The House On Hope Street

by Steel, Danielle

  And as she walked into the office on Valentine’s Day, Liz finally believed her. Jack had always made a big deal out of holidays. He bought roses for her on Valentine’s Day, and he always got her a present. But everything about this year was different. She had to appear in court for clients twice that day, and she was finding it harder and harder to do that. Her clients’ animosity toward the spouses they were divorcing seemed unnecessarily venomous to her, and the cruel tricks they pulled on each other and wanted her to pull on their behalf seemed so pointless. She was beginning to hate their law practice, and wondered why she had let Jack talk her into family law in the first place.

  She had said as much to Victoria when she last talked to her. Her boys kept her busy as they were still in nursery school, and she and Liz had had trouble getting together, but they still had time for long conversations on the phone late at night.

  “What other kind of law would you rather do?” Victoria had asked sensibly. “You always told me you hated personal injury when I was doing it, and I can’t see you doing criminal.”

  “There are other specialties. I don’t know, maybe something to do with kids. All my clients are so busy trying to screw each other over, they forget about their children.” Children’s advocacy had always appealed to her, but Jack had always been quick to remind her there was no money in it. He wasn’t greedy, but he was practical, and they had five kids to support. They made a good living in family law, and it was difficult to ignore that.

  But she was reminded again of how much she hated it on the afternoon of Valentine’s Day when she walked out of court having won some minor point for one of her clients. She had allowed herself to get talked into filing a motion against the woman’s ex-husband more for its nuisance value than for any real legal reason, and the judge had correctly scolded her for it, but granted the motion. The victory was hollow for her as a result, and she felt stupid as she drove back to the office.

  “Did you lose?” Jean asked when she saw her walk into the office. Liz looked tired and annoyed and seemed irritable when she picked up her messages on the way into her office.

  “No. We won. But the judge said it was frivolous, and he was right. I don’t know why I let her talk me into it. All she really wanted to do was annoy him. Jack would have put his foot down.” But Jack wasn’t there anymore to discuss things with, or bounce things off of, or make her laugh, and keep their clients in line. He had made it fun for her, and kept their practice exciting. Now it was just drudgery, and she no longer felt she was doing the best possible job for their clients. “Maybe my mother was right two months ago, and I should close the office.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jean said quietly, “unless that’s what you want to do.” She knew the insurance money had come in the week before, and Liz could afford to close the office for a while and decide what she wanted to do, but she thought she’d be miserable sitting at home with too much time on her hands. She had worked for too long, done it too well, and had enjoyed it too much to just give it up now. “Give it time, maybe it’ll get to be fun again for you, Liz. Or maybe you just have to put your foot down with your clients, and be more selective about the cases you take now.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” She left early that afternoon, and didn’t tell anyone where she was going. There was something she wanted to do, and she knew she had to do it alone. She stopped and bought a dozen roses on the way out of town, and she drove to the cemetery, and stood at his grave for a long time. There was no headstone yet, and she laid the roses down on the grass, and then stood there and cried for an hour, racked by sobs.

  “I love you,” she whispered finally, and then walked away in the chill wind, with her head down, and her hands deep in her pockets. She cried all the way home, and she was just a few blocks away when she missed a stop sign, and rolled blindly through it, just as a young woman left the curb and dashed across the street. Liz’s Volvo and the young woman’s left hip collided instantly, and she crumpled toward the ground with a startled expression as Liz stomped on the brakes, put the car into park, and leapt out of the car to help her. There were still tears on her face as she helped the young woman up, and three cars honked at her, and people shouted out their windows at her.

  “What are you? Crazy, or drunk? I saw that!”

  “You hit her! I was a witness … You okay?” the driver shouted to her victim, as both women stood trembling in front of Liz’s car, and tears continued to pour down Liz’s face.

  “I’m so sorry, I … I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see the stop sign,” she said to her victim, but she did know what had happened. She had been to the cemetery to see Jack and she was so distraught she had hit the woman who had every right to be crossing the street. It was entirely Liz’s fault, and she herself knew it.

  “I’m okay … don’t worry … You just barely touched me,” the young woman reassured her.

  “I could have killed you,” Liz said in horror, and both women were holding each other’s arms, as though to hold each other up, and the woman who’d been hit looked at Liz, and realized Liz was in a daze.

  “Are you okay?” Liz nodded in answer, barely able to speak, desperately sorry about what had happened, and frightened of what could have.

  “I’m so sorry … my husband just died … and I was at the cemetery just now … I shouldn’t have been driving …”

  “Why don’t we both sit down …” They both got into Liz’s car, and she offered to take the woman to the hospital, but the young woman insisted she was fine, and told Liz she was sorry about her husband. Liz was in far worse shape than she was.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go to a doctor?” Liz asked her again, but the young woman smiled, grateful that nothing worse had happened.

  “I’m fine. The worst I’ll get is a bruise. We were both lucky … or at least, I was.” They sat there together for a little while, exchanged names and telephone numbers, and a few minutes later the young woman got up and went on her way, and Liz went home, still shaking. She called Victoria from her car and told her what had happened, since personal injury had been her specialty. Victoria whistled through her teeth when Liz told her.

  “If she’s as nice as you say, which I doubt, from experience, you were goddamn lucky. You’d better give up driving for a while, Liz, before you kill somebody.”

  “I’ve been okay … it was just today … I went out to the cemetery … it’s Valentine’s Day …” She started to sob and couldn’t say more.

  “I know. I’m so sorry. I know how hard this is.” But she didn’t. No one could possibly know, Liz knew now, unless they’d been through it. She realized that all the times she had told people who had lost someone how sorry she was, she hadn’t been able to dream, for a single instant, of what it meant to them, or what it felt like.

  She told the children about the accident that night, and they looked frightened, they were clearly worried about her. But when she called the young woman to see how she was, she still insisted she was fine, and she sent Liz flowers the next morning at the office, which stunned her. The card read “Don’t worry, we’re both going to be okay.” Liz called Victoria as soon as she got them.

  “You must have hit an angel,” Victoria said in disbelief. “All of my clients would have sued you for emotional distress, brain damage, spinal injuries, and I’d have collected ten million dollars for them.”

  “Thank God you retired.” Liz laughed for the first time since it had happened. There was nothing to laugh about these days.

  “You’re damn right. And damn lucky. Now are you going to stay off the road for a while?” She was genuinely worried about her.

  “I can’t. I’ve got too much to do.”

  “Well, you’d better be careful. Take this as a warning.”

  “I will.”

  She was exceptionally cautious after that, but it sobered her a little, and made her realize how distraught and out of touch she was. And for the next month, she made a bigger effort to cheer up for the c
hildren. She took them to the movies on weekends, went bowling with them, encouraged them to invite their friends for dinner and the night. And by St. Patrick’s Day, another of Jack’s favorite holidays, they weren’t in great spirits, but they were better. It was nearly three months, and the children at least seemed to be happier, even Jamie. There was laughter at the dinner table again, they played their music as loud as they ever had, and although their faces were still too serious from time to time, she knew that they had turned the corner. But her nights were still long and dark and lonely, and her days filled with stress at the office.

  But on Easter weekend, she surprised them. She couldn’t stand the thought of another dismal holiday, filled with memories of Jack, wandering the house in agony and trying to overcome it. She took them all skiing at Lake Tahoe, and the kids really loved it. They looked relieved to see her back out in the world with them, skiing with them, and laughing as she raced Megan down the bunny slope, or collided with Jamie. They all loved it. It had been just what they needed.

  And on the drive home, they talked about the summer.

  “That’s months away, Mom,” Annie complained. She had a crush on a boy close to home, and didn’t even want to think about going away that summer. Peter already had a summer job lined up, at a nearby veterinary hospital, which wasn’t a career path for him, but at least it would keep him busy. And all she had to do was organize the three girls and Jamie.

  “I can only get away for a week this year, I’ve got too much to do now that I’m working alone. How about camp for a month for the three of you? Jamie can stay home with me and do day camp.”

  “Can I bring my own lunch?” Jamie asked, looking concerned, and Liz smiled at him. He had hated the lunches at the last day camp he went to, but he loved the kids and the activities and she thought it would do him good. He couldn’t go away to sleepover camp like his sisters.

  “You can bring your own lunch,” Liz promised, and he beamed.

  “Then I want to go.”

  Two down. Three to deal with, Liz thought to herself as they drove home from Tahoe. The other three discussed it all the way to Sacramento and decided that camp sounded like a good idea after all. In July. And Liz said she’d take them all to Tahoe for a week in August, and then they could hang around at home, and use the pool with their friends.

  “Are we going to give our Fourth of July picnic this year?” It was an annual tradition that Jack organized every year. He did the barbecue, ran the bar, and was a one-man band. Just thinking about it depressed her. There was a long silence and Liz shook her head. No one argued with her, and then as she glanced over at him, she saw that there were two tears sneaking down Jamie’s cheeks as she watched him.

  “Are you sad about the picnic?” she asked softly, but he shook his head. It was something else. Something much more important.

  “I just remembered. Now I can’t do Special Olympics.” It was an event he loved, that Jack had done with him. They had “trained” for months, and Jamie usually came in last, or close to it, in whatever events he entered, but he always won a ribbon of some kind, and the whole family went to watch him.

  “Why can’t you?” Liz refused to be daunted. She knew how much Jack had put into it, and how much it meant to Jamie. “Maybe Peter can train with you.”

  “I can’t, Mom,” Peter said regretfully. “I’m going to be working from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the pet hospital, and I’ll even have to work some weekends.” But it was great money, which was why he had agreed to do it. “I won’t have time.” There was a long, long pause, as the tears continued to roll silently down Jamie’s cheeks, and Liz felt as though her heart had been ripped out of her chest as she watched him.

  “Okay, Jamie,” she said quietly, “that leaves you and me. We’ll have to work on this together. We’ll figure out what events you want to be in and qualify for, and we’ll work our asses off, and this year,” she said, fighting back her own tears, “I think we ought to go for a gold medal.” Jamie’s eyes grew wide at the words.

  “Without Daddy?” Jamie looked startled as he turned to see if she meant it or was just teasing. But she wouldn’t have done that to him.

  “With me. How about it? Let’s shoot for the stars.”

  “You can’t, Mom. You don’t know how to do it.”

  “We’ll learn together. You can show me what Daddy used to do. And we’ll win something, I promise.” A slow smile dawned on Jamie’s face, and he reached out a hand and touched hers, without saying another word. They had solved the problem. And the summer was organized. All she had to do now was enroll the girls at camp, sign Jamie up for day camp and Special Olympics, and reserve rooms or a house for them in Tahoe for a week in August. It wasn’t easy, any of it, figuring it out, meeting their needs single-handedly, living up to their expectations, trying to make up to them for what they had lost, but she was doing her best, and for the moment they were surviving.

  They were all doing decent work in school, they smiled a good part of the time now, they’d had a great time skiing with her, and all she had to do now was keep them on track till they grew up, carry a double load in their law practice, and learn how to get Jamie through Special Olympics, and with luck, even win a ribbon. She felt like a juggler in a circus act, as they drove home toward San Francisco, and Megan turned the radio on full blast. But it was familiar at least. Jack would have had a fit over it, and made her turn it off. But Liz didn’t. She knew it was a good sign, and they needed all the good signs they could grab now. There had been damn few of them in the past three and a half months, but things were slowly beginning to look up. Liz glanced at Megan with a small smile, and as their eyes met, Liz turned the radio up even slightly louder. And as Megan watched her do it, she started to laugh, and so did her mother.

  “Yeah, Mom … go for it!!!” They all laughed and shouted and started to sing with the music. It was deafening. But it was just what they needed, and Liz spoke as loud as she could in the din.

  “I love you guys!” They managed to hear her despite the noise, and in unison they shouted back to the woman who had guided them over the reefs and back into safe waters, and they knew it, just as she did.

  “We love you too, Mom!!!” Their ears were still ringing from the music when they got home, but they were all smiling, as they picked up their bags and walked into the house, and Liz was walking right behind them, smiling.

  Carole was waiting for them at the door. “How was it?” she asked, referring to the ski trip as much as the long drive home, and Liz smiled at her with a look of peace Carole hadn’t seen on her face in months.

  “Terrific,” Liz said quietly, and walked up the stairs to her bedroom.

  The House On Hope Street

  Chapter 5

  The kids got out of school on the second week of June, and two weeks later, Liz and Carole were packing their bags for camp. The girls were genuinely excited and several of their friends were going too. It was nice to see them all looking so happy. The camp they were going to was near Monterey, Liz drove them down herself, and took Jamie with her for the trip.

  There was a real holiday atmosphere in the car, on the way. They played a variety of CD’s, all of them loud, wild, and their kind of music, rather than their mother’s. But Liz didn’t mind. In the last month or two, she had really enjoyed being with her children. And she had promised Jamie she’d start training with him as soon as the girls left for camp. They had another five weeks before the Special Olympics, and his sisters would be back by then. The whole family always went to the Special Olympics to cheer for Jamie. It was a tradition Jack had started three years before, and one that was important to them. But Jamie was still worried that his mother wouldn’t know how to do it with him.

  They dropped the girls off at camp between Monterey and Carmel, and Liz helped carry their sleeping bags, tennis rackets, one guitar, two trunks, and a mountain of duffel bags and tote bags to their cabins. It looked like enough gear for an invading army. And they scarcely remembere
d to kiss her and Jamie good-bye before they ran off to meet their counselors, and find their friends.

  “Maybe you’ll go to camp one day,” Liz said to Jamie as they drove away.

  “I don’t want to,” he said matter-of-factly. “I like being home with you.” He looked up at her as he said it, and she smiled at him as they got back on the freeway. It took them three hours to get back to Tiburon, and when they arrived, Peter had just come home from work. He had started the week before, and was loving it, despite the long hours. It was exactly what he wanted. And there were two other high school kids working there that summer too, one of them a very pretty girl from Mill Valley, and a young college intern, from the veterinary college at Davis.

  “How was work today?” she asked her oldest son, as she and Jamie walked into the kitchen.

  “Busy.” He smiled at his mother.

  “How about some dinner?”

  She was cooking for them again, as she had been for months. Carole had covered for her before that. But ever since Easter, she felt as though she had reconnected with her children. Her mother was still calling regularly to check on her, but even her predictions of doom didn’t seem quite as ominous. It was beginning to seem as though they were going to make it after all. She was managing at work, despite an enormous workload. She had finished all of Jack’s cases, and started some new ones on her own. The kids were in good shape. The summer was off to a reasonable start. And she still missed Jack, but she could get through the days, and even the nights now. She didn’t sleep as well as she once had, but she was asleep by two now instead of five, and most of the time, she was in fairly decent spirits. Though occasionally, she still had some real sinkers, and some intensely down days. But now at last there were plenty of good ones too, more than bad.