Plotting at the PTA

by Laura Alden

  I tried not to think about my future if the notebook had been found by someone with an average sense of curiosity. Who could resist reading a notebook filled with handwriting? Who wouldn’t want to read someone else’s private thoughts?

  By the time I reached Sunny Rest, I’d worked myself up to a near panic.

  “Hi, Beth.” The receptionist smiled at me. “Are you here to see Maude? She’s in the solarium.”

  “She . . . is?” I blinked. “So she’s feeling a little better. That’s good.”

  The receptionist’s smile turned into a vague frown, but I didn’t have time to discuss Maude, not right now. “Say, has anyone turned in a spiral notebook? About so by so.” With my hands I made a rectangle about four inches on one side, six inches on the other.

  “Let me look.” Her head disappeared while she ducked behind the counter. “No, sorry, I don’t see anything. Did you lose it . . . ?”

  But I was already pushing open the door, headed back outside.

  Where could it be? Had it even been in my purse that day I was at Sunny Rest?

  I thumped my forehead with the heels of my hands. What was the point of having a brain if you couldn’t get it to work when you needed it? What was the point of trying to learn the names of all the U.S. Supreme Court justices if you couldn’t find the one thing that might help you track down a killer? What was I going to forget next, my children’s middle names?

  “Jenna Elizabeth, Oliver Richard,” I said out loud. “Jenna Elizabeth, Oliver Richard.” After repeating their names a few more times, the clutch of anxiety that had seized me started to release its hot grip.

  There. I wasn’t losing it, not completely. And as long as I could find that notebook, everything would work out just fine.

  But then the very real possibility of not finding it pushed me along the sidewalk a little faster. I looked under trees and under shrubs. I looked under the edge of fence lines and around petunias planted at the curb. I peered under cars.

  Don’t panic. It’s around here somewhere. All you have to do is find it. You’re good at finding things, remember? And you’re good at figuring things out. Link up Kelly and Amy in the right way and you’ll find the truth. You’re close, so close.

  My pep talk worked fine until my stupid imagination chose to play a video of Claudia and Tina out for a power walk yesterday evening. “What’s that?” Tina would have pointed.

  “Looks like a notebook.” Claudia stooped to pick it up. “One of those cheap spiral jobs no one but college kids uses.”

  “Maybe there’s a name inside?” Tina asked, standing back. Touching anything that had touched the ground had her running for antibacterial soap and warm water.

  “Just like in grade school?” Claudia asked. “No one does that anymore. If you lost it it’d be an invitation to invade your privacy, and . . . well, would you look at that. Beth Kennedy.” She laughed loud and long. “Such a surprise. Wonder what’s in this little gem?”

  “Shouldn’t we return it?” Tina edged closer.

  “Of course we should. And we will.” Claudia grinned. “Right after we read it.” She flipped through the first few pages. “Geez, what kind of chicken scratches are these?” She thrust the notebook at Tina. “Can you read this?”

  Tina kept her hands behind her back, but peered at the open page. “Well, sure. She writes like my sister. Kinda.”

  “What’s that say?” Claudia pointed to a titled list. “There, at the top.”

  “Um . . .” Tina squinted, opened her eyes wide, then squinted again. “It says potential suspects in Amy Jacobson’s death.”

  I shook away the image. That hadn’t happened. It couldn’t happen. Wouldn’t happen. Claudia would not read that list and see her name sitting high at number six. She would not read the other names, and she would not read my ramblings that included far more than questions about Amy and Kelly. If Claudia got her hands on what had turned into a stream of consciousness litany of my deepest thoughts, I’d be the laughingstock of not only the Rynwood PTA, but the whole town of Rynwood. And, thanks to e-mail and Facebook, the entire cyberworld would soon be giggling at me.

  What idiotic impulse had made me write—in pen!—that the summer after my sisters had forced me to watch Jaws at age eight, I’d been afraid to swim in the lake? And I must have been feverish the night I wrote that Claudia Wolff frightened me.

  My steps went faster and faster. If Claudia read that, I’d have to resign as PTA secretary. I’d leave the PTA altogether, and I’d close the store. Move the kids to a place where no once had ever heard of Facebook.

  I slowed, trying to think if such a place still existed. Slowed a little more when I realized that there probably wasn’t a place like that. Not any longer.

  “But maybe,” I said out loud, “there are places still on dial-up. No one on dial-up would be on Facebook, would they?”

  There had to be pockets of dial-up everywhere. We might not have to leave the country. Maybe not even the state.

  Cheered, I refocused on the task at hand. Outside a small apartment building a flat piece of cardboard sent my heart racing, but it was only a piece of packaging. I picked it, a candy wrapper, and the cap from a soda bottle up off the ground to toss and looked around for a garbage can. There.

  I crossed the street into the official downtown blocks and dumped the litter in. Took two steps away, then went back. I pushed back the garbage can’s lid—please, don’t let it be full—and, one eye shut, looked inside. “Hello?” I called quietly. “Are you in there?”

  My voice echoed around the plastic liner and came back at me. I remembered that the city emptied garbage cans on Monday and Friday mornings. If someone had dumped my notebook in, it was on its way to the landfill and no way was I going to work that hard to find it. Claudia-sponsored embarrassment would fade. Eventually.

  “What are you looking for?”

  I looked up. “Oh, hi, Alan. Um, it’s not that important.”

  He leaned on his broom. “Do you feel okay? You look a little odd.”

  No, I wasn’t okay. The new scuffs on my shoes, the dirt on my pants, and the scratch on my hand were mere outward manifestations of the mess on the inside. Frustration that I couldn’t help Maude, anger that I couldn’t manage to keep track of a simple notebook, confusion over the tangles between the past and the present, and always, always, sorrow and longing for those who had died before their time.

  Why couldn’t I figure this out?

  “Beth . . . ?” Alan, concern all over his kindly face, reached out to touch my arm.

  I jerked away. “Thanks, Alan. I’m fine. Really, I am.” Ignoring his frown, I started walking backward. “Just looking for something, that’s all. I’m sure it’s here somewhere. Probably dropped it yesterday. . . .” Just outside Alan’s store was a planter filled with holly bushes. I pushed the branches aside, looking deep into the dark green thickness.

  Nothing.

  Nothing in the next planter of daylilies, nothing in the garbage can, nothing under the garbage can.

  Where, where, where?

  “Beth Kennedy, what on earth are you doing?” Flossie stood outside of her grocery store, hands fisted on her hips.

  I brushed past her, intent on looking in the flower box attached to the hair salon next door. “Looking for something.” Nothing in the red geraniums, nothing in the sweet alyssum, nothing in the ivy dangling over the edge.

  “Beth . . . ?” Denise hung out the door of the salon. “If it’s weeds you want, I have plenty at home.”

  I gave her a blank look. Weeds? What was she talking about? Maude needed me and I needed to find what I’d so stupidly lost. I blinked at Denise a few times. She was asking that question again; did I feel okay? Why did people keep asking that?

  She was still talking when I turned away. There were lots of places left to look. Another whole block of downtown was ahead of me, and I hadn’t even touched the alleys and side alleys.

  Nothing under the teak benches next to
the dentist’s office, and nothing tucked into the table of seventy percent off items outside the gift shop.

  Where was it?

  “Beth, honey? What are you doing?”

  I hurried past Ruthie. Nothing behind the newspaper racks outside the pharmacy. It wasn’t in the container of dried grasses by the accountant’s front door and no one had left it on the window ledge outside the Green Tractor.

  Where was it?

  No one had put it in the rack of brochures outside the chamber of commerce.

  Where?

  I pulled at my hair. Where?!

  “Beth!” Strong hands gripped my upper arms. “What is the matter with you?”

  I tried to yank myself free, but he was too strong. “Let me go!”

  “Not until you calm down and tell me what’s going on.”

  “Nothing!” I glared up at Evan. “Leave me alone!”

  He put his hands on my shoulders. “Beth, you’re traipsing all over downtown with dirt all over your face, blood on your hands, the hem of one pant leg torn out, and a rip in the neck of your shirt deep enough to show more cleavage than you see at the Academy Awards. Everyone’s looking at you and it’s a little embarrassing.” He tipped my chin up. “What is going on?”

  I jerked my chin away and twisted out of his grasp. “Nothing.” I did not like having my chin tipped up against my will and I did not like my shoulders being clamped down upon. With his size and strength advantage he could twist me into a pretzel if he wanted, but I would not go willingly. “I’m fine, why do . . .”

  My voice trailed off as I looked down the street. Almost every downtown business owner and half their staff was out on the sidewalk, staring at me. Most had their mouths open.

  I looked down at myself. Evan hadn’t been exaggerating. Dirt was ground into the knees of my pants in large round splotches. My ragged fingernails looked as if I’d been digging in the garden with my bare hands. Blood streaked my arm and the back of my wrist—a scratch from something, I didn’t remember what. And my shirt . . . I hitched it up, hoping my feminine undergarment was now under cover.

  “Beth?” Evan’s tone was turning harder. “I think I deserve an explanation.”

  Deep down inside me, down below the ever present concerns about my children, below the misty grief that was hovering over me, underneath my fears of early onset Alzheimer’s because what other reason could there be for imagining the voices of dead people in my head, down in the darkest part of my hidden self, I suddenly realized something very important.

  I wasn’t in love with Evan.

  At all.

  If I was really in love, I would have been more considerate of his wishes. If I truly loved him, I wouldn’t have kept my investigating to myself. I would have talked about what I was doing and asked for his opinion. I wouldn’t have kept a bland smile on my face and said, “Oh, nothing,” when he asked what I was thinking about.

  And if he truly loved me, he would be taking me into his arms, murmuring things like, “It’ll be all right. Don’t worry, whatever it is, we’ll get through it.” He wouldn’t be worrying about my appearance and his primary question wouldn’t be about himself. No, it would be something like, “How can I help?”

  He reached for me, but I backed away.

  “Beth.” He let his arms drop to his sides. “Let’s go inside and get you cleaned up. Then we can talk.”

  “Hide me away from the prying eyes, you mean?”

  “I mean you should get inside and get cleaned up.”

  He said it with a smile, but even dull-witted me could sense the hardness inside.

  And it was a hard truth to realize that I’d been fooling myself—and Evan—for all these months. I’d been so blinded by Evan’s good looks, his charm, and the way he didn’t have to tally up the month’s budget in his head before going out to dinner, that I hadn’t stopped to take stock of how I really felt.

  I rubbed the back of my hand, thinking.

  “Beth,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

  “I don’t think so, Evan.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t go around town looking like that.”

  He reached out to take my hand, but I took another step backward. He hadn’t asked me if I was okay. Sure, he’d asked, “What’s the matter with you?” but that wasn’t anywhere near the same. And he hadn’t asked me if a child-oriented emergency was what had sent me staggering down the street in dishabille. That was more than I could forgive.

  “Good-bye, Evan.” My voice was calm and even. There wasn’t a chance I could keep that up, so I nodded and turned away.

  “What are you doing? Beth?”

  His voice tugged strong at me. I shook my head and kept walking. Ten feet distant, I stopped. I hadn’t said I was sorry.

  But, then again, what was there to be sorry about? Besides everything.

  I walked away and didn’t look back.

  Chapter 18

  Marina drained the tea mug and bumped it onto my desk. “That’s all you said? Good-bye? A perfect moment for an exit line, and you blew it completely. Why did I know that was going to happen? You should have come to me, I would have prepped you with a dozen possibilities.”

  “Like what? ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a—’”

  She waved off the end of my sentence. “Little pitchers,” she said, wagging her index finger at me and nodding at my office doorway. Outside of it, in the small kitchenette, Paoze and Lois were in a competitive conversation about the merits of green tea over black tea, with Paoze taking the firm lead due to his Asian heritage. I knew for a fact that he hated the green stuff, but Lois didn’t. I smiled. It was going to be an entertaining summer.

  “You’re worried about a college student overhearing a quote from a classic movie?” I asked.

  “When I waltzed in, and I do mean waltz, dahling.” She blew an imaginary smoke ring and tapped the end of her invisible cigarette onto a pile of shipping notices. Considerate person that she was, she picked up the nonexistent ash and brushed it into the wastebasket. “A short minute ago, there were at least three young children perusing the volumes on your lowest shelves.”

  I pushed my chair back and propped my feet up on an open drawer. It was Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend, and I’d decided not to enter the store from the time I left today until Tuesday morning. The knowledge was giving me a taste of that summer vacation feeling, and I was enjoying the faint flavor. “Neither Lois or Paoze would be back here if anyone was in the store.”

  Marina switched from Greta Garbo to Cowgirl. It was a new persona and she hadn’t gotten it quite right. “Well, whistle me pink and call me honey. Ah didn’t know you had such surefire instincts. And if Ah may say one other thang, Ah’d like to say you don’t sound real busted up about your bust-up with that pretty boy.”

  I’d been thinking the same thing. How could so many months of romance end with so little emotion? Right now, I was most concerned about telling Jenna and Oliver. Their father was picking them up straight from school, so when would I tell them they wouldn’t be seeing Evan ever again? It wasn’t news I wanted to break over the phone; I needed to be there to read their faces and give them the hugs and kisses they’d need.

  And what had I been thinking, bringing a man into their lives who wouldn’t be there forever? They’d already lost their father being in their daily lives—which wasn’t strictly true, since Richard’s former job had taken him on the road four days out of five, but still—and now I was yanking Evan away from them.

  Last night I’d called him. He came over after the kids had gone to bed and we’d talked and talked, but the end result was still the same.

  We’d sat on the couch and he’d held my hands in his large ones. “Beth, please say you’ll think this over. I love you. I want to marry you. We can work this out, I know we can.”

  It had been so tempting to fall into his arms, tempting to let myself be taken care of, tempting to convince myself that this was meant to be. All so very
attractive, just like he was. Why didn’t I love him? I wanted to; I’d wanted to for months. But I was finally seeing that I didn’t love him, and if I didn’t now, after this long, why would I ever start?

  I sighed. Why had I begun seeing Evan in the first place? Why hadn’t I trusted my instincts and stayed away from men until the kids were older, say, in their forties?

  “Uh-oh.” Marina was back to being Marina. “I know that look. You’re feeling guilty about something. Let me guess. Hmm.” She lined the tips of her fingers over her eyebrows. “Hmm. I say Beth feels guilty about . . . her children. Yes, that’s it!” She held out her hand, palm up. “Prize for the winner, please.”

  I gave her a bookmark.

  “Thank you, thank you.” She waved it above her head like a trophy. “Now, don’t you feel guilty about ending it with Evan. He wasn’t right for you and I’m glad you finally saw the truth of it before I had to show it to you.”

  I looked at her. “You never did like him, did you?”

  Her new bookmark became an airplane. It flew high and then low as she said, “What I didn’t like is how you were around him. You weren’t yourself, my sweet. You were the person he wanted you to be.”

  And that, in a nutshell, was why I wasn’t going to weep into my pillow that night.

  We sat there for a moment, quiet with our own thoughts, until Marina sailed the bookmark into her purse and snapped her fingers. “Say, did you know Richard is going to Italy this fall?”

  “Yes, can you believe it? All those years I wanted to go abroad, now he decides to get up and go.”

  “Did he say who he’s going with?”

  I frowned. I hadn’t once thought about that.

  “Aha. I see he didn’t. He’s going with”—she leaned forward—“with a friend.” When my expression didn’t change significantly, she added, “You know, a friend. A girlfriend. From his new office.”

  My emotions tumbled around in a tangling whirl. Anger, pain, sorrow . . . but once the tumbling slowed, I found the that primary emotion was surprise. And pleasure. Because now I didn’t have to suffer any guilt about his long commute.