Those We Love Most

by Lee Woodruff

  She mentally ticked off the possibilities. There was golf and tennis in the warm weather. Perhaps he could be one of those husbands who played cards at the club. There was the YMCA for exercise equipment, and some of the men had a weekly movie club. He’d always talked about getting back to building things with his hands; he’d made birdhouses as gifts when they were first married. Years ago, when they’d lived in Ohio, he had even tried to build a model ship in a bottle, but the truth was, Roger wasn’t a man who relished hobbies or volunteer work. The bulk of his life, like so many men of their era, had been devoted to his career.

  And what was it now inside the company, or perhaps inside of Roger, that was crumbling? She knew that any business needed ultimately to make way for the next crop of leaders and go-getters. But Margaret had always imagined that Roger’s departure from the office would be on his timetable. He’d been a part of the firm for so long, and they’d all ridden the real estate market through its many ups and downs, good times and bad. Roger had often joked grandiosely at parties that their company had been responsible for paving over half of the Midwest. Clients loved him, warmed to his self-assuredness, his ready knowledge of grandchildren’s names or a wife’s favorite variety of wine.

  Roger’s jocular, salesy personality, so in opposition to her own reserve, could at times appear fake and contrived, but she understood its value in his profession. Her husband’s “gift of the gab,” as one colleague had termed it, was a valuable asset that had put a roof over their head and helped to send three kids off to college and out into the world.

  Roger’s guttural snores irritated her now, and she rose, wide awake, grabbing her robe on the bedpost and padding downstairs. She turned on the lamp in the kitchen, and it cast a warm glow on the white painted cabinets. Margaret poured a glass of tap water and leaned over the kitchen sink, staring out beyond the crab apple branches and into the yard lit by a waxy moon.

  They had more than enough saved for retirement; she supposed that wasn’t the source of her anxiety. Roger had invested well, and they had never been big spenders, never reached beyond their means. They owned the cottage in Door County outright; the mortgage on the expansion there had been paid off for at least five years she knew. They usually took one good trip a year, with one or two other couples, always to warmer places with golf courses. Maybe they’d increase their travel in retirement and see more of the world together. Honestly, she felt slightly guilty and uneasy at how little she did know about the intricacies of their finances. She knew they had long-term disability, life insurance and policies on the houses, all of that through Pete’s business, and their friend from the club, Hank Stabile, had managed their portfolio for years. Roger had always urged her to attend the annual financial meetings, to take more interest, and perhaps she’d need to in the future. She refilled the glass and then took a sip. Yes, there could be many upsides to his retiring.

  She had once imagined retirement as a time of growing together, of shared activities, yet Roger had never spoken that language back to her. He’d roared more than once that they’d have to carry him away from his desk feet first. She’d hidden her disappointment at his theatrical chest-beating, and minimized her expectations. Work and golf were the things he enjoyed in his daylight hours, and she knew those activities kept him vigorous.

  Margaret shifted her position to a chair at the kitchen table, leaning on her elbows and easing slowly down. She could feel the tightness in her back from carrying Sarah and she arched slowly, like a cat. Staring into the backyard, she began the process of teasing out what was really gnawing at her. It was the niggling feeling that there was more to this sudden talk of retirement. Something else was at work, a fumbling, an uncertainty in his actions. Absentmindedly she spun the lazy Susan in the center of the table that held the vitamins and the salt and pepper shakers, watching the objects rotate slowly.

  It was weakness she detected, weakness in a man who had always prided himself on his vitality in almost every arena. Margaret sipped the water for a few minutes more, aware of the ticking hand of the kitchen wall clock. She rose and gently slid the chair back in place, automatically rinsing the glass before placing it in the dishwasher’s top rack. If she had to be completely honest with herself, weakness was the one emotion in Roger she was not prepared to witness.

  20

  The temperatures had plummeted dramatically since the first of December, and none of them had a full set of their winter clothing—jackets, hats, or mittens. Somehow with a thief’s stealth, the season had changed, and Maura, normally vigilant about rotating clothing, had left it to the last minute.

  Rifling through the mangle of items in the front hall closet, she came across an old pair of navy blue winter boots, jammed in the back under a bag of ski hats. As she pulled out the first boot, her breath snagged in her chest. They had been James’s, and she’d been saving them for Ryan to grow into. Somehow, like so many of her good intentions, they had gotten misplaced, shoved in the back and forgotten.

  Maura slipped her hand reverently in the boot to feel the spot where his little boy foot had once fit. She put it up to her face, hoping to extract the scent of James, but it smelled only of the closet now. She wobbled onto her bottom as the first of a series of sobs hit. As they subsided, she realized ruefully how it was a form of progress that she could not specifically remember when she had last cried like that. And yet Maura was left with a vague sense of guilt, almost a feeling of betrayal at the diminishment of grief, no matter how incremental.

  Later that afternoon, Sarah was coloring on the floor as Ryan sat huddled at the kitchen counter under the overhead light, working on his math homework. Maura sidled up to her son and ruffled his hair.

  “Ready for me to quiz you on your spelling words?” she asked. Ryan beamed and the phone rang.

  “Maura.”

  “Hey, Pete.”

  “I’m going to head out of work and meet up with Gil and Stevo tonight for a bit.”

  “OK,” she said halfheartedly.

  “We’re just going to grab a burger and watch the Bears game at the bar. I won’t be home late. But you don’t need to wait up.”

  “Do I ever wait up anymore?” she joked, somewhat sarcastically. He snorted into the phone, a half-laugh.

  “Up to you,” he said in a somewhat jovial tone. “I can always slide into the spare room so I don’t wake you.” She noticed he didn’t call it James’s room.

  “No need. I’ll be OK. Have fun.”

  “Will do.”

  Maura pulled the lasagna out of the oven and cut it into neat squares, buttering the rolls she’d baked from a cardboard dough canister. Then they said the quick, simple family prayer that had been James’s favorite, and they dug in.

  “Mom, we gotta do my list for Santa,” Ryan piped up. He reached toward her, and his glass of milk wobbled, almost tipping before Maura caught it. His bangs were so long they were falling into his eyes, and she made a mental note to take him to the barber this week.

  “We have to do Sarah’s list too,” Maura said brightly, turning toward her daughter. “Right, Sarah? Santa is coming soon. He’s going to bring you some toys.”

  “Yeah, lots of toys.” Sarah picked up a carrot and popped it in her mouth.

  “Do you guys know exactly what you want to ask for?” Maura realized how unprepared she was for the holidays this year. She had previously been one of those women who’d had most of her Christmas list scratched off by Thanksgiving except for the stockings. The task of shopping for the entire extended family seemed enormous right now. Maybe she and Pete could go out together one night this week and purchase a bunch of items at one of those mega toy stores near the mall. That shared activity might make them feel more connected, she thought. At the very least they could put out some of the decorations together this week and hang the lights outside.

  Two hours later the kids were upstairs, Ryan freshly showered and Sarah bathed, quiet in their own rooms, when her phone rang again. She was scrubbing t
he stubborn lasagna pan as the dishwasher hummed. She could see on the phone’s caller ID that it was Pete again, calling from his cell.

  “Hello?” No response from Pete, just noisy background chatter, probably from the bar.

  “Hello?” Maura said again, but nothing. She could make out Pete talking as if into a tube. Maybe that was Gil’s voice too, or Stevo, it was harder to hear them. She heard the strains of Journey’s “Oh Sherrie” in the background. They had to be at the bar.

  “Yeah … with her.” It was Pete’s voice now; she could distinguish some of the words more clearly. And then it dawned on her. Pete had pocket dialed her, inadvertently hitting the redial button that routed him to his last call.

  “You guys … [unintelligible] better?” Stevo’s voice now, she was able to pick up some of the words. Maura swallowed hard. She was both horrified and fascinated to be eavesdropping this way, but she continued listening. His voice was more distinct now, closer. Who were they talking about? What?

  “It sucks,” Pete said. “The whole thing sucks. We were good, well, maybe just OK, I guess. You know, normal. I mean we had issues, like every couple. But we were normal.” There was a pause as the falsetto strains of Steve Perry warbled in the dead space. “And then … well, you guys know. James. Of all the goddamned shit to fall out of the sky.”

  There was a silence, and she couldn’t make out what one of the men said. It sounded like a slap on the back, some kind of encouragement. Was Pete crying? She couldn’t imagine that, not in front of these guys in a bar. Maybe he’d already had too much to drink? She bit her top lip.

  “Here’s the goddamned thing,” Pete said loudly. She could clearly make out the words. “I still love her. But right now, we’re nowhere.” He paused for a moment, and she envisioned him taking a tug off a beer bottle. She could picture the overvarnished wooden counter, the TV tuned to a game but muted and captioned, the eyes in the bar trained to the screen like worshippers of a cult.

  “You’ll get it back, buddy.” It was Stevo’s voice, higher than the others, encouraging, but pitched at an unnatural cadence. Almost cajoling. “Everybody goes through shit.”

  There was something more, unintelligible, and then a collective shout went up in the bar, and she guessed that the Bears had scored. The rollicking cheers of the patrons obscured what was said next. Maura was frozen in one place, afraid to move, as if, ridiculously, she might be discovered. She was holding her breath.

  “I dunno,” responded Pete gruffly after the cheering subsided. “This is some big shit.”

  Another flurry of background noise and a new song came on the sound system with a thumping bass, and she couldn’t make out the reply. A series of loud boos, no doubt brought on by an unpopular referee call, blocked what was said next. She considered hanging up, but something stopped her. She was both attracted and repelled.

  “Sometimes … … if there’s another guy.” His voice was rising, slurred but distinct. Maura heard this clearly, and her veins froze for a second. She could hear Stevo now, laughing, they were goading Pete, talking him down from a ledge.

  “Now you’re overserved, buddy.” It was Stevo again. “… good egg … loves you.” She winced at the image of it, Pete, maudlin and spilling his worst fears. Thank God he was with boyhood friends, guys with whom he’d grown up, shared girlfriends, survived adolescence, if not necessarily fully left it behind.

  A profound sorrow washed over Maura as she listened to the flecks of anguish in Pete’s voice. His words softened her, as disgusted as she was by his drunkenness. Seemingly out of nowhere, something sputtered and flared like a match in her heart, a tiny thing, and she hung up the phone, unable to eavesdrop further.

  Maura moved to the kitchen counter stool as a tangle of thoughts rushed in, relief that he did love her, gratitude that he had old friends with whom he could unburden, sadness that they were at such a place of attrition, that a sliver of uncrossable distance had crept between them. Later that night, as she stepped out of the shower, she studied her naked body in the fogged bathroom mirror. It had been too long since she had tried for any intimacy with Pete, long before James had died. Her marriage simply couldn’t continue this way. She’d lost one person she loved already; she would not lose Pete as well.

  At the window in James’s room, Maura looked for Alex before turning in. She’d spotted him a few more times now since Halloween. And there were nights when the sky was moonless, and the darkness obscured vision, that she was left with the strong sense that he was out there, lying corpselike. Maura had become accustomed to looking for him, and she worried about him, now that the weather had turned so cold. Boys his age didn’t like to bundle up or wear hats and gloves. One evening a week or so ago as she observed him, she was pleased to see he was at least wearing a down coat with some sort of hooded sweatshirt pulled up underneath.

  The stretch of lawn on the other side of the maple was bare, and she was certain there was no one below the tree tonight, which left her with a vague feeling of disappointment. Maura was now fairly certain that he knew she was watching. There had been one time, around Thanksgiving, when he had looked directly at her inside the front room and met her gaze, even in the semi-cloud-covered night. At least Maura believed this was what had transpired through the glass. She had remained motionless, and whether it was a trick of the light or her imagination, the boy’s eyes looked to her to be almost pleading, as if they were searching, but still she had stood immobile, unwilling to step toward the door and break the spell. This was her mutual secret with Alex, a complicit act.

  For reasons she could not completely articulate, Maura had still not told Pete about Alex’s visits. Rightly or wrongly, she sensed that Alex was sending some sort of message just for her. It was a wordless act of contrition. This was Alex’s apology, his atonement if she would not come to him. And though it was perplexing and even a little creepy, it was also oddly and inexplicably comforting. No, thought Maura, this was between her and the boy right now.

  Changing into her pajamas, Maura thought back to the conversation she had overheard from Pete’s cell phone in the bar and grimaced. She imagined Pete would be back long after she was asleep. Impulsively, Maura grabbed her cell phone from the top of the bureau and texted Pete, SLEEP W ME TONITE. She studied it a moment before pressing SEND and then smiled to herself, turning off the phone and slipping under the covers and onto her side.

  21

  The long aisles of Lowe’s were packed with people this time of year, but all of the holiday-related items and decorations seemed to be near the front of the store. It was mostly Christmas lights that they needed, the white outdoor kind for the bushes in front of the house. Maura had pulled everything out of the attic over the weekend, and half of the tiny bulbs didn’t work. It was easier just to buy new ones, Pete had instructed, rather than search for the one culprit that was affecting the entire strand. While she was here she thought she might pick up a few items to put under the tree. Erin’s husband, Brad, was such a Mr. Fixit she could probably find him some set of tools or nice work gloves; it was worth poking around. Maybe she’d locate some of those small LCD flashlights too, for Ryan’s stocking.

  Maura pushed the oversize shopping cart absentmindedly through the garden aisle. She had no real concept of exactly what she was looking for, perhaps a set of pruning shears for her mother, that expensive German brand with the red handles. Moving toward the next row, past the hoes and rakes, and into the lightbulb aisle, she saw a mother with a young boy in her cart. Next to them was a store employee with a blue apron. The worker was young, a kid, and something about the familiarity of his frame made Maura look twice in the crowded store. It was the way the young man was leaning forward toward the cart and offering something to the child, a toy or some small object perhaps from the shelves, as a look of shy delight played across the little boy’s face.

  Maura realized, with a sudden ripple of alarm, that it was Alex Hulburd in the Lowe’s apron. He must have taken a part-time job durin
g the holidays. She stopped and then backed up the cart slowly, keeping her eyes trained on him through the shelves to make sure she was unobserved. Yes, she was sure of it now, the inverted triangle of his swimmer’s frame, his fine features and sandy hair. She panicked for a moment, wanting to be invisible, unable to tear herself away. His gentle interactions with the little boy fascinated her, and she maneuvered the cart around to an angle in the next aisle where she could better observe the interaction but remain unseen.

  “What’s your name?” she heard Alex say, his voice lower than she had expected, more mature.

  “Chris.” The boy was shy but warming under Alex’s coaxing. His mother chatted brusquely into her cell phone, holding up various sizes of lightbulbs and barking the numbers to the person on the other end, clearly trying to determine what she needed. She could see the object now; it was something on Alex’s key chain that he was using to distract the little boy, showing him how when you pushed little buttons two eyes lit up. Another one made a silly noise like a monkey call. It was the sweetness with which Alex treated the child that fascinated Maura, and she found herself unwittingly mesmerized. An elderly customer with a cane ambled up to interrupt Alex with a question, and he tousled the little boy’s hair before offering to lead her to the appropriate aisle.

  Maura took a moment to compose herself, looking around the store’s cavernous interior, and found that the zeal to shop for gifts had completely deserted her. She would grab four boxes of outdoor Christmas lights at the end cap by the registers and check out. The last thing she wanted to do was run into Alex Hulburd during the Christmas holiday.

  On the way back home, Maura felt her previous energy plunge. Perhaps it was the surge of adrenaline and then the enervation she’d experienced in seeing Alex. His unexpected tenderness with the child in the cart had sideswiped her. Mostly, she assumed her fatigue was attributable to this hectic time of year, so fraught with memories and the high and low spikes of emotion. Maura had always heard people talk about how difficult the holidays were if you’d lost somebody, but now that this applied to her, she realized she had never given that trite saying much thought. Until this year the advance of the Christmas holidays had contained only the swell of joy and anticipation.