Golden Girl(95)

“Is there a way for Carson to realize she has almost been caught but not be caught?” Vivi asks. “Can we scare her straight?”

“Use a nudge,” Martha says. “Pronto.”

Carson and Zach are going at it on the living-room sofa. Carson’s clothes are scattered across the floor of both the living room and the hallway. When Pamela pulls into the driveway, there’s a three-tone chime that sounds throughout the house. It’s an alarm, Vivi realizes, to let the occupants know someone has arrived. An alarm for this reason feels like overkill—they’re on Nantucket!—but of course, Pamela works in insurance. Possibly the alarm company offered it to Pamela free of charge. The alarm is worth its weight in gold in this situation.

Zach leaps to his feet, pushing Carson off him and into the coffee table, where she knocks over a pair of candlesticks.

“She’s home,” Zach says. “Go out the back.”

Carson is naked. “I need my clothes.”

She and Zach snatch up Carson’s clothes. Pamela, meanwhile, turns off the ignition and reaches into the back seat for her sports duffel and her racket.

“I can’t find my thong,” Carson says. “What did you do with it?”

Zach runs a frantic hand around the cushions of the sofa. “Just take what clothes you have and go.”

Pamela reaches for the car door.

“Nudge,” Martha prompts. “She isn’t going to make it out of the house in time. Nudge right now.”

“How?” Vivi says.

“Call Pamela,” Martha says.

“Call her? On her cell? How can I call her? I’m dead.”

“Who will she pick up the phone for?” Martha asks.

“Work?” Vivi says. “Rip? Her parents?” Vivi feels the answer like someone kicked her in the rear. “Peter.”

“Yes,” Martha says. “Do it now.”

Vivi peers down into Pamela’s purse and thinks, Call from Peter, call from Peter! Pamela’s phone lights up and starts to play the marimba ringtone, which was also Vivi’s cell’s ringtone. She feels a sad nostalgia even though she hated when her phone rang and tried never to answer.

The screen says, Son Peter.

Pamela ignores the ringing. Arrrrgh! Vivi watches with horror as Pamela puts one foot out of the car.

Carson is struggling with her T-shirt and finally gets it on, inside out and backward. She hurries down the hall, naked below the waist. Her skirt is in one hand, shoes in the other.

Answer the phone! Vivi thinks. She reaches down through the stretchy membrane and turns the phone so that when Pamela glances at it, she sees a picture of Peter’s face lighting up the screen.

“Ah!” Pamela says. She snaps up the phone. “Darling? Is everything all right?” There’s a pause. “Darling? Peter? Peter, it’s Mama, can you hear me? Your reception is terrible. Hello? Peter? Well, if you can hear me, just know that Daddy and I will be there around two on Saturday afternoon.” Pamela holds up the screen, checks to see if the call is still connected. Improbably, it is. “Okay, honey, love you. We’ll see you Saturday.”

Carson steps out the back door, hides between two hydrangea bushes, and wriggles into her skirt. Her breathing is shallow, and her heart is beating like the heart of a small, scared animal that narrowly escaped becoming part of the food chain; Vivi can hear the thumping even from up here. Zach finds a red Hanky Panky thong under the sofa and stuffs it into his pants pocket. He straightens the cushions, stands the candlesticks upright. Through the living-room window, he watches Carson slip through the border of lacecap hydrangeas into the neighbors’ yard. He’s exhaling his relief as the front door opens. Pamela walks inside, staring at her phone.

“I just got a call from Peter,” she says. “But I couldn’t hear a word. The service up there is nonexistent. I hope everything is okay.”

“I’m sure everything is fine,” Zach says. His voice is tight and high but Pamela doesn’t seem to notice. “He probably wants us to bring up junk food. He likes those white cheddar Doritos. How was tennis?”

Only then does Pamela give her husband the briefest of glances. “Fine,” she says. “I won in two sets, but, I mean, that’s nothing to brag about, my mother is nearly seventy. I’m going to shower.”

“Okay,” Zach says.

Pamela disappears up the stairs and Zach collapses onto the sofa. His head lolls back, exposing his Adam’s apple, which moves with shudders of relief.

Carson runs down Gray Avenue in her bare feet and climbs into her car. When she’s back on Hooper Farm Road, she says, “Thank you, God.”

“It was me, honey!” Vivi calls out.

Martha shakes her head. “Oh, Vivian,” she says.



Carson drives home, orders Lola Burger for herself and her brother, and goes to bed at ten o’clock without the aid of so much as a sleeping pill.



After Carson has safely fallen asleep, Vivi goes back.

It’s 2011, the third summer of the wineshop. The Cork is hemorrhaging cash, and JP is late with the rent to his mother; he’s asked Vivi nicely if he can pay Lucinda out of their joint savings account and Vivi has said she’ll think about it. She doesn’t want to give in to JP on this, but what choice does she have? Lucinda is a tough landlord; she won’t let him slide. Vivi wishes Lucinda would just evict him and then, as his mother, tell him what Vivi herself is too afraid to say: JP doesn’t have a head for business. He should close the shop for good at the end of the summer and do something else. Vivi is now making enough money that JP could simply stay home and be a full-time dad, take some of the parenting duties off Vivi’s plate.