by Leanne Davis
She could picture him gnashing his teeth. “I am not mad at her, Tracy. I don’t sit around thinking of ways to get back at her, or fight with her, or ignore her. I’m busy, okay? I work, remember? I’m trying to keep my entire life afloat. And Vickie? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Where we stand, or where she wants us to stand. I don’t even know where I want us to stand. It wasn’t a malicious act on my part to get even with her or anything. I don’t know what you’re supposed to know. She is an adult. Whether you admit it or not, she is. She can decide what she tells her own family. Last time I tried to get involved, your parents didn’t talk to me for almost two months.”
“She called me from the bar next door to your work. She said—she said you two got into a fight and that was why she drank. Is that true?”
He rustled around and finally sighed into the phone. “We argue all the time. We always did. We just used to have periods where we made up. Where it was the opposite. But lately? Since she got home from rehab, we never have any good periods. We have nothing much good between us. It isn’t just my opinion; it’s hers too. I don’t know what you want me to tell you. Did I cause her to do that today? Maybe. Partly. But then, no; you can’t blame me. The responsibility has to end with her. At some point, you and your parents need to realize that she has to be accountable.”
“I do realize that,” she snapped.
When he spoke, his tone was weary, “I’ll be right there.”
“Good. At least, you can still be bothered.”
“That was low and uncalled for, since you know that isn’t the case.”
“I know my sister loves you and you need to try. Try harder. Help her.”
His laugh was hollow. “Your sister doesn’t know if she loves me anymore than I know if I love her.”
“She told me… she said what you were arguing about.”
He was silent. Finally, he said softly, “You? She said we were fighting about you?”
Her stomach rebelled just then by cramping, which made her double over. His words were so ugly. To think that she could come between her sister and her sister’s husband. “Yes,” her voice was barely audible.
“We fight about everything. You are just one on a list of fifty things. She thinks I have feelings for you. She won’t listen when I deny having any inappropriate intentions towards you.”
“Oh. My. God. Does she know?” she finally whispered.
“That we kissed? Yes. I told her about three months ago. Notice she hasn’t ripped into you, has she? She doesn’t really care, Tracy. She doesn’t really know what she cares about anymore.”
“How could you not tell me you told her? I can’t believe the stuff going on that you don’t feel inclined to freaking tell me. I’m right there. Every single day, I’m sitting right where you can see me. How could you not tell me that? Any of that?”
“I’m well aware you’re right there every day,” he finally whispered. She held the phone away. No. No. No. There was a tortured tone in his voice again.
“Did you notice how she hasn’t insisted that you stop coming to the office every day? Most women with her suspicions and beliefs would have first off kicked your ass out of her business. It’s half hers, you know. She knows it too. She wanted me to hire you. She sure as shit wouldn’t be shy about firing you. Or laying into you. Notice how she hasn’t done any of the above. She hasn’t done what you’d expect from her if she was so upset to discover you and I had a moment.”
“She’s passed out, drunk, in my spare room. What more do you need as proof for her having a reaction to our ‘moment’? Is that what you call it when your sister and husband irrevocably betray you?”
He sighed with exaggerated frustration. “We didn’t really betray her that much. You’re being a bit melodramatic. And it’s not the first time she’s passed out or gotten drunk somewhere, so it’s not totally about you.”
“She loved you. Before all this started, she was in love with you. Are you telling me that’s all gone for her?”
“I’m telling you she had three other husbands that she changed her mind about. I’m telling you we not only argue about you, but just about everything else. We argue about Julia, work, your parents, my parents, what we want for dinner. You name it, we fight about it. There isn’t much left of how we were when we started.”
“I still can’t believe all this happened.”
“Look, give me an hour to wrap things up. I’ll be over. Are the girls there?”
“No. My mom is handling their practices tonight. Does she have Julia too?”
“No. My mom has my daughter. The one person who never has her is her own mother, Vickie.” He hung up and Tracy stared at the phone in anger, shock and disbelief.
She paced the kitchen. Then she paced the living room. She checked on Vickie three times. Vickie didn’t move. Finally, she heard Donny knocking. His distinct knock. The knock she hadn’t heard in months. She ran down the stairs to the door and flung it open before suddenly stopping dead in her tracks as everything froze inside her.
Donny was there.
So? she nearly yelled out loud. She tried to stop her heart from squeezing with longing and passion at seeing Donny again. Who cared? She saw him all the time. There was no reason to get excited if Donny was around her or not.
They stared at each other. She finally stepped aside and he passed by her into the house. “Is she upstairs?”
“Yes. She’s passed out.”
“Sounds like a bad one.”
“Isn’t every time a bad one?”
His gaze sought hers and she finally turned to end it. “She was talking crazy and saying something about her being such a bad person. Why would she think that? When… when she isn’t the bad one?”
Donny suddenly stepped forward, and grabbed Tracy’s elbow before spinning her towards him. She was barely a foot from his chest. Her face was right there, at eye level with his breastbone. She looked down.
“Let me guess… we’re the bad ones?” Donny asked softly.
“Yes,” she whispered, still having a conversation with his chest. She could not bear to look at him. “Yes, what happened… it was so wrong.”
“I know that. But she isn’t all that innocent, either. This is all just a great, big cluster-fuck.”
Shaking her head, Tracy stepped away from him and kept retreating until she hit the wall with her back. “Yes. But not because of me. I quit. No more. I will not lose her as my sister because of you. You’re just a guy. You’ll divorce her like all the others did, and we won’t see you again. So it’ll be over. All of it. Vickie and I will find some way to muddle through this. I have to believe that. But you and I? We will not see each other again.”
Donny ran both his hands through his hair. “Don’t quit.”
“I quit,” she insisted, her voice barely a whisper. “I quit. All of it.”
His stricken gaze met hers. She straightened up and forced her facial muscles into a blank mask. She meant that. He could not sway her. And he could not know how much that cost her.
“I know.” He spun on his heel and stomped upstairs. She didn’t follow. She wilted against the wall and tried to keep her tears from flowing.
He came down minutes later, visibly shuffling under Vickie’s weight. Vickie hung like a rag doll in his embrace. His face revealed the strain of her dead weight. Tracy quickly opened the door and he passed through, without comment. Or a second look. He set her sister in his car and got in the driver’s seat and pulled away.
****
Vickie decided, once again, to enter an inpatient rehab. Donny was shocked when she woke up the next morning and announced that was her decision.
“I realize I want to be sober, Donny. Regardless of what happens with us, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling the way I do now. Even I have my standards, and this is way too much.”
“I think we should discuss Tracy.”
Her head popped up and her eyes widened in surprise as her mouth flat
tened into a scowl. “She is often on your mind, isn’t she?”
“You told her I was in love with her. You can imagine she’s a bit hysterical right about now in regard to where that leaves you two. She can’t stand the thought of losing you.”
“Ah, so you want my permission?”
He set his hands flat on the kitchen table and shifted his weight onto them as he held Vickie’s glare. “No. I don’t need it. If I ever decide to be with your sister, it will have nothing to do with you.”
She jerked back and her entire body went rigid. “Did you really just say that to me?”
He smiled slowly. “I did. It occurred to me last night, as I carried your drunken, comatose ass out of Tracy’s house, that you think I’m a pussy. You think I’ll never call you on your shit because I feel guilty. So I’ll let you drink. And I’ll turn a blind eye to your spending increases, and ignore that you’re not working and not even inquiring if I think you’re ready to take care of Julia. I realize now that you don’t want me anymore than I want you. I think you’re not going to say one way or the other. I think you’re going to make me suffer because it happens to be your damn sister you believe I want.”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t honestly know. I know I don’t really like being married to you anymore.”
A small smile hovered over her lips. “You turn me on when you get all alpha-asshole. Not a role you play very much. Is it me? Do I bring that out in you?”
He didn’t return the smile. “You think? And you don’t turn me on all drunk and needy and oblivious to our daughter.”
She nodded. “That’s fair. What do you think? You can just divorce me and take up with my sister?”
“Not hardly. What I’d most like to do is skip all the shit and fighting and just admit this isn’t working. I mean, unless you feel differently. Unless the scowls and venom you send my way are really jealousy over feelings I might have for someone else. I don’t get that from you. I get the feeling you really just don’t want to lose your high maintenance lifestyle again. Isn’t this about the usual duration? How long your marriages usually last?”
She flicked some crumbs off the table and fixed her gaze on her hands as if she were accomplishing a scintillating task. “I don’t mean for them to.” Her tone lost its former hard edge. She glanced up. “I don’t mean to be such a bitch. Or get drunk. Or be so discontent. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’ve been saying that since I met you. You need to figure that out, Vickie. But no one can do it for you. And no one can tell you either.”
She sighed heavily. “The whole ‘complete yourself before anyone can be with you’ lecture’? Or ‘I have to love me before anyone else can’? I’ve heard them all. Gretchen spent years using her psychological mumbo-jumbo trying to teach me that. It never worked.”
“Do you want to be married to me?”
“I think I liked the idea. I want to want all of this. I even do sometimes. But not all the time. I half want the lifestyle I had when I was single, and I half want what I have when I’m married.”
“I’m sure you also get that’s impossible. Or, at least, it is with me. Maybe there is someone out there who would like it. Why don’t you try dating someone who matches what you want, and not what society tells you to want?”
Her eyebrows furrowed. “I never thought of it like that.”
“I never thought I’d end up like this.”
“What? Like me? Divorced? You’ll survive. It’s really not considered a medical condition.”
His mouth twitched. “You’re almost funny.”
“She won’t go for it, you know. The whole sister bond is pretty unbreakable to her. She has standards that I don’t. I’m not sure you’ll ever overcome them.”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
She tapped a long fingernail on the table. “I think you even believe that. So what now?”
“Nothing. You said you need to go to rehab again. So go. You need to have a safe place to come home to. That’s here.”
“I’m not good as a mother.”
“You’re still her mother. I don’t want you to disappear one day like Micah and do that to her. I want you to do whatever you can to engage her. As much as you can. As consistently as you can. I’ll work with you. If you let me have full custody, you can visit her, or she you, as much or as little as you like.”
She held her forehead with her hand. “That makes me the worst person ever. What kind of mother would even contemplate that?”
He reached over and put a hand to her shoulder. “An honest one. If you will promise to never walk out on her, I’ll work with you anyway you want. You can be a mother when you want, and not when you don’t. Unlike the marriage thing, I can help you make it work.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because any part you play in her life will make it less traumatic for her. And if you start now, she’ll never really know any differently. And it’s more honest.”
“Yeah. We’re there.”
“I’ll pick up the slack. I’ll make up for what you don’t or can’t do. Plus, my mother, and…”
“Tracy?”
“No. Not right now. That’s not my intent. And frankly, I know it’s not what she wants.”
“So I can be a flighty mess, in and out, as long as I simply communicate to you what I want?”
“Pretty much. But no drinking. You can’t drink with Julia around.”
She nodded. “I intend to keep struggling to accomplish this. I know I failed at every relationship in my life, but I want this to work. I want to stay sober. I want to be in Julia’s life. I think, maybe, I can do it. But all my alcohol counselors say I’m not supposed to make any big life decisions the first year I’m sober. I think this probably would qualify.”
He nodded. “Do you mean a year from the first time you entered? Or now?”
She shrugged. “I guess we call it from the first time I entered rehab. It isn’t an exact science.”
“Seems fair. Seems like a good transition period for all of us. So, yeah. We can do that.”
“I don’t want you telling anyone what we agreed to do. My mom…”
“Still with that? Really? Your mother’s opinion. Why don’t you just be honest? She’s there for you, no matter what.”
“It works for us. And I still don’t want you telling Tracy. Not yet. Can you understand that?”
He snorted. “I think I understand that. She’s under the illusion you’re hopelessly in love with me and about to become a fragile, suicidal train wreck when you learn of what might exist between us.”
He backed away from the table, his heart lodging into his throat. Was this for real? They just decided… what? To divorce in six months time? But live together, as if not, until then?
She crossed her long arms over her chest and glared at him. “I’m not giving you my permission. Ever.”
He leaned towards her to kiss the top of her head. Then he leaned back, looked into her eyes, and finally smiled. “Yeah? Well, I’m never asking you for it. Ever.”
“You know, I control your destiny. She’ll never betray me unless I give her permission.”
“You could just let her know it isn’t a blood oath between you two; and although a little weird—”
“A little? It’s fucked up, Donny.”
“And who did I learn that from?”
She scowled hard at him before she finally laughed. “I miss this side of you. I don’t think you’ve been this way in months. I didn’t think you even remembered how to smile. I missed it.”
His mouth twitched. “I never said we didn’t have a good time.”
“She still won’t go for it.”
“I’m not asking you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe we’re discussing this.”
He sat down, finally. “I can’t believe we’re discussing it so rationally. That’s almost more fucked up than the situation itself.”
&
nbsp; She threw her head back with a laugh and her hair cascaded down her back. “It totally is.”
“Do you want me to arrange for the rehab?”
“Would you? I would, but…”
He finally smiled. “I know.”
Chapter Seventeen
TRACY WENT OVER TO Vickie’s house first thing the next morning, only after she knew for sure that Donny had already left for work. There was a weird smirk on Vickie’s face as she opened the door wider. She looked worn out, with her hair all scraggly down her back, un-brushed, no makeup and kind of sick-looking around the gills.
“I’m going to rehab again. You don’t have to waste your breath.”
Tracy simply hugged her. “I’m glad. But I’m here because of what you said. Do you remember?”
She turned and flopped onto the couch. She had to push toys and coats aside to do so. “Sure. That you love my husband? I remember. Look, Trace, I was drunk and talking out of my ass. No one takes me seriously when I do that.”
“I do. I take all of that seriously. I quit working at the office. I’ll stay away from you both. I promise. I just wanted to say, I’m so, so sorry. It will never happen again. I just hope, someday, you can…” Tracy gripped Vickie’s hand tightly in hers. She had thin, long fingers and vein-y hands that were cold to Tracy’s touch.
“Damn. You’re dramatic. Go grab me some coffee and quit acting like you’re single-handedly responsible for the end of the world.”
“But—”
“But you want my forgiveness to feel better so you can leave me, and banish yourself in all your martyrdom. Screw that. Get me some coffee and aspirin for my headache, and sit your ass down and keep me company.”
“You want me to just stay here?”
“Yup. I feel like shit. I hate this part of it. You could clean up the pigsty here, if you felt like doing something to make up for kissing my husband.”
The fire that ignited on Tracy’s skin might have very well scarred her. She was shocked that Vickie would say that, or act so blasé about it. Like she wanted Tracy to stay there. Like she wouldn’t hate her forever.
