The Way Back to Happiness (21 page)

“You stay right where you are. For heaven’s sake—do you think we’re so uncultured that we can’t be trusted to socialize with Tom for a few hours?”

“It’s not you who worries me.”

“Diana’s not completely uncivilized. I’m sure she’s read a book at some point in her life.”

Bev scoffed. “The last book I saw in her hands was
Make Way for Ducklings
.” Poor Tom. She could imagine him being dragged into one of Diana’s beads-and-weed dens. “She’ll scare him off.”

Gladys laughed. “If contagious disease didn’t send him running, I’m sure he’ll weather Diana.”

“But I won’t be able to see him alone this weekend,” Bev lamented. How would she be able to tell him about the baby with everyone around? Of course, she suspected Diana had overheard her talking to Dr. Gary, so she would be lucky if her sister didn’t spill the secret first. She considered writing Tom a note back.
Have fun—and by the way, you’re going to be a father!

Her head throbbed, and her throat felt as if it was on fire. She dropped into sleep, sleep that fell across her like a lead blanket, smothering her so that even while she was out she struggled to wake again. Her dreams were fitful, disturbing. She would fight to consciousness to flee them, only to find herself in a hellish state of aches and soreness that made her wish she’d never woken up. Rinse, repeat.

Saturday morning’s breakfast tray brought Cream of Wheat and no new note from Tom.

“He’s still asleep on the foldout couch in the living room.” Her mother was already dressed for work. The bank was open half days Saturdays. “He and Diana went to see a movie last night.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know.
Airport
was what they mentioned wanting to see.”

“Didn’t you ask what they did when they came in?”

“I didn’t hear them—it was too late.” Gladys plucked at the scarf at her neck. “I’m going to the bank, but I’ll try to take off early today. You go to sleep and I’ll have some hot soup for you when you wake up.”

“I feel ridiculous. Of all the times to be sick. Tom has so little time . . .”

“Just rest,” her mother said. “The doctor didn’t prescribe worrying.”

True to her word, her mother presented herself at Bev’s bedside around midday with a bowl of chicken and rice soup. Again, there was no note.

“What is Tom up to?” Bev asked. “I thought I heard Jim Morrison earlier, while I was dozing. I hope Diana didn’t wake him up.”

“They’re not here. They must have decided to go out to lunch, or shopping.”

That afternoon Bev stayed awake, waiting to hear them return, but the only person who came into the house was Dr. Gary, who declared Bev’s illness was progressing nicely. Recovery was just around the corner. Then, he lowered his voice a little. “How are you doing with . . . the other?”

The other.
Nice way to think of a baby. “Fine.”

“I should have conclusive results on Monday. There’s been no change? No pains, anything like that?”

“No.” She frowned. “Should there be?”

“Just take it easy, young lady. Told your mom yet?”

“No. I thought I’d wait until I’m sure.” Or at least until she had told Tom. “Can’t I get up tonight and watch TV? My boyfriend’s visiting—he only has a few days before he has to report for officer’s training.”

“And do you want him to contract mumps and miss it? Do you want to expose him to the same risks you’re running? What if he developed meningitis and died? Would having watched a little television make you feel better then?”

She shrank back, gripped by hypothetical guilt. But a part of her did think it would be wonderful if some life-threatening but not quite fatal illness rescued him from his duties. He wouldn’t have to go . . . and it wouldn’t be his fault. Neither the US Army nor his family could blame him. She could encourage him to leave Houston and live here. They’d get married, rent an apartment. She would teach, and Tom . . . could find a job somewhere. Or go to graduate school. That’s where he belonged.

Sunday morning, Gladys brought more Cream of Wheat and disturbing news. “They didn’t come back last night.”

Bev sat up. “Didn’t come back from where?”

“I don’t know. Yesterday evening they returned briefly to eat and change and told me they were going for a drive.”

“Where could they have driven to?”

“In fourteen hours? Where
couldn’t
they have driven to?”

The nightmare of the following days would stay with her always. By Sunday night, it was clear that Tom and Diana’s disappearance had nothing to do with losing track of time. All sorts of crazy thoughts occurred to Bev. Had they picked up a hitchhiker and been kidnapped? Had they fallen prey to some psychotic killer, like Charles Manson?

By Monday afternoon, Bev was more exhausted from worry than illness. Calls to the police, hospitals, and all of Diana’s friends revealed nothing. A terrible reality was beginning to settle in. Tom and Diana had run off together. As her mother grew more agitated, Bev’s worry seemed to settle into a painful ache in the core of her being. Her mother didn’t know that her fears were almost all self-centered.
What am I going to do? How am I going to manage?

Finally, after strenuous arguments from Bev, Gladys called Tom’s family.

From the sound of things, Dorothy Jackson answered the phone. Her mother kept her gaze trained on Bev even as she spoke over the line. “We were wondering if you’d seen Tom, Mrs. Jackson,” she said after introducing herself. “Yes, he
was
here, but now he’s gone, and he’s taken my daughter with him. I was wondering if he had gone to Houston. . . .”

Even as her mother said it, Bev realized again how ridiculous the idea was. Tom wouldn’t have gone to Houston—it was the last place he wanted to be. Her mother hadn’t understood that.

“He’s not with
Bev,
he’s with Diana.” Her mother’s face reddened as she listened. “I know you haven’t been introduced to Diana—that’s not the point. She’s my younger daughter and she’s disappeared with your son. The essential question is, where are they?” She sank down in a chair, hand clenched around the receiver. “Diana did not
take
him anywhere. Nineteen-year-old girls do not generally kidnap soldiers.... Yes, I said
kidnap. . . .”

Her mother listened a moment longer and then put the receiver against her chest. “She’s putting her daughter on the line. Now what good is that going to do?”

Bev pried the receiver out of her mother’s hands. “Dot, this is Bev.”

“Mother says your mother is accusing Tom of kidnapping your sister,” Dot said.

“Have you seen them? Have you heard from Tom at all?”

“No, of course not. Mother’s very upset. The word
kidnap
has legal implications, I believe.”

“All right—they’ve run off together.”

“But why would they have done that?” Dot asked. “He went down to visit
you,
didn’t he?”

“I have the mumps.”

There was a pause. “Are you serious? Isn’t that a childhood disease?”

“Not exclusively, obviously.”

“The mumps!” Dot practically brayed the word. “Maybe Tom was right to take off. The last thing he needs is to start catching diseases from you people.”

Bev pulled the telephone cord taut. “If you hear from them, let us know. Please?”

“Okay, but I think it would be best if you didn’t disturb Mother anymore. She’s very upset.”

“What kind of people are they?” Gladys asked after Bev had hung up. “Every time I said something, she would counter it. She answered ‘Where is my daughter?’ with an attack on my daughter’s pedigree.”

“That’s the kind of people they are,” Bev answered.

“Do you think Tom joined the army to get away from them?”

“That could be. His father was in the military, but Tom doesn’t support this war. Maybe he thought that by enlisting he’d get away from them and finally earn a tiny drop of their respect. I think he’s confused.”

All Bev knew for sure was that the doctor had been wrong. Mumps hadn’t been the danger to Tom. If she’d roped Tom into watching television, everything might have ended happily. Instead, she’d followed the doctor’s orders and he’d fallen prey to Diana. He might have survived a bout of mumps, or even meningitis. But he’d had no antibodies against freewheeling Diana.

As she stood, her hand still on the phone, a knitting pain inside that she’d been too preoccupied to think about escalated into a cramp too strong to ignore. She gripped her middle, nearly doubling over.

Gladys jumped to her feet. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s . . . I feel sick.”

It was worse than sick. It was pain so sharp she thought she would fold over on herself.

“Of course you still feel ill,” her mother said. “You should be back in bed.”

Gladys took her elbow and grunted in surprise when Bev leaned all her weight against her. She should have told her mother about the pregnancy before now. This didn’t feel right.

Another cramp seared through her.

“Bev!” Gladys clenched her in alarm. “What’s the matter?”

Could this be normal?

Of course not. Nothing about her life would ever be normal again.

Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Mama? What am I going to do?”

“W
hat do you think?”

Stuart stood in the center of the “stage” he’d set up for a dress rehearsal in his parents’ garage to simulate the atmosphere of the high school auditorium on talent show day. Electrical tape marked off the back for the performance area, facing rows of Mrs. Looney’s empty folding card table chairs. A few seats were occupied by brooms and mops wearing hats, a punching bag topped with a baseball cap, and a giant plush panda. Their audience.

“I should have brought Rhoda Morgenstern,” Alabama said. “She’d have fit right in.”

“I wish you had,” Stuart replied. “We need all the fake people we can get.” Dressed in his new tunic over jeans, he crackled with nervous energy. “Of course, this isn’t as big as the auditorium at school, but you get the idea.”

He’d been pestering her to have a formal rehearsal for two days, but she’d been reluctant. At some point, she would have to confess that she couldn’t really dance any better now than she could when she was eight. When she thought of getting on that stage, her heart would start battering her chest until she was dizzy with nerves. It was madness to contemplate, but whenever she saw Stuart, she felt too embarrassed to back out. She didn’t want to confess to him that she’d been a liar, that she wasn’t talented. That, in fact, there was nothing special about her at all.

She was also reluctant because she worried that if she saw him do his Shakespeare thing, he would ask her honest opinion and she would either have to lie or lose her one friend.

As it was, the outfit alone convinced her he was doomed. The tunic was royal purple with gold braid. Stuart loved it. And for some reason, he’d moussed his hair into a curly, new-wavy cowlick, like the singer in Tears for Fears.

He caught her staring at the tunic. “The color is really going to pop under lights. I wanted to make a real jacket—something more fitted—but then I worried I’d screw it up. This gold braid isn’t cheap.”

She drew in a breath, trying to work up the courage to tell him that she was going to back out of the talent show. She knew he would think she was a chicken, but . . . well, maybe she was.

“We need to hurry up and start,” he said before she could get a word out. “Dad’ll be home in a little bit. Mom’s okay with parking her station wagon in the driveway while we’re working, but Dad thinks cars belong in a garage. He’s . . . you know . . . the Looney car guy.” He sighed, as if having a local celebrity dad was his cross to bear. Just as quickly, though, he snapped out of it and grabbed a box off one of the metal chairs. “First, I’ve got a surprise for you. Close your eyes.”

Dutifully, she squeezed them shut. While she stood in darkness, something heavy plopped on her head.

“Okay—open ’em.”

She opened her eyes to her own reflection in the hand mirror Stuart was holding up. His surprise was a wedding veil—traditional in appearance until you noticed that some of the netting was thick with fake cobwebs, and that there were little spiders dotting the material. At the crown, a small stuffed mouse perched next to a plastic wedge of cheese.

She laughed. It was his Miss Havisham look—a take on the old jilted bride from
Great Expectations.
“It’s perfect!”

He beamed, pleased by her reaction. “Isn’t the mouse great? I found it in a box of my brother’s closet. I think it’s one of the cat’s toys.”

“You guys don’t have a cat,” Alabama said.

“We did until about five years ago. Justin
never
cleans his closet. Anyway, the mouse is stapled to the headband, so you don’t have to worry about it coming off during your routine.” He picked at the material, arranging it to better show off the spiders.

“I can’t believe you did all this,” she said.

“Oh, it was fun, and it didn’t take me long. I did most of the work in your aunt’s class this week. She’s been acting spaced out, and didn’t even come over to ask why I was working on a wedding veil. Of course, I would never have admitted that it was because you were too chicken to attach spiders to her wedding dress.”

Stuart was still clinging to his Bev-as-Bette theory. “It’s not
her
dress,” Alabama said.

He sent her a pitying look. “Whatever.”

She groaned. They’d been circling back to this argument all week—during lunch, after school, on the phone at night. Ever since the night of
The Old Maid,
Stuart had been convinced a genuine Bette Davis movie plot was unfolding under the roof of his best friend, and he would not let it go. It was so frustrating.

She knew what had upset her aunt that night—Derek. She wasn’t going to blurt out the fact that her aunt was a battered girlfriend just to refute Stuart’s crackpot theory, though. Bev might assume she was a blabbermouth, but she wasn’t.

“We still don’t know who the wedding dress belonged to,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” he drawled.

She wanted to scream. “Bev is
not
my mother.” Didn’t he see how mad this insane conjecture made her? Did he not care? “I hope you haven’t told anyone else about this idea of yours.”

“Of course I haven’t. Who would I tell?”

“Your parents?”

“No.”

“Bev thinks you told Mr. Hill about her broken nose.”

“What about it?” Stuart asked, interested.

She bit her lip.
Oh great.
She was practically accusing him of being a gossip and now she’d almost spit out the secret. Even though she was pretty sure Stuart must have pieced it together anyway. “Never mind. It was just my aunt being paranoid as usual.”

“I thought of something that could prove my theory about your real mother,” he said. “Have you ever seen your birth certificate?”

Alabama frowned. “I don’t think so. I’m not even sure I have one.”

“Everybody has one. Not having one is, like, illegal.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” Stuart said. “I’m pretty sure.”

She bit her lip. Last week when they’d studied vocabulary together, he’d been pretty sure
myopia
was a country next to Thailand. “And my birth certificate would show who my mom is?”

“It’s supposed to. Mine does.”

“I have no idea where mine is. I never thought to ask. It might be lost.”

“You could send off for a copy, I bet. Where were you born?”

“In San Francisco.”

Stuart’s eyes bugged. “California? You didn’t tell me you lived there!”

“Only till I was a year old. Then my mom met some guy and they went to Ashland, Oregon. After that, she thought finding a place for a single person with a baby would be too difficult in San Francisco. We moved around a lot.”

“And after your mom—” Stuart swallowed and started over. “Last summer, before you left St. Louis, you didn’t see the birth certificate then?”

“I packed up a lot of stuff. . . .” She squinted at the oil-stained cement floor, dredging up those awful days. She could see Bev hunched on her knees in her mom’s room, going through the shoe boxes where all the important stuff like the lease was kept. Bev had boxed up those things. At the time, Alabama had been more concerned with preserving sentimental items—clothes, pictures, her mom’s costume jewelry.

Funny how Bev had gone straight for the vital records....

“My aunt might have packed it,” she said.

“But she didn’t show it to you?”

“No,” Alabama said, her voice defensive. “Why would she?”

He folded his arms. “The question is, why would she
not
want to show it to you?”

For the first time, Alabama was almost willing to allow a suspicion that he could be right, but that didn’t make her like the idea—or his mad embrace of it—any better. In fact, the possibility of its being true made her angrier. “It doesn’t matter if Bev is my mother, because even if she is, she’s not. Mom was my mother, and she was beautiful, and funny, and even if she wasn’t exactly normal she at least wasn’t boring. And even when we had to live on saltines and government cheese, I knew she’d do anything for me. Anything. She would have died for me—”

Her throat clogged, and she was mortified to feel tears in her eyes. She couldn’t have a bawling fit at the Looneys’. Probably no one ever cried in this house, except maybe during the Olympics and
Little House on the Prairie
reruns.

“God, Alabama.” Stuart stepped forward, apologetic. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

She flicked a tear away from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Then why don’t you just drop it?”

“I thought you’d want to know the truth.”

“The truth? You think the truth is something you can invent if reality’s too dull for you. If you want to face uncomfortable truths, start with yourself.”

He drew back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means the first time I ever saw you, you were being bullied by people because of some stupid lip-synching routine you did in middle school. And now you’re setting yourself up to be a laughingstock again. Look at yourself.”

He glanced down at his outfit, confused. “I think this turned out great.”

“Yes—if you were going to join the Ice Capades. But at New Sparta High School you’re going to be the butt of jokes for months.”

“By doing Shakespeare, in a real costume?” he asked. “Is that how you think?”

“No, it’s how
they
think.”

“Well, they’re wrong. And they’ll all see they’re wrong when I’m a big success.”

“Oh right,” Alabama said. “When you win your Oscar. Academy Award night, 2002.
Then
everybody’ll be sorry.”

His cheeks flushed red. “Wow—I never suspected you were one of the mean kids.”

“I’m not.”

“You sure know how they think.”

“Because I’m worried about you.”

“That’s dumb. This”—he gestured around the garage, ending on the stuffed panda—“this is what I’m interested in. If life was all algebra class and vocabulary lists, I wouldn’t want to get up in the morning. But it’s not. The stuff I love makes all the other crap I have to put up with worth it. If you’re going to succeed at what means something to you, you have to have a little courage. I thought you did. But you don’t even seem to have the courage to be my friend.”

Heat stung her cheeks. “That’s unfair. I am your friend.”

“Until something better comes along, right? Or until you get whisked away by your rich benefactress in Houston.” He snorted. “Good thing
you
don’t have your head in the clouds. You’re patterning your life after a book, but you don’t even have the story straight. At the end of the book, it’s not the old lady who’s the benefactress, is it? It’s the convict, the guy Pip is ashamed of.”

She scowled at him. “The book gave me the idea. I didn’t say my whole life was going to follow a book plot—unlike
some people
who seem to think life follows bad movie scripts!”

Not long after that, she stomped away. Halfway home, she realized that she was still wearing the spidery veil. She ripped it off her head, then stared down at it, feeling guilty. Stuart was right—the mouse was stapled on really well. It hadn’t budged when she’d yanked the thing off. He’d put so much work into it.

And she hadn’t even stayed to watch his monologue.

She
was
a bad friend. But the memory of how stubborn he’d been about the Bev question kept her huffing toward her own house instead of turning back to apologize.

She wasn’t a coward. But how could she ask Bev “Are you my mother?” without seeming like a doofus?

And what if she didn’t like the answer?

Okay, maybe she was a coward.

When she dragged up to the front door, she gave the mailbox a desultory glance. She’d lost hope of receiving another letter from Houston. But today, there it was—the cream-colored envelope, the same compact, spidery writing.

She snatched it up excitedly.

Maybe having your head in the clouds wasn’t such a bad thing. Right now, rescue by her long-lost relatives was just what she needed.