Hannah couldn’t manage to feel sorry for Teddy.
“It’s the dry weather. He’s had them on and off for weeks. Today’s the first time he’s stayed down. He’s being stoical mostly. Up and around, doing his projects, chasing his tail.”
“Better his own, than someone else’s.” It was a mean thing to say. “Sorry, Jeanne. Tell me about the Wisconsin kid.”
“Busy now.”
“Jeanne, I said I was sorry.”
“I know you’re sorry.” Implication: sorry comes easy for you, Hannah Tarwater. “Are we still on for Saturday night?”
“Did you hear me? I said I was sorry. You know the way I talk, I say—”
“And I assume we’re both welcome?”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
“Just checking, Hannah. Just checking.”
The phone line clicked dead.
Hannah stared at the receiver in her hand.
She was fifty years old; was there any hope at all she would ever learn to keep her mouth shut? She was mad at Jeanne for being touchy. Mad at herself for making a joke at the expense of the esteemed Dr. Theodore Tate—renowned horse’s ass. Every woman in town knew he was a lech; was it possible Jeanne didn’t? Somehow Hannah had never found the nerve to bring the subject up because since childhood Jeanne had been able to intimidate her. Hannah was also mad at the kids and mad at Dan. Mad at Liz too. She knew how Liz would look when she got off the plane, all strong and striding and confident. Almond-tanned. While every other woman in the English-speaking world fretted about overexposure to the sun’s rays, the genes of some long-ago Sephardic ancestor put lucky Liz at low risk for melanoma. This irritated Hannah and she didn’t care why because it just did. Thank heaven she didn’t have to explain it to anyone because she hadn’t a clue. She had always been moody but in the last couple of years she had begun to fear the sunrise, not knowing what darkness awaited her, what illogical anger or resentment. And then someone would tell her how good she looked, and she felt like a cheat. There she was, apparently a woman with her world in full bloom. Fifty and still mostly blonde, her skin good and barely lined, her body straight and slim and strong. A woman to be admired and envied. Right? Hah. God, she hated her moods. The way they stormed in and took over her life. Even as a kid, she could wake up feeling cheery as a red apple and in an hour, for no reason she could ever identify, everything went wormy with anger or dread.
After five years away, Liz had suddenly announced she was coming back to Rinconada for a visit. When Hannah asked her why, she waffled around, wouldn’t say anything specific. That vagueness was all it took to set Hannah’s imagination going. Liz had cancer, Hannah was sure of it.
“Why are you coming?” Hannah couldn’t help asking when Liz called her from Florida to talk about the rain. Liz had laughed.
“Because I love you. And I miss you.”
And I have cancer and I’m going to die and I don’t want to tell you in a letter. On the phone the word was right there, cancer, waving on the line like a pair of blood-red panties.
Hannah walked to the window and stared down the garden to the pool and below it to the barn and paddock and the line of trees that marked the slope leading to the creek. The view further depressed her: autumn flowers sparse and stunted, a film of dust on every leaf and blade of grass. More than three years without a season of generous rain had stressed even the stoic eucalyptus. Against the sky, they drooped in bedraggled silhouettes like a line of dirty mops.
“Please, God, make Liz okay and let her bring the rain with her.” Hannah rested her forehead against the window glass. Like the parched earth she felt abandoned, uncared for and depleted.
Reflexively, her mother’s critical voice played in her head. You have so much, Hannah. It’s a sin to want more when others have nothing.
Her father had taught her to make an alphabetical gratitude list. He said it was what he did. Even a priest in the Episcopal Church has his down days, Hannah. The thing is, not to give in.
First up: A.
Angel.
I am grateful for Angel because she smiles at me and holds out her arms to me, because there are things I can do for her that no one else can.
B.
Baby.
Angel. I’m grateful for the smell of her skin after I bathe her and for her heart I can hear when I press my ear to her chest.
C: child.
Angel. I am grateful for the soles of her feet and her long toes.
D: daughter.
Angel.
Jeanne Tate’s brain was like an old-fashioned oak desk fitted with niches, and drawers and cubbyholes. Moments before a parent conference it was fruitless to wonder about the mystery of Liz’s visit or let Hannah irritate her, so she squirreled her questions and feelings away and didn’t think about them after that. It was as if they didn’t exist at all.
Most of the parents Jeanne Tate interviewed were younger than Simon Weed; and she couldn’t always conceal her contempt for the yuppie moms and dads who appeared in her office wearing gold and smelling expensive. Yuppie. The word was dated now—or so Hannah told her every time she used it—but to Jeanne it best described the parents who parked their sleek cars in front of the school and then had to be told to move them to the parking lot behind the gymnasium as if they couldn’t read the sign that said NO PARKING, as if they were exempted. Hard bodied, glowing with affluent good health, cell phones ringing, palms stuck to miniature computers that told them where they were supposed to be and why: couldn’t they walk the little distance up the hill from the parking lot like everyone else?
Simon Weed might be older than most parents but Teddy had read aloud his credit report. He was another Silicon Valley millionaire, might even be a billionaire, Jeanne supposed. Such numbers became meaningless after a while.
Teddy had already begun to talk about pressing him for a contribution to the computer center Teddy was positive the school needed in order to stay competitive. That’s what Teddy did; he asked people for money and they gave it to him. The school was richly endowed because Teddy was a born fund-raiser and funds were everywhere in the Santa Clara valley. Happy Teddy, a boy in a world where every day was payday, where the skies rained dollars, not raindrops.
Weed might not be the easy touch Teddy thought he was. Jeanne saw that he had been cut from a different loaf than the rest of the zillionaires. For one thing, he had followed the signs directly to the lot, and Jeanne liked that. She also liked the paunchiness around his middle and the telltale line bisecting the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses. Here, for once and all the way from Wisconsin, was an imperfect specimen, a real human being. She felt disposed to like his child as well.
“My company’s out here. Since I always seem to be working it makes sense to have Adam here too.”
Jeanne agreed and asked him a few more questions about his business—electronic somethings, she had only the vaguest idea what a transistor was, let alone a chip, or this little thing Simon Weed was explaining to her—but she knew how to nod intelligently. She was very good at that.
“Adam was born almost three months premature,” Weed said. “He’s got a little brain damage—enough so I’ve learned not to expect too much from him. He can get Cs, no question, but he has to work mighty hard. His last experience was pretty, well, pretty pitiful.” He looked guilty. “Public school.” Weed slapped his driving gloves across his palm as if he could punish himself.
“If a child works hard at Hilltop,” Jeanne said, “his grades will reflect that effort.” She heard the pedant in her voice and wished she could take the words back, start again. Speak the truth for once. We’ll take good care of him.