Bones and Roses (2 page)

“Good.” I don't elaborate. What goes on in the “rooms” stays in the rooms. Ivy is well aware of this; that's not why she was asking. She's worried I'll fall off the wagon.

“You didn't return my call.”

I extract a clump of sprouts from my sandwich before taking a bite. You'd think Cypress Bay was the birthplace of the alfalfa sprout from its prevalence in these parts—it's the kudzu of crunchy land. I'd be happy if I never saw another sprout. “Yeah, it was too late by the time I got your message.”

“I thought the meeting got out at nine.”

“I went out afterwards with some friends,” I lie.

“Really. Is that why all the lights were on at your house?”

I narrow my eyes at her. “What, so now you're spying on me?”

“I was checking up on you. That's not the same as spying. I was worried, okay? I thought something had happened to you.” I can't say I blame her, after what I put her through during my Lost Weekend years. She was the first person to whom I made amends after I got sober.

“I'm perfectly fine as you can see.” I spread my arms to show I have nothing to hide—as in no bruises from having fallen down while in a drunken stupor, no bandages from having slit my wrists.

Ivy says nothing.

I munch on my sandwich as if I hadn't a care in the world, swallowing what's in my mouth before delivering another whopper. “Today is just another day as far as I'm concerned.”

She returns her sandwich to her plate and pushes her aviator sunglasses onto her head to look me in the eye. “It's no use, Tish. I've known you since we were in sixth grade. You can't fool me.”

I shrug. “It's been twenty-five years. Believe me, I'm over it.”

“No, you're not,” she insists. “You're only saying that so I'll shut up. But this isn't one of those fake-it-till-you-make-it things.” I hate it when she does that, quotes AA scripture she learned from me.

“What do you want from me? Do you expect me to moan and wail?”

“No, but you could mark the occasion—you know, to get closure. Have some sort of ceremony.”

“What, you mean like scatter her ashes? Visit her grave?” An edge creeps into my voice. “My mom isn't dead, Ivy. She ran out on us.”

She ignores my biting tone. “Tish, it's time. You'll never get past it if you don't deal with it.”

“I've dealt with it plenty, trust me.”

“Oh, really. Is that why you're glaring at me like I just confessed I slept with your boyfriend?”

“You don't even like Daniel,” I remind her, seizing the chance to change the subject. I take a sip of my Perrier, wishing it was a gin and tonic. I haven't touched a drop in three and a half years, but right now it feels like the first thirty days when every hour of every day was an uphill battle.

“I never said I didn't like him,” she corrects me. “All I said was I didn't think he was right for you.”

“Like you're such an expert. You've never been in a relationship that lasted longer than the milk cartons in your fridge.”

“It's no use trying to pick a fight,” she replies with maddening calm. She does know me too well—that much is true. “We're not talking about me. Or men. We're talking about
you
.”

I give a sigh of surrender. “All right, I admit it's been on my mind. But I'm not doing some stupid ceremony.” Why bother when each year the anniversary of my mother's defection is marked by the black cloud that descends on me? “Even if I saw the point, it's not just me—there's Arthur to consider. You know how he gets.” My brother is unpredictable to say the least.

“She's his mom, too.” I'm grateful for her use of the present tense. It's easy to imagine the worst when you haven't heard from someone in twenty-five years. “He might want to say his own good-byes.”

“He talks to her all the time.” Along with the other voices in his head.

“It doesn't have to be a huge deal. Light a candle, say a prayer.”

“I stopped going to church when I was twelve.” I guess Dad didn't see the point after Mom went away. God didn't want to be his friend? Fine, he wasn't going to play over at God's house.

“Say a prayer to your Higher Power, then.”

I only pray to my Higher Power for the strength to resist temptation, but no point getting into that. I reply grudgingly, “I'll think about it.” We go back to eating our sandwiches—or rather, Ivy eats while I pick. “I didn't have it so bad, you know,” I point out, as if in saying it, I can make it so. “Dad did the best he could.” Never mind it was what the Big Book of AA calls “half measures.” As in
Half measures availed us nothing
. The truth is, my brother and I would have been better off if we'd gone to live with our grandparents. “Lots of kids had it way worse.”

“Yeah, I know. Macaulay Culkin and the poor kids in Africa.”

“Funny you should mention Africa.” Ivy's mom is a doctor who gave up her private practice some years ago to start a free clinic in a remote village in Malawi, leaving then twelve-year-old Ivy in the care of her dad and grandmother. Ivy sees her only once or twice a year, when she visits Malawi or on the rare occasion when Dr. Ladeaux can fly home between cholera outbreaks and dengue fever epidemics.

If my intention was to point out that Ivy might have abandonment issues of her own, I'm not getting any traction. “At least I always knew where my mom was,” she says with a sanguine shrug.

She isn't being cruel, just stating a fact, but I feel a dull throb nonetheless. “Okay, so mine cared more about her boyfriend than about us. That doesn't make her Mommie Dearest.”

“No,” she agrees, adding gently, “but you don't have to be beaten with a coat hanger to have scars.”

I have nothing to say to that; I can only swallow against the lump in my throat.

The last time I saw my mother was when she was waving good-bye as I ran to catch the school bus that day. She was dressed for work, in a yellow wraparound dress with poppies on it that matched her bright red lipstick and red slingback heels: an outfit more appropriate for a pool party than place of employment. Her blond hair was in a French braid, curly tendrils trailing around her heart-shaped face. From a distance she looked like Marilyn Monroe. I was at an age when my friends were embarrassed by their parents, but I never felt that way about my mom. I was proud of her. Proud to be her daughter, even though I felt I could never measure up. I had been told I was pretty, but I wasn't beautiful like her. My hair was dirty-blond rather than golden; my flat chest and boyish hips showed no hint of coming attractions the likes of which she boasted. The only thing I got from her was my eyes: gray-green and thick-lashed. (My boyfriend, Daniel, once said gazing into them was like gazing into a tide pool, which was a compliment coming from him: He's an associate professor of marine biology.)

I had noticed at breakfast she seemed preoccupied, as if something were weighing on her, but I didn't think too much of it. My parents hadn't been getting along, so I chalked it up to another argument with Dad. When I arrived home from school later that day, she was gone, along with her suitcase. She'd left a note saying she had to go away for a little while, but she'd be back for Arthur and me as soon as she could.
Don't worry. Everything will be okay. Love, Mom
. I didn't know then about her lover, whom she'd met at work—Stan was on the construction crew building the new wing at the Fontana Spa and Wellness Center, where my mom ran the gift shop. I didn't find out until much later when a kid in my class, Cam Pressley, called my mom a whore. After I was sent to the principal's office for slugging Cam with my backpack hard enough to give him a bloody nose, my dad had to come pick me up. I asked him about Mom on the way home. He was careful not to lay blame, saying only that she had found someone else who made her happier than he could. To his credit, he never once said a bad thing about her. Whatever he might have felt or thought, he took those feelings to his grave.

My mother was far from perfect. She drank too much and flirted with other men. She was always buying stuff my parents couldn't afford and she'd pout when Dad made her return it. She was famous for starting and abandoning projects. When I finally got around to clearing out the basement of our old house after Dad died, I found boxes with half-completed scrapbooks; squares for a quilt that was never stitched; fabric from bolts, folded but not cut, and dress patterns never opened; recipe books with page after page of bookmarked recipes she'd never gotten around to trying. Yet she could light up a room just walking into it. She had a laugh so infectious random passersby on the street would often pause and smile at hearing it. She was generous in her affections, too, always pulling me or Arthur into a hug and snuggling up next to us on the bed before tucking us in at night. That's what made it so hard to believe she would abandon us. For years I clung to the hope that, if we hadn't heard from her, it was due to circumstances beyond her control: amnesia from a blow to the head, or that she was being held prisoner by Stan, who'd turned out to be a bad guy. It was a long time before I had reason to doubt her love.

Ten years ago, I got a postcard from a cheesy theme park in Florida. On the front was a photo of a burly guy wrestling an alligator. On the back was a brief message that read “Sorry for everything.
”
It was signed “Stan Cruikshank.” It was only then I had learned Stan's name. A subsequent Google search turned up nothing but a couple of misdemeanor arrests, one for driving with a suspended license, the other for assault and battery. But it dispelled the notion that my mom was being held prisoner or that she had amnesia. Or that she was dead—if he felt bad enough to contact me, surely he would have informed me. Which left the inescapable conclusion: She'd abandoned us. Maybe it was out of shame that she hadn't contacted us. Maybe her drinking had gotten out of control, like mine was starting to. Whatever the reason, it hurt all the same.

To this day I can't think about it without feeling as if I've had the air knocked out of my lungs. Lighting a candle or saying a prayer wasn't going to change a damn thing. I stare down at the sandwich on my plate, oozing hummus and bristling with sprouts. Suddenly I want to throw up.

I must look a little green, because Ivy takes pity on me. She steers the conversation onto other topics. We talk about her show at the Headwinds Gallery in two weeks' time, for which she's been frantically preparing. I tell her about my fun morning getting sprayed with woodchips at the Caswells'—the tree-trimmer I hired to limb their trees wielded his chainsaw as if it were a six-shooter and he a Wild West gunslinger—and then fishing a dead possum out of the swimming pool at the Russos.' Finally I get around to dishing the latest on the Trousdale divorce.

Douglas and Joan Trousdale are the wealthiest of my clients by a couple of zeros. Douglas is CEO of Trousdale Realty, where I worked as a broker; it's easily the most successful realty in town, judging by the signs with his grinning mug marking every other property for sale in these parts. He also owns the Fontana Spa and Wellness Center, where my mom worked, which he inherited from his father when the old man died ten years ago, and which is now world renowned due to his promotional efforts, with franchises in several other locations—Palm Springs, La Jolla, and Las Vegas. Joan is a prominent socialite and on the board of several charities.

They own three homes: their primary residence in the tony San Francisco neighborhood of Pacific Heights, where Joan now lives alone; the condo in Pacifica, where Douglas is currently shacked up with his twenty-five-year-old mistress; and the oceanfront estate in La Mar that I manage. The latter sits on ten acres and boasts an Olympic-sized swimming pool, tennis court, and not one but two guesthouses, one of which my boyfriend Daniel occupies rent-free in exchange for maintaining the grounds. (His meager salary as a tenure track assistant professor at the university wouldn't cover his living expenses otherwise). Meanwhile, Douglas and Joan are so busy fighting over who gets what and when each should have use of it—in a divorce so epic it makes all others seem like minor squabbles in comparison—the La Mar house sits empty for the most part. Not for much longer, however; their son Bradley is due to arrive soon for an extended stay.

I have yet to meet the man. All I know about him is that he's a combat cameraman for CNN based in the Middle East—and an only child, the apple of his mother's eye. He's flying in tomorrow from New York, after three months in Afghanistan. One of the items on my to-do list for today is to ready the house for his arrival.

“Who cares if he's stuck up? He's hot,” says Ivy after I've expressed my low expectations regarding the only son of billionaires. A while back, I made the mistake of mentioning he was good-looking, which I know from the photos of him scattered throughout the house.

“What's that got to do with it?”

“Everything. But if you two fall in love, it'll be kind of awkward with him and Daniel living on the same property. Then I guess he'll have to find another place to live. Daniel, I mean.”

I frown at her. “Seriously, what has he ever done to make you dislike him?”

“Nothing. And I repeat, I don't dislike him.” She retrieves a piece of bacon that's fallen out of her sandwich and pops it in her mouth. “He's a perfectly nice guy. He's also intelligent and kindhearted and environmentally conscious. But face it, Tish, you're not in love with him. And he's not in love with you.”

“How can you say that? We have a very loving relationship.”

“You have a loving relationship with your cat. I should hope you want more from your boyfriend than to have him curl up next to you.”

“Nothing wrong with that. When you've been together as long as we have—” going on two years now— “you don't go from zero to sixty in a heartbeat. You take it slow.”