Souvenir (3 page)

Four

C
ARSON WATCHED THE SUN EASING ITSELF CLOSER TO THE LOW MOUNTAINS
, a glass of sangria in front of him on the thatch-covered outdoor bar. Val had gone to work out with Wade, her trainer, leaving him alone with his musings. He was accustomed to being alone with his musings, had produced some of his best work this way. But this afternoon, the musings were neither creative nor as positive as a man who’d just made love with a vibrant younger woman ought to be having.

Though the bar was shaded, he kept his sunglasses on, along with his ball cap—the ineffective disguise of celebrities everywhere. St. Martin wasn’t as rife with fans as most stateside locales, but he’d been approached for autographs seven times already in the two days they’d been there. This, however, wasn’t the reason for his moodiness; in fact, he was having a tough time identifying what the reason was. He had no reason to be moody whatsoever: in addition to having just had sex, he’d recently won two Grammy awards, his Seattle condo was under contract for more than the asking price, his healthy parents were about to celebrate their forty-third wedding anniversary, and he would soon marry a woman who didn’t hold his unseemly past against him—a woman who’d done two
Sports Illustrated
features, who could have pretty much any man she wanted. Maybe it was this last part that was hanging him up.

“I know doing this is a cliché,” he said to the bartender, a short-haired buxom brunette, “but let me get your opinion about something.”

“Of course.” She smiled, her white teeth artificially bright and even. She set a towel aside and leaned onto the bar in front of him, her V-neck blouse straining.

He sat back a little. “Why would a woman—young, beautiful, appealing—like yourself—what would make a woman like you want to marry a worn-out guy like me?”

“You
are
the rock star, no?”

Rock star
. That had been his tag for a dozen years now, and still it sounded strange to him, and wrong. He was a songwriter, a singer, front-man for a band that sold out most of its venues—all of that was true. And yes, the music
was
rock music—though broader in scope than most, modeled after Queen and the socially conscious, always-fresh music of Sting, whom he’d met for the first time last year. Still, he didn’t see himself as a rock
star
, though he recognized that he lived the life of one. It was a strange disconnection, one he’d been aware of peripherally for a long time, but which had only in the last year or two come into focus. Probably the awareness was a result of his age—that midlife business his manager, Gene Delaney, said stalked men more relentlessly than band sluts. Gene had a way with words. Whatever it was, Carson felt increasingly dissatisfied with the rock-star label: It sounded shallow, two-dimensional at best. He wanted to be
thicker
than that. He wanted to be substantial in life, had once believed his deeply felt music would make him that way.

“Right,” he told the bartender. “I’m the rock star. Are you saying that explains it?”

“Non,”
she said. “It is good, yes,
mais non pas tout
—it is not everything. You have a handsome face, and very good…
qu’est-ce que c’est
?” She gestured to indicate his body. “And you are not so much an American asshole.”

He raised his eyebrows, and the bartender clarified, “Not to hit his woman, or make a woman service him. You are
generoux, non
?”

He shrugged. He supposed he was generous—he always tipped well above what was expected, news he assumed had spread to all the staff quickly. He donated to several charities, worked with Habitat for Humanity twice a year—some people might call that generous. To him it all seemed like the least he could do when he had so much money that it seemed to replicate itself.

Money management, now that was a job in itself, and he didn’t have time for it. He left that to his mom, who liked to tease him that a wife and half a dozen kids would help him put the money to use. She thought it was a shame that Val had so much money of her own. “She’ll be too independent, Carson, mark me on that.” When his parents came to Seattle to meet Val at New Year’s, his mom told her about a seven-bedroom Ocala estate she’d heard was for sale: “Plenty of space for you two and all the kids,” she said, not even attempting to be subtle. “Kids?” Val said. “Ocala?”

Carson told the bartender, “My fiancée is seventeen years younger than me—not that
I
mind, but shouldn’t
she
?”

The woman reached over and laid one manicured finger on his arm. “Must be your motor is good, eh?”

“For now.”

“
Mais oui
. What else is there?”

Five

W
HEN
M
EG DROVE INTO THE PARKING LOT OF
O
CALA’S MAIN LIBRARY, HER
headlights swept over and past her daughter sitting alone, earbuds in, on a bench near the entrance. Savannah stood, lifting her patch-covered book bag from the bench and swinging it onto her shoulder as Meg pulled to the curb.

“Hi, honey,” Meg said when Savannah climbed in, loudly enough to be heard over whatever was playing on the iPod. “Take those out, will you?”

Savannah pulled out the earbuds and hung the cord around her neck. “Is that better?” She turned and shoved her bag and the notebooks into the backseat, then grabbed the plastic bag with the fried chicken from the floor near her feet.

“It is,” Meg said, making herself not react to Savannah’s rudeness. She knew it wasn’t intentional, knew from past arguments that the “tone battle” wasn’t a battle worth fighting. “What are you listening to?” she asked instead.

“Nobody you’ve heard of.” Savannah began to rifle through the bag.

“Why don’t you wait—I thought it’d be nice to eat together with Dad, at home.” For a change. She couldn’t recall, right off, the last time they’d done this.

“I’m hungry now,” Savannah said, opening the box inside and taking out a wing. “You’re late.”

Meg pulled away from the curb, ignoring the weakness that remained in her arm and ignoring Savannah’s accusatory tone. Ignore whatever doesn’t suit: a strategy she’d learned at her father’s knee. She asked, “Where’s Rachel?”

“
Her
mom picked her up at eight.” It was now seven minutes past.

Meg sighed. A parenting book she’d read advised fighting only the truly important battles. The challenge was in how to determine, while her buttons were being pushed, just which battles were important. Yesterday morning, both of them tired after the security alarm had gone haywire and awakened them all at two
AM
, they’d fought over whether the milk was beginning to sour.

Savannah added, “Thanks for the chicken. It’s good.”

There was hope. “You’re welcome. Why don’t you hand me a piece? A leg—and a napkin.” They could eat together in the car; Brian probably wasn’t home yet anyway.

Savannah rummaged in the box and found a leg. “Here,” she said, holding it out. Meg intended to reach for it, started to move her hand off the steering wheel, but her arm felt sluggish again. Something wasn’t right. She thought back to her anatomy courses, considered the networks and pathways of nerves and signals; something must be pinched, torqued out of place by the difficult entrance of that second twin this morning. Janey, the labor nurse, had been rooting for a C-section, but in Meg’s view, C-sections were overdone, riskier sometimes than just patiently working with nature. Besides, Corinne, the mother, wanted to do it all naturally as long as the babies weren’t at risk. Meg had been very satisfied, as Corinne had, when little Corey and Casey came through unscathed. The only price for taking the harder route, Meg thought, was this nuisance with her arm—which could probably be fixed with a short visit to Brian’s orthopedist.

When Meg didn’t take the chicken immediately, Savannah said, “Mom?”

Meg forced a smile. “You know, I think I’ll just wait—keep both hands on the wheel. What sort of example am I setting if I eat while I drive?”
One I’ve set a hundred times
, she thought. Well, what was parenting if not a series of inconsistencies and the occasional hypocritical action?

She changed the subject. “So, tell me about this project you’re doing.”

“It’s no big deal. Cell anatomy and function. Pretty boring.”

Meg remembered taking high school biology, studying those same things with her lab partner, Carson. More often,
not
studying. Savannah, though, was a serious student, curious about everything—or so she’d been back when her every thought manifested as a question or observation. Presumably she was still the same girl, just quieter. Was she caught up in identity issues? Questioning her sexuality? She hadn’t yet had an official boyfriend; maybe she was gay—which would be fine, Meg would love her no matter what. Or maybe Savannah was just picky; she could be awfully judgmental, the “curse,” her fifth-grade teacher once said, of gifted children. In truth, Meg hoped Rachel
had
persuaded Savannah to meet some boys, if only so that Savannah would start getting her feet wet.

“Well, did you find the info you needed?”

“Mostly,” Savannah said, her mouth full.

The traffic signal ahead turned red, and Meg slowed to a stop. She looked at Savannah, really
looked
at her, in a way she rarely remembered to these days. The dangling wood-bead earrings, the thick, hammered-silver wrist cuff, the mascara, the slight sheen of lip gloss—when had she begun wearing that?—the swell of breasts inside a snug green tee; all these signs said her daughter was essentially a woman. When had this maturing taken place? Surely it was just last week that skinny, flatchested, unadorned Savannah was dressing Barbie dolls and perfecting cartwheels on the pool deck behind their house. Yet
this
week she was a sophomore at a private all-girl high school; a little more exposure to the opposite sex would do her good.

Meg rubbed her shoulder while thinking whether she should ask outright if the girls had been “researching” with boys. But knowing Savannah, the question would be interpreted as an accusation—and she simply didn’t have the energy to defend herself tonight. So instead of asking, she changed the subject, again.

“Hey, I just saw Grandpa Spencer. Do you want to go have dinner with him Sunday? He thought you’d get a kick out of using the self-serve ice cream machine they have there.”

Savannah smirked. “I’m practically
sixteen.
Did he forget the
teen
part or something?”

The signal light changed and Meg turned the car, heading toward their gated community on the northeast side of town. She left her arm resting in her lap. “Be nice,” she said. “The important part is that he wants your company.”

“Whatever,” Savannah said.

Meg glanced at her. “Is that a yes?”

Her daughter shrugged, slim shoulders signaling noncommitment. “Are you and Dad going?”

“
I
plan to. I don’t know about your dad.”

“He never does anything,” Savannah grumbled.

True as it was, Meg felt obliged to defend him. “He has a business to run.”

“I think I know that.” Savannah opened the glove box, shuffled through a few CDs, selected one, and slid it into the player.

Meg waited to hear what she’d picked. In a moment, the sounds of acoustic piano and guitar surrounded them, joined, after a few bars, by Carson’s voice. She smiled at how Savannah had moved from a grumpy thought about Brian to soothing herself with Carson’s music. Meg had done the same thing many, many times herself.

“Good choice,” she said.

“Can I borrow this to upload when we get home?”

“Sure, borrow it—but make sure you put this one back afterward.”

“Duh,” Savannah said as though she’d never forgotten before.

Savannah sang along softly, as invested in the music as if she’d composed it herself. Meg knew why
she
loved Carson’s music, but was Savannah’s connection inborn? The possibility alternately pleased or worried her, depending on how close the past felt when the thought bubbled up. Tonight, the thought was a bittersweet pleasure—a longing for the simpler life she and Carson and Savannah would have had if things had been different. But sometimes she hoped fervently that Savannah was Brian’s—wished for a clean break from Carson, for pure, open space between her past and the truth of her life
now.
The deliberate mystery of Savannah’s paternity had turned out to be much more troubling to her than she’d expected.

Probably, she concluded, she’d trained Savannah to love Carson’s music. Inadvertently, by example. Probably it meant nothing.

“I
guess
I’ll go to Grandpa’s,” Savannah said when the song ended. “Oh, we have our opening ball game Sunday at one. I told Dad; he said he has a nine thirty tee time with some client, so you’ll have to take me.”

Of course. When Brian wasn’t jetting off to some branch or another of the company he’d founded, Hamilton Investments Management, Inc., he was on the golf course. He rarely involved himself in their lives—ironic, considering he’d once been so determined to win her away from Carson that he and his father had spent $387,000 to close the deal.

He just wasn’t the sort of man who wanted intimacy, in the fullest sense of the word. What was surface level was uncomplicated and therefore desirable; he saved his energies for work. He was about accomplishments. Results. The successful pursuit of an ever-higher standard. He collected achievements the way other people accrue trophies. She admired his energy but was cowed by it too; he expected the same from everyone around him and, especially lately, she didn’t have it to give.

“Well, whether Dad comes with us or not,” Meg said, “Grandpa will be glad to see you; he wants to show you around—‘show her off,’ that’s how he put it.”

“Why?”

“It’s his new home, the people there are his new neighbors—he wants them to see his beautiful offspring.”

“Which would be
you,
or Aunt Beth,” Savannah said. “Not me.
I’m
not beautiful; I got Dad’s big nose.”

Perhaps
, Meg thought. Savannah’s nose did look something like Brian’s, and the shape of her face was similar, too; the broad forehead, the wide smile. Meg wouldn’t bet her life on a genetic connection, though. She said, “
You
are absolutely gorgeous. I’d give anything for that wavy hair.” She wanted to reach over and touch Savannah’s long auburn hair, willed her tired arm to cooperate. Happily, it did, and she pushed some strands behind her daughter’s ear, letting her hand linger. Carson’s low, soulful voice sang one of his early ballads, a song about a pair of young lovers separated by a washed-out bridge.

“Hey, two hands on the wheel,” Savannah said.

In the darkness, Meg allowed herself a wistful smile.