Page 2 of Playing for Keeps in Starr's Fall
“Everything will be closed?—”
“Check out the house,” Maggie suggested instead. “Choose paint colors. Walk up to the waterfall.” She was starting to sound desperate, but she really wanted to go now. “I don’t know, Ben. We’ll find something, I’m sure.”
And anything would be better than staying here, in a house that felt like a mausoleum, a testament to what had once been with no hope for the future. “Let’s go.”
* * *
It was, Maggie realized, a nice day. She hadn’t noticed the weather this morning—she’d tendednotto notice a lot of things about life lately—but today was one of those late autumn days where everything was cold and crisp and clear. As they drove north toward New Haven, the highway sparkled under a wintry sun. When they turned off I-95 for Route 8, the scenery became more pleasant—trees and fields rather than the occasional eighteen-wheeler and endless billboards.
The very last of the leaves were clinging to the maples and birches that lined the road, ragged scraps of scarlet and ochre fluttering in the autumn breeze. The grass was tipped with frost, making the meadows rolling by glitter with silver. Maggie took a deep breath, letting her lungs expand along with her fledgling hope. She couldbreatheout here, under the autumn sky, with the world seeming so wide open, not like back in Greenwich, in a house that felt like a tomb, with all the memories pressing in on her all the time, which was part of the reason they were moving.
The other far bigger part was because of Ben.
Maggie slid her son a sideways glance, as ever trying to discern his mood. She took mental readings of his emotional state as circumspectly as she could because Ben hated it when she asked about his feelings. He called it creepy; she saw it as essential. Her son had been through too much, and had too many dispiriting and frankly frightening lows, for her not to do a daily, and sometimes hourly, check-in.
Now she kept her voice light, almost playful, as she asked, “Are you glad we’re doing this?”
Ben shrugged in reply as he turned to look out the window. All right, well, that wasn’t a no. Maggie turned back to the road. Ten more miles to Starr’s Fall. Was it silly, she wondered, far from the first time, to move to a place you’d only been to twice, three if they counted the day they’d looked at the house and bought it in the same afternoon? Was itstupid? Her sister certainly had thought it was.
“Maggie, you don’t move to where you’ve vacationed,” she’d stated, like it was a universal principle that everyone instinctively understood and followed.
“Tell that to everyone who retires to Florida,” Maggie had shot back with a smile. Lynn was just about the only person who didn’t pussyfoot around her since Matt’s death, and she appreciated that. Mostly. “Anyway, I thought you’d be a fan,” she’d continued. “We’ll be closer to you in Boston.”
“Yes, but… you don’t actuallyknowanyone in Starr’s Fall,” Lynn had replied. She’d always had a gift for pointing out the obvious.
“We’ll get to know them,” Maggie had insisted staunchly. Although since Matt’s death they had not been exactly the most social of people, but they wouldbecomesuch people… in Starr’s Fall. They’d have neighbors over for cozy suppers, and walk the dog they didn’t yet own down quaint, tree-lined streets, and invite friends over for a movie night, everyone curled up on the sofa with a giant bowl of popcorn, and generally live life like it was a rose-tinted montage on a soppy romcom. It was going to happen. She had to believe that, because otherwise what she’d done really was not just silly, or stupid, but certifiably insane.
And she was doing it anyway.
“Mom,” Ben said suddenly, “you’re going to miss the turn.”
Maggie came out of her reverie to find she was about to pass the right turn to their future. She hit the brakes with a squeal, causing Ben to inhale sharply as he clutched the door handle, his face paling.
“Sorry, sorry,” Maggie said in a rush, and she slowed down to turn onto the road at a more sedate speed.
Tall, straight evergreens stood like sentinels on both sides of the road, the Litchfield Hills rising up in dark green humps above as they drove the last few miles into town. They’d been to Starr’s Fall for two vacations—once, when Ben had been nine, that Maggie recalled with dreamy, rose-tinted fondness, when they’d taken long walks through the woods and gone to the nearby lake to canoe and swim. She remembered Ben lying starfished on the sand, giving her a gap-toothed grin. “Can we stay here forever?” he’d asked, and she’d laughed and ruffled his lake-damp hair and told him she wished they could, but three more days would have to do.
The second time had been when they’d gone back to Starr’s Fall two years ago, a vacation that she recalled with less rose-tinted fondness and more quiet regret. Ben had been on the cusp of teenaged angst and glumness; seventh grade had not been a great year. Matt had received his promotion a year before and had grumbled about being in Connecticut when they could have afforded the Maldives.
It was only after he’d left, four days in, to respond to a work crisis, that she and Ben had started to relax. They’d gone back to the lake and canoed all around, and once again, when they’d been sitting on the sand, watching the sun set over the placid water, Ben had asked her the same question, but this time sitting with his head lowered and his elbows resting on his knees, in a voice that had been touched with despair.
“Mom, can we stay here forever?”
Finally she was able to say yes.
Their third visit to Starr’s Fall had been two months ago, when they’d bought a house there in a matter of hours. It had been a snap decision that, Maggie hoped and prayed, had been the right one.
“Does it look the same?” she asked lightly and got yet another one of her son’s stares—the well-duh one which meant she’d asked a particularly stupid question that was usually undeserving of a reply.
“It was summer then,” he said, as if that explained everything, which maybe it did. Starr’s Fall at the tail end of autumn was, despite the bright blue sky and sunshine, not the same as in the high heat of summer. Now, the streets were empty, the stores shuttered, the planters that had been bursting with flowers holding only a few dead-looking chrysanthemums. The trees lining the street were devoid of leaves, their branches dark and skeletal against the bright sky.
Still, Maggie told herself, it was beautiful—it was cold enough that the lampposts were glittering with frost, and she passed a sign for Max’s Place, a pet store and bakery, that looked cute before she pulled into the empty space in front of their home and hopefully, one day, café.
“Here we are,” she sang out just a little too cheerfully. Ben scowled. Maggie knew what happened when she went too hard on the Pollyanna act; her son shut down. She took a steadying breath and then got out of the car.
A couple were coming out of the pet store a few doors down, balancing several pies as well as a small dog while the woman locked up. Maggie thought about saying hello, decided she wasn’t that brave—yet—and headed for their own forlorn-looking storefront, just as Ben finally slouched out of the car.
“Hello,” the woman sang out, and Maggie turned, startled. She still wasn’t used to people talking to her without knowing her history. She wasn’t used to people talking to her, period. Since Matt’s death, she’d gone into hermit mode, and the twin awkwardnesses—because that was how people viewed grief, she’d come to realize, asawkward—of Matt’s death and Ben’s difficulties had kept any well-meaning acquaintances away. She hadn’t minded that much, because she hadn’t been craving chitchat, and she’d never been particularly adept at it, anyway.
