The Life You've Imagined (22 page)

That wrinkled old ninny fell asleep with her cigarette dangling out of her hand, most likely over the side of the bed, so it dropped on some garbage on the floor, as opposed to right on her bed sheets.

Then, Anna still hasn’t come home and isn’t answering her cell phone. I’ve heard her curt, cool voice mail message—“This is Anna Geneva. Leave a message”—ten times now, so I’ve stopped bothering. She’ll call when she can.

If
she can.

No, stop. The universe would not do that to me, not on the same night. She’s just late, out having fun, not hearing the phone ring.

The hospital looks disgustingly cheerful, all lit up and bright.

A weary woman at the information desk tells me where to find Sally, and as I shuffle off in that direction, another memory overtakes me, of that time Robert piled the car into a utility pole.

I’d had to roust Anna out of bed. She was only four years old. The poor babe was rubbing her eyes against the harsh light and drowsing on my shoulder as I talked to the doctor, wanting to brain Robert with an IV pole. He wasn’t seriously hurt and had the nerve to smile. Anna reached out for her daddy once she woke up enough to see something was wrong. After being reassured his “owies” would go away, she cuddled up next to him in the hospital bed. Robert sang her a silly song of his own invention. I can still hear him, in his whispery tenor.

Anna my banana, how I love my girl,

Anna my banana, every freckle and curl,

Anna my banana, won’t you always stay with me?

Anna my banana, I love you, can’t you see?

How could the same man who sang nonsense love songs to his little girl then disappear on us just six years later?

If he would only write back like he promised, maybe I’d at last find out the reason, and if there’s a reason—there has to be—there can be forgiveness, eventually.

I turn the corner to see Sally in her room. Her wig is off and her short gray hair is smashed flat like a worn shag carpet. Her face still looks a little sooty, though someone has wiped it partway clean. She plucks off an oxygen mask to greet me. Her usual cockeyed smile is gone as she says, “I know you always told me not to smoke in bed, but honest, I didn’t fall asleep, I promise.”

I don’t bother arguing with her. What difference does it make now?

Now that it seems clear she will survive, another reality smacks into me like a wrecking ball. Sally has no place to live. The Nee Nance just got more crowded.

I
confer with the doctor and promise to retrieve her tomorrow and help deal with the paperwork. With that, I am dismissed to go home.

Robert has never asked about his sister in the letters. Maybe he figures that Sally moved on with her life. Will he be delighted or dismayed to find out she’s still hanging around? I’ll wait until I see him to broach that one.

But she is not moving in with Robert and me. I don’t care if we have to build her another trailer with our own bare hands.

After I drag myself to bed and fall into an uneven, unsatisfying sleep, I jolt awake at the ringing buzzer for the front door. I pull on my old robe and fly down the stairs barefoot. I peer through a small window in the door.

Anna stands in the circle of weak yellow light cast by the bulb under the awning. In the seconds while I fumble to open the door, I scan her for signs of trauma. She seems intact, but her posture is hunched and she’s hugging herself, like she’s afraid she might fly apart otherwise.

“What’s wrong?” I say. “Where’s your car? Your purse? Oh, God, were you mugged?”

Anna lets out a heavy sigh. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“What is it?”

“I’m sorry to have to wake you up. I lost my purse and had to take a cab home. I’m sure they’ll find it in the morning, and I’ll get my car later.”

I wonder why she didn’t just stay there, in one of their gajillion rooms, rather than take a taxicab without her purse and wake me up in the middle of the night. Who paid for the cab? And for that matter, why is she home so late? Why couldn’t one of the Beckers have brought her home hours ago? Not that I mind being awakened; now I know she’s safe.

If she lost her purse with her phone in it, that explains why she didn’t get my calls.

“Honey, I should tell you that Sally is in the hospital. Her trailer burned down. No serious injury, just smoke inhalation. Actually, the way she packs away the cigarettes, her lungs are probably better tonight than they are most nights, since she’s not allowed to smoke there.”

Anna leans against the newspaper rack and steps out of her shoes. “I assume the trailer is a loss.”

“I assume so, too.”

“Shit.”

“You said it.”

Anna curves over slowly to pick up her shoes, as if every muscle aches. “Where is she going to go?”

“Where else? The Nee Nance, home of the Wayward Genevas.”

Anna gazes around the darkened store. “Where the hell are we going to put her?”

“I know. Where the hell, indeed.”

Chapter 32

Cami

I
’m not much for makeup, but then, I don’t normally have a shiner, and I just know what everyone’s going to think the minute they look at me—that is, everyone who knows my dad.

I squint into a mirror on the back of my closet door and slather another layer on. It looks cakey and orange, but from a distance you probably can’t tell.

My plan A of staying inside until it healed has derailed. Anna called to say she needs me, so does Maeve, at the store, and besides all that, the sounds of Sherry and my dad making love like wildcats is worse than the fighting. At least, I assume that’s what they’re doing in there.

I already know Anna won’t believe what really happened, but she’s a lawyer and has spent a career trying to pin down weaselly liars. I suppose that will predispose a person to be cynical about the honesty level of the general public.

But he didn’t hit me, beat me, or do anything that dramatic. I just had to play Supergirl and defend the scrawny, drunk skank who was about to be throttled by my dad. I got in the way, is all, and those dumb tin cans were still all over the kitchen, and that part was
my
fault.

I blacked out for a second or a minute, I’m not sure, and when I opened my eyes, Sherry was screeching that I was dead and my dad was screaming at Sherry, blaming her for my fall. I laughed; they were so concerned about who was going to get blamed for murdering me. Manslaughtering me, I guess, would be more likely.

I don’t know why that was funny. Probably because I’m a sick individual.

My dad startled when he heard me laugh and yelled at me, “You think this is funny?” as if I’d arranged to knock myself unconscious as some kind of practical joke.

Sherry interrupted him by saying I’d gotten “knocked silly” and we should be glad I’m not dead. Real sweet of her, though she didn’t offer to help me up. I was wobbling all over the place, trying to pull myself upright again while they carried on arguing. I got my own bag of ice and a roll of paper towels for stanching my head wound.

Well. That’s as good as my face is going to look. If only I had time to buy a hat before I meet Anna. I’d love to buy some huge Jackie O sunglasses, too, only I need to wear my eyeglasses, which are fashionably taped together, since my fall cracked one stem.

I make a pucker face in the mirror. Yeah. Sexy.

Anna called my cell this morning with her voice barely under control, and that right there got my attention. She said her aunt’s trailer burned down and she wanted some company while she went to go check the wreckage for anything she could salvage.

I think something else is up, though. Clinical, collected Anna wouldn’t be that shaky over her aunt’s knickknacks.

She’s going to pick me up at the corner in her mom’s Buick. She said something else about her car I didn’t quite catch.

I heave open my bedroom window. I lift out the screen and slide it between my headboard and the wall. I sit on the sill, swing my legs out, and drop myself to the muddy strip of dirt that used to be a garden.

I prefer the escape route to the front door and the risk of being interrogated by my father and Sherry, who seem to be extending their Fourth of July to the fifth as well, never mind opening up the shop. With luck, when I come back, they’ll be sleeping or my dad will finally have gone to work.

My head throbs. I forgot to bring my Motrin.

The first thing I notice in Anna’s car is that my black eye is on the opposite side of the car from her, so this delays any interrogating from the attorney-at-law. Stealing a glance at her as she pulls away from the curb, I see she’s so pale the veins in her cheek appear ghostly and blue.

“Thanks for coming,” she says.

“What are friends for, yeah?”

She doesn’t respond, steering the car out of Haven to the two-lane state highway.

“How was the party?”

She shifts in her seat, checking over her shoulder, though she’s not changing lanes or anything. “It was . . . Well, I’ve had better nights.”

Her face tenses up as she clenches her jaw. I turn away and watch road signs click by until we turn onto a gravel road.

We both take the Lord’s name in vain as we pull up to what used to be Sally’s home.

To call it rubble would be charitable. The acrid stench of melted plastic hangs in the air. There’s nothing here but a scattered pile of charcoal. Sally was lucky to get out of there alive. Considering she lives out in the sticks on a patch of someone else’s property, the volunteer firefighters probably took some time to get here.

Not even Sally’s car survived. The fire ate that up, too, via the attached carport. I can’t even tell what kind of car it used to be.

The Buick chimes
ding, ding, ding
, reminding us we’re standing there with the doors open. I slam mine, and Anna pushes hers shut listlessly.

I wonder if Sally has keepsakes. Sure, she probably does; everyone does.

“Was she insured?”

Anna shakes her head, eyes riveted to the wreckage.

“Where is she going to live?”

Anna leans one hip against the side of the car. “We’ll lay her out on top of the beer cooler or something, I guess.” She looks down, and her curls hang between us.

I come around to join her at the driver’s side, putting myself between her and the fire scene. “What’s wrong?”

She raises her face to me, then puts her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God, he hit you!”

Shit. For a second there I forgot about my prizefighter face.

“I knew you were going to think that, but no. I fell.”

“Sure, you fell.”

“Don’t start, yeah? I fell. He and Sherry were fighting and I got caught in the middle. I mean, I stupidly put myself in the middle.”

“You really just fell.”

“Don’t cross-examine me.”

“I hate it when people say that to me, you don’t know how much.”

I look her straight in her eyes, which I see now are red-rimmed and tired. “I swear to you. I only fell.”

“This is still not good. If your father and . . . who? Sherry? whoever, are fighting violently, you should get out of there.”

“We’re not talking about me, now. Something’s wrong. Now, what?”

“Cami—”

I hold up a hand. “No. Subject closed.”

She walks a few steps away, staring into the green woods around the trailer. “It’s petty, now. Forget it.”

I walk to her side, keeping far enough away she doesn’t feel under siege. “Don’t do that. Don’t play the ‘your problems are worse than mine’ thing, because people did that after my mom died, and you know what it meant? No one ever talked to me again. Girls didn’t complain to me about their own moms being mean, or about their divorced parents, or their bad hair days. And because they couldn’t do that they never invited me anywhere, and you know what? Having a dead mom and no friends was worse than listening to other people’s problems.”

“You might hate me.”

“Try me.”

Her answer comes out as a whisper.

“Come again?”

“I slept with Beck.”

This startles me so much I take a step back. Miss Superstar Honor Roll sleeping with a married man. But even Anna Geneva has her days, it seems.

“Well, you seem pretty sorry about it.”

She laughs with no mirth. “You could say that.”

“How did . . . How did that come about, even?”

She folds her arms tight as she tells me about rescuing his daughter, Beck’s admission that he and his wife were splitting, how he turned to her for comfort and kissed her, and from then it was one escalation after another with neither of them thinking at all.

“We just picked it up again like an old habit. It’s probably what alcoholics feel like when they fall off the wagon. I can’t say what he felt, I guess, but I know I didn’t think a bit because if I had . . . But I suppose I had to willfully shut it off, didn’t I? Somehow I shut off the part of my brain that knew it was wrong.”