Return to Little Hills

by Janice Macdonald

  “Mmm,” Edie said. She was suddenly feeling weirdly sad about Maude’s cats and she couldn’t imagine why since she’d never been a big fan of cats, either. “I’m not sure.”

  “Oh, it’s this little trampy girl who goes to Luther. Melissa. She’s trying to get transferred back to Stephen’s, only so that she can be with Brad again. Ray knows that’s why, but he says she’s got Peter wrapped around her little finger. She told Brad she’s going to earn extra credits for some newsletter thing Peter’s trying to start. Ray says he’s practically given up talking any sense to Peter, since he just doesn’t listen.”

  “Peter mentioned the newsletter. He asked if I’d be an adviser.”

  Viv turned her head. “Peter asked you? How did that come about?”

  “I ran into him when I went for a walk yesterday. He was with his daughters and a bunch of kids from the school.”

  “That was it? He just asked you, like that?”

  “Yeah.” Edie heard something in Viv’s voice. “What? You sound surprised.”

  “Oh, I don’t know…” Her fingers tapped on the wheel a moment. “You’re not…like, attracted to him or anything?”

  “Viv, he has four children.”

  “So?”

  “So, can you picture me being a mommy to four children?”

  Vivian grinned. “Not exactly.”

  “Well, there’s your answer.”

  A moment passed. “You never think about having children?”

  Edie shook her head. “They wouldn’t fit into the kind of life I lead.”

  “You could do something different.”

  “Never. My work is who I am. I can’t even imagine doing anything else.”

  “I used to envy you sometimes,” Viv said. “Here’s me stuck in Little Hills with a husband and two kids and you’re out doing all these exciting things. But you know what? I wouldn’t trade my life. A little more money might be nice, but I’m happy. Ray’s a good guy and I’ve got two great kids. I think about you sometimes and wonder how it would have been if I’d just taken off and done my own thing. And then I think, no, I couldn’t be that way.”

  Edie said nothing. It was always there in her conversations with Viv, that little barb. Pick up on it, and Viv would laugh and accuse her of being overly sensitive—which, Edie conceded, might be true. Maybe it was the moment to whip off the mask and proclaim, “Hey, the person you think is me isn’t really me,” but she felt weary. Things were settled with Maude now, it seemed. If she could survive the rest of the visit without turmoil, it would be enough.

  In a dream that night, she wore a hideous yellow bridesmaid dress covered with butterflies and little green worms. Maude and Vivian wore similar dresses, except their dresses had no worms. Maude was complaining that her feet hurt and Vivian wanted the wedding to be over with because she had gingerbread in the oven. They were all standing at the end of the aisle waiting for Beth to appear. Then things got kind of weird and Peter was holding his hand across Edie’s mouth and Beth kept whispering that formaldehyde was her favorite perfume and if Edie would just hold still everything would be fine, but then Maude started screaming, loud shrill screams that wouldn’t stop. When Edie sat up in bed it was morning and the phone was ringing. Vivian’s daily seven-thirty call.

  “I realize that it’s just your way, Edie,” Vivian started out. “But sometimes, sweetie, you can be a touch heavy-handed and insensitive.”

  “No!” Edie said, weary already. “Me?”

  “And sarcastic,” Viv said. “Also, I hate to bring this up, but mom just called me. She said you screamed at her last night.”

  Edie rubbed her eyes. On the table beside her bed was the article she’d fallen asleep reading the night before. “An Analysis of Political Sensitivities in Southeast Asia.” She leaned back against the pillows. “I didn’t scream at her,” she muttered.

  “Mom said you did.”

  “I didn’t scream at her,” Edie repeated. “I asked her if she had an alarm clock and she didn’t understand what I was talking about. I said it four times and then I finally pantomimed a damn alarm clock, brrrrbrrrbrrr. Little bell on the top of my head. And she kept saying, ‘Boat dock? Boat dock?’ Finally, I just brought my mouth up to her ear—”

  “And screamed at her.”

  “I didn’t scream. I raised my voice.”

  “Mom said you screamed.”

  Edie slowly banged her head against the pillow. “Okay, Viv, I screamed. I’m a wicked, horrible person. I screamed at a poor defenseless little old lady.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” Vivian scolded. “Just remember she’s old. Maybe she seems energetic and capable to you, but trust me, if you’d spent any time around her, you’d appreciate how frail she is. By the way, if you’re not doing anything today, we really need to get a start on packing her things.”

  Edie considered the day ahead, the highlight being a promised trip to the IGA for Maude to buy toilet paper. “Sure,” she said. “When are you coming over?”

  Viv sighed. “I can’t, Eed. The gourmet group wants to do Japanese for the next dinner and guess who’s been assigned sushi? Wasabi powder. That’s one of the ingredients. First, I have no idea what wasabi powder is, but I know damn well the IGA won’t stock it, so that means I’ll have to drive into St. Louis. So, anyway, if you could just get started with her closets. Make her toss out the clothes she doesn’t wear and…oh, by the way, I meant to warn you about this before…remember when we all went out for drinks and Beth was talking about Peter?”

  Edie shook her head, dizzied by the sudden topic change. “Vaguely. Why?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about the whole situation with Beth and Peter and I think she really downplayed the way she feels about him and I know it’s because you were there. I could tell. She’s intimidated by you—”

  “Intimidated by me?” Edie lay back on the pillow. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No, I’m not kidding. Look, Eed…” A pause. “Okay, I’m not criticizing you. You’re probably not even aware of it, but it’s just the way you come across.” Been there, done that. Tell me something I don’t know. “It’s intimidating, Eed. People are scared to tell you what they really feel.”

  Edie studied a brown water spot on the ceiling. “Vivian,” she said. “I’ve probably spoken to…five people since I got back to Little Hills and that includes Honey at the IGA. And what with ringing up the groceries and making change, she didn’t get down to talking about her personal feelings—”

  “See? That’s what you do. Here I’m just trying to help you by pointing out that you can be a little hard to deal with sometimes and you have to be sarcastic and snippy. I’m telling you for your own good, Eed. None of us are perfect, you know. Even you.”

  “Thank you, Viv.” Edie picked up the Asia document and put her glasses back on. The role of the journalist as a detached, objective observer, she read, can be compromised when personal feelings… “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “I hope you’re not being sarcastic, sweetie,” Viv said. “I’m only telling you for your own good. You’re my sister and I love you. Sometimes, I think, we don’t say that enough. Oh and one more thing. I wouldn’t ask you, but I’m driving myself crazy with everything I have to do… I told you about Brad, and that little trampy girlfriend, right? But don’t get me started on that. Anyway, Ray went off this morning without his briefcase and he wants me to drop it off. If you could just stop by and get it when you take Mom to the IGA—she needs toilet paper, by the way—and then drive it over to the school, I’d really appreciate it. Wasabi powder. I swear to God.”

  “JUST CAUGHT Melissa Fowler smoking outside the school,” Ray Jenkins poked his head into Peter’s office to announce with obvious satisfaction. “Shouldn’t she be in class right now?”

  “Yes, she should.” Peter remembered the bruise on her wrist he’d noticed a few days earlier and felt a stab of guilt. He’d meant to talk to her. “Is she out there still?”

>   “No, I sent her inside.” Ray moved farther into the office. “I’ve had it up to here with that little tramp,” he said in a lowered voice. “Always hanging around my son. I caught them both in the garage last night—just talking, Brad said—but I wish to hell she’d leave him alone.”

  After Ray left, Peter walked over to the English classroom and waited outside until the bell rang. Melissa appeared shortly, sauntering along in the midst of a pack of jostling, laughing students. Her smile faded when she saw him standing there.

  “Melissa.” She stopped and the other kids hurtled on, one or two of them casting backward glances at her. She wore a black sleeveless shirt and, as she raised her hand to brush the hair from her face, he caught the bruise on the underside of her wrist. “How is everything?”

  “Good.”

  He said nothing, just looked at her. After a moment, her face colored and she glanced away.

  “Mr. Jenkins told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  “That I was smoking and…?”

  “And?”

  “I was late for class?”

  “Were you?”

  “Yeah, but I was with three other kids and he didn’t say a word to them, he’s just picking on me.”

  “Let’s talk about the smoking first,” Peter said.

  “I’m going to quit.”

  “Good, then you won’t need a lecture from me about all the terrible things smoking does to your body.”

  She shook her head. “I know all that. I just…I don’t know, I just did it but I swear that’s my last one and, Mr. Darling, the reason I was late was that me and Marcus…he’s my boyfriend. We kind of broke up, because there’s someone else I like? And I was, like, telling my friends about it and I just kind of forgot what time it was.”

  He nodded at her wrist. “Where did that bruise come from, Melissa?”

  “Oh…” She looked down at her wrist. “We were just goofing around—”

  “We?”

  Her face colored. “Me and Brad, he doesn’t go to school here. He wasn’t trying to hurt me or anything, he just grabbed me too hard.” She glanced at her wrist again. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  Peter looked at her. “Melissa, I believed you when you said you wanted to graduate from Stephen’s—”

  “I do, Mr. Darling.”

  “Well, so far I’m not seeing very much evidence of that. The next time you’re tempted to cut class, I want you to remind yourself of your goal. And if I learn that you’ve been late again, or that you’ve missed class, I will personally suspend you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Darling.”

  “I don’t want apologies, Melissa. I want deeds that demonstrate your commitment.”

  “Can I just say one thing though?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I think Mr. Jenkins is picking on me because he’s mad that Brad likes me.”

  “Were you late for class?”

  “Yes, but the others—”

  “I don’t care about the others. You were late?”

  She nodded.

  “Are there other times when you’ve felt Mr. Jenkins singled you out unfairly?”

  “No…not really.”

  “No other times?”

  “No, but he doesn’t like me and I know why. He thinks I’m not good enough for his son.”

  Peter looked at her for a moment. “Melissa, Mr. Jenkins’s opinion of you vis-à-vis his son is not important. You’re an intelligent, capable person with a lot of potential. Except for your one rather obvious flaw, I see nothing at all wrong with you.”

  “What flaw?”

  “Your inability to tell time, or at least your insistence on ignoring it. Work on that and I think you’ll do splendidly.”

  After Melissa left, he paid visits to a couple of classes, intervened in a scuffle between two junior boys, confiscated a package of sunflower seeds and was starting back to his office for a two o’clock parent meeting, when he saw Edie Robinson walking toward him. As she drew closer, he felt an idiotic grin spread across his face. He tried to arrange his features into something less indicative of the fact that the sight of her had produced a wild burst of happiness that was making his heart race.

  “Edie.” They’d stopped outside the science classroom where, through the partially opened blinds, he could see heads bent over textbooks. Edie wore faded jeans and an equally faded yellow T-shirt. “What brings you here?”

  “An errand for my sister. Ray forgot his briefcase this morning. My mother’s in the car waiting for me. After that, we’re going to the IGA for toilet paper.”

  He met her eyes for a moment.

  “I lead a very busy life,” she said.

  “Clearly. But immensely rewarding, I should imagine.”

  “And challenging. Last time we went to the IGA, I bought the wrong kind of toilet paper. One-ply, which Mom says is far too thin. I had no idea.”

  “One learns,” he said.

  “One does.” She pushed her hair back behind her ears. “And on top of all that, I’ve actually had time for some introspection.”

  “Good heavens,” Peter said. “Amazing.”

  “Isn’t it? After I met you in the park, I thought a lot about the remark I made to you about children being a foreign language—”

  “Which you had no interest in learning.” He nodded. “Yes, I do remember you saying that.”

  “In retrospect, I think that perhaps what I really meant was that while I do find children…well, what I’m saying is I don’t know much about children, nothing really, but that doesn’t mean…” Her face colored slightly. “I have no idea why I’m making such a mess of this. I just didn’t want to leave you with this impression that I’m cold and unfeeling, because I’m not. Really.” She bit her lip. “God, I’m embarrassing myself. You seem to bring that out in me.”

  Peter watched her face. Cool composure was clearly struggling to regain control. If he hadn’t been aware of the curious looks from students in the science classroom, he might have put his arms around her. Instead, he removed a yellow leaf from her shoulder that had fluttered down from the gutter above the classroom.

  “I didn’t think for one minute that you were cold and unfeeling,” he said.

  “Good. How are your daughters, by the way?”

  “Very well, thank you. How is your mother?”

  “Probably getting very impatient,” she said. “I should go.”

  “By the way,” he said. “The journalism club I mentioned. I’d like to set up something for tomorrow after school. Around four.”

  She nodded. “I think I’ll be through at the IGA by then.”

  “Terrific. We’ll be meeting in the arts building. Anyone can direct you.”

  “See you then.”

  Peter started to walk away, then turned to glance over his shoulder. “And Edie,” he called. “Don’t forget the toilet paper. Two-ply.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “HEY, MOM.” Edie was grinning as she climbed into the car. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I got talking to Peter. The principal.” She started the ignition. “He’s asked me to help set up a journalism group.”

  She drove out of the parking lot and started down Broadway, heading for the IGA. “I think it’ll be fun.”

  In the rearview mirror, she peered at her reflection. Her eyes looked bright, her face slightly flushed. Peter Darling. Had his parents been thinking of Peter Pan when they named their son? She’d have to ask him. She tried to remember his daughters’ names. The quiet one was Delphina. She glanced at Maude. “Mom, I want to ask you something.”

  “No, I’ve got one of those little spots up my nose again,” Maude said.

  “Viv said I’m intimidating,” she said. “Do you think I’m intimidating?”

  “I’d like to see you start dating,” Maude said. “I’d like to see you settled down and married. You’re getting too old to be traipsing all over the world. What about children? You think you’re ever going to have children?
I clipped an article from one of those magazines Dixie passes on to me. I don’t care for them much myself—too much sex stuff. I don’t know why people want to read about sex—as far as I’m concerned, it’s a private thing between two people—but it said women of fifty are having babies these days. It’s a common thing. In my days, you stopped having children much younger but—”

  “Mom.” It’s not worth it, Edie told herself as she pulled into the IGA lot, but stubbornness made her persist. “Look at me.” She switched off the ignition and turned in the seat to face Maude. “Intimidating,” she said slowly. “Do you think people find me intimidating?”

  “Mating?” Maude’s soft pink face was tense with concentration. “Is that what you said?”

  “Viv said I’m hard to talk to. And I wanted to know if—”

  “You snap,” Maude said.

  “But when I’m not snapping…” Foot curled up under her, keys in her hand, Edie tried another approach. “Are you scared of me, Mom?”

  “Scared of you?” Maude’s mouth pursed. “No. Why would I be scared of you?”

  “Because I’m intimidating.”

  “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying,” Maude said. “You look fine, but I don’t like your hair like that. Makes you look older.”

  Edie gave up and got out of the car. I’m not intimidating, she decided. Viv’s nuts. Over on the passenger side, she helped Maude out of the car, and then held her arm as they slowly crossed the parking lot to the IGA, where the windows were advertising 8 Jumbo Rolls for $3.99. The problem, she reflected, was family perception. If you started life as bossy and obnoxious, you could evolve into Mother Teresa but to the folks at home, you’d be bossy and obnoxious until the day you died. But Viv was wrong. She wasn’t intimidating—a fact she intended to demonstrate throughout her visit to Little Hills.

  “I need prunes, too,” Maude whispered. “Haven’t gone for three days.”

  “Good idea, Mom,” Edie said. “I’ll go and find them for you.” Well, obviously Peter Darling didn’t find her intimidating. It was a pleasant thought.