by Nicole Baart
In spite of the taut mood in the car, Daniel filled the seven-minute drive to school with stories and speculations about his upcoming year. His teacher was a seasoned veteran, a lovely lady with a graying bun and earrings that betrayed her quirky sense of humor. She wore tiny lassos for kindergarten roundup, dangly silver spoons and forks for the parent dessert night, and miniature stuffed teddy bears for the new student meet and greet. Daniel was completely in awe of her and more than eager to commit himself to her tutelage five days a week.
When we pulled up in front of Mason Elementary, he had his door half-open and one foot on the street before I could utter a protest.
“Hey!” I called, reaching over the back of the seat and catching his wrist. “You can’t leave without a good-bye!”
“Oh.” Daniel grinned. “Bye, Mom.”
“No hug? A kiss, maybe?”
He peered out the crack in his door at the shuffle of kids and teachers crowding the long sidewalk in front of his new school. “Nah. You can hug me tonight.”
With that, he slipped out of my grip and was gone.
“Don’t forget Grandma is picking you and Simon up this afternoon!” I shouted, hoping he could hear me through the open passenger window. Stifling a sigh, I turned to wish Simon a good day. My backseat was empty. He was gone too.
“Maybe I should go to Iowa City,” I grumbled to myself. “Apparently I’m not as needed here as I thought.”
It took me less than two minutes to get to Value Foods from Mason Elementary. My heart was still in the drop-off lane with Daniel and Simon, and my head must have been in the clouds because I drove to an empty spot at the very back of the lot before I remembered that there was a space next to the back door just for me. It didn’t have my name on it, but it did have my title: assistant manager.
Value Foods was a pretty small operation, so my new job didn’t carry the same sort of prestige that it might at a larger chain. But the pay was better, and I liked working under Mr. Durst. He was fair and honest and straightforward—many of the same traits that he claimed made me perfect for the job. Since accepting the promotion in June, my days had consisted of a lot more desk work and a lot less on-the-floor melodrama. There was always some soap opera going on between the clerks, shift managers, and bag boys, but I felt impervious in my ivory tower. Actually, my office more closely resembled a windowless dungeon, but I had brightened it up with photographs of my family, a few pieces of art that I had scrounged from summer garage sales, and a stuffed green and blue snake that Simon had won at the county fair. He gave it to me as a gift when I was named assistant manager.
Michael had seemed less than enthusiastic when I told him about my new title, and though I hadn’t understood it at the time, I realized as I grabbed my purse off the floor of the car why my position caused him alarm. He thought that it would be harder for me to leave Value Foods if I was anything more than a clerk. I bit my lip when it struck me that he was right. At least a little. There was more to it than that, but I couldn’t help taking pleasure in a job that I had never hoped would be anything more than a way to earn some money. I had never imagined myself assistant manager material.
Sure, the scheduling and record keeping were mundane, but Mr. Durst also let me do some of the purchasing and sales, and after the first month he completely handed over control of the weekly Value Foods flyer and promotional discounts. I quickly discovered that I loved unearthing wholesalers who could provide items we’d never stocked before. It was like finding treasure.
At first, my manager had been skeptical that we’d be able to move items like garam masala or the fresh raspberries that I contracted from the farmer who lived just down the road from us. But I had provided a recipe for spicy pork curry with the masala coupon in our flyer and made a Local, Homegrown sign out of old barn wood to post by the woven tubs of gem-colored berries. Both had been a huge hit, with jars of masala disappearing off the shelf and people begging for more raspberries. Mr. Durst just laughed in wonder and told me to keep at it.
In spite of being more or less abandoned by my boys, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling as I wrenched open the heavy back door of Value Foods. The storeroom was cool and my favorite worker was filling a grocery cart with cans of tomato sauce to restock the shelves.
“Good morning, Graham,” I said, offering him a little wave. He had grown up so much in the years that I had known him. The scrawny boy who had stood a whole head shorter than me when I started working as a stock girl was now a star athlete who towered so high that I worried about neck cramps when I looked at him. He had even gone to a major university on a basketball scholarship. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to college?” I asked, confused that he was handling tin cans instead of basketballs and books. “I didn’t schedule you for this week.”
“Yeah, but I actually don’t start until next week. I commandeered a couple of shifts. Textbooks aren’t cheap, you know.”
“You could always quit and keep working here.”
He knew I was teasing, but he seemed to give my suggestion serious thought anyway. “You’re easy to work for, Jules, but I think I might still like to get my degree.”
“You’d better,” I told him, leveling a finger at him like the mother I was.
He winked and went back to work, but just as I was about to disappear through my office door, he called, “Hey, Julia! I thought we had something special.”
I gave him a puzzled look.
Graham’s smile was crooked and endearing. “I’m just jealous that you’re getting flowers from some other guy.”
Spinning a finger around my temple to let him know he was crazy, I edged my office door open with one hip. Suddenly I got Graham’s strange joke. In the middle of my desk was a vase of flowers so big, it stood nearly as tall as I did. Flowers had never really been my thing, but these were exquisite—not your typical bouquet of red roses. I recognized the tall spires of purple delphiniums and the smaller clusters of white freesia. There were magenta spider lilies and pale yellow chrysanthemums the size of dessert plates. When I looked closer, I saw that there were roses, too, but they weren’t red—they were the color of tangerines and sunrise, of a warm summer flame.
My breath was caught in my throat, and when I finally grasped that I was suffocating and took in a wheezing breath, the scent of all those flowers was nearly overpowering. Michael, I thought. It had to be Michael. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I paused. If Parker had my e-mail address, it wasn’t a huge leap to imagine he’d tracked me down. But the bouquet before me was too personal. He wouldn’t, I assured myself. He wouldn’t dare.
I lunged for the credit card–size note that was wedged between two waxy leaves. The envelope betrayed nothing more than my name, written in a curlicue script that was anything but masculine. So a florist wrote the note. No hint there. I ripped it open and found one line in the same handwriting. Call me. It was signed M.
All at once I felt winded and dropped into my office chair with a moan of relief. In comparison to Parker’s loaded e-mail, Michael’s unexpected gift of flowers felt safe, almost homey. I was overwhelmed by the reminder that whether or not Michael had proposed to me a week ago, he loved me. I loved him. He was my best friend and confidant. He made my pulse race. Somehow I had lost sight of that in the midst of my disappointment that everything had not turned out exactly as I dreamed it would. I had lost sight of us.
I fumbled in my purse for my cell phone and dialed Michael’s number with trembling fingers. “Pick up,” I whispered. “Pick up.”
It rang only once.
“Hey, you.” Michael’s voice was soft and familiar. It sounded as if he had been expecting my call.
“Hey, you,” I echoed.
“Got the boys dropped off at school?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re at work now?”
“Yeah.”
“So you . . .”
“Are staring at the amazing flowers you sent me.”
�
�I hoped you’d like them.”
“I do. And I’m not the sort who goes all wobbly at the sight of flowers, but . . .”
Michael laughed. “You’re wobbly?”
“It might have more to do with you than the flowers.”
His low exhalation spoke volumes, but I was surprised when he whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? For what?”
“For putting you in such an awkward place. How could I expect you to just pack up and leave everything? Your job, Nellie, your home . . . And all I offered you in return was a social experiment.”
I giggled. “You’ve been in med school too long.”
“Yet I’m nowhere near done,” Michael said, his voice low and serious.
“I know.” It broke my heart a little that what had started out so innocent—a moment of renewal, of reconciliation even—had turned into something somber in the span of a second. “So . . .”
“So we forget my ridiculous—my insensitive proposal.”
I wondered if he realized the way that word stirred my soul. A proposal was a promise, a pledge, the assurance of forever. His offer in the grove hadn’t been a proposal. Far from it. And yet it was something. “You want to just go back to the way things were?” I asked, my words light as the air it took to voice them.
“No.” Michael’s answer was immediate. “No, I think we’ve come too far to turn back now.”
Hope pricked at my heart, made tiny holes where everything I felt for him began to leak out, slow and warm. It filled me, made me believe for the first time since his awkward proposition that we could still make this work. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
“I have an idea.”
“You do?”
“But I’m not going to tell you over the phone.”
“What?”
“This is more of a face-to-face sort of a thing.” Though I couldn’t see him, I could imagine the smirk that graced Michael’s lips.
“You’re kind of a jerk,” I told him.
“You’re kind of quick to jump to conclusions.”
I clutched the phone, pressed it to my forehead for a moment, and wished that I could wrap my arms around Michael instead of the small piece of plastic in my hand. “When do I get to see you?” I asked.
“Well . . . I just started eight weeks of microbiology, and it’s pretty intense.”
“Eight weeks? I can’t wait that long!”
“What are you talking about? Our entire relationship has been long-distance.”
“You don’t have to remind me. Holidays and summer break are like endless appetizers. I feel like I never get to eat a full meal.”
“I’m a snack to you?” Michael snorted.
“Bad analogy. But you know what I mean. We’ve never been together for more than a couple of weeks at a time.”
“So eight weeks should feel like nothing. The syllabus eases up a little at the halfway point. I might be able to squeeze in a quick trip home then.”
I worried my bottom lip, doing the mental gymnastics necessary to calculate if I could fit in a visit to Iowa City. It just didn’t seem plausible. I let go of a shallow breath. “Okay. Just make sure you grow some nice microorganisms for me.”
“We’re dealing with bacterial meningitis and pathogens. You wouldn’t believe the—”
“Too much info, Dr. House.”
Michael laughed. “Okay, okay. I’ll see you soon.”
I thought his definition of soon was a little loose, but I didn’t tell him so. “A month,” I declared, trying to put a time frame on it so I could start counting days.
“A month,” he agreed. “But more likely two.” He sounded rueful, almost despondent, and my heart trembled at the realization that he hated the distance between us just as much as I did.
“Fine,” I whispered. “Two.”
We were silent for a moment, the only sound between us the measured exchange of our quiet breaths. As he breathed out, I breathed in. “Thank you,” I finally said. “For the flowers. They’re beautiful.”
“I love you,” Michael told me.
“Love you, too.”
I clicked the phone shut, laid it on my desk, and stared at it as if it contained Michael’s secret. He had an idea. . . . What in the world could he be planning?
But as much as I wanted to waste hours daydreaming about Michael, I simply didn’t have time to think about him. About us. Guilt at coming in to work late, and then spending my first five minutes on duty glued to the telephone, drove me into warp speed as I officially started my day. I was grateful that Mr. Durst came in at nine, and no one but Graham was around to suspect that I was doing anything other than work in my office.
Moving the flowers to a side table, I plunged into my daily workload. I reconciled the sales receipts from the day before in record time, filled the final holes in the new September schedule, and made a disciplinary phone call to a sales clerk who continually showed up five to ten minutes after the start of her shift. She was contrite, and I was in a gracious mood, so I didn’t give her the tongue-lashing she deserved. Instead, I asked about her daughter’s first day of high school, and we commiserated as lonely mothers of independent children. It was a brief moment of connection, and when I hung up, I felt confident that she wouldn’t be late again.
I took my lunch break with Graham and sent him to Subway with a twenty-dollar bill and instructions not to come back until he had purchased a feast worthy of his bon voyage party.
“It’s Subway.” Graham’s sloped eyebrow assured me that there was no such feast to be found at the sandwich mecca.
I shrugged. “Do what you can. I’ll uncork a bottle of our finest.”
Although Graham laughed when he realized that our finest consisted of a $2.99 bottle of nonalcoholic cold duck, he seemed willing enough to go along with my impromptu celebration. I poured it into mismatched mugs from my office and we settled ourselves on the picnic table outside. Napkins served as plates, Doritos a delectable side dish that perfectly complemented our matching meatball subs. Of course, the sandwiches weren’t quite matching. Mine was a six-inch; his was a footlong plus the other half of my truncated sub.
By the time we had laughed our way through the half-hour lunch break, I was in such an expansive mood that the loose ends of my life seemed less like frayed edges and more like bright ribbons. They were a bit tattered maybe, but cheerful too. Full of possibilities instead of dead ends. I was revived by the assurance that Michael had an idea, that he could somehow make everything work when only yesterday I was certain that our relationship had turned the final corner. It was like the sun had broken from behind a cloud, and though the light was thin and indistinct, it cast coins of color where shadows had crept.
I was in such a good mood that when I unpacked a box of startling new stock, I found myself laughing uncontrollably instead of groaning in disappointment. It was probably my first foolish purchase, though the seller had assured me that the postcards adequately captured the “pastoral beauty of our lovely Iowa.” If by “pastoral beauty” she meant barrels of pink piglets and a gigantic ear of corn in a rusty wagon, the postcards were a smashing success. But I had hoped for twilight landscapes and vistas of endless Midwestern horizons. On any other day, I would have been dismayed at the sight of an eighty-year-old farmer in gumboots with manure up to his armpits and a jaunty caption proclaiming, Wish you were here! Today, I found it funny. Endearing, even.
As I prepped them for a display near the checkout lanes, I ended up choosing one postcard of every design for myself. Little gifts for Michael. He would find them hilarious. Or he’d be embarrassed by our quaint, backwater state and insist we move somewhere more chic the day he graduated from med school. I grinned when I realized I had envisioned us moving.
My workday was over at four, and I was anxious to go home and find out how Daniel and Simon had fared their first day of school. I arranged my desk carefully, wondering how in the world I would get the flowers home without smashing t
hem and plotting special things to do with my boys. I’d take Daniel exploring around the creek at the back of our property, and if we found a frog or—heaven help me—a snake, I’d put it in a jar and let him take it for show-and-tell. And I’d persuade Simon to take a walk with me. I’d explain to him that everything was going to be okay, that we absolutely were not moving to Iowa City right now, and that he had nothing at all to worry about. He’d believe me; I knew it.
I was just about to switch off my computer when I realized that there was one more person I could bless on this banner day.
My junk box was empty save for the one note that had caused me such heartache. In a few days the message would be erased from my account permanently, and I would never have to confront it again. It was a comforting thought, and I almost let myself shut down the computer without acting on my foolish impulse. Almost. But deep down I knew that whether or not the note existed in cyberspace, it would always exist in my heart, in a private place where I clung to those fathomless emotions that I couldn’t begin to explain or understand. A place where secrets and questions and what-ifs stirred with every inhalation.
I paused for a moment before clicking the message to life, then quickly hit Reply so I wouldn’t be forced to reread Parker’s words. There was no need to revisit his plea. I knew what he wanted to know.
Do I have a child?
I typed three letters before hitting Send.
Yes.
Words
I didn’t know that three letters would change my life.
Of course, I should have. Throughout my twenty-four years I had been forever altered by such trios. Bye. Boy. And someday soon, I hoped, I do. It was irresponsible of me to imagine that my small act of benevolence wouldn’t ripple forward like waves on a pond. Yes was a tiny pebble to throw, but it wrinkled the fabric of my days all the same, shaping my future in ways I couldn’t begin to fathom.
But I didn’t know that at the time. It took me a good week to realize that e-mailing Parker was quite possibly one of the most self-destructive things I could have ever done.
