Souvenir (2 page)

One

R
EMINDERS
. M
EG DIDN’T NEED MORE OF THEM, BUT THAT’S WHAT SHE GOT
when her father let her into his new apartment at the Horizon Center for Seniors Wednesday evening. He held out a plastic grocery bag.

“What’s in there?”

“Notebooks, from your mother’s desk,” he said. “Take ’em now, before I forget.”

He did more and more of that lately, forgetting.
Idiopathic short-term memory loss
was his doctor’s name for his condition, which right now was more an irritation than an issue.
Idiopathic
, meaning there was no particular explanation.
Idiopathic
was an apt term for Spencer Powell, a man who lived entirely according to his whims.

Meg took the bag and set it on the dining table along with her purse. This would be a short visit, coming at the end of her twelve-hour day. Hospital rounds at seven
AM
, two morning deliveries, a candy-bar lunch, and then four hours of back-to-back patients at her practice—women stressing about episiotomies, C-section pain, stretch marks, unending fetal hiccups, heavy periods, lack of sex drive, fear of labor. And still four hours to go before she was likely to hit the sheets for five. An exhausting grind at times, but she loved her work. The ideal of it, at least.

“So how was today?” she asked, taking the clip out of her shoulder-length hair and shaking it loose. “Are you finding your way around all right?”

“Colorful place,” he said, leading her to the living room. He sat in his recliner—why did old men seem always to have one, fraying and squeaky, with which they wouldn’t part? “Pair o’ guys over in wing C got a great system for winning on the dogs.”

The greyhounds, he meant. “Is that right?” she asked, looking him over. He looked spry as ever, and his eyes had regained the smile she’d never seen dimmed before last fall. His hair, once the brightest copper, had gone full silver, making him seem more distinguished somehow, silver being more valuable. Distinguished, but no less wild than before—a man whose mind was always a step ahead of his sense. His diabetes was in check, but since her mother had died suddenly seven months earlier, Meg felt compelled to watch him closely. She was looking for signs of failing health, diabetic danger signals: swollen ankles, extra fluid in the face, unusual behaviors.
All
his behaviors were unusual, though, so that part was difficult.

The other difficult thing was how he kept confronting her with random pieces of her mother’s life. A pitted chrome teapot. Stiff and faded blue doilies from their old dining hutch. Rose-scented bath powder, in a round cardboard container with a round puff inside. Last week, a paper bag of pinecones dipped in glitter-thick wax. Trivia from a life forever altered by the sudden seizure of Anna Powell’s heart, like a car’s engine after driving too long without oil.

“Yeah, those boys said they win more’n they lose, so what’s not to like about that? Hey—my left kidney’s acting up again. Steady pain, kinda dull, mostly. What d’ya s’pose that’s about?”

“Call Dr. Aimes,” she said, as she always did when he brought up anything relating to his kidneys. “Tomorrow. Don’t wait.” He looked all right—but then, she’d thought her mother had too. What a good doctor
she
was; she should’ve seen the signs of runaway hypertension, should’ve known a massive heart attack was pending. She never should have taken her mother’s word that she was doing fine on the blood pressure medication, nothing to worry about at all.

Her father frowned in annoyance, as he always did when she wouldn’t diagnose him. “What good are you?”

“If you go into labor, I’ll be glad to help out. Otherwise, tell Dr. Aimes.” She would remind him again when she called tomorrow.

His apartment was modest—one bedroom, one bath, a combined dining–living area, and a kitchen—but comfortable, furnished mostly with new things. He’d sold the business, Powell’s Breeding and Boarding, along with the house and all the property, in order to move here. She didn’t know the financial details because he’d insisted on handling that part of things himself. But he assured her he could afford to “modernize” a little, as he’d put it.

Meg looked around, glad to not see much of her mother here. Memories were like spinning blades: dangerous at close range. Her mother’s empty swivel rocker, placed alongside the recliner, would take some getting used to. If her father would just stop regurgitating things from the farm—or send them to her sisters, all of whom wisely lived out of state—she might be able to get comfortable with the new order. Was that his strategy, too? Was he giving things away so that he didn’t have to be reminded of his loss every time he opened a closet or a drawer? He certainly wasn’t much for facing the past, himself. The past was where all his failures lived.

Well, they had that in common.

He pulled the recliner’s lever and stretched out. “So yeah, I’m doin’ fine. Why’nt you bring Savannah over Sunday; we’ll have dinner in this establishment’s fine dining room. They just put in one of them self-serve ice cream machines, you know what I’m talking about? Toppings, too. Y’oughta see the old farts elbowing each other to get there first! If I’d known this place was so entertaining, I’d’ve moved Mom here. This would be her kind of place, don’t you think? Lots of biddies around to cackle with.”

“Sure, she would’ve liked it a lot,” Meg said. The farm had overwhelmed her mother perpetually, even after Brian and his father—officially Hamilton Savings and Loan—forgave her parents’ mortgage as promised. In the years afterward, Meg liked to take her mother out to lunch for a break and a treat; she offered her spending money (as she secretly did her sisters too), but the reply was always, “Oh, heavens no, Meggie. You’ve done so much as it is. Besides, you know your father.”

She did. Though cursed with a black thumb for profits, he was too proud to let her put cash in their hands. He hadn’t been too proud, though, to let her—to
encourage
her—to take Brian’s offer. That was different; no money changed hands. Meg hadn’t had to give up anything—Carson didn’t count. It was her choice anyway, that’s what he always said.

“Hey—why’nt you bring our girl over here for dinner Sunday?” He said this as if the idea had just occurred to him.

She stood next to his chair, noting how his invitation didn’t include Brian—intentionally? “I’ll do that,” she said. “Right now I need to get going.”

“Okay, fine, go on, Miss Hectic Schedule. I know, you got things to do. Y’oughta enjoy the ride a little more, though. Now that you can. Don’t you think? I’m fine here, everything’s settled. I don’t know why you don’t just get on with your life.”

Now that she could? What was he talking about?

He continued, “You’re not happy. I’ve known that for a long time. Move forward, Meggie, while you’re still young.”

She looked at him quizzically—he didn’t always make sense, but he hated having it pointed out—and kissed him without pursuing it. “I’m fine, Dad,” she said. “It’s just been a long day.”

Two

“T
HE NORTHEAST SIDE’S WHERE THE BEST WAVES ARE,” YELLED
V
ALERIE
Haas, over the sputtering whine of the motorbikes she and Carson McKay had rented for their excursion on St. Martin. The West Indies isle, known for its split Dutch and French identity, was one of three islands they were considering for their wedding location, as well as the site of a vacation home. “And the nude beaches are there, too!”

“Where’s a good bar?” Carson yelled back, ready to be done with the noise and the hot wind and the vibration in his crotch, nude beaches or not.

He preferred riding horses to motorcycles by far, and was riding this souped-up scooter only in deference to Val. She would’ve had him on something much more powerful if it had been available to them—something worthy of a motocross track—and had been disappointed to have to settle for only 100 cc’s. She wouldn’t even consider the little Suzuki SUVs, insisting that the best views were accessible only with the bikes. He had to admit she was right; the roads up the low mountains deteriorated as they got farther from the small coastal towns, and a few times they’d taken mere trails to different points of interest. Val had wanted to locate a home rumored to have belonged to Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston several years back. Though they were told the house wasn’t officially on the market, she thought it might be fun to buy it if possible—a surefire conversation starter, she’d called it, as if their lives weren’t already full of those. They found the house this morning, tucked into the hills of the island’s French side, but he wasn’t wild about its rocky landscape and lack of large shade trees. Val, raised in Malibu, would have gone for it anyway. Carson thought of the lushness of central Florida, the oaks and cedars and palms and twining, flowering vines, and declared that notoriety wasn’t enough to persuade him.

Now he pointed to the side of the gravel road, indicating that he was pulling over.

“You’re not done already?” Val said when she came to a stop next to him.

The sun pressed heavy on his forehead, forcing sweat down the sides of his neck. He wiped it away. “’Fraid so,” he said.

“We aren’t even close to finishing the tour.”

He snorted. They’d been out since seven-thirty, and it was closing in on two o’clock. Lunch had been fried plantains and some fizzy fruit soda at a roadside stand. “Feel free to go on, but I’m heading back to the villas.” There was a terrific bar there, and, should he happen to consume a drink or two more than made it safe to ride, he’d already be “home.”

Val pushed her sunglasses up onto her shaggy white-blond hair and squinted at him. “Okay, I’ll go back with you—
if
you make it worth my while,” she said, grinning that same provocative grin she’d used on him the night they’d met, in L.A. at the launch party for his latest CD. He’d seen thousands of come-hither smiles over the years, but hers was different. Confident—but not threatening, the way some women’s were. Some women were so aggressive they scared him. Val, who at twenty-two was already world famous in her own right, had enticed him with a smile that made him feel like he could reciprocate without remorse. He’d had his share of remorse over the years, and a few extra portions for good measure.

He shook his head, admiring her brilliant hair, the long, lean muscles in her thighs and arms that were products of uncountable hours of surfing and training. She’d won her first junior championship at fifteen, had her first endorsement contract a year later. “You’re awfully easy on me, you know.”

“I know,” she agreed.

“It’s a real character flaw.”

“I never said I was perfect.” She pushed her sunglasses down and turned her motorbike back toward their resort, a collection of luxury villas on Nettle Bay. “Catch me if you can!”

Three

M
EG LEFT HER FATHER’S APARTMENT AND STOPPED TO ADMIRE HOW THE
setting sun glowed through the moss-draped branches of live oak trees. Spring was in full force, honeysuckle snaking its fragrant way into the trees, azaleas of fuchsia and pink and white and lavender lining the sidewalks and underlining windows. Spring was Meg’s favorite season, but Brian, with his allergies, hated spring. Messy pollen and drifting seeds, messy flower petals. He’d had their home builder clear a fifty-foot perimeter around their house when it was built. Without trees to shade the house, their electric bill was outrageous. He didn’t care; “That’s what money’s for,” he’d say.

In the parking lot, as Meg dug out her keys, she noticed a strange weakness in her right arm. She struggled to raise the arm, to aim the remote at her six-year-old Volvo, feeling as though her arm had become weighted with sand. Bizarre.

A
very
long day
, she thought, walking the remaining twenty feet to the car. That awkward twins delivery just before lunch must have strained her arm—and those damn speculums she was trying out, some new model that was supposed to work easily with one hand but was failing to live up to the product rep’s promises. Three of them had jammed open this afternoon, causing her patients discomfort and embarrassing her—and, she’d noticed at the time, making her hand ache in the effort to get them to close.

She squeezed her hand around the remote, then tried the button again. Her thumb cooperated, and the odd feeling in her arm began to pass. Once inside the car, she sat back with a heavy sigh and directed the vents so that cold air blew directly onto her face. The prospect of a shower was as enticing as diamonds. No,
more
enticing; diamonds had little practical value on their own, and almost no value to anyone unable to see them. A shower, though, offered universal appeal: wash away your cares, your sins, the evidence, the damage, the residue—whatever it was you needed; she would choose a well-timed shower over a diamond any day.

As she flexed her hand, she looked at the bag of notebooks where she’d set them on the seat beside her. Opening the bag, she saw maybe a dozen blue composition books, a neat stack tied up tightly with the same all-purpose twine she’d seen, and used, everywhere on their farm when she was a kid. Twine was almost as good as duct tape for making what were meant to be temporary repairs, but which inevitably became permanent.

The notebooks looked almost new. Likely her father had found them in a recently unpacked box—leftover office supplies, unneeded in his retirement. As if he was the one who’d kept the business records to begin with.

The clock on the dash read seven forty, and Meg’s empty stomach growled in response. She would stop by KFC on her way to get her daughter from the library, where Savannah and her best friend Rachel were hanging out. Supposedly. Supposedly they had a biology project to research, but she doubted this. They could research almost anything from the computer at home. Knowing Rachel—a bubbly girl whose existence disproved the theory that blondes were the airheads—there were boys involved, and the library was just a staging ground that the girls imagined would fool their parents.

Who might the boys be? Savannah revealed so little about her life these days. Somewhere between getting her first period and her first cell phone, Savannah had morphed from a curious, somewhat needy, somewhat nerdy little girl, into an introverted cipher. She was nothing like Meg had been as a teen, which was a good thing. Savannah was just as reliable, but not as caught up in all that boy-girl business. Not grafted onto the heart of a young man who would later hate her for betraying him. Not, Meg hoped, destined to live with her own heart cleaved in two.

Razor sharp, some memories were.

She pushed the past away and sat another minute in the air-conditioning, stealing just a little more time for herself before moving on to her next work shift. Food. Kid. Reports. Case studies. Thirty minutes on the Bowflex, if she could dredge up the energy—or maybe she’d just spare her arm, let it have another night off. And now that it was feeling nearly normal again, she put the car in gear and headed for the library.