As Good as It Got (23 page)

“I guess Betsy hit you with the erotomania thing, huh?”

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Her diamond/stone lips barely moved. “Yes.”

“So?
Did
you make it all up?” Under his nonchalance she sensed his eagerness, hound nose snuffling, picking up a promising scent.

“What does it matter what I tell you? The main symptom of my ‘illness’ is that I believe it’s all true.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Why?” Her throat closed. Her rock body shook in a silent earthquake. What did this jerk want from her? “Because one good liar can always spot another?”

“You—” He took a furious step toward her. “What the hell was that for? Haven’t I always been a good friend to you? Is that how you repay me? By not trusting me? Calling me a liar?

What grounds have I given you for that kind of accusation?”

His eyes blazed, his face contorted. A fleck of spit flew out and hit her forehead, but she didn’t dare brush it off. She’d never seen anyone change personalities so suddenly and completely. Bianca could probably do it, leave off the Jackie O routine and ice over into the woman who made Eldon so unhappy, but right now it could not have been much more shocking if Patrick had turned into a werewolf.

“Okay.” She stepped back. “I apologize. You’ve been a good friend.”

He put his hand to his chest, took a couple of quick deep breaths that made her doubt further that he’d ever been a serious disciple of Buddhism. Martha had met people who’d been to Thailand or India to study, and all of them gave off an unmistakable aura of centeredness that Patrick, surfer-dude of spirituality, lacked.

“I’m sorry, Martha. It’s a crazy, crazy hot button. I . . . I had this friend once, um, who—”

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“It’s forgotten.” She wasn’t interested in sticking around for any more of The Patrick Show.

“Thank you, Martha.” He made his eyes go gooey-warm, which brought on that intense male magnetism that fascinated and repelled her. “You are a very generous and remarkable person. I told you the first day that you have a special power, and I meant it.”

It was all she could do not to tell him straight out to cut the shit. “Thank you, Patrick. You are quite a remarkable person yourself.”

“Friends again?” He held out his hand, missing her sarcasm, which had been worthy of Ann.

“Yeah.” She shook his hand reluctantly, half expecting to encounter a tranquilizer dart in his palm, managed a smile, then could not begin to describe her relief when he turned, walked a few steps, turned back to wave and wink, and walked back toward camp.

Alone. Thank God. She blundered up the path several more yards, then pushed into a small mossy clearing and collapsed on a rock. Patrick was right. Loving Eldon was no mistake, no insanity. She’d cling to that.

She closed her eyes and cleared her mind, relaxed her body absolutely, ignoring the sting of a mosquito on her calf.

When she entered the special place, felt that rush of warmth down her limbs, that perfect clear stillness, she sent her love out to Eldon, felt a rush of joy she recognized as the moment their minds connected. Of course he was thinking of her.

Send me a sign. Send me a sign to know what to do.

Time lost its meaning; she no longer felt its passage.

Send me a sign.

A buzzing sound flashed past. She opened her eyes and As Good As It Got

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saw a hummingbird at the feeder, its slender body quick and alert, movements sure and impossibly fast. Martha sat, enchanted by its glimmering grace.

Eldon had sent her this bird. Eldon or whatever power in the universe brought them together. God, or Love, or Fate, or the collective wisdom of man.

A sign. And in that next instant she knew what to do. She’d battle Bianca in her own quiet way. Continue what she’d already started, and make sure as many people as possible understood about the rare and special nature of her and Eldon’s love.

Chapter 13

Ann looked critically at the painting she’d just completed of one of the islands out in the bay. Getting the rocks at the shoreline right was a killer; their shades were so subtle and their shapes so complicated, but over all she’d take it.

Painting gave her the closest thing to serenity she’d felt in a long time, second to sitting on a lobster boat stuffing stinky herring into bags. Even when her thoughts wandered, at least part of her stayed calmly centered on what she was doing.

Back home when her body had been calm, her mind always raced ahead to the next thing. After Paul died, it still raced, but always to the past.

The watercoloring women of camp Kinsonu, seven in this class, had brought their paper and paints down to the shore, seated themselves in a row facing the bay, and started trying to capture the sparkling sun, the blues and greens of water and trees, and the brown-grays of the rocky island shorelines.

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Too bad they couldn’t capture the fresh scented breeze or the swish of waves, or the whiny complaints of gulls.

Beside her she heard the latest groan of exasperation, followed by a high-pitched giggle. Apparently Cindy wasn’t pleased with her painting. She’d been making grunts and miserable sounds during the entire class, which was getting incredibly tedious.

“Not happy?”

Cindy gave another of her weird giggles, eyes unnaturally wide and deeply shadowed, skin a sickly color reflecting her bright yellow top. Ann was starting to think she was nearing the edge. Maybe she thought her husband should be begging her to come back by now. Like
that
was going to happen.

“I see it with my eyes, but I can’t get down on the paper what I see. I thought I could learn here. I thought I could.”

Cindy’s voice bordered on hysteria, and Ann wanted to shout,
Who cares, it’s just a painting!
but was afraid she’d push Cindy over.

“Maybe you’re trying to draw too exactly. Maybe you should try to capture the essence of what you see, or the mood of what you see. Or forget what your painting looks like and enjoy the process.”

“Oh. Yeah. Maybe I should.” Again the giggle.

Ann wasn’t sure Valium was fashionable anymore, but it seemed to her Cindy could use a case of it.

“Okay, ladies.” Jenny, the art teacher, who reminded Ann of Betty Friedan, clapped her hands. “Please bring your supplies back up and put them away. It’s nearly time for your next class.”

Ann gathered her things and started toward the art build-204 Isabel

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ing, annoyed when Cindy fell into step beside her. The last thing she needed was to get stuck playing Nurse Ratched.

A lobster boat revved its motor out on the bay, and Ann wondered for only the fortieth or fiftieth time whether the sound belonged to Clive and Arnold’s boat, working its route. Ann would be back out with them next week; she looked forward to more time on the open water, away from the walking wounded. She looked forward to seeing Clive again and apologizing for her outburst. Of course, everyone who worked with the campers would need to be up to speed on what was happening with each of them and would report back. She didn’t have to like it, but she got it and had gotten over it. Not Clive’s fault, not a personal betrayal, for God’s sake. They barely knew each other. She’d overreacted.

Ann had also been thinking about capturing the view from that little lean-to in back of his house. Maybe she’d take him up on his offer of spending time there some afternoon.

“What do you have now?” Cindy stumbled over a root on the path and barely caught herself before she fell.

“Archery.” If Cindy said
Oh, me too
, Ann would—

“Oh, me too!” She turned to gaze at Ann as if they were suddenly best friends, and with her eyes off the path, she stumbled again. “Gosh, look at me. You’d think I’d been hitting the rum.”

“You are a little unsteady.”

“I can’t sleep.” Her voice sounded a little more desperate and nearer to tears than usual.

Ann hoped they’d get around other people before she let any flow, since Ann wasn’t the huggy-huggy I’m-so-sorry type. Which had never seemed a liability until she was around so many women who were.

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“I haven’t slept since Kevin left me. I think I’m cracking up.”

“I’m sure you’re not.” Ann used what she hoped was a soothing tone, while starting to walk faster. “Have you tried warm baths? Hot milk? Incessant masturbation?”

“What?”

Ann sighed. “I’m sure they can give you a pill or something.”

“I don’t need a pill. I need a husband.”

“A new one?”

“No, not a new one. Kevin. The old one. The only one.”

“Right.” Ann was not going to get into this discussion. If Cindy wanted to whip herself with the shards of her broken marriage, that was her own masochistic fun.

“Were
you
married before . . . this?”

“Yes.”

“Divorced? ”

Shade cooled their entry into the woods. Ann wearily shifted her painting from her right hip to her left. “Widowed.”

Cindy’s gasp made Ann roll her eyes. “I’m so sorry!”

“Thanks.”

“Was he . . . your true love?”

Ann stopped walking. What the hell kind of question was that? “My who?”

“The love of your life, The One, who completes your sentences and shares everything with you.”

“God, where did you come up with such bullshit?”

“Martha found it. She told me.”

“Martha has been smoking bad weed. Either that or she lives in a happy place the rest of us can’t get to.”

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“I think she found it. I don’t have it with Kevin, I know that.” Her glance at Ann contained the obvious question.

“Paul was . . . we were good together.” Ann entered the art building and hung her painting carefully where it would dry among the others. They hadn’t been good together at the end. Paul hadn’t been good to anyone. Least of all to himself.

“I bet he would have been really proud of your painting.”

Cindy looked at her own ruefully before she hung it away.

“Kevin would be disgusted by mine.”

Ann rolled her eyes, wondering who’d beaten Cindy down to where she thought this Kevin was worth staying with, then realized she wasn’t sure what Paul would have thought of her painting. Because her favorite pizza, in New Haven, Connecti-cut, wasn’t anywhere
near
as good as the pizza he’d had at that tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Rome. And the wine at one of Boston’s finest restaurants might send her into ecstasy, but he’d had
much
better in this or that château in France or Italy.

She was proud of her painting. Doubtless it would not measure up to Renoir.

Were they good together?

She and Cindy stepped out of the shady building and headed toward the sunny archery field, a few dozen yards up the hill and west of Betsy’s cabin, Cindy constantly glancing at Ann. Her yearning for communication was starting to feel like wet clothes on a swimmer, a constant drag. Something about needy people made Ann want to put them out of their misery rather than help. Another attitude she shared with Paul—or learned from him? Another one that wouldn’t exactly put her in line for sainthood.

“Where did you grow up, Ann?”

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“Framingham. Massachusetts.” They walked on, and the more steps they took, the more Ann’s reply sounded brusque and rude, and the more obvious it became that the silence needed to be filled. By her. “How about you?”

“Princeton, New Jersey.” Cindy sighed. “Daughter of two brilliant professors who had and still have no idea how I came out of their gene pool.”

Ann nodded, feeling an actual pang of empathy. Ann’s low-strung, placid parents and brothers thought she was an alien for her intelligence and ambition and drive. “I know what that’s like.”

“You?”

Ann sent her a look. “Why not me?”

This question appeared to flummox Cindy entirely. “Well, I mean, I thought, I assumed . . . women like you have it all together.”

Ann snorted. “Which is why I’m here.”

A few more steps in silence, while Ann hoped the subject was closed. “It’s funny, you know not to judge a book by its cover, but we all do all the time. I never expected Martha would have been in such a perfect relationship. I figured you’d had it easy every day your whole life. I thought Dinah had no depth.”

“Wait, she does?”

Cindy giggled and slapped Ann’s arm playfully, which had to be one of the most annoying things anyone could do. “Tell me more about your family. Tell me how you were different.

Tell me—”

“Whoa, one at a time.”

“Sorry.” She laughed that brittle alarming laugh. “Kevin says I talk too much and say too little.”

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By some miracle Ann managed not to say,
Kevin is an
asshole.
She could tell plenty of Paul stories that wouldn’t endear him to anyone either. “Let’s say I was determined not to be satisfied with a high school education, a small brick house in a crowded neighborhood, and a job that never offered new challenges.”

“And I bet you weren’t. Did success make you happy?”

Ann stared longingly at the approaching archery field and its cluster of women who were not Cindy. What kind of naive question was that? “Sure, I was blissfully happy every single waking hour of my life.”

Cindy stopped walking and stood there in her denim wrap skirt and denim tennis shoes with bright yellow ankle socks that matched her top, giving Ann a look that made her feel like a puppy killer. “I just wanted to know.”

“Who the hell is happy? What kind of question is that?”

“I was happy. In my life. I was happy.”

“Happy being betrayed and devalued? Sounds like a regular twenty-four/seven orgasm.”

“Most of the time it was fine. Most of the time it was—”

“Why did you put up with it? For the sake of women everywhere, count yourself lucky he’s gone and start over now that he’s given you the chance.”

“I don’t know how. I’m not strong like you.” Cindy’s dark deer eyes filled up with tears, and she turned and walked off toward the targets set up on the field.