The Ghosts of Lovely Women (29 page)

“You take risks, you get rewards,” I said, slipping into Marnie’s heels and finding I was just the right height to kiss him.

“I was thirty.”

—Nick,
The Great Gatsby

Frost said nothing gold can stay, but my golden birthday was a most memorable occasion. My mother came to my apartment early to decorate it, then brought in caterers for the festivities, which were shared by Lucky and Matt, Will, Cindy and Charlie, Derek, my parents and me. I was given all sorts of gifts and mercifully no one in my family went with the black balloon motif.

Derek was a hit with everyone in my family, especially, somehow, my father. The two of them spent long periods of time talking in one corner, and at one point I saw my dad examining Derek’s pipe, which had appeared out of nowhere. They clapped each other on the shoulders more than once, as though they had gone to college together and had been recently reunited.

“Your father has really taken to that boy,” my mother said, noting that I was watching them.

“He’s not a boy, Mother.”

“What did he give you for your birthday?”

I smiled. “He gave me a box of almonds. And a gift certificate to Jake’s pizza down the street, because we were supposed to go there once and never did.”

My mother looked extremely disappointed.

“Oh, and a pair of diamond earrings. I’ve never had diamonds before. I’m afraid to wear them.”

“Diamonds!”

“Yes. And he took me to a bookstore and let me spend all morning there, and he paid for all of my books.”

Now my mother was pleased. “Very nice,” she said.

My brother sidled up to us, holding Charlie. “Derek is trying to take my place in Dad’s heart. What, is he trying to get a slot in the will?”

“Derek’s father died when he was young,” I said. “Let him have some dad time.”

“Oh. Okay, then. But we have to share custody of the old man. Derek can take him to the carpentry club events.” My mother laughed and murmured something about a cake, then moved away. To me, Will said, “You should marry this guy, Teddy. We all like him, and you know that kind of lightning doesn’t strike twice.”

“I so agree,” said Cindy, walking up to hand Charlie a piece of cheese, which he claimed without taking his eyes off of Will. Will’s eyes were on Cindy, which I found interesting.

My mother was back. She had actually shoved thirty candles into a cake; she and Lucky lit them and the lights were turned out. I listened to them all sing to me, thinking of
The Glass Menagerie
, which ends with the classic line, “Blow out your candles, Laura — and so goodbye!”

“Teddy, do me a favor,” Will said dryly. “Stop thinking about books long enough to make a wish.”

I looked at Derek, made a wish, and blew them all out with one gust.

* * *

Richard sent me a letter of apology, assuring me that he would not be contacting me again. “I didn’t realize how it came across to you, Teddy, but I’ve been making an effort to see it from your point of view, and I realize I might have seemed a bit inappropriate. In any case, good luck with everything.”

I sent a copy of the letter to Dave the lawyer. He said he’d keep it in a file.

The letter didn’t comfort me, nor did I necessarily believe that Richard was going to keep his word. The sad thing was that I couldn’t really do anything about it. If Richard wanted to plot revenge against me, that was still his prerogative. There was always a chance that the letter had merely increased his resolve.

At this point I could only hope that it was over, that Dave had been right, and that Richard had seen the error of his ways.

* * *

Derek helped me carry a box to my car on the last day: my potted plant, some books I needed to read for the following year, my good markers, my Shakespeare beanie-baby. He stowed it in my trunk and said, “Lunch?”

“Sure.”

We leaned there on the car for a moment, basking in a nice sunny day that wasn’t horribly hot. A little breeze lifted our hair. “What are your summer plans?” Derek asked me.

“I’m teaching summer school, of course. Bills, bills.”

“But that’s just for four weeks. Fancy going on a vacation?”

“I don’t like traveling alone.”

“Nor do I. Perhaps we should travel together.”

I smiled. My summers in the past had consisted of working and reading. The thought of doing something different was intoxicating.

“Okay, Derek. That would be lovely, indeed.”

“We are the stuff that dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

—Prospero,
The Tempest

Over the summer the Hallidays paid for a linden tree to be planted on school grounds in Jessica’s memory. A bronze plaque beneath it paid homage to her work as a student and as a thespian at St. James High. Mrs. Halliday had asked that I be consulted about a literary quotation which could appear at the end of the tribute — something, she said, that Jessica would like.

I deliberated over this for a week. At first I wanted a line from
A Doll’s House
, especially because I found out that Jessica had, in fact, earned a part in a summer-stock production of that very Ibsen play. She had been cast as Nora. I’m sure that was one of the things she’d wanted to tell me when she called. I often wondered how events might have been different if I had answered the phone.

In any case, the
Doll’s House
quotes were appropriate for me, perhaps, because in the end Nora blamed the men in her life for letting her down. But I couldn’t put that on a plaque as my personal revenge on the world. I needed to find a quote that would represent who Jessica had truly been — a girl who loved life, who believed in people, who wanted to champion the downtrodden. Ultimately Jessica believed in life and in humanity; that was why she wanted to confront those who didn’t meet her standards.

I settled on Miranda’s words from
The Tempest
, when she finally meets human beings other than her father, her fiancée, and the monster Caliban. Never mind that these new human beings are criminals: Miranda finds them beautiful.

Jessica’s plaque reads

“In Honor of Jessica Halliday

St. James Class of 2009

Honors Student and Talented Actress

“How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it!”

The Hallidays and the administrators seemed happy enough with the quotation; they felt it reflected Jessica’s
joie de vivre
. Those better versed in Shakespeare, however, would remember the response of Miranda’s father, Prospero, who had no confidence in her optimistic view of the world.

“Tis new to you,” he had told her wearily.

Jessica would have noted the irony. I still recalled her protest of this moment in the play: “But he’s criticizing her naîveté, and he’s the one who created it, Ms. Thurber! He kept her in ignorance on his little island, then felt superior to her when she didn’t understand the world. It doesn’t change the purity of her vision.”

That was Jessica: defending the downtrodden, disputing injustice. She envisioned a world that acknowledged its flaws and took steps to correct them, and she spoke of it often — I can hear her voice to this day.

Jessica existed, and still exists, because I can hear her lovely voice.

The End

JULIA BUCKLEY is a Chicago area writer. Her first mystery,
The Dark Backward
, was released in June of 2006 and earned high praise from
Crimespree
and others; her next book,
Madeline Mann
, was lauded by
Kirkus
and
The Library Journal
. It is now available for the first time on Kindle, as is as its sequel,
Lovely, Dark and Deep
.

Her short story, "Motherly Instinct," appears in Anne Frasier's 2011 Halloween Anthology,
Deadly Treats.

Julia is a member of Sisters in Crime, MWA, and RWA. She keeps a writer's blog at
www.juliabuckley.blogspot.com
on which she interviews fellow mystery writers; her website is
www.juliabuckley.com
. She is one of Poe's Deadly Daughters, and posts weekly on their blog:
www.poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com
.

Like Teddy Thurber, she is a bibliophile who teaches English.