Riggs Park (23 page)

B
y the time the moon rose high enough to brighten the darkness, Veronica Legacy had been driving nearly eleven hours and was so tense that the tips of her fingers had begun to go numb from clutching the wheel.

“I’ll drive if you’re tired, Mama,” her daughter Simpson said for the twentieth time.

For the twentieth time Veronica shook her head. She’d stopped only twice since they’d left the South Carolina coast this morning and didn’t mean to slow down now. The only way to get where you were going, she reckoned, was to plow on.

Eleven hours before, Veronica had left her husband, Guy, for the third and final time. Her first major departure, more than eighteen years ago, was one she rarely allowed herself to think about, and her second, a year later, had lasted only a week. This would be different. Permanent. The third time was the charm, she’d always believed.

“We’re leaving, honey,” she had said to Simpson just the day before. “We’re going somewhere we can settle for good.”

“What about Dad?”

“You can wait here for him if you want, but he’ll just be off again somewhere and wanting to drag you with him. The sensible thing is to come with me.”

“Where are you going?”

“To stay with Ernie Truheart,” Veronica said.

“The one who sends the Christmas cards?”

“Yes.”

“But you hardly know her. A Christmas card is not a relationship. I don’t know her at all.”

“Yes, you do. You were there with me once, but you were too little to remember.”

“What’s going on, Mama? This isn’t like you.” Simpson extended a hand as if to check Veronica’s forehead for fever.

“I’m not sick, honey.” Veronica caught her daughter’s fingers in her own and moved them away from her head. “I’m doing this to keep myself well. We can’t live like nomads all our lives. I’ve spent all the time I’m going to working in every cheap T-shirt shop in every beach town on this coast.”

“Kmart and Wal-Mart, too, Mama. You always liked Wal-Mart.”

“It’s not just the jobs. It’s the constant moves. It’s the—”

“You did it this long. You never minded before this past year.”

“Oh, I always minded.”

“And you knew after Dad stayed here in Beaufort the whole school year, he’d be ready for someplace different.”

This was just like Simpson, sounding so logical. But Veronica only shrugged because she knew it was impossible to explain to a nineteen-year-old what it was like to reach the very middle of life—thirty-eight!—with a person who insisted on wandering the countryside, never living a neat plait of life but always a wild and unruly tangle, a thousand strands blown in every direction by the slightest wind.

“All I can say, honey, is that my mind’s made up and it would break my heart if you didn’t come with me.” Veronica could see that Simpson thought she didn’t have a choice.

So at dawn this morning they’d finally locked the trunk of the Mercedes on what suddenly looked like pathetically few possessions to show for twenty-one years of marriage. Pathetically few. She hadn’t even tried to settle up with the landlord after she closed her checking account and counted the dismal balance. When you waited until age thirty-eight to get on with your life, you couldn’t let a detail like rent reduce you to poverty.

 

1. 1.
   Like many people, Barbara and Marilyn have a nostalgic view of the “old neighborhood” where they grew up. How does this change when they revisit Riggs Park many years later? Is it altered more by what they see there, or by what they learn about events that happened there when they were young?
   
 

2. 2.
   Riggs Park
   is a novel about women’s friendships, and particularly about the lifelong bond between Marilyn and Barbara, as well as their early friendship with Penny. Was each one always the kind of friend she wanted to be to the others? What are some of the sacrifices they made for each other? Were there times when they could have done better?
   
 

3. 3.
   Essie Berman makes many decisions that affect the lives of the children in Riggs Park well into adulthood. Are they wise ones? Should she have done some things differently?
   
 

4. 4.
   In what ways is the Jewish concept of
   Tikkun Olam
   —fix the world—important to Barbara’s not-very-religious parents and later to Barbara and Marilyn themselves? Are they serious about “fixing the world,” or just conveniently adapting the idea to fit their lives?
   
 

5. 5.
   As a result of their experiences and life lessons, some people “mellow” as they grow older, while others grow bitter. How would you characterize the changes in Marilyn and Barbara and Jon—first, over the years of their lives, and second, as a result of what happens during the months of the story?
   

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