The sound caused Cara to jump, startled, and made her feel sick, her stomach churning in giant waves. Cara shivered even as the breeze blew warm air through the room, stirred the used Kleenex on the table.
Cara took a long, deep breath and tried to steady her voice. “Yes. He is. There is someone else he wants to be with, someone besides all of us. He’s staying with her for now. I can’t answer for him, sweetheart, I can’t tell you what he’s thinking; he’s going to have to do that. And I’m sure he will, in his own time.” She said this to Katie in a whisper. Never had she sounded, never had she felt, quite so dead.
Katie crossed the kitchen floor with determination and picked up the cordless phone that hung in its nest on the wall. She punched in the numbers and waited, her eyes focusing on nothing in particular. Subconsciously she gnawed on her fingernails, the black nail polish chipping off with each bite. Muffled, the outgoing voice mail greeting on Jack’s cell phone clipped out of the receiver. The beep tone pierced through the still air in the room before Katie began hurling obscenities and left her father the last words he would hear from her until nearly Thanksgiving:
“YOU ASSHOLE. BASTARD. HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO US. IF YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST WALK OUT OF OUR LIVES AND EXPECT US TO BE OKAY WITH IT, YOU ARE MORE STUPID THAN EVEN I GIVE YOU CREDIT FOR. I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE, BUT I WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. DON’T FUCKING COME AROUND THIS HOUSE OR ME OR MY BROTHERS OR CLAIRE OR MOM EVER. EVER AGAIN. DO YOU HEAR ME? DO YOU HAVE A GODDAMN CLUE ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING?”
Jack would be furious with Katie’s disrespect. Cara silently wondered if such a rage existed somewhere within herself, some untouchable place she hadn’t yet found. Somewhere that she’d eventually be able to find and use. She was never more proud of Katie, never more in awe of her than while watching her berate her father on his voice mail. Cara hoped he’d play Katie’s message on his speakerphone, Barbie poised in the front seat of his car with her lips pursed as if she’d bitten into a lemon.
Cara sat at the table, and tucked her legs up under her behind. She knew she had a role to play—the parent—but she was so tired, so done with life, that she couldn’t find the strength to take Katie aside to talk with her, reason with her, even punish her for the outburst she’d just had. Katie slammed the phone back in its cradle before she made her way back to Cara’s side. She stopped to run her hand down her mother’s spine, kissing her on the top of her head lovingly before she stomped down the hall and out of sight to the back of the house, her bedroom, her refuge.
Katie was fragile, just barely on the mend. Surely Cara could find the courage to remind her that they could all deal with this, that a drink wasn’t the solution. Katie had lost herself so many times in the bottom of a bottle; Cara couldn’t bear to think of what this might do to her.
Cara put her head down on the long kitchen hardwood table and dozed off.
What seemed like forever later, she heard the front door swing open and close firmly and listened for the footsteps that would follow. She made her way out of the chair she’d been molded into and toward the entrance hall, convinced it must be Jack who had realized his stupidity. She prayed that he’d come to his senses. Either that or he’d gotten Katie’s message and was ready to stand battle.
She cut the corner at the dining room, and came face-to-face with Melanie. Their eyes met just as Mel began calling Cara’s name. Melanie’s hair was swept up in a long but simple heavy black braid; she’d been at the gym. Dressed in her workout clothes and her cross trainers, she seemed longer, more graceful than she already was at six feet. Her legs went on forever. She was without makeup, but sheer beauty, confident and calculated, and she took Cara in with her exquisite, piercing eyes.
They slumped on the polished marble floor together; Cara’s cleaning lady had just mopped and high-gloss waxed it the day before. The tiles were cool and they dissolved against them in a heap. Heaving, heavy sobs racked Cara’s body until there was nothing left. Mel held her, wordless and comforting. Then she asked Cara if she was done, if she’d had enough. Melanie said it just like that, too.
“Cara, for God’s sake, are you done now? Have we had enough of this already?”
“How did you know?” Cara asked, confused. Mel lived in San Francisco, nearly an hour away, and she rarely ventured south of Market Street unless she absolutely had to. It had to practically be a life-or-death emergency for her to follow the freeway south of where the bay cut inland, separating the Peninsula from Oakland and the East Bay hills.
Melanie cleared her throat purposefully. “Kate called me.”
Across the foyer, Katie made her way down the hall toward her room, convinced she’d done the right thing. She’d changed her clothes and brushed out her hair and, in a pair of holey jeans and a tank top, her hair loose and cascading around her shoulders, she looked much younger than she had only an hour ago when she had been screaming obscenities into the phone at her father. Her eyes were dark, circled in eyeliner and heavy with mascara. She jammed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and waited, watching them.
Melanie’s tone was reassuring but short and clipped. Cara knew Mel would have no sympathy for Jack; there would be no mourning period. Never friends to begin with, Mel and Jack had tolerated each other for Cara’s sake. Jack had moved in on Melanie’s territory, stole her time and diverted Cara’s attention. Mel was here to stake claim on what she thought had been unjustly taken from her.
Melanie lifted Cara to her feet, steadying her and, allowing her to rest her head under the arm she cradled around her as she led Cara back to the kitchen table. Immediately, Cara felt cared for, protected, the way she had always felt when Mel was around. Melanie then went to the bar, reached for two scotch glasses and filled them generously with tequila before she returned to the table and sat opposite Cara’s chair, the half-full bottle between them. She set the glasses on the table and sighed, waiting for Cara to say something.
“I don’t think I can drink that,” Cara said to her, because the same nausea that had been with her all afternoon had washed over her again. The smell of the tequila rose up to burn Cara’s nostrils even before she reached for the glass. From the back of her throat Cara tasted bile.
“Suit yourself,” Mel said and reached for her glass, “but it would do you some good, it would help.”
Cara stared at the shot, the honey-colored liquor that filled the bottom one-third of the glass. The smell was pungent, strong.
“He’s gone, Mel. Walked out.”
“Yep, sure is.”
Melanie tipped back the glass and took the booze into her mouth in a single swig as if she was taking a long drink from her water bottle. She placed the glass back down on the table and wrapped her hands over Cara’s, encapsulating them in her own. Mel’s hands were warm, and she laced her long fingers within Cara’s.
“He ain’t coming back, Cara. You know that, don’t you? You’ve known that for a long time; that once he left, he wouldn’t be back,” Melanie said matter-of-factly and without fear of repercussion. She wasn’t particularly concerned with hurting Cara’s feelings any more than they’d already been damaged; she simply wanted Cara to recognize what she knew would come to unravel over the next few days and months.
Cara nodded her head slowly, her eyes glazed and very far away. She felt like she should cry again, like there would never be enough tears to be done with it all, but nothing came this time; no loud sobs, no whimpering sighs.
“Cara? I mean it. Look at me.” Mel’s eyes darted across her face. “He ain’t coming back,” Mel said again, sounding out each of the syllables in the words. “You know this because you knew he was leaving. You’ve known all along that he was going to go.” She spoke slowly and clearly, allowing Cara to absorb the words. She wasn’t vindictive or vengeful, just factual.
Cara was used to Mel’s approach. It might have seemed cold, heartless, but it wasn’t meant to be. It was just Mel’s way.
A buzz collected in Cara’s brain like
a swarm of bees round a hive.
“What do I do, Mel? Where do I even begin?”
“At the beginning, the new beginning. Oh, baby, you start from this place—this one right here—and move forward,” she sighed. “Sometimes it’s going to feel like you are moving backwards. Sometimes it’ll feel like you’re being sucked backwards and you can’t go on another step, but you will. You’ll see. You start at the beginning, Cara. You can do this; you’re going to be fine. Without that bastard, you’re going to be better than fine.”
Cara knew Mel thought she should have left Jack long ago; Mel had been reminding her about it for years. But then again, Melanie would have never allowed herself to be in a relationship like Jack and Cara’s, married for so many years, dedicated and loving and nurturing in the beginning, truly partners. Cara’s mind flashed to the good times that dotted the canvas of her married life like fireflies in the night. You never knew quite when they were going to appear, but they were like a special treasure when one of them went off, something to be captured and held on to in a jar as if they might live on forever. In the past few years they’d become more rare, leaning toward extinction.
Melanie dropped her friend’s hands and poured herself another shot. Cara said to her, “Really, Mel, you can drink mine, if you’d like. I can’t stomach it right now.” She stared at the glass, and nudged it toward Melanie. “I just never thought he’d go. Really, in the end, I just didn’t think he would actually go.”
“He left a long time ago, Cara. He just packed today.”
Cara sat with those words for a minute, turning them over in her mind, shuffling them like a deck of cards. Mel was right. Jack had been unfaithful the bulk of their marriage, bouncing from one relationship to another, timing them at the most inopportune moments—just after Katie was born, then later when Cara was pregnant with Will. They’d nearly separated then, but Cara had clung to the notion that things would improve, that the kids would bring them closer together, that Jack’s new job would satisfy the craving within him that Cara couldn’t seem to fulfill. Then Luke and Claire nearly back to back, which had sent Cara spiraling and drove Jack further away, rather than closer, from all of them. Jack succeeded in the firm, made partner, spent less time at home, until finally his indiscretions were so obvious, he didn’t seem to mind the number of times he was caught. Still, Cara had never stopped loving him, never stopped believing she could bring him back, to all of them.
“Fool,” Cara whispered, barely audible, shaking her head at the memories of all the times she had known, all the things she’d disregarded.
“Uh-uh. No way, Cara, I won’t let you do that to yourself. This was not your fault. This was not something you caused or did or had any control over. This was Jack, this was all his deal.”
“Such a long life to be looking the other way.”
“You always knew where you stood on this, Cara. You knew what Jack was doing. You never once looked the other way; you were always honest about his infidelities. You do not deserve to be punished for trying to keep your family together, for trying to keep your marriage together. It was an admirable effort, even if I thought you should have given up on it a long fucking time ago.”
“At what cost, Mel? Look at me. I’m forty-three and I’ve got four kids, who I’m assuming will all stay right here with me, right here in this house, where every memory of my husband exists. This is the consolation prize? This is what I get?” Cara spread her arms wide and looked around the kitchen at the memories, the artwork hanging on the refrigerator, the corkboard covered with notes and a calendar full of activities. Signs of life, of family, were sprawled everywhere.
“No, babe, you get to start over. It’s hardly a consolation prize if you think about it. You get to do this the right way. You get to take all the stuff you were doing right about this, all the good you have done for your kids, all the love and unselfishness you’ve poured into this family, and you keep going, you keep doing that. And then? You start over, you get to a place where life’s about you and the things you need, the things you deserve. Not Jack. Not figuring out how you’re going to make this better for Jack, how you’re going to turn things around so Jack is happier. Now you get to see what makes this better for you. ’Cause you deserve that. You deserve to know what it’s like to get something back. You deserve that and so, so much more, Cara. So good riddance to Jack. Good riddance to his midlife crisis and his affairs and his piss-ass attitude around this house. Good riddance to all of that, Cara. This is your chance to make a life of your own, one that counts for something more than what Jack handed you.”
Cara pushed the shot of tequila across the table so hard that it sloshed and dripped down the side of the glass, and set in to form a ring on the table. Everything about her was unkempt, droopy. She couldn’t remember when she’d become so droopy. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, her cheekbones puffy. Her bobbed sandy-colored hair was limp and lifeless like straw. She was out of tissues, the cardboard box before her empty. She pushed her chair back and made her way to the bathroom for more.
She should be mad, she thought. Angry, angrier than she’d ever been. She should be disgusted with Jack, sick with what he had done to her, done to their children.
“And don’t tell me you didn’t know he was leaving, Cara,” Melanie hollered after her. When Cara turned to look at Mel she was staring at her glass, turning it round and round so the light from the window bounced off the crystal. When Mel met Cara’s eyes again, she said just a bit softer, “Don’t tell me you didn’t know he was leaving. You’ve known it all along. At least admit that. You’ll feel better about things if you’re honest with yourself. Trust me on that, Cara. Trust me on that.”
Cara nodded, plodding back to the table.
“How’s Katie taking it?” Mel asked, craning her neck toward the foyer, and down the hall toward the bedrooms. “She sounded fairly angry on the phone.”
“Oh, she’s pissed off all right. If I wasn’t so worried about what she might do next, I’d think it was kind of fabulous, actually.” Cara snorted, recalling the message that her daughter had left on Jack’s machine. “But you know how quickly Katie can swerve off course. I know there’s something I should do, I’m just not sure what it is.”
“Let me check on her, Cara. I’ll see how she’s doing before I head out.”
Cara agreed, nodding her head and blowing her nose at the same time.
In the hall, Mel knocked firmly on Katie’s door and didn’t wait for her to answer before opening it. Inside, Katie sat on her bed, propped by pillows, her knees pulled up to her chest. She’d put on a zip-up sweatshirt and her black Converses. There was a large hole in the left knee of her jeans and she sat pulling at the threads, staring at nothing.
“Kate?” Mel asked.
Katie stared ahead, her shoulders hunched and her mouth curved into a frown.
“Katie-girl?” Mel asked again, waiting to get a rise out of her.
Katie raised her eyes to meet Mel’s. “Yeah.”
Mel leaned against the door frame as if it was there to support her. “Your mom seems to be doing a little better but it’s going to be rough going for a few days.”
“Huh. Really? I can’t imagine why.”
“Kate, you get it, right? You know this may take a while for her to bounce back from. No matter how bad they’d been fighting. Well, your mom, she wasn’t really prepared for him to go, even after all this.”
“Uh, yeah, Mel. Yeah, I think I get it.”
“How are you doing?”
Katie rolled her eyes but didn’t meet Mel straight on. “Huh.”
“Your mom thinks you’re pretty angry about all this.”
Katie shrugged her shoulders in response.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“You want a drink?” Mel asked her. She wasn’t used to not getting a response and quite frankly, it was annoying her.
Katie’s eyes shot up, open wide. She couldn�
��t tell if Mel was altogether serious, but it wouldn’t have surprised her. Mel was always up to something and Katie was almost certain that she could even smell tequila on her.
“I’m not kidding, Kate. ’Cause if you want a drink, and I’m sure there’s a part of you that does, well, let’s just get it over with. Let’s just march right out to the kitchen and pour you one right now. Quite frankly, I’d rather watch you drink it than leave and wonder about what you’re going to do next. I’d rather you have it right here with your mother and me than sneak out of the house and go stand in the shadows over at the liquor store, waiting for someone to ask to buy you some beer.”
Mel wasn’t far off. The fact of the matter was that Katie did want a drink, preferably something that wouldn’t sit well, like Jagermeister. But Katie hung her head and shook it quickly, a mix of embarrassment and shame washing over her.
“All right, then. Listen, I’m going to go. You can call me, just like you did. You can call me anytime you or your mom needs me over the next few days. I’ll be down later in the week to check on Cara. And to check on you, too. But you can call me. It was the right thing to do.”
Katie nodded and when she did, Melanie realized that tears had filled her eyes. Mel hoped she hadn’t shamed Katie into feeling bad about wanting to drink, about coming clean with the fact that it was a weakness for her and that Melanie understood that weakness and how much, how easily, it could consume her. It hadn’t been Mel’s intention to embarrass her, only to give her an out. Who could blame the girl if she went off the wagon? Mel bet that Cara’s glass was still sitting on the table, untouched. Who would blame Katie for one shot?
Mel knelt at the side of the bed and pulled Katie toward her. She was shocked at how thin Katie had gotten, how knobby her legs felt as if she was a tiny, undeveloped adolescent.
When I'm Not Myself Page 2
