Sleeping Beauty (26 page)

They were silent. “I'm sorry,” said Gail. “I can't even imagine feeling like that. Nothing really awful has ever happened to me. Isn't that amazing? I'm thirty-three years old and I haven't had one really terrible experience. I don't remember Mother, and as for everything else . . . I've had bad things and I've been unhappy, but those times passed and didn't leave any scars. I wonder if that's true of most people.”

“I think everything leaves a scar,” Anne said. “We change a little bit, or a lot, every time something happens to us. Sometimes we're hardly aware of it, and other times we know nothing will ever be the same again.”

Gail gazed at her sister. “Did you have other terrible things, after you left here?”

“No, I've been careful. But I deal with them in my office. My clients are usually pretty unhappy—some of them are thrilled at shedding a wife or a husband and starting again with somebody new, but most of them are having a rough time—and they all think their troubles are unique and devastating. And in a way they're right: they do feel devastated and nobody else has ever gone through their particular divorce with their particular children and parents and in-laws and property . . . the whole thing. And divorce always changes people, even though most of them are too vindictive or defensive or relieved or beat down to be aware of it at the time.”

“What did you mean: you've been careful?” Gail asked.

“Oh, I don't get involved with anyone. I made a good friend in the Haight—we're still friends—but after that I was too busy. Would you like more tea?”

“Yes, thank you. You don't have any close friends? Or men?”

“I have Eleanor, my friend from the Haight. And I like some of the people in the firm.” Anne poured the tea. Tendrils of steam curled upward against the rain-streaked window. The kitchen was warm and bright; it felt good to be
there. “Most of us need a lot less than we think, you know. If we have work that we love, and if we're interested in a lot of things, so we're always learning, that's enough. We don't need crowds of people. We don't really need anyone.”

Gail ran her finger around the rim of her mug. “You don't mean that.”

“It's the way I've lived all my life.”

“Not when you lived here.”

“A lot of the time I did. A lot of the time I felt like a stranger. And when I needed them most, they treated me like one.”

“But you came back.”

“I wanted to say good-bye to Ethan. I never understood why he didn't help me that night, but I loved him and he was the one I missed the most. I wish we'd had a chance to talk before he died; I would have asked him why he let me down. And I would have told him I always loved him.”

“Leo said he talked about you.”

“He did? What did he say?”

“You should ask Leo.”

There was a pause. “I don't think so. I'd like to meet Leo, but I don't want to see any of the others. I'll leave before they get here.”

“I don't want you to leave; I just got you back,” Gail said. “Oh, but you could . . . Listen, Anne, come to Tamarack with us! We're leaving tonight; Leo has to get back. Do come with us. You can get to know Leo and the kids, and we can talk all we want. You'll stay with us; we have loads of room. Oh, Anne, please say you will. It would be wonderful.”

“I don't know.” But already the idea had taken hold. She had not seen Tamarack for twenty-four years, and it had been her favorite place. “How many of the family live there?”

“Just Keith; you remember, Marian and Fred's son. I guess he was about five when you left. He went through a wild time, lots of booze and drugs, and then one day out of the blue he showed up and asked Leo for a job. That was about three years ago; he's assistant to the mountain manager
now, and I think he's really straightened out. We hardly see him; he has his own friends.”

“And that's all? No one else?”

“Well, Dora and Josh, the guy she lives with, have a house in town, and they're in and out. He's terrific; we got to be good friends. We don't see him as often as we'd like; they live in Los Angeles. If you're asking about Vince, he never comes to Tamarack. Daddy doesn't come; neither does William. Marian and Fred and Nina come once or twice a year. That's all. None of them gives a damn about the town. They were furious when Grandpa got Chatham Development to borrow money to develop Tamarack; they were always mad at him because they thought he cared about Tamarack more than the company or anything else in Chicago. We could disappear tomorrow and all they'd care about would be the money they might lose.”

Anne put down her mug. “What's wrong, Gail? What are you afraid of?”

“I'm not. Did I say anything about being afraid?”

“It's what you didn't say. What's wrong at Tamarack?”

“Well. A lot. But I'm not dumping it on you, Anne. And that isn't why I asked you to come home with us. I don't even know how you figured it out.”

“I spend a lot of time figuring out what people really mean when they're too worried or scared or mad to come out and say it. And I wouldn't mind if you thought I could help; I'd like it. Though I'm not sure what I could do.”

“Maybe we just need somebody to listen to us. Somebody who's part of the family but not really
part
of it, if you know what I mean.”

“Perfectly,” said Anne, her voice cool. “You couldn't have put it better.”

“Oh, no, I didn't mean . . . Oh, Anne, I'm sorry, I didn't mean you're not part of us. Of course you're part of the family; I always thought you were, even when
you
didn't seem to—” She broke off. “I'm saying all the wrong things, aren't I?”

“It's all right,” Anne said quietly. “It isn't always clear what the right things are.”

“Did you
ever
think of
me?”
Gail burst out.

Anne nodded. “A lot. But I didn't know you. You were so young when I left, and you had your own friends, and we hardly ever saw each other. I thought you'd barely notice that I was gone.”

“Well, I did. It was as if you'd died. And the worst was not knowing, and thinking you didn't care about me enough even to call.”

“I'm sorry,” Anne said. “It didn't occur to me that you might be unhappy, too. I always thought you got along with all of them much better than I did; you never talked back or argued.”

“I couldn't. I always got scared when people quarreled and their eyes got shiny and angry. I wish I'd rebelled a little bit, though; it might have been fun.”

Anne smiled faintly. “There's not a lot of fun in rebellion; it's mostly misery. Rebellion mostly means being lost and trying desperately to find a place to belong and somebody to pay attention to you.” The words lingered in the air. “I'd like to help you, if you think I can. Tell me what you'd like me to do.”

“I don't know,” Gail said. “I'm not sure what any of us can do. We have to find a way to keep Tamarack. Daddy's wanted to sell it for a long time but he couldn't, as long as Grandpa was alive. Last night he brought it up again—we hadn't even had the funeral!—and Leo and I absolutely refused, but if there's a vote, we could lose. This family doesn't work together. It's crazy, when you think about it, because everybody's been involved with the family company forever, but outside the office something happens to us and we don't even seem to
like
each other. I don't even know what we all want from the company, and from each other; we just don't talk much. You'd think families would talk all the time, and maybe some of them do, but we don't. So I don't see how we can sit down and work this out. I'll tell you the whole story—”

“Not now,” Anne said. She looked at her watch, afraid that the family would suddenly appear, massed before her. But as much as she did not want to see them, she did want to
go home with Gail. She could spend some time just with Gail's family and rediscover Tamarack and, maybe, find a way to regain some of what she had lost.

But then she pulled back. Gail's family would be the wedge; she'd end up seeing the rest of them.
Too close, too close.
She was safe where she was. She had a home and a job, she was secure in a law firm that had been her only family for a long time. It was a comfortable place to be, with rules and patterns of behavior, ritualized activities and expectations, and scrupulous care that no one stepped on anyone else's toes. A family was nothing like that; no group of people in the world was more unpredictable and potentially chaotic than a family: everybody a loose cannon primed to go off when something happened that no one could have imagined one minute earlier.

I've been careful. I don't get involved with anyone.

But if I go slowly, she thought, it might be all right. This is my family; and it might be safe to talk to some of them.

Unexpectedly, a new idea came to her. Maybe she had been wrong, to leave in such a hurry. It had never occurred to her. Maybe she hadn't lost her family; maybe she had thrown it away.
I ran off and left the rest of them intact. I let Vince have the family, and I left with nothing. I was too young; I didn't know I could fight to keep what was already mine.

She didn't know if she could do that. But maybe it was time to try. At least to make a start and see if it was really possible, and if it was what she wanted. I could give it a try, she thought. As long as I stay in control. I have to control what happens.

“I want to hear the whole story,” she said to Gail. “But not now. I have to leave. You can tell me when we're in Tamarack.”

“You'll come, then? Oh, wonderful! What an incredible day this is! I didn't even think about your coming to the funeral, but here we are and it's almost as if we've hardly been apart—do you feel that, how simple everything is?—and now we'll have you in Tamarack! It really is incredible! Isn't it, for you?”

“Yes,” Anne said. She put on her suit jacket. “I'll wait for you at the airport. What time is your flight?”

“Eight-fifteen, but what will you do until then? It's only two o'clock. I'll go with you.”

“You stay with the others; they'll expect it. I'll meet you at the plane. Don't worry about me; I'll be fine.” Anne smiled. “But thank you, anyway; it's been a long time since someone worried about me.”

She took a last glance at the kitchen, and then walked back through the house. The limousine she had hired that morning had followed them and was waiting at the door. The rain had stopped and the clouds were lifting; thunder growled far away. Anne directed the driver to take the same route she had walked when she left so long ago, and she watched the village slide by. A much more stylish way to leave, she thought with a smile. But it still hurt to look at this groomed, manicured town that presented a facade of easy living and happy families, of harmony and serenity and deep comfort, and know how false a facade it was. Wealthy towns hide their agonies with ease, Anne thought, behind the work of architects and landscapers, decorators and carpenters, but the wealthiest towns beckon with such exaggerated and false promises that a young person growing up in them is trapped between wishful thinking and reality. And the only escape from that is to get out.

They passed the station where she had stood, her duffel bag beside her, waiting for the train to Chicago. The driver seemed to slow for a moment, then drove on, turning west. When they turned south onto the highway, Anne sat back in the cushioned seat. She would never go back there; Lake Forest and the houses of the Chathams held nothing for her. But she had taken the first step in rejoining her family, and she wanted this time alone, before she met Gail and Leo and the children at the airport, to think about what that meant.

It means I'll give it a try; that's all it means. If there's too much pain, or too much prying, I'll leave, and I'll be back where I was—which is fine; there's nothing wrong with it. But if I like being with them . . .

I'll wait and see. It's worth a day or two of my time, to find out.

*   *   *

Tamarack was a small town the first time Anne saw it, its streets snow packed and muffled, its buildings weighed down by heavy caps of glistening snow hanging low over their eaves. She was five years old and she was there with her parents and grandparents. She learned to ski that winter, and Ethan took her for a ride on a sled pulled by fourteen huskies. The following summer they hiked along a stream to a meadow where the bluebells reached their knees and the only sounds were the hum of insects, the descending trills of birds, and the rush of swift water in the stream. “It's a magic place,” Anne said, her voice hushed.
“My
magic place. Someday I'm going to live right in this exact spot.” “I'll build your house,” Ethan said. “But you might not want to be this far from other people. You have lots of time to think about it.”

She never forgot that place, though over the years, in other parts of the world, she found many others even more remote and more wildly beautiful. For ten years she went to Tamarack whenever anyone in the family decided to go, even for only a few days. She became a smooth, fast skier, and in the summers, a strong hiker through pine and aspen forests and over long stretches of rock or tundra. She always skied and hiked alone. She would have liked to make friends in Tamarack, but she never figured out how, since she was in town for such short visits.

Ethan had built a new house on sixty acres on Star Mountain that looked across the valley at the ski runs on Tamarack Mountain, to the east up Wolf Creek Pass, and to the west at some of the tallest, most rugged peaks of the San Juans. A few years later Vince bought eighty acres higher up the mountain, though he never got around to building on them. Marian and Fred Jax built a house in town with a view of Tamarack Mountain from their front windows and Star Mountain from their backyard, though they were almost never there, and Nina rented a condominium in a complex
at the base of Tamarack Mountain. Charles and William never built at Tamarack. William preferred beaches and sailing, and Charles refused to put money into the town. After his father began investing heavily in it, he saw it as a rival of Chatham Development and began to dislike everything about it, even its beauty, as people do when they are eaten up with jealousy and must find flaws to justify their hatred.