The Way Back to Happiness (24 page)

“For a—” Bev sputtered. “You did not have permission to do that. What’s more, you’re grounded. Which you knew darn well.”

“I figured I deserved one last wingding before you locked me in my room, or whatever you intended, Aunt Bev.”

“I came home with every intention of trying to rationally discuss what happened today, and why I got so angry.”

Alabama sputtered out a laugh. “Really, Aunt Bev? You were angry?”

Bev tilted her head, suspicious. “Why do you keep doing what?”

“What?”

“Calling me Aunt Bev.”

“Isn’t that what you are, Aunt Bev?”

“Of course, but . . .” Her aunt’s brow furrowed. “Look, I know I seemed a little irritated today—”

Alabama snorted.

“But I don’t want to be unreasonable. You have to agree that taking my dress after I specifically asked you not to mess with my things was wrong . . . and you’d obviously been planning it for a long time. And then I come home and you’ve disappeared, and with a boy I barely know. Who’s too old for you.”

“He’s only two years older.”

“But you’re still fourteen. That’s too young to date. Especially a boy like that.”

“You keep acting like he’s some kind of demon. His father’s even on the school board, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but Kevin’s a junior, and he’s . . . well, boys like that are used to getting their own way. And you’re just fourteen.”

“So? You’re almost forty, and you went out with a scuzzball.”

Bev’s eyes bugged in anger, and then she took a deep breath. “The point is—I don’t know how we can go on this way with you being so secretive.”

Alabama nearly howled. The anger that had been building back up while Bev lectured her suddenly surged. “
I’m
secretive?
Me?
”

Bev paled. “What does that mean?”

“You know.”

Bev actually looked as if she had to think about it. “I’m not sure.... Is there something you’d like to discuss?”

Alabama’s lip curled. The last thing she wanted was Bev to sit her down for a heart-to-heart. Right now, she knew something that Bev didn’t—and Bev knew that she knew something, but didn’t know what it was. For once, she had the upper hand, and it felt good.

“I guess I don’t know what I’m talking about.” She turned and strolled back to her room.

“Wait,” Bev called after her. “I think we should discuss—”

“Never mind,” Alabama said.

“But you wouldn’t want to—”

Alabama reached her room and shut the door a split second before her aunt could follow her into it. She flipped the hook-and-eye latch she’d installed. The snub wasn’t the classiest of victories, but it was the best she could manage at the moment.

H
uman childhood lasted so long for a good reason, Bev realized. Those years of loving a cute baby and then an adorable child gave parents time to prepare for the jolt of cohabitating with a teenager. Under normal circumstances, the troubles of childhood would have been ramping up slowly all those years, so that by the time the kid hit thirteen, the parents would be like the proverbial frog in the boiling water. They wouldn’t notice that all of the sudden the pleasant little parenthood pool they’d been dropped into over a decade before had turned into a chaotic bubbling kettle of adolescent angst.

Plopped directly into the pot, Bev just felt scalded and bewildered. She had no endless reservoir of love and experience to draw from. She thought she had, but now that she was being tested, her reservoir felt like a puddle. She’d been around teenagers all her adult life, but they were the kind that she could leave at three in the afternoon. And they didn’t seem to make a vocation out of hating her.

Maybe this was what her mother had been warning her about last summer when Bev had been trying to tell
her
that she didn’t know anything about teenagers. Her own arrogance stupefied her now. How could she have thought she could take on a troubled girl like Alabama all by herself?

Impulsively, she picked up her phone and called her mother. She never would have guessed that Gladys Putterman would seem like a lifeline, but that’s how desperate the situation had become.

Wink picked up and was his usual ebullient self. “Hey there, stepchild! How’s every little thing?”

“Oh . . . fine,” Bev managed. “May I speak to Mama, please?” The fact that she had to ask to speak to her mother now when she called the apartment was galling.

And being someone’s stepchild. Ugh.

“Sorry, you just missed her. We’re having a big Halloween do in the activity room. I came back up to grab my uke.”

Halloween. That’s how all the problems had started. The talent show . . . the dress . . . the blow-up.

“I guess y’all are expecting a stampede of trick-or-treaters,” Wink said when she didn’t answer.

As his comment penetrated her thoughts, a cry of surprise rent the air, and the most astonishing thing to Bev was that it had come from her own mouth. Trick-or-treaters! “I forgot to buy candy!”

She never forgot things like that. Holidays were her time—days when she really shone. But then last week at the store she’d been worried that she or Alabama might tear into the bags ahead of time.

“You’d better remedy that situation,” Wink said, chuckling, “or your house is likely to get egged.”

Or toilet papered, which was worse, in Bev’s opinion. Egg could be cleaned off with a hose, while those little bits of toilet paper lingered for weeks.

“Of course, back in my day, trick-or-treating really meant something,” Wink said. “We had candy apples, delicious cookies, and popcorn balls. And real fudge. Remember how that used to taste?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, interrupting him. “I should get to the store.”

“Fudge that melted on your tongue,” Wink continued. “You can’t find that now.”

“They’re waiting on you and your uke downstairs, aren’t they?” she prompted.

“Oh, right.” Nothing got an extrovert’s attention like yelling “Showtime!” “Was there something you wanted me to tell Gladdie for you?”

“No . . . I was just calling to say . . .” What had she meant to say?
You were right and I was wrong. . . . I’m in over my head. . . . Help?

“Happy Halloween?” he guessed.

Bev didn’t feel like confessing to Wink that she’d wanted to talk to her mother because she was in despair over Alabama. “Yes, just tell her that for me. And have fun.”

“We always do!”

She hung up, sad that her attempt to reach out to her mother had been thwarted, but at least she now had something better than sympathy—she had a task to get her mind off her troubles. She went and knocked on Alabama’s door.

“I need to go to the store,” she called through the wood. “Would you like to come?”

“No.” A short pause followed the answer. “What store?”

“The grocery store. I forgot to buy Halloween candy.”

“No thanks,” Alabama said.

“Is there somewhere you do need to go, then?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Bev said. “You’ll be all right while I’m gone, won’t you?”

“What do you think I’m going to do? Kill myself?”

Bev drew back. “No, of course not. . . .” A shiver snaked through her, and she frowned. “I . . . I shouldn’t be gone long.”

No reply.

Bev sifted through this exchange as she drove the few blocks to the grocery store. Was Alabama just sniping or had she detected something new and bitter in her tone?

She shouldn’t have lost her temper this morning outside the assembly. In retrospect, she could have simply asked Alabama to change into normal clothes for the rest of the day and then had a talk about respecting her things when they got home. But the shock of seeing her dress there, at school, and treated again in such a mocking way had made the incident feel personal.

And now Alabama had snapped. Before today, the only boy Alabama had been interested in was Stuart, and they seemed more friend-friends than boyfriend-girlfriend. But now . . . Kevin Kerrigan? She remembered him sitting at the table with Marvin, when the boys had been chucking sunflower seeds at her. Of course, Kevin’s father was the mayor, and the grand muckety-muck of the school board, which practically made the Kerrigans New Sparta royalty. But there was something in the boy’s eyes that had always made her uneasy.

Alabama was too young and too emotionally vulnerable to be going out with a boy like Kevin. Or any boy.

Of course, Diana had boyfriends at that age....

Another worry reared in her mind.

Why would she have said that?

Bev thought she had detected a deeper meaning behind the words, but Alabama didn’t know that Diana had committed suicide. She couldn’t know. The letter was at the bottom of a locked drawer.

Unless she’d found it. The possibility had caused a flush of fear, until Bev had checked the file cabinet. The cabinet was locked, and the letter was right where she’d left it.

Maybe she was reading more into Alabama’s words than there had actually been. People used phrases like that all the time. It didn’t mean anything.

Dark was descending as she parked outside the grocery, and she spied her first flock of costumed kids parading down the sidewalk. She needed to get her brain and her rear in gear. She hurried inside and went directly toward the aisle where the candy was—what little was left of it. The shelves had already been picked clean of the good stuff—the Reese’s, the Hershey’s miniatures, the one-nut Almond Joys. Sighing, she settled for bags of Smarties, peanut butter logs, and off-brand bubblegum.

Her house might get toilet papered anyway.

“Bev.”

She turned. It took her a moment to believe what she was seeing. Glen stood in front of her in a top hat, red coat, jodhpurs, and knee-high boots. One hand clutched a shopping basket full of chips.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. Stupid question. What anyone was doing here was obvious.

From his reaction, though, she began to wonder. He shuffled the basket to his other hand, as if wishing to hide his chip habit from her. “Oh, I . . .”

“Have you taken up fox hunting?” She reached out and tugged his lapel. “Tally-ho!”

He blushed. “I’m supposed to be a . . . a . . . kind of circus character, I guess.”

He guessed? “Are you having a party at school for the cast of your play?”

“Not exactly.” He took a few steps toward her and changed the subject. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, but I wasn’t sure if I should call you at home.”

“You can talk to me anytime at school,” she pointed out. “But I hardly see you . . . except for the rare appearance in my room.”

At her allusion to the kiss, he shifted his weight and red climbed up his neck. “Things are so odd this year. And you’ve seemed . . .” He stopped, then backtracked. “I heard there was an argument after the talent show today?”

Tensing, she turned and reached for a bag of caramels. “Oh, that was just a little dust-up between Alabama and me.” No. She should face up to her flubs. “To be honest, I flew off the handle.”

He said nothing, but his nod amounted to an unspoken
So I heard.

“This hasn’t been the easiest year,” she confessed.

He stepped closer. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. First your nose, then the parking lot incident.”

“You heard about that, too?”

“Bev, I know you’re going through a hard time. . . .”

Maybe he meant well, but his sudden concern had the earmarks of swooping back into her life when she was vulnerable, when her resistance was low. Not the best time to forge or repair a relationship.

“I’m doing fine,” she said. “I’m managing.”
Managing to screw up everything.

He lowered his voice. “I know you’re doing your best, but from what I’ve heard—”

“You never used to pay so much attention to gossip, Glen.” She didn’t want him to think she’d lost all sense of dignity. “I’d go crazy if I started listening to all the chatter in this town.”

“But this was—”

“Why, hello there!”

Winging around the corner came Jackie Kirby, who would have been an unwelcome sight at any time. But she was interrupting an interesting conversation, and this was Jackie Kirby in a leopard-print catsuit, complete with a headband with perky ears. The rest of her looked perky, too. Slender and perky.

Bev was about to make a joke about how the Food-Save was beginning to feel a lot like the faculty lounge when Jackie dropped a tub of sour cream into Glen’s basket. Almost as if it was her own basket.

And then it sank in. They were together. Ringmaster. Circus. Big cats.

Struck dumb, she looked at Glen. He hitched his throat, and his gaze skittered to the nearest shelf.

Jackie laughed softly . . . almost purred, actually. “I know it’s ridiculous. When we planned this, Glen and I thought I’d be a lion and he’d be a lion tamer. But all the lion outfits I found made me look like a big tan blob, like Winnie-the-Pooh. This is much better, don’t you think?”

Hating her, Bev made a mental note to buy a Jane Fonda workout video. She pasted on a smile and looked from one to the other. “Are you two headed to a big party?”

Jackie put her arm through Glen’s. “Just a thing at my brother’s.”

“How nice.” Bev leveled a pointed glare at Glen. “What were we talking about before?” She feigned forgetfulness, then remembered. “Oh, yes—of course I wouldn’t mind if you called me at home, Glen. I’m sure you’ve still got my number memorized.”

He looked flustered, as if he didn’t know whether she was being sincere, or if she was throwing a wrench into his evening with the leopardess.

“Y’all have fun at the thing.” Bev trilled a parting wave to him.

She paid for her candy and fled the store. Driving home, she ripped open a bag and gulped down several caramels. She shouldn’t have let Jackie jump on her nerves like that. She prayed she hadn’t looked as burned as she felt. Evidently, this was her day for making an idiot of herself.

And she was even more of a idiot for the perverse jealousy coursing through her veins.
She’d
thrown Glen over. She’d broken his heart last year. And for what? A two-timing loser who’d knocked up another woman and then slammed a door on her nose. She’d transformed her life into a county-western song—never a good move.

How awful to realize that she had dismal judgment when it came to men. Add that to the stack of life lessons learned too late that she was piling up this year.

Although . . . Glen was hardly distinguishing himself, coming on to her while Jackie was prowling in the dairy aisle in her catsuit. And he had been so passive while Jackie pranced around, practically taunting her. That was always Glen’s trouble. He’d never stood up for her. The only time she’d ever seen him show real backbone was when he’d played Juror Number 8 in
Twelve Angry Men
in a little theater production.

Back at the house, nothing had changed. Alabama was still in her room, although now she was listening to Diana’s records. Bob Dylan this time—“Like a Rolling Stone.” That snarly yowl had always jumped up and down on Bev’s nerves.

As darkness fell, she went out and lit the pumpkins, then put the porch light on. After that, she retrieved her special little bucket in the shape of a cauldron and emptied all the candy bags into it.

She thought about putting on her witch hat, and maybe adding a mole and a blacked-out tooth. Then she remembered Jackie’s catsuit, and Alabama’s cobwebby jilted bride, and gave up the idea of a costume. Her heart just wasn’t in dressing up this year.

She felt antsy, and one thing especially puzzled her. Before they were interrupted, Glen had said he wanted to talk to her about something. She’d assumed it was going to be a bid to resume their relationship. But he was with Jackie, obviously, and Glen wasn’t the two-timing sort. Not like Derek.

So what had he wanted to say to her?

 

The theme of the Thanksgiving project was A Cornucopia of Thanks. The class was coming off of their household finance block, during which Bev had been dismayed by how flippant the kids had seemed about money. A lot of them didn’t even see the point of knowing exactly how much it would take them to live.

“You’ll care the first time it’s Saturday night and you run out of money,” Bev warned them.

One girl had piped up, “My mom’s bank has a machine now that gives out cash whenever. She has a little card, like a credit card, only the money’s from her checking account. She can get money any time she wants it.”