The Life You've Imagined (20 page)

Oh, here comes Beck. By now I’ve got my mojito, and my shoulders sag with relief that I won’t have to stand so alone anymore. It’s not the aloneness that bothers me—rather, the spotlight effect it creates in a party setting. Also, people will start whispering, if they haven’t already:
Why is she still in town? Has she moved back for good? Did she lose her job?

His face brightens as he approaches, and he greets me with a hug. It catches me by surprise, so I don’t have time to move my glass out of the way; it gets squished between us. We share a chuckle over that.

“Maddie looks cute today,” I tell him, gesturing toward her. She’s now got a dandelion and she’s plopped down in the grass, blowing fluff. Paul Becker is standing nearby, one eye on her and another on some city councilman. I look away from the pair of them.

“Yeah, Sam bought her that dress.”

It’s brown, pink, and white and makes Maddie look like Neapolitan ice cream.

“Where is Sam today? I haven’t seen her.”

“Ah. Well, she wanted to go visit her parents in Indiana for the Fourth. Maddie pitched a fit about going for that long drive and wanted to stay here, so . . .”

“Oh, well. I’m sure Sam will appreciate the break.”

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

Maddie runs over to Beck, and he scoops her up in one arm. She nuzzles his shoulder and steals a shy look at me. That’s when I notice her eyes are the same sea-glass green as her father’s. I wave at her and she buries her face, then wiggles down and goes skipping off across the grass screaming, “Aunt Tabi! Aunt Tabi!”

“They change your life, don’t they?” I say.

“Do they ever.”

“Remember when we used to say we’d have five kids?”

“Three boys and two girls. You said you hated being an only child.”

I stare out over the bluff at the sun sinking toward the water. We used to have those silly conversations on this lawn all the time, sprawled over each other on the grass, Beck toying with one of my curls. We used to talk longingly over how we could walk around naked if we wanted in our own house. Such glorious privacy, the holy grail of teenage lovers.

Beck clears his throat just as I’m wondering if he’s having the same memories. “Is your . . . You hear anymore from your dad?”

I shake my head. “I’m not the one who heard from him in the first place, but no, I don’t think so. I haven’t seen any more letters, and Mom did promise. I’m so furious with him for toying with her like that.” I grip my drink harder and take a long, cool sip. “If I could get my hands on him . . .”

“You probably could. Get your hands on him, I mean. Your mom knows where he is, right?”

“Where he was at the time, anyway. Who knows where he might be now?”

“At least you know he’s still alive.”

I turn fully away from Beck and walk a couple of steps toward the lake and away from this conversation. I never really figured he was dead, anyway, though I used to say so all the time. I can see now I was only trying to make myself feel better about his absence, as if he were on his way back to us and he got run over by a truck, only he didn’t have his wallet so no one knew how to track down his survivors . . .

Beck says from behind me, “I’m sorry to bring it up.”

“Don’t be. I know you care, which is more than I can say for a lot of people.”

“When are you going back, do you think?” Beck steps to my side but doesn’t face me, joining me in staring out across the water.

“I haven’t decided. I’m still worried about Mom and I extended my leave a bit.”

“Good of them to do that for you.”

“Mmm. They’re not all that thrilled about it, but I’ve never asked them for any favors before. I think they’re hoping I’ll turn back into my old self.” I smirk at this. “Back into a scullery maid when the spell wears off.”

Beck drapes an arm across my shoulder. “So you’re Cinderella, now?”

I step sideways out from under his arm. “Hardly. I, um, I’d better go, and . . . I have to talk to Amy. I’ll see you later.”

I walk backward for a few steps before I turn around and head toward the crowd, feeling uncomfortably hot, though the breeze has taken the heat out of the air.

A
fter an hour of drifting around the edges of things, shaking hands and enduring small talk with three or four people and not-at-all-subtle inquiries as to whether I’d lost my Chicago job, I’m ready to get home, screw the fireworks. Beck seems to always be in my peripheral vision and I keep meeting his eyes, and I’m all too aware of all the other eyes at this party.

I’m heading to my car when I bump into those three girls again, the supposed new friends of Amy Rickart.

They fill my ear with bridesmaid chatter, and I don’t try to hide how bored I am. The last wedding I celebrated was my coworker David’s. He flew to Vegas with his girlfriend, got married, came back, and got his closest friends drunk over tapas and sangria at their new apartment.

“Saw you talking to Will Becker,” Nikki says.

“Yep.”

“Must be nice, catching up with an old flame.”

“It was a pleasant conversation.”

The other two girls watch with naked greed in their eyes, so I change the subject, interrupting Sarah, whose mouth is open to say something else.

“Amy looks wonderful,” I say, nodding to where she’s standing next to her mother.

“She does,” chirps Kristi. “It’s amazing that she ran all that weight off. Too bad her mother can’t do it.”

“Oh, yeah, running is great. You should try it, Anna. It’s really amazing.”

“Try what?”

“Running. It takes the weight right off.”

I pivot on my heel and turn back away from them, those idiot magpies standing between me and my car. One of them calls something after me and I fold my arms, pinning my hands to my side with my elbows, to keep from flipping them the bird.

I take the wooden steps down to the Beckers’ private beach, enjoying the sound of my shoes smacking against the hard wood. At the bottom, I don’t get the privacy I was hoping for.

The partygoers have begun to filter down here, spreading out blankets preparing for the small private fireworks show that will start just after dusk. But I don’t see Beck, or his brother, or anyone else annoying, so I stand apart from them at the water’s edge. I slide my feet out of my shoes, drop my handbag, and curl my toes in the warm sand. The dune hugs this stretch of shore close, keeping the wind at bay, pulsing with the warmth of the day’s sun.

The lake’s motion is soothing and steady, though strong. I step into the lake, just far enough that the waves won’t soak my knee-length skirt. The undertow sucks the sand from around my feet and I sink farther in, feeling rooted. It’s an illusion, though. I can pull away anytime.

Something gold catches my eye. Gold in the lake?

I stride into the water and then push off from the bottom in a surface dive. I pull the water toward me until I reach the swirling gold and pull Madeline up by her tiny torso. I flip onto my back to kick us back to shore, arm tucked around her chest. There is screaming from the beach, but silence from the little girl.

Chapter 29

Maeve

I
t’s hard, sometimes, not to hate the customers.

They don’t see you, for one thing. Most of them. Their eyes are on their purchases, their wallets, their money, their kids, and even more these days, their cell phones. I used to fold my arms and wait for a customer to finish talking before I would ring up their items, instead of being made to feel like an intruder on this critically important phone call they can’t stop having for five seconds, long enough to meet my eye and hear me say, “Have a good day.”

But after I spent too many transactions standing there like a servant waiting for orders and endured too many disgusted sneers when they finally caught on to what I was waiting for, I gave up my one-woman crusade and just took my revenge out in little ways, like stacking their tin cans on top of their bread.

Holidays are the worst. Lots of people work holidays, people with important jobs, like doctors and police officers, saving our lives no matter how much fun everyone else is having. But for me and all the other service-industry types, we live to serve someone else’s fun.

I can’t count how many years it’s been since I’ve seen fireworks. For that matter, even been to the beach, though I can see it from my front door.

“That’ll be $12.32,” I tell the woman who has come in for sunscreen. She snorts at the price tag, then at me. I argue in my head,
I’ve got overhead, you know, and bills to pay
.

Today would be a great day for the beach, nice and warm, a breeze to keep you from sweating too hard. The water has warmed up at last, enough to make a swim merely bracing instead of heart-attack cold.

My hands fly over the keys on auto pilot, the customers blurring together.

I remember Robert on a hot day like this, just twenty-three years old, hair coffee black, with that crooked smile.

We’d stolen away to Crescent Beach, an isolated sliver of sand that only the locals could find because it was hidden down a winding path of streets with no signs to indicate its presence.

My mother knew I was going to see Robert and ordered me to put something on my shoulders. It was 1975, but the sexual revolution mattered not at all to Mrs. Callahan, and I was not going out with bare shoulders to meet the likes of him.

I still had the sweater draped over me, cape-fashion, staring up at Robert in the sun, as we paused during a walk on the beach. I was dizzy with the heat and with his nearness.

“Baby, look at you. It’s too hot for that sweater.” Robert looked down at me, eclipsing the sun, which shone so bright around him I could barely see his face. With one thumb, he nudged the sweater off my shoulder. I made to pick it up, but with the slightest pressure, he stopped me.

“It’s only sand,” he said. “It’ll wash.”

I felt no cooler. I’d barely eaten after fighting with my mother about going out at all. The emptiness in my stomach spread to my limbs, to my head, and I felt like all my air was gone and I really needed to sit down . . .

Next thing I knew, I was stretched out on cool sand under a stand of trees at the far edge of the beach, something cold and wet on my forehead. Robert was lying next to me, shirtless, one arm supporting my head like a pillow. He must have used his shirt to stroke my head with cool water. I snuck a look around to see if anyone was nearby enough to see us.

“You scared me half to death,” Robert said, but he was smiling and not looking very scared. “You okay?”

I sipped the shady air and tried to play it cool, like the sophisticated woman a man like him should have, not some swoony kid. I tried to sit up, but Robert pressed me gently back down, to rest, he said.

“I just got too hot, too hungry,” I said. “No big deal . . .”

“I didn’t know that, though.” He gave me that sideways grin of his. “For all I knew, you were afflicted with a rare teenage heart attack.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“No, I’m serious. I thought,
This girl could die right here and I never made love to her
.”

I put my hand to my chest, my heart stopping, then barreling off like a sprinter at the starting gun. He slowly withdrew his supporting arm from under my head until I was lying properly flat. I might have fainted again, if I’d been standing.

He kissed me. We’d kissed before, even engaged in some light petting, but we’d never been horizontal, in broad daylight, with an item of clothing already removed. I pushed against his chest, just gently, thinking we were going too far, but he just kissed harder, and I kissed back myself, turning that push into my own caress.

Then I felt his hand on my breast, and I gasped, scrambling backward away from him like a crab.

Robert gulped hard but made no move to come after me or coax me back. “I’m sorry. You’re just . . . You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Maeve Callahan?” His voice was raspy.

He was going to break up with me and return to his worldly girls who would make love to him anywhere, anytime. I hated my virtue suddenly, so out of place and even freakish, and what good did it do me after all?

He looked down at the sand, and then back up to me, his face solemn. “Well then, I have no choice in the matter.”

He scooted forward on the sand in a seated position and took my hand. I was losing him. The love would never go away, though; I believed that. It was far too powerful to simply wink out like a candle flame.

“Maeve, my good girl, marry me.”

“What?”

His eyes twinkled. “You heard what. Marry me. I love you, I want you, I don’t want anybody else, and we’re old enough. I believe that means I should marry you.”

My breath caught in my throat, so I could only nod, and when he folded me close, I soaked his bare chest with my tears.

I made him promise to buy me an engagement ring and told him we’d keep our engagement secret until he did—that way maybe it would look better to my parents. And it might have stayed secret, but one of the times I fought with my mother over him, when she insisted he was a Don Juan and had other girls on the side and would dump me any minute, I screamed, “He’s going to marry me!”