Julia's Daughters

I stare at the powder room door. I’ve been in here at least ten minutes. I’m surprised no one has come looking for me.

Who would come looking for me? Izzy? Possibly. Certainly not Haley. She hates me. Not my husband. Ben’s thoughts are a thousand miles away from me right now; he’s in the bosom of his family.

I groan to myself. How is it that after all these years, I still haven’t outgrown, outsmarted, out-somethinged these petty jealousies?

I have no right to be covetous. I know that.

I knew what I was getting myself into when I married Ben almost twenty years ago. I was an adult woman, making adult choices. I knew what his family was like. How they could be overwhelming and all encompassing. And it’s not like we didn’t talk about it. Ben warned me when we started discussing the possibility of marriage, our senior year at Cal. He flat out told me that he was a mama’s boy. He told me his brothers were his best friends.

But I wasn’t really listening. Looking back, I see that now. Ben was so much fun and I was so in love. I was too busy thinking about a house with a finely manicured lawn, thanks to Maxton and Sons, and a baby in my arms. I didn’t read between the lines. The truth is, I was young and dumb. And I didn’t want to listen to my mother. I didn’t want her to be right. About me or Ben. About anything.

But she was right. She’d been wrong about a lot of things, but this one thing, she’d been right about. What Ben had been trying to tell me was that I would never be the most important woman in his life. That I would never be his best friend.

That was exactly what my mother told me. Damn her.

So I have no right to ask to change the rules now. Not after all of these years. Not after having three children. Certainly not after burying one.

And then here I am again, back to Caitlin. It’s like that silly movie Caitlin loved, Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. He keeps living the same day, over and over again.

I lean back on the toilet. The lid’s down; it’s actually not an uncomfortable seat. And it smells good in here. Linda always has Yankee candles burning all over her house. The one burning on the sink smells like vanilla. It’s nice. I used to burn candles in our house too. Before we draped the mirrors with black crepe and piled ashes on the furniture.

I came into the bathroom to pee . . . going on fourteen minutes ago, I see from my cell sitting on the edge of the sink. But then I realized I needed a minute. A minute to what, I’m not sure. Not necessarily to cry. Although this is probably the longest I’ve gone without crying in forty-nine days.

I think I just needed to catch my breath.

Tonight’s been hard. Harder even than I thought it would be. So hard that more than once I seriously considered getting up and walking out.

But I didn’t leave. I just hid in the bathroom. That’s progress, isn’t it?

I close my eyes.

I should cut myself a break. This is my first real foray into some sort of normal outing. A birthday dinner at my mother-in-law’s. A protected environment where someone who doesn’t know won’t ask how Caitlin is doing in her cheering competitions. Which is what happened to me last time I tried to go to the market. I ended up leaving my half-filled cart near the dairy case. Frozen fries and all.

So, tonight. Relatively safe, but still hard. It hasn’t been easy to listen to the conversations at the table. Even without anyone expecting me to say anything. It hasn’t been easy to sit there watching other people’s lives go on.

I gave up pretty quickly trying to follow any of the multiple conversations running at the same time at the big dining room table. Ben’s family’s always been like this; they’re loud and they’ll talk over you if you don’t fight to get in a few words. Tonight I didn’t even mind because I didn’t have anything to say. I don’t care what kind of grass seed Jeremy thinks they should try to combat the summer drought issue. I don’t care how outraged Tabitha is about the price of permanent makeup. I’m not even sure I know what permanent makeup is, although, checking out Tabitha across the table, I wondered if that’s what’s wrong with her face. And here I thought it was an overdose of Botox.

I doubt anyone at the table noticed I wasn’t talking. That I was just sitting there sipping my wine, pushing my food around my plate.

Haley was doing the same thing: making no attempt to join in, moving her food around with her fork so it sort of looked like she was eating. But she wasn’t eating.

That thought suddenly worries me. When was the last time I saw her eat anything? Is that why she looks so pale? She has to be eating, doesn’t she? I haven’t been present for a family meal since Caitlin died. There haven’t been any family meals since Caitlin died.

I need to talk to Haley. I can’t put it off any longer. I know that. I fully intended to do it this afternoon. I was just trying to come up with a plan of attack. Instead, I took a nap.

I lower my head to my hand. I need to pull myself together. I just—

A knock on the bathroom door startles me. I instinctively come up off the lid.

“Julia! It’s Linda.”

“Just a minute,” I call, reaching back to flush so she won’t know I’m just hiding in here.

The door opens and in she comes. Of course she does.

I want to take a step back and get her out of my personal space, but there’s not really anywhere for me to go. I can’t believe I forgot to lock the door.

“You okay?” Linda asks, closing the door behind her.

Now she’s really in my space, which I find profoundly intrusive. Far more intrusive than I would have a few months ago. A few months ago, I might have thought oh, this is just Linda being Linda. She gets in people’s space all the time. But now she’s not just intruding into my personal space, she’s intruding on my grief. The deepest part of me.

“Um.” I sidestep to get to the sink and I turn on the faucet. “I’m okay.”

“I want to talk to you about Haley.”

I glance at myself in the mirror. I look like a hag. A hag with gray roots.

“Ben told me about her getting expelled. About the drugs.”

I pump soap into my hand; it smells like a shower gel Caitlin used to use. I savor the scent for a moment, then glance at Linda in the reflection in the mirror. “Did Ben tell you where she said she got the Percocet?”

“That she stole them from me? He did. Which means she’s a drug addict and a thief?”

I take my time rinsing the soap off my hands. I rarely argue with Linda. I certainly never confront her. I’ve always told myself I don’t disagree with her openly in order to keep the peace in Ben’s family. But my family is shattered and honestly, tonight, I just don’t give a crap about Linda’s. “Why do you have that much Percocet lying around? It’s a controlled substance.”

She folds her arms over her chest. She’s a petite woman. Pretty, but the drinking and the pills are beginning to show on her face. She looks pinched and there are bags under her eyes. Not bags as big as mine, but she’s definitely looking rough.

“I have a prescription, if it’s any of your business,” she says, getting snotty with me the way she does when anyone challenges her. “My back. Remember, I had that car accident. But that’s neither here nor there. You’re not going to redirect this conversation, Julia. I’m very concerned about Haley. We all are.”

I turn around and park my skinny butt on the edge of the sink. I can smell Linda’s perfume. It’s an Estée Lauder scent. I pull the white hand towel with an embroidered sailboat on it off the rack and dry my hands. “Ben says you think we should send her away to boarding school.”

She still has her arms crossed. Between the candle and her perfume, I can barely smell the gin on her breath. Just barely. But she doesn’t seem drunk. Of course, she never does. If I had as many gin and tonics as I saw her down tonight, I’d be unconscious under the dining room table.

“I think it would be good for her.” Linda’s dark eyes bore into me. Ben’s eyes. “I’m willing to pay for it. There are some good schools in Oregon. Schools that would—”

I cut her off. “It’s not about the money, Linda. I’m not sending my daughter away.” I sound stronger than I feel. “How do you think I could send her away after what happened—” My voice cracks. I can’t say to Caitlin.

“Just for a semester.” Linda softens her tone. “Two. It would give her some time to think, somewhere where she’ll be safe. We can send her somewhere where she’ll be closely monitored day and night. No drugs. No negative influences. Just academics and structure. And having her out of the house will give you and Ben some time,” she goes on. “To work on your marriage.”

“My marriage?”

“Well, let’s be honest, it could use it right now, couldn’t it?”

I lift my gaze. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Julia, this is me you’re talking to. I’m Ben’s mother. You think I don’t know how unhappy he’s been? You think I didn’t know your marriage was a mess before we lost Caitlin?”

I glance at the door, considering just walking out, but she’s pretty much blocking my way. I’d have to knock her down to escape. Possibly knock her out.

Linda sighs, trying to sound sympathetic, but I know her better than that. Doesn’t she know I know her better than that after all these years?

“You know, Peter had an affair. Did Ben tell you that?” It’s rhetorical. She goes on. “We were about the same age you and Ben are now. It’s the age couples are when there are affairs.”

“No one had an affair, Linda.” I stare at her, what she’s saying slowly sinking in. I feel my forehead crease. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me Ben’s been cheating on me?”

“I don’t know anything about that. My point is that we got through it. We went to counseling, we promised to be better to each other.” She shrugs. “We both agreed that one little sexual indiscretion wasn’t worth ending our marriage, our business partnership, our life together. We put it aside and we went on. Which is what you and Ben have to do. You have to get past Caitlin’s death.”

I’m still stuck on the part where Linda insinuated that Ben was having an affair. Granted, things haven’t been good with us lately, but I just can’t imagine him cheating on me. But now I’m starting to imagine. Is that what was going on in the months before Caitlin died? Was that why he was working such long hours? I meet Linda’s gaze. “This—conversation—is—over—Linda.” I emphasize each word, imagining myself returning to Montgomery’s funeral home to pick out a coffin for my husband. After I kill him.

She just stands there, arms crossed over her chest. “You know, when Ben came to me to tell me he’d asked you to marry him, I begged him to reconsider.”

Tears suddenly well in my eyes. I didn’t know that. Ben never told. And suddenly I feel a tenderness for my husband that I haven’t felt in a very long time. Which seems completely crazy because a second ago I was thinking he’d cheated on me.

“I told him that while I thought you were a nice enough girl, I didn’t think you two were well suited for each other. I warned him that with the kind of people you come from—”

“Linda,” I interrupt.

She keeps talking right over me. “You’d never understand what it meant to be a part of a real family. You’d never—”

“Linda,” I repeat, holding up my hand. “Linda, this is neither the time nor the place to have this discussion. In fact, I can’t imagine when would be a good time for you to tell me this. Ben and I have been married nineteen years.” I reach around her to grab the doorknob. “I’m not going anywhere. We’re not getting a divorce.”

As I turn the door handle, she lays her hand on mine. “You have to do something about Haley.”

“I know.” I yank open the bathroom door.

“Before it’s too late,” she calls after me as I push past her.

“Girls?” I call, my tone bordering on shrill. “You ready to go?”