Chapter Twenty-nine
She was prolonging her illness, willingly settling into the mind-numbing darkness of sleep. But the looming guilt was more than she could bear. Phil avoided her; he left whatever room he was in whenever she entered it. Communication consisted of exchanges of facts and needed information.
A week passed in an aberrant mix of days and nights, but she allowed sleep to confuse her. Then she stared at the empty pillow next to her at five thirty Friday morning and figured it out: she’d work her way out of this hole, prove her worth. She rose from the bed, showered, ripped the bandages off her side and ignored the pain. No use in complaining about it; time to fix all this. Time to fix it.
She dressed in her pearl gray wool slacks with the matching blazer over a black V-neck sweater. She slid on gray suede pumps and walked to the kitchen to cook omelets, biscuits and sausage, squeeze fresh orange juice. She set the breakfast table with the fine china, brought out the real silver and cloth napkins—no eating at the breakfast bar in a hurry, no quick half-toasted bagels for Molly and Phil. She would labor her way out of this crisis and make Phil listen to her. She would prove her value and stamina; prove . . . she loved them. There was no other way for Phil to know, since she couldn’t tell him; he wouldn’t believe her.
Molly stumbled into the kitchen at six thirty, rubbing her eyes, pulling at the tank top of her pajamas.
“Mom, what are you doing? I don’t have to get up for like another half hour and you are banging away down here, and you’re all . . . dressed up. Did I miss something?”
“No, hon.” She kissed Molly on the side of her mouth. “I just wanted to get up and cook you and Dad a special breakfast. I feel so much better . . . and I missed getting up with you.”
“Wow. This is a lot of food.” Molly looked around the kitchen, waved her hand over the table. “Is someone else coming or something?”
“No, it’s for you and Dad.”
“Jeez, I can barely choke down a Pop-Tart in the morning.”
“Not this morning. We’re all going to sit down and enjoy each other, enjoy breakfast. Then, starting today, I am going to clean out every single closet in the house—get our lives in order.”
“Don’t you dare touch my closet. No way.”
“Hiding something, Molly?”
“No, I just have everything the way I like it. The last time you cleaned out my room, you threw away all the good stuff and kept all the stupid baby stuff. I never did find my bird’s nest.”
“It smelled.”
“Just stay out of my room.”
“No promises.”
“I’m getting a lock and keeping the only key. Lucky Jack, you can’t get into his dorm room.”
“Go get ready for school. I’ll wake Dad up for breakfast.”
She dropped the last omelet on a vintage transfer-ware platter and placed it under the heating lamp. It felt good to use the dishes she usually saved for special occasions. She would begin her redemption right here, right now, and not stop until she had earned it.
She climbed the stairs, her high heels clicking on the hardwood, to the guest room door. She turned the handle; it was locked. She knocked gently.
“Yes?” His voice called from the bedroom, like an echo from far away.
“I cooked breakfast . . . I want you to come down to breakfast.” Amy used a voice she hoped sounded normal, maybe even cheery.
Phil opened the door, his hair sticking up on one side, dark circles under his eyes, the impact of her betrayal on his face. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I made . . . made breakfast.”
He rubbed his cheeks. “I’m really not hungry. I have an early staff meeting.”
“Can’t you eat just a little? Sit down with me and Molly?”
“The staff meeting is a breakfast, Amy. You know—every Friday morning.”
“Oh, yeah. Why do you have to be there so early today? Usually you don’t have to go until seven or so—you have time to sit with us for a second.”
“No, I have to lead the meeting. I have to be there early, and I’m already running late.” He shuffled toward the guest bathroom. Her heart fell to the pit of her stomach in one long lurch as he entered a bathroom meant only for those who were transient. He turned his back on her and anything she had to say.
“You have to head up the meeting?” She wanted to hang on for one more minute, talk him into staying—maybe even listening.
“Yes. I got a promotion last week—head of the division.”
“Oh, Phil.” She leaned toward him, instinct taking over; she reached to hug him. He stood with stiff arms, then patted her on the back.
“Congratulations. You didn’t tell me. You—”
“I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Okay. I’ll cook us a huge celebratory dinner tonight. What do you want? Steak, shrimp, tenderloin? I’ll whip up your favorite buttermilk pie. Jack’s coming home tonight for the weekend. We’ll have a big family dinner.”
“I’m taking Jack camping tonight . . . I promised him.”
“Well, then we’ll all go. Family camping. We haven’t done that in . . . years.”
“No, Ame. I’m taking Jack. Listen, I have to shower. I’m late. Really . . . I’ll talk to you after work today.”
She went back to the kitchen and slumped in a pine ladder-back chair and listened to the whistle of the guest bathroom shower, to the opening and shutting of closets and doors. She knew the sound of each pipe, each creak of floor.
Molly bounced into the kitchen, grabbed a biscuit and kissed her on the head. “Bye, Mom. I’m going home with Cindy after school, spending the night. I’ll call from her house. Love ya.”
Amy smiled, nodded—nothing left to say. She pushed an omelet around the plate with her fork.
Phil shuffled into the kitchen and looked around, never at his wife. “Oh, Amy.”
“Go on. I know you’re late.”
She didn’t look up—her humiliation greater now than her need to see his face as he left the house. The door clicked shut and she stared out the kitchen window and noticed, again, the empty bird feeder. She rose from the chair, opened the storage closet, then yanked out a bag of bird seed, walked into the backyard, her heels spiking into the ground. She pulled down the bird feeder and filled it to the top, not caring about her suede pumps now coated with soil.
A cardinal perched on the top branch of the birch tree above looked down at her.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. But here you go. I’m here now. I won’t forget again.”
She walked back into the kitchen, dumped the entire breakfast in the garbage disposal and cleaned the remnants of the uneaten feast. She stood back, surveyed her clean kitchen. “Okay,” she said out loud. “We’ll start with the linen closet.”
Although she kept the house in almost pristine condition, she loved artifacts and mementos, so her closets and drawers overflowed with paraphernalia she thought she just might need one day, things she couldn’t bear to throw away: old clothes, antique linens, papers, knickknacks and crafts.
The clothes and towels, the closet essentials of their lives, poured out from the hidden places and landed on the floor and on tables; she sorted them as if their family’s collective life depended on how she organized them. If she was so messed up—surely she could fix this—at least this.
She was so intent on her work that the OWP group told her they rang the bell four times before she entered the foyer. She smiled at them when she opened the front door—poised and ready with the self she woke up with, the new self who would force redemption.
Norah, Revvy and Reese stared at her. They all opened their mouths as if to speak, but only stared.
“What?” She looked at them, tilted her head.
“Your clothes,” Norah said and laughed.
She looked down; she was covered with dust, streaks of dirt smeared across her black sweater, and she had on only one shoe. “Oh, I’ve been cleaning out closets.” She laughed, a coarse sound. “Come in, come in. What are y’all doing here?”
Norah held up a box. “We brought you dinner. We thought you were still—you know—confined to bed.”
“You cooked me dinner?” Guilt rose.
Reese stepped up and touched the box. “Well, not exactly cooked. You wouldn’t want that. But we did pitch in for it—all vegetarian, of course. Hope ya don’t mind.”
“No. No. You are so . . . sweet. Come on in. I have to warn you that it is a huge mess. Just step over the piles. I can’t believe you drove all this way to bring me dinner.”
“Mrs. Reynolds, are you sure you’re supposed to be up like this?” asked Norah.
“Oh, yes.”
They all looked at one another.
“Really,” she said.
They followed her to the kitchen. “Sit, sit,” she said and gestured toward the bar stools. “Hey, where’s Brenton?”
“He couldn’t bear to come with us.”
“Why—can’t stand to burn all that fossil fuel?”
“No—he didn’t want to see your face when we told you about the island.”
Instead of them sitting on a bar stool, she did—already defeated before the end of the conversation. Of course there would be bad news. Did she believe anything good could come of her actions?
“Go ahead, tell me.”
“Well, it seems that we don’t have enough evidence to get a Heritage Trust and they were a bit miffed by the fact that Nick broke into the house and illegally collected evidence.”
“He didn’t break into the house. He had a key. And”—she sighed—“it was both of us, not just Nick.”
“Well, he told them you had no idea he was doing anything illegal—that it was all him.”
“He protected me. Everybody’s protecting me.” She wanted to lie down on the kitchen floor and curl in on herself; she deserved nothing of the sort.
“Even if he had the key, I guess he got it—illegally. Not that we blame him—he was only trying to help,” Revvy said.
“Have you talked to him?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, wanting and not wanting to know.
Norah took her hand. “No—he showed up for his hearing, so we didn’t lose our bail money, and then he disappeared again. All the judge gave him was some community service, which he already does—land preservation on the barrier islands. He didn’t want to talk to us—he waved, then left. Even his wife doesn’t know where he is.”
“I’m so, so sorry about all this. I really am,” she said.
“Oh, Mrs. Reynolds, there’s no reason to be sorry—you did all you could, and having Nick help us could have saved it,” Revvy said.
“But it didn’t.”
“Well, I’m partly to blame. I lent him the boat and I knew what he was doing,” Reese said.
“Did you get in any trouble?” She looked up at him.
“Nah, he protected me, too. Said he borrowed the boat from a friend without permission.”
“I wish I could do something to fix this.” She wished she could do something to fix everything. “Has the sale gone through?”
Norah sighed and leaned up against the kitchen counter. “Tomorrow they’re going to close the deal. At least we’ll find out who the buyer is.”
“I wasn’t much help, was I? Couldn’t even find out who the buyer was.”
“Oh, yes, yes, you were a huge help.” Norah hugged her for the first time. “The gilded wallpaper and the Purbeck stone almost swayed them—I guess they’re really valuable. But they said we used illegal means and there just wasn’t enough evidence to warrant the amount of money it’d cost to buy the island.”
“I’m sorry.”
Revvy thumped her on the back—she considered this a hug. “Stop saying that. You did as much or more than we did. It just didn’t work and that sucks.”
“Yes, it does,” she agreed.
The OWP walked out as a somber group and promised to contact her if they needed anything else in their efforts to protect the ACE basin. She opened the boxed dinner and smiled at the vegetarian lasagna, the whole-wheat bread and the largest chocolate chip cookies she’d ever seen. She picked up a cookie and took a huge bite, sat down on the bar stool and ate alone—feeling there was so much lost in all this mess, so much.
The kitchen side door shuddered open, caught on a pile of towels and stopped. Jack poked his head in the crack. “Hey, Mom?” He kicked the door open, spreading the neat pile of towels across the floor.
“Hey, bucko. Don’t mess up my piles.”
“What is all this?”
“I’m cleaning the house—the entire house.”
“In a suit and high heels?”
“Don’t mix those piles up. They’re divided into ‘give away,’ ‘sell,’ and ‘keep.’ ”
“Are you sure you’re supposed to be up doing all this?”
“I feel great . . . fine. I’m going to fix everything.”
“Okay . . .” Jack tilted his head.
“I have a month’s leave of absence from work. I’m going to—”
“Where’s Dad? Is he home from work yet?”
“Did you know he got a promotion?”
“Yeah, he told me last week.”
She picked up the towels Jack had scattered and began to fold them. “Oh.”
“Is he home or not?”
“No . . . not yet. I haven’t heard from him all day.” She turned away from Jack, from his eyes. The sound of the garage door opening and closing on its rusted track vibrated through the kitchen.
“Well, there he is now.” She stood, smiled and smoothed the front of her black sweater. “Oh, my, I’m all wrinkled.”
Jack laughed. “Gee, I wonder why.” He swept his hand over the piles scattered across the kitchen floor, the kitchen table shoved against the wall.
“Tell your dad I’ll be right out.” She scurried toward the bedroom to change into something clean and ironed. The deep voices of her husband and son echoed across the house. She stared at her closet, at the pile of laundry. She pulled out a red sweater; it was wrinkled. She yanked a blue silk shirt from a hanger, but there was a crease right down the front. Finally she found a smooth brown cashmere sweater, tugged it over her head, and emerged from the closet.
She entered the hall; her smile fell before it fully crossed her face. The empty sound of the house told her; they were gone, had left without saying goodbye. She walked unsteadily into the kitchen, loneliness now settling deeper than she’d ever known.
She opened the door to the garage and stared at the empty space where Phil’s car had been parked ten minutes before. He must have already been packed, ready to go. A slimy patch of oil shone under the fluorescent garage light.
“Well, then.” She went into the kitchen, fished around under the sink and pulled out a bottle of Lysol, paper towels and a scouring pad. She walked back into the garage, squatted in the empty parking spot and scrubbed at the oil spot until clean gray concrete came through. She stood, smiled.
“Okay, fixed.”
She dumped the cleaning supplies under the sink, stood in the pile-strewn kitchen. “Well, then. I guess I just need to iron all those wrinkled clothes now.”
She walked through the house on her heels, into her closet to pluck down every single shirt she owned—then piled them according to color, material and texture. She grabbed the ironing board from behind the belt rack, then plugged in the iron—a wedding present that hadn’t been used as often as the fine china. Her motto had been “If it needs ironing, it goes to the dry cleaners.” But not now; now she would do everything correctly.
She began to iron one shirt at a time, beginning with white and moving to colors—bright to dark.