The Things We Do for Love (13 page)

Mary Anne’s father said, “Well, hello.”

Graham had stood almost the moment the door opened and Mary Anne got up, too, less gracefully, banging the edge of the table.

Mary Anne’s father greeted Paris fondly. “Hi, you little mop.” Then, he turned to Mary Anne to hug her and shook hands with Graham.

In these circumstances, it was her father whom Mary Anne counted on to behave like a normal person. Swiftly she made introductions, “Dad, Mom, this is Graham Corbett. He’s a friend who lives down the street. Graham—Jon Clive and Katie Drew.”

“Hello, Graham,” they both responded.

Mary Anne’s mother said, “Now, Caroline, you know Mother doesn’t want your dog inside.”

She sounded exactly like a scolding older sibling—actually almost like a scolding mother talking to a young child.

Mary Anne wanted to sink into the floor.

“Katie, Paris is clean and well-behaved, and Mother has let her stay here before.” Caroline lingered in the doorway behind Graham and Mary Anne.

“Don’t let us interrupt your dinner,” Mary Anne’s father said.

“I think we’ve just finished,” Graham replied, looking at Mary Anne and Caroline for confirmation.

“Have you eaten?” Mary Anne asked her parents, wanting to look behind her to see if the wine bottle was empty and knowing it wasn’t. Stupid reflex, like all the tricks of childhood she had tried to keep her father from drinking. Wine wasn’t usually his tipple, yet she wanted all forms of alcohol out of his sight. She began to wonder if there was any chance he could stay sober the entire time
he was in Logan. She wanted, more than anything, to call Cameron, the one person who had seen Mary Anne’s father in action through most of her life, the person who really understood.

“Yes, we stopped at Shakey’s,” her mother replied, straightening up a bit. Straightening as if she was reminding herself to do so.

Graham sensed the tension in the air, siblings circling each other—Mary Anne’s mother and her aunt. Mary Anne seemed to have turned as brittle as a thin sheet of ice. Well, families could be like this. He was an only child and had always gotten on well with his parents, but his wife’s family certainly had exhibited all the ordinary drama of life.

The doorbell rang.

The caller was Paul Cureux, and Mary Anne felt color flood her face.
If he says anything about the love potion…

Paul’s hands were full of brochures. “I’m campaigning for my father.”

Mary Anne said quickly, “We’re voting for him, Paul. Of course, we are.” She wondered if she needed to introduce him to her family. On the one hand, he was just somebody handing out election material. On the other hand, he was Cameron’s special friend.

Quickly, she made introductions, adding that he was a friend of Cameron’s and that his father, a neighbor, was defending his city council seat in the coming election. David Cureux had bought his house in the years since Mary Anne’s parents had moved away, so they didn’t know him.

Nonetheless, Mary Anne’s father felt compelled to say, “Well, tell your dad we’ll do all we can to talk up his campaign while we’re here. Come to think of it, why
doesn’t Mother Billingham have a sign in her yard?” he asked his wife.

“She thinks campaign signs hurt the grass,” Mary Anne said.

“Well, that’s nonsense,” he told his daughter. “Paul, I’ll tell you what. I’ll come over and pick up a sign tomorrow, and we’ll get Mrs. Billingham’s permission to display it. How is that?”

“Great,” Paul agreed, giving Graham Corbett such a curious look that Mary Anne was sure Cameron had confided the whole story of the love potion.
Damn it, Cameron. How could you?

Mary Anne knew how. Cameron felt rejected by Graham and was now seeing him pursue Mary Anne. She’d probably talked to Paul about it, to some degree. They
were
close friends.

And, as Mary Anne moved to shut the door behind him, Paul turned and stage-whispered, “Is it working?”

Red-faced, she closed the door without answering.

Mary Anne’s mother promptly said, “Now, Jon Clive, Mother doesn’t want signs in the yard. She says political views are private.”

Mary Anne knew this, too, but she hadn’t wanted to say it in front of Paul. And the nonsense about the grass was true as well.

Her father moved toward the living room and said, “Well, how about a drink, Mary Anne?”

She said numbly, “Help yourself,” disturbed by the move, which she knew was an assertion against all Jacqueline Billingham’s mores.

In proximity to both her parents, she suddenly decided that her father had an infinitely greater potential to hu
miliate her than her mother did. He would get drunk and chase women, and then he would apologize in a maudlin way, publicly confessing all his offenses, and swearing to do better.

Graham, thank God, was reaching for his coat. “I think I’ll head home and let you enjoy seeing each other again. I’m glad your grandmother’s better, Mary Anne. Nice to meet you all. Thanks for the wonderful dinner, Caroline.”

“My pleasure, Graham. I’m so glad to meet you,” Mary Anne’s aunt said.

Mary Anne saw that Caroline already had her cigarettes and lighter in hand, and she read this as a stress reaction to the arrival of her parents.

Mary Anne stepped out onto the porch to say good-night to Graham without closing the door behind her. If she had, her mother would have found a pretext for opening it.

Graham told her, “It’s nice to meet some of your family, Mary Anne.”

Her face felt stiff as she smiled, and she hoped that in the shadows of the porch light he wouldn’t notice. Watching him head down the front walk to the street, she thought again about her father inside, starting his visit to Logan with a drink.

G
RAHAM
C
ORBETT
spent Halloween afternoon raking leaves in his yard and bagging them to take to the dump. The sky was a dark gray, and the wind blew his leaves and the neighbors’ yards in small tornadoes over the dry grass.

Mary Anne’s father gave Graham a casual nod as he strode up David Cureux’s front walk. Graham had the idea that Jon Clive Drew wasn’t quite sure where he’d seen Graham before.

As Graham was loading a bag of leaves into his car—and before Mary Anne’s father reached his neighbor’s front door—Paul Cureux and Cameron cruised up on their mountain bikes, sweaty from a ride. Both waved to Graham, Cameron tentatively and Paul indifferently.

Graham waved back, wondering why Paul Cureux wasn’t at the state park zoo, which must be open that day. Then he looked at his watch and realized it was already five-thirty, giving him only half an hour to get the leaves to the dump.

“Hello, there,” Jon Clive said. “I just came by to pick up a campaign sign. Do our part for your dad, Paul.”

“The grass will withstand it?” Paul asked, a bit amused.

Graham saw Cameron give him a surreptitious dig with her elbow.

“Well, considering that Mother Billingham is in the hospital, we who are in Middleburg will claim ignorance of her wishes concerning grass.”

“It doesn’t look like Dad’s home,” Paul said, climbing off his bike. “Tell you what, Mr. Drew. I’ll get a sign, bring it over and put it up for you, with minimal harm to the grass.”

“Why, thanks, Paul. That will do. Who’s this nice-looking woman with you?”

Your niece,
Graham thought, trying not to be offended by Jon Clive Drew’s flirtatious tone. It was probably just his way.

But it was Cameron who seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “It’s nice to see you, Uncle Jon Clive. When did you and Aunt Katie arrive?”

Graham tried not to eavesdrop on the three, but he was fascinated by everything to do with Mary Anne’s family. Soon, in any case, Jon Clive Drew headed back toward Jacqueline Billingham’s house, and Paul and Cameron laid their bicycles on David Cureux’s lawn.

They went round into the backyard, emerging soon with a campaign poster that could be planted with an innocuous wire stand the diameter of coat hanger wire.

Graham was starting to get into his car when he heard Cameron say, “Oh, no, you don’t! Paul, don’t you dare tell him.”

Tell who what?

To Graham’s surprise, he found that both were glancing uneasily at him.

“Why not?” Paul said. “It might help your cause, and you know I always want to help you with these things, Cameron.”

“Ha-ha,” she said mirthlessly.

“I’m like a brother to you. I have your best interests in mind.”

Now, both of them seemed determined
not
to look at Graham, and he headed to the dump and recycling center as much in the dark as before.

“D
O YOU KNOW HOW
mortified Mary Anne would be if that were publicly known?” Cameron asked as she watched Graham Corbett’s car disappear down the street.

“She’d get over it,” Paul said. “You could just let it slip.”

“
I
will never let it slip. I can’t believe your mother did—to you.”

“Oh, I’m sworn to secrecy. It’s a family obligation,” Paul said with every appearance of mischief in his face. “Of course, another plan would be for
you
to dose him with love potion.”

“Your mother already told me he’s all wrong for me.”

Paul now looked truly shocked. “You’d do that?
You’d
do that? I mean, Mary Anne, I can see, but I thought you were more ethical.”

Cameron glared at him. “Why ever should you think that? I tell approximately one person a week that I’m ‘involved’ with you. Don’t you think that’s unethical?”

“Of course not,” Paul replied. “You and I have an arrangement that suits both of us and keeps us safely single—though I’m dying to know what Graham Corbett understands about our relationship.”

“Well, of course, I’ve never told
him
I’m seeing you.”

“Then, it’s just as well he doesn’t like you,” Paul answered, “or I’d have to find a new method for preventing women from throwing themselves at me.”

Cameron rolled her eyes. “Just act like yourself. That should do the trick.” Then, she thought of all the unhappy relationships she’d seen in her work at the women’s resource center and muttered, “Then again, maybe it would have the reverse effect.”

“Y
OU’RE ON A SHOW
about dating?” Mary Anne’s mother said. “Not one of those talk shows where people tell terrible things about themselves. I think those are so tacky.”

Mary Anne was glad that Graham wasn’t present. No, she and her parents and Aunt Caroline were at the hospital, waiting for visiting hours to begin. It was the day of Mary Anne’s second radio show with Graham, and she hadn’t seen him since their dinner together. She’d told her parents she’d only be able to say hi to Nanna and then dash away. In addition to it being the day of her second radio appearance with Graham, this was election night. She would be on the radio all evening with Jonathan—with whom she’d had one date since their first night out, a date from which she’d come away with the distinct impression that he wanted to get her into bed as soon as possible. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t yield. She was in love with him, wasn’t she?

Yes. But she wasn’t sure that he was in love with her.

She told her mother, “No, the show’s not like that. It’s very tame.”

She wasn’t encouraging her family to listen to Graham’s show, but Aunt Caroline said, “I’m going to make sure I’m home by the radio for that.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mary Anne’s mother. “I want to hear it.”

Mary Anne hoped the day’s questions from listeners wouldn’t include any about sex.

She noticed her father glancing around restlessly. She was familiar with this restlessness in him and associated it with drunkenness and ensuing chaos. He had had drinks in the evenings ever since arriving in Logan, but he’d done so at home, which tended to minimize the trouble he caused. He and Aunt Caroline and her mother played cards together, a game called Progressive Rummy, which went on for hours. Sometimes Mary Anne joined them. Twice, Aunt Louise and her husband and Cameron had come over and played, too.

Aunt Caroline was three years younger than Louise. She was the youngest and had been the prettiest. Mary Anne sometimes tried to imagine her parents and aunts and uncle in school together, her father dating first Aunt Caroline and then Mary Anne’s mother. None of them seemed to like to talk about it, which Mary Anne supposed was natural. Whenever she asked basic questions—for instance, when her parents had first noticed each other—her mother said uninformative things like, “Well, we were both from Logan.”

“I hope you aren’t serious with that man,” her mother said.

“Who?”

“The man from the radio.”

Mary Anne still wasn’t sure whether her mother meant Graham, whom she’d met, or Jonathan, whom she hadn’t. Without bothering to narrow it down, she demanded, “What would be wrong with that?”

“Well, I think you know how your father and I feel about marriage.”

In fact, Mary Anne
didn’t
know. All she knew was that right now her mother was hinting at the fact that she
didn’t want her daughter sleeping with a man to whom she wasn’t married.

Mary Anne tried to remember everything years of therapy had taught her. For instance, now was a good time to reestablish boundaries. But it didn’t seem easy at the moment. She settled for saying brightly, “I don’t think there’s anything for you to worry about, Mom.”

“Well, he seems nice,” her mother said, as if doubting that this first impression was accurate, but confirming that she’d been talking about Graham Corbett.

M
ARY
A
NNE HAD ONE STOP
to make before the radio station, and she was dreading it. Aunt Caroline would turn fifty-one the next day, and she’d been talking about a scarf she’d fallen in love with at the Blooming Rose, where Angie Workman worked.

Mary Anne had considered pretending that she’d never heard her aunt mention the scarf. She’d spent some time telling herself that she could find an even
more
special gift somewhere else in Logan. But this was plain old cowardice. She’d done her best to steal Jonathan Hale from Angie, and her best was proving to be pretty damned good. It had already destroyed their engagement…or so Mary Anne believed. Because no sooner had he broken up with Angie, than Jonathan had asked her out.

She blew through the door, determined to appear in a hurry, and rushed to the sale rack where Aunt Caroline had seen the scarf.

Angie emerged from the back room, her blond hair held back with barrettes in that style that was so…unimaginative. She wore a periwinkle blue suit, wrong for the season but beautiful on her. Her heels matched.

Focusing on the shoes, Mary Anne exclaimed, “I love those!”

“Thank you. We have them here.” Angie’s friendliness seemed to have dimmed a bit. “I love your jacket.”

Mary Anne had dressed specially for the afternoon and evening. She wore her favorite buff suede pants, a dark brown silk blouse and a long dark green leather jacket.

“If I tried to wear that color, I’d look like something that should be buried,” Angie said. “And, Mary Anne, I heard that your grandmother wasn’t doing well. How is she now?”

Unable to keep from noticing how polite Angie was, Mary Anne gave an abbreviated medical report. “Thank you for asking,” she concluded.

Angie said, “I guess you’re on your way to cover election night with Jonathan.”

Mary Anne wondered how Angie had known she would be doing this. “After Graham’s show. I’m his ‘dating expert.’”

“He seems nice,” Angie said. “A friend of mine was in therapy with him for a while.”

Mary Anne nodded, unable to think of anything else to say.

“Well, what can I help you find?”

But Mary Anne had already spotted the scarf Caroline had admired. “This,” she said, drawing it carefully from its clip.

“That’s a pretty one,” Angie said. “Will you want it gift-wrapped?” With the second sense of a good salesperson, Angie seemed to know it wasn’t for Mary Anne.

“Yes, please.” Part of her thought it might be wiser to get out of the store before any unpleasant scene occurred. But Angie didn’t seem remotely interested in making one.

Mary Anne thought that any other woman would commiserate with Angie on her broken engagement. But Mary Anne certainly couldn’t do this. So she stayed silent, listening to the country music playing through the store while Angie wrapped the scarf.

Before she left, Angie said, “I hope you enjoy yourself tonight.”

“Thank you,” Mary Anne replied, wondering what, precisely, Angie meant. “I’ll be happy if I don’t make a fool of myself on the air.”

C
AMERON
M
C
A
LLISTER
was uneasy. This week’s Women of Strength event was a day-long self-defense class. Cameron had taught it in conjunction with Paul, who taught tae kwon do locally and donated his time for women’s self-defense classes whenever they were offered.

This class was better attended than many others in the past, attracting women beyond those who made use of the women’s resource center. One of them was Angie Workman’s friend Elinor Sweet, whose unlikely partner for many of the events had been Paul’s sister, Bridget. Though Elinor hadn’t seemed thrilled with the arrangement at first, Cameron had noticed that soon Bridget was wowing Angie’s friend with talk of cosmic alignment, forces of nature, crystal energy and other New Age topics. And Cameron had been displeased to notice that part of their conversation was about Angie Workman’s recently dissolved engagement.

“The soul-mate relationship,” Bridget insisted, “
cannot
be broken. There’s no need for anyone
ever
to mourn a breakup, because there really is no such thing between true spiritual partners.”

Though Paul’s opinion was that his sister did everything in her power to make herself unattractive—from not removing body hair
he
thought excessively hobbitlike to not
combing
the hair on her head—Cameron knew Bridget to be an extremely attractive woman, who’d never, to Cameron’s knowledge, known rejection from any man she desired. This made her assertions about unrequited love a little hard to hear.

But Cameron didn’t like the way the conversation was going because she, Cameron, had persuaded Mary Anne Drew to buy a love potion, and though that potion had never reached its intended target, its purpose had been to disrupt a soul-mate connection between Angie Workman and Jonathan Hale. And in Cameron’s opinion, Bridget was no more discreet than her brother, who seemed to take a special pleasure in bringing up the subject within earshot of people who’d be fascinated to learn the facts.

Her horror increased when she heard Bridget mention love potions to Elinor. “For instance, my mother has the sight and has brewed love potions for many years, but the nature of a love potion is only to unite a soul-mate connection. Even when a love potion reaches the quote, unquote, wrong person, it is the wisdom of the potion that is acting, finding the correct place to act.”

“Love potions?” Elinor said. She appeared thoughtful, as if she might be wondering whether a love potion could reunite Angie and Jonathan.

Cameron came over to the pair and said, “Okay, let’s see your wrist release. Bridget, grab Elinor’s wrist.”

Five minutes later, Paul told Cameron none too softly, “Bridget’s selling her partner on love potions.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Cameron said shortly,
following the method she thought might be best for discouraging him. If she started blushing or showing fear, he would seize upon it as annoyingly as a playground bully.