The Girls of Tonsil Lake

by Liz Flaherty

  He straightened the sweatband covering my eyes, turned me around in circles a few times, and led me on. I heard a door open and close, but I had no idea which one it was. “Are you taking me into the linen closet to have your way with me?” I demanded. “Because you wouldn’t need to. The hallway floor’s just fine with me.”

  I felt so good today, so alive, that I truly thought I might be mistaken. Maybe it was an ulcer, or—never mind, I wasn’t going to think about it now. I was having too good a time.

  “Hush, woman.” His breath tickled my ear, and he paused to kiss the side of my neck, little butterfly kisses that sent sensation curling through my whole body, before moving us forward again. “Okay, here we are.” He pulled off the sweatband. “Voila.”

  We were in Carrie’s room, or what used to be Carrie’s room. The French provincial furniture was all gone, as was everything that had hung on the walls, the windows, and in the closet. Even the purple carpet Carrie had chosen, and I’d hated, had been removed.

  “We were going to just move Carrie’s stuff out and bring yours in,” said David, “but when we were getting your desk ready to move, Laurie found this folder full of pictures and notes about what you wanted in an office. Since none of us had a clue what ‘BIBCIC’ meant, we decided we’d wait.”

  I looked over at the closet, roomy enough to have been a playroom in bygone days. “Built-in book cases in closet,” I translated, “with a stepstool so that the shelves can go all the way to the ceiling. It would be my own little miniature reference library with a rocking chair and a little table with a lamp.” I looked up at him, not allowing the thought “too late” to come all the way into my mind. “What about Carrie?”

  “She’s fine. It’s time for her to be a grownup. And Megan’s thrilled. She wants to sleep in Mommy’s bed all the time and give the puppy her crib.”

  “She’s too little,” I protested.

  “She doesn’t think she is.”

  “And they don’t have a puppy.”

  “They will have. Kelly and Brian’s dog got out and went whoring around.”

  “Oh, David, it’s perfect.” I put my arms around his waist. “How did you know I was so upset about it?”

  “Well, it sure as hell wasn’t because you told me.” He scowled at me, but it wasn’t an angry look. “I just had a lot of time to think about what Andie said about listening to what you meant instead of what you said. And one time while you were gone, Josh and Laurie had a spat and he looked at me in total bewilderment and said, ‘Damn, Dad, why didn’t you tell me you had to be a mind-reader to be a husband? I thought that was the wife’s job.’”

  I walked the perimeter of the empty room, mentally placing my desk here, the filing cabinet in that corner, a small table and two chairs under the window. I grinned over my shoulder at him. “And you said?”

  “That I’d only just figured it out myself. You always did such a good job of reading my mind, I didn’t even know you were doing it. It’ll take me some time to acquire the skill. Can you be patient?”

  I glanced over at where he leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed over his chest. His hair, more gray than brown these days, flopped over his forehead, his eyes sparkling bright blue below. He was smiling at me, but it wasn’t a public smile. It was one of those looks Suzanne called a silent secret.

  “I love you,” I said, “so much.” My chest ached with it, and it occurred to me that I couldn’t die; there was too much yet to do. I had to finish what was proving to be the book of my heart, put this office together, and weed the flowerbeds that had gone mostly untended in my absence. I wondered if my mother had felt that way, if everyone did.

  David crossed the room, pulling me unresisting into his arms. “Me, too, Mrs. O’Toole.”

  I was sitting at my computer in the corner of the dining room when the phone rang the next morning. It was five-twelve.

  Suzanne

  I didn’t really want my Camaro anymore. It was a pretty car, and a convertible, but it sat so close to the ground that it didn’t ride very well. If it snowed more than a teaspoonful, you could forget it, because it would rear up on its wide back wheels and say it wasn’t going anywhere. It was hard to get into, even harder to get out of, and no amount of plastic surgery changed the fact that my hips were starting to get arthritic. I’d been more comfortable sharing the back seat of Jean’s Buick with Andie and Jean’s laptop than I was in the flashy little car I’d once loved so much.

  Sarah lived on the edge of Lewis Point. It was just a little shotgun house, but she had a small barn and a few other outbuildings that made it easy for her to keep and care for the stray animals that gravitated to her.

  I wondered, as I pulled into the carport beside her SUV, if I’d be welcome. Or would she be “on her way out” or “just going to bed” or “too busy to talk now, Mother.”

  She was busy—being the junior partner in her veterinary practice kept her on call more than off—but I knew it wasn’t the busyness that kept her from wanting to see me. The time had come to find out what it was.

  She eyed me from behind the wooden screen door that led to her front porch. “Mother. I was just—”

  “You weren’t ‘just’ anything,” I interrupted. “You ‘just’ want to avoid me.”

  She was silent. God, how that silence hurt.

  “I’ve lost your brother,” I said baldly. “I don’t know any way I can get him back, or any of us can get him back, for that matter. I’ve pretty much lost my job, my condo’s all white and boring, and I hate my car. I’m not losing you, too—whether you like it or not.” I glared at her through the screen. “And if you think you’re already lost, you can just think again.”

  She pushed open the screen. “What do you mean, lost your job?”

  I walked past her into the cozy living room. “I’m too old,” I said briefly.

  She gestured toward the couch, and I sat down, jumping back up again when a kitten squealed in protest. “Sorry.” I made sure the seat was clear this time, and sat with the small black cat in my lap. “There, there. You’re not hurt.”

  “Want some lemonade?”

  “Thank you.” I held the kitten up to my face, relishing the soft feel of its fur. “What’s its name?” I called.

  “Elmer.” Sarah came back into the room with two frosty glasses and handed me one before sitting in the recliner at right angles from me. “Your job?” she urged.

  I started to tell her, surprised by her interest, then stopped abruptly. “That’s not why I’m here.” I took a long swallow of lemonade and met her eyes.

  She looked like me with darker, not-so-round eyes. Her streaky blonde hair was almost the same color as mine, but hers was natural, as were the extremely long eyelashes that no one ever saw because she flatly refused to wear makeup.

  “You have the most beautiful skin,” I blurted.

  Sarah grinned, and I saw vestiges of my little girl in the expression. “Cowshit, Mother. It does wonders.”

  I grinned back at her. “You talk like Andie.”

  “Thank you.”

  I hope I didn’t flinch. “You’ve spent a lot of time making sure you’re not like me, haven’t you?” I asked slowly, setting my glass down because my hands were suddenly so cold.

  “Sure, I have.” Her gaze didn’t waver. “But that’s not just me, Mother. Miranda tries not to be like Andie—I swear, she has as much makeup as you do. Carrie and Kelly never even considered being like Jean. Everybody does that.”

  “It’s not because you hate me?”

  Elmer was tired of being stroked, he was ready to go to sleep, but I kept my freezing hands buried in his fur.

  She leaned forward in her chair. “I don’t hate you,” she said. “You drive me crazy, but I don’t hate you. Did you hate your mother?”

  “Yes,” I said instantly, thinking of the woman who had sat in that filthy trailer for years on end, hearing voices and seeing shapes and screaming out in the night.

  “
Only when you were young, when you just knew she wasn’t like other mothers. Not when you found out she was paranoid-schizophrenic and couldn’t help it.” Sarah smiled, but there was an unkind edge to the expression. “Then she just drove you crazy.”

  “Is that how I lost your brother, by driving him crazy? Is that what pushes you away from me?”

  She hesitated, and she wasn’t looking at me anymore. I followed the line of her vision and saw that it rested on a picture on an end table. It had been taken the day she graduated from high school. Phil and I had reluctantly posed with Sarah and Tom standing between us. We were all smiling dutifully for David’s camera.

  “It should have been that way,” said Sarah.

  I looked from the picture back to her, seeing the sheen of tears in her dark eyes. “What way?” I asked, although I knew.

  “We were a family, but you tore that apart without ever looking back. It’s always all about you, and you never gave a damn what the divorce did to Tommy or me, or even Daddy. At least you never appeared to, and that’s more than a kid can understand.” Sarah gave a self-deprecating little shrug. “I guess I still don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you know why we got divorced?”

  She shrugged again. “Because of your job, because your needs always came before everyone else’s.”

  “Is that what your father told you?”

  “Not in so many words. That’s what I observed on my own.”

  “Do you remember Ben and Kate Rivers?”

  She rolled her eyes. “The infamous picture of you and Jean on the front page of the paper. Of course, I remember. Jean’s kids and Tom and I were popular for a whole week because of it. Kate and Ben bring their dogs to our clinic now. They still have Dalmatians.”

  “Do you remember your dad’s reaction?”

  “You fought about it,” she said, “but you guys fought a lot, so it was no big deal, was it?”

  “Sarah, think about it. Why would we have fought about something like that? Jean and I did the right thing, didn’t we?”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  A knock at the door interrupted her, and she got up to walk across the room, looking back over her shoulder at me with a puzzled expression. The watch on my wrist, a gift from my company as part of a bonus one year, said it was five minutes past midnight. In my lap, Elmer rose to a sitting position and eyed me expectantly. I stroked his head.

  Later on, I would play this scene over and over in my head, till I felt like screaming. Maybe if the plane from Maine had been late into Indianapolis instead of early. If I’d stayed away from Sarah’s and minded my own business the way she preferred. If I hadn’t been there, young Jake Logan might have come earlier and no one would have said what he came to say. There was nothing in it that could have warned me, nothing I could have changed, but I still felt responsible.

  I heard him murmur, “Hi, hon,” as he stepped inside, pulling Sarah into the curve of his arm.

  He was in his state police uniform, which only added to the movie star looks he’d inherited from his father. I could see his side and part of his back, and I noticed he’d just gotten a haircut; his tanned skin was lighter at his hairline.

  “Mother’s here, Lo,” said Sarah.

  I wondered why she called him that.

  He turned toward me then, and my greeting was halted in the middle by the stricken expression he wore. I said, “No.”

  But he told us anyway.

  Vin

  I heard the telephone, but rolled over and ignored it. That was, after all, why God had invented answering machines, wasn’t it? And if God hadn’t done it, surely he’d intended to, to make up for allowing the emergence of telemarketers.

  Then there was a knock on my bedroom door. I muttered something unintelligible into my pillow and rolled again so that my back was to the door. The prescription Lucas had given me was working—I hadn’t been awakened by night sweats in over a week—so why wouldn’t outside forces let me sleep?

  The door opened. I supposed I couldn’t ignore that. Since only Archie and I were in the house and she never disturbed me needlessly, I’d better open my eyes.

  Archie held a cordless receiver in her hand. “It’s Andie,” she said. “You’d better take the call.”

  I took the phone and watched Archie go into Mark’s office and turn on the light. A moment later, as I tried to absorb what Andie was telling me, I heard Archie’s voice from the other room, speaking softly but authoritatively on the other line.

  When I said, “Thanks for letting me know, Andie,” and laid down the phone, Archie came back into the room.

  “Do you need me to pack for you?” she asked. “Or will you just take what’s still in the bags?”

  “I’ll just take that,” I said, pointing at the smaller of the two bags that sat in front of the closet doors. If I needed more, I could buy it there.

  “The plane leaves at ten. There’s an afternoon commuter to Lewis Point, so I booked that, too. Will you need a hotel room?”

  “No.” I got out of bed and pulled on a robe, stopping to give her a curious look. “How did you know I’d go?”

  Archie smiled at me, and I thought how the expression softened her features into prettiness. Suzanne would have a heyday with that face. Oh, Suzanne.

  “When I went back to Ireland,” Archie said, “I learned that you can’t always go home again. When you went to Maine with your friends, I think you learned that sometimes you can.”

  She left the room, carrying my suitcase and the telephone, and I dressed in jeans and a cotton sweater, wondering how Suzanne was doing. I would have liked to talk to her, but Andie said the doctor had given her a sedative and she was sleeping in Kelly O’Toole’s old room at Jean’s house.

  I thought of young Tom Taylor, who I hadn’t seen since the summer he and Jean’s Carrie graduated from high school. He had been out of control even then, although charmingly so. And now he was dead at twenty-nine, the victim of a hit-and-run driver on the street outside Suzanne’s condo.

  I felt an ache in my chest as I tried to imagine the depth of her grief. Was this what our fifties were going to be? Was it all going to be about loss and pain and suffering?

  Archie had coffee and a croissant ready for me when I went downstairs. I sipped the coffee and reached for the phone.

  He answered on the third ring.

  “Lucas?” I said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Andie

  We gathered at Jean’s after the funeral. The house was full, what with friends, family, and ex-husbands. Had we not been so sad, watching Trent Taylor and Phil Lindsay try to avoid each other would have kept us entertained. As it was, the years-old enmity seemed to deepen our sorrow.

  I stood in the dining room with Paul at the sliding glass doors and looked at all of our surviving children together beside the pool. Carrie’s and Miranda’s little ones frolicked in the water. They had probably not all been together since the last wedding in one of our families. Or the last death.

  Young Jake stood with an arm around Sarah, and I wondered how far beyond friendship that had gone. My son was not what one would call forthcoming, and Sarah was downright closemouthed.

  “I’d like to see that,” said a voice beside me, and I looked up at Jake, Sr. “She’s a terrific young lady, and our boy isn’t so bad, either.”

  Paul spoke from my other side. Turning, I realized he was talking to Jake more than to me. “We wondered, didn’t we, back when they played Little League, how they’d all turn out. We talked about it then, and I think we grieved a little bit ahead of time for days like this.”

  “I remember,” said Jake, and he wasn’t talking to me, either. “I never thanked you, Paul, for how good you were to young Jake when I couldn’t be there.”

  The melancholy in his eyes was overwhelming, and I had to look away, back toward the group of twenty-somethings gathered at the pool. They were laughing uproariously, holding onto each other. It was nice to see, even though it
was the kind of laughter that masks pain.

  “You were always there, Jake,” said Paul. “Maybe I was your mouthpiece sometimes, but you were always there.”

  Jake nodded, accepting the compliment with the same grace with which it had been delivered. “Well, so were you.”

  Their eyes met somewhere past me, and I sensed there was more being said than I heard, which is not a new thing for me. I miss out on a lot. Jean says it’s because I’m always making so much noise, but I was quiet now.

  “I’d like to think you’ll always be around,” said Jake casually.

  “Me, too,” said Paul.

  They shook hands, and, slow though I may be to catch on, I had the feeling Jake had just let me go.

  “I should go see if Jean needs any help,” I said, and left them there together, the only two men other than young Jake who’d ever had a definitive place in my life.

  I found Jean in the kitchen with Vin. They were standing at the sink, their heads together at the window over it. I poured myself a cup of coffee and hipped my way between them, which was easy to do because I have considerably more hip than either of them. “What are you two doing?”

  “Look out there,” said Jean, washing glasses without looking at them.

  Suzanne stood in the yard with Trent’s arm around her. They’d been together a lot the past few days, grieving for the son they’d lost, and I wasn’t surprised to see them together now. The addition to the picture was Phil Lindsey. Whoa.

  “I thought he left after the funeral,” I said.

  Vin shook her head, rinsing glasses and setting them upside down on a dishtowel—she wasn’t looking at them, either. I was glad I was drinking from a mug.

  I became as involved in watching the tableau as they were. Pretty soon David and Lucas were snickering behind us and Vin hissed, “Shh!” as though the three on the lawn could hear them.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “Here comes Phil. Look busy.”

  “We are busy,” said Jean. “Get another plate of sandwiches out of the fridge.”

  I buried my head in the side-by-side, coming out again quickly so that I wouldn’t miss anything. Sometimes I am just not a very nice person. When I closed the refrigerator door, I hit my head with it. Shit.