When her own cell phone began vibrating in the pocket of her white linen pants, it startled her and she dropped the knife onto the floor. She took the phone from her pocket, saw it was her sister Kara, and answered, her eyes on the knife.
‘Hello, sis,’ she answered, making her voice normal, as she’d done for the girls when she picked them up. How accomplished she was at pretending.
‘Did you see it?’ Kara asked.
‘Did I see what?’
‘The official announcement – Carson’s engagement, what else?’
Kara would be all a-tizz about that. She’d followed Carson’s career and life like a groupie, just as she’d once trailed Meg and Carson over the hills and fields of their farms. ‘I saw something about it on the CNN website,’ Meg said, bending down to get the knife. ‘Is that what you mean?’
‘No, no, not that. The Ocala paper’s got the real official thing.’
‘How do you know?’ Meg asked, picking up the knife. Kara lived in Northern California now, near Travis Air Force Base where her husband Todd, a master sergeant three years away from retirement, was finishing out his enlistment.
‘I read it online – how do you think I keep up with what’s going on back home?’ For Kara, who’d had four homes since leaving Florida in 1992, only Ocala would ever be the real thing. She’d told Meg she was trying to talk Todd into going back there when he got out of the service; she wanted to start a plant nursery. She had it all planned out and was certain it would be a hit. Of all the Powell girls, Kara was the most like their father.
‘I assumed you were psychic, obviously,’ Meg said.
‘Oh, I wish! Then I wouldn’t have to ferret out every detail of the kids’ lives. God knows they don’t tell me anything! Well, at least I can read the news – and you really need to see this. You get the paper, right?’
‘We do – but I haven’t read it yet.’
‘You haven’t read it? Jesus, it’s four-thirty out there – what’ve you been doing all day?’
Kara’s innocent question was an ice pick in Meg’s gut, but she made herself stay calm. ‘I had a mom in labor all last night and this morning, then Savannah had a softball game this afternoon. I’m just getting a chance to make a sandwich and sit down for five minutes.’
‘Well, don’t sit yet – get the paper so you can see this.’
While Meg tracked the paper to the den, where Brian had left it after his cursory glances at the front section and sports, Kara asked how their father was doing.
‘Haven’t you talked to him?’ Meg said.
‘Not in about two weeks. He’s being pissy about us not being able to visit this summer. Screening his calls, I assume. But I know he’s fine or you’d have told me.’
Of course she would think that; gatekeeper of information was Meg’s role, had always been her role. Her parents had left her to mind her sisters, and now her sisters had left her to mind their parents – parent, now – and always, she was to keep everyone informed. ‘He’s doing okay. Settling in. His left kidney’s acting up.’
‘Is he eating right? I swear, he’s so stubborn! What’s the deal with the kidney?’
Meg pulled out the newspaper’s lifestyles section, where the engagement and wedding announcements appeared each weekend. ‘I’m not sure; I told him to call his nephrologist.’
‘There you go with the big words,’ Kara teased. She was bright, but not college-educated, having married Todd at nineteen, three years after meeting him at Meg’s wedding, where he’d parked cars for a few extra bucks before starting basic training. Four kids – all boys – had followed. Meg hoped Kara would prevail with her desire to come back to Florida; she missed her sister, who had been her closest friend besides Carson. She and Beth were close now too, and she could visit any of her sisters by plane if she could just find the time. Time, however, hid from her as well as Savannah had done in department stores when she was little. Any more time stubbornly refused to be found.
Returning to the kitchen, Meg said, ‘Okay, so I have the paper – lifestyle section, I presume.’
‘Open it to page two.’
Meg did, and there was the announcement. ‘Grammy winner Carson McKay to wed Miss Valerie Haas of Malibu, CA,’ read the caption beneath a photographer’s picture of the betrothed couple. Meg closed the paper.
‘Well?’ Kara said. ‘Isn’t she just as cute as you can imagine?’
‘Cuter,’ Meg said. She finished constructing her sandwich, grasping the knife again and cutting the sandwich smoothly.
‘I never would’ve pictured him with a professional surfer. Have you ever heard of her? My god, it says she’s twenty-two! And he’s, what? Forty?’
A professional surfer? Meg hardly knew there was such a career, particularly for women. ‘Not yet – he’s thirty-nine until November.’ Her own thirty-ninth was coming up in late June.
‘Wonder what they’ll do for his fortieth. Probably rent an island for a party and invite their hundred closest friends.’
As Kara was saying this, an image of Carson on the old tire swing came to Meg; he was sitting with his legs through it, holding on to the thick rope they’d used to suspend it from a high branch of the oak near the swimming lake. He leaned back and, with bare feet, pushed himself in a lazy circle, while she watched from the shady base of the tree. ‘For your fortieth birthday,’ he said, ‘I’m taking you to Africa on safari.’
‘Are you, now?’ she asked, more interested in watching his naked back than in considering anything that might happen more than twenty years in the future.
He said, ‘Yep. Count on it.’
‘What about for your fortieth?’ she said.
‘Thailand,’ he answered, ‘for lemongrass shrimp.’ He let the tire sway then, peering into the oak leaves like their future was painted there, episodes of their life-to-be displayed for preview on each toothy leaf.
Kara laughed. ‘God. Seventeen years.’
For a second Meg thought Kara was talking about how long it had been since that day. Not seventeen years, she thought. Twenty – no, twenty-one. And then she realized Kara was calculating the age difference between Carson and his fiancée. No wonder they were calling him a cradle robber; his bride-to-be was probably just learning to walk when he’d made his safari promise.
‘Whatever makes him happy,’ Meg said, wanting to be done with the topic. ‘Now tell me, how go your plans for the plant nursery?’
‘Do I detect a change-of-subject attempt here? I mean, c’mon Meggie, you had your shot and you let him go.’
‘True,’ Meg said. Neither she nor her parents had ever told Kara or Beth or the youngest, Julianne, the whole truth about why she and Carson broke up.
Kara
