The Goodbye Year

by Kaira Rouda

  Maybe he should join her and have a drink tonight, he thought, carrying the plates over to the sink. She had turned her back to him, overly scrubbing a pan.

  “You just let him get away with everything,” Melanie said, her voice low, angry. “You aren’t even trying to parent anymore. Just give up and leave it all to me.” If she scrubbed the pan any harder it would crack.

  “Oh, honey, he’s a good kid. He just hates school. We need to find him the perfect place. I’m going to call the counselor, see if she has any ideas. Some of the schools have November 1 deadlines, that’s only a month away,” Keith said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and giving her a squeeze, hoping to calm her the way he had just calmed Dane.

  “Really? Just a month for early decision? I hadn’t realized that. Gosh, thank goodness you are here,” Melanie said, and Keith knew she was building up to an explosion of anger. What did I say? “Who has been telling you this, begging for your help since last year, and now you are telling me we only have a month. Ha!”

  She pulled away from his embrace and turned, arms crossed in front of her chest, staring at him. “Our private college counselor fired him. Fired him! He’s the one who did everything with Seth. Now it’s all up to me,” she said. Keith noticed slick sweat on her forehead and on the top of her lip.

  “Seth did Seth’s applications, Mel,” Keith said, realizing he’d just used the form of her name she despised.

  “Kee-th,” Melanie said, speaking slowly, drawing out his name to make her point. He was a child, an idiot, as usual. “Mr. Baker helped a lot. He’s from New York. He has helped thousands of kids get into great schools. He fired us. He said he couldn’t work with Dane. Couldn’t help him. Do you remember that?”

  “Stop speaking to me like I’m an idiot,” Keith said and walked to their wet bar and pulled his favorite bottle of vodka out from the cabinet. He poured himself a stiff finger and dropped in three ice cubes. He listened to the comforting sound of the ice cubes cracking into the potent liquid. His shoulders relaxed. He was never this tense anymore, not at work at his firm, not on the golf course certainly, not even during a big case. Only, it seemed, at home.

  “We already have twenty-seven likes on our photo,” Melanie said, her voice sounding more normal, the anger having dissipated like fog in warm sunshine.

  “What?”

  “Likes on Facebook, on my rebranding photo of us as a couple. That’s more likes than I’ve gotten in forever. That settles it. No more photos of kids or me with the ladies. It’s just going to be you and me from now on until people see us together and see how happy we are,” Melanie said. Keith watched as she loaded the dishwasher. After a minute, she stopped loading and looked over at him. “I mean, that’s how it’ll be next year, no matter where Dane ends up. Just you and me. We better start practicing for the golden years.”

  Keith attempted to smile at his spouse. He loved her, despite her insanity over Dane’s future. He would need patience to survive the next few months. He could handle this, he told himself, taking a big sip of his drink, finishing it. It tasted good. He’d need another, he decided. They would make it through this senior year, this year of stress for all of them, and then he and Melanie would recalibrate. She’d find a purpose, a new passion, and they’d be free to travel. He was a partner at the law firm. He could take time off whenever he wanted. He’d created a travel file on his computer at work and had stuffed it full of places he’d like to see, articles he’d read. Melanie just needed adventure to open her mind, help her see how blessed they really were. He imagined them together, climbing a mountain in the Himalayas, visiting monks in Tibet. Then he remembered her fear of heights. He’d think of something.

  “Melanie, it’s not like we become senior citizens the minute Dane goes to college,” Keith said, wiping the dining table with the washcloth she’d handed him. He saw her look, the doubt in her eyes. He didn’t know if the doubt was about Dane or their next fifty years together. “He will go to school. He will do great in the real world. It’s not like he’s a drug dealer or something. He’s a good kid. He’s just lazy sometimes and he’s not cut out for traditional education, that’s all. And the move hit him harder than it did Seth.”

  Melanie walked toward him stopping to pick up a framed photo of the four of them—their perfect little family—the day they left Ohio for California. “He was happy then. Doing well in school,” Melanie said, handing Keith the photo.

  “He had some of the same issues there as here. Talking too much in class, marginal grades. Don’t kid yourself,” Keith said. Although Dane’s social anxiety did start with their move to Crystal Beach, the counselor assured them it could have come on back in Ohio just as easily. Melanie had scoffed, choosing to blame the move, herself. Him. His wife seemed to doubt everything, especially the choice they had made to move here to the beach. A choice he celebrated every day. “We’ll find him a music school, an arts college where he’ll meet other creative kids like him.”

  “Dane can’t compete with these kids here. What makes you think he’ll be able to get into music school? He was better off in the Midwest. Average is all right there. I think I belong back there, too,” Melanie said, turning away from him, yanking open the refrigerator and refilling her glass of wine that had become empty somehow. “I totally embarrassed myself in front of the queen at dinner the other night. I’ll be even more ostracized now.”

  Watching her hand holding the glass shake, Keith wondered if his son was right, if something was wrong with his wife, if perhaps she did drink too much. Was he blind to what was really going on inside his own home?

  “Forget about the sushi night with Sarah. She made you nervous so you drank a little too much. It happens. Hell, she makes me nervous, a ghostly white Barbie doll whose face is so frozen in place she can’t smile. And that husband of hers? Now that’s a scary dude. Who the hell doesn’t play sports because his hands are too valuable? That’s just freaky,” Keith said, holding his hands in the air while Melanie finally smiled. He still remembered asking Jud Nelson if he golfed and getting that ridiculous answer. Weird dude. But most people in their community were normal. Sure, not as friendly as Midwesterners, a little entitled, but still good people. He heard Melanie sigh, releasing a little tension.

  “You used to think my hands were magical as I recall,” Keith said, walking over to his wife as she placed her wineglass on the counter and wrapped both arms around his waist. It felt nice, this hug, this closeness. This is what they should do more of, he realized. This and travel. “Honey, Dane is right where he belongs. And so are you. We’re going to be fine; everything is going to be fine.”

  She breathed deeply, and Keith hoped he was right.

  WILL

  Will had just finished inspecting the last project of the day. Blissfully, it was a new hotel on the edge of the ocean, providing him with scenic views and fresh sea air as a job perk.

  He’d ridden his bicycle to all of his sites today and, even with five stops, it was only three in the afternoon when he’d finished up. Most of his business was repeat customers, many of them the female assistants to builders he’d meet on-site. He’d pile on the charm and dazzle them with his knowledge, flirting of course, but never taking it too far. He needed their business, not their affection. He had too much of that lately from Lauren and he was beginning to feel antsy, trapped. As he waved goodbye to his last client, an older heavyset woman who called him William and blushed when he gave her empty compliments, he headed to the beach. He didn’t feel bad for flirting. He never felt shame for anything, he realized.

  He sat down on the warm sand, feeling so lucky to be here, so far from the gray, dying steel town of his youth. Here, in Crystal Beach, it was always sunny and alive. People paid money to vacation here and this was his home. He was blessed, he really was. And he’d do anything to continue to live here. He needed to stay one step ahead of everyone else. But that was easy. He knew he was smarter than everyone, that’s why he could always get away with doing
whatever he wanted. Anything. He just didn’t want to push Carol too far. He needed her for structure and appearances.

  When he thought back to high school in Ohio, Carol was the only bright spot. She was his constant through his parents’ ugly, violent divorce. She was the cheerleader on the sidelines of every big football game, his only fan. She could have gotten into her choice of colleges, but Will was only accepted to Grand View University in Des Moines. So she went with him, on a full-ride academic scholarship. Will took out loans to get by, working at the bars near campus with a fake ID that convinced the owners he was twenty-one. He’d come home to Carol every night after work, smelling of beer, and sometimes other girls’ perfume. Not often, just sometimes.

  Talking Carol into moving to California was the tough sell. She was close to her family, too close for Will’s liking, truth be told. They would suffocate him as much as the old, rundown steel town would have. He and Carol had needed to start fresh. They were young. They needed an adventure. And she’d said yes.

  She’d followed his dreams all along. And now, Lauren was pushing him every day to leave his wife. How could he do that? He couldn’t. His anniversary was coming up, as Carol had just reminded him and written on the calendar in green. He always forgot when they’d decided to start counting. In high school or college, or did they mark the year of their actual wedding? Carol would remind him. Just like she told him everything, everywhere to be, in his color, Peter Pan green.

  As much as he needed the structure, or so he told himself, he had started to despise the color. That green. He saw it on the kitchen calendar, beckoning, judging, trying to control him. The color of responsibility, mortgages, bedtimes, alarms, jobs, kids, structure. He’d uncapped the lid to the green pen, left it to dry out on the counter. That would teach her, he had thought.

  Will stood up and stretched. The sun was getting lower on the horizon, but he still had plenty of time. He dropped and did twenty push-ups, glancing to his right to be sure the female tourists stopping on the boardwalk were still watching him. They were. He smiled in their direction and they giggled and walked on. I still have it, he thought, wondering if he should follow them, ask for the blonde’s number. Not now, he told himself, he had enough on his plate.

  Carol didn’t have it anymore, he knew. She’d never turn another man’s head. She just didn’t care about herself, or her looks. She was pretty still, in that outdoorsy sort of school principal way. The guys in his basketball league always told him she was a looker, but guys just did that to make you feel good. He knew the truth. He saw it every morning at the kitchen table. When he was with Lauren, though, he did feel good. She dressed nice, mostly in dresses. He hadn’t seen Carol wear a dress in years. Lauren always wore makeup and fancy perfume. High heels and necklaces and really lacy underwear that were a different surprise each time they met. Carol just wore cotton briefs. There really weren’t any surprises anymore.

  But it was almost their anniversary, and she was the mother of his daughters. Will sat back down in the sand, pulled out his phone, and scrolled through recent photos. He knew she would expect something from him to mark their anniversary, he’d learned that much over the years. He found the perfect shot. It was from a few months ago. All four of them had packed a picnic and enjoyed dinner at the beach. The girls were happy and getting along, alternately surfing and then joining them on the picnic blanket. Carol had looked beautiful in the setting sun, shadows smoothing out her wrinkles, framed in a backdrop of purple and orange and ocean. Marni had grabbed his phone and taken the picture.

  “Smile lovebirds,” she’d said, her hair wet and long against her face, beautiful without the oversized glasses. She looked like Carol when Will had first met her. Will had leaned over and kissed Carol’s cheek. They’d all laughed, a perfect Hallmark moment.

  He opened Instagram. Carol had just shown him how to use it, instructing him to keep watch on their daughters’ accounts. He selected the photo. He wrote: “Here’s to another lifetime with my lovebird. #truelove” and smiled as it posted. He’d even remembered to use a hashtag. She’d like that. If only she could give him some space on the stupid calendar, they’d be fine. They liked all the same shows on TV. She was like living with his best friend, and what he imagined his mom should have been like. So what if they didn’t have sex anymore? He just found it elsewhere. But he always returned home to her.

  It worked for everybody. His phone screen lit up and he smiled as little hearts showed up indicating people had liked his post. It was sweet. Even Marni liked it, he saw, watching as their high school and college friends clicked like, and then some guys from the gym, and then Carol. She liked it, he realized, as a big smile crossed his face. He was proud of himself, as usual.

  He looked at the time on his fancy watch from Lauren. Carol would be home from school already, probably preparing dinner and talking to Piper about homework. Maybe Marni was with them, sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop open, a pile of college brochures next to her, deciding which school to grace with her big brain, a replica of his brain. She knew he expected her to earn a scholarship. They didn’t have the money like the rest of the people in Crystal Beach. He hoped he had told her that often enough.

  Maybe his Instagram post would make this evening pleasant and happy, like the family scenario of his dreams. He’d come home and all three of his girls would rush to the door, greeting him like a returning hero. Or, at the very least, Carol and the girls could look up from their laptops as he walked in, perhaps give him a smile or any other look that could convey he wasn’t a total fuck up.

  Because the real problem with their marriage was that Carol often treated him like a child, a bad child. He deserved better. He was a man in top physical condition. He deserved to be worshipped. Forget about Elliot and the others. He always came back, always provided for them. But yet, he never was and never could be good enough for her. He saw his failure reflected in his own parents’ faces as he grew up. He saw it again in her parents’ faces from the time they began dating. They knew whose son he was, where he came from. He saw it in Carol’s eyes every night before bed, every morning when he woke up. But she had the wrong view. He was much more than what she saw. He’d prove it.

  His phone rang, and Will answered before looking at who was calling.

  “How dare you,” Lauren said. “How. Dare. You.”

  Her voice was deep and calm. He’d never heard her sound like this. He didn’t like it.

  “Well, good afternoon to you, too,” Will said, not sure what had gotten her in such a huff. He decided to take the high road, try to brighten her day. That’s the kind of man he was being today. “Hope you had a great day, sweetie!”

  “Don’t call me sweetie,” she said. “Are you still—”

  “Still?”

  “At Main Beach?” she said, her voice was clearer now. She must have switched over from Bluetooth. She still sounded rather menacing, he decided. And how did she know where he was? Will felt a chill spread up his spine. Did she have a tracking device on him or his phone?

  “Just about to bike home on this glorious evening,” he said, while scanning the beach in both directions. No Lauren. He needed to get away from here.

  “Stay put,” she said and hung up.

  She couldn’t talk to him that way, could she? No, of course not, he thought, and began walking slowly in the direction of the hotel, where his bicycle and escape awaited.

  “I said stay put. You are such a coward and a liar.”

  Will turned around and saw Lauren on the beach behind him, barefoot but wearing a shiny, short silver dress, hands on her hips and fury in her green eyes. He wanted to reach over and kiss her, to calm her down, but they were in public so he couldn’t. Also, she was scaring him. He was starting to want to run away.

  “Sweetie, what happened? We had a great lunch yesterday as I recall, tried some new things,” Will said, taking a step closer to her, feeling that familiar warmth of arousal start deep in his stomach. “Were you
missing me?”

  “How can you talk to me like that and post this? Are you insane?” Lauren asked, shoving her phone in his face. It was his Instagram post. But, that wasn’t possible, he thought. His profile was on “private.” Carol had set it up that way for him, just family and some close friends.

  “How did you see that?” Will asked, swallowing hard, trying to figure out what to do, what to say. In his panic, he knew he’d turned white and he felt his heart racing.

  “What do you mean how? With my own two eyes, you lying coward,” Lauren said. Her anger scared him.

  “Honey, please, calm down. You’re scaring me. I thought the post was private; it doesn’t mean anything,” Will said, putting his hands up in the air as if she were holding a gun, not a damning cell phone Instagram post.

  Lauren shifted back and forth on her feet, like she was rocking a baby. The sun was sinking more quickly now and Will needed to get home before Carol suspected something. He needed to fix this fast.

  “Look, I was just feeling guilty. Carol and I have shared so much. A whole lifetime,” Will said slowly. He thought he sounded reasonable, logical. He hoped Lauren agreed.

  “Yeah, I know, you tell me this all the time. I don’t care anymore. You have a choice. Me or her. Not both of us. Not anymore. You keep saying you’re leaving her. Do it. Otherwise, leave me alone,” Lauren said, her voice quiet, but determined.