Not unlike his wife, in those times she’d confided in me about the most intimate aspects of her marriage, now it was Forrest who seemed almost to have forgotten who he was talking with. How old I was, anyway.
“I got in over my head,” he said. “I could’ve lost everything I care about the most. My family.”
I might have felt flattered that Forrest was confiding in me as he did now. What got in the way was that even as he expressed remorse for his behavior over the course of the summer, he made no mention of me. As much remorse as he expressed for betraying Regina, he seemed not to have considered that he’d neglected me—a girl who’d loved him all her life—for a stupid affair with a terrible person.
Never mind,I told myself. The important thing was that it was over with Brenda now. The important thing was that Forrest trusted me with his confession. Regina seemed happier. Everything was going to be fine after all.
“Sex can make you crazy,” Forrest told me, dipping his brush into the cedar gum and moving it over the bark. “It’s like a drug or something. All of a sudden you find yourself in this place you never dreamed you’d be. It’s like you’re in this little dinghy going through some class five rapids in someplace like the Grand Canyon, and you don’t know how to get out. Things just keep happening that you never intended. You end up places you didn’t mean to go.”
On the island with Brenda, for instance. Plotting the murder of his wife. Or listening to someone he knew plot her murder, anyway. Someone he’d just finished having sex with.
“I just wanted to tell you I’m back now,” he said. It was almost as if he knew I’d been there in the library that day, and on the island, and in the yard outside the Barnetts’ rental house even.
“It’s over,” he said.
“That’s good,” I told him. “I’m happy for you.”
“You know you mean a lot to me, don’t you, Frances?” he said.
But the warm feeling I would have felt once, hearing these words, was gone.
76
Three Tennis Skirts. One White.
I’m taking you shopping,” Regina told me.
It was two days before Labor Day weekend, three days before my father was scheduled to drive up to Maine to bring me home.
We were having our tuna fish sandwiches in the kitchen. Jilly had set up a restaurant for her American Girl dolls in the living room, enacting a discussion between Samantha and Molly about who was the prettiest. Hayward was eating his on the deck, his eyes glued to the ever-present video game, though now and then—in a way that continued to unnerve me—he’d cast his eyes in my direction, as if he knew something about me. And he did, of course.
So it was just the two of us, Regina and me, sitting at the kitchen island. As usual, Regina had removed the bread from her sandwich, leaving only a very small portion of tuna fish. She’d taken three bites. For her this was lunch.
I hadn’t planned on buying new clothes for ninth grade. I would have liked a new outfit, but getting to work with Jonathan mattered more, and the truth was, I hadn’t grown out of my clothes from the year before.
“I want to buy you some nice pants and a few sweaters,” Regina said. I hadn’t mentioned anything about my lessons with Jonathan, but she seemed to know I didn’t have any money.
She spoke the next words almost as an afterthought.
“It seems like you’re spending a lot of time at the club. We’ll get you a good pair of sneakers. The ones I gave you are looking a little beat up. And we can get you a couple of cute tennis skirts with matching tops. A good tennis skirt can make a big difference in a girl’s life.”
Regina brought me to the Gap, a very different kind of store from the one we’d visited to purchase my Bastille Day dress. When I picked out a pair of jeans from the sale rack, Regina shook her head.
“Those look like last year’s style,” she said, though I couldn’t imagine how she’d know this. She just wanted to get me the more expensive kind. Those, and two other pairs of pants, along with three sweaters and a sweatshirt.
I told her this was enough. More than enough, more than any shopping trip I’d ever been on, though that didn’t say much, considering that my mother had probably only taken me shopping twice, ever.
But Regina said no. We were going to Macy’s. She had decided I should have pajamas and a nice warm bathrobe for the cold months coming up. This was Regina for you. One aspect of Regina, anyway. The problem was, you never knew which one was going to show up.
After that came the tennis shoes. Then the skirt. Three of them, actually, one blue, one green with pink stripes, one white.
When we were done with our shopping, we got lunch in the food court—hamburgers and fries and milkshakes. (For me, anyway. Regina had her usual: water.) Regina seemed more lighthearted than I could ever remember—uncharacteristically cheerful and filled with energy. For once I was the tired one.
She wanted to know what classes I’d be taking in ninth grade, what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I told her I was interested in history, World War II in particular. Reading Anne Frank’s diary had inspired me to find out about the Holocaust. But what I loved best was reading. I’d finished nine Stephen King novels over the summer.
“It’s probably impossible,” I told Regina. “Me, actually getting to be a writer.”
