The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (55 page)

“Do you feel like talking about it?” Gerry asked.

Andie gave her a deeply injured look, as if to say,
How can you even ask?
Then with a sigh she sank down on the bed. Gerry remembered when her children were little and would burrow under the covers, snuggling against her like puppies, one under each arm. In those days it had seemed she would never get enough sleep, but now she’d have done anything to turn the clock back. She tucked a bookmark into the novel she’d been staring at without really reading by an author with the unlikely name of Daphne Seagrave.

She tried a different tack. “I’m sorry I upset you.”

Andie shrugged. “Justin’s the one crying. Not me.”

Gerry sighed. These days she thought of her daughter in terms of Before and After, for it seemed she’d lost more than a husband in the divorce. The sunny, affectionate girl who’d chattered incessantly, helped out around the house, and often hugged her for no reason had vanished, leaving in her place this hard-faced, unforgiving teenager.

“Would it help,” she said gently, “if I told you I’m just as nervous as you are about meeting her?”

Andie lifted her head. In the shadowy light from the night-table lamp, her eyes looked bruised. “The difference is you have a choice. We don’t.”

“Fair enough,” Gerry acknowledged, and saw a flicker of surprise in her daughter’s face. They’d been butting heads for so long. “Still …” She risked a small smile. “Aren’t you a little bit curious at least?”

“Maybe.” Andie plucked at a loose thread in the bedspread. After a moment she asked in a voice so low Gerry had to strain to hear it, “What made you decide to look for her?”

Gerry’s gaze shifted to the framed movie poster on the wall by the dresser:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
in Italian, which she and Mike had bought when they were on their honeymoon but which now seemed a souvenir from another lifetime.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I think it had to do with Aunt Sam. Seeing her pregnant. I don’t know—it just hit me, that’s all.”

“You didn’t think of her when you had
me
?”

“Every single day.” She laid a hand over Andie’s, stilling its fretful plucking. “But it wouldn’t have done any good to go looking for her then. Even if I’d found her, I doubt her parents would have let me see her. Besides, your father …” She let the sentence trail off.

“Dad knew?”

She nodded. “I told him before we were married.” Mike had been understanding at the time. It wasn’t until the children were born that he’d made his true feelings known. He didn’t want them to think less of her, he’d said. Too ashamed to argue, she’d gone along.

Andie’s mouth twisted in a smile that was more a grimace. “It’s weird, isn’t it? Here I was thinking it’d be Dad and Cindy who’d surprise us with a kid. I never expected it from
you.
”

“I guess we’re all a little shell-shocked.”

“So where do we go from here?”

Gerry reached up to brush a curl from her daughter’s forehead. “The main thing you need to remember is that I love you and Justin very much. Nothing will ever change that.”

She caught the gleam of tears in Andie’s eyes. “Finch talks about it sometimes, what it was like growing up without parents. I always felt so lucky …” She turned away, her back a brick wall Gerry felt helpless to breach. “I’m going to bed now. Do we have church tomorrow?”

“Would you like to go?”

Andie, for whom Sundays had become a battleground, nodded ever so slightly before getting up and heading for the door.

Gerry climbed out of bed. “I’ll check on your brother.”

Andie paused in the doorway and turned, a wedge of shadow falling over her face. In the soft glow from the hallway the illuminated half gleamed like a newly minted coin. “He misses Dad.”

“I know.” Gerry kissed her on the forehead. “Good night, sweetie. Sleep tight. Don’t—”

“—let the bedbugs bite,” Andie finished for her, smiling a little and shaking her head as if at the antics of a child. In that moment she looked so grown-up Gerry felt an urge to snatch her back from the brink of adulthood the way she might have from the path of a speeding train.

They arrived just after the introductory hymn, sliding in next to Anna Vincenzi in the second to the last pew. Anna smiled and passed them each a missal. She looked her usual frumpy self in a shapeless flowered smock, yet something was different about her. Then Gerry realized what it was: She was used to seeing Anna with her sister, stoically pushing Monica about in her wheelchair, Monica treating her as if she were a flack in the entourage that had once shadowed her every move. Today Anna was with her elderly mother instead. It must be one of Mrs. Vincenzi’s good days.

“Page thirteen,” Anna whispered while her mother stared vacantly ahead, a hollow-eyed wraith, the black mantilla draped over her snowy head only adding to the effect.

Gerry glanced over at her children. Justin, his face still a little puffy, was quietly thumbing through his missal. Andie, dressed demurely for a change in a long-sleeved top and corduroy jumper, was subdued as well. Gerry saw her pull something from her pocket and was surprised to see it was the rosary beads Mavis had given her when she was confirmed.

The congregation rose for the penitential rite, and Gerry chanted along with the others, “I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault,” she struck her breast lightly with her fist, “in my thoughts and words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do… .”

The familiar rhythms of the mass wrapped around her like a warm blanket, and when it was time for the Eucharist, she felt as if she were being roused from a light doze. She made her way down the aisle, past pug-faced Althea Wormley in a hideous yellow dress several seasons out of date; David and Carol Ryback with their sickly son, Davey; elderly identical twins Rose and Olive Miller. At the altar, when she put out her hand to take the Host, she found Father Dan’s kind blue eyes on her, as if he were looking into her soul—and liking what he saw. She felt a rush of gratitude. In all the years she’d known him, he’d never judged or condemned her. While others whispered behind her back, Dan seemed to understand her passions and needs. Needs he’d surely wrestled with himself. With all the women batting their eyes at him, he’d have to be either gay or made of stone not to at least be tempted.

She closed her eyes, and there was only the rustle of vestments smelling of starch and incense. The murmur of his voice as he dispensed his blessing along with the Host was like cool water trickling over her.

The sermon had had to do with today’s reading from Corinthians. In his deep voice Father Dan had read, “ ‘If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it does not for any reason belong any less to the body… .’ ” He’d lifted his head, wearing his easy smile that seemed to carry a knowing wink. “Who among us hasn’t pulled that one? Our boss asks us to do something and we say, ‘Oh no, not me. That’s not
my
job. Go talk to Mr. Jones down the hall.’ Or a wife asks her husband to watch the kids”—his gaze fell on Janet Stickney and her brood, five red-haired boys ranging in age from two to twelve—”and he says that’s
your
responsibility. I’m too busy earning a living.” He waited for the titters to die down. “The point is we’ve all been guilty of setting ourselves apart, of thinking it’s somebody else’s problem, not ours. Paul says there are many parts, but one body.” He paused. “I think that applies not only to our jobs and families but also to our relationships to one another. For if we’re weaker, we find strength in the body as a whole.”

He might have been speaking directly to her. For all her qualms with the Church, this was what brought her to mass every Sunday: to be reminded that she wasn’t alone. Now she glanced at Anna, quietly attempting to subdue her mother, who’d grown restless. Compared to Anna’s problems—caring for a senile parent in addition to working long hours catering to her sister’s every whim—hers seemed small.

When they rose for the final hymn, “Father, We Thank Thee,” she felt at peace for the first time in weeks. Even Andie and Justin seemed more at ease. They joined the line of parishioners making their way out onto the steps, where she stopped to have a word with Father Dan.

“Wonderful sermon,” she told him.

“You’d have enjoyed last Sunday’s even more.” A not-so-subtle reminder that she’d missed last week’s mass, though his twinkling blue eyes let her know it was only out of concern that he’d mentioned it. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” she lied. “Other than that I could use a vacation.”

“The sisters keeping you on your toes, eh?” He smiled broadly. Her job managing the beekeeping operation at Our Lady of the Wayside seemed to amuse him in some way.

“You know the old saying, No rest for the wicked.”

“Ah, so it’s not just work.”

She smiled at the inference to Aubrey. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it from Marguerite.”

He arched a brow. “Is there something I should know?”

“Not a thing, Father.” She put on an innocent look.

Her hand, when he took it in both of his, felt like a flower pressed between the pages of a book. “When you feel like talking about it, you know where to find me.”

Before she could reply he drifted over to a group of ladies from the Altar Guild, leaving her to head off in search of her children. She spotted Andie with several of her friends from school. A short distance away Justin was getting an earful from garrulous old Mr. Hennessey, the former merchant marine who’d been the church caretaker for as long as she could recall.

She remembered that she’d promised to stop at Lickety Split on the way home. Justin was at that age when he could eat an entire banana split and still be hungry for lunch. Maybe later, if Andie and Justin were in the mood, they’d take a hike up into Wheeler Canyon. It was beautiful this time of year, just a hint of chill in the air. Apple weather, her mother called it, for out near the orchards you could still catch the faint cidery scent of windfall. With luck they wouldn’t come across any bears, like the one Waldo Squires claimed to have seen last week up on Chorro Ridge (Waldo’s word, however, was suspect, given his long and well-documented battle with the bottle). Though after all they’d been through what was a wild animal or two?

She felt a sudden burst of optimism. Things would work out somehow. Eventually her kids would come to accept Claire … and Claire would accept them. One day they might all attend mass together, not to mention weddings and christenings down the line: a family like the body of which Paul had spoken, a body made up of disparate parts that was strong as a whole.

Gerry had no sooner reached the bottom step when the world was plunged into shadow. She glanced up at the sky, where the sun had disappeared behind clouds that had come out of nowhere. More were gathering in billowy heaps over the mountains to the west, and the wind picked up, scudding in over the trees with a low, confiding rustle. Gerry shivered, pulling at the lapels of her blazer.

“Andie! Justin!” she called.

There’d be no outing today. They’d be lucky if they made it home without getting drenched.

A
NDIE SLUNG HER BACKPACK
over her shoulder with a sigh and started up the stairwell. Portola High was all on one level, a series of low buildings connected by breezeways, with the exception of the building she was in now. It housed the principal’s and vice principal’s offices, with a faculty lounge upstairs and a large room overlooking the quad, where the school newspaper put out its monthly ruminations on everything from the football team’s current losing streak to the student petition being circulated right now in favor of installing vending machines for condoms in the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms, and where on this bright Monday afternoon, a good half hour after he’d promised to meet her out front, she was certain she’d find her boyfriend Simon, editor in chief of the
Scribe.

She ought to have been totally pissed. This wasn’t the first time he’d kept her waiting. Why did she put up with it? He wasn’t the best-looking guy around. Nor was he the coolest (not that Simon gave a damn). While other guys looked up to Derek Jeter and Shaquille O’Neal her boyfriend’s idols were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. And while jocks like Pete Underwood and Lonnie Thorsen were butting heads on the field or in the locker room snapping each other with towels, her boyfriend could usually be found on the trail of a hot tip or tapping furiously on a keyboard.

That was the thing about Simon. He cared about stuff like global warming and gun control and wasn’t too busy trying to score some action (or in Dink Rogers’s case, some dope) to try making a difference—though the editor in chief of the
Valley Clarion,
to which Simon regularly submitted on spec, had suggested that many of his articles were more suited to the
Berkeley Barb.

He was sexy, too—in a reverse cool kind of way. The kind that doesn’t advertise itself and is always a little surprised that anyone would think so. The reason they hadn’t done It yet wasn’t because she didn’t want to or was holding out for a better offer but simply because she was afraid of where it would lead. She was already crazy about him. What would happen if they were sleeping together?

Andie was halfway to forgiving him by the time she reached the top of the stairs. She found the door to the
Scribe’s
room propped open with an overflowing trash basket. Inside she looked about at the shelves and cubbyholes jammed with reference books and old bound issues of the
Scribe;
the bulletin board that nearly covered one wall layered with index cards and photos and play-off schedules for every sport; the desks on which computers sat, flying toasters and brightly colored cubes floating across their screens. Only one was in use—the one at which Simon sat hunched, oblivious to the world.

He blinked up at her, the thick lenses of his Buddy Holly glasses giving his wide-set hazel eyes a faintly astonished look. “Andie, hey. What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you,” she said sharply, placing her hands on her hips. “You were supposed to meet me out front.”