She could hardly tell her father and Gwen the truth. I’m coming because Jack thinks you need me. Gwen would hate having anyone worry about her. Nor could she say that she was coming to help with Ian’s kids. Who would believe that? So she had to make up a reason.
“I am having such good luck changing the content of my programs that I thought I might try shaking up my training routine a little.”
How selfish that sounded. I, Miss Amy Legend, am interrupting your lives on the slight chance this will be good for my training routine.
But when she called before going to the rink the next morning, Gwen seemed so delighted that Amy was coming that she paid no attention to her reason, and Dad…well, he was probably used to Amy sounding selfish.
I haven’t meant to be. I didn’t know I was.
“That’s wonderful,” Gwen exclaimed. “When will you get here? How long will you stay?”
“I’ll know more this afternoon,” Amy promised. “I’ve got to work out the ice time first.”
The others were already at the rink when she got there. At the first break, she told them. “My brother’s marriage has broken up, and he’s taking his two younger kids back to Iowa. I need to go too. I don’t know how long I will be gone, but it will be more than a week. I’ll train by myself.”
Oliver’s jaw sagged. Tommy’s eyebrows went up. Henry stepped forward almost threateningly.
She held up her hand. “You can say whatever you like, but you aren’t talking me out of it. I’m going. My family needs me.”
“What are you?” Henry asked. “Cinderella?”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Oliver asked. “You’ve never trained alone.”
“I know that, but this is necessary.” She turned to Henry. “And I’m not going as Cinderella. My family may not understand me, but they aren’t stupid. They know I’m hopeless in the kitchen.”
“So why are you going?” Henry demanded. Then he stopped and waved a hand. He wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of this. Why try to understand? “You’re still with the program, aren’t you?”
Amy knew what he was talking about, what the program was—the three of them skating together, touring together as long as their names would sell tickets and their bodies would hold together. Over time they would do more and more work for other skaters, producing, choreographing, designing. Skating would be their lives; they would never have to find other occupations.
She looked at Henry. He had always been the one most intent on their future—not only because he was the most intent about everything, but because the future would probably arrive first for him. His style of skating was more demanding physically than hers or Tommy’s. She and Tommy would be skating in front of crowds at least a decade longer than he would be. Their routines wouldn’t be as difficult as now, but they would find other ways to entertain.
Yes, she still wanted that, yes, she was still “with the program,” but only if there was more in her life than that.
At lunch, she went into the office and settled down with Gretchen to make arrangements. She was serious about continuing her training, and she needed an Olympic-size rink with private ice time.
The college had a new rink, and even though Amy had contributed a fair amount of money toward the building of it and had skated at its opening, she could never get it for as long as she would need it. The college community needed it; that’s why it had been built.
But a couple of years before the new college rink had been built, someone had built a private rink on the edge of town. Again Amy called her parents’ familiar number, and it didn’t seem odd in the least to have Gwen answer. “Is the rink out on Fifth Street still open?”
“I hardly know where Fifth Street is,” Gwen answered, “much less anything about a rink. Do you want me to have your father call you? Although…wait, it’s listed in the phone book.”
Gretchen was on another line, rescheduling some things. So Amy called the rink herself. She could do that. She was a big girl.
During the school year, the manager said, the rink didn’t open until one o’clock, and yes, of course, they’d consider leasing it to a private individual—Amy had not identified herself—oh, except on Tuesday and Thursdays at ten, there was a little kiddie class.
Five days a week, mornings only, except for an hour on Tuesday and Thursday morning for the preschool class—plenty of skaters would have delighted with that much private ice time. But Amy was used to much more.
She hoped she was doing the right thing. This could be a disaster. She had never trained by herself before.
But Jack had asked her to do it. She took a breath, identified herself, and reserved the ice.
If she left tomorrow, she would arrive before Ian. That sounded like a good idea. She asked Gretchen to call the airline. “And a car,” she said. “I will need a car.” Whatever was wrong with Gwen wouldn’t be improved by having to share a car with Amy.
At the beginning of the summer Tommy had suggested that Amy rent a car and drive herself to the lake, and she had dismissed it as far too adult. But here she was, two months later, renting a car.
She called Holly, catching her eating lunch at her desk. “I’m going to Iowa tomorrow.”
Holly was shocked. “You aren’t serious, are you? Isn’t this when you practice so hard? How can you leave? Amy, Jack is crazy. Don’t listen to him. Mother will be fine. If Jack’s so worried, he should go himself. He’s the one not doing anything.”
Jack did want to go himself. Amy was sure of that. He probably had had to slash his tires to keep himself from going. But he must know that he and Ian being together in one house would not solve a thing.
“If there’s any chance that I can help your mother,” Amy said to Holly, “then I’m going. I want all the best for her. I love her.”
Holly was silent for a moment. “I can hardly argue with that.”
That night as Amy was packing, Jack called. “I’m asking for more than I know, aren’t I?”
How good it was to hear his voice. “Probably, but that’s okay.”
“So why are you going?”
“Because it was you who asked.”
“Oh.” Clearly he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Oh.”
“Jack, what are you up to?” she asked suddenly. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?” It was impossible to imagine him doing nothing. “How can you be doing nothing?”
“Because I have nothing to do. I thought maybe Pete—he’s the guy I sold the business to—might need some help, but he doesn’t.”
“What about learning to fly a helicopter?” Amy sat on the bed next to her folded clothes. “I thought that’s what you were going to do next.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“Then what are you doing? What’s your day like?”
“Like anyone else’s, except I’m not doing anything.”
“Be more specific,” she ordered…it was possible that Jack’s definition of doing nothing included digging a new trench to reroute the Ohio River.
“I get up. I shower. Then I decide whether or not to go to 7-Eleven for coffee or make it at home. I read the newspaper. Actually, I read several newspapers, which is odd because I don’t give two hoots for world affairs. Then I shoot pool or play pinball or go to the batting cage. That’s what my day is like.”
“And you’re worried about your mother?” It sounded like he was the one with the problem.
“I do one other thing. I think about you. In fact, that’s what I do most of the time. I think about you.”
Even though she was renting a car, her father would have liked to meet her at the airport. He wanted to help her claim her bags and get the rental car, but he had a class to teach.
“I’ll be fine, Dad. I know how to get through an airport.”
She did indeed manage fine. She got her luggage, signed the rental agreement, and drove the thirty minutes to Lipton, carefully parking at the curb in front of the big, square red-brick house. Gwen must have been listening for her car. She was waiting on the white-columned porch, and it seemed completely normal to see her, hug her warmly, and walk into the house with her. Together they carried Amy’s luggage upstairs.
“Do you mind sleeping in Phoebe’s room?” Gwen asked. “The one thing that made Emily agree to come was the promise that she could stay in your room.”
Ian’s daughter had just started first grade. “My room? Why would she want to stay in my room?” It was by far the smallest.
Gwen shrugged. “It seemed important to her, but that was before we knew you were coming.”
“If it’s important to her, then that’s fine. I can stay in Phoebe’s…even though I won’t get a moment’s sleep because I’ll be so worried that someone will come in and holler at me for playing with her makeup.”
Gwen smiled. “I think you can count on having to holler at Emily for coming in and playing with your makeup.”
“I will not mind in the least.”
“Yes, you will. She’ll use your blusher brush in the eye shadow, and you’ll find yourself with big brown streaks under your cheekbones.”
“I guess I would mind that.”
They were driving to Iowa City that evening to have dinner with Phoebe and Giles. Amy had not been at her sister’s house since before their mother had died. Like their parents’ house, it was brick, built at the turn of the century, with four square rooms on the first floor. The stairs were in a different location; the front porch was different; the kitchen had been redone, but it really was a lot like Mother and Dad’s. Even the furniture was arranged in a similar way.
Amy hadn’t noticed this before. Didn’t you trust yourself, Phoebe? Didn’t you believe you could make a home for your family in a different style of house?
“This is such a treat,” Giles said, hugging Amy, his silky beard brushing her cheek. “How long are you here for?”
Amy hugged him back, hiding her grimace against his burly chest. Once again she didn’t know how long she was staying. That was just the sort of behavior that Phoebe had complained about. It probably did make her seem very much the prima donna.
And she couldn’t even give an honest answer. “That’s so hard for me to answer because I don’t know how training alone will go.”
“You’ve never come home before,” Phoebe said.
You never came home when Mother was alive. That was what Phoebe was saying.
Amy took a breath. You’re right. I probably wouldn’t have come home if Mother was alive. Gwen feels more like my true mother than Mother ever did.
Phoebe had to know this, and it chewed at her, this sense of her younger sister’s disloyalty. By your standards I have been disloyal, but I cannot run my life by your standards.
The next morning Amy drove herself to the rink and adhered faithfully to the workout that Oliver had designed for her. During the hour that the preschoolers and their moms were using the rink, she drove to the college and used the weight room. Then she returned to the rink and continued with her practice. At twelve-fifty, the rink manager came to resurface the ice for the public session, and Amy went home.
Gwen was changing sheets, getting ready for Ian and his kids. “I’d hoped to get this done before you got back,” she apologized. “I didn’t want you to feel like you had to help.”
“I don’t mind.” Amy moved around to the other side of the bed. “You’d expect Holly to help, wouldn’t you? Think of me as Holly.”
Ian was arriving on Saturday. Hal borrowed a station wagon, and Gwen and Amy drove to the airport with him. Scott and Emily were quiet, weary after the plane ride. Ian looked thin and tired just as Hal had last Christmas. He hugged Amy briefly. “Emily was thrilled that you were going to be here.”
Amy glanced at the little girl. She had to admit that she had never paid much attention to this particular niece. At family gatherings Emily and Claire were together all the time, and everyone treated them as a single being. The only time Amy had ever thought of her separately was when she noticed that Claire, Phoebe’s daughter, was better behaved and less demanding.
And if she had thought about it, she would have assumed that Emily was paying no more attention to her. But here Emily was, slipping her hand into Amy’s, asking if Amy would sit with her in the way back of the borrowed station wagon.
“I’d love to,” Amy said. And suddenly brown eye shadow on her blusher brush didn’t sound so bad after all.
The flight had arrived in Iowa City, so they went directly to Phoebe’s for lunch. Amy expected Emily to forget all about her as soon as she saw Claire, but Emily did not want to have one thing to do with Claire. She would not go see Claire’s new bike, she would not play in Claire’s room, she would not even sit with her at lunch. “What’s going on?” Amy whispered to Phoebe and Gwen as they were clearing the dishes.
“Emily’s mad at Claire,” Phoebe said, “because Claire has a mother and Emily does not. Of course, it’s really Joyce that Emily’s mad at, but she won’t admit that.”
That was almost exactly what Gwen had said about Phoebe earlier in the summer, that Phoebe was mad at her mother but couldn’t admit it.
“I hope you don’t mind that she’s turned to you,” Gwen said to Amy.
“Not at all. I’m flattered.”
Finally Ellie was able to persuade all four kids to walk down the block to the park, and the adults were able to sit down and talk.
“Are things as bad as they seem?” Giles asked.
“Yes,” Ian answered, but he wasn’t whining and he didn’t sound depressed. “All three of us are a mess, but we’re going to get better.”
“Do you have any expectation that you and Joyce will get back together?” Hal asked.
“Not in the immediate future. My focus right now is Scott and Emily and, to a lesser extent, myself. I’ve been seeing a therapist,” Ian said, “and I hope to find someone here. Yes, Joyce is needy and critical, but those are her issues. What I’m trying to figure out is why I was drawn to someone like that, why I wanted to be coupled with a difficult person.”
“Do you have any answers yet?” Amy asked.
“Not a one,” he said almost cheerfully. “But I’ll get there.”
Like most skaters Amy needed a routine, and as a navy wife Gwen was used to one, so the newly expanded household immediately settled down. Scott and Emily remained quiet and fearful, but the predictability of Gwen’s schedule was soothing.
“I don’t think we are being much fun,” Gwen whispered to Amy as they waited for the children to set the table one evening. “But this might be what they need.”
The one thing Gwen had asked of Hal was that Ian not hang around the house all day. “Amy is fine,” she had said. “She’s a woman. But I’m not going to face having a man at home until you retire.”
So Hal had found Ian office space at the college, and while the kids were at school, Ian went to the campus and worked on the tapes his students were sending to him. It was, Amy had to believe, as good for Ian as it was for Gwen.
Amy wasn’t wild about training alone, but her skating was going well enough. For an hour every morning a student from the college came in and videotaped her practice. She watched it and then express-mailed it to Oliver, who would watch it and call her with comments.
She had been in Iowa nearly a week and felt that she had not seen anything that justified Jack’s concern. Gwen really did seem fine.
Finally she called Holly from the rink. “Would you tell Jack I’m getting nowhere? Your mom seems fine.”
“Of course she is. And why don’t you call Jack yourself? You don’t need me to be a go-between.”
“Just call him, will you?”
“All right, but only because it means I can tell him he was wrong.”
Two hours later, the college student who opened up the rink for Amy called her back to the phone.
It was Holly. “He wants to know if she is being herself or if she’s just being the perfect wife and mother.”
“What does he mean by that?”
“It can be really hard on a military wife of Mother’s generation when her husband dies on active duty. She not only loses him, but she also loses her job. This sounds weird to us, but being a C.O.’s wife, then an admiral’s wife, really was Mother’s profession. But she did fine after he died. She got new routines for herself, she met all kinds of new people, went to museums, took classes.”
Amy thought before she answered. “She’s not doing anything like that now.” Taking care of Hal, Ian, Scott, and Emily was her job now. And Amy. She was also taking care of Amy.
“But there are things to do, aren’t there?” Holly asked. “With the college and all? And what about the house? At the beginning of September she was saying that there was tons to do. She said that the rooms needed painting, the kitchen needed updating, and every single window in the house had pinch pleats, but I haven’t heard her talk about that in weeks.”
“I haven’t heard her talk about that at all.”
Amy had almost completely cooled down by now, so she did a minimal stretch and went home. Gwen was out, and the house was quiet.
Before she even took a shower, she walked through every room. The walls did need painting, and every single window except those in the kitchen did indeed have pinch-pleat draperies, velvet on the first floor, chintzes on the second. Her mother hadn’t been the least interested in interior design.
But Gwen had had wildflowers on the mantels and the side tables all summer long, emerald ferns arching out of earthenware vases, vivid masses of goldenrod, the soft, pale stems of the touch-me-nots. Gwen loved beauty in her home.
She heard Gwen’s car in the drive and glanced out the kitchen window. The truck was open; Gwen was unloading groceries. Amy hurried out to help.
“I talked to Holly today,” she said when they had the groceries inside.
“I’m glad. I love it that you and she get along so well.” Gwen handed Amy a box of cold cereal to put away.
“She said that you’d been thinking about doing some redecorating.”
Gwen started folding the grocery bags. “It was just a reflex. John and I always bought whenever we moved, and we never could afford what we wanted. So I would always spend the first year of a tour working pretty hard on the house to get it halfway tolerable.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes. I got a little sick of doing the painting and sewing, but picking out everything was fun.”
Amy had had nothing to do with the decoration of her Denver condo; she hadn’t had time. But she could see that it might be fun. “Why don’t we do some stuff, then? Why don’t we do it together?”
Gwen shook her head. “I have painted with children in the house, and trust me, it isn’t anything you would want to do.”
“We aren’t going to paint ourselves,” Amy said firmly. “We’re going to pay people to do that, and we’re going to pay them a huge amount to do it quickly. We’ll just do the fun parts. Where do we start?”
“I always wallpaper my own bathroom first. It’s cheap, it’s fast, and you’re in it every day.”
“Then let’s forget about making dinner”—Amy didn’t like cooking any more than she ever had—“and let’s wallpaper your bathroom.”
Amy had never looked at a wallpaper book in her life. Her designer had always ordered reference samples and had taped them to the wall for her approval, but within ten minutes of arriving at the paint store, she was ready to wallpaper every room in her condominium. There were so many pretty patterns.
“We should bring Emily,” Amy said. “I would have loved this as a kid. Maybe she will.”
“If you don’t mind, we could let her pick out a border to put up in your room. We wouldn’t even have to repaint. Just slap something up. We can always take it down after she leaves.”
That sounded like a great idea. Amy had never gotten to pick out anything for her room. “Did you let Holly pick out her paint colors and such?”
“Amy, I let Jack pick out what he wanted in his room.”
Amy stuck a piece of scrap paper in one of the books, marking a pattern that she liked. “You really are a noble person.”
Amy had no idea what the future held for her and lack, but she knew one thing for sure. There was no way she was ever letting him pick out paint colors.
So Amy now spent her afternoons helping Gwen with the house. While Gwen was far more experienced, Amy’s eye for color turned out to be better, and if it was Amy leaving the message, painters and contractors returned the call.
Gwen had long since met all of Hal and Eleanor’s friends in the college community, but when she and Amy were in town, looking at fabrics and carpets, they occasionally ran into women whom Amy knew and Gwen did not. These women were the professional community, the wives of the doctors, lawyers, and bankers. Amy knew them because they ran the local charities, and they had appreciated the usefulness of her rising fame long before any of her parents’ friends ever had. The first public speech of her life had been in front of the Lipton PEO, an organization her mother would have never joined.
They were orderly, elegant women who were accustomed to their order and elegance being essential to their husbands’ careers.
When Amy and Gwen were comparing wallpaper selections with Mrs. Selfridge, a lawyer’s wife, it occurred to Amy that Gwen would probably have more in common with these ladies than she did with Eleanor’s friends. But she would never have a chance to get to know them. They would never think to invite a music professor’s new wife to their homes. There was little socializing between the business community and the college. Gwen would never have met them through Hal. Her friends would have to be Eleanor’s friends.
Not if Amy could help it. She was going to introduce these ladies to Gwen. She would have a luncheon and invite them all. It would be strange, her guests would be very surprised at the invitation, but they would come.
Amy thought about the details. If she had it at home, Gwen would end up doing all the work. She could have it at Staunton’s, the town’s nicest restaurant, but she suspected the people she was inviting went there all the time.
It wasn’t childish to call Gretchen for advice, she told herself. Having such poor problem-solving skills herself, she had hired Gretchen for hers. And Gretchen had the solution, the name of a company that air-shipped a complete New England clam and lobster dinner packed in its cooking pot. All Amy would have to do was set the table and add boiling water. This even Amy could do.
“My new stepmother is from the East,” she said when she issued the invitations, “and misses the seafood. Could you join us?”
She invited Phoebe as well. She did it to be polite. She didn’t really expect Phoebe to take off work to come eat clams with women she had little interest in. But Phoebe did. The two sisters did all the serving and clearing, leaving Gwen to entertain the guests.
By the end of the party Gwen volunteered to cut down and re-hem the old bedroom drapes so that they could be used in the rec room of the local shelter. She appeared eager to hear a lecture on Oriental rugs at the next Service League meeting. She indicated that she and Hal would be pleased to get an invitation to the Literary Volunteers’ annual fund-raiser.
“I didn’t understand why you were doing this,” Phoebe said when the two of them were alone in the kitchen. “I thought you were showing off. But I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”
The following day she had to go back to Denver. Oliver was insisting on it. “I have to see this live.”
“You can have two days,” she told him. “I’ll come back for two days, but that’s it.”
The little world of professional skaters was all atwitter about the fact that Amy wasn’t training in Colorado, and other coaches started sniffing around, seeing if she was ready to leave Oliver. But she didn’t want to leave Oliver. She didn’t want to break her close association with Henry and Tommy. She simply wanted to stay in Iowa for a while.
In October, the professional season began. The professional competitions weren’t really true competitions. They were television events, designed to run opposite football games. Only the most competitive-natured skaters, like Henry, cared very much who won. But the appearance fees were considerable, and the exposure enormous.
The hoped-for triple salchow was not going to happen. Amy knew that technically she was not skating her best. “That’s not good,” Tommy said when she confided this to him. “Even at your best you’re one of the worst skaters here.”
But professional competitions weren’t about technique. They were about performance, and Amy was still one of the best performers. Her new material was so strong and so unexpected that she started winning by unusually large margins.
Since the competitions were taped for future airings, they were often held during the week. One Friday afternoon Amy was at home in Lipton when Ellie called. “Oh, Aunt Amy, I need a huge, huge favor. Can you baby-sit Alex and Claire on Saturday night?”
It was a complicated story, involving a date with someone Ellie adored. “I asked him. Do you believe it? None of us have ever asked a boy out. And Charles never dates. I used to think it was because he was so smart, but Nick said it might be because he’s shy and nervous—”
“Nick? You talk to Nick?”
“Oh, sure. Well, it isn’t talk. We e-mail each other almost every day, and he told me that I should go ahead and ask this guy myself. So I did, and I was so nervous that I forgot that I told my mom ages ago that I would sit tomorrow night, and none of my friends can do it, and if I tell my mom I want to go out, then she and Dad will stay home, and I will feel really bad and—”
“Ellie, I can’t follow a word that you are saying, but I’m very happy for you. What time do I need to be there?”
When Phoebe heard of this plan, she was horrified and called Amy. “I can’t let you do this.”
“Dad and Gwen are going out.” They had been invited to dinner by one of Gwen’s new friends. “Ian is taking his kids to the movies, so I was going to rent a video for myself. You have videos in Iowa City, don’t you?”
“Giles can go to this alone.” Phoebe was not going to be distracted. “Everyone will understand.”
“But that’s not the issue,” Amy countered. “Look, Phoebe, that afternoon at the lake, you said I never do anything for the family, and—”
“I should not have said that,” Phoebe interrupted. She was mortified. She hated being reminded of that.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have said it then. But you should have said it sometime because you were right. So for the first time in my entire life I’ve got a chance to do something for you, and you’re being a pill if you don’t let me. Furthermore, if you change your plans, Ellie will be miserable, and apparently this date is a pretty big deal to her.”
“It is that,” Phoebe acknowledged.
“Then I’ll be there at seven.”
Phoebe and Giles had left by the time Amy arrived. Ellie explained all the rules about bedtime and television, and then the doorbell rang and Ellie went pale. So feeling quite the helpful aunt, Amy went to open the door, and then it was young Charles’s turn to go pale. He had clearly not expected to be meeting Ellie’s famous aunt. He dropped his eyes, snatched his hand away as if hers were burning, and greeted Ellie as if she were a St. Bernard rescuing him from a blinding snowstorm. But he was surprisingly good-looking for the captain of the chess team.
Amy had never baby-sat before in her life, but she proved perfectly able to microwave a bag of popcorn and read some stories. Fortunately, the kids didn’t fight and went to bed almost willingly. Amy then watched her own video and looked through reports of charitable foundations until Phoebe and Giles got home.
“Did Ellie get off okay?” Giles asked. “Were the two of them miserably nervous?”
“He was so terrified of me,” Amy answered, “that she looked like high ground in a rising river.”
Giles put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. “You do have your uses, dear sister-in-law.”
Phoebe walked her out to the car. “I know I’m sounding like a broken record, but I still can’t believe what I said to you at the lake. I was so completely out of line.”
“Oh, Phoebe…don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Phoebe ignored her. “Do you know the Demeter-Persephone myth?”
“No,” Amy answered. There was no point in pretending that she did.
“It’s Greek. Demeter is goddess of the earth. Persephone is her daughter. Persephone is abducted by Hades, god of the underworld, and Demeter is so grief-stricken that she stops doing her work. The earth is taken over by perpetual winter. She’s like Lot’s wife, the woman who looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt; they’re both symbols of grieving too much.”
Amy no longer believed herself stupid. Phoebe’s intelligence was conventionally analytic while hers was intuitive, kinetic, and aesthetic. Amy did not envy Phoebe her intelligence; she did not wish to be other than she was. But Phoebe was better educated, and Amy did envy her that.
“So you feel that you’ve been grieving too much?”
Phoebe nodded. “There’s been times since Mother died that I’ve felt like a pillar of salt, full of tears yet unable to cry. But Demeter and Lot’s wife were grieving for the loss of children; I’ve been grieving for my mother. Mother did die too early, there’s no question about that, but most women lose their mothers. Of course you should mourn your mother, but I cringe at the thought of Ellie or Claire being as paralyzed by my death as I have been for the last…it’s almost been two years already.”
Phoebe was learning. She was learning how to forgive herself for her mistakes.
She was wearing a dramatic necklace, a slab of malachite suspended from links of heavy silver. Amy touched it. “That was Mother’s, wasn’t it?”
Phoebe nodded.
“What about the lapis lazuli? Do you wear it much?”
“Probably more than anything else.”
Amy wasn’t surprised. The lapis lazuli necklace and bracelet were the simplest of Mother’s jewelry. “And the garnets? I did love them when I was a girl.”
Phoebe smiled. “Claire does too.”
Claire was five; she refused to wear anything that wasn’t pink. “Are they a nightmare?” The garnets had been Eleanor’s only Victorian jewelry. They were ornate and overwrought, badly set in fading gold.
“I’ve never figured out what to wear them with,” Phoebe admitted. Then her eyes shifted away, and she spoke without looking at Amy. “Why didn’t you want any of Mother’s jewelry?”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want it.” Amy’s words came out in a rush. Phoebe had completely misunderstood why she hadn’t taken any of the jewelry. “No, no, it wasn’t that. I mean, the opals and the topazes…But it did seem to me that you should have everything, that it would mean more to you than to me.”
Now, however, she could see how Phoebe had interpreted what she had intended as generosity. “Did it seem like I didn’t care about Mother’s dying? I did, of course I did, but I knew how devastating it was to you, and somehow that’s what that time was about for me, worrying about you more than grieving for her.”
“You were worrying about me?” Phoebe didn’t like people worrying about her.
Amy went on quickly. “It wasn’t that I didn’t care about her dying, but in some ways I had already grieved for—well, not really for her—but for her place in my life.” She hoped that she wasn’t going to make everything worse by saying this. “I had to accept a long time ago that Mother was never going to understand me and would never really value what I did.”
Phoebe sighed and shook her head. “My relationship with Mother was so strong and good, it’s hard to understand how yours could be so different.”
“You and I are different,” Amy said. “And ironically Mother may have been the best possible mother for me. So many kids skated to please their mothers, and I used to envy them, having mothers who cared so much, but now I see how bad that was. From the very beginning I had to skate for myself. Mother made the process work—she wrote all those checks—but she didn’t particularly care about the results. I didn’t have to succeed for her.”
Phoebe was a mother. She understood this perhaps better than Amy herself. “I know your tastes and interests were very different from hers, but in some ways you were more like her than I am. I follow every rule ever made, and she never followed any. I knew that she was disappointed that you had so little interest in books, but secretly I worried that I was disappointing her because I was so unadventuresome. I thought I ought to be like her, and I wasn’t.”
“Is that why you work so hard at everything?”
Phoebe smiled, a tight little half smile. “Giles would say so.”
“Phoebe”—Amy had to ask her this—“have you and Giles found a new lake yet?”
Phoebe shook her head. “No. We’re working on it, but I know that I am trying too hard to find something exactly like our lake. Giles has sent away for about seventeen thousand sets of house plans, and he’s enjoying that…You know, Jack offered to come help him build it next summer.”
“He did?” Amy was surprised. It seemed odd that Jack was talking to Phoebe and Giles when she wasn’t.
“Giles loves the idea,” Phoebe said, “although I think we should get someone else to rough it in during the spring. Then the pair of them can wire it and finish it together…if we find a site, of course.”
But there was a site, a perfect site. Amy had to try again.
“I realize it came out all wrong this summer, this business of the Rim, but I still mean it. It’s there for you and Giles if you want it.”
Phoebe shook her head. “I’m still baffled by this. It’s hard to believe that you own the Rim. Why did you buy it?”
“Because I’m an idiot who believes a lot of drunks, because I wanted to be the savior of the universe.”
“So why didn’t you tell any of us?”
“Because it seemed so transparent, that everyone would know that I wanted to be the savior of the universe…but that doesn’t matter now. For whatever reason, I do own it. Did you talk to Giles about it? Did you tell him?”
“No. That would make it seem like I was trying to do everything my way, that I wasn’t willing to leave the lake.”
She had a point. “But now that you’ve looked for other places, maybe it would be different. Why don’t you at least mention it to him? At a minimum he ought to know that his sister-in-law is an idiot who believes a lot of drunks.”
“No,” Phoebe answered. “I said I would move to another lake, and I will.”
“Would you think about it?”
“No.”
There was clearly no point in saying anything more. Phoebe was not listening to her. So when Amy got home, she sat down with her father and Gwen and told them that she owned the Rim.
Hal was as surprised as Phoebe had been. He shook his head. “Sometimes I think that your mother and I never understood one thing about you.”
“Maybe you didn’t, but you never tried to change me,” Amy answered. “That’s the important thing.” She had never fully appreciated that before. Her parents had never tried to turn her into Phoebe or Ian. It was a good thing because it would have been hopeless. She would have made a very poor Phoebe, but she was doing a pretty fine job of being Amy.
“Why are you telling us about this property now?” Gwen asked. “Are you hoping to sell it to Phoebe and Giles?”
Amy suspected that Gwen thought it as good an idea as she did. “Sell, give…I don’t really care. But Phoebe won’t even tell him about it.” She explained what was happening. “And I’m not going to talk to him behind her back.”
“That’s very wise,” Gwen said.
Hal was drumming his fingers against the arm of his chair. “This really is a good solution, isn’t it?”
Neither woman answered. It was obvious to Hal that they thought so.
“Eleanor and I both had grave reservations about Joyce.” Clearly he thought that this had some connection with what they were talking about. “We discussed them, and I assumed, I thought it just went without saying, that we would never say anything to him. But Eleanor always spoke her mind about everything. She said something to him, I don’t exactly know what, but I think it only made him feel more protective of Joyce and made him marry her that much more quickly.”
“So that’s why you are always so careful not to interfere in our lives?” Amy asked.
“That episode certainly confirmed what was probably a natural inclination. But”—he stood up—“this is a very different case, and I think it is now time for me to interfere. I will talk to Phoebe.”
He must have called Phoebe the minute he woke up because Amy was pouring her first cup of coffee, not even ready to think about what she would wear to church, when the phone rang. Gwen handed it to her. Giles spoke without any greeting. “If I write you a great big check for this piece of property, are you going to rip it up?”
That would be Amy’s first impulse. “Not if you really hate the idea.”
“I do. I’m utterly incapable of accepting such a generous gift. At least I hope I am. I want that lot so badly I might even stoop to graciousness in order to get it.”
Amy hugged the phone to her ear. She was so happy that this was happening. If anyone on earth deserved her sister, it was this wonderful man.
He admitted that he might not have been so enthusiastic about it in July. “Minnesota claims to have ten thousand lakes, and I suppose we shouldn’t have gotten discouraged, having only looked at about nine thousand of them, but fatigue was setting in.”
He insisted that they all come to Iowa City for dinner that night to talk about it.
Phoebe’s dining room table was covered with house plans and blueprint kits. Giles was full of questions, what were the dimensions of the most likely building sites, what the drainage was like.
Amy was useless. “I don’t know. I can’t estimate distances unless I’m on my skates. I don’t even know what drainage is. Why don’t you ask Jack? He went there with me. He might have noticed.”
Giles instantly disappeared and came back a few minutes later. Jack had some notion of the lot size. “But he says that even he wouldn’t pick plans based on those estimates.”
“Take note of the ‘even he,’” Gwen said. “No one can accuse Jack of having unnecessarily high standards. If he says something isn’t good enough, then everyone needs to run to the nearest bomb shelter.”
“Oh, I think in some things Jack has very high standards,” Giles said, and pointedly looked at Amy.
That was Sunday, and Monday morning Amy was once again pouring herself a cup of coffee when the phone rang. Gwen was in the shower, so she answered it.
Static crinkled through the line. “I’m in the truck,” a voice called out, “and I’m an hour south of Indianapolis. Can you hear me?”
It was Jack. A familiar wash of joy flooded across Amy. “Yes, I can hear. It’s me, Amy.”
“I can’t hear you,” he was still shouting, “but tell Giles I am going up to Minnesota to do those measurements for him.”
Halfway through the word Minnesota the static suddenly disappeared, and Amy had to hold the phone away from her ear so that his voice didn’t blow out her eardrums. She replied in a normal tone. “The line’s clear now. You don’t have to shout.”
“Amy?” He had thought he was speaking to his mother.
“It’s me, and I hear you. You’re driving up to Minnesota to measure the lot for Giles. You’re driving from Kentucky to Minnesota to measure a building site.”
“It’s not much more than a thousand miles. It will wreak hell with my pinball game, but I make sacrifices. I assume it’s okay with your dad if I spent the night in one of the cabins. He showed me where a key was hidden.”
“I’m sure it’s—” But the static was back, and a moment later the line went dead.
Wednesday, Jack called with the dimensions Giles needed. A number of trees were going to have to come down, and Jack pointed out that they could probably get better prices on tree work now than in the spring, when everyone was wanting such work done. He was quite willing to stay and arrange for the work if people would tell him what they wanted done. So Giles and Phoebe flew up for the weekend to make some decisions; Amy and Gwen took care of their children.
Amy was amazed. It took her family five years to move a gas light. Now Giles and Phoebe were hopping onto airplanes, intending to have their new cabin roughed in by next July.
“It’s so beautiful up there,” Phoebe gushed when she and Giles got home. None of them had ever been to the lake in the fall. “The popple and the birch are these wonderful shades of gold and yellow. Everything was so quiet. I didn’t want to come home.”
Apparently Jack hadn’t either. During the two days before Phoebe and Giles arrived, he had prowled around some of the junk shops that people had set up in their garages. He found a couple of propane iceboxes in decent condition. He called Hal. How about if he picked them up and installed them in the big garage? And then as long as he was trenching a gas line out here, why not put in some lights?
And then after Phoebe and Giles returned home, while Jack was waiting for the tree work to start, he found a wood stove that had a fifteen-gallon water cistern. “It’s too big for the cabins, but if we sink a well—”
Hal interrupted, laughing. “Jack, stop bothering me. Stop driving into town to call every time you have an idea. Do whatever you want. Send me the bill.”
Gwen clasped her hands. “My baby’s going to be all right.”