Barefoot Girls (29 page)

The worst times were when she found her mother had actually disappeared, leaving Hannah utterly alone without a caretaker. Those times were the most terrifying, even more than the zombie-Mom times. At least zombie-Mom was physically there. Wandering alone and calling her mother’s name through their little house on Shady Hill Road in Fairfield, Hannah always felt silly but helpless to stop. She knew her mother had left, felt it immediately. The air changed and Hannah knew she was alone without having to call out her mother’s name.

Hannah read the second chapter. This was where she got personal. It was a composite; a blending of every time her mother had disappeared for hours or even days, but it was all true. She found herself cringing as she read. She had been doing more than scratching an itch. She had been lashing out, bringing down vengeance on her mother, and, reading it now, she knew why. It wasn’t just about what had happened when she was a little girl. It was that keen and deep jealousy she had felt toward her mother for as long as she could remember.

The lighthearted full-of-fun Keeley that everyone else knew, that quality that made Keeley so immensely popular, beloved even, filled Hannah with a deep and impotent craving. She, too, wanted to be that at ease, that funny, that quick with a joke or an entertaining story. Instead, Hannah’s mouth became dry in public, her words disappearing into the air. People would look at her when they first met her, she was attractive in a dark brooding way, but would lose interest almost immediately when they witnessed her stiffness and her struggle to gasp out a few polite words. 

Each photo of her mother surrounded by admirers at a party, each card or note of praise for Keeley that came in the mail, each time she heard the roar of appreciative laughter after one of her mother’s stories, Hannah took it and fed it to the jealousy she nurtured, and watched with dread and satisfaction when it grew.

Hannah read on, into the third chapter, and the words started to change before her eyes. They were alive, writhing like black ink-stained maggots on the page. It was vile. Hannah felt her stomach lurch. A dry burning puff of air came out of her mouth, leaving a sour taste on her tongue. Her mother had made mistakes, many mistakes, but what Hannah had done here, it wasn’t a mistake.

Hannah took a deep breath and ripped the page from her book. Then she tore another, and then another, ragged tears that left some of the page still attached to the spine. She threw each page in a pile on the floor, and let that pile mount as she continued her work. When there was nothing left to tear, she tucked the empty binding under her arm, gathered up the pages from the floor in both arms, and dropped them in the fireplace along with the binding.  She opened the flue damper, lit a match, touched it to the edges of the pages, and watched the paper curl and turn black as the flame traveled.

The fire grew hot quickly, and Hannah put two logs on top to keep any of the burning pages from flying up the chimney. Then she covered the fireplace with the mesh screen that stood beside it and sat cross-legged in front of the fire to watch her book burn, her mind racing behind her blank face, picking up solutions and trying them on before rejecting them and turning to the next.

Chapter 26

Zooey read the last page, closed the book in her lap, and sat in bed, staring into space. Hannah’s novel was wonderful. It was also horrible. What was she going to do?

The afternoon was winding down, golden light shooting through the windows and creating yellow squares on the opposite wall. Outside her bedroom window, a mourning dove was cooing. It was one of her favorite sounds, one that usually soothed her, reminding her of the quiet of her parents’ house and childhood naptimes after lunch. The mourning doves near her window and the ticking of the bedside clock and the distant creak of a tread-upon floorboard had always been present whenever she had drifted off during her enforced afternoon naps at home in Rye, New York.

But now the doves’ soft noises sounded worried, concerned. Zo shook her head. She was projecting her own anxiety onto the birds.

She picked up the book again and looked at it. The cover art was very nice: an impressionist painting of a little clapboard house, done all in grays and blues and dashes of white. And there was Hannah’s name in gold lettering.

Earlier that day, after chastising Hannah on the phone about Keeley, Zo had been suddenly consumed with guilt. After using the bathroom, she went to the pile of books on her bedside table and found Hannah’s book at the bottom of the pile. The bookmark was where she left it after reading thirty four pages. Why hadn’t she read the rest of it? Some odd feeling of disappointment and her old friend, doubt, had stopped her. She remembered with a pang of embarrassment that she had hidden it from herself for the rest of the summer under an issue of
Vogue.

Well, she was going to finish it. Today.

Her vow made, she’d been annoyed that there were so many appointments to get through that day before she could stretch out her bed and read. First, there was her annual dermatologist appointment for a skin check. Dr. Rosenbach had sliced off a piece of a suspicious mole for biopsy, making Zo feel faint and slightly nauseated.

Then there was the luncheon for an esteemed horticulturist at the garden club. “Esteemed” really was the word that afternoon, the woman who introduced the speaker used it three times, and the horticulturist herself used it five. Zo counted. Chewing endlessly on a piece of the rubbery chicken that topped the Caesar salad that had been placed in front of her, Zo wiggled her watch off her wrist and placed it in the napkin on her lap so she could check the time surreptitiously.

She damned herself for coming at all and hardly listened to the speaker after the fifth repetition of that word, instead alternating between checking her watch and examining the attire and grooming of the women at her table. What was she doing here? These women weren’t her friends. In fact, she found the ones she’d spoken with desperately boring with their monotonous talk of renovations on their homes or what was the best preschool/stroller/whatever for their children.  But she knew why she was here. Her mother, an old-guard WASP through and through, always enthused about her many years with the garden club and regularly asked for reassurance that Zooey, too, would become a member. “Those girls from the island are lovely, dear, but you mustn’t limit yourself,” she would say, patting Zo’s hand with hers, which had grown ropy with veins and powdery-soft before she died a little over six years ago. Her mother had meant more, but said the minimum and always gently.

Now Zo was here, bored out of her mind and desperate to be home, curled up on her bed with Hannah’s book in her lap. She chewed a little longer on the piece of chicken, forced herself to swallow it, and decided she would wait until the supercilious snob at the podium was done speaking to make her swift and quietly apologetic exit. She mimed reacting to a vibrating cell in her purse, knitting her brows while peering into her purse at what was actually a MAC compact, pretending to read a message on it. There was no cell. Zo had one, but it was in her car’s glove compartment, reserved for roadside emergencies. Once the applause began, she leapt from her seat, made a sad-face at the women who looked up at her, shook her head and mouthed the word “home” before walking quickly from the room.

Pulling into her garage fifteen minutes later, she was relieved to see that Neil wasn’t home, his car’s bay empty. During their first year of marriage, he spent his days either at his office or on the golf course, but recently, he’d taken to suddenly appearing at home during the day and wanting Zo’s attention. Sometimes he’d burst in on her when she was in their bedroom getting ready or just relaxing, obviously searching for signs of infidelity, the cast-off garments and half-finished cocktails of an afternoon tryst. He’d go to each bedroom window, looking for the imaginary man, and then went around checking inside closets and even under the bed. Other times, he was like a puppy, following her around the house and whining that they didn’t do enough together. If he came home when she was out, he’d be waiting for her when she returned with a flurry of questions about where she’d been and with whom and why.

There had been clues of his insecurity and jealousy from the beginning. Back then, when he demanded that she explain where she’d been or beg for assurance of her love for him, she’d found it charming, romantic. After all, her first husband, Phillip, had been so walled off and work-obsessed. He had never uttered proclamations of love, or required them in return. And Blake, well, it turned out that Blake loved men, not her. Later, after his confession, he admitted that what he’d really fallen in love with was Zo’s fashion sense as well as her lifestyle. Plus, they had the same taste in books and music and Broadway shows. She should have known the truth when she saw how he was looking at Hugh Jackman when they went to see “The Boy from Oz”. 

Her first two husbands had given her far too much space and time by herself, even for an introvert. So she’d wished upon a star and gotten her wish granted in the worst possible way. It was like that story about making a deal with the devil: that every wish would be granted, but would never satisfy and would often bring ruin to the poor soul who had fallen for the devil’s game. It made her wonder if she’d somehow made a deal with Satan by accident. She’d wished for successful and powerful, and gotten workaholic Phillip. She’d wished for a handsome companion for conversation and gallivanting about town, and she’d gotten beautiful boy-loving Blake. Now Neil.

Zo walked through the house, appreciating the echo of her step, the quiet broken only by the distant barking of a neighbor’s dog. She loved the house, even though three unhappy marriages that had been played out there. She loved the high ceilings, the beautiful old moldings, the wide and deep fireplaces. She loved the glossy wooden floors and the black-and-white kitchen with its checkerboard floor.  When things ended with Neil, and they would probably end soon, she had decided would stay on here alone and enjoy a solitary life: just her and her house. And maybe a cat or a little dog. But not more than one, she didn’t want to be one of those crazy old women with too many pets.  Smiling at the thought of her future, she made herself a sandwich in the kitchen, climbed the stairs to her bedroom, and got in bed with Hannah’s book.

Five hours later, stiff from lying still for so long, she stared at the cover of the book her hands. Certainly, there was plenty that she could praise honestly. The pacing was excellent, the evoked imagery was stunning, and the court scenes riveting. How had Hannah known all about child custody laws? Of course. Hannah was a student at heart. She had probably not only read everything available, she’d probably sat in courtrooms as a spectator, observing similar lawsuits as they played out in the justice system. Zo was impressed; the court scenes, which could have been stagy and silly, were extremely realistic.

On the other hand, much of the dialogue outside of a courtroom was pretty bad, and the elderly neighbor character, Mrs. Worthington, that rescues the abandoned little girl and fights for custody of her, was simply awful. Saccharin and impossibly perfect, the woman was like a cartoon. What older woman was like that, all sweetness and light, living in a storybook cottage with blue shutters and an immaculate yard, with no financial problems or health issues? What woman who was alone and in advancing years would be willing to adopt a six year old child? There wasn’t even a son or a daughter who could take over when Mrs. Worthington eventually died. The issue wasn’t addressed in the court scenes, which was impossible to believe. And in almost every scene with Mrs. Worthington in it, with the exception of the court scenes, she was baking something while wearing a frilly apron. Mrs. Worthington sounded like an elderly June Cleaver. 

Even worse was the mother character, Shelley Guildford. Of course, Shelley was meant to be terrible, she was the antagonist after all, but it wasn’t that. It was just amazing that Hannah, their baby, could conceive of such an emotionally abusive and distant mother when her own childhood had been so idyllic and full of love.  But it was a novel, after all, and her darling Hannah had always possessed a vivid imagination.

But the abandonment! Hannah had never been left alone, yet she described it so well. Zo literally felt that echoing terror, that deep rending rejection, pierce her as she read. Where had all of that come from? It couldn’t just be from reading other great novels or books about child abuse.

Zo put the book down in her lap and turned to look at the silver-framed photo of Hannah on her bedside, a recent photo of her from this summer on Captain’s, laughing into the camera the night they celebrated her and Daniel’s engagement. Zo had photos of Hannah all over the house, but this frame always held the most recent snapshot.

She reached over and picked up the frame and looked at it. Those knowing sparkling eyes, her often surprising insights. Was it possible that Hannah was psychic?

Zo had known a real psychic, Kurt, an older gentleman from Germany she had met at a cocktail party when she was still married to Phillip. She had liked his quiet intensity and invited him to a small dinner party she held a month after meeting him. After the others left, Kurt lingered and helped Zo clear the table. Phillip made his usual noises about work to do and disappeared into his den. Over a second cup of coffee in the kitchen, he’d said he had a special gift and he wanted to use it to help her. She was skeptical and started to feel a little nervous – was he crazy? She was glad Phillip was within shouting distance.