Kindred Spirits (18 page)

On rainy autumn Sundays like this, she and Jeff would make a big pot of chili, much of which they’d freeze and eat as leftovers throughout the month. This wasn’t just any old chili. This was the works. Chicken, beef, pork sausage mixed with sautéed chopped onions, garlic, chili powder and cumin, mustard, high quality tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, two kinds of beans, black olives, red pepper flakes, and (her secret) a handful of fresh dill.

A football game would be playing in the background and Jeff, puttering around the house fixing this or that, would stop by the TV to shout at Bill Belichick while the kids did their homework in the living room or upstairs. If it were cold, too, he’d build a fire in the fireplace and she’d make both cornbread and an apple pie along with a crunchy, tart salad.

Then they’d eat early and watch
The Simpsons
or maybe a movie. Sometimes Carol read
The New York Times Magazine
in the bath and then climbed into clean sheets, snuggling up to Jeff and listening to the rain beat against the windows, the cold wind whipping across the lake. There was delicious comfort in being assured that her family was under that same roof, safe and warm, as the elements battled outside.

She never fully appreciated the quiet joy of domesticity. Before, it had always seemed so claustrophobic, which was why she’d find herself awake a few hours later, roaming the house, an inner restlessness making it impossible for her to sleep through the night.

They loaded their bags into the Highlander and Carol climbed into the back, adjusted her safety belt, her cell phone, BlackBerry, and legal pad, checked her pens. Then she booted the computer on her lap and opened the file for the memorandum of law she was working on. Usually, after a few minutes of switching gears, she could delve right into work. Not this morning. This morning she was recovering from her martinis and Amanda’s call and the dream of Jeff’s skin against hers.

Mary Kay started the car and they headed out for their second day on the road.

Somewhere on I-80, about an hour into their trip, Beth put down the sock she was knitting and asked, “Aren’t you curious about what Lynne’s daughter looks like?”

Mary Kay and Carol were kind of stunned that they hadn’t already asked themselves this question.

“She could be anyone we’ve come across,” Beth said. “We might have walked right past her in the mall when we went shopping yesterday. She could have been at the McDonald’s where we changed to meet Aunt Therese.”

“I hope not,” Mary Kay said. “That was a pretty scuzzy Mickey D’s.”

Beth giggled. She was unusually chipper this morning.

“What’s gotten into you?” Mary Kay asked, amused.

“I can’t help it. I know I should be dragging my red wagon, but I’m so. . . giddy. Is that wrong?”

“Why would it be wrong?”

“Because Lynne’s gone, and I don’t know”—she shrugged—“I’ve stopped feeling sad. Instead, I feel kind of liberated.”

“Liberated?” Mary Kay cocked her head. “Because Lynne’s dead?”

“Not
because
Lynne’s dead. Certainly not. It’s more like . . .” Beth tried to phrase this the right way. “You know how you always say you’ll do something, something big like writing a book or moving to another country, but then little problems tie you down?”

“What kind of little problems?” Carol asked from the backseat, where she was searching case law and paying only half attention.

Beth turned slightly, thinking. “Oh, like how Marc can’t work on his book full-time the way he wants because we need his paycheck. We can’t move because of my parents. That’s what I mean by getting bogged down.”

“With all due respect, in the category of worries, those don’t sound so little,” Mary Kay said.

“They are when you think about Lynne and how there was so much left for her to do with her life, finessing her art and, of course, finding Julia. Then she got cancer and—zip—that was that.”

Mary Kay and Carol couldn’t argue with Beth’s logic.

“So, that’s what I mean about feeling liberated. Last night, remembering how we were at the Cape, I realized there’s no value in holding back. Every once in a while, you gotta let go.”

Carol saved her place in the memorandum, unable to take one more soporific paragraph of arguments. “And where would you go, Mrs. Levinson?”

“Italy.”

“Italy?”
they chimed.

“I’ve never been. I’ve always wanted to go to Amalfi.”

“Amalfi’s easy enough,” Mary Kay said. “Just buy a ticket and go. Where else?”

Beth reddened slightly, embarrassed to be embarrassed by an insecurity that had plagued her since high school. “It’s not so much
where
I’d go as
what
I’d do. Like get a makeover. Nothing too radical,” she added quickly, grabbing a hank of her hair. “Just a new haircut and some highlights so I’m not so . . . drab. Lynne was always after me to spruce myself up. She claimed it would, you know, boost my confidence.” Beth punctuated this with a slight laugh.

“To feel good you’ve got to look good, is that it?” Carol asked, trying to keep a straight face.

“Exactly.” Beth dropped her hair. “What do you think, MK?”

“I think Lynne would be pleased as punch that somehow her death finally convinced you to head off to sunny Italy and get a makeover, not necessarily in that order.”

“Let’s make sure that when this trip is over, you do just that, get a makeover,” Carol said. “The whole kit and kaboodle.”

“The whole kit and kaboodle sounds expensive,” Beth said.

Mary Kay dismissed this with the flick of the left blinker. “No sweat. It’ll be our treat, our way of paying you back for driving your car all over hell’s half acre.”

“No, you guys have done enough already. You bought all the food and drink last night, Mary Kay, and, Carol, you got me the running gear and one of you paid for that hotel room. I’m no Blanche DuBois, relying on the kindness of strangers.”

“Are you calling us strangers?” Carol asked, searching her iPhone for spas around Marshfield, thinking the coolest thing would be to invite Beth to New York and surprise her with a trip to the Frédéric Fekkai Salon on Fifth Avenue.

“I’m just saying I’m not a moocher.”

Mary Kay reached over and pinched Beth’s cheek. “You’re not a moocher, you’re a
smoocher
.”

“You’re a hootchie-coocher,” Carol added.

Beth leaned her head against the window in defeat. “You two are impossible.” Though, secretly, she was smiling with delight.

It was a shame they couldn’t do the makeover right away, but today they had to rush across this humongous expanse that was Pennsylvania in order to catch Lynne’s mother at the nursing home.

They hadn’t exactly been looking forward to breaking the news to Eunice before. But after hearing Therese’s tragic story about how Lynne had been Eunice’s miracle baby, they were dreading this meeting even more.

Beth reached into her purse and pulled out the letter that Lynne had written to her mother. “I can’t tell you how tempted I am to read this. If there were a hot kettle here, I’d steam it open.”

“I know. I’m dying to know what it says,” Carol added.

“What if Lynne lashes out at Eunice and calls her every name in the book?”

“That doesn’t sound like Lynne’s style,” Carol said. “And if the letter is nasty—which I doubt—we’ll be there for her.”

“Look, this is what we’ll do,” Mary Kay said. “We’ll calmly introduce ourselves and tell Eunice what happened. Maybe we should mention that Lynne had always spoken about her in loving terms. . ..”

“But!” Beth interrupted. “She never—”

“I know. But sometimes a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, you know? Would it hurt to say that Lynne loved her? She did, deep down.”

Beth dumped her knitting in a plastic Ziploc bag and pulled the blue zipper tight. “You’re right. Sometimes it’s OK to lie.”

Sometimes,
Mary Kay thought, trying not to obsess too much over her own lying to Drake.
But rarely.

Outside Lynne’s hometown of Calais, they stopped for gas and to go to the bathroom and freshen up before heading down to the Beckwood Landing Assisted Living Center. There was no other option besides JJ’s Brew ‘N’ Burn, a truck stop with tractor trailers lined up spewing diesel fumes.

“The last time we were at a truck stop together,” Mary Kay said as she and Carol left Beth to pump the gas, “was on our way back from the Cape.”

It took a beat, but Carol remembered, bursting out in laughter. “And we accidentally went into the men’s room.”

Mary Kay opened the heavy glass doors for two truckers. “It wasn’t our fault. The men’s room wasn’t even marked. At least, not very well.”

“What I can’t get over is that you, me, and Lynne got as far as the stalls before we realized something was off. Lynne asked, ‘Since when do women’s rooms have urinals?’ And I remember wondering if that was some liberal Massachusetts law, coed bathrooms.”

“Until that guy at the sink said, ‘I think you ladies meant to take a left instead of a right. Not that I’m complaining.’ ” Mary Kay shook her head. “If a guy had done that in a women’s room, could you imagine?”

“We’d call the cops!”

While Mary Kay and Carol went to the bathroom, Beth took the opportunity to call Marc. She didn’t like to interrupt him while he was writing, but all that talk about Amalfi had made her homesick.

“Well, hello!” Marc said, delighted. “And how are we feeling this fine morning?”

She glanced at the phone suspiciously. What was up with him? “Fine. Why?”

“Oh, no reason.”

“I called to say I love you.”

“I know.”

“You do?” She eyed the pump as the numbers flipped upward: $12.46, $13.10. The price of gas was out of control.

“Yes. You said so last night over and over and over again. Marc, I love you
sooooo
much.”

Oh! She cringed, completely forgetting that she’d drunk-dialed him after a few too many lemon martinis. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was adorable.”

“But drunk-dialing? It spells pathetic loser.”

“No, it doesn’t. I haven’t heard you that gleeful in weeks.”

“I didn’t have that much to drink, actually. It’s that I went for a run with Carol and I was a little dehydrated.”

“A run, you say?”

Beth could picture him sitting with his legs up on the dining-room table, the laptop open before him, drinking a cup of coffee and loving this. “That’s right, wiseguy. A run. Carol took me three miles, and you know what? It wasn’t that bad. Think I might do it again tonight. Also, what would you say if I colored my hair? Nothing wild, just some highlights.”

“No matter what you do, you’ll be beautiful to me.”

Somewhere along the way someone must have handed Marc the magic guidebook for how husbands should respond to their wives.

“Listen, I’m glad you called. I just got off the phone with your sister jabbering a mile a minute about Chat’s test results tomorrow.”

Right. Maddy had called last night during their impromptu party, but Beth hadn’t heard the phone so she’d left a message on voice mail.

“I told her that I’d go with your parents to his appointment tomorrow, but apparently that’s not enough. She says she needs to talk to you ASAP.”

“I’ll call her as soon as I get off the phone. How is Dad, by the way? Have you heard anything?”

“All I heard was that he went out for nine holes of golf yesterday and shot two under par.”

Beth smiled. That was her father, all right. No clucking hens like her mother or sister would keep him off the links on a sunny autumn day. “Trying to squeeze in what he can before the snow falls.”

“You got that right. And Beth?”

The pump turned off, but she cocked the nozzle to deposit the final drops, as she’d learned in her penny-pinching research. “Yeah?”

“Come home safely, OK? It’s been disturbingly quiet without you around.”

“Promise.” She hung up the nozzle, got her receipt, and called her sister. “Finally!” Maddy exclaimed. “I called over and over last night. Where were you?”

“In our hotel in Pennsylvania.” Beth caught her reflection in the gas pump. The long hair wrapped in a messy bun, the old turtleneck and cardigan. No makeup. With this level of frump, she was giving librarians a bad name. “I must not have heard the phone, what with the music turned up full blast.”

“Music! I thought this was supposed to be some sort of dharma trip.”

Maddy could get herself so worked up over nothing. “It’s not a dharma trip. It’s a trip to fulfill Lynne’s last wishes, and Lynne wouldn’t have minded if we cranked a few tunes and drank a couple of martinis in her memory.”

“If you ask me, that sounds like just another girls’ night on the town.”

“Trust me, Mahoken’s not much of a town. Is everything OK? We’re about to get back on the road.”

“Everything’s fine. I’m just worried about Dad’s appointment tomorrow. I got absolutely no sleep last night worrying that he’ll get the results and he’ll need some kind of procedure. I know you and I have gone over and over this, but I just don’t feel right about him staying at Grace when the finest heart surgeons in the world are only a commute away.”