The mess in the kitchen was beginning to make Joan nauseous; she suddenly felt the need to break out some disinfectant and scrub everything in her path.
“What problems, Dermott?” Joan asked him inquisitively. She was fishing for something and he knew it.
Dermott fumbled, not sure of how to answer her question. “You got no business here, Joan. Not anymore. I can take care of my own household now; I don’t need you coming round to check on me, to check on us. Melanie’s mother left but she can’t be dragging all of that over to your family to deal with. I can take care of her. She should be here.” His voice caught as he said it, anger and emotion sweeping through. He stared at her, cold, waiting for her to meet his hard, angry eyes.
He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, holding the nicotine in his lungs, and reached for a glass sitting on the countertop that Joan hadn’t noticed before. Lots of ice, filled to the top. Joan knew Dermott wasn’t drinking water. She suspected Belvedere, Dermott’s vodka of choice. He may live like a slob, but he had good taste in his liquor.
He saw her eyeing his glass. “Can I pour you a drink?” he asked her, smugly.
“No. No, thank you.”
“C’mon Joan. One little drink? It’s been a long time since you and I have had a cocktail together. We could always count on a cocktail together.” His voice sent a shiver up her spine.
She stared at him, disbelieving. “No, Dermott. Not on your life. Not ever again.” She swallowed back a spoonful of guilt, losing her composure briefly. She wondered if it had been such a good idea for her to come at all.
He swirled the liquor in the crystal glass, letting the tension between them build. The ice cubes clinked against each other and then settled. Dermott was lanky, skinny and bony. His parts were long all over. He leaned against the chipped tile countertop and sucked long on the cigarette he held between his finger and thumb. She couldn’t stand it when he smoked; she had never been a smoker like Bea had.
Joan had had enough. She needed to leave the house before it came crushing down on her, before Dermott moved a step closer to her, closing her in. She cleared her throat and adjusted the silk scarf she wore loosely at her neck. “I suppose I should be going, Dermott.”
“Yeah?” He leered at her. “What’s your hurry? I don’t expect Bea will walk in the door any minute. Jus’ you and me here, you know.” He laughed at her, his haughty, gravelly voice filling the kitchen.
“No, Dermott, really, I think I should probably be going.” She rose and clutched her pocketbook against her hip, glancing at him briefly and letting him know that she meant business.
He caught her at the wrist, his long fingers easily circling Joan’s fragile, small bones, and spun her so that she was facing him. He was taller than her by a head, but somehow he managed to come eye level with her. In his eyes, she saw the hatred that Melanie must have seen. In his eyes, she saw the anger that Melanie must have lived with. Joan shuddered thinking about it. She knew she could never send Melanie back, not now, not ever.
“I want you to send Melanie home, Joan.” He spoke plainly, clearly. There was nothing friendly about his tone; Dermott was done negotiating.
Joan twisted her arm, trying to free herself but he held his grip on her. She did her best to keep her footing and thought about nothing but escaping the house, of running as fast as she could as far as she could. She cleared her throat and dared to meet Dermott’s eyes again. “I hear you,” she said to him. “I hear what you’re saying.”
For days following her visit to Dermott’s infested home, Joan felt as if she couldn’t get clean. She felt as if she couldn’t get warm. She felt as if she didn’t belong. It was as if something from the house had made its way inside of her and was staying put, and no matter how hard Joan tried to shake it off, she just couldn’t lose the feeling. She let her mind wander to Bea and what it must have been like for her in that house, the lonely and incomplete feeling that had finally overtaken her enough to drive her away.
15
Claire swung her legs back and forth, back and forth off the end of the worn leather couch. On either side of her, Will and Luke sulked against the cushions, complaining. They were hot; they were tired and hungry. And above all, they were bored.
“What do you get to eat?” Claire asked her sister.
Katie shrugged her shoulders. “All kinds of stuff. But none of it has been very good. Sometimes we get spaghetti,” Katie said to her, hoping to make it sound better than it was. Spaghetti was one of Claire’s favorite foods and Katie didn’t want her little sister worrying about her while she was locked in rehab.
Katie was annoyed with her mother; pissed off, actually. She didn’t see the point in dragging her little brothers and sister to the rehab facility so that they could spend their Sunday afternoon on display at the center. And she certainly wasn’t enjoying Claire’s version of twenty questions.
“Where do you sleep?” Claire asked her.
Katie nodded her head in the general direction of the brick wing of two-bed suites that bordered the visitors’ room. “Down there. I’m the second-to-last room. You can see my window from here.”
“What’s your room like?”
Katie shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing special.”
“Do you like it here?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then why don’t you come home?”
Finally, a question she couldn’t answer. Technically she had twenty-six days left, not quite four weeks. She didn’t feel ready yet. Not really. She wasn’t actually sure when she’d be ready. She just knew she didn’t feel that way yet.
“Don’t know, Claire-bear. I hope I can soon.”
Cara had gone in search of sodas from the machine in the adjoining corridor. She came back with two root beers in one hand, a Sprite and a Coke in the other. She doled these out and collapsed into the chair next to Katie’s. It had been a particularly grueling week at the office; she’d had a client fighting her on a campaign concept she knew in her gut was right for them, and nothing she or David had been able to do seemed to be working to convince the client otherwise.
“Mama,” Claire asked with authority, as if she could change fate, “when can Katie come home?”
Cara didn’t want to make promises she couldn’t keep. She’d learned by now that the disappointment was far worse than the truth. “I’m not sure, sweetie. Soon, I hope.” Cara reached for Katie’s hand but her daughter pulled away, and turned her head to look out the window.
It was a particularly gray and colorless day. Lately, Cara hadn’t been able to break through. Katie seemed angrier than ever, less cooperative and less willing to talk to her when Cara stopped by for her visits. The counselors assured Cara it was normal behavior, good signs, even. They thought it meant Katie was beginning to show signs of taking responsibility for herself and that it wasn’t Cara she was angry with, but herself.
“Will and Luke, did you see the pool table? Pretty cool, huh?”
They all turned to stare at the middle of the room where two patients were silently sharing the table, involved in a game without words. One of the patients, a twenty-six-year-old named Javier, wore a long black braid down the middle of his back. He was in a head-to-head competition with Scott, an artist who wore square black glasses, shaved his head and carried an iPod shuffle around his neck. He reminded Cara of someone she worked with, a talented web designer named Bobby.
It was impossible to have missed the table; you had to walk around the edge of it to get to the other side of the room.
“Hard to miss, Mom,” Will said and rolled his eyes. He kicked his feet up on the coffee table and slumped low on the couch as if someone from his middle school might spot him there and he’d be humiliated to be seen with his family.
“Sit up, Will. And get your feet off the table,” Cara said to him.
He lifted his feet from the table one at a time and stomped them on the ground but he didn’t push himself back on the sofa.
“Y
ou wanna play, Will?” Luke asked him, eagerly. “When those two guys are done? I’ll take you on.”
“Huh, yeah, right, Luke. Like you have a shot at beating me.”
Luke shrunk back into the corner of the couch, disappearing against the worn leather.
Cara was ready to challenge Luke herself, willing to do just about anything to keep him from crying, which he looked like he was ready to do at any minute. Heavy, salt-laden tears sprang to the bottoms of his lids and were hanging there; fat and pregnant with emotion. “C’mon, Luke, I’ll play you.”
He shook his head firmly and turned his mouth into a tight screw.
“C’mon,” Cara tried again, “I’ll bet you can beat me at that, easy. I’ve got to be one of the world’s worst pool players. You have no idea how bad I am.”
Luke shook his head firmly again and Cara was just about ready to give up, furious with Will for teasing his little brother for the millionth time that day. She threw Will a look that should have sent him begging for an apology, but instead left him more annoyed than anything.
On the middle of the table, Cara’s cell phone vibrated.
“Are you going to answer that, Mom?” Katie asked her.
“I’ll get it later.”
“Who is it?” Katie asked her.
Cara couldn’t imagine. There were only two people that ever texted her: Mel, and she knew it wasn’t Mel; and Katie, and Katie was sitting right in front of her. “I don’t have any idea,” she said to Katie.
They both reached for the phone at the same time, curious. Katie snatched it from the table, stopping the vibrating on the wood.
When will I see you?
“Who’s David Michel?” she asked, pronouncing his last name, Mitchell.
Cara froze, her stomach lurching. She couldn’t imagine what the message must say. She lunged for the phone and yanked it from Katie’s hand, flipping open the phone and retrieving the message.
Katie’s curiosity peaked, her intuition heightened. Her eyes narrowed and she stared at Cara, unforgiving. “Who’s David Michel?” she asked again, more harshly this time, in an accusatory tone.
“Someone I work with,” Cara retorted, snapping the phone shut.
When will I see you?
Could it be worse? Clearly her daughter had read the message and now Cara had to lie to her. Well, technically not a lie, of course. She repeated over and over to herself, we do work together; we do, we do.
When will I see you?
Cara’s mind raced, her heart pounding in her chest.
“Someone you work with? Right, Mom.”
Cara cleared her throat and looked up at Katie. Her daughter’s eyes were waiting on her, full of hurt and mistrust. She didn’t particularly feel like justifying her personal life, the one that existed outside of the life she had with her children, but then she realized there wasn’t really any life outside of her life with her children.
“He’s an account director,” Cara started, steadying her voice. “We work together on a couple of accounts, one that is particularly difficult right now. And I suspect,” Cara said, holding her cell phone in her hand and shaking it directly at Katie, “I suspect that David needs to speak with me about the client that has been giving us so much grief.” She looked from Katie to Will, Luke and Claire, all lined up on the couch, watching her, mesmerized, like they were watching a favorite television show. “Now, if you’ll excuse me for just a few minutes, I’ll go check in and see what it is that he needs.”
Cara stood up and dropped the coat she was holding in her lap into the empty chair. She smiled at them politely, trying to seem normal.
“Why didn’t he just call you?” Katie asked, and Cara stopped cold, feeling the weight of Katie’s stare on her back.
There was nothing she could tell her that would make Katie believe her. Cara stood still for a minute, then walked away from them at a clip.
“What do you mean, ‘When will I see you?’ Jesus, David, I’m with my kids.”
“Hello, Cara,” he answered her. He sighed, sounding tired, exhausted from dealing with their stubborn client, one of the agency’s largest. Maybe she’d been right. Maybe he’d only needed her help with the client. Maybe she’d overreacted.
She waited on the line, unsure of what she should say to him.
“Cara?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m here.” She took a deep, cleansing breath, instantly sorry for how she had reacted.
“I’m sorry, Cara. I didn’t realize . . .”
She didn’t let him finish. “It’s okay. Never mind.”
“I was thinking it would be nice to see you.” He waited a minute, waiting for her to answer him, to take the bait. When she didn’t, he filled in the dead air, the awkward silence that had settled over the phone between them. “Cara, where are you?” he asked her.
Cara followed the short corridor back toward the visitors’ room. Hazy smoke filled the room where her children sat at the other end. On the way she studied the addicts, the alcoholics and drug abusers, those who had lost control of their lives and couldn’t find any part of themselves that existed before. She wondered if she was all that different, really. She wondered if people looked at her and wondered when she’d be back to her old self again.
“I’m with Katie,” she said simply to him, and that was enough for him to know that she couldn’t see him now, not now and not for a while. She was leaning against the door of a janitorial closet, waiting for him to say something. She wasn’t sure what it was he might say to her, when he finally broke the silence.
“Stay strong, Cara. Call me when you can.”
She clicked off after that, hanging on those words.
When will I see you?
16
Jack eyed Cara carefully, looking her up and down.
“What?” Cara asked, finishing a peach. She chased the syrup with a napkin, slurping up the juice. Jack was dropping off the kids, lugging their backpacks and overnight bags into the house.
“Nothing, nothing,” he answered, dumping the load on the floor. “You look, um, well, I guess you just look different is all. Did you change your hair or something?”
Cara’s hand went to her hair, running her fingers through it. “No, no, nothing.” She was immediately suspicious. It wasn’t like Jack to stop and engage in meaningless chitchat. His usual modus operandi was to drop and run, usually with Barbie in the front seat of an idling car. But Jack looked like he was ready for coffee, maybe even breakfast.
“How was your weekend? Anything interesting going on?” he asked her, and her bullshit indicator went on.
“Fine,” she answered him. “Yours?”
“Fine, fine. Plenty to keep us all busy, of course.”
Jack was fishing, waiting for her to come clean.
Cara busied herself unpacking Claire’s backpack; stuffed animals and a sweatshirt, a book and her lunchbox.
“Cara?” Jack asked. “Are you, well, I’m not quite sure how to ask you this, so I guess I’ll just come right out with it. Are you dating someone? I mean, I know it’s not really my business and all, but the kids mentioned it this weekend. And I figured, if so, well, I should probably know about it.”
Cara put one hand on her hip and balanced herself against the kitchen counter. She didn’t know whether to laugh in his face or throw him out on his ass. “Well, you’re right about one thing, Jack. It is none of your business. But let me get this straight, you figured that if I was dating someone, you should probably know about it?”
He nodded. “For the kids, of course. In case they bring it up or something.”
“For the kids,” Cara replied, tilting her head as if she was thinking about how much sense that made.
“Yeah, Cara.” He narrowed his forehead. “In case they ask. What would you like me to say to them? I should probably have some sort of answer about whether or not their mother is dating someone . . .”
“God, Jack, that’s unbelievably thoughtful of you. Too bad you didn’t
clue me in when you started dating. It would have made things so much easier to explain to the kids then. Oh, right, that would have been a little awkward, I guess. Since we were still married and all.” She walked away from him, disgusted. The kitchen was clean, spotless, in fact, the way it always was after a weekend without the kids. There were no dishes in the sink; no crumbs left scattered across the countertops, but Cara whipped out the bottle of disinfectant anyway and started scrubbing away at the granite.
“C’mon, Cara, how long are you going to hold it over my head? How long are we going to go on bringing everything back to what I did to you? I’m sorry, Cara. I’ve said it, I don’t know how many times. Saying it again isn’t going to change anything. You know what, forget I asked. Forget I wanted to know if you were getting on with things. I figured that maybe you were actually getting on with things. And, quite frankly, I was going to be really happy for you, really I was. I thought that maybe you were seeing someone that was going to make you happy again, Cara. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”
The louder Jack talked, the more Cara scrubbed. She worked each tile, scrubbing at the grout until it looked as if it had been bleached. His voice was grating on her, pitchy and whiny and consistently nagging. She would have liked it if he would just leave.
“Getting on with things, Jack? You think I haven’t moved on? You think I’m sitting here pining away for you, crying for you every night?” She stared at him from the other side of the island, a small prep sink in between them. She wanted to tell him about David just to prove a point, just to wipe the sympathetic “poor Cara” look off his face, but then she didn’t see much point in it, anyway. It wouldn’t change anything, certainly not what Jack had done to her.
Jack pushed his sunglasses on top of his head and placed his hands, palms down, wide apart on the countertop. “Cara . . .”
“Don’t start, Jack. Do yourself a favor and stop there. Stop before you get yourself into a situation where you can’t afford to do anything but lie to get out of it.”
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