Lone Star (3 page)

Chloe softened her tone. What was happening here was just preface. The real meat of her mother's argument was still to come. But this time Chloe wanted a different resolution. This time she wanted her way, not Lang's way. “Mom, what's the big deal? I'll be eighteen when we go.”
When,
not if. What a clever play on words! What a clever girl.

“Yes, because that solves all the problems. And don't use the word
when
with me, young lady.”

Ahh! “What problems? We want to go to Europe for a few weeks. We'll walk around, visit beautiful churches, eat delicious food, go to the beach, experience things we've never experienced before—”

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

“And then come home,” Chloe went on as if not hearing, “and Blake will write a beautiful story that will win first prize.”

“The boy has many skills. Do you think writing is one of them?”

“A minute ago you thought it was!”

“Don't yell. Oh, and by the way,” Lang said, “Europe is a big place. It's not Rhode Island. Or Acadia National Park. Where in Europe were you four thinking of visiting? You mentioned church and beach. That could be anywhere.”

“Barcelona.”

Her mother groaned. “Barcelona.
That's
your idea.
That's
where you want to go?”

“We've never been to Spain. And it's on the water.”

“So is Maine. And you've never been to Belgium either.”

“Who wants to go to Belgium? What kind of story can one possibly write about Belgium? Or Maine?”

Lang shook her head. “There is
so
much you don't know.”

“That's why I want to go to Europe. So I can find out.”

“You're going to learn about life lying on a filthy beach? Okay, riddle me this,” Lang said. “Where do you plan to sleep?”

“What do you mean?”

“Am I not being clear? You're planning to go with your boyfriend, your best friend, and her boyfriend. Where are the four of you going to sleep in this Barcelona?”

Chloe tried not to stammer. “We haven't thought about it.”

“Haven't you.” It was not a question.

“Probably a youth hostel or something like that.”

“So in a dorm with fifty strangers all using the same bathroom facilities, if there are any?”

“We don't care about that. We are young, Mom. We're not like you. We don't care about creature comforts. Where we sleep. What we eat. It's all fine. So it's not the Four Seasons. We'll be in Europe. We'll buy a student Eurail pass for a few hundred bucks, sleep on trains to save money.”

“Why would you need to do that?” Lang's already narrow dark eyes narrowed and darkened further. “You just said you were going to Barcelona. Why would you need to sleep on trains?”

“In case we wanted to see Madrid. Or maybe Paris.” That was Hannah's idea. Hannah, the Toulouse-Lautrec artiste.

“Paris.”

“Yes, Paris. Isn't France next to Spain?”

Her mother folded her hands together. “Chloe, I tell you what. Go away and think carefully about all the questions I'm going to ask you next time you sit down and say, Mom, I want to go to Barcelona.”

“Like what?”

“Nope. That's not how it works. You figure out the solutions to the problems. Oh, and by the way, one of those problems is telling your father. Let's see how you surmount that.”

Chloe became deflated. “Perhaps he'll be more reasonable than you,” she said. “Maybe Dad remembers what it's like to be young. Oh, wait, I forgot, you can't remember, because you were born old. Born knowing you'd have a kid someday whose dreams you'd spend your entire life harpooning.”

“I'm harpooning your dream of going to Barcelona?” said Lang. “The dream I didn't know you had until five minutes ago?” She raised her hand before Chloe could protest, defend, explain, justify. “Where are you going to sleep, Chloe? Why don't you first work on giving your father the answer to
that
pesky question. Because it'll be the first thing he'll ask. Then worry about everything else.”

Her parents didn't yell, they didn't punish. They were simply hyperaware of every single thing Chloe said and did. The only thing that was expected of her, aside from not flunking out of school, was not to let down half a billion Chinese mothers by going to a Barcelona beach to have unfettered sex with her boyfriend.

“Going to Barcelona is also an education, Mom,” Chloe
muttered. She
really
didn't want to face her dad's questions. What was she supposed to say? We're going to get two rooms, and the girls will stay in one room, and the boys in the other? What kind of naïve fool for a parent would believe that?

“Yes, an education in boys,” said Lang. “What are you going to tell us, that you'll get two rooms and you and Hannah will stay in one and the boys in the other?”

There you go. Didn't even have to say a word.

“Your plan,” Lang continued, “is to rove around Europe for a month with your boyfriend on your hard-earned college savings. This is something you're seriously proposing to your father and me?”

Dad is not here, Chloe wanted to say. Dad never really liked Mason, that gentle kid. She didn't know why. Everyone else loved him. “We could go to Belgium, too, if you want.”

“Are you weak in the head? Why would I want this?”

“You mentioned Belgium. I could bring you back some chocolates.”

“Your father gets me a Whitman's Sampler every Valentine's Day. That's enough for me.”

“Belgium is safe.”

“Is Mason safe?”

“Hannah will be with me. She's nearly a year older. She'll protect me.”

“Chloe,” said her mother, “sometimes you say the funniest things. That girl couldn't protect a deck of cards. I trust Mason more than I trust Hannah.”

“See?”

“More, which is to say nothing. How much is two times zero? Still zero, child.” She raised her hand before Chloe could come back with a wisecrack. “Enough. I have to slap these Linzers together and then get dinner on. Your father will be home soon.”

“I'm going to be eighteen, Mom,” Chloe repeated lamely.

“Yes, and I'm going to be forty-seven. And your father forty-nine. I'm glad we've established how old we are. Now what?”

“I'm old enough to make my own choices,” said Chloe, hoping her mother wouldn't laugh at her.

To Lang's credit, she didn't. “Can you choose right now to go play a musical instrument?” she said. “Piano or violin. Pick one. Practice thirty minutes.”

“Hannah wants to talk to me before dinner.”

“Well, then, you'd better jump to it,” said Lang, her back turned, an icing-sugar shaker in her hands. “What Hannah wants, Hannah gets.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

C
HLOE RAN FROM HER HOUSE ACROSS THE FLOWER BEDS AND
brush to Hannah's next door.

Since the divorce five years ago, Hannah's mother had been involved with revolving boyfriends, and consequently their yard never got cleaned up. Blake and Mason offered to help, but Terri didn't want to pay them to do it. And she didn't want them to do it for free because that was asking
men
for a favor. So she lived surrounded by unkempt backwoods, in wild contrast to Chloe's parents' approach to their house and their rural life. Lang allocated part of every day to weeding, mowing, cleaning, planting, raking, leafing, clearing, maintaining. The birches and pines were trimmed as if giraffes had gotten to them, and all the pinecones were swept up and placed in tall ornamental wicker baskets, and even the loose pebbles were picked up and arranged around the flower beds and birdhouses and vegetable gardens. Lang never said a thing, and kept Jimmy from saying anything, but Chloe could tell by her father's critical expression when he spoke of “that family” that he looked forward to the day Hannah might become a friend of the past.

Before Chloe knocked, she stopped at the dock and stared out at the lake, the railroad across it, at the bands of violet mackerel sky. She imagined a lover's kiss in the Mediterranean breeze, the
mosaics of streets, parades down the boulevards, music, ancient stones, and evening meals. Beaches, heat, flamenco, bagpipes. Passion, life, noise. Everything that here was not. She imagined herself, fire, flowing dresses, abundant cleavage on display, no fear. Everything that here was not. Her heart aching, she knocked on Hannah's porch door.

Hannah's mother was on the couch watching
Wheel of Fortune
.

“Hello, Mrs. Gramm.”

“Hi, honey.” Terri didn't turn her head to Chloe. “Are you staying for dinner?”

“No, my mom—”

“I know. I'm joking.”

Hannah pulled Chloe into her bedroom and slammed the door. Chloe had spent many years with Hannah in this room trading forbidden lipstick and confidences.

“So? Did she say no?”

“Of course she said no.”

“But was it no, we'll see, or was it no like never?”

“It was no like never.”

“But then she started asking you all kinds of questions?”

“Yes.”

“So it's yes. Give her a week to think about it. She has to talk to your dad.”

“What, you think I'll have a better chance with him?”

“No. But he might give you money.”

“For Barcelona?”

“We'll figure it out. We have bigger problems right now.”

“Bigger than my mom saying no?”

“Yes.” Hannah was biting her nails. Perfect Hannah with her perfect teeth was biting to ugly nubs the nails at the ends of her perfect long fingers.

Chloe frowned in confusion. “What's the matter with you?” Though Chloe herself found Hannah to be slightly androgynous, with her tall, boyish body—straight hips, straight waist, small
high breasts, short hair always slicked back away from her face—other people, boys especially, did not agree. Her serious, appraising eyes, brown, round, and unblinking, made Hannah look as though she were engaged—as though she were listening. Chloe knew it was a ruse: the steady stare simply allowed Hannah to be lost inside her head. She wore makeup she could ill afford, but strived to look as though she just splashed water on her face and, voilà, perfection. Her current demeanor was out of character. “What's the matter?” Chloe repeated.

“Nothing. Everything. How likely is it,” Hannah asked, “that Blake and Mason are actually going to go?”

“A hundred percent.” Chloe pulled her friend's twitchy hand out of her mouth. “Stop doing that. What's wrong?”

Hannah didn't reply. She was too busy bloodying the tips of her fingers.

Chloe plopped down on Hannah's lavender bed and stared at their reflection in the floor-length closet-door mirror. For a long time Hannah had wanted to be a ballerina. For many hours in her room she practiced her arabesques and
soubresauts
in front of that mirror, hoping one day she would stop growing and her parents could afford ballet classes. She finally got her lessons in the divorce settlement, but by then she was five-ten and too tall to be lifted into the air by anyone but Blake, who was definitely not a ballet dancer.

Hannah turned up her music, which was already plenty loud. She did it so her mother couldn't hear her, but the result was that Chloe couldn't hear her either. Hannah had a barely audible soprano, like a low hum, and over the high treble strands of Metallica's “Nothing Else Matters” she was nearly impossible to make out.

She lay on her bed next to Chloe. “Chloe-bear, I'm in trouble.”

Chloe didn't hear.

“I have to break up with him and I don't know how to do it.”

That Chloe heard. “With Blake?” She bolted up. She was horrified.

“No, with Martyn.”

“Who?”

“Shut up. Be serious.”

Chloe shut up. How to tell Hannah she
was
being serious? Who the hell was Martyn? She hoped her pitiful ignorance didn't show on her face. She scrunched it up knowingly, trussed her eyebrows, nodded. “Why, um, do you have to break up with him?”

“He was going to give me money to go to Barcelona, because he knows I don't have enough, but if Blake is going, he won't give me any.”

Chloe blindly navigated the maze before her, hands out in front. “So don't tell him Blake is going.” Who the hell was Martyn?!

“Except . . . he was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days.”

Chloe weighed her words. “Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days?” As if repetition would make Hannah's words make sense.

“I didn't want him to, Chloe, believe me, but I don't have enough money to go, and I thought, what's a couple of days, when we're going to be there two weeks, right?”

“Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona.”

“Don't be mad. I was going to tell you he was coming. I was just waiting for the right time. Please don't be mad.” Hannah briefly leaned her head into Chloe's head, and then clapped her hands, businesslike. “No, that's it. I'm going to end it. It's for the best,” she said. “He is getting too serious, anyway. We need to break up, not go on vacation.”

“Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona.” Chloe couldn't get past this one point.

“He doesn't want me to go without him. He's afraid I'm going to meet someone, have a fling. He is very jealous.”

“Martyn. Jealous.”

“So jealous.”

“Um, does Martyn know you have a boyfriend? Maybe he can be jealous of him.” Poor Blake.

“He's not worried about him.”

“Well, you're not, why should he be? So this Martyn is afraid you'll have a fling in Europe with someone other than your boyfriend?” Chloe opened her hands. “What kind of girl does he think you are?”

“For once can you
please
be serious? I know I need to break up with him. But then where do I get the money to go?” She wrung her hands, twisted her sore and bitten fingers. The usually unruffled Hannah looked ruffled.

Chloe was afraid to ask the follow-up question. There were so many questions, she couldn't sort out their order of priority. She was thinking of Barcelona. But she was also thinking about Blake. “Hannah, if you've met someone else, why do you string Blake along? Why don't you break up with him, and do what you want?”

“Don't talk nonsense, Chloe. Did you not hear me just now when I said I was breaking up with Martyn?”

Chloe heard all right. “Do you even want to go to Barcelona?”

“More than anything.”

“With Blake?”

“I'd prefer to go just the two of us.” Hannah pulled Chloe in for a hug. “Like we planned. Can we talk Blake out of going?”

Chloe shrugged. “Perhaps you can talk him out of it by telling him if he goes, then your secret lover won't give you any money for Europe.”

Hannah turned her back to Chloe.

“I thought you had money,” Chloe said after a silence. “I thought we were both saving.”

“We were. We are. But Chloe, I'm not you. I can't walk around in the same extra-large T-shirt. I need spring clothes, I need summer clothes.”

“What do you want, a new skirt or Barcelona?”

“Both.”

“You don't have money for both. Pick.”

“Both!” Hannah's back curved into a ball.

Chloe sighed, kneading her comforting palm between Hannah's shoulder blades. “Who's this Martyn anyway?”

“Stop joking!”

“I mean”—Chloe cleared her throat—“how come
he
has money to burn?”

“He's a professor. He's got plenty of money.”

Martyn, Martyn, Martyn. Chloe tried to remember the first names of their teachers at the Academy. In any case, Hannah said professor, not teacher. Jumping up, Hannah started to pace and talk, began to tell Chloe things she couldn't hear. It occurred to her that perhaps this was the reason she didn't know about Martyn. Hannah had told her, but Metallica was playing and through the strands of living life their way, Chloe missed it.

Hannah grabbed Chloe's hands. “What am I going to do? It'll crush him.”

“Do you
want
to break up with him?”

“I have to. He's become way too emotionally involved with me.”

“What about Blake?”

“Will you forget Blake? I have a real problem and you bringing him up every five seconds is not helping me.”

Chloe tried to regroup, find something else to say. “So . . . how long has this Martyn thing been going on?”

“October.”

“
Last
October?”

“Yes, since my college interview. Chloe, why are you being so obtuse? Is this on purpose? You're making it hard to talk to you.”

Now Chloe remembered. She had driven Hannah to Bangor for her University of Maine admission interview. Chloe had been accepted without an interview so she waited outside while Hannah went in. Hannah walked out with a man, who shook her hand or, rather, took her hand and held it. Hannah introduced
Chloe to a very tall, grandfatherly gentleman, soft-spoken and modest in manner. Surely that wasn't Martyn?

Chloe had thought no more about it, except in January when Hannah asked to be driven to Bangor again because the admissions office needed to go over a couple of things.

That couldn't be the man Hannah needed to break up with. Chloe had it wrong. It couldn't be him because he was . . .

“I'm sorry, but how old is Martyn?”

Hannah studied the lilac bedspread as if the answer was written there like a cheat sheet. “Sixty-two,” she said.

Chloe jumped off the bed.

“Sit down. What are
you
getting all riled up about?”

“Hannah!” Chloe couldn't sit. She could barely focus on Hannah's aggrieved face. “Please tell me you're not involved with a man forty years older than you. Please.” Was Chloe the only one who thought this was gross?

“Okay,” Hannah said. Metallica segued into Nirvana. Come as you are. As a friend. “Forty-four years,” she corrected Chloe.

Come as you are.

Hannah was flushed, blinking rapidly, breathing through her mouth, as if she was catching the strands of the plot on her tongue and was about to jump on her computer and write a story for the ages. “He's very much in love with me,” she said musically. “He's a widower. He's been very lonely. At first he told me I was just for company. He knew we couldn't last. He's the one who told me it wouldn't!”

“But you've only seen him the few times I've driven you to Bangor,” Chloe said dumbly. “Right? I mean . . .”

“Don't be naïve. We've been meeting every Tuesday at the Silver Pines Motor Court. And some Saturdays. He finishes teaching early on Tuesdays.”

Chloe's expression must have been a sight.

“
That's
why I didn't tell you,” Hannah said.

Where had Chloe been that she hadn't noticed Hannah's twice-weekly disappearance? What did Hannah tell Blake about
her regularly scheduled absence from their already convoluted life? How could
he
not know? Chloe had been busy squirreling away her own secrets from Hannah—which now seemed pathetically small in comparison—and perhaps was grateful for a few days a week when she didn't have to look away every time Hannah waxed poetic about the University of Maine they would both be attending in the fall. But what was Blake's excuse?

Tonight Chloe had nothing to say about Hannah's dilemma. She remained stuck on the man's age. He was thirteen years older than her father! Yet Hannah seemed unconcerned with this most startling detail: that she was sleeping with Cain and Abel's uncle. Hannah sighed as if in a romance novel. “It's very flattering to be loved like that,” she said. “So intensely. Oh, Chloe! Do you know what it's like to be loved so intensely?”

“Oh, sure.” Chloe stared into her hands as if they loved her intensely. “Quite a situation you've gotten yourself into, girlfriend,” she said.

“Don't you think I know that?” For a moment, Hannah looked ready to cry. Yet Chloe knew that to be false, for Hannah didn't cry. She only appeared to look to be ready to cry. Her big round eyes were permanently moist. She evaluated you before she pretended to cry, and then you loved her. That was Hannah. Always fake-crying to be loved.

“I gotta go,” Chloe said, rising from the bed. “Hey, look on the bright side. My parents probably won't let me go anyway.”

“How is that the bright side?” said Hannah.

Chloe wanted to say she was being ironic but couldn't find her voice suddenly.