by Wendy Walker
“You were still the victim of a much older man. He should have gone to jail. Your father should have killed him. I would kill anyone who did that to Jessica,” he’d said, causing both of them to shudder at the thought.
“The point is that I made a choice, a decision aimed at hurting my father. Only it backfired dead center into my life. Then I went running for cover.”
Finally getting to the part of the story that had repercussions for his life, Bill had nodded slowly. “You ran right to me.”
“Yes.”
They talked then about where that left them, now that Love was no longer in need of escaping. Now that she no longer needed to be someone else, anyone but the disgraced Love Welsh. They talked about what remained when they peeled away the layers of their pasts that had drawn them to each other. And they were still talking, learning to see one another in the full light of day. Hoping to build their love on steadier ground.
In the back seat, Baby Will began to doze. Glancing at his shuttering eyes through the rearview mirror, Love muted the lullaby CD, then returned her focus to the highway. He had adjusted well to the new schedule, taking his naps in the car, accepting the company of new faces at a day-care center near Columbia University. Three days a week she loaded him up and took him with her to New York. She was enrolled in Freshman Biology and Comparative Literature. They were two of the twenty-four courses she would need to complete her degree. At this rate, she would be fifty when it was finally done, and that thought could stop her dead in her tracks.
The decision had been difficult, as was any change that caused this much upheaval. That it wasn’t worth the effort was a fear that filled her head nearly every morning that she dragged herself to the city. The routine was hectic’getting everyone fed and dressed and packed up for the day, loading them in the car, dropping Henry at his school, then Jessica at hers. She wouldn’t get on the highway until well after nine, just in time to hit the end of rush hour. If the baby slept, which on most days he did, the drive would be tolerable. On the odd day he stayed awake, it took sheer will power to keep going. She’d drop him at the day care, then rush off to a lecture hall to sit among faces that made her feel like a dinosaur. Still, for all the hassles, all the complaining by Henry and Jessica about being picked up from school by Gayle, and the chaos it had thrown into her marriage, Love knew it was worth it. For the first time in many years she was present in her life, living each moment. She could feel it now, as she drove in silence among the falling leaves, the sense of peace that was edging out the noise.
SIXTY-NINE
MARIE
“JESUS CHRIST!” MARIE SAID under her breath as she looked at the speck of blood.
It was the third time in under ten minutes she’d nicked her hand on the tape dispenser’a device that appeared simple and therefore had her all the more infuriated. The living room was finished. Items carefully packed, sealed, and labeled, ready for the movers who were coming first thing in the morning. But the kitchen was another story.
She checked her watch.
“Christ!” she said again. It was after three. She reached for the phone, dialing with one hand while she turned on the radio.
“Love?” she yelled into the receiver.
“What? I can’t talk, I’m in the car.”
“Will you get a bloody hands-free phone already! What’s wrong with your
Love answered, checking in her mirrors for police cars. “It’s on my list. Now what’s up?”
“It’s three!”
“Oh’OK. I’ll turn it on.”
Marie hung up, then went back to her boxes and the program that was coming on public radio. It was a taped interview with Gayle Haywood, founder of the innovative Smart Choices program that was now being prototyped in New York.
Yes, we have had wonderful feedback from the girls and their parents. Gayle’s words floated through the room and Marie was near giddy with pride. No, it has not been controversial. It’s a privately funded program, so there’s no state involvement. And, frankly, parents are grateful that their girls are being empowered with accurate, unbiased information.
She went on for ten minutes, answering questions, getting the message out. And although she sounded nervous to Marie, the rest of the world would hear nothing but an intelligent, passionate woman.
“Christ!” Now it was half past three and she hadn’t even finished the glasses.
Weighing the factors carefully, she tossed the tape dispenser on the counter and headed for her car.
It was the last play date they would have. There had been talk of getting together every few months, promises on her part to drive up from Brooklyn and the good intentions of her friends to bring the kids to the city. None of them believed any of it. They were forcing it now. The kids were outgrowing friendships imposed by their mothers, and, as the holiday frenzy ate up every ounce of spare time, Marie knew she would not see Love and Gayle for some time.
They had met every week over the summer months, unraveling the events of late spring. They had talked Gayle through the Janie Kirk incident, with Marie doling out legal advice and Love helping Gayle battle the self-doubt that was always sneaking up on her. In turn, Gayle had listened as only she could while Love worked through the decision to start at Columbia.
For her part, Marie had practically begged them to understand her decision to move back to the city. Not the city, exactly, but Brooklyn, where they could afford a small townhouse. Three bedrooms, two baths, a run-down kitchen and dreary living room, one small patch of grass and weeds out back’it was a far cry from the cute-as-a-button colonial they were leaving behind. Still, it was a house, and Marie was betting everything it would become a home where they could all be happy.
It was clear to Marie now, having spent most of the summer thinking about their life, trying to see herself through objective eyes. She had been slowly disappearing into nothing more than the anti-wife, a modern-day Katharine Ross running from her robot clone. How many hours had she devoted to picking apart the Stepford wives, judging them for being happy with a life that she had also chosen? That she couldn’t find her own happiness in that world didn’t make them less human. It simply meant that it was time for her to leave.
In spite of this conviction, nothing about the decision had been easy. The house wouldn’t be ready for three more weeks, and that meant a midsemester transfer for the girls to their school. And Marie was needed for a trial at her new firm in six days. There would be little help with the logistics now that Anthony had started back at the Center for Human Rights. The commute was ungodly at the moment, leaving little time to help with the packing’let alone golf. That he wasn’t completely convinced yet made it all the more difficult. He was doing this for her, she knew full well. They were renting for now, viewing it all as a one-year experiment. And that was how they’d sold it to the girls, whose protests weren’t nearly as catastrophic as she had planned for. Suzanne cried to her friends on the phone but then spoke of New York with pride. I was horn there, she’d say. And it is the greatest city in the world. Olivia was too young to understand. She cried because they were leaving the house but had already begun her plans for setting up the new bedroom.
Still, there were many moments when Marie felt the waves of doubt roll in, with nothing other than her family’s happiness on her shoulders. But it was done now’it was time to hope for a new beginning.
As for Randy Matthews, absence had done its job, forcing the kisses to recede to a place where she could manage them. And she was more than happy to keep them there.
She’d heard from him in August. As before, it came in the form of an e-mail. And, also as before, it contained few words.
Dear Marie,
How’s life in the cave?
She’d laughed out loud in spite of herself, then written a reply. She’d filled him in on the Farrells and their other cases. Her mind had shifted then to Randy autopilot and she started to write about the summer, the girls, the ongoing struggles with the move. But
these things were not his concern. Not anymore. Randy had given her a gift, a look at her life from the outside in, and she could now see that life for all that it was and all that it wasn’t. And there was no room in it for him.
Deleting line after line, she’d left only the case updates, then added one final note.
Good luck out there.
Marie
There had been no further communication on either side. Randy would go on with his final years at Yale. He would pass the bar and become a brilliant attorney. And, despite the internal protests he would stage, Marie had no doubt that he would not escape love. It was possible that he could dodge marriage, maybe even a lifetime partner, if such a thing even existed. But no matter how deeply he analyzed the world around him, keeping himself at arm’s length, he was not immune. She had seen it firsthand. One day, she was certain, he would be a father. Love would find him and he would let it in, embrace it, and let it run away with him.
SEVENTY
GAYLE
“I HEARD A CAR!” Henry yelled from the playroom. He ran to the back door and watched as his mother’s van pulled into the driveway. Jessica was right behind, standing on her tiptoes to reach the glass panels of the door.
Gayle came up behind them, watching as Love retrieved Baby Will from his car seat and made her way up the walk.
“Hello, Lovey,” she said, giving her friend a hug. But she was quickly outnumbered by two children, now jumping up and down at their mother’s feet.
Love bent down and took them in her arms. “Hi, guys! How was school?” It was over in a second. The we missed you, where have you been all day? guilt show had been duly performed, and the performers had returned to the project set up in the other room.
“Great interview’as always!” Love said.
Gayle brushed it off. She never would learn to take a compliment. “Was it OK? I couldn’t hear it over all this.”
“What exactly is going on in here?” Love asked, following her children to the back of Gayle’s house. In the center of the wood floor was an enormous sheet of white paper. On each of the four corners of the paper, were little puddles of paint. Blue, red, purple, orange, yellow, green. There were paintbrushes of every size and shape, sponges, crayons, glue pens, and glitter. Olivia and Suzanne were making footprints’stepping in the squishy goo, then walking across the paper. Jessica was busy doing the same with her hands, and Oliver was using three brushes at once to make a rainbow. In the far corner, usurping all the crayons and employing great determination to stay within the lines he had created, Henry was making a picture of a Bionicle Lego.
None of this would have surprised Love had it not been Gayle’s house.
“Paint,” Gayle said.
Love was still standing in the doorway. “Wow. This is an incredible mess in the name of artistic development.”
It was more than a mess. Paint had dripped onto the wood floor, glitter had scattered across the room, landing on fine upholstered sofas and the felt top of the pool table. And it would only get worse when they tried to wash all those little feet and hands.
With the wry smile that had returned to her face in the past few months, Gayle answered her friend. “I know’but it’s not what you think. When all of you are gone, I’ll be in here with the scrub brushes, vacuum cleaner, glitter-dust detector. By the end of the night the room will be cleaner than it’s ever been. Then I’ll have a really big glass of wine.”
Love laughed. In truth, Gayle probably would do those things, or come damned close. Certainly, no one believed she had transformed that drastically. But it was also true that she was aware now’more aware than ever’of the forces that had been driving her into a state of total containment. With incredible grace, she had exorcised Troy from her life and helped Oliver navigate the path of a broken family. She had pared down her commitments, serving as the clinic’s spokeswoman for the Smart Choices program, but nothing else’spending the time with Oliver instead. And she had found a new psychiatrist to help her get off the drugs. Now she was pushing herself, going to therapy, facing her childhood and her marriage. She was beginning to figure out what was real and to trust her instincts again. And she was testing her own limits in these small ways’messy paint and children on the loose.
Walking over to her friend, Love squeezed her shoulder and gave her a smile. All of this suited her. It showed on her face.
“And the packing?” Love said, turning to Marie, who was sitting on the couch.
With a cup of coffee in her left hand, Marie held up the right one, which was now adorned with three tiny Princess Band-Aids.
“Boxes?”
“Tape dispenser.”
“Ah. I can help tonight’after the kids are down.”
“Great! I’ll supply the wine.”
Gayle frowned at both of them. “Wine? How come you only see me over coffee and kids?”
Marie raised her mug at Gayle. “You come, too. Oliver can sleep over.”
Love gave Marie a sad smile. The clock was ticking on these gatherings, and Love could already feel the huge void that Marie’s departure would leave.
It was just after six before they had the children clean enough to transport home. One after the other, they marched them to the back hall, put on jackets, sorted backpacks and lunchboxes, and loaded them into cars. Marie and Love thanked Gayle for picking up their kids. They gave each other hugs, which were longer today, and then they were gone.
Turning to Oliver, Gayle bent down to see into his eyes. “Did you have fun?” she asked, and he nodded. “Go on inside. I’ll get the mail.”
The days were growing shorter, and the sky was almost dark. Without the sun’s warmth, Gayle felt a chill as a gust of wind passed through, blowing up the leaves. She pulled her sweater tightly around her and turned her face away until it was gone, until the leaves had returned to the ground. Making her way down the long driveway, she started to think about the paint on the floor, wondering how best to remove it without dulling the finish. Then she stopped herself before the thoughts turned to actions, before she found herself rushing inside to restore the perfect order she had been fighting to disrupt. She would not clean up. She would go in, have dinner with her son, play a game or watch a movie. She would feel the small joy of those things and keep at bay everything else. As she waited for the electric gate to swing open, she drew a long breath. This was how it had been, one thing at a time.
The mailbox was full, as it always was this time of year, with catalogues and other junk making up the bulk of it. The wind picked up again, blowing the leaves around her feet. She carefully pulled the mail out and held it close to her chest. She closed her eyes until she felt the gust settle, then walked to the foot of the driveway. As she waited for the gate to open again, she pulled the mail from her chest and began to flip through it. From between two oversized catalogues a small postcard slipped out and fell to the ground. When the wind picked it up, she thought of letting it go. Her arms were full, the gate was now open, and her eyes were starting to water from the cold. Postcards in the fall were invariably solicitations for some sort of home repair operation’painters, landscapers, and the like. Still, there she was, chasing after it into the road. At least she was smiling at herself’her confounding inability to let a damned thing go. As she caught up with the card in a pile of leaves, she made a promise to let the next one go.
It was later that evening, after Oliver was asleep and she was alone in the kitchen, that she finally found the card again mixed in with the other mail. It was a white card with a sketch of a mountain scene, and she took a small moment to guess the name of the service company that would appear on the other side. Alpine Lawn Care. Everest Remodeling. Colorado Cleaning Company. She flipped it over, hoping to be amused, but instead found herself without a breath. The handwriting was unmistakable.
It was postmarked in Oregon, and that was the last place she’d heard he’d gone. Through the agency that had sent Paul to them years before, she had pieced together his journe
y after leaving her home. He’d been abroad for a while. Chile, Brazil. Then to Mexico and up the California coast. She had asked that he not be told of her inquiries, nor had she explained the reasons for his departure. She had not expected to hear from him again.
His note was brief.
Dear Gayie,
What can I say to you after all this time? I have held on to the conviction that leaving was the right thing, but I fear I was wrong. I have prayed that you and Oliver would be all right. I planned a journey, something that was overdue. But the change in the weather has me longing to return. Are the leaves as beautiful this year as last? I hope to reach you by the end of the month. Of course, I will call first. Give my love to Oliver.
Paul
So little was written, and yet so much was said. He knew Troy was gone. He never would have written had he not known. And he addressed her as Gayie, making her think now how foolish she had been not to insist upon this from the very start. Clinging to formalities had left her house so sterile, so lacking in humanity. But he was not her employee anymore. There would be no more Mrs. Beck. He had never been the cook, or the butler. He was a man, an honest, compassionate man who had done nothing less than hold their house together’listening to her daily dilemmas, teaching Oliver to dribble a soccer ball. Countless little things, everyday nothing things that together constituted life. It was not until he was gone that she realized what he had been. The string that holds the beads together.
These past months, she had come to know this’to see who this man really was. And yet, at the same time she had become all of those things for herself, and her son. Together they had filled the void and created a new home, and it was a good home’somehow complete even in the absence of a man. Marie would be proud of her now, thinking as she was about the failings of marriage, hers in particular. She had done a lot of thinking about the state of affairs between men and women and the attempts they made to share one life, one home. Was there ever really harmony without one person’s submission? And even then, was misery not inevitable?
