The Secret of Joy (11 page)

“If you’d just read the letters, Joy—”

Joy stood and reached into her handbag for some bills, which she put under her drink. “I’d like you to leave in the morning, Rebecca. And I mean head back to New York City.” She walked over to the dance floor and whispered something in Victoria’s ear. Victoria nodded, kissed Joy on the cheek, and resumed dancing. And Joy walked right out of the restaurant.

No, no, no!
How had this happened? One minute they were
talking math and bulls and alpacas, whatever alpacas were; they were talking
life
and paths, and the next, Joy and the closed door were back.

Her heart squeezing, Rebecca supposed that meant she should sleep on the chintz-covered sofa in the parlor, after all.

six

Two hours later, Rebecca was driving back north in a rental car courtesy of Joy Jayhawk’s Weekend Singles Tours, Jed biting at cuticles in the passenger seat. His mother, with whom he still lived, had called him complaining of both chest pain and foot pain, and so Jed had asked Joy if he could apply his unused tour to a future date. Joy had said of course, then added that “Rebecca will be happy to drive you home.”

So that was that. Joy had managed to get rid of her even sooner than she’d intended. At the car rental agency, Joy had handed her a printout of a Google map and driving directions, a twenty-dollar bill for gas, and not even a forced smile.

“I don’t know what to do here,” Rebecca had said. “I feel like this is it. You gave me a chance and I blew it and now this is it. I’m gone.”
Your eyes are just like our dad’s. And your chin, too
.

“We’re not family,” she’d said in such a low voice that Rebecca had to lean in, which made Joy step back. “Words, labels, whatever, don’t mean anything in and of themselves.”

But
—Rebecca stood there, not knowing what to plead, how
to fix this. “I totally agree. But we can at least talk, can’t we? Just talk?”

Joy sighed and glanced away, then back. “Rebecca, I am all talked out. I’m sorry, but I’ve been talking and talking and talking for a while now. I don’t want to talk anymore. I’m sorry if that sounds cold.”

Jed had walked over, his cell phone in hand. “That was my mom again. Her right big toe is tingling really bad. Anyone know what that’s a symptom of?”

During the ride back home, he chatted nonstop about his mother and her ailments and his need to break free, move out, that Ellie was great and all, but that he had a little crush on Maggie, and did Rebecca think Maggie might go out with him, or did a guy like him have no chance with a guy like Clinton around? Rebecca dropped him off at his place with the assurance that the best thing to do in life, under any circumstance, was to ask for what you wanted.

“That is really good advice,” Jed said. “Really good.” Then he gave her hand a squeeze and headed up the path to his home, suitcase bumping his thigh.

Joy had instructed Rebecca to return the car to an agency in Brunswick, right off the highway. Apparently, someone would be happy to drive Rebecca to Joy’s house to pick up her own car.

Someone was. Someone even chattier than Jed had been: “You’re from New York? I just came back from there—family vacation. Have you ever been to the top of the Empire State Building? What about the Statue of Liberty? I climbed up to the chin when I was a kid. Someone behind me got vertigo.
Ever heard of that? I saw that movie, you know, the old one, but I didn’t think people still suffered from that, you know?” He talked and talked and talked, so much that Rebecca didn’t have to respond, for which she was grateful. She stared out the window at the passing scenery, at life speeding by—meandering by, really—and realized that as long as she was in this car, with this chatty middle-aged man, she was
somewhere
.

“And here you are,” he said, pulling up at 52 Maple Lane in Wiscasset.

It was very strange to stand in front of the house knowing that Joy wasn’t there, wasn’t inside, that she was miles away, and Rebecca had been banished, basically, from there. From Joy’s life.

As she got into her own rental car, she took one last look at Joy’s sweet blue Cape Cod and then drove back to the center of town with the idea of finding a motel or a cute bed-and-breakfast, anywhere she could throw herself into a bath and think. Was she supposed to go home? Home to Michael and the firm and Marcie’s smug face? Home to a life that felt off size, off-key, off everything? There was no family anymore, just Michael, and the more Rebecca got to know him, really know him, understand him, how his mind worked, the less like family he seemed.

She had nowhere to go, she realized as she arrived in the center of town. Mama’s Pizza was aglow with lights and Rebecca could hear music, strange music, like a polka, maybe. Arlene would know where Rebecca
could
go, at least for the night. A few nights, maybe.

Inside, the restaurant was crowded with a party—helium
balloons imprinted with
HAPPY 60TH TRUDY!
were everywhere. The polka music was loud, and a makeshift dance floor was crowded with mostly the senior citizen set. She’d crashed a party. Just as she turned to go, Arlene sashayed over.

“Rebecca! Nice to see you again,” Arlene shouted. She wore a dark fuchsia fuzzy sweater dress with a big flower pinned at the chest. “Come have the last slice of cake.”

“I didn’t mean to intrude on a private party,” Rebecca told her. “I’ll head out.”

“Don’t be silly. And I baked this cake myself. Trust me, you want some.”

Rebecca smiled and accepted a plate of chocolate cake with pink icing, the edge of the letter
Y
adorning it. She took a bite and it melted in her mouth. Her mother had made cake this good, a skill Rebecca hadn’t inherited.

“Told you,” Arlene said.

The music changed from polka to square dance, and the crowd curtsied and do-si-doed. Arlene explained that Trudy was her sister and taught “Dance Styles Through the Ages” through the Wiscasset Recreation Department.

Rebecca had to shout to be heard over the music. “Arlene, could you recommend a hotel or an inn nearby? For a night or two?”

Arlene nodded. “Finch’s just down Water Street is closed for the season, but the owner is an old friend. I’ll call if you’d like. Why don’t you go on out to the deck till I get a hold of her. There’s a path leading down to the beach, but I’d better warn you that the water will be too cold for toe dipping.”

Rebecca hadn’t met many people like Arlene in her life,
kind for no reason. The woman’s warmth and motherly spirit were so comforting at the moment that Rebecca didn’t want to leave her presence, but Arlene was already heading to the counter and the telephone. She was spun around a few times along the way.

Rebecca headed outside to the deck with her cake. A man sat alone at a far table, a bottle of Sam Adams beside him and his feet up on the railing. She’d know that hair anywhere. Thick, dirty-blond, sexy. Underneath, the tanned neck, the broad shoulders in a dark green T-shirt.

“Theo, right?” she asked.

He turned around and smiled at her, his dark brown eyes sharp and intense. “Rebecca, was it?”

She nodded. “Nice view.” Not that she could see much of anything. The deck lights barely lit up the grass below, and about a hundred feet away she could make out a rocky path. But she could hear the lapping of the ocean.

He turned the chair next to him in invitation, and she sat down. “So what brings you to Wiscasset in September?” he asked, reaching for his beer. “We’re pretty much a summer town.”

For a moment, she considered just spitting it out, the whole story, but again she had that nudging feeling that she shouldn’t, that this was Joy’s territory, that this was equally Joy’s story, and she shouldn’t be telling everyone Joy’s personal business.

“Hypothetically?” Rebecca asked, taking another bite of her cake.

He glanced at her and smiled. “Sure.”

But instead of saying anything, she burst into tears, the image of her father, frail in the hospital bed, his lined face, the strange expression in his eyes, suddenly overtaking her. What was the expression? Not guilt, not really. “Let’s say someone’s father dies,” she rushed to say, “and right before, he confesses something, that he had another child and that this child is now an adult, just a couple years younger than, say, you are.”

He reached over to the napkin dispenser on the table behind them and handed her a few napkins. She dabbed under her eyes and clutched the white scratchy paper.

“And let’s say,” she continued, “that your own life is just sort of—I don’t know the right word exactly. Just sort of
not
. And something in this news, this startling piece of news, that you have a sister out there somewhere, means something to you, really means something. And you go in search of this sister and you actually find her and she wants nothing to do with you.”

“Ah,” he said, staring out at the darkness. “I would think she needed some time.”

“Really?” she asked, turning to face him. “Even if she said we’re not family, that there’s no
there
there, basically?”

He nodded. “Yup, time is the answer.”

Rebecca let out a deep breath and took another bite of cake, which sat in her stomach.

“My own father checked in and out pretty much my entire childhood,” Theo said. “If a kid of his came knocking on my door and said, ‘Hey, I’m your brother,’ I wouldn’t feel much of a connection. Not at first.”

Rebecca nodded. “I can understand that. I guess I feel the connection because I did grow up with my father. His other daughter is part of him. But she doesn’t have that. She doesn’t have anything to go on. I’m a stranger.”

“Hypothetically a stranger,” he said, tipping his beer bottle at her.

She smiled.

“Theo, dear, I’m ready to leave.”

Rebecca turned around to see one of the elderly square dancers smiling at them from the doorway. She wore a long, quilted down coat even though the temperature was in the low 60s.

“My grandmother,” he whispered. “Roommate of the birthday girl.” He closed his hand on Rebecca’s for a second and added, “Time works. Sometimes even a half hour is enough.”

And with a last smile, he was gone. In one fifteen-minute conversation, he’d managed to make her feel better than she had in a week.

Finch’s Seaside Inn turned out to be quite fancy, a huge Victorian on the water, but since it was closed for the season, the restaurant and the spa and housekeeping were shut down. Marianne Finch, the friendly faced proprietor, said she would drop off linens in the morning, but Rebecca had to change her own sheets. Oh, and she had to put up with some construction noise from the new deck and back porch she was having built. For this, her room rate was less than fifty bucks, and what a room it was. Spacious, with a dark wood four-poster bed and
white, fluffy down comforter and a marble bathroom and a balcony that overlooked the beach.

It was close to midnight, but Rebecca pulled on a sweater and her L.L.Bean wool socks and headed out onto the balcony with the leather box of letters and the liter bottle of Diet Coke that Arlene had given her as she left Mama’s. For a few minutes, she listened to the lap of waves, let the calm, the peace surround her. Surprisingly, Theo came to mind—those gorgeous dark eyes—and then Michael’s face, with the disapproval etched in his handsome features, overtook it.

He hadn’t called once since she’d left. How could that be? How did you go from waking up next to someone every morning, sharing a bathroom, a bed, and then not call to even check in, to hear their voice, when they were going through something so … so what? Painful. Strange. Unmooring. If she didn’t do what he said, what he suggested, he would fire her as a girlfriend? Seemed so.

She leaned her head back against the chaise and pulled the leather box tight against her. Not that the contents were a comfort. They contained someone else’s secrets and were meant for someone else. Not for her. Charlotte had said she’d get to know her father through the letters, but did that mean she hadn’t known him? That the man she had known as her dad was someone else, someone with a lie in his past, a secret emotional life?

Time works
.

Rebecca closed her eyes and reached into the box and pulled out a letter at random.

Dear Joy
,

You are thirteen, and I know what that means. I’ve been through it with Rebecca. TROUBLE. Not that Rebecca’s trouble. She’s a good girl. Well, most of the time. She has a boyfriend named Dalton. Dalton—what a name. He’s her first boyfriend and, oh, is she crazy about this boy. Of course, Dalton broke her heart tonight, crushed her right before a school dance by just not showing up, so of course she and her friend Charlotte went to the dance anyway, and there he was, slow dancing with another girl. She called and asked me to come get her, and cried and cried, and asked why boys pick other girls, and what’s wrong with her
.

I’m the last person to have any answers about that, but it got me thinking about your mother, how I suppose I “picked her” when I had a perfectly wonderful woman, a wife, the mother of my little girl. I wanted to explain to Rebecca that you can love someone and get pulled away anyway by things that trigger other things in you, but how could I explain that? I ended up offering some platitudes
.

You choose who ends up making the most sense for your life in that moment, not necessarily who you love most. Not that I loved your mother more than Rebecca’s mother. Oh, Lord, I don’t even know what I’m saying. I just know you make a choice in a moment, sometimes without conscious thought, and you figure that must be the right one, so you don’t rehash the one you let get away too much. Until later, I guess.

Rebecca remembered that conversation with her dad about Dalton and her first broken heart:
“You’ll be fine, honey. There will be other boys. He doesn’t deserve you. By homeroom in two days, you’ll have a new boyfriend.”

There wasn’t a new boyfriend for a while, a very long while. Would she have preferred if her father had said,
“You want the truth, Becs? The truth is, you can really like a girl so much, think about her all the time, and then turn around and like a new girl just as much, and actually want both girls in your life, but of course you can’t have both girls, so you choose the one that makes the most sense.”
And Carrie Futterman had obviously made the most sense for Dalton, since she had enormous breasts at age fifteen, a.k.a. a C cup.