APPEARANCES

 

  

Tanner’s Wife_____________

     The men seated across from me tell me that my husband is in a bad situation.  Photographs of my husband found by Helen on the porch this yesterday morningalarm me.  Tanner is wearing the black pin-striped suit and red tie Helen put out for him when I last saw him. His arms appear to be tied behind his back.  He is gagged.  My husband’s gagged face is wild with anger, his handsome features distorted as if  he has just been to the dentist by the gag.  This image stays with me as the men seated across from me talk.

          My husband’s cell phone was in his filthy suit jacket found with the photos.  There are several messages from me.   A woman whose voice I do not recognize phoned him.  Who was she?  His secretary, Patty, called several times.  Helen said Patty phoned Truro.  I thought Tanner took the day off, played hooky because the kids and I were gone. Bart Stevens phoned. Tanner missed his Tee Time.  Ben White called to remind Tanner about a baseball game they are to coach together tonight even though our son will not be on the team this season.  Tanner has told me that Ben White can’t handle the kids alone.  The woman whose voice I do not recognize phoned Tanner again.  She was from a restaurant.  Tanner left his American Express Card behind when he paid for the business luncheon last week.  More urgent calls followed from Tanner’s secretary.  A dozen more calls from people –all looking for my husband.  The men seated across from me want to talk about the voice of the woman who I do not know.  She called about the credit card.  I do not like what they are suggesting. 

     He was in my mouth I think now as I sit across from the men asking me questions.  I had my husband in my mouth the last time I saw him.  Tanner wanted sex before I left for the Cape, the way he always wants sex.  The woman whose voice I do not know is not a mistress.  My husband is not having an affair.  I do what I have to do.  My husband was in my mouth the last time I saw him.  I want to tell these men that. 

       Tanner was drinking at the business luncheon where he left his credit card late last week the men tell me..  He ordered drinks with lunch.  Is he a drinker they want to know. I almost laugh, knowing Tanner’s family–their history.  My husband was not drunk I insist, as if I was there with him.  I look across the space of my kitchen at the men.

       “Your husband was drinking,” the first man says.

        “He was drinking?” the second man asks. 

I see that the third man writes it down.  The woman at the end of the kitchen counter nods.

         “He had been drinking,” the first man says again.

         “Was he drunk?” the second man asks me.

          “Drunk?” I ask, hating the word as I consider this.  “Tanner–drunk?”

I do not like the word drunk being used to describe my husband. Appearances are everything I remind myself, thinking about my mother. 

          “He was drinking, not drunk,” I say.  “Tanner has a drink with lunch sometimes when he is doing business.  My husband does not drink.  He hates drinking.”

          “The server who called about his credit card said he seemed fine when we spoke to her, a woman named Heidi.  Your husband is a regular.  He often gives her his card for the meal but that day he forgot it,” the first man tells me.  “He did not seem intoxicated.  But if he was drunk…”

          “My husband does not get drunk during the middle of the day, during business,” I say now.  “That I can tell you.  He has a drink to be social.  Men do that for business!”

          “If he was drunk on the day he was taken your husband might have been incapacitated,” the man taking notes suggests.  “Drunk, he would be easier to overpower if it came to that.”

          “Someone managed to get the better of him,” the other man says.  “Tie him up like that, take him somewhere he didn’t want to go.”

          “I assure you that my husband was not drunk,” I say, calm.

The men asking me questions are quiet.  I almost consider telling them that I gave into sex before I left for Cape Cod, catching him at the door as he was about to leave for his morning run.  My husband was in my mouth one of the last times that I saw him.  In the end I don’t.  It isn’t an image I want them to have of us.  Appearances are everything I remind myself.  My mother’s voice runs through my head as I tell the men asking me questions what they want to hear. 

         “Your husband is in a very bad situation.”  the woman at the end of the kitchen counter says to me.

My husband will fight to come back to us I tell myself.

 

 

Connie______________

    I hope to convince Mike to go to the movies tonight.  There is a new one I want to see at the LAKE Theatre.  Mike hates going to the movies.  He complains about the expense.  We have to treat ourselves sometimes, i think.

    Mike doesn’t want me to answer the phone.  I am not allowed to answer the phone in my own house because my husband thinks it might be a bill collector.  After all these years I can’t believe we are back in this again.  When our kids were teenagers we lived like this.  After the bankruptcy Mike vowed never to be in this place again but his medication is so expensive.  We have to decide between medicine and food sometimes.  Our kids don’t know.  We don’t want to burden them with it.  When the phone rings Mike tells me I can’t answer it.

           I can’t boil eggs. No matter how hard I try they never come out right–always too soft in the middle.  This morning I ruined the eggs.  Mike is upset.  He has taken over making the eggs, disgusted with me I can tell. 

            “Don‘t fucking hover over me, Connie!” he screams as I attempt to help him. “Can you cook it a little more? I ask–anxious to make it right. 

            “Get away from me!” he bellows. “I just want a fucking hardboiled egg, Connie!”

Mike is always hungry after his paper route.  This morning he seems to be starving.

            “I wish that I could cook better,” I say.

            “You can’t cook fucking at all! He grunts.  “You can’t do a fucking thing right, Connie!”

His anger is not only about the eggs–I know. Mike is stressed out over our financial situation.  I know that.   

          My husband hates when the collectors call. He screams and yells. I can always tell when Mike has had a bad day when I come home from my job at a Greeter at Wal-Mart, there have been more calls than usual.  Mike is agitated, more of a bear than usual, when he speaks to bill collectors on the phone. 

            “I know your name–you fucking Bitch!” Mike will scream into the phone. “I’m going to fucking hunt you down!” 

He will slam the phone down then telling me he doesn’t want to talk about it when I warn him he can’t threaten people like that. My husband is all bark–no bite. But strangers do not know that.

          I realize that Mike is ashamed that we are in financial disaster again.  He hates that we had to pay for his medication with credit cards until they were jammed, some over their limits again the way they were years ago when the kids were young.   Now our kids have their own kids.  Amber is a lawyer.  She would help us if we asked.  Mike will not ask.  Jason makes a fortune designing those video games.  He has a young family like Amber.  Mike won’t let me tell them about our problems.  He won’t let me answer the phone.

           Because Mike is outside fighting with the lawnmower to get it started, preparing to mow lawn that is so short it will not need to be mowed for another week, I answer the phone when it rings.  The voice on the other end lifts my spirits.  I immediately start asking questions. My neighbor Gwen has talked for weeks about going back to Cape Cod with her grown daughters for the summer.  Now, I listen.  Something terrible has happened to Tanner.

 

 

Ruth_______________

    For so much of our marriage Owen has not touched me. That should have been my first clue. We kissed and hugged, he always liked spooning. But really touch me, he didn’t do that very often. I ignored it–busy. It was easier to stay busy.

     After we lost our son he was more attentive. Grief–I thought.  It does that.  Now that Tanner is missing, has been kidnapped, my mother seems more aware of my younger sister somehow.  Grief does that.  My mother thinks Tanner is already dead.  People do not survive abductions I remind myself.  Grief, at first I responded to it with Owen after Bobby died. I was glad for it. But Owen wanted to stay in that horrible space. He seemed to be drowning in the sea of sorrow our lives had become. We lost our son. He died. Bobby died because I did not go to him. Owen asked me to stay with him. I stayed with him because we were having sex.  I was too hungry for it.   The promise of sex from a husband who did not touch me kept me from my son.

     While I waited for my husband to touch me the way I needed to be touched my son was choking. He was crying out for me. I heard him. We both did. Owen asked me to stay. Bobby was quiet. A bad dream I imagined, something that would pass. I did not go to him. What kind of mother does not go to her child? I am a terrible mother.

     Miranda is on the phone talking about the wedding in Boston this weekend.  I tell her I will have to miss it because we have a family emergency here on the Cape.  That is all I say to her.  She is talking about the wedding the TODAY SHOW is planning with viewer input this summer.  An event we are in charge of.  She is talking fast, her trademark. Miranda Adams speaks quickly. It causes people to become caught up with her latest obsession.

     “Our viewers have the BEST taste!” Miranda tells me.

She has said this all along, pleased so far with the choice of dresses for the bride, tuxes for the groom and his Best Man, and bridesmaid’s dresses. Miranda loved the ring the viewers picked and the hairstyle, an upswept casual yet elegant affair,chosen for the bride. She even was pleased with the choice of dresses for the mothers of the bride and groom. The only thing she disagreed with was venue. Miranda wanted the wedding to take place at TAVERN ON THE GREEN.  She misses it so much.  Of course that didn’t happen–a disappointment for her. But Miranda came around. Today she is ecstatic over the flowers the viewers have chosen.

     I sit watching the ferry leave for Boston.  Listening to Miranda talk about the TODAY SHOW wedding now I want to tell her I am falling apart.  Sage, my teenage daughter is pregnant. I believe my husband loves men.  The family crisis we are having here on Cape is that my baby sister’s husband has been kidnapped.  Instead, I tell Miranda that I will not be able to attend the wedding planned in Boston for Friday Night.  As Miranda informs me that she will take care of it I pretend to be taking notes about the TODAY SHOW wedding later this month, never letting on to Miranda over the phone that my life is falling apart.

 

 

Emily_______________   

    Nothing is mine.  People marveled over the year at how I did it, taking care of three boys and my husband.  What was my secret to having the perfect family?  The perfect home?  How did I juggle it all so well, children, a husband and a house?  The answer was the thing it took me forty-two years of living to know.  Not a thing in this world belonged to me.

       Standing on the beach with the baby, Jolie, now I feel as if it is the moment when I first knew this, as if I am living it all over again.  Closing my eyes I want to live it again.  Feeling the ocean rush between my toes as the tide comes in I need to live it all again right now for a moment of sanity.  I am not here in this place of my life.  No, I am back a few years when it was all so perfect. 

       Nothing is mine. This realization comes over me as I fluff pillows in the living room–picking up stray toys on my route to the family room.  The house is askew with items it would not be if I had not gone to sleep when I did.  Toys belonging to the boys are everywhere.  A blanket is overthrown where my husband was seated late into the night.  Edward was reading probably after everyone went to bed.  The late hours of the night are his time.  My time is early, wee hours before dawn.  Cups are left on the counter in the kitchen.  The trash container is overstuffed.  This is what happens when I go to sleep too early, before the rest of my family.

        Most nights I attempt to stay up beyond the others, so that I can have the enjoyment of moving through the quiet house picking up stray things as I turn out lights in various rooms.  Last night that did not happen.  Exhaustion overtook me.  I climbed into the coolness of my perfectly made bed.  Beneath the covers I found sleep, escape.  This morning the house was unkempt.  It was the price of my going to bed too early.

        Because I keep a perfect home it all falls into place relatively quickly.  My neighbor,  Mrs. Gibson, taught me this.  Keep a perfect place–it will always fall back into place.  Toys are tucked into handy storage spaces.  Pillows are fluffed.  Blankets have been folded.  A light sweeping of the wooden floors is complete.  Mirrors are being wiped.  The stray cups and saucers my husband and the kids left out are in the dishwasher.  I have the dishwasher running already.  A second load of laundry is being tortured in the washing machine.  Towels have been neatly folded,ironing prepared to be ironed.  In twenty minutes I will begin to make a breakfast of waffles, French Toast, pancakes, eggs, muffins, bacon, sausage, oatmeal– all from scratch.  My mother never made anything from scratch.  We always ate in the car, on the road as she liked to call it back then.  It is five-forty in the morning.

      Although I wash, dry, fold and iron six loads of laundry each day I only own four sets of clothes.  Two of these sets are clothes I wear only in the house, ragged shorts and a T-shirt for summer and worn corduroy pants with an out of shape turtleneck for winter.  I wear these clothes only in the home, every single day of each season.  The other two sets of clothes are the ones I wear when I go out to bring our daughter to school or to do errands.  They are duplicates of the others but in better shape.  I only wear two colors, navy and black, because they do not show stains.  Mrs. Gibson has informed me that I only wear one color–navy because she says black is not really a color.  My neighbor has spent a great deal of time explaining things to me.  She knows a certain glee instructing me.

      When I first arrived in the neighborhood five years ago Mrs. Gibson took me under her wing.  I was a mess, unable to live up to the standards of North Oak Park.  Left on my own I would repeat the mess my own mother was when we were young.  Mrs. Gibson stood at the bus stop with her six children.

      “It’ll get easier once you have  a schedule, Emily!” she told me.

I’d nodded, not believing her.  The house was a mess, lawn overgrown.  I could not cook a meal.  That was when I only had one child. The stay-at-home-mother role was not for me.  I turned to Mrs. Gibson for help.  She put me on a schedule.

       Stepping outside I move down the driveway to fetch the morning paper each day.  On weekend mornings I include the paper with a breakfast tray I serve my Husband.  Edward enjoys the Sunday Paper with his breakfast.  News of this spread quickly on the play lots.  Women I did not know, informed at play dates at the park by nannies who had been made aware of the rumors by other domestic help, spoke to me about it.  They said that I should not do it, that I was the one who should be served breakfast in bed by my husband.  I could no picture Edward serving me in bed.  Mrs. Gibson said they were envious.  I did not do it to arouse envy or anger.  Mrs. Gibson had told me early on to do something nice for my husband at least once a week.  Breakfast in bed on the weekends became that thing.

      The gardens I tend are also the talk  of the neighborhood.  Although they are not as vast or as original as Mrs. Gibson’s the fact that I have three cutting gardens along with two very attractive flower gardens I keep untouched plus a healthy vegetable garden causes a stir.  I know a certain pride over this.  On my way down the driveway to get the newspaper I cut several of whatever is in bloom for my husband’s breakfast tray.

       On this particular Sunday I am remembering I view my gardens with a critical eye.  The newspaper I have fetched from the driveway for my wife is beneath my arm as I clip flowers to include with Edward’s breakfast tray.  I come out of the house as a blob of shadow beneath the sun.  This is what I am these days–a blob.

      Standing in the center of my driveway I think about the one disappointing fact about my family life as I watch my neighbors ushering their kids for church.  My family does not attend church.  Edward and I were not married in church.  A justice of the peace performed our ceremony.  Once we relocated from Michigan where we met in college I attempted to get our family to church.  We were stressed and running late before our third was born.  I was off my schedule because of church.  Finally we gave up the idea of attending church all together.

       Because of poor judgment our youngest was not born in Oak Park at West Suburban Hospital the way we planned it.  Late In the pregnancy we took a drive to Madison, Wisconsin to visit my sister Joyce then our college friends Karl and Paula Lambert who were already married when we met them at Ann Arbor.  They live in Madison, where we traveled for a day trip.

       Labor came fast and furious.  We had been expecting the forty-three hour ordeal our other boys had given us.  It did not happen that way.  The youngest was born at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.  Exhausted when it was time to leave the hospital after the birth Edward pushed me in a wheelchair.  We followed Paula Lambert through the hospital in a daze.

       During our extended visit Paula and Karl had been telling us that they did not practice religion.  Instead they did good deeds.  It was evident in their lifestyle.  I secretly envied the sloppy house on Willy Street in a funky part of Madison Karl and Paula lived in.  Edward, of course, was curious how they made their money–both of them working from home as artists.  Most of all I observed how relaxed and normal their two sons appeared to be.  Their view on religion was of interest to me.

       As we followed Paula Lambert through Saint Mary’s Hospital I could barely see straight after the birth of our youngest who slept in my arms, exhausted and emotionally spent.

       “I parked somewhere…” Paula stated, leading us through the empty corridors of the hospital late at night.  “Oh, yes.  By the statue of Mother Theresa.”Mother Theresa, even in my daze I was impressed that the hospital had a statue of Mother Theresa.  We followed Paula without a word.

       “Do you mean a state of  the Virgin Mother–Mary?” my oldest son asked finally.

This registered in my head.  We were in Saint Mary’s Hospital.

      “That’s the one,” Paula said.  “I knew it was a statue of a woman.”

Our son led us back to where he had seen the statue.  I was secretly proud of him.

       “You really don’t practice religion–do you?” I asked Paula Lambert.

       “No–only good deeds,” she stated.

This stayed with me.

       Our elderly neighbor Elvira Ramsey walks back and forth in front of her house each morning.  She only walks the length of her property.  That is as far as she allows herself to go.  Prior to this year she walked with her husband.  Now she walks alone because her husband is too ill.  Holding the newspaper and flowers I clipped from the garden intended for my husband’s breakfast tray in my hand I cross the street to where Elvira is.  She is taken back when I hand her the flowers intended for Edward‘s tray.

      “You have such beautiful flowers,” the old woman tells me.

I tell her they are not really mine.  Nothing in the world is mine.  This is the secret of life.  The thing I have been put on this planet to know.

      Standing in the waves now holding my daughter I cry recalling this, no longer able to stay in that time.  This is where I am, in the wake of Edward’s affairs.  Joel Lowell has come into my life.  He gave me Jolie.  I am with my sisters and our mother, Cape Cod where I do not want to be. There is nowhere else for me to be.  I have ost eveything.  My home, my boys, my husband–all gone.  My brother-in-law is gone, possibly dead.  How can this be my life?  It was all so perfect.  For another moment I stand on the beach until finally turning around, gathering the strength I need to go back inside to comfort my younger sister.  This is not about me.  None of this that is happening is about me right now.  Nothing in the world is mine.      

 

 

Gwen_________________

   She has called Connie Sullivan.  Of course my daughter, the baby, has phoned Connie Sullivan instead of turning to me.  All of her life in any given situation she has turned to Connie Sullivan.  In heated conversation once my oldest daughter told me Connie Sullivan was more of a mother to them than I ever was.

        “You abandoned us!” Joyce screamed the weekend I spent in Madison visiting her more than two years ago now, a winter when the city had so much snow it broke the record.  “You might not have left us the way he did but in your own was you abandoned us too!”

         “I did not!” I insisted.  “Everything I did was for you girls!”

         “Everything you did was for yourself, Mother!” Joyce said in a wild tone, her short dark hair reminding me of myself.  “You were always absent.  Your body might have been with us but that was about it.  We could tell your mind was somewhere else.  You wanted to be somewhere else!”

I turned away from her wounded, looking out over the frozen lake.  She attempted to take it back but nothing Joyce said could do that.  The accusation was already there.  It is no surprise to me that my baby called Connie Sullivan.

           The moment the woman arrived Connie Sullivan took over my role with my daughters.  She hugged and embraced them all as if they were her own.  I watched them all gathered around her.  Plain and simple Connie stood holding the baby for a long while.  My daughter fell into her.  I could hear Connie say the thing I never say.   Something I would never call her.  Pressed against her tight, short and stout, Connie Sullivan let it slip out in a deliberate action I am sure.

        “Amanda!” she whispered hard and loud into my daughter’s ear.  “Poor, sweet, Amanda!  I would do anything not to have this terrible thing happening to you!”

I saw my youngest daughter sink into her.  The way I was sure that Connie wanted her to.  Nobody ever calls her by her name, Amanda.  To us she is the baby or Tanner’s Wife.

         Seated across from Connie Sullivan now I feel left out, as if I am the intruder here with my own family.

         “How was your flight, Connie?” Emily asks now, as if suddenly recalling her manners.  “Was it okay?”

Connie gushes over the baby–Jolie.

         “I never flew first class,” Connie says.  “Amanda sent a first class ticket.  I barely ever flew, only to Disney one year.  That time I got sick, a headache I couldn’t shake once we took off on the way there and back.  It was fine.  The flight was fine.”

         “It was good of you to come,” Ruth states.  “To drop everything the way that you have.”

        “Of course!” Connie states.  “Have you heard anything?”

         “I’m catching a flight to Boston,” my youngest daughter tells Connie.  “The Boston Police are working with the FBI and Tom’s bosses at the Federal Reserve Bank.”

          “I still think that is a mistake,” Zelda says.  “You should stay here to hear from the kidnappers again.  They contacted you here.”

          “I have to go,” my daughter says.

          “I’m going to drive her to the airport at Race Point Beach you just flew into,” Joyce tells Connie, taking over as she always does when there is trouble with one of her sisters.  We are all thinking the same thing.  My daughter has been trying to reach her husband since we left.  If Tanner was kidnapped thed ay that we left he might be dead by now. 

       Prior to the ransom demand they were fighting in the kitchen, old injuries just beneath he surface.  So often they can be like children.  The baby never gets involved but the other three always fight.  Once Joyce did not speak to Ruth for more than a year after a strained Thanksgiving.   In crisis they always come together, though.  When Joyce had her breast cancer scare that same year Ruth was right by her side.  These are my girls.

         “Do you want me to come to Boston with you?” Connie Sullivan asks my youngest daughter.  “I came to help, Amanda–to be with you!”

         “No, stay here,” the baby says.  “Just knowing you are here is a help, Connie.”

         “I can come,” I offer.

         “You’ll just be in the way, Mother,” Joyce says in her authoritative tone.

My youngest nods in agreement.  I sit silent listening to my daughters talk to one another the way they often do, as if I am not even in the room.  As if I am not the one responsible for all of them.  None of them would be here without me.  Connie Sullivan stands at the center of them all, as if she somehow belongs.

 

 

Sage__________________

  

     I was born guilty.  My parents lost my brother before they had me.  They never got over that.  It filled our house up.  Growing up I thought it was somehow my fault that my older brother died.

         This baby beneath my CAPE COD sweatshirt was made on the bus.  I hate riding the bus to school.  All the cool kids sit in the back.  Popular girls who are bitches. The freaks are in the front.  Then there is the middle of the bus.  The place where my baby was made. 

          On the beach I listen to my IPOD.  The only escape from this misery my mother has brought me to.  I hate being here with my aunts.  My punishment for embarrassing my mother. 

        That’s why we came to Cape Cod.  So nobody knows I am pregnant.  I have not told anyone, not even my closest friend, Angela.  Since I’ve been showing I’ve worn sweatshirts.  June, July and August I will not be able to hide it.  That’s why my mother brought me here where nobody knows me.

       She wants me to give my baby away.  I’m not sure I can do that.  It works for her.  Nobody back home has to know about it.  We were just away for the summer at my aunt’s house in Truro, that’s what we’ll tell people.  I can hear my mother saying it already.  The only person who knows about the baby back home is Trey.  The father of the baby who wants nothing to do with it.  He won’t mind if the baby just ’goes away’ like my mother has promised me it can do if I arrange an adoption.  Behind all of her flowery talk about a couple who crave a baby is that.  My mother, like Trey, wants this baby to just go away.

        I don’t want to see or talk to anyone.  Connie Sullivan thinks I want to hear what she has to say.  As if I asked her.  Why does the whole damned world think they can talk about my baby?

       “My Amber had a baby when she was your age,” Connie tells me now, on the beach with me as if we are friends.  “A boy in high school got her pregnant.  She kept the baby.  It was hard, nearly ruined her life.  But she met a nice guy, went to school at night but finally finished college.  She’s a lawyer now.  They live in a nice house with three kids.”

I look away from her.

       “It’ll be hard but it can work out,” Connie says to me.

       “What about the father?” I ask.

       “He was never in the picture,” Connie Sullivan tells me.  “Too immature to be a father when Amber had Danny.  He’s no better now from what I have heard.”   

I nod.  She might as well be talking about Trey.  He’s off enjoying his summer while I am here hiding my mother’s embarrassment over me, keeping up appearances that are always so important to this family.

FAMILY MAN

 

Joyce_______________

      Alone in the bathroom I do not look at the mirror because I do not want to see myself.  It’s important that I do not see my reflection as I say to myself the thing I have been aching to speak.  I love Tanner!  My brother-in-law has been kidnapped.  He is missing.  I might never see him again.  Our mother thinks he is dead.  He is my sister’s husband but that doesn’t matter in this moment.  I love him.  This can’t be happening.  It’s all I can do to resist running out of this bathroom and yelling to everyone who will listen that I love Tanner.   I love my brother-in-law.  Everything in me right now is afraid I might never see him again.

       When I first spotted Tanner at the anniversary party in River Forest last month he took my breath away.  It stopped me to see him.  His short haircut made go weak.  It boasted his tanned features.  I stood watching him move across the lawn of the estate in River Forest for a few long moments.  

        Emily’s older neighbor Elvira Ramsey was at the anniversary party.  My sister insisted she come.  The woman was happy enough to be there for awhile then wanted to go home to check on her husband.  Tanner offered to drive her.

        “You’ll get lost,” his wife stated.  “You didn’t grow up in Oak Park.”

        “I will not,” he said.  “I’m capable of finding my way back.”

        “You won’t ask directions,” my younger sister smiled.

A grin spread across Tanner’s face.  I could not keep my eyes off of him in his tansuit, a black and white striped tie knotted tight at his tanned throat.

         “He never asks directions,” his wife laughed.

         “I’ll go with him,” I said.

A look of surprise came over my sister’s face.  She nodded.

         “Joyce will get you back.  She knows Oak Park like the back of her hand,” she told her husband.  “You’ll be fine with Joyce.”

Tanner nodded.  We moved across the lawn with Elvira Ramsey.  Nearing the Emily’s van Tanner loosened the tight knot of his tie.  I watched his fingers open the top collar button of his dress shirt.  Everything from the white handkerchief in the pocket of his suit jacket to the gold tie clip he wore made me want him. He stood removing his suit jacket before he climbed into the van.  The muscles of his back showed through his white dress shirt and the crewneck undershirt he wore beneath it.  I was lost to my attraction to him then, I knew.  All of my life I have had a weakness for men in undershirts.  Sitting alongside him in the car any thoughts I had  about him being my sister’s husband slipped away.  My brother-in-law’s smell made me want to weep.

        Behind us the older woman spoke on and on about Oak Park.  We both listened to her the way people at the anniversary party for Ruth and Owen had listened to her stories.

     “Elvira Ramsey can tell a story.  That’s what people always said about me when I was younger,” she said.  “It was my downfall.  People came to avoid me because of this trait.  I was always good at elevating small events into grandiose happenings.  People either loved or hated that about me.”

         “A natural born storyteller,” Tanner grinned, behind the wheel of Emily’s van. 

The old woman continued to tell us her stories about Oak Park when the Chicago Suburb was called Oak Ridge.  A saw mill had been along the Des Plaines River, she said.  Elvira told us that she thought some of the structure from the mill was still there but it was down deep in mud and water. 

        “It seems like only yesterday when I was falling in love with Earl Ramsey,” she said.  “He took me to that mill by the river.  There was something romantic about it.  A big adventure is what it was.”

         “I remember being a girl listening to stories my aunts and grandmother told passed down to them of a time when Oak Park was a wilderness first settled by Joseph Kettlestrings,” she said.  “First Oak Park was called Kettlestrings Grove then later Oak Ridge before it finally became Oak Park.”

Outside her home across the street from Emily’s house we stood on the porch.  Tanner had held Elvira’s arm as he helped her up the steps.  She reached into her purse to pay him as she stood in her opened doorway.

         “For getting me home safe and sound,” she said.

         “No–really!”

He held his hands up, palms out.

        “Elvira Ramsey always pays her way,” she said, folding a dollar bill into Tanner’s hand.  “Please, take it!”

I saw Tanner nod.  He held the dollar as Elvira Ramsey stepped into the house.  Alone together on the porch my brother-in-law laughed.  He removed a silver money clip      from his suit pants pocket. 

       “Want to go try to find that old mill she was talking about?” he said, boyish grin on his face.

       “I promised I’d get you back to the party,” I told him.

       “After we find the mill,” he said.

The sun flickered on his face.  His shirt and tie conspired to make him beautiful to me in that moment, like a song I’d never heard.  Watching him clip the dollar bill to it I fell in love with the clip he held, the classiest thing I thought I had ever seen.  I fell in love with my brother-in-law.

          Mud threatened Tanner’s black tasseled leather loafers I knew my sister had paid a fortune for.  The heels of my own shoes poked into deeper than they should.

          “As far as we can go!” he grinned.  “Adventure over.”

I nodded.  He waved his arm suddenly, mosquitoes in his short blond hair and on his crisp white dress shirt.

          “Sounded like a better adventure before the bugs and mud!” he laughed.

I nodded.  We made our way back to the van, away from the green water of the river.  Later I would follow him into the woods when the boys took him ‘captive’ but his wife would be there.  I had hoped to have a bit of the moments we shared near the river looking for the mill Elvira Ramsey had told us about back.  But he was with my baby sister, where he belonged.

            Standing in the bathroom now I begin to sob.  Dropping to my knees on the cool tile I feel stupid.  How could I be so stupid?  He is my sister’s husband!  Tanner is a Family Man!  Nothing would ever have happened with him.  Now I might never see him again.  Holding my hand over my eyes attempting to be quiet I try to keep back the tears–the way I have kept them back all of my life.  Connie can stay on Cape.  I am going to back to Boston with my baby sister, to be with Tanner.

 

Hank________________

  The woman is gone!  Frances fell asleep on his fucking watch!  We didn’t fucking tie her up.  Tanner is wrapped up like a fucking Christmas present but her we didn’t fucking tie up.  Frances was watching her.  I feel asleep listening tot hem talking.  The talking was good because it kept Frances from getting in her pants or fucking my brother-in-law up the ass the way he wanted to.  Frances was fighting those urges.  Keeping the woman up with him talking, free like she was one of us instead of tied like a dog on the floor like Tanner was, made the difference for him he told me.  I listened to him.  Fuck!  The woman is gone!  Just like that this whole thing is fucked up!     

  Wild with rage now Frances kicks his heavy boot into Tanner’s chest.  Snot runs from my brother-in-law’s fucking nostrils.  He chokes through the tie gagging him.

      “That ain’t going to find her!” I tell Frances.  “Leave him alone!  Zelda don’t want him hurt!  That’s why she wanted us to wear the fucking masks!”

I see Tanner’s eyes go wide.  His face falls like he’s been kicked again realizing his sister is the one doing this to him.  I knew he recognized me.  He knew it was me but probably convinced himself Zelda wasn’t a part of it.

      “We got to find that fucking woman!” I yell to my cousin.

     “She ain’t getting far out there in the dark!” Frances tells me.  “Miles of fucking woods all around this place!”

I nodded, small relief.  That was true.  Woods were everywhere.  We could find her.

     “One of us looks for her!” I say, leaning over to yank my brother-in-law up to a sitting position again.

His chest heaves, tails of his white shirt hanging out over his suit pants now.

     “One of us stays with him!” I say.  “The other goes after her!”

     “In the fucking dark?” Frances asks.

He doesn’t like the woods in the dark.  It’s early morning, getting fucking light I reason.

     “Things crawling around out there,” Frances says.  “Fuck no!”

     “Stay with him!”  I tell my cousin.  “I’ll go after her!”

Frances nods.  I open the door of the cabin to light that nearly blinds me against the dawn of a cold morning for late June and sound that stops my fucking heart.

     “Down on the ground!” a distorted voice through some type of funnel it seems orders me.  “Police!  Down On the ground!  Get down!”

Against a line of fucking trees I see them.  An army of fucking cops with guns drawn.  The fucking woman named Barb is with them.  She didn’t have to get too far.  Fucking cops surrounding the place like they was looking for us.  Fuck!  I drop to the ground, arms over my head.  Behind me I see Frances holding a gun to Tanner’s head.  My fucking eyes close at the sound of the fucking gun going off.  Frances is the one dropping to the ground.  He is hit, down.  Gone in a fucking minute.  Tanner is on his knees still tied and gagged, wild relief all over his fucking face, as I am being handcuffed and pulled to my own feet.  It’s over, fucking over.     

 

Zelda_____________

   The world is crashing down around me as I pace back and forth in this room that I hate.  My brother’s wife has decorated the whole house nautical.  This room is the worst, with a sailboat and stones in the fireplace.  My eyes focus on the damned sailboat now as my world falls apart.

    Hank is not answering the cell hone I gave him.  That is a bad sign.  Something is wrong.  I can feel it.  Something has gone terribly wrong. 

         On the television the news anchor has said that a wide scale search is taking place in Maine for the missing wife of a congressman.  New worry over the cabin where Hank is keeping my brother spikes in me.  That’s the reason I am drinking, hiding it so nobody in this house realizes what I am doing.

        Gwen Coleman is my biggest problem.  She is on me like a leach.  Stay off of me Old woman!  That’s what I want to scream.  She is distracted by Connie Sullivan arriving.  A woman Gwen seems to hate more than I hate her.  Since Hyannis Gwen and I are getting along better.   

       “The dress looks great on you!” Gwen said in her screeching tone as I came down in the rose ‘frock’ as she called it on Main Street in Hyannis.  ‘The shoes and purse are perfect!  Pearls on your neck and your wrist, a terrific touch, Zelda!”

Gwen gushed over me as if we were girlfriends.  Tanner’s wife was distracted.  That’s when Connie arrived.  Gwen went all crazy-looking insane again.  My brother’s wife is going up to Boston.

       “I’ll come with you!” Gwen offered.

She was told she would be in the way.  Connie offered to go.

       “Just knowing you are here with the kids gives me comfort,” my brother’s wife said.  “Stay with the kids, Connie!”

A slap in the face to Gwen.  I could see it when they left.  The way Gwen watched out the window after them, like a dog left behind by a family.

      When we were kids Gwen Coleman would fixate on something.  Nobody else seemed to see it.  Our parents were too drunk all of the time as they ushered her into the house.  Gwen put that crazy gaze on someone or something.  Then it was over.  Whatever Gwen Coleman wanted Gwen Coleman got.  As much as I always hated her a part of me always admired how Gwen always got what she wanted. 

       I need to do that now.   That ransom money will be mine.  It should be mine!  I always thought Tanner got more money than I did! I would never do something so bad to Tanner if he would have continued giving me the money that is really mine!

       The voice on the phone surprises me.  It is Tanner’s.  He is calling for his wife, to warn her.  My brother is warning her about me.

       “I’m safe!” he says.  “Long story, but we’re safe!  Zelda and Hank did this, Amanda!  I’m calling the police down there.  Zelda did this to us!”

My world explodes, falls apart.  Never in my life did I envision my own brother’s words destroying everything for me like this. 

    Without even taking the time to erase the message I rush upstairs to pack, a frantic effort, then out to the garage where my brother’s cars are parked.  The vintage convertible starts, but the garage door doesn’t open.  I climb out and rush behind the car to open it.  The power is out.  Because it is an automatic door it will not budge.  Gwen Coleman steps into the garage.  Everything has fallen apart.

 

 

Gwen_____________

        Family.  Connie Sullivan is more family to my daughters than I am.  The way that they rushed off, leaving me behind, proves it.  All of them went to the airport together, even Connie.  I am alone in the house with Zelda, who I think is drinking again.   The two of us left behind.

          Cape Cod sunshine bounces off of the white walls and wood floors of my daughter’s house as I move through it.  Zelda is upstairs throwing things around in her room.  Probably drunk, I think.  Somehow it makes me think about my husband.  Ron didn’t drink often but when he did that was how he got.  Not mad and angry, but frantic the way things sound in Zelda’s room upstairs right now.

          It wasn’t always like that for Ron.  He was good at the start when we were young, even romantic.  Ron proposed to me on the porch of the Grand Hotel, Mackinaw Island.  We’d gone to Michigan that weekend.  The hotel was too expensive for us so we stayed in a tiny little place, rode bikes.  We weren’t dressed right for the hotel.  I told him that.  But he insisted we go up on the porch where all the chairs were.  That’s where he proposed to me, down his knee and everything.  Ron was different then.  He wasn’t the man I was married to all those years  who was out of work with no ambition.  A man who got our neighbor’s teenage daughter pregnant.  The man I killed and buried in the yard beneath my garden when our girls were all still so young.  There was no sign of that man then, not that day on the porch of the Grand Hotel on Mackinaw Island when I said yes to his marriage proposal.

      Standing near a set of leather chairs facing each other in front of a corner fireplace in my favorite room of the house, where my youngest daughter has a sailboat in the firebox of the fireplace with a pile of stones from the shore surrounding it, I see the red light on the telephone flickering.  A message.  Someone has phoned, possibly from the airport.  It has to be for me.  One of my daughters needing something from me.  As I am moving toward the phone I see Zelda come down the stairs with a suitcase, moving toward the garage in a hurry. 

       Tanner’s voice is on the phone.  He is unable to reach his wife on her cell phone because she is probably flying already.  His voice is urgent.  Listening to it stops me cold.  I move toward the garage where I saw Zelda headed.      

       In the garage the car is running.  Paul’s old convertible.  The one he always drove around Hyannis Port all those years ago.  How I loved that car, pretending that I was Jackie Kennedy when Paul drove down Sea Street in it, up into Hyannis Port along the ocean.  That stretch of Nantucket SoundI loved.  Zelda is out of the car, standing behind it.  I see her attempting to open the garage door but it will not budge.  Power has probably gone out in the garage again.  I heard my daughters complaining about it earlier in the week.  Zelda turns toward me.  Without a word I slide into the opened driver’s door of the convertible, shifting it into reverse.  The car rolls in slow motion then stops.  Climbing out of the car I see Zelda pinned between it and the closed garage door.  The convertible is pressed against her legs.  A look of wild panic is all over her face.

       Zelda could be a beautiful woman.  She has her father’s good looks and mother’s fine posture.  But the drinking has aged her oval face and softened her at the waist.  I can see dark roots in her dyed blonde hair now.  She is trapped between the car and the garage door, wearing the  dress with roses on it that we bought together on Main Street in Hyannis the other day.

      “Gwen…” she says.

      “You did this to my daughter?” I ask her.  “To your own brother?”

      “I had to…” she says.  “I needed the money!  Tanner wouldn’t give me the money.  He said he’s finished giving me money.  I needed the money …”

Exhaust from the car rises up around her.

      “You do this to us?” I ask.  “Our family?”

      “Gwen…”

She is not going anywhere.  I start to turn away from her.

      “Gwen!”

The exhaust surrounding her is starting to choke her words.  She calls out my name again.  I can see her pounding her hands on the trunk of the car. Zelda lifts the bottom of her dress up around her face, covering her nose and mouth with it against the exhaust from the car she is standing over. She twists, slamming her hands tangled in the bottom of her dress now against the closed garage door.  The light from the garage catches the pearls on her wrist.

      “GWEN!”

Without another word I step out of the garage, closing the service door tight behind me as I do.

       Back inside the house I erase the message on the phone from Tanner.  The phone rings.  My daughter Ruth is on the line  She tells me that they are going to go to Wellfleetfor the bonfire I have been nagging them to have to try to forget what is happening.  I tell them I will be waiting for them outside the house.  Zelda is not feeling well, I say to Ruth.  She won’t be able to join us. Once I am off the phone I sit listening to Zelda’s fading voice and the sound of the running car in the garage as I begin to read a magazine. 

A LIE

Owen_______________

    

   He is not wearing a suit. That’s the first thing I notice about him. The fact that he isn’t wearing a suit and tie the way that the majority of the other men at this overblown occasion are catches my attention. There are a few men in dress shirts and khaki pants but they do not stand out the way that he does. Instead they fall into a pitiful group who appear to have somehow gotten the wrong invitation.

      I am one of those men, in a summer sweater and dress pants.  One other man my age wears a very colorful long-sleeved cotton shirt buttoned down the front into a pair of brown dress pants. Like myself the look does not make him appear hip or cool the way I  am sure he intended. It is desperate and sad. We are both too old for the look.

     My eyes are on the tall dark haired man standing in the row of seats before me, brave enough to wear a golf shirt to this event. From behind him I can detect the outline of a sleeveless white undershirt through the material of his pale yellow golf shirt. Straining my eyes I see that it is a knit shirt he is wearing, tucked into a pair of tan dress pants. An impressive brown leather belt circles his trim waist, matching the brown leather loafers a pair of tan socks on his feet disappear into. As he turns a bit I see that it is not a golf shirt at all that the man is wearing, rather a button-down knit I saw at TALBOLT’S for seven hundred and fifty dollars when I first arrived in Boston yesterday.

     We are standing for the ceremony now, two people I do not care about being married against the backdrop of Boston Harbor and the city skyline. Two hundred of us, at least, are gathered on this early summer night at the Hyatt Hotel near the airport for the nuptials. I am in the last row of fancy chairs facing the water, ignoring the couple being married as I study the back of the man standing directly in front of me. He holds his arms behind his back now. I note the expensive watch on his tanned left wrist. In his right hand he holds the program we have all been given for the wedding. It prevents me from seeing the thing I am most desperate to see, his left hand. I want to know if he is wearing a wedding ring.

     A friend of my wife’s is the bride. Ruth agreed to do the wedding for Melissa as a favor. I came to meet Ruth for the wedding.. Shortly before the event was to begin,when I was already trapped in this row of seats, my wife’s assistant informed me that Ruth was not going to make it. She was caught up in everything happening down in Truro.  I stood thinking I should have known, wondering how I could flee without causing a scene before he arrived. The man in front of me.

     If I am honest about it I am as guilty as my wife is. I might be angry she is not here but my reasons for being here are not pure.  I just could not stand another moment watching my neighbor go for his paper in his underwear or leaning against the kitchen window to see bikers using all their muscles, men in spandex, to pedal to the top of the hill where we live.  That’s the real reason I came to Boston for this wedding with the agreement I would go down to Truro with Ruth and Sage for the weekend, possibly longer.

      As the ceremony concludes the man in front of me pulls his hands apart from behind his back. I watch his tanned fingers separate, all of the muscles in his beautiful back moving beneath the expensive material of his knit shirt. My eyes rush toward his left hand. In this moment I expect my heart to drop if I detect a wedding ring. Oddly enough it does not. Instead I close my eyes a moment with the realization–he is married.

     It is obvious to me now that he is married. I wonder why I couldn’t see it sooner. Maybe I didn’t want to see it. They are two couples, standing right in front of me. The man in the loud shirt causing him to look desperate like me is married to the woman in brown alongside of him. Next to him the man in the yellow knit shirt I can see the outline of his white ribbed A-shirt strained across his broad shoulders through is married to the overweight woman in the yellow dress alongside him. Overweight or pregnant? She is pregnant. He is married, his wife heavy with child.

     In front of me the man in the yellow knit shirt stands grinning, sunglasses covering his eyes the way that they have since he has arrived. I have wanted to see his eyes the whole while we have been watching this sunset wedding. Heaviness fills me for a moment. He is married. Suddenly the thickness in my chest lifts. I don’t care–I tell myself.  It doesn’t matter if he is married. Who cares if he is married? I am married. It doesn’t matter. We are here in this place, away from our lives.  Anything seems possible. I want the man in front of me.

   I thought that this wedding would bore me. The fact that I do not know any of the people here bothered me as I contemplated it. Early in our marriage I stopped attending Ruth’s events for this reason. I had no desire to be at this union because I do not like the bride, Ruth’s friend– Melissa.

     After the ceremony we stand waiting for the newly married couple to pass us. I make a mental note of the detailed embroidery on Melissa’s Vera Wang bridal gown. The dress is not bad, off the shoulders with a flowing train creating a dramatic look against the backdrop of the harbor and the city. Weather for this evening event is perfect.  June could find us cold and damps still. Instead we have summerheat with a cool breeze. The clouds parted as the couple spoke their vows, as if instructed to by my wife. All of the guests attending are giddy with Friday Night excitement, the type I’ve witnessed accompanying passengers on the Fast ferry from Hyannis to Nantucket when Ruth and I visited Tanner and Amanda in Hyannis Port a few years ago. Like my wife everything about this affair is perfect.

     Standing near me the man I am watching in the yellow knit shirt grins, all of his handsome features on his tanned face breaking into a wide smile. He laughs, a charismatic sound.  This man’s dark brown hair is cut short. I can see a gold necklace around his tanned throat glistening in the sunlight, dangling toward the thick bush-like hair rising out of the opened collar of his shirt.  I imagine a heavy mass of the hair gathered around the strong definition of chest outlined by his shirt.

     As we are waiting for the bride and groom the man I am watching begins to smoke. He removes the cigarettes from a place I do not see, holding one between his lips suddenly. I am shocked by the brazen behavior, knowing both my wife and the bride would be horrified someone smoked so quickly after the ceremony, before Melissa was even received. It is unbelievable to me that this man picks this particular moment to smoke, still wearing his sunglasses. I can’t believe that watching him do this does not make me turn away in disgust. Instead it draws me deeper. I want this boyish man with the horrible manners who has a filthy habit I have always hated more than ever.

     Melissa shrugs past me with her usual vacant glance, as if I am not really here. All of her dark brown hair is beautiful, swept up with a series of pins. No veil for this bride. I remember Ruth telling me that Melissa did not want anything covering her face. Of course she didn’t. Now I must admit that Melissa knew what she was doing. Everything about her is perfect.

     Alongside of me a woman in a pink dress smiles and grins, hugging Melissa. She kisses the groom, fat and balding. He is older than  any of us it seems. Mellissa’s new husband, Ben, beams beneath what appears to be a painful sunburn. This man makes me look good. Melissa married down.

     The man I am watching kisses Melissa. She turns away, disgusted I am sure by the smell of smoke on his breath. She has probably seen him smoking, even though he has stomped out the cigarette beneath he hard sole of his expensive brown loafer. Melissa, like my wife, never misses a thing. This I know.

     “Your husband’s a flirt!” Melissa says to the pregnant woman standing alongside the man in the yellow shirt.

I see the woman nod.

     “That’s why I keep him on a tight leash,” the woman responds, tugging at his arm where his bicep bulges against the short sleeve of his knit shirt.

Melissa and Ben move on.

     Women should not listen to morning television or believe what they read in magazines I tell myself now. Shows like the one my wife does segments for are the culprits. All spring I have noticed women who should not be wearing them stuffed into tight, flimsy, floral dresses and skirts. This wedding seems to be a climax of an entire season of bad taste. The women surrounding me wear everything from frocks cut and cropped too short or small for them to what appears to be yards of material resembling bad wallpaper. One woman wears a long red gown the man with her has to carry so she does not trip. I am about to laugh when I realize that the woman in the red gown, all f these women in their poor taste, are with someone. None of them is alone with their snide sense of false superiority –like me.

     Heels stick into the lawn in front of the hotel. It is a hideous display rescued only by the dramatic background the wedding is playing out against. I think about Melissa–then my wife. Once again they knew what they were doing.

     People gather near a table facing the hotel for food, fruit and salads to hold off starvation while we wait for the wedding photos to be taken. For more than fifty minutes the photographer poses Melissa and Ben in front of the harbor beneath he fading light of the sky. The entire wedding party is gathered, men in grey pin-striped suits with white shirts and pale purple ties. All of the women are in purple dresses Ruth said Melissa picked to make herself look good. Two men hold Melissa’s mother up between them. Draped in an off-white dress the heavy-set woman leans on them heavily. Ruth has told me that Melissa’s mother has no ailments. She walks slow, demanding help, Melissa informed Ruth years go for dramatic affect. It works. Watching the woman I begin to understand a little bit more about Melissa, enough to almost feel sorry for her.

          The bar is the center of attention. I stand near it, not ready to order a drink yet. Not far from me the man I am watching in the knit shirt holds a beer in his hand, raising it up and down as he speaks. He and his wife talk only to the two people they sat with during the ceremony. I wonder if, like myself, they do not really know many people here. Who are they? How did Melissa manage to rope them into this drama?

     From where I am standing I can barely determine what the man in the knit shirt is drinking. Straining my eyes I read KRAIT BEER on the gold bottle. A client of Ruth’s demanded KRAIT BEER for an event once. My wife claimed it was because it was less gassy so he could drink more of it. I watch the man in the knit shirt raise the bottle to his lips, seeing his throat bulge a bit as he drinks.

     Once it is almost dark he finally removes his sunglasses. But I can’t see his eyes from where I am standing. When he turns I see that the front of his knit shirt has dark lines running down it–part of the design. They make the shirt seem somehow more formal to me, appropriate for Melissa’s overblown wedding. For some reason this is important to me.

     At the bar I see him approaching the man in the loud shirt who looks desperate.  Closer to them now I can detect the many lines of the older man’s face. The sun has not treated him well. I have been wondering how old the man in the yellow knit shirt is, guessing the youngest being in his late twenties and oldest somewhere mid-thirties. His friend is considerably older, a man who reminds me of women I often see from behind who have nice bodies with beautiful hair but are a terrible surprise when they turn around with their well-seasoned faces. Close to the man in the knit shirt now I turn away. He smells good, like a summer morning or the ocean on a hot day. Ruth tells me smell is everything.

     A dozen scenarios run through my head, way I can meet him. If I bump into him will he say he is sorry? What if I spill a drink on him the way that people do in the movies? Will we go off together somewhere so he can remove the expensive shirt while I try to clean it? Does that ever really work? His wife will clean it for him. He has a wife at his side. How can I meet him?

     The blonde behind the bar looks at the man in the yellow knit shirt as if he can fill an insatiable desire deep within her, erase the angst of yearning and longing that she knows. For a second or two they linger like this.  At last he pulls away from her. He is a tease, I realize. This is probably as close to an affair as the man will ever get. Her gaze follows him, a look suggesting that just knowing him might somehow make her whole.

     Across the lawn there is a sudden chaos. Melissa is posing for more photos,screaming because her dress is blowing too wildly now. The two men I am watching are with their wives still, heading to dinner. He is smoking another cigarette. How will I approach him? What will I say to him. Why will he want to be with me? When did all of this become so important? I was angry with Ruth for not showing up at this wedding, then I saw him. I watch him smile and laugh as he smokes and drinks. Nothing else in the world seems to matter to me now, except meeting him. 

    Watching the man in the yellow knit shirt as I wonder how I can meet him, a thought comes to me as I watch him moving toward dinner. I will ask him for a cigarette. If I can get him alone I will ask him for a cigarette. That’s how I will approach him. The rest will have to happen from there. Another thought. What if he lights it for me? Men don’t do that for other men. Do they? Will I have to smoke it? I can’t smoke it.  I won’t!

     Without warning the wives leave their men as they approach the table for dinner. They must be going to the LADIES’ ROOM together I think. I stand awkward a moment. He is close enough that I can touch him. His back is to me. I close my eyes.

       I decide what to do. Before I am able to think about it I bang into him from behind. The softness of his knit shirt delivers everything the look of it promises. It resonates against the skin of my hand as I begin to apologize. His beer hits the ground hard, the bottle not breaking but spilling out onto the grass.

     “I’m so sorry!” I say, exaggerated tone.

     “It’s okay,” he tells me.

This close to him I can see his eyes. They pull me into him. For a second I am unable to speak.

     “I’ll buy you another…”

     “That’s okay,” he tells me, smashing his cigarette beneath the of his dress shoe.

     “No! I want to buy you one!”

     “Really–it’s cool,” he tells me. “They’re free anyway.”

Of course.  Open bar.

     “I should know that,” I mumble. “My wife planned this wedding.”

     “You’re married to Ruth Larson?” a female voice asks.

Their wives have returned.  My heart sinks a bit as I nod.

     “I watch her on the TODAY SHOW!”

The older man’s wife says this. I grin, thinking about Ruth on television.

     “Kitty did a baby shower your wife led in a segment for me just last month!”

The older woman smiles. Kitty–I realize.

     “Where is your wife?” the man with the knit shirt’s wife asks me, glancing around for Ruth.

     “New York because of the show,” I lie, wanting to keep their interest in Ruth and the TODAY SHOW.

     “Are you alone?” Kitty asks.

I nod.

     “Join us!” Kitty says.

     “I  couldn’t…”

     “Millicent will be joining the people from Melissa’s health club!” the man in the yellow knit shirt grins, moving place cards.

     “It does not say Millicent!” his wife smiles at her husband. “You are so bad!”

     “Something odd with an M,” he grins. “Who names their kid Millicent anyway?”

There is a small laughter amongst us.

     “Peter,” the man in the yellow shirt says, offering me his hand.

     “Owen,” I say, weakening at the feel of his skin against mine as I take hold of his hand to shake it.

For a second I want to study the deepness of his tan or drink in his face which I have barely looked at. Instead I look away so that my eyes don’t betray me.

     Standing in the line for the ferry the next morning I watch and wait like I always do. The man in the yellow knit shirt named Peter is in the line wearing different clothing, white T-shirt and navy shorts. Sandals are on his tanned feet. He is with his wife and their friends. I can hear Kitty laugh from where I stand. The sun burns down on us. We are waiting for the ferry to Cape Cod, Provincetown.

     Dinner was just that last night at the wedding–dinner. Polite conversation, most of it from Kitty about my wife. She boasted over Ruth’s talents. When it was time to dance I was sitting alone, the man named Peter in the yellow knit shirt drunk and horny all over his wife. After a few moments of watching the two couples I went up to my room to sleep in the bed that was too large.

     Now I am this line for the ferry because I saw them in it, reconsidering my thoughts of returning to San Francisco .  Peter and his wife are with Kitty and her husband. They did not see me. I bought a ticket, asking where the ferry was going. The girl selling tickets out of a window told me Provincetown.  I decided then to go to Truro where Ruth and Sage are.

     On the ferry I deposit my suitcase, looking for them. My mind races with the conversation that we will have, their surprised glances when we all realize we are going to the same place. Peter in his white t-shirt and shorts this morning. The sea breeze in our faces. Nearly two hours of conversation on the ocean.

     Over the rail I see them, down on the dock. They are not  on the ferry. I am! Someone the four of them wave to is against the rail I stand near, waving to them. Peter is not going to be chatting with me in the ocean air. My heart pounds. I move toward the rack holding luggage for my suitcase. This is wrong. I have to get off of this ferry. My feet hustle me toward the ramp where the last passengers are boarding. There is a chance to get off. I have to take it. This wrong.

     Conversation with Peter is not waiting for me. That is done, gone. He is gone,with his wife and their friends. I am not a part of it. Boston does not have anything for me. I stay on the ferry to Provincetown.

     As Boston disappears behind me, heavy bruised blue clouds hanging over the cluster of buildings making up the city skyline along the harbor,  I look out onto the water. My mind is alive with worry of what is waiting.  There might not be room for me at the house in Truro unless I sleep with Ruth.  Of course I will be expected to sleep with my wife.  We have separate rooms at home.  I will find a place to stay in Provincetown.  Even though I don’t know the town or anybody there.

     I know now as I sit alone on this ferry surrounded by excitement over the journey why people love the water. The truth dances upon it, on each and every wave, despite the mysteries of the deep. There’s no escaping it. The wide open sky above the ocean allows no place to hide. Swallowed up by the varying shades of grey where the sea meets the clouds I sit on this ferry to Provincetown –heading toward truth.   

 

Joyce_______________

       When we were young our mother did what was good for her.  All of her decisions were based on what was good for her.  I have always hated her for that.  Now I am about to do the same thing myself.  Watching my brother-in-law come in from talking to the police I am prepared to do what is good for me.  No matter what it does to anyone else.

       I am wearing the lilac skirt that goes to the suit I wore for the last concert this school year.  My legs look great in the slit of the skirt. The suit I flew from Madison to Boston in.  I wore the suit to fly back to Boston with my baby sister, Amanda earlier tonight.  Amanda is on the last flight back to Provincetown, to get the children.  Tanner wants to see his kids.  They will be here first thing in the morning.  I watched Tanner talk to the police, dressed in a navy blue pin-striped suit and patriotic tie his wife picked out for him to talk to press and authorities.  Appearances always in this family, I tell myself– Gwen’s idea.  She drilled it into us when we were young.  Looking in the mirror at myself I am pleased.  I am wearing just the skirt with a full slip.  For a long few moments I stay in my room looking in the mirror.  Ready, I step out into the hallway.

       The condo is quiet.  Tanner and I are alone now.  Amanda phoned from the plane as she was about to take off.  She is meeting the rest of the family for a bonfire in Wellfleet, heading back to the condo in Boston on Beacon Hill in the morning—with the children.    The bonfire was probably our mother’s idea.  She insisted since we arrived.  That is just like her.  This is the woman who packed us up and drove across the country to impose herself on people all over Cape Cod after her husband abandoned her with four young children, never to return again.  Helen managed to get a permit from Wellfleet yesterday.  In Wellfleet open fires are allowed. 

       They are all there now supposedly building this bonfire that has been spoken of for days.  With great reluctance my brother-in-law Owen was convinced to lead the bonfire outing.  He is not staying with us I found out when he arrived this morning.  Something is wrong between him and Ruth.  It isn’t just the strain of their daughter’s pregnancy the way Ruth said it was.   Even Sage went to the bonfire, probably because both her parents were going I guess. 

         Tanner took the sleeping pills Amanda insisted on before she left, to prevent him from having nightmares about what happened to him.   I said I was sick so I could stay back with Tanner.  We are alone. 

        Tanner is on their bed in his clothes.  He has removed the suit jacket and tie Amanda insisted on when he spoke to the press.  Authorities on Cape Cod will arrest Zelda by morning I heard.  I stand in the doorway of the room for a long few moments with the excuse of looking in on him on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t need it.  My brother-in-law is unconscious.  He snores heavily as I creep across the room, barely budging as I find the courage to slide off my skirt and climb into the bed alongside him.  His smell rushes up my nose.  The sound of him breathing and snoring leaves me weak.  My fingers loosen his belt and open his suit pants, exposing patriotic boxers that match the tie he wore. I rest my head on my sister’s pillow feeling him against me.  Tilting my jaw toward the ceiling of the darkened room with the sounds of Boston just beyond the windows I prepare to receive my sister’s husband.  In a low groan he calls me Amanda, thinking that I am her.

 

Gwen_______________

       This is fun.  All of us here at Cahoon Hollow Beach, bright moon and waves rushing the shore.  A million stars in the sky.  Seeing my family in the glow of the bon fire as we sing and tell stories  reminds me of camping with them when they were children.  We would drive from Oak Park into Wisconsin to the Dells then up North of that to find spots to camp.  Before everything went crazy.  While Ron was still with us.

       How many years has it been since I first spotted those magazines photos of Jackie Kennedy and her family smiling from the glossy pages in cable-knit sweaters on the shore, imagining them around a bonfire?  More years than I would like to admit.  Now I am here on Cape Cod with my own family on this perfect night.  The way I always wanted it to be.  Everything I ever did was for this very moment. 

       My granddaughter Sage is being moody.  She and her mother have some words in hushed whispers that grow.

      “You were never there for me,“ Sage accuses Ruth, using the same words my own daughters have used on me.They are a rite of passage I think.  These exchanges between mothers and their teenage daughters.  But my daughters still say them, long past their teenage years.  I know they hate that I was not there for them.  In my own way I did run off after Ron was gone.  It was the only way I could keep any of the sanity I had left, protect my heart against them.  After finding out what Ron did I could never trust anyone again, let them that close to me.  Ron cost me everything.  I couldn’t risk that again.  It was true, I kept them at a distance.  I used the traveling back and forth between Oak Park and Cape Cod we did to do that.   Imposing on strangers was easier than being alone with my girls.

      Sage leaves the bonfire.  Ruth stands up to follow her.  Connie stops her.  I should be the one who stops Ruth from following her daughter but Connie does.

       “Let her go, Ruth!” Connie says, as if she is Ruth’s mother.  “She’s pregnant, a teenager.  Nothing she says is how she really feels right now.  When Amber was pregnant we were at each other two.  She was the same age as Sage.”

Hearing this I feel a monster rise within me.  The same one who killed my husband and almost drowned Amber Sullivan’s baby boy that afternoon so long ago.  The monster who closed to garage door as Zelda screamed for me.  Connie Sullivan did not just mention the baby her daughter had with my husband.  The reason our family was ruined.  I sit silent attempting to push the monster back down.

       “She’s just so upset all the time,” Ruth sobs.  “I feel terrible for her.  If I was home more I might have stopped her from getting pregnant!”

        “I thought the same thing with Amber,” Connie says to Ruth.  “But it wasn’t my fault.  The baby was meant to be.”

Meant to be?  My head explodes.

        “Your slut daughter seduced my husband!” I say across the flames of the bonfire.  “That was never meant to be, Connie!”

All of their sunburned faces reflected in the flames of the bonfire look at me. 

       “What?” Connie finally asks me.

       “That baby was a mistake!” I say.  “Your daughter tricked Ron into getting her pregnant!  It wasn’t his fault!”

        “Gwen…” Connie stammers.

       “What?” Ruth says.

       “Mother,” Emily gasps.

       “Amber Sullivan seduced your father!” I say to my girls.

       “Mother!” Emily says again.

I see Emily and Helen together now, getting the children to stand up.  Helen takes them down to the shore to splash in the waves, even the older ones who want to stay.

       “Get hold of yourself, Mother!” Emily says.

       “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Connie tells me.

       “I know your daughter seduced my husband!”

        “Ron is not the father of Amber’ baby, Gwen!” Connie says.  “Jimmy Ferguson is!  They went to school together.  You– My God!  You didn’t believe what Amber said that day did you?  She…” 

        “What do you mean believe it?”

        “Amber was like Sage, moody!” Connie says.  “You were being rude about it, asking about the father so you could spread it all over the neighborhood.  Amber said the worst thing you would want to hear to get back at you.  I didn’t know you believed her all these years!”

I see a look of realization cross Connie’s plump face.

       “Did you send Ron away because of that?”  she gasps.

I stand now, desperate for air.

      “I did everything because of that!” I yell across the flames.  “I killed Ron and buried him in the garden!  I left Oak Park to come to Cape Cod because of that–because your daughter said my husband was the father of her baby!”

All of their eyes are on me, wide with disbelief.  I see Connie Sullivan cover her mouth with her hands now.  The girls and Owen do not dare to move yet.  Before they do I grab the backpack Helen brought with her, running away from the bonfire with it toward the parking lot.  Fleeing the way I have ever since those awful hateful words were spoken to me by Amber Sullivan.  A lie.  I should have known it was a lie.  My God–a lie!

      In the parking lot their voices call after me.  I am already in the SUV with the doors and windows locked, starting the engine.  All of them hang on the vehicle now.  Owen is attempting to open the passenger door.  Ruth and Emily yell and scream for me.  All of them know what I have done, where their father is at last.  The thing I never wanted any of them to ever know.  I back the SUV away from them, hearing the loud thud too late.  A shadow behind me.  One of them.  I have hit one of them.  But they are all standing there.  Connie, I think.  I have hit Connie Sullivan.  A small pleasure rises in me over this thought.  Then I hear my daughter’s wail, loud and unmistakable.  Through the closed windows of the SUV I recognize the horror in it.

     “Sage!”

My daughter is on her knees screaming her daughter’s name.  Sage must have come up from the beach somewhere after pouting.  I hit her with the SUV.

 

 

 

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