“That must be hard,” Jenny sympathized.
“Not really. At least not so far. Your father had so many clothes, and he hadn’t worn a lot of them for years. Those are the ones I’m tossing. I do cry a lot, of course, but I cry a lot, anyway.”
“Take care of yourself, Mom. Go out to dinner with your friends. See a movie.”
“I will, Jenny. I do. You, too.”
Monday night the three gathered around the kitchen table, which Meg had covered with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. Meg served lasagna, green salad, and a buttery, garlicky bread. They drank an Italian Chianti with the meal.
“This is delicious,” Arden said, licking her lips.
“Yummy,” Jenny agreed. Leaning back in her chair, she asked, “How’s your Alcott work going, Meg?”
“Okay.” Meg put her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, thinking. “Although I have to admit my research has got me in a slump about men.”
“Why?” Jenny asked, tearing off a piece of garlic bread.
“Bronson Alcott allowed his oldest daughter to work herself sick to support him while he sat on his butt thinking great philosophical thoughts that no one cared about—”
“Meg.” Arden leveled a look across the table. “That was a zillion years ago. Times have changed.”
“But have men?” Meg countered.
Arden began to clear the table. Jenny stood up to help her. They worked together in silence, covering the leftover lasagna, stacking the dishwasher, wiping down the counter.
“Aren’t men better fathers these days?” Arden clarified.
Meg gave herself a moment to consider. “I believe Tom is a good, faithful husband to my mother. He’s a good father to his sons. He’s reliable and trustworthy.”
“How is he as a stepfather?” Arden asked. She turned from the sink, wiping her hands on a dish towel, watching Meg and realizing she’d never thought about Tom as Meg’s stepfather before. Arden could scarcely remember the years before Gavin and Mike were born. When Arden’s parents were first divorced, Cyndi used to babysit her while Arden’s mother worked, but after the twins were born, Arden seldom was invited to Meg’s house. “As I recall, Tom was kind of distant. Boring. I mean, he didn’t ever pick me up or hug me. He didn’t even really notice me.”
Meg folded her arms across her chest. “Interesting to hear you say that. I don’t think of Tom as my stepfather, actually. I called him that when I was in school, but I’m pretty sure he never felt any affection for me.”
“I always thought you were treated like Cinderella in that household. After the babies were born.”
Meg laughed. “You did? I guess you’re right. But with sickly twins, Mom needed the help, and I was crazy about those little boys when they were babies. When they got older, not so much. They were all about each other, their own exclusive club. Then I got sent to boarding school, and at first I felt hurt by that, so shoved away.… That was a couple of years after The Exile.” The lightness of laughter fell away from her face as her memories returned with their burden of sorrow. “I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. That no one wanted me.” Tears filled her eyes. “Shit, I hate remembering those days.”
“I’m sorry I brought it all up,” Arden apologized.
“It’s okay. Boarding school turned out to be good for me. I made some really close friends, and I learned I was hardly alone as a discard. At least half the kids I knew were from divorced homes. A lot of the kids whose parents were married didn’t want them around, either. They were too busy traveling or working or something. I fit right in. I found my own little club.” Meg’s smile returned. “And I discovered I was smart. I hadn’t known that before. I got a scholarship to Smith. That was just cool beyond measure; I can’t begin to tell you what that did for me. For one thing, I didn’t have to rely on Tom for a penny. Dad helped financially, of course. I worked waiting tables all summer, so I had enough money for clothes and stuff. I got a fellowship at Lesley University for my master’s in English lit, and I started teaching at Sudbury College shortly after that. I’ve always been a hard worker. Independent.”
“You should be proud,” Arden told her.
“I wish …,” Meg began, then stopped and started over. “Mom and Tom and the boys came to my high school and college graduations. I think just that much was hard for them. The twins were a handful as children. Not bad boys, but active and mischievous.” Meg smiled smugly. “They gave quiet old Tom a real workout. When they were in high school, they got into a lot of trouble—not serious stuff, but wrecking cars, skipping classes, that sort of thing. Now they’re in college and doing well. They’ve settled down.”
“Well, I’m glad for your mother’s sake.”
“I called Mom about our July Fourth party. She can’t come. She and Tom have become social butterflies. With all the kids gone, they’re partying with their own gang. She sounds happy and busy.”
“So there you are,” Arden said. “We know of one good man. He might not have been a good stepfather, but he wasn’t abusive, and he’s been good to his sons, and faithful to his wife.”
Meg laughed scornfully. “That’s a sad definition of a good man.”
“Nobody gets everything,” Arden pointed out. “Someone told me once to make a list of the ten things I want most in life. If I get the top three, I should shut up and be thrilled.”
Jenny returned to the table. “Hmm. Interesting. What are your top three things? Husband, children, and what else?”
“Are you kidding? Husband and children?” Arden tossed the dish towel down and threw herself into a chair. “No children for me, thank you very much. I’m thirty-four. I decided a long time ago, when my father left me to marry Cyndi and be Meg’s dad, that I’d never inflict the kind of pain on a child that I had dumped on me.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Meg said softly. She looked at Arden, whose perfect face was momentarily marred by bitter lines, and wanted to comfort her. “We had a lot of fun when we were little girls, remember? You were really nice to me when you came for weekends.”
Arden looked surprised. “I was?”
“Don’t you remember? You brought me so many baby dolls—”
“Yeah, but they were secondhand. Plus, I didn’t like dolls—”
“That doesn’t matter. You gave them to me. I was a little girl. It was a huge thing for me to get them! You brought me Barbie and Ken, and you gave me all the clothes you’d outgrown. Because you were three years older, I thought you were the coolest thing around. I’d wear your clothes even if they didn’t fit. And you invented the best games. Remember our secret clubhouse behind the furnace in the basement?”
“I do.” Arden burst into laughter. “Remember our babysitter, Patsy?”
“Oh, gosh, I’d forgotten about her. She was
awesome
! Remember how when Mom and Dad went out to dinner or something, she’d dress us up in stuff she brought over and put on music and we’d do music videos? Remember when Patsy brought over all those bangles—”
“Walk like an Egyptian!” Meg warbled, undulating her arms.
“ ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’!” sang Arden. “We thought George Michael was so hot.”
Meg cackled, “You wanted to marry him when you grew up.”
“Okay, remember, I was, what, eight? Nine?”
“Bon Jovi,” Meg crooned. “The band, the man, the hair!”
“I had a crush on Seal,” Jenny confessed.
“Everyone had a crush on Seal,” Meg said.
“Then suddenly it was all Alanis Morissette and people whining and complaining,” Arden remembered. “What happened?”
“We grew up,” Meg sighed. “What was that song she sang? ‘You Oughta Know’?”
Arden snorted. “Well, now we know.”
Not wanting to be left out, Jenny offered gently, “The three of us did have one nice summer together.”
“We did?” Arden looked doubtful.
“Yeah,” Meg agreed. “That first year we were here. Before the second bad year. We had fun.”
“Wait, are we on the same planet?” Arden asked. “That first year, you and Jenny went into a teenybopper bonding thing and spent all your time painting your nails and sneaking into my room to try on
my
lip gloss. Then Justine would get mad at
me
for letting you wear it.”
“I kind of remember that.” Jenny planted her elbows on the table, resting her chin in her hands. “I know you had to babysit us
a lot so Dad and Mom could go to parties and stuff. But that was always fun. We played statues in the backyard.”
“Right!” Meg said. “Remember, Arden, you’d swing us around and we’d land in these ridiculous positions?”
“Some nights, especially if there was a storm, we’d play Spook. Meg and I would hide and you’d go through the house looking for us—”
“With special sound effects,” Meg giggled. “You’d make creepy voices, Arden, and stomp hard like a monster coming up the stairs. I was really scared.”
Arden grinned. “Yeah, I remember that. You two would scream like crazy when I found you.”
“The show we did for Dad!” Jenny chirped. “Remember? We wore grass skirts and plastic leis over our bathing suits and did the hula to—gosh, what was that song?”
Meg shrieked with laughter. “ ‘The Dock of the Bay’!”
“Oh man, I remember now,” Arden said. “Michael Bolton! His hair was longer than yours, Meg.”
“But the song is so good,” Jenny said. “And our dance was
wicked cool
.”
Meg hummed a few notes of Otis Redding’s quietly emotional song. Arden sang along, swaying in time, lifting her hands in a drifting motion.
Their voices faded. For a moment the kitchen was silently alive with memories.
“We told Dad we were island girls,” Jenny said softly.
“Island girls.” Meg nodded, a smile turning her face young. “Yeah. I remember.”
“He loved our dance,” Arden recalled. “He smiled so much, and when we told him we were island girls, he got all choked up.”
“We made him happy then,” Meg realized.
Again, they were all quiet, lost to memory.
Jenny spoke up. “You’re right. We
were
all happy that summer. You know what else? The night of the meteors!”
“Oh yeah,” Meg said. “That was, to use the word properly,
awesome
.”
Arden sat for a moment, searching her mind.
“How can you forget that?” Meg demanded of Arden. “You sneaked us out of the house! We went down to the beach and lay on the sand and watched all these meteors whizzing through the sky over our heads.”
“It was like being in a spaceship,” Jenny breathed. She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “We have meteor showers every August, but that year it was sensational. I think I really began to believe in God that very moment.”
“Yeah,” Meg said, “because so clearly something else is out there, it was like messages written in star dust.”
“And, Arden.” Jenny opened her eyes and sat up. “We wouldn’t have seen it without you. Remember? Mom said we couldn’t stay up till midnight; that’s when the showers began. So you stayed awake, and you tiptoed into my room and woke me.”
“Me, too,” Meg added.
“We didn’t wear shoes. We stayed in our pajamas. We crept down the stairs—” Jenny shot a conspiratorial glance at Meg, and they both flushed with laughter at the memory of disobeying the strict Justine.
“We went out the back door. We didn’t make a sound until we were a block away from the house.” Meg put her hands to her mouth, caught in a warp of old gleeful guilt.
Jenny snorted. “Yes, and then we laughed so hard we almost peed our pants!”
“Let’s go out for a walk now!” Meg suggested.
Arden rolled her eyes. “Duh. It’s not August. No meteors.”
“We don’t have to have meteors. We can just look at the
lights of town and the lights on the boats in the harbor. Maybe have an ice cream cone.”
“Good idea,” Jenny said, standing up. “I’d love some ice cream.”
Arden hesitated for one long second, then smiled. “Me, too.”
Okay, she was an idiot, no doubt about it. Arden ripped open a new bag of Fritos with such fury the chips exploded all over the table.
Pride goeth before a fall, and her pride had sent her tumbling head over heels into disaster.
“Ernest,” she’d invited, so sweetly, so sure of herself, “please come down to our Fourth of July party. I want you to meet some people. Some people with fab summer houses they want me to simplify on my show. You’ve got to meet them.”
She’d wanted the Channel Six program director to see her in action, to
get it
, how good she was at convincing the hotshots and luminaries who summered on the island to allow her to redo a room in their house and let it be shown on
Simplify This
. She wanted Ernest to realize that no new kid on the block could hope to compare with her.
“I’m busy that weekend, Ard. You know how the wife ties me up with social engagements. But tell you what, I’ll send Zoey
down. She can learn the ropes straight from the horse’s mouth. Ha-ha, talk about a mixed metaphor.”
“Oh.” Arden thought fast. “We don’t have any room for her to stay in the house, Ernest.”
“That’s okay. I’ll have the station put her up at a hotel.”
So there she was, the size-zero darling, flitting around the backyard, batting her long, dark lashes at all the men, pretending intense fascination at their conversation and allowing them to check out her perky cleavage.
“She’s sweet,” Meg had said earlier, when the Independence Day party started.
“You think everyone’s sweet,” Arden had muttered.
Meg blinked at Arden’s harsh response. The three women had gotten along so well all day Sunday, getting ready for the party, making lists, double-checking supplies. They’d baked cheesecakes and topped them with strawberries, grapes, and blueberries in a red, white, and blue design. They’d gotten hysterical as they attached tiny lights to the hedges that walled in the backyard, only to discover they were miles away from any electric supply. Jenny had jumped in her Jeep and zipped off to buy heavy-duty extension cords. Then they’d had to put the tables over the cords so no one would trip on them, and that threw off their carefully devised layout. They’d worked like a team, excited and just a bit overwhelmed by all the people who’d accepted their casual telephone invitations.