The Life You've Imagined (12 page)

At this my mother grins, and I stand up to offer Sally my chair. I tell them I’m going to take my sandwich into the lounge to eat it, and Beck follows me out. We settle on opposite sides of a round fake wood-grain table.

Do you have to cross-examine me?
Mom said, sounding so much like Marc. I’d blown up at him for throwing out terms he’d learned watching
Boston Legal
just to undermine me.

Marc followed that up with this gem: “Can’t you drop the lawyer thing for one second so we can have a real conversation?” and I’d said, “What lawyer thing? This is me, take it or leave it.”

“No way, there’s a real person in there, a real girl who can feel something.”

“Feel what,” I asked him, “What am I supposed to be feeling, and how is my job somehow an impediment to that?”

“Who uses words like
impediment
in everyday conversation?”

“Stop changing the subject,” I said.

“I want to talk to you about having a family and all you can do is respond with arguments and logic, and your career . . .”

“And now we get to the point,” I told him. “My career that you seem to find so threatening.”

“Can’t you just have some feelings, for God’s sake?”

And so I gave him feelings. I screamed at him for all I was worth about my feelings. And the next day I came home to find his set of keys on my front table and the closet half empty.

Beck says, “Are you in there?”

“I guess.”

“What’s wrong?”

I shrug. “What isn’t wrong? Mom’s getting evicted, she could have had a stroke, my dad . . . Forget it. I better eat something or they’ll have to pull up a bed for me next to Mom.”

The sandwich tastes like dust, but I force myself to chew every bite, appreciating Beck for his respectful silence.

Chapter 17

Maeve

S
ince I’m banned from working, I might as well take advantage of the privacy.

I slip my hands into the handles of my sewing shears. Sitting on top of my bed is not the most reasonable place for a sewing project, but it’s the only space I have that’s big enough. Back in the old days, when I used to sew clothes for Anna, I’d set up a card table in the office space and duck back there during slow moments.

That’s not an option for this particular project.

Back in the old days I also would have whipped up this dress without a pattern, but it’s been a long time since I’ve done much serious sewing. The rhythmic, metallic
snip, snip
is calming, which is good for me, all in all.

The doctor had discharged me with an armload of pamphlets, including one about stress reduction. I almost laughed in his face, but he was just trying to help.

I suppose, in her way, Anna is also just trying to help, but she must have realized the last thing I need is harassment, because since the hospital she’s backed off.

My wedding ring taps my chest as I sit back for a moment and stretch. I didn’t even hesitate when I put it back on, though I made sure Anna wasn’t looking. It’s my ring and I can wear it how I like. As I sit forward to snip again, it swings briefly into my view, a glint of white gold.

Small white flowers swirl over a field of blue in the shade of a cool spring sky. It will be a shift dress, sleeveless, to the knee. It’s always been flattering on me and I can’t find them anymore. It was the style of dress I was wearing when I met Robert, in fact.

Dean Martin croons on my CD player about pillows and dreaming. I used to take so much flak for my taste in music, because all the other kids were shimmying to the waning days of disco or getting stoned listening to The Who. I didn’t like the teasing, but I didn’t change my ways, either. I wasn’t like all those other girls, and maybe that’s why Robert liked me back.

It was 1973 when we met. I used to tag along with Sean, my older cousin and the closest thing I had to a brother. Sally was hanging out in the group, too. She was quirky, and her quirky was still cute. She was eight years older than Sean and shaving years off her age even then. Her wild, kinky black hair and heavily kohled eyes were exotic and exciting to me. Sally called me “doll” and I loved being included that way in their circle of sophisticated people. I was only eighteen, still in high school.

One night in early fall I went to the drive-in. I was supposed to meet Nick, a pock-marked boy with big teeth who I’d thought was nice. I’d grabbed a ride with Sean and then wandered around the concessions and through the rows of cars trying to find Nick, getting colder and colder because I hadn’t brought a sweater.

When I finally gave up, embarrassed but not all that crushed that Nick hadn’t shown up, I wandered back to Sean’s car. No one was paying any attention to
American Graffiti
, and in fact no one was in the car at all. Sally was passing around a flask.

Robert saw me approach first and said, “Well, look here, a fair Irish lass.”

His voice was rich in a way that set him apart from the other boys. Not deep, exactly, but warm and resonant. He had a shock of dark, dark hair, and in the faint light from the movie screen and the moon, his smile made my stomach shiver.

I looked at my shoes and rubbed my bare arms with my hands.

“Hey, you’re cold,” he said, draping his jacket around my shoulders like a cape.

“Won’t you be cold?” I asked him. I could see goose bumps on his arms where his short-sleeved shirt ended.

“Nah.” He winked at me. “Not a bit.”

He drove me home himself that night and walked me to the door, so I wouldn’t have to spend one cold moment without his jacket. He stood on the porch while I let myself in, smiling at me but doing no more than that. I was just a kid, after all.

I had to lean on the door to catch my breath.

Of course, Robert understood the effect he had on me. He was a savvy twenty-two years old by then. I was just a teenager and experience-wise barely out of puberty. And I thought I was playing it cool! I was a puddle every time I saw him.

We saw each other at the drive-in, the bowling alley, the pizza place. Always in a group, always with Sally or Sean or both. But then, he never brought around other girls, and at the end of the night, I always seemed to end up with his jacket.

Now that I’ve finished cutting out the front of the dress, I scoot my sewing to the side and rest back on my pillow. I close my eyes and conjure up the jacket. It smelled like him, and the crackled leather rustled slightly when I moved. I could cry now to think that I gave it away to a thrift store in a fit of pique right after he left.

After I graduated, Robert asked me out properly. I was already a goner by then, and our first real kiss nearly made me swoon, just like in my favorite romance novels.

I didn’t mean to insult Anna by telling her she’s never known love like that. I just don’t see how she possibly could. She was always so very serious, even when she was with Will Becker in high school, insisting they break up because they couldn’t possibly maintain a long distance relationship, with him at Michigan Tech way up in the frozen north and Anna at University of Michigan. I tried to talk her out of it then, to give Will a chance, because he looked so utterly wrecked when he left here that day. Anna, on the other hand, glided down the steps after he’d gone, with her hand lightly on the railing. She simply started mopping the floor.

She probably had boyfriends in Chicago, but none that she ever told me about. I’ve never seen her giddy, not since . . .

Well, not since she was ten years old.

Another memory of Robert comes to me, of him pushing her on the swings at the park and Anna shrieking, “Higher!” Her freckles sparkled in the sun and her limbs were all akimbo, and Robert was hooting and laughing and running underneath her swing.

I shake my head, stretch, and pick up my scissors again. I’d better get busy if I want this dress done by August.

Chapter 18

Cami

W
hen I see the cop come through the Nee Nance front door, the first thing I think is, he’s dead.

He asks me, “Is Mrs. Geneva present?”

So my dad’s not dead. I should be happy. Or something. “She’s resting right now, Officer. Can I help you with something?”

When I say “officer,” Anna pops out of the back office, where she’s been rummaging in papers. Her hair springs out of her head, and without her makeup in her casual clothes she looks like an overgrown twelve-year-old. She says to the cop, “I’m Anna Geneva, her daughter. What’s wrong?”

“We need to talk to your mother about an incident here a couple of days ago, with a boy and a broom.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, remembering the scrawny kid and the shoplifting.

Anna shoots me a warning look, so I sit back in the office chair and let the attorney-at-law handle this one.

“She was defending her property. She believed the boys to be stealing and she ordered them to leave and they refused to go.”

The cop folds his arms. On closer inspection he looks younger than I would expect. Then again, I’m getting older, so these people are going to start turning up younger than me. Cops, doctors, and so on. He’s got a shaving nick on his jaw and I can see a tiny piece of toilet paper stuck there. He tells Anna, “She can’t go around hitting kids with brooms. She should have called us.”

“And what, made a citizens arrest? What if they’d turned on her? They were already showing a blatant disregard for her rights as proprietor of this store. Are you going to charge her with a crime?”

“Felonious assault with a cleaning implement. Very serious,” I intone. “We’re just lucky it wasn’t a Swiffer.”

“Cami!”

I unfold from my chair. “Seeing as this officer needs to talk to your mom, why don’t I go see if she’s awake.”

As I pass between them, I stop just in front of his face. He looks overly tense, like it’s a hostage situation. So I think better of actually reaching for his face to flick off the toilet tissue. “You’ve got something stuck to your jaw,” I tell him, and proceed up the stairs.

I knock on Maeve’s door and she says she’s awake. There’s a great deal of rustling before she opens the door.

When I tell her what’s going on downstairs, her jaw falls open.

“Yeah, I know,” I tell her. “What a world. Let’s get it over with before your daughter decides to file suit against the Haven Police Department.”

“Billy Patterson!” says Maeve as she comes down the stairwell. The cop swallows hard and stares at his shiny black shoes.

Turns out Maeve has known him since he was a kindergartner and used to stop in with his mom to buy a Snickers bar when they ran errands downtown. Billy, rather, Officer Patterson, is visibly relieved when Maeve shows him the offending broom. He’d thought it was a heavy shop-floor-type broom, something that could have done some damage.

He has to write up a report, he says, since the kid’s mom complained, but he felt pretty sure the prosecutor wouldn’t be bothered.

Anna shoos her mother back upstairs, and with Officer Billy safely down the street, Anna picks up a pencil and begins to twirl it in her hand.

“I cannot believe she hit that kid. She could still get sued. I read his notebook upside down; the kid was only twelve.”

“Take it easy, yeah? The little hoodlums were stealing from her.”

“I know, I know. I just . . .” Anna squints at me, then glances over her shoulder, checking for customers. We’re alone at the moment. She leans in closer, dropping her voice low. “Her decision making lately hasn’t been stellar. She’s not thinking clearly and I’m worried.”

“She didn’t decide to get high blood pressure, and she was worried about the cost of the drugs . . .”

“That’s not what I mean.” Anna looks down, working her jaw, and I think she’s working up to tell me something.

The bells on the front door clang and a couple of customers straggle in, one after the other. Anna holds my gaze for a moment, then sighs and returns to her papers in the office.

In a half hour, she taps me on the shoulder and we switch places. Her turn to work, just like back in school.

“I can close up for a few minutes to drive you home,” Anna says, wrapping her wild hair up in a ponytail off her face. “Wouldn’t take so long and you wouldn’t have to sit around here.”

“I’ve got nothing there to do, yeah?”

“You still painting your room?”

“Yeah, and I’m tearing up the carpet, but . . . Well, my dad usually has a
houseguest
this time of day and I’m not in the mood to run into her.”

“Ah. Charming.”

When the door opens, Anna stiffens, her hand frozen in the act of restocking cigarettes.

“Hi,” says Amy Rickart quietly, looking like she just ran over Anna’s dog with her car.

Anna doesn’t acknowledge her and goes back to her stocking. Amy nods at me briefly, then addresses herself to Anna’s back.

“Is your mom okay?”