The Life You've Imagined (38 page)

It was his job as a father to answer those questions, though, as best he could. To take care of us, not to drown himself in booze and scream obscenities and knock me down the stairs when I got in his way and then tell the school I fell.

Maeve appears at the top of the stairs, and we both turn to her. “How did it go?” she asks.

Anna shrugs. “She got the house.”

Maeve nods, seeming to read the air in the room and understand that
congratulations
is not the word.

“Cami, I hate to ask you this, but could you excuse us, please?”

Maeve seems pale and a little shrunken. Anna sets down her briefcase and folds her arms.

I say, “Of course. I need some air, anyway.”

I leave them to their own trials and walk out on the summer-baked sidewalk, trying to let the sun burn dry my freshly turned grief.

Chapter 55

Anna

I
t takes my mother some time to drift down the stairs. As she does, she holds her own arms tight, as if she’s cold.

“I got a call,” she says. “While you were out.”

I wait, not daring to guess.

“It was your father. He said . . .” She lowers her gaze to the floor. “He said he wanted to check on me and to find out what you had to say about him. He’d wanted to call earlier but said he was giving me ‘space.’ ” She chuckles darkly and looks around at the bones of the store. “As if I need more of that. Anyway. He said there was a change in plans.” My mother laughs, again, slightly hysterically. She steadies herself on an empty shelf. “The land? The trailer? Turns out Charley sold it to someone else with actual money and income, but not to worry! He says, babe, don’t worry, I’ve got another spot all picked out . . .” She winks and assumes a stance very much like my dad would: all big arms and big smiles, trying to take up more space, as if to puff up his sorry little idea.

She walks across to me and holds out a hand. It’s an odd gesture, to shake the hand of one’s own mother, but out of reflex I offer my hand. She takes it and turns it palm up. From her pocket she takes out something small and places it in my palm, folding my hand over it.

She smiles, but her eyes are crinkled up in grief.

I open my hand and her wedding ring sits there, looking so small in my palm, the diamond little more than a chip of stone.

“I don’t want this,” I say. “What would I do with it?”

She shrugs. “ Do whatever you like with it. Sell it, throw it in the lake. It’s over. It took me twenty years to say it, stupid broad that I am, but it’s done.”

I slide the ring onto my pinky finger for safe-keeping, until I get upstairs to put it somewhere safe, and consider its ultimate fate. I look back at my mom, and she seems withered and wrung out. I’ve felt this way at work, when I’ve won a tough battle, but both sides—the people, not the lawyers—look drained and white-faced in the aftermath. Victory is not always a pleasure.

“I’m not happy or anything, Mom. In fact . . .” I swallow hard and approach her, finding the words hard to conjure, even to my mother, who has already seen me as vulnerable and exposed as I’ve ever been in my life. “In fact . . . deep down I was hoping he was coming back for real.”

I embrace her and let a couple of unfamiliar tears fall into her hair. I’m too tall with my shoes on. I step out of them so I can be smaller again, more like the child she raised by herself. “Maybe you were the braver one for daring to hope out loud,” I tell her.

She chuckles sadly. “Let’s not get crazy here. No, I was just blind. I’m sorry, sweetie.”

“I’m sorry, too, Mom.”

For once, it’s my mother who tries to step back first. But I don’t let her. Not just yet.

I
help my mother clean up her room after I change out of my suit and put her ring, wrapped in tissue paper, inside a small box of childhood mementoes: certificates, medals, awards. Evidence of my early potential, which so far has brought me right back here, and a future no more clear than the horizon in a morning fog.

Mom has three piles going: keep, donate, trash.

She puts her hand on her sewing machine. “Will we have room in the apartment?”

I consider it. “Sure. More room than we have here, right? And it fits here.”

“Well, you’ll have your things from Chicago.”

“I’ll be getting rid of a lot of that. Pretty stupid to have a cappuccino maker and a wine refrigerator.”

“Don’t be so sure about that!” calls out Sally as she passes, her wig back on but crooked. She’s been digging trash out of the kitchen, in merry spirits. Mom told me she’s going to sit Sally down tonight and let her know all about Robert.

The phone rings, and my mother and I exchange a look. “I’ll get it,” I say.

I trot down the hall, and to my immense relief, it’s Agatha from the boutique. “Hello, Maeve.”

“This is Anna. But don’t worry, everyone makes that mistake. I’ll get her for you.”

“Great,” says Agatha. “Because that great-niece of mine thinks we oughta talk.”

Amy? Talk about what? I’d like to ask, but Agatha doesn’t appreciate nosy types, so I give Mom the phone with a shrug and go back to my own packing.

Twenty minutes later, Mom finds me in the kitchen, stacking pots and pans in a Seagram’s 7 box. Our moving supplies make us look like drunkards.

She wanders in, looking lost and perplexed.

“What is it, Mom? What did Agatha want?”

“She’s thinking of giving me a job.”

“Really?” I abandon the packing and wipe beads of sweat off my head with my forearm. “You don’t look happy.”

“It’s not final yet; she’s thinking about it. She said she was all set to retire because of her arthritis, only Amy’s insisting she hire me instead to be her seamstress in the shop. She might even let me manage it.”

I remember Mom sewing some things for Amy back in school, when Agatha’s didn’t have anything suitable, and certainly nothing in the mall would have fit. Good of her to remember that.

“Well, if that works out, it would be nice.”

“I’m just so shocked. First, Veronica pitching in to help me watch Sally, when I . . . Anyway. They actually had fun, Veronica said. And the other day Doreen came in to tell me her daughter wouldn’t mind spending some time with her, either. Rhonda would take Sally with her for her church food pantry volunteering, said she’d enjoy the company because it gets boring sometimes.”

My mother’s color comes back a bit, and her face gets more animated. “If Agatha gives me this job, you can go back!”

“Where?”

“The Land of Oz. Where do you think? Go back to Chicago! I’ll find someplace to rent, someplace small. Sally and I lived in one bedroom before; we can do it again. She’s got Social Security, which is something. I can work for Agatha, and with all this help, we’ll be fine!”

She’s just overwrought. What would they do for health insurance? Even if Agatha hires her, Mom should know that small businesses can’t afford quality benefits. And Haven is getting more touristy by the day. Even rent on a small place is going to be pricey.

And anyway, where else would I go?

Mom clasps her hands up under her chin, like she always used to waiting for me to open my Christmas present.

“I’ll think about it, Mom.”

This seems to satisfy her, and with a contented little sigh, she dives back into the boxes.

B
y morning, we’re mostly packed. We’ve left out the few things we’ll need over the next couple of weeks while we slowly move in to the new place, a two-bedroom duplex I found in a decent neighborhood, owned by a quiet older couple who live in the other side.

Already wearing my swimsuit, I step over Cami’s sleeping form. The new place isn’t so far from the lake, either. I could walk to the beach in good weather for a swim, then shower and head to work. I don’t have a job yet, but I’ll figure something out. I could always hang out my own shingle for a time. Haven probably needs attorneys, or maybe Muskegon, Grand Rapids. I can commute if I have to. And once I sell my fancy Chicago crap and stop paying for that storage, I’ll have enough to get by modestly, for a little while.

I pause in my walk through the store to let a moment of grief pass, a cramping sensation in my chest for what’s gone forever: August, my once-soaring career, my colleagues back in Chicago. The possibility of Beck in my life again.

The morning air already carries a chill. Summer is so brief.

The water’s coldness shocks me into the present moment, so that I think about breathing and my stroke, watching the pier over my shoulder to make sure I don’t get too far out. Alone, that would be dangerous.

Even with the edge of the pier, I pause and tread water, looking at the skyline—such as it is—of Haven, looking postcard-quaint from this distance.

It’s not so bad, being here.

I look south, toward Chicago. Then I inhale sharply and swim back toward shore.

I walk quickly back, my wet hair dampening the sweatshirt I’ve thrown on over my wet swimsuit. As I approach, I see someone at the front door of the Nee Nance, peering in between cupped hands.

“Beck.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be up.”

He steps aside and I use my key to let us in. I listen; no one else seems to be up yet.

“What do you need?”

“I told Sam I had an early meeting. Well, I do, but not this early.”

“For the record, I did not ask you to tell that lie. That’s on your conscience.”

“I came by to apologize. For putting you in such an awkward position.”

“Well, I had plenty of chances to avoid this train wreck myself.”

With his toes turned slightly in, and the way he keeps raking his hair with his fingers, he looks sixteen again.

“Beck, what do you want?”

“Well, first of all, my dad has a job for you, if you want it. No, listen, hear me out. They’ve been thinking about adding a lawyer on staff at Becker Dev instead of paying a big firm all kinds of money to keep consulting on things. And he adores you and respects you. It’s perfect.”

“Not for me, it’s not.”

“Well, could you at least—”

“No.”

The sidewalks begin to fill up outside the windows with morning commuters walking to get breakfast at Doreen’s, the early tourists out to get their cappuccinos at the café down the street. Without the beer posters in the window, we’re exposed here, and I see people glancing inside. Beck still hasn’t spoken but is making no move to leave.

“What is it? What?”

“Can you . . . can you give me a little time? Sam said she wants to work things out, but I think she’s going to see eventually that our marriage hasn’t been working for a long time, that it has nothing to do with you. Then we can really end it, and you and I can . . . we can give it a chance. We just need to give it time.”

“I think we’ve given each other enough time.”

“Anna, please . . .” He steps toward me, arms out.

I stop him with a raised hand. “Time to look forward now, wouldn’t you say?”

“We’re still friends, though, right?”

“I don’t think that’s very smart. Also, not very sensitive to your wife.”

“I don’t want to lose you completely.”

“There’s a lot of things I didn’t want. You get over it.”

He opens his mouth as if to speak again but then lets himself out the door. He turns and walks with his rounded shoulders off in the direction of Becker Development.

A
n hour later, all the residents of the doomed Nee Nance are up and at ’em. My mother starts to make pancakes in the kitchen for Cami and Sally. I’m not hungry, so I step into my room to clean it up.

I could leave it dirty, I know, since Paul is going to bulldoze it. I wince to think of a wrecking ball careening into that tiny octagon window through which I watched Haven parade by, watched for Beck to pull up for dates, watched for my father.

No, when I leave for the last time, I want to see this room as my parents saw it when they first moved in: bright and clean with promise, a quaint nursery for their little redheaded toddler.

“Hey,” Cami says, startling me so much I almost drop my broom.

She doesn’t question my sweeping. I think she gets it.

“Not hungry?”

I shake my head.

“Suit yourself. Hey, I’ve got an idea, yeah?”

“What’s that?”

“Why don’t your Mom and Sally live in my house?”

“Why would they do that?” I dump what seem like a decade’s worth of red curls from the dustpan into a plastic trash bag.

“Because I think you and I should go to Chicago.”

I stop in my sweeping and finally put the broom down. “What the hell for? I quit my job. And I thought you wanted so badly to live in your mom’s house.”

“I wanted to own it; I still want to own it. I want it to look pretty again, and I want it to be taken care of. Maybe I’ll come back and raise a family there if I ever get to do that. But right now I don’t need the space. Your mom does. I wouldn’t even charge her rent. See? Then she’d be okay with her new job and I could get a real fresh start. I’m a good roommate, as you know. I don’t even snore.”