“I can imagine. Will you have another visit soon?”
“In a week,” she said with a shrug. “It’s not so long, I guess. It just feels... It’s been so many years of not being near the people who are important to me.”
“I can imagine. You’re doing a very good job for us, Krista. If you find you need a day or two extra to visit family, I’m sure it can be arranged. Don’t suffer in silence.”
Suspicion reared its ugly head again. “Are you this accommodating with everyone?”
“No,” he laughed. “Some I’m very tough on, some I grow impatient with, some would get on the nerves of a saint and some I don’t trust very much. But when I have a hard worker who seems sincere and has earned a break I can make an extra effort. I don’t know the gory details but I’m sure what you’ve been through was no picnic.”
“Huh,” she said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know...”
“I didn’t ask,” he said. He handed her some more duck pellets. She accepted them, tossed them to the ducks. “You’re entitled to some privacy, for God’s sake.”
“I just meant it’s all public record, if your curiosity gets the best of you. By the way, I am grateful you haven’t shared that with anyone...that I know of.”
“I haven’t.”
“If you know so much about everyone, what’s up with Elizabeth?” When he didn’t reply right away, she said, “That was unfair. You won’t talk about another employee...”
“That one I would,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out what to say. Someday I’ll figure her out. She’s smart and very efficient. Why isn’t she nice to people? Who’s she mad at?” He shook his head.
“Assuming you’ve talked to her, she needs counseling,” Krista said.
“Of course I’ve talked to her, but I can’t mandate counseling. Let me walk you a little way. Here,” he said, handing her some more duck pellets. She laughed and tossed them behind her. Three ducks waddled toward them. “Chaperones,” he said.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Just taking a break. I get a little sluggish about this time of day, especially after lunch. You walk to work every day?”
“I do. It’s great. My cousin would be happy to drive me but I’d rather walk. I’m staying with two cousins at the old family lake house we stayed at as kids. They’re sisters. One of them is sick. She’s been fighting cancer. She just came through a powerful round of chemo and no one knows what’s next—recovery or...you know...the end. Even she doesn’t know. It’s been a rough battle and she says she’s done with treatment, no matter what. She’s the one who insisted we open up the house and spend the summer here. That’s the main reason I’m here. To spend time with her. We were always close.”
“Jesus, Krista!” he said sympathetically. “You come off a tour like you had only to face a possible loss like that?”
“It would be okay not to mention that, too,” she said. “I just told you because you gave me duck pellets.”
“Of course not,” he said. “I hope you get lucky on this one, Krista. I hope your cousin stays well.”
“Thanks—me, too. She’s pretty amazing. Her attitude. I think she’s made peace with the thing, you know?”
“I saw that in my father. Same disease, same fight, same attitude, eventually. When he came to the end of his patience, he let us know he’d had enough and that was that.”
“And your father...?”
“Unfortunately, he passed,” Jake said. “But he seemed serene. He enjoyed his last months and we were all with him.”
“Are there a lot of you?” she asked.
“A sister and a brother. I’m the youngest.” He laughed then. “How many are there in your family?”
She gave him a brief rundown of the sisters and cousins. “And obviously I’ve been out of touch. Not everyone will be overjoyed to see me if they come this way.”
“They haven’t been in contact?”
“A couple have,” she said. “The two cousins I’m staying with now and my mother, of course. But really, some are pretty embarrassed...”
“Don’t we all have those dark shadows in our past?”
“I don’t know too many people who have shadows like mine,” she said. “But tell me more about you. It’s probably so much nicer.”
He told her about being a farm kid, filling her with envy. He talked about hayrides, harvest parties when they buried corn and potatoes in hot coals for a cookout, regularly rescuing stranded motorists in winter by taking the tractor to the road to pull them out of the snow. To him it was austere and rugged—a tough way to grow up. To her it sounded like freedom. They walked and talked for about fifteen minutes and then he said it was time he got back. And she told him she was almost home.
* * *
Over the years Krista had nurtured many a fantasy, but living at the lake house of her childhood had never been one of them. Perhaps because she could not even have imagined a life of such lovely tranquility. Of course, this lake house, renovated by Charley, was ten times the place of her childhood. On the days Krista worked, she was back home by two thirty. Quite often Jake would accompany her about halfway.
“Aren’t you afraid people will talk about you always walking with one of the waitresses?” she asked him.
“Nope,” he said. “Not worried at all. If you’d rather be alone...”
“It’s okay,” she said. Truthfully, she looked forward to it every day, so grateful he didn’t ask her personal questions.
After work Krista could stretch out on a lounge on the porch with Charley and Meg, or fish off the dock, float on a raft or nap in the hammock. She was frequently admonished by Charley for walking around outside in her beloved Jockey underwear. On days she didn’t have to work, she took the bus to Oakdale and treated her mother to a long lunch. Then she’d slip her mother a twenty-dollar bill. Sometimes she wondered if she had died and gone to heaven.
Meg’s husband, John, came every weekend, and on the Fourth of July Jo also came for the holiday weekend and they had the most wonderful time, barbecuing, having a picnic outside in the sweltering heat. There were fireworks over the lake, set off by the lodge, and the lake was busy with boaters and swimmers. She even had a brief fantasy of inviting Jake to join them but she knew she wouldn’t have the nerve. And even though she worked every weekend it was such a treat to come home to a full house, including her mother.
She restricted herself from thinking too often or for too long about her years in prison, about the people she knew there. It had the shock and ache of an amputation, but she longed so fiercely to have never been there at all she practiced this conscious denial. I can suffer about that later, she would tell herself. For right now I want to enjoy this respite, live in the moment, be with my cousins and best friends.
Of course, she knew Hope would be coming with her daughters, though no one seemed to know exactly when. Their very presence would force the issue of her twenty-three-year imprisonment. She tried to mentally prepare herself for her sister. It was a matter of scraping away a thick, sticky layer of anger and resentment. Maybe, she told herself, if Hope can manage not to hate me for what I’ve done to get myself locked up, maybe I can manage to not hate her for abandoning me. But forgiving Hope for ignoring their mother would be harder.
Krista had been at the lake over a month. Meg seemed to be doing pretty well. Early July was hot and humid and life seemed generally peaceful. Pleasurable. Then the moment she’d dreaded arrived. Krista walked home from the lodge, the smell of grilled cheese and Caesar salad dressing clinging to her clothes. Lost in her thoughts she was surprised to find a silver Mercedes parked in the drive behind the house. She stopped and studied the vehicle. Pennsylvania plates. She approached it cautiously and put a hand on the hood—it was hot. She hadn’t been here long. She could hear the high-strung and excitable
voice of her older sister emanating from the house, but she couldn’t make out what she was saying. Whatever, she was saying it fast. The nervous edge to Hope’s voice carried and it had not changed in all these years. Please be nice, Krista begged herself. Remember the summer is not really for her, or for you, but for Megan. It’s Megan’s summer.
It was that last thought that propelled her up the porch steps—the thought that this could be Meg’s last summer. She so wished they could become old women together.
Krista was actually smiling as she walked in the house. She stopped immediately, of course. All she had to do was look at them, the three of them.
Hope sat on the sofa alone while Charley and Meg sat in two adjacent wicker chairs; they each had tall sweaty glasses of tea on the large square table that separated them. And directly opposite Hope, across from the glass-and-wicker table, sitting on a single chair, were her daughters, Bobbi and Trude. Alias, Brattie and Turdie. They were almost identical blondes, though Krista knew that two years separated them in age. Both had long, thick, straight hair, multilayered makeup, especially so around their eyes—they wore mauve shadows, liner, heavy mascara. Their wet-look lipstick, identical to their mother’s in color and style, was lined with a darker lip pencil around the edges.
Krista sauntered into the room, but stopped dead in her tracks, shocked in spite of herself. She just hadn’t been prepared for it all. First of all, Hope was a good fifty pounds overweight, but Krista had never seen a woman more plucked, pruned, primped and polished. Her fingernails and toenails were shiny with perfect enamel, her brows penciled with a sensual slant, her clothing obviously tailored and expensive. Her hair was permed and frosted and fluffed into a fancy short style that accented her bright and shiny gold earrings. Though she wore shorts and sandals, the shorts were cuffed above the knee and she also wore a blazer and plenty of jewelry, including a large diamond ring and thick sparkling tennis bracelet.
Krista turned to the girls. Now what were their ages again? Thirteen and fifteen? Fourteen and sixteen? Whatever, too young for this, yet they, too, were manicured and pedicured, their nails matching their glossy outlined lips. Krista had been away a long time, but she hadn’t been deprived of TV during this time. These two were more overdone than twenty-one-year-old beauty contestants. And their pouty mouths showed their frank displeasure at being there. No one can snub like a beautiful teenage girl! With their crystalline blue eyes they resembled the alien children from the Village of the Damned. The younger one, who sat on the arm of the chair, was thinner than the older. Much thinner. In fact, her collarbones, elbows and knees seemed to jut out. They, too, were dressed to kill in their overlong shorts, jackets and accenting silk scarves.
“Well, Bobbi and Trude, I presume?” Krista asked politely.
Hope turned her head toward Krista. The girls simply gave her an abbreviated and suspicious nod.
“You guys missed the turn to the yacht club,” Krista said. She plucked an apple out of the bowl that sat on the counter. She took a big, noisy bite. No one responded to her remark. “Hey,” she said, her mouth full of apple. “I’m completely unarmed!” A small huff of laughter escaped Meg but Charley appeared to be bracing herself for more. Krista met her eyes ever so briefly and took note that Charley might be waiting too eagerly. Krista bent at the waist for a closer look at their feet, both pairs crossed at the ankles. “Are the bottoms of your shoes clean?”
They both tucked their feet back with speed. The older girl took the hand of the younger, giving comfort.
“You have us at a disadvantage, Krista,” Hope said. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
Krista took another noisy bite and chewed. “You didn’t?” she asked with her mouth full. “Then I bet you just about shit when you found out.”
“Kris—”
“Don’t talk to me in that superior tone of yours or I might lose my temper and deck you. Believe it or not, no one else ever treats me like that.” She turned toward the girls again and leveled them with her hard expression.
Boy, do I have a mean streak, Krista thought.
“Bobbi and Trude,” Hope said. “This is your aunt Krista, my younger sister. We haven’t been in touch for many, many years...which would explain why I haven’t exactly mentioned her.”
“Oh, I don’t think that would explain it, Hope,” Krista said. “Have you told your daughters that I exist at all?”
“Krista, please. Don’t be confrontational.”
“I’ve been away,” she said, directing her gaze at the princesses. “Charm school. Forty years and two life terms... Really, we can’t blame your mother for being uncomfortable. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to die in prison. But it was all a misunderstanding and the California Supreme Court apologized for the inconvenience and gave me parole.” She grinned. “And here I am.”
“You’re just trying to scare them,” Hope said. “Girls, your aunt Krista isn’t really a dangerous—”
“Where’s Frank?” Krista asked.
“Dad...” one of the girls began.
“Frank couldn’t get away from work, Krista. He has a lot of responsibility. He’s depended upon by too many people to take a vacation right now.”
“That’s too bad. I was looking forward to meeting him.”
As Krista spoke the younger, thinner girl leaned down to whisper to her sister, her hair forming a canopy over both of their faces. Then she rose and the older girl spoke. “Mom, may we please be excused. You and your sister can catch up on old times and we’ll put some of our stuff away. Please?”
“Sure,” Charley said, before Hope could interfere. “You can have the whole loft to yourselves. Change into bathing suits if you like—there’s still plenty of sun today.”
Neither of them said thank you or excuse me, but fled quietly toward the back stairs, picking up a couple of bags each as they went.
“Well, dang, they damn near talked me to death!” Krista pronounced, biting into her apple again.
“You haven’t changed at all, have you?” Hope asked with hostility. “You once enjoyed shocking the grown-ups and now it’s the children you want to shock with your crude behavior.”
“Kiss my ass, Hope.”
“Charley,” Hope entreated. “How do you imagine we can make this situation work? I certainly can’t subject my children to—”
“Charley isn’t in charge, Hope,” Krista said. “You and I have one or two things to sort out. Maybe when we do that and you get off your high fucking horse, we’ll make this work by being equals, a thought that must make you wanna puke. Hmm?”
“Charley? Meg?” Hope pleaded.
Megan shrugged her thin shoulders. “I don’t think this has anything to do with us. Does it, Charley?”
“I don’t have any issues,” Charley said. “Except that I’m not interested in spending the next couple of weeks listening to you two snipe at each other.”
“Oh, God, I should have known you’d side with her,” Hope said, resting her forehead in her hand. Weariness seemed to wash over her. “I would never have come if I’d known this was what was waiting for me! I can’t put the girls through this!”
“Through what?” Meg asked. “Your reunion with your sister, who they didn’t know existed?”
Hope lifted her head. “She’s outrageous. Indiscreet and confrontational and inappropriate...and she’s been in prison, for God’s sake. Yet she’s somehow implying that I’ve made some grave familial error!”
Krista scrunched up her face. “Familial error?”
“I came back here with the best of intentions—hoping upon hope that a reunion of our family could put everything right at last and allow Grandma Berkey to die in peace. I wanted her to see the girls once more. I wanted to satisfy our obligations, pay my respects, perhaps thank her for making me feel loved and cherished when I was a you
ng woman without family. I’m ready to put a final stamp on our family business and tidy up any legal complications. But I did not come back here to haggle with Krista over whether or not we’re equal!”
Megan, Charley and Krista all looked at each other in total confusion.
“Legal complications? Hope,” Charley said patiently. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The will!” Hope nearly shouted. Her eyes were glassy, her cheeks rosy and her impatience a palpable thing. “I came back to settle my inheritance. And that’s all!”
Silence enveloped them, a silence heavy with confusion. Megan, Charley and Krista made eye contact, asking the nonverbal question over and over: Will? What will? But however Hope had concocted this in her mind—that this was a last call for the purpose of seeing a will—might remain forever unanswered. She’d been doing this for years, as a teenager and young woman, living a delusional life in which she was a fairy princess and not related to common folk.
Remembering that, Charley laughed. Meg joined in. Before long Krista was holding her sides in hysterics.
* * *
“As soon as they’re asleep tonight, I’m outta here,” Trude told her sister in a hushed voice. She sat on one of the two double beds in the loft and whispered to her older sister. “You can take me or I’ll go alone. Either way, I’m gone. They’re all nuts, Mom at the head of the pack.”
“We could give it a day or two,” Bobbi suggested. “We could see how it shakes out. Check out the place. Get a tan.”
“I can’t,” Trude insisted. “Dad said if she was acting crazy, we didn’t have to stay. She’s been crazy all the way here—making us promise to keep it a secret that she and Dad are divorced, making us promise to act like we have a perfect life or she doesn’t know what she’ll do, throwing away our jeans, making us have manicures and facials and... Shit! And this place is crazy as she is! She’s got a sister who’s like right outta jail! Jesus! I’m like... I’m all... She won’t take us to the airport so let’s take the car and go to the airport, park it, fly home, and Dad can handle her. She’s fuckin’ loony tunes, okay?”