Bright Young Women(26)

“That’s the man you saw,” Tina said. “Four years ago, he killed my friend Ruth.”





RUTH


Issaquah, Washington

Winter 1974

I don’t like the idea of you going to a stranger’s house,” my mother said when I pointed out the advertisement in the post office. The Complex Grief Group met every Thursday evening, six to eight, out of a counselor’s home in the Squak Mountain neighborhood of Issaquah. No Men was underlined twice in red ink.

“It’s all women, though,” I said somewhat longingly.

“That girl was living in a house with all women too,” my mother reminded me, hitching the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder and starting for the door. “Let’s go, Ruth. I need to get to the dry cleaner before it closes.”

I started to follow her out, then doubled back and tore off the tab with the counselor’s phone number, just in case.

“What if you drove me,” I suggested on the way home from the dry cleaner. We’d made it before closing, and the tailor was in that day. Things were going her way, which (according to my mother) was rare, which, rarer still, made her pliable. “We could check it out together. Make sure it is what the flyer says it is.”

“What is complex grief, exactly?” she wanted to know, sounding dubious that such a thing could exist.

I shrugged. “I guess they tell you once you get there.”

“But what if it turns out you don’t have it? Then you went all the way over there for nothing.”

I couldn’t tell you what complex grief was, only that I was sure I was suffering from it.



* * *




Squak Mountain was mere minutes from my parents’ house in Issaquah, where I’d been living since my father passed away the previous summer. Issaquah itself is located about twenty miles from downtown Seattle, tucked into the base of three mountains that make up the Cascade foothills. Evergreens umbrella the neighborhood, insulating each home and forming a natural sound barrier. Even on the populated streets with smaller lots, there is a hushed sense of isolation that I guess is part of the appeal.

“You never know what you’re going to get over here,” my mother commented as she navigated a tight, steep right. Squak is supposedly one of the hardest neighborhoods to price because there are so many kinds of homes, everything from ticky-tacky ranches to Queen Anne mansions, properties with steely gray views of Lake Sammamish and ones that don’t even have yards. The counselor’s home was somewhere in the middle: a traditional Northwest Regional offering a forest panorama. There were several cars parked in the driveway and young women waving and hugging one another on the front porch. I’d had to miss the first two sessions because my mother needed more time to think about whether I could be trusted to attend a complex grief group without a chaperone, and now I felt like a girl who had transferred to a new school in the middle of the year. If I wanted to make any friends, I had my work cut out for me.

“Do you want to come inside and check it out before it starts?” I held my breath, praying she wouldn’t take me up on the offer.

My mother surveyed the women on the front patio. “I don’t see any ax murderers.”

My mother didn’t usually make jokes, and I knew what she was doing. Ingratiating herself to me in case I was tempted to betray her. I laughed reassuringly, and she seemed to relax some.

But as I got out of the car, my mother told me to be careful. “And smart,” she added, which was what she really needed me to be. “Please, Ruth. Be smart.”



* * *




The counselor’s name was Frances. She was about my mother’s age, with a manly wedge of brown curly hair. She wore no makeup and no jewelry but a pinkie ring, which I noticed only because as the other women eventually started to talk and cry, she supported her chin in her hand while she listened to them. My mother always shooed my hand away from my face when I did that. Maybe my skin would clear up if I could just stop touching it.

“Help yourself,” Frances said, gesturing to the cookies and coffee she’d set out on a tray in the entryway. I had expected more rustic decor to match the stained-wood-and-river-stone exterior of the house, but inside I felt like I was in Morocco. (All those times I’ve been to Morocco, I should know.) There were real and fake plants tucked into corners, clay pot vases, brightly knit afghans draped over brightly patterned chairs, so much art on the walls I couldn’t tell you what color they were.

I reached for a cookie. “Are these pignolis?”

Frances beamed. “You must be Italian.”

“Polish through and through,” I replied. “But I have a good recipe for them. Haven’t made them in a while, though.” I took a bite and closed my eyes in ecstasy.

“Good?”

“Oh my God.” I laughed a little. “I have to start making these again. I forgot how much I like them.” My mother didn’t see the point of nuts in a cookie, and why were pine nuts so expensive, anyway?

Frances smiled and tapped the corner of her mouth, where I must have had a crumb. I wiped it away, blushing, but Frances only waved off my embarassment. “I’m wearing my breakfast most days. Come and meet the others.”



* * *