The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (103 page)

It was on the tip of Anna’s tongue to defend him, but what would’ve been the point? He’d been dead for years. Besides, everyone knew what he’d been like. Joe Vincenzi, the meanest drunk around. That he’d been nice when sober didn’t count because few ever saw him when he wasn’t three sheets to the wind.

“Well, I’m off,” Edna announced for the second time. She paused as she was stepping out the door, looking at Anna as if there was something else she wanted to say. But whatever it was, she apparently decided against it. “See you in the morning.”

Morning? Anna didn’t know how she was going to survive the night.

Minutes later, the table set and the macaroni and cheese bubbling in the oven, she was on her way to fetch Betty when laughter, not canned, rang out in the next room. She froze. It couldn’t have been her mother; she hadn’t laughed like that in years. It was what Anna missed most, her mother’s laugh—the one thing Joe hadn’t been able to beat out of her. That, and her sense of fun. Anna remembered coming home from school one day to the unexpected treat of a cake with candles and a pile of tissue-wrapped presents. Betty had decided to throw them an
un
birthday party. The presents weren’t expensive—a pink plastic hairbrush and a comb set for her, nail polish and the current issue of
Mademoiselle
for Monica, a nightgown for Liz—but the occasion stood out in memory more than any real birthday.

Remembering helped, but it made her sad, too, in the same way that photos of her dad, grinning into the camera with a little girl on each knee, made her feel as if she’d had two different fathers. These days her mother was like a whole other person from the one she’d known, with Anna the grown-up and Betty the child.

In the living room, she found Laura’s adopted daughter, Finch, seated on the sofa, chattering away while Betty smiled in delight as if at an exotic bird that had flown in through the window.

Finch caught Anna’s eye and smiled. “The door was open,” she said. “I guess you didn’t hear me knock.”

“Perfect timing,” Anna told her. “I was just putting supper on the table.”

“I can’t stay. I just dropped by to give this to your mom.” She dug into the pocket of her jean jacket, producing a key chain with a penlight attached. “I thought she’d like it.” She thumbed its button, and it was as if a light had been switched on in Betty as well. Her eyes glowed like a child’s on Christmas morning.

Anna’s own eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. When Finch dropped by, it was always with some little trinket for Betty, or to return a book she’d borrowed, never leaving Anna to feel like some sort of charity case. Her years in foster care had left her far more sensitive than most to the sting of handouts.

Finch rose to her feet with a graceful little dipping motion as she swung her long dark hair over her shoulder. It fell in a rippling sheet down her back, and Anna was struck anew by how she’d blossomed in the past year. In her jeans and UCLA sweatshirt, she looked like any normal teenager, the hollow-eyed runaway of last summer already a distant memory.

“Sure you can’t stay? There’s more than enough,” she urged.

Finch hesitated. “I’ll have to check with Laura.”

She went into the bedroom to use the phone, returning moments later to say it was okay. Anna knew that it had probably been the plan all along, and tonight she was too tired to refuse when after they’d eaten Finch offered to put Betty to bed.

Finch coaxed Betty to her feet, saying gently, “Come on, Mrs. Vincenzi. Wait till you see how cool this looks in the dark.”

She reached to pry the penlight from her grasp—Betty had held on to it throughout supper—but Betty balked. “Mine! Monica gave it to me,” she cried.

Finch smiled at Anna. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

If Betty had mistaken her for Monica it was because there was a certain resemblance. In the framed photo over the fireplace, taken when she was Finch’s age, Monica was a fresh-faced beauty as yet unspoiled.

When she was alone, Anna turned to the dirty dishes in the sink, which included those from breakfast—Edna wasn’t much when it came to housekeeping, and Anna wasn’t in a position to complain. Fifteen minutes later, with the last dish stacked in the drainer, she tiptoed down the hall to check up on her mother. She found Betty tucked in bed, Finch reading aloud to her from a storybook.

“ ‘One day the two sisters received an invitation to the ball that was to be made at the palace of the King, in honor of his son the Prince …’ ”

The tears she’d been holding back all evening spilled down her cheeks as she hovered in the doorway. Finch was so patient with her mother, almost as if she understood her in a way Anna couldn’t. Maybe because she knew what it was like not to fit in. One day she might tell Anna what it had been like, all those foster homes, the last one so bad she’d run away, but for now Anna was simply grateful for her kindness.

Anna retreated down the hall and was straightening up in the living room when she heard the door to her mother’s room click shut. Finch appeared a moment later, saying in a hushed voice, “She’s asleep.”

“You’re so good with her.” Anna had muted the TV and now there was only its flickery glow, casting the furniture in shadowy relief. She didn’t dare say more; she might get choked up again.

Finch shrugged nonchalantly, as if it weren’t a school night and she didn’t have better things to do. “I like her. She’s more like a little kid than someone Maude’s age.” Laura’s eighty-two-year-old housemate, who was like a member of the family, might be forgetful at times, but she had all her marbles.

Anna knew what she meant: just as with a child, everything was upfront with Betty. “I wish you could’ve known my Gramma Nini,” she said. “It was like that nursery rhyme about Jack Spratt and his wife—she was as big as a house and Grandpa Eddie as skinny as a beanpole.” She smiled, remembering the meals at her grandmother’s groaning table.
No wonder I’m so fat.
“I guess it’s pretty obvious which one I take after.”

“Why do you do that?” Finch frowned.

“Do what?”

“Put yourself down like that.”

Anna chuckled to hide her embarrassment. “I’m just stating a fact.”

“Well, it’s also a fact that you’re pretty and smart.”

Anna’s smile faded. “I’ve been hearing that all my life,” she said with a sigh. “Such a pretty face. It’s just another way of saying it’s a shame you’re fat.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know you didn’t.”

She braced herself for what inevitably came next: the helpful suggestions about dieting and exercise. She’d heard them all. Even Laura, who’d rather bite her tongue until it bled than offend someone, had invited her more than once to go horseback riding.

But Finch only said, “I should be getting back. I have homework.” She rolled her eyes, but Anna knew she liked school. This past semester she’d even made the honor roll.

Anna followed her out onto the porch. The temperature was falling rapidly; it was at least ten degrees cooler than when she’d arrived home. The only sounds were the cheeping of crickets and nightjars. She hugged Finch, a bit too tightly perhaps, wondering what it would be like to have a daughter of her own. Then Finch was bounding down the path, disappearing into the darkness. A moment later came the roar of Hector’s old pickup.

Shivering, Anna retreated inside. If the outside of the house showed its age, the interior was virtually unchanged from when she was growing up. The old Motorola stereo cabinet was where it had always been, never mind the CD player that had made it obsolete. Surrounding it were the clunky old breakfront that had been her grandmother’s, the worn plush chairs, and the brocade sofa with its granny-square afghan that her mother had crocheted to cover the burns from her father’s cigarettes. It might have been only yesterday that Anna had been summoned home from college for his funeral. Sixteen years—had it really been that long? The week or two she’d planned to stay before returning to Cal State had spun out into months, then years.

At first it had been to help her mother to adjust. Amazingly, after nearly thirty years of being beaten and bullied, Betty missed the old man; she’d drifted about in a daze like a boat that had come unmoored. When it became clear that the daze was more than just grief, Anna had felt obliged to stay just to make sure she didn’t set the house on fire or do herself bodily harm.

She’d been there ever since.

Now she wondered if her reasons for staying had as much to do with her own fears as with Betty. One day she’d woken up to the realization that her friends all had careers, or were married with children, or both. A kind of panic had set in. Where would she go? What would she do? A woman in her thirties without a bachelor’s degree who wasn’t qualified for anything more than minimum wage. It had seemed the answer to her prayers when, shortly after the accident that had left her a paraplegic, Monica tearfully begged Anna to come work for her at LoreiLinda, where she’d taken up permanent residence. Monica claimed to need her desperately, offering to hire a companion for their mother, and at the time it had seemed like the answer to both their prayers—the insurance money from their dad’s death had run out just as Betty’s condition was worsening, making it impossible for Anna to hold down even a part-time job without outside help. It wasn’t until too late that Anna saw she’d only become more deeply mired.

Her cat came slinking out from under the sofa to wind in and out between her legs, purring loudly. Anna bent down to scoop him up. “It’s just you and me, pardner.” She stroked his silky black head. “What’ll it be, Rocky Road or butter pecan?”

Boots, named after his three white socks, was the cat Laura had brought over on loan from Lost Paws the year before last to cut down the mice population in her pantry. He’d been with her ever since, her feline counterpart. Neither had intended to stay, but there they were nonetheless. When she put him down, he followed her into the kitchen, meowing piteously as if it’d been days, not hours, since he’d been fed. Anna dropped a spoonful of Rocky Road into his bowl before helping herself to three large scoops.

She was settling into the recliner to watch TV when she caught her reflection in one of the breakfront’s glass doors, distorted like in a funhouse mirror: a huge head atop the blob that was her body. She was filled with self-loathing and had a vision of herself ten years from now, seated in the same chair, digging into the same heaping bowl of ice cream. With each passing day she’d become that much more helpless to combat Monica’s will. Glenn and the others would eye her more pityingly, until it edged over into disgust.

Just as her own disgust was now creeping over into horror. Had she seen this coming when her father died, she’d have run for the hills.

Only once before had Anna experienced an epiphany on this scale. As a child she’d suffered her father’s beatings in choked silence until one day something in her had snapped. She’d looked up at him as he towered over her with his hand raised and blood in his eye—she couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven—giving him a look of such intense hatred he’d immediately lowered his arm. She’d sensed somehow that in the same way a bomb needs to be detonated in order to explode, he had to see fear for his rage to be released. At that moment she had stopped being afraid. He never raised his hand to her again.

With the same clarity, she knew it was now or never. If she didn’t act quickly, the moment would pass and with it any chance of a future. Trembling all over, she rose to her feet, the bowl in her hands cradled like something sharp that might cut her. She hurried into the kitchen, where she dumped the ice cream into the sink. Watching it disappear down the drain in a muddy swirl, little white clumps of marshmallow clinging to the lip, she felt a flicker of hope, the first in months, maybe years.
I can do this,
she thought.
I can change.

“N
EW DRESS?”
L
AURA
asked as Anna climbed into the backseat, squeezing in next to Maude and Finch. This morning when Anna’s car wouldn’t start, Laura had offered her a ride to church.

“I haven’t worn it in a while.” Anna didn’t add that the flowered dress she had on was from her Atkins phase, when she’d been fifteen pounds thinner. This was the first time she’d been able to fit into it since then—at least three years.

“Well, it looks nice on you.” Laura went on eyeing her as Hector backed the Explorer out of the driveway. “No, it’s not just the dress,” she said. “You’ve lost weight.”

“A few pounds.” Anna didn’t want to make a big deal of it. She’d been on so many diets through the years, she was like the boy who cried “wolf,” except that in her case she’d eaten like one. “You look nice, too,” she said, eager to change the subject. Laura, who practically lived in jeans, except at work where she wore slacks, had on a stylish ecru dress and high heels.

“It’s my brother’s christening. I figured I’d better dress up.”

“Jack won’t recognize us,” Finch said.

“I hardly recognize myself grumbled Hector, looking uncomfortable in his suit. He’d been to the barber, too; his shiny black hair stood up in spikes except where slicked down around his collar. The one maverick touch was the bola tie from his and Laura’s hilltop wedding earlier in the year.

“Well, I, for one, am celebrating the fact that there’s even going to
be
a christening.” Maude peered out from under the cartwheel hat that matched her vintage polka-dot dress. “When I think how it might have ended …” Her voice trailed off, her blue eyes, bright as buttons sewn onto the soft little pillow of her face, momentarily clouding over.

A silence fell, everyone remembering the car accident the previous spring that had nearly claimed Sam’s life along with that of her unborn baby—the climax of the soap opera that had begun with Laura’s widowed mother falling in love with Ian, fifteen years her junior. That he was her younger daughter’s stepson to boot had only heightened the drama.

But now it was November and no one in the extended Kiley-Delarosa clan could remember what life had been like before Jack. Sam was like any new mother besotted with her baby, never mind she was old enough to be his grandmother. Laura and Alice, who’d been horrified by their mother’s pregnancy, doted on him. Finch would have baby-sat for free if Sam hadn’t insisted on paying her. And Maude, named an honorary grandmother in the absence of any real ones, knitted little sweaters and booties as fast as Jack outgrew them.