The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (112 page)

“Joke about it all you like. Someday you’ll be swept off your feet, and I’ll say, I told you so.’ ”

Anna nibbled on her salad, thinking,
That’ll be the day.
“What about you? Is it serious with this guy?”

Liz shrugged, tearing bits of crust from her bread and tossing them to the sparrows. “Who said I was seeing anyone?”

Something in her expression raised a red flag, or maybe it was all the talk about Marc. “Don’t tell me he’s married,” she said with a groan.

A guilty flush rose in Liz’s cheeks, and Anna thought.
Oh, dear.

“It’s not what you think.” Liz was quick to defend herself.

“I’m not thinking anything. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I’m a big girl.”

“Does Dylan know?”

“God, no.” Liz looked aghast at the idea. “It’s only the nights he’s at his dad’s.”

“What about the wife?”

“His marriage is over. He’s only staying because of—” Liz broke off, frowning. “It’s complicated.” She looked so unhappy, Anna couldn’t imagine its being anything more than a garden variety affair—sneaking around, lies, promises that never materialized. You had only to watch
Oprah
to know it would end in tears.

What made Liz think her situation was so unique? Did she imagine she was so different from the countless other women who’d been down that road? Was she that deluded?

Anna refrained from putting in her two cents. She had larger concerns at the moment. Like Monica. What would she be like after two weeks in this place? Humbled—or chafing at the bit? Marc had instructed them to prepare a list of confrontations, which they’d have a chance to air later in the week. Hers would be a mile long, but would she find the courage to risk Monica’s wrath? Undo thirty-six years in just four days? Yesterday she wouldn’t have believed it possible, but now she found herself wondering if pounds weren’t the only thing she was dropping.

“All right, who wants to go first?” Marc glanced about the circle of patients and family members, a knowing little smile on his lips. It was the final day of family week, and the moment they’d all been dreading had arrived. He might as well have asked who wanted to be the first to face a firing squad.

No one’s hand went up. They were four days and several boxes of Kleenex into it, their workbooks grubby and souls stripped bare. They now knew more about each other than did many of their closest friends. Anna had heard stories that would curl even Oprah’s hair, and had wept for the innocent children these men and women had been. Sophie, who’d been molested by her uncle as a little girl. And Scott, with the dark circles under his eyes, whose parents had disowned him when they found out he was gay. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Got-Rocks, whose real name was Lindsay, turned out to have been the classic poor little rich girl, raised by a succession of nannies who were fired as soon as she grew too attached to them.

Even Liz had crept out of her shell. She’d talked candidly about their father, and Anna had been surprised to learn that she’d been wrong in believing that Liz, as the youngest, had been spared to some extent. Listening to her speak about those years, how on nights when she’d wet the bed she’d lie awake for hours, soaked in urine, afraid to make so much as a peep for fear that their father would hit her if he found out, Anna had found herself swallowing back tears.

But most surprising was the change in Monica. The first day, Anna had expected to find her snarling like a caged tiger, but she’d been remarkably subdued. Maybe it was the meds she was on, but she seemed fragile almost. More bruised than rotten. When she’d opened up about her drinking and how hard it was to give up, despite knowing what it was doing to her and everyone around her, it was obvious she was sincere. No one was that good an actress, not even Monica.

Anna had found anger and resentment giving way to pity at times. Yet she’d secretly applauded when Marc had busted Monica for blaming it all on the accident, and forced her to admit she was an alcoholic. Anna had been right about him. He
was
the only man in the universe her sister couldn’t wrap around her little finger.

Now she looked over at Monica, scarcely recognizable as the goddess immortalized in countless magazines and movie posters. Her famous face was scrubbed of makeup and her auburn hair loosely pulled back in a ponytail fastened with a rubber band. In her oversize T-shirt and baggy drawstring trousers, clothes that two weeks ago she wouldn’t have been caught dead in even at home, Anna was reminded of the teenage Monica, before she’d dropped Vincenzi in favor of Vincent and become the superstar known to millions worldwide.

Monica didn’t raise her hand, and shot a warning look at her sisters, lest they volunteer. That’s what did it. Suddenly Anna was remembering all the times she’d swallowed her feelings along with her pride so as not to rock the boat. Her hand shot up seemingly of its own volition.

“I’ll go first.” Her stomach fluttered and her heart began to knock in her chest, but she was rewarded by the warmly encouraging smile Marc directed at her.

Monica cast her a baleful look before slowly wheeling into the center of the circle. Anna dragged her chair over, planting it opposite Monica. A dozen times the night before she’d gone over her list of confrontations, rehearsing each one with Liz so she wouldn’t screw up, or worse, wimp out. But face-to-face was an entirely different matter.

“Is that a comfortable distance for you?” asked Dr. Meadows, the pretty dark-haired woman who’d lectured that first day, a day that seemed to have taken place in another lifetime. She was cochairing this afternoon’s group.

Anna waited for Monica to reply before remembering that she had a say in it as well. “Fine by me,” she said, thinking the distance from here to Pittsburgh would be more like it.

Monica gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

“Remember, this isn’t about proving a point,” Marc said, reminding Anna of the guidelines, which they’d gone over in yesterday’s group. “Stick with what happened to you, not some other family member, and how it affected you.” He shifted his gaze to Monica. “You’ll get a chance to respond later on, but for now I’ll ask you to just listen. All right?”

“Do I have a choice?” she quipped feebly.

Anna opened her workbook and withdrew a sheet of dog-eared paper covered in her neat, precise handwriting. Her hands were clammy and her head hummed like a receiver off the hook. Monica’s expression was flat; it was like looking into the windows of a stretch limousine where all you saw was your own reflection.

She started with the most recent event. “When you passed out on the bathroom floor, and ended up in the hospital, I felt …” She struggled to recall the correct phrasing. “Fear and … and anger,” she stammered, glancing at the chart on the wall on which, printed in large block letters, were all the emotions she was feeling now, jumbled together in a steaming stew:
ANGER, FEAR. PAIN, GUILT, SHAME, JOY. LOVE
. Except joy, that is. There was no joy in any of this as far as she could see.

Oddly enough, Monica’s silence didn’t help. Anna would have found it easier in some ways if she’d been able to talk back. At least she’d have known what to expect.

She glanced once more at her notes. “That time you screamed at me in front of Glenn over that stupid necktie, I felt anger, pain, and shame.” It all came rushing back. Christmas of last year, when she’d mistakenly wrapped the wrong present for Glenn—though he’d have been none the wiser if Monica hadn’t lit into her, cursing a blue streak.

She’d been drunk, of course. Anna’s cheeks burned at the memory.

She caught a glint of something in her sister’s eyes. Remorse? Or surprise that she was still upset after all this time? Anna looked down to find her hands trembling.

“The party I was supposed to be a guest at, when you had me take coats at the door, did you ever stop to think how humiliating it was? There I was, in my best dress …” Tears threatened, and she quickly blinked them back.

“Stick with your feelings.” Marc’s gentle voice brought her back on track.

Anna nodded fiercely, sucking in a breath. “I felt shame,” she said in a small voice. This was so hard, and Monica’s stony expression was making it harder. What was going on behind those eyes? What price would Anna have to pay?

There are worse things than losing your home,
she told herself.

She sat up straighter. “That time I had the flu, and you kept saying that the best thing for a cold was to stay on your feet, only because you didn’t want me to take the time off. I felt …” She faltered, overcome by the enormity of her rage. Before she knew it, she was shouting, “
Dammit, I ended up with pneumonia because of you!
” Anna sat back, shocked by her outburst. Though she thought she saw Marc out of the corner of her eye nod faintly in approval.

Monica’s mouth dropped open. Not in shock at her audacity, Anna could see, but in bewilderment.
She doesn’t even remember!
She could have died, and it wasn’t even on Monica’s radar screen. Suddenly it was all too much. Earlier on, Liz had jokingly referred to the chair now facing Monica’s as Old Sparky, and Anna experienced a physical jolt as years of unleashed fury surged through her. With a sob, she jumped up and bolted from the room.

When Marc found her, she was huddled on the lawn, sobbing her heart out. “The world didn’t come to an end, at least.” His voice was mild but not unsympathetic.

She lifted her head to find him regarding her with a mixture of admiration and empathy. She gulped in a breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“You did just fine.” His eyes were gentle and smiling, the lines at their corners curving to meet his silvering temples. He seemed taller, too, or maybe it was because he was standing over her.

She knuckled away her tears. “And I thought I was here for Monica.”

“Would you have come if you’d thought otherwise?”

“Probably not.” A small laugh escaped her.

“You’re not alone.”

“Does that make us cowards?”

“Far from it.” His expression turned serious. “What counts is that you stuck it out. There are those who’d sooner risk their necks in battle.”

“It’s not so different, is it?” If this were a battle, they’d all have earned Purple Hearts.

He nodded, lowering himself onto the grass. “In some ways it’s even harder.”

The lawn glistened in the fog that had rolled in. She watched the resident cat slink out from under a bush with what looked to be a lizard in its mouth. As it headed up the path to the main building, which housed the offices and dispensary, she thought of how helpless she’d felt until now—as helpless as that lizard.

She turned to Marc, propping her chin on her knees. “Why do I get the feeling this battle is far from over?”

“I wouldn’t rule out a peace treaty.”

“You don’t know Monica.”

“You’d be surprised. We like to think of ourselves as special—in AA we call it terminally unique—but we’re not.” She was reminded that he, too, was an alcoholic, ten years sober. “When you’ve sat in on a hundred meetings and heard a hundred people tell your story, it can be pretty humbling.”

Humble
wasn’t a word that came to mind with Monica.

“I guess we were all fooling ourselves one way or another.” She sighed. As the cat disappeared under another bush, she saw that the lizard in its jaws was no longer wriggling.

“Change can be scary.”

“But there’s no going back, is there?” Right now she longed for the relative safety of her cocoon. Just as it had been easier for her sister to use the accident as an excuse to drink, it had been convenient for Anna to blame everything on Monica.

He arched a brow. “Would you want to?”

She thought of the life that awaited her back home and shook her head. No, what she wanted was to be free—without the struggle and heartache of getting there. “I just … I didn’t expect it to be so hard,” she said.

“I wish I knew an easier way.” He stretched his legs out on the grass, and she noticed that he was wearing navy socks with brown loafers. She found it oddly endearing, and couldn’t help wondering why his wife hadn’t said something.

“I thought you guys had all the answers,” she said lightly.

He laughed, throwing his head back, a wonderful deep laugh that was like a gulp of warm, sweet tea. “Don’t I wish. The truth is, a lot of the time we stumble around in the dark like everyone else.”

“What made you decide to become a therapist?”

“I got sober.”

“What did you do before that?”

“Believe it or not, I used to be a pilot.”

“Seriously?” She hugged the knowledge to her like a found coin, certain she was the only one in their group in whom he’d confided. “I mean, it’s not the kind of thing you think someone would give up.”

“It wasn’t voluntary—the FAA yanked my license after I crash-landed in the desert with six pharmacists who were on their way to a convention in Vegas.”

“How awful. Was anyone hurt?”

“Luckily, no. But when it came out in the investigation that I’d been drinking that day, I was pretty much washed up. I spent a year or so just getting sober before I decided to go back to school for my degree.”

“At least no one could accuse you of having a boring life.”

“Define boring.” His gaze fixed on her, as if he’d known she was thinking of her own dull existence.

“I dropped out of college after my dad died,” she told him. All he knew from their groups was that she lived with her mom, not what had led to that decision—if you could call it that. “It wasn’t something I planned on. After the funeral I was only going to stay for a few weeks to help out. But Mom … well, she wasn’t herself. She’d go off on an errand and then get lost, stuff like that. At first I thought it was because she was grieving, but then we found out she had Alzheimer’s.” Anna found it easier to talk about this with Marc than with her sisters. Monica seemed to think Betty was only getting what she deserved, and Liz avoided the topic out of guilt. “You want to know something awful? Sometimes I hate her for it.” As if it were her life savings Betty had lost through foolish investments, not her mind. “Does that make me a bad person?”