A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

  Exactly the kind of stunt Celeste had pulled years ago, with the same excuse. Until she’d decided she wanted help.

  “You made yourself sick,” Katherine said, “because you waited too long to give your body what it needed.”

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  For the second time that day, Katherine raised her gaze to the ceiling.

  The door beside the registration desk opened. A plump chestnut-haired nurse, who looked as if she was a few years older than Katherine, brought Zach into the waiting room. Zach’s arm was in a cast and a sling—a real sling made of navy medical-looking fabric, rather than a bleached white tea cloth. His flannel shirt was gone, likely cut from his body. Instead, he wore only the gray T-shirt she’d spotted beneath the flannel earlier. The nurse caught Katherine’s gaze, broke into a grin, and waved a handful of papers in greeting, as though she recognized her.

  Celeste shot out of her seat ahead of Katherine.

  “What a nice family you have,” the nurse told Zach.

  “We’re friends,” Celeste said, to Katherine’s relief.

  “Oh, I thought—” Again the nurse caught Katherine’s gaze. At close range, Katherine schooled her features into a neutral mask. This time, the nurse frowned. “Never mind.”

  “How’s Blake doing?” Zach asked. “Did he clean up his mess? You sure he wasn’t hurt?”

  “Blake and the bakery are fine,” Katherine said, feeling a swell of irrational pride. She’d created Zach, but his sense of compassion and empathy was not of her doing. “How are you?”

  “Good as new.” Zach nodded at the cast. “Like you said, I will be, eventually. Right, Lois?” he asked the nurse.

  “Zach has a distal radius fracture,” Nurse Lois said. “Clean break, luckily, no fragments. But because of the angle, the doctor had to perform a nonsurgical reduction.”

  “You boiled him?” Celeste asked, referring to the culinary meaning of reduction.

  Katherine grinned.

  “Reduction is when the two pieces of a broken bone are realigned so they can grow back together.” Nurse Lois brought her hands together to demonstrate proximity fusing the broken parts. “All the doctor had to do was move them back into place.”

  “Yeah, that wasn’t my favorite part,” Zach said. “Ow.”

  Lois patted Zach’s good arm. “I’ve made him a follow-up appointment with the doc to make sure he’s healing nicely.”

  “Can’t wait,” Zach said.

  “Does he need anything for the pain?” Katherine asked.

  “I’m fine, Katherine,” Zach said. His exaggerated patience reminded her of the way a son might speak to his mother. His tone spoke of a long-term relationship and familiarity. All wishful thinking. In reality, Zach was one of those types who acted as though he knew you slightly better than he did.

  Or was Katherine, once again, assuming Zach was like Adam—a ghost from her past she’d barely known?

  “Acetaminophen and ibuprofen.” Nurse Lois slipped her stack of papers into Zach’s left hand. “Care instructions and appointment card.”

  “I’ve heard using your nondominant hand makes you smarter,” Zach said. “Forces your brain to grow new neural connections.”

  Lois set a hand on her hip and shook her head. She gave Zach a grin and looked as though she wanted to muss his hair. “I have a feeling your friends will want to spoil you. See you at your follow-up, hon,” she said, and ducked back through the door to the examining rooms.

  Back in the years-ago maternity ward, a pediatric nurse had made a fuss over Zach, too. The nurse had lifted him from his bassinet and kissed the top of his head before laying him in Katherine’s outstretched arms. Immediately he’d turned his head to Katherine, rooting for what he needed. Her chest had swelled, a tidal wave of milk and love bursting for release. “This one takes the cake,” the nurse had said, as if she were proud of him, too. “He most certainly does,” Katherine had answered.

  An hour later, she’d signed the adoption papers, legally breaking her own heart.

  “Let’s get you home,” Katherine told Zach. “You got an apartment at Ledgewood, right?”

  “Not exactly,” Zach said.

  “What exactly, then?”

  “I’m staying across from Celeste’s at Chez Matilda.”

  “Who?” Katherine asked, and Zach stepped into the automatic revolving door.

  “He’s been sleeping in his car,” Celeste said, and followed behind him.

  What?

  How had Katherine missed this factoid? What else had skirted her arguably limited vision? Was she that hyper-focused on keeping her little secret about Zach that she’d risked his well-being?

  Katherine stared at the revolving door, her actions spinning and churning through her mind. Hindsight wasn’t twenty-twenty. Hindsight was seeing your reflection in glass, ugly and distorted. Hindsight was wondering how you could move forward when you couldn’t go back.

  She’d been here before, this exact spot, after she’d left the maternity ward, willing herself to walk through the hospital’s revolving door. She’d faced her reflection while patients brushed by her. An elderly man and his nurse. Two middle-aged women, navigating their way on crutches. A fair-haired woman she recognized from the maternity ward, followed by her whistling husband, carrying their newborn in his blue car seat. The revolving door had spun; the winter cold had blown through her wool coat. Before her eyes, the sun had set—the parking lot dimming and darkening and lightening beneath streetlights. Only then had she mustered the nerve to walk through the revolving door and into a soul-sucking emptiness.

  To the right of the cylinder that was spinning with memories, an ordinary door caught Katherine’s eye. Had it been there years ago? She pushed through the door and race-walked through the lights and shadows, scanning the lot for Celeste’s car. The night chill sneaked like a cold hand beneath the cotton of her sweater. The smoky autumn air hinted at the sharp, white scent of snow, as if her mind couldn’t tell the difference between the present and the past. Late October or early January? The last glimpse of a newborn baby boy in a bassinet wheeling from her hospital bed and the door closing behind him or an adult Zach climbing into Celeste’s yellow Cabriolet.

  “Zach!” Katherine said, in a hurry to get the words out now that she’d decided. “You can stay with me,” she said, her voice high and giddy. In the space of a breath, she imagined helping Zach care for his injury by slipping a sofa pillow beneath his arm at night, leaving towels for his morning shower in her bathroom, resetting the coffeemaker so Zach could enjoy a fresh cup after she’d left for the day.

  “Thanks for the offer,” he said. “But Celeste beat you to it.”

  Celeste raised her chin a notch, no doubt remembering their last conversation about Zach, and Katherine’s dire warnings.

  “Oh,” Katherine said, and swallowed down a tremor. “That’s great!” she told Zach, willing the claim to inspire the feeling.

  “I would’ve said yes if you’d asked me first,” Zach said, his tone soothing and conciliatory. The tilt of his head hinted at regret.

  Ridiculous, but Katherine wondered whether a newborn Zach would’ve similarly agreed to be her son had she not first decided to give him away.

  Celeste helped Zach fasten his seat belt.

  Thank you for taking care of my son.

  “So, see you tomorrow,” Celeste said, and she went around to the driver’s side.

  Katherine bent to Zach, the desire to hug him swelling inside her. “Guess I should’ve acted faster.” She patted his shoulder, as though she were Nurse Lois, a middle-aged woman, charmed by a young man she barely knew. Then she shut the car door and stepped out of the way. Through the window, Zach met her gaze and gave her a left-handed thumbs-up. The car fired to life. Celeste backed from the space and slowly pulled from the hospital parking lot. Katherine stared after them into the darkness.

  A soul-sucking emptiness pressed at the back of her throat, teasing her gag reflex.<
br />
  Katherine should’ve decided faster. She still didn’t think Celeste and Zach were a good idea—Zach with his wandering ways and his broken wrist, and Celeste with her broken spirit. But what did Katherine know, really? What did she know of love?

  All she’d ever done was chase love away.

  Running away was Zach’s way of dealing with conflict, his modus operandi, his signature move. At twenty-three, he was a little old for his first-ever kick-ass epiphany, yet there it was.

  And he resented the shit out of it.

  Maybe it was the shock from his injury wearing off. At first, his wrist hadn’t hurt, at least not in the way a broken-bone virgin might imagine a broken bone. But now, after a round of x-rays, when Nurse Lois had “adjusted” his hand’s position, and after the realignment or reduction or whatever the heck the sadomasochistic doctor had done “for his own good,” his nerve endings had fired to life.

  Good morning!

  Celeste slowed and glided toward a stop sign, its white lettering glowing before Old Yeller’s headlights. Then Old Yeller clipped a frost heave or a speed bump or some other sort of torture device, and Zach’s wrist cussed like a—like Celeste.

  A noise echoed in the car, a combo of an exhalation and a grunt.

  “You okay?” Celeste asked.

  Zach considered telling Celeste he’d burped. Instead, he got real. “Got any ibuprofen or acetaminophen at your place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Think I might need a few of each.”

  “That’s cool.” Celeste yanked off her kerchief thing, tossed it into the backseat, and eased onto the road. Her face glowed, pale and pretty, like something ripe. Like something he wanted to hold in his hands. And, at the same time, like something too precious to touch. Too delicate.

  Maybe Celeste had caused the epiphany. He knew she expected him to leave. She knew he knew it. Why should he live up, or down, to her expectations? Unless that was the right thing to do for everyone, including Katherine.

  Maybe Katherine had caused Zach’s epiphany.

  Right when Zach had been sure she’d wanted him to up and leave, she’d up and invited him to stay. Not just in Hidden Harbor but with her.

  But he could still leave Hidden Harbor. He could even tell himself breaking his wrist had been a sign, some kind of karmic crap letting him know it was okay to down a handful of pills, get in Matilda, and drive back to Massachusetts.

  Decades of living in a town where you couldn’t go a block without tripping over a health food store or a yoga studio or a granola factory must’ve infected his DNA.

  He could tell his mother he’d found her—his birth mother. He wiggled his fingers, shooting sparks of pain through his hand, up his wrist, and to his elbow. He could drive one-handed, saving his right hand for emergency purposes only. He could choose to see the fracture as a mere complication to his plan. A test to see how badly he wanted to follow through with his intention to run.

  Or he could choose to see the fracture as a stop sign, a warning to slow down, look both ways, and, for once, follow through with his original plan.

  He could choose.

  A muscle twinge tightened the right side of his neck. He shifted in his seat and turned his head until his gaze fell on the rear view.

  “You sure you’re okay to drive Matilda back to my place?” Celeste asked. “We could figure something out tomorrow.”

  “Nah, let’s get it done.”

  “Cool,” Celeste said. “Because we’re almost home. I mean, back at Lamontagne’s.”

  “Sweet.” Home, Zach reminded himself, was wherever you hung your hat, your hoodie, or your fluffy yellow blanket. Celeste had offered him a spot on her couch, not a starring role in her life. But the word hung in the air, evoking a Cape with a shingle roof, a white picket fence, and a freshly tarred driveway. An SUV and—now he knew he was losing his mind—a couple of rug rats of his own.

  He’d never before imagined himself as someone’s dad.

  Celeste pulled up to Lamontagne’s and into the space beside Matilda. She killed the engine. “And we’re back.”

  He’d never met anyone like Celeste before.

  “Yup.” Zach went for the seat buckle.

  “Wait.” Celeste took hold of the shoulder strap. “Okay, go ahead.” When he depressed the button, Celeste leaned over him and guided the shoulder strap around his arm.

  “Thanks,” he told her hair.

  “You’re welcome,” she said, her voice sweet and hushed and inches from him.

  Zach wanted to brush her hair from her eyes, to search for hidden meaning, as though she were a Jumbles riddle he needed to decode. He’d never before wanted to get inside a girl this badly. A chuckle jostled his belly and tugged the corners of his lips.

  He meant he’d never before wanted to get inside a girl’s mind this badly.

  Celeste helped him into Matilda, guiding the seat belt around him and tucking him in behind the wheel. Ten minutes later, they parked Matilda and Old Yeller at Ledgewood, and Celeste reversed the seat belt process.

  Zach got his duffel bag and Celeste’s blanket from Matilda.

  “Want me to carry the blanket?” Celeste asked.

  He tossed the blanket over his shoulder, lowered his nose. “I’m fine, Celeste.”

  “Did you sniff my blanket?”

  “Uh, maybe.”

  “Ew,” she said. “You’re a sick man.”

  Then she led the sick man to her apartment door, turned the key, and opened the door.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about this furniture,” Zach said.

  “You don’t like it?” Celeste paused with her pocketbook in the crook of her arm. She tilted her head, widened her eyes, and gave him a half smile. Was she joking or truly peeved?

  If this furniture was her style, then she was someone other than who he thought she was. The notion unsettled him, a milder version of the way he’d felt after his parents’ big this-isn’t-your-life reveal. “I thought—imagined—it doesn’t really look like you.”

  Celeste laughed and tossed her pocketbook on the floor. “I’m not a five-foot-tall testosterone monkey.”

  “A what?”

  “A short, brawny dude. The furniture came with the apartment.”

  “Thought so.” Celeste was one of the coolest girls he’d ever met, but masculine she was not.

  “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll go get you some drugs,” she said, and she went into the bathroom.

  Zach peeked around the corner and then unzipped his jeans. He tugged them down with his left hand, unzipped his duffel, and grabbed his sweats from the top. Now what? The water ran in the bathroom. His heart raced, like some sicko about to be caught with his pants down.

  He tossed the sweatpants on the floor, stepped into the legs, and pulled them up, one at a time. When the bathroom door clicked open, Zach arranged himself on the couch, his hand sticking to the black vinyl. He set his feet atop the glass coffee table. He crossed his legs at the ankles.

  Celeste wore gray sweatpants and a shapeless gray hoodie. She’d braided her hair—a shiny, loose rope flopped over one shoulder. So that’s what she did with her hair at night.

  She set a Dixie cup of water and the pills he’d requested on the table. “Look at you, following my directions and making yourself comfortable. You can listen.”

  Zach lifted the chalky tablets to his lips. “Don’t let it get around,” he said, and tossed down the pills in one gulp.

  “Wow.”

  “That’s not how you do it?”

  “Nope, but that’s okay. We’re all different. Do you want something to eat?”

  “Beer?” Zach asked.

  “Probably not a good idea. Plus, I don’t have any. Eggs?”

  “If you’re making some for yourself.”

  “Eggs it is.”

  Zach took his feet off the coffee table and started to get up.

  “I’m good. You stay right where you are.” Celeste eyed the loaner blanket Za
ch had tossed on the end of the couch. She pulled the blanket over his lap, slipped the TV remote into his left hand, and left the room.

  A guy could get used to this treatment, except for the whole pain issue.

  Zach turned on the TV. A World War II documentary. Flip. A romantic comedy. He could tell because the girl was a cheerful blonde and the setting was New York City. Flip. Cops.

  Zach had gotten caught up in the show when Celeste came into the room. “I hope you like your eggs dry because—”

  Zach switched off the TV.

  Celeste held two plates of scrambled eggs and a wary smile. She notched her head to the side. “What were you watching?”

  Zach’s heart pounded in his mouth, and his cheeks heated. “Nothin’.”

  “Nothin’ looked a lot like something, and that something looked exactly like Cops.” Celeste set a plate of eggs on Zach’s lap.

  The plate heated Zach’s thighs. The aroma of eggs and butter watered his mouth. “Surely you can’t be serious.”

  Celeste sat down, balanced her ankle on her knee and a plate on her lap. Celeste’s hands, Zach had noticed a lot. Feminine, but with short, bare nails. Her toenails were a whole different species. Blue and glittery. They looked like candy. Like something he should put in his mouth. Like something that might taste like a raspberry Pixy stick.

  “I am serious,” Celeste said, “and don’t call me Shirley.”

  Zach raised his gaze. “Airplane,” he said. Celeste didn’t seem overly eager to dig into her eggs, so he got started. He picked up the fork with his left hand and scooped a heaping forkful of eggs. Slowly, he raised the eggs to his mouth. The girl was covered up from neck to ankle, and her toes got him going?

  Man whore.

  “That is correct,” Celeste said. “And yet it still doesn’t explain your fascination with trash TV.”

  Zach chewed.

  Celeste nibbled her eggs.

  Zach swallowed. “Cops isn’t trash TV.”

  “Aha! So you admit it. You were watching Cops. I recognized the wifebeater T-shirt and the chick with the meth addict skin.”

  Zach shrugged, and a buzz ran through him. The kind of buzz that tingled whenever he tried to explain himself to his parents. “All I saw was a scared woman and a guy in uniform trying to help.”