How long ago was it those boys had thought they were sisters at that Mexican restaurant? Livy had laughed, thanked them for the compliment, but she’d figured they where just throwing out flattery to get near Katy. She played along, bought a round of beers for the boys, and they all laughed and talked, the boys’ eyes on Katy, but polite, as if they knew that to keep Katy’s attention, they’d have to be nice to her mom. Those were the good years, years between being married, years when she had Katy in a life where they could be more like friends than mother and daughter. Livy had gotten a job at an insurance firm, and Katy had gone to college. On a good track, it seemed. Then Katy met Frank, who was nothing but bad, and Livy got to where she couldn’t drive for the anxiety attacks. She looked in the mirror, figured it was around then that the “eleven” started digging into her face. Frank was a coke dealer. Even though Katy swore he had inherited his money, Livy knew the truth. She’d stayed with Joe all those years to keep Katy in private school, to get her ready for college. And there she was, dropping out of college and living on a boat with a coke dealer. Those times put the years on her face.
Then she met Lawrence at her shrink’s office, of all things. She was signing in at the reception desk when he strolled into the waiting room as if he owned the place, the kind of walk she liked in a man. He stopped, stood still in the middle of the room, and gave her a nod that was more than a nod, something more like a bow and a smile that said, How can a woman like you have any kind of problem that would bring her to this place? She couldn’t remember what she said to him, just remembered the warmth, the twinkling in his eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked at her like that. It turned out he was dating the shrink then, and now he was married to Livy. It was one of those see-it-got-to-have-it things. All roses and dinners and diamonds. Then marriage. Now, just outside the bathroom door, Lawrence Baines was no doubt snoring in bed already with the Wall Street Journal on his chest.
Oh, Katy, she thought. Maybe you shouldn’t get married yet.
Years later, when she told Lawrence about the night those boys had taken her and Katy for sisters at that Mexican restaurant, he threw down his paper and said, “You might still look like a glamour girl, but you’re too old for that kind of thing.” He was furious, she knew, because his hair was thinning, his broad chest collapsing to a soft bunch of flesh at his waist, while she, well, she did have a little bit of elegance that didn’t age. She just smiled at his fury. “But those boys in the Mexican restaurant, it happened years ago,” she said. He stood up then, said with the kind of meanness as if she’d cheated on him, “And you’re still thinking about it!” Then he walked out of the room with such fury and force, it occurred to her that that was what people meant when they said a person stormed out of the room. Joe had always been a quiet man, but Lawrence came and went like weather, so when he stormed out the door, she let him go and wondered what she’d been thinking to get married again so fast. She knew it was safety. That was why Katy was marrying Billy. And safety always meant some kind of sacrifice, so Livy let Lawrence stomp away and decided she’d make those popovers he loved to go with the roast beef for dinner. He always softened with a good meal.
Now she looked at her face in the mirror. Far from a glamour girl, but she had good bone structure, high, defined cheeks. Livy hardly wore makeup, didn’t have to work to catch a glance. When she was young, it was hard to keep the Suck Creek boys from grabbing at her. Being tall and filled out seemed more a curse than a gift. Then in college, after that one ballet class, she figured it out. It was all in the way you carried yourself. Livy had discovered the power to make men suck in their bellies and straighten their shoulders at the sight of her entering a room. That was what had gotten her out of Suck Creek and gotten her Joe Connor, who’d bought her a nice home halfway up Lookout Mountain. And that was what had gotten her Lawrence Baines and the five-bedroom, three-bath house on top of that mountain that was like being on top of the world in that town. Posture was everything. She used to tell Katy this. She’d touch that space between Katy’s shoulder blades when she’d see her slump. Straighten up, Livy would say. You don’t want to look like an old woman before your time. And Katy learned. She stood straighter, and finally walked away from Frank. At least she was marrying Billy, who lived a brick house and not some floating bar of a boat on the water.
Positive thinking and good posture. Those two things could take the years off, just maintaining a strong stance and a sweet smile. Livy had learned this from one of those self-help books she’d read. She glanced at herself in the mirror, closed her eyes, and thought, I’m beautiful, I’m strong, I’m blessed, I’m beautiful, I’m strong, I’m blessed. But when she opened her eyes in the harsh light of the bathroom, she saw that she was teetering on the threshold of becoming the kind of woman who disappeared in a crowd, a gray smudge who brought attention only when she was about to purchase something, the kind of face that brought attentive smiles only when she was ready to pay. Was that what Lawrence wanted?
Joe had been proud of his catch, said he’d married the best-looking woman in Hamilton County, seemed to forget she was from Suck Creek. Joe liked to forget where she came from. He was Catholic, so she had to forget she was a Suck Creek Baptist girl, had to take classes with a priest before she got married, but that was okay then because Livy believed life was a process of continuously reinventing ourselves. She’d read that in a self-help book she’d found at the library. She was willing to reinvent, and even though it made her momma cry, she was rebaptized with a saint’s name: Olivia Katherine, a little cup of holy water dribbled over her forehead at the font with no one but the priest and Joe and God and maybe the saint she was named for watching.
If it hadn’t been for Katy, she might have left. Maybe. But back then she was a good Christian girl who tried to believe, so she went to her momma for help. “Life gives us crosses to bear,” her momma had said. “We prove ourselves in times of trouble, not times of ease.” Livy was happy that at least her momma didn’t blame her bad marriage on the Catholics. When things got worse, her momma told her to go talk to her priest. He told her that love was a gift, but marriage was a sacrament, a covenant. She would have to honor that. “A sacrament is a sacrament,” he said. But where was the proof of sacramental things? “It’s self-evident,” the priest said. “A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inner and spiritual grace.” Yes, she knew that. But with that definition anything could be a sacrament—helping a stranger, baking a perfect cake. “It’s a mystery,” the priest said. “You don’t walk away from God’s mysteries. You embrace them. You struggle to understand, and what you don’t understand, you accept.” He left her there in his office, staring up at the crucifix, and she thought of Jesus, tortured on the cross like that. Jesus was a tortured man. Not a God. Just a man. That was all. She came to the conclusion that sometimes God left you to your own salvation. You had to save yourself. Now she looked in the mirror and told herself she would have to tell Katy that. She’d tell Katy to beware of believing sacramental things.
“Are you coming to bed?” Lawrence called from the bedroom. She peeked through the door, saw him sitting up. He had that look in his eyes. At least with Lawrence, the sex was good.
“I thought you were sleeping,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said with a smile. “Just dreaming.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she said. “You know me and my routines.”
She went back to the mirror, rubbed cream in swift, light strokes up her neck and in gentle circles in her cleavage, what her aesthetician called her décolletage—there was a special cream for that. She closed that jar and reached for another for her hands.
She sat on the lid of the toilet and rubbed the cream into her skin. She liked her long fingers, good nails. And that diamond, Lord, a diamond so big it embarrassed her sometimes. Her mother would have declared it prideful. But she liked the fact that she had her mother’s hands, a few scattered freckles, the Irish blood. She would have to tell Katy to be careful of the sun with her dark hair,