As Good as It Got (15 page)

“Usually, yeah.” Patrick smiled at Ann, eyes speculative.

“I’ll talk to Betsy.”

She watched him walk across the room in his graceful easy stride, saw women’s heads turning to watch his progress. Unless she was completely insane, which at this point was a very strong possibility, he was cooking up something else for her to do, and she wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse.

“My first husband, Dan, tried to kill himself, you know, after I left him, did I tell you? Honestly, you have to wonder about people like that, how stupid they have to be not to have the vaguest idea what a ridiculous
waste
it is, to—”

“Dinah. New topic.” Martha’s low voice carried surprising power and enough threat to stop even Dinah cold. Martha glanced at Ann, impassive as always, but in that second Ann knew she’d figured out how Paul died.

Aw, hell
. She sat stunned, previous anger evaporated by the intrusion and shock. After her abominable behavior in the bay, she should have guessed Martha would figure it out.

Ann didn’t want her to know. She didn’t want anyone up As Good As It Got

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here to know, except Betsy and Patrick and the other staff, who had to. Paul’s death was her business. Her business and her shame. Though if anyone had to know, better Martha than the emotional peeping Toms around here.

“Dessert.” Cindy jumped to her feet, holding her empty plate. “I think I saw lemon pound cake out there. I’ll bring back plenty for the table.”

“I’ll help.” Dinah climbed over the bench to join Cindy, leaving silence that needed to be broken.

“Thanks.” Ann mumbled the word to her hands, twisting on the tablecloth.

Of course, Martha didn’t hear.

Ann turned to the spiky back of Martha’s head. “I said, thanks.”

No reaction.

Ann cleared her throat and reached to touch Martha’s large soft shoulder. “Thank you, Martha.”

Martha nodded, still facing out to sea, then her body con-vulsed suddenly as if she had the hiccups.

Shit. She was crying.

Ann wasn’t cut out for playing nursemaid. She hadn’t been able to deal with Paul’s depression, she couldn’t deal with emotional collapse from a stranger. Her parents, her brothers, they’d all grown up rough-and-tumble and teasing.

“Uh. You . . . okay?”

Stupid stupid question. If Martha was okay, would she be bawling her head off and trying to hide it?

“He’s sick.” The big low voice was thick and congested.

“Pneumonia. He’s going to die.”

Ann’s eyes froze wide. Crap! Who was sick? Martha wasn’t 128 Isabel

Sharpe

married, so who? Boyfriend? But she had to have lost someone. Ex-boyfriend?

Shit!
Ann wasn’t equipped for this. Where was Patrick?

What was taking him so long? She spotted him, still confer-ring with Betsy, who glanced over at Ann, who was getting very tired of feeling like a psych ward case.

No help there.

“Oh. Wow. Pneumonia. That . . . sucks.”

Christ. She sounded like her neighbor’s teenage daughter complaining about too much homework. She had to do better than that. She
would
do better than that.

“Martha . . . I’m really sorry.” She made her voice come out gentle and sincere. Her chest responded with warmth, as if the words had triggered truth. “This is all so . . . surreal.

For all of us.”

A nod. Another hiccupy sob that made her round lumpy body jump.
Damn it
. The others would be back soon. Martha couldn’t be caught like this. She’d hate it.

“I don’t know if this helps, but, well . . . ” She took a loud exaggerated breath so Martha could hear. “If Dinah can get through three deeply felt losses and turn out the way she did

. . . then there’s hope for all of us. Don’t you think?”

Martha’s back stiffened. She turned slowly, caught the look on Ann’s face and did what Ann had been hoping for.

She cracked up. Which made Ann laugh too, and the two of them sat there, snuffling and chortling with intensity usually reserved for grief, until Patrick came back and climbed into Cindy’s spot, grinning and wanting in on the joke, which made them both stop laughing.

“So.” Ann wiped away a tear, feeling lighter than she had As Good As It Got

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all day. “Have I been given a reprieve from Bonfire of the Seventies?”

“You’ve been charged to my care tonight, Annie. I’ll come by your cabin at eight to pick you up.” He winked, and got up to make room for Cindy and Dinah, coming back with plates heaped with slices of lemon cake.

Ann watched him walk off again, trying to get her brain to process what he’d just said. Charged to his care? Just him and her, alone all evening?
Annie?

A dark burn of excitement started low in her body, and she had to tell herself she was being ridiculous. Again. Things were not always more than they seemed. Martha had simply fallen. Patrick was gay. She couldn’t have saved Paul.

Bullshit. All of it.

The bleakness carried her through the rest of the uneaten meal, back to the cabin where she dodged her cabin-mates and lay in bed, trying to block out the Dinah-drone recounting every microsecond of her coastal Maine flora and fauna class that morning.
And then I inhaled. And then I exhaled.

And then I did it again. And then I scratched my elbow.

Going to the bonfire would have been dreadful, but easy.

Spending the evening in Patrick’s cabin could be complicated. She wasn’t in the mood for complicated. Everything in her life for the past few years had been inevitably and increasingly complicated, though she hadn’t tuned in completely until Paul forced total consciousness into her head with the bullet he shot through his.

She got up, accepting the incessant jabbering as part of the cabin’s background noise, drifted to the window and looked out at the fading light, darker toward the east, probably 130 Isabel

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a sunset visible from Dinah’s and Cindy’s rooms. She felt shaky, restless, electrified, possibly manic after a few months of depressive.

An evening with Patrick and no idea what to expect. Anything from twenty games of gin rummy to two hours of intensive new age therapy bullshit. Or worse, some kind of self-improvement exercise where she’d have to crawl around pretending to be a lioness.

Or . . .

No, no, no. He was either gay or pretending to be. He had too much at risk to blow his cover. There was no reason for her to be this nervous. None.

Unfortunately, being this nervous gave her an enormous reason to want a drink. Liquor store, tomorrow. No way could she survive another week and a half of this place without the soothing fortification of something brewed, distilled, or fermented.

Through the thin walls she heard the others getting ready to leave—Cindy, having managed to get a word in edgewise, saying she hoped they’d get to sing again. Oh yes, Dinah agreed, she hoped so too.

Sometimes Ann felt like she’d been sent here in a space pod from some other world. No, galaxy. No, universe.

Heavy steps thudded up to their porch, making Ann’s heart echo the beat. Patrick’s voice, not as deep as Paul’s, but male all the same, and a welcome relief from Camp Kinsonu’s twenty-four-hour female channel. Ann had always preferred male friends. Who wanted to talk about feelings or fashion or decorating or endless hygiene and makeup routines? Poopy diapers, potty training, nursery school applications, and at what age to make sure the kids had condoms. Get a life! The As Good As It Got

131

world was bigger than wall colors and skin-care products and cloth versus disposable.

“Ann?” Patrick, outside her door.

“Here.” She scowled over her fluttering heartbeat, refused to look in a mirror, grabbing the light jacket she’d torn off when she got back from dinner as she went out into the hall.

“Ready for my special ed program.”

He stood grinning, hands on his hips, looking her over in her jeans and yellow cotton/cashmere sweater until she was squirming with discomfort.

“We staying here?”

“Sure. Standing in the Hall for Fun and Profit.”

She rolled her eyes and struggled with her jacket, which had one sleeve inside out.

“Allow me.” He took it from her, righted the sleeve and slipped the jacket onto her arms. The kind of gesture Paul would make—or would have made before he descended into permanent gloom. In fact, the Paul she fell for had the same energy and charm as Patrick, though eight or nine times the cynicism.

“Thank you.” She zipped up the jacket for something to do with her hands. “What’s the plan after this terrific bout of hall-standing? ”

“Entertainment at my cabin tonight, Ann.”

A nervous chuckle burst out of her; she glanced past him to make sure the others had left. “What does that mean?”

He shrugged, his eyes lit gray, reflecting the beams of sunset coming through Dinah’s room. “Means we go to my cabin and hang out so you don’t have to sing about being woman and roaring.”

Sounded harmless. Didn’t it? Harmless was good. Wasn’t it?

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So nice to be back to her usual decisiveness. “Deal.”

“Good deal.” He grinned and let her pass him in the narrow hallway. Very close.

Relax, Ann
. She stalked through the common area and tromped down the steps into air beginning to cool toward chilly. They’d hang out. Or whatever. Anything was better than facing a beach full of agonized women pretending waving their arms around brought them closer to healing and to each other.

She glanced toward the shore and spotted the familiar trio from Cabin Four nearly at the steps down onto the sand, Dinah and Cindy walking together, Martha plodding behind.

On shore today, after the kayak incident, another of Martha’s odd transformations, like when she’d done yoga during group therapy. From bawling mousy suicidal mess into an astonishingly magnetic storyteller, gesturing like a dancer, giving the silly kiddy tale an extraordinary musical delivery that drew listeners in as if she were performing Shakespeare.

“Patrick.” Ann stopped, eyes fixed on the large stooped figure. “Maybe Martha should be up here too, with us.”

“Betsy’s watching out for her.” He came back, touched her shoulder. “I’m watching out for you tonight.”

She scrunched up her face. “Private tutor or probation officer? ”

“A little of both.” He smiled his charming lazy smile and led the way, long legs eating up another narrow uneven path, to a small cabin tucked far back into the woods across from the lodge building. Inside, it was comfortable, spare, mas-culine. A bed with gray wool blankets, made with one long diagonal wrinkle underneath. A desk with computer; book-As Good As It Got

133

shelves with a few books, mostly self-help. A file cabinet.

No TV. Basic bachelor layout except for the small pine table bearing a silver statue of a laughing Buddha, familiarly seated cross-legged, earlobes stretched long, belly extended, joyous grin on his chubby face. Flanking him, candles in glass hold-ers, a few silk flowers, and a few perfect shells.

“Your altar?”

“Meditating brings me peace.”

“Ah.” Peace. What a concept. As likely in Ann as it was in the Middle East.

She studied the bald beaming figure, which she dimly associated with China more than Thailand, where Patrick had lived, aware that he’d moved away. She tuned into the sounds across the room behind her—the clank of a bottle on the counter, rattle of ice into glasses, then liquid glug-glug-ging that sounded so much like it was being poured from a bottle of booze that she actually started salivating. “You think it’s possible to be at peace?”

“The monks in Thailand can do it twenty-four/seven. I settle for small chunks. It takes more time and work than most of us can manage and still have what passes for a life in western culture.”

Peace as hard work? She’d always thought of peace as something that descended naturally when you got all the ingredients of your life assembled in the right recipe. She couldn’t remember feeling much peace in the last few years.

Maybe when she and Paul were first married, most often when they lay together after sex—though too often her mind would start a tilt-a-whirl over some job issue. In later years she was always aware of their disconnect, though too firmly in denial to acknowledge it openly. When had that started?

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“Here.” A glass appeared in front of her, bisecting her view of Buddha so that his head appeared over the rim of what looked—and oh happy day smelled—like scotch.

Ann whirled around, a fiancée-to-be given her first surprise glimpse of the ring. “For me? Really?”

“Single malt. You’ve earned it.”

“Did I die and go to heaven? You can tell me. I can take it.”

He laughed and pushed the glass closer. She took it, grinning up at him, gestured to his glass, a fraction as full as hers.

“You’re having some?”

“A taste. Alcohol and I are careful of each other. After this I’ll match your every round with apple juice. So cheers.” He clinked with her. “The night is young, and so are we.”

“Speak for yourself.” She toasted him and drank, closed her eyes and allowed the smooth taste to spread over her tongue. “Oh my God did I need that.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmmm.” Another sip, to get the mellow soothing started. Then another. Then the glass drained. “Am I allowed seconds? ”

“Seconds and thirds and whatever you need tonight, Ann.”

“I need a lot.” She held out her glass, already feeling the warmth traveling her veins, lifting her mood. “I’ve got days of horrendous deprivation to make up for.”

“I know what that feels like.” He took her glass and gestured to the door. “Let me grab your bottle and my juice, and we can sit outside and watch the sunset. How does that sound?”

“Perfect.” She stepped out onto the porch, humming a tune she identified as “Tonight, Tonight” from
West Side
Story,
which made her stop humming immediately and just As Good As It Got

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stand there, alcohol fueling a buzz of tense excitement and rare pleasure.