18

We were up on the top of the mountain, lying on our backs on the ground in the very same clearing of the birch forest where I had come with Mom and Ida back in October the year before. Our heads were together, our legs out at angles like the spokes of a wheel. The sky was full of stars, and the forest was full of night sounds—if you listened hard enough. But we had arrived just before sunset, when the other hikers were quitting the area, and we’d had plenty of time to acclimate ourselves to the dark.

No one had said a word in some time. No one had moved. The waterfall could be heard in the distance, a mellow flow—there hadn’t been much rain all summer. It was as mesmerizing a backdrop as you could ask for, and it was a pleasure to be mesmerized after the day that we had put in saying farewell to family and friends. The three of us would be sleeping at my house, and in the morning Mom would be driving us to Boston where we would be attending different colleges. Over the summer we had bullied our parents into agreeing to pay for us to share an apartment together for the first year. After that, we’d see.

“Are you sorry we didn’t go to New Jersey?” Sharon asked, her voice as soft as butter.

“No, not really,” I answered.

We had made our farewell list back in January, when we all got back together again and agreed that we would all go to school in Boston. At the time it had been months since I had even thought about Herman Gardener, but in the course of telling Sharon and Terri every single thing that had crossed my mind since we had gone our separate ways back in the fall, his name had come up. My desire to see him was revived and I added him to our list. Sharon, who still clung to her investigative ways, became so interested in pursuing the encounter that I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my own interest was diminishing proportionally as the months went by. I had removed him from the list as recently as last week. I had my own father back now, emotionally speaking at least, and no need to elicit the concern of a stranger. “Can you believe my father?” I asked.

“Was that the first time you ever saw him cry?” Terri asked, referring to how he had broken down when we had been there earlier to say good-bye.

“No,” Sharon said. “Don’t you remember? He cried that night when Ginny was there telling him about the gun, the night Ginny found out about Surge.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Terri said. “I’d forgotten.”

“Surge,” I sighed.

“The gun,” Sharon sighed.

“We’d better get on with it soon,” Terri said.

“Soon,” Sharon and I answered simultaneously, but no one made a move.

We were silent again for a long time. Then Terri said, “Do you think we’ve grown up this past year? Do you think that what happened in September pushed us into adulthood prematurely?”

“Ah, a breeze!” Sharon whispered. We watched the fingernail clipping of a moon disappear behind a cloud and then reappear. “The forecast is for rain.”

“Good thing you’ve got your coat,” I teased her. In spite of the hour it was still very warm, and Terri and I were wearing only shorts and T-shirts. Sharon was wearing jeans, and she had her raincoat spread out over her legs, to keep the bugs off her, she’d said. I inclined my head towards Terri’s. “I don’t feel grown-up. I feel different, of course, but I wouldn’t call it grown-up.”

“And Ginny would know,” Sharon added.

“How’s that?” Terri asked.

“Well, while you were searching for the genie at the bottom of the bottle every night and I was pursuing new friendships so as to appease my therapist, Ginny was cultivating relationships with adults.”

“You know very well,” I said, “that the adults I spent my time with didn’t show any signs of maturity.”

“Well then, there’s your answer for you, Terri,” Sharon stated. “There is virtually no difference between teenagers and adults. None of us know what the hell we’re doing.”

“It’s depressing to think so.”

“No it’s not. Not really. Actually, I think it’s a contradiction in terms to say that someone is mature … or wise. You fall into a ditch, you scramble around for a while in the dirt, you figure out which way is up, and you emerge smiling and thinking you know something. Then you trip and go down and it starts all over again. The adults who appear to be wise are the ones who simply don’t have any ditches in their backyards.

“Look at the Newets, for example. There they were, coasting along in their fancy house, blind to the fact that their daughters are abominable—”

“You never met them until today.”

“Ginny told us. Anyway, the Newets seemed like wise, mature adults to me when I first met them. I remember sitting in your kitchen, Ginny, once when they were over, and we were talking about money—”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“And Charles was saying that it was impossible to save money on a weekly basis from your paycheck, because all middle-class Americans spend every penny they make. That was when I’d gotten that $3000 from my grandmother and I wanted Charles to sell me a computer with a modem and the rest of it. And Charles said he wouldn’t take my $3000 because I might not have a lump sum like that again for some time, and that the one thing you should never do with a lump sum is spend it. He said I should buy the computer on time and pay it off with my allowance and birthday money and baby-sitting money and so on. I took his advice and before I knew it, the computer was mine and I still had the $3000 to boot. And let me tell you, I thought Charles Newet was the wisest male adult in the world—after Ginny’s father, of course.”

“I see your point,” Terri said. “So here Charles understood how a large amount of money might never come one’s way again but didn’t see the parallel where Ida was concerned.”

“That’s right. He was prepared to empty his entire marital account for the sake of a … a …”

“Bimbo,” I supplied.

“Bimbo. Thank you.” Sharon said.

“Well, Charles was lucky, wasn’t he?” Terri replied. “If today was any indication.”

Our voices were smooth and low and inflectionless, like the voices of people in dreams. When we broke off again, to reconnect with the stars and the night, it seemed as if we had never spoken at all. Another cloud crossed over the moon, but this one was so delicately put together that it did not entirely diminish her light. When it had passed, Charles drifted back into my mind. He was the one who had come to the door when we arrived there earlier. He’d made us coffee and then he’d had us sit down in the dining room and tell him all about our apartment. Ida had been up in the shower. She hadn’t realized we were there, and when she came down she was dressed in a bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head turban style. When she sat down, I saw Charles’s arm move; he had taken her hand under the table. Ida, who had been talking, stopped to giggle and then went back to what she had been saying. But Charles must have been doing funny things to her hand under there, because Ida’s face got red and you could see by the way she kept biting down on the corners of her lips that she was trying not to laugh. They had reminded me of the Gardeners.

“Don’t think it happened so easily,” I said.

“What’s that?” asked Sharon.

“Ida and Charles’s reconciliation. Remember, I’ve had to listen to her all this time. I’ve had a blow-by-blow account of the forgiveness process, and it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. I mean, when she first declared that she intended to forgive him and go back home, I thought she was some kind of saint. For a few weeks, everything must have been heavenly because I didn’t hear a word about it. Then she started coming in to work depressed again, insisting that she was confused, not angry. She just didn’t understand how after twenty-one years of marriage a thing like that could have happened, and unless she figured out why it happened, she had no reason to believe that it wouldn’t happen again somewhere down the road. So Flo, the other woman at work, sits her down one day and tells her that it’s natural for a man to pursue an attractive woman when he’s been married for so long, that what Ida needed to do to insure that it wouldn’t happen again was change her appearance, lose weight, wear makeup, buy some new clothes, etc.

“Well, all hell broke loose after that. Ida insisted that she liked herself just the way she was and if, after all this time, Charles was more interested in how she looked than who she was, she didn’t want him anymore.”

“Good for her,” Terri said.

“Yes, but poor Charles. Here he was trying his best to patch things up. And here’s Ida, so unwilling to do anything, appearance-wise, that might help things along, that she went quite the other way for a while. I mean, she gained ten pounds, on purpose. She started coming in in these rags that, my best guess is, she had used previously to dust her coffee tables. She stopped blow-drying her hair and let it just hang, and she was angry all the time. Not about Goliath, of course, because she’d promised herself that she would forgive him on that account, but about everything else that he did wrong.

“For instance, she bought him a shirt for his birthday and he left the box that it had come in up in their bedroom instead of throwing it in the trash. I can’t tell you how many afternoons I had to listen to her describing how angry it made her to see that box sitting in the corner of the room. Finally I said, ‘Ida, if it bothers you, why don’t you just throw it out yourself?’ She was all over me after that, saying that she was tired of picking up after Charles, that she’d been doing that her whole married life. He cut her badly, one big stab in the middle of the soul. But she got hers in too, little scratches every day until he was bleeding as well. She stopped cooking, you know. For months they lived on TV dinners. It was her way of punishing him.”

“But her intent was to forgive him,” Terri said, “and ultimately she did.”

“She says it happened overnight, back in April, April 17, she says whenever she tells the story, and that’s approximately once a week. She was having a terrible time with her allergies that day. That night, for no particular reason, which is sometimes the case, Charles had one of his anxiety attacks. So there they were, in bed, and Ida’s dying with discomfort, with her inhaler going in and out of her nose, and Charles, who had taken his tranquilizer but wasn’t feeling its effects yet, is shaking all over, and the bed is quaking, and they’re both moaning and groaning. And all of a sudden it strikes Ida as terribly funny and she begins to giggle, and then Charles does, and they really look at each other, for the first time in months and months, Ida said, and then they’re overcome and they can’t stop laughing. Later, when Charles is all tranquilized and Ida’s breathing properly again, one or the other of them laughs and they both get going all over again. It goes on all night; they keep waking each other up with their little snorts of laughter. And then in the morning, everything’s fine. It’s as if Goliath had never been born. They’ve been like two teenagers—Ida’s simile, not mine—ever since.”

“Incredible,” Sharon said. “A simultaneous epiphany induced by shared physical trauma. It must be something like a simultaneous orgasm.”

“I had an epiphany,” Terri whispered, “back in January, regarding my … problem.”

“And you didn’t tell us?” Sharon asked.

“Well, it was back when you guys first started taking me to the AA meetings, when we all first got back together again. You guys were so happy to be helping me to get back on my feet that I was afraid that if you knew that something else had triggered my recovery, you might be hurt.”

“Terri,” Sharon said, “you have to stop projecting your own sensitivity onto other people. We would have borne it. Tell us now.”

“Well, do you remember that first meeting that we went to?”

“Yes, it was held in one of the offices over by where Ginny works.”

“Worked,” I corrected.

“Well, the truth is, all during that meeting, while you and Ginny were talking away, telling all those strangers all about our misfortunes on my behalf, I was sitting there thinking, I hate this! I hate this twelve-step business and I hate these slobbering drunks, and as soon as I get home I’m going to have myself a drink and forget all about this.”

“Yes? So what happened to change your mind?”

“Well, then Ginny wanted to stop in at the church for a minute on the way out, to see how it looked all decorated with the stuff that the kids at the day-care had made. And I was—” She broke off to choke back a sob, then took a deep breath which rattled on the exhale. “It was moving,” she whispered.

In fact, it had been; I had been moved myself, although not in the same way that Terri must have been. Ida and Flo had set up their display over in an alcove beneath a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi. They had put the fish on the floor and covered them with a crinkled blue-tinted cellophane that really did resemble water and that concealed the fishes’ defects very nicely. They had created a bank for their “stream” with real rocks and tree trunks and clustered the little raccoons and bunny rabbits that the children had assembled around them, closely, so that you didn’t notice their defects either. The horrible cardboard panels, painted to resemble mountains and sky, had been placed behind Saint Francis, but the wisps of clouds, angel’s hair, which Flo and Ida had glued on kept you from noticing any flaws. The overall effect was glorious, truly. The pastor wasn’t about, but he must have surmised that some of the AA people might come in, because he had a tape playing in the background, children’s voices singing Christmas songs, both religious and secular. We came in in the middle of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” and stayed until the end of “Winter Wonderland.” So there, in the church, in the middle of that devastating winter, was the recreation of spring that Ida had envisioned from the start.

“I can’t really explain it very well,” Terri continued softly. “I can only tell you that something changed in me. And when I went home, I didn’t have a drink.”

“But there were episodes afterwards,” Sharon pointed out.

“Well, yes, of course, and the AA meetings really did help a lot then. And I don’t know what I would have done without you two throughout it all. But the children’s display was the thing that enabled me to go forward with the rest of the process. That was what provided me with my intent.”

Sharon sat up. “I think it’s time. The moon’s gone for good now. It’s getting really cloudy.”

I sat up slowly. It was like coming out of water after being submerged for a long time. Terri extended an arm and I pulled on it to help her into a sitting position. We spent a few minutes rubbing our eyes and stretching our legs, and then we all got to our feet and turned our headband flashlights on. I still had my father’s and I had bought two others for my friends just for this occasion.

Sharon was the first to take up the shovel, but she hit some tree roots and had to start over again a foot or so away from the original spot. By the time she gave the shovel to me, the hole was already as deep as it needed to be, but as our ceremony called for involvement of all of us, I made a few token stabs at the earth and then passed the shovel to Terri, who did the same. Then we put the shovel aside, turned off our flashlights, and reached out in the dark to find each other’s hands. Sharon, our designated spokesman, lifted her face to the dark night. “Spirits of the Night, Spirits of the Past,” she called out in a clear loud voice that elicited a little giggle from Terri.

I squeezed Terri’s fingers in warning and she whispered, “Okay,” and then Sharon continued:

“We have come here tonight to tell you that while we understand the necessity of your persistence, we reject your implements as a way of life. Tomorrow we go forward, into the world of higher education, and, ultimately, adulthood. We refuse to be your daughters. We refuse to be victims of our own anger. Now, as a symbol of our renunciation, we return to you those things that are yours.” She lowered her head and her voice. “Who’s got the bag?”

We let go of each other’s hands and Terri found the shopping bag that we had brought along and handed it over. Sharon reached in and pulled out the cardboard box containing her “documents.” She had, in fact, made them up, her intention being to startle one or both of us into getting in touch with her in spite of the edict that she had laid down. Also in the box was the Faust play, which she had still never let either of us read. She bent low and dropped the box into the hole. “I am no longer angry with my mother or Dr. Lindsey for using bad judgment. I am no longer angry with Beverly Sturbridge for dying.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And I am no longer angry with Thomas Rockwell.” She handed the bag to Terri.

Terri cleared her throat. Fearing she might giggle again and ruin this for Sharon, who had conceived the idea, I nudged her. She took from the bag a wine bottle, which she had emptied one evening in May when she’d had a minor relapse, and dropped it into the hole on top of the box of papers. “I am a recovering alcoholic,” she declared softly but surprisingly firmly. “I am no longer angry with myself for becoming one or with my parents for not noticing that I had become one. I am no longer angry with Thomas Rockwell.” She passed the bag to me.

My fingers found Surge’s spare collar and I had to gulp back the sob that threatened at that instant. “I am no longer angry with Frankie Stewart for stealing my dog,” I said. I reached in again and took out the last item. “I am no longer angry with my father for hurting my mother and me. I am no longer angry with Goliath, for not being who she might have been.”

I began to sniffle, out of nowhere. “Say it,” Terri whispered. “It doesn’t have to be true. You just have to intend it to be true for now.”

“Leave her,” Sharon said. “She will.”

“I am no longer angry with Thomas Rockwell,” I said, and I dropped the gun into the hole.

It hit the wine bottle of course, and we all jumped back from the flying glass. Then we turned our headband flashlights back on and bent over to cover the hole with dirt. When this was done, we straightened up and stomped on the dirt until it was level and hard-packed. “Well, we’re done with that,” said Terri as she rubbed her hands together to loosen the dirt on them.

“Ya hoo,” Sharon replied.

Terri and I looked at her. She was beaming. Tears were flowing from her eyes. “Boston!” she declared by way of explanation.

Yes, Boston. It seemed real now. Tomorrow we were going to Boston, and our lives once again would be changed utterly.

“Ya hoo!” I said back to her.

Terri began to laugh. “You’re regular Banshees. Is that the best you can do?”

“Listen to her,” Sharon said to me. “As if she ever made a Banshee-like sound in her life.”

“Do you think I can’t?” Terri asked.

“No, I really can’t imagine it.”

Terri tilted her head skyward and took a deep breath. “I hope no one’s listening,” she said. Then she yelled, “YAAAAAA HOOOOOO!”

Then we were all screaming, screaming like Banshees, running along the forest path, stumbling over the rocks that our little headlights failed to illuminate, bumping into trees and into each other, heading for the parking lot, heading for adulthood, which, we already knew, was likewise a continual stumbling, a comedy of errors, and with no wisdom to be gained whatsoever.