Nothing but Trouble

by Susan May Warren

  Still, PJ could hear panic under Connie’s voice. Especially when Connie continued, a little too quickly.

  “Okay, listen, I know you don’t want to hear this, but . . . I need you to come home.”

  Connie took a breath. And PJ held hers.

  “Mom’s been in an accident.”

  Everything went silent—the hip-hop beating the floorboards, the far-off hunger of the ocean, Matthew’s criticism in her ear. The years rushed at her like a line drive knocking her off her feet, regrets scattered like dust in her shadow.

  Then Connie sighed and hung up. The beep and time signature noted no further messages.

  PJ reached for the phone.

  * * *

  Connie sounded as if she might be on her fourth cup of coffee in some cement-lined corridor, tapping out the hour in her Jimmy Choos.

  “PJ, where have you been? Mom’s already had her cast set and is in recovery.”

  “Please, Connie, not now. Just . . . what happened?” PJ pressed the phone tight to her ear and paced to the window, the ten-year near estrangement with her mother hollowing her out. Had her mother forgotten her silent pledge to carry on, to be waiting if and when PJ summoned the courage to point her car north?

  “She fell on the tennis court and broke her ankle.”

  The window’s cool surface broke the sweat across PJ’s forehead. Tennis? “For pete’s sake, Connie, I thought . . . oh, man . . . Don’t call me again.”

  “PJ!”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you want to know how bad it is?”

  PJ sank into a chair. “How bad is it?”

  “They casted her ankle; her bones are secured with a pin. She’ll be out of the hospital tomorrow. But I need you to come home. I’m getting married in a week, and I need help.”

  Married. Of course. PJ had seen a picture of Sergei, Connie’s fiancé, and seriously wondered why a double-degreed lawyer might be marrying her tae kwon do coach. But who was she to question—after all, she, a near felon, had dreamed she might pass as a pastor’s wife.

  “I thought you two were eloping.” PJ had managed to catch her breath and now returned to the freezer, cradled the phone against her shoulder, and dug out the Moose Tracks. As she opened the lid, crystallized edges and the smell of freezer burn elicited only a slight hesitation. She lifted a spoon from the dish drainer cup in the sink.

  “We were flying down to Cancún, but Sergei’s parents couldn’t get a visa for Mexico, so I planned a little soiree at the country club. But the thing is, I have vacation time coming, and if I don’t use it, I’ll lose it. So we need to get away now if we want a honeymoon, and Mom certainly can’t watch David while she’s in a cast. I need you, Peej.”

  PJ leaned a hip against the counter and cleaned the sides of the carton, the chocolate swirls melting against the roof of her mouth—sweet with only an edge of bitter.

  “So let me get this straight—it’s okay that you weren’t going to invite me to the sunny sands of Mexico to watch you tie the knot with Mr. Muscle, but you want me to leave my life and return home at your whim?” She kept her eyes averted from the threadbare wicker and the chipped Formica table and stomped the floor once, real loud, hoping the boyz in the hood might hear her over the rap.

  On the other end of the phone, Connie’s voice wadded into a small, tight ball. “I know how you feel about Kellogg and Boone and especially Mom, and frankly I don’t blame you. I’ve even tried to respect your decision. But it’s time to come home. You have family here. I need you. David needs you. . . .”

  PJ tossed the empty container into the sink, licked off the spoon. Down the street, a car peeled out in a hurry, and a dog barked in disapproval.

  “You know how I feel? Really? Because you got to stay, Connie. After graduation, you went on to college, to a life. I left town right after the ceremony, a Tupperware bowl of fruit on the seat beside me, praying my ancient VW Bug would make it to the South Dakota border. I’ve spent the past ten years wandering from one tank of gas to the next, trying to figure out where I should land. You lived the life Mom dreamed for you—”

  “You lived the life you dreamed for yourself.”

  PJ flinched, Connie’s voice sharper than she remembered. She stared out the window, wondering if Matthew still stood on the beach, a hand to his bruised head. “Is that what you seriously believe?”

  Silence on the other end made PJ rub her fingers into her eyes. Connie had become an unlikely ally over the past ten years, mediating between PJ and their mother, once in a while sending her enough to cover her rent. However, it still wasn’t so easy to share the limelight with the sister who was wanted.

  As opposed to being the one left on the proverbial doorstep. Being adopted sounded so endearing to everyone but the adoptee. The fact that Connie had been born just a few months later, close enough to share the same classes in school, constantly earning better grades and more awards, only served as a constant reminder that PJ hadn’t been good enough, even from birth.

  “I’m sorry,” PJ said, letting a sigh leak out. “I’ve had a rough night.”

  “Then come home, PJ. If only for a couple weeks. Or longer. You can stay with me until you find your own place.”

  “Did you ask Mom?” PJ winced, hating the question and that she didn’t yank it back. Hadn’t she learned anything?

  “I asked. Even if Mom won’t admit it, she needs you.”

  PJ stood at her screen door, staring out at the now star-sprinkled night glistening on the rippled landscape. The Milky Way streamed across the sky, heading north.

  “Please?” Admittedly, it was the closest to pleading she’d ever heard from Connie. “I need you.”

  “How long before your wedding?”

  “Six days. Sunday at two.”

  PJ hung up without promises and walked back outside, over the boardwalk to the beach. The wind had chased the clouds, and a diamond chip moon hung in the sky, surrounded by the jewels of the night, brilliant and close enough to wrap her fingers around. She pressed her bare feet into the sand, then lifted them out, listening to the water slurp, then fill the imprints. Finally, she stared out again at the ocean and wondered how many turtles really made it back to the sea.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Whoever said you can never go home again probably hailed from Kellogg, Minnesota, population 2,317.

  PJ passed the carved Welcome to Kellogg sign, noting that they’d installed a small placard at the bottom listing the population, wondering if they’d change it should she decide to sink down roots.

  Or just how soon the law would appear to run her out of town.

  So maybe she felt a bit punchy, twenty-six hours on the road stiffening her brain and her muscles, combined with the wild spree of hope that had caused her to ditch her life—what was left of it, at least—in Florida and head north.

  She turned down the country hee-hawing from her radio, still hearing the three little words that had kept her VW Bug’s gas pedal to the floor through Atlanta, Nashville, Peoria, Madison, and finally around 694 north, skirting Minneapolis, and then west, around Lake Minnetonka.

  Straight into Kellogg.

  “I need you.”

  It scared her how much she clung to those words.

  PJ unlatched her hands from the leather steering wheel, flexing her fingers, stretching her neck, hoping to release her bunched muscles. She’d wedged a box of books, shoes, and mementos into the seat behind her and shoved her duffel, filled with only the clothes she really liked, into the trunk.

  She’d left the sundress behind.

  And the garage sale furniture had been destined for abandonment all along. Her landlord even gave her back her security deposit, thankful for a furnished apartment to rent.

  Anytime now, the voice of sanity could kick back in: PJ, what are you doing?

  Rolling down her window, PJ stuck out her elbow and took a deep breath, the smell of summer stirring in the minty grass, the lilacs hanging from plump trees. Kellogg’s M
ain Street bordered Lake Minnetonka, now dark against the midafternoon sun, hazy and fierce behind anemic clouds. Lazy sailboats, moored at the yacht club and out in the harbor, gleamed bright and enchanting, whispering promises of windblown hair and a sultry tan as they bobbed like swans in the water. Sunday afternoon sun worshipers lay on the coarse sandy beach, others in blue and white loungers, floppy hats pulled low over sunglasses.

  PJ had spent too many high school summers dividing her time between the beach and the country club pool, her legs sticky with coconut oil, hoping Boone might motor by or, better yet, hijack his parents’ ski boat and woo her into spending the afternoon skiing on the foamy waves.

  Leave it to her fickle heart to trail back to Boone’s memory like a homing pigeon.

  She breathed in the spice of garlic and smoking wood chips, courtesy of the grills off Sunsets Supper Club’s veranda just beyond the beachfront. In the lane next to her, a convertible of laughing, muscle-shirted boys turned up their radio. Rap music spilled out, and they jackhammered their way past closed storefronts displaying preppy fashions meant for leisure. PJ barely touched the gas, noting the new volleyball pit outside Hal’s Pizzeria and Bar; a sign over the outside stage advertised a jazz festival. Last time she’d seen a band at Hal’s, it had been Ricky Merkel’s punk band.

  On the boardwalk that stretched along the beach like a border, the occasional couple strolled hand in hand. Frisbees winged on the breeze across lawns dotted with picnickers.

  Like an old friend, a lusty wind reached out, tangling her hair into a knotty, carefree mess.

  She had the urge to toe off her flip-flops and drive barefoot as she turned off Main at the theater, driving past the redbrick high school, then out to the country club, with its neat hedges, its white terraces, the tidy golf course. Before she could stop herself, her gaze swept the employee parking lot for his Kawasaki.

  Boone’s voice, low and angry, came back to her: “You’ll be back someday. And maybe I won’t be here.”

  Oh, she dearly hoped so.

  The new kitchen wing, now nearly ten years old, jutted out past the old foundation. It felt too much like visiting a war monument. She had the urge to stand over it, say a little prayer for lives lost.

  Namely, hers.

  She pulled up at the far end of the parking lot, cataloging the changes. The weathered, white-tiled pool boasted a new slide and, on the high dive that had once trapped her at the pinnacle, a fresh coat of paint. A crisp white flag fluttered on the tenth green, in plain sight to anyone who might be looking.

  She hadn’t really noticed that before and for a second nearly put her car into reverse. But it wasn’t likely that she’d see old Ben Murphy or Ernie Hoffman again, was it? Or that they’d still remember finding her on prom night entangled with Boone on the smooth putting green blanket?

  Maybe there were some images a person simply couldn’t purge. She certainly had a few.

  Behind her, a guest slammed the door to her silver BMW, balancing in her arms a gift wrapped in pink. PJ glanced in the rearview mirror. Why hadn’t she stopped outside town to change? Instead she had to show up smelling like she’d spent a week under a bridge, her red—no, auburn—hair greasy, in frayed jeans, a tank, and flip-flops.

  “Oh, boy . . .” She sat in the car, hands wrapped around the steering wheel, debate gluing her to the seat. “Oh . . . boy.”

  Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she thought. So what if Connie was on her second husband, while PJ couldn’t even snag the first? No one in Kellogg knew that she’d job-hopped her way around the nation, had more forwarding mail addresses than a sailor. She could pretend . . . well, she was done pretending.

  Maybe it was time to find the real PJ, the one she could live with long term. The one who didn’t have to be pastor’s wife material but wasn’t the messy PJ she’d left behind, either.

  Besides, Connie, or maybe her mother, did need her.

  “Don’t even think about coming back here, PJ Sugar. We’ll arrest you on sight.” PJ closed her eyes against Director Buckam’s warning in her ears. Just because she’d been banned from the country club premises ten years ago didn’t mean they’d recognize her today. She’d changed her hair color, for one. And this time she wasn’t wearing silk—or rather, not wearing it.

  “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

  Right. She’d memorized that verse first after finding Jesus and salvation on the boardwalk in California. It felt easier to believe then, and especially when she packed up and moved to Florida. Now, however, was when she needed it.

  Yes, the new and improved PJ Sugar.

  Her cute little lime green Bug looked pedestrian and forlorn as she grabbed her bag off the front seat, shut the door, and climbed the broad, white steps, pushing open the door to enter the grand foyer of the club. Polished wood, worked leather, Turkish wool rugs—the smells of tradition rushed back to her. She smelled Sunday lunches on the veranda and Saturday morning swimming lessons, heard the slap of wet feet running through the main hall from the locker rooms, and felt anew the air-conditioning prickling her skin before she hit the humidity of the summer. She could almost see Boone in his caddie uniform, his wide shoulders under the green polo shirt grooming him into the preppy boy his father hoped to create. How one could hide behind the aspirations of an ambitious parent.

  Voices lifting from the anteroom startled PJ to the present. She crept toward the fireplace room overlooking the golf course and Connie’s wedding reception area. Fifty friends, she’d said on the phone, a small get-together to celebrate the day. Had Connie dared jot her name on the guest list?

  She stopped just outside the door, spotting her mother, her leg in a cast and propped up in her wheelchair, her voice commanding as she engineered the silver and black decorations.

  PJ blinked and time fell away. Slim Elizabeth Sugar, directing the caterers at her and Connie’s graduation party, her regal pearls at her neck, her dark mahogany hair piled into a tight chignon. Blue and gold streamers had surrounded the graduation pictures on either end of a long table. How she hated that her mother had picked the eleven-by-seventeen shot of her in the pink angora sweater. But had she ever really had a choice?

  A carved watermelon fruit bowl, croissants, a three-tiered marmalade cake with sugared orange curls twisting from the top crowned the table, all under an eight-foot sign: “Congratulations, PJ and Constance.”

  Sisters from different mothers. In every way.

  “PJ!”

  Her sister’s voice fast-forwarded time, and her mother aged, with shorter hair, her face lined and, remarkably, even thinner, her bones sharp through a pair of classic black pants and a periwinkle silk shirt. She still wore the pearls at her neck.

  Funny thing about regret. Now that it had climbed up from the hard places PJ had stored it, she couldn’t swallow it back down. It lodged in her throat, thick and choking off her air.

  Connie handed off a box of corsages to the florist and rushed to PJ. “When did you get here?” She pulled PJ tight against her skinny, French-manicured self, every inch the groomed woman she appeared in the Internet photo for her firm. Poised, her dark hair pinned back, with their father’s deep green eyes, wearing a pressed linen suit that looked as fresh as when she’d put it on. True Sugars didn’t let anyone see them sweat.

  “Just now,” PJ managed. “Nice decorations.”

  “You’re tan.”

  PJ could have hugged her again for not mentioning the chipped fuchsia toenail polish, her ratty attire, the rather unsavory aroma she emanated. “Life on the beach, Sis.”

  “And you colored your hair.” Connie reached out and fingered PJ’s shoulder-length cut. “I liked it long and blonde.”

  Yeah, well, some things had to change. “You look great. Sergei’s a lucky man.”

  “He loves me and David,” Connie said, her eyes saying more. “You need to get cleaned up—the wedding’s in an hour. Nothing like getting here ear
ly? So as to not worry the bride?”

  “You know me—I live for drama.” But behind her words, she heard Matthew’s voice. “Well, not so much anymore.”

  “Right.” Connie gave her a peck. “I brought you a dress. It’s black; I hope that’s okay. And some heels, like you asked. They’re in the Chip Hill room—you remember.”

  “You look like you’ve been driving a truck.”

  PJ didn’t even have to turn. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “I’m kidding, PJ. Come here.”

  PJ simply stared at the woman wheeling toward her. Extending her hands to her. Pulling her into her arms.

  “I’m so glad you’re home.”

  For a second she didn’t move, didn’t know how to. Glad . . . ? But then she leaned into the words, wrapping her arms around her mom, pulling her close, feeling the bones that seemed sharper. Still, she breathed deep, smelling the Chanel on her skin. Reorienting. Capturing.

  Yearning.

  Her mother pulled away from her too soon. “The important thing is that you made it. And you still have time to change.”

  * * *

  Her mother, or perhaps Connie, still had impeccable taste. Bouquets of fragrant gardenias framed the small platform where Connie and Sergei took their vows. Silver and black silk ribbons anchored the serving table, accentuated by the white-gloved servers carrying trays of salmon canapés and caviar on ice. An acoustic guitar player seated on a high barstool hidden discreetly to the side of the head table played unobtrusive, delicate tones. PJ watched as one polished, degreed lawyer friend after another stood and offered congratulations. When she finally raised her glass, her words seemed hollow, unattached to the bride.

  Still, Connie beamed at her and raised her glass in approval.

  “Isn’t she gorgeous?” A thin, elegantly coiffed associate asked as PJ helped herself to another canapé.