attacked—Caroline with a knife! That’s why Caroline was hospitalized.”
“Oh, honey. Oh my goodness. That’s not true. It was the other way around! She came after your mother!”
“That’s what my mother told you?”
“It was the other way around! Oh my goodness. Caroline said your mother attacked her? No, sweetheart, I swear to you, it was the other way around! Ask—oh, I was going to say ask your father. But he knew. It was Caroline who tried to attack your mother!”
There sat the spider, beautiful in her web, drops of dew shining like diamonds all around her. I spoke very carefully. “Aunt Fran. Do you honestly believe that?” I picked up a pencil from the kitchen table, balanced it along the knuckles of one hand while I waited for her answer. Come on, Aunt Fran, you were my favorite. You in a yellow sundress, holding two of your own kids, one under each arm, laughing.
“Well, of course I do! It’s the truth!”
I let the pencil fall; it rolled under the table. I would not bother to retrieve it. My mother had Aunt Fran, just like she had my dad. There was no more to say. I held on to the phone and stared out the window at the sunset. Beautiful pinks. Dusty rose. Mauve. Wonderful next to sage green.
“Laura?”
“I have to go.” I hung up the phone, locked my mother’s house, and headed to the car to go to the airport. Enough. I turned on the radio, turned it up loud. Then louder still.
It is a travel advertisment in a newspaper, a half-page picture of an older couple in their late seventies or early eight-ies, floating in a pool on rubber rafts with built-in pillows. The water is crystal clear and shot through with jagged lines of sunlight. The man wears black bathing trunks that come almost to his knees, funny, in their way. The woman wears a beautifully designed swimsuit in a Hawaiian print with a plunging neckline that—unbelievably—looks sexy. Her necklace is made of shells that coordinate with the bathing suit. She wears a bathing cap covered with flowers but has left uncovered one perfect wave of streaked hair. Her hus-band holds her hand—it is he who has reached out to her; it feels somehow that it is always he who reaches for her. Her face is a study in pride: eyebrows plucked in a graceful arch, cheekbones high and rouged, lipstick perfectly applied. She has a smile on her face; his expression is more serious, nearly anxious.
When I came across this picture, I had an odd reaction to it. “Look at this,” I told Pete, and he looked over and said, “Huh. Cute.”
“It’s not cute!” I said angrily.
Pete looked up, surprised.
“It’s not! Look at her! This is a woman whose been overly cared for all her life. She’s a user; she thinks only of herself. Look at her eyes!”
He looked again. “You can’t even see her eyes.”
He was right. Both people in the photograph wore dark sunglasses.
“Well, I know what they look like,” I said.
“How?” Pete asked, and I did not answer, because I could not say.
21
PETE PICKED ME UP AT THE AIRPORT. HE LEANED OVER to give me a quick kiss before we pulled away from the curb. I wondered what he’d ask me and what I’d say. I realized I’d fallen once again into uncertainty. I was beginning to think I understood battered wife syndrome: seeing someone as a monster, then as someone not so bad, then as someone familiar and loved. “Damn it!” I said.
“What happened?” He slowed the car, checked the rearview.
“Nothing,” I said, waving my hand. “Sorry. It’s okay, don’t stop. I’ll tell you later. I don’t even know what I’m feeling.” I began to cry, which only made me angrier.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know.” I wiped away the few tears I’d shed. “Listen, can we go get a drink somewhere? Are the kids okay?”
“The kids are fine. Your mother’s there. And . . . well, surprise, my parents are too.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed. “When . . . ?”
“They didn’t tell me. They were on their way back from somewhere, and they were only fifty miles away. . . . They arrived just after your flight took off from Minnesota.”
I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. “Pete. You know I love them. But so much is going on!”
“Let’s go somewhere and talk.”
“Somewhere close. I don’t know why I’m angry. I’m not angry. I really am not angry.”
THE