Accidental Happiness (20 page)

“Is that why you stood up for her about the cottage? Out of guilt?”

I took a sip of my drink, let myself feel the cool liquid travel the length of my chest. Why had I stood up for Reese?

“Could be, I don’t know. I don’t understand half of what I’ve done in the last couple of days, Maxine. I’m acting on gut impulses and not much more, and there’s been another turn of events that I’m sorting through. But with Reese . . . part of me actually feels bad for her. Regardless of all her screwed-up decisions, I think she wants the best thing for Angel. And we can’t completely dismiss the idea that Ben might be her father.”

“But?” she said.

“But what?” I asked. She was relentless.

“But something else is going on. You sound as nervous as a bird.” Her instincts made me feel like a child who had misbehaved. She read me too well. “Is it the man who answered the phone? Because if it is—”

“No, Maxine. I didn’t keep anything from you on that. This thing with Derek—whatever it is—has just taken a turn in the last day. I wasn’t hiding that from you.”

“Good.” She sounded like a mother, like the mother I’d always wanted my mother to be. “Because
I
know what you’ve been through over Ben. I’ve seen it, and it’s worried me to death. You weren’t making normal progress, Gina. This is not a bad thing, your time with this man—whatever it is. Let yourself be happy if you can.”

Dammit, I was crying again. This time it was different. She was unbearably kind, and she loved me. She loved me the way I thought Ben had loved me. Could I have been wrong about that?

“So,” she said, her tone changing back to business. “What is this
turn of events
in the last day or so?”

“I don’t know what to tell you. There are some things going on with Reese and Angel. I need to find out exactly what I’m dealing with. I just don’t want you to think I’m keeping things from you. I promise, as soon as I sort out what’s going on—what’s
gone
on—I’ll tell you everything.”

“I won’t pry, Gina. But I’m your biggest fan. Don’t think you can’t come to me—about
anything.
”

“I know.”

“And Gina?” Her voice was almost too low for me to hear, as if we were conspiring on something, “You need to be careful with Reese. Don’t get sucked into her stories, her . . . I don’t know . . . her needs. She’s like arts funding—no matter how many donations are made, there’s never enough to turn a profit. Reese
will never
turn a profit, Gina. She’ll always be playing catch-up.”

I laughed. Maxine saw things from the oddest angles.

“And are you
sure
you want me to let her live in the cottage?” she added. “I’m doing this mostly because you asked me.”

“Maxine,” I said, “I know you’re concerned about the house, but—”

“Oh, please.” She laughed. “I was just being difficult. She could burn the thing down and I’ve got it insured for every penny. You have to be covered with God-knows-who renting it all summer. It’s just that when she asked . . . Well, that woman rubs me every way except the right one. But it seemed to be important to you that I let her do this. And you’re right . . . there are issues about the child we have to consider. Do you still want Reese to move into the house? That’s what I’m asking. Yes or no? If I don’t give it to her, she might just go away. That could be the best thing for everybody.”

“Maxine,” I said, “it’s your decision, but yes, I still want you to help her out. I don’t know what part of my instincts to go with when it comes to Reese. I know Ben helped her out, sent her money, from time to time, when she needed it. But part of me doesn’t trust her to be honest about what she ate for breakfast, much less about Angel, and Ben.” I stopped. I’d almost said too much. “But I don’t want her to take off anywhere until I get some answers.”

I took another sip of drink, wondered how I would find those answers when I was dealing with the flakiest woman with a pulse. “On the other hand,” I went on, mumbling half to myself, “I want her off my fucking boat.” When I realized I’d said it out loud, my cheeks ran hot. “I’m sorry, Maxine. I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay, dear,” she interrupted, with the exaggerated annunciation of her best club lady voice. “I want her off your
fucking
boat too.”

I’d barely taken a shower when the phone rang again. Naked, except for the towel, I went looking for where I’d put it down. I wondered if Maxine had forgotten something. I found the cell phone on the kitchen counter.

“Hello?”

“Gina?” It was my mother. Like always, her tone was polite, impersonal enough to be somebody raising money for the local wetlands conservatory.

“Hi, Mom. How are you?”

“I’m good. How are you, sweetheart?” she said. Her cadence fell on even beats. A Stepford Wife at cocktail hour. I could see her. Going about her day in her manicured neighborhood, with her manicured fingers. “I just hadn’t talked with you in nearly a week and I thought I’d check in, make sure you’re okay.”

It’s what mothers do. She always did what mothers were supposed to do. But it was like the set of a play: all false fronts. Behind it, the raw guts of the backstage area remained functional and bare. It had been that way for years, even before my sister jumped in that pool. Maybe that was why Elise jumped in the deep end before she’d gotten good at swimming. Maybe that was why she’d always gone to any lengths to get five minutes of attention.

“I’m fine,” I told her. “How’s Dad?”

“He’s in Richmond this week for the regional meetings. He’ll be back on Wednesday.”

“Why didn’t you go with him?” I’d always thought she might travel with him once I went away to school. Instead, they seemed to have less in common than when I was home.

“I’ve got my book club here tomorrow morning. Which reminds me, I need to run out and get a new coffeemaker. The old one won’t keep a pot hot for five minutes.”

Coffeemakers. A delightful new recipe for baked sole. Some friend of mine from high school she’d just seen at the dry cleaners. These topics held the meat of our conversations. Weren’t mothers and daughters supposed to have more than that? I thought of Maxine, how I could say just about anything and, most of the time, she could guess what I wasn’t saying. Lane too, for that matter.

“Mom?” I had to take a chance. Too much had happened, and I was sick of playing tea party every time we talked. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, honey. What is it?”

“Do you think that Elise felt like she had enough love?” My heart was going fast. It was the most personal question I’d ever asked my mother. “I mean, she always needed so much from us. She asked for so much. Do you think we gave her enough?” In a sense, it came out of nowhere; in other ways, it seemed as if it had been there all along, just waiting to be asked.

“What in the world are you talking about, Gina?” She sounded panicked.
Good. Let’s crawl out of the comfort zone, Mom.

“I just want to know what you think.” I tried to sound calm, something less than crazy. “Since Ben died, I’ve been thinking about a lot of things. Elise . . . well, sometimes I felt like—”

“I think you’ve got too much time on your hands,” she interrupted. She’d gone from panicked to irritated. Panic might have jostled her out of her suburban stupor. Irritated would get me nowhere.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Mom. I’m sorry. It’s just—”

“You didn’t upset me,” she said quickly. “You’re overwrought after all you’ve been through. I understand that. I think getting off that ridiculous boat and into a real house or at least an apartment might help you move on. But rambling on about your sister is certainly not going to accomplish anything.”

I stayed silent, couldn’t think of a word to say, really. Finally, when it was clear that in the stylized game of conversation with my mother I had the ball, I fumbled, lost all momentum. “I appreciate the call, Mom. I’m doing fine.”

She finished with something like, “You call me if you need anything,” and that was that.

I thought of her after she hung up, sitting at her desk in the kitchen, reinventing our conversation and editing the parts that caused her unease. For days after Elise jumped in that pool, I waited for her to fall apart. I wanted her to yell at me, punish me. I wanted her, Dad, one of them to ask what the hell I’d been thinking, socializing with my friends when I was supposed to be keeping an eye on Elise. Why wasn’t I watching her? She couldn’t swim all that well, for God’s sake. Something between random flailing and an active dog paddle.

I wondered if anyone ever told them how she was calling to me.
Gina! Watch! Hey, Gina, look at this!
In my mind, I could see her calling to me, but that’s just imagination. In reality, I’d never looked her way. I was at a table with my friends and we could all hear her. We rolled our eyes at my annoying little sister; then we’d gone back to our card game. Rummy. The umbrella at the table kept the sun at bay, and I remember the cool shade that fell over us, the bright sun that seemed to set everything outside our circle on fire.

But my parents never yelled. They barely noticed me, or each other. They stayed inside themselves, went back to a normal routine, as if Elise might be off at camp. And after that first afternoon, when my mother got to the pool and saw the paramedics trying to bring my sister back to life, I’m not sure I even heard her cry again.

But she did cry that day. She cried as she climbed into the ambulance. There was little to gain from the mad race to the hospital. They could have gone straight to the funeral home. But we didn’t know the final truth then, and on the ride to the Emergency Room (a neighbor took me while Mom rode with Elise), I thought more about my mother’s face than that of Elise. It didn’t seem conceivable that anything truly permanent could happen to my sister. But my mother looking that way, sounding that way, was both thrilling and scary.

Then everything changed. Elise was gone, they said. The sounds I heard my mother make when they said that were unbearable; would bring souls back from heaven just to listen and recall the essence of pain. And, still, with all I was feeling that day, I was, on some level, mesmerized, enchanted that this person existed inside a woman I’d seen nearly every day of my life. It had to be avoidance on my part, to focus so intently on her, but I still recall it with the clarity of present time. My father hadn’t arrived, never saw her that way, and I’ve since come to believe that something, someone, merely inhabited her for a brief moment. An angel, maybe, taking pity and becoming my mother in flesh so that no one would suspect the true coldness of her nature.

Standing with my phone still in my hand, I shook off the conversation with my mother. She was right about one thing. I’d become overwrought. Still, what was wrong with that? Anger. Insanity. Anything was better than the gnawed edges of numb regard.

I adjusted the towel around me. Water from my wet hair ran in crazy patterns down the sides of my arms, and I thought of Maxine, how horrified I’d been at her sustained, kinetic grief. The persistence of it wore me out. But she’d had it right then too. I wanted to be the kind of person who could throw something at a wall if it gave me an ounce of relief. I couldn’t make my mother open up about Elise after nearly twenty years of silence. If a statute of limitations on emotion existed, I’d likely run out of chances on that one myself. But my pain over Ben hadn’t yet become old and embedded. I could still make peace with his death, if I had the nerve.
Let yourself be happy if you can.
It was too soon to tell, but Maxine may have had the right answers all along.

19

Reese

“D
o you feel better?” Angel asked. She winced as Reese pulled the last of the old bandage off to look at her shoulder.

“That’s what I’m supposed to be asking you,” Reese said. They were sitting on the floor in Lane’s den. The place had begun to feel like home in just a couple of days. Reese worried that it wasn’t a good idea for that to happen.

“But yeah, I feel fine,” Reese lied. She dabbed peroxide around the area of the wound. The scab looked clean, but the skin around it had gotten a little more red. “When was I not okay?” Angel seemed to always know when Reese was getting bad again, feeling that loss of herself.

“You needed to sleep yesterday, and when Lane asked if you wanted to go for a walk with us, you said you wanted to read, but I saw your hands shaking a little. You never want to go on walks or play outside when your hands are shaking.”

“You’re right,” Reese said. “I got some pills that will make me better. They came this morning. It hasn’t started working yet, but I’ll feel like playing hopscotch pretty soon.”

“Mom, I don’t even play hopscotch anymore.” Angel was smiling. At least her shoulder didn’t hurt the way it had at first. She wasn’t asking for the pain medication as much.

There was a physical therapy session coming up on Thursday. Reese made a mental note to ask about the redness. They told her at the hospital that the wound wasn’t all that serious; only an infection could make it dangerous for the child.

“Mom?” Angel turned to face Reese as she finished putting ointment around the wound. “I gotta tell you something.”

“What’s that, baby?” Reese took a paper towel and wiped the goop off her fingers, then got out a clean bandage to put on the shoulder. When Angel didn’t speak up right away, she moved to the couch and sat down, gave the girl her full attention. “Let’s give that shoulder some open air for a minute. Go ahead. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Angel sat down beside her. “I told,” she said.

Reese went still. That could mean so many different things. She didn’t want to upset Angel, make her feel responsible for anything bad. Reese felt guilty, imposing all the secrecy on such a young child.

“What did you tell?” She tried to keep her voice light, playful. She felt her fingers tingle, her hands shake in spite of her efforts to keep them steady. She hoped to God the pills kicked in soon. “I’m sure it’s not a big deal, Angel. Just tell me what you said.”

“I told Gina about my visits with Ben,” she said. “About how he showed me puzzles.”

Okay, okay. That was a big one. For Angel’s sake, she had to stay calm. It simply complicated things. It didn’t change anything. Not really. But she had hoped to have more time to sort out her options before she cracked that nut with Gina.

“Come here, baby.” Reese pulled off the back of the large bandage, placed it gently on the wounded shoulder. “It’s all right, Angel. It really is.”

She tugged at Angel to come sit on her lap. The effort, the child’s weight, made her feel weaker, but she took a breath, cleared her head, and willed herself to continue for Angel’s sake. “I don’t want you to worry about it. You didn’t do anything bad.”

“But you said not to talk about it, and I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I saw the grave and we started talking about Ben. She seemed nice to me when she talked about Ben and she hadn’t been that nice before.”

“When has she not been nice?” Reese asked the question mainly to stall, to figure out what to say to her daughter. But she knew more than she wanted to know when it came to Gina’s feelings about children. At one point she’d hoped it would work to her advantage. She wasn’t proud of that, but it was true.

“I don’t know,” Angel said. “She just never acted like she liked me much. But at the cemetery . . . well, she was different. It just came out about Ben when she started asking questions.”

“Like I said.” Reese rubbed the hair back off Angel’s forehead. “Don’t worry. No harm done. Is that why you wanted to go to church with Gina, because you heard her say Ben was buried there?”

Angel nodded.

“What’s it like?” Reese asked. “Is it pretty where he is?” She felt tears, just around the rims of her eyes. She needed to change the subject. Turn on the television. Something.

“It’s real pretty,” Angel told her. “It’s up on this hill and you can see over the trees at the church. The ocean is there.”

Was it the ocean? Reese couldn’t remember. A channel maybe, that fed into the Atlantic, not too far down. Ben had taken her sailing by the cottage. Out into the ocean too, where large broadside swells made her sick to her stomach. He’d taken Angel on their last trip down. Reese hadn’t gone with them. She hadn’t been invited.

“He doesn’t have one of the big things on his grave yet,” Angel told her.

“A tombstone?”

“Yeah, that.”

The thought of Ben. The thought of Angel wanting to be close to him again. She would not have a full-blown cry. Not in front of Angel. Besides, her emotions had gotten close to the surface for a number of reasons. She had to keep a handle on herself.

“Want to go?” Angel asked.

“Go where?”

“To see Ben.”

“Ben’s not there, baby. I don’t need to see his grave.” The thought terrified her. Not so much the cemetery, the grave, but the church that went with it. She hadn’t been in a church since that awful revival. The heel of the preacher’s huge palm pressed against her forehead. Falling down in spite of herself. She’d told her friends that he’d pushed her, made it happen. They’d seen it happen, some of them, as their parents watched the preacher on television. They’d given her endless shit about it. But the frightening truth was, he hadn’t pushed. He’d barely raised his hand to her before she fell.

“You got the gift,” he’d whispered as he knelt over her. She lay paralyzed for seconds . . . minutes . . . ? “Don’t turn your back on God’s gifts. Good goes to bad when we deny the Lord.”

Later, when the preacher made clear what gifts he thought she had, she’d turned her back on all of it—the church, her father, the whole fucking business of religion. All that remained was the memory, and she’d free herself of that too if she could.

“I just thought you might like it there.” Angel spoke in a low mumble, refused to look at her mother. Then she stood up, walked across the room with no apparent destination in mind.

Reese knew the answer had come too fast. She hadn’t considered why Angel was asking, what it meant to her daughter. Would it be so bad? If it meant something to Angel, she had to at least consider it. She wouldn’t have to go in the church.

“Come to think of it,” Reese said, “that cemetery is near the cottage we’re moving into in a week or so. It wouldn’t hurt to ride out and see the house, then stop by on the way back.”

“Okay,” Angel said, but she still kept her distance.

She had to be careful when it came to Angel’s feelings about Ben. She’d wanted so much for them to have something special, a real relationship. Now it had backfired. She was left with bigger problems than before she’d brought Angel to visit him. She was left with not only her own grief, but Angel’s as well.

She heard a car drive up. Probably Lane getting back from a dentist appointment she’d gone off to after breakfast. She stood up, tried to ignore the slight falter as her brain lingered behind her intended action. Just a hairbreadth of lag time. Nothing serious.

“Let’s ride out to the cottage now,” she said to Angel. “We can stop for lunch on the way.”

“Can Lane go with us?” Angel looked out the window.

“Let’s just make it a trip for the two of us.” Reese didn’t want to stay around Lane, around anyone, for too long, until she felt more normal again. If someone noticed, the questions would begin.

“Okay,” Angel said, perking up.

They went out to greet Lane, whose bizarre speech pattern suggested a rough outing at the dentist.

“What happened?” Reese asked.

“Sick bastard,” she managed, obviously forgetting her proximity to Angel. “I’m going to bed.” She passed them with no greeting for Angel, which, more than her language, reflected the depth of her infirmity.

“Can I do anything for you?” Reese called back to her.

Best she could make out from the garbled reply, Lane had simply said, “Kill me.” Reese laughed as she heard the screen door slam behind the older woman.

Glancing over toward the marina, Reese could make out Gina standing outside in the cockpit of her boat, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked over toward Lane’s house. Reese didn’t want to run into her; she especially didn’t want to get stuck with Ben’s widow on her outing to the grave with Angel, not if that meant being grilled on Angel’s revelations about her time with Ben. Best to keep things simple for the time being.

“Come on, baby,” she said to Angel. “Let’s get going.”

As the two of them drove past the Ship’s Store on the way out to the main road, she glanced in the rear mirror and saw Gina with that short-tempered dog of hers walking ahead on the leash. The two of them were on the path that led to Lane’s house.

“Dodged that bullet,” she mumbled.

“What?” Angel asked.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” she said, making note of her daughter’s arm in the sling. “Bad choice of words.”