Smart Women (26 page)

“Oh, it was really snowing and Daddy decided it would be better for all of us to be together since he’s the only one with a four-wheel drive, in case of an emergency . . . you know . . .”

“Where’s Lucy?”

“Lucy’s here, with me.”

“Don’t let her drink out of their toilets.”

“Why not?”

“Because I said so. Where are you going to sleep?”

“I’m not sure. Upstairs on the sofabed, I think.”

“Watch out for those children, Sara. They’re drug addicts.”

“Not really, Mom.”

“Listen to me, Sara. I know. Don’t take anything they give you. Promise me that . . . promise me that you won’t take anything.”

“Okay . . . I promise.”

“Let me talk to your father now.”

“Hang on . . . I’ll get him.”

Andrew came on the line a minute later. “Hello, Francine . . . how’s your mother?”

“Why did you take Sara there? I asked you not to, didn’t I?”

“Because of the storm, but that’s not important . . . how’s your mother doing?”

“I’ll decide what’s important!”

“Look, don’t worry, everything is fine here. Lewis is trying to reach you. He asked me to have you call him as soon as you can.”

“I want to talk to Sara again.”

“Yeah, Mom?” Sara sounded annoyed this time.

“Sara, I want you to make your father take you home tomorrow. It’s not safe for you there. Do you understand?”

“Okay, Mom. I’ll try.”

“I love you, Sara.”

“And me you.”

“For how long?”

“You know . . .”

“For always and forever?” B.B. asked.

“Yes.”

“Then say it, Sara.”

“I can’t right now.”

“Why not?”

“You know.”

“Because they’re listening?”

“Something like that.”

“Are you embarrassed to have them know you love me?”

“No, Mom.”

“Then say it.”

“For always and forever,” Sara said, softly.

“For always and forever what?”

Sara didn’t respond.

“For always and forever what?” B.B. said again.

“I love you for always and forever,” Sara said quickly.

B.B. began to cry. “The flight attendant spilled hot coffee on my lap. My pants are all stained.”

“I guess you’ll have to wash them,” Sara said.

“Yes,” B.B. said, hanging up the phone. She had lost Sara too. She could feel it. Sara would be happier if she never came back.

B
.
B
. AWOKE AT DAWN
with a cramp in her foot and a kink in her neck. She had fallen asleep in the chair in the hallway outside the intensive care unit. It had been hours since she had seen her mother. But surely if there had been any change they’d have called her.

She went inside. Her mother was still asleep, or whatever it was that looked like sleep. B.B. sat beside her, looking down at her, feeling an intense anger building up. “Damn it, Mother! I was such a good girl. I always tried so hard to please you. I never did anything wrong, did I? Never got into trouble like other kids. Never let the boys touch me. I did everything right and now look! Look at what a mess I’m in. How come? I mean what’s the point in being a good girl if this is what you get for it? My son is dead. My daughter doesn’t care about me anymore. My husband’s living with another woman, right under my nose. My whole life is such a disappointment. Why didn’t you tell me what to expect? Why did you lie to me, saying I had everything? I expected to be happy and now I can’t remember what being happy feels like. I haven’t felt happy since Daddy died.”

She turned the gold bracelet she was wearing around and around on her wrist. “Did he really die in that girl’s bed, Mother, or was that just some story you invented because you were playing around with Uncle Morris? I remember that time I walked in on the two of you and your blouse was unbuttoned, but you just laughed and said that Uncle Morris was tickling you. I believed you, Mother . . . I believed you because Uncle Morris liked to tickle me too. Did you know that? Did you know that he felt me up on my wedding day? That he said he’d like to shtup me himself . . .

“You told me when things get unpleasant I should just put them out of my mind and then I wouldn’t feel unhappy or angry. Why did you tell me that?” She grabbed her mother by the shoulders, “Why are you just lying there like that? Why won’t you answer me? Why am I being punished this way?” She shook her mother and shouted, “Why did you have to go and have a stroke? Haven’t I had enough . . . haven’t I?”

“Now, now . . .” a nurse said, restraining her. She led B.B. out of the intensive care unit. “We must pull ourselves together, dear. At a time like this it’s important to . . .”

“Fuck off!” B.B. yelled, wriggling free.

“We’re going to have to be quiet,” the nurse said, “or we’re going to have to leave.”

“Don’t talk to me as if I’m a three-year-old.” B.B. turned and ran down the corridor to the emergency exit, then through the parking lot until she came to her rental car. She had to think, had to clear her head. She drove off, as the sky turned from black to gray. She drove for ten minutes, for twenty, for forty, until she came to the cemetery. She parked the car, leaving the door on the driver’s side open, and ran past row after row of grave sites.
Turn right . . . turn left . . . across the hill, beyond the trees . . .
until she came to a small grave, covered with ivy. In the early morning light she looked down at the simple gray headstone with block letters carved into it.

R
OBERT
A
LLAN
B
RODER

1964–1974

BELOVED SON OF ANDREW AND FRANCINE

BELOVED BROTHER OF SARA

REST IN PEACE

She lay down on the ivy and wept.

S
HE DID NOT KNOW
how much time had passed when a caretaker, young and black, kneeled beside her, tapping her shoulder. “You all right, lady?”

“Yes,” she said, standing up.

“You all wet.”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. She had not been aware of the rain until then.

“You gonna catch cold, you not careful.”

She walked away, her feet squishing in the soft ground. She walked back to the rental car. The seat was wet. She turned on the ignition, but she did not know how to turn on the windshield wipers. It didn’t matter. She drove away. She drove across the Causeway. Just a flick of the wheel, she thought, just a flick would send the car jumping off the bridge, into the black water below.

part three

30

M
ARGO HAD
pale, putty-colored paint in her hair. When school had been cancelled that morning because of the heavy snowfall, she had decided to stay at home and finish up the trim in the new room. It was a beautiful room, light and spacious, with two skylights, a window wall facing south, rough wood walls, and brick floors. Even she was surprised that they had been able to turn the garage into this handsome space in just four weeks. They had done the work themselves, with some help from a carpenter who owed Margo a favor. Andrew had worked full time, Margo had worked weekends and evenings, and Stuart and two of his friends, after lengthy negotiations over hourly wages, had worked after school each day. Even Michelle had participated, helping to set the brick floor in sand, and then applying eight coats of glossy sealer to it.

It had become clear to Margo when Sara stayed overnight for the first time, in January, that they did not have enough space in the house for a visiting third child. She had been thinking of converting the garage for a long time anyway, at first as a studio for herself, then, after Andrew moved in, as a hideaway for the two of them. But after Michelle’s indignation over Sara having spent the night in
her
room, without
her
permission, Margo knew that what they needed most was a room that could serve as a kid’s bedroom now and someday double as a workspace for her and Andrew.

“You’re not going to give this room to the Brat, are you?” Michelle asked, as she and Margo were painting the trim around the windows.

Margo had anticipated that question and was surprised it had taken so long to come. “No, I think it should be Stuart’s for the rest of this year and then, when he goes off to college, it should be yours. We’ll give Stuart’s old room to Sara so that when she comes over she’ll have a place to sleep.”

“All this trouble for one weekend a month?” Michelle asked.

“Andrew is hoping she’ll come more often once she has her own space. And this will give all of us more privacy.”

“So you’re saying that next year this room will be all mine?”

“Yes . . . if you want it.”

“What about when Stuart comes home from college?”

“I guess he can have your old room.”

“I think he’d rather have
his
old room.”

“Well, we could certainly arrange that.”

“But that would mean the Brat would wind up with my old room.”

“I think we shouldn’t worry about this now.”

“Don’t you ever think things through, Mother?”

“Some things.”

“I like to think things through totally,” Michelle said. “I like to know what’s going to happen next.”

“No one can know exactly what’s going to happen.”

“I like to try.”

“You have to bend a little, Michelle. Otherwise life gets to be unbearably hard.”

Michelle turned away. “Who paid for this room anyway?”

Margo felt herself stiffen. She was not comfortable discussing the financial arrangements between her and Andrew and she did not know why. “Andrew and I split the cost fifty-fifty.”

“Does that mean that part of the house is his now?”

“No, but if I decided to sell I’d pay back his share.”

“Suppose you get married . . . what happens then?”

“We haven’t discussed it.”

“Do you think you will . . . get married?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter to you?”

“I wouldn’t mind . . . then I wouldn’t have to worry so much.”

“Honey, it’s my life . . . you don’t have to worry about it.”

“I do have to worry, Mother. Suppose next year you come home with someone else and I don’t like him at all?”

“It’s unlikely that I’ll be coming home with someone else next year.”

“But you can’t guarantee that, can you?”

“No, but things are working very well between Andrew and me. You can see that, can’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s only been a couple of months.”

“The first months are the hardest,” Margo said.

“Not according to this book I read about
affairs.
It said that
affairs
last three to six months and then
poof,
the magic is gone.”

“Well, since it’s the end of February, it’s already been six months and the magic is still intact.”

Michelle gave her a long look, then said, “I’m going out to build a snowman.”

Margo sighed and went upstairs to the kitchen. She put the kettle on and grabbed a wedge of Gouda. One minute Michelle seemed to be an old woman, taking on the worries of the world, the next, she was a child, building a snowman. Margo found the child easier to understand.

“
I
T’S FABULOUS!”
Clare said, a few hours later, as she stood in the middle of the new room. She had stopped off at Margo’s on her way back from driving B.B. to the airport to catch a plane to Miami. B.B. had called Andrew early that morning to tell him her mother had had a stroke and to ask him to look after Sara while she was away.

“I’d take it for myself if I were you,” Clare said. “It’s so much roomier than your bedroom.”

“I know,” Margo said, “but we don’t want to give up the bathroom or the hot tub.”

“I guess I wouldn’t either. Especially the hot tub. I wouldn’t mind a soak right now. It’s been a long day.”

Margo checked her watch. “Good idea.”

Clare sprawled out on Margo’s bed while Margo stepped outside to get the hot tub going. When she came back inside she closed the sliding glass doors and leaned back against them, blowing on her hands. “It’s cold out there.”