The Girls of Tonsil Lake

by Liz Flaherty

“I thought we’d go out,” he said, coming up behind me in the kitchen and sticking his hands in the back pockets of my jeans. “You know, celebrate your success.”

  I looked back over my shoulder at him, the carving knife stopping halfway through the roast. “You didn’t say.”

  “I’m sorry.” He nuzzled my neck. “I thought you’d know.”

  When I sold the second book, David sent me flowers, the Tonsil Lake girls sent me enough locally made and sinfully delicious chocolates to give me a week-long sugar high, and the kids wanted to know what I would buy them when I got my advance check.

  I had just stepped out of the shower when David came into the bathroom, taking off his tie. He leered at me, then said, “What’s for supper? I’m beat.”

  “I thought we’d go out,” I said, wrapping my towel around myself because the only other alternative would have been smothering him with it.

  He looked nonplused. “Oh. Well, we can, I guess.”

  “Never mind.” I gave him my best June Cleaver smile. “We’ll have BLTs and we’ll eat in the living room. The kids are spending the night at Suzanne’s.”

  “Oh, well.” He leered again, and pulled the towel away. “Just a little preview,” he said, tipping my face up to kiss me.

  But he was asleep in front of the television by the time the dishes were done. I covered him with a quilt and went to bed alone.

  And I thought, If my advances were bigger, I just might get a divorce.

  When the third book sold, Vin was in town, so we all went out to Tonsil Lake and got drunk. Andie stood on a table and told all six of the other tavern customers that I had just sold my third book and it was going to be a bestseller.

  Vin held up her glass and said solemnly, “And to the republic, for which it stands.”

  Suzanne cried.

  I told David about the sale when he came to pick us up. He didn’t say much, but stopped in the middle of the parking lot and put his arms around me and held me for a long time. “I’m proud of you,” he said, “but it really doesn’t have a damned thing to do with how many books you sell.”

  I would have liked to know what he was proud of me for, but Andie chose that moment to say, “Oh, shit,” and throw up all over her shoes. They were new Birkenstocks, too, and she bitched all the way home. Then we all got to laughing and David said he’d better not find any wet spots on the seats of his new car, which made us laugh all the harder.

  But now I’m finishing my eleventh book, and no one seems to think it’s a big deal anymore at all. I have two days left to write twenty-some pages, so I’m not in too bad a shape. But my stomach hurts again and I’m tired. I’m so tired.

  Andie saved my life when she brought over lunch today. Then David brought home Chinese and set it all out for supper. He even cut some flowers and put them in a vase in the middle of the table, which made me want to cry. Or maybe it was the combination of grease-laden cheeseburger and Chinese that twisted my stomach into knots that made me want to cry.

  Vin called and asked me to spend a month in Maine. I don’t know what she was thinking of. I can’t leave David or the house for that long.

  And I’m Carrie’s backup babysitter, too. She’s even pickier about her kids than I used to be. I thought she and her husband were going to break up when she wanted to go back to work and neither his mother nor I could watch the children fulltime. Tim told Carrie they could put them in daycare or she could stay home; the choice was hers. She was angry with him for forcing her to make that choice, and even angrier with me because I wouldn’t take the children.

  It’s funny that I’ve always liked being needed, but at the same time I envy Vin and Andie and Suzanne because they’re not. That sounded ugly, didn’t it? I don’t mean it that way, I really don’t. I would just like the chance to be myself for a while.

  Whoever that is.

  Suzanne

  My regional director’s secretary called me last week and asked me to come to division headquarters in Chicago. I was surprised, even though I knew it was time for my annual evaluation. Amanda—my director—usually comes to Lewis Point for it. We have dinner and drinks, then she tells me what kind of year I’ve had and what kind of raise I’m getting. She also gives me my mid-year bonus check. I’ve always done very well, and there haven’t been many complaints from either side of the evaluation table.

  Even though Amanda’s secretary didn’t give anything away, I was certain I was in line for a promotion. Sales have increased in this area to the point that division has talked about adding a new regional director. Though I’m really not crazy about tooting my own horn, I know the sales increase is largely due to my efforts and my presence in the stores.

  I bought a new suit to wear to the meeting with Amanda and had my hair colored a week early because it wouldn’t do to go to headquarters with mouse-brown roots showing. I got a manicure and pedicure while I was at it, even though I usually do my own. I was packing when Vin called.

  “Hey,” she said, sounding friendlier than usual, “why don’t you come to Maine for a month? Andie and I will be there, and we want to talk Jean into it, too. Do you have any vacation time saved up?”

  I have plenty of vacation time, but I couldn’t think about a month in the back of the beyond right then, so I probably got a little pissy with Vin. She turned cool in the blink of an eye, which usually gets me flustered, but not this time.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m getting ready for a very important business trip. I’ll be back tomorrow night and I’ll give you a call then. Just have Attila the Housekeeper put me through to you, okay?”

  I heard a strangled sound from the other end of the phone that if it hadn’t been Vin I would have thought was a laugh. Then she said, “Fine. Take care,” and hung up.

  I caught a puddle-jumper flight out of Lewis Point’s little airport and spent the night in Chicago so I’d be fresh for the ten-o’clock meeting. I dialed Jake Logan’s number when I got to my hotel room that evening. I hate eating on my own.

  He wasn’t in, so I left a message on his machine, thinking if he didn’t call back in time, I’d just order room service. I had a paperback that Jean had recommended in my suitcase. I love to read, which always surprises everyone. It’s like, “Duh, you mean Suzanne can read?”

  Instead of calling back, Jake knocked on my door a half hour later. He swept me into a bear hug that lifted me right off my feet. “Suzy-Q, it’s been too long.”

  He put me down and held me away, looking me over with a sparkling blue gaze that was like a caress. As God is my witness, if he’d said the word or even swept those long eyelashes down in a suggestive manner, like Jean writes about in her books, I’d have gotten naked right then.

  Although I’d seen him to wave to, I hadn’t spent time with him since his and Andie’s son young Jake, Jean’s daughter Kelly, and my daughter Sarah had graduated from college four years ago. We’d had a big party to celebrate and Jake—along with both my ex-husbands—had come. I had kept my distance from my exes, but Andie and Jake were like old friends, laughing and drinking toasts and standing with their arms around each other. They’d looked almost as married as Jean and David did, and I remembered feeling jealous. Which wasn’t very nice of me, I guess, but I just felt so alone, and I’ve never learned to like that.

  I’d thought then that Jake was just about the handsomest man I’d ever seen this side of a movie screen and I still thought so. “But you’ve gotten so thin,” I said. “Why is it men eat everything that’s not nailed down and lose weight while women gain just by walking through a kitchen?”

  He laughed and hugged me again. “Are you going to let me buy you dinner?”

  “I could be convinced.” I gave him a Mae West look and a little flip of hip.

  “Be still my heart.” He grinned at me. “Get your purse. If you’re nice, I might even take you dancing.”

  He didn’t take me dancing, but we did go to the Comedy Shop and laugh ourselves silly before he delivered me to the door of
my room before midnight.

  “Oh, Jake.” I put my arms around him. “How could Andie have let you go?”

  A shadow seemed to fall over his eyes, dimming the ever-present twinkle. He was silent for an instant, his face a mask, but he recovered so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. “What, and deny the rest of the world the pleasure of my scintillating company by keeping me?”

  “There is that,” I said, and raised my face.

  He took the hint, kissing me there in the hallway of the eleventh floor of the hotel. I couldn’t really afford to stay here, but had given myself the night as a reward for the upcoming promotion. It was a first-date kind of kiss, and I broke it with every intention of going back for more, but he stepped away slightly, covering my mouth with two fingers.

  “You need your rest for your big meeting tomorrow,” he said, “and I need to be going.” He kissed my cheek. “Good luck, Suzy-Q. I’ll call you.”

  I thought about the evening as I undressed and showered. We’d talked about Andie’s illness, about what all of our children were doing these days, about the pitiful state of gas prices in the Midwest. He’d asked about my job and I’d told him more than he probably wanted to know, but he hadn’t talked about himself, something I found unusual and endearing in a man.

  The lighting in hotel bathrooms is uniformly cruel to any woman over twenty-two. I kept my back to the mirror as I dried off, slathered on body lotion, and dropped a silky gown over my head, but I had to face it to take off my makeup.

  The plastic surgeon did a good job with my eyes—I never have that vaguely surprised look I’ve seen on other women—and the partial facelift I had five years ago is holding up well. But as I looked at myself that night, I saw the hint of a double chin when I turned my head, and there were faint lines around my mouth and below my eyes that it took two coats of concealer and a healthy application of makeup base to hide.

  I applied moisturizer, then applied it again just for good measure.

  “You’re damned near fifty-one,” I told my reflection. “You can’t fight gravity forever.” I grinned at myself. “Well, maybe you can fight it, but you can’t win.”

  I remembered Jean’s joke about me having my breasts sewn into place and looked down at my chest, wondering if I should go ahead and invest in another surgical procedure.

  Andie used to say, “I’ll do something about them when they smack me in the knees when I walk, especially since my fallen ass will be smacking the backs of them at the same time.” We’d always laugh, but it wasn’t so funny anymore. I couldn’t go braless in public anymore, because my nipples were exhibiting a definite downward trend, but I wasn’t sure I wanted the expense or the pain of more cosmetic enhancement.

  One of the things I tell the ladies who use my makeup is that the best things they can do for their skin have nothing to do with what they put on it. They need to drink lots of water and they need to get plenty of sleep. I tell them I may have to get up in the night to pee a lot, but I look good while I’m doing it.

  It was hard to follow those rules that night. The water in the hotel room tasted terrible even with ice, and I wasn’t about to pay the price of taking a bottle out of the little refrigerator.

  Then I couldn’t get to sleep when I finally lay down. Instead, I hugged the extra pillow to my stomach and planned how I would run my own region when I got my promotion.

  I overslept in the morning, but still arrived for my appointment by ten. Amanda and I exchanged hugs, compliments on hair color, and air kisses, before taking seats in the conversation area over by the floor-to-ceiling windows in her office. She buzzed her secretary with a request that we not be disturbed. I felt a little shiver of trepidation.

  Amanda opened a folder on her lap and took out a slip of paper. “First things first,” she said, beaming. “You had a spectacular Christmas and spring season. The company is grateful for your hard work and creativity.”

  The bonus check was the biggest I’d ever had, nearly twice as much, as a matter of fact, as I’d ever received before. It nearly took my breath away.

  Maybe I would get my breasts done.

  “Now,” said Amanda briskly, laying the folder on the table between our chairs, “let’s get down to business. We need to discuss your future with the company.”

  Vin

  I woke in the middle of the night, which isn’t like me at all. Mark used to say I must be eternally innocent, because I’d sleep through an earthquake and wake at my regular time wanting to know what the fuss was about.

  Menopause seems to have robbed me of that innocence in a way even his death had not. I slept around the clock in the days after losing Mark, but nowadays night sweats were attacking me at unexpected times.

  I stripped off my soaking wet nightgown and took a shower, which served to leave me wide awake at four-thirty in the morning with nothing to do. I could have worked on Andie’s book, I guess, but I really wanted to wait till we were together in Maine.

  I brewed a pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen counter with a cup in front of me. I wished suddenly and desperately for someone to talk to. Another sign of menopause, I suppose, since I’d never been the type to exchange confidences over coffee. But then, I’d always had Mark.

  Tears threatened, and I shook my head even though there was no one to see. “I know,” I said aloud, looking up—because if there’s a heaven, Mark is there. “I promised I wouldn’t do the bereaved widow thing.” But I am bereaved, goddamn it.

  The Andie-like thought made me smile, but I still wanted to talk, and no one I knew got up at this time of the morning. Except one.

  Jean answered on the first ring, sounding cautious.

  “Were you up?” I blurted. “If you weren’t, I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Vin. No, I was up.” Now she just sounded exhausted. “I’ve been up since three, trying to finish this dratted book.”

  I made what I hoped was an appropriate response, and when Jean spoke again a few seconds later, it was as though she’d just been awakened from some kind of dream state.

  “Vin?” she said. “Are you okay?” It was her normal voice, laced with the concern and compassion-if-you-need-it that were an inherent part of her personality.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “No, I’m not. This menopause thing is for the forny birds.”

  “Ah.” She laughed softly. “Don’t be brave. Go to your gynecologist and tell him or her to give you anything, you don’t care what it is, just to survive.”

  I tried to imagine Jean rushing off to her gynecologist and couldn’t. “What do you take?”

  There was a second of hesitation, but when she spoke, her voice sounded normal. “Me? Nothing. It hasn’t been so bad for me, but I thought we were going to have to shoot Andie to put us all out of our misery.”

  “What about Suzanne?” I was pretty sure if Suzanne woke up with night sweats, she’d have to go into rehab.

  “She had a hysterectomy when she was forty, remember? It threw her into instant menopause, but hormone therapy’s worked great for her.”

  Silence hummed between us, then Jean said, her voice as coaxing as if she were talking to a child, “Come on, Vinnie. What’s wrong?”

  The soft sympathy in her voice was the last straw. Before I could even draw a deep breath, I was sobbing and speaking in a rush of hiccups. “I don’t know, Jean. It’s like there’s no reason for living anymore. I never envied you guys having kids before, but now I do. I don’t have anything without Mark.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  “I rattle around this brownstone all by myself except for Attila—”

  “Who?”

  As abruptly as the spate of tears had started, it ended, the sobs segueing clumsily into giggles as uncontrollable as the sobs had been. “It’s what Suzanne calls my housekeeper. Archie’s just the slightest bit…er…militant about screening my phone calls.”

  Jean laughed, and I was glad I’d called her just because the sound of her laughter is enough t
o brighten anyone’s day. “Oh, Jeannie,” I said, “please come to Maine with us. We’d have such fun.”

  “Oh, phooey, you all just want me to cook because you’re afraid you’ll poison yourselves.”

  She was still laughing, but it struck me that maybe that’s what she really thought. It also struck me that she was right.

  We’d counted on her to rescue us from our cooking limitations of canned soup and frozen entrees. We’d been counting on her to rescue us for forty years.

  “Nope,” I said stoutly. “I’m taking along that cookbook series we published a couple of years ago and we’ll all learn to use it.”

  “Oh, good heavens.” There was another little silence. “Maybe for a few days. A long weekend,” said Jean. “David’s got a golf trip coming up. I know he’d like not worrying about me being home alone. And, believe me, after I send in this book, I’m ready for a break.”

  It irritated me that she always put David’s and her children’s needs before her own, but the thought crossed my mind that if Mark were only here, I’d put his needs before anyone else’s forever and ever.

  “You think about it,” I said. “We’d love it if you came.”

  Silence again, then, “Okay,” she promised. “I’ll think about it, but not till I get this book done and to my editor. I’ll call you Sunday.”

  I got to the office early and stayed late, making large inroads into clearing my desk in preparation for devoting a month to Andie’s book.

  Back at the brownstone, I ate the dinner Archie had left in the oven for me, took a shower, and went to bed. Although I consider myself a morning person, I don’t believe morning starts at four-thirty a.m. I was exhausted.

  The clock beside the bed read eleven-seventeen when the phone rang. I’d been dreaming, I think, because when I picked up the receiver, I fully expected to hear Mark on the other end.

  But it wasn’t him, would never be him again. Instead, it was Suzanne, speaking in an almost unrecognizable voice, one that made me sit up and say sharply, “Suzanne? Are you okay?” God, how often we said that to each other, we girls of Tonsil Lake. Are you okay? Are you all right?