Time Is a River

by Mary Alice Monroe

  “No, but the thing is, Kate became a recluse. A one hundred percent, genuine hermit.”

  A young mother came in with a girl in tow. The girl let go and ran to the glass cabinet, flattening against it and declaring which pastries she wanted to buy. Becky rose but before she walked off she turned to Mia.

  “And don’t forget, there was that little matter of a murder.”

  She wanted to ask more questions but another customer came in, jingling the bell. The more Mia learned about Kate, the more intrigued she became. She paid her bill and left.

  She went first to Clark’s Hardware. A small-framed man with wisps of gray hair on the top of his head stood at the cash register. He wore an apple red apron with the name Clark’s Hardware in bright green letters.

  “Can I help you?” he called out in a flattened voice.

  “Yes, thank you.” She looked at the aisles of tools and gadgets and felt lost. “I’m not sure I know what to ask you for.”

  “Don’t be shy. That’s what I see as my job, hear? To help the customers, especially the ladies when they get confused. We’re a small bread-and-butter kind of place and service is our middle name.” He stuck out his hand. The bones were delicate and he had a soft grip. “I’m Clarence Clark, the owner of this store.”

  “Hello,” she replied. “Mia Landan.”

  “You from around here?”

  “I’m from Charleston.”

  “We get lots of visitors from Charleston. Pretty city. I go there often. So, what can I do you for?”

  “Well, Clarence, if I may call you Clarence?” He nodded emphatically. “I have a problem.”

  Clarence removed his glasses and polished them briskly. “Ask away. I’m your man.”

  Mia told him how the cabin had lost power when she’d plugged in the new toaster oven she’d just purchased in his store.

  “Blown fuse, no doubt about it. I’ll bet that electrical system is ancient. Did you bring a fuse with you?”

  Mia shook her head. She was embarrassed to tell him she couldn’t even find the box.

  He put his glasses back on and pursed his lips in thought. “Probably just as well. Those old fuse boxes can be tricky. I wonder what size fuse it would take?” He thought, drumming his fingers on the counter. “Was it the kind you screw in?”

  “Honestly, Clarence, I have no idea.”

  “Do you know where the fuse box is?”

  Mia shook her head.

  He sized up the situation quickly. “I’ll have to come up and have a look-see.”

  Mia bet he’d love to be the first to see the inside of Kate Watkins’s cabin. “All right, yes, thank you. That would be fine, if you can spare the time. It’s a drive.”

  “I’ll get Joe to come in and cover for me while I’m gone.” He could barely restrain his enthusiasm. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Before you go…I need some wood for the fireplace. Can you tell me how I can get that?”

  “You’ve come to the right place. Do you want a cord?”

  Mia sighed and shrugged. “What’s a cord?”

  His eyes widened. “Why, uh, a cord is the measure by which wood is sold.” He leaned closer and spoke in a tone of confidence. “You’ve got to be careful where you buy your wood. I hate to say it, but there are some less than honest people who’ll take advantage of a pretty girl like you. You don’t want to get burned buying firewood.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “A cord is a hundred twenty-eight cubic feet. That measures about four feet high by eight feet long. You want to buy it stacked, too, or you might find you bought less wood than you bargained for. And you want wood that’s been stored off the ground.”

  He droned on about the proper cutting, stacking, and storing of firewood, and all Mia could think to herself was that this was one more area she never studied in college.

  “Anything else?” he inquired, all business.

  “I need some basic tools. Nothing fancy. Just enough to do a few tasks or repairs. You know, maybe a hammer and nails, that sort of thing.” Mia was determined to learn to be self-sufficient.

  The little man lunged forward with alacrity, eager to tackle the task. She followed him as he darted from aisle to aisle pulling tools out of bins and muttering, “Phillips head, flat head, pliers, wrench, staple gun.” He came to an abrupt stop. “Maybe even an electric drill. Yes, definitely.” He persuaded her to buy a small yellow toolbox and as he filled it, he explained to her in great detail why she needed each item. Mia listened in a daze.

  At the checkout counter she found a selection of fix-it manuals, and again with Clarence’s assistance, she selected one with lots of photographs and bought that, too.

  The total was more than she’d expected. She pulled out her credit card and handed it to Clarence, thinking how Charles would have a fit.

  She went from store to store along Main Street, purchasing what she felt were essentials. At Rodale’s she bought groceries; at Maeve MacBride’s she purchased a few more tubes of paint. She also stopped at the women’s clothing store to buy a few pairs of shorts and tops and a swimsuit to get her through the summer.

  When she was working in the city she spent more on one suit than she did on all the things she bought today. During their marriage she and Charles made a good living, but they were cash poor. Other than a few stocks and bonds and their riverfront condominium, saving for the future had never been part of their budget. What little money they did have set aside had been devoured by her medical bills. Mia knew Charles deeply resented that. He’d never actually told her that in so many words. It was more in the exaggerated sighs when the medical bills came in, and comments like, “Well, I guess there’s no vacation this year…”

  Before going home she stopped at the overlook park again. This little bench had become her favorite spot for making and receiving phone calls. Pulling out her cell phone, she saw she had several messages. She dialed voice mail and heard Maddie’s increasingly irritated phone messages, each demanding that she call immediately and how it had been six days since they’d talked and if Mia didn’t call soon she’d call the police to send out a rescue squad. There was a message from Belle, something about the hot water heater being delivered. She felt sucker punched when she heard Charles’s voice.

  “Mia, it’s me. Charles. Please call me back when you get this. We need to talk.”

  She closed the phone and stared out at the view, seeing nothing. Hearing his voice made her physically ill. Her heart was pounding in her ears as she stared at his name on her phone. Charles. Not Chuck, Charlie, Chas. Even in bed he didn’t like her using intimate nicknames. His family was old Charleston. This gave him a sense of entitlement that had once attracted her. He believed that it didn’t matter how successful he became or how much money he earned; his honored forebears had fixed it so every door and every coveted event in the city would be open to him and his issue till the end of time. Maybe knowing that was why he had so little ambition. Charles rested on his ancestors’ laurels.

  Every instinct in her body screamed out for her to ignore the call. Yet despite the cold knot forming in her stomach, Mia knew there was no point in delaying the inevitable. Without thinking more, she jabbed his number into the phone.

  After the fifth ring she thought she might catch a break and be able to leave a voice message. A simple hello, she was all right, she would call again next week. She wasn’t so lucky.

  “Hello.” His voice sounded tense.

  “It’s me,” she said coolly.

  “I called a dozen times. Don’t you check your messages? Where the hell have you been?”

  “Why the hell do you care?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  She could only laugh, but there wasn’t a trace of humor in it. “So now you’re telling me what’s fair?”

  “Mia, you’ve been gone more than a week. Where are you?” he asked again, insistent.

  “I’m in North Carolina,” she replied, begrudging him that morsel.


  “What are you doing up there? You should be here. In Charleston. This is such a mess. We’ve got to talk.”

  “I’m not ready to talk.”

  “Look, Mia. I know you’re hurt. God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to find out this way.”

  “You mean you didn’t mean for me to catch you fucking that girl on my bed? So, which way did you mean for me to find out?”

  “You don’t need to be crass.”

  She blushed. Mia hated foul language, rarely used it. But she was so hurt, so angry, it felt good to strike out. If only with words.

  “Me crass? I would have thought you’d at least have the decency to take her to some cheap motel that you pay for by the hour. Isn’t that the way it’s usually done?”

  “She’s not that kind of girl.”

  Mia was taken aback. She had expected him to say he was sorry that he brought the woman into their bed. That he was sorry for hurting her. She did not expect him to defend the girl.

  “Just what kind of a girl is she? Aside from the kind that sleeps with a married man.”

  “I didn’t call to talk about her.”

  “Then why did you call? To talk about me?”

  “Yes. And us.”

  “Well I’m fine. So you can cross that off your list.”

  “Fine isn’t running out of the house and disappearing for a week. Fine isn’t not bothering to call to let me know you’re alive. And fine sure isn’t taking my Titleist clubs!”

  “Oh my God, Charles. You’re not calling to check on me. You’re calling to check on your golf clubs!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Listen, Mia, let’s not start getting nasty. I’ve seen that happen with my clients and nothing gets accomplished. We need to remember how we once felt about each other and move forward from that point.”

  Mia’s blood chilled as she heard the divorce lawyer come into his voice. He had already made up his mind. He saw her as a client. She cleared her throat.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

  He took a long, ragged breath, the first sign of true emotion she’d heard. “I want a divorce.”

  Despite the fact that she knew deep in her heart that this was coming, hearing the words caused her to suck in her breath.

  “I’m sorry, Mia. I didn’t want to drop it on you like this, on the phone. It’s been coming for a long time. You must have felt it, too.”

  “No. I didn’t actually.” That made her feel all the more the fool. “Then again, nothing’s been quite the same for the past year.”

  “Exactly.”

  She felt suddenly defensive. “It’s not like we planned it. We didn’t wake up and say, hey, how about you get cancer so we can test our marriage to the nth degree.”

  “I know. Mia, I do. But plan it or not, it happened. It did test our marriage. And frankly, Mia, it failed.”

  “How can you say that? We had some great years.”

  “Had. Not anymore. We don’t go out. We never talk.”

  “I know I haven’t been myself.”

  “We never make love anymore.”

  “That’s because you don’t want to,” she cried back. “I know it can be difficult for husbands after surgery. But you won’t touch me. You can’t even look at me.”

  There was a long pause during which Mia closed her eyes and saw in her mind’s eye the night she had dared to show her husband the scar after her breast surgery. She’d never forget the look on his face before he turned his head away.

  His voice cracked. “I’m sorry, Mia. Really I am. I know it makes me shallow. I’ve told myself a hundred times it shouldn’t matter. But it does. I…I just can’t get past it.”

  “In time…”

  “It’s not just the breast or the scar. It’s you.”

  He flung the word at her accusingly, as though all of their problems—the cancer, the scar, the affair—were her fault.

  “You’re not the same person I married.”

  “No, I’m not. How can I be? I’ve been through hell and back.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But things are different now and I can’t go back.”

  “Who said marriage is easy? Marriage is for better or for worse. This was the worse part. But we have to hope for the better.”

  “Mia…”

  “You’re my husband,” she exploded, hearing the finality in his tone. She knew he didn’t call to talk about it. His mind was made up. The hurt was scathing. “You should have been there to help me get through this. But you weren’t there. Charles, you were never worried about how the cancer was affecting me. All you were worried about was how the cancer was affecting you. When would you have told me if I didn’t come home early?”

  “I was waiting till you were stronger.”

  “So you were going to do it again?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry when you’re not!”

  “But I am sorry,” he shouted back. Then, skipping a beat, he repeated more softly, “I am. I never planned for this to happen. I still care about you. But it’s over.”

  “I hate you for doing this to us,” she said, her voice breaking. She brought her fingers to her forehead and squeezed her eyes shut while she rocked back and forth, willing herself not to cry.

  “I was hoping we would be able to work the divorce out ourselves.” He spoke in the voice she’d heard him use in court. “We don’t have a lot of property and we have no children. We could save a lot of money, given we have so little to divide.”

  She dropped her hand, incredulous. “So now you want me to trust you to be fair to me? After what you did?”

  He sighed with resignation. “Fine. Do it your way. You need to get a lawyer. I can recommend a few, if you like.”

  “Screw you. Screw that girl. And screw—”

  She heard a click.

  Mia flushed. He’d hung up on her. How could he be so callous? How could he care so little to ask for a divorce without discussion, without even waiting until she came home. Why didn’t she see it coming? She let her hand drop to her lap. Charles wanted a divorce. She couldn’t quite get that concept clear in her mind. Her marriage was over and in walking away he took from her all that she had so willingly given of herself. And for all his saying “I’m sorry” over and over, he never really apologized.

  She took a breath, then picked up the phone and dialed her sister’s number. It was a reflex action.

  When she heard Maddie’s voice on the line Mia blurted out in a rush, “I talked to Charles.”

  “Damn. I’ve been trying to reach you before he did. Don’t you ever answer your phone?” She paused, then said cautiously, “He told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He wants a divorce.”

  “Is that all he told you?”

  Mia tensed again, sensing another blow. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Maddie sighed heavily. “I’m just going to spit this out so you hear it straight and you hear it from me.” She paused, then blurted out, “He’s going to marry that bimbo.”

  Mia’s mind stalled. “Who? That woman?”

  “She has a name,” Maddie said softly. “Do you want to know it?”

  Mia felt her blood ice in her veins. She wasn’t sure she wanted to give the woman an identity. It made her real.

  “Yes.”

  “Julia Barnes. She’s a law clerk for the same firm. Did you know her?”

  “No,” she blurted out, regretting her decision, seeing again her face; her long, dark hair flowing over her beautiful breasts. “And I don’t care what her name is. She doesn’t deserve my recognition.”

  “OK, then,” Maddie drawled.

  “How did you find out he wants to marry her?”

  “He told me. God help me, Mia, he’s been calling me every day, bending my ear about this and that, like I’m some ambassador between the two of you. He seems to think if he can make me his ally this will all end neatly and wit
hout scandal. He’s going on about how he’ll divide everything equally and how you can both get on with your lives, make a new start, that kind of crap. My bet is he’s more than a little worried about how his law firm will react to any gossip about how you found him in bed with Julia at lunch hour. Not a classy scene. Wouldn’t look too good for him.”

  “So. It’s going to happen. The divorce.”

  “I’m afraid so, honey.”

  She swallowed the news, though it had a tough time getting down her throat. “I’ll have to think about it more.”

  “Think fast. Charles seems hell-bent on it happening. He’s putting it on the fast track.”

  “Why the hurry? I’ll be up here for the summer. Let him sit on the hook for a while.”

  “Oh honey, bolster yourself. There’s more.”

  Mia stiffened. “What more could there be?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  Mia felt numb and could only sit for a moment, dazed and speechless. The first emotion that pushed through the shock was hate.

  She and Charles had talked about having children early in their marriage, but they were both ambitious with careers blooming and they’d decided to wait. When Mia neared thirty-five, she wanted to begin a family but Charles didn’t want to talk about it. He’d said he wasn’t ready. He was still young and wanted a few more years of freedom, he called it. Time while they were still young to enjoy going out when they wanted to, to travel and not have to worry about being tied down by rug rats and diapers and that whole lifestyle.

  The following year, Mia was diagnosed with breast cancer. The chemo had poisoned her body, possibly her eggs, and now it was questionable whether Mia could ever have children. How did that woman get pregnant so fast? she wondered. Had it been an accident? Could she be so manipulative as to try to trap Charles in that age-old ploy?

  But Charles wanted to marry her. He wasn’t the kind to get trapped.

  “Honey, are you still there?”

  Mia nodded, then croaked out, “Yes.”

  “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you all this. I thought you should know.”

  “Hey, Maddie,” she said, her voice soft and shaken. “You know how I said I didn’t want you to come up here? How I needed to be alone?”