The Way Back to Happiness (29 page)

“Silly, these things are tradition,” her mother said, cutting off her search. “You don’t have to look them up.”

You do if your regular tradition is Domino’s.
But Alabama didn’t want to spoil her mom’s mood with an argument, so their bird, which for budgetary reasons was actually the size of a plumper-than-average chicken, was stuffed with sausage and bread crumbs and stuck into a hot oven at two in the morning.

When they woke up, the house smelled wonderful.

“We should just have Thanksgiving breakfast,” Alabama said.

Her mother had laughed, showing rare Julia Child–like kitchen confidence. “You’d die if you ate that turkey now. You’ve got to cook it thoroughly, or it’s deadly. You could end up with tularemia, or botulism, or something.”

So the bird roasted another four hours. By the time they sat down at the table, it was turkey jerky. Charlie said chewing it made his jaw hurt, but he’d had two helpings. Alabama never saw her mother so happy again.

Her grandmother’s turkey—Alicia’s turkey—was perfect, of course. But as Alabama thought about her mother, everything on her plate might as well have been made of cardboard. The whole horrible year passed before her eyes, killing her appetite.

She looked around at the gleaming table and linen napkins and silver service with more forks and spoons than she knew what to do with, and then remembered all the places she and her mom had lived. What a contrast.
What am I doing here?

“My heavens, Alabama,” her grandmother drawled. “You look lost in a fog.”

“I was thinking about Mom.”

That simple statement plunged the table into an uncomfortable silence. Dorothy Jackson finally said, “I don’t think we need to bring up unpleasant topics at the dinner table right now, do you?”

Alabama’s face burned, and across the table her aunt’s eyes widened. Alabama guessed Bev was trying to warn her to be quiet, but she felt she would explode if she didn’t say something. “She wasn’t a topic. She was my mother.”

“And I’m very sorry about her,” her grandmother said evenly. “But this is a moment for giving thanks, not mourning.”

“I can’t help thinking about her.”

“No more than I can help thinking of my Thomas and, even after all these years, poor Tom,” Dorothy said. “But you have to discipline your mind not to speak every time you feel sad. Talking about it does no one any good.”

Dorothy Mabry Jackson’s tone was so matter-of-fact, she made forgetting sound simple, as if memory came with an off/on switch. And she had lost her son, and then her husband, which couldn’t have been easy. Looking at her grandmother, who seemed so sensible and composed, and knowing that there was even more sadness sloshing around in that head than in her own, made Alabama feel almost ashamed for sounding so whiny. Discipline. Mind over misfortune. That’s all it took.

So it was all the more surprising when Bev, her face crimson, slammed her utensils down on her plate. The rest of them hopped in their seats.

“That’s the most heartless thing I’ve ever heard.” Bev’s voice crackled with tension.

“Not heartless,” Dorothy Jackson said. “Practical.”

“Heartless,” Bev repeated.

Oh God.
Alabama could recognize the warning signs too well now. Her aunt was revving up to another Lewanne’s Dinner Bell-parking-lot-style scene.

“Diana’s only been gone six months,” Bev continued. “
Six months.
Can you imagine how that feels for Alabama?”

“Of course I can,” Dorothy said. “My mother is no longer alive. I went through the same thing.”

“Not at fourteen.”

“That’s why Mother invited the girl here,” Dot said. “We couldn’t help pitying her.”

Pity! Alabama’s head whipped toward Dot.

“
The girl
is sitting right across the table from you,” Bev pointed out, “and believe me, she knew how much you wanted her here when you took weeks to answer her letter. And then wrote about consulting lawyers!”

“You can hardly blame us for that,” Dot said. “Mother didn’t want to be imprudent. And Alabama
was
invited. She has no cause to complain.”

“Oh no,” Bev said. “Certainly not. Who could complain after being snubbed for nearly fifteen years? And after her mother was
never
invited.”

“Diana wanted nothing to do with us,” Dot said. “She ran away and never came back.”

Bev stood so abruptly she bumped the table. Water glasses trembled on their graceful stems. “Diana left because of me. We had a fight—it had nothing to do with you. But you wouldn’t know that”—she pierced both Jackson ladies with her eyes—“because you were so happy to see the back of her. You were probably too busy counting your blessings to care what she was going through.”

“She tore Tom away from us—that was enough.”

“
War
tore Tom away from you. The war you were so eager for him to participate in,” Bev said. “And how do you think Tom would feel about the way you treated Diana? And his daughter?”

“We had no obligation to your sister,” Dot said. “And we had no way of knowing if Alabama was really—”

A muffled shriek tore from Bev’s throat before Dot could finish. “Don’t you dare say that.” She jutted a finger at Dorothy. “Your mother knew just by looking at her.
One look.
What would have happened if she’d bothered to look fourteen years ago, or even ten? If there had been someone to reach out to Diana, to help her, to save her—”

Bev’s voice broke, and she dissolved into tears. A split second later, she fled the room at a sprint.

The front door slammed.

Alabama sat frozen. Staggered. What the heck had just happened?

“Like history repeating itself,” Dot grumbled under her breath. “All Puttermans are crazy.”

Silence stretched on for another uncomfortable minute, and then Dorothy reached forward, picked up a small silver bell, and rang it.

What next? Would her grandmother cancel Thanksgiving now and send her home? Have her escorted out?

The maid appeared at the door.

“More bread, please, Alicia,” Dorothy said, unruffled. “And you can take away the fourth plate. Perhaps Bev will join us again for dessert.”

Or maybe Bev had gotten in the car and was already heading back to New Sparta. Alabama still felt stunned. What was she supposed to do? Should she walk out, too? Part of her wanted to, but she could see the Jackson point of view, as well. A little. Dot’s saying that she’d been invited out of pity had made her furious at first . . . until she realized that she had
wanted
them to feel that way. Her letters had shamelessly played the pity card. She wanted to stand by her mother—and, she guessed, her aunt—but she didn’t doubt that her mother had made a bad impression on the Jacksons.

“Have some more mashed potatoes,” Dorothy urged her.

Alabama reached for the gold-rimmed bowl, feeling guilty for not showing solidarity with Bev. But it would seem a little stupid to get up and stomp out now, after she’d hesitated. War raged in her conscience as she dutifully scooped potatoes onto her plate. Bev was so crazy, and irritating . . . and she’d kept important things secret, things that still didn’t make sense....

She’d admitted that
she
was the reason Diana had run out all those years ago. Over some argument. About what? So they’d all been here together, and fought. But today Bev had stuck up for Diana. Why?

She put the serving spoon down. She didn’t want another helping of potatoes, or to leave in a righteous huff. She wanted to know the truth. And she might as well start now.

She turned to Dot. “How did you end up taking so many pictures of Aunt Bev with my father?”

“I
’m so sorry.”

Bev’s words were the first either of them had spoken since leaving the Jackson house fifteen minutes before. After a long walk to blow off steam, Bev had slunk back inside in time for the after-dinner coffee, uttering a non-heartfelt apology for disrupting the meal. She hoped her niece would realize that her apology now was sincere. She’d never meant to cause a scene, or abandon her.

“I had to get out of there for a while,” she confessed to Alabama. “I was suffocating.” Her voice lowered to a growl. “All that talk from Dot about being prudent made my blood boil.”

“Dot did a lot of talking after you left,” Alabama said.

“I’ll bet.”

“All about you and her brother. My dad.”

Bev should have been used to Alabama’s simmering glare from that side of the car by now. Their relationship had begun with a long, silent ride. But this felt different.

“I’ve been confused for so long,” Alabama said. “Mom would never tell me about why you two never spoke to each other. And she never talked about my dad much, either. Basically, nobody told me
anything
. I guessed Mom avoided Texas, and you, all those years because you were so mean to her. I had to fill in a lot of blanks, and I made you the villain, because Mom didn’t want to be near you. And then when I moved to New Sparta, I kept finding weird stuff, like the dress and the pictures.”

“What pictures?” Bev asked.

“Your photograph album in the attic. I assumed it had to be Mom’s, because there were pictures of Dad in it. But it’s yours, isn’t it? And the dress was really yours, too. When you said that, I thought you were ranting, but you probably made it because you thought you were going to marry Tom Jackson. That’s what Dot said.”

Bev kept her gaze trained on the road. She felt exposed, but there was no way to shield herself from the bare truth now. “He never asked me,” she told Alabama. “We went together for years—almost all through college—but he never proposed.”

“But he was going to, wasn’t he? Dot said they all expected him to ask you—that he’d even hinted he might when he drove up to Dallas after basic training. They said they were afraid you two would elope, but the next thing they knew, Tom had disappeared with Mom instead, and then even went AWOL. What happened?”

Bev frowned. She’d known that going to the Jackson house would be awful, but she hadn’t expected Dot to be such a Chatty Cathy. No telling what she’d told Alabama. “I had the mumps.”

Alabama blinked at her. “The mumps? What does that have to do with anything?”

“The day of Tom’s visit, I came down with the mumps.” She explained the bare time line to the best of her ability, from the mumps until two months later, when Gladys stormed out of the Jackson house in a fury, after Diana had fled. She only left out one detail.

“So that’s what Dot meant about history repeating itself,” Alabama said. “But where did Mom and Tom go?”

“Diana ran off to California, where she had you. Tom’s parents had pulled strings to keep him from getting disciplined for disappearing and washing out of Officer Candidate School, and he was sent to Fort Hood almost immediately. I believe he traced Diana, but they never had any more time together. He was shipped out a few weeks later, and of course he died before you were born. The Jacksons were very bitter and held Diana responsible for . . . well, for everything.”

Alabama stared at the road. “So why didn’t they get married?”

Bev felt stricken, remembering that horrible confrontation in the guest bedroom, and all the awful things she’d said.

“A little while ago, you said you always thought of me as the villain. Well, you weren’t wrong. Diana felt responsible for . . . well, for what happened between Tom and me . . . and that was my fault. I said some things to her, things I regret now. Bitterly.”

Alabama frowned. “In the letter,
she
came off as feeling guilty. And she also seemed to think that I—”

Her words cut off.

Bev tensed. “What letter?”

Alabama glared at her. “The one you kept from me. In your file cabinet.”

“You broke into my file cabinet?”

“I had a good reason. Stuart had this weird theory that you were actually my mother—”

“—and I told him he was crazy, but he said I should find my birth certificate, so I went looking for it, but instead of my birth certificate, I found the letter Mom sent you.”

“Oh God.” The blood drained from her face. She couldn’t imagine Alabama stumbling across that letter, reading those words, and mulling them over all alone. “When?”

“Weeks and weeks ago.” Alabama shrugged. “Halloween.”

And she’d been keeping that knowledge a secret all this time. Regret overwhelmed her.
She’s right. I should have showed her the letter, talked to her about it.
Alabama should have been told all this, long ago.

“Why did you keep it from me?” Alabama asked.

“It was so upsetting—”

“You had no right! You let me go on thinking that it was an accident, when really she wanted to die. She didn’t want to take care of me anymore.”

“That’s not true. If I gleaned one thing from that letter, it was that she loved you more than anything. She would have done anything for you, but she . . . well, I don’t know what happened.”

“She killed herself.”

Alabama’s tone was so certain, so even, it chilled Bev to the bone. A fourteen-year-old shouldn’t have to had to deal with so much. She pulled the car over to the shoulder and braked. “Listen to me.”

Alabama groaned. “Not again. Can’t we just keep going?”

“No. I want to make sure you understand. Diana died in an accident,” Bev said. “Because she’d been drinking. And was depressed, obviously. But her death was ruled an accident.”

“Only because the police never saw that letter.” Alabama shook her head. “I thought it was an accident when she didn’t leave me a note. But that letter was a suicide note. And she wrote it to you.”

“She’d probably been drinking when she wrote that letter,” Bev said. “A person who’s drunk too much isn’t really in her right mind.”

Alabama seemed to be considering whether this was true or not. “She wasn’t in her right mind for a lot of her life. When I was little, she went to that place, remember?”

“It was a drug rehab center. Mama paid for it and took care of you until Diana quit using hard drugs. Neighbors had called Child Protective Services on Diana, and she was so worried about losing you that she would have done anything. Anything.”

“I thought she was at a country club,” Alabama said. “Because the place had a Pong game and a pool.”

They remained silent for a moment, each lost in her own thoughts.

“I’m sorry you saw the letter,” Bev said. “I’m sorry I didn’t show it to you sooner. That was wrong of me. But I didn’t want you getting upset again.”

“I got upset anyway,” Alabama said. “And it was so confusing, because she made it sound as if I
was
your kid. I started to wonder if Stuart was right after all.”

“He most certainly was not right.”

“Then why did Mom say she was giving me back to you? Why would she have used those words?”

Bev’s mind raced. That was the detail she had left out of the story—the pregnancy. She’d never told a soul about that, except for Dr. Gary, her mother, and Diana. The Jacksons also knew, but it seemed they’d been tactful for once and not told Alabama.

“I wondered if maybe something weird had happened, like you had me and gave me to my mom,” Alabama said. “But why would you have done that? You were Miss Homemaking and Mom was . . . well, kind of screwed up. And she wasn’t even married, so it wouldn’t have been like
The Old Maid
.”

“The what?”

“That Bette Davis movie. That’s when Stuart came up with his theory. Because you got so upset about the wedding dress, and then you thought that movie was so sad—”

“It
was
sad.”

“—but I figured out that you were really upset about Derek that night. Then, later, when I saw the letter, I wondered again if maybe Stuart was right. Why would Mom have said she was giving me
back
to you? What did that mean?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. But you think I shouldn’t be able to hear it, or something. What did she mean?”

Bev took a deep breath. “I was pregnant when Diana and Tom ran off together.”

Alabama went rigid. “You had a baby?”

Bev shook her head. “I lost it early on.”

Alabama swallowed. “You mean it was Dad’s. It would have been, like, my half brother or sister.”

Or simultaneously, her cousin . . . but Bev didn’t want to disturb her any more than she probably already was.

“That’s awful,” Alabama said.

“It was awful, but Mama was the only one who knew until I blurted out the truth to Diana when we were all at the Jacksons’. Diana got upset. I said some hateful things to her, things that were never forgotten. Diana always felt bad about how it all happened. I think—I know—she held herself responsible, because I lost the baby after Tom and Diana had run off together. I was angry with her for a long time.”

“So you
were
in love with my dad,” Alabama said.

“Yes.”

Alabama pondered this for a moment. “You must have hated her.”

“I felt like she’d stolen my life. But then Tom died, and Diana was gone, and she had you. We didn’t speak.” Tears welled up, and she had to gulp back a keening tension in her throat. “I suppose I did hate her sometimes. I’ve been a small person, in a lot of ways. I can’t tell you how differently I wish I’d acted now. These past months, and weeks, it’s all been bubbling up, haunting me. She was my little sister, and I cursed her. I let her down because I was so full of resentment I couldn’t see how much help she needed, how much I . . .”

Her words broke off.

“She wouldn’t have accepted help even if you’d offered it,” Alabama said.

“I’ll never know for sure, will I?”

Bev blew her nose, checked the rearview mirror, and then pulled back onto the road.

Alabama didn’t say anything for a few miles. “But you took me in. After all that. You wanted to offer me a home even before you’d seen the letter.”

“Of course.”

“Even when I didn’t want to go to New Sparta.”

“Well, why would you? It probably seemed pokey, after living in cities all your life.”

She scowled at the passing landscape. “I wasn’t very nice.”

“You were still reacting to terrible things that had happened,” Bev said. “I couldn’t imagine enduring what you went through.”

Alabama bit her lip. “I always wondered why Mom never talked about my dad. I guessed it was because she loved him so much that thinking about losing him made her too sad.”

“It probably did. Don’t forget, you’re only hearing the worst about Tom—the mistakes he made. They were huge, I know, but he was actually a sweet, funny person. A mixed-up person. But he was also young. We all were.”

“But the point is,” Alabama said, “Mom didn’t know him all that well, did she? Not as well as you knew him.”

“I’m not sure. Maybe not.” Bev frowned. “Although maybe their time together was more . . . intense. If you ever do want to talk about Tom, I’d be glad to share some happier memories.”

“Maybe someday,” Alabama said, scooching down in her seat. She thought for a moment and then said, “You see things from both sides, don’t you? Like that corny Judy Collins clouds song. I don’t think my mom did that very well. She was always so focused on what was directly in front of her. Usually bad things. It was like she had no defenses—she was all exposed nerve. I’m a little like that, too, I guess.”

“Everyone is. It’s natural to focus on your own problems. You have to.”

“But not to see other people’s?” Alabama shook her head. “I don’t want to be like that. What did you say that one time, about becoming something different before it’s too late . . . ?”

“It’s never too late to become what you might have been,” Bev said.

Alabama repeated it in a low voice, quickly, as if memorizing it for a test.

“I’m sorry I ruined your trip,” Bev told her.

“You didn’t,” Alabama said. “I mean, it wasn’t all your fault.”

“I’ve been losing my temper a lot recently. I’m not usually like this. It’s no wonder you wanted to find a . . . what did you call it?”

“A benefactress.”

“And now I’ve sabotaged that. It wasn’t on purpose.”

Alabama folded her arms. “It’s okay.”

Resignation wasn’t her niece’s style. It made Bev nervous.

They lapsed into a thoughtful silence for several miles.

Bev was expecting more discussion of Diana. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved when Alabama changed the subject.

“Would you mind if I listened to some music?”

“Of course not.” Her gloomy thoughts weren’t conducive to conversation anyway, and she’d be just as happy to stew in them in silence.

But instead of putting on her earphones as Bev expected, Alabama turned on the radio and searched the dial until she found a station that came in clearly. “Take on Me” blared from the speakers, and Bev sat up straighter. It was so rare that Alabama wanted to listen to the radio when they were together, and the upbeat rhythm made it hard to sag in her seat.

“This song is on all the time,” Alabama complained.

Bev had heard it on several occasions, but never paid attention to the lyrics. Listening to them now, the words didn’t seem to add up to anything that made sense. “What are they talking about?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. A-ha is a Norwegian group. I think it’s all less confusing if you don’t think about it too hard.”