Random Acts of Kindness

by Lisa Verge Higgins

  Nicole knelt on the floor of her kitchen with her head deep in the gutted dishwasher, holding on to the vain hope that she’d hear the sound of a bedroom door bang open or the clatter of footsteps on the stairs. She was deluding herself, of course. Lars was at work and the kids were out of the house at preseason lacrosse practice. Not that they would have rushed to answer the door, anyway. Over the past eighteen months, they’d all learned that unexpected visitors only brought bad news.

  Her spine knotted one vertebra at a time. Nicole tipped back on her heels and braced herself as she stretched to her full height. She edged her way around the flotsam of plastic and metal dishwasher parts on the floor then walked on soft footsteps through the hallway. She bent to peer through the peephole.

  No blue uniforms.

  She drew away and let out the breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. Of course it wasn’t the San Mateo police. For the past two calm, quiet weeks, she hadn’t had to worry about frantic neighbors or impromptu visits from California state social workers or squad cars pulling up to the house at unexpected hours. Yet she was still reacting like a lab rat conditioned to expect an electric shock at the sound of a bell.

  She put her eye to the fish-eye lens and took a better look at the women waiting on the porch. They looked vaguely familiar, but not like any of the social workers Nicole had come to know. The woman in the back was chewing on the inside of her own cheek. Her face was hidden behind a pair of oversize glasses, and she clutched a small, fat dog under her arm. The other had a bohemian look—a loose auburn braid, drugstore sunglasses, and a T-shirt that screamed EARTH FIRST! We’ll strip-mine the other planets later.

  Nicole settled her face into a mask of calm and then mustered the courage to pull the door open. “May I help you?”

  The bohemian gasped. “You’ve cut your hair.”

  Nicole swept her fingers up her neck to where her hair curled at the nape. Any social worker she knew wouldn’t have commented on that. She’d cut her long, long hair before she’d had the need to know anything about social services.

  “You’re all cheekbones now,” the woman said. “It looks wonderful! But I imagine that when it happened, legions of your ex-boyfriends spontaneously woke up wailing and gnashing their teeth.”

  Then the bohemian laughed, and the sound of that deep-throated amusement burrowed into Nicole’s brain, unearthing a memory of a hot June day under pine trees, washing the sap off cars to raise money for something, something, something. The softball team? Or was it the hiking trail restoration project that Claire Petrenko ran—

  Claire.

  Nicole blinked. The woman’s features wavered and morphed as if she’d been looking at her through rainwater glass, but now those features grew as sharp as the photos Claire’s sisters frequently posted on her cancer blog.

  Claire winked. “Go Pine Lake Beavers.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “How long has it been?”

  Nicole’s mind raced. The last time she’d seen Claire in the flesh was nine or ten years ago on vacation in their Adirondack hometown of Pine Lake, clear across the country, when Claire had made a quick stop there before flying to Thailand. The last she’d heard of Claire was on the cancer blog Claire’s sisters kept for her. Lately Nicole had been skimming that, wincing at Claire’s sisters’ relentlessly upbeat posts. The only thing she remembered amid the myriad medical details was that Claire had come out of the mastectomy with flying colors.

  When was that? Six, eight weeks ago?

  Then Nicole realized she was standing openmouthed while a high school friend stood on the porch bouncing on the ball of her toes. So Nicole opened her arms. Claire threw herself at her, squealing, and Nicole rocked in her embrace while Claire’s laughter bubbled over.

  “You’re so skinny.” Claire pulled out of the embrace and held her at arm’s length. “Both you and Jenna. Don’t you guys eat Cheez Doodles?”

  Nicole glanced at the other woman. Seeing Claire was a shock, but having Jenna standing in her shadow was just bizarre. The two of them could have time-traveled as a set from twenty years ago. Jenna had always been Claire’s particular pet, an odd little bird limping along in her wake.

  “Hey, Jenna.” Nicole leaned over for a quick hug, but it was like wrapping her arms around a plastic mannequin. Or her eldest son. “What an adorable dog.”

  “He’s a rescue mutt. He’s ugly as sin.” Jenna tightened her grip as the dog shuddered. “Do you always open your door with a weapon?”

  Nicole glanced at the screwdriver still gripped in her hand. “You caught me in the middle of a home repair.”

  “Just tell me it’s not the toilet.” Claire threw a thumb toward Jenna. “Kiddo here has a bladder of iron, but not me. I haven’t peed since we left Sacramento.”

  “There’s a powder room right down the hall.”

  Nicole felt her smile tighten as she stepped back to let them in. She hadn’t welcomed visitors for a long time, and unexpected ones put her on guard. She reminded herself that Jenna and Claire weren’t the kind of unexpected guests she had to worry about. At least, she didn’t think so, as her mind stumbled to come up with even one plausible reason why they’d suddenly show up at her door.

  The thought crossed her mind that Claire and Jenna’s visit couldn’t possibly be unexpected. Jenna lived in Seattle, Claire somewhere in rural Oregon; now they were both here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And Nicole had been losing track of schedules these past few weeks, dropping balls in ways she’d never done before. Her sudden freedom of movement after living in a high-intensity-monitoring mode had left her feeling slack and disorganized. She’d checked her e-mail just this morning but hadn’t seen anything from either one of them. She hadn’t received a text, either—and she would have known, because her cell phone never left her pocket.

  The uncertainty embarrassed her. She hesitated to ask in case this visit had been prearranged and in the hell that had become her life, she’d just forgotten.

  “I like the pictures.” Jenna stood in the hallway with her sunglasses perched on her head, eyeballing the framed, whimsical charcoal sketches of oak trees upon the walls. “Who’s the artist?”

  “My eldest son.”

  “You’re lucky he draws. My husband sculpts. You can’t walk five feet in my house without tripping over one of Nate’s installations.”

  Nicole mentally scrambled for what little she knew about Jenna. Pine Lake High had been small, but she and Jenna hadn’t really been friends. And though the cancer blog had put everyone in touch again, it gave only hints of everyone’s life through their brief, sympathetic, cheering posts.

  “Could Lucky have a bowl of water?” Jenna gave the dog a nuzzle. “I didn’t dare give him a drop in the car. Sometimes he pees when he’s nervous.”

  Numbly, Nicole led the way toward the kitchen. Eighteen months ago, she’d have been deliriously happy to welcome guests, joyfully enfolding them into her happy, unruffled suburban life. She’d be handing Jenna a stiff drink and asking about her family, trying to coax the woman out of her shell, find out what she’d done with herself, maybe joke a little about that one time they went whitewater rafting and Jenna had surprised everyone by being the first to hurl herself into the water off Elephant Rock.

  Neutral questions only, Nicole thought. If she asked probing questions, then they would ask probing questions, too.

  “So,” Nicole said, choosing her words carefully, “did you call to tell me when you were arriving, Jenna? I’ve been elbow deep in replacing chopper blades, but—”

  “I told Claire to try, but she wanted to surprise you. She also said you’re not so good at answering phone calls.”

  Her breath rushed out of her. So she hadn’t missed a call or an e-mail or a text. She wasn’t completely losing it. “With three kids, the phone’s always ringing. Do you want something to drink? Water? Lemonade?”

  “Lemonade.”

  “I’ll have some of that, too,” said Cl
aire as she joined them a minute later, blinking at the metallic guts of the dishwasher on the floor. “What, are there no cars to reassemble around here?”

  “It’s been a long time since I took apart an engine. This is a lot easier.” Yesterday it was replacing the inner tubes in her bike, and the day before she’d spackled a hole that her daughter Julia had punched into the hallway wall with her lacrosse stick. “It’s less greasy than under the hood of my old Lynx.”

  Claire grinned. “It’s good to see some things never change.”

  Nicole set out a cereal bowl of water for the dog and poured a second glass of lemonade for Claire. “Listen, I promised Lars I’d have this all cleared up before he got back from work and the kids from practice and that’ll be”—she glanced at the antique clock on the wall above the sink, calculating how soon she could gracefully shoo these two out—“about an hour from now. You don’t mind if I finish this while you guys tell me what brought you so unexpectedly to my door?”

  “Of course, Nic,” Claire said, her eyes dancing. “I know we took you by surprise.”

  Nicole laughed as if she hadn’t panicked at all. Then she leaned into the dishwasher and removed a torx screw in the chopper cover.

  Claire added, “Jenna did the same exact thing to me the day before yesterday.”

  Jenna? “Really?”

  “Yup, she just drove down from Seattle and showed up at my cabin and offered to take me and the dog on a road trip for the next three weeks.”

  Nicole paused, more at the number than the news. It’d be three weeks, six days, and ten hours before Noah would be home again.

  “Wow.” Nicole’s voice sounded flat even to her own ears. “I don’t remember what it’s like to be that spontaneous.”

  Claire leaned affectionately into Jenna. “Isn’t it the most selfless, generous, random act of kindness?”

  From the shadows of the dishwasher, Nicole’s curiosity tingled. She glanced at Jenna pulling dry kibbles out of a plastic snack bag and feeding them, one by one, to the dog on her lap. She tried to remember Jenna’s story as she pulled a paper towel off a roll and started wiping gunk from the filter. Jenna had at least one daughter who must be a teenager by now, probably her own son Christian’s age. Jenna worked in the money business, at a bank or with a broker. That didn’t sound like the kind of situation that would lead easily to three weeks off without family.

  Not that this was any of her business. “A vacation sounds like just what the doctor ordered, Claire, especially after all you’ve been through. Although isn’t it awfully soon after your surgery to be taking a long trip?”

  Claire said, “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “For a minute, I thought I heard my sister Paulina’s voice coming right out of your mouth.”

  Nicole slipped two screws on the counter above and raised a brow. “Does your sister have a reason to be concerned?”

  “The operation was six weeks ago. I’m right as rain and ready to see the sights. So tell me, how’s the life coach business going?”

  Nicole plunged her head back into the dishwasher, wiping clean some deeper part of the inside so neither Claire nor Jenna would see her face when she stated the next bold-faced lie. “I’m on sabbatical now. In August my clients are basking on beaches and too busy to worry about things like how to potty-train their three-year-old or motivate their teenagers to clean their rooms. So, do you have a route planned?”

  “Jenna’s driving,” Claire said. “I’ve never been much for maps. And I’ve always believed that plans and travel frequently work best when they aren’t made together.”

  Nicole tried to hit the mental brakes, but she couldn’t stop her mind from vaulting ahead of her better sense. In her kitchen sat a woman who’d just emerged from a brush with death and another who’d somehow untangled herself from a knot of domestic and professional obligations. If Nicole were a real therapist—which she wasn’t—she’d say this was a classic avoidance scenario, spurned by some stressful life change. If she were to give them advice—which she wouldn’t—she’d suggest they make plans, set an agenda, make reservations, decide on a final destination.

  Two lost sheep.

  “Ah, Nic,” Claire said, “I can tell from your silence that you’re sitting there thinking the two of us must have gone totally crazy.”

  “I don’t have enough letters after my name to make that kind of diagnosis.” She squinted up at Claire. “But I do remember that the last time you took off on a long trip, you ended up doing a stint as a Buddhist nun.”

  “This time I’m not subject to the lure of holy temples. My only job is to keep costs down as Jenna and I discover the lower forty-eight.”

  Nicole remembered that Claire had once bragged she’d lived on three dollars a day while backpacking in Thailand, mostly by charming herself into the homes of many a native family for the sake of a free bed.

  A free bed.

  Ahhh. The quest for a free bed would certainly explain this surprise visit.

  “The truth is,” Claire said, “I really do have a goal. Back in high school I left something unfinished, something I always wanted to check off but never did. So Jenna and I are planning to head back to Pine Lake.”

  “Pine Lake?” Nicole knocked her head on the top of the dishwasher as she fell back on her hip. “Our Pine Lake? Three thousand miles away in upper New York State?”

  Claire drawled, “Is there any other Pine Lake?”

  Suddenly, Nicole was no longer sitting on the hard kitchen tiles. She was transported to a beach chair lakeside. The wind riffled the grass. Katydids chirped in the trees. She envisioned the sun turning the surface of the water late-​afternoon gold. Her toes curled as she remembered the feel of sand sliding underneath her sandals. Her shoulders suddenly ached, a sunburn ache, crying out for an evening breeze under star-blasted skies.

  Claire’s voice was tinged with concern. “Hey, are you all right?”

  “I haven’t been home—there—in so long.” Nicole rubbed her head where she’d knocked it. “You took me by surprise.”

  “I see that. What do you think, Jenna?” Claire nudged a startled Jenna with an elbow. “Is there enough room in the car for a life coach who appears to be in desperate need of a vacation?”

  Nicole stood up and placed the screwdriver on the counter. Rather, she tried to place it down. Instead it clattered out of her fingers, the noise jarring.

  “If only I had three weeks to spare.” Nicole stepped around the dishwasher parts and headed toward the hallway. “Why don’t I just make up the guest room for you two? I would love if you both stayed the night.”

  Claire called out her name, but Nicole took the stairs pretending she didn’t hear. Nicole flung open the hall closet and hid behind the door to stare blindly at the folded linens. She was a fool to even consider the possibility. She had too much to do here at home, plus two other children and a husband who needed her.

  And she didn’t deserve to be jaunting off on a three-week road trip as free as a bird.

  Not while her son wasn’t.

  Chapter Two

  Reno, Nevada

  Standing on the second-floor walkway of the Silver Dollar Motel, Jenna drank horrendous motel coffee while watching trucks kick up dust on the busy road. Last night, the Reno skyline had been a blaze of neon bling, bright and enticing from a distance. Now those buildings were dull and wreathed with a blue haze, ugly in the harsh light of morning.

  She turned to return to her room to pack the last of her stuff and noticed someone waving at her from the motel parking lot. She stilled as a dark-haired woman shaded her eyes to squint in Jenna’s direction.

  No. Can’t be.

  Jenna blinked to loosen the grit from her vision. She blinked again, hoping this was just a mirage born of heat and air pollution. That couldn’t be Nicole standing in the blazing Nevada sun. Yesterday, Jenna and Claire had driven away from Nicole’s home, leaving the former star athlete back in California.
But no, there Nicole was, crossing the cracked asphalt toward the motel stairs.

  Jenna lifted her arm in greeting and tried to hide her dismay. She didn’t really like Nicole. Her aversion to this woman was stupid, and she knew it. It was a musty remnant of high school. Nicole’s only crime was being born well-mannered, efficient, confident, and gregarious. While Jenna had plotted for a week how best to approach her English teacher for the embarrassing necessity of asking for a college recommendation—then spent four days hovering at the end of class trying to balance the risk of being late for Calculus with the opportunity for a private moment—Nicole had just popped her head around the door and chirped, Hey, Mrs. Peters, you think you could write me a rec?

  Now Jenna watched the former star softball player bounce up the stairs to the second floor of the motel and then stride past the row of chipped maroon doors as if she were loping across the outfield to the pitcher’s mound with a hundred people cheering.

  Jenna’s daughter, Zoe, walked like that, too, her sails billowed by easy confidence as she navigated through the mean-girl storms of middle school.

  “Hey, you.” Nicole approached, digging into her wicker purse. “I bet you’ve been missing this.”

  Jenna felt a sinking darkness as Nicole pulled a familiar smartphone out of her purse.

  Nicole gave it a little tilt. “I misplaced mine once, and I felt like an amputee for days. I found this buzzing under the guest room bed.”

  Deep under the bed, Jenna knew, because she’d kicked it there herself and then went down on her hands and knees to make sure it slid far. Now she glanced at the screen and saw a single bar of power and a bunch of missed calls. It must have been vibrating madly on the hardwood floor for Nicole to have found it so quickly.

  “Jenna?” Nicole dipped down to catch her eye. “Didn’t Claire tell you I was coming?”

  “No. No, she didn’t.” She slipped the phone in her back pocket and wondered why Claire had kept mum. “Please tell me you didn’t drive all the way up here just to deliver this to me.”