Flirting With Pete: A Novel (34 page)

Thursday nights were for yoga, and Casey needed the class. She skipped it, though, because even more than yoga, she needed to talk with her mother. She figured that Caroline might have a word or two to say on the matter of Ruth.

This night, however, Caroline didn’t have a word to say on any matter at all. She was sleeping, perhaps breathing more heavily than normal, though not sounding distressed. Feeling a great big lump in the pit of her stomach, Casey sat by her side, held her bent hand, and studied her face in the dim evening light. She didn’t mention Ruth’s name. She didn’t have the heart, with everything else Caroline had to fight.

After a while, she called softly, “Mom?” She waited, watched for a blink, a twitch, even the tiniest tic to indicate awareness. “Do you know I’m here, Mom?” She waited, watched, grew frightened. “I need to know what’s going on with you. This is starting to make me nervous.”

Caroline just lay there, propped on her side with her eyes closed.

Casey leaned closer. “Can you hear me?” she asked in full voice.

She waited a while longer. Caroline remained motionless, breathing in small echoes. In time, unable to deal with the fear, Casey kissed her mother’s cheek, stroked her hair, and said, “It’s okay, Mom. You’re tired. We’ll talk next time I come. You’ll feel better then. I love you.” Her voice broke. She kissed Caroline’s cheek once more and pressed her forehead there to absorb Caroline’s warmth. She needed that warmth. It had been there for her even when she had sworn off it in the name of independence. She had been shortsighted then. She saw that now. One could need warmth and still be quite independent. Caroline had known that. Through good and bad, she had been loyal and loving. Casey didn’t want to lose her.

Fearing that it might happen anyway and not wanting to face that possibility, she gently put her mother’s hand on the sheet and backed out of the room.

Friday, in Casey’s book, was professional enrichment day, on which, typically, she attended seminars, met with colleagues, read professional journals. On occasion, she went to the beach. Restorative therapy, she called it.

She headed for the beach this Friday morning, but not to play. She needed answers, and Ruth Unger was the only one left who might have them.

She called first, of course. She didn’t want to drive all the way to Rockport and find that Ruth wasn’t there.

Ruth answered the phone. Casey hung up. Juvenile? Yes. But she had a right to a moment’s regression. Her disdain for Ruth went back to her teens, when she had first discovered the woman’s existence. Lacking other explanations for how Connie could ignore his daughter, she made Ruth the bad guy.

Ruth had stolen him from Caroline, or so ran the first scenario. Connie had been on the verge of calling Caroline again, when Ruth had stepped right in, turned his head, and pinned him down.

Ruth had poisoned him against Casey, went another scenario. When Connie had expressed an interest in contacting Casey, Ruth had gone into a jealous rage. She wanted him to focus on making
her
pregnant, rather than distracting himself with the product of a one-night stand— who might not even be
his
child, Casey imagined Ruth arguing, because
we
don’t know who else Caroline Ellis was seeing at the time.

Casey even imagined that Ruth had gone so far as to snatch letters Connie had written to Casey from the outgoing mail.

In time, the scenarios fell apart. The more Casey learned about the workings of the human mind— and the more she watched Connie— the more she held him responsible for his own behavior.

Not that Ruth was completely off the hook. Casey didn’t understand why, particularly after the years passed and they remained childless, she hadn’t prodded Connie into making even the smallest gesture toward his only child. Casey didn’t understand why she hadn’t made the gesture herself— or called Casey to tell her of Connie’s death— or why she hadn’t contacted her since.

These thoughts simmered in her as she headed north on I-93. They gained heat as she drove northeast on Route 128 and were hot enough when she reached Gloucester for her to consider turning back. But she was out of options. And besides, she reasoned, if she lost her temper and let loose on Ruth, it was nothing Ruth didn’t deserve.

Turning onto Route 127, she followed the curve of Cape Ann until she reached Rockport. She knew the way to Ruth’s house from the center of town. She had driven it before— oh, not all the way up from Boston just to see Ruth’s house, but she had driven past it four, maybe five times in the last dozen years, when she’d been in Rockport anyway, doing the tourist thing. Other than growing more gray from the blow of sea salt, the house hadn’t changed much.

It sat at the end of a street with stubby grass and coastal shrubs, a Cape-style home with a large slate roof that slanted up and back from a conventional doorway flanked by windows. Casey parked in front and went up the stone walk. She rang the bell and waited, head down, wondering why in the world she had come, but she was too stubborn to leave.

The door opened.

Casey knew what Ruth looked like. She had seen her at Connie’s side during professional dinners, and, more recently, had seen her at the memorial service. On each of these occasions, Casey had thought her conventional looking for an artist. But conventional wasn’t the feeling Ruth conveyed now. For one thing, since last week, she had cut her hair from an ear-length bob to a short, feathery cap. What had been a mousy salt-and-pepper shade was now more salt-and-shiny, and what had been a tidy helmet was now windblown. A slim woman, several inches taller than Casey, she wore a soft pale blue shirt that flowed down over a tank top and shorts. Her feet were bare, her toenails orange.

She looked… looked so much like what Casey imagined Caroline would have looked like in another ten years that her throat grew tight.

Ruth seemed nearly as taken aback as Casey, but she was the first to recover, and in the most unexpected way. She broke into a bright smile that was filled with genuine warmth. “Casey. I’m
so
pleased.” She reached for Casey’s hand. “Come in.”

Casey didn’t resist. Totally aside from Ruth’s appearance, the last thing she had expected was that Ruth would be pleased to see her. That unbalanced her at a time when she was still trying to deal with the knot in her throat, and then there was the house. Inside that Cape-style exterior was a veritable cavern of tall windows, skylights, and glass doors leading to a deck that offered no less than three different ocean views. Here was the artist’s home, with an easel, holding the work-in-progress, set up at one of the windows, and other canvases in various stages of completion propped around.

“I’m
so
pleased,” Ruth repeated, still smiling.

Gradually Casey got her bearings enough to realize that a small part of her was pleased, too. Ruth was one step removed from a relative, and she seemed genuinely happy to see Casey.

But Casey couldn’t forget the history of this particular near-relative. So she asked a blunt, “Why?”

Ruth’s smile faltered, but she remained warm. “Because you’re Connie’s daughter. Now that he’s gone, the sight of you does my heart good.”

Casey was suddenly angry again. “Why now that he’s gone?”

“Because I miss him.” Ruth’s smile was gone now, leaving kind features in a serious face. “And because this is long overdue. I’ve been wanting to meet you for a while.”

“Why have you waited?”

Ruth hesitated, then said with care, “Because Connie did not want the contact made.”

“Why
not?”
Casey asked. This was why she’d come.

Ruth drew in a long breath. “It’s not a simple answer. Will you come sit on the deck?”

Casey would have been perfectly happy getting her answers there by the door, then turning and leaving. But there was something about Ruth’s genuineness, and the brightness of her home, and the hope inherent in her art that spoke to Casey. So she let herself be led toward the deck through the living room, first past a large white sectional sofa that formed a U and was flanked by a stone coffee table bearing art books, elegant carvings, and large iron lamps, then past the easel and canvases.

“Would you like a cold drink?” Ruth asked when they were on the deck.

Casey shook her head. Grasping the railing, she faced the sea. The tide was out, leaving a foreground covered with seaweed-strewn rocks. Gulls called to each other as they dove, rose, coasted on air currents. The waves rolled, crashed, and receded in a soothing rhythm.

Through no will of her own, Casey’s anger faded.

Ruth came to stand at the railing not far from her side. She, too, looked out. “I was always an ocean person. Connie wasn’t. He liked things closer and more contained.”

Casey turned her head. “Why?”

Ruth met her gaze. “Security. He didn’t trust things that made him feel helpless.”

“Where did that come from?”

“You know the answer.”

Casey certainly did. “Childhood, only I don’t know a thing about his. I don’t even know the name of the town where he grew up.”

“Abbott.”

“Not Little Falls?” Casey challenged.

“I’ve never heard of a Little Falls. He came from Abbott.”

Abbott. A name so long sought, that simply revealed.

“It’s a small town in Maine,” Ruth explained, “though I can’t tell you much more than that. I never saw the place myself. When we were first married, I used to suggest taking a drive there, but he refused to go back. The years he spent there weren’t happy ones.”

“Why not?”

Ruth turned troubled eyes to the ocean. It was a long minute before she faced Casey again. “He was always such a private person— didn’t want anyone knowing about his past— but he’s gone, and you’re his flesh and blood. If anyone has reason to know, you do. It’s not like there was anything violent or perverted. I used to think there was,” she confessed. “I used to imagine some great big awful event that warped him forever.”

So had Casey. “And there wasn’t?”

“No. No single act of mayhem, just years of hurt. Connie was born puny and bright. Neither trait was appreciated in Abbott. He was the object of derision from the time he was the smallest child— ridiculed, taunted mercilessly, made the butt of jokes. He was withdrawing from people even before he started grade school, and with the pattern established, it became self-perpetuating.”

Casey could easily make the transition from the child Ruth described to the man Connie had become. But there was the element of intervention. “What did his parents do?”

“What
could
they do?”

“Sell the farm.”

Ruth smiled ruefully. “There was no farm. Not as you and I know it. If his mother grew vegetables or raised chickens, it was to put food on their own table. They lived close to the center of town in a very small house on a very small piece of land. I’m not even sure they owned it. Whatever, they couldn’t afford to move away. Money was short, and living in Abbott was cheap.”

“Victimizing their child was about
money?”

“No,” Ruth said with care. “It was also about Connie’s father, Frank. Frank was a burly, physical type— everything Connie was not. He was
convinced
that if anything could ‘cure’ Connie of being a sissy, it was the macho culture of Abbott. Clearly, it didn’t work. Connie’s life was a misery. The only way he could survive was to put up walls.”

“What about Connie’s mother? How could she stand by and watch that?”

“Not easily, I think. She did have a soft spot for Connie, but she was first and foremost a docile wife. Her husband had firm beliefs, and she wouldn’t buck them— and who am I to criticize her for that? I haven’t done much different. We call it respecting our spouse’s wishes.”

Casey didn’t think the situations were at all alike. “But Connie was a child. He was suffering. I can’t imagine being a mother and not doing anything to help.”

“She did help. Very quietly, she did what she could.”

“Like what?”

“Encouragement. The father didn’t know if Connie should go to college.”

“Didn’t want him
bettering
himself?” Casey asked, dumbfounded.

“Didn’t want him growing even more isolated from what his father considered to be normal, quote unquote, and healthy. When push came to shove, the man might have been okay with Connie’s going to U of Maine, because he worked there himself, but Harvard?” She shook her head. “That was Connie’s doing. And he didn’t do it alone. His mother was behind him, quiet and invisible, but pushing. He won a full scholarship, left Abbott, and never returned.”

“Not even to see his parents?”

“His father died right before he left, and his mother moved away. This was all a long, long time ago.”

“But indelibly etched,” Casey said.

“Yes. Connie never got over it. His personal life was ruled by fear of ridicule and rejection. So he enhanced his professional life. With each degree he earned, each paper he delivered, each book he wrote, he felt justified in distancing himself. His credentials grew into a shield.”

Casey saw it clearly. “He became the professor who was so brilliant that his eccentricities were excused. And that, too, became self-perpetuating. The more it happened, the less accessible he was for personal relationships, and without personal relationships, he wasn’t open to hurt.” Only there was a big piece of the picture missing. “How in the world did he ever come to be with my mother?”

Ruth smiled sadly. “The same way he came to be with me. Hope dies hard. He always desired acceptance. He dreamed of love.”

“Don’t we all?” Casey countered. “But the rest of us can at least carry on a personal
discussion
with a friend. Not Connie. Yet he had an affair with my mother. So, how did he get past his fear of rejection?”

“He ended the relationship before he could be rejected— at least, that was the case with your mother. In my case, he ended the intimacy. Just withdrew into himself. Or maybe,” she said more introspectively, “he was that way all along, only I thought it would be different once we were married. I thought he was just old-fashioned, waiting until marriage to share his deepest, darkest thoughts.”