Random Acts of Kindness (25 page)
Read Random Acts of Kindness Online
Authors: Lisa Verge Higgins
M
om,
please
come pick me up. This is so
awkward
.”
Jenna grimaced as she heard Zoe’s discomfort beamed through the cell phone. She struggled to unlock the front door to her house while squeezing the cell phone between shoulder and ear.
“Honey, I don’t know what to say.”
“Sissy’s making cookies in the kitchen,” Zoe wailed. “Like Natalie and I are
ten years old
again and we’ve come over to ice the gingerbread men.”
Jenna flicked on the lights. She slipped her dripping umbrella into the umbrella stand and clanked her purse on the hall table. “I suppose Sissy is just trying to make you feel
welcome
—”
“Welcome,” Zoe snarked. “She’s got a bowl full of stale popcorn she expects us to string. And she’s playing this ridiculous Christmas music. You know, the old Charlie Brown music?”
Jenna pictured a much younger Zoe racing into this house with her red reindeer sweater, hopping from one foot to another humming the Snoopy song while she flung her ponytails like floppy ears.
Poor Nate. Jenna could practically smell his desperation. “That was once your favorite Christmas music.”
“When I was a kid! Meanwhile, Dad is in the other room cursing and making all this noise trying to mount the new TV on the wall.”
Jenna bit her tongue so she wouldn’t release the ungracious laugh that rose to her lips. “Zoe, he’s been looking forward to having you over for a good long stay, now that they have a house.”
“It’s just too weird. I feel like I’m stuck in one of those black-and-white Christmas movies where everyone smiles too much and pretends everything is all right when it’s all twisted and stuff.”
Jenna kicked off her heels and nudged them toward the pile by the door. She padded to the kitchen. Nicole had warned her that this was going to be part of the new paradigm. Though Jenna and Nate were a few weeks from being officially divorced, the dysfunction in that other household would always seep into hers, simply because it would always involve Zoe.
Her gut instinct was to get back into the car, drive across town, fetch Zoe, and shelter her from the inevitable difficulties that came with a new stepfamily. Jenna would have loved to spend the evening pulling out the old ornaments and decorating their own Christmas tree. She’d have loved to watch
Elf
while sipping eggnog with Zoe. That was what they’d usually do in this house that now held fewer of Nate’s sculptures—and no more Nate. But Zoe hadn’t yet spent a full weekend with her father, never mind a whole week. Now that Nate and Sissy had settled into a new house, he was determined to settle into the shared-custody arrangement.
“Okay, tell me this,” Jenna said, opening the fridge to see what’s for dinner. “How awkward is it?”
“Like what?”
“Is it missing-the-goal-when-you’re-wide-open awkward?”
“Not even close.”
“Is it burping-while-you’re-giving-a-class-presentation awkward?”
“No!”
“Is it getting-your-period-in-gym awkward?”
“Mom!”
“So then it must be I’m-going-to-need-time-to-get-used-to-this awkward.”
Zoe sighed, and it was a sigh that Jenna could
see
, as if the girl were standing right in front of her with her gaze rolling toward the ceiling.
Jenna said, “Do you remember after I got this new job at the bank, when I told you how uncomfortable I felt every time I walked into the office?”
“I know, I know,” Zoe muttered. “You told me you felt like you were exploring the dark side of the moon.”
“It took me weeks to figure out that I shouldn’t talk to my boss before her second cup of coffee. But now it’s hardly awkward at all.” Jenna felt a little frisson of excitement. “Today I even hung around for the Christmas party.”
A Christmas party where she’d summoned the courage to walk across the room to strike up a conversation with that stock analyst she’d just met, the one who was fluent in Chinese. She’d been curious about a phrase she’d heard during yesterday’s talk with the factory manager of a company they were researching in Guangzhou. The analyst had shuffled his feet. He’d bent his shoulders down in a shy way that she recognized all too well.
Seeing it through Nicole’s eyes, she thought,
Interesting.
Zoe sighed into the phone again. “So you’re not going to pick me up.”
“Not until next week. Eat one of Sissy’s gingerbread men for me, okay?”
“You want me to disembowel it?”
“Absolutely. Tear it apart, limb by limb. Pick out its eyes. Anything that makes you feel better.”
“Okay.”
“Love you, pumpkin.”
“Love you, too.”
Jenna ended the call and stared at the screen. She would be alone for a week, the longest stretch she would be without Zoe since she had returned from Pine Lake. Though she would miss her daughter, Jenna suddenly found herself in possession of a freedom that shimmered with possibilities.
She flicked her thumb over her smartphone and opened her contacts list. She scrolled down the names. Sydney and Lu. Riley, still fixing up the main lodge in Pine Lake. Jin back at her clinic in Salt Lake City. Maya off on a dig in South America. Nicole, weeks into therapy, working hard on the New Year’s launch of her updated life coach website.
And Claire in Oregon, newly bald as she finished her scaled-back chemo, as she geared up for the clinical trial.
Jenna paused. Her thumb hovered over Claire’s name. On the last video blog entry, Claire claimed she was running low on material, so instead she introduced Bertha the goat to all her friends. Although the video had made Jenna laugh until she spit coffee on her keyboard, she also sensed that her friend might be going a bit stir-crazy in the woods.
Jenna pressed the Call button and lifted the phone to her ear. She glanced out the kitchen window to the car parked in her driveway. Before the first ring, she’d mentally packed, called in a few vacation days, and made the time-distance calculation to Roseburg, Oregon.
“Hey, it’s your fairy godmother,” she said with rising excitement, as Claire picked up the phone. “Make a wish.”
Lisa Verge Higgins
Dear Reader,
I guess it’s no secret that I adore traveling. Those of you who’ve read my previous books have already journeyed with me to India and Burundi in
The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship
and all over Europe in
Friendship Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
. So I’ll confess that the cross-country expedition in
Random Acts of Kindness
mirrors a road trip I once took with an interesting young man. That adventure made me realize that any guy who can abide retro music, fast food, and driving ten hours through cow country is definitely worth marrying. He’s now the father of my three girls.
Like most young couples, my husband and I imagined that we would continue our bohemian way of life after we had children. Yes, I can hear you all laughing. We might have attempted that lifestyle if our kids weren’t so sensitive to car and air sickness. Instead, we sought adventure only a few hours from home in old Catskill resorts, kitschy Adirondack towns, and rustic cabins in the Poconos. We ate meals in community halls, played board games in the main lodges, danced the Chicken Dance and the Hokey-Pokey, and were entertained by ventriloquists and Elvis impersonators. We toured caverns and old farms, took hayrides, and visited petting zoos. Veterans of gritty European backpacking trips and one voyage around the world, we teased each other that we no longer vacationed abroad—instead, we vacationed in 1956.
And yet we loved every minute of it. Those very different journeys are what inspired me to create Pine Lake. This college resort town in the historic Adirondacks is the home of our perpetual youth. In Pine Lake, folks escape from trouble, heal in body and mind, and often stay for good.
With a great, heartfelt sigh, this happy traveler is going to nestle in for a while. I’ll be keeping tabs on Claire, Jenna, Nicole, and all the other Pine Lake women, even far-flung Maya and Dr. Jin. I hope you’ll join me for the next book to discover what Riley makes of Camp Kwenback and learn exactly what happens when Three-Tat Tess comes back to town.
It’s a natural evolution: all roads lead to home.
Lisa Verge Higgins loves to meet new readers. If your book club has chosen a book by Lisa and you’re interested in arranging a phone or Skype chat, feel free to contact her at
http://www.lisavergehiggins.com/contact.htm
.
- Random Acts of Kindness
is written around the theme that even small acts of generosity can cause great changes in people’s lives. Jenna’s initial kindness to Claire kicked it all off. Is it possible that Jenna’s first act of generosity ultimately led to Nate’s final change of heart? - Road trips are the quintessential American vacation. We travel for pleasure, for curiosity, for education, or just for a change of scenery. Have you ever driven cross-country or taken an extended driving trip with friends and family? Was the trip a disaster or a success? During those long hours driving, what did you learn about your traveling companions that you hadn’t known before? What did Claire, Nicole, and Jenna learn about one another that they hadn’t known
before
? - Claire gives her friends a number of reasons for wanting to spend three weeks on the road. First, she wants to escape from the label “cancer victim” and just be Claire in the big, wide world. Second, she wants to finish running the rapids of the Hudson Valley Gorge. And third, she wants to avoid her sisters’ medical interventions. Which reason do you think is the primary one? Do you think Claire, the disillusioned idealist, has other, underlying reasons that she doesn’t admit, maybe not even to herself?
- Nicole is undergoing a crisis of confidence because of her failure to identify and effectively manage her son’s mood and behavioral problems. She sets off for Pine Lake in the hopes of rediscovering the confident, capable woman she needs to be in order to help Noah upon his return from the Hope Recovery Center. When does she first start to find her mojo? Does Pine Lake prove to be the magic elixir?
- Jenna, like many introverts, has learned to adapt her temperament to function in a world that favors extroverts. Can you relate to Jenna’s social difficulties? Do you know people like Jenna? What about you? Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
- Claire, Jenna, and Nicole are all facing crises that will result in profound change in their lives. Jenna is fighting against the destruction of her family, Nicole grapples with her son’s behavioral issues, and Claire is facing her own mortality. Their issues cannot really be solved, only managed. Who, in your opinion, handles these life-altering issues with the most grace?
- Before Claire has a change of heart about her medical treatment, she is certain about the decision she has made, even though her friends and family disagree. How do you feel about Claire’s choices? By initially refusing treatment, is she showing wisdom at the inevitability of mortality? Or is she being irrational? Even selfish?
- Jenna remarks that her daughter, Zoe, has “a touch of the changeling” because of how temperamentally different they are. Nicole could say the same about Noah after her once-amenable son morphs into a moody, unpredictable teenager. Perhaps most children, in the eyes of their baffled parents, have this “touch of the changeling.” How about your children? And what about you? Did you grow up to baffle your own parents?
- The fate of one of the ladies of the Pine Lake Sisterhood, Theresa, remains a mystery, a thematic reminder that not everyone will find a happy ending. If you had to speculate, what do you think happened to Three-Tat Tess?
- Who is your favorite character, and what is it about her and/or her situation that you most relate to? Who among the secondary characters—Jin, Maya, Sydney, Riley, and Lu—are you most drawn to?
- Each woman remembers her hometown of Pine Lake differently. To Nicole, it’s the land of her heavenly youth. To Claire, it’s a town that had more than its share of socioeconomic problems. To Jenna, it’s a place she visits regularly and the site of many a middle-school gaffe. Would you approach a visit to your own hometown more like Nicole, Jenna, or Claire? Are your remembrances also colored by the experiences of your youth?
- Jenna makes a decision in the middle of the road trip to return to Seattle to confess her love for Nate. Was Jenna being courageous for putting her heart on the chopping block? Or was she just being foolish for giving Nate another chance to hurt her?
- While in Thailand, Claire had difficulty accepting one particular Buddhist concept. In order to reach Nirvana, one must acknowledge the sufferings of one’s past and understand that it was in these most troubled times where the seeds of happiness were sown. Jenna gets a hint of this when she finally realizes that maybe she
isn’t
the bad parent she secretly believed she was. Thinking back on your own difficult life experiences, do you believe there is truth in this Buddhist concept? - Sometime during the journey, Nicole finally realizes that even a therapist can benefit from a support group. Accepting help can be a very difficult and humbling thing to do—especially if you are the one who usually does the giving. Have you ever been in a position of physical, financial, or emotional need to the point where you required outside help? Was it difficult to ask for that help? What was the trigger that pushed you to find the help you needed?
- Nate’s request for a divorce is such a shock that Jenna fills a crate and leaves their home. Based on how Nate behaves whenever Jenna confronts him, what do you think Nate’s real feelings are about the adultery, the divorce, Sissy, Jenna, and the new pregnancy?
- In one of the most surprising random acts of kindness in the story, the Pine Lake women shave their heads to show solidarity with Claire. It’s a bold sacrifice in a society that puts so much weight on a woman’s physical appearance. Yet several of the women find the act liberating. If you had a good friend undergoing chemotherapy, could you make that same choice?