Random Acts of Kindness

by Lisa Verge Higgins

  “No repeat of prom night.” Claire had hoped for oblivion that night, and she had gotten it in spades.

  Maya said, “I’m sure you’ve all learned to drink in moderation since our misspent youth.”

  “Not me.” Jenna fed crumbled little bits of hamburger to Lucky on her lap. “I never drink.”

  “You of all people should take a nip now and then,” Maya exhorted. “Vodka makes extroverts of all of us. Now”—Maya cracked open the cap—“there’s a game I play whenever I come to a new dig with a brand-new crew. It’s an icebreaker. The four of us haven’t really spoken for too many years, so I propose we give this a go.”

  Claire said, “The last time you proposed a game, Maya, Theresa Hendrick nearly set the school on fire.”

  “That was Truth or Dare.” Maya shrugged. “And Tess was just starting to go off the rails. This game is more cerebral. More spiritual. So I’ll take the first swig and ask a question, and then the person of my choice will have to answer it.”

  Claire noted that Maya didn’t wait for debate. She raised the bottle and took an impressive gulp.

  “Okay.” Maya coughed, her voice rough. “My first question to all of you is: why are you here?”

  Maya thrust the bottle at Nicole. Nicole, looking baffled, seized it. “Why am I here?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your hearing,” said Maya.

  “Clearly,” Nicole said, starting to stand, “you meant to start with the Buddhist.”

  “She’s on the other side of the fire.” Maya touched Nicole’s arm to keep her in her chair. “I’m asking you.”

  Claire’s heart skipped a little as Maya’s grin went sly. That look reminded Claire of an evening on Coley’s Point when Maya, limned by fire, looked Claire straight in the eye and asked her what she planned to do with the rest of her life. Maya had been fixed, intense, questioning. The next day Claire found herself starting projects she’d never before considered. Both Maya and Nicole had that effect on people. So Claire settled herself more comfortably in the rickety chair in order to watch the clash of the titans.

  “Do you want something existential,” Nicole asked, “or another Bible quote?”

  “No need to please me.” Maya curled into her chair. “Just answer it honestly, any way you’d like.”

  “I’m here to make sure these two sheep”—a careless flip of her hand toward her and Jenna—“don’t get eaten by wolves before they reach Pine Lake.”

  Maya cocked her head to the other side. “That’s kind of a literal response. You’re not doing this at all for yourself?”

  “Well, it’s a vacation.” Nicole took a sip of the vodka and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “I haven’t had a vacation in nearly two years.”

  “So you’re not on some soul search.” Maya rolled her hand toward the grasslands beyond the circle of firelight. “You’re not seeking some essential truth in American life?”

  “Wow,” Nicole sputtered. “How long have you been living in academia?”

  “Only a couple of months a year. Aren’t you a therapist, Nic?”

  Nicole paused a beat. “I started a business as a life coach.”

  “How is that different?”

  “Therapists have about as many letters after their name as you do. They’re licensed. They can deal with clinical situations. For example, my fifteen-year-old son won’t talk to me no matter how hard I try to coach him, so he is seeing a therapist.”

  Claire felt that little bit of news hang in the air for a moment, like a spark amid a cloud of smoke.

  “My daughter won’t talk to me, either,” Jenna said abruptly. “Maybe I should have her see a therapist.”

  Claire glanced at Jenna in surprise. Her friend usually stayed quiet in groups, preferring to whisper personal details rather than state them in an open forum, notwithstanding yesterday’s extended confession in Cheyenne.

  Nicole must have sensed the change, too, because she shifted her attention to Jenna. “With teenagers,” Nicole said, “it’s hard to know what’s normal and what’s not. Exactly how old is your daughter?”

  “Thirteen.” Jenna slipped Lucky onto the ground and then placed the napkin full of hamburger meat in front of him. “Do you guys remember what it was like to be a teenager?”

  Claire certainly did. At thirteen, she was the new girl in Pine Lake, seasoned enough to hang back until she got a bead on these folks with the flat northern accents who kept calling her a come-away. She was used to having to work to fit in. Her father had shipped his family of eight across the country several times as he moved his way up into better-paying park ranger positions. He’d made a conscious decision to stay in the Adirondacks after Claire’s mother’s terrible diagnosis.

  She remembered that day. She’d been only seventeen years old.

  “What I remember,” Nicole said, “is that the softball coach finally gave me a chance to pitch. That’s the year we won the regionals. Jenna, didn’t you run for class treasurer or something?”

  “My mother thought it’d help me be more popular. She made those stupid posters with the glitter glue.”

  Maya barked a laugh. “I’ve heard that being an American teenager sucks. I spent so much time overseas I hardly remember those years.”

  “Being a teenager didn’t suck for all of us.” Jenna hugged her own knees. “Nicole didn’t suffer.”

  “God, no,” Nicole said. “Those were some of the best years of my life. The hot lights during a spring softball game, the maple pecan pie after school on Fridays, swimming out to the island at Bay Roberts. Long after I moved away and my parents retired to Boca Raton, Lars and I used to visit every August. It hasn’t changed, you know: the lake shore, the uptown drag, Coley’s Point, the tiny aisles in Ray’s general store—”

  “—the drunks down by the cannery, the seasonal unemployment,” Claire added, “the occasional alerts about the mercury levels in the fish.”

  Nicole gave her a raised brow from across the fire.

  “I’m just trying to point out that your idealized town of our mutual past had its problems, too.”

  “You never let us forget it,” Jenna said in a rush, “even when Nicole pulled you over in the hall and asked you to help at her fund-raiser car wash, and you agreed only if she would join us in your winter coat drive.”

  “That sounds like just the kind of idealistically futile thing I’d do.” Claire’s gaze drifted to the hollow of the open sky beyond the flames. “You’ve got quite a memory, Jenna.”

  “I remember it,” Jenna continued, “because I was standing there right next to you, and Nicole didn’t think to invite me.”

  The firewood popped and collapsed in the subsequent silence. Maya snagged Claire’s eye in curiosity. Nicole looked like she’d been hit upside the head.

  “That wasn’t fair.” Jenna stiffened in her seat. “You were a popular softball star who dated Drake Weldon. I was just a gimp who dragged a thousand middle-school gaffes behind me like Marley’s clanking chains.”

  “And apparently, I was an oblivious jerk.” Nicole tossed the last of her boneless chicken fingers in Lucky’s direction and then thrust the bottle at Jenna. “Now it’s your turn. Tell us why you’re here.”

  Jenna reached for the bottle. “I’m here because of Zoe.”

  Claire had expected Jenna to say she was here to get away from the situation in Seattle. Jenna hadn’t said much about Zoe, other than the fact that Nate was trying to get full custody of their daughter. The surprises just kept coming.

  Claire asked, “Is Zoe having trouble in school or something?”

  “No. Trouble in school I could handle.” Jenna, raising the lip of the bottle to her mouth, winced as she took a sip. “I mean, really, what awkward situation haven’t I experienced as a teenager? The problem is that Zoe hates me.”

  Claire raised a hand in protest. “She doesn’t hate you, Jenna. She’s thirteen, right? Helloooo, hormones.”

  “No, she really hates me. She slouches downstairs
to family dinner wearing attitude and then only picks at Nate’s parmesan chicken.”

  Maya murmured, “My God, you have a husband who makes parmesan chicken.”

  “His sirloin roast is better,” Jenna said. “But all I ever see is Zoe just moving it around on the plate.”

  “Classic teenage behavior.” Nicole took great interest in a thread that had come loose in the side seam of her shorts. “She probably thinks you’re probing. She’s misinterpreting your efforts at conversation as an invasion of privacy.”

  “Is that why Zoe’s calling me dumb, blind, and stupid?”

  Nicole glanced up, raising her brows. “Jenna, when a teenager says something like that, it sounds to me like…well, like she’s dragging a thousand troubles behind her like Marley’s clanking chains.”

  “If she is, Zoe’s certainly not telling me.” Jenna leaned forward, watching Lucky struggle to choke down the last of the chicken. “And that’s why a week ago, I set off to find Claire.”

  Claire was starting to wonder if Maya hadn’t spiked the fire with something more than dried old brush. Jenna was rarely this voluble—and she certainly had never really explained why she’d decided to show up at Claire’s door a week ago. At the time, Claire had been too excited about the prospect of getting away from her sisters to probe too deeply. In fact, she hadn’t wanted to probe—the gift Jenna offered was a juicy ripe plum, and Claire had lived in the fear that her friend would have second thoughts and snatch it away.

  Jenna leaned down to scratch behind Lucky’s ears as he sniffed around the grass for more food. She scratched and scratched, making no indication she was going to elaborate, even as Lucky stretched out from under her hand to wander farther afield. So both Maya and Nicole then looked straight at her, as if Claire might have an explanation. All Claire could do was shrug to mutely confess her own ignorance. Jenna’s mind had always run in strange, concentric circles. Sometimes it took a little while to hit the bull’s-eye.

  “I’ve screwed up every relationship I’ve ever had in my life,” Jenna finally said, with Lucky out of reach. “My father’s dead. I’ve never gotten along with my mother. My husband is leaving me, and my daughter hates me. In the middle of all that, the thought came to me that I needed to go back to the beginning of things.” Jenna pulled her knees to her chest and then hugged them so close that she could rest her chin on them. “The beginning of things is Pine Lake, where I once had a really good friend. Someone who seemed to like me, even if I was a freak.” A flicker of a gaze, swift and nervous, across the flames. “I thought, maybe if I connected with Claire again, I could finally learn how to stop screwing up all my relationships.”

  Claire’s face started to burn with a hot shyness as her friends’ gazes shifted back and forth from Jenna to herself. She didn’t quite know what to say. She didn’t dare admit how uncomfortable it made her feel to be so needed, to be the central object of so much hope. There were reasons why she’d retreated to the isolation of a Buddhist temple after her sister’s death. There were reasons why she’d come back to America only to hide in a cabin in the Oregon woods. Too many times she’d grappled with failed expectations, not the least of which were her own.

  “Damn, Jenna,” Maya murmured. “It’s always the quiet ones, you know?”

  Claire heard rustling, and a shadow passed between her and the fire. A bottle appeared in her lap. Before Claire could lift her head and raise her arms for a hug, Jenna pulled away and hustled back to her chair.

  Then she noticed six eyes fixed upon her.

  “No, no,” Claire said, hiking the bottle. “It’s end of game. No way am I going to be able to top that.”

  Maya said, “It’s not a competition.”

  So Claire looked at Maya, still wearing her battered khaki hat with its wooden bead though the sun had gone down. The archaeologist sat at ease with her fingers laced on her belly, looking like the modern female version of Indiana Jones.

  Maya, who never doubted.

  Claire stretched her legs out toward the flames, flexing her bare arches as she felt the heat on the soles of her feet. “Did I ever tell you all what I did after I graduated from Saint Regis?”

  Nicole leaned sideways in her chair toward Maya, forming a wall of inquisitive solidarity. “Tell me it has to do with why you’re here.”

  “I’ll get to that. After college, I ended up in a roach-​infested studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen along with three other idealistic young pips. We were so eager to move to one of the most expensive cities in the world for the joy of working at a nonprofit.”

  Maya snorted. “That’s so Claire.”

  “It took me almost two years at a land preservation company to realize that only about eight percent of the funds we raised actually went toward conservation. What was left was sucked up by the mortgage on my boss’s penthouse on Central Park West.”

  Jenna piped up, “That doesn’t sound legal.”

  “It wasn’t. He was indicted and spent a few years in jail. But long before then, all my pretty illusions about the good work done by nonprofits had been shattered. So I quit.”

  Maya said, “Good for you.”

  “So I flew back to the nest, which, by then, was in Oregon. After a few years slinging hash at a diner, I decided to go back to school and get my master’s in education.”

  Nicole’s brow furrowed. “I remember. Second grade?”

  “Special ed.”

  “There goes Claire again.” Maya clasped her hands around one knee. “Running into burning buildings when most people run away.”

  “I intended to mold malleable minds.” Claire swirled the bottle until she could feel the weight of the liquid shifting inside. “I was going to reach the most unreachable children. I was going to lift the disadvantaged out of poverty. You know, I was going to turn water into wine.”

  Then Claire’s mind turned to Jason. A five-year-old covered in freckles with a mop of tangled red hair. He had quick eyes, agile in avoiding her gaze.

  “There was this one boy there,” Claire said, “the sweetest five-year-old you could ever know. Until you broke his routines. And then he’d completely lose it. He’d throw a full-body, screaming-at-the-top-of-his-lungs, all-out, flailing tantrum.”

  From across the fire, Nicole murmured, “Autistic.”

  “He hadn’t been diagnosed because he was new to the school system. The teacher I was working with was at her wit’s end. She had twenty-seven other kids in her class. I was a student teacher and the only one available to take him on.” She had spent most of her time talking to the top of his head. He spoke in short sentences, in a flat voice, and he’d rock himself whenever the world became too much for him to handle. She’d labored to find the rhythms that kept him calm. Every once in a while, he’d rise up and say something almost poetic, like, This morning I woke up inside a flower. “It took about three months before it all came crashing down on me. Jason ended up in the hospital with a concussion. The mother accused me of being the one who gave him the bruises all over his body.”

  Around the silent fire, Claire could see the luminosity of their eyes. She didn’t want to talk about the hellish details of those following weeks. The quick suspension, the small-town rumors, the suspicions of the weary social workers, the legal wrangling, the multiple interrogations.

  “The truth is I probably did give Jason some bruises. You had to hold tight when he lost control. If you didn’t, he might wriggle free and throw himself through the glass door. He’d tried once before.”

  Nicole sank her head into her hands. Claire supposed Nic had seen such things before, maybe in grad school.

  “I was told that the investigation was mercifully quick, though it didn’t feel that way at the time. Within a week, Jason was taken away from his mother and given over to social services. I was cleared not long after. But by that time, I’d seen enough. With three more classes to finish my master’s, I quit.”

  Claire’s throat went dry. That was the beginning of the har
dest time, when her sister Melana got sick and everything went to hell.

  Maya said, “Is that when you went to Thailand to become a nun?”

  “No. That was a little later. But I quit that, too.”

  Crickets in the grass chirped. A breeze swept across and teased the fire. If she looked away from it, she could see the breeze rippling over the grass, silvery in the starlight. An expectant silence settled around the campfire.

  “It looks like Jenna and I have something in common.” Claire lifted the bottle to her lips and took a good, long swig. “I need to go back to the beginning of things, too. To the very first time I quit.”

  Chapter Seven

  Sioux Falls, South Dakota

  Stepping into one of the dusty batting cages at the Sioux Falls Empire Fair, Nicole eyed the selection of baseball bats. The aluminum bats gave a hollow clang that probably pleased the tween boys who were the main frequenters of these carnival cages. But aluminum bats always felt odd in her palms, slippery and cold. So she curled her hand around the neck of a battered wooden bat, hefting it up. Ashwood, she thought, as she rolled it to sense the balance. Then she lifted it to her nose to sniff the cinnamon grain, dusted with alfalfa pollen and sticky with pine tar.

  In batting cage number three, she dug her front foot into the fairgrounds’ dust. The bat felt heavy as she swung it over her right shoulder. She heard the drop of the metallic arm at the other end of the cage just before the ball shot out. Instinct kicked in, and she swung at the white blur.

  Crack!

  Nicole glared at the far opening and tried to concentrate on the next ball instead of the troubles that kept rattling in her head. Road trips were supposed to be about leaving those troubles behind. They were supposed to be about immersing yourself in the world you were in, like here in South Dakota with its crowds of brawny ranchers at every truck stop, its dusky, multihued horizon, its billboards advertising Wall Drug three hundred miles ahead. Yesterdays weren’t supposed to exist when you were flying through fields of sunflowers listening to Jesus stations and soft country rock.