I remark, knowing how much those nine years she has on me bother her. I’ve been teasing Pam longer than Rob did, even though he was more inventive, but she’s always been more amused than annoyed by me.
She’s smiling against the mug as she takes a sip; I can tell by the widening of the lipstick marks she leaves on the rim. Pam goes nowhere without her makeup. I expect today she needs the armor more than any other.
I want to ask how she enjoyed her first night sleeping alone. But that question brings up painful memories. I didn’t sleep in our bed for weeks after Rob died. It was just too big and lonely without him.
“Hey, you tattled on me,” she reminds me.
Although a couple of weeks have passed since I told Mom about Pam’s plans, I feel enough guilt to squirm against the leather stool.
Mom’s restaurant looks more Irish pub than English tearoom with its rich brown leather stools and chairs, gleaming oak trim and floors and shiny brass fixtures. She did a lot of refurbishing down here, probably working out her anger over Dad’s death as I’d worked out mine in Smiley’s yesterday. But she’d done nothing with the upstairs, leaving the items the previous owners had stored up there.
“Mom needed to know why we were cleaning out the apartment,” I say in my defense.
“And the plan was to tell her that you were going to use it as an office for your bookkeeping since you sold Rob’s business,” Pam reminds me.
I shake my head. Although I often tease Pam about her age, she hasn’t been acting it lately. “I was not going to lie to Mom and sneak around behind her back.”
“Not perfect little Holly,” she agrees, transporting me back to my childhood.
She and Emma had been the ones to lie and sneak around, and because I was younger, they’d excluded me. Or maybe they’d excluded me because I had tattled back then, likely only out of revenge. It hadn’t mattered if I’d tattled or not, they always got caught and suffered the consequences.
Like Rob had. I shake off the maudlin thought; I’ve done enough wallowing. It’s time to move on. Maybe Pam has the right idea.
“Did you really think you could move in without her knowing?” I ask.
Pam shrugs, trying for nonchalance even as her face flushes with color. “I just wasn’t ready to tell her yet about leaving Keith.”
“You worried for nothing. Mom is okay with you staying here. She knows it’s just a separation.” A very temporary one, I suspect. Pam’s been married too long—she doesn’t remember how lonely being single is.
She shrugs again.
“Pam? You are going to try to save your marriage, aren’t you?”
“I worked on it for twenty-five years, Holly.”
Work? Was that what marriage was supposed to be, like a job you labored at twenty-four—seven? Mine hadn’t been like that, if you exclude the times I tried to get Rob to eat right. The rest of it had pretty much been a party, full of fun and games and lots of laughter.
Pam expels a weary breath, then adds, “I need a break.” From the exasperated look she shoots me, I suspect she doesn’t want a break just from her marriage but from her family’s questions about it, too. Not that Emma, Mom or I have asked her much about their problems. We hadn’t thought they had any, so we’ve been too shocked by the news to ask.
“Why are you here?” she asks me. “Books to do? Don’t let me keep you.”
I smile at the eagerness in her voice. She obviously wants to get rid of me. “I came to talk to Mom,” I say, but don’t tell her it’s because I need to see if there’s a chapter in the widow guidebook about how to deal with resentful children. If I admitted that, Pam might offer advice, or at least an opinion, since she has one about everything. But she really can’t understand. She has only one daughter, who was always sweet and loving. Of course Rachael doesn’t know her mom left her dad yet. After Rachael married, a little less than a year ago, she moved to the other side of the state, to Detroit, for her husband’s job.
“You wanted to warn her about your meltdown in Smiley’s,” Pam guesses.
“But someone already told her about that,” I say, glaring at my oldest sister.
“This is Stanville. You expected to keep a secret here?” she asks.
I don’t point out that she expected to do the same, and just continue to glare suspiciously at her.
“It wasn’t me. I haven’t even seen her yet.” She turns on her stool and waves at Mom across the room, where she’s leaning over a table. All the men over fifty, and some under, are staring at her behind. “Until just now.”
I could argue semantics with Pam, that she could have called instead of seeing her, but I know it’s not her way of doing things. And if it was, she might not have been the first and certainly wasn’t the last to share my Kitty Cupcake coup with Mom.
“I know it wasn’t you,” I admit, cutting Pam a break.
She’s going to need it. When she realizes she made a mistake, I hope Keith gives her one and takes her back. I’m almost relieved now knowing that the boxes and bags in the hall and the garage are full of my stuff, not hers.
The kids said the contents belonged to them, but when I checked, I found towels, blankets and pillows. Their “packing” had consisted of emptying the linen closet.
“It was probably Bulletin Bill,” she murmurs around her mug, shrugging a shoulder toward the end of the counter.
Bill Diller is the only man whose head doesn’t turn to watch my mother. We figured out when we were kids why that was, that he and our math teacher, Simon Van Otten, who is now the school principal, weren’t just fishing buddies. But since the locals keep electing Bill mayor, I doubt the rest of our little conservative town knows. They think he’s simply a confirmed bachelor. He and Simon are still fishing together exclusively.
As an old-timer gets up to leave, he stops by Bill, patting his shoulder. “Hey, Mayor, I’m going to see if anything’s biting since the rain stopped. You gonna let me in on the location of your secret fishing hole?”
Bill laughs and shakes his head, as it’s not a secret he’s willing to share. But that’s the only secret he’s ever kept. If I hadn’t told Mom about Pam walking out on her marriage, he would have.
“So how was it last night, by yourself?” I ask Pam despite myself.
She’s my sister. She was there for me. Even though I don’t agree with what she’s doing, I intend to support her.
“Quiet,” she says.
I remember those first nights after Rob died. The quiet had been deafening. Now I think back to how many times I jammed my elbow in his side and complained about his snoring until he rolled over, taking most of the blankets with him. What I wouldn’t give to lie shivering and wide-awake next to him. I’ve passed stage five and accepted that’s not going to happen. But Pam can still go home.
Before I can suggest it, she releases a deep breath. “It was heaven….”
