Return To Little Hills

“I’m sure there’s an interesting story about how a man from Malvern, England, came to be a high-school principal in Little Hills, Missouri, but—” she glanced around “—I see a line forming to talk to you, so I’ll just…invent my own version of the facts.”

“Or you could call me,” he said, surprising himself. “And we could exchange life stories over dinner.”

“Thank you,” she said. “But I think I’ll stick with my invented version.”

“Pity,” he said. And then as he was about to let her go, he said, “I’ve noticed that your brother-in-law calls you Edith. Is it Edith, or Edie?” he asked.

“Edie,” she said. “Only my family calls me Edith…and I tolerate that very poorly.” A moment passed. “I’ve noticed that my brother-in-law calls you Pete. Is it Peter, or Pete?”

“Peter.” He grimaced slightly. “I suppose it sounds terribly formal, doesn’t it?”

“It sounds fine,” she said.

ZOWEE, Edie thought as she walked back across the campus to Maude’s car. Zowee. Zowee. Zowee. In the car, she pulled off her jacket, tossed it in the back seat, kicked off her heels, which had elevated her exactly to the level of Peter Darling’s gray-green eyes, threw them in the back, too, and sat grinning idiotically at the cracked, green vinyl–covered dashboard. Zowee. Shaking her head, she pulled down the driving mirror to look at her face: flushed scarlet. The car, she noted belatedly, was a furnace. She rolled down the driver’s window, still seeing Peter Darling’s face. Zowee. If every female in that school wasn’t having indecent dreams about him, she’d…eat her press pass.

THE OLD BLACK DIAL PHONE in the hallway was ringing when Edie let herself into Maude’s house some thirty minutes later. Her mother, Edie thought as she picked up the heavy receiver, should at least have a portable that she could carry around the house, but Maude wasn’t about to go easy into the digital age. The old one suited her just fine, thank you very much. Edie dragged the phone to the stairs and sat on the bottom step, listening to Vivian describe the pot roast she’d just put in the oven for dinner that night. Edie should bring Maude over at about six, Viv said.

Edie leaned back against the stairs and stifled a groan. Family gatherings ranked low on her list of ways to spend a pleasant evening. Viv would outdo herself with the food, then complain of being exhausted. Ray would be smarmy and insinuating. She’d lost touch completely with her nephews. And Maude would spend the whole time telling everyone that she didn’t know what she’d done to deserve the way her youngest daughter was always snapping at her.

Home sweet home. Thank God it was only for a month. Looking on the bright side, Viv would probably continue her rant about Peter Darling. Funny how much more interesting that prospect was, now that she’d met him.

“Mom doesn’t feed herself properly,” Viv was saying now. “And I’m sure you’ve probably forgotten all you never learned about cooking. I’ll do the roast and then I’ll wrap up what’s left and you can take it back to Mom’s. That way, you’ll both have something decent to eat.”

From the stairs, where she remained after hanging up the phone, Edie could see Maude at her chair by the window. “She spends hours there,” Viv had complained on the ride from the airport. “Just staring out at the street. That’s why she needs to get out of that house and into a place where she can be with other people her own age.”

Elbows on her knees, Edie sat for a while watching her mother from the dim and musty hallway. Maude, at her lace-curtained window post, in a fusty room crammed with knickknacks, crocheted mats, knitted cushions, cuckoo clocks and all the detritus accumulated over a lifetime, seemed so organic to the house that Edie found herself wondering whether uprooting her might cause Maude to just wither and die sooner than she might if she were left to live out her life at home.

But when she mentioned the thought to Vivian that night, her sister looked impatient.

“Edie, trust me, I spend a lot more time with Mom than you do. She needs to get rid of that house.”

Edie, sprawled on the massive off-white leather couch in Viv and Ray’s cavernous family room, channel surfing on their massive TV because Vivian had laughed incredulously at her offer to help out, conceded that Viv was probably right. Still, she would sound Maude out anyway, just to be certain in her own mind. “Are you sure I can’t do anything to help?” she called to Viv, who hadn’t left the kitchen for the past hour.

Vivian laughed. “Thanks, but no thanks, Eed. I can manage better without your help. Trust me. Just relax.”

So she tried. She channel surfed some more, but found herself critiquing the correspondent’s performance on every new station. It was hard to forget her vocation, even when she wasn’t working. Finally, she let her thoughts drift. She thought for a bit about her sister in the kitchen, whom she normally thought very little about. Coming home always brought the old memories flooding back. Viv. Poor Viv, the pretty but asthmatic child. She could still hear Maude scolding, “Oh Edith, don’t be so selfish. Let Viv have the doll.” Or the candy, or the book or whatever else it was that Viv might want. “You’re such a lucky girl, you have your health. Look at poor Viv.” And Edie would look at Viv and feel not sympathy but envy because Viv had Maude’s attention and she didn’t.

All that old, bitter stuff that she hardly ever thought about now. But, deep inside, she still felt it, that same need for her mother’s approval and acceptance. Love me. Need me. Ben, she reflected, had failed badly in that regard. Don’t look for commitment from me, he’d said. Pretty much the last significant thing he’d said, as a matter of fact. If other events that night hadn’t overshadowed everything else, those words would have plunged her into a dark void of gloom. Instead, she’d developed a sort of emotional amnesia. Ben would escape or be released; she knew that much for sure. After that, who knew? Her thumb on the button of the remote, she gazed at the flickering images. A perfume ad with heartbreakingly beautiful people locked in dreamy embraces. Happy women folding diapers, mopping floors, sending happy kids off to school.

“So you really like the house?” Viv called from the kitchen. “We love it, but sometimes I get freaked at how much we had to go into debt… Want a glass of wine?”

“Maybe later.” Edie called back. Viv and Ray had bought the house two months ago. It was a sprawling mock Tudor that sat amidst similar houses on the edge of what Edie remembered had once been bean fields. It had struck her, as she’d trailed Viv around earlier, dutifully oohing and aahing, that everything about the house—from the sweeping driveway and mirrored guest bathroom with its elaborate gold-plated fixtures, to the cream-and-gold master bedroom—seemed new, immense and designed to impress. Fleetingly, she’d wondered what assistant principals made these days, but it wasn’t a question to ask. “What’s not to like about the house?” she answered rhetorically as televised images flickered hypnotically across her line of vision.

“We like to entertain,” Viv, still in the kitchen, was saying now. “It’s something Ray and I both enjoy.”

“Well, you’ve got a great place to do it in.” A cartoon bird gave way to an anchorwoman’s face and Edie’s thumb paused on the remote. “…and the search continues,” the announcer said, “for American freelance journalist Ben Morris, captured last month on assignment in Iraq. Morris and three other journalists came under fire when the jeep they were riding in was ambushed by gunmen…”

CHAPTER TWO

EDIE STARED transfixed, but the announcer’s dry recap of that nightmarish ride told her nothing she hadn’t relived endlessly ever since. “Hold on to your hat, Eed,” Ben had said. “We’re going to outrun them.” She remembered the way his teeth had gleamed in the dark night. The roar as he’d gunned the jeep, the terrifying careen up the dark mountainside with no headlights on. He loves this, she remembered thinking. It’s his essence. I’m an idiot to even think about commitment… And then the jeep had flipped.

“Carrot sticks, cauliflower and a no-fat dip.” Vivian set a tray on the chrome-and-glass coffee table and flopped down on the couch beside Edie. “I’m not real sure about the carrot sticks, they have a bunch of carbs and I’m on this low-carb diet. Doesn’t it seem weird to think of carrots as a no-no? I mean, carrots and cottage cheese used to be what you’d eat when you were trying to drop a few pounds, but supposedly now they’re off limits. Too high carb. If you want some wine, let me know. It’s not on the diet…beaucoup carbs, although gin’s okay. Want some gin?”

Edie blinked, staring at Viv as though she’d been roused from a dream that still seemed real. Viv smiled. Kitchen warmth had flushed her face and her shoulder-length hair, hardly faded from the strawberry blond it had been in high school, fell into a smooth bob. “Vivian’s the pretty one,” Maude would say. “But you’re smart, Edie.”

Edie rubbed her eyes. “Sorry. I’m miles away. Where’s Mom? I thought she was out in the kitchen with you.”

“Ray ran her down to the IGA to get denture cleaner. I didn’t want to tell you, but she’d worked herself up into quite a tizzy about it and—”

“I took her to the IGA this morning,” Edie said. “We got denture cleaner. I remember taking it off the shelf.”

Viv reached over to pat Edie’s knee. “It was the wrong kind, sweetie,” she said maternally. “Don’t blame yourself. How would you know that? I’ve got beer too. Beer, wine, gin, you name it. I’m not drinking, though. If I don’t get this extra weight off I’m going to kill myself. What do you think about these jeans?” She jumped up, turned to present a rear view. “Do they make my hips look kind of wide? Tell me, I won’t be mad, honestly.”

“You look fine, Viv.” Edie said, her mind still on Maude’s shopping trip. “So why didn’t Mom say something?”

Viv sat down again. “She’s scared of you, sweetie,” she said softly as though there was a chance Maude might overhear. “She says you snap at her. You know, I might cheat a little and have some wine. Want some?”

“I’m fine.” Edie shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’m furious. God, it kills me. I tried to be so patient with her. I was patient. For me, anyway. And I didn’t snap at her in the first place. Maybe I overreacted slightly when she told me for the fourth time that she needed toilet paper, but—”

“Hey, Eed.” Viv reached for a carrot stick. “Can we not talk about Mom for a minute? You’re going to be here for a while, we’ll have plenty of time to discuss her. Trust me. Come on, eat something.”

Edie took a carrot stick. “Will the boys be here for dinner?”

“Absolutely,” Viv said. “They’re always talking about their glamorous Aunt Edie.”

Edie gave her sister a skeptical look.

“Really. One of them—I think it was Eric—was asking something about you just the other day,” Viv said. “Frankly though, Edie, you haven’t exactly been a big part of their lives.” She dunked her carrot stick in dip, twirling it for a second. “Back to Mom, though. She’s a novelty to you, but—”

“She’s my mother, Viv. And trust me, I don’t find her much of a novelty.”

“Well, you know what I mean. In a couple of weeks, you’ll be flying off to Boogawongabooboo, or wherever, but I’ll be right here listening to Mom tell me about the little sore up her nose. Eat something, Edie.” She reached for a cauliflower floret. “You’re making me feel like a pig. How come you stay skinny when everyone else balloons up as soon as they hit thirty?”

“Clean living,” Edie said.

“Yeah, sure.” Vivian eyed her for a moment. “Frankly though, and please don’t take this wrong, I think having a little fat actually makes a woman look younger. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be too skinny. It gives you this drawn, dried-up look.”

Edie smiled politely. “You think so?”

“Ray thinks so too. Scrawny chickens, he calls them.” She reached for a napkin and dabbed at a spot of dip on the glass coffee table. “I mean in general, of course.”

“Of course,” Edie said. “What little sore?”

“Little sore?” Vivian looked momentarily confused. “Oh, Mom’s little sore. She’s always got one up her nose. I swear to God, the minute I sit down to breakfast, the phone rings and it’s Mom going on about how the little sore bleeds every time she blows her nose. I can’t even look at strawberry jam these days.”

Edie laughed. Despite everything, she wanted, suddenly, to embrace her sister. The perfunctory little hug at the airport had been disappointing. On some level, she realized now, she’d been looking to Viv for the same thing she sought in Maude. Love me, need me. Tell me not to leave again. Ironic, this need, when she would battle to the death anyone who tried to wrest away her shield of independence and self-sufficiency. Odd, too, that the need only seemed to trouble her when she returned home.

“You know what?” Vivian said. “I am going to have some wine. How often does my little sister honor us with her presence? Be right back.”