Hope Out Loud

by Kristina Riggle

  HOPE OUT LOUD

  A Haven Novella

  By Kristina Riggle

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About this Book

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Kristina Riggle

  For Bruce, because sometimes you hope enough for both of us

  Chapter One

  Anna

  Monday, July 1, 2013

  Chicago

  The handwriting on the postcard is spiky and jerky, as if someone were trying to yank it away from my father before he finished what he had to say. I turn it back to the other side, looking at the cartoonish picture of a pouting little girl in pigtails, her feet turned in, her little round face abject. “Florida’s Great, But . . . I Miss You!”

  The postmark, however, says Tennessee.

  The Anna of five years ago would have scowled, torn it up, thrown it away, all in a big act to convince myself I couldn’t possibly care about the father who had abandoned my mother and me twenty years ago—no, twenty-five years ago, now.

  Since he popped back up in 2008, I have consented to let him get in touch by writing. It felt safer, demanding written contact only, as opposed to phone calls or, heaven help me, visits.

  The writing bears its own intimacy, though. Emails look uniformly sterile, barring the use of a whimsical font or silly signature line. But something handwritten conjures up the writer. I imagine my dad’s knobby fingers clutching his pen as he scrawls away. I wonder what he was thinking when he stuck on the stamp, where exactly in Tennessee he was when he slid it into a mailbox. Does he still limp, like when I saw him last? Has he resorted to a cane by now?

  When my cell phone rings, I know without looking that it’s my mother. I assigned her a special ringtone: “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” one of her very favorite songs. When you’re weary, feeling small . . .

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, honey! I’m so excited to see you! The weather forecast looks great. Is Cami able to come?”

  “No, she’s so close to popping that kid out that she’s fit to burst. She’s going to stay near familiar doctors. Not to mention her husband.”

  When I left Haven, Michigan, five years ago after a turbulent summer, Cami came back to Chicago with me, and we were contented roommates for about a year until she fell head over heels for a flooring contractor she met through her home renovation work. I was secretly relieved to have a place to myself again. Economic necessity forced me to share rent at the time, what with having jumped ship from Partner Track Big Law to hanging out my own shingle. Once she moved out, though, I grew once again to love the cocooned feeling of a door I can lock against the entire world, best friends and men included. I let people in when I want to, only. I have to admit I want to do that less and less often these days.

  My mother sighs theatrically. “Oh. I was hoping she’d risk it, and then end up having the baby here. Naughty of me, I know.”

  “We’ll just have to get you down here to visit, and you can coo to your heart’s content.” I represent my mother’s only shot at grandchildren, and the biological window is open only a hair by now, but she has the good grace not to mention this.

  “So Mom, any big plans for the week? I mean, other than Saturday, obviously.”

  She clears her throat, and I recognize this tell of hers. Oh goody.

  “Well, dear, the Beckers invited us to their Fourth of July bash, and I thought we could go.”

  I was afraid of this.

  “Can’t we just get a spot on the beach and watch from there? Or heck, do sparklers in the yard and skip the traffic.”

  “My dear, you are way too young to be that jaded. C’mon, Al wants to go. He’s never been to the Beckers’.”

  “I would have thought your wedding was enough excitement for the week.”

  “Pshht, excitement, it’s just a few people standing on a beach for heaven’s sake.” I’m still wrapping my brain around the fact that Mailman Al—the man who would drop off our bills and junk mail at the Nee Nance Store, buy a Diet Coke, and stride off with his postal shorts showing off his knobby knees—is about to be my stepdad.

  “Which reminds me, I got another postcard from my father. You?”

  We often get notes at the same time. He still thinks of us as one unit, Anna and Maeve, the daughter and wife he left behind to rot in that stupid rundown convenience store which was both our livelihood and our home. My mother might still be there now, ringing up cigarettes and Lotto tickets and Bud Light, if not for being evicted for a classy joint that sells fancy cheese and wine and such.

  Mom sighs like I let the air out of her. “Yes.”

  “Same old?”

  “Yes.” After a pause, she adds, “Pretty much.”

  “Uh-oh. What?”

  The attorney in me can’t help but chase that down. There’s a reason she said “pretty much” and a reason she paused first.

  “Well, I’d told him about the wedding. He seems a bit, well, taken aback.”

  I groan and drop my head into my hand. “Mom, why did you tell him? That’s just asking for trouble.”

  “Because I’m not going to hide and pretend and sneak around. I’m not doing a single thing wrong. And he might as well know for sure he hasn’t got a reason to come sniffing back around here.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell him the date.”

  “So what if I did?”

  I open my mouth to give her “so what,” because he’s grossly inappropriate and romantic to a delusional extent and it would be just like him to swoop into town and try to woo her away. Instead I take a breath. I know I’m right, but I’ve finally learned that sometimes it’s better to be quietly right. I smile, so that my voice will come out brighter than I really feel.

  “Never mind. I’m sure he’s far too busy with his latest scheme anyway, not to mention he probably can’t scrape up the gas money to get here from Tennessee.”

  We hang up after she makes plans to pick me up at the Grand Rapids train station tomorrow. I’ll be spending the rest of the week in my hometown, helping her finish up details of her wedding.

  In my room I peel off my “lawyer clothes” as I call them. I still wear most of the same suits I did back in my days at Miller Paulson. They’re expensive enough to last, and classic enough not to go out of style, and working for myself I don’t have the budget for fancy shopping. My suits feel like armor in a not-unwelcome way. By contrast, it makes getting into my pajamas at six thirty a delicious treat.

  Shelby, my favorite Miller Paulson friend, always tries to rouse me for happy hour with the old group. They all still love me, she swears, and in fact probably like me better now that I’m outside of office politics.

  When I couldn’t stand it, the happy hour crowds and the drinks and the expense and the noise and the chatter about nothing, I begged off with excuses of work, always plausible in our business.

  Sometimes she tries to set me up and gets exasperated when I continually turn her down. “You’re turning into a hermit! Don’t you ever want to get laid again?”

  Online dating has served me well and I’ve not dried up completely; I just saw Kevin last weekend, and we had a nice time with Indian takeout and Netflix. Meanwhile, Shelby’s picking out husbands for me. At thirty-six that ship has sailed and I’m happy to wave from the shore. Bon voyage to the suburbs. Enjoy your Popsicle stains.

  I do marvel at Cami, though, how quickly her tough façade crumbled t
o dust as her belly grew, and she’d unconsciously rub it in small, slow circles. That kind of love is like a miracle, a one-in-a-million chance. I wonder if she appreciates this.

  I settle into the corner of my sectional with a bowl of Mini-Wheats and the remote control. I found the couch secondhand at a consignment shop. It’s not old enough to be cool vintage, and too old to be “gently used,” but it’s just the right amount of beat-up comfy.

  My phone dings at me for a new email, though without even looking I guess who it is, and yep, it’s Michelle. Poor thing is going through a funhouse ride of a vicious divorce, and as her attorney, I’m right there beside her. I read it while munching my cereal, then put down my bowl to type back a quick reassurance and hope that will calm her down. Michelle, I will talk to opposing counsel to attempt to get him to stop, but otherwise, there’s very little we can do if he’s telling mutual friends you’re insane. I’m sure it’s not pleasant, but try to remember that we’ll get through this. This too shall pass.

  Who knew I’d end up ferrying so many people across the raging river of divorce? When I left Miller Paulson, I was thinking mainly of freedom from partner track pressure, office politics, and the emptiness of corporations suing corporations. Then I handled one divorce for an acquaintance, and then a couple more, and now it seems like I spend all day helping people renege on “’til death us do part.”

  As I channel flip, I spot yet another voyeuristic reality show about shopping for wedding dresses. I watch for the satisfaction of being able to roll my eyes at the histrionics over mermaid style versus ball gown. Like any of that will matter in a few years, when they’re throwing dishware at each other, and dragging out their final settlement over who gets the Fast and Furious DVD.

  In contrast, my low-maintenance mom has designed her own wedding dress. It was the only choice she had left, considering the usual offerings were princessy or slinky styles of the young bride, or the dowdy pastels of the mother-of-the-bride. She won’t tell me anything about the dress yet, but I can’t wait to see it and I have no doubt she’ll look terrific.

  Mom has remarked more than once, with exaggerated wistfulness, that it really should be the other way around, when you consider our respective ages and stages. She should be planning my wedding.

  Yeah well, my dad shouldn’t have left us when I was a little girl.

  Hasn’t she figured this out by now? We don’t get to live the life we’ve imagined.

  Chapter Two

  Beck

  Monday, July 1, 2013

  Haven, Michigan

  “Hi, Daddy,” Maddie says, looking up from her drawing only for a moment. I let my gaze linger on my daughter as I put down my briefcase and drape my jacket over a kitchen chair.

  Golden curls dangle onto her paper, obscuring her handiwork. Crayons lie scattered on the table, each one snatched up and discarded as my budding artist races through the color spectrum, periwinkle to plum to peach, on her latest masterpiece.

  Samantha glances up from the pot on the stove. “Hi, Will. Good day?” By the time her sentence is done, her back is to me again.

  “It’s better now,” I answer, ruffling Maddie’s curls. She shrugs her head away from my hand, far too busy to be caressed. “Where’s your brother?”

  Maddie shrugs. Samantha answers, “He’s staring at the fish, what else?”

  I head off down the hall to his room decked out in Transformers decals, decorated during one of Sam’s campaigns to get Harry to be more like other boys. Harry doesn’t mind the decoration. Nor does he give a rip about Transformers, or Star Wars, or Pokémon, or whatever else the boys like these days. All he wants to see, care about, or enjoy are animals in all their forms.

  His jet black hair hangs down in his eyes. Sam must have had a busy weekend; normally she keeps him on a rigid bangs-trimming schedule. He’s more serene than any other four-year-old I’ve ever seen, Maddie included, and Maddie at that age could freeze for an entire hour if Sesame Street was on.

  I touch his shoulder, thinking he might startle, but he barely reacts. “Hi, Dad,” he says, his eyes following the lazy ellipses of the fish in his tank. “Did I tell you what I learned today about caterpillars? Mom let me go on the NatGeo site and . . .”

  And he’s off. If he doesn’t become a zoologist or a vet, we’ll have done something seriously wrong. I’ve never met a person so sure of what he wants.

  I fold myself down cross-legged on the floor, watching him watch his fish and letting his happy chatter wash over me.

  I used to catch myself imagining that Anna was in the other room, cooking dinner and helping Madeline with her third-grade spelling words. She’d call out, “Honey! Dinner!” instead of Samantha’s sharp use of “Will!” that always has the exasperated edge of a substitute teacher.

  This was unfair, I know. The Anna of my memory was perfect by virtue of her absence. It would have been nothing like I imagined.

  Anyway, the long years eroded those daydreams some time ago. It’s only the season. The approaching Fourth of July tends to bring Anna to mind.

  “Are you ready, champ?”

  Harry nods, not moving from his spot.

  A familiar black, bitter swell rises in my chest. I was not supposed to be the weekend dad, make that every-other-weekend and Monday nights. I can’t remember why we picked Monday for my weekday “parenting time.” I’m sure there was a reason but it seems absurd now. On my weekends with the kids, I drop them off Sunday night and I’m back in twenty-four hours. But it took us so long to achieve our détente, we are both loathe to disrupt it.

  Harry finally untangles himself from the floor and wordlessly picks up his bag, his tiny backpack of stuffed animals and animal books that he totes between his two homes. That he does this without protest or argument, because it’s all he’s ever known, is its own kind of agony.

  Maddie, however. Maddie is old enough to remember her family intact.

  When I return to the kitchen, Maddie’s cherub face, which still has infantlike fullness to the cheeks, has turned a splotchy pink. Her eyes are wet.

  “I know you haven’t seen Mommy all day because I was at work, but you’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll take you and Harry out for pizza and a sundae, ok? I promise I’ll make it up to you,” Samantha says.

  Sam never wanted to go back to work, and because of that I pay her generous child support and even alimony. I did this willingly, knowing my part in what happened all too well. But when I questioned why she needed to return to work, why the money I pay her isn’t enough, she reminded me coldly that her own mother was single. They lived hand-to-mouth, in constant fear of eviction, utility shut-offs, and doctor bills. In this way Sam reminds me of my Depression-era grandmother who refused to throw away expired food because it was “perfectly good,” no matter how wealthy my father became.

  Maddie has finally stood up from the chair and is dragging her feet to the little Maddie-height peg on the wall where her own two-household backpack hangs. As much to avoid Sam’s glare as anything, I glance down at the artwork she was working on. It was a butterfly, I think. It’s hard to tell under the mass of black scribbles now obscuring her masterpiece.

  *

  I flick on the light in my little townhouse duplex. At least it’s not a grim apartment in that massive block of buildings where my sister-in-law used to live, full of twentysomethings getting drunk on the weekends and middle-aged divorced men nursing their beers in front of flickering televisions.

  It hardly lives up to the Becker manse where I was raised, but for just me, and the kids when I have them, it suits perfectly well. Harry and Maddie pop their backpacks onto their own little pegs on the wall here, a bit of symmetry with their mother’s house that I hope they find comforting. Sam has already fed them chicken nuggets and macaroni as is the Monday custody hand-off tradition. It’s an easy meal for her, and I don’t have to use up my visitation doing a ton of prep and cleanup. I am grateful for this small courtesy. For my part, I always try to return them clean
, fed, and rested, not too spoiled. I don’t try to one-up her, or buy the kids’ affection. I’m not sure she notices, and she definitely doesn’t acknowledge, but I finally figured out that asking for credit for not being a dick is, by definition, a dick move.

  Paul and Amy will come by in a few minutes, so I set out some cheese and crackers and pull out some glasses, and a pitcher of lemonade I made from powdery mix. I bobble a glass but it bounces harmlessly on my wood-look table. Wedding presents stayed with Sam. This set I bought at Target on clearance.

  The kids have zoomed off to their rooms. One small comfort is that the toys I have here are somewhat of a novelty. They don’t have time to get bored of their things like they did when we were all in one household. So if Maddie sulks and drags her feet about coming, at least she has her Barbie house to play with once she arrives, and Harry can feed his hamster.

  Paul raps at my door with his rhythmic “shave-and-a-haircut” knock he’s used since we were kids, trying to get invited to his big brother’s room. I swing open the door and knock twice for “two bits.”

  “Hey, Will, what’s up? I hope you have beer because this day kicked my ass.”

  Amy steps in behind him, leading Penelope by the hand. I crouch down to her. “Hiya, Pen. Harry’s in his room with the hamster. Want to go see?”

  Pen has the Becker family’s light green eyes, with straight brown hair always combed smoothly with a precise center part. Paul told me once in confidence that this was Amy’s real hair color, something she never liked to admit to anyone.

  “Say hi to Uncle Will,” Amy prompts, but Pen pops a thumb in her mouth in response and scurries off to Harry’s room.

  Amy shoots me an apologetic smile—as if I’m offended by my sweetly shy niece—and follows after her. Amy has lately seemed more comfortable visiting with the children than sitting with Paul and me.