Circle of Grace, page 14
She had drunk hot chocolate that night, too, she remembered. Not this instant low-fat, low-calorie stuff you microwave in a cup of water, but real cocoa, cooked in a pan on the stove, with powdered chocolate and whole milk and too much sugar. She hadn’t worried about her figure back then. She hadn’t worried about much of anything.
But that had been—what, thirty years ago?
And now, like a ghost from the past, this letter.
The last of the twilight was fading, and the familiar handwriting blurred on the page. Amanda fished her reading glasses out of the drawer, turned on the desk lamp, and held the letter to the light.
Dear Lovey,
It’s been a very long time since we’ve all seen each other. We’ve kept in touch over the years through the circle journal, but I never had a chance to get to any of the reunions. And so I’m writing to you—and to Liz and Tess—asking all of you to join me the second weekend of April for a few days in Asheville.
I know it’s short notice, but surely you haven’t forgotten how beautiful the Blue Ridge Mountains are in the springtime. The redbud trees and daffodils are already blooming, and the ornamental pear trees are coming out with their white blossoms. There’s color and life everywhere. I want to share it with the three of you.
Here’s what I have in mind—Friday through Monday at the Grove Park Inn. I’ve reserved two adjoining suites, and made reservations for a massage and spa treatment for all of us on Saturday morning. I’ll take care of everything except your flights, and if anybody can’t manage a plane ticket, I’ll pay for that too.
I really want us all to be together again. I have something important to talk to all of you about, but I need to do it face-to-face and not through letters or phone calls.
Please come. Please.
Love,
Grace
“Lovey, is it?” said Bo over her shoulder. “Nobody’s called you that silly nickname in years. Who’s this from?” He snatched the letter out of her hands and began to read.
“Bo, give it back!” She stood and reached for it, but he held it over his head, an infantile game of keep-away.
He scanned the letter, then thrust it back into her hands and frowned down at her. “Grace? That moralistic prude you lived with in college?”
“She wasn’t a prude. She was just—well, idealistic. Fervent.”
“She was an idiot. Don’t you remember how she gave you holy hell about having sex with me?”
Amanda glared up at him. “Well, she certainly wouldn’t have to worry about that issue now, would she?”
His face went white, then red, and he ran a finger around his collar as if the neckband were too tight. “Dammit, Amanda, don’t start with me. This is not my problem.” His eyes slid over her ample form, and a poorly disguised expression of disgust skittered across his face. “We’ve got company coming in”—he checked his watch—“fifteen minutes.” He adjusted his tie, retucked his shirt, and pulled his belt up under his bulging belly. “You’re not going to wear that, are you?”
Amanda looked down at the silky black-and-white blouse over flowing black evening pants. She had chosen the outfit because she thought he liked it—simple at-home elegance, not too formal. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It makes you look dumpy. These are important clients, Amanda. High-class people. Go change into something more appropriate, will you? I’ll mix the martinis.”
Amanda sighed and started toward the stairs.
“And one more thing,” he called over his shoulder as he opened the bar cabinets and began to set out crystal stemware. “You can forget about going to Asheville to be with those old college pals of yours. A couple of them came here once, and that was enough. They’re—”
She turned. “They’re what, Bo? Not our kind of people?”
“Exactly.” He opened the bar fridge and peered in. “Where are the olives? And the cocktail onions? Don’t tell me we’re out of cocktail onions.”
Nobody can tell you anything, Bo Tennyson, Amanda thought. But she didn’t dare say it out loud.
Then, with Grace Benedict’s invitation still clutched in her hand, she went upstairs to change.
-16-
THE CHEERLEADER
On Monday morning Amanda lay in bed and pretended to be asleep while Bo showered, dressed, and packed for a week-long business trip. This time it was a sweep of the Big Bo’s Sports Gear franchises in northern Minnesota—Duluth, Hibbing, Bemidji, and Moorhead.
College draft prospects aside, Bo Tennyson’s professional football career hadn’t exactly turned out to be the stuff of legend. For a year and a half he had warmed the bench and paced the sidelines at the old Met Stadium, until his big chance arrived one memorable game during his second season. Injuries to the first- and second-string receivers forced Coach Grant to put him in during the fourth quarter. He dropped the first pass and was penalized for offensive interference on the second. And then, on third and long, a miracle happened—the unknown tight end from North Carolina made a spectacular catch in the last thirty seconds of the game, leaping over three defenders and across the goal line for a game-winning touchdown.
It was a career-making moment. Fans in the stadium snatched up discarded programs, desperately trying to connect his number with his name, then sprang to their feet, screaming, “BO! BO! BO!”
If he had just left well enough alone…
But he didn’t. When the play was over, he caught sight of the TV cameras in the end zone and couldn’t resist grabbing a little more airtime. Grinning hugely, he attempted an ill-conceived vault into the stands, fell back onto the field, and shattered his tailbone on the frozen turf. If he’d made it, the move might have gone down in sports history not as the Lambeau Leap, but the Tennyson Leap, or the Old Met Leap. Instead, in the ultimate indignity, the late-season hero found himself cradling his tight end in a donut pillow and watching on television as his team won the NFC playoffs and lost the Super Bowl.
After two unsuccessful operations, the surgeons fused his three lower vertebrae and sent him home, his football career officially over. He couldn’t even sit on the bench anymore. The Vikings paid out his contract and let him go.
But if Bo had turned out to be a bad investment for the Vikings, the Vikings had turned out to be a very good investment for Bo. He had parlayed his contract payoff and his short-lived fame into a multi-million-dollar business. Minnesotans were insane about their Vikings; they would drive a hundred miles to get an autograph even from a washed-up rookie who had played only a few minutes of one quarter in his entire career.
His looks didn’t hurt, either. His blond hair, handsome face, and boyish grin made for great ad copy. Never mind that he was from a poverty-stricken backwater town on the Outer Banks, he looked Norwegian. He’d even dropped his southern accent and taken to saying “Uff da” and “You betcha.” And if the twenty-foot photograph on the billboards went back ten years or more, nobody seemed to care. The old charm still worked its magic. He was Big Bo, and everyone adored him.
Bo Tennyson was no longer a tight end. Or a tight stomach or anything else tight, for that matter, Amanda reflected. The gorgeous muscular hunk she had fallen in love with had been absorbed into an overweight type-A businessman whose primary concern was making money—tons of it—and perpetuating the myth of genial Big Bo.
Still feigning sleep, Amanda watched through slitted eyelids as he closed his suitcase, struggled into his tweed sport coat, and left the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. She listened as he lumbered down the stairs. When at last she heard the faint whine of the garage door opening and his Lexus SUV pulling out of the driveway, she sat up, reached into the drawer of the bedside table, and pulled out Grace Benedict’s letter.
Unaccustomed as she was to analyzing her own emotions, Amanda had difficulty discerning exactly what sensations the letter brought up in her. Longing, certainly, for the friendships of those college days. Curiosity, as to what was so important in Grace’s life that she would pay for a weekend at the Grove Park to get the four of them together once more.
There were other feelings, too. Anger at Bo for his contemptuous mockery of the long-abandoned nickname Lovey. Rebellion over his declaration that she absolutely would not be going to this reunion, that her old friends were not “their kind of people.” And underneath those surface impressions, a deep-seated dread at the idea of seeing them all again.
But why should she, of all people, be afraid? She was Amanda Love Tennyson, wife of Big Bo. She had a half-million-dollar house with a million-dollar view of the golf course and lake. Two beautiful—if spoiled—grown children. A housekeeper, cook, and gardener. More money than she’d ever be able to spend in three lifetimes. What did she have to be ashamed of?
The answer came to her in Neva Wilson’s simple response to the question “Are you happy?” Amanda had everything she always thought she wanted, and nothing her soul really needed. She was lonely. Empty. Friendless, unless you counted the Stepford wives who accompanied her husband’s business associates to dinner.
And Neva.
She’d never really thought of Neva as a friend, but the housekeeper was the kind of person Amanda could talk to. The woman never missed a thing, and despite the fact that they lived in totally different worlds, Amanda was certain that Neva understood what it was like to occupy this house and be Mrs. Big Bo. Understood, and sympathized.
Why, she wondered, had the very fulfillment of all her dreams betrayed her so cruelly? Amanda didn’t know. But for once she wasn’t going to ignore her own instincts. She was going to find out what was missing, no matter what.
The psychiatrist’s office was warm and comfortable, a cherry-paneled room with a desk in one corner and massive bookshelves on either side of a brick fireplace. Gas logs flickered in the grate, giving off little heat but plenty of atmosphere. While she waited for the counselor, Amanda leaned back in the leather armchair and stared into the flames. The effect was calming, almost hypnotic. No wonder people so readily bared their souls in a place like this, and paid a hundred dollars an hour for the privilege.
It wasn’t the first time she had been to a psychiatrist, of course. Over the years she had seen two or three counselors in town, mostly on the recommendation of other Junior Leaguers. But her sessions had produced little in the way of fruitful insight, invariably resulting in a diagnosis of depression and a six-month prescription for the antidepressant du jour.
Trazodone. Elavil. Serzone. Prozac. She rehearsed the list in her mind, feeling the rhythms of the words: TRA-zo-done, EL-a-vil, SER-zone, PRO-zac, rah…rah…RAH!
The dowager’s cheer, Amanda thought glumly. The team chant for bored, rich, past-their-prime women who have nothing more productive to occupy their time and attention.
When she was younger, she had made fun of them, those gaggles of clucking hens, all dressed by Bob Mackey and Liz Claiborne, all with hair dyed exactly the same color blonde. She would see them gathered around a corner table at the country club, lunching on salads and discussing their latest discoveries in hairdressers and manicurists and shrinks. Now she was one of them. Fifty-something and going to seed, desperately clutching to the last remnants of her youth and vitality.
The door opened, and a man entered the office and crossed over to the desk—a big, jovial-looking man with curly gray hair and a ruddy complexion. This must be Jonathan Whitestone, Amanda thought. She had heard of him by reputation but never met him in person before. And now that she had seen him, she was gripped by an unaccountable urge to run for the door. He reminded her of her husband’s business associates, all of them, morphed into a single seething mass of masculinity. She could feel the air around her teeming with testosterone. How could a man like this—or any man, for that matter—possibly understand a woman’s angst?
He closed the file folder on his desk, swiveled his chair in her direction, and rose to shake her hand. “Mrs. Tennyson, is it? All right if I call you Amanda? I’m John. Lucky break, what, having a cancellation when you called?”
She stared at him. He had the oddest voice—not a low, powerful baritone, as she had expected, but a bright tenor, with a bit of the Brit around the edges. His eyes creased at the corners when he smiled, and his two front teeth were crooked.
A leprechaun, she thought suddenly. I’m going to be psychoanalyzed by a leprechaun.
He gave a short bark of a laugh, seated himself again, and pulled his rolling desk chair close up in front of Amanda. “Now then, let’s get to it, right? Comfortable? You’d not rather have the couch? No? Pinch of the stereotype in that, eh?”
Amanda gazed at him. She opened her mouth to speak, and shocked herself by what came out. “Are you—Irish?”
He laughed again. “Lord, no, lovey. Aussie by birth. Come from Queensland, near Longreach. My ancestors were sheep farmers, but in the last twenty years or so they’ve taken to raising ostriches. Delicious meat, ostrich, but bloody cantankerous birds they can be—”
He stopped and cocked his head, peering at her. “I see tears, lovey. Clearly I’ve said something that’s struck a nerve.”
Amanda blinked and bit her lip. “You called me…lovey.”
“Just an expression,” he said. “My granny used to call everyone lovey, and I suppose I picked up the habit from her.” He propped his hands on his knees. “Does that mean something to you?”
“My maiden name was Love. Amanda Love. In high school and college, all my friends called me Lovey.”
“Ah. And so the name brings back some memories, does it?”
“Not just the name. Other things. A letter—I received a letter yesterday from an old friend. One of my best friends, actually. Four of us shared a house together during college, and we’ve kept in touch over the years. Occasionally we’d get together—all except Grace, this friend who wrote the letter, who never came to any of the reunions. But we haven’t seen each other in almost fifteen years. And now out of the blue Grace has invited us—all of us who lived together—for a kind of reunion. Says she has something she needs to talk with us about. In person. It sounds important.” Amanda dug in her bag. “You can read it if you like.”
He waved the offer aside. “It’s more important what the letter says to you than what it might say to me. How do you feel about the prospect of seeing these friends again?”
“I have mixed feelings. I want to go, in a way. But in another way, I’m reluctant.”
“Reluctant?”
“Afraid.” She looked into his eyes. “Terrified.”
“Why would you be terrified to see old friends? Did you have a falling-out with them? Some rift that needs to be mended?”
“No.” Amanda shook her head. “It’s just that the last time I saw them—the other two, not Grace—I was caught up in raising kids and doing charity work. And now I’m older, and those things are past, and I’m not—” She could feel his eyes boring into her, and she faltered.
“Go on,” he urged quietly. “Say whatever it is that’s floating to the surface of your mind.”
“I’m not what they expect me to be!” Amanda blurted out.
“Ah. And what do they expect of you?”
“I don’t know. Sophisticated. Together.” She paused. “Happy.”
She anticipated the question: Why aren’t you happy? It was what a psychiatrist ought to ask, after all—the natural segue into a discussion of her life and current woes.
But he didn’t. Instead, he asked, “Why do they expect you to be happy?”
She hesitated. “Because—because I’m rich and secure and have everything I ever wanted.”
“Yes. Indeed. You’re Mrs. Big Bo.”
Amanda gaped at him.
“Don’t look so shocked, lovey. Everybody in Minnesota knows Big Bo Tennyson. But that’s not the issue, now, is it? The real issue is—” He held out a hand, waiting for her to fill in the blank.
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. Don’t think too hard. All the answers are inside you, just waiting to come out. The real issue is—”
“How I feel about myself?” She exhaled the tentative question.
John Whitestone grinned broadly, his eyes dancing. “Right you are. And how do you feel about yourself? What’s the first descriptive word that comes to mind, without censorship?”
“Lost.” The word popped out before Amanda could stop it. Tears stung at her eyes. “Blank. Void.” She took a deep breath. “Abandoned.”
He pounced, but gently. “Abandoned by whom?”
“By everyone. My husband. My children. I would say my friends, except I have no friends. I’m just—just a cheerleader.”
John leaned forward. “What does that mean, a cheerleader?”
“It’s what I was when I met Bo and fell in love with him. A cheerleader. Pretty good joke, right—the cheerleader and the football hero?” She paused, went purse-diving again, and extracted the broken picture frame, which she had brought along just in case she decided to replace it. “See?” She pointed. “Football hero. Cheerleader.”
He cradled the photos in his hands and looked at them, giving particular attention to the smashed picture of the girl. “Throw this against a wall, did you?” He grinned.
Amanda frowned. “It fell off the table. It got broken by accident.”
“Interesting. So tell me more about being a cheerleader,” Whitestone prodded.
“That’s all I’ve ever been. I’ve spent my life swishing imaginary pompoms and doing the rah-rah number for other people. The Junior League. My children, though God knows they’ve turned out to be less than heroic. But mostly I’ve stayed on the sidelines, cheering for my husband.”
“And yet you’re much more than a cheerleader on the inside. You don’t belong on the sidelines, do you?”
“Don’t I?” She narrowed her eyes. “No, you’re right. I don’t belong on the sidelines. I am more than a cheerleader. I have much more to offer than that, even if my husband doesn’t recognize it.” She felt strength flowing out from her as she said the words, and then returning to her again as she heard them.
