Around the Bend

by Shirley Jump

  It wasn’t, in other words, what I had expected from Dave’s 36D wife.

  “I have rum. And…tequila,” she said, searching a cabinet above the Kenmore stove.

  “Do you have Coke?”

  She shook her head. “Diet Pepsi.”

  “It’ll do.” Heck, I would have had the rum straight, but I figured Susan didn’t know me well enough to see me get drunk, something I’d done more in the past few days than in my entire life. After all that had happened, I was beginning to see the upside of staying perpetually toasted.

  She poured two rum and Diet Pepsis over ice, then returned to the table, sliding one in front of me. Apparently Susan also wasn’t paying attention to the clock when it came to having a respite from the shock-and-awe campaign executed by Dave’s funeral.

  I drank deeply, then pushed the glass away and folded my hands over each other. Susan was one of the keys to what had happened with Dave, to why he had married another. I needed her, even though I didn’t want to.

  “The way I see it,” I began, “both of us have been screwed, pardon the pun, by Dave.”

  She nodded. Slowly.

  “And I want to know why. I was married to him for fifteen years.”

  Susan raised a palm, wiggled her fingers. “Five here.”

  I swallowed that fact, allowing it to hit my stomach and churn in the empty pit with the rum. Five years. That meant he’d married her the year I was in the hospital having my appendix removed. I tried to think of when Dave had been gone then, but my brain had become a fuzzy mess of dates and lies.

  For a second, I thought of telling Susan the whole thing was a huge mistake. Thanks for the rum, but I gotta go.

  Then I realized leaving wasn’t going to do anything but put me back to square one, and instead I stayed where I was, taking another gulp of my drink from a glass decorated with flowers around the edge, and tried to regain some kind of normalcy.

  Ha. There wasn’t any of that here. What I had was a whole lot of questions and a piano-playing dog who kept looking at me with expectant eyes, as if I was supposed to do some amazing trick, too.

  “Well,” I began again, trying to drum up the courage to press forward, to force myself out of the comfort zone where everything was a known quantity. “I don’t know about you, but I want some answers.”

  Susan shook her head. “I—”

  “Don’t say you don’t want to know.” I waved the glass at her, the ice clinking in the emptiness. “Because you will. An hour from now, a day from now, you’ll wonder why. You’ll look in the closet and see his shoes—”

  Oh, God, his shoes were under her bed, too. In her closet. Was this where his favorite blue shirt had gone? The one I’d torn the closet apart looking for last May? Or the yellow striped tie I told him I hated that he’d never worn again in my presence?

  I clutched the glass tighter, to keep myself from running to her bedroom to peek and see how much of my husband was here.

  “And you’ll want to know,” I went on, pushing the words past my lips, “because you’re some kind of masochist who hates to have a mystery unsolved.”

  “I kind of like mysteries,” Susan said, a bright smile on her face, as if I’d just handed her a new Nancy Drew.

  “Work with me, Susan.” I bit off the aggravation in my voice. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to know. About Annie. About where he went when he wasn’t with you.” I swallowed. “Or me.”

  She toyed with her still-full glass. Silence descended over the kitchen, seeming to darken the bright, pretty room. “I left him that day, you know.”

  “Yeah, the EMTs told me.”

  “We had a fight,” she said.

  I tried not to let on how much it weirdly pleased me to hear that he and Susan had had a fight.

  “We had the fight after we…well, you know.” A faint sheen of red filled her cheeks, a surprise in this woman who seemed so Manhattan. “Anyway, I left and took the train back to Rhode Island, figuring he’d catch up with me at home. If I had known—” Her voice caught on a sob and held the last syllable. “I’m sorry, Penny.”

  She was apologizing to me for leaving my husband. For not being there when he’d had a heart attack. She made it impossible to hate her. “I’m sorry for you, too.”

  She nodded, then picked up the tumbler, knocked back half the drink and slammed the small glass back onto the wooden surface. Brown liquid sloshed over the rim. “You’re right. I want to know, damn it. I loved that man and I want some answers, too.”

  To hear her say she loved him hit me in the gut, hard. I rose, poured myself another drink—skipping the cola this time—and the feeling went away. A little.

  Harvey the Wonder Dog trotted into the kitchen, his nose to the floor, looking for scraps, or maybe another rug to circle.

  “I say we take him,” I said, gesturing to the Jack Russell terrier, “to this doggie show and ask everyone there about Dave. They knew him, they know Harvey.”

  “And if they won’t tell us anything?”

  I grinned at my strange new ally and raised my glass. “We’ll break out the rum.”

  As she toasted my glass with her own, I had a flashing nightmare of the two of us ending up on Jerry Springer, telling our tale of woe while Harvey did tricks in the background.

  Surely, it wouldn’t come to that.

  I’d go on Oprah before I’d ever sink to Springer.

  Maybe.

  six

  The next time I took a road trip to discover the truth about my late husband, I would go it alone.

  Susan wasn’t a bad person, but the combination of Harvey and her in the car nearly drove me over the edge. Susan chattering, Harvey pacing and whining. I was used to being alone in my car, listening to the music I liked, the talk-radio programs that interested me, but as we moved farther from Boston, the reception got worse and Susan’s voice box revved up. She’d talked all through the night, making me regret letting her get a fifty-five-ounce Diet Coke at our last gas fill.

  We’d stopped for fast food at one of the exits off of Route I-81 in Virginia. The place had been littered by ten million roadies before us, but Susan had assured me, one hand securely on my arm, that there couldn’t possibly be any airborne viruses in a place like that.

  Probably because they’d all run for the hills, overcome by the grease fumes.

  I’d gotten a cheeseburger, but opted to have us eat in the car—breaking one of my cardinal rules—after I saw a fly groom himself on a table in the apple-themed food court.

  “Here’s a napkin,” I said once we were back in the car. “You might want to spread it out, like a tablecloth. There are wet wipes in the glove box, so you don’t get any grease on the door handles. Oh, and watch those little salt packets. They have a tendency to spray.”

  “Here, Harvey,” Susan said, ignoring my housekeeping instructions and opening a six-piece box of chicken nuggets on the backseat of my Mercedes. Harvey dug in, as if he hadn’t already had his shot of Purina for the day. His little jaws made quick work of the nuggets, spraying brown confetti crumbs over the leather.

  “Can you get him to stop that?” I asked. “He’s making a mess.”

  “He’s a dog. He’s allowed.” Susan let out a sigh, her hundredth of the trip, then made a face at her window.

  “This is a Mercedes,” I said, realizing as I said it how pretentious it sounded. Like it was okay to get processed chicken tidbits all over a Chevy, but not a Benz. I relaxed my white-knuckled hold on the steering wheel, drew in a breath, let it out, then decided it was going to be a hell of a long drive to Tennessee if I didn’t get a grip. “Never mind, I’m sure he’ll eat all the crumbs.”

  He did just that, leaving a gooey white trail of doggy saliva on my seats in the process. Eww. I made a mental note to get the car reconditioned. Or better yet, call one of those crime-scene cleaners to erase all trace of dog.

  The miles passed, with neither one of us talking. Harvey thrust his muzzle out the three inches of open
window, sniffing the air with an enthusiasm that bordered on cocaine snorting. Every once in a while, he’d let out a yip, as if he’d seen someone he knew, his tail beating a greeting against the backseat. Then he’d hop down, dance around the backseat, nudge at his backpack, hop back onto the armrest and start the process all over again. If I hadn’t known better, I’d swear he was doing doggy aerobics.

  I switched on the radio, but couldn’t get anything besides static. I watched the mile markers on I-81, which come every tenth of a mile, as if taunting me with how far I had yet to go, dread building in my stomach with each round number—261, 263, 268.

  “Did you ever meet Vinny?” Bracing for the answer, I stiffened my spine and concentrated on the road—and not what lay at the end of it.

  Because it sure as hell wasn’t a leprechaun and a nice little pot of gold.

  “Vinny?” Susan thought a minute. “No, though I heard Dave talking to someone with that name a couple times, if that helps.”

  A pang slammed into my chest, as sharp as a steak knife. Picturing Dave in her kitchen, or worse, her bedroom, sitting on the Sealy, lying against the pillows, talking on his cell. He’d have one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, and he’d be slumped a little, relaxed. If there was one thing Dave hadn’t been, it was high-strung.

  “Apparently, he’s Harvey’s trainer,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  In five seconds, conversation had died, may it rest in peace and never be resurrected. Had I really thought I could spend fifteen-plus hours in a car with a woman I didn’t know, and had nothing in common with—

  Except a husband.

  Susan fidgeted beside me, adjusting the strap of her purse in her lap, then the deep V at her neck. Susan had a way of dressing that was just a step above streetwalker and about five hundred steps away from me and my turtlenecks and St. John’s Bay suit jacket. I wondered if that was what Dave had needed, a little dash of Victoria’s Secret to keep my husband home. If I’d worn a V-neck instead of a turtleneck, would he have craved another woman?

  I had to stop playing this guessing game. It certainly didn’t improve my mood.

  “So, Penny, what’s the plan?” Susan asked me, pivoting in her seat as she did, her face now happy and bright, as if the whole thing was just oh-so exciting. Either she was putting on a good show because she was just as bored as I was, or she truly thought this was going to be one long pajama party.

  “We go down to Tennessee, meet this Vinny, give him the dog and…” My voice trailed off.

  “And find Annie?”

  I turned and looked at Susan. “Do you want to find Annie?”

  She sighed and, in that sound, I heard every emotion that had torn apart my heart in the past few days. Like it or not, the two of us were going through the same grieving, sharing the pain as if we were conjoined twins. “Not really. But I suppose we have to, don’t we?”

  I wanted to say no, we didn’t. That we could leave Annie wherever she was in Podunk, U.S.A., and go back to our merry lives like nothing had happened. That we could dump the dog and run.

  But the practical side of me knew if there was a will—which I had yet to find in my search through the house—insurance money, social security death benefits, then there were legalities to work out between the three of us. If there were three. Maybe Annie was Harvey’s breeder or dog food provider or something.

  “This is kind of fun,” Susan said, resting one skinny bare arm on the door. “I’ve never been on a road trip before.”

  Fun? She was having fun?

  “I haven’t traveled much, either.”

  “Why not? You seem the…sophisticated type.”

  “I’m an accountant,” I said, as if that was an explanation for everything.

  “But don’t you have, like, accountant get-togethers where you discuss exciting things about taxes or whatever?”

  I laughed, the sound bursting from my lungs so spontaneously I almost didn’t recognize it. It had been days since I’d laughed. Weeks, maybe. “Well, they do have conferences, but I’ve only been to one.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t do well in strange places.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean,” I hastened to add, in case it sounded as if I was some kind of an agoraphobic conference freak, “that a conference throws me off my schedule.”

  “I don’t even own a watch,” Susan said, as if that should make total sense to me.

  In a weird way, it did.

  In the beginning of our marriage, Dave had asked me to travel, to go with him to conventions and client appointments in different cities. I’d tried it, once, and found the whole experience so unnerving and so out of my control that I’d never gone again. I’d pleaded headaches, the flu, work deadlines—until Dave stopped asking.

  Now I knew why. It hadn’t just been my reluctance that had made him quit inviting me along. He’d been hiding a life that he’d apparently decided I didn’t want to share.

  If he’d asked one more time? If he’d told me…

  What would I have said?

  I already knew that answer. Hell, no, I didn’t want a dog that could pirouette. And a definite nix on the idea of trotting him around dog shows all over the country. I mean, we’d had a mortgage to pay, a lawn to mow, for Pete’s sake.

  “Oh, look, hitchhikers!” Susan pointed at what was clearly a novelty to her, standing on the highway in the misty rain. “Let’s stop.”

  “Haven’t you read Stephen King? Don’t you know the chances of us being maimed or robbed…or worse?”

  Susan waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, they look okay.”

  I glanced at the couple by the side of the road as we neared them. A scrawny guy in jeans with long, unkempt brown hair standing beside a short, plump woman who was either pregnant or hiding an Uzi under her shirt. “No. We’re not picking them up.”

  “Fine.” Susan pouted, then turned her face again toward the window, giving the couple a little wave as we drove past.

  Mile marker 274. Tennessee had never seemed so far away.

  If these miles didn’t start passing faster, or if Susan didn’t suddenly fall asleep in her seat, there was going to be a felony committed in this car. And it wouldn’t be at the hands of some nameless hitchhiker.

  “Susan, listen, I—”

  The Benz jerked to the right with a loud pop, cutting off my sentence. I gripped the wheel, struggling to pull the car back into the lane before we were creamed by a mint-green Honda Odyssey puttering along in the slow lane.

  “Holy crap! What just happened?” Susan asked, her face deathly white.

  “Flat tire.” Or at least, that’s what I assumed. I’d never had anything go wrong with the Benz. Dave had always taken care of maintenance and when one car wore out, he’d replaced it with another just like it, black, dependable. “I think.”

  I slowed, waited for the Odyssey to go by, then pulled off the road, gravel spitting between my tires and dinging against the body. The Benz leaned to one side, sinking into the ground as if an elephant had taken over Susan’s spot.

  I got out and walked around to the front of the car, feeling the whoosh of traffic passing by, lifting my hair and jacket, making them flap in the hurried sixty-five-miles-per-hour breeze. There was no mistaking what had happened. The tire on the passenger side had gone flatter than a sheet of cardboard.

  “Do you know how to fix it?” Susan asked, climbing out of the car and standing beside me in her ridiculous heels, shoes that were definitely not designed for performing car maintenance.

  “No. I know how to call Triple A, though.”

  Susan looked disappointed, as if she’d paid her dollar for an adventure and was expecting me to provide one. I went back to the car, searching for my cell phone. It wasn’t in the ashtray/change dish. Not in the cup holder, not on the dash, not in my purse. I started feeling blindly along the carpet, trying to ignore the French fry and nugget crumbs, then finally found it. Under Susan’s seat, the cover flippe
d open.

  The battery was dead.

  When had I gotten this distracted that I’d forget to recharge my cell? That I hadn’t even noticed it had bounced out of my purse? I couldn’t think of a single other time when I hadn’t been on top of everything, knowing exactly how to get from A to B.

  And yet, I’d left this morning in a car with a woman who was a total stranger with nothing more than an overnight bag, a road atlas and a can of soda. I’d never done anything that unrehearsed, that unplanned.

  At least not until my dearly beloved and stone-cold husband had thrown a big old roadblock into my life. A roadblock with impossible shoes and a tendency to talk at the worst time.

  I cursed and tossed the useless cell onto the seat. It hit the hard surface of the armrest, bounced up and pinged into the backseat. Harvey let out a yip, then cowered in the corner.

  And peed on the leather.

  That was it. The last straw in a haystack that was already depleted. I started to cry, collapsing onto the driver’s seat in a useless heap. What was I thinking, driving this far? I could have just stayed in Newton, handing off the estate to some attorney who would tell Susan and Annie they’d get to split the dog and none of the things Dave and I had worked so hard to build together.

  I didn’t want to hear that our entire life had been a group effort, that I had to triangulate my assets, as I had my husband.

  Soon as the tire was fixed, I was turning around, heading back home. I didn’t want to know what Dave had been up to. I didn’t want his damned dog. And I especially didn’t want his other damned wife.

  “Penny?” Susan’s touch was light on my shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Yes.” Years of conditioning, of pretending everything was all right even as it crumpled around me, spit that word out on a sob.

  “Don’t worry about the tire. Help has arrived.” She gestured beside her with a flourish, at the two hitchhikers I’d bypassed five minutes earlier.