Love, Suburban Style (3 page)

“I don’t believe it!” she exclaims, clutching Cosette’s sleeve—long, and black, despite the midday heat.

“I don’t, either. There’s not even a Starbucks around here,” Cosette grumbles.

“No, that’s Krissy… Krissy!” Meg calls and waves at the woman.

Hmm. Maybe it isn’t Krissy after all; she doesn’t wave back, nor does she even look up from the cell phone or BlackBerry or whatever it is that’s poised in her hand.

Is it Krissy? Krissy Rosenkrantz was Meg’s first kindergarten friend, and her partner-in-crime right up through graduation. When they signed each other’s yearbooks, they wrote about all the things they were going to do together, like get tattoos and travel through Europe, and they prefaced their signatures with BFA—
Best Friends Always
—and YFF—
Your Friend Forever.

Meg’s last memory of Krissy Rosenkrantz is of her standing by her father’s packed Jeep on the stifling August morning she left for Bennington College, with a heartfelt promise to visit Meg in New York over Columbus Day weekend.

Columbus Day came and went, Thanksgiving came and went, the years came and went, and Meg never saw Krissy Rosenkrantz again…

Until now.

Or is it really her?

Most of her face is obscured by large brown sunglasses, but there’s something about her that seems so familiar…

“Krissy?” Meg calls again, waving both her arms over her head this time to get her attention.

“Mom, shh! Stop making such a spectacle. What are you doing?”

“I could swear that’s an old friend of—yes, it
is
her!” Meg recognizes the distinct motion with which the woman tosses her thick, tawny hair over her shoulder as she pockets her electronic device.

“You’re Krissy Rosenkrantz,” she says triumphantly, sidestepping right into the woman’s path.

The woman looks up, startled, her perfectly arched brows rising above the frame of her glasses… then breaks into a grin.

“Meg?”

“I knew that was you!” Meg hugs her. “Though when you didn’t answer me when I kept calling you, I did wonder for a minute.”

Krissy smells like expensive perfume. She’s crisply dressed all in white: cool linen pantsuit, designer pocketbook, leather sandals with heels. As Meg releases her she can’t help but wonder if she’s left a newsprint smudge on her old friend’s back.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t even hear you! Probably because nobody’s called me ‘Krissy’ in ages! I go by Kris, now… and it’s not Rosenkrantz, it’s Holmes.”

“You’re married?”

“Twice. And divorced. Twice. But I kept my first husband’s name—even when I married the second. I wanted it to be the same as my son’s. How about you? Are you married?”

No. But I didn’t even keep my own name—first or last,
Meg wants to tell her.

No need to get into the whole Astor Hudson saga here, though. Especially now that she’s all but decided to give up everything about that life—not just the name, but everything that goes with it: both the stage career and the city.

It’s time to open a new chapter. She’ll miss the creative outlet of performing, but she hasn’t craved the spotlight in years—not like she did in the early days. She’s achieved what she set out to do; she is—no,
was
—a genuine star.

And now the star is aging, fading; her voice is mature, but so are her face, her body, her mind. Deeanna Drennan was a blessing in disguise once the dust settled. Losing the part—and accepting that her ingenue days are long over—allowed Meg to realize that she doesn’t need a stage career to fulfill her anymore.

What she needs at this stage in her life is to move on to something new.

Perhaps
something old
is more apt.

Cosette doesn’t know about any of it yet. As far as she’s concerned, this jaunt up the Metro-North tracks to Westchester County is simply a pleasant—for Meg, anyway, if unpleasant for Cosette—way to spend a summer Saturday afternoon.

Meg isn’t going to tell her daughter anything more until she’s certain what their next move will be—and when it will happen.

All she knows at this point is that she’s going to be settled in a new life, with Cosette, before the school year resumes in September.

Glenhaven Park is the natural place to commence the search for a new home… since it once
was
home. And still feels like it… at least, so far.

“I’m still Meg Addams,” she replies in answer to Krissy’s—rather, Kris’s—question.

Cosette rolls her eyes at that, undoubtedly thinking,
Still? You haven’t been Meg Addams since you left this place behind.
At least she doesn’t say it.

“And who is this lovely young lady?” Kris asks, turning to look at her.

“This is my daughter, Cosette.”

Who is looking like anything but a lovely young lady. Cosette’s unnaturally black hair has been straightened and shorn so that it falls past her shoulders in a vaguely shaggy nonstyle. Her eye makeup is Halloween-thick and her once rosy, healthy complexion is masked beneath a layer of ivory pancake base. Any curves she possesses are camouflaged beneath a boxy, long-sleeved black T-shirt and black jeans, and she’s wearing black boots—yes,
boots
—in June.

“It’s nice to meet you, Cosette.” With a jangling of chunky gold bracelets, Kris stretches a manicured hand toward Meg’s daughter.

Meg wonders if she’s remembering that she, like Meg, was also a nonconformist at Cosette’s age. Though their most extreme physical deviation was to triple-pierce each other’s earlobes using a threaded sewing needle, an ice cube, and a potato.

Meg still has the battle scars to show for it, though these days, she rarely wears six earrings at once. And a quick glance at Krissy’s lobes reveal only a pair of tasteful gold studs.

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Cosette is saying, politely extending her own black-polished fingertips to shake hands.

Meg heaves an inner sigh of relief that at least the good manners she worked so hard to instill didn’t go the way of Cosette’s auburn ringlets and wholesome prettiness.

Kris turns back to Meg. “So what are you doing here in town, and when did you get back?”

“About two minutes ago. We just stepped off the train.”

“From the city? You’re still in New York? Last I knew, you were on Broadway. Literally.”

Meg raises an eyebrow, surprised, somehow, that news of her stage career has made it back to her hometown. Then again, it’s not as if it’s all that far away from the city—and perhaps not the cultural morass she recalls.

“How did you know that?”

“Mr. Dreyfus talks about you all the time, about you having success on Broadway,” Kris tells her. “I think he takes personal credit for your success.”

Meg smiles. Mr. Dreyfus is her former high school drama teacher. “He was definitely responsible for getting me started.”

After all, it was Mr. Dreyfus who believed in her from the start. He even cast her, as a freshman, as the lead in the all-school musical—causing an immediate scandal, particularly among the senior divas.

“Is he still teaching at the high school?”

“Sure is. Plus he directs a drama program for teenagers through the town’s recreation board. Do you realize he’s only ten years older than we are? The teachers all seemed so old back then.”

“Most of them really were,” Meg recalls, aware of Cosette shifting her weight, bored. “Are a lot of them still there?”

“None of them, except Mr. Dreyfus.”

“What about our old friends? Who else is still around?”

“Just me, really. And ‘old’ is right.”

“Oh, come on, you look exactly the same. And so”—Meg sweeps an arm to indicate Main Street—“does this place.”

“You think?” Kris shakes her head. “You haven’t taken a close look yet, have you?”

“Not yet… why?”

“Just… trust me, Meg, nothing stays the same. Including me. So, are you married, or…?” With an eye on Cosette, Kris tactfully trails off.

“Divorced,” Meg says briefly.

No need to go into the gory details—and not just because Cosette is here. She rarely discusses her ex-husband. In fact, she had known Geoffrey a few years before she even got around to telling him the truth about her ex… and she did so only because it would have been awkward not to, under the circumstances.

They were standing on line at Regal Cinemas on Fourteenth Street at the time. Normally Geoffrey pooh-poohed mainstream movies, but the indie film he wanted to see was sold out, so he suggested they catch the new summer blockbuster “starring that hot action movie guy.”

Who happened to be none other than Calvin.

“How could you not have told me that you were married to
him
?” Geoffrey asked when he managed to recover from his fake faint.

“Trust me, it’s not something I like to think about. The only good thing that came out of that marriage was Cosette. Whom, by the way, he has never even been interested in meeting.”

Geoffrey’s jaw dropped. “He’s never met his own daughter?”

“He walked out when I was eight months pregnant and never looked back.”

That was before Calvin was a big star, but he was already on his way.

The only contact Meg has had from him in the last fifteen years is the sizeable alimony and child support check that arrives monthly like clockwork from his West Coast lawyer’s office.

But without him, there would have been no Cosette, and for that, Meg is grateful. She held her breath as Cosette grew older, but her daughter embodies none of her father’s less-than-admirable characteristics—except, perhaps, for his moodiness. But then, he’s an actor; most actors are moody.

Cosette, for that matter, could be an actress. She’s a natural onstage, and performed in a few professional musical productions when she was younger. With her father’s acting talent and her mother’s voice, she’ll be able to go far, if she chooses to pursue that route someday. But Meg pulled her back when she realized New York is just too cutthroat when it comes to child performers. She didn’t want that for her daughter; Cosette’s life has always been complex enough.

But maybe, she thinks hopefully, Cosette will want to get involved in the local theater once they move.
If
they move.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Kris is saying, and Meg snaps right back to the present. Oh. She’s talking about the divorce.

She can’t tell her old friend that she’s better off without the jerk. Not with Cosette standing right here. She’s been asking more frequently about her father, and Meg is determined not to bad-mouth him. But it’s pretty hard to find anything remotely positive to say about a man who chooses not to acknowledge his own child, especially when that child isn’t exactly oblivious to his absence in her life.

“So are you still acting, singing, dancing… all that good stuff?”

“I’m on a career hiatus at the moment, actually,” Meg tells Kris, and feels Cosette tense up beside her.

For as many mother-daughter clashes as they’ve had since Cosette hit adolescence, Meg’s daughter remains a staunch, proud supporter of her mother’s work. She was outraged about the lost
Brigadoon
role and assured her mother that something much bigger and better must be right around the corner.

Meg has yet to tell her that
smaller
—but infinitely better is more what she has in mind at this point.

“What about you? What are you up to these days?” she asks Kris.

For Meg, who is a big believer in cosmic coincidence, the unexpected answer is a clear sign that her tentative new life plan is meant to become a reality.

“I’m in real estate,” Kris says cheerfully. “I sell houses right here in Glenhaven Park.”

Rounding the corner into the front yard, Sam immediately spies the source of the scream. Lori Delgado, soon-to-be-lady-of-the-house, is standing on the unkempt lawn. She’s wearing exactly the same clothing as Sam: faded Levi’s, a white T-shirt, and sneakers. Ah, the Saturday-in-suburbia homeowner uniform.

Unlike Sam, who’s
Been Here, Done This
more times lately than he cares to count, she’s wringing her hands and staring fearfully up at the gloomy Victorian house.

“What’s the matter?” Sam saunters to a stop—knowing only too well what’s the matter.

“This place is haunted!”

Yup, just as he suspected. She must have heard the rumors about the place, and now the legendary Duckworth ghost has already put in an appearance, courtesy of the power of suggestion and a vivid imagination. In broad daylight, no less. Usually the new owners wait until the wee hours, and well after they’ve settled in a bit, before they start seeing things.

Sam wonders wearily if he should feign surprise, as he did with the last two sets of new neighbors. Or should he just come right out and admit that he’s well aware of the home’s reputation?

Indeed, having grown up right next door, he’s known all his life that the old Duckworth place is supposedly haunted. Neighborhood kids used to dare each other to walk up the steps on Halloween night—not that deaf old Mrs. Duckworth would have heard the doorbell, much less greeted them with mini Zagnuts and tiny boxes of Chiclets.

In fact, that was the whole point.

In retrospect, there was something purely all-American about having grown up on a street like this, with a house like that. And in retrospect, Sam figured out that the “haunted” rumors stemmed from the home’s ramshackle appearance and classic Victorian architecture. With its broken shutters, untidy yard, and black wrought-iron fence, the Duckworth place exudes a delicious air of foreboding.

Which is why Sam, mired in skepticism, remains utterly unfazed by the string of recent events involving the place.

Now, he mildly addresses the new homeowner: “Haunted? Why do you say that?”

“Why? Because I just saw a ghost!” Lori Delgado blesses herself and murmurs something in fervent Spanish. “I just want to go home.”

Sam wants to remind her that this
is
home—it’s about to be, anyway—but is pretty certain she means home as in Brooklyn.

“Where are your husband and your kids?” Sam asks, looking around and seeing no evidence of the couple’s ten- and twelve-year-old daughters or their SUV, which was parked on the driveway earlier.