by Pamela Morsi
The paunch around his brother’s midsection said differently, but Eli didn’t bother to say so. Happily married and a victim of his wife’s great cooking, Clark had put on a lot of pounds in the past few years. Woodworking was good exercise for shoulder and biceps, even legs and thighs. But it was no help for his brother’s beer gut. And allowing his hair and beard to grow down to his waist did not serve to disguise it.
“The customers expect us to look like hillbilly hayseeds,” he often said. “We could probably raise prices if I’d knock my front teeth out to complete the picture.”
Eli didn’t agree. Or at least he didn’t agree completely. Marketing certainly sold furniture. But he wanted to fashion the kind of pieces that sold themselves.
And he preferred to look ordinary.
That’s how people thought of him. That was how he thought of himself. He was medium build, not tall but not short, with a face that was, to his mind, fairly average. His hair and eyes both unmemorably brown. His demeanor was calm and his opinions carefully considered. He’d always been soft-spoken and unassuming. So much so that it had startled his high school classmates when he’d been named valedictorian. Even today, if most were asked to list the most successful businessmen in town, Eli’s name would not have come up. He didn’t mind. Fading into the wallpaper was a plus for anyone engaged in a solitary vocation. Not being noticed had never bothered him. Or rather, it almost never bothered him.
“I guess you heard that Mazy Gulliver is home,” his brother said with such studied nonchalance that it had to be faked.
Eli was eyeing another piece of poplar that momentarily trembled in his hands.
“I heard.”
“Sheila says she knew we’d see her again as soon as Tad and Genna split the sheet.”
Eli gave a dismissive huff. “Not likely. Your wife must be getting really bored, Clark, if she’s dredging up gossip that old. Mazy and Tad were fifteen years ago. Can’t see that starting up again.”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “I just don’t want anybody else getting ideas about her.”
The silence within the building was not lengthy, but it was intense.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eli replied.
Clark made a clicking sound and shook his head. “This is me you’re talking to, Termite,” he said. “I know you always get your hopes up. I can’t stand to see you get your heart broken.”
Eli shook his head. “Don’t worry about me,” he told him. “And don’t call me Termite. I’m not three anymore.”
“Hey, you’ll always be my kid brother no matter how old you get,” Clark told him. “And I know, just as sure as I’m alive, that she’ll come crawling over here, looking at you with those big brown eyes. Don’t fall for her again. That woman is not for you.”
Eli gave a huff of dismissal. “Trust me, I know that,” he said. “Mazy’s been out of my league since middle school.”
“Out of your league? That crazy psychochick would need an extension ladder and a hot-air balloon to even get close to your league.”
“She’s not a psychochick. She’s...she’s just kind of mixed up.”
“Mixed up is what people are in high school,” Clark said. “When you get past thirty, that definition slides into crazy.”
Eli waved off his words. “Neither of us have talked to her in years. For all we know, she’s a staid, solid citizen these days.”
“Not likely,” Clark said. “Mazy is one of these people that no matter what the options are, she’s going to choose wrong.”
“Ah, come on, Clark. That’s not fair.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” his brother said. “But I do know that she is never going to give you a second look.”
“Isn’t that what I just said? She’s out of my league.”
“Not that,” Clark answered, stopping his work to stand thoughtfully. “It’s that you’re too decent a guy.”
“What?”
“She’s one of those women who wants a jerk.”
Eli tossed another board onto the rack.
“That’s nuts.”
“You’re right. It is. But some women are just that way. For some reason they’re just attracted to the creeps of this world. The only men they fall for are the ones who are going to treat them like dirt. They can’t stop themselves. Gangsters, outlaws, cheaters and beaters―they are always surrounded by women. It’s nice guys like you that never get noticed.”
Eli shook his head. “Obviously there are men who treat women badly, but it’s not like the women want it that way.”
“You could sure fool me,” Clark said. “Given a choice, some women always choose the son of a bitch.”
Eli knew it was true, but he didn’t like to imagine it. He really didn’t like to imagine it about Mazy.
“From what I’ve seen of her,” Clark continued, “she must love the drama. Roller coaster relationships can be a thrill. And thrill is something people get addicted to.”
Eli shook his head. “How ‘thrilling’ can it be to have a guy walk all over you?”
“Hey, if he’s tough, confident, domineering—that can be mistaken for being a real man. Especially when a woman has daddy issues.”
“Mazy doesn’t have daddy issues,” Eli said. “She loved her dad. He was a great guy.”
Clark nodded. “A great guy killed in a freak accident. One day he’s there, the next day he’s not. Perfect recipe for screwed-up psychochick.”
Eli rolled his eyes. His brother meant well, he knew, but Clark had always been the sort of guy who was quick to judge. Eli tried to give people the benefit of the doubt. “Mazy is not a psychochick. Anyway, that’s just a stereotype. She’s made some mistakes in the past, but that’s the past. People change, Clark.”
His brother looked skeptical. “I guess we’ll see,” he said. “I do believe that all of us get smarter about stuff, get more mature. But our basic personality is the same as it always was. If she wanted a jerk in high school, she wants one now. I mean, why do you think she picked someone like Tad over you?”
Eli chuckled. “Oh, wow, I dunno,” he said facetiously. “Taking a stab at it, I’m thinking it could be that he was the high school hero, captain of the basketball team, class president, tall, good-looking and rich. I’m just guessing, of course.”
Clark shook a finger at him. “But he was also going steady with somebody else. He was totally unavailable to her. And he didn’t even try to pretend otherwise. He never dated Mazy, never took her any place, never acknowledged her in public. As far as I know, he didn’t so much as buy her a burger.”
Eli couldn’t dispute that.
“So what does Mazy do?” Clark asked rhetorically. “She gives it up for him. He honks his car horn at the top of the hill and she sneaks out of her house to show him a good time. While you’re right here next door, her best friend, the nice guy, practically falling on your face to worship her, and you can’t get the time of day.”
Eli shrugged. “I was a year behind her. That’s an incredible age gap in high school.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t quite so big after you graduated and she got bored with diapering her baby,” Clark pointed out. “You two weren’t exactly secretive. Humping like rabbits every chance you got.”
“Teenagers are like that.”
“Okay, that accounts for round one,” Clark said. “What about when she turns up like a bad penny a few years later? You were all into curing her heartache and getting her back on her feet. You were all starry-eyed, thinking happily-ever-after, and she goes running off with the first creep that crooks his finger at her.”
“We weren’t really a couple,” Eli defended. “It was a friends-with-benefits thing, and when it was over, it was over.”
Clark gave a huff of disbelief. “Yeah, right. It meant no
thing to you. The hangdog look and black mood that went on for months, it was a coincidence.”
Eli could hardly argue with that. He’d been devastated when she’d dropped him. She’d been positively gushing about the vacuum cleaner salesman from Charlotte. He’d felt like he’d been kicked in the gut.
“Okay, so maybe I got in over my head,” he admitted. “But that was my fault, not hers. She was clear from the first that we were just best friends.”
“Yeah, well, I’m more than your best friend, I’m your brother,” Clark said. “And I’m warning you right now. She’s never going to want more from you than a temporary distraction.”
His brother was probably right. Mazy had never been able to see him as anybody but her childhood playmate. Eli didn’t think he could bear to be put through the ringer again. It was never going to work out between them, despite how drawn to her he was. Steering clear was good advice. He might have taken it, too, if his brother hadn’t added one more thought.
“The only way you could ever get Mazy Gulliver interested is if you start walking all over her like bubble gum on a shoe.”
3
Everything was different and nothing had changed. Cliché and contradictory, but it summed up Mazy’s first day back in Brandt Mountain.
This morning she would be going with Tru to enroll him in school. She had done this chore many times and openly speculated about that number over breakfast.
“So this will be your fourth new school.”
“Fifth,” Tru corrected. He was eating the pancakes that Beth Ann had fixed him. He didn’t even look up. “Freshman year and I’m already in my second high school.”
“But you spent all of middle school at Roland-Grise.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, looking up at her finally. “All my friends were there. Now all my friends are at Hoggard and I’m...here.”
It was not a new subject of discussion for them. Mazy wasn’t about to get into it again this morning.
“You’ll make new friends,” she told him.
He rolled his eyes, but she left the room pretending that she didn’t notice. Making an issue of some justified insubordination seemed like a stupid thing to do. He had apparently given up the silent treatment. Mazy was going to take her victories wherever she could find them.
They were not in her mirror, however. In the tiny bathroom featuring the same bad lighting that had bugged her in high school, she eyed herself with dissatisfaction. The blond highlights that she’d worn for a decade had disappeared in an overgrowth of brunette, which might have been okay if she wasn’t still using the makeup from the lighter era. There was no money to waste on self-adornment—she’d even discovered that she could cut her own hair using her jawline for a guide. It was certainly not the best she’d ever looked, and she hated to give the homefolks the satisfaction of being able to say so, but it couldn’t be helped. And it was the very least of her problems. Gamely, she brushed her teeth, put on her lipstick and held her head high.
Still driving her rental car, she and Tru pulled up in front of the high school at 8:02 a.m. Nobody had to tell her that it was better to show up late than to walk through the social gauntlet of students waiting for the bell to ring.
Her son looked deliberately nonchalant. Not smiling, not curious, totally teen. His jeans hung only slightly lower than God had intended and his hoodie featured a digital game that was both geeky and gory.
He’ll do fine, Mazy reassured herself for the millionth time.
Tru was smart, likable and resilient. He would definitely find a place for himself.
On the glass front door of the school, someone had painted a fierce-looking insect in black and gold.
“They’re bees?” Tru asked, incredulous. “The mascot is a bee?”
“That’s Buzz,” Mazy told him. “Bees can be very dangerous. Fatal if you’re allergic.”
“I think I’m allergic,” her son said.
She shot him a look and got the first smile aimed in her direction for weeks.
Having been there on many occasions, Mazy walked directly to the admin office. The furniture was newer and the puke-green paint she remembered from her youth had been replaced with a more Zenlike blue, but it was exactly the same atmosphere.
She walked up to the counter where a slightly plump woman with a curly perm grinned at her excitedly.
“Hello, I’m here to enroll my son in school.”
“Mazy! Mazy! It’s me. Don’t you recognize me? Karly Wilkins, Karly Farris now. You haven’t changed a bit.”
Mazy tried a half smile, her brain scrambling through a million dusty memory files to try to recall the person in front of her. She would have testified in court that she’d never seen the woman before.
“Karly Wilkins,” she repeated eagerly. “Remember, we were home-ec partners for Breads and Pastries.”
Mazy did remember. The shy girl with the bad clothes that nobody wanted to befriend. She and Mazy had been paired together as class pariahs.
“Oh, sure, I remember,” Mazy said. “You literally pulled my biscuits out of the oven.”
The woman laughed. “I still bake those little sailor knots for my kids from time to time,” she told her. “So, is this your boy?”
Tru was slouching, looked uncomfortable.
“Yes,” Mazy answered, setting his transcript and old class schedule on the counter. “Truman Gulliver.”
“Coach Keene is going to want to get a look at you,” Karly told him, her smile friendly and enthusiastic.
“Me?”
“I bet you play basketball, don’t ya.”
“Basketball? Uh, no.”
Karly looked genuinely surprised, but then glanced guiltily at Mazy.
“Are you sure?”
Tru kind of snorted at the question. “Well, yeah, I can play basketball. But I’m on the swim team in my school. I mean, my last school.”
“Oh, we don’t have a pool,” Karly said. “And I guess we all thought you’d play basketball.”
It was like a secret code and Mazy wasn’t ready for her son to be in on it. She intervened.
“As his mom, I’m more interested in his algebra than his athletics.”
“Oh, oh, of course,” Karly said, a bit more brightly than necessary. “Let’s see what your class schedule looks like.”
It took less than twenty minutes to get it all settled. Freshmen everywhere tended to take the same courses, and with no credits to match up, Tru was almost a high school blank slate.
As she watched him walk down the hall, being shown to his classroom by a fellow student, she had to resist the impulse to run after him and drag him out of the building. She had never kept secrets from her son. She was not a keeping-secrets kind of gal, and her son had always been told the truth. But knowing something was quite different from having everyone around you know it, too.
It couldn’t be helped. She kept thinking that there had to be a statute of limitations on screwing up your life, but apparently not. Especially since she managed to do it again and again.
She returned her car to the rental place on the highway where it Y-ed off to Main Street. The walk to the town center was more than a mile and she hadn’t worn her most sensible shoes, but in her experience a gutsy gambit required the highest, most uncomfortable nonsensible heels. And hitting up your ex for a job was about as gutsy as it gets. With her chin up, her outlook determined, she made her way along the cracked, uneven sidewalks. It was hard to imagine a course of action more humiliating than her current one, and she refused to anticipate the outcome. If the past months had taught her anything, it was to allow the chips to fall. Nothing could fit into place until they did.
Brandt Mountain was wide-awake. There were people coming and going. Mazy tried not to make eye contact. She didn’t want to have to m
ake polite conversation. A place where everybody knows your name is not always a good thing.
The town’s tiny commercial hub was only a few blocks long. The buildings were mostly early twentieth century, with an occasional throwback to eras perhaps a hundred years earlier. A line of cars fronted the diner and the shops were beginning to open. The store windows featured antiques and flower displays and vintage clothing. A plumbing shop showed off several toilet models. The bookstore boasted a sale of used paperbacks for fifty cents.
Mazy walked past each one as she headed up the hill to where Main Street crossed Depot Road. On that corner, in a four-story building trimmed in gray granite and white marble, was the Farmers and Tradesmen State Bank.
Mazy hesitated for an instant and then, as if she might lose her nerve completely, she jerked the door open and stepped inside. The cool, quiet foyer revealed a line of old-fashioned tellers’ windows with their bars still in place. Only one was occupied and the woman standing there looked familiar. But in her hometown, almost everybody did.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Driscoll, please.”
The woman literally looked down her nose at her. “Honey, he’s kind of busy. Do you have an appointment?”
Mazy stood at her full height and smiled the biggest, fakest sugar smile ever. “No, honey, I don’t. But you run and tell him Mazy Gulliver is here. All right?”
The teller didn’t run, she actually used her phone before suggesting that Mazy have a seat in the waiting area.
Perching on the edge of a too-cushy sofa, she silently went through her practiced spiel. She would have to confess everything. But she would not cower.
She heard the footfall of someone approaching across the marble floor, but she did not turn her head until he was standing beside her.
“Mazy?”
“Tad.”
The years had not been unkind to him. He still had that athletic build, though perhaps a bit softer than in his youth. He was tall, with the same sandy-brown hair she remembered. It had started to gray, but even that leaned to his rather attractive, sophisticated appeal. He was wearing glasses, which was totally new, but she could still see the pale blue eyes that were so familiar.
