Free Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons Page B

doomsday, they both can. There’s not going to be any divorce, and I’m not talking to anybody.”
    She took a deep breath and blew it out again.
    “Why would you want to hang on to somebody who’s done this to you? How could a divorce be worse than this?”
    she said. “What are you afraid of? You’re the smartest woman I know; there’s nothing you can’t do. You’re going to have all the money you need, and the house; anything you want, if you’re at all smart about it. That’s where the good lawyer comes in. Tee doesn’t have a leg to stand on. You must know that.”
    “But what if it’s just a fling, what if he gets tired of her, or her of him? It’s bound to happen, Liv; I can’t think what on earth they could have in common but bike shorts…”
    “It’s not a fling. I’ve heard the talk from other people besides Caleb, Coke people. People who know them both. Tee may well indeed get sick of her, or her him, but the fool is bound and determined to marry her first. And even if they split up…Molly, could you live with him again after this?
    Could you really do that?”
    I looked at her. I knew that I was never going to make her understand. And if not Livvy, certainly no one else. But, yes, I could live with Tee again after this. Because otherwise I wasn’t anyone and it was too late to begin searching for another self, and what if I never did find one? You can’t go through the world a spectre, so mutilated that more than half of you is gone, so

    UP ISLAND / 67
    lacking in substance that people can look right through you.
    “You still love him that much?” she said softly.
    “I have no idea if I love him at all,” I said. “But there’s not going to be any divorce.”
    She sighed, but said no more about it. We went to lunch at R. Thomas and talked to the cheerful, molting birds and drank wine and ate veggie pizzas. I felt almost normal, just a little fey and quivery, as if I were recuperating from a debil-itating illness. Everything was eerily bright, and strange. But other than that, it was okay. I thought I could probably do the visits now.
    As if on cue, they began that evening.
    Mother and Dad rang my doorbell at six o’clock. I peered through the peephole, prepared to pretend I was not at home until whoever it was left, and saw one of my mother’s flam-boyant hats with my father’s face looming over it, behind her. I could not see Mother’s face, but Dad’s was still and blank, as if he was having a passport photograph taken. My father was an essentially private and rather formal man who did not believe in dropping in on people, not even an abandoned and possibly suicidal daughter, and I felt a smile twitch at my lips. I opened the door.
    Mother swooped in, carrying an armload of flowers wrapped in florists’ waxed green paper. She laid the flowers on my console table and hugged me fiercely, standing on tiptoe and knocking her hat askew in the process.
    “The mountains have come to Mohammed and are taking her out to dinner no matter what she says,” she said into my shoulder blade. “How are you, darling? We just can’t let you hide out in here any longer.”
    Over the waggling hat I looked at Dad. He 68 / Anne Rivers Siddons
    winked, and managed a grin, more a spasm, really. I could see the worry about me in his eyes, and in the deeper lines around his mouth.
    “Hi, baby,” he said, and at the sound of his voice something swelled and warmed behind my eyes, and I felt tears sting in them.
    “Oh, now,” Dad said, trying to find a place to hug me that wasn’t engaged by my mother.
    I backed out of her embrace and gave a great, rattling sniff and managed to smile at them both.
    “Here come the marines,” I said, and we all laughed more loudly than the words deserved.
    “Oh, darling, you look like death warmed over,” my mother said in her throaty tremolo. “When have you washed your hair? Or had anything to eat? You run right up and shampoo and shower and put on something