Raising Hope (22 page)

She sets her jaw and strides to the car, saying nothing. It’s only when I get in and shut the door that she turns to me, two bright spots of red on her cheeks, and says, “For your information, Hope, my world does not revolve completely around you. I do have other interests, other topics of conversation.”

“Fine, fine,” I protest as she jerks the car backward out of the parking space. “I was only kidding,” I lie.

She doesn’t say anything, just drives looking straight ahead. God, she’s so sensitive sometimes. I change the subject so she won’t be so mad. “Listen, Sara Lynn. I have a question for you.”

“What?” she asks, still pouting a little.

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Have I
what
?” She laughs, although I see nothing funny in my question.

“Been in love,” I reply.

“Well . . .” She pauses, then says, “Y-yes, I suppose I have.”

“Who with?”

“With whom,” she says.

I sigh. Honestly, it’s like pulling teeth. “Okay. With whom?”

She clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth a few times, like she’s thinking. I don’t know what she has to think about. If you’re in love, you know who it is you’re in love with, right? “Hmm,” she says. “You know, that’s sort of a personal question.”

I just shrug and look out the car window, and in a moment she asks cautiously, “Have you ever been in love?”

I don’t miss a beat. “That’s sort of a personal question,” I say snidely.

She laughs. “Touché,” she acknowledges.

Since we’re (sort of) sharing things here, I decide to ask her another question. “What was my father like?” My voice comes out all funny, like it’s been trapped in my throat.

“Your father,” she says slowly. “My, you’re asking probing questions this afternoon.” She doesn’t speak for a minute, then she asks, “Why do you want to know?”

Oh, for crying out loud. “Why do I want to know?” I burst out, raising my voice. “Because he’s my father. God, Sara Lynn, you overthink everything. I just want to know what my father was like. What don’t you get about that?”

“Calm down,” she snaps. She takes a deep breath. “Oooh, let’s see. Your father was . . . gosh, I don’t know how to describe him. He was . . . very irreverent, in the best sort of way.” I can see her lips twist a little, like she wants to smile. “He saw the absurdities of life.”

Like that makes any kind of sense to me at all. “What else?” I ask. “What else do you remember about him?”

“That’s . . . all, right now.”

“Well, that’s kind of lame,” I say with a snort.

“Yes, Hope,” she retorts sharply. “I guess I am awfully lame. A real loser.”

Okay, then. So much for a heart-to-heart chat with Sara Lynn. There’s no pleasing her. I sigh and roll my eyes, looking out the window. Sometimes I wonder if that woman even has a heart.

Chapter 16

W
hat am I doing? What on earth am I doing? This is the sentence that’s been churning through my head since I turned onto the highway leading down to Boston. I’m going to work. That’s what I’m doing. Just going to look at a garden. Just going to do my job.

Ha! Doing my job indeed. Does my job involve meeting men . . . no,
boys
—meeting boys for illicit trysts? Illicit trysts . . . good God, I sound like the copy from one of my mother’s bodice-ripper books.

I shake my head as I flick my blinker to enter the passing lane. What was I thinking when I agreed to this? No, no—even worse. When I
suggested
this. Because it was absolutely my idea. What must he think of me? My cheeks get warm just imagining. I basically propositioned him. Yes, I did. I as much as said, “I can’t date you, but I’d be happy to meet you secretly in Boston one night next week and have sex with you.”

Oh, for God’s sake. I’m not going to do any such thing with him. He can think whatever he likes about how it sounded, but what a person believes and what’s the truth are two entirely different matters.

I’m gritting my teeth, and I force myself to stretch my jaw and relax it. My dentist lectured me at my last appointment about the damage one can do from teeth gritting, jaw clenching, and other stress-related behaviors. I take a deep breath—oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Think about something else. I stretch out my right hand, hit the radio, and flick through the buttons, looking for music that’s pleasing. No. No. No. I hit the off button and drum my fingers on the wheel. This drive is boring, a straight line on the map leading from Ridley Falls to Boston. I could do it on autopilot, have done it on autopilot when I used to drive this very highway back and forth and forth and back in my past so long ago that it seems to belong to a different person.

In my early twenties, I lived and worked in Boston. I thought I was there to stay until I hit twenty-four and drove back to Ridley Falls for good, having quit my big-time lawyering job and irrevocably ruined the bright future I’d spent my life preparing for.

I was a lawyer at Amos & McAllister, the oldest and most prestigious law firm in Boston. I was lucky, it was said, because Amos & McAllister hired only the best and the brightest. Even my boyfriend, Todd Wilton, hadn’t managed to get a job there.

Lucky . . . I thought of the irony of this on a fall afternoon before I brought my life to a full stop as I sat in the law firm’s library, working on research for Conrad Dalton, the firm’s managing partner. I didn’t feel lucky. I felt as if I’d been sentenced to a life made up of equal parts stress and boredom, and there wasn’t any way out of the prison I’d diligently constructed for myself.

“How’s that research coming?” It was Conrad Dalton, walking through the library. He stood behind my chair and breathed over me, short ugly pants through his nose, as he skimmed the case I was reading.

“Fine,” I said, my heart pounding in my chest.

“Goddammit, I hope so,” he said grimly. “There better be cases out there on our side.”

As if it were my responsibility to make up the cases that appeared in the law books! As if it were I who had authored the long-winded opinions regarding whether or not the plaintiff truly owned one-half of a racehorse or the defendant should have sanded his sidewalk so the plaintiff didn’t fall. As if I cared about any of it!

I sighed and raised my hands from the book. “I’m not having much luck,” I said. “I’m trying to find cases that say what you want, but I’m afraid the law comes out the other way.” I cringed inside. Better to disappoint him now than later, I thought. Better to prepare him for the likely scenario that his argument wasn’t going to hold up.

He grabbed the open book from the table and, still breathing heavily, began to read. “What about this?” he said, setting the book on the table and smacking the back of his hand against the page. “Isn’t this exactly what we want?”

“That’s a case from 1885,” I said softly. “The law has changed significantly since then. As I demonstrated to you in my memo of last week.”

“You know, Sara Lynn,” he said, “I’ve warned you about this. About your tendency to give up on things. This case might help us. You don’t just read it and say, ‘Oh, dear, it’s too old; the law has changed.’” He raised his voice to a falsetto to imitate me. “No! You construct an argument out of it. You use it. You think!”

As he strode away, he said, “Get working on that argument. And think, Sara Lynn. Show me that you have a brain.”

Have a brain? Have a brain? I fumed inside as I looked down at those dusty law books. I was certain my grades were higher than his had been. Hadn’t I been high school valedictorian and summa cum laude out of Wellesley? Hadn’t my thesis on the role of nature in Wordsworth’s poetry won top honors? But what if he was right? It was a thought that grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go. What if I wasn’t smart at all? What if my whole life had been a facade and the jig was finally up? What if I really was merely average and not the least bit special?

I toted a pile of books into my office and shut the door. As I sat down to try again, the phone rang.

“Sara Lynn Hoffman,” I said professionally, wondering what hell awaited me on the other end of the line.

“Hi, honey,” trilled my mother. “I just came in from doing my roses and thought of you.”

“Hi, Mama,” I said.

“You don’t sound very perky today.”

“I’m working, Mama. Working.” Mama hadn’t worked in donkey’s years. She didn’t have any idea what it was like to try to please people all day and never measure up to what they wanted out of you.

“I know you are, dear,” she said. “Oh, I’m so proud of you! My daughter—the lawyer! You’re so lucky to be living in today’s world, where women are encouraged to have their careers. Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m proud to have been a homemaker and mother all these years. But then, I wasn’t as smart as you. I didn’t have your talents.”

“Oh, Mama,” I said, trying to sound modest.

“How’s Todd?” she asked, excited.

“Well,” I said, wanting to please her, “he invited me to Martha’s Vineyard this weekend to stay at his family’s house.”

“You’re going?”

“Yes,” I said, “I am. And we’re staying in separate rooms, Mama, so don’t go hinting around about propriety or anything like that.” I was lying to her, of course, but I couldn’t bear for her to think I wasn’t her perfect daughter.

“Why, honey,” she exclaimed, “you’re an adult woman. What you do is your business, and I know in my heart I’ve raised you to be a lady. I know you’ll never do anything to shame me. I don’t need to ask you personal questions to which I already know the answers.”

My cheeks reddened, and my stomach clenched up.

“He’s a nice boy. Any hint of . . . dum dum da dum?” She hummed the first bars of the “Wedding March.”

“No,” I said hastily. “No, not at all.”

“You’ll be such a lovely bride, Sara Lynn,” she said. “We’ll get you a fairy princess dress that accentuates your tiny waist. And cap sleeves. So demure-looking for a bride, I think. And a long, long veil.”

“I don’t even have a ring on my finger yet.”

“Can’t start planning too soon,” she retorted.

I sighed. “No, I guess not.”

“Why don’t you bring him home one weekend? We haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Mama, I was home last month.”

“Like I said, that was ages ago. And he’s never seen your home.”

“I’ll ask him,” I said grudgingly, “but we’re both sort of busy right now.”

“You’re not too busy to trot off to Martha’s Vineyard. It’s not too much for me to ask you to bring your fiancé home.”

“He’s not my fiancé,” I said from between clenched teeth.

“Oops, got to go, sweetheart. I’ve got bridge this afternoon. Ta-ta.”

And she hung up in a flurry, convinced I’d be engaged before she took her next breath.

Goose bumps sprang up on my arms. Oh, God. I dialed the number to my parents’ house.

“Hello?” she answered expectantly.

“Mama, it’s me.”

“What is it, Sara Lynn? I’ve got to go.”

“Listen,” I said, twisting the phone cord around and around my hand, “don’t go telling anybody I’m engaged or about to be engaged or anything like that.”

She was silent.

“Okay?” I asked.

“I don’t know where you got this notion into your head that I haven’t any discretion.”

I sighed. “I’m just asking you to keep it quiet, that’s all.”

“What would make you think I’d breathe a word?”

“Nothing, Mama, nothing,” I cried. “Just see that you don’t.”

“All right, Sara Lynn,” she said airily. “I won’t say one word about you. Just in case my discretion fails me. And if anyone asks about you, I’ll just say, ‘I’m sorry. Sara Lynn would prefer that I not speak about her at all, lest I say something I’m not supposed—’”

“Mama,” I snapped, picking up a pen and tapping it like crazy on my desk, “did I ever say that you weren’t to speak about me at all? Did I ever say that?”

“You implied it.”

“I did not. I simply asked that you not share your hopes regarding an engagement with anyone.”

“Fine, Sara Lynn,” she said stiffly. “Now I really must be going.”

“Fine,” I said, and then I felt guilty for making her feel bad. “Mama, I’m sorry. I’m under a lot of pressure here at work and I’m taking it out on you. I’m sorry.”

She was waiting for that. “That’s all right, dear. I forgive you. I just wish you’d give your mother a little more credit.”

“I will,” I promised. “Love you, Mama.”

“Love you, too, sweetheart,” she said, all chipper again. “Have a good day! Don’t work too hard!”

I hung up the phone and opened the top book on my pile. I brought my hands to my eyes and forced my eyelids wide open. I’d fall asleep otherwise, trying to decipher these cases from the days when they drove around in buggies, the days when women couldn’t vote.

I had hated law school from day one, when Professor Forrest made Mary Lou Gallant cry because she answered a question in her high, squeaky voice and he kept interrupting her to cup his hand to his ear and say, “What? What? Speak up, Miss Gallant. The jury members won’t be convinced if they can’t hear you.”

“Miss Gallant,” he had continued, striding across the room and grinning at her as she piped out a few more words, “do you not have anything worthwhile to say? Is that why you insist upon whispering, Miss Gallant?”

At this, Mary Lou had stopped completely, and we all could hear the big, round, white-faced classroom clock tick from one minute to the next.

“Can you hear a word she’s saying, class?” Professor Forrest threw one arm out from his body to take all of us in, enveloping us in his unquestioned power. We were benevolently welcomed; he would keep us safe. We laughed until Mary Lou ran out of the room with tears streaming down her face. Then we were silent until Professor Forrest shrugged and said mockingly, “Was it something I said?” He gave us permission to laugh again, and we did, all of us, thanking God we were on the inside instead of the odd person out.

I wasn’t a weak person. I understood that we were to shrug off the criticism, the insults, the jeering laughter. So what was it about law school that horrified me so, that made me not even recognize myself in the bathroom mirror when I got up in the morning? I’d blink the sleep crusties out of my eyes and lean in toward the round vanity mirror in my little Cambridge apartment. I’d look and look, and I’d think, Sara Lynn Hoffman, I don’t even know who you are.