Minus Me

by Mameve Medwed

  How strange to be pulled in such opposite directions: she wants Sam close; she wants him at a distance. Physicists would document positive and negative magnets. Philosophers would discuss a paradox. Psychologists would diagnose ambivalence. No matter. Some things are too complex—and too unpredictably human—to be explained.

  She moves into the study and prints out the addition to the manual. Back in the bedroom, she tucks it in her underwear drawer. The pages are starting to pile up, she notices, and heaps an extra row of socks on top. She showers, careful to protect her hair, which seems to have survived eight hours of tossing and turning crunched against the sofa’s nubby linen upholstery. She throws on a turtleneck and jeans. In the mirror, she studies her face. Does she look sick? Ashen? She must admit she appears pretty normal for someone in the throes of normal’s opposite.

  She heads downstairs to the kitchen. She needs coffee. Toast. Orange juice to erase the fuzz from her tongue. The second she pushes through the door, she sees it—the dozen long-stemmed red roses in the center of the kitchen table. With a note propped up against the vase. Annie, enclosed in a heart, scrawls across the front. It strikes her at once: a dozen roses from a husband outclass and outshine a single red blossom from a bachelor.

  She opens the note:

  Dear Annie,

  I am so sorry for acting like such a brat last night. I don’t know what came over me. Blame it on my—stupidly—wanting everything to stay the same and my desire to be included in every part of your life. I’m really not one of those stalker husbands who end up on 48 Hours! Of course you don’t have to report your every move. Or be available 24/7 by phone and text. And of course your hair looks beautiful. It just took me by surprise. And the lights—so childish of me. (My mother used to do the same thing to my Dad when he was out late with his buddies playing cards—I thought that was so infantile—and here I am copying this awful behavior. Is it in my genes?) I’ve been so spoiled. So used to having you by my side that I feel totally lonely without you. Unfair to you, I know. And I was worried, imagining God-knows-what had happened. I hardly slept. I am an idiot. All during the night I kept saying to myself, how can I turn away the one person in the whole world I can’t live without? Please forgive me.

  Love up the wazoo, Sam

  (BTW: if you’re near the drugstore, can you pick up some Advil?)

  Chapter Ten

  The phone rings just as Annie is ready to set out for the shop. Sam making sure she saw the flowers, she supposes. Not that she could ever miss that towering bouquet. But when she picks up, the caller ID displays the name and number of Ambrose Buckley. She’s tempted to let it go to voice mail. She checks her watch. Two seconds later and no one would have been home anyway. Her hand on the receiver, she hesitates. No, this is the first day of the rest of her life—her abbreviated life—with its new-dawn resolutions of honesty, transparency, and facing the music. “Hello,” she answers.

  “Annie?” It’s Dr. Buckley himself, unannounced by the customary Carolyn Connelly preamble. “I’ve received the results of your blood work.”

  “And?”

  “And, fortunately, at present, you continue to be stable. You’re in a holding pattern.”

  “Great,” she says. She waits for the other shoe to drop.

  It does. “Nevertheless …” he begins.

  “Nevertheless?”

  Dr. Buckley switches to cautionary mode. “Nevertheless,” he warns, “things could escalate.” He clicks his tongue. “As your family doctor, yours and Sam’s, I feel an extra level of personal involvement. Annie, please, you must find a way to tell Sam.”

  “I already explained … I will. Later … after I see Dr. O’Brien. It’s only a couple of weeks.”

  “But he should know, and he’ll be a comfort to you. In medical school—way back before you were born,” he points out—“we used to role-play the various ways to talk to a patient, to convey information, to show compassion, to give instructions. You might try it. Practice will make it easier.”

  “It never worked the first time; I tried,” she says. She recalls his storming up to bed, her night on the sofa, her resolve to proceed slowly, how angry she was. She shudders. “I hardly think polishing up my act will have a new effect.” Nothing will make it easier, she knows. She’s more than familiar with the struggle to communicate. After all, she’s been composing her own manuscript—postscript—now hidden in her drawer. “I’ll consider it,” she says. “I promise,” she lies, already breaking her recent pledge to choose honesty.

  * * *

  By the time she arrives, there’s a line outside Annie’s, winding down Main Street past Aherne’s place and Pappy Rappy’s Electrical Supplies. What a relief. Neither she nor Sam will have the opportunity to initiate any “about last night” blow-by-blow analysis.

  “Hi, Annie, how’s it going?” the regulars greet her as she heads toward the entrance. She’s happy to note that Ralphie Michaud is not among today’s customers. She manages a sigh of gratitude.

  Sam’s behind the counter, wrapping a Bunyan in its signature waxed paper, the shop’s name repeated in a series of black elongated triangles. They nixed the logger’s ax and the iconic Maine pine for the elegant simplicity of sans serif letters and sharp-edged geometry. A classy presentation for a classic sandwich.

  Annie squeezes in beside him.

  “Hey there,” he says.

  She lowers her voice, hoping to shroud any act of contrition from the next-up Mrs. Godfrey, who is already pulling out bills from her wallet. “Hi,” she whispers. “Sorry.”

  “My fault,” he says.

  “Mine,” she counters.

  “I was an asshole.”

  “I was worse.”

  His face shifts from hangdog to wistful. “How ’bout we split the guilt fifty-fifty?”

  “Fine,” she agrees. She reaches in her pocket and hands him a bottle of Advil.

  “I’m much better,” he says.

  “Great.” She grabs a stack of napkins and sticks them next to the sandwiches. “And thanks for the roses. They’re amazing. Really beautiful.”

  “The least I could do.” He rings up the order on the old-fashioned cash register they inherited from the Doughboys, one that antiques dealers making the New England circuit have offered to write a check for on the spot. He turns to her. “Your hair looks nice today,” he says sheepishly.

  Is this overkill in the make-amends category, she wonders, a blatant lie to ensure company in bed tonight? Or is it a genuine reassessment? Like the coleslaw they first rejected as too sour that is now their favorite condiment?

  Mrs. Godfrey steps up to claim her half dozen Bunyans. She passes Sam her recycled Andrew Wyeth shopping tote from the Portland Museum of Art. Annie is glad that this Wyeth depicts a weather-beaten shack rather than the usual maudlin Christina’s World—a painting that is starting to seem all too personal. “Great hairdo, Annie,” Mrs. Godfrey praises.

  Fortunately, they have little time for either gloating or apology, so busy are Sam and Annie in dancing their well-rehearsed pas de deux. It’s a choreography they have perfected, circling each other, layering onions and peppers and cheese, handing off sandwiches, rolls, napkins, paper. Though the space is small, they manage not to step on each other’s toes or open cabinet doors into foreheads or drip sauce down their apron bibs.

  At last, there’s a lull. Only the regulars linger, arguing over municipal taxes and the number of flies tied before the fishing season begins, plus the few stragglers buying sandwiches for dinner. “Don’t feel like cookin’ tonight,” they confide.

  “You and me both,” Annie replies. She and Sam stand by their product. They’re not like those two-faced vendors who sell made-in-China polyester and deck themselves in four-ply cashmere from Scotland. While big-city experts, ignoring the Bunyan’s local gourmet designation, might denounce it as fast food, Annie can argue that the sandwich does cover all four nutritional groups—grains (bread), protein (meat), dairy (cheese), vegetabl
es (onions and peppers) and fruit, if you classify tomatoes as fruit the way botanists do.

  Back in the kitchen, Sam begins to fill a request that came over the phone—a family in Florida yearning for a touch of home for their reunion. He calls the FedEx service to schedule pickup and delivery while Annie loads the dishwasher.

  Sam squeezes her shoulder. “Are we okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can we put it behind us?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Soon enough, she realizes, everything will be behind them. Behind them as a couple. Behind her as half of one. In time, the holding pattern will no longer hold. What looms ahead? Only the unattainable horizon of Christina’s World. She studies Sam, his strong chin, his wide eyes, the chiseled nose she always dreamed their children would inherit, the rangy body that contains such sweetness, such loyalty, a body that, folded around her, makes her feel safe—until the vulture of disease attacked the tunneled-vision shelter of her nest. She certainly drew the short straw in the lottery that is life: Ursula as mother, her father—too young—collapsing at his desk, miscarriages, a stillborn daughter, this mass in her lungs.

  Yet she hit the jackpot with Sam. True, living and working and sleeping with someone can provide plenty of reasons for that person to get on your nerves. A person who will fall apart at a medical challenge. A person who can become a little clingy. A person who holds too strong an opinion about your hair. A person who might have trouble functioning without a book of instructions provided by his wife. Yet with Sam she’s known love, has felt cherished, has been happy. For seventeen years they’ve done more than okay. You must tell Sam, Dr. Buckley ordered. Soon, yes, but why destroy Sam’s happiness now along with what is left of her own?

  She remembers the day they took official possession of the sandwich shop. They turned the key in the lock. Sam carried her over the threshold. They filled a bucket with ice to hold the bottle of champagne they’d bought on the way. Sam unloaded a radio and plugged it in. “May I have this dance?” He bowed. Around and around he twirled her, skirting the cartons of china and utensils, the tables with chairs upended on top of them, while Stevie Wonder sang “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” Later, he spread the movers’ blanket across the kitchen floor, their floor. “ ‘And I mean it from the bottom of my heart,’ ” they chorused as they stripped off their clothes.

  Now Annie puts away the rest of the rolls. Sam is sponging the counter tops, a job usually assigned to Megan. “Where’s Megan?” Annie asks. So full of guilt and apology and her own angst, she hasn’t noticed the missing pair of extra hands. She checks the clock on the wall; it’s well past the hour when Megan shows up, always on the dot, if not earlier.

  “Rachel called to say she’d be late. Some kind of crisis of the teenage sort. Actually, Rachel wants you to phone her.” He unties his apron and taps his forehead. “I should have told you the minute you came in. I forgot.”

  “You always forg …” she begins, then catches herself.

  Sam hooks his apron over one of hers. She notices that both of their aprons hang sweetly, almost lasciviously, intertwined. He points to the front room. “Do you mind if I join the gang out there for a coffee break?”

  “Of course not. You should be schmoozing with the customers. It’s good policy. I’ve read that in the fanciest restaurants, chefs make the rounds of the tables every night.”

  “Ha.” He tilts his chin. “I’m not exactly a chef.”

  “In the world of Passamaquoddy, you’re top chef. Iron chef. Master chef. Chef in chief.” She looks at him. “Is this coffee-with-the-regulars something new?”

  “They started asking me on those days you weren’t around.”

  “Good for them; they’re watching out for you.”

  “Nah. Probably hankering for free refills. But, believe it or not, those guys are pretty cool.”

  “I believe it. Now scram.”

  He hesitates.

  “Go. I have to call Rachel anyway.” She shakes a finger. “Behave yourselves out there. This is an establishment of fine dining, after all.”

  He touches her arm. “I love you, you know.”

  Boy does she know. “And I love you,” she says. “Now go.”

  * * *

  As soon as Sam leaves the kitchen, Annie calls Rachel.

  “She’s on her way,” Rachel says, “finally. She got a ride. Ralphie Michaud came driving down Elm Street just as we were walking out the front door. He said he was going to the shop anyway.”

  Annie forces out a nonchalant “Oh.”

  “Such hysteria this morning,” Rachel continues. “She broke up with Ben. Or rather, Ben dumped her.”

  “Ben? I thought her boyfriend’s name was David.”

  “I don’t blame you for being confused. I can hardly keep up with them myself. David followed Tom, who was two boyfriends away from Jake, who was a few degrees of separation from the current or currently not-so-current Ben.” Rachel sighs. “I wish some of the courting multitudes would rub off on me.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “You’re right. Who needs all the drama at this age? Fair warning for all the salty tears that are going to end up in your malted milks.”

  “What happened?”

  “The usual. Someone cuter came along.”

  “No one’s cuter than Megan.”

  “My thought exactly. But this one has huge breasts and parents spending the winter in the Bahamas. Ergo, empty house, full bar.”

  “I get it. I just hope Ralphie Michaud isn’t going to take advantage of her vulnerability.”

  “Don’t be absurd. He’s our age.”

  “So?”

  “I’m not worried about Ralphie. Besides, he always had a crush on you.”

  What should Annie tell her? That she’s aged out of crush-worthiness? That he’s got his eye on Megan? And then have to divulge the source of that information? The sordid source? Instead, she asks, “How can I help?”

  “The usual. Tea and sympathy. I just wanted to warn you to expect fits of weeping and assorted meltdowns. I doubt you’re going to have a very efficient employee today. Remember when Tykie Frye broke up with me?”

  How could Annie forget? Freshman year at college. Rachel cried for what seemed like four days straight. They fashioned a voodoo doll from a towel, pasted his yearbook photo on its head, and stuck needles into his India-inked, traitorous black heart.

  “Of course you never suffered any of that boy/girl anguish,” Rachel accuses.

  “Not true. Remember our Hell’s Kitchen summer in New York?”

  “Oh, that. But it hardly counted, since you always had Sam.”

  “Poor Megan,” Annie says now.

  * * *

  But poor Megan doesn’t appear quite that miserable when she and Ralphie Michaud finally saunter through the door. Ralphie has his arm slung over her shoulder—a little too close to her breast. As for Megan, she’s flipping her hair and leaning a hip into him.

  “Hi, Annie,” she says. Her eyes are bright, not red from weeping. She does not look as if she’s been pushed aside by a rival with parents safely stashed in a tropical paradise.

  “Hi, Annie,” Ralphie echoes, too cool for school. Innocence maps his face—no downward glances, no embarrassed grins. In the acting department, he rivals Ursula.

  He also must be experiencing selective memory loss, Annie decides. Early-onset dementia. Or does what happened yesterday bear so little weight in the annals of Ralphie Michaud as to be as forgettable as this morning’s reheated Pop-Tart? Perhaps hoping to thrust your tongue into a married woman’s mouth counts the same as selling a lottery ticket or filling your car with gas—all in a day’s work.

  If so, what does it mean for Megan? For her goddaughter, who is newly rejected and therefore raw and vulnerable and clearly on the rebound? It’s up to Annie to rescue this Little Red Riding Hood from the pot-smoking predatory jaws of the Big Bad Wolf.

  She tosses Megan an apron. “Can you fill th
e coffee urn?” she asks.

  “Sure,” Megan agrees. She pulls the apron over her head and wiggles her butt in Ralphie’s direction, a signal for him to tie up the back. A signal that Annie intercepts with a maneuver so deft it deserves a Heisman trophy. She jumps on Ralphie’s toe, offering no apology. She grabs the apron ribbons and fastens them around Megan’s waist with a double half hitch. Let him undo that, exults Annie, whose merit badge for tying knots was proudly pinned to the sash of her Girl Scout uniform. She gives Megan a godmotherly push. “Off to work,” she commands.

  Megan turns back to Ralphie. “Can I make you a cup of coffee? Or a shake?”

  Ralphie smiles his slow, bad-boy, pine-woods-behind-the-high-school grin. “A shake would be cool. Chocolate with—”

  “No,” Annie says.

  “Or coffee—”

  “No,” Annie repeats.

  “It’ll just take a minute,” Megan pleads.

  “No,” Annie says again.

  “But Annie,” Megan entreats. Astonishment suffuses her face. Annie is sure Rachel would never offer such a plain, unadulterated no. Instead she would present a list of footnoted pros and cons, all suggested in a calm, uninflected, helping-profession tone oozing concern for the feelings of her daughter, her self-esteem, and her delicate sensibilities.