A few minutes after Danielle left, the front door opened and in walked the mailman.
“Well, hello there,” he said.
“Hi,” Abby said. The letters were ready, set aside in a tidy pile.
“It’s Abby, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Charlie,” said the mailman, sticking out his hand to her. He’d only introduced himself to her five or six times now. These introductions were becoming his little game.
“Nice to see you again, Charlie.”
“Is that a new dress?”
“It’s not a dress. It’s just a top with a skirt.”
“Well, it looks good on you. You look tan.”
“Thank you,” she said, glancing down at her daisy patterned blouse.
“So, what have you got for me today?”
“Just these,” she said, handing him the pile of outgoing mail.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Do you think it’s fair,” he asked, setting the plastic bin of letters by her feet, “that I keep bringing you all this, and all I get in return is one little stack of mail?” He propped his elbows on the little ledge in front of her, leaning over her, grinning.
“Who ever said life was fair?” she asked him.
“Huh.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “I didn’t take you for the jaded type.”
“I’m not jaded. I’m a realist.”
“A realist, you say.”
She nodded, glancing at the door. She didn’t want Clark Lorbmeer to walk in and discover the mailman hanging over her, dripping sweat onto all the partners’ business cards.
“Or maybe you’re sad?” he said.
“No. I’m really happy,” she said.
“Then say it like you mean it,” he whispered.
“I’m happy,” she repeated.
“If you’re not, let me know, and I’ll see what I can do to fix it.”
The door opened and the UPS guy walked in.
“Hello, Yellow!” he said to Abby. “You look like sunshine today!”
Charlie stepped back, nodding at him. He couldn’t hide his annoyance at the intrusion.
“Hi, Dave,” said Abby.
“It’s Grand Central Station around here today,” said Dave. “The Fed Ex guy’s right behind me. Sign here, Abby. Do you want these in the breakroom?”
“Sure,” she said, just as the Fed Ex guy walked in.
“See you soon,” said Charlie, leaving without taking her stack of mail.
Abby scribbled her name on the Fed Ex guy’s tablet and ran after Charlie with the mail. He hadn’t gotten far. She suspected he’d left the mail there on purpose.
“Charlie! Wait up! You forgot these,” she said.
“Oh. Sorry about that.” He took them from her, making a point to let his hand linger on hers.
She yanked her hand away. “Okay. See ya,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he called after her.
She shook her head. If this guy didn’t tone it down, he was going to get her in trouble.
Chapter 10
People assumed Abby was a second or third wife, that she broke up something sacred and more real than what she and Randall now had. She was, however, his first wife. His one and only. She could see the irony in something so bad having had an honest start.
Her first year with Randall wasn’t that awful. They traveled more back then, six or eight trips a year, and he worked less, distracted enough by the newness of her to take a hiatus from being a workaholic.
She’d thought having children was part of why he’d married her, until the day she checked the messages on their answering machine and heard a confirmation from the doctor’s office for his upcoming vasectomy appointment. They’d discussed starting a family two weeks earlier while lazing on a beach in Hawaii. She had thought it had been a discussion, anyhow. She’d told Randall that she would like to have a baby and he’d told her that she would be cute when she was pregnant. She had felt like she was beautiful to him that day. Not in a trophy kind of way, but in some softer, sweeter way. It had been an actual aphrodisiac; they’d gone inside their hotel room and had not-even-that-bad sex. “Maybe I should go off the pill?” she’d asked him and he’d said, “Maybe.”
That trip was the happiest Abby had ever been with Randall. She had resigned herself to this being her life, and she’d realized it wasn’t all bad. The vasectomy call was a total blindside. It was the first time Randall’s rampant selfishness and dishonesty had been directed toward her. She was convinced the call was a mistake. When he got home that night she asked him about it and he didn’t even deny it.
“I thought it was for the best. I’m too old to be a father, and you’re too young and beautiful to be a mother. Don’t you think we’ve got a good thing going here just like it is?”
“This isn’t the kind of thing you decide without talking to me.”
“It’s my body,” he said.
“What about that talk we were having in Hawaii?”
“What talk?”
“We were talking about maybe starting a family.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“We just talked about it.”
“Huh.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“That message said your appointment is in two days.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I thought we were a team,” she said, desperate to make him understand how powerless he was making her feel.
“No,” he said. “A man and a woman are never a team. I’m the quarterback. You’re the cheerleader. It’s how God and nature intended.”
“Did God and nature intend for you to not have babies with me? ‘Cause if so, you wouldn’t have to have an operation to keep it from happening.”
“Don’t try to argue with me. You’ll never win.”
“Then I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Don’t say anything at all.”
This was her first inkling of how screwed she was. She’d seen and heard him treat plenty of other people this way, but she never imagined she’d be one of them.
A few days after his vasectomy, Randall was on damage control. “Go get your hair done,” he told her.
“I’m fine,” she said. No one from her generation thought getting a haircut was a treat.
“I insist,” he said.
When she got back home there was a silver BMW in their driveway, complete with a gigantic bow on it. It was not anything she’d ever wanted, but he felt good giving it to her, and enjoyed the way she looked driving around in it. He wanted people to believe he spoiled her.
From the time of his vasectomy on, no matter how many times she asked him to stop, whenever people asked them if they had children he’d wrap his arm around her shoulder, give her a squeeze, and say, “Just this one.”
Chapter 11
Longevity ran in the Greer family. The fact that Randall’s father was ninety and still partying at his Arizona retirement home gave Abby little hope of ever becoming the young widow with the fresh start that she dreamed of.
Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly hopeless, she would play the But-this-is-worse game. She’d scan the news for awful stories, read them, mull them over, and then tell herself, “Your life sucks, but this is worse.”
For instance, a young woman was assaulted, raped, beaten, and left for dead by two assailants on her way back to her dorm. After telling the police just that much, she slipped into a coma. Abby, on the other hand, had spent her evening with Randall and his friends, listening to hours of drunken, slurred work talk at the Bergmans’ annual barbeque.
That was worse, she’d tell herself, meaning being attacked and left for dead.
Or a four-year-old child was killed by the family pit bull, and his parents were forced to euthanize the dog. They buried their child and dog in side-by-side caskets, seventy miles away since the city ordinances wouldn’t allow pets in the cemetery near the
m. Abby, by comparison, had spent the evening wearing high-heeled rubber boots, and whipping Randall while he blubbered like a baby and begged for more.
The pit bull story, despite Abby’s terrible life, was still far worse.
The But-this-is-worse game helped her keep it all in perspective.
The funny thing was, women in their fifties and sixties were jealous of her. Her life looked great to them. Fab. Divine. The shopping and vacations and being young and beautiful and childless. They couldn’t imagine how she could want for anything. A few of them, the ones who weren’t terribly proud, even said things to her like: “You’ve got it made in the shade!” or “What I wouldn’t give to be you.”
Abby guessed they looked at her and saw someone old like them on the inside, but in a younger package. That’s not exactly what a woman in her twenties was, though, whether or not they remembered that.
Chapter 12
Abby was sitting at the front desk of Lorbmeer, Messdiem & Miller, taking rubber bands from the dish on the desk and wrapping them around Danielle’s rubber band ball. She was doing her best to evenly arrange the colors, and to keep the ball a perfect sphere. The maintenance of this ball had begun to take on an irrational level of importance in her life.
When there were no more rubber bands to add to the ball, she evaluated her work, spinning the ball, adjusting bands here and there by a couple of millimeters. She was waiting for the mailman to arrive; with him came mail held in bunches by more rubber bands, along with a heavy dose of flirtation. Against her better judgment, he was growing on her. Awakening something long dead in her. Curiosity, perhaps. The remembrance that the unexpected hadn’t always been bad.
Charlie normally showed up between 12:10 and 12:30. It was 12:47 and she still hadn’t seen him. Danielle would be back anytime. It was a Thursday. If Abby missed him she would have to wait all the way until Tuesday before she had another chance.
The door opened and in walked a mailman she’d never seen before.
“Good day,” he said.
“Where’s our regular mailman?”
“He’s hunting.”
“Hunting?” Abby asked. In the circles she had traveled in, nobody hunted.
“Yeah, I think he’s out for a few days. Burning up some of his vacation time.”
“Hunting for what?”
“Deer. It’s bow hunting season. Didn’t you know that?”
“No.”
“Charlie goes every year at this time,” said the impostor mailman as set down a bin of mail, not where Charlie normally set it. Abby glanced at the pile and saw not one rubber band. Everything about this guy was making her mad.
“Does he go out in the country?” she asked.
“Well, sure. Did you think he hunted in the city?”
“No. I didn’t think he hunted at all.”
“Do you have anything for me today?”
She handed him a stack of letters.
“Good day,” he said, prepared to go.
“Wait a minute,” she said.
“What is it?”
“I…” She shook her head. “Never mind. I guess I don’t have anything to say.”
“Okay then. Have a good day.”
“You too.”
He left and she sat there, deflating. The room, she realized with an abrupt stab of anger, was freezing cold. Why was the air conditioning kept at sixty-two degrees? Because it’s what the partners liked? The partners who were never around because they were too busy golfing and having meetings at restaurants? Abby got up to find the thermostat and kicked the mail bin as hard as she could. It skidded across the floor a couple of feet.
“Are you okay?” asked Danielle, having returned from lunch. Her tiny tummy was puffing out against her size two pencil skirt.
“I’m fine. Where’s the thermostat? It’s freezing in here. I don’t know how the plants don’t all die.”
“We can’t access it. It’s in Mr. Miller’s office, but we’re not supposed to mess with it.” Danielle rubbed her stomach. “I’m so stuffed. Blaaaa.”
“Well then, I guess I’m leaving for the day. Have a good weekend.”
“Oh, that’s right. End of the workweek for you.”
“Yep. Lucky me,” said Abby, going to her office to retrieve her purse. “Lucky, lucky me.”
Chapter 13
“Sugartitties, come in here for a minute.”
“What’s up?” Abby asked, joining Randall in the kitchen.
“Where are all the potholders?”
“Maybe they’re still in the dryer?”
“I’ve got a pan of Danishes burning in the oven and no potholders. Go find me one.”
Abby went to the laundry room and retrieved them from the dryer. She brought them back to the kitchen, along with a pile of dishtowels. “Here you go.” She handed two potholders to Randall and put the rest in their kitchen drawer. Then she began folding dishtowels.
“Why does she wash them all at once?” Randall asked.
“I don’t know.”
He opened the oven and removed the pan of storebought Danishes he’d been reheating. “Put the pattern facing out,” he said.
“Sorry.” Abby unfolded the dishtowel she’d just done and tried again.
“Butter them up for me, would you?”
“Sure.” She removed a tub of butter from the refrigerator and put a chunk over each of the four rolls in the pan.
“Help yourself if you’d like one.”
“I’m good,” she said. “But thanks.”
“I don’t appreciate her leaving with a job half-done like that.”
“She doesn’t do that very often. She had to leave a little early yesterday to get her grandson.”
“When she gets here today, you need to talk to her about this. Tell her my Danishes almost burned.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“Something like that affects a person’s whole day.”
“I know. I’ll talk to her.”
“Do it. Don’t make me call home and deal with it. I’m busy all day. You need to take some responsibility for how things go around here.”
“Got it.”
“Managing Rosa should be your responsibility. You’re the one who sees her on a daily basis. Not me.” Randall took a bite of one of the Danishes. He wasn’t dressed for work yet, so he made no effort to keep the butter from running down his chin and neck.
“Randall, I heard you. She does a pretty good job most of the time. But I heard you. I’ll talk to her.”
“I don’t like your attitude about this. The way you’re sticking up for her. It’s disrespectful to me. If you have to pick sides, you pick my side. Not hers.”
“Sorry. I’m on your side. Not hers.”
“Hand me one of those.”
Abby gave him a dishtowel. He wiped crumbs and butter from his face, and then tucked it in the neck of his t-shirt. “You need a certain level of detachment to be a good manager,” he continued. “If I suspect you’re getting too close with her, it’s going to make me think you’re letting her get away with things.”
He stuffed a second Danish in his mouth. They had cooled off a bit, allowing him to pick up his pace. He inhaled nearly half of it in one bite. His eating habits, like nothing else about him had ever done for her, occasionally mesmerized Abby. Like a seed bursting from the soil and becoming an unfurling, sun-grasping plant in a time-lapse video, or cells splitting beneath a microscope. Or a snake swallowing an entire cow. The purity, force, and focus of his hands and the food and his mouth collaborating like a fascinating machine.
“Give me another,” he said, after he swallowed, holding out his hand.
“She and I will talk today. I promise,” Abby said, handing another towel to him.
“Good girl,” he said. “Good talk.” He took a long swallow of coffee and set the mug down on the kitchen island. Abby continued folding dishtowels. For a couple of minutes the only sound was Randall chewing.
The last d
ishtowel folded, Abby placed them all in their drawer, arranging them into tidy rows.
“Sugartitties, I didn’t know you had it in you to do such a good job around here,” Randall joked.
“I’m not so useless after all.”
“I’m gonna be late,” Randall said, stuffing the last Danish in his mouth and heading to his bathroom for a shower.
Abby changed into her bikini and dove into the pool so she’d be busy when Randall was leaving. Opening the patio door, saying goodbye – he wouldn’t bother with that unless he had some instructions or criticism for her.
Twenty minutes later she watched his Mercedes gliding down their driveway. Once he was out of view she climbed out and toweled off, and went inside to watch TV. A half hour later Rosa arrived.
“Good morning, Miss Abby,” she said.
“Hi Rosa. You know it’s fine to call me Abby. How are you today?”
“Good.”
“Sit down in here by me for a minute. Let’s talk. You can start your work later.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Of course I’m sure,” Abby said, waiting as Rosa settled in uncomfortably on the chair across from her.
“Is anything wrong?” Rosa asked her.
Abby shook her head. “How’s your grandson?”
“He’s very good. He turns seven next week.”
“Seven already! Is he still into Legos?”
“Is he ever.”
“How’s your daughter doing?”
“She’s good. They think they got it all this time.”
“That’s really wonderful news.”
“But they said that once before, and it came back.”
“I know. I remember.”
“A lot of people are praying.”
Abby nodded. “Me too,” she said. She wished it were true. She’d lost her religion a long, long time ago. Now she only found herself praying in rare moments of her own selfish desperation.
“And you’re good?” Rosa asked, tentatively.
Abby nodded. “Of course.”
Run Away Baby Page 4
