The Precious One Read online

  There were five of us, and we all yelped, “What?”

  Itzy dropped her voice to a near whisper, “‘Don’t worry about it. Everyone sits there. That one’s really just a sample.’”

  Our excuse was pumpkin shopping. Six teenaged girls dressed in their best jeans and new fall boots and sweaters, lip-glossed within an inch of their lives, and eager—avid, breathless, pink cheeked—for gourds. It was a big place, Ransom’s, deep and wide, with rows of open-air wooden tables covered with pots of plants and flats of flowers giving way to rows of larger plants and shrubs, and delicate, hopeful little potted trees, and interspersed throughout, pretty objects: birdbaths and garden furniture made by local artisans, and ceramic planters full of artful arrangements, funny things like purple-hearted cabbages and chili pepper plants and trailing vines mixed in with the usual flowers.

  There was a shop, too. A cottagey structure full of vases, wind chimes, fancy, seasonal tabletop decorations, blown-glass hummingbird feeders, candles, crystal garden balls, wreaths made of herbs, pomegranates, eucalyptus. My mother rarely shopped there. “Too expensive,” she’d say, “but it’s a great place to get ideas.”

  I’d find out later that Mr. Ransom and his wife had opened the center together, years before Ben was born, and that in the beginning, it was Mrs. Ransom who had been in charge of all the arty things. After they divorced, when Ben was three, Mr. Ransom had taken over that part, too, and, to his surprise, found that he had a knack for it, a real eye. Sometimes, the local rich ladies would even pay him to come to their houses and decorate their yards, dining room tables, and mantelpieces, fill their planters and window boxes. Mr. Ransom didn’t really need the extra jobs because the center did fine; he did it because he loved it.

  Because the six of us had so much ground to cover, we decided to divide and conquer, some of us starting at the perimeter and walking in ever-smaller circles toward the center, a couple of us taking the cottage, and one of us cruising the displays out front.

  I took the front displays, and because, even though I was boy crazy, I was also kind of a nerd, I got interested: gripped by gourds, pulled in by pumpkins. There was a mind-boggling variety of them: the usual basketball orange, of course, but also green-striped ones, bone-colored ones, enormous blond ones, flattish princessy ones, the barnacled type that had made such an impression on Itzy, and giant tear-shaped ones whose long, curved handle-tops made you want to grab one and club something. And all along one bench were the gourds that would change my life. I’d never seen anything like them, not gourds so much as creatures: small orange pumpkins with squatty white legs.

  I picked up two of them, one in each hand, and made them toddle, jauntily, along the bench. I hummed a little tune. Behind me, someone said, “Hey.”

  A boy’s voice. Slowly, I turned around. His eyes sparkled under his eyebrows. His smile was crooked and genuine. I noticed he had one dimple, just like I did. I also noticed that he was perfect, man-apron and all, and I was making little pumpkins walk. I stood looking at the boy, my hands full of gourd monopod spacemen. And here’s the thing: I should’ve been mortified. Every interaction with the opposite sex I’d had since the age of ten had taught me that, at that moment, I should’ve wanted to disappear from the face of the earth. But I didn’t.

  “Hey,” I said, smiling back at the boy. “You probably thought I was trying to steal your gourds.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said, shrugging in a way that made his hair fall sideways on his forehead. Luckily, my hands were occupied or I might have brushed it back into place. “Most gourd stealers don’t make them dance a jig before they take them.”

  I snorted. Snorted. “Well, that’s stupid. How else would they know which ones to take?”

  “Good point,” he said, grin deepening. “You know, I sort of hate to tell you this, but those Turk’s Turbans might not actually be gourds. They might be squash.”

  “That might matter to me if I were a gourd stealer,” I snapped, “which I’m obviously not.”

  Then, that bright star of a boy tipped back his head and laughed, a sound unself-conscious and ringing, so completely uncool, more like the laugh of a little kid or someone’s granddad than like a high school guy talking to a girl his age he had just met. If I’d been in another state of mind, my usual state of mind, I might have felt embarrassed for him. But nothing at that moment was usual, and his laugh was like my own private meteor shower.

  “I’m Ben Ransom,” he said.

  He held out his hand for me to shake, and later, I’d kick myself all the way home for not jumping at the chance to touch him, to grab hold and hang on, but at that moment, I would’ve given everything I owned to hear Ben Ransom laugh again, so I slapped a Turk’s Turban into his open palm and said, “Taisy Cleary.”

  “I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE thinking,” I said to Trillium. “Granddad laughs and dancing pumpkins don’t make for the most romantic meeting in the world. But they did! We were sixteen. We barely felt comfortable alone in our own rooms, and we cared more about what people thought of us than we cared about anything, world peace, anything. Yet there we stood, talking like no one was watching, like we’d known each other all our lives.”

  Trillium said, “Actually what I was thinking is that you were insane to ever let him go.”

  As soon as she said that—boom—there was Ben’s face again, the way it looked the last time I saw him, stunned, betrayed, a world of hurt in his eyes. I blinked the image away.

  “I didn’t want to. Trust me. But I was a kid! I didn’t have a lot of choices.”

  This must’ve come out more plaintive than I’d intended because Trill reached out and took my hand.

  “Hey, babe, I wasn’t judging. No way. Of course, you were a kid! So let me guess. Wilson caught you doing some totally normal people-in-love thing with Ben that he thought no daughter of his should be doing, called you whorish, and—kaput, Ben and Taisy were no more.”

  “Yeah. Well. Something like that.” I cleared my throat. “Anyway, it was a long time ago.”

  “You think you’ll see him? Does he still live in the area?”

  I shrugged and looked away. “How would I know?”

  “Pfft! Yeah, right. You googled. Don’t try to tell me different, lady. Does he still live there?”

  I grinned. “Not still. Again. He went away to college and then grad school in Wisconsin and seems to have lived out there for a while. Anyway, he’s back. He has an address.”

  “So you’ll see him!”

  “Trill. He’s probably married with ten kids.”

  She stuck out her hand. “Bet he’s not. Bet you a refrigerator clean-out that he’s not.”

  I considered. “Since you don’t even keep food in your refrigerator and since your rock-and-roll cleaning guy cleans it for you every month, it’s a deal.”

  We shook.

  “I hope you see him,” said Trillium. “I hope, I hope, I hope.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen him. He has all those tattoos and smells like Pine-Sol, but he’s still kind of cute.”

  “Hardy har har.”

  “You know what Ben did, about three weeks after we started dating? He took a couple of ballet classes, just because ballet was so important to me, and he wanted to see what it was like.”

  “Wow.”

  I sighed, chased a pea around my plate with a fork. “What if he’s different?”

  “He will be,” said Trillium.

  “Oh, God, what if he’s the same?”

  “He’ll be that, too, honey,” she said. “Just like you. Just like everyone.”

  TWO DAYS LATER, I drove the seven hours from my house to my father’s with an iPod full of fortifying songs, a suitcase full of a week’s worth of clothes, and a head full of Ben. Oh, Ben. His laugh; his Yorkies Busby and Jed; the way he and I would study for hours together without speaking; the things he taught me to like (Ovaltine, basketball, chess); the things I taught him to like (sushi, U2, Barbara Kingsolver); the way his eyes we
re so dark you could only see his pupils in the brightest sunlight; the way he read books, literally, to pieces; the night he called me in tears (the only time I ever heard or saw him cry) and told me that his mother, who had MS but refused to use a walker, had fallen down the garage steps and broken her hip, how she’d had to lie there for two hours on the cement floor until his stepfather got home.

  It was complete indulgence, a memory binge, a Ben bender. After so many years of studied denial, of trying to downplay, shrug off, forget, I didn’t so much fall off the wagon as plunge off a cliff. I was so lost in Ben, Ben, Ben that I almost forgot that I was headed Wilson-ward. It wasn’t until I saw the exit for what I still thought of as my hometown (even though I’d tried to stop) that I remembered to worry about what waited at the end of my journey, and even then, the worry was only an annoyance, like a mosquito buzzing in the car or a bad smell. I didn’t panic. I didn’t feel like throwing up or turning the car around. Instead, I squared my shoulders, turned up the Decemberists, thought about the first present Ben gave me (a hand-cranked ice cream maker and a bag of rock salt), and exited.

  Wilson’s house was on a road that had once been quiet and countrified, bordered by farms and fields but which was now pretty well trafficked. Still, the house—a long, white stucco number with a red tile roof—was set so far back from the road that it seemed to be in its own little world, bucolic and meadowy, with trees so old they were probably historic landmarks rising majestically from their pools of shadow. Mixed up among the old trees were newer ones, small and delicate. It wasn’t until I was driving down the long, gently curving driveway that I realized that all the young trees were willows.

  I stopped the car, midway up the drive, shut my eyes, and took some deep breaths. With a shaky imaginary hand, I drew a magic circle in the sand, stepped into it, one foot, the other foot, and waited for the peace to soak in.

  You are an adult, I told myself. You have a life that you love. You are happy and secure and rich in friends and family. Your mother is a jewel. Your brother thinks you’re funny. All of your ex-boyfriends still like you, except Peter, but he never liked you much to begin with. You’re a homeowner. You have ghostwritten two international bestsellers. You have long eyelashes and good feet and a famous best friend. Jealousy can’t touch you because you exist on a plane above jealousy. High above. Miles. Miles and miles and miles.

  “Miles and miles and miles,” I whispered as I put the car in drive.

  “Miles and miles and miles,” I whispered as I put the car in park in front of the house.

  “Miles and miles and miles,” I whispered as I rang the doorbell.

  I heard footsteps inside the house and stopped whispering.

  Caro answered the door. Her eyes and hair looked startled, but her smile was unmistakably real.

  “Taisy!” she said. “How wonderful that you’re here!”

  Then, my stepmother and I were hugging, and I’m not sure, but I can’t swear that I wasn’t the one who started it.

  Maybe it will be okay, I thought, Maybe it will even be good.

  “Hello, Eustacia,” said a voice.

  The person was so impossibly tall, lithe, cool-eyed, and collected that it took a moment for me to realize three things, in this order: that she wasn’t a grown woman but a girl; that she was Wilson’s daughter, the precious one, the one deserving of honorary trees; and that we were dressed in almost identical outfits. Cashmere sweater, tall boots, and what I swear were the same wool pants, except that hers were black.

  Charcoal gray is much wittier, I thought, triumphantly, and instantly felt like a heel. She who is driven to comparing shades of stretch wool lives not on a plane above jealousy. It was so petty, I had to smile. Maybe because she thought I was smiling at her, Willow took a step backward, bumped into the stair rail, and flushed, poor child, to the roots of her hair.

  “Hey there, Willow,” I said, and this time my smile was really for her. “It’s been a long time.”

  Instead of smiling back, Willow lifted her chin an inch and said, “Welcome to our home. My father is sleeping just now, and I think it’s best if I don’t wake him.”

  Her chin was trembling, but the rest of her was frozen in place. It’s what saved me in the end, the sudden understanding that she was so much more afraid than I was.

  “It’s okay,” I told her, but what I really meant was, “It’ll be okay, really it will.”

  For a split second, and I don’t think I imagined it, her eyes flashed like a stricken deer’s. Then, Willow pressed her lips together, gave a sharp shrug, and said, “Fine, then.”

  “Willow,” said her mother.

  But in a swirl of perfect posture and auburn hair, Willow was gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Willow

  DURING THAT WHOLE FIRST conversation, he didn’t call her “daughter.” And I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a huge relief to me, a relief that later, once I’d stopped clinging to it like a life raft, transformed itself into a victory, the kind that gives you a little, gloating lift for days afterward, every time you think about it. I was not proud of this reaction. I knew it to be childish, and ignoble, and even, possibly, pathetic. For one thing, let’s face it, the chances of his calling her “daughter” when he was actually in conversation with her were pretty slim. Not many people, at least in this century, address their offspring as “daughter” even if they’re bursting with paternal feeling. Still, he might’ve used it obliquely, as in “your duty as my daughter” or in an ironic, quote-y way like “Ah, the prodigal daughter returneth!” (this second possibility had popped into my head right before bed the night before and seemed so plausible that it kept me up for hours).

  But, all this aside, it simply shouldn’t have meant so much to me, that one little word. It shouldn’t have meant anything. After all, I was the true daughter. I was not the one my father had tossed aside in disgust and studiously ignored for going on two decades. It’s not overstating things to say I resided firmly on the mountaintop of my father’s love, while Eustacia had spent her life at its foot, gazing upward, powerless to get so much as a toehold. I knew this, with both my brain and my metaphorical heart, but not, somehow, with my physical heart, which pounded like thunder for the full ten-minute conversation. Nor with my lungs, which seemed to freeze with dread, waiting, waiting for him to call her the word, my word, mine.

  And he didn’t. But if I am perfectly honest, I will say that the conversation did not go the way I had wanted it to, even though, up until the last two minutes or so, my father was splendid, was just exactly as I would’ve hoped. Once I’d made sure he was awake and ready—so handsome in his striped pajamas and crimson dressing gown—and he had granted permission for Eustacia to enter, he’d spotted her hovering in the doorway and waved her in.

  “Enter and welcome, Eustacia!” he called out. “I trust you had no trouble finding us and that you have had a little time to shake the road dust from your shoes! Please, please, do not loiter in the doorway! Enter and sit! Be at ease!”

  He gestured toward the chair near the foot of his bed, a Victorian chair with a carved wooden back, no armrests, and a velvet-covered seat that was hard as a pincushion. It was the right chair for her, just as all his choices were right, his commanding tone of voice, the raja-like sweep of his hand. Oh, he was grand. He was majestic.

  It was Eustacia who was all wrong. After what she’d done, she should have been humble, grateful, awed. She should’ve crept into my father’s room like a mouse and perched on the edge of that wretched chair as though she didn’t fully deserve to sit in it, and she should’ve begged with her eyes for any small scrap of approval my father might deign to bestow. Truth be told, I didn’t know precisely what it was she or her dastardly brother had done, although I’d come to understand that his transgressions had to do with drinking and maybe also drugs. Common degenerate stuff. Hers were kept more shadowy and vague, which is how I knew they had to do with sex. Probably pregnancy. Teen pregnancy! Like some s
ad-eyed, droopy failure of a girl on a billboard with a 1-800 number printed under her tremulous chin. What could be stupider? More clichéd?

  But here was Eustacia, striding with her shoulders back and her eyes amused, not even giving the Victorian chair a glance, but moving without a second thought to stand, her boot soles planted, at my father’s bedside. For a hideous instant, I thought she might lean over and kiss his cheek, but she just stood there, looped a loose strand of hair behind her left ear and smiled.

  “Hello, Wilson,” she said. “My trip was fine. I’m fine. The question is, how are you?”

  The insolence!

  “I?” said my father, turning slightly pink and sitting up straighter against his pillows. “I am very well, very much on the mend.”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Eustacia, a bit doubtfully. “I guess I expected . . .”

  “What?” asked my father.

  She gave a slight shrug. “Not that you don’t look great. You do. But, it’s been, what, around a month? I supposed you might be out of bed by now.”

  The low-down, dirty insolence!

  I wanted to shake her until her pretty white teeth rattled, but I needed to show my father I believed he could handle her on his own, which of course, he could. I bit my tongue, literally, and gazed down at my nails then out of the window in as bored a manner as I could muster.

  “Ah, well, if it were up to me, I would be out in the fall sunshine raking leaves at this very moment,” said my father, “but my doctors have been quite adamant in advising bed rest and patience, neither of which suits a temperament like mine.”