I rarely feel sad about the divorce these days but it is hard to accept how much better of a person he is. You’re supposed to let yourself go. East terrible food. Lament the quality in the dating pool. Not land a hot chic twelve years your junior who thinks you hung the moon.
“Good for him.” Palmer looked at his watch. I bet it cost more than my car, which I almost parked in the back of the country club I was so embarrassed. Alongside all those Mercedes and Lexus, it looked like the maid’s car. I prayed no door dings would occur while I was here as I would no doubt get blamed.
“Cherish should be here soon.” he nodded as if I was wondering.
I nodded too. I tried not to smile when I heard M’s voice in my head saying, “Cherish? What the hell kinda name is Cherish? When he brought her home I thought for sure she’d be wearing 4-inch glass shoes and swinging from the column on our porch.”
“Did she sound upset?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Lolly.” One word, a devastating blow.
Tears welled up in my eyes when I heard that name. It wasn’t the one I knew her by. It was what her family called her because of her childhood love of lollipops. And I don’t know why but when I heard that name come out of his mouth I found it so incredibly sad she’d never have another lollipop. Not ever.
“I’m sorry if this is hard.” he handled me like a disgruntled employee.
“If?”
He nodded. He was the same clueless kid he had been when I first met him at 17. But now he was dressed in a sport jacket, a belt that matched his overpriced loafers, and sunglasses perched on his head. They should’ve been larger if he wanted to hide the monk-like bald circle on the top of his noggin. How could I have ever kissed this creep? Even as a 22-year-old. For the record, he was 18 by then. No harm, no foul. No laws broken. Honest.
But he was the kind of man that moms who loved money would love. I’m sure Cherish’s family was very happy with her ability to land such a big fish. M had told me as much. At their wedding she said they were lit up like Christmas trees who thought they had won the retirement lottery. M loved mismatched metaphors.
M had laughed at the time because her brother was notoriously tight-fisted and she knew they wouldn’t be seeing a red dime of that money. He’d have it protected eight ways from Sunday, whatever that meant.
I said she was crazy because Cherish would find a way to get them some. She reminded me that Palmer tracks every penny of their household expenditures, including placing Cherish on an allowance, which wasn’t enough to fund anyone's retirement. Plus, she said that she didn’t think Palmer liked Cherish all that much anyway.
“So why did he marry her then, smartie pants?” I thought I knew everything back then.
“Because she’s pretty and she’ll be grateful.”
Looking at him now, I could see how she’d probably been right.
That’s one of the things I miss most of all about her. We were just starting to understand couples. How many people can you think of right now that you would consider the kind of couple you want to be a part of? Less than 5, right? I’m talking about the June and Johnny Cash type couples of the world. The perfect ones. The ones who make your heart hurt out of wanting. And then there’s everyone else.
Heartbreaking really. So many in relationships just to be in them. She and I spent a lot of hours talking about what makes a good one and a mediocre one. We decided it’s not the bad relationship you should fear but the mediocre one that is so lacking in meaning.
I hope I never fall into that rut. No worries of that as long as I keep fooling around with inappropriate strangers. At least, that’s my plan. Walsey doesn’t like when I joke about that but we’re 3,000 miles apart and he says he’ll never get married again so I say why hem yourself in. He doesn’t like it but has yet to suggest something workable.
I stared at Palmer’s mouth as he brought his drink up to it. I remembered his lips being more wet than the average person’s. Not a desirable quality in a kisser. I wondered if that bothers Cherish. I sent a silent wish out into the universe that she was a virgin when they got married because if I remember correctly, he was pretty bad in bed too, a little too quick on the draw and all over the place. No steady rhythm in that boy’s hips.
But maybe he had learned something over the decades. Then again, it’s not exactly something money could buy.
“She told me she was looking forward to coming to see me.”
He turned to me with a surprised look.
“When?” he asked.
“When what?”
“When was she coming to see you?”
“Nine days after...” I stopped just short of calling it anything. What would I say “her death”? “The accident”? Offing herself?
“I mean it would’ve been nine days. I mean she was due in nine days after, would’ve been.”
Grammar when talking about dead people is so hard. Is it past-tense? It “would’ve” been but it never happened, the visit I mean. So how can it be in the past?
His phone buzzed.
“Cherish says ‘going home.’ She got her eyebrows waxed and doesn’t want to be seen. But I’m supposed to tell you she’s tired and she’ll see you in the morning. So tell me one thing...”
I sit up straight like I’m in a job interview.
“Why do women have their eyebrows pulled out just to paint them on again? And this idiocy costs me like $50 a session.”
I smiled sheepishly and traced my full right eyebrow with my finger. Eyebrows are always something I intend to get done but then bill paying gets in the way. But if he’s paying $50 for them, or for hers, he’s getting fleeced somewhere. I looked at my lap to avoid his gaze. Maybe she is saving for her parents’ retirement, one pluck at a time.
I shrugged to let him know I had nothing more to add to that conversation.
“So, it’s just us.” I said but as soon as those words left my mouth I regretted them. It sounded much more inviting than I had intended so I added, “Just us and your sister’s memory.” That would’ve killed anything that I may have inadvertently sparked. Don’t get me wrong, not saying he wanted me after all this time. Just saying sometimes when you open the car window too far, the dog will jump out...or in, as the case may be.
I raised my glass. “To M.”
“To Lolly. Never will she grow old.”
Those simple words caused me to explode into an embarrassing heap of tears. Darn her. I wore my anger with her like armour but I could see the look on Mike’s face when her name was mentioned or even how the clerk at the liquor store looks at me if I come in a few too many times within the week. They look sad. Palmer looks uncomfortable.
But he’s right. M will never grow old. She’ll forever be 44 and free, unencumbered by responsibility or the trivialities of this broken world. I’ll go through my first gray hair alone. I’ll go through menopause without a bestie to ask, what’s the hottest it’s ever gonna get?. I am completely alone in my aging and no one else on this planet can understand what that feels like.
When I told Walsey what had happened to M, he listened to me sob for 53 minutes. I know because I was sitting in a dark room with only the red light from the digital clock watching me. When I stepped out of my own need for a second, I was embarrassed to have shared this with him when everything was still so new between us. We were just getting to know each other again. I told him I needed to go because one of the kids was crying.
He said he knew the kids were at Mike’s because Mike would know I needed time. And they were. Then he said, you don’t have to get off the phone. Cry, yell, or tell me a story about her. I’m not going anywhere. In the end I fell asleep and when I woke a few hours later he was still on the line. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to marry him at that moment or never talk to him again. Part of me still feels like I owe him something for that. He’s not my boyfriend.
I tried to regain control of the deluge coming from my eyes but the more I tried, the more I felt the perm
anence of this mess.
There is no reset button. There is no do over. There is no clever writer who will make these awful weeks into a dream sequence that I will soon awaken from.
This. Is. It. My best friend is now something that could be mistaken for belonging in my vacuum cleaner.
I sobbed, ugly cried in the middle of his swanky trying-hard-to-be-a-casual-pub-style country club.
He stared at me and muttered an apology. He didn’t seem like a man who was used to emotional displays.
I wanted to leave, to get in my car and drive. I reached for my keys but he was faster than me. He scooped them up and tucked them in his pocket. I was angry and relieved and wanted to go to bed immediately. I imagined this is what toddlers felt like after a meltdown in Walmart.
We walked home to his place without talking. I thought maybe I was safe from conversation. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about her any more than I did.
But as he told his device to open the door, he turned to me. I had expected the door to open right away. I followed him a little too closely. When he turned, my nose was practically on his chest. He put his hands on my upper arms as if he was trying to steady me. Maybe I looked like I needed it.
“What’s the point?” he asked.
I shrugged hoping he’d stop but he continued.
“What’s the point in someone going out for groceries in the morning that they’ll never eat. Did Luke tell you that? She just bought groceries.”
“Yes. He likes to tell me about the contacts too.”
“What?”
“She ordered contacts the week before and they came the day after the…” I hesitated. She wasn’t buried so I couldn’t say that. No one had a funeral for her. “After she was cremated.” I left the latest part about the panties subscription out of the conversation.
“My attorney knows a guy and he’s looking into the train schedule.” he said taking command in what I imagined to be his business voice.
“Why?”
“Because she would’ve known the train schedule.” he pressed a finger into the post above my left shoulder like it would help prove his point.
“Obviously.” I even practically knew it. You could hear it in the background when she was on the phone.
“But that doesn’t make sense.” he said.
“What doesn’t?” I wasn’t following. My head felt thick with sludge.
“What do you think of the cowboy?”
“He’s a nice kid.” I shivered even though I wasn’t at all cold. I was hoping he’d get the idea that I wanted to go in. Instead, he just walked past me and perched on the railing of the porch.
“I never liked him. He’s like 10 years younger than she is.”
Was, I corrected silently in my brain. She has now stopped aging.
“Well, now they can finally catch up in age.” That remark didn’t sound anything like I thought it would.
He cocked his head to the side like my dog used to before he died and left me.
“He’s actually 13 years younger. And no college degree.” I added that last part because I knew it would bother his blue blood sensibilities.
M never acted like she was raised in the luxury that she was but Palmer spends every minute reminding everyone he meets that he’s researched the family tree and while they weren’t on the actual Mayflower per se, they were on the boat right behind it. M used to call it the S.S. Second Place.
“The thing is she always chose lousy guys. Remember Tucker? The one she was married to for a hot minute?” he ran his hand through hair that hadn’t been there for at least a decade.
“In all fairness she didn’t realize she was married to him. She thought it was a prank.”
“Still.” he swept at something invisible on the railing.
“When she found out it was legal, she reversed it immediately.”
“She was always pretty messed up.” he said.
I didn’t know whether to agree with him or not. She didn’t always make the best decisions but she was never boring like her bombastic brother. To admit my best friend was “messed up” is to admit that I must be too because my shenanigans far surpassed any of hers but I lived under the anonymity of marrying my “sort of” college sweetheart, although not until years after college but that’s a different story.
People tend to cut married women breaks as long as you’re not caught doing the crazy stuff. People are more than happy to blame the single friend.
“There’s no conspiracy. She wasn’t killed by a jealous ex.” I insist.
“Of course not. Who said that?”
“I just thought that was where you were headed.”
“That’s ridiculous. Of course not. I just think it’s suspect they haven’t released toxicology reports on the conductor yet.”
“Those things take time.”
“It seems like too much time if you ask me. That backwater Texas town is probably hiding something. Luke’s brother is the sheriff.”
“I know.”
“So you don’t think that’s weird? I’d like to know what kind of insurance policy he had on my sister. But I can’t seem to get that answered either. Every time I bring it up to Jen and she brings it up to him, she says he breaks down or changes the subject.”
“He’s devastated, Palmer.”
“He’s a lout. He doesn’t even have a job.”
“He was in the army and now he runs a farm...er ranch.” I’m suddenly Luke’s biggest fan.
“He was living off my sister. Lolly was paying for everything, a new tractor, paid off a lien…”
I know nothing of this and don’t know how he has any idea of it. M never talked about money other than when she’d offer me some. But I never knew whether that was her last dollar or just a two-week dividend check from her investments. I don’t even know if she had investments.
“She bought groceries and contacts. That doesn’t sound like a cover up to you? Maybe he got wind she planned on leaving him. Maybe he knew the money was going to dry up. Maybe she told him dad had cut her off.”
And there it was. That’s how Palmer knew. Family money always comes with strings, or more like bungee cords that snap back on you when you pull too much.
“That’s why I’m having my guy look into it.” he announced triumphantly like he could already imagine “the idiot cowboy” doing consecutive life sentences.
I don’t know why I said what I did next. Maybe it was because I was tired or drunk or just exhausted from keeping it in. I know it wasn’t something I had intended to say. I had planned on taking it to my grave as I was the only one who seemed to hold fast to this idea. But I said it anyway.
And I’m pretty sure the entire neighborhood heard me. The only thing I had going for me was that it was a humid night and maybe the sound didn’t travel as far. Still those million dollar homes are all on top of each other as if they like being able to look into each other’s windows.
The first part of the sentence I said quietly as if working up the nerve to hear the words out loud.
“There’s nothing to investigate. She KILLED HERSELF!”
Once, before sculpting goats, when I was driving on the outerbelt, I was late for an early work meeting. It was earlier than I was usually on the road. Maddie was in her car seat. I was taking her to daycare. And I’m zooming along. Hardly any traffic. I don’t see all that well in the dark but I see two orbs up in front of me, reflecting my bright lights. I turn the high beams down and as I get closer I see a buck with crazy in his eyes. He stood regally but his eyes gave away his secret terror at getting caught by something unidentified speeding his way. And I knew...or I should say I didn’t...that crazy is totally unpredictable. There were 27 different things he could’ve done. But he only did one, stand completely still looking at me, the whites of his eyes showing ever so slightly as I swerved and passed. But that look I still remember[6].
That’s what Palmer looked like in that moment. He looked like he wasn’t sure whether to bolt in fr
ont of me or bound off the backside of the porch.
And I wasn’t sure exactly what I was trying to tell him.
After years of staring at each other he said, “She didn’t.”
“No,” I said. “This has all been a giant joke we’re playing on you.”
“No, I mean she just bought contacts and groceries. The cowboy told Jen that she got her haircut and dyed the day before. People who kill themselves don’t do that.” he rationalized.
I nodded.
“They don’t.” he adds. Sometimes saying things twice makes them truer than the first time.
He looked at the moon and then back at me. I thought maybe he wanted me to say something like “that’s what other people think but I don’t.” I say none of this.
“Why would she do that? It doesn’t make sense.” In his family, people don’t give up. Suicide was just that, a giant throwing in of the towel.
I shrugged. “Sometimes people just do things. There’s no reason.”
“Are you telling me my sister killed herself for no reason? That’s ridiculous. She had a guy she liked.” he insisted.
“Loved.”
“Fine, loved...she has a family who love her. She was pretty. She took care of herself. She bought organic...she traveled and had her own fashion design brand.”
But when he throws all of it out there like that, although it all sounds good, it also sounds hollow. His voice trails off. He’s lost trying to think of accomplishments and things that set her life apart.
Like me, there was no lasting impact. And there never would be now. If he paid attention at all to his sister’s life he would’ve known her design brand was nothing more than a few pieces of jewelry she made and accessories she ordered from Indonesia that she sold at the occasional crafts fair or farmers market. The line had been something once but not now. She had given up on it a few years ago.
She had given up a lot of her life, everything outside of Luke.
Palmer opened the door and a waft of fall scents that undoubtedly were purchased at a high-end home store or catalog tickled my nose. He held the door for me, directed me to my room, and said, “I have an early meeting tomorrow, if I don’t see you, take care.”
West of You Page 6
