Home Truths (38 page)

‘Um. A Mrs Ericsson?’

Joe thought hard. ‘Nope. Can't say I know her. You know her, Betty?’

‘I'm thinking, I'm thinking – but no, don't think I do. Say, are you from England?’ the waitress asked with breathless awe.

‘Yes,’ the girls told her.

‘That is just so nice,’ Betty enthused. ‘I could listen to you speak all day long.’

Automatically, the girls found they rounded their vowels and used choice adjectives, much to her delight. After more coffee and flattery, Lester Falls seemed less dull and their hostility lessened too.

‘Well, thank you so much,’ said Pip, ‘that was simply super.’

‘Indeed!’ said Cat. ‘Splendid coffee.’

‘Have a nice day!’ Betty said.

‘Cheerio,’ said Cat.

They strolled along Main Street. The rain had stopped, revealing the town to be less dreary than first impressions
suggested. The shops were old-fashioned but quirky, the façades comfortingly indicative of small-town America, as portrayed in so many of the films the sisters had seen. A promising landscape was now impressively visible beyond the town. The mountains so thickly forested that they appeared to be clothed in thick green bouclé sweaters.

‘We're in the lie of the Green Mountains here,’ Pip looked up from the guidebook. ‘
Vert Mont
– Vermont! Do you see?’

‘Shall we walk then?’ Fen asked tentatively. ‘Joe said it would take half an hour.’

‘But say she
is
in,’ Cat said. ‘We don't even know what we're going to say.’

‘Let's find somewhere to stay first,’ Pip said.

Sitting tightly together on one of the beds in the family room they'd found in a decent guest house on a pretty street a short walk from the centre of town, the McCabe sisters pored over the local phone directory. They'd missed the entry initially, forgetting that Bob was most likely a diminutive of Robert, but had then found the entry for R. Ericsson. The address was the same as that which Django had provided and gave the girls a bizarre sense of triumph, as if they were veritable sleuth-hounds. Pip jotted down the telephone number. Then they stared hard at the entry again, as if utter concentration might suddenly provide fly-on-the-wall privilege, some sort of telepathy or more clues.

Pip looked at her watch. ‘Shall we mosey on up there now,’ she suggested lightly, ‘you know – just in time for tea?’

‘We have another three days, remember,’ said Cat and Fen felt herself lurching to the verge of tears at the thought of four more days until she'd actually be home. ‘We could look around the town and get our bearings.’

‘Find somewhere for supper later,’ Fen agreed.

‘This is not a holiday,’ Pip said impatiently. ‘We're here
on family business. Now come on.’ She picked up the car keys and led the way.

Pip crept the car along Emerson Street. The houses, modern but unexceptional, were set spaciously along it, fronted by steeply pitched gardens making the buildings appear more squat than they actually were. Under their breath, the sisters spoke out the house numbers, falling silent when they came upon their mother's home. Though it fitted well with the style and scale of all the other houses they had passed, its blandness took them aback. Fen felt embarrassed that she'd actually thought along the lines of Bates Motel. She realized how, deludedly, she had been expecting something else; presumed that somehow she'd instantly recognize the house where their mother lived. Something more sinister. Something a lot less ordinary. Pip stopped the car at the bottom of the drive and they looked up.

‘Doesn't look like there's anyone at home,’ said Fen though she could not base this theory on fact.

‘Might as well come back later,’ Cat said, ‘or tomorrow.’

‘God almighty, you two,’ Pip sighed, ‘come
on
.’

They walk up the drive.

They loiter by the front door.

Then they turn on their heels and walk briskly back to the car.

Unseen from an upstairs window, Penny had watched them arrive and now she's watching them leave. And they've gone. She goes downstairs and sits heavily in Bob's chair. What could it possibly mean? It was a sight she has never envisaged, never even thought about, never hoped for, never dreaded. What on earth should she make of this? What on earth is she meant to do? What on earth do they want? Why didn't they ring the bell? Why didn't she open the door
anyway? she asks out loud, again and again. But no one answers.

‘We could head off to Boston,’ Cat suggested, once they were back in the guest house.

‘Or we could just go home,’ Fen said. ‘Do you mind if I do that? You two hit Boston, by all means.’

‘We'll call her,’ Pip said and Fen glanced with resentment at the phone book still lying in the centre of Pip's bed. ‘We can't go without trying a bit harder,’ she told her gently. ‘We've come this far. And spent a fortune.’

‘How about we phone the number at 9 p.m. tonight, and if there's no answer, we pop up there again at 9 a.m. tomorrow and if she still isn't there, we head back to Boston and Fen can make the 9 p.m. flight?’ Cat said.

‘Cat o' nine tales,’ Pip laughed.

‘We can send her a postcard, or something,’ Fen said quietly, looking from one palm to the other.

‘Are you missing Cosima dreadfully?’ Cat asked.

Fen nodded. ‘You have no idea how much.’

‘But Matt's mum said everything was fine when you last phoned home?’ Pip said.

Fen nodded and shrugged.

‘Weird to think that Cosima's other grandma is just a couple of miles away,’ Cat remarked.

‘Weirder to think it's our
mother
just a couple of miles away,’ said Pip and they stared at the phone book. ‘Right, I'm calling her now.’

‘What if she answers?’ Cat gasped as Pip lifted the receiver. ‘What will you say?’

‘What if it's an answerphone?’ Fen asked. ‘Will you leave a message?’

Pip was already dialling. ‘Answering machine,’ she said, hanging up.

They stared at the phone.

‘What did it say?’ Fen asked.

‘I don't know,’ Pip said, ‘I hung up on “Hi”.’

‘Can I listen?’ Fen asked. Pip shrugged, phoned the number and passed the receiver over to Fen who glued it against her ear and tried to detect clues from the wording of the message, the timbre of her mother's voice. She hung up in a hurry before the beep.

‘I suppose I ought to as well,’ said Cat and Pip dialled the number again. Cat listened hard; though she'd heard the voice only once before, it sounded strangely familiar.

Hi. You've reached Penny Ericsson. Can't take your call right now. Leave your message after the tone and I'll call you as soon as I can.

‘Hullo – who is this?’

The voice rang through before the anticipated beep. Cat was so taken aback that one hand was paralysed to the receiver, the other frozen in mid-air where it had been hovering over the phone's cradle. The voice filtered out of the receiver, tinny and faint yet filling the room.

‘Hullo?’

Fen stared at Cat wide-eyed while Pip mouthed,
Say something Say something
whilst holding out her hand for the receiver.

‘Hullo? Who is this?’

Cat cancelled the call.

They sat in silence, staring at the phone with trepidation, as if their mother might suddenly materialize from it, like some wicked genie.

‘She was
there
,’ Cat whispered, ‘she's there right
now
.’ She looked at Pip. ‘Please don't make us go back up there tonight.’ She held her hand out for her sisters to observe how it trembled. Fen took it and held it between hers. Pip sat and wondered what they should do next.

It was like a skewed take on Postman's Knock – the resultant addled adrenalin rush caused by the near miss. Derring-do mixed with jet lag and crisp cold beer in a local bar, combined to ensure a lively evening for the McCabe sisters. They picked at peanuts and at the labels on the beer bottles and giggled at the details of the day.

‘It's all very Enid Blyton,’ Fen said, chinking her beer bottle against her sisters'.

‘Woody Allen, more like,’ said Cat, with a long drink.

‘Let's just hope it doesn't turn Stephen King,’ Pip laughed and she put down her bottle and laid her hands on the table as if they symbolized facts. ‘Right. We know that she's here but she doesn't know that
we're
here. Do we phone first or just front up?’

‘I wonder if she was in all along, this afternoon,’ mused Fen, ‘spying on
us
stalking
her
.’

‘We didn't ring the bell,’ Cat said, ‘but perhaps she traced our calls. Do they have 1471 in America?’ she wondered, hiccing softly.

‘The thing is,’ said Pip, ‘what do we want to say? What is it that we want to hear?’

Tracing the paths of the condensation on their beer bottles, tracing the pattern of the wood grain on the table, making patterns out of peanuts, they could draw no conclusion.

If Pip had been subconsciously looking for any excuse to confront her middle sister, that night it was presented to her on a plate, or rather in a beer bottle, in the guise of four studenty local boys offering to buy them a drink. It wasn't as if the boys loitered with intent. Or made a pass. Or even flirted harmlessly. They didn't ply them with alcohol, just the one friendly round of beers. They weren't suggestive in their conversation; if anything they were refreshingly artless in their questions. After all, three English girls were something
of a novelty and buying them a drink bought an evening's entertainment. They asked about the Queen. They asked the girls to say ‘squirrel’ and ‘bath’ and ‘pasta’. They asked how old were the houses in which they lived. Though Fen's smile and easy chatter was harmless enough, to Pip it seemed otherwise. With her beer goggles on, she computed simple facts into complex danger signs. She fused the tone of Fen's laughter, the slant of her smile and the glint of her eyes, into the image of a trollop warranting chastisement.

‘Nice guys,’ Fen commented as the boys left the bar.

‘You can tell whose daughter you are,’ growled Pip.

If this was a saloon in a Spaghetti Western, loaded silence would have met Pip's verbal gauntlet. But in this bar in Lester Falls, time didn't stand still and the din did not abate and Pip's haughty expression was somewhat diffused by the dim lighting. Both Cat and Fen had to squint at her and say, What? because the beer and the bar and the bizarreness of what they thought they'd heard were so distorted.

Pip looked at Cat. ‘Why not ask her what babysitters are for?’

Cat looked at Pip, confused. ‘What
babysitters
are for?’ she asked and Pip nodded gravely. Cat turned to Fen. ‘What are babysitters for?’ she asked ingenuously, with a conspiring twitch of her face to signify she thought Pip odd.

Fen took a long moment to answer, in which time Pip's point struck her sharply. ‘Tell her they're to alleviate the oppressive humdrum a frumpy mum can just occasionally be choked by,’ Fen told Cat whilst glaring at Pip.

Cat looked at Pip. ‘She says they're to – oh fuck it, did you hear all that? They choke humdrum frumps and stuff.’

Pip folded her arms and levelled a stare at Fen, whilst speaking to Cat. ‘Tell her, Oh! Really! I thought that was the function of someone called Al!’

It was well below the belt but it winded Fen all the same, a single spasm deep in her diaphragm forcing her breath into her constricted throat. ‘Fuck you,’ Fen whispered which was easy enough for everyone to lipread.

‘What's going on here?’ Cat asked, her gaze leaping from one sister to other. ‘Have you fallen out? Have I missed something? Who's Al?’

‘Al's your sister's bit-on-the-side,’ Pip announced.

‘That's not true!’ Fen protested.

‘
Who is Al
?’ Cat repeated. ‘What's happened?’

With her hands in her lap, Fen looked deeply into her beer bottle as if hoping for a magical kaleidoscope to transport her away, willing the neck of the bottle to widen and reveal Narnia, Wonderland, anywhere. But it didn't. It didn't even say Drink Me any more. Fen pushed the bottle away and slowly she looked up at her sisters with a smile soft and beatific which she hoped might miraculously solve the issue and change the subject. But it didn't.

‘Fen!’ Cat implored. ‘What's going
on
?’

‘Leave me alone,’ Fen said feebly as she stood heavily from her stool and made to leave the bar. Almost at the door she stopped. What was the point of this? Storming out would only make her look worse. These were her sisters. Really, she needed their support, not animosity. After all, as the only feeling she harboured for Al was regret, there could be no harm in divulging that at all. Her sisters' friendship was imperative; she hadn't been through life without it and just then she could not contemplate going forward without it. As she made it to the door, she was accosted by the memory of a quote on a tea towel Pip had once bought her, which decreed that anyone who didn't know how a woman could both love her sister and also want to strangle her was probably an only child.

‘Sorry,’ Fen said, with searching eye contact, as she returned to the table and sat back down for her comeuppance.

‘What's happened?’ Cat pleaded. ‘What did you
do
?’

Fen glanced from one hand to the other and then she looked up. ‘There is this bloke called Al,’ Fen told Cat apologetically and with a clear shrug of confession to Pip, ‘but nothing happened really.’ She stopped at her words; glancing back over her memory of the time in Al's room and wondering just what defined something or nothing; what precisely was infidelity. Penetration or intent? Wandering hands or simply straying thoughts? She remembered how she'd deludedly hoped a quick dalliance with Al would provide positive memories that would titillate. But there, in the bar in a one-eyed town in Vermont, the thought of what she'd done, what she'd been on the verge of doing had Pip not phoned her that fateful night, sank a leaden spear of shame right to her core. She dragged her gaze to meet her sisters'.

‘I almost cheated on Matt,’ she confided with a meek nod and a sad shrug.

‘What's “almost”?’ Cat asked aghast.