The Girls of Tonsil Lake

by Liz Flaherty

  “I’m not unhappy.” The protest was automatic.

  He grinned at me. “Right, and I can drive a ball as far as Tiger Woods and putt like Phil Mickelson.”

  I’d watched enough golf on television to know better than that. “Really,” I said, touching the keyboard of the laptop, “I’m not.” I leaned in to kiss him hello, feeling the brush of his day-old beard on my cheek. “What do I have to be unhappy about?”

  “I don’t know that,” he said. “Maybe if I did, I could do something about it.”

  I shrugged. “Menopausal women, honey. You know what they say.” I kissed him again. “I love the laptop, though. Does its software match mine so I can work back and forth?”

  “Yes, it does. Tim and Brian went with me to get it, and Josh even drove up to meet us with a list of stuff Laurie said you would need on it. It was like Keystone Cops in the computer store, with all three of them telling the salesman what we needed.” He reached across the computer for another plastic bag. “Kelly sent orders to get you this. Said it wasn’t something you’d buy yourself, but that you’d need it.”

  The leather attaché was small, slim, and soft, with room for the computer and whatever other writing paraphernalia I carried with me. I could actually put my wallet and keys in it and forego carrying a purse for the first time since entering junior high.

  I could suddenly see myself getting on the plane. No purse holding everything but the kitchen sink, no canvas tote I always used in lieu of a briefcase. I felt excitement shiver along underneath my skin. It would be a new kind of freedom for Jean O’Toole.

  Freedom.

  Free writing, that’s what it was called, what I’d been doing on the computer all afternoon!

  I turned toward it with every intention of deleting it, but a look in the corner of the screen informed me I had written fifteen pages. I shook my head and named the file before saving it. Then, with a little “why not?” shrug, I saved it to a jump drive, too, and tucked it into the new attaché along with several others.

  Later, David and I sat on the couch together and watched an old movie. At one point, he turned to me and said, “I just want to be sure you’ll come back to me when it’s over.” He rubbed a hand up my arm and ran a finger under the armhole of my dress.

  I knew he wasn’t only talking about the trip to Maine when he mentioned “it” being over. He wanted his cheerful wife back, the Pollyanna who had a smile and a good meal for him on the worst of days. Well, I wanted something back, too; I wanted a husband with a direction that took him further than the Fallen Tree Golf Course.

  We were in a trap, I realized. He kept thinking he was going to come home to Carrie, Josh, and Kelly’s mother, the good daughter and daughter-in-law, the dutiful wife, and instead he returned to a woman who went through the motions on automatic pilot. As for me, I kept expecting the company vice-president I’d known for so long: in command and in demand and never falling short in either category.

  We loved each other, these two virtual strangers on a leather couch in a custom-built house in the Willow Woods subdivision. We had loved each other through early marriage poverty, children’s emergencies, a brief affair on David’s part, the deaths of all of our parents, and the empty nest. But was it enough? Would it ever again be enough?

  Suzanne

  Andie was yelling again. I sighed and continued to lay out my underwear in sets.

  “How could you?” she shouted. “How could you be so stupid? How could you try to kill yourself? How could you forget for one forny frigging minute how precious life is?”

  “Okay.” Done with the underwear, I counted out shorts and shirts. “Number one, it was an accident. Number two, it was an accident. And number three, it was an accident.”

  She wasn’t listening. Sometimes I thought she never listened.

  “What did you expect us to tell Sarah and Tom? ‘Well, hey, kids, she’s dead, but she looked real nice lying there.’ That would have been a great comfort to them.”

  I laid socks up against the tops that matched the shorts, coordinating their colors, and thought about my kids. Sarah, the beautiful veterinarian at the clinic on the edge of town, who seldom gave me the time of day. And Tom, who twelve years ago had moved in with his father as a troubled thirteen-year-old. My son had been in and out of detox so many times I could hardly keep track of his address. The only time I was sure of it was when he called and asked me to send money.

  “Somehow,” I murmured, “I don’t think they’d have needed a lot of comfort. Are you taking anything to dress up in?”

  “No! Why are you worried about clothes when you damned near died less than a week ago? I swear, Suzanne, sometimes I think—”

  “Shut up, Andie.” I got into the bottom drawer, searching for sweatshirts. When I straightened and looked at her, she was staring at me.

  “What?”

  I almost grinned, but not quite. “I said shut up. And listen. I did not try to kill myself. The end.”

  “But all that booze and those pills,” she said. “Suzanne, you don’t do that kind of thing. None of us do. Remember the pact?”

  Of course I remembered it. We’d made the pact the day Vin’s stepfather’s old Mercury had found its way to the bottom of Tonsil Lake. We’d sat on the bank and watched the men fish the car out of the lake with a winch attached to a wrecker. The men had looked up at where Vin’s mother stood and shaken their heads.

  Mrs. Hardesty hadn’t even looked over at where her daughter waited with Andie, Jean, and me. She’d just turned and gone back to her trailer, supported by Jean’s mother and mine—which was like the blind leading the blind.

  We’d moved closer to each other so that all our shoulders touched, and we’d watched as they loaded Mr. Hardesty into a black bag and zipped it closed before carrying him up the bank to where an ambulance sat.

  I looked at Vin and saw that Andie and Jean were looking at her, too. I wondered if I looked as sick as they did. Although there was no emotion showing on Vin’s face, I understood the relief in her eyes. We’d all done our share of eluding Mr. Hardesty’s advances when he had a snootful; we also knew Vin had been unable to escape.

  Actually, we knew a lot of things; it had been a very long day that had started in those darkest hours before dawn. A day that had started bad and gotten worse, ending on sins and secrets.

  Jean finally spoke. “I think we should make a pact,” she said quietly.

  Andie snorted. “We’re thirteen, Jean, not little third-graders or something. And what good’s a pact going to do anyone?”

  “It could do us some good,” said Jean. “I think we should agree we’ll never let ourselves get out of control because of alcohol or drugs, and if we find ourselves heading that way, we should call the others.”

  I liked this, even though I couldn’t say things as well as Jean did. “And the others can’t get mad or refuse to come.” I scowled at Andie when I said that. She was always mad.

  Including now. “It’s dumb,” she had said angrily, starting to get up. “This whole thing isn’t because of drugs or booze. It’s because—”

  Jean’s next words stopped her. “And there are things we’ll never tell another living soul unless we all agree.”

  “I’ll agree to it,” said Vin quietly. “I’ll swear.”

  Jean put out her hand and Vin laid hers on top of it. I put mine on, resplendent with Passionate Plum nail polish.

  Andie scooted back into her position, passed a disgusted look all around, and laid her sun-browned hand on top of mine.

  “It’s done,” said Jean, “until we die.”

  “Until we die,” I repeated.

  Vin nodded, just one jerky motion of her head. “Until we die.”

  “Fine,” said Andie. “Until we forny die.”

  “It was an accident,” I now repeated to Andie, for what seemed like the hundredth time. “And the pact worked. I called and you came.” This time I did grin at her. “Of course, you got mad, which you weren’t
supposed to.”

  She grinned back. “Hey, you ruined the end of my date.”

  I put each complete outfit into a zippered plastic bag, smushed the air out, and laid the bags into my suitcase. “Ruined it or delayed it?”

  Her smile widened. “Oh, well.” And then she wouldn’t say anything more.

  I laid the folder with the retirement plan on top of the bags of clothes. Andie looked at it.

  “What are you going to do, Suze?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Then I was the one who wouldn’t say anything more, because I couldn’t talk with panic pushing up into my throat. I just shook my head and leaned over the bed to zip the suitcase closed.

  I went to get my cosmetics case out of my closet and spied one of the bags my company gives away during promotions. I brought the bag with me back to the bed. After clearing my throat to get my voice working again, I said, “These are for you guys. I sent Vin’s to her then forgot to give you and Jean yours.”

  I pulled the flat black cases out and looked at the pressure-sensitive labels on the edges that told the color combinations of the makeup inside. “Here’s yours. They’re travel cases, so you don’t have to take everything with you.” I gestured at my own bag; it was the size of a weekender.

  Andie opened her case and gave its contents a cursory look. “Thanks,” she said, closing it and looking from it to my big blue one. “I think you should leave that here and just take one of these.”

  “Oh, but…” I stopped. If I didn’t take my full battery of cosmetics, I probably wouldn’t be able to cover the fine lines around my eyes and mouth. The light tan spots on my hands might begin to darken. I wouldn’t have samples with me to offer other women who showed an interest in makeup.

  I would have nothing to hide behind and nowhere to run.

  I put my cosmetics case back in the closet.

  Vin

  “Would you be wanting me to go with you, Mrs. Stillson?”

  I looked up from my packing. Archie stood in the doorway of my bedroom, holding a long-handled duster like a staff.

  “The Maine house hasn’t been opened since last summer,” she said. “The guest rooms and bathrooms aren’t ready, there’s no food, the linens need to be re-washed because it’s so damp up there.”

  Martha Mary Archibald had been Mark’s housekeeper when I married him. Although she’d never been less than gracious to me, I knew she had not approved of his marriage to a woman twenty-five years younger than himself. We had been married several years before I realized that she was as in love with my husband as I was.

  I had understood that, and respected it, and life had gone on. Her grief at his death had been sharp and sustained. We had stayed out of each other’s way. When the dust settled and Mark’s children had returned to their accustomed pretense that I did not exist, Archie had stood in my bedroom doorway just as she did today.

  “Would you be wanting me to leave?” she had asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  And that was that.

  “You don’t need to come, Archie,” I said, slipping the makeup case Suzanne had sent into the side of my bag. “What will you do while I’m gone?” I’d never inquired into her personal life before; minding our own business had been part of our unspoken agreement to live in the same house and love the same man.

  She hesitated. “If it would be all right with you, I would like to close the house and go to Ireland to visit my sister. I haven’t seen her in all these many years, and I believe I have enough money saved.”

  “Of course. And you must stay as long as you want. I’m sure we owe you months in unused vacation time.”

  “A month will be enough,” she said impassively, dipping her head. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She turned to leave, and I said impatiently, “Wait a minute.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “We’ve shared this house for twenty-some years, Archie. I’d like for you to call me Vin. No more ma’ams, no more Mrs. Stillsons. Now, do you have your passport up to date?”

  “Yes, ma—Vin. I’ve always kept it up in case I needed to go home quick-like.”

  “And when would you like to leave?”

  She looked surprised, and I all but tapped my foot waiting for her to answer. “A week,” she said definitely. “That gives me time to close the house and prepare for the trip.”

  “Fine. Come with me.”

  She followed me into Mark’s office, where I got on line and procured a plane ticket to Ireland and arranged for a car rental. “You’ll leave in six days,” I said, getting up from in front of the computer and handing her the confirmation and itinerary.

  “I will write you a check for this cost,” she said sturdily, waving the printed sheets at me.

  “You’ll do no such damned thing. Come with me,” I said again, and went back to the bedroom with her following in my wake. I could feel her antagonism smacking me right between the shoulder blades.

  This was fun. I felt strong again.

  I opened the door of Mark’s closet, nearly going to my knees when the unique and distinctive scent of him assailed me. So much for feeling strong. “Oh, God,” I muttered, and looked over my shoulder in time to see Archie crossing herself. “We need to do something about this,” I said, touching a cashmere sleeve.

  “Yes.”

  “Soon, but not now.”

  “Thank you.”

  I looked over my shoulder again, and we exchanged small, tentative smiles, then I walked into the closet, coming out with three pieces of luggage. I set them at her feet and delved into the closet again.

  It had been so long since I opened the safe that I no longer had any idea what all was in it, but I knew there was cash. There was also jewelry in a black velvet bag. I tucked the bag under my arm.

  I brought out three thousand dollars and slapped it into Archie’s hand. “If he were here,” I said flatly, “he would do no less.”

  She was pale. “Are you firing me?”

  “No.” I touched her hand. It was the first time I’d ever touched her in any way. We hadn’t even shaken hands when we met. “Please don’t think that. Is there any coffee?”

  “I can make it. I’ll have it up here in ten minutes.”

  “No, I’ll come down. Here.” I thrust two of the suitcases at her and picked up the third, keeping the black velvet bag in my other hand. “You can keep these bags,” I said on the way down the stairs. “God knows you’ve packed and unpacked them enough times to know every fold in the leather.”

  In the kitchen, I took a seat at the bar while Archie made coffee. I noticed that she tucked the money carefully into her purse and was glad she hadn’t refused to accept it. While I waited for the coffee, I poured the contents of the velvet bag onto the marble counter in front of me. “Forny.”

  “Mr. Stillson’s mother’s,” said Archie, bringing sugar, cream, and a spoon over to where I sat.

  There were sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, all in old-fashioned, ornate settings. They were extremely valuable, I knew, and uniformly ugly.

  “You should have them reset and wear them.” She brought my coffee.

  “Bring yours over here, too,” I ordered, “and sit down. Today, Archie, we are two women, not lady of the house and housekeeper. Okay?”

  “Yes, ma—Vin.”

  When I’m grown up, I’ll be rich, and I’ll wear jewelry like all the rich people do in the books, like Queen Elizabeth and Princess Grace, like Jackie Kennedy did at the inaugural documentary thing that was on TV. I’ll have servants and three houses and a car with a chauffeur who wears a uniform and calls me ma’am. And no one will ever be able to make me do anything I don’t want to. No one.

  The memory rose up unexpectedly, attacking me in the same manner as Mark’s scent had when I opened his closet, but with a very different kind of pain. I’d been ten, and my stepfather, the second of four, had just shown me in graphic detail exactly what he could make me do.

  Mark
had always been careful to let me do whatever I wanted. When, as it often happened, I didn’t know what that was, he led me in what always turned out to be the proper direction. When I wanted to go back to work even though I didn’t need the money and he didn’t really want me to work, he had called Liam Gunderson and told him his wife was looking for a job. Could Liam help?

  Now, without Mark, I knew I no longer wanted the brownstone, the house in Miami Beach, the hideous jewels that splattered the counter with jarring colors. Princess Grace and Jackie Kennedy were dead and Queen Elizabeth hardly ever paraded around in jewels anymore.

  I didn’t want to be “ma’am” to a woman who was no less than I was just because I’d loved and married a wealthy man and she had only loved him. For right now, I wanted—no, needed—to go to Maine with my three best friends and just be one of the Tonsil Lake girls.

  “If you’d like,” said Archie, helping me scoop the jewelry back into its bag, “I could drive you to the airport.”

  I met her eyes across the cups and the black bag and the years of our acquaintance. “Thank you, Martha,” I said. “I’d like that.”

  Part Two

  “There was no getting around it—she was lost.”

  Jean O’Toole

  The Price of Pride

  Cupid’s Bow Books, 2009

  Chapter Five

  Andie

  “Do you have any concerns that we should talk about?”

  Carolyn Murphy, who’s been my gynecologist since our kids were in kindergarten together, never sat behind her desk. She always came around it and sat in a chair beside me. When I’d been too sick to drive myself to see her, she’d dragged a chair from the corner for the person with me rather than sit behind the desk.

  “I’m still tired,” I admitted. “I thought I would have bounced back by now.”

  “Your body’s been attacked from all angles. And, truth to tell”—she shrugged, with a rueful smile—“we ain’t twenty anymore. Your counts are all in good shape, but you’re bouncing back like a fifty-year-old, not a teenager.”