Return to Summerhouse

  “But Little Miss Perfect said she’d never even met Jeanne.”

  “When did she say that?”

  “When I opened the door to her. She was standing there holding the doormat, and she looked at me as if I were an insect she wanted to squash.”

  “Aren’t you glad I talked you into taking out the nose ring?”

  “Not really,” Zoë said. “If I’d known the third prisoner was going to be a judgmental, uptight little snot, I would have had a dozen more piercings.”

  “I really don’t think you should make judgments before you get to know her.”

  “Why not?” Zoë asked, taking a deep drink of her soda. “She made lots of judgments about me. I could pretty much read her mind. In fact, I could read her life.”

  “Come on,” Faith said, frowning. “You’re not being fair. No one can read another person’s life.”

  “Okay,” Zoë said, wiping her hands on a napkin. “Let me tell about you.” She didn’t wait for Faith to answer. “You grew up in a small town, loved by everyone, went to church all the time, had adoring parents—What?” She broke off because Faith had started to laugh.

  “I think you should clean your crystal ball. You could not be further from the truth.”

  “So how am I wrong?”

  Faith started to speak, then smiled. “No you don’t. I’m not telling my story until all three of us are together.”

  “Do you think that Miss Perfect is going to come out of her room in the next few days? No way. She’s going to stay in there until she thinks it’s safe to leave, then she’ll go back to her loving family, who will protect her from whatever nastiness she thinks has happened to her.”

  “Maybe Jeanne should have sent you to a camp where they teach courtesy,” Faith said, glaring. “We don’t know what happened in Amy’s life and I don’t think you should set yourself up as judge and jury. How would you like it if you were judged by how you look?”

  “But I am. And so are you. We all are.”

  “And you want people to know that you’re…” She trailed off as she looked at Zoë’s makeup and hair.

  “I’m what?” Zoë said daringly.

  “If you’re so determined to talk, please do so. Tell me all about your rotten childhood and how you grew up hating everyone because of something awful that happened to you. What was it? An uncle that visited you in the night?”

  Zoë blinked at Faith for a moment. “You can give it out, can’t you?”

  “You mean that I can be as hateful as you? You may think you know all about me but you don’t. For your information, when I was a teenager, I was considered the wildest girl in town. I drank too much, rode in too many fast cars, and had sex with lust and abandon.”

  “What changed you?” Zoë asked softly.

  “Marriage to a good man,” Faith said quickly, then picked up the bill off the end of the table. “Shall we go? Or do you want to sit here and cut other people to shreds?”

  They paid at the register without saying a word to each other, and when they walked back to the summerhouse, Faith kept ahead of Zoë, not speaking to her. She unlocked the front door and went in, still saying nothing to the younger woman. Faith stayed in her bedroom with the door closed and waited until she heard the water running in the bathroom, then she slipped out the back door and into the little garden.

  As soon as she was outside, she flipped open her cell phone and called Jeanne. “This isn’t working,” she said without preamble.

  “What isn’t?” Jeanne asked, her mouth full of food.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. This. All of it. The three traumatized strangers staying together in one house.”

  “Okay, tell me everything,” Jeanne said.

  Faith told her about being the first to arrive and how she thought the town and the house were both lovely. She didn’t know what was supposed to be accomplished there, but she’d had high hopes.

  “That is until Zoë arrived. How could you have thought that that aggressive, opinionated girl and I would get along?”

  “Did she tell you about herself?” Jeanne asked.

  “Not a word.”

  “That’s because she doesn’t know much about herself. She was in a car accident that split her head open and she doesn’t remember anything after she was about sixteen. All she knows is that she woke up in a hospital and an entire town was furious at her.”

  “Why?”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “But surely you could find someone who knew her and you could ask them.”

  “Of course I did.”

  “And what did they say?” Faith asked.

  Jeanne was silent.

  “Well?”

  “Patient confidentiality. Why don’t you ask Zoë?”

  “Cute,” Faith said, “but you’re trying to entice me to like her.”

  “Not like her, but have some patience.”

  “That’s not easy,” Faith said. “Zoë says she can’t stand Amy and wants nothing to do with her.”

  “How is she?”

  “Amy? Zoë opened the door to her and she looked scared to death. She took her suitcase into the new bedroom and we haven’t seen her since.”

  “I feared that. She doesn’t want to be around anyone she hasn’t known for twenty years.”

  “Jeanne’s Crazies,” Faith said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Zoë calls us Jeanne’s Crazies.”

  Jeanne laughed so hard she nearly choked. “I think I’ll get a plaque carved with those words. Think I should hang it over the door?”

  “Wonderful idea,” Faith said. “I’d sure want to be a visitor to a house with a sign like that.”

  “Okay, I won’t do it,” Jeanne said, “but I’ll never be able to look at the house again without seeing that sign there.” Her voice changed to serious. “Look, Faith, none of you are crazy. I don’t put disturbed people together. Each of you has been through a great personal trauma and I think it would do you good to talk about what happened to you to someone other than a professional. It’s that simple.”

  Faith sighed. “My husband died after a very long illness. I still don’t see that as a trauma. It wasn’t as though his death wasn’t expected or planned for.”

  Jeanne was silent.

  “Stop it!” Faith said. “I mean it! Stop it right now! I can see the look on your face. You want to say that if it wasn’t such a trauma why did I take a bottle of pills? And why did I attack my mother-in-law at the funeral?”

  “You tell me,” Jeanne said.

  “I have told you!” Faith said, her voice rising and filling with exasperation. “I spent an entire year telling you why I did both of those things, but you’ve never believed a word I’ve said.”

  “Faith,” Jeanne said, “how old are you?”

  “You know how old I am.” When Jeanne said nothing, Faith sighed. “I am thirty-eight years old.”

  “When you stop looking fifty and look your true age, I’ll begin to think we’ve made some progress. As it stands now, I don’t think you and I have achieved anything. How’s your former mother-in-law?”

  “Dead, I hope,” Faith said before she thought.

  “I rest my case. Faith, the truth is that I’ve made more progress in less time with people who have been declared criminally insane than I’ve made with you. For the last year, every day I’ve expected a call in the middle of the night telling me that you’ve committed suicide.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Is it? What’s in your handbag?” When Faith didn’t say anything, Jeanne said, “I hope Zoë makes you furious. I hope she makes you so angry that you tell her things that you’ve never told me.”

  “I think I may have already,” Faith said softly, as she remembered telling Zoë that she’d been a wild child in high school. She hadn’t told Jeanne that in their therapy sessions.

  “Good!” Jeanne said, then lowered her voice. “Faith, I shouldn’t tell yo
u this, but you three are very much alike.”

  “They’ve had to deal with long-term illness?”

  “No,” Jeanne said. “All three of you hide what you feel and tell no one anything. I wish you could get the women to talk.”

  “If you tell me that because I’m the oldest I am to get these girls together and play therapist, I’ll leave tonight.”

  “Yes, Zoë’s young, but for your information, there isn’t that much age difference between you and Amy. She looks so young because she has a drop-dead gorgeous husband, so she takes care of herself. You look old because…”

  “Because why?” Faith asked, interested.

  “I’ve been making you pay me for a whole year so you’ll tell me why, but you won’t.”

  Faith took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s deal with the present. What do I do tomorrow to keep Zoë from offending Amy and me?”

  “There’s a big blue cabinet in the living room. It’s full of art supplies. Show them to Zoë and they’ll keep her busy. You need to get Amy out of her room and take her shopping for her kids and husband. If you ask her about them, she may talk.”

  “So how much are you going to pay me to do your job?”

  “If you leave there and aren’t satisfied with what’s happened to you, I’ll refund every penny you’ve paid me. And Faith?”

  “Yes?”

  “Take all business cards from everyone.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it. Don’t throw away any business cards. And call me tomorrow and tell me what cards you have.”

  “Is this some new therapy for especially damaged people?”

  “Yes and no. Just let me know, will you?”

  “Sure,” Faith said, puzzled by the request. They said goodbye and Faith went into the house. Zoë was out of the bathroom and there was no light under her door so maybe she was asleep. Faith thought about knocking on Amy’s door because she did see a light, but she didn’t. It had been a long day and she wanted to rest.

  She went into the bathroom, meaning to take a shower, but instead, she filled the tub with steamy-hot water and got into it to soak. Lying in a bathtub of very hot water had been one of her few relaxations in the many years it took her husband to die. He always encouraged her to spend as long as she wanted in the tub, and every bath had been a hedonistic rite that involved heat and delicious herbal smells and candles. Eddie used to tease her that when she was in the bathtub she went away to a fairy-tale kingdom.

  But as Eddie grew worse and she began to be afraid that her every second with him would be their last together, she’d stopped the tub baths and settled for quick showers.

  Eddie was dead now. He’d passed away over a year ago, and just as Faith feared, she’d been out of the house when it happened. At the very end, Eddie’d had a professional nurse who came for three hours a day, but it was still left to Faith to do the errands. Never mind that they lived in his mother’s house and she had four servants, Faith was still sent to the drugstore, the grocery, to wherever her mother-in-law wanted her to go.

  Faith had returned from the grocery, full of stories about the outside world, to find that the nurse had pulled a sheet over Eddie’s dear face. His mother had been with him in his last minutes. She had held his hand and said goodbye.

  It was late when Faith let the water out of the tub, dried off, and put on her nightgown and robe. She was heading into the bedroom when she thought she heard a sound in the house. An intruder?

  She opened the door a bit and could see the third woman, Amy, in the kitchen. Faith wanted to go to bed, but she also wanted to get to know this woman.

  “Hello,” Faith said softly, but Amy still jumped as though a firecracker had gone off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “I’m fine,” Amy said quickly. “Sorry I woke you. I just wanted a cup of tea.”

  “Did you have any dinner?”

  “I bought some sandwiches at the airport so I had plenty, thank you.” Amy started toward her bedroom.

  “I talked to Jeanne tonight.”

  Amy stopped and turned back to her. “I’ve never met the woman. Without even meeting me, she heavy-handed my husband into sending me to…to this place.”

  Faith gave a small smile. “That sounds like her. I think all three of us are trauma victims and she thought we might like to talk to one another.”

  “Trauma?” Amy said, and gave Zoë’s darkened room a quick glance. “What sort of trauma?”

  “You mean did either of us murder anyone?”

  When Amy heard it said out loud it did sound preposterous, but at the same time she didn’t know either of these women.

  Faith got a tea bag out of a box, put it in a cup, and poured boiling water on it. She took her cup to the wooden table and sat down. “I don’t know about you, but I have no idea why I was sent here.”

  Amy’s eyes widened and she took the few steps back into the kitchen. “Me either.”

  “My husband died, but he’d been ill for a very long time. It wasn’t traumatic at all. I expected his death. I keep telling Jeanne that a person needs time to get over a death, but she seems to think I should snap out of it yesterday and start wearing red dresses.”

  “I like your clothes,” Amy said as she sat down across from Faith. “They suit you.”

  “I guess they do,” Faith said absently. “What about you? Why are you here?”

  Amy took a deep breath and glanced into the dark living room, as though she were checking to see if Zoë was there. “I had a miscarriage,” she said softly.

  “A long time ago?”

  “Four months.”

  “But that’s not enough time to get over anything, much less a death,” Faith said.

  “I agree completely!” Amy said. “But no one will listen to me. I was sent off to this place—” She waved her arm around the room. “I was sent here to be with strangers—no offense—and I don’t see why.”

  “We have something in common,” Faith said as she finished her tea. “But we have to please other people so we must stay.”

  “Exactly,” Amy said.

  “I think we should make the best of it.”

  “What about…her?” Amy asked, her voice lowered.

  “Zoë?” Faith got up and went into the living room to the blue cabinet and opened it. When she turned on the light, she saw that it was packed full of art supplies: paint and canvas, Cray-Pas, chalks, huge pads of paper, watercolors, lots of brushes.

  “Please tell me we don’t have to draw our secret selves,” Amy said from behind her.

  “I hope not. Jeanne said to open this cabinet in front of Zoë and she’d stay busy for days.”

  “Glory hallelujah!” Amy said under her breath, then smiled at Faith. “Shall you and I eat breakfast out?”

  “I’d like that,” Faith said. “I’d like that very much.”

  Three

  “Did you two have a good time?” Zoë asked, and they heard the animosity in her voice. “Did you do a lot of bonding?” She was in the garden behind the house and on the metal table were two watercolors.

  “These are good,” Amy said in wonder as she looked at them. “In fact, they’re very good.” She held up a watercolor of three little kids struggling to pull a canoe onto a rocky beach. “If I saw this in a store, I’d buy it.” She looked at Zoë with different eyes.

  “The queen has spoken,” Zoë said, and made a little bow toward Amy.

  “However, if I’d met the artist I’m sure I would have changed my mind.”

  Zoë laughed. “Did you two have a nice day out? Buy lots of stuff?”

  “Amy bought half the town,” Faith said as she sat down by the table and looked at Zoë’s paintings. “You must have spent a hundred years in school to do this kind of work.”

  “Actually, I never went to art school,” Zoë said. “Would either of you like something alcoholic to drink? I could make a pitcher of margaritas.” When neither Amy nor Faith said anything, Zoë said, “L
et me guess, you two angels of middle-class America don’t drink.”

  “Give me the tequila.” Amy shook her head at Zoë. “Do you ever say anything nice?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Zoë said as she headed for the kitchen. When she looked in the refrigerator she was glad to see that it was packed with a dozen little carryout boxes. She’d been sure that they’d go to dinner by themselves and leave her out of it, but they hadn’t. She couldn’t help feeling betrayed. She and Faith had been at the house first and Amy had arrived later. If sides were going to be taken, shouldn’t it be Faith and Zoë against Amy?

  As Zoë started squeezing limes, she could almost hear Jeanne asking why it had to always be someone against someone else. Why couldn’t they all be on the same team?

  Minutes later Zoë had filled a pitcher, salted three glasses, and put it all on a tray. For a moment she paused in front of the window and watched as Faith and Amy looked at the paintings she’d done that day. It was gratifying to see them shake their heads in wonder. Faith had said that Zoë must have spent a lot of time in school learning how to paint. But no, Zoë had woken up one morning with metal staples in her head and no memory of the preceding years of her life. It was when she was handed a ballpoint pen and a pad of paper to write on because her throat was sore, that she’d drawn portraits of all the people around her. The people consisted of the medical staff. No relative and no friend came to see her.

  She took the tray outside and set it on the table. Faith moved the watercolors into the house, out of danger of the damp, then returned to pour the drinks.

  “It’s lovely here,” Amy said, looking at the roses hanging over the fence. “I can see why Jeanne sends traumatized patients here.”

  When Zoë’s heavily made-up eyes narrowed on Amy, as though she meant to say something hateful, Faith spoke up. “‘Traumatized’ doesn’t mean insane.”

  “I think snooping Jeanne might disagree with you,” Zoë said in a sneering tone.

  “If you don’t like her, why do you go to her?” Amy asked.

  “Court ordered.” When the others said nothing, Zoë ran her hand through her hair. “Half of this isn’t mine. It’s extensions. I was in a car wreck and the top of my head was sliced open. The doctors sewed me back together but…” She shrugged. “Something happened inside my head. I can’t remember part of my life.”