All Dressed Up (28 page)

“But you won’t
admit me into the angry club.”

“I’ve left the
angry club. I’m trying to take a harder line on myself and see why
maybe I shouldn’t be angry any more.”

“I guess I’m
not that evolved.” He didn’t really think this, Sarah could tell.
Charlie Keogh always knew for a fact that he was incredibly
evolved. Most of the time he was decent – and evolved – enough not
to let it show.

“What is it
that you’re angry about? The fact that she didn’t tell you, or the
fact that she gave him up?”

“How about
both? How about I’m relieved that my mom didn’t give me up to her
parents and walk off into the sunset, calling herself my big
sister?” The elevator slowed and stopped at street level.

“Did her
parents make the offer?”

“No. I’d
probably have gone into foster care at some point if they had. My
grandmother drank – a family tradition – and my grandfather…” He
thought for a moment, and settled on, “…was worse. Drank and fenced
stolen goods and initiated faked personal injury compensation
claims.”

The elevator
door opened and Charlie stood back to let Sarah walk out first.
“Gosh, and my sister was prepared to marry into a family like
that!” she said.

“You’re saying
I should thank my lucky stars to have her?”

“It seems to
me she was rewarded for ten years for doing all the wrong things,
and now she’s trying to do some of the right things – we both are,
her and me – and she’s being punished, and who are you to punish
her? How have you suffered from this?”

“This is not a
small overlooking of relevant personal history. I mean, there are
things I haven’t told her, things I’m appalled about and regret
that were shocking at the time – one thing, especially – but it’s
not ongoing, it’s not… a child. Whom I’ve thought for four years
was her brother. Okay, Sarah, you don’t have to walk me any
further. Go back to Billy and Emma.”

“What shall I
tell her?”

“Nothing.
Nothing.”

“Where will
you be?”

“At
Mom’s.”

“When are you
going back to the city?”

“I don’t know.
Tomorrow?”

“Please don’t
be a shit to my sister.”

“I’m reserving
the right, at this stage.”

“Up yours,
then.”

“Sure, Sarah.
No problem.”

He left, fast
stride angry and righteous, good-looking and Alpha enough to draw
the gaze of three women in the thirty yards between the elevator
and the main door. Sarah turned her back.

Thank God she
didn’t have to marry him. But she ached for Emma, who still wanted
to, and she understood the pull. It was a sister thing, okay?

“We are
turning into one of those families you talked about, who all come
along in a big group to the E.R.,” she said to Emma when she got
back to the unit. Mom had gone to call Dad again. “And I’m telling
you, kicking a vending machine sounds like a really good idea right
now. Is it a good time, for you?”

“It’s perfect.
Get me a candy bar out of it while you’re there?” Emma answered. “I
don’t think any real food is happening today for any of us.” All
the stress had gone into her lips, they were all tight and pale.
Remorse struck her suddenly, re the candy bar. “Oh, Billy, I won’t
eat it in front of you, I promise. That’s awful! I won’t get one at
all, if you don’t want.” It was probably just about the most
genuine, unselfconscious thing she’d ever said to him.

“It’s okay,
you can have one,” Billy said in his new little-sick-hospital-kid
voice. “I’m not even hungry for chocolate.”

“A candy bar?
Me, too?” Brooke said. She named the kind she wanted with relish
and familiarity. She knew the contents of the hospital vending
machines. “I shouldn’t, but…”

So Sarah
actually went and found a vending machine near the elevator and
bought candy bars out of it, which they ate in front of Billy
because he insisted he didn’t care. Sarah had to brush the hair
back from his forehead even though it wasn’t flopping in his eyes
because she just needed to give him that kind of touch, she was so
proud of him.

Chapter
Twelve

Charlie parked
his car in the street, and Lainie didn’t register his arrival until
he appeared at the side door. He made the bug screen rattle with
his knocking and she let him in. “You’re back from the hospital
already,” she said, then kicked herself because in just six words
she’d managed both to pre-empt what he might have said about not
working things out with Emma and to imply that he’d therefore
failed.

He passed
through the kitchen without stopping. “I’m going running.”

She followed
him. “Do you run too much? Are you destroying your knees?”
Translation: I’m your mother. Speak to me. Whatever it is, I’ll fix
it for you. He’d always made her work so hard to earn the right to
fix things for him.

He stopped on
the bottom stair and looked at her for a good thirty seconds,
obviously debating what to say, or whether to say anything at all.
She made herself wait, practically wiring shut her jaw. “Did you
ever consider…” He stopped and tried again. “What did you consider
when you were pregnant with me? What options?”

“What
options?” she echoed stupidly.

“You were
eighteen, nineteen, on your own. Were you brave, keeping me? Or
dumb? Or did you think you had no choices?”

He’d only
asked her about his father three times in his life – three sharp
slashes through her various age-appropriate colorizations. Once
when he was six: “Do I really have a dad?” Once when he was
fifteen: “If we could track down my father, would you let me go see
him and stay with him?” Once when he was twenty-four: “So he was a
shit, was he, my dad?”

She would have
talked about him more, but Charlie indicated each time that he was
satisfied with the answer to his single question and didn’t want
embellishment. She could remember his questions more clearly than
she could remember her own inept replies.

“All three,”
she told him now. “I was dumb. I learned to be brave because I had
to. And if you’re talking about the hardest choices, abortion and
adoption, I think the women who make those are either desperate or
they have some concrete, important sense of what they want to do
instead.”

“Instead of
raising a baby.”

“Yes. They
have other dreams. I was too dumb to have dreams. I was coasting.
You gave me direction. You were the best thing that could have
happened.”

“You never
considered giving me to Grandma?”

“She wouldn’t
have taken you. Oh God, it makes me shudder to think of it. She
barely managed to raise me. She raised me sitting in a broken chair
on the porch for hours every day, shouting at me to cook dinner.
And by the time you were born, she… Oh no… oh no.”

“But if she’d
been competent…”

“That if is
too big.”

“Humor me,
Mom.” He leaned against the wall beside the stairs, eyes narrowed
to study her. “If your parents had been loving, competent,
non-substance-abusing people who really wanted to help you and free
you for something better, who would I have called Mom?”

“You don’t
know what an impossible question this is, because you don’t know
how much someone is changed by having a child. I’ve been your
mother for thirty-three years. I did raise you. I’ve forgotten who
I was before I had you.”

“Try
harder.”

“You’re not
going to tell me why this is important, are you?”

“Eventually. I
will tell you. I can’t now.”

On the
strength of this promise from him, she said slowly, trying her
hardest for him, “I can only picture a slapdash arrangement. It
would have kept shifting. You might have ended up pretty confused
about who you were. I liked my fun times, back then. I would have
dumped you on these mythical competent parents of mine whenever I
felt like it. Maybe for months at a time. Especially if you weren’t
being cute. And you weren’t cute, often. You were relentless, when
you were two. I had to scramble to keep ahead of you. To keep my
energy when you gave up your nap so early. To find books for you
when you taught yourself to read before you even turned four. Then
I’d have casually snatched you back again. They might have put
their foot down after a while and demanded I take more
responsibility. If I’d gotten involved with the wrong kind of guy –
” She stopped.

“You did that
anyhow.”

“So I did.”
She had to take a steadying breath at this point. “Although that
was later, wasn’t it?” Another breath. “If I’d had competent
parents they might have been awarded custody of you then, I guess,
after you came back. Children’s services tend to blame the parent
when a twelve-year-old runs away from home and stays gone for that
long. Is this the kind of answer you wanted, Charlie? It’s too hard
to picture. It was you who made me grow up. It’s the best I can
do.”

“You’re right.
Forget it.” He started up the stairs.

“Charlie…?”

“I said
eventually.” From the top step, he turned and asked, “What about
Brooke? Would she have given Ashlyn to Cousin Angie?”

“Angie was
pretty angry at Brooke about getting pregnant so young when Angie
had made sure to sit her down and talk to her about birth control.
She wouldn’t have let her off the hook so easily.”

He moved and
Lainie had to ask, “Who’s pregnant? Emma? Sarah?”

“Not now, Mom.
I’m going for a run, okay? No one’s pregnant.”

She let him
go. What else could she do?

While he was
out, Mac called. Out of the blue. And utterly expected. Both at the
same time. “I… uh… was thinking we could go somewhere,” he said.
“We could eat.”

“Oh, I would
love to,” she blurted out, and added before she thought about a
minister’s lowly salary, “Somewhere nice.”

“Well, no, I
thought hot dogs at Aviation Mall.”

“I know you’re
not serious. I’d better not tell you that hot dogs at Aviation Mall
sounds just as good as a la carte, if it’s hot dogs with you.”

“No, you’d
definitely better not tell me that.”

“I won’t, Mac.
Don’t worry. I’ll guard my tongue with extra care and not let it
slip.”

“Good. I
admire your tongue’s control.”

She teetered
on the edge of taking the tongue concept to a whole new level of
dirty double meaning and the silence stretched and he jumped in,
“If you’re not saying it because I’m in the church, Lainie, I’ll be
very disappointed.”

“S-saying
what?”

“Any of the
very juicy possibilities stemming from tongues.”

“I think I
just want to skip to the part where I see you. I don’t want
games.”

“I don’t want
them either. Is McGinty’s good for you? Do you know it?”

“Downstairs at
the Craigmore.” The Craigmore had become something of a theme.
“It’s perfect.”

“I’ll pick you
up.”

“You’re a half
mile from the Craigmore and I’m a half hour.”

“I’ll pick you
up anyhow. This is a date, Lainie Keogh, and I want it to work like
one.”

“Oh. Oh… yes,
please.”

She didn’t
realize until the air began to throb outside the front of her house
that he meant on his motorcycle. She met him at the door with the
words, “I can’t go on that,” already prepped on her lips, but he
was wearing a black leather jacket which somehow caused the prepped
words not to come out and, “I’ll have to change,” to come out
instead. He looked different, somehow. Was it just the aura of the
classic bike?

Oh God I am so
pathetic, she thought to herself upstairs. Peeking out the window
she saw him standing by the bike in his leather jacket, and… What
is this, 1977? Am I eighteen? Do I think I’m eighteen? Do I think I
can even get my legs apart far enough and high enough to straddle
the damn seat? Oh God I really have to change. I have to wear cool
1977 eighteen-year-old pants. Oh God but what were they like?
Flares, or something. I have to wear neat black older woman
trousers that no one will guess are cool 1977 flared Levi jeans in
my pathetic imagination.

And I have to
change fast or my grown son will come back from his run and see me
going out with an unsuitable boyfriend on the back of a motorcycle,
fully intending to break curfew. Which is when? What’s my first
appointment tomorrow? Oh God I can’t stay out all night or Charlie
will know.

Fumbling, she
slid the pants from the hanger, then tortured herself over shoes.
It was too hot for boots. Could you wear heels on a motorcycle?
Could you wear sneakers, and bring a plastic shopping bag
containing your real shoes, which you would change into at the
restaurant, in the bathroom, and emerge lugging the sneakers in the
bag? Who were you trying to impress? Your Norton-motorcycle-riding
show-off of a date, or the style gurus hiding under your table at
the restaurant giving you points for your shoes?

She settled on
some square-toed black pumps with staid heels that she should have
thrown out five years ago, and found a blouse that she hated
slightly less than the other options. It had a swirly pattern and
was generously cut. It buttoned down the front. It told everyone
she was over fifty and it was in a conspiracy with her shoes to
hide in a dark extremity of her closet so that she didn’t cull it
from her wardrobe on the days she decided to dress as if she was
thirty-six.

Oh God and
before she put on the blouse, did she own a sexy bra and would she
need one? She quickly assumed no on both issues. In the bathroom
she clumsily spiked black mascara in a streak up to her eyebrow and
rubbed off the lipstick she’d decided was too dark with such a
rough, unsteady hand that it smeared beyond her lipline and all
around the corners. She had to get out her make-up remover and
start over. What would Mac be thinking after all this time?