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“He told me that.”
Fred laughed. “Ever strike you funny how people can be so cynical and hardheaded about things they want to believe and so damn gullible and stupid about other things?”
“Not so much funny as pitiful,” she said. You’re not breaking up my marriage, Edie, Ben had told her. It was broken long, long before I met you.
“Hey, Edie.” Fred was saying, “Cut out the whiny broad stuff.”
“I’m not whining.”
“You’re feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Bull.” Tears burned her nose. “I’m fine. Terrific.”
“You’ve always had Ben’s number…”
“I said I’m fine.”
“Yeah well…listen, here’s something that’ll put a smile on your face. I heard your name mentioned the other day. How does Edie Robinson, Asia bureau chief, strike you?”
“ASIA? Wow, Edie, how exciting,” Vivian enthused the next morning when Edie told her about the bureau chief job. “You know what, though? I don’t envy you one bit. I tell you, when Ray and I got back from New York after our tenth anniversary, I was never so glad to be home.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.” Edie stuck the phone between her ear and shoulder and, as Viv rattled on, searched the refrigerator shelves for breakfast material. Another trip to the IGA seemed likely. She wanted to get off the phone with Viv, who was seriously beginning to get on her nerves. Irritation, like a small yappy dog kept on a tight rein ever since she’d hauled her bags into the back of Vivian’s gleaming new SUV, was tugging hard at the leash. She bit experimentally into a withered apple, decided it was too far gone and dumped it into the trash.
Maude, upstairs clomping around, would be down any minute and they were out of coffee creamer, which would inevitably get the day off to a shaky start. I don’t want to be here, Edie thought. I don’t want to hear my mother tell me she needs prunes and I don’t want to listen to my sister bitching to me about her hot flashes and her gourmet club. I am cold, unlovable and I vant to be alone.
“I know Little Hills seems boring to you,” Viv was saying now. “But as far as we’re concerned, there isn’t a better place to raise kids. And that sort of thing matters to me and Ray,” she said. “We’re very serious about our kids.”
“I know you are, Viv.” Edie stuck her head in the fridge. The gas oven was also an option. Why didn’t the prospect of a bureau chief job strike her with quite the sense of elation she’d thought it might? She’d stayed awake half the night trying to figure that one out. That and Ben’s release—which she’d never had any doubt about—and the three years she’d wasted with him. “Don’t expect commitment from me,” he’d always say. Something she’d have understood much more readily had he also mentioned a wife back in the States.
Her mood didn’t improve much that day and it wasn’t much better the next, when someone from Maple Grove Residential Living called to inquire whether Maude was still interested in having her name added to the waiting list for residential apartments.
Edie, pacing the hallway with the black receiver lodged between her ear and shoulder, moved too far in one direction and the phone clattered to the floor, knocking over the spindly table it had been standing on. “Damn it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” Edie stood the table up again and replaced the heavy black phone on its crocheted doily. “I was talking to the phone.”
“Of course.” The administrator cleared her throat. “When your sister and mother paid us a visit recently, they were both very impressed. Your sister did say that there were other places they wanted to investigate, but we were under the impression that they were definitely leaning toward Maple Grove.”
Literally or figuratively? Edie wanted to ask. “I don’t think my mother’s made a decision yet,” Edie said. “In fact, I’m sure she hasn’t, but let me check with my sister.”
“That would be Vivian Jenkins?” the administrator asked.
“That would be,” Edie said, irked by the woman’s officious tone. In the mood she was in, Mother Teresa would have irked her.
“I was under the impression, from Mrs. Jenkins, that the decision had been made. Mrs. Jenkins is concerned that your mother is no longer capable of living alone. Your mother was so taken with Maple Grove, she wanted to move in on the spot.”
“Well, that may be,” Edie said. “As I said, I’ll check with my sister.”
“We have very few vacancies,” the woman said. “In fact, that’s why we were forced to create a waiting list. I would hate to see your mother lose out. She was so impressed—”
“I’ll call you,” Edie said and slowly replaced the receiver in its cradle. Tinkerbell, the most persistent of Maude’s three cats, watched her balefully, his eyes the color of grapes. “I hate salespeople,” she told him. “Actually, this morning, I hate everyone.”
The cat mewed and moved to snake its long orange body along Edie’s bare calf.
“That will get you nowhere, trust me.” On tiptoe, Edie reached for a jar of Ovaltine, thinking for a minute it might be coffee. Maude appeared to be out of coffee, which wasn’t helping matters. She took down the jar, unscrewed the lid and peered inside at the dried-up cake of brown powder. “Yuk.”
“Meow.” The cat rubbed its ear against Edie’s leg.
Edie nudged it gently with her toe. “Look, if you want to get into my good books, run down to the corner and get me a double latte, okay? Maybe a bagel, too.”
Still musing on the phone call, a niggling sense that she’d somehow been shut out of an important decision prompted her to dial her sister’s number. As usual, Vivian sounded harried.
“I’m trying to do a million things,” she said, “and the phone keeps ringing off the hook. Brad spilled root beer all over the family-room carpet and I’ve got someone coming in to clean it. Ray’s in a permanent funk. By the way, I’m sorry I jumped at you the other night about Beth. You know I didn’t mean it, right? I swear when I’m on a carb diet, I get the worse sugar withdrawal and—”
“Viv, some woman called from Maple Grove—”
“Oh right.” A pause. “I meant to tell you about that… Look, if the carpet cleaners don’t take too long, how about I drop by right after and we’ll talk. Where is Mom, by the way?”
“A woman from church dropped by to pick her up. They were going to a potluck, or something. Mom was up before me this morning, making macaroni and cheese.”
“Damn.” Vivian exhaled loudly. “Dixie Mueller, right? Little tiny thing with white hair? Well, they’re all little tiny things with white hair, but Dixie’s…first of all she shouldn’t be driving, so every time she takes Mom out, I have to worry about whether they’ll get into an accident. And then Mom goes to these potlucks and eats too much and ends up calling me in the middle of the night convinced she’s having a heart attack…”
Edie held the phone away from her ear as Vivian railed. I am completely out of my element, she thought. This is my mother, but I have no idea what’s really in her best interests. “I’m sorry,” she said after Vivian finally wound down. “Mom seemed really jazzed to be going out and I didn’t know about—”
“It’s not your fault, Edie. Don’t blame yourself. It’s just that I’m with Mom and you’re not. And that’s why she needs to be in a place like Maple Grove. She can’t look after herself and I’m honestly worn out with looking after her.”
“But there are other options besides a residential facility,” Edie said. “She could have someone come in to help her. A live-in assistant, maybe. That way she could stay in the house—”
Vivian laughed. “Edie, Edie. You have no idea, do you? Live-in assistants cost money—”
“So do residential facilities,” she pointed out. “I might not be with Mom on a day-to-day basis, but I’m not entirely out of touch with the real world.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that you were,” Viv said. “It’s just that…well, I hate to keep saying the same thing over and over, but I’m here, Edie, and you’re not.”
A theme that was beginning to sound so familiar, Edie thought, she could almost predict the moment Vivian would say it. Almost as predictable as Vivian’s breathless complaints that she had a million things to do and really didn’t have time to talk about this right now.
“…And I’m going out of my mind,” Viv was saying now. “Do you have any idea at all how much food two teenage boys can consume?”
“Of course I don’t,” Edie said. “I don’t have children.”
A moment of silence from the other end of the line. “Are you being sarcastic?” Vivian wanted to know. “Because if you are—”
“I was just stating a fact,” Edie said. “You have kids and I don’t.”
“I know, but you get that snippy tone in your voice… Anyway, I really don’t have time to argue. I don’t want to argue, let’s put it that way. I don’t see you often enough to spend time when you are here bickering with you.”
Having established the moral high ground, Viv then went on to complain about the paintwork in her newly finished upstairs bathroom, her neighbor’s obnoxious dog who barked half the night and the ridiculous price of the boneless pork roast she’d bought for tomorrow’s dinner with some friends who probably wouldn’t be impressed, anyway.
As she listened, Edie wondered whether it would seem insufferably self-righteous if she attempted to lend some perspective to her sister’s problems by describing the young girl she’d seen in Sarajevo—all dressed up in high heels and full makeup as she picked her way through the rubble from a recent mortar attack because, war or no war, life goes on. Or the women who sent their children to school during shell fire with the reassurances that they were probably safer at school than at home. Yeah, it would be insufferable, she decided, not to mention hypocritical. You’ve never dwelled endlessly on your own petty problems?
“By the way,” Viv said, “I really am sorry for jumping on you lately. You must think I’m a total bitch. When I’m on a low-carb diet, I swear I get sugar withdrawal. Anyway, look, bottom line is we both have Mom’s best interests at heart.”
“Exactly,” Edie agreed, “Which—”
“I’m sure it isn’t easy for you to be back here, feeling that you’re doing everything wrong, but face it, Eed, that’s reality. You made your choice to go off and lead…your kind of life.”
“But—”
“And I have no problem at all with looking after Mom. I mean, I told Ray, I said I don’t even know why Edie’s coming back, as busy as she is…but look, sweetie, I know you’re concerned. Tell you what, how about we take Mom out to Maple Grove tomorrow and you can see the place for yourself?”
Meanwhile, Edie decided as she hung up the phone, she would have a little talk with Maude when she got back from her visit with Dixie—just the two of them. She might never know or understand Maude the way Viv did, but she could at least try to get to know her a little better.
Tomorrow, she would take Maude to lunch.
PETER’S PHONE RANG during the middle of a parent conference. Since he’d told Betty Jean to hold all calls other than emergencies, his first thought as he excused himself to pick up the receiver was that it was one of the girls. “Your sister,” Betty Jean said. “She insisted that I put her through immediately.”
Peter exhaled. “Yes, Sophia?”
“I’m calling for a progress report.”
He frowned. “On what?”
“The wife search. What else?”
“Oh, that,” Peter said, irritated. “Do you honestly think that I have nothing else… Listen, I’m in a meeting—”
“I just thought you might have given it a little thought.”
“I have,” Peter said without thinking first.
“And?”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“A teacher?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“A foreign correspondent.”
“A foreign… Oh, Peter, that’s ridiculous. They’re gone all the time. You read about their lifestyles. How can that possibly work?”
“Not quite sure.” Especially since she’s now declined two invitations, he thought as he hung up on Sophia.
“Anyway, as I was saying, Mrs. Black…Patricia’s academic progress would be enhanced considerably if she attended school more than two days a week. Let’s talk a little about what we can do to ensure she gets up in time to catch the school bus in the mornings. An alarm clock would be an obvious first step…”
Sophia’s second call came just as he was leaving his office to head across campus. “Please forget about the foreign correspondent,” she said. “It would be an enormous mistake. As soon as the girls begin to trust her, she’ll be whisked off to Timbuktu, or somewhere, only to be shot at and God knows what else. Please tell me you weren’t serious.”
EDIE HAD ENVISIONED somewhere a little more celebratory for her getting-reacquainted lunch with Maude, but her mother had insisted on Mrs. Brown’s Burger Bar: pumpkin-colored vinyl booths and anthropomorphic dancing pies painted on the windows. Maude liked Mrs. Brown’s early-bird dinners. Edie glanced at the menu. A little insert offered a free slice of apple, chocolate or cherry pie with any order over six dollars.
“I don’t want anything spicy,” Maude was saying. “What are you having?”
“Salad.” Edie set the menu down and looked at Maude. So far today things had gone quite smoothly. She hadn’t slapped her forehead in exasperation, or sworn or wanted to shake Maude silly. I am becoming a better person, she decided. If not a paragon of saintly virtue, more patient and understanding. Compassionate, even. Earlier, as they had been getting into the car, she’d taken a second look at her mother’s headgear and refrained from asking why Maude had chosen to go out wearing a tea cozy.
And last night, after her mother returned from the visit with Dixie Mueller, Edie had listened with a degree of patience she had no idea she possessed to Maude explain that she only ate eggs on Tuesdays except if it rained and then sometimes she’d have a banana, not because she was hungry, mind you, but because of the potassium, but if you stopped to think about it, she’d lived this long so if she wanted to eat eggs on Wednesdays, too, how could it hurt?
“This was nice, Edie,” Maude had said when just before midnight she’d announced she was ready for bed. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a talk like this.” And actually, Edie thought as she’d drifted off to sleep, it had been kind of nice. Not exactly the heart-to-heart, mother-daughter chat she’d once dreamed about, but peculiarly contenting, anyway. Of course, she’d had a couple of glasses of wine.
“What can I get you ladies?” The waiter, a tall gawky kid who appeared to be about twelve, thirteen max, looked from Edie to Maude, then reeled off a list of specials.
“I didn’t get that,” Maude told him. “Can you read them again?”
“Mom, what difference does it make?” Edie asked. Vivian had already warned her that Maude, when dining out, would eat nothing but fish and chips. “You’re going to have fish and chips, anyway.”
“Where’s the chicken potpie?” Maude had picked up the menu again. “How much is it?”
“We don’t have chicken potpie,” the kid said.
“Chicken potpie,” Maude said. “And a cup of coffee.”
“They don’t have chicken potpie,” Edie told Maude. “Why don’t you just have fish and chips like you always do?”
Maude eyed Edie, a tad suspiciously. “What are you having?”
Edie felt her hand move almost involuntarily to her head. She restrained it. “I’m having salad, Mom. I already told you.”
Maude screwed up her face as if she’d just learned that her daughter was going to dine on stewed yak. “Salad?”
“Salad.”
“I don’t want salad. I’ll have chicken potpie.”
Edie slapped her head. “Mom! Look at me. They don’t have chicken potpie.”
“Don’t shout at me.” Maude raised her eyes to the waiter. “See how my daughter talks to me?”
“Want me to come back in a few minutes?” he said.
“No,” Edie said. “She’ll have fish and chips.”
“I don’t know though.” Maude was browsing the menu again. “The last time I had chicken potpie here it had bits of green pepper in it. I think I’ll just have the fish and chips. Edie, that man across the street keeps looking at you.”
Edie looked beyond the dancing pies to see Peter Darling leaving the hardware shop, smiling broadly. She realized with irritation, now back and in plentiful supply, that her hair was lank and unwashed, she had on no makeup and that she was wearing tatty elephant-colored sweats. She drank some water and slouched down in the booth as Peter approached. The life of the foreign correspondent wasn’t always glamorous and exotic.
CHAPTER FIVE
