Distant Shores (23 page)

Anita gave her a grateful smile. “I was working in the beauty salon. Lordy, I still remember the first time I saw him. He looked like a Saturday-matinee hero, with his shaggy black hair and dark eyes. He had a mustache in those days, and his eyes were dark as night. I turned to my friend, Mabel, and said, ‘Oh, baby, will you look at that.' ” She sighed. “I reckon I fell in love with him right then. 'Course, he barely noticed me at all.”

Elizabeth frowned. Daddy had shaved off that mustache the year after Mama died. He'd never worn one since. “When was that?”

Anita didn't look at her. “It doesn't matter.”

“You knew my mother,” Elizabeth said suddenly, straightening.

Anita started to speak—to deny it, Elizabeth was certain. But when their eyes met, Anita sighed heavily and slumped forward. “Not really. She was with him that day, though. Mabel cut her hair.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Me? Naw. I was just out of beauty school. No one paid me much mind.”

“Tell me about her.”

“I don't know much, really. I heard stories, o' course. The second wife always hears stories about the first. By all accounts, your mama was the most beautiful, most adventurous woman in Springdale.”

“I've heard that line for years. It's starting to sound rehearsed. Tell me something real. Why wouldn't Daddy ever talk about her?” She gazed at Anita. “Please.”

“Before you were born, your mama ran away for a spell.”

“She left Daddy?”

“In the middle of the night, from what I heard. It took him a while to find her. She was way to North Carolina by then, but he tracked her down and brought her home. After that, folks said, she was different. Sad and quiet. Jenny Pilger saw her break into tears one day at the Piggly Wiggly.”

“Depression.” Elizabeth had never imagined such a thing. Her mama, the woman everyone said was so bold and adventurous,
depressed
. She didn't quite know how to process this new information.

“She loved you. Old Anna Deaver said that Marguerite never let you out of her sight. She even slept with you most nights. Wouldn't let anyone watch you, ever. But the rumor was that she never did shake that sadness. Some said she clung to you so tightly they thought your little eyes'd pop out. She stopped smilin'. That's what I heard most of all. That she'd left her smile in North Carolina, and she couldn't even come up with one for you.”

“I used to beg him for stories about her. He never would say anything beyond, ‘You hold your memories close, sugar beet.' But I didn't have any memories. Not enough, anyway.” She'd never been able to make him understand the howling emptiness she'd felt as a child.

“Maybe he didn't have any stories to give you. Sometimes unhappiness can settle over a thing and bury it until there's nothin' else left.”

Nothing else left. Just unhappiness.

Elizabeth knew how that felt now. “That's how it got between Jack and me.”

“It's easy, sometimes, to forget why you fell in love with someone.” Anita stared out at the ocean. “I left him once, you know.”

“No, I didn't know. Not then, anyway.”

“How would you, I guess, livin' so far away, and your own life on top of it? Edward wasn't the kind of man who'd tell his only child that his marriage had gone missin'.”

“You could have told me.”

“On one of our long, soul-searchin' mother-daughter talks? Honey, you barely said hello to me when you called.”

“Where did you go?”

“That doesn't matter. It didn't even matter then. Away, that's all.” She sighed, and Elizabeth wondered if that memory hurt more now that he was gone.

“Maybe we shouldn't talk about this.”

Anita was quiet for a moment. The ocean whooshed toward them, tumbled lazily across the sand and slunk away again. “He overwhelmed me sometimes. He was so hungry for everything, so needy, and I was young when we got married. I didn't know what I wanted. So I lived his life. For a long time, that was okay.”

Elizabeth knew that feeling. Jack and her father had that in common. Both men were like the sun; everything ultimately orbited around them. In the beginning, that was okay, but as you grew older, things changed. You started to see the roads you hadn't taken, and you wondered,
What if …?

Anita brought her knees up and curled her arms around her ankles. She started to turn toward Elizabeth, then looked down at her wedding ring instead. “I wanted to have a child.”

Elizabeth remembered that night in the garden, when she'd blithely asked Anita why she hadn't had kids.

“Oh, honey, that's a question for another time, maybe between different women.”

“In other words, mind my own business.”

“Yes. That question cuts to the heart of me, is all. I'm not goin' to answer it as idle chitchat at midnight two days after my husband's death.”

It must have wounded Anita deeply to hear that question asked aloud.

“I knew I'd be alone one day,” Anita went on, fiddling with her wedding ring. “I thought a baby would help. So, after Edward and I got back together, we tried. I had three miscarriages. All boys. Each one took a bigger piece of me, until …” She shrugged. “Three was enough, I guess. I figured God knew what he was doing.”

Elizabeth felt herself softening toward Anita, glimpsing a woman she'd never imagined before. It felt strangely like coming home. “I had a miscarriage once,” she said softly, surprising herself by the admission. “I never told anyone except Jack. It about broke my heart.” She touched her stepmother's ankle, squeezing it gently. It was the first time she'd ever done such a thing.

Anita made a sound, a tiny gasp, then turned to her. “I have something for you. I brought it all the way from Tennessee. And it wasn't easy.”

None of this was easy,
Elizabeth thought but didn't say. Instead, she helped her stepmother to her feet. They climbed up the rickety wood steps and emerged onto the soggy grass.

When they reached the porch, Elizabeth noticed the big cardboard box leaning against the house. “I wondered what was in that thing.”

Anita rushed into the house and came back out, holding a knife. “Open it.”

Elizabeth took the knife and split the box down the seam.

“You ought to put it down,” Anita advised.

Elizabeth slid the box onto the slatted porch floor. It hit with a loud metallic clang. She knelt down and opened the box.

Inside, she saw shiny green poles … white knotted rope.

“It's Daddy's hammock.”

“Y'all used to snuggle together in that thing for hours, rockin' back and forth. I remember hearin' your giggles from the kitchen while I was cookin' dinner.”

Suddenly Daddy was there, beside her.
Heya, sugah beet, hand your old daddy one o' them sweet lemonades, won'tcha?

“We used to watch the fireflies together,” Elizabeth whispered, remembering it in vivid detail. “They flew all around us when we were in this hammock.”

“He'd want you to have it,” Anita said. “It'd be perfect over there by the stairs, so you can sleep in it on a sunny day and listen to the ocean below … and remember how much he loved you.”

Elizabeth finally looked up at Anita, her eyes stinging. She couldn't say anything, not even thank you.

Anita smiled. “You're welcome.”

March howled into New York on an arctic blast. In the middle of a night so cold that even Times Square was deserted, it began to snow. At first it was just a flake here and there, drifting across the city, but by dawn, God had finished screwing around. Snow fell so hard and fast Jack could barely see the buildings across the street.

He stood at his window, sipping a latte. On the street below, cars were few and far between. City buses rumbled slowly forward, angling toward the stops. Neon signs looked faded and worn against the pewter sky, like collectible postage stamps from a forgotten era. Cottony clouds hung low in the sky, severing the high-rises in half.

He was just about to head into the shower when the phone rang.

“Hello, Mr. Shore. This is the Bite Me insurance agency and we need authorization to distribute your assets, since you have Fallen Off The Face Of The Planet.”

He couldn't help laughing. “Mea culpa,” he said. It was always better to take responsibility with Jamie. Otherwise, she'd chew you up and spit you out.

“No shit, mea culpa. That's not even a question. I suppose you've been so busy big-manning it that you didn't have time to call me back about the swim team.”

“We only talked about that two days ago. I knew you wouldn't do anything right away.”

“Hel-
lo
, Dad, I think you need to cut back on the peroxide. That conversation was more than a week ago.”

He frowned. “A week? No way.”

“Oh, yes, way.”

“God, I'm sorry, baby. I meant to get back to you. Things have been crazy around here.
People
mag—”

She snorted at the familiar
meant to
. “Yeah, right. It's always other people's fault.”

He made a mental note to pay closer attention to the calendar. “I'm working fifteen hours a day.”

“That must be why you were out when I called you last night … at two o'clock in the morning. Working.”

Thank God he wasn't talking to her face-to-face. He felt himself flush. “I took a sleeping pill last night. I've been having trouble sleeping lately … you know, without your mom.” That was actually true.

And false, of course.

“I didn't even know you missed her. You never mention her.”

“I do … miss her. She'll be out here any day.” Suddenly he knew what Elizabeth meant when she said it was tough to lie to the kids.

“You've been saying that for too long. Stephie and I have come up with a plan. You're invited to make it all happen.”

He immediately relaxed. So that was it: Jamie had a plan, and verbally roughing him up was her way of assuring his guilt-ridden participation. “And what exactly am I looking forward to this time, sending you girls to Europe this summer? Or, maybe scuba diving in Aruba for spring break?”

“Stephanie and I are gonna fly into Kennedy Friday morning. You'll meet us at the airport; then we'll all fly to Oregon together for the weekend.”

“Huh?”

“It's Mom's birthday. You didn't forget, did you?”

Shit.
“No, no. Of course not. I was going to fly out to be with her for the weekend, but then this thing at work—”

“Don't even finish that sentence. Honest to God, Dad, you're coming with us. I mean it. You're a television personality, not a cardiac surgeon. No one is gonna die if you take Friday off.”

What a mess. “You're right,” he said dully.

“You can meet us at the airport, right? So we can all fly together. We'll buy the tickets on-line and put them on your Visa.”

“Sure. Why not?”

“And, Dad, it's a surprise. So don't tell her, okay?”

Jack closed his eyes and sighed. “Oh, it'll be a surprise, all right.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Last night, Elizabeth and Anita had stayed up late into the night, talking. They didn't venture again into intimate territory. They simply talked, two women who'd known each other all their lives and yet had never really known each other at all. To their mutual surprise, they'd found a lot of common ground.

In the morning, after a breakfast of poached eggs and toast, they walked along the beach, talking some more. It was a glorious spring day, bursting with sunlight.

Later, while Anita napped, Elizabeth went to town and stocked up on groceries. It was late afternoon by the time she returned home. She picked up her mail, then turned onto Stormwatch Lane.

Out to sea, the first pink and lavender lights of evening were beginning to tint the sky. She parked in the gravel.

Anita was on the porch, staring out at the ocean. She wore a long, flowing white dress and a beautifully knit coral sweater. Her white hair was twisted into a single braid that fell down the middle of her back.

The light was stunning. Perfect. It drizzled over the house like sweet melted butter, softening all the edges. Anita's face was full of light and shadow right now: sad eyes, smiling mouth, furrowed brow. Her dress seemed to be spun from crushed pearls.

Elizabeth felt a flash of inspiration. “Could I paint you?”

Anita pressed a pale, veiny hand to her chest. “You want to paint my picture?”

“I don't promise that it'll be any good. I've only just started again. But if you'd be willing—”

“I could sit on that log over there by the cliff.”

Elizabeth turned. Sure enough, there was a perfect log slanted along the edge of the property. In the newly setting sun, it shone with silvery light. Behind it, the gilded ocean stretched to the horizon. It was the exact place she would have chosen, although it might have taken her an hour to make up her mind. And Anita had chosen it in five seconds.

She looked at Anita. “Are you an artist?”

Anita laughed. “No, but I read that book,
Girl With a Pearl Earring.
The one everyone was talkin' about.”

“Stay here. I'll be right back.” Elizabeth raced into the house, seasoned a whole chicken and popped it into the oven alongside a few potatoes and carrots, then put the groceries away and got her painting supplies. She was outside again in less than fifteen minutes.

She set up the easel and got everything ready, then looked around for Anita.

Her stepmother was standing by the log instead of sitting on it. Her back was to Elizabeth. Her arms were crossed—that female self-protective stance Elizabeth knew so well.

The twilight sky was pure magic. Pink, purple, gold, and orange lay in layers above the sparkling silver ocean. In the distance, the gnarled trees were already black.

Anita seemed to be fading before Elizabeth's eyes, as if the colors in the sky were drawing their strength from her. She was becoming paler and paler; her hair and dress looked almost opalescent.

“Don't move!”

Elizabeth let pure instinct overtake her. She'd never moved with such speed, such purpose. Mixing colors, slashing lines, trying desperately to capture the lonely beauty of the scene in front of her. Layer upon layer of color, everything taking on a hue that was completely unique.

She painted furiously, desperately, wordlessly, until the last bits of light seeped into the waterline at the edge of the world and disappeared.

It was almost completely dark when she said, “That's it, Anita. No more for tonight.”

Anita's body seemed to melt downward and become smaller. Suddenly Elizabeth realized how much she'd asked of the woman. “I'm sorry. Did it hurt to stand so still for so long?”

“I loved every moment of it.”

“You must be starving. I know I am. Come on inside.”

Anita glanced eagerly at the easel. “Can I see it?”

“No.” Elizabeth heard the hard edge to her voice and was instantly contrite. “Sorry. I mean not yet. Is that okay?”

Anita waved her hand in the air. “Of course, honey.”

Elizabeth carried the painting into the house and put it in the walk-in pantry to dry. “Dinner'll be ready in a while,” she said to Anita; “go on upstairs. Take a hot bath.”

“Darlin', you read my mind.”

Elizabeth set the table and made the salad, then called for Anita. When there was no answer, she went upstairs and found her stepmother sitting on the end of the bed, holding a small lace-trimmed pillow. Her head was bowed forward. She was so still that for a moment Elizabeth thought she'd nodded off.

“Anita?”

Anita looked up. Her face was pale; in the dull light, her cheekbones created dark hollows in her cheeks. There were tears in her eyes.

Elizabeth sat down on the edge of the bed. “You okay?”

“I guess.”

Elizabeth didn't know what to say. Grief was like that: One minute you were tripping the light fantastic; the next minute, an old blue pillow made you cry.

Anita smoothed her hand across the pillow. “Your daddy always tried to get me to take up needlepoint, but I never could master it. Such a feminine thing.”

Elizabeth glanced down at the pillow. It was one of the few mementos she had of her mother. She had often tried to imagine her mother in a rocking chair, working with all that beautiful silk thread, but all she could draw up was a black-and-white image of a young woman looking into the camera.

“Your mama made this pillow,” Anita said. “I can tell by her dainty stitches. That time she came into the beauty salon? She stitched the whole time Mabel cut her hair.”

“I try to picture her sometimes.”

Anita set the pillow down and stood up, then placed her thin hands on Elizabeth's shoulders and guided her toward the mirror that hung above the bureau.

Elizabeth stared at her own puffy reflection. Her hair was a mess, her face looked pale without makeup.

“When I first saw your mama, I thought she was the loveliest woman I'd ever seen. She and Edward looked like a pair of movie stars together.” Anita pulled the hair back from Elizabeth's face. “You're the spittin' image of her.”

As a girl, Elizabeth had spent hours searching through family photographs for pictures of her mother, but she'd never found more than a few.

She'd been looking in the wrong place for years, and no one had ever told her. All she'd needed to see Mama was a mirror. Now, as she looked into her own green eyes, she saw a hint of the woman she'd spent all her life missing. “Thank you, Anita,” she said in a shaky voice.

“You're welcome, honey.”

Jack barely slept that night.

Bleary-eyed and hungover, he padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

Unfortunately, the hot water couldn't wash away his regret. He'd slept with Sally again last night.

He wished he could believe it wouldn't matter; he and Birdie were separated, after all. But he knew better. This separation wasn't a license to screw around. It was a hiatus, a resting period in the midst of a long marriage. If he found out that Birdie had been unfaithful, he would kill the guy.

She'd forgiven him once, but that had been years ago, when they were different people. Back then, she'd been willing to sacrifice a huge amount of herself for their family. Though he'd hurt her, she'd been willing to believe in him again. In them.

But those days were gone. The new Birdie was a woman he couldn't predict.

She might learn about this mistake and file for divorce.

Or maybe she wouldn't care anymore. Maybe she'd drifted so far away that fidelity didn't matter.

He wiped steam off the bathroom mirror and stared at his hazy reflection. After a night of partying, the wrinkles around his eyes were more pronounced, and his skin had a sick gray tinge. It was easy to imagine himself as an old man, stooped by time and bad choices, tottering forward with a cane to steady his walk.

He'd always believed that Birdie would be beside him in those twilight years, still loving him when he had nothing to offer but a shaking hand and his heart. It had never occurred to him—not even in the past weeks—that they wouldn't always be together.

Now, suddenly, he was afraid. What if he'd finally ruined it?

He had just started shaving when the phone rang. Naked, he walked into the bedroom to answer it. “Hello?”

“Hel-
lo
, Dad.” Jamie sighed disgustedly. “I told you he was still at home. He forgot us.”

Shit.
Today was the day they were going to Oregon. “I was just walking out the door.”

Lame, Jack. Lame.

“Often, people leave for the airport
before
the plane lands,” Jamie said.

“I meant to.”

“He
meant
to,” Jamie said, clearly talking to her sister. “How long until you'll be here? Maybe we should get a room and wait until it's convenient for you to pick us up.”

He glanced at the clock. It was eight-forty-eight. “An hour, max. I don't know what traffic is like. Our plane doesn't leave until …”

“Eleven-forty-nine.”

“Right. I'll meet you at the gate by ten.”

Jamie sighed. “We'll be there, Dad.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Really.”

“We know. See you in a few.”

Jack hung up the phone, took two aspirin, and rushed to get dressed.

What if Birdie could tell he'd been unfaithful just by looking at him?

Damn. One screwup at a time. For now, he had to deal with the fact that he'd forgotten to meet his children at the airport.

In ten minutes, he was out the door and in a cab, heading toward Kennedy.

That gave him plenty of time to figure out what to say beyond,
I'm sorry.

Maybe Stephanie would buy it, would smile prettily and say,
That's okay, Dad,
but not Jamie. She'd stare daggers at him and ignore him for as long as she damned well felt like it.

Once again, he needed Birdie. She'd always been the glue that held their family together. She'd guided him, gently and not so gently, toward an easy relationship with his daughters. She'd made sure that he'd apologized when he needed to and listened when it was imperative. Without her, he was on his own, and he had no idea what to say.

“You can quit being strong, you know,” Anita said as they sat at the kitchen table, eating an early lunch. A few presents sat on the counter.

“What do you mean?”

“A happy birthday from your stepmother and a little gift doesn't quite cut it. Admit it, you miss your family. You've looked at the phone about fifty times today.”

“I'm fine. And you said you were going to teach me how to play cribbage tonight. That's something to look forward to.”

She eyed Elizabeth. “What did you normally do on your birthday?”

“You mean besides warn everyone for a week that it was coming?”

Anita nodded.

“Let's see. I usually took the day off from all volunteering projects and slept in. By the time I woke up, the house was empty. Jack and the girls always left birthday messages on the table. Once they tied balloons to the chairbacks.” Elizabeth's heart did a little flip. She'd forgotten that … “Jack always made dinner for me that night. His one meal—chicken piccata. It took him two hours and two drinks to make it, and you couldn't talk to him while he was cooking. He cursed a blue streak the whole time. After dinner, he gave me a body massage and then we made love. Oh, and I got to kiss and hug the girls as much as I wanted—they weren't allowed to protest.”

“It sounds wonderful.”

“It was.”

“You're good at it, you know.”

“What?”

“Denial. I mean, if I didn't know you, I might think everything was just peachy for you.”

“I made a choice. I wanted to be alone.” Elizabeth's voice softened; hurt feelings flooded through the barriers she'd built. Suddenly she was drowning in sorrow; a minute ago she'd been happy. She'd buried herself in denial because she knew how much a birthday without her family would hurt. No one had even called her today.

That was the realization she'd been running from all morning. No one had called.

Elizabeth forced a smile. “I'm going to go paint now. I need to finish four more pieces before the festival.”

Anita stood up from the table and unwrapped her apron. “Do you mind if I tag along? I could knit while you paint.”

“I'd appreciate the company,” Elizabeth answered truthfully. “I'll go change my clothes and grab my stuff.”

Upstairs, she changed into a pair of baggy Levi's and a well-worn blue denim shirt. She was almost to the door when she realized that she needed a belt.

She went back to the bureau and dug through her clothes, finally finding an old leather belt with a big silver buckle. She threaded it through the loops and cinched it tight, then went back downstairs.

Anita grinned at her. “You look like one of those country-and-western singers from home.”

“Daddy bought me this belt at Opryland, remember? I haven't been able to wear it in years.” Smiling at that, Elizabeth gathered her supplies. It wasn't ten minutes later that she and Anita were climbing down the steps.

“I can't believe you can carry all that stuff down these horrible old stairs. I keep thinkin' I'm gonna twist my ankle and plant my wrinkled face in the sand.”

Elizabeth laughed. She felt good again. The girls would call tonight. Most definitely. “The tide's out,” she observed. “We can spend hours down here.”

Anita picked up the knitting bag she'd dropped down from the top of the stairs. Flipping her blanket out on the sand, she sat down and started knitting. A pile of fuzzy white yarn settled in her lap like an angora bird's nest.

Elizabeth set up her easel, tacked the paper in place, and looked around for a subject. It was easy to find things to paint, but difficult to settle on just one. Her practiced eye saw a dozen opportunities: Terrible Tilly, the lighthouse in the distance, lonely and stark against the aqua-blue expanse of sea and sky … Dagger Rock, the black stone monolith that rose from the ocean in a cuff of foamy surf … a Brandt's cormorant circling the land's edge.