Chapter 12
Hannah, her face wet with tears, walked back to Aunt Pam’s house in the dusk. She hadn’t been able to cry openly in years, yet lately it seemed to be all she could do. Writing that little essay had unplugged the well again, and it felt oddly pleasurable.
Back at Aunt Pam’s house, she crouched in the shadowy living room and pawed through the boxes searching for a flashlight. She found one and flicked it on, shooting a circle of light across the room. Good, but she would need to have some real lamplight. You didn’t wander around with flashlights on Captain’s; you lit gas lamps with shapely glass hurricane lamp shades. The only time to let in blasphemous electricity was in a pinch, like now while Hannah searched for the matches using her flashlight. It was also acceptable in the middle of the night, when a small switch-on electric camping lamp was handier and safer when you only needed to use the toilet for a minute.
Lamps lit and the air full of one of Hannah’s favorite Captain’s scents, sulfur from the lighting of matches, she set about making dinner. She laid out apples, French bread from her favorite bakery, and a wedge of ripe swelling Brie and made herself an apple and Brie sandwich. Biting into the crusty bread, she realized how ravenous she was. When was the last time she ate? Oh, that awful fast-food burger that didn’t even taste like beef. What was that filler they used? Soy? She ate lustily, finishing off the entire loaf of bread and all of the cheese along with a tall bottle of seltzer. One apple remained and would be good tomorrow with breakfast.
Now what?
If it had been summer, the meal would have been boiled crabs or pan-fried fish and sliced vine-ripened tomatoes and corn on the cob and a green salad. There would have been a crowd of rosy candlelit faces around the table – everyone gathered together to eat at night – and laughter and talk. Once they finished eating someone would jump up and run to the piano or pick up a guitar and the player or the singers would start picking songs at random. Everyone would sing and most would dance. Some would pair off to play checkers, or someone would grab up a board game, shout its name, and slap it down on the table once the plates were cleared. Often someone would yell out the name of a local bar and they would all pile in a boat and head off to “wreck the place”, returning much later that night.
Hannah had never been alone on Captain’s. She sat and listened to the quiet. The house sighed and shifted, settling into the sand. The wind rushed through the reeds outside of the window, making a hushing sound. Water slapped and thumped rhythmically against the dock outside.
Usually, she would have relished this solitude, but now she was gripped by the need to hear her mother’s voice. Captain’s was too strange without her, too quiet. Plus, Hannah wanted to thank her again for the key, for the promise of forgiveness it implied which was much more valuable than the words in her letter. Sometimes her mother said things without meaning them, but she never did things without meaning them.
Knowing how intimidated she was of big mechanical things like generators, Hannah had brought along a battery-powered cell phone charger and had been charging her phone since she unpacked the charger from one of the boxes piled up in Aunt Pam’s living room. She took the phone off of the charger and walked to the large picture window that dominated the living room and faced out over the channel. In the daytime she would have a view of the dock stretching out into the water and the small powerboat tied up there, the grasses on either side of Pam’s yard, the blue moving water of the channel and the causeway beyond. Now it was a study in gray and black shapes shot with tiny slivers of orange from the streetlights on the causeway in the distance.
She dialed her mother’s number and held her breath while it rang. It was only 6:30 pm, but that could mean many things. Some nights, Keeley would have consumed a full bottle of wine by now. Another, a single glass. Which would it be?
“Well, if it isn’t my long lost daughter on the phone. My, oh, my. And to what do I owe this honor?” Keeley said, her voice booming a bit.
Hannah breathed again. Her mother had picked up at long last. And only one glass, she was pretty sure. “Hi Mom. Thank you for picking up. It’s so great to hear your voice.”
A pause on the other end. Then a sigh. “It’s good to hear yours, too.”
“Thanks so much for the keys. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“Oh, well, I think I do. And let me tell you something, Hannah. It was a big deal for me. After all that you did, it was a really big thing to send you that key. Our little Barefooter house represents why I’m still on this planet and around to be your mother, no matter how flawed and fucked-up a mother I apparently happen to be.”
“It was a fictional novel. A novel!”
“No, don’t you start that with me! You’re twenty-two years old. You don’t have it in you to make up all that stuff. Though, who knows where the hell it came from,” Keeley said. She paused and then blurted. “Do you realize that I can’t socialize at all anymore? I mean, other than the Barefooters. I’ll never be able to show my face in Fairfield again. And in the city, Jesus. You’d think I was a leper. Not that the ladies-who-lunch ever had much to do with me in the first place. It’s been like that since I got here. I miss Connecticut. And now I can’t go back.”
“Oh, Mom, I’m sorry. I-“
“No, I don’t want to hear it! Listen, I can’t talk to you right now. I will, but not right now. It’s been a long day and I’m tired. Call your Aunt Zo. She’s dying to talk to you. As usual. Okay? Okay.”
The connection was cut.
Hannah looked at the phone. Why was it always like this between them? The more Hannah reached for her mother, the more Keeley backed away. But if Hannah sat very still, her mother would creep up and sit down right next to her, tell her a story or a joke, give her a huge bear hug and a kiss. It was Hannah needing, wanting, that was somehow repulsive to her mother, the natural caretaking instinct misfiring somewhere in Keeley’s brain.
It made Hannah feel horrible, disgusting. It made her want to wall out the world. And she had, hadn’t she? She was laying bricks even now, a new wall between her and Daniel, the concrete spreading neatly beneath her practiced hand.
“Oh, God. What am I going to do?” Hannah moaned.
She dialed the phone again. It rang four times and an old-school answering machine picked up. That was Aunt Zo for you, having all the money in the world and still having one of those ancient tape-playing answering machines. Aunt Zo’s voice said, “Hello! We’re not here right now. Please leave a message and we’ll call you back tout de suite!”
“Aunt Zo? Are you there? It’s Hannah,” Hannah said to the machine. “Oh, I guess not. I...I just wanted to talk to you. Mom won’t talk to me. She never does, you know? Even when things were good, she was too busy or something. Oh, I shouldn’t be talking about this on your machine. It’s probably at full volume. When are you going to get voicemail, anyway? Okay, I’ll call you back tomorrow. I hope you’re not away on one of your trips. Wait, aren’t you in Paris? Oh, no. You are, I think. Damn! I really wanted to talk to you. Well, I’ll call you anyway, in a few days. Maybe you’ll be back. Love you!”
She hit the end button, and sat down on the couch in the dark living room, listening to the shushing sound of the wind in the grasses outside. She could call Daniel, of course. But he didn’t know her mother at all, and that’s what she needed right now. To know Keeley, to understand her. Real understanding, the way only the Barefooters understood her mother. She could call Aunt Pam, but she didn’t like getting calls at night, so it would be iffy at best. Better to wait until morning.
Aunt Amy was out completely. Ever since the review came out, Amy was just as incommunicado as her mother, every call going to voicemail and never returned. Hannah knew why. Amy had been her biggest cheerleader all along, not knowing what Hannah was writing but saying to everyone it would be “genius”. She had given Hannah her old car when she traded up for a newer model, no strings attached. She had co-signed on her lease when Keeley wouldn’t.
Keeley had thought the carriage house too expensive and fancy, had said that Hannah was acting spoiled about it and should get a regular apartment like everyone else, not some romantic vine-covered carriage house in back Greenwich. “It’ll just isolate you more. You need friends, Hannah! Get out there! Meet people!” Keeley had said. And she had been right, the carriage house had made her life smaller and quieter and her social life had shrunk even more.
But Aunt Amy had said, “Let her be happy, Key! She is who she is. She’s isn’t you, she’s Hannah.” That was Aunt Amy, her bulldog. Except now she had reverted to being a guard dog for her mother; if there was a choice between them, the choice would always be Keeley.
Hannah sat in the pitch-black room, her phone in her hand, and suddenly hated the quiet, the emptiness of the little house. She was tired of being alone, tired of building walls, and yet she had no idea how to stop herself.