Hope Out Loud

by Kristina Riggle

  Opposing counsel doesn’t pick up, so I scold his voicemail and demand a call back. I follow that up with an email to the same effect, typed as fast as I can manage with my thumbs. Then I have to jump out of the car before I roast alive with the July sun steaming up the parked Chevy. I walk toward the beach in search of a breeze, all the better to re-enter the pleasant vacation zone.

  The streets are crowded with tourists and locals, and it’s easy to sort them out. The tourists are richer, for one thing. They’ve got natty clothes with branded logos. Not that we don’t have our share of money in Haven but it’s concentrated in a few enclaves and private spaces. Those folks tend to remain there, barbecuing on their spacious decks overlooking the lake or the golf course. The locals out and about now are the ones in jean shorts or khaki capris, grabbing a sandwich before heading back to sell lighthouse tchotchkes or sit at the lifeguard stand, or maybe answer phones at the accountant firm upstairs from the shoestore.

  The sun winks off the lake in the distance, and the sounds of laughing children and waves undulating over the sand saturates the atmosphere such that we seem to forget all this beauty and joy. But those merry tourists swinging their shopping bags can’t help but gaze at their surroundings.

  And then I spot it, feeling ambushed, as if my old home had jumped out to get me. As I stop short to gawk at the shiny, aggressive modernity of the place, a mother rams into me with her stroller. So I step out of the flow, where I rest one hip against a newspaper box.

  The front windows used to hold faded beer ad posters, and the lettering read NEE NANCE STORE, named after my own babytalk attempt to say convenience store, back when my parents were still young marrieds getting a start.

  Now gold sans serif lettering on sparkling clean glass reads VIN FROMAGE. I hold my hand over my face to hide my smirk. Not wine AND cheese, but wine cheese? This reminds me of a running joke I had with Beck, way back when. We went out to Portobello for dinner before a Valentine’s dance, and the waiter conspicuously and sniffily corrected Beck’s pronunciation of “bruschetta.” For the rest of that meal and ever after we would intentionally mispronounce any fancy or foreign food name. We called crème brulee “Creamy Broolee” and jalapeños “jalopy-noes.” To this day I mispronounce menu items in my head and smile. If we were still in touch, I’d call him and laugh about Vin Fro-Midge.

  Well, now I’ve got to go in.

  It had been some unspoken pact that my mother and I avoid the place. My heart hurts on her behalf when I think of all the time she wasted in that crumbling liquor store. I’m the lucky one. I got out.

  As I step through the door, I have to admit it really is lovely inside. It smells delicious, for one thing, savory and spicy. A small deli section sells fresh sandwiches back where our Hi-C Fruit Punch used to be. The clerk gives me the tight smile of the busy service worker who acknowledges your presence but doesn’t have time to gab. He looks to be a college kid. I wander past where we used to have the beer cooler—now home to a whole wall of wine—and look for the door to the upstairs. I can’t find it.

  Should I ask to see upstairs? Small-town people will allow quite a lot, especially if you can identify yourself as a native.

  Being in this building gives me a pang for my daffy aunt Sally. My dad may have bailed on me, but his sister stuck around, keeping us laughing with her antics and her crazy wigs. I’d walk into the Nee Nance and she’d laugh about a “Geneva Convention” every single time. I used to roll my eyes, but now that she’s gone, what I wouldn’t give to hear that stupid old joke again.

  “Don’t tell me you’re moving back.”

  I whirl around to see Beck standing there with a crooked smile and one sandy curl loose on his forehead. My heart races double-time and my mouth goes dry. We’d broken up—the final time, that is—almost in this very spot. Five years ago, he came to the store to beg me to give him time to sort things out. Time he would spend going home to his wife. I’d seen him briefly at Sally’s funeral, but otherwise had managed to avoid Beck sightings, getting news of his life only from third parties, and only when such news was foisted upon me. I’d deleted his contact and texts from my phone, thrown away the copy of Walden he gave me, and carried on with my life hundreds of miles away.

  My instinct is to blurt, What are you doing here? But his office is just down the way; he’s probably here three times a week. My hand goes up to fuss with my own hair, a fidget that took me years to break, but still rears its ugly head when I’m surprised. My shocked brain finally catches up to real time and I realize he asked me a question.

  “Had to finally look around. Can’t help but think of old times.”

  I look down, away from his eyes, the color of pale green sea glass. This comment, between any other two people, would be meaningless. But the last time we saw each other, we’d been having an affair that nearly destroyed his marriage. Maybe it did, in fact, destroy the marriage. Their divorce happened years later, but I’m sure our cheating opened up a generous fault line. Old times indeed.

  “I know what you mean,” he says. “It’s so funny seeing you here, in your old place, but it’s not your place.”

  “Come here often?” I rejoin, rolling my eyes at my own lame joke. I glance around the store, looking for anyone here who would know us, know our history. This scene would make rich fodder for the magpies down at Doreen’s.

  “Not so often. But Dad wanted me to grab some wine for dinner tonight. Amy and Paul are coming by, you should join us.”

  I laugh bitterly before I can stop myself.

  It was Paul, Beck’s brother, who redeveloped the Nee Nance and kicked my mother out. All’s well that ends well, et cetera. Nevertheless, I don’t relish sharing a dinner table with Paul Becker.

  “I’ll pass, thanks.” I swallow hard, so thirsty that I would like to snatch a Coke right out of the cooler and glug it down, corn syrup, calories, and all. I feel just as overheated now as I did in my mom’s car minutes ago, though I can hear the air conditioning roaring away in here.

  Beck doesn’t back away, or move to leave. He tilts his head to catch my eye again. “How are you doing? Has your dad been . . . is he in touch?”

  “Sometimes. I get postcards.”

  “Is that okay for you?”

  In the five years since I moved away, again, I’d forgotten this. I’d forgotten what it’s like to be in the presence of a man who knows every scuff mark and scratch and stain in the house that is your personal history. Beck also knows how it makes me feel. He knows enough to ask. My shoulders relax a degree or two. I hadn’t realized I was tense.

  “Yes. Most of the time it is.” My old self would not like to admit this, not even to him. And now that I’ve gone this far, I wish I could blurt it all out to him. Often, I wish my dad stayed away, and in fact sometimes I even wish he would die—quick and painless of course. Then I could mourn him properly and move on. This quasi-contact—sort-of-there, sort-of-not—messes with my head in a whole different way than his stark absence. How can he settle for only postcards? Doesn’t he want to know what he missed? Is it because I didn’t give him grandchildren? Would he have cared in that case? I look up at Beck again. “Did I ever tell you he has another family?”

  “What? You’re kidding.”

  “No. A common-law wife. Or at least he did, last I knew. There are twin boys. They’d be almost twenty by now, I think.”

  “Half-brothers.”

  I shrug. I never wanted to see the children my dad decided to raise instead of me. He offered to send pictures once, and I told him not to.

  A woman’s voice trills from the doorway of the shop. “Will Becker! Great to see you!”

  Beck pastes on a smile before turning around. He and Paul, as the heirs to Becker Development dynasty, walk around in a kind of small-town spotlight.

  “Hi there! Fancy running into you here. I hope we can go over the ad copy later? I’m free for lunch in fact.” She turns her smile to me, and her expression takes on the blank fakeness of the net
working Chamber of Commerce type. This is the face of someone who hasn’t decided yet if I’m worth her time. “Hello, I’m Amanda Schafer.”

  “I’m Anna Geneva.”

  I see my name register in the way she blinks rapidly and says, too brightly, “Oh! Yes! I think your family used to own this place, right?”

  “Sort of. We owned a business that leased here. I’m in town and thought I’d pop by and check it out. It’s nice.”

  Beck runs his fingers through his hair and clears his throat. “Amanda works for the agency that’s taking over the marketing and ads for Becker Dev.”

  Amanda mock-slaps Beck’s arm. “Works for it! Try that I own it, thank you very much. Anyway, lunch, Will?”

  “I already ate, Mandy. Just stopped in here on an errand and I have to get back. I’ll check my calendar when I get back to the office.”

  Amanda tosses her sleek dark hair, bobbed to razor precision at her chin. “Well then, I’ll leave you to your errand, and your . . . catching up. Bye!” She pivots on a very high heel and strides out without having bought anything.

  I watch Beck watch her leave, his gaze skimming over her body. She’s very pretty, svelte and young. This is exactly why I so rarely visit Haven. All this place does is remind me of what’s gone for good.

  “I’m going to head out,” I tell Beck, making to step past him toward the door. He puts one hand on my elbow, barely touching me, but it’s enough to send a chill racing up my arm.

  “Will you come to my family’s Fourth of July? I’d love to see you.”

  “I don’t know. It’s a bit more déjà vu than I have the stomach for.”

  “We’ll just have to stay out of the upstairs bedrooms this time.”

  “God, Beck.”

  “Sorry. Crummy joke. But, seriously. Please come. You have to save me from Mandy.”

  “You didn’t look like you wanted saving just now.”

  A blush tinges the tops of his ears. “Fine, she’s nice to look at. Listening to her talk for more than ten minutes is a whole other experience. And I think I’ve still got nail marks on my inner arm from the last time we were at an event and she clung to me the whole time.”

  “You’re sweeping me off my feet.”

  He takes a step closer to me, and cups his hand around my arm, gently, just above the elbow. He strokes my arm with his thumb. He used to do this all the time, I doubt he even realizes he’s doing it now. His face has softened, shedding the last of the awkward tension of our random meeting. He’s once again the Beck I always knew, sweet and kind. Too kind for me, I always believed.

  “Please come? I just want to catch up a little, before you disappear again to the big city.”

  I ponder the alternative, which is sitting around alone while everyone else in Haven is making merry somewhere, either at the beach or at a house party. I’ve done that enough in Chicago. Standing here in front of someone who has known me and cared about me for more years than I want to count, it seems ludicrous to say no.

  “Yes, fine. I’ll come.”

  The way Beck lights up at this takes ten years off of him, and I can’t help but smile back. As I watch him buy his wine and head out into the sunshine, still wearing that smile, I find myself envying his happy naiveté, in which catching up with an old lover is nothing but a pleasant way to spend an evening, with no corroded emotional freight banging along behind him.

  Chapter Four

  Beck

  Thursday, July 4, 2013

  My eyes snap open at six thirty on the dot.

  I can sleep in today, and God I wish I would. There should be some benefit to having to give up my kids on these holidays. I should at least catch some extra sleep.

  Years of rigorous punctuality at Becker Dev have conditioned me to dawn wakefulness, not to mention years of being bounced awake by early-bird children. Mornings are still the worst. Those and the holidays I can’t have them. Actually, even the holidays they spend with me are awful, because I know they miss their mother.

  I turn over in my bed and shove my face under my pillow. I have hours and hours before I can go anywhere or do anything useful. The office is closed today, and the party won’t start until seven. Sam’s taken the kids to Indiana by now to see her folks. I’ll be lucky to get a phone call. I used to try to get the kids to do a video chat with Sam’s smartphone, but Harry never seemed to know how to talk to me in that tiny little screen, and Maddie was too busy to look at me. Samantha would end up standing there holding the phone by my daughter’s face as she dressed a Barbie or colored a picture, and I’d hear my ex-wife muttering with increasing impatience, “Take the phone and talk to your father.”

  I tried to be goofy with it, even showing them my nose hairs and making my eyeball huge in the phone. But kids of divorce are smart enough to know that all the wacky hijinks in the world can’t cover up the reason for my absence.

  Maddie doesn’t remember that she almost drowned five years ago, thank god. And even if she remembered she likely couldn’t understand that almost losing her—right under my nose, even—makes her rejection sting all the more. She’s only a little girl, I continually remind myself. I can’t guilt trip her into loving me more.

  No more than Sam could do that to me, try as she might.

  I sit up on the edge of the bed, tossing my pillow across the room and giving up on sleep. Even though Anna said she’d come and I’m glad I get to see her, I do wish I had the power to skip today entirely.

  *

  After I make myself a big breakfast and clean the kitchen rigorously to eat up some time, I take myself for a morning stroll around the neighborhood. I’m on my second mile when my phone rings. I happen to be in front of the playground and I stop to take the call, then start walking again. Lone men with no kids around look weird at playgrounds. Besides, I can’t handle the sight of gleeful children today.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, dear. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “No, Mom. It’s fine. Just taking a walk. What’s up?”

  “Did I hear correctly that Anna Geneva is coming?”

  “Sure. You invited her mother and fiancé, and Anna is in town for their wedding.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Well. Be careful around your father. Maybe don’t mention her in front of him.” She has dropped her voice and I can tell from the echoing that she’s in the mudroom off the garage.

  “He can’t still be holding that grudge.”

  “He has a long memory, you know that.”

  “But he loved Anna when we were kids.”

  “I think that’s why he was so upset by what happened. He trusted her.”

  “It’s not only her fault.”

  “Nor is it only yours,” my mother observes. I can hear her dry tone and just imagine one eyebrow raised. “It takes two to tango.”

  “Yes, and we tangoed five years ago, and for that matter we only tangoed once.” I don’t remind my mother about the emails, texts, and occasional visits we had in the meantime. She knows it all anyway.

  “I’m on your side, Will, you don’t have to tell me. And I keep trying to tell your father that things were rocky with you and Samantha anyway. But he likes simple explanations, you know that.”

  “If he’s that upset, why did he invite her mother?”

  “That was Paul’s doing. He still feels guilty about the store. And anyway, her mother is lovely, we always thought so when we were practically in-laws, back when you kids were dating in school. Will, are you busy today? You should come early. Spend some time with us before the hordes descend.”

  “Let’s see, I have to avoid mentioning Anna Geneva to my father, because he’s been angry for five years, gee, I can’t wait.”

  “Please, Will. It’s crazy how seldom we see you considering we’re right in this same tiny town, and you and your father working together! When was the last time you saw him when you both weren’t wearing business suits?”

  Knowing the alternative is to watch the shadows cree
p across the floor in my duplex as a baseball game drones on the television, I admit defeat and agree that yes, I’ll come early. The dutiful oldest child will come pay his respects.

  *

  What I see, as I drive up the huge semicircle driveway in front of my massive childhood home, is a monument to my father’s disappointment in me.

  I was supposed to want a house for myself at least this big, and fill it with a pretty wife and as many children as she would agree to have. Nannies and maids, too. I lacked the bloodlust for the family business and got sidetracked into a degree in environmental science. So yes, I work for the family shop but seeing as I spend my days picking over site plans for proper drainage and voicing concern over runoff pollution, I’m a thorn in their side more than anything else. Supposedly my intervention in-house keeps them from running afoul of environmental laws. That’s the story, anyhow.

  Also, having an “environmental projects specialist” is a fun thing to slip into an Earth Day press release.

  My brother Paul did get the development bug, but he had the misfortune of coming of age during the housing collapse. Rumor around town was that my father almost lost our family home by taking out mortgages to keep the company afloat during this time. I wouldn’t know if that’s true. If it ever was, he pulled his ass out of the fire just in time, because the sprawling mansion with its Greek-like columns is still here, looking as embarrassingly grand as it ever did in my childhood.

  I pull my Prius into the wide driveway in front of the garage and take a fortifying breath. Everywhere I turn is the ghost of what I used to be.

  My sister-in-law’s goofy Labrador, Frodo, comes charging around the corner to greet me, his tongue flapping drool behind him. I look for Amy, or Penelope, but instead it’s my mother who follows along behind. “Will!” she cries, opening her arms and breaking into a trot, as if I’m coming home from a journey around the globe. I scratch Frodo’s ears and then my mother squeezes me around my middle. I leave one arm around her shoulder as we stride across the lawn.