Souvenir

THREE

Meg left her father’s apartment and stopped to admire how the setting sun glowed through the moss-draped branches of live oak trees. Spring was in full force, honeysuckle snaking its fragrant way into the trees, azaleas of fuchsia and pink and white and lavender lining the sidewalks and underlining windows. Spring was Meg’s favorite season, but Brian, with his allergies, hated spring. Messy pollen and drifting seeds, messy flower petals. He’d had their home builder clear a fifty-foot perimeter around their house when it was built. Without trees to shade the house, their electric bill was outrageous. He didn’t care; ‘That’s what money’s for,’ he’d say.

In the parking lot, as Meg dug out her keys, she noticed a strange weakness in her right arm. She struggled to raise the arm, to aim the remote at her six-year-old Volvo, feeling as though her arm had become weighted with sand. Bizarre.

A very long day, she thought, walking the remaining twenty feet to the car. That awkward twins delivery just before lunch must have strained her arm – and those damn speculums she was trying out, some new model that was supposed to work easily with one hand but was failing to live up to the product rep’s promises. Three of them had jammed open this afternoon, causing her patients discomfort and embarrassing her – and, she’d noticed at the time, making her hand ache in the effort to get them to close.

She squeezed her hand around the remote, then tried the button again. Her thumb cooperated, and the odd feeling in her arm began to pass. Once inside the car, she sat back with a heavy sigh and directed the vents so that cold air blew directly onto her face. The prospect of a shower was as enticing as diamonds. No, more enticing; diamonds had little practical value on their own, and almost no value to anyone unable to see them. A shower, though, offered universal appeal: wash away your cares, your sins, the evidence, the damage, the residue – whatever it was you needed; she would choose a well-timed shower over a diamond any day.

As she flexed her hand, she looked at the bag of notebooks where she’d set them on the seat beside her. Opening the bag, she saw maybe a dozen blue composition books, a neat stack tied up tightly with the same all-purpose twine she’d seen, and used, everywhere on their farm when she was a kid. Twine was almost as good as duct tape for making what were meant to be temporary repairs, but which inevitably became permanent.

The notebooks looked almost new. Likely her father had found them in a recently unpacked box – leftover office supplies, unneeded in his full-time ‘retirement’. As if he was the one who’d kept the business records to begin with.

The clock on the dash read seven-forty, and Meg’s empty stomach growled in response. She would stop by KFC on her way to get her daughter from the library, where Savannah and her best friend Rachel were hanging out. Supposedly. Supposedly they had a biology project to research, but she doubted this. They could research almost anything from the computer at home. Knowing Rachel – a bubbly girl whose existence disproved the theory that blondes were the airheads – there were boys involved, and the library was just a staging ground that the girls imagined would fool their parents.

Who might the boys be? Savannah revealed so little about her life these days. Somewhere between getting her first period and her first cell phone, Savannah had morphed from a curious, somewhat needy, somewhat nerdy little girl into an introverted cipher. She was nothing like Meg had been as a teen, which was a good thing. Savannah was just as reliable, but not as caught up in all that boy–girl business. Not grafted onto the heart of a young man who would later hate her for betraying him. Not, Meg hoped, destined to live with her own heart cleaved in two.

Razor sharp, some memories were.

She pushed the past away and sat another minute in the air-conditioning, stealing just a little more time for herself before moving on to her next work shift. Food. Kid. Reports. Case studies. Thirty minutes on the Bowflex, if she could dredge up the energy – or maybe she’d just spare her arm, let it have another night off. And now that it was feeling nearly normal again, she put the car in gear and headed for the library.

FOUR

Carson watched the sun easing itself closer to the low mountains, a glass of sangria in front of him on the thatch-covered outdoor bar. Val had gone to work out with Wade, her trainer, leaving him alone with his musings. He was accustomed to being alone with his musings, had produced some of his best work this way. But this afternoon, the musings were neither creative nor as positive as a man who’d just made love with a vibrant younger woman ought to be having.

Though the bar was shaded, he kept his sunglasses on, along with his ball cap – the ineffective disguise of celebrities everywhere. St Martin wasn’t as rife with fans as most stateside locales, but he’d been approached for autographs seven times already in the two days they’d been there. This, however, wasn’t the reason for his moodiness; in fact, he was having a tough time identifying what the reason was. He had no reason to be moody whatsoever: in addition to having just had sex, he’d recently won two Grammy awards, his Seattle condo was under contract for more than the asking price, his healthy parents were about to celebrate their forty-third wedding anniversary, and he would soon marry a woman who didn’t hold his unseemly past against him – a woman who’d done two Sports Illustrated features, who could have pretty much any man she wanted. Maybe it was this last part that was hanging him up.

‘I know doing this is a cliché,’ he said to the bartender, a short-haired buxom brunette, ‘but let me get your opinion about something.’

‘Of course,’ she smiled, her white teeth artificially bright and even. She set a towel aside and leaned onto the bar in front of him, her V-neck blouse straining.

He sat back a little. ‘Why would a woman – young, beautiful, appealing – like yourself – what would make a woman like you want to marry a worn-out guy like me?’

‘You are the rock star, no?’

Rock star. That had been his tag for a dozen years now, and still it sounded strange to him, and wrong. He was a songwriter, a singer, front man for a band that sold out most of its venues – all of that was true. And yes, the music was rock music – though broader in scope than most, modeled after Queen and the socially conscious, always-fresh music of Sting, whom he’d met for the first time last year. Still, he didn’t see himself as a rock star, though he recognized that he lived the life of one. It was a strange disconnection, one he’d been aware of peripherally for a long time, but which had only in the last year or two come into focus. Probably the awareness was a result of his age – that midlife business his manager, Gene Delaney, said stalked men more relentlessly than band sluts. Gene had a way with words. Whatever it was, Carson felt increasingly dissatisfied with the rock-star label: it sounded shallow, two-dimensional at best. He wanted to be thicker than that. He wanted to be substantial in life, had once believed his deeply felt music would make him that way.

‘Right,’ he told the bartender. ‘I’m the rock star. Are you saying that explains it?’

‘Non,’ she said. ‘It is good, yes, mais non pas tout – it is not everything. You have a handsome face, and very good … qu’est-ce que c’est?’ She gestured to indicate his body. ‘And you are not so much an American asshole.’

He raised his eyebrows, and the bartender clarified, ‘Not to hit his woman, or make a woman service him. You are généreux, non?’

He shrugged. He supposed he was generous – he always tipped well above what was expected, news he assumed had spread to all the staff quickly. He donated to several charities, worked with Habitat for Humanity twice a year – some people might call that generous. To him it all seemed like the least he could do when he had so much money that it seemed to replicate itself.

Money management, now that was a job in itself, and he didn’t have time for it. He left that to his mom, who liked to tease him that a wife and half a dozen kids would help him put the money to use. She thought it was a shame Val had so much money of her own. ‘She’ll be too independent, Carson, mark me on that.’ When his parents came to Seattle to meet Val at New Year’s, his mom told her about a seven-bedroom Ocala estate she’d heard was for sale: ‘Plenty of space for you two and all the kids,’ she said, not even attempting to be subtle. ‘Kids?’ Val said. ‘Ocala?’

Carson told the bartender, ‘My fiancée is seventeen years younger than me – not that I mind, but shouldn’t she?’

The woman reached over and laid one manicured finger on his arm. ‘Must be your motor is good, eh?’

‘For now.’

‘Mais oui. What else is there?’

FIVE

When Meg drove into the parking lot of Ocala’s main library, her headlights swept over and past her daughter sitting alone, earbuds in, on a bench near the entrance. Savannah stood, lifting her patch-covered book bag from the bench and swinging it onto her shoulder as Meg pulled to the curb.

‘Hi, honey,’ she said when Savannah climbed in, loudly enough to be heard over whatever was playing on the iPod. ‘Take those out, will you?’

Savannah pulled out the earbuds and hung the cord around her neck. ‘Is that better?’ She turned and shoved her bag and the notebooks into the backseat, then grabbed the plastic bag with the fried chicken and brought it up to the front.

‘It is,’ Meg said, making herself not react to Savannah’s rudeness. She knew it wasn’t intentional, knew from past arguments that the ‘tone battle’ wasn’t a battle worth fighting. ‘What are you listening to?’ she asked instead.

‘Nobody you’ve heard of.’ Savannah began to rifle through the bag.

‘Why don’t you wait – I thought it’d be nice to eat together with Dad, at home.’ For a change. She couldn’t recall, right off, the last time they’d done this.

‘I’m hungry now,’ Savannah said, opening the box inside and taking out a wing. ‘You’re late.’

Meg pulled away from the curb, ignoring the weakness that remained in her arm and ignoring Savannah’s accusatory tone. Ignore whatever doesn’t suit: a strategy she’d learned at her father’s knee. She asked, ‘Where’s Rachel?’

‘Her mom picked her up at eight.’ It was now seven minutes past.

Meg sighed. A parenting book she’d read advised fighting only the truly important battles. The challenge was in how to determine, while her buttons were being pushed, just which battles were important. Yesterday morning, both of them tired after the security alarm had gone haywire and awakened them all at two AM, they’d fought over whether the milk was beginning to sour.

Savannah added, ‘Thanks for the chicken. It’s good.’

There was hope. ‘You’re welcome. Why don’t you hand me a piece? A leg – and a napkin.’ They could eat together in the car; Brian probably wasn’t home yet anyway.

Savannah rummaged in the box and found a leg. ‘Here,’ she said, holding it out. Meg intended to reach for it, started to move her hand off the steering wheel, but her arm felt sluggish again. Something wasn’t right. She thought back to her anatomy courses, considered the networks and pathways of nerves and signals; something must be pinched, torqued out of place by the difficult entrance of that second twin this morning. Janey, the labor nurse, had been rooting for a C-section, but in Meg’s view C-sections were overdone, riskier sometimes than just patiently working with nature. Besides, Corinne, the mother, wanted to do it all naturally as long as the babies weren’t at risk. Meg had been very satisfied, as Corinne had, when little Corey and Casey came through unscathed. The only price for taking the harder route, Meg thought, was this nuisance with her arm – which could probably be fixed with a short visit to Brian’s orthopedist.

When Meg didn’t take the chicken immediately, Savannah said, ‘Mom?’

Meg forced a smile. ‘You know, I think I’ll just wait – keep both hands on the wheel. What sort of example am I setting if I eat while I drive?’ One I’ve set a hundred times, she thought. Well, what was parenting if not a series of inconsistencies and the occasional hypocritical action?

She changed the subject. ‘So, tell me about this project you’re doing.’

‘It’s no big deal. Cell anatomy and function. Pretty boring.’

Meg remembered taking high school biology, studying those same things with her lab partner, Carson. More often, not studying. Savannah, though, was a serious student, curious about everything – or so she’d been, back when her every thought manifested as a question or observation. Presumably she was still the same girl, just quieter. Was she caught up in identity issues? Questioning her sexuality? She hadn’t yet had an official boyfriend; maybe she was gay – which would be fine, Meg would love her no matter what. Or maybe Savannah was just picky; she could be awfully judgmental, the ‘curse’, her fifth-grade teacher once said, of gifted children. In truth, Meg hoped Rachel had persuaded Savannah to meet some boys, if only so that Savannah would start getting her feet wet.

‘Well, did you find the info you needed?’

‘Mostly,’ Savannah said, her mouth full.

The traffic signal ahead turned red, and Meg slowed to a stop. She looked at Savannah, really looked at her, in a way she rarely remembered to these days. The dangling wood-bead earrings, the thick, hammered-silver wrist cuff, the mascara, the slight sheen of lip gloss – when did she begin wearing that? – the swell of breasts inside a snug green tée; all these signs said her daughter was essentially a woman. When had this maturing taken place? Surely it was just last week that skinny, flat-chested, unadorned Savannah was dressing Barbie dolls and perfecting cartwheels on the pool deck behind their house. Yet this week she was a sophomore at a private all-girl high school; a little more exposure to the opposite sex would do her good.

Meg rubbed her shoulder while thinking whether she should ask outright if the girls had been ‘researching’ with boys. But knowing Savannah, the question would be interpreted as an accusation – and she simply didn’t have the energy to defend herself tonight. So instead of asking, she changed the subject again.

‘Hey, I just saw Grandpa Spencer. Do you want to go have dinner with him Sunday? He thought you’d get a kick out of using the self-serve ice cream machine they have there.’

Savannah smirked. ‘I’m practically sixteen. Did he forget the teen part or something?’

The signal light changed and Meg turned the car, heading toward their gated community on the northeast side of town. She left her arm resting in her lap. ‘Be nice,’ she said. ‘The important part is that he wants your company.’

‘Whatever,’ Savannah said.

Meg glanced at her. ‘Is that a yes?’

Her daughter shrugged, slim shoulders signaling noncommitment. ‘Are you and Dad going?’

‘I plan to. I don’t know about your dad.’

‘He never does anything,’ Savannah grumbled.

True as it was, Meg felt obliged to defend him. ‘He has a business to run.’

‘I think I know that.’ Savannah opened the glovebox, shuffled through a few CDs, selected one, and slid it into the player.

Meg waited to hear what she’d picked. In a moment, the sounds of acoustic piano and guitar surrounded them, joined, after a few bars, by Carson’s voice. She smiled at how Savannah had moved from a grumpy thought about Brian to soothing herself with Carson’s music. Meg had done the same thing many, many times herself.

‘Good choice,’ she said.

‘Can I borrow this to upload when we get home?’

‘Sure, borrow it – but make sure you put this one back afterward.’

‘Duh,’ Savannah said as though she’d never forgotten before.

Savannah sang along softly, as invested in the music as if she’d composed it herself. Meg knew why she loved Carson’s music, but was Savannah’s connection inborn? The possibility alternately pleased or worried her, depending on how close the past felt when the thought bubbled up. Tonight, the thought was a bittersweet pleasure – a longing for the simpler life she and Carson and Savannah would have had if things had been different. But sometimes she hoped fervently that Savannah was Brian’s – wished for a clean break from Carson, for pure, open space between her past and the truth of her life now. The deliberate mystery of Savannah’s paternity had turned out to be much more troubling to her than she’d expected.

Probably, she concluded, she’d trained Savannah to love Carson’s music. Inadvertently, by example. Probably it meant nothing.

‘I guess I’ll go to Grandpa’s,’ Savannah said when the song ended. ‘Oh, we have our opening ballgame Sunday at one. I told Dad; he said he has a nine-thirty tee time with some client, so you’ll have to take me.’

Of course. When Brian wasn’t jetting off to some branch or another of the company he’d founded, Hamilton Investments Management, Inc., he was on the golf course. He rarely involved himself in their lives – ironic, considering he’d once been so determined to win her away from Carson that he and his father had spent $387,000 to close the deal.

He just wasn’t the sort of man who wanted intimacy, in the fullest sense of the word. What was surface level was uncomplicated and therefore desirable; he saved his energies for work. He was about accomplishments. Results. The successful pursuit of an ever-higher standard. He collected achievements the way other people accrue trophies. She admired his energy but was cowed by it too; he expected the same from everyone around him and, especially lately, she didn’t have it to give.

‘Well, whether Dad comes with us or not,’ Meg said, ‘Grandpa will be glad to see you; he wants to show you around – “show her off”, that’s how he put it.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s his new home, the people there are his new neighbors – he wants them to see his beautiful offspring.’

‘Which would be you, or Aunt Beth,’ Savannah said. ‘Not me. I’m not beautiful; I got Dad’s big nose.’

Perhaps, Meg thought. Savannah’s nose did look something like Brian’s, and the shape of her face was similar, too; the broad forehead, the wide smile. Meg wouldn’t bet her life on a genetic connection, though. She said, ‘You are absolutely gorgeous. I’d give anything for that wavy hair.’ She wanted to reach over and touch Savannah’s long auburn hair, willed her tired arm to cooperate. Happily, it did, and she pushed some strands behind her daughter’s ear, letting her hand linger. Carson’s low, soulful voice sang one of his early ballads, a song about a pair of young lovers separated by a washed-out bridge.

‘Hey, two hands on the wheel,’ Savannah said.

In the darkness, Meg allowed herself a wistful smile.

SIX

Savannah passed the ninety minutes before her online ‘date’ by working on a new song. Her guitar, a fifteenth-birthday gift almost a year ago, made a good diversion most nights, especially now that her grandparents’ horse farm was sold. But last Sunday, while she was chatting online with her friends, she got a message from someone intriguing. A guy – no, a man – who wanted to get to know her. And at nine-thirty tonight he would be online to chat with her again … she hoped.

She sat on her fuzzy purple stool, trying to improve the final three bars of her song. The purple, the fuzz, annoyed her. Nothing in her bedroom suite felt like ‘her’ anymore; her life didn’t feel like ‘her’ anymore. She’d outgrown the lavender walls and spring-green carpet, the white dressers and desk. Her fuchsia curtains, with their bright appliquéd daisies, annoyed her. A lot of things annoyed her, in fact: most of her classmates, her dad’s refusal to let her get a dog even to keep outside, the stares of the creepy lawn-care guys, the way she still wasn’t allowed to stay home alone when her parents traveled, as if she couldn’t be trusted – just to name a few. It was all so irritating, like a cloud of gnats she couldn’t shoo away. Even this song, which she’d been so dedicated to at first, was getting on her nerves; she just couldn’t seem to get it to end the way she wanted it to.

Finally, at nine-twenty, she gave up trying to concentrate and propped the guitar against the wall, wishing there was some way to fast-forward to a time when she had her own life, her own place. Space that was decorated by her, not by some fussy designer who thought she knew ‘just what smart little girls like!’ Someplace like a park ranger’s cabin along the Chassahowitzka River, where she could do research on manatee populations – that would do her just fine. The gentle mammals were her main interest outside of music. If she could have music and manatees, that was all she needed. Well, music and manatees and a boyfriend who loved those things too. And maybe now she’d found him.

‘Ten minutes to Kyle,’ she said, nervous. Would he show? Would he be as interested in her as he’d seemed last time? She grabbed her laptop and settled onto her bed with purple velvet pillows propped behind her, facing the door like she always did – so that no parent could stroll in and read over her shoulder. Not that they would stroll in. Not that she ever had anything to hide, in particular … until this week.

She signed on and scanned her buddy list for Kyle’s screen name: still offline. Suppose he didn’t show? Suppose he found someone he liked better than her?

Her webpage, where he’d first discovered her, was as appealing as she could make it. She’d fudged a little on the facts, though, including posting photos specially selected to make the case that she was twenty, not a month shy of sixteen. One showed her by the pool, wearing a bikini and holding a highball glass filled with amber liquid meant to look like a cocktail. In reality she didn’t drink at all – she was smarter than that. But success in life was all about presentation, that’s what her dad always said. So her page presented the Savannah she thought would attract the kind of boyfriend she wanted: an older guy whose interests matched hers. Guys her age – the ones she knew, anyway – seemed to care only about sports or money or, like her friend Jonathan, were more into playing video games than having an actual life.