The Life You've Imagined (37 page)

The chances I’ll be able to sleep right now are nil, so I pour myself a cup and settle into the chair across from her.

“Sally, have you . . . Have you talked to Mom?”

“Not really. Her friend dropped me off this afternoon and she was watching TV, said she didn’t feel much like talking. So I let her be.”

So Sally doesn’t know. With my father’s face fresh in my mind, I can see a resemblance now between them, something in the brown eyes that makes them always seem like they’re just about to wink. I feel like I should tell her that her brother is not only alive, but only a hundred miles away. But then, I think that’s my mother’s job. Something for the older generation to work out themselves.

“So I’ve been getting forgetful,” Sally begins, looking down into her cup.

“Happens to everyone.”

“Not like this, it doesn’t. I forgot how to play cards, and the other day when I got steamed at your mom . . .” At this she looks up at me, right into my eyes, no trace of mirth or pranks. “I lost whole hours of time. I don’t know where I was, and by now I’ve figured out that my ride wasn’t any boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

I put my hand over her free one, the one that’s not clutching the coffee mug like it’s an anchor to reality.

“So, I want you to know, dearie, that you can go ahead and put me in a home.”

“Sally!”

“No, I mean it. I’m feeling okay right now, but I know that a brain going down this kind of slide doesn’t crawl back up again. It’s only gonna get worse. And you and your mom shouldn’t have to deal with me. You should be off in the big city making your fortune. I know you didn’t like that job anymore, but there’s nothing for you here.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘nothing.’ ”

“Honey, in some ways you are just like your father. Now, listen to me, don’t go getting all upset. In the good ways. He dreamed big, dreamed of getting the hell out of here. See, you got the dreaming, but you also got the brains and the discipline to do it right. Anyway.” She takes her hand out from under mine and pats my arm. “Like I said, you go ahead and sign me up for a home. Soon enough I won’t know the difference between that and a sock hop anyhow.”

With what money?
I’d like to ask her.

“So, how else am I like my dad?”

She sits back in her chair, frowning at me like she would a complicated sudoku puzzle. Silent seconds tick by, and I think maybe she’s forgotten what I asked her and maybe that’s just as well.

“You’ve got the Geneva nose, for starters. And when you’re upset about something, you bring your jaw forward and tip your chin up, just daring the world to knock you silly.” She demonstrates, and the effect is eerie, not only because I can see myself doing that so clearly but because I saw my father do it so recently. “When you were a kid, you were a fidgeter, and that was just like Robert. I think he took up smoking because it was an easy way to fidget, flicking that lighter and tapping his cigarettes. Sometimes he’d pack the tobacco down so hard he couldn’t light it.” She smiles, for a moment seeming to be lost in the fog of memory. Then she looks up at me again. “But you don’t fidget so much anymore. And that’s the big difference, like I said before. Discipline. And that you got from Maeve and all them Callahans. Your uncle Mike, rest his soul, running that bowling alley, even your grandma Callahan. And though you may not show it, you love like a Callahan, too. Hard and life-long. Not just when it’s convenient, running hot and cold.”

I open my mouth to protest, remembering Marc and the keys left on the table.

She stops me by raising her hand and saying, “I know you’re not married yet, but maybe this is why. You’re gonna wait for just that guy you can love hard and for life. That’s not just anybody.”

I picture Beck’s solemn face during the dance, then his inscription in the book.
I imagine life with you.

“What’s eating you?” She takes a sip of her coffee and stares at me over the rim.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me, doll. Anyway, I’ll probably forget in the morning.”

I chuckle at this. “It’s nothing, Sal. It’s just . . . I’m a little confused, is all.”

Sally leans in. “Ain’t we all? Look, honey, I waited half my life for a man that wasn’t mine.”

“What . . . What makes you think I’m talking about a man?”

“I don’t know nothing about nothing. But I do know that waiting around on someone else is no way to live. It wasn’t my choice not to have babies, honey. By the time I gave up on him, I was too old.” She heaves herself up out of the chair with a dramatic show of stretching and creaky bones, as if to drive home the point. She pats me on the shoulder as she passes and plants a kiss on the top of my updo. “But it was sure a pleasure watching you grow up, Anna. You sure are something special.”

She walks down toward the darkened bedroom she shares with my mother, softly whistling “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

Chapter 54

Cami

I
t’s impressive, watching Anna suited up for battle. She’s in her severe, chic black suit and she’s wrangled her hair behind her head into a bun. She’s perched at the edge of her narrow childhood bed, one leg crossed over the other, her foot tapping slowly in her dangerously sharp heels as she stares down at the settlement document in her hands.

Per my instructions, it says that my father gives me the house in exchange for my not suing him over stealing my trust money. According to my watch, our meeting starts in a half hour.

As Anna pointed out, such a document does not, however, protect him from criminal proceedings.

Down the hall, I can hear Maeve rustling in her room. She’s packing things, though none of us know if she’s joining Anna in the apartment she picked out or if she’s made other plans. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for two people to ignore each other in such a cramped space, but they have not exchanged words beyond “Excuse me” since their fight.

Anna tells me that she encountered her mother in the kitchen yesterday, the day after the wedding, and they just stared at each other and walked huge circles through the room to avoid actually crossing paths.

Part of me wants to shake Maeve, but I know I’m the one who stayed half the summer with a man I was afraid of, pretending I was too tough to be worried, too savvy to be at real risk.

So yeah, I’m not one to lecture about delusion. Also, I know she won’t believe someone else anyway, no matter how reasonable and right that other person might be. Even her own daughter.

Anna looks up. “You ready? And you’re sure this is all you want?”

“I just want his drunk ass out of that house.”

“Well, then. Let’s go.”

My dad insisted on meeting at the house, saying he didn’t want our business all over town, and seeing as Anna doesn’t have an actual office, this was the best we could do.

“So much for neutral territory,” Anna had grumbled, but I told her no territory was neutral in Haven.

Anna manages to walk smoothly up the gravel driveway in her heels, her briefcase swinging at her side. She skips the doorbell and hammers on the door with her knuckles.

When my father opens the door, the first thing I notice is that he’s clean shaven and smells like soap. His tie is crooked and his shirt is stained yellow at the armpits, but it’s an actual buttoned-up shirt.

Maybe he looked something like this when my mother fell for him. It had to be something.

“Mr. Drayton.” Anna sticks out her hand. “Thanks for meeting us.” She shakes his hand hard, hard enough to surprise him. I stifle a smile. He wasn’t expecting much, I can tell. “Is your attorney on his way, then?”

My father clears his throat roughly. “He, uh. He can’t make it.”

Anna looks around the front of the house and settles on the kitchen table, which is only marginally cluttered. I can see the house has already begun its slide back to squalor in the short time I’ve been gone.

“Do you need to reschedule, Mr. Drayton? Or, I could schedule a court date if you prefer, and we’ll let a judge hash this out. We don’t have a great deal of time.”

Actually, we have nothing but time, really, since she doesn’t have a job. Technically I could go back to tutoring, but I don’t have any money of my own, and Steve won’t have me back. My pitiful salary there isn’t enough to pay rent by myself, so I’m starting over, too.

My dad just grumbles and indicates a chair. I’m sure he couldn’t find an actual lawyer to take his case.

I lean against the kitchen wall, preferring to stand.

Anna launches into her legal speak, explaining that he stole what was mine and never even told me it existed, and how much interest he would owe if she took him to court to pay it back now.

“But this could all be solved, right now, today. You just have to do one thing.”

He slumps in his chair like a kid in the back room of math class, ready to throw a spitball. “What?”

“Only one asset of yours comes even close to the amount of this debt to your daughter.” Anna waves her hand to indicate her surroundings. “This house.”

“My house? She wants this house? Bullshit. It’s mine.”

I can’t take it anymore. “It was my mother’s!”

He wheels on me but stays seated. “She was my wife! And what was hers then is mine now. I deserve it after what she put me through.”

“She put
you
through?”

“Do you know how much hospitals cost? You think I had any insurance, running my own shop? That little life insurance policy we had on her was enough to bury her and didn’t even cover half the debt she left me with.”

“You act like she got sick on purpose, you miserable fuck.”

He slams his hand down on the table and uses it to prop himself up to stand. He stares at me with the clearest eyes I’ve seen in months. “I won’t have you disrespecting me.”

“I won’t have you insulting my mother.”

I step closer, my heart going wild in my chest, my hands itching for something heavy and blunt to hold and swing.

“I needed that money. Not you. I needed it because I had debt, and a business, and little kids to feed and a mortgage. So yeah, I got the hospital off my back, and I paid off this house so I wouldn’t have to worry about it no more. Pam wouldn’t let me touch a dime of those rich assholes’ money the whole time she was alive, so yeah, I took it when I needed it, and I needed it because of her.”

“It wasn’t her fault.”

“It wasn’t mine, neither! She’s the one who died and went off to heaven or whatever, and I’m the one who had to stay here and listen to you kids bawl and tell you she wasn’t coming back. You kept asking me! You kept asking, even though you were old enough to know! You killed me every time you asked!”

My dad crumples down in the chair, keening and roaring and pounding his fists.

I never saw this, not once, after Mom died. I heard slammed doors, I heard cans being opened behind those doors, and I watched him chain smoke for hours.

I glance at Anna. She has her phone in her hand, thumb on the buttons.

We both wait, until his wailing loses force like the air hissing out of a tire.

He sits back abruptly. “Gimme the paper.”

Anna slides it over. “I think you’ll find, Mr. Drayton . . .”

“Shut the fuck up and tell me where to sign.”

He signs in all the required places and stands up so roughly his chair knocks over behind him.

I clear my throat. “Dad, I . . .”

“I suppose you’re gonna sell it and give half the money to your fruit brother and that fag boyfriend. Or maybe you’ll just use it to do your whoring. It’s still my house for a week. Get out or I’ll call the cops.”

He yanks open the fridge, knocking over bottles inside.

Anna has to pull me out by my elbow as my father roots around in the refrigerator, cursing into its cold interior.

T
he drive back to the Nee Nance is silent and slow.

“Thanks,” I tell Anna when she parks in the alley.

”You’re welcome. I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

“For what? We won, yeah?” I swing my legs out of the car and try to feel triumphant. If I feel anything right now, it’s relief. I’ve just snatched something precious out of danger, like a vase that was teetering on the edge of a mantel.

He’s stirred up memories I haven’t considered in years and would rather not think of now. The tears and the clinging, the massive hole left by mother.

Anna follows me inside the dim store interior, and I prop myself against the front counter, my eyes unfocused on the brown, waxy floor. We did both keep asking my father about Mom’s death. We couldn’t believe it after so many relatives had assured us our mother was “a fighter” and we just had to keep hoping. We did hope, Trent and me; we even prayed the way my aunt told us. And she died anyway, and we’d been so believing of those grown-ups, but then they didn’t have answers; they all drifted away, in fact, after the funeral and the sorting through of her affairs; they all floated away until it was Dad, Trent, and me, and Dad didn’t have any good answers, either.