Seasons Under Heaven Read online

  Tory was having trouble following the thread of Cathy’s rambling. “Baseball game? What’s that got to do with condoms?”

  “Nothing, except that every boy on the team got one, as well as every boy in the school, including the boy that Annie is out with as we speak.” She leaned back hard in the chair and brushed her fingers through her bangs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dominate the conversation like that. It’s just been an incredibly bad day.”

  “We can relate,” Tory said. “The kids spilled Kool-Aid on my computer. Oh, and Joseph passed out at his birthday party today.” The two events seemed equally tragic to Tory.

  Cathy shot Brenda a look. “Is he all right?”

  “Yeah, fine, I think.” Tory wasn’t surprised at Brenda’s lie—it wasn’t like Brenda to dump her problems out for everyone to examine. Sometimes Tory wished she would. To her, Brenda was some kind of mythical supermom who did all the right things and never had a negative thought. Just once, she’d love to see Brenda fall apart, get angry, lose her cool. It certainly would help Tory relate to her better.

  “Sylvia’s the only one who’s had a peaceful day, I bet,” Tory said, smiling at the matriarch of the neighborhood.

  “Not really,” Sylvia said. The swing stopped, and Sylvia swept her frosted pageboy behind her ears. “See, Harry came home today for lunch and asked me if I would think about going to Nicaragua as a full-time missionary.”

  “A what?” Cathy threw her head back and laughed uproariously, as if she’d never heard anything so funny in her life. Tory found it less amusing, and Brenda wasn’t smiling at all. “Has he gone off the deep end? Sylvia, what did you say?”

  Sylvia seemed puzzled by Cathy’s response. “Well…I said I’d think about it. And no, he isn’t going off the deep end. It’s something he’s always wanted to do. We’ve talked about it before. Now that the kids are gone…”

  Cathy’s smile faded, and she looked at Tory, then at Brenda, and realized that no one but she was laughing. “You’re serious. You’re really thinking about this.”

  Sylvia drew in a deep breath and let it out hard. Tory didn’t think she had ever heard Sylvia sigh before. “Thinking about it. That’s all. I don’t know if I could do it. Sell the house, the furniture, leave the country…”

  “Why would you do that?” Cathy asked. “Why would he? You have it so good here. You’re so happy. He’s a prominent cardiac surgeon. He’s worked all his life to be where he is. What could possibly be in Nicaragua for you?”

  Sylvia thought that over for a moment. “It wouldn’t be about us, Cathy.” The words were not said in condemnation. They were thoughtful words, meted out carefully. “Harry feels called.”

  “Wow,” Cathy said. “I don’t mean to seem so bowled over by this, but it’s kind of hard for me to imagine. Most people work all their lives to get where he is. It’s just hard to grasp.”

  “For me, too,” Sylvia said. “I understand why he wants to do it. I’m just not sure I’m that selfless.”

  “Give me a break,” Cathy said. “You and Brenda are the most selfless people I know.”

  Tory couldn’t help noticing that Cathy didn’t mention her. But she wouldn’t have expected her to. She looked down at the boards beneath her feet.

  “The first year we went,” Sylvia explained, “we worked in Leon, about an hour and a half from Managua. I lost ten pounds in two weeks. Hardly ate a thing, because it was so disgusting to go to the marketplaces to buy meat that was hanging in the open, covered with flies.”

  “Gross,” Tory whispered.

  “The second year, we went to Masaya. I thought it would be better, because it was right on the lake. I pictured a resort area, you know? Imagine my surprise when we got there and all we saw were run-down buildings badly in need of repair. No telling where we’d live if we went there indefinitely.”

  “Where did you stay then?” Brenda asked.

  “In the home of a missionary who was already there. And in spite of my disappointment at the location, it turned out to be a fruitful trip. Harry operated on hundreds of people and treated hundreds of others. He did all types of surgery—not just heart cases. Because of Harry, the little church the missionary started has doubled. Some of those converts are starting churches of their own. There’s no doubt, it’s God’s work.”

  “For two weeks, maybe,” Cathy said. “But forever?”

  A strong wind whipped up, dancing in their hair, as Sylvia seemed to think that over. “I’m not sure God’s calling us to do this. I’m praying about it. I want to do God’s will, but frankly, I’m not sure I’m up to this. I don’t have a lot to contribute, you know? Harry practices medicine there, and they flock to him by the hundreds. He helps them. But I just don’t think I have that much to offer.”

  “You have a lot to offer,” Brenda said. “If you put everything you have experience doing on a resume, it would never fit into an envelope.”

  Tory’s eyes settled on Brenda for a moment as she tried to let that sink in. Brenda made being a housewife seem noble, yet Tory couldn’t think of it that way. To her, it was a detour on the way to her career goals, something that had gotten in her way.

  “So what are you going to do?” Tory asked finally.

  “I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “Harry told me he would wait until I made the decision.”

  “Oh, great,” Tory said. “So he dumps it in your lap?”

  “I already know what he wants to do. He’s leaving it up to me.”

  “It’s better than having him come home and telling her to pack her bags, that they’re on their way out of the country,” Brenda said. “I think it’s sweet.”

  “He believes that if God really is calling him, He’ll call me, too.”

  “If I were you I wouldn’t answer the phone,” Cathy said. Everyone laughed.

  Tory looked over at her house and saw that the light in the laundry room was on. She knew Barry wasn’t doing laundry. Was he working on the computer they kept there? Cursing her for being so stupid as to leave the children alone long enough to destroy the equipment he’d worked overtime to pay for?

  Wearily, she got up. “I guess I’d better go home.”

  “Might be a good idea,” Sylvia said.

  She paused a moment, crossing her arms. “Sylvia, did you ever have days when Harry was working long hours, and you just really wanted him to come home?”

  “I sure did. And when he finally did, I was happy to see him.”

  Tory nodded, wishing on one hand that she could be more like Sylvia, and on the other stubbornly holding on to her anger at Barry. “It’s just so unfair, these long hours.”

  “He’s doing his job.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Sometimes Sylvia’s wisdom drove her right up the wall. “Well, I’ll see you all later. Brenda, let me know if you need anything.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tory tramped back across the yard and into her garage. She took a moment to collect herself before opening the door and going in. Was he stewing now as she had stewed earlier? Was he waiting at the kitchen table, poised to attack?

  She made a point of closing the door loudly enough for him to hear, then went in and looked around the kitchen. He wasn’t there, so she went to the laundry room. He heard her coming and glanced over his shoulder at her. He was sitting in front of the computer with a bottle of some kind of cleaner he must have brought from the office. He had taken the keyboard apart.

  “I don’t know if I can fix it,” he mumbled.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

  He turned around in the swivel desk chair she’d gotten for Mother’s Day. “Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t home sooner. This account will mean a million dollars for the company, and a sure raise for me.”

  It was hard to be mad at him when he put it that way. “It’s okay. You just wouldn’t believe all that’s happened today.” She wanted to make a checklist of today’s tragedies, so he would understand. She
wanted him to be amazed at the things she put up with; she wanted him to submit her name for “Mother of the Year.” “You just don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “Staying home all day with two preschoolers. I don’t have much adult companionship. And I have no time to write. I look forward to you coming home and relieving me, and then when you don’t…”

  “Tory, we agreed,” he said. “When you got pregnant with Brittany, we agreed that you would raise our children, instead of letting them go to day care. Writing a book was way down on the priority list.”

  She bristled. “So what’s wrong with my writing a book, as long as I’m getting everything else done? The house is spotless, Barry. It always is. The kids are clean, they’re fed, they’re loved. What’s wrong with me wanting to write a book?”

  “Nothing, unless it makes you miserable when you have to spend time with the kids.”

  She turned away from the door and went back into the kitchen. He’d left his briefcase and his car keys on the table. She picked them up and put them where they belonged.

  He got up and leaned in the doorway, right where she’d been standing. “I’m just saying, Tory, that when I work overtime, it’s because I have to do that to make it possible for us to live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and still let you stay home with the children.”

  She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Though the counter was clean, as it always was, she got her sponge from the sink and began wiping it again.

  “Tory, do you want to go back to work? Is that it? Do you want to get a job and let me stay home with the kids?”

  She knew there was about as much chance of that as there was of her running for congress. “I want to be a writer.” She slammed the sponge down and spun around to face him. “I’m smarter than this, Barry. I’m smarter than getting cats out of trees and rescuing Spencer from horse corrals and reading Dr. Seuss. People used to look up to me and admire me when I was in college. I want to make an impact. That was the plan.”

  “You are making an impact. You’re raising two children who are secure and happy. You’re doing a great job. But if it’s instant gratification you want, you’re not going to get it in child rearing.”

  “I’m not going to get it in writing, either,” she said, “so that’s a low blow. You know it’s not instant anything I’m after.”

  “Then what are you after?”

  “I just want to write four pages in a day without losing it to a Kool-Aid spill,” she said. “I just want to be able to sit by myself and think sometimes. I just want to be able to reach a goal or two.”

  “Well, if you didn’t spend all your time cleaning this house and reading self-help books, maybe you’d get something done.”

  “Oh, so now you’re upset because the house is clean?”

  “No, I’m upset because you have to have everything perfect. That’s how you are with your writing. Other people do it for a hobby. They work it in. But if you can’t have everything exactly like you want it before you start writing, then forget it.”

  “Barry, don’t you understand that I did write today? I wrote four pages and it’s gone.”

  “Did it ever occur to you to try to re-create those four pages?”

  “How? The computer was broken.”

  “You could let the kids play in the little pool and sit out there with a legal pad and a pen. You remember those, don’t you?”

  He was right, she thought. It could be done that way. Lots of people did it that way. It just wasn’t the way she wanted to do it.

  He went to the table and sat down. “Come here,” he said. “Sit down and tell me everything you can remember about what you wrote. It’ll come back to you, then you can take a pen and paper and write it again.”

  She just stood there with her arms crossed. “Barry, it doesn’t work that way.”

  He tapped the chair. “Come on, Tory. Just try. Is this still the story you wanted to do about the nurse in France in World War II?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she falls for a wounded soldier, but he dies…”

  “I had him get wounded today. He was brought into triage, and she met him. It was really good.”

  “Great. What else?”

  She kept standing where she was. “Nothing else. That’s as far as I got.”

  “Good. Then you don’t have so much to re-create. What happens next? He’s going to die, right? And while she’s grieving, Dr. Right comes along and rescues her from herself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then start writing. It’s a guaranteed best-seller.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t turn it on just like that. I’m not in the mood.”

  He stared up at her, his face hardening. “Tory, I’m trying to help you. Look, if you’re so miserable, then let’s try something else. Plan A was to stay home and raise our kids. But if Plan A isn’t working, then let’s think of Plan B. Just come up with one, Tory. You could hire a baby-sitter for a few hours a day so you could write. Whatever it takes.”

  She felt horrible and thought of Sylvia and Brenda telling her how she should be happy to stay home with her husband when he finally came in. She rarely heard them complain. The first time she’d ever heard Sylvia complain was tonight when she’d spoken about Nicaragua. Tory wondered if there was something wrong with her that rendered her incapable of appreciating things that other mothers longed for. The truth was, she didn’t want to go out and get a job, and she didn’t want to put her kids in day care. She did want to stay home with them. “It’s just that…no one puts much value in child rearing,” she said, then wished she hadn’t said it aloud.

  He got up and leaned on the counter, forcing her to look at him. “Just tell me one thing, Tory,” he said. “Who is it that you’re trying to impress?”

  She couldn’t believe he’d asked that. “What are you talking about? I’m not trying to impress anybody.”

  “You said that no one puts value in child rearing. That sounds to me like you’re trying to prove something or impress somebody.”

  She felt her face growing hot. “You’ll never understand,” she said, “because you can go to work and do your job and meet people and be good at what you do and get awards and recognition and pay raises. You can stand back and look at the work you’ve done and be proud of it and tell everyone that you did it. I can’t do any of that, Barry.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” he said. “I think Brittany and Spencer are better awards than any pay raise and any job recognition.”

  “Great, now you’re acting like I don’t value them!”

  “It sounds like it, Tory. Sometimes it really does.”

  “That’s it.” She squeezed out the sponge and went to throw it into the washing machine, then dropped the top loudly.

  Then she went to bed angry and cold to the sound of David Letterman in the living room.

  CHAPTER

  Eleven

  Cathy paced the front room of her house, the room they called the formal dining room, though there was nothing formal about it. Jerry had gotten their antique dining-room suite in the divorce, since it had come from his family, and now he and his new wife used it at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Cathy had never had the inclination to replace it—in addition to never having the money. Shopping for furniture was something that took time, and she never had a block large enough to do it. So she had moved a garage-sale table in here, covered it with a tablecloth, and set up her computer and printer on it.

  Tonight, what drew her to the room was the fact that it had a window overlooking the front yard. From here, she could see the entrance to Cedar Circle, and each time she passed the window she peered out to see whether any headlights had lit up the street. Annie was three hours later than she’d said she would be.

  When she had come home from Brenda’s with Mark and realized that Annie should have been home by then, she headed over to the high school’s baseball field. The parking lot was empty. The game had long been over. Getting angry, she had gone b
y the grocery store where Rick worked, and asked if he knew where she could be.

  “She doesn’t tell me anything,” Rick said. “The brat’s probably gone to a movie or something.”

  “She wouldn’t dare. Not after I barely let her go to the game on a school night.”

  “Sure, she would,” he said. “Annie does whatever she wants. Usually, you just don’t know about it.”

  Cathy’s mouth had fallen open. “Rick, I hope you intend to explain that!”

  “Can’t, Mom. Gotta go. I’m on the clock.”

  Frustrated, she had gone back to the car. She’d left Mark in it with the motor running, and he had moved to the driver’s seat so people would think he was old enough to drive. The radio was on a heavy metal station and turned to full volume. She was embarrassed when she opened the door and the music came blaring out. “Move over, Mark,” she yelled. “And turn that thing down. Good grief!”

  He moved over but didn’t turn the radio down, so she got in and turned it off.

  “Hey, I was listening to that!”

  “And so was half the town. There are laws about disturbing the peace, Mark. And I don’t want you going deaf. You already do a pretty good job of not hearing me whenever I tell you to do something.”

  “So did you find her?”

  Cathy didn’t put the car in reverse just yet. Instead, she sat there, staring out the window, trying to think. “No, Rick didn’t know anything. Mark, he said something that really bothered me. He said that Annie does whatever she wants. That I just usually don’t find out about it.”

  “He’s got that right,” Mark said, reaching for the radio again.

  She slapped his hand away. “I’m talking to you. What did he mean by that? What has she done that I don’t know about?”