The Girls of Tonsil Lake Read online

  When the minister cut loose with one of those platitudes, we’d all look at each other and Andie would smirk because living on Tonsil Lake taught you better than that. Clichés about God’s will and angels on high weren’t intended for the likes of us. It was only later, when we attended Rosie’s funeral in the little church, that we admitted we’d taken comfort from some of the tired expressions.

  “Look,” I said now, pointing. “There’s Mark, too, and Rosie behind them to watch over them the way she did us. They’ll be all right.”

  We watched in silence for a little while, sipping our coffee, then Andie said, “Goddamn it.”

  “What?”

  “Rosie’s star’s a forny airplane.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Andie

  Sometimes I feel as though sadness has seeped right through my pores and become a part of my bloodstream, poisoning me in much the same way as the cancer did. Only they don’t have chemo and radiation for sadness; there is no prosthesis or reconstructive surgery to replace the part of you the sadness destroys. I look at the shell of the love of my life as he lies in bed, at my children as they lose their father, and think I can’t bear another day.

  That’s when I understand the murder-suicide scenarios you read about in the papers. How easy it would be, if there were no one else to consider, to put Jake out of his misery and then turn the weapon of choice on myself.

  What about Paul? The thought dances through my head like a song I can’t stop singing, but I don’t know that there will be enough left of me when this is over to make real the relationship we only play at in these awful days.

  I think all of this as I sit in the recliner listening to Jake’s breathing. Sometimes the space of time between sucking in air and shuddering exhalation is long enough that I lean forward in the chair and say his name.

  “Still here,” he says, his voice little more than a sigh.

  It is the Friday before Thanksgiving, though I’ve given little thought to either the holiday or giving thanks. I feel remorseful about that sometimes, when I think of my loud-but-happy children and grandchildren, of Jean’s grapefruit-sized benignity, of my own restored health. But then the sadness overwhelms the remorse.

  Lo and Sarah came in as I stared out the window at the bleak November landscape. Suzanne was with them.

  We exchanged the kind of silent conversation we’d all gotten good at, with raised eyebrows and headshakes, and went into the kitchen. I turned up the monitor on the counter, and for a moment we stared at it, hearing that shallow breathing.

  “Uh, Mom, Suzy-Q, we need to talk to you.” Lo was at the coffeemaker, preparing a fresh pot, making it strong enough to cut with a knife. “You got anything to eat?”

  “You know where the refrigerator is,” I said. “You spent half your life standing in the open door of it complaining.”

  “True. Sarah, would you make me a sandwich?”

  “No. Your legs aren’t broken.”

  I beamed at her. “What a good girl you are.” Suzanne rolled her eyes.

  He settled for pecan pie, eating it straight out of the pie plate because there was only a third of it left. Seated at the table, he jerked his head toward the dining room. “Any change?”

  “No. He sleeps more every day, but you know that.”

  “Well.” He exchanged a look with Sarah. “We thought we’d get married.” He fluttered his long eyelashes at her and gusted an unconvincing sigh. “She thinks I should make an honest woman of her.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes just as Suzanne had, and it was uncanny how much like her mother she looked. “Truth is,” she said, “he says he won’t sleep with me anymore if I don’t marry him.”

  “But, sweetheart…” Suzanne was all wide eyes and breathy voice—I wanted to smack her one. “You do realize who you’re getting for a motherin-law, don’t you?”

  So then I had to hit her, then we held each other close and hard before turning to hug our children.

  “We’d like to do it here,” said Sarah, when we were seated around the table with cups of thirty-weight coffee, “on Thanksgiving, with just you two and Miranda and Ben and Jake.” She met my eyes. “I’d like for my dad to perform the ceremony. Would that be okay?”

  “Of course,” I said. Although I didn’t particularly like Phil Lindsey, he had gained points with me when he told Sarah the truth about his divorce from Suzanne. And whether I liked him or not, he was the father of the young woman who was about to become my daughter-in-law.

  I saw in Suzanne’s eyes the regret that her only daughter was going to marry in someone’s dining room with no guests to speak of. No white tulle or bridal showers or flower girls. Sarah would be married as we had all been.

  There had been no money for weddings for the Tonsil Lake girls, and we’d all been too proud to allow our fiancés or their families to finance the kind of luxury we’d lived all our lives without. We’d lived out that particular dream in our children’s marriages. All three of Jean’s kids and Miranda had had big weddings and noisy, laughing receptions at the country club or the park or, in Josh’s case, in Jean’s back yard.

  Sarah must have seen her mother’s eyes, too, because she said gently, “This is what we want, Mom. We want for Jake to be there.”

  “Of course you do,” said Suzanne, her smile instant and bright. “You’ll have to watch him, though. You know how he always becomes the life of the party. Remember when you kids were all little? None of you wanted to have a birthday party unless he was going to be there.”

  “You gotta admit,” I said, “playing Pin the Tail on David O’Toole was entertaining.”

  We all laughed. “And David was so good,” said Suzanne, “yelling like a banshee every time a kid even approached the target Jake put on his butt.”

  “Remember when Carrie wanted a swimming party and Jean said no because it was too cold?” said Sarah. “Jake started pushing people into the pool and it became a swimming party anyway. Jean was the first one he pushed in.” She looked anxious. “Will they understand why we’re doing it this way?”

  “You know they will,” I said. “But Jean will have a party for you at some point. You can bet on that.” In the silence that followed my comment, I listened to Jake’s breathing as it came through the monitor. He would think he was a lucky guy, seeing his son married to a girl we both loved.

  I smiled at my son and Suzanne’s daughter, willing the sadness—for the moment at least—to go away and leave me the hell alone. How could I do any less? “It’ll be the best Thanksgiving we ever had.”

  Jean

  “My editor hates it.” I looked down at the sheets of manuscript Vin had printed out. “She says it will disappoint readers who expect a certain thing from me.” I frowned at the plethora of red ink on the printed pages; there were slashes and scribbled notes everywhere. “It looks as though you weren’t thrilled with it, either.”

  “Look again,” said Vin sharply, pointing at the pages with her butter knife. “Of course your editor doesn’t like it. Although you’re an excellent writer, your voice is also predictable. If you released a book under a pseudonym, your readers would still know it was you. You’ve stepped way outside that box on this, and that’s not something your publisher wants from you. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing.”

  “Oh.” Pleased, I went back to looking at the manuscript. “What can we do for Sarah and Lo?”

  “I was thinking about that.” She sat at the table with her toast. “I thought maybe a honeymoon of sorts. They’re off work until the Monday after Thanksgiving.”

  “They won’t want to leave town,” I said, “with Jake being so bad right now.”

  “I know.” She looked thoughtful. “The Henderson farmhouse at the lake is a bed and breakfast now, and that’s only fifty miles away. What do you think?”

  “I think that’s inspired.”

  “Good. I’ll call them this morning.” She sighed. “And one of these days soon I’ve got to bite the bullet
and go see my mother.”

  I grinned. “Carrie will be saying that about me one of these days, if she’s not already.” I looked curiously at Vin. “Do you ever wish you’d had children?”

  “Sometimes, I guess, but most of the time I think it’s good I didn’t. I’m too selfish for the fulltime business. I want to put my toys away when I’m tired of them. I like being the fairy godmother, with all the good stuff but none of the heartache. It was nice of you guys to give me that opportunity.”

  “We thought so,” I said primly. I leaned an elbow on the table and propped my chin in the palm of my hand. “So what’s with you and Lucas? You talk to him every day, you blush when David teases you about him, and you’ve left New York behind you. What comes next?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll just go call that bed and breakfast.” She hurried out of the kitchen even though there was a telephone right there, and she was blushing.

  Suzanne

  “Mom?” Sarah stood in the middle of her bedroom, clad in a silky white slip with scallops around the bottom. Her hair was wrapped in a towel. “Would you maybe do something with my hair? And put some makeup on me that I won’t rub off halfway through the ceremony?” She laughed, sounding selfconscious. “I’d kind of like getting married looking as if I had eyelashes.”

  My first impulse was to get all maternal and teary, but I knew that wouldn’t fly with my daughter. “Sure,” I said briskly. “Go on in the bathroom. I’ll get the makeup.”

  I got us each a glass of wine while I was at it, even though it was only nine-thirty in the morning.

  She looked askance at the glass. “Mother, I just finished my coffee.”

  “Hey, you don’t get married every day, kiddo.” I put my hand on my chest. “Even I don’t get married every day.”

  She laughed, but when she met my eyes in the mirror, hers were worried. “What if we’re making a mistake?” she said. “I don’t want to be in the situation you and Andie were in, divorced with two little kids. What if this is the wrong thing?”

  “There aren’t any sure things, honey,” I said past the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the kind of home and life that Jean and David gave their kids, but things just didn’t work. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to work for you. You and Lo were friends before you were anything else; you’re still friends. Good heavens, your dad and I were never friends. Trent and I weren’t until…until recently. It would have been so much better if we had been.”

  I worked my fingers through her soft blonde hair. “Up or down?”

  “Down but out of my face,” she said. “Lo likes it down, but it drives me nuts if it’s in my eyes. Jake and Andie were always friends, though, and look how that turned out.”

  “That’s what I mean by ‘no sure things,’ ” I said, “but they’re still friends, they still love each other. They just couldn’t be married.”

  I put white clips in her hair to hold it back from her face. “This is a compromise, leaving your hair down but holding it back, and compromise in marriage is at least half the battle. You can’t do that with everything. Andie couldn’t with Jake’s lifestyle, I couldn’t with your dad’s…uh…views on things. But Jean and David and Vin and Mark had it down, and had Trent and I been more mature, we probably could have survived.”

  I tugged at a lock of hair. “But then I wouldn’t have you, so I certainly wouldn’t want to change anything.”

  She turned toward me, pulling her hair out of my hands, and put her arms around me, her face pressed against my breast. “I love you, Mom.”

  There was no stopping the tears then, and we both cried a little before I gave her a last hug and said, “I love you, too. Now, we’d better hurry, or you’re going to be getting married in your slip. Lo would probably like it, but your dad’s a little stodgy about things like that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “My dad’s a lot stodgy about things like that.”

  We laughed together, and it was like dancing when you feel the music instead of just hearing it.

  Oh, she looked lovely. I almost cried again after I dropped the simple white sheath over her head and zipped its back. She’d bought it off the rack, but it looked as though it had been made for her.

  She wore the strand of pearls that had been Phil’s mother’s and a slender, twinkling gold chain Tommy had given her for Christmas one year. Her earrings matched the pearls, a gift from Andie and Jake, and in the second hole in each ear she wore the tiny diamonds I’d bought her when she graduated from vet school.

  She’d said, “Diamonds, Mother?” in a voice that indicated she’d really rather have had some heavy-duty rubber boots.

  I’d countered with something idiotic about how every girl needed diamonds sometimes and had bawled all the way home.

  “You were right,” she said suddenly, touching the little studs as though she knew what I was thinking. “Everybody needs diamonds sometimes.”

  “But you don’t,” I said. “You sparkle just fine without them.”

  She grinned. “You bet I do. I look just like my mom.”

  Their ceremony was short and very sweet. Jake was able to stay awake through it and hand the ring to his son to place on Sarah’s finger. Lo kept staring at his bride with a tender smile on his face that warmed me right down to the toes of my black suede pumps.

  Andie and I didn’t look at each other until Phil said, “Normally, I would ask who gives this woman to be married, but in this instance, we all give you to each other, as your lives have been intertwined since before they even began. This we do with our love, and by the authority vested in me by the State of Indiana, I pronounce you husband and wife.”

  I felt my eyes brimming and when I ventured a glance at Andie, she was mopping her cheeks. She caught my eye and we both began to laugh, albeit damply, then turned to hug our children.

  We settled Jake to sleep and went into the kitchen. Jean and David were on their way out the door, moving covertly and wrapped in raincoats like two suburban Columbos. They waved. Jean ran back to kiss Sarah and Lo, then they were gone before we could stop them.

  The kitchen counter was set up like a buffet, with platters of turkey and ham along with all the accompaniments. A lace-covered card table sat in the corner holding a miniature wedding cake and several bottles of chilled champagne. Two wicker laundry baskets, decorated with ribbons and lace, were full of envelopes and wrapped gifts.

  I sniffled, and Andie said, “Leave it to Jean. She never fails.”

  Miranda laughed. “Those laundry baskets have made the rounds. I think they’ve been present at every bridal shower, wedding, and baby shower since I got married.”

  “Just like Jean’s friendship,” said Andie, “only it’s far too big to fit into two baskets.”

  Her voice was wobbly when she went on. “I’ve found it so difficult to be thankful. It’s like losing Jake is bigger than all the good things that have happened, and I just couldn’t be grateful. But today, with one marriage and two fussied-up baskets, I’ve figured out that you can hurt and be grateful at the same time.”

  Phil opened the first bottle of champagne, pouring it into the glasses that waited beside the cake. “Andie,” he said quietly, “would you like to make the first toast in Jake’s stead?”

  “I don’t think I can,” she said, shaking her head. “Suzanne?”

  Good heavens, no one ever asked me anything like that. Phil should—no, he shouldn’t. I raised my glass.

  “To all of our sons and daughters, from all of us. May you know as much happiness as we have known, and have fewer troubles. To the bride and groom in particular, may your friendship and your marriage be long and prosperous. To Jake, because we are all so glad he could be here for this day. And to…” I stopped, looking at Andie.

  Her glass touched mine. “And to the republic, for which it stands.”

  Vin

  I had Thanksgiving dinner with my mother in the big dining room of her assisted liv
ing facility. We sat alone at a table, which I regretted because we had so little to say to each other, but the people she considered her friends were out for the day.

  When I got there this morning, standing in her small living room with my raincoat drizzling on the carpet, I’d offered, “We could go out if you’d rather.”

  “I like it here,” she said. “Hang that coat over the tub, Vin. You’re dripping.”

  There was nothing wrong with my mother. She was in the assisted living portion of the upscale apartment complex because she’d never taken care of herself in her life, and didn’t want to start.

  At seventy, she looked no older than her late fifties. I kept her supplied with the kind of makeup Suzanne used to represent, and she had a healthy allowance in addition to her Social Security. She shopped a lot, getting on the facility’s bus and spending days on end at the mall.

  She liked being able to flash her credit card at the big department stores that had been laughably beyond the means of any of my stepfathers. I used to cringe when her bills came in, but Mark only laughed. “Just pay them, darling. It keeps her happy and out of your hair.”

  Her greatest concern when he died was that her allowance would stop, that her credit card would be cut off. “Will you marry again soon to someone who can take care of things?” she’d asked. “Will I have to move?”

  “My friends and I will shop tomorrow,” she said now, as we sat at our table for two. “It’s such a fun day. What will you do?”

  “Sit with Jake. And Jean and I will watch Carrie’s and Miranda’s children so their mothers can go shopping.”

  She frowned. “Why don’t you hire nurses to sit with Jake? For that matter, why didn’t Andie just put him in a home? It’s not safe, having someone in the house with That Disease.”

  I noticed that a lot of people called AIDS That Disease. Did it make them feel immune, as though refusing to give it its name put them above such things?

  “We’re very careful,” I said. “Andie didn’t want nurses, and she didn’t want him to die without family around him.”