Versions of Her

by Andrea Lochen

  The sky had a rosy glow outside the frosted bathroom window—sunset. Kelsey checked the time on her phone and saw the text message that she had composed to Josh earlier. It seemed like a lifetime ago. She clicked send, and a second later, her phone beeped, signifying a successful delivery. Apparently the fishing cabin’s reception was awesome. Go figure. She assumed her text was probably much too late, anyway—any damage to their friendship had already been done.

  MELANIE PUSHED THE porch swing back and forth lazily with her heels. Sprocket was sprawled out a few feet away, snoring louder than any small dog had the right to. She had been reading an article in Scientific American about seawater desalination, but no daylight was left to read by, so she’d dropped it into her lap and kept rocking instead of going inside.

  Lights were on in the Fletchers’ house, and she could imagine Nicholas bathing Noah and reading him bedtime stories and Jess feeding Gracie and rocking her to sleep. They were probably frazzled and exhausted, rushing to get the children put to bed so that they could steal a few minutes of alone time together to eat a quick dinner and drink a glass of wine, but Melanie would have traded places with them in a heartbeat. She let her head loll back on the wooden swing. Would my baby have been a boy or a girl?

  Sprocket suddenly shot up and sniffed at the darkness encircling the wraparound porch. Before Melanie’s mind had time to jump to horror-movie scenarios, her sister called out, “It’s just me,” and the little gray dog bolted toward his master.

  “You’re home early. I didn’t hear a car.”

  “He didn’t drive me home. I wanted to walk.”

  Kelsey looked small and sad. Even her springy hair looked deflated. Melanie was reminded of her senior year of high school, when Kelsey, a sophomore at the time, had been invited to the prom by a popular junior, Wyatt Jameson. She had been so pleased with herself, getting to go to prom ahead of her time, since only juniors and seniors were allowed to go. Melanie had been unattached and had gone with a group of her other unattached friends, and that had seemed to sweeten the experience of going with a date for sixteen-year-old Kelsey—a date who bought her a red-rose corsage and drove a black Mustang convertible. But that night had ended early too. Melanie and her mom had patiently pulled bobby pins out of Kelsey’s updo—sixty-seven of them—and listened to her recounting the night’s disasters. Food poisoning at dinner and one too many trips to the restroom had caused Wyatt’s eye to turn to another girl. Kelsey had found them making out in the twinkly-lit courtyard while her favorite song, “Drops of Jupiter,” played in the gymnasium.

  “He’s not worth the salt in your tears,” their mom had said, handing her a tissue, then locked eyes with Melanie over Kelsey’s head. Her frank gaze seemed to say, We adults understand these things, don’t we? Melanie had felt great affection for both her mom and her sister at that moment.

  But her mom wasn’t there now, and Melanie didn’t know what to say. She suspected anything she did say would be interpreted as sermonizing or one giant “I told you so.” She sat quietly to see what Kelsey would do next, if she would go straight inside to her parents’ bedroom or if she would sit down. She sat down.

  Melanie started rocking them on the swing. “I have been racking my brain, trying to figure out who Everett’s laugh reminds me of, and I think I finally have it.”

  Kelsey turned to her, enticed despite her studied indifference. Her eyes were red rimmed, like she had been crying.

  “Ernie. You know from Ernie and Bert?” Melanie mimicked Everett’s laugh. “He-he-he-he-he!”

  “Oh God, you’re right!” Kelsey burst out laughing. “He’s totally Ernie.” She imitated the laugh with more success. Her impressions had always been better than Melanie’s. She did a spot-on one of their dad’s wife, Laila, with her lilting cadences and oddly placed pauses.

  “You sound like a hissing cat having a seizure!” Melanie picked up Sprocket and put him between them on the swing, but he jumped down after a few seconds. “Do you think something is wrong with him? Like maybe he has a deviated septum?”

  “Maybe he just watched a lot of Sesame Street as a kid.” Kelsey undid her sandals and tucked her feet under her. “A laugh like that is kind of a deal breaker, though. His girlfriend probably wants to murder him when they watch comedies together.”

  His girlfriend? Melanie had known he was a player—those dimples probably made him think he could get away with anything. Did he voluntarily share this information with Kelsey, or did she find out some other way? The red-rimmed eyes made her suspect the latter.

  “I mean, if Ben laughed like that, you wouldn’t have married him, right?”

  “Of course not!” Melanie said, but in her heart, she thought, Yes, yes, yes. Of course she still would have married him. She would have married him if he sounded like Oscar the Grouch—heh-heh-heh—or Fozzie Bear—waka waka!—or a trumpeter swan honking. But that wasn’t the case. He had a warm, pleasing, and quite infectious laugh.

  “Don’t worry. We parted on good terms,” Kelsey said, an edge to her words. “In case you were worried he wouldn’t be coming back on Tuesday.”

  “I wasn’t worried about that,” Melanie answered truthfully. The possibility that Everett would be so unprofessional as to terminate their contract because of a romantic mishap with Kelsey hadn’t occurred to her. But she was grateful to be reassured nonetheless. “I’m worried about you, though. Are you okay?”

  “No.” Kelsey exhaled. “I saw Dad in the time portal today. His first time out to Lake Indigo, when he and Mom had just met.”

  Melanie scrambled to catch up. “Dad?” She had been expecting Kelsey to describe her evening with Everett and the revelation about his girlfriend, not what she had seen behind the tapestry. Though Melanie had promised herself that she wouldn’t try to dredge up any more of her mom’s private life, their parents meeting seemed like a piece of shared history, a moment that somehow also belonged to Melanie and Kelsey. It was where all their threads came together.

  “Yes. Young and buff. But I know you don’t want me to tell you any of this.”

  Melanie let her bare feet drag, slowing the porch swing down. It felt like Kelsey was intentionally tempting her, but she found she couldn’t resist. She pictured the wedding photo of her parents hanging in her living room back in Ohio: her mom in a sheer, lacy bodice and puffy sleeves, her veil a frothy waterfall behind her, and her dad in a matching white suit, both of them with one-hundred-watt smiles, grinning like it was going out of style. She couldn’t look at the photo without smiling as well. “Was Dad just as suave as he claims to be?”

  “Kind of. He seemed very gentlemanly.” Then Kelsey relayed, in detail, what she had seen and heard: the teenagers at the bonfire, especially their lovey-dovey parents, how Lance and Vinnie were flirting, how their mom had followed Vinnie when she went to get more beer, and their conversation in the basement. “Mom wouldn’t answer Vinnie when she asked her if she loved him. She would only say that she didn’t want to hurt her. Then Vinnie claimed to know Mom better than Dad, the real her, and she asked why Mom would choose him over her. And you know what Mom said? She said, ‘It’s just easier to be with him.’”

  “Hey. Take a deep breath.” Melanie patted her sister’s hand. Just as she’d predicted, the sweater with its stray piece of yarn was unraveling. “It sounds like they were together, but they broke up. She chose Dad, didn’t she?”

  Kelsey unfolded her legs and began rocking the swing jerkily. “Did she do it for the right reasons, though? Or just because it was easier to pretend to be straight? To stay in the closet and make her parents happy?”

  “You act like ‘easy to be with’ is damning someone with faint praise, Kels, but it’s actually a pretty appealing quality in a mate. Maybe you misunderstood Mom. Maybe she meant that Dad was more enjoyable to be around, more relaxing, more comfortable. From what I know of Mrs. Fletcher, she could be pretty temperamental. Witty and charismatic, yes, but other times downright moody. Do you remember that time
she threw her steak over the porch railing? She said Mr. Fletcher had overcooked it.”

  Kelsey didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know. The way she said it... I just feel like there’s so much raw emotion between them. Like this crazy spark.”

  Like Catherine and Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, all fiery passion and doom. Yes, Melanie had felt it, too, had witnessed it in that kiss. “So you’re worried that Mom settled? That she and Vinnie maybe continued their relationship even after Mom and Dad got married?”

  Kelsey folded her arms across her chest and rocked the swing so hard that Melanie’s head bumped the back of the seat.

  “Ouch. Watch it!”

  “Sorry.” Kelsey stopped her rocking abruptly. “I hadn’t phrased it that way to myself, but yes, that’s exactly what I’m scared of.”

  No loons were out, or if they were, Melanie couldn’t hear them over the Memorial Day bonfires and get-togethers all around the lake. Snippets of laughter, rock music, and splashing carried across to them. Sprocket was sawing wood again.

  “Well, the solution is obvious, isn’t it?” Melanie said. “You need to stop going into the past. No good is coming from it, and it’s making you upset. Mom and Dad loved each other, and they loved us. Was it a perfect marriage? No, but whose is? Fortunately, most couples’ marriages don’t have to withstand the scrutiny of their adult children time traveling to examine them from every which angle.” She rubbed the back of her head. “What would be the outcome of you finding out for sure if Mom and Vinnie were having an affair? It would only taint things. I don’t think that would be healthy.”

  “So ignorance is bliss?” Kelsey asked sarcastically. “Keep your head in the sand, and all that jazz?”

  Melanie smoothed her sundress across her lap. “If that’s how you want to think about it, fine. But I think that’s a pretty immature viewpoint. It’s really not about us. It’s between Mom and Dad—”

  “And Mom and Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “Right. I’m not saying you should ignore anything or pretend you haven’t seen what you’ve already seen. I’m just suggesting you stop actively seeking it out. For your own peace of mind.”

  Kelsey pushed herself up and walked across the porch. Melanie thought she was going to go inside, but she paused by the railing. “I don’t think I can stop quite yet,” she said softly. “I did something today that you’re not going to be very happy about. I left a picture in the closet for Mom.”

  “A picture?” Melanie’s heart hammered against her ribcage. “Of whom?”

  “Us.” Kelsey turned around to face her. “Mom’s favorite picture. The one she kept framed on her desk in Dad’s office.”

  Kelsey didn’t need to describe it any further. Melanie could immediately visualize it in her mind’s eye. In it, Kelsey was five, and Melanie was seven, and they were lying on their backs on a quilt together, looking up at the twilit sky, waiting for some fireworks to start. Melanie’s arm was draped protectively around Kelsey, and Kelsey’s head was resting against Melanie’s side, and though they weren’t smiling, they looked as content as kittens. Melanie thought it might have been taken at Lake Indigo’s Fourth of July fireworks display. She couldn’t remember that moment or that night, even, but she wished she could. The photographer, her mom, perhaps, had seemed to capture on film the only sweet, sisterly moment that had ever occurred between them.

  “Did you leave a note with it?” Melanie asked. The furious pace of her heart had slowed a little. At least it wasn’t a more recent photo.

  “No.”

  “Was anything written on the back?”

  “Our names and the date, I think. Maybe our ages too.” Kelsey hugged herself. Her bare shoulders glowed white in the moonlight, and Melanie suspected she was cold. “I know this is a weird thought, but I can’t help wondering about it. I acted compulsively, and it was such an automatic decision—like that photo was the obvious choice to show her. So what I keep asking myself is, Did I put that picture in the closet because it’s Mom’s favorite, or is that picture Mom’s favorite because it was the one I put in the closet? The first picture she ever saw of us? Do you get what I mean?”

  “I do,” Melanie said. It was a “butterfly effect” question—one of those knotted situations she had been hoping to avoid. She tried to envision what her eighteen-year-old mom’s reaction would be when she found the photo. It would be like looking at her future through the wrong end of a telescope. She was still so far away from becoming their mother, yet Kelsey had seen to it that she knew about them. “Why did you choose to leave that photo right then?”

  “Hmm?” Kelsey cocked her head.

  “I’m curious about your timing,” Melanie said. “Why leave her a photo of us after that intense interaction with Mom and Vinnie you had just seen?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I had similar motives to yours for writing that note. Mom was upset, and I wanted to leave her with something to look forward to. I wanted to introduce her to the people she’s sharing the closet with in a kinder, gentler way,” she added somewhat defensively.

  Melanie set the swing lightly rocking again. “So it didn’t have anything to do with wanting to influence Mom’s choices? Wanting to lay claim to her and make sure she chose the right horse, so to speak?”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Kelsey snapped, pushing off from the railing. “If you’re suggesting that I planted that photo there just so Mom would feel obligated to choose Dad over Vinnie, you’re forgetting a pretty important piece of the puzzle here. We already know that Mom married Dad! Otherwise we wouldn’t be here!”

  “I know that. You know that. But eighteen-year-old Mom doesn’t know that. I just want her to understand she made that choice of her own free will, not because she felt pressured by her future daughters.”

  “I do, too, of course. But that doesn’t change the fact that I already left the picture there, and Mom has probably already found it by now.”

  They raised their eyebrows at each other as they mulled over that exhilarating yet alarming possibility.

  “Come on, Sprocket.” Kelsey whistled, and he wiggled himself into a sleepy, seated position. “I’d better get to bed. I’ve got to leave here at six tomorrow morning if I want to get to work on time, so I probably won’t see you.”

  “Okay,” Melanie said. “I think I’m going to sit out here for a little while longer.” One of the lights had gone out on the near side of the Fletchers’ house. She could imagine the little boy nestled in bed, a teddy bear tucked under his arm.

  “Good night.” Kelsey opened the screen door then hesitated. “Hey. How do you think our neighbors know Lavinia? Do you think they’re renting from her?”

  “I wondered the same thing,” Melanie said. “Maybe she’s their landlord. But it seemed like they knew her more personally, didn’t it?”

  Kelsey swatted a moth away from the open door. “I guess so. Do you think she knows that Mom died?”

  “I don’t know. She might have seen it in the paper. Or maybe they still had mutual friends.” She tried to remember the long list of names she’d kept track of, the people who had sent their condolences and flowers or monetary donations. Was Lavinia Fletcher’s name among them? If it had been, it certainly hadn’t stood out to her at the time.

  Kelsey batted away another moth and started to close the door. “Well, I was just wondering. Good night,” she repeated.

  “Good night. I love you, you know,” she added as an afterthought. Maybe it was her mom guiding her. She had told both her daughters that she loved them every night before bed.

  “I do know. And I love you too,” Kelsey said before disappearing inside the house.

  Chapter Fifteen

  For the next week, Everett was especially polite to Melanie, and she made an effort to hold her tongue and stay out of his way. She went to the lab to have more blood drawn, raked leaves out from under the shrubs, polished the spindles on the oak staircase, and sanded and stained the outdoor table on the wraparound porch.
She liked how the table turned out so much, she wondered if she could somehow get it back to Ohio. It would look much nicer on their deck than the cheap patio set she and Ben currently owned.

  Charlene had stopped over on Wednesday to show her the final house description: Gorgeous 4 bedroom, 3 bath Victorian mansion on stunning Lake Indigo! A must see... The listing would officially become live on all the major real estate websites that Friday, and the open house was scheduled for next Sunday at one o’clock, and—Charlene was emphatic about it—they should have no private showings before then to generate lots of interest and competition on the big day. Melanie wondered what she would do with herself during those three hours when she needed to be out of the house. Maybe if Kelsey wasn’t working, they could go to a movie together or go shopping.

  On Friday afternoon, she sat at the kitchen table, refreshing the house listing on a web page that kept track of how many people had viewed the listing and saved it to their “favorites.” Days on the Market: 1. Views since Listing: 82. 29 Shoppers Favorited this Home. Stalking the online listing was better than thinking about her mom’s lack of reply. Kelsey had reported to Melanie that she’d checked the closet three times before she left for Bartlett, and she’d seen no note. But Melanie supposed something could have shown up since then. She hadn’t permitted herself to check, but the thought of a letter from her mom sitting there, unread, was maddening. What if her mom, disappointed or insulted that it was still there, took it back and threw it away before Kelsey could get it?

  Melanie got up to refill her glass of water, sat back down, and hit refresh again. Views since Listing: 88. 31 Shoppers Favorited this Home. She felt a small glow of pride. Some of the other houses listed in the area—she had scoped out the competition—had been on the market for sixty days or longer and still hadn’t gotten that many views or favorites.