Distant Shores (7 page)

She kissed Elizabeth's cheek. “Hi, Mom. You look tired. Where's Dad?”

Elizabeth laughed. “Thanks, honey. Your dad had to stay behind for a day. Some big story.”

“Gee, what a shock.” Jamie barely paused for a breath and started talking again. “Could they
put
more seats in that plane? I mean, really. When the guy in front of me leaned back, my tray dropped down and almost snapped my jaw off. And you have to be Calista Flockhart to get out of your seat.”

Jamie was still talking when they pulled up to the house.

Daddy and Anita must have heard the car drive up (they'd probably been standing at the window for the last thirty minutes, waiting impatiently); they were already on the porch, holding hands, grinning.

Jamie bounded out of the car, hair flying, arms outstretched. She launched into her grandfather's open arms.

Elizabeth and Stephanie gathered the bags together and followed her.

“Stephie,” Anita said, teary-eyed, taking her granddaughter in her arms.

After a quick round of
hello-we-missed-you-how-was-your-flight?
they all went inside.

The house smelled like Christmas; fresh-cut evergreen boughs draped the mantel and corkscrewed up the banisters; the cinnamony scent of newly baked pumpkin pies lingered in the air. On every table, vanilla-scented candles burned in cut crystal votive containers. There were artifacts of the girls' childhoods everywhere—clay Christmas trees that leaned like the Tower of Pisa, papier-mâché snowmen covered in glitter and acrylic paint, egg cartons cut into nativity sets.

They spent the rest of the day talking and playing cards, wrapping presents and shaking the packages already under the tree. By midafternoon, Stephanie and Anita had disappeared into the kitchen to make homemade dressing and a bake-ahead vegetable casserole.

Elizabeth stayed in the living room, playing poker for toothpicks with Jamie and Daddy.

“So, missy,” Daddy said, puffing on his pipe as he studied his cards. “How're things at Georgetown?”

Jamie shrugged. “Hard.”

That surprised Elizabeth. Jamie
never
admitted that anything was difficult, not this child who wanted to climb Everest and publish haiku and swim in the Olympics.

“Jamie?” she said, frowning. “What's wrong at school?”

“Don't lapse into melodrama, Mom. It's just a tough quarter, that's all.”

“How's Eric?”

“That is
so
over. I dumped him two weeks ago.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth felt oddly adrift suddenly, unconnected. Once she'd known every nuance in her daughters' lives; now boyfriends appeared and disappeared without warning. In the other room, the phone rang and was answered. “Are you seeing anyone else?”

“Hell's bells, Birdie. Who gives a rat's hindquarters about boys? How's the swimming, that's what matters. Are we gonna get seats to see you at the next Olympics?”

Jamie had vowed to win Olympic Gold when she was eleven years old. The day she'd won her first race at the Ray Ember Memorial Pool.

“Of course,” she answered, smiling brightly.

But there was something wrong with that smile, something off. Before Elizabeth could say anything, Anita walked into the room, heels clacking on the floor. She was holding the cordless phone to her ample breast.

“Birdie, honey, it's Jack.”

Elizabeth knew instantly: bad news.

Elizabeth hadn't slept well. All night, she'd tossed and turned on her side of the bed. Finally, at about five a.m., she gave up, got dressed, and went downstairs.

Jack hadn't been able to get away yesterday.

Of course he hadn't. Something
important
had come up.
The video, honey, it's first rate, but
blah, blah, blah.
I'll be there tomorrow night. I promise.

Promises were a lot like impressions. The second one didn't count for much.

Elizabeth made herself a cup of tea and stood at the kitchen window, staring out at the falling snow. Then she wandered into the living room to make a fire.

There, sitting on the coffee table was a red cardboard ornament box.

Her father must have left it out for her last night.

She put down her tea and reached for the ornament that was on top. It was a lovely white angel, no bigger than her palm, made of shiny porcelain with silvery fabric wings. Her mother had given it to her on her fourth birthday; the last such present Elizabeth could recall.

Each year, she'd wrapped and unwrapped it with special care, and taken great pains to choose the perfect place for it on the tree. She hadn't taken it with her when she moved out because the angel belonged here, only here, in this house where her mama had lived.

“Hey, Mama,” she said quietly, smiling down at the angel in her palm. Once, it had seemed so big. The most important part of the angel was the memory attached to it.

Can I hang up the angel now, Mommy? Can I?

Why, darlin' Birdie, you can do most anything. Here, let me lift you up …

She had so few memories of Mama; each one was valuable.

She hung the ornament from the second-highest branch, then plugged in the lights and stood back. The tree looked beautiful, sparkling with white lights and festooned with decades' worth of decoration. Everything from the pipe-cleaner star Jamie had made in kindergarten to the Lalique medallion Daddy had bought at an auction in Dallas. Golden bows adorned the branches.

Anita walked into the room. She wore a frothy pink negligee and Barbie-doll mules. “I had a heck of a hard time finding that box.”

Elizabeth turned around. “You left this box out for me?”

“You picture your daddy rootin' around in the attic for a certain box of Christmas ornaments, do you?”

Elizabeth smiled in spite of herself. “I guess not.”

Anita sat down on the sofa, curled her feet up underneath her. The puffy pink pom-poms on her slippers disappeared. “I'm sorry Jack couldn't get here yesterday.”

Elizabeth turned back to the tree. She didn't want to talk about this. For all her pancake makeup and fiddle-dee-dee-don't-confuse-me airs, Anita sometimes saw things you'd rather she didn't. “He's busy with some big story.”

“That's what you said.”

There was something in the way she said it, a hesitation maybe, as if she didn't believe the excuse. “Yes, it is,” Elizabeth answered curtly.

Anita sighed dramatically.

It was how they'd always communicated, in fits and starts. Ever since Daddy had brought his new wife home.

Elizabeth had been thirteen, a bad age anyway, and worse for her than most.

And Anita Bockner, the beautician from Lick Skillet, Alabama, was the last person she would have chosen to be her stepmother.

This is your new mama, Birdie,
he'd announced one day, and that was that.

As if a mother were as replaceable as a battery.

Mama had never been mentioned again in this sprawling white house amid the tobacco and cornfields. No pictures of her graced the mantels or the tables, no stories of her life had ever been spun into a wrap that would warm her lonely daughter.

Anita had tried to mother Elizabeth, but she'd gone about it all wrong. They'd been oil and water from the beginning.

Elizabeth had hoped that time and distance would sand away the rough edges of their relationship, but that wasn't how it worked between them. They'd remained at odds for all these years. For Edward's sake, they'd learned at last to be polite. When things got too personal, one of them always changed the subject. It was Elizabeth's turn. “I hear you and Daddy are going to Costa Rica this spring.”

“I'm a fool, that's for sure. I could choose a beach somewhere, with margaritas and pool boys, but
noooo
. I agree to visit a country that's famous for snakes and spiders.”

“A lot of women dream of exotic vacations with husbands who love them.”

“That's because most women can't remember why they fell in love with their husbands. Without that …” Anita let her voice trail off. “You have to work to remember the good things sometimes.”

Elizabeth wasn't sure whether this conversation was idle chitchat or not. It didn't matter. Anita's comments were getting too close to the truth. It was bad enough that Elizabeth's marriage had gone stale. She wasn't about to add insult to injury by talking to her stepmother about it. “Did you notice the snow? The backyard looks beautiful,” she said, scouting through the obviously empty box, looking for a not-there ornament.

“Ah, the weather. Always a good topic for us. Yes, Birdie, I saw the snow. Edward thought we'd all go down to the pond tonight.”

“I think—”

The doorbell interrupted her. She glanced back at Anita. “Are you expecting anyone?”

Anita shrugged. “Benny, maybe? Sometimes when he has a hot date, he does his deliveries at the crack of dawn.”

“Who in the sweet bejesus is that?” came Daddy's voice from upstairs.

Elizabeth went to the front door, opened it.

Jack stood there, looking rumpled and tired. His hair was an adolescent mess. Tiny pink lines crisscrossed his cheeks like an old road map. His blue eyes were narrowed by puffy skin. “Hey, baby,” he said, giving her a lopsided grin. “I woke up the news director at midnight and gave him the tape. Then I flew all night. Forgive me?”

Elizabeth smiled up at him. “Just when I think I'm going to trade you in for a newer model, you do something like this.”

She let him pull her into his arms, and when he leaned down to kiss her, she kissed him back.

SIX

The frozen pond looked like a pane of mirrored glass tucked into a mound of cotton batting. At the silvery edge, a tractor was parked; its engine was running. Two bright headlights shone toward the ice. A boom box played Elvis's “Blue Christmas.”

For as long as Elizabeth could recall, ice-skating on this pond had been a Christmas day tradition. In the attic, there were dozens of pairs of skates, some dating back a hundred years.

They always did it the same way: first, a lazy morning of gift opening, then a late afternoon holiday dinner of turkey with all the trimmings, then a pot of hot, mulled wine made in the huge fireplace in the living room. Once they'd transferred the wine to thermoses, they climbed onto the slat-sided, tractor-drawn wagon and rolled through the snow-blanketed pasture toward the wood whose Native American name had been long forgotten. Daddy always attached a string of bells to the back of the wagon.

This pond was magical. Here, when Elizabeth was four years old, her mother had taught her to skate. It was one of her favorite memories. One single day, barely more than an afternoon, but never forgotten. Her Mama had been underdressed and freezing; when she reached down for Elizabeth's hand, her touch had been icy cold.
You just hang on to Mama, darlin'. I won't let you fall.

Elizabeth had often remembered that promise in the empty years that followed, especially when Anita moved into Sweetwater.

Now she sat on top of the picnic table, wrapped tightly in a multicolored woolen blanket. On the ground beside her, a bonfire crackled and snapped and sent gray ash into the slowly darkening sky.

Out on the ice, Jamie was teaching Jack to skate backward. His ungainly movements and uncharacteristic lack of coordination kept his daughters laughing. When he fell hard, Jamie rushed toward him, made sure he was okay, then immediately broke into a fit of the giggles.

Anita skated toward Jack and helped him up. They skated off together, Adonis and Dolly Parton on ice.

A minute later, Daddy skidded to a stop in front of Elizabeth. “You quit awful early,” he said, huffing and puffing. White clouds of breath accompanied his every word.

“I was watching.”

“You do too danged much o' that, sugar beet. Now, come on out here and skate with your old man.”

She unwrapped the blanket and eased herself off the picnic table. Steady on the blades, she walked to the ice and put her gloved hand in his.

As they'd done a thousand times before, they glided across the ice. Moonlight glittered on the frosted surface. In the background, “Frosty the Snow Man” was playing. For a single, perfect moment, she was a little girl in pigtails again, skating in a puffy pink ski suit that was two sizes too big, while her mama and daddy stood watching from the shore.…

“You always were a good skater,” Daddy said, sweeping left at the end of the pond. “You were good at a lot of things.”

It depressed her, that observation, made her feel old. She thought of the conversation she'd had with Meg:
Let's be martini-honest, here, Birdie. You used to be a lot of things—talented, independent, artistic, intellectual.… We all thought you'd be the next Georgia O'Keeffe.

“Life is short, Elizabeth Anne. When was the last time you traveled someplace exotic? Or scared yourself silly? Or took up some crazy thing, like hang gliding or skydiving?”

They'd had this discussion a dozen times in the past few years. It stung more each time. “I prefer to scare myself in ordinary ways, Daddy. Like letting my children cross the country for college. Why bungee jump when you can put a kindergartner on a school bus? Now, that's
real
terror.” She laughed, as if it were a joke.

Daddy twisted Elizabeth around until she was skating backward in front of him. “I'm only gonna say this once, Birdie; then we can pretend I kept quiet if you want.” He lowered his voice. “You're missin' out on your own life. It's passin' you by.”

The words were a sucker punch that left her breathless. “How do you know that?”

“Just 'cause my glasses are thick as Coke bottles doesn't mean I can't still see my little girl's heart. I hear the way you talk to Jack … and the way you don't talk to him. I know an unhappy marriage when I see one.”

“Come on, Daddy, you've been married two times, and wildly in love with both of your wives. You can't know about …” She shrugged, uncertain of how to proceed. “Whatever it is I'm going through.”

“You think I never had my heart broken? Think again, missy. Your mama about killed me.”

“Her death broke all our hearts, Daddy. That's not the same thing.”

He started to say something, then stopped.

She sensed that he'd been about to reveal something. “Daddy?”

He smiled, and she knew it had flown past them, whatever opportunity had almost existed. As usual, he wouldn't say anything about Mama. “Show me one of those pretty turns Anita taught you.” He spun her around and gave her a gentle push.

She pirouetted until she was dizzy. Then, breathing hard, she slowed down. In a lazy, swirling arc, she glided across the ice.

Jack came up beside her, half skating, half walking clumsily. His breath shot out in broken, cloudy white gusts. He grabbed her hand, squeezing hard. “Is this archaic southern ritual almost over? Any more quality traditional time and I'll probably fracture my hip.”

Elizabeth couldn't help smiling. There were so few things Jack couldn't do well. Frankly, it was nice to be the accomplished one. “You could stand by the fire.”

He glanced in that direction. Edward and Anita were there, cozying up to one another. “And talk to your father? No thanks. Last night he practically called me an alcoholic—while he was sucking down his fourth bourbon-and-soda.”

“He doesn't understand what you do for a living, that's all.”

“That's not true. He thinks I do nothing. He thought playing football was useless;
talking
about football is even worse.”

Jack almost fell; Elizabeth steadied him. “It's what we think that matters.”

“I can't wait for you to see the interview I did. What happened was … no, wait. Let me start at the beginning. About a week ago …”

You're missin' out on your own life.

She wanted to listen to her husband, but her mind kept drifting back to her father's words. It was just another of Jack's look-at-me stories, anyway. She'd heard enough of them to last a lifetime.

Life is short,
her dad had said.

She knew it was true. Every motherless child knew that.

But just now, with her husband's voice droning on and on, she couldn't quite grasp hold of that.

Because there was something else, equally true. When you were forty-five years old and
missing out
, it felt as if life were very long indeed.

In an ordinary year, the week after Christmas was quiet, even dull. A time for boxing up ornaments and taking down decorations, for eating leftover turkey sandwiches and watching old movies on television.

Elizabeth hadn't been back in Echo Beach more than twenty-four hours when she realized that this was not going to be an ordinary year. They'd been in the Nashville airport on December 27 when Jack received the first phone call. She hadn't thought much about it at the time, hadn't understood yet that their life had altered in the past week. While she'd been relaxing with her family in Tennessee, things in Oregon had undergone a subtle shift.

Jack was a hero again.

The Drew Grayland story had broken on the day after Christmas. The next day he'd been arrested, charged with rape. The story immediately went national. The
National Enquirer
ran it as a cover piece.

All across the country, people sat in bars, arguing over the case. What was date rape? When does
no
mean no? Can a woman “ask for it”? Do ordinary rules apply to extraordinary athletes? These questions and others were suddenly on the menus in diners all across America. Radio hosts asked their listeners for opinions; op-ed pieces popped up in newspapers from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine.

From the second Jack and Elizabeth got home, the phone never stopped ringing. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to interview Jack. He'd become a story himself. After all these years in partial obscurity, he was famous again. Not like he'd been in the past, certainly, not a household name, but
somebody
.

It wasn't as if just anybody had broken the Drew Grayland story.

Oh, no. The story had been brought to America by a man who'd once been a god, then stumbled and lost his way. His reemergence into the heat of fame was a story all by itself. Aging, overweight, unhappy men from California to New York saw Jackson Shore's return and thought:
Maybe it could happen to me … maybe life could turn around in an instant.

That was the baton Jack now held:
Never give up
. He'd become the poster boy for redemption.

This new life of his was evident in everything he did. He walked taller, smiled brighter, slept better.

Unfortunately, as he grew, Elizabeth seemed to diminish. She couldn't quite make herself be happy for him, and that shamed her.

She was his wife. Every woman knew the secret handshake that went along with the church ceremony. You had signed on to be a cheerleader whether you'd known it or not, whether you felt like it or not. Supposedly what was good for one of you was good for both.

How could she admit to being jealous of her husband's happiness and success? And if she dared to voice those poisonous thoughts to Jack, he'd be hurt and confused. He'd give her that frowning look—the one he always wore when she tried to talk about their relationship—and say, very matter-of-factly,
Well, Birdie, what is it you want to do?

She had come to despise that question.

So, instead of telling Jack that she felt lost and more than a little abandoned by his sudden happiness, she ripped the hell out of the dining room.

It had been a perfectly functional, if boring, room before, tucked as it was between the kitchen and living room. Like many of the original cottages built along this part of the coast, the house had begun life as a summer getaway for a rich Portland family. Built for limited, high summer use, it had a big main floor with a large kitchen and even larger living room, and two small bedrooms upstairs. Over the years, under a variety of owners, the house had been expanded and remodeled and reshaped. By the time Jack and Elizabeth had stumbled across it in 1999, the poor place had become a jumbled mess.

All Jack had been able to see was the cost: a run-down house with peeling paint and outdated plumbing fixtures … bedrooms that were too small, windows that were too thin, a yard gone bad. Not to mention the commute. Echo Beach was quite a drive from Portland.

But Elizabeth had seen past all that, to a beautiful little cottage with a wraparound porch and view to die for. She fell in love with the pouting lip of land that overlooked a secluded curl of beach.

For the only time in their marriage, she put her foot down, and Jack yielded.

She'd started work immediately. In the last two years, she'd made a remarkable number of changes. By herself, she'd stripped things down to the good, old-fashioned bones. She'd ripped up yards of avocado-green shag carpeting and found a beautiful honey-gold oak floor beneath, which she'd refinished. Then she'd painstakingly removed the white paint from the river-rock fireplace and pulled up the plastic molding that ran along the baseboards. She'd scraped fifty years' worth of paint off the kitchen cabinets and replaced the countertops with exquisite granite tiles.

Because she worked alone, her progress was slow. Although she'd finished (mostly) the kitchen and living room, she was still a long way from done. Only last week, the dining room had seemed to be a low priority, much less important than fixing up the master suite. After all, the kids were rarely here anymore, and when they did come home, they were off with friends for dinner. She and Jack didn't entertain much; it was just too far away for most of his colleagues to drive.

But last night had changed her outlook. She wasn't even sure why.

She and Jack had been sitting in the living room, watching television. The phone had rung every fifteen minutes, and he answered every time, talking endlessly about himself and the story.

Elizabeth had heard the resurrection in his voice and it sparked a lot of memories. Few of them were good.

In the early years of their relationship, she'd loved football. Watching him play in college had been thrilling. For an overly protected southern girl who'd been raised to speak softly and only when spoken to, the high-octane world of football had amazed her. Every time Jack won, he brought a dusting of victory and fame home with him. They'd loved each other then, wildly, madly, deeply.

But time had changed that, had changed them. Somewhere along the way—she thought it was when they moved to New York—he'd become a Star, and stars acted differently than ordinary men. They stayed out all night, drinking with their teammates and slept all day, ignoring their wives and children. They slept with other women.

She and Jack had barely made it through those dark and terrible days. What had saved them, ironically, was the end of his fame. When he'd blown his knee out and gotten hooked on drugs, he'd needed Elizabeth again.

Last night, as she'd listened to him talk ad nauseam about himself, she'd glimpsed their future; it was a mirror image of the past.

And suddenly, she'd looked into the dining room and thought,
That wall needs a set of French doors.

The next morning, after he left for work, she went to the hardware store, bought herself a paper dust mask and a sledgehammer, and got to work. Every time the phone rang, she smashed the sledgehammer into the crumbling wall.

Now, almost eight hours later, she stood back from her work. She was breathing hard, and her arms ached.