A Million Little Things--A Novel

by Susan Mallery

  She missed her kids. She knew that for sure. She kept wanting to text Jen or Steven to find out how they were. She’d specifically added the international plan to her cell phone so that wouldn’t be a problem. But what was she going to say? It wasn’t as if they’d parted on happy terms.

  “That place looks great,” Eugenia said, pointing to a café. “Let’s get lunch there and then poke around town. We’ve got three hours until we head back to port.”

  They’d already been on a city tour and had seen most of the sights, including the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie. Now they were on their own until it was time to get back on the bus that would take them to the train station and from there, their ship.

  They crossed the street and went into the restaurant. It was open and cheerfully lit with plenty of big windows.

  “It’s Germany,” Olimpia pointed out. “I say we drink beer to celebrate being here.”

  “I’m in,” Eugenia said.

  Pam nodded, then excused herself to use the restroom. She walked by the bar. There were several posters on the wall, all of them advertising various liquors. She turned the corner and came face-to-face with a poster for Saldivar tequila that featured a very handsome man she happened to know.

  The photograph was maybe ten or fifteen years old, she would guess. Miguel stood by a bar in a tropical setting. His smile was knowing, his posture inviting. She could practically hear his sexy voice murmuring, “Pamela.”

  She blinked against unexpected tears, then hurried to the bathroom. On the way back to the table, she looked away from the poster. She’d barely settled in her seat when Olimpia took one look at her and asked, “What happened? Are you all right?”

  Her friends stared at her.

  “Tell us,” Eugenia said gently. “Aren’t you feeling well?”

  Pam pressed her lips together. “I’m fine.”

  “Uh-huh.” Laura leaned back in her chair. “We ordered a beer for you, by the way. I hope you like it. And no, we’re not changing the subject. Something’s up. You’ve not been yourself since we left New York. Now talk.”

  Pam drew in a breath. “I can’t. You won’t like me anymore.”

  The other three women exchanged glances. “I doubt we’re that shallow,” Olimpia said gently. “But if we are, you’re well rid of us.”

  Pam felt her eyes fill with tears. She blinked quickly and vowed she would not cry in a foreign country.

  Their waitress returned with four large mugs of beer. The women toasted each other and drank before looking back at Pam. She understood that unless she could come up with a convincing lie in the next fifteen seconds, she was stuck with the truth.

  “Jen and Steven aren’t speaking to me,” she finally said, staring at the coaster on the wooden table. “I told Steven he was making a huge mistake about Zoe. That he should walk away. I said that getting involved with her would ruin his life. Or words to that effect. Jen told me stay out of it, but I didn’t listen. Plus Zoe is her friend. So she’s mad at me, too. And I’m starting to think maybe she has every right to be.”

  Pam looked up at her friends and saw them watching her with expressions of compassion and understanding. “I don’t mean to be a bad person. I don’t. I try to see other people’s sides of things. I like Zoe. I wish her only the best. It’s just... Chad was such a disaster and she’s stuck with him. I don’t want that for Steven. I don’t want him raising someone else’s child. I want him to have what his father and I had. His own baby. No one else’s. I just know this is all going to end badly and Steven will be hurt. I want to keep him safe and I can’t because no one will listen.”

  She drank her beer again, then put it down. “But he won’t believe me or listen. He thinks I’m overreacting and then we fought. I said some things...” She shook her head. “I’m so confused and I miss them all.”

  “What about Miguel?” Eugenia asked softly.

  “Oh, that went badly, too.”

  “What do you want?” Laura asked.

  “I honestly have no idea. I think for now I’d like to not talk about it.”

  “Then we won’t,” Olimpia told her.

  They ordered their lunches. Conversation turned to what they’d seen that morning and how the city had changed so completely.

  “I want to go to that chocolate shop we saw,” Laura said. “We’ll get dessert there for sure.”

  Everyone agreed. Pam thought she might like to take some cocoa home. Lunch came and she ate. Conversation flowed around her. She was quiet, but knew that was okay with her friends. She needed to think right now. She trusted them to give her space.

  Before they left, she walked back to the bar and took a picture of the poster of Miguel, then sent it to him with a simple text.

  It seems you are everywhere.

  It was two in the afternoon in Berlin, so maybe seven in the morning in Mischief Bay. Even so, it took only seconds for his reply to come in.

  Is that good or bad?

  She hesitated before answering. She wasn’t sure what he was thinking or what she wanted or anything else. She just knew she needed a connection to home and right now Miguel was all she had.

  Good, she wrote back. Then she rejoined her friends.

  * * *

  The teacher of the Mischief Bay High School AP English class also didn’t have a sub tub for Zoe. Instead she’d left a detailed lesson plan, a list of which students could be counted on to help and some notes to guide the discussion.

  “Guess we’re not watching Sky High here either,” Zoe murmured to herself as she went over the information.

  The class was studying Shakespeare. Students were allowed to pick their project, as long as it was comprehensive. Either one of his plays or a collection of his poetry. Although she’d taken a class on Shakespeare in college, Zoe had a feeling the AP students were going to challenge her. Something she looked forward to.

  The school schedule was in blocks, with different subjects studied on different days, but for longer periods of time. It wasn’t a format Zoe was familiar with. She had two and a half hours with the AP English class this morning, followed by two hours of regular English after lunch. The latter was taking an essay test, followed by an hour of reading a short story collection.

  Right on time, her AP students filed into class. They eyed her curiously, but weren’t overtly hostile. She introduced herself, then took roll. She only mangled a few names and a couple of the students helped out with the pronunciation.

  Zoe leaned against her desk and glanced at the notes she’d been left. “Jefferson, you’re starting today’s discussion.” She looked down at the paper. “You’re reading A Winter’s Tale, I believe.”

  Jefferson, a tall teen, opened his laptop and typed on a few keys. “I am. It’s been interesting because of the change in tone.” He looked at her. “You’ve read it, right?”

  She held in a smile. “I have.”

  A long time ago, but she was pretty sure she remembered enough to be able to fake her way through a conversation.

  “So there’s this part.” He began to read.

  “Sir, the year growing ancient, Not yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth

  Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o’ the season—

  Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors, Which some call nature’s bastards: of that kind

  Our rustic garden’s barren; and I care not to get slips of them.”

  He looked up. “It got me to thinking. There are a lot of flower references in Shakespeare.”

  Several students groaned. A dark-haired girl in the front row shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said cheerfully. “Jefferson loves spreadsheets. It’s like an addiction for him. He’s probably made up a spreadsheet for every flower reference in every Shakespeare play.” Her mouth twitched. “Conside
r yourself warned.”

  Jefferson ignored her. “I did a search online and then put the flower related quotes into a grid.”

  There was a second group groaning.

  “What?” he demanded. “It’s interesting. He even mentions flowers in the Henrys. They’re everywhere.”

  “Dude, like flowers?” another guy asked. “It was the olden times. They didn’t have a lot to talk about. Nobody texted.”

  “It’s more than that,” Jefferson insisted, brushing his dark hair off his forehead. “Flowers meant something back then. They had significance. Different flowers represented emotions. Or hardships. Like this part from A Winter’s Tale.” He cleared his throat, then read again.

  “And with him rises weeping: these are flowers of middle summer, and I think they are given to men of middle age.”

  Jefferson looked up. “The flowers are women, right? Girls. Young girls given to old guys. The flowers of middle summer references a time in life, not the real summer.”

  He pointed to the girl at the front of the room. “There are flowers in your play.”

  “What are you reading?” Zoe asked.

  Jefferson rolled his eyes. “Romeo and Juliet. It’s crap. But the part about the flowers.”

  “‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’?” Zoe asked.

  “Right. More flower references. See, I think the flowers are everything. They survive the winter, they’re seen as God’s blessing. ‘They neither toil nor do they spin.’”

  “I think Jefferson hit his head,” one of the guys joked.

  “Go ahead and think that,” Jefferson told him. “And when I get accepted at Harvard, we’ll see who’s laughing.”

  “Anyone else have flower theories?” Zoe asked.

  Conversation flowed easily among the students. Zoe enjoyed the exchange of ideas. The time flew by quickly. When class ended, Zoe stopped Jefferson by the door.

  “You know, now I’m going to have to go back and reread A Winter’s Tale.”

  He grinned. “It’s not my favorite play, but it’s interesting.”

  At lunch, Zoe went into the teacher’s lounge. She’d brought her lunch and found a place at one of the tables. The other teachers were friendly and welcoming. She had to admit today was more interesting than teaching at the elementary school had been.

  While her afternoon block took their test, she reviewed the book of short stories and thought about what it had been like when she’d been teaching middle school. Some of her students had been interested in the subject, but most had not. She’d struggled to make the material interesting to them so they would be engaged.

  At the time she’d thought she wasn’t cut out for teaching and there had always been the draw of the elusive Chad. That one day he would come to his senses and realize they were meant to be.

  Events had conspired. She’d had the opportunity to expand her “help pay the bills” second job into a full-time opportunity with shorter hours and better pay. Her mom had been sick and Zoe had wanted to be there for her. She’d been frustrated with her teaching. Or maybe her life. Regardless, she’d quit teaching and had started translating manuals full-time.

  Her path had been so clear, she thought as she turned pages in the book. She’d been so sure. Her mom’s illness had distracted her from the going nowhere-ness of her relationship with Chad. Her mother’s death had devastated her. It wasn’t until she’d been trapped alone in her attic that she’d realized how empty and boring her life had become.

  She didn’t know exactly what she wanted for her future, but she knew that translating manuals wasn’t it. She wanted more. Engagement with other people. An exchange of ideas. She missed teaching. And while she could accept that, what bothered her the most was that, as her father had pointed out some weeks ago, she’d totally changed her life for a man.

  Like many people, she’d been distracted by the beauty of the flower, rather than the substance of it. Or lack of substance.

  She held in a smile. Okay, things were bad if she was mixing metaphors with flowers and Chad and Shakespeare. She supposed the point was, she wanted more days like today. Days where she could hope that an unexpected discussion about how words have meanings and meanings change over time would stay with a student for years. She wanted to get back into the occupation she had once loved.

  The question was how and in what capacity. Being pregnant would make scheduling a new job difficult. Plus, she wanted to be home with her baby for the first few months. And to be honest, she wasn’t excited about returning to middle school.

  She thought about her meeting with the counselor at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Graduate school would give her more options. She could look at teaching high school or even community college.

  She knew she had some decisions to make. She’d been blessed with the luxury of options and she was grateful for that. As for what had happened with Chad—she was determined to learn from her mistakes. Whatever she decided going forward, she would choose based on what was right for her and her baby. Not Steven or Chad or any other man. This was her life and she needed to be the star of it. And while she was being decisive...

  She pulled out her cell phone and began an email. It took a couple of false starts before she figured out what she wanted to say.

  Dear Pam—I’m sorry you’re so upset about my pregnancy and what it means as Steven and I continue to see each other. I’m not sorry I’m pregnant. I’m confused. I’m terrified. I wish anyone but Chad were the father, but I’m not sorry. I refuse to be sorry. This baby is a blessing—however he or she came to be. And while I’m sorry you’re not happy, I won’t apologize for what happened. Not now, not ever.

  I had thought...hoped really...that we could stay friends. I thought you were my friend. But I see now I was wrong. I understand why you’re choosing your son over me—what I regret is that you feel there has to be a choice. That you can’t be happy for him and for me. I would never hurt him. I’m not saying he won’t get hurt. Life means taking risks. The only way to keep that from happening is to live in a cave and never talk to anyone.

  It’s funny. I always saw you as this perfect person, living a perfect life. Now I realize you’re just like everyone else. Mostly good, some bad and a lot of faking it to get by. This information could have brought us closer. Instead, it comes too late. I’m sure you won’t believe me, but I really do wish you all the best.

  Zoe sent the email before she could change her mind. She didn’t know if it was the right thing to do or not, but it was too late to change her mind now. Maybe that was the solution, she thought as she put her phone back in her bag. Burn bridges so there’s no chance of changing your mind and trying to turn around.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Saturday afternoon Jen finished her fifteen minutes of quiet mind time, as she thought of it, and opened her eyes. The house was still. Kirk was working and Lucas had moved back to his place. Jack was asleep, although he should be waking up from his nap any second now.

  She let herself enjoy the peace. To see it as simply what was. Not the absence of anything. Irrational panic poked around, as if looking for an opening. That happened every now and then, but she was learning to observe rather than feel.

  The meds were helping. As was knowing that there actually wasn’t anything wrong with her son. Or if there was, it was her. That truth was one she’d yet to come to terms with. Mostly she alternated between fury and guilt, with guilt generally winning. She was the reason her son wasn’t talking. It was her fault. Just hers. In her attempt to be the best mother possible, she’d totally screwed up. All the organic food and nonchemical cleaning didn’t make up for that.

  When her mom got back from her cruise, Jen was going to ask Pam to take Jack for a few hours to confirm that he really was talking to anyone but her. He would start day care on Monday. She would get a dai
ly report for the first week. She knew in her gut that the report would say Jack was talking up a storm.

  “Something I’ll be happy about,” she promised herself as she stood and straightened the bed.

  She went into the kitchen and confirmed she had everything she needed for dinner, then looked at the clock and frowned. Jack should be awake by now. He pretty much kept to his schedule, especially during the day.

  She walked into his room. Although the curtains were drawn, there was still plenty of light to see. She crossed to his crib.

  “Hi, sweet boy. Ready to wake up?”

  Jack barely stirred. Jen flipped on the lamp and saw that he was flushed. When she touched him, his skin was burning hot.

  “Jack,” she said, keeping her voice calm as she lowered the side of the crib, then scooped him up in her arms. “Honey, can you look at me?”

  He was limp in her arms and barely stirred as she lifted him. She carried him into the hall bathroom and then shifted him to one arm as she opened the drawer that held the thermometers.

  She used the forehead one first. It took a second to turn on, then she brushed it across his skin. The reading sent panic racing through her—103.7.

  “It’s okay,” she said, more to herself than him. “It’s okay. We’ll try this again.”

  She used the ear thermometer next and got the same reading. Still holding Jack she ran to her bag and pulled out her cell phone.

  It took her two minutes to work her way through her pediatrician’s answering system so she could leave a request for an immediate callback. Once she’d put the phone down, she grabbed clean dish towels and dampened them. She carried her son to the sofa, then used the damp cloths to lightly stroke Jack’s face and arms. His eyes opened and then closed. He barely moved, even when she sang to him.

  Her stomach was a solid knot of fear. She thought about starting a bath, but didn’t want to do anything until she heard from the doctor. That included giving him medication. Better to know if she had to take him to the ER first.