Whole Latte Life (24 page)
“Jen! I’m going to Town Hall,” she yells through her daughter’s door before swinging it opened. Jenny sits on a chair pulled up to the window. Her feet are propped up on the sill, her arms crossed in front of her. “Keep an eye on your sister. I’m taking Owen.”
Jenny looks like a mannequin. She leaned out, morphing into someone new this year, seeming more like seventeen than fourteen. Her hair is pulled back in a simple low ponytail.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” she asks gently.
From where she is standing, she can’t see her daughter’s eyes. But she imagines they are brimming with hot tears that her daughter summons every bit of effort to hold back. If Jenny says anything, even one word, it will come out in a painful sob. Maybe this is better. Right now her daughter hates her guts. The silent treatment is better than crying in front of her. Especially if they are sad tears. Sara Beth has a funny feeling they are more sad than anything else. As though she misses her old mother. And longs to have her back.
Three antique children’s chairs line the side wall of the Parks & Rec office. The chairs are pint-sized, dark maple, with rush seats. Sara Beth found them at a church bazaar in New Hampshire five years ago and stuffed them into the back seat of Rachel’s already stuffed car that October Girls’ Weekend Out. They liked to do that sometimes: Leave the kids with the dads and take off flea marketing, sightseeing, and coffee shop hopping. It was good for the kids, good for the dads and good for the town. Whole Latte Life uses her antique oak coat rack; the Savings and Loan displays her cast iron horse bank; the library houses a large country table in the Reference Room. At Parks & Rec, someone stacked old Highlights magazines on a table beside the chairs and the Kiddie Korner was complete.
Owen sits in one of the chairs, studying the Timbertoes page.
“I meant to call you,” Margaret Grinheim says. She logs onto the computer on the countertop. “I thought it was funny that your girls weren’t enrolled. They’ve been swimming every year since forever.”
“Is there
anything
this session, even later in the morning? Maybe at another pool?”
Margaret runs down the list of names under each pool, each timeframe, her squared off, peach-painted fingernails dragging the mouse up and down each column. “Nothing. Gee, I wish I called you.”
“Me too. How about a waiting list?”
Margaret turns the monitor around so that Sara Beth can see the screen. “These are the waiting lists for each session, as noted on the designated column. At least ten kids are ahead of yours. I’ll put their names down, but don’t hold your breath.” She adds Katherine’s and Jenny’s names. “Give me your telephone number, hon,” she says as she tabs over. When Sara Beth hesitates, Margaret looks up at her.
“You know, never mind. Maybe I’ll put them in the winter lessons at the Y.” Owen sits behind her swinging his legs on the antique chair.
“Are you sure? Now, wait a minute. There is one opening in the last session, at eleven-fifteen?”
“That wouldn’t work with my schedule.” Because Lord knows she needs a schedule. This running around arranging lessons and micromanaging kids can’t be all there is. She hoists Owen up on her hip, thinking she’ll hire Chelsea and Nicole for private swimming lessons. “Thank you anyway.”
“Let me know if you change your mind.” She smiles at Owen. “Bye bye little fella.” Owen tucks his head on Sara Beth’s shoulder as she turns to leave. “Oh Sara Beth, I meant to tell you. The Green came out beautiful. It was getting so we thought you had forgotten all about the flowers.”
“Flowers?” She turns back and moves to tuck her short hair behind her ear.
“In the barrels. Didn’t your sister tell you I saw her? You must have been busy at another barrel.”
“Melissa?”
“Rachel was there, too. Of course it was the end of the day. Pete and I’d come out of Smith’s and I walked over and said hello.”
“Must’ve slipped her mind.” So Rachel planted the barrels after all, with Melissa’s help. Swimming lessons, flowers, even the kids’ clothes shopping. Dates and routines are like sand slipping through her fingers.
“Everyone’s pleased with how you plant those flowers. It’s such a pretty spot.”
Sara Beth hears the sympathetic tone in Margaret’s voice. She can imagine the thoughts.
Maybe she’s getting a divorce
. She shifts Owen on her hip.
Sometimes late babies are a last ditch effort to save a marriage
.
And those earrings
. The voices are almost audible as she hurries through the hallway, down the flight of stairs and outside to her car, growing louder with each pound of her headache. She snaps Owen into his seat and takes a deep breath.
That’s what she needs. Relaxation and harmony. Deep breathing. Peace. She’s been out of sync with herself for so long, a little life harmony would feel good.
Before driving away, she digs her leather journal out of her hobo bag and opens to the familiar page.
Did you ever take a Yoga class? Or meditate in some way?
Just writing it helps, wishing for a mantra, feeling calmer driving through town, circling The Green before pulling over beneath the shade of a tree, feeling nauseous from the headache.
She knows. You get a sense for these things; they leave a feeling in the pit of your stomach.
This
is why Rachel stopped at the carriage house that day. To invite her to plant. Each barrel brims with zinnias of red, orange and yellow, fresh green spikes and baby vinca vines. She gets out of the car and dips her fingers into the soil. It is rich and damp, freshly watered.
Owen makes a beeline to the wishing fountain. He hurries around and around the circular stone wall of the fountain, laughing each time he passes his mother. Her hand feels down to the bottom of her purse, sweeping along for a stray coin to drop in the water.
“Penny?” Owen asks.
“No pennies today.”
“No penny?”
Owen looks back at the fountain and she closes her fingers around his hand. It’s early still and the morning sun is hot. She planned to stop at the carriage house after lunch. But Owen needs a nap. And she yelled to the girls as she ran out that they would hit the mall later to stock up on shorts and tops and sandals. But they’ll still be mad about the whole swimming lesson thing so the shopping will suck with attitude and whatever. She’ll call them on her cell now and promise them tomorrow instead. An all day thing complete with tacos and fries, when they are in better moods. When even the light isn’t bothering her head.
Because suddenly, cupping a fat, blossomed zinnia, none of it matters. Seeing all this planting, the velvet petals of summer framed by cool green cascading vinca vines makes her words in the carriage house, her
Get out
, seem all the more harsh. Because she knows the meaning of zinnias, oh she knows what message Rachel is sending her. They always research the meanings of the flowers before they make their barrel choice. And Rachel’s zinnias break her heart with their message…Thoughts of absent friends.
Apparently she can’t keep anyone happy, because at forty, she has this: No penny, no clothes for the girls, and no friend. But touching a yellow zinnia, she realizes what she does have: Flowers. And her mother. Both can cheer her up.
I really need to talk, Mom. I’m going to pick a bouquet from my garden for you. And paint my nails, too. Remember when we’d do each other’s Then after lunch, when Jen can stay home with Owen, I’ll come for a visit. I’ll sit outside in the sunshine with you and have a long overdue heart-to-heart.
Love,
Sara Beth
E
lizabeth,” Tom says. “You’ve got to help me out here. Sara misses you so much, she can’t handle it anymore. It’s getting worse and I don’t know what to do.”
Dr. Berg had suggested that a psychological emergency can trigger a breakdown. When Tom realized yesterday exactly what psychological crisis prompted Sara Beth’s changes, he called Berg right away.
“What’s important to know, Tom, is that there are several stages of grief. But if a person gets stuck in one stage, the grieving isn’t complete. It’s crucial to go through all five stages. At the same time, people can live on forever inside our hearts. So you have to carefully distinguish the difference. Is what you’re seeing Denial? Or her mother living on in a new way?”
The sun’s rays are low now, casting a deep color to the thick green grass, to the trees, the violet twilight sky. Tom reaches down to straighten the simple garden bouquet Sara brought to the cemetery, noticing how precisely she’d trimmed the surrounding grass. An old navy and gold Matrioshka doll is nestled on the grave side. Its colors are faded by the summer sun, the wood of the doll dried out. He pauses before touching her mother’s gravestone, bowing his head as though waiting for an answer, then leaves.
The drive along Old Willow Road feels sad with what’s about to come, but he’s glad for one thing. Owen wasn’t the emotional emergency that triggered Sara Beth’s crisis. So there’s relief for his son. Tom checks the house numbers. The river ribbons beyond the road to the west, where at the end of long driveways, captains’ houses look out over the water. Crumbling stone walls border the properties.
He finally pulls over on the side of the road and shuts off the car, hearing only the cicada buzzing and melodic robin song. The driveway, littered with twigs and scattered leaves, winds up beside the big old house. Now he understands why Sara arranged to stay here when he’d kicked her out, because of the strong connection to her mother. Elizabeth’s close friend owned the property. It all made sense, the way she sought to get closer and closer to the mother she’d lost last year. He steps out of the car and gently closes the door.
It doesn’t look like anyone is home in the farmhouse. He thinks they probably went to the summer concert at the bandshell. It’s where Sara Beth is supposed to meet him in a little while. Her car is parked beside an oak tree, with the library books she said she’d drop off still piled on the front seat. But the carriage house stops him. It’s made with rough-hewn white planks with deep green cross beams on the two doors. Black iron hardware hangs from the cross beams, big heavy loops to get a grip on in order to pull the wide doors opened. They had to be wide, so that the buggies could fit through in colonial times.
A split rail fence butts up to either side of the carriage house, then back along the length of the property. Someone tacked coated chicken wire along it so animals, or the family dog, wouldn’t slip through.
He walks closer. The door on the right is opened and the setting sun rays fall on deep browns, reds and golds inside. It is an opulence that murmurs its colors, its cherry, mahogany, oak. Hardware whispers brass. Mirrors sigh silver. If richness made a noise, you’d hear it in this space, in the smooth black lacquered hinges. Dull pewter kettles. Creamy ceramic wash basins.
He takes another step and sees his wife bent over a small table, wiping the curved legs to a bottomless glow. All her antiques have that dimension to them, where your reflection rises up as though from a deep pool of water. His foot steps on a large stick and it snaps.
Sara Beth looks up at him. The birds sense a predator with the snap of the branch and stop chirping. He walks into the carriage house wordlessly and a lone robin resumes its evening song.
