Tempted (32 page)

Mary spent most of her time with Betts, discreetly. Patricia buzzed between the house and the catering tent, supervising the food. Children played under Claire’s watchful eye. She was an unexpected babysitter, but the kids loved her because she played games with them like Simon Says and Red Light, Green Light. Today she wore a clingy summer skirt and shirt that were perfectly modest yet managed to show off the newly sprouted bulge of her tummy, leaving no question as to her pregnancy.

The party was an absolute success. Friends and family had gathered to celebrate what would have been a happy occasion for any couple; for my parents it seemed equally as remarkable as it did joyful. I mingled with people I hadn’t seen in years. Family friends complimented me on my house and the party. Most commented on how much I’d grown up, how they’d remembered me as that “quiet little girl with the book in her hand.”

“You always had a book. What were you reading, anyway?” said Bud Nelson. I remembered him as a hefty, red-faced man with a boisterous laugh who always had a quarter in his pocket for a girl who’d run and fetch him “another cold one.” He’d gotten sickly thin, with scrawny arms and legs poking out beneath his too-large Bermuda shorts. His skin drooped on him like it had melted. His eyes and teeth were yellowed.

“Nancy Drew, probably.” I smiled. Always smiled.

“Girl detective,” Bud scoffed. “That Nancy got herself into some trouble, didn’t she? Always had to have her dad bail her out.”

That wasn’t the way I recalled the stories, but I wasn’t going to debate it. “They were only stories.”

Bud laughed and dug in his pocket. “Hey, Annie. How about a quarter for you if you fetch me—”

“Another cold one?” I said before he could finish.

He nodded and settled back in his chair like it had been an effort just to dig for the money. The quarter gleamed in his palm. I closed his fingers over it.

“You don’t need to give me a quarter, Bud.”

“You’re a good girl, Annie. Always were.”

“So I’ve been told.”

He was being kind, and he wasn’t the only one. I heard it over and over again that day. Annie, you were always such a good girl. A quiet girl. Annie, fetch me another cold one. Annie. Annie. Annie.

I hadn’t been Annie to anyone but my dad for years, and suddenly I was that girl again. Fetching cold ones. Smiling. They only figuratively patted my head now instead of literally, but it was the same feeling.

The party was in full swing, with people beginning to dance on the deck and the lawn. The food had been decimated, like a plague of locusts had marched through. The day had turned sweltering, with the unrelenting pressure of humidity added to the heat. Clouds had started drifting in from across the water. Still white for now, but hinting at darkness.

I went into the house to find some cold air and a glass of ice water and maybe just a few moments to myself. Patricia, who’d been on the verge of a breakdown for weeks over this event, had spent the day beaming from ear to ear and laughing. I, on the other hand, was slowly becoming a wreck.

It wasn’t the party, really, but the entire summer that had weighed me down. It was Evelyn. It was Alex and James. It was fixing things that had caught up with me all at once. I sought the quiet of my bedroom, looking for just a few minutes’ peace. Time to catch my breath and not have to talk or smile. All I wanted was a minute. Just one.

The house was as full as the yard. The noise level, higher. I wove my way through the kitchen and down the hall, hoping at least that nobody had migrated into my room. I’d closed the door before the party started but left all the others open. Most people would have understood what that meant. A closed door meant privacy. Keep out. Most people, when they enter someone else’s home, understand boundaries.

This part of the house was marginally quieter. Most of the guests had gathered in the living room, den and kitchen. One of my cousins sat in the quiet and clean guest bedroom, nursing her baby. We smiled at each other but didn’t say anything, and I pulled the door most of the way closed to give her some privacy. The bathroom door was closed but opened as I passed. Laughing, I danced for a minute with the person who came out until we moved in opposite directions.

At the end of the hall, my door was no longer closed. It was cracked open an inch or so. I put my hand on the knob, but paused at the sound of voices inside.

“…well, no wonder,” said a familiar voice. “And that sister of hers is pregnant, it’s so obvious. I didn’t see a ring on her finger, either. And the father! I knew he had some…issues…but I had no idea he was a drunkard.”

God. Did people really use that word, anymore? Apparently Evelyn Kinney did.

For about ten seconds I almost turned around. Let it go. Ten seconds in which I contemplated just being the good and quiet girl with a smile on her face and walking away. On the eleventh second, my hand pushed the door all the way open.

Things got worse. Much worse. Extravagantly, extraordinarily, infuriatingly worse.

Evelyn stood next to the small writing desk beneath the window. It had once belonged to James’s grandmother, and though I didn’t often sit at it to write, I did keep my private correspondence in its drawers. Sentimental cards from James, certain photos, my calendar. Not the one I hung on the wall in the kitchen to chronicle things like doctor’s appointments and when it was time to rotate the tires. It was a small journal-style calendar with a small block for each day. In it I wrote brief notes or summaries of what had happened that day, just a few lines to remind me what I’d done or felt. It was the best I could do at keeping a diary.

Evelyn put it down when I walked into the room. Margaret, who was eating a brownie without a plate beneath to catch the crumbs now scattering my floor, had the grace to look guilty.

“Anne. Hello.”

For an instant I saw nothing but white, like a flash of lightning that faded and left a burning blue afterimage. And I stopped being a good girl.

“What are you doing in my room?”

“Oh.” She tittered. “Well, your sister Patricia told us there was a scrapbook of your parents for the party that we had to sign.”

“It’s in the living room, on the table.”

“Well, she didn’t tell us that.” Mrs. Kinney’s nostrils, at odds with her sugary smile, flared.

“So you came looking in my bedroom for it?”

“I wanted to show Margaret the desk. She might want some of these pieces. James said to go ahead.”

I didn’t even attempt to believe her. Margaret swallowed the brownie and wiped her fingers on the napkin. With flushed cheeks she edged toward the door, but she had to get by me to escape, and I wasn’t moving. She turned sideways and fled.

Coward.

“So you came into my bedroom and helped yourself?”

She wasn’t expecting confrontation, and I understood that. After all, I’d kept my mouth nice and shut for a long time. She hadn’t expected to be caught, either.

“I was looking for the scrapbook.” She drew herself up.

“And you thought it might be inside my desk? Does that seem a likely place to put it?” Each word came out clipped and sharp, but I didn’t raise my voice.

Inside I was shaking, but I kept my back straight. My hands loose at my sides. It took every effort I had not to clench them.

“Anne, really, this isn’t necessary.”

She recoiled when I laughed. “Oh, I think it is. Tell me something, Evelyn. Does that look like a scrapbook to you?”

She made a break for it. I expected as much. Nobody likes their misdeeds flung in their face. I’d have respected her more if she’d flat-out admitted she was a snoop. I’d probably even have stepped aside to let her pass if she’d just said she was sorry, she’d made a mistake. But my mother-in-law didn’t admit to mistakes, a nifty little trait she’d handed down to her son.

She didn’t go so far as to shove me, and we stood at an impasse. I was taller than she was, though she was broader.

“Does it look like a scrapbook to you?”

She shook her head. Stubborn. “I don’t have to listen to a lecture from you.”

“Why not just answer the question?”

Hot color had spread up her throat and cheeks. I was glad to see her that way, squirming like a worm on a hook. I was glad to see her made to feel uncomfortable for once.

“Does it look like a scrapbook?”

“No!”

“Then why would you have picked it up?”

Her mouth worked, but heaven help her, she wasn’t going to admit to wrongdoing. “Are you accusing me of snooping?”

“I don’t think it’s an accusation. I think it’s true.”

She sneered. I’m sure she felt righteous in her indignation. Most people who know they’ve fucked up manage to find a way to justify themselves.

“You are a disrespectful—”

I lost it. All of it. The final, shredded threads of my control. If my hair had turned to snakes, writhing and hissing and dripping venom, I wouldn’t have been shocked.

“Don’t you dare talk to me about being disrespectful. You came into my house, during my party, and you helped yourself to my room and violated my privacy. Don’t you dare talk to me about respect, because you don’t have a clue.”

My wrath must have been horrific to behold. I know it sent Evelyn reeling. She must have thought I meant to strike her, though I still hadn’t raised my voice.

“You’re trying to paint me out as some evil person, and I won’t stand for it!” she cried, indignant, crocodile tears glimmering.

“I don’t think you’re evil,” I said in a voice thick with ice. “I think you are incredibly arrogant and self-absorbed, and if you really think that you are not in the wrong, then I guess you must be stupid, too.”

She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. I had done what I’d have said was impossible, rendered Evelyn speechless. It only lasted a moment, but it was immeasurably sweet.

“I would say I can’t believe you’d say something like that to me,” she said in the tone of a woman soaked in gasoline who’s just lit the match. A martyr.

Was it wrong of me to assume she took an especial, private satisfaction in this conversation, just as I did? That it somehow relieved her to be right about me? That I had acted in the way she always knew I was capable, had treated her horribly, and, therefore, her forgiveness and acceptance of me could be construed as a laudable act of charity? Because she might still have managed to save herself in my eyes if she’d only managed to rein herself in.

But, no. She went there.

“But I suppose you can hardly be expected to know any better,” she added with the simpering, sanctimonious tone that had always made me want to puke, “taking into consideration your family background.”

I was done with her. There was no going back after that. No cooling down, no finding a way to smooth this over. I was done.

“At least in my family we understand how to behave in someone else’s house. You are not allowed to judge my family,” I told her. My calm dismissal seemed to set her more aflame than my anger had. She couldn’t defend herself and be affronted against dismissal the way she could against fury. “Not in my house. Not to me. You need to leave.”

“You can’t throw me out!”

“Then get your panties in a twist and storm out on your high horse. I don’t really care how it happens. Just get out of my house. You are not welcome here anymore today. Maybe not anymore, ever.”

“You…you can’t…”

I leaned toward her, not because I wanted to intimidate her, but because this was something best said up close and personal. “My life,” I said, “is not any of your business.”

“Anne?” We both turned to see Claire in the doorway. “Dad’s going to give a toast.”

She looked at us curiously. Evelyn pushed past me and my sister with a sniff. The clack of her heels was very loud in the hall.

“Holy shit,” Claire whispered. “What did you do to Mrs. Kinney? Threaten to throw a bucket of water on her?”

In the aftermath my legs shook. Feeling sick but lighter, too, like an immense burden had been lifted, I sank onto the bed. “Let’s just say I got some things off my chest.”

Claire sat next to me. “She looked like someone had served her a big old bowl of worms and told her it was angel hair pasta.”

“That’s probably what it felt like.” I covered my face with my hands for a minute, taking deep, shaky breaths. “God, she’s such a bitch.”

“That’s not news, I hate to tell you.”

That first laugh felt like acid in my throat. “I don’t think she’s ever going to forgive me, Claire. What a mess.”

“Forgive you?” My sister made a nasty noise. “For what? Calling her on the carpet for behaving badly? Anne, you never do anyone favors by letting them be assholes.”

“I could’ve just kept my mouth shut about it. We’d have pretended it didn’t happen. But I couldn’t, Claire. God. I saw her standing there with it, and I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. All those times she got in my face about things, poking her nose where it didn’t belong, acting like she was so perfect…I just lost it.”

“What the fuck did she do?”

I told her.

“No!” Claire sounded fascinated as well as horrified.

“Yes. I don’t know how much she’d read, but she was definitely looking through it.”