Apart at the Seams (5 page)

Dr. Streeter was a lifelong bachelor with no obligations to anything but his work and studies. He had no clue how hard it was for me to find the time, money, and child care to take even one night class per week. But he meant well; I could see that.

“I'm sorry, Professor. I appreciate your confidence in me, but I'm a single mother. I just can't put my life on hold for the next two years. Even if I could, where would I find the tuition money? How much does this cost anyway?”

His face lit up again. “That's what is so wonderful. A donor is underwriting a portion of the costs, so Carrillon is able to charge a reduced, flat-rate tuition—eight thousand dollars a semester no matter how many courses you take. So if you were to—”

“Eight thousand dollars a semester!” I gasped, and then laughed, wondering what kind of heiress he thought he was talking to. Seriously, Dr. Streeter needed to climb down from the ivory tower and spend some time in
my
world, where a blown-out tire or trip to the dentist meant the difference between being able to scrape together money for tuition or having to sit out the semester.

“Thirty-two thousand total? That's more than I make in a year! Even if I had that kind of money, what do you expect my family to live on while I'm going to school?”

Dr. Streeter, who had been nodding the whole time I talked, said, “It would be a difficult undertaking, Ivy. I realize that. But you're going to end up spending that much on your education anyway—probably more. You're just going to do it slower. Tuition costs rise every year. What will a class cost you nine years from now when you finally graduate? How much earning power will you give up in those extra seven years when you won't have a degree? Time is an irreplaceable commodity, Ivy. You've got to look at this long term.”

“I understand what you're saying, Dr. Streeter, but . . .” I sighed, suddenly very tired. I looked at my watch. “I've got to go. My babysitter has to be home by nine.”

I walked toward the door. “Thank you, Professor. I really appreciate your encouragement, but there's just no way I can make this work. Not now.”

Dr. Streeter's swivel chair squeaked as he got to his feet. “Here,” he said, taking the blue brochure I'd left on his desk and placing it on top of my book. “Hold on to this for a while. Maybe something will happen to make you change your mind—a miracle or something. Who knows? Maybe you'll win the lottery.”

“Professor,” I said wearily, “I've never even bought a ticket.”

“Then maybe it's time you did. Act of faith, eh?”

He smiled and rested a big hand on my shoulder. “At least think about it. Promise me you will.”

 

I
did
think about it. For about as long as it took to walk from Dr. Streeter's office to my car. Then I slid off the rainbow and back into reality, driving home with the windshield wipers going full blast, thinking about the stuff that mattered.

What was I going to do about my broken computer? The tech guys at the office-supply store would charge me seventy-five bucks just to run a diagnostic and who knew how much more for repairs? It might be cheaper just to buy a new one, but I didn't have that kind of money right now. Speaking of money, the bill for the car taxes was still sitting on my desk. How was I going to scrape up $168.52 to pay it? Had I remembered to send in an order for more interfacing before I'd left work? Or to call the pediatrician and schedule the kids' school physicals, so I wouldn't be scrambling to get them an appointment in August? Would that spot of drywall near the bathroom floor, the part that got soaked in this morning's Bobby-induced flood, dry out or would I have to patch it? Could I squeeze in a trip to the market during my lunch break tomorrow?

Fifty balls to keep in the air and only two hands to juggle with. I opened my mouth wide, unclenching and stretching my jaw, trying to relieve the building tension.

What was Dr. Streeter thinking? No way could I go to college full-time, especially a college in Delaware. Delaware! He neglected to mention Carrillon's location, but it was listed right there on the brochure. I'm sure Delaware is lovely, but no way was I moving.

New Bern is my home now and, more important, my kids' home. Bobby doesn't remember living anywhere else. He loves New Bern—we all do. Our friends, Evelyn and Charlie, Abigail and Franklin, Margot, Virginia, Tessa, Madelyn, and Philippa are all here. They're my support system; I depend on them. Not the way I did at first, of course. After all, they've got their own lives to live. Evelyn and Charlie are busy running their two businesses, the quilt shop and the Grill on the Green restaurant. Abigail and Franklin spend half their time traveling. Margot is married now and busy with her family. Philippa is occupied by her duties at the church and taking care of her baby, Tim. Madelyn has her hands full running the inn, and Tessa is busy filling the deluge of orders for her herbal soaps and lotions. Even Garrett, who for years was my regular babysitter on quilt circle nights, isn't available now. He'd been working and living above the quilt shop, waiting to see if Liza, his former girlfriend, was ever going to move back from Chicago. I guess he must have gotten tired of waiting, because about two months ago, he moved to the city. Who can blame him? New Bern isn't exactly a haven for the young and single.

But I love it here. In New Bern I feel happy, accepted, and most important, safe. I can't imagine living anywhere else, not for all the diplomas in Delaware.

 

The house was quiet. Drew was sitting at the kitchen table studying but started to pack up his books as soon as he saw me.

“Everybody asleep?”

He nodded. “Bethany gave me a little grief about bedtime but not much, and Bobby was in there singing to himself for a while.”

I smiled. “Yeah, he does that.”

I drove Drew back home. I hated to leave the kids alone, even for ten minutes, but what else could I do?

“Can you just drop me off?” Drew asked, pointing to a narrow opening in a hedge that marks the entrance to the Olivers' driveway, just a couple of hundred feet from his own. “I have to go check on the house in case they decide to come up for the weekend.”

“Drew, are you sure? It's pouring. Why don't you wait until tomorrow? Nobody will know the difference. It's supposed to rain all weekend, and if they haven't been up since Christmas, it's not very likely they're going to show up now.”

I've never met Gayla and Brian Oliver, the people from New York who bought the cottage next door to Drew about three years ago, but I almost felt sorry for these strangers who either didn't appreciate what they had or couldn't carve out time to enjoy it. And maybe it sounds strange, but in a way, I felt sorry for the house too. It looked lonely. And neglected. The grass was overgrown, the driveway was cratered with potholes, and the hedges needed trimming. So sad.

“The Olivers pay me to check on the house on Tuesday and Friday, so that's what I have to do. I'll be fine walking home.” He pulled his black hoodie up. “Oh, I almost forgot. I fixed your computer.”

“You did! Thanks! What was wrong with it?”

“Dead battery. Power cord came loose from the socket.”

I smacked my hand against my forehead. “I'm an idiot.”

Drew grinned, then hopped out of the car and ran to the cottage, leaping over puddles, dashing between raindrops.

What a sweet kid.

 

I poured ginger ale into a glass filled with ice, watching it fizz and bubble, took a piece of cold pizza from the box in the refrigerator, carried everything into my room, sat down in my favorite chair, a wingback upholstered with blue corduroy that I bought at a tag sale for twelve dollars, and opened my laptop. The computer gave a series of encouraging blips when I pressed the power button, booting up without a problem. I still felt like an idiot, but not as idiotic as I would have felt if I'd spent seventy-five dollars to have the guy at Staples “fix” it by plugging in the power cord. Things were looking up.

I love this last hour of the day, when the kids are asleep and the house is quiet, when the lights are low and the air is still and no one is asking me for anything. On an ideal day, I'd use this time for quilting. I leave my sewing machine set up in a corner of the dining room, so I can take advantage of every spare moment. But even when I have to do homework or catch up on e-mail instead of sew, being able to do so in peace and quiet is so, so nice.

I bit the point off the pizza slice and logged in to my e-mail, sipping ginger ale while I waited for the program to open. By the time I finished deleting the spam, links to blogs I don't have time to read, and ads for things I can't afford to buy, there wasn't too much left to deal with. Donna Walsh wanted to discuss bringing in another intern to take Judith's place; I told her I'd call her in the morning. Philippa was looking for volunteers to help out with Vacation Bible School in July; I said I would bake cookies and help decorate. Margot's e-mail, with the subject line “National Girlfriend Appreciation Day,” contained a poem celebrating the importance of girlfriends and instructed me to forward the message to the special women in my life, including the one who sent it to me. I did return it to Margot, with “Xs” and “Os” for kisses and hugs, but didn't forward it to anyone else. Not so much because I don't do forwards (though I don't) but because I knew that Margot would already have sent it to Evelyn, Abigail, Tessa, Madelyn, Virginia, and Philippa. We are one another's special women. I don't need a poem to remind me of that, but sometimes it's nice to get one just the same.

I didn't recognize the address on the last e-mail, so I deleted it without opening it, thinking it was just more spam. I hovered the cursor above the red button in the upper left corner, ready to click it and shut down the program, but something stopped me.

Sheila Fenton . . . Whom did I know named Sheila Fenton? A customer from the shop? Somebody I'd met at church? Or at the Stanton Center? Nothing concrete came to mind, but the name sounded familiar.

I took another drink of ginger ale, clicked on the trash folder, opened the message, and started to read.

My fingers went slack, and the glass I was holding slipped and fell onto the wooden floor in a collage of ice, broken glass, and ginger-colored fizz. But I didn't notice any of that, not until I got out of the chair and stepped on a shard of glass, drawing blood, turning the bubbles pink.

Until that moment, none of it seemed quite real; I was hoping that I'd fallen asleep in my chair, was having a bad dream, and would wake up soon. But I hadn't, and I didn't. The stabbing pain in my foot, the pounding of my heart, the pink bubbles, testified to the truth.

Hodge was getting out of prison and coming to New Bern. He wanted to see Bethany and Bobby, to be reunited with them. And, according to Sheila Fenton and the state of Connecticut, he could. And there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

P
ouring rain and an overturned tractor-trailer on I-95 added hours to my trip. When I finally did arrive at the cottage, I almost ran over Drew Kelleher.

He was walking down the dark driveway wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt. I didn't see him until the last second. Thank heaven my brakes are good.

When the car lurched to a stop, Drew, who didn't seem to realize how close I'd come to hitting him, just waved and walked up to the car.

“Hey, Mrs. Oliver,” he said when I rolled down the window.

“Drew?” Truthfully, I wasn't 100 percent sure.

If anything is wrong at the house, Drew sends me a text, but I'd seen him in person only once, on that weekend he helped stack the wood and Brian offered him sixty dollars a month to keep an eye on the house. He'd been a skinny kid of fourteen then. Now he was seventeen, a foot taller, and twenty pounds heavier, with muscled shoulders and the beginnings of a beard.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Checking on the house.”

“In this weather? You could have waited until tomorrow. Hop in. I'll give you a ride home. You're going to catch pneumonia out here.”

I shook my head as he loped around the car to the passenger door, wondering why he hadn't worn something warmer and more waterproof than a black hoodie.

“I was just about to text you,” he said, pushing the sodden fleece hood from his head. “The furnace is out.”

“Seriously?” Apparently, Brian's prophecy had proven correct. “Great timing. Oh, well. I can start a fire. It's not that cold.” I pulled onto the grass and made a U-turn.

“I carried some extra wood from the pile to the porch, just in case you showed up. Do you want me to ask my dad to come take a look at the furnace?”

He'd brought in extra wood? Even though we hadn't been here since Christmas? What a nice kid.

“Don't worry. I'll call a repairman tomorrow. Drew, I almost didn't recognize you. I bet you've grown a foot since I last saw you. What are you, six-two?”

“Six-three-and-half.” He smiled, proud of his height. “Dad is always griping about how much I eat.”

“I bet. You're a junior now, right? Have you decided where you want to go to college?”

He shrugged. “Maybe UConn, but I haven't really—Wait! Turn here!” he exclaimed, pointing to the right. I pulled up in front of a white cape-style house with green shutters. Drew thanked me for the ride.

“Hey, I'm going to be up here for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, so you won't need to come by for a while.”

His face fell. “Oh. Okay, sure. Let me know when you need me again.”

“Drew, I'm going to pay you anyway.”

He shook his head. “I can't let you do that, Mrs. Oliver. Not if I'm not doing any work for you.”

“Of course you can. We have a deal. Don't!” I said, holding up my hand to stave off his protest. “I'm paying you like I always do. It's called a retainer—a payment that someone makes so you'll reserve your time for them. Whether they use the time or not is their problem. That's how people pay me, and that's how I'm paying you, so no arguments, all right? By the way, ‘retainer' is an SAT word. Memorize it.”

He smiled, but I could tell that he still wasn't comfortable with being paid for work he hadn't performed.

“Well, if you need anything while you're here, Mrs. Oliver, just let me know. You're low on kindling. I can chop some for you if you want.”

“I'll be fine.”

He opened the car door. “Oh, Mrs. Oliver, one more thing. The Christmas tree is still up in the living room. I was going to take it down, but I didn't know if maybe you still wanted it?” He raised his shoulders questioningly, making it clear that, had it been him, he'd have removed the tree, but on the other hand, you never could tell what crazy stuff people from the city might do.

“Great,” I sighed. “I asked Brian to throw it out before we left, but I guess he must have forgotten. That's okay. I can do it.”

He pulled his wet hoodie back over his head and got out, then turned around and stooped down, peering at me through the open door with a concerned look.

“Mrs. Oliver, are you okay? You look kind of . . . Well . . . is anything wrong?”

My throat tightened. “I've had a cold. It's been going around. But I'm getting better. I'm fine.”

“Okay. Well, if you need anything . . .”

“Good night, Drew.”

 

The cottage was like an icebox. Drew was right: The iron dinosaur in the cellar must have finally given up the ghost. I searched through the closet and found my ski parka, then snapped on the lights in the kitchen.

The mice were back. They'd left little calling cards on the countertops. Disgusting. I wouldn't be able to prepare a thing in the kitchen until I bleached and scrubbed every surface. But cooking was the last thing on my mind; food would have choked me.

When I went into the living room, I found the Christmas tree, still in a stand in the corner, circled by a little moat of dropped needles, so brown and bare it was nearly skeletal, with one lonely, overlooked glass bulb clinging bravely to a naked branch. The very last thing I'd asked Brian to do when we left at the holidays was to toss the tree out. Maybe he hadn't been listening. Maybe he had other things on his mind.

When I got down on the floor and unscrewed the bolts from the stand, the tree toppled sideways onto the floor, losing the last of its needles and smashing the glass bulb into silver-green shards. I opened the back door and tossed the tree skeleton outside, then grabbed a broom and swept up the mess.

The exercise did nothing to warm me. If anything, the house seemed colder than when I'd first arrived. I brought in a load of wood from the back porch and, tossing in a few handfuls of dried Christmas tree needles for tinder, started a fire in the fireplace.

I was exhausted, but my head was too full for sleep. I dug through a kitchen cabinet and found an unopened bottle of scotch, a Christmas gift from our insurance agent, and poured a little into a glass. The unfamiliar taste was harsh and initially unpleasant. It burned my throat but warmed and loosened my limbs, and after a minute, I found the sensation soothing.

I filled the glass to the top, carried it into the living room, settled myself into a chair in front of the fireplace, and started to cry again. I stayed there the rest of the night, draining the glass and refilling it twice more, sobbing until I was as used up as the discarded tree skeleton, now so stripped of color and dried out that it was hard to remember how splendid, fresh, and fine it had been when we found it and brought it home, the way Brian and I had been once upon a time.

I was only nineteen when we'd met, little more than a child. But from the moment I laid eyes on him, I had loved him. I couldn't help myself.

 

Three days after my eighteenth birthday, I received a letter informing me that I'd been granted admission to Princeton University. I was thrilled. So were my parents. Why wouldn't we be? I was a poor girl from a lower-middle-class background, the first of my family to be admitted to college. And not just any college, but Princeton! One of the most elite universities in the country, the college that my parents had dreamed of sending me to since forever, though I'm still not sure why. Whatever the reason, my father tacked a Princeton Tigers pennant to my bedroom wall before I was even born, and for the next eighteen years, there it stayed, reminding me of what was expected of me, goading me to work harder, do better, be worthy of the sacrifices my parents had made for me.

The arrival of that fat envelope marked the culmination of all their hopes, and mine as well. I wanted to go to Princeton—of course I did. How could I not? I'd never considered any other avenue; I never knew there
were
any. But within weeks of my arrival on campus, it was clear that I was not born to be a Tiger.

For one thing, I was quickly acquainted with the fact that I was not nearly as special or academically gifted as I had been led to believe. Sure, I'd been on the top of the ladder at my high school, but at Princeton, I was average at best, as my first-semester grade point confirmed. This isn't an uncommon experience among college freshmen; I've talked a number of my former clients through the shock of discovering just how small a fish they are when suddenly dropped into a bigger pond. My discontent ran deeper than that. I just didn't fit in at Princeton.

Many, though far from all, of my classmates were a lot wealthier than me, but the gulf that separated us was more than economic. They were miles more sophisticated than I was, better read and better traveled. I'd never been farther from home than the Jersey shore, and though I'd read Shakespeare's plays in their entirety and written that drama column for our school paper, my experience with professional theater was limited to two trips to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall at Christmas.

Realizing how limited my life experience was in comparison to everyone else's, I was tongue-tied in the classroom and socially awkward. My clothes, my unfashionably frizzy hair, even my vocabulary was out of place at Princeton. The only friend I had was my roommate, Lanie Micelli, a pert, pretty, and driven girl, the daughter of a trucking magnate from Chicago. Lanie's freshman GPA was just as low as mine was, and she fell in and out of love nearly every week, but she knew how to get on in life.

Lanie took me under her wing. She lent me clothes, made me read
Cosmopolitan
magazine, taught me to smoke, tried to chemically straighten my hair—a well-intentioned act with disastrous results—and introduced me to a string of her cast-off boyfriends, with similarly disastrous results. Finally, Lanie came to the conclusion that what I needed was broadening and a change of atmosphere.

“Do a summer semester in London,” she counseled. “Smoke some pot, visit some clubs, sleep with the bass player in a punk band. If you have time, maybe tour a few museums and see a play in the East End. You know what your problem is, Gayla?”

“You mean besides having bad hair?”

“See? That's what I'm talking about. You're too damned serious. Quit thinking so hard! Go to Europe and do something your parents would disapprove of. You'll be a new woman when you come back; I promise.”

I was too scared to smoke pot, but I did rip the knees out of a pair of perfectly good jeans, stick a bunch of safety pins on my jacket, and go to some clubs, only to discover that punk music was dead, or at least in remission, and much too angry for my taste. Following a tip from a girl at Marks & Spencer who sold me a tube of pink glitter lip gloss, I found a little club that hosted bands that were less screeching.

Warrior Poets played the kind of music that wouldn't be out of place among today's current crop of singer-songwriters, with thoughtful lyrics and hummable guitar interludes, played acoustically. The band was just okay, but the bass player was divine.

Brian kept his eyes closed during almost every song, like he wasn't playing for anybody but himself. I couldn't stop myself from staring at him. His hair was long then and flopped down over his brows when he bent his head forward. His jeans were ripped at the knees, not because he'd torn them but because he'd didn't care about clothes. He didn't have to. Then, as now, everything he put on his tall, lean body looked absolutely fabulous. His fingers were long and slender, like mine. He pressed and strummed and stroked them along the strings and neck of his guitar with a delicacy and skill I found swooningly sensual.

By the third set, he must have felt me staring at him because he kept opening his eyes in the middle of songs, looking up at me, even fumbling a chord once, drawing a scathing glance from the lead singer. At the end of the night, he came to my table and offered to buy me a beer. Of course, I was already totally enamored, but the second Brian opened his mouth, it was all over for me. Few nineteen-year-old girls can resist a gorgeous musician, but a gorgeous musician with a British accent? Forget about it.

When the club closed, we found a restaurant that served bacon and eggs all night and told each other the stories of our lives. Brian's was much more interesting than mine. He was twenty-one years old, the second son of a distinguished family. I don't think he intended to tell me that part, because the minute it came out, he turned red and started fiddling with his silverware.

“It's not a big deal,” he said.

“It sounds kind of glamorous to me.”

Brian shook his head. “Three hundred years ago, maybe. Now ‘viscount' is just a title. Comes with no lands or rights but plenty of responsibilities. Well, not responsibilities as much as pressures.”

“Such as?”

“To look more important than you are and maintain a lifestyle you really can't afford, like keeping a big, drafty, impractical house that's been in the family since the reign of George the Fourth, or sending your sons to Harrow because that's where we've always gone, that kind of thing. Keeping up appearances. It's ridiculous. My brother, James, will inherit it all someday—title, house, and headaches.”

“And that doesn't bother you?”

“Not a bit. I'm free to do and be whatever I want. Of course, my parents don't agree. When I told my father I was dropping out of university to compose and play music, he almost had a heart attack.”

“You mean you
wrote
those songs?”

He dipped his head forward. His sleek chestnut hair flopped over his brow.

“Most of them.” He smiled. “The good ones.”

“Even the one about the phone booth? Wow! That was my favorite. That's so cool! I never knew anyone who made their living writing songs.”

“Well,” he said with a shrug, “I haven't actually sold any. Not yet. But I own all the songs. And if we ever make it big . . .”