The Life You've Imagined

by Kristina Riggle

  Beck has nearly plowed through his sandwich already. So I say, “Got time to take a walk?”

  I’m glad I skipped the pantyhose today, because now I can dig my toes into the warm sand. I tip my face up toward the sun. I’d forgotten how good this feels on a perfect June day when the sun is just warm enough to be pleasant instead of burning. Beck and I are sitting on an old picnic blanket he found in his trunk. He’s cross-legged on the blanket next to me, still wearing his shoes and business clothes.

  It’s crowded at the beach, but no one’s paying us any attention. Moms are watching their children; teenagers on summer vacation are watching each other.

  Beck rolls up his shirt sleeves and loosens his tie. “So, what’s wrong?”

  I sit up and turn toward him. He’s giving me that steady look of his, the one that seems to say, Let me have it. I can take it.

  “My dad is writing my mom letters.”

  He startles and turns to face me more fully. He takes one hand of mine in two of his. “Are you sure? Is he okay? Have you talked to him?”

  “No, I haven’t talked to him, and he’s at least okay enough to be writing. Yes, I’m sure. I found the letter and she confessed immediately.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful!”

  I pull my hand back out of his. “What’s so wonderful about it? He’s an asshole loser who abandoned his family twenty years ago without so much as a postcard and now he’s writing my mom love letters or something. He probably just wants money, which she doesn’t have, no small thanks to him.”

  “Maybe he’s changed.”

  “Changed into what? Some saint? And if he’s all saintly now, why is he not writing to me, his daughter? Mom was a grown-up; she had a chance to get over it herself. I was just a kid. Think of your daughter. How she would feel.”

  That was perhaps a low blow. He grimaces. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I just . . . Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to see him?”

  “What for? So he can complicate my life again? He can say, ‘Hey, sorry about all those years and stuff I missed, and oops! Gotta run!’ I’ve spent twenty years making sure he has no effect on me whatsoever and I’m not about to muck that up now by having a conversation with him. Anyway, he doesn’t want to talk to me; he wants Mom.”

  “Now what’s going to happen?”

  Before I can answer, Beck’s phone bleeps at him. He looks at the screen and cringes. “I’m sorry, Annie, just a sec.” He starts typing, holding the phone at an angle to shield the screen from glare.

  I was only ten, but I remember that day. I remember my mom screaming at Bill, that no-account loser who came to bring the car back but not Dad. I remember her screaming at him, “You’re helping a man abandon his family!” and she was holding her stomach with both arms, doubled half over like she’d been stabbed. She was right there out on the sidewalk. She’d made me go inside, but I was peeking between the newspaper rack and the beer posters to see what was going on.

  I knew what abandon meant, so when she told me that night that Dad was just taking a trip and he’d be back eventually, I also knew she was lying to me.

  Beck finally puts his phone down. His face is long and his frown is heavy.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Sure, it’s fine. Sorry about that. It was Sam.”

  He puts his hand on my knee. I move my leg away from him. “Don’t.”

  He clasps his hands in his lap. “I just hate to see you hurt.”

  “Who’s hurt? I’m not hurting. I said I’m worried. I made Mom promise not to write him again, but what if she doesn’t really stop? The return address was Tennessee, but he could call or just show up one day at the store. Then what?”

  Beck doesn’t reply. He’s staring at me, but it seems that he didn’t hear a word I just said.

  I brush the sand off my feet so I can slip my sandals back on. “I’d better let you get back. Seems like you have an emergency brewing anyway.”

  I help him fold the blanket and then we walk in silence back to his car. At the car, he reaches for a hug, but I take one step back, waving at him instead. He gets in his black BMW and drives off, and I wish I wasn’t still thinking about the warmth of his hand on my knee.

  Chapter 12

  Maeve

  It’s hard to believe my daughter will be gone again on Sunday. Is it possible to miss her and want Sunday to get here, all at the same time?

  I can see Anna chafing in this shabby little store. She’s still walking around in the few skirts and trousers she brought with her, and more and more she’s on her phone to the office, lining up appointments. She’s gone swimming in the lake and taken walks with Cami once or twice, but I can tell from all her fidgeting and restless working she’s about to the last thread on the end of her rope.

  Can I blame her, really? Yet her restlessness feels like a rebuke to me. Even now, all the shelves dusted and gleaming and all the canned products lined up fastidiously, it looks accusatory. Look how you let this place go!

  Well, it wasn’t my idea to spend my life selling people their vices. So I don’t do it perfectly, big deal.

  When the phone rings and I answer “Nee Nance Store,” a young lady says, “Anna? Hi, it’s Amy. I was wondering—”

  “It’s her mother, Amy. Anna isn’t here. I can leave her a message.”

  Amy wants Anna to come see her wedding dress. I break it to Amy that my daughter is leaving on Sunday and probably won’t be back all summer. Anna keeps going on about how much work she has to do to make up for being gone these measly two weeks.

  No sooner do I put the phone back in the cradle than two men walk in, one wearing overalls and the other a dark business suit.

  “Mrs. Geneva,” says Paul Becker. “You’ll excuse the interruption, but Jack and I need to discuss some plans for the property.”

  I grip the edge of the counter hard. “You can’t do that when the store is closed? I open late on Sundays. And how about a little notice?”

  Paul was looking at his cell phone while I was talking to him. He affects a laugh that must seem very deep and manly to him. It sounds theatrical. “Oh, Mrs. Geneva, no need to drag Jack away from his family just to bring his tape measure inside, really now.”

  This Jack person pulls out a digital camera.

  “What are you doing now?” I ask, though I can tell what they’re doing. They’re deciding what to demolish. Flash! And he snaps a picture of the wall I share with the gift shop next door.

  “That’ll have to go,” Paul says, frowning at a clipboard.

  Carla comes in and gives me a look, wrinkling her face up at the invaders. I hand her the scratch-off Lotto and Virginia Slims without her having to ask and shake my head at her questioning eyes.

  I might as well rent a billboard, though, because Carla will stop in to Doreen’s or down to the Tip-A-Few and tell people that Paul Becker was in here with a guy in overalls, and they’ll all figure out right quick that this place is getting gutted and Maeve is being evicted.

  I’m thinking I’d better tell Anna before the gossip winds its way to her when she walks in the door. Guess she’ll hear it right now.

  Anna drops a shopping bag on top of the newspaper rack, whips off her sunglasses, and demands of the men, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Paul Becker turns around and Anna jumps back as if splashed with cold water. “Paul? What are you doing?”

  Paul comes charging toward Anna with his hand out, all glad-handing business. “Hey, thanks for coming to my party the other day. Nice to see you there, just like old times. Well, not just like, I guess,” he says, laughing at his own wit. Anna’s mouth is slightly open and she’s got a little crease between her brows.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Jack, the contractor, has continued his measuring and snapping of pictures.

  Paul holds up one finger with a smile on his face, like he’s going to show us something delightful, like a cuddly puppy or a birthday present. He grabs a big ca
se off the floor and withdraws a rolled-up tube of paper. This he spreads out triumphantly on my front counter.

  It’s an architect’s drawing of what will no longer be my store.

  “It’s going to be beautiful. We’re going to have high-end lofts up here, and downstairs, right where we’re standing, is going to be a grocery. But not just any grocery! It will be upscale: imported cheese and wine, olive oils, ciabatta bread. It’ll serve the residents of the lofts upstairs and down the block, but of course in time we hope to attract the tourists from Chicago. And, of course, the business crowd who will stop in here on their way to their lakeshore homes.”

  Anna stares at me now, as Paul babbles on. I draw myself up tall, folding my arms. She asks, “So, you’re overhauling the store, Mom? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  Paul breaks off in mid-sentence, looking between Anna and me.

  “You know, we can finish this up another time. We’ll call you, Mrs. Geneva. Sorry for the intrusion. Jack? Let’s get out of their way now, okay?”

  Anna says again, “Mom?”

  I say nothing at all as Paul rolls up his dream and slips it back in the case. Jack nods to me on the way out.

  I clear my throat. “My lease is up,” I tell her. “End of August. They’re not letting me renew.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, that’s still up in the air a bit.”

  “Up in the air? Mom, that’s only a few weeks from now! What the hell?”

  “Watch your language.”

  “You’ve got no plan B at all? Where are you going to stay? Can you afford to move? How are you going to earn money without the store? Why can’t you stay and run this stupid yuppie grocery?”

  My head is starting to ache again, so many questions. “I can’t afford the rent. You wouldn’t believe what he wants to charge. I’ve got a little money to tide me over.”

  “Only a little?”

  “Quite a lot of it went out the window taking care of a child by myself for all those years, and don’t forget college!”

  “I paid most of that myself, and I am still paying off those loans and will be doing so until I die.” She shakes her head and touches her temple, now speaking more calmly. “I’ve always appreciated that, but it’s beside the point, Mom. I can help you financially and I will, but—”

  “Who says I need your help?”

  “You just said you have no place to live, no other job lined up, and only ‘a little’ money. Of course you need my help.” She waves her hand in the air at this and props it on her hip.

  “I can stay with Sally.”

  “In that shitbox trailer out in the sticks?”

  “It’s a roof! It’s just temporary!”

  “Isn’t that what Dad said about the Nee Nance?”

  I flop into the office chair, turning away from her hard gaze. She comes around the counter and crouches in front of me.

  “Mom. I’m just saying that your livelihood and place to live are going to be gone in a few weeks. You have to be thinking more than shacking up in Sally’s trailer. We need a long-term plan. We need to start applying for jobs, looking for places to live that you can afford. Worse comes to worst, you could come stay with me in Chicago, but you don’t want to do that, do you?”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child. And what’s this ‘we’ business? ‘We’ don’t need to do anything. It’s my problem and I will solve it myself, which is why I never told you to begin with. I knew you’d get like this.”

  Anna stands up away from me now and folds her arms. “Get like what?”

  “Bossy. Patronizing.”

  “I’m just trying to take care of you. Someone’s got to.”

  I stand up roughly from the chair and it bangs back into the back shelf. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Then why are you in this mess? Do you know all the years you paid rent in this dump you could have bought actual property? Something you owned and couldn’t just be cast out of? What were you waiting for?”

  My headache is shrieking now. I can hardly keep my eyes open. I stand up and fumble past her like I’ve gone blind, stumbling up the stairs to my room, where I choke down two Excedrin dry and lay on top of my quilt, curled up like a wounded animal protecting my soft insides.

  When I awake, my mouth feels cottony and I’m dizzy, disoriented. It takes me several moments to remember what just happened. I creep down the hall to peek down the stairs. From this view I can see the store in operation, and I can hear Anna’s voice as she rings up purchases. She also seems to be on her cell phone with her office.

  I slink back to my room, avoiding squeaky spots on the hallway floor. I close the door gently and press the lock down. It snaps into place and I relax a bit.

  From under my mattress I withdraw Robert’s last letter and a pad of paper. My pen remains on my nightstand from when I last used it.

  Dear Robert, I begin.

  You asked me when you first wrote if I believe in second chances and at the time I said I didn’t know. I needed time. And actually, just recently I tried to stop writing you. It suddenly seemed so foolish to even entertain the notion of seeing you again, after everything.

  But I re-read your letter every night and I couldn’t bear to think this could be the last I hear from you, if I didn’t write back at all. It was like you were disappearing again, only this time it’s up to me, it’s in my hands.

  I can’t promise it will be like it was. But you’re sorry and you love me and you’re coming back after all, and since I can’t stop thinking of you . . . I guess this means I still love you, too.

  All this means that yes, I’ll meet you. Just tell me when and where.

  I don’t know what the future holds for us, if anything. But I’m willing to see.

  Maeve

  The envelopes are downstairs. I’ll have to wait until Anna is asleep, or out, or, if not before, I can mail it Monday, when she’s gone back home with her fancy education and expensive suits and her utter confidence that she’s so much smarter than I am.

  Chapter 13

  Amy

  My mom looks around for a chair to sit on.

  We’re in Agatha’s Boutique, and for most people a chair is nothing, almost nonexistent, like the spoon in your hand or the mirror on the wall, serving only as a means to an end.

  Only when you’re fat, none of this is nothing.

  “Here, Mom,” and I take her elbow and point her toward a low bench, upholstered in crushed velvet. It’s wide enough for two, or wide enough for her. I remember sitting there myself when looking for a prom dress. I gave up in disgust and stayed home.

  She nods her relief at finding a place to land. She crosses her legs at her ankles because she can’t cross them at her knees.

  I still remember the joy the first time I realized I could cross one knee over another.

  She’s still breathing a little hard. We had to park far away.

  “Well,” she says with a little puff of air, fanning herself with a tissue. “Let’s see this vision of a dress.”

  It’s still the store model. Mine isn’t in yet, but Mom wanted to see it, insisted on it, in fact. Aunt Agatha appears with the dress over her arm.

  Mom gasps. “Oooooh, look at that. Will you just look at that.”

  I accept the dress from Aunt Agatha and step into the large bridal fitting room, alone, by prior arrangement with my mother. She fussed at me over it, complained, “Why are you so modest? I wiped your butt; I can see you change into a dress.”

  I told her I just wanted her to see it all at once, and get the full effect when it was already on.

  I don’t let Agatha in here, either. She offered before, because climbing into a wedding dress alone is hard. Too big to step into, too heavy to pull comfortably over the top of you. So I hang it on a hook and wriggle into it from underneath, reach up, dislodge the hanger, and then let it fall down on me. I perfected this after trying on a dozen or more dresses, with Kristi, Sarah, and
Nikki tittering outside the doors.

  I poke my head out and let Agatha in so she can do up the buttons at the back. The model dress is too big—such bliss! For something to be too big!—and she pulls on it and bunches it up in her hands behind me so it hugs my body.

  Only then do I look in the mirror.

  We head out into the store like that, me holding up the hem so I don’t step on it in my bare feet and Agatha like a caboose hanging onto the back.

  Mom puts her hands over her face. She looks horrified, only I know she’s not. Her tears are running over her fingertips and sliding down her cheeks, but she makes no sound.

  “Well?”

  It’s an off-the-shoulder white gown, with seed pearls and lace, and lace swooping down the skirt, and a crinoline.

  “I know it’s a bit lacy and princessy for a woman my age,” I say.

  “Nonsense,” breaks in Agatha. “Every bride can be as princessy as she likes, I don’t care if you’re eighty.”

  “So beautiful,” my mom says. “Just . . . I always said you were such a beauty.”

  “Well, now, Maryann,” Agatha says to my mother, who also happens to be her niece. “What do you say we look at some gowns for you?”

  At this she flushes deep. “I don’t know, Aunt Agatha, I’m not sure I’m up to that today. I’d like to drop a little weight first, you know . . .”

  “Mom,” I say as gently as I can. “The wedding is in August.”

  “I know, sweetheart, I just . . .” She looks up at Agatha.

  Agatha blows a piece of her gray hair off her forehead. “Maryann, I can always take it in for you when you lose those pounds. It wouldn’t hurt to start looking. I’d hate for you to be stressed and rushing, last minute. How about I just find you a few candidates, for starters?”

  Without waiting for a response, Agatha disappears toward the mother-of-the-bride dresses.

  The gown is loose now that Agatha has let go of the back. I feel like I’m lording over my mother, so I crouch down next to her, sitting cross-legged under the billow of my dress. “What’s wrong?” I ask her, though I already know.