Rebecca had put boxes full of clothes and books in front of the French doors that led into what had once been Leslie’s tiny, private rose garden.
For a moment, Leslie wanted to close the door on the whole mess. Maybe it was more than she wanted to tackle. How was she going to persuade her family to clean this place up so she could use it?
But then she remembered the face of that girl who’d looked back in the mirror at her. That girl hadn’t been afraid of anyone or anything.
As Leslie stood with her hand on the door handle of the summerhouse, she knew that right now, this very second, was the turning point of her life. What she did this moment would determine how the rest of her life would go. She had been given a second chance at her life, and she’d chosen this life and these people because she loved them. But she’d also learned that she needed to love herself.
The truth was that Leslie didn’t know what was waiting for her in the next months. For a long time now she’d expected her husband to ask her for a divorce so he could marry a woman who probably had the fearless eyes that Leslie had once had. And if he did ask for a divorce, where would Leslie be then? Even more afraid than she had been these last years?
And how would her taking over the summerhouse or not taking it over affect her future life?
“Not one damn bit!” she said aloud, then again looked around the summerhouse. And this time when she looked at it, it was almost as though she saw herself in the old building. She had once been something perfect and beautiful, as this building had once been. But she had been taken over by her family, just as they had taken over this house. It was as though they had pushed her onto her back and filled her belly with refuse.
With a smile, Leslie opened both doors to the summerhouse wide, then she walked to the TV set, picked it up, and jerked the cords out of the wall. Her lovely bookcase had had almost the entire back sawn out of it. Still smiling, she carried the TV through the doorway; then she gave it the strongest heave she could manage. The TV went sailing for a few feet, then hit the edge of the little stone retaining wall that Alan had had put in two years ago, then went tumbling down the slope toward the barbecue pit.
When it hit Alan’s oversized brick barbecue and the glass front of the TV smashed, Leslie didn’t think she’d ever heard a more satisfying sound in her life. And the sound gave her strength.
She went back into the summerhouse and began hauling out the rest of the rubbish. Joe’s skates tumbled down the little hill right behind Alan’s TV; then Leslie righted her little washstand and closed its doors. One door’s hinge was wrenched nearly off, but she could fix it.
Rebecca’s old clothes and her years of pack-ratting went next.
And with each item that Leslie threw out, it was as though she got stronger and . . . well, more of herself back.
“I told you!” she heard Rebecca shout. “She’s gone crazy!”
Leslie had her hands full of a broken rabbit cage that the children had dumped into the summerhouse. She gave it a toss down toward the other items that were piling up in front of Alan’s beloved barbecue.
Glancing up, she saw the three of them running down the path toward her. Rebecca looked angry, Alan was concerned, and Joe looked amused.
She didn’t acknowledge them but went back into the summerhouse and picked up a couple of bags of ten-year-old rabbit food. “We might need that,” Rebecca had wailed when Leslie had begged her years ago to give it away. But Rebecca held on to every possession she’d ever had and never released anything.
“Leslie, honey. Is everything all right?” Alan said from the doorway. He was using the voice he saved for difficult clients. “The man was crazy,” he’d say, “so I talked to him like this.” Then he’d show her the voice that he was now using on her.
“Fine,” she said, giving him a bit of a smile as she picked up a box of broken Christmas ornaments that Alan swore he was going to repair someday. “Excuse me,” she said, then stepped past him and threw the box down the hill.
“Could you stop that for a moment?” he said when she turned back toward the summerhouse.
“No, I can’t. I want to get this place cleaned out, so I can set up a studio in here.”
“Studio?” he said, and there was mirth in his voice. “Honey, I know that turning forty has hit you hard, but I do think that maybe you’re a bit old to start dancing again.”
Leslie didn’t answer him as she picked up a box full of broken electronic gadgets, the product of many Christmases. When she got to the door, Alan put his hands on the box, but the look she gave him made him remove his hands and step back. But as she prepared to heave the box, Alan nodded toward Joe and he took the box from his mother.
“Thank you,” Leslie said, then turned back for more.
Alan stepped inside the summerhouse. “Look, Leslie, honey, if you wanted to clean out this old place, why didn’t you tell us? We could have all done it. As a family. And we could have done it in an orderly manner, not throwing things against the barbecue. Did you see that you’ve damaged it?”
“Damaged it?” she asked softly as she picked up a box of receipts that were dated 1984. “I damaged your barbecue?”
“Yes, you did,” Alan said sternly, mistaking her words for caring. “It will have to be repaired.”
Leslie went to the door, and while looking at Alan, she gave the box of receipts a hard sling. Pieces of paper went flying all over the lawn and into the trees and shrubs, but Leslie didn’t look at them as she stepped back into the house, but she could feel anger rising in her. She looked back at Alan. “I damaged your barbecue? What about the damage you have done to my summerhouse?”
“Yours?” he asked in bewilderment. “I thought it was ours.”
“No, Alan,” she said slowly. “The summerhouse was mine, and it always was. You seem to own everything else in our lives, but the summerhouse was mine.”
Alan nodded to Rebecca and Joe to pick up the papers that were flying about, then he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Leslie, honey, I know that turning forty is hard on a woman, but—”