RESIDENTS OF ASPEN GROVE don’t talk about the unrest they experience each November as they watch snowflakes accumulate, marking time until there is enough snow for the local ski resort to open. They don’t discuss the discontent they encounter each Idaho spring as they wait for the cherry trees to bud and the daffodils to bloom. They’ve grown up with this sense of unrest. Something in the water, retired postman Mr. Peters said one day, grumbling about how annoyed he was waiting for his grass to turn green. Like birds fluffing feathers against the frigid winter breeze, it’s a feeling every resident of Aspen Grove acknowledges whenever the sun shines, or the wind turns the leaves of the trees into shimmering, silver medallions.
It’s a feeling Maxine Foster gets every morning as she drags out of bed to fix Herb’s lunch, a lunch she knows he’ll throw away because he’s done that for at least three years now, ever since he took that job at Andy’s Auto Supply. She knows this because Herb’s favorites—steak sandwiches and chocolate cake—that she used to pack for him dwindled to leftover lasagna or tomato soup and other foods Herb hated. If he had been eating his lunch, he would have complained that the food she packed wasn’t fit for a pig.
Instead, he often came home whistling that irritating tune he had developed over the last year, which meant he was headed to the kitchen where he would drop his lunchbox, open the refrigerator and down a can of beer before even saying hello. By the time he flopped on the sofa and flipped the TV channel away from Maxine’s favorite show “Jeopardy!” to the local news he never watched let alone listened to, he’d be well into his second beer.
Each morning Maxine yelled, “Eat your lunch,” as Herb slid into his red Ford Ranger and backed out of the driveway headed for work.
“At least feed it to Andy’s cat,” Maxine mumbled as she watched him turn the corner. “You don’t make enough money to throw away good food.”
Truth was they didn’t have much of anything to throw away. Herb was their primary source of income. When he worked. Just last year, three weeks before Maxine turned sixty-two, they’d had a lengthy discussion about money. She had planned to file for Social Security until she discovered she didn’t have enough credits. Sure, she made a few bucks cleaning houses for a couple of doctors’ wives, but that wasn’t a real job with deductions and benefits. If she was going to draw Social Security, she needed a real job and who would hire her now, an old woman with osteoporosis and arthritis in her hips? Besides, she knew the minute she had a steady paycheck, Herb would quit his job, stay home and drink all day. Sure as summer, she would come home tired to find him passed out in front of the television. She knew this because that was how he spent Saturdays and Sundays. Instead of fixing the fence or mowing the lawn, every weekend Herb drank himself into a stupor.
With a weary sigh, Maxine turned from the window and launched into her morning ritual. Every day before she started her chores, she opened the old Zenith cabinet and flicked the record player lever. While she tidied the kitchen and dusted the living room, she’d croon along with Elvis and wish that she were sixteen again and still dating Larry Fisher.
When she was in high school, Larry lived down the street from Maxine. He couldn’t carry a tune, but every day after school, he would carry her books like boys used to do. When he tipped his head and crooked his eyebrow, he looked just like Elvis Presley. At sixteen, Maxine had fallen in love with Larry. Hard. She would have married him, too, if he hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed.
“Ah, Larry.” Maxine blotted the tears in her eyes. She turned the record over, flipped the lever and sang, “I will love you longer than for eh-everrrrr.”
If dusting wasn’t bad enough, singing along with Elvis and dreaming of Larry put Maxine in an awful mood. By ten o’clock she was too depressed to clean her own home. She turned off the record, filled her coffee cup, lit a cigarette and burrowed into the sofa while she waited for her favorite soap operas to begin. She especially liked Lucinda Walsh, past president and CEO of WorldWide Enterprises on As The World Turns. Maxine didn’t believe in reincarnation, but if she had, her wish would be to die and be reborn as the beautiful Lucinda Walsh, stronger than metal with a backbone of ice. Too restless to sit still, Maxine picked up her knitting. Something’s got to change, she thought as she watched Lucinda yell at Dr. Dixon. There was a new president in the White House, proof that there was still hope for the future.
***
Across town, in a two-story house of brick and cedar, Maxine’s daughter Grace was just stepping out of the shower. Her husband Rob had left hours ago, promising to drop their daughter off at school. Earlier that morning there had been another fight. They’d argued about his scheduling work on a night he had promised to take Grace to dinner. In the last week alone she had had to cancel two dinner engagements and a movie because he was unavailable. “Tell them I’m busy,” he had said when she asked, almost begged him to go a friend’s house for cocktails. And since she wouldn’t be caught dead without an escort, Grace sat home alone, looked at Vogue and Glamour, and pouted.
Brushing her auburn hair until it curled under in a neat bob emphasizing her sleek neck, Grace paused in front of the mirror and gazed at her naked body. She turned left, then right and assessed her stomach, still flat and smooth. For a woman in her early forties she looked good, even if she said so herself. The morning runs and Atkins diet paid off. She had never been this thin, not even the day she married Rob. She’d also never been so unhappy or so sexually aware. Something was wrong with her hormones.
Grace laid her brush on the dresser and picked up their wedding picture, encircled perfectly in its golden frame. College sweethearts, they’d been so much in love. But love could make you do stupid things, like drop out of college and get married. Once married, Rob abandoned his dream to be a college professor and took a job selling cars, a job he was quite good at. Good enough to buy a nice house and support his wife so she didn’t have to work. Grace, on the other hand, got just what she wanted, until she didn’t want it anymore.
She put the picture back and sighed. Forty-three was too young to stay home and host dinner parties. Her sixteen-year-old daughter Abbie no longer needed supervision. “Tomorrow,” Grace told her husband while he showered, “I’m going to work for Aspen Grove Realty.” It wasn’t that she needed to work; Rob was a good provider. But she was bored and she liked to look at houses, redecorating them in her head. Every year, she volunteered at the annual tour of homes. What could be better than a job where they sold houses? Maybe they’d even let her stage a few.
But that wasn’t the only reason she took the job. She hoped it would force Rob to pay more attention to his conflicting schedules, and maybe even to her.
For sixteen years, Grace had vied for his attention, and she was tired of competing. “Abigail,” he said when the baby was born, naming her after some heroine in one of those books he still kept in his office. The minute Grace delivered the child, she was sorry, because everything changed. Rob no longer saw his wife as sleek and pretty. In fact, he no longer saw Grace at all. From the minute Abbie arrived, all Rob saw was his precious, darling daughter.
Well, she’d show him. Grace turned from the mirror and flipped on the light in her large walk-in closet. As she moved along the rows of blouses, many still bearing price tags, she decided to go shopping. After all, she had a new job and needed something nice to wear.
She was on her way to the mall when she turned off Main Street and headed for Cedar Lane. Ever since viewing a certain house—her dream house—on the tour of homes, she was fixated. It might have been hers, too, if Rob had secured the loan like he promised. But he wasn’t quick enough and someone with more money closed the sale before they could even make an offer.
Grace turned onto Cedar Lane and slowed the car, coveting the manicured lawns and maple trees just starting to turn colors. The subdivision, less than a year old, was evolving into a comfortable section of town. The for-sale signs were gone, replaced with new cars in driveways and hanging baskets near front doors. Grace let the car idle in front of the house at 2122 Cedar Lane. The great entryway was made of brick with columns extending at least twenty feet high. Below a large picture window on the second floor, a double oak door with etched glass panes opened into the house. White and gray, the house had a clean, fresh look, a design that would always be attractive. Grace liked the bay window, but the part of the house she liked the most couldn’t be seen from the street. The large sunken living room just three steps down from the kitchen was her favorite. In her mind, she had already filled the room with a big, comfy sofa where she could relax and read fashion magazines.
She startled when a car beeped behind her, causing her foot to hit the gas pedal and accelerate. Reluctantly Grace left Cedar Lane and turned toward the mall. She couldn’t have the house, but she’d have a nice afternoon trying on dresses.
***
While Grace contemplated new items to add to her wardrobe, Abbie waited for the buzzer to dismiss her sophomore English class. As soon as it did, she rushed to her locker, grabbed a notebook and met her best friend Heather in the auditorium. Seats filled fast. Who knew a fine arts meeting after school would generate so much interest?
Abbie and Heather settled as close to the front of the stage as possible, ending up behind Jessica Anderson and her tagalong friends.
“This is awesome!” Heather’s voice raised an octave.
“Grow up.” Jessica turned in her seat. “It’s just a stupid meeting.”
Heather and Jessica glared death at each other before Jessica sneered, “Loser.” Jessica’s friends echoed her and burst into laughter.
“It’s just a stupid meeting,” Heather mimicked. “Bitch.”
“Ignore them.” Abbie knew how it felt to suffer Jessica’s contempt. Having clear skin, eyes the color of a winter sky, and hair so blond it looked white in the sun didn’t make Jessica a nice person. Pretty, popular and selfish, it was no secret: whatever Jessica wanted, she got, one way or another.
But Heather didn’t leave it alone. She kicked the seat in front of her until Jessica turned and said, “Stop it, Bitch.”
“Hear you and Lane broke up again,” Heather taunted.
“Shows what you know.” Jessica glanced at the boys seated two rows away.
Abbie shot Heather a warning. Leave it alone. But Heather bragged. “I know I have a date to Sadie Hawkins, and you don’t.”
“With who? The janitor?” Jessica and her friends laughed.
“With Tyler Frazier, that’s who,” Heather said.
“Poor Tyler. You know he’s a lousy kisser, don’t you?” Jessica puckered her lips, and her friends laughed.
“Stop it.” Abbie held out her hand just in time to keep Heather from taking a swing at Jessica.
“Missed.” Jessica adjusted her turquoise sweater over her ample breasts and fluffed her long hair. “I suppose you have a date, too, Abbie, with someone just as charming. Like Tyler’s little brother. You’re both so yesterday.” Jessica’s friends tittered.
Abbie didn’t have a date, but that didn’t stop Heather. “Abbie’s going with Jeremy Blackburn.”
“I am not.” Abbie glared at Heather.
Jessica and her friends laughed so hard, students sitting nearby turned to see what was so funny.
“Right,” Jessica said when she stopped laughing. “Like that will ever happen.”
Abbie glanced in Jeremy’s direction. Super talented and more than cute with that wavy dark hair, he sat three chairs from her in art class. Like most of the girls in her sophomore class, Abbie harbored a secret crush on him, had since fall classes began. She’d had lots of crushes before, but they never amounted to anything. Maybe a walk home from school. A few passed notes in class. None of them held her interest for long, not like Jeremy. There was something different about him. Something that made her heart beat fast every time she said his name. It was all she could do to keep her eyes pointed straight ahead; all she could do to keep from turning in his direction.
She kicked Heather for almost spilling her secret and then leaned forward as her art teacher approached the podium.
“Well.” Mr. Young smiled at the audience. “Nice to see so many faces.”
Abbie had been looking forward to this meeting all week. Her summer—in fact, her future—depended on it.
“I’m delighted to inform you Aspen Grove High has agreed to sponsor two students to the Oakland Bay art internship in San Francisco.” He held up two fingers. “This is a great opportunity for some of our students to advance their studies and perhaps develop a promising career.”
That’s what she wanted: a promising career and someday, her own art gallery.
He stepped aside to accommodate the large screen dropping from the ceiling. The auditorium filled with hoots and smack-like kisses as the lights dimmed and the room grew dark. Jessica tittered and whispered to her friends.
“Shhh,” Abbie said. “Shut up and listen.”
The film ran approximately twenty minutes. In addition to information on the art college, the picture highlighted Coit Tower, Fisherman’s Wharf and Golden Gate Bridge, all places Abbie hoped one day to see.
When the lights came on, Mr. Young said, “Any questions?”
Abbie’s hand shot up. “Where are the applications?”
He smiled. “In my classroom, Abbie. Stop by and pick one up.”
She already knew what she wanted to draw. She couldn’t wait to get started.
“I suppose you think you’ll win that stupid scholarship?” Jessica said as she pushed past Abbie.
“I have a better chance than you do,” Abbie said, looking out of the corner of her eye to catch a glimpse of Jeremy. But he was already gone.
“That’s because I don’t want it,” Jessica said.
“Good thing. You can’t even draw a circle,” Heather said.
Jessica flipped her hair over her shoulder and smiled at Heather. “You’ll never get it. Good luck, Drabigail. You have as much of a chance at getting that scholarship as you do getting Jeremy to the dance.”
“Oh, yeah?” Heather said. “Just watch her.”
“Yeah,” Abbie said. She was tired of Jessica’s superior attitude. She wasn’t drab. She wasn’t beautiful either, but she could draw. And she never walked away from a challenge. “Just watch.”
But later at home as she worked on her sketches, Abbie wondered if she’d temporarily gone insane. Jeremy hardly knew her. Everybody in the school liked him, and Sadie Hawkins was less than three weeks away.