Things You Won't Say

by Sarah Pekkanen

  She’d missed too much of the movie for it to make any sense, so Lou huddled lower in her chair and closed her eyes. The next thing she knew, someone was tapping her shoulder.

  “You’re snoring really loudly,” the girl behind her whispered.

  “Sorry,” Lou said. She could hear giggling and she sat up straighter. Her clothes were damp and she could feel goose bumps rising on her skin. She stole a glance at her watch and realized she couldn’t go home for at least an hour. She wrapped her arms around herself and wished more than ever for that hot bath.

  She needed to find a new apartment, fast.

  •••

  She, Christie Simmons, had a job!

  A real job, too—not like the hostess and receptionist gigs she usually floated between, or the “modeling” assignments she’d taken in the past that required her to walk around in a bikini at car shows. This was regular, steady, enviable work. Elroy had even mentioned an expense account. Bolo-tie-wearing Elroy wasn’t a misplaced cowboy after all. He was a private detective who specialized in infidelity cases, and Christie was going to help him gather evidence. She’d be working undercover. The best part, though, the thing that made her lips curve into a secret smile, was that she’d be playing off the assumptions of people like Baldie with the wedding ring from the bar. Just because a woman was single and sexy, some guys assumed she was easy, a throwaway sort of girl. And during the past few years—the same stretch of time in which she’d begun to feel a slight ebb in her energy and notice a slight sagging of the skin around her eyes and jawline—she’d realized it had begun to bother her deeply. Christie wanted a lot of things, including a nice house and car, but something else had edged its way to the top of her wish list, something that couldn’t be bought.

  Respect.

  Only one man in her life had ever treated her with true dignity: Mike, the father of her beautiful, perfect son, Henry. Christie had met Mike at a bar—because let’s face it, girls like her didn’t hang out at the library or health food store or hiking trail—and he’d offered to buy her a drink. But then the familiar script had strayed from its usual path: he’d kept his eyes on hers instead of focusing them twelve inches lower, and he’d spoken her name when he handed her a glass of Chardonnay. Back then she thought wine tasted sour, but she’d been ­twenty-three and figured the drink sounded classy.

  Mike had been so beautiful—intense brown eyes, a blunt nose, and broad shoulders. A triangle of springy black hair peeked out from the top of his polo shirt. He wasn’t very tall, but he seemed to take up a lot of physical space.

  “Can I take you out to dinner?” he’d asked, while her friends gave her the thumbs-up and made obscene gestures behind his back.

  “Dinner?” she’d repeated. She’d licked her lips, glossed in a shade called Kitten Pink, and lowered her eyelashes, hoping he appreciated the four coats of mascara she’d painstakingly applied.

  “Tomorrow night,” Mike had said. “Italian sound good to you?”

  “Are you telling me you’re Italian?” Christie had asked.

  It took Mike a moment, but he’d gotten the joke. “You’re a firecracker,” he’d said.

  “And what are you?” she’d asked.

  “A cop,” he’d said. She’d seen the way he stood up a little straighter with the release of those words. She’d almost made a joke about his handcuffs, but she’d refrained. For some reason, she didn’t feel like bantering with him the way she did with other guys.

  “I do like Italian,” she’d said instead. “In all its forms.”

  “So I’ll pick you up at seven.” That was Mike—confident, direct, steady. He’d shown up five minutes early, held open the car door for her, and asked her what she liked to eat as she studied the menu at the restaurant.

  “Nothing too heavy,” she’d said. She was a size eight, and wanted to stick to it for as long as possible. Which might be only until she turned forty, given that her mother now resembled a blowfish. But her mother subsisted on a steady diet of junk food and junkier television, and Christie was determined to avoid that path. Well, at least the fast-food part.

  “The angel hair’s nice,” he’d said, in a voice so low and deep it was almost a growl. “Maybe with clams and a little red sauce.”

  She’d nodded, and when the waiter arrived, Mike had ordered for her. It had made her feel taken care of, but not in a creepy, father-figure way—especially since she’d slept with Mike that night. Mike may have been a gentleman, but he wasn’t that much of a gentleman.

  He was good in bed, if conventional, and eventually that was his downfall: being too traditional in other ways, as if he was rushing toward middle age, arms stretched out in a welcoming embrace. Mike wanted the white picket fence and Sunday afternoons helming the barbecue grill. Christie wanted nights out dancing and spontaneous trips to Vegas. She was far too young to settle down, and if she were being perfectly honest, Mike didn’t seem all that eager to settle down with her, either. His calls came less frequently after the first few weeks.

  They probably would’ve drifted apart, their memories of each other fading with each passing year. Maybe after a decade or two, one of her friends might’ve said, “Remember that cop you used to date?” And Christie would’ve replied, “Oh, yeah, he was cute,” and struggled to conjure his name.

  But she got pregnant.

  It was her fault. She’d told Mike she was on the pill, which was the truth, but what she didn’t reveal was that sometimes she forgot to take it, especially after a night of drinking.

  She’d broken the news to him because she wanted him to help pay for the abortion, but part of her also wanted to say the words because she didn’t have anyone else in whom to confide. Her mother would’ve erupted—she’d had Christie at eighteen and was vocal about questioning the wisdom of that decision—and her father was nothing but a faded photograph Christie kept hidden in a dresser drawer. At least she thought the picture was of her father. The guy in it had an arm around Christie’s mother’s shoulders, and she could tell it was taken at about the time she’d become pregnant, because they were in the halls of their high school. Sometimes Christie thought she could see bits of herself in the shape of his eyebrows and the straight lines of his nose, but she’d never met him, so she couldn’t be certain. Apparently he’d entered the military after graduation, and hadn’t responded to the letters Christie’s mother had sent. If Christie’s mother had thought the news of a baby would lure him back, all handsome and official in his Navy whites, like a scene out of An Officer and a Gentleman, it had been the first of many disappointments in her life.

  Christie didn’t know what kind of reaction she’d expected from Mike when she told him about the two lines on the E.P.T. test, but he’d merely nodded without changing expression. Maybe that went hand-in-hand with being a cop—you couldn’t freak out when someone confessed to something big, like a murder, or you’d blow the whole case.

  After a moment, he’d quietly asked, “Do you want to get married?” She’d almost fallen off the couch. What twenty-three-year-old guy would ask that of a girl he’d been dating for less than four months?

  By then Mike’s steadiness had become boring, and the thought of being yoked to him for the rest of her life made her feel claustrophobic. He laughed too loudly when he watched television—which he was content to do most nights while he drank a Budweiser—and he owned only one suit, a blue number with a disturbing sheen.

  “No,” she’d said. “And I don’t think I want to keep it.”

  He’d gone pale then, and had put a hand to his own ­stomach.

  “I’m Catholic,” he’d said.

  That explains a lot, she’d thought.

  “Just—wait, okay?” he’d said. He’d dropped his head into his hands for a long moment. They were in his condo, sitting side by side on the black leather couch, untouched cartons of Chinese food in front of them. Christie
couldn’t eat because morning sickness had struck with a vengeance, except it was all-day sickness. That, along with her missed period, had been what prompted her to pick up a test at CVS.

  “What if you kept it?” he’d said. “We kept it.”

  “I told you I’m not getting married,” Christie had said. Not to you, anyway, she’d refrained from adding.

  She didn’t know why, but suddenly she’d felt angry with him. “I was going to break up with you,” she’d said. “You bore me.”

  “Don’t do anything yet, okay?” he’d said, and it had made her even more upset that he hadn’t reacted to her declaration. “It probably has arms and legs by now. Hair, too.”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” she’d said, even though she had no idea who was right. She’d stood up, fury shaking through her. “It’s a blob. A tiny little blob!”

  She’d stormed out and driven home, where she’d poured a big rum and Diet Coke, which she vastly preferred to the stupid, cheap wine Mike always offered her. She wasn’t keeping the baby, so what did it matter if she drank? But she couldn’t swallow more than a sip. The alcohol felt metallic in her mouth and made her stomach heave. She’d poured it down the drain instead, and cursed Mike.

  An hour later he’d knocked on her front door, breathing hard, as if he’d run the whole way there. “The baby’s got fingers and toes. I checked. He or she is the size of a kidney bean about now.”

  And Christie had burst into tears.

  She and Mike didn’t last, of course. They’d already broken up by the time of her first ultrasound. But the arrangement Mike had suggested was surprisingly successful. He took the baby most of the time when he wasn’t at work, and he paid for part-time day care. Christie had Henry only three nights a week and one weekend day. Mike also gave her five hundred dollars a month in child support. Christie had complained about having to drop out of hairdressing school, since her all-day sickness was so overpowering and the smell of chemicals made it worse, but she’d never regretted their decision. The truth was, Henry was an angel. He slept through the night the very first week, happily ate whatever was offered, and rarely got sick. She loved watching TV with him cuddled on her chest, smelling of soft, chalky talcum powder and feeling as cozy as a hot-water bottle. Henry was good company right from the start.

  Later she figured out why she couldn’t go to the abortion clinic. It wasn’t because of the haunted look that had come into Mike’s eyes, or the thought of those tiny fingers and toes wiggling inside of her. It was because the moment she learned she was pregnant, the hollow, aching feeling Christie had grown accustomed to carrying around had finally disappeared. It was only after it had vanished that she’d been able to identify it as loneliness.

  Now Christie pulled her Miata into the cul-de-sac where Mike and Jamie lived. Mike had built the white picket fence around their brick rancher himself. When he’d told Christie, she’d faked a coughing fit to hide her laughter. The front yard, as always, was littered with scooters and a tricycle and squirt guns. Even before Jamie opened the door, Christie knew what the interior would look like: sports equipment piled haphazardly by the front door, a beaten-up sectional sofa around a television that was too big for the space, a bunch of kids wandering around, including a neighbor or two . . . Strange how all the things she’d bristled against fifteen years ago didn’t seem quite so terrible now.

  She knocked on the door, and Jamie answered, pushing her bangs off her face with one hand while she pulled open the door with the other.

  “Hey,” Christie said. Mike’s wife was only a few years younger than Christie, but Jamie looked about twenty-five, with her unlined, softly rounded face and baby-blue eyes. She probably still got carded.

  “Hi, Christie.” Jamie smiled without showing her teeth.

  Christie may not have made the honor roll in school, but she had an unerring sense about people. Jamie tolerated her only because of Mike and Henry.

  “Is that a new shirt?” Christie asked.

  “This?” Jamie looked down like she’d forgotten she was wearing clothes. When she looked back up, she also wore a suspicious expression. “No, I’ve had it forever.”

  Christie didn’t know why she’d said it. Obviously the shirt wasn’t new; the neckline was a little frayed. She never knew how to act around Jamie, so she usually ended up saying or doing the wrong thing.

  “So is Henry around?” Christie asked.

  “Yeah, hang on,” Jamie said. “Henry!” she called up the stairs. A minute later came the thudding of heavy footsteps and the sight of her son.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said, moving easily and fluidly despite the fact that he seemed to be all knobby elbows and gangly limbs. Henry played three sports: baseball, basketball, and soccer. He got mostly As with a few Bs sprinkled in like seasoning. He said “please” and “thank you” without being prompted. He was a golden boy.

  “Burgers sound good for dinner?” she asked.

  “Actually, we had that last night,” Henry said, glancing sideways at Jamie. “But I don’t mind twice in a row.”

  Christie pulled him close for a quick hug, noticing again the fine light-brown hairs that had begun to sprout above his upper lip. She was five foot five, but he’d officially passed her a year ago. She wasn’t a sentimental person, but tears had stung her eyes on the day she’d realized she had to look up at her son.

  “Bye, Jamie,” Henry said. He gave his stepmother a hug, too—he was the human version of Switzerland—and stepped out the door, his huge backpack slung over one shoulder.

  “Love you!” Jamie called after him, and Christie felt herself soften. No matter what she thought about Mike’s wife, she had to give her this: Jamie had never been anything but good to Henry. Once Christie had asked Henry about the time he spent with Jamie. “Does she ever say anything about me?” she’d asked, keeping her voice casual.

  “Yeah,” Henry had said, and Christie had braced for it.

  “At night, when we say our prayers”—this was something Christie hadn’t authorized, but she couldn’t control what Mike did with their son—“Jamie tells me to include you.”

  “Oh,” Christie had said. For a moment she wasn’t sure how to take that revelation. Did Jamie think Christie needed saving? But Henry’s voice was sweetly innocent, and she’d decided it was a compliment of sorts. Even though Christie didn’t believe in God, she liked the idea that someone else was putting in a good word for her.

  “I’ve got some cool news,” she said as they climbed into her Miata. “I got a new job.”

  “Yeah?” Henry said. “Where?”

  “It’s undercover,” Christie said. “A private detective hired me.”

  “Seriously?” His face brightened.

  “I know, right? You’ve got a cop for a dad and an undercover investigator for a mom.”

  “So what are you gonna investigate?” Henry asked. “Drug deals?”

  “No,” Christie said, amending it when she saw Henry’s disappointment. “At least not at first. I’m going to catch gross guys who cheat on their wives.”

  “Like with wiretaps?”

  “Probably,” Christie said, even though she had no idea. Elroy hadn’t given her all the details; they were meeting in a few days to go over them. “I’ll probably have a hidden microphone when I talk to the guys. Maybe a secret camera, too.” And possibly a sexy trench coat, Christie decided. She might as well start breaking in her expense account.

  “That is so awesome,” Henry said.

  “I know, right?” Christie said, and she experienced the same warm burst of pride Mike must have felt on that long-ago night when he’d told her he was a cop. Her new job paid sixty bucks an hour, which was a heck of a lot better than the fourteen she currently earned as the receptionist at a hair salon.

  She felt as if the fates were finally turning in her favor, after all those bad relationships and ov
erdue credit card bills and the sense that somehow, without her being able to pinpoint exactly when or how it had happened, the life she’d meant to live had slipped past her, carrying along a tide of people who were laughing and clinking champagne glasses and waving as she stood on the shore.

  Screw her passive-aggressive scale, she thought, and she said, “Should we go get hot fudge sundaes to celebrate?”

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  SUMMER WAS OFFICIALLY HERE. Hot, sticky, languid summer. It was 10:00 A.M. on June 22, and a flurry of teacher appreciation events and picnics and field days had ushered in the end of the school year. Now Jamie was wondering why teachers didn’t earn million-dollar salaries. All they’d have to do was stage a strike, and after a few days, parents would be pulling money out of their wallets to make up the difference. Jamie could barely handle three little people—how did anyone control a pack of twenty-five or thirty without tranquillizer darts?

  A shower, she thought longingly as she bent down to wipe up something brownish—best not to examine it closely—off the floor. Before kids, bathing used to be an uneventful part of her morning routine. Now ten minutes alone with sweet-smelling shampoo and hot water coursing over the knots in her shoulders felt as luxurious as a week in the Bahamas. But her plans to get up early and sneak one in had been thwarted when Eloise awoke at 5:45, having soaked through her nighttime diaper. Jamie had started to throw the wet pajamas and sheets into the wash, then she’d realized there was already a load in the machine. It smelled funky—it must have been moldering there for a few days—so Jamie had dumped in a little more detergent and pulled the dial to rewash it, then come upstairs to encounter the stain on the floor. By then Eloise was flopped on the couch, her hair sticking up and her eyes bleary, loudly asking for Barney on TV.

  “Shhh, honey,” Jamie said. Was she actually panting from the brief exertion of running up the stairs? She really had to figure out a way to exercise regularly. “No TV this morning.”