After seeing Charlie’s parents at the party, I’d spent the next three afternoons in their kitchen. It was as if, with our collected love for Charlie in the same room, we could conjure up a veneer of him.
“Bernice said they’d get tired of me, but what does she know!” I’d found Ben in his room after dinner and sat on the edge of his bed. He nodded and strummed his guitar. “I mean, they were a second set of parents to me, you know, when the first set gave up.” Ben grimaced and played louder. “She’s probably jealous. She, Neil, Leah didn’t exactly look chummy at the party.” I dared him to engage in the conversation. I was restless, anxious, didn’t know what to do with myself.
“They’re fine, Reese.”
“Have you washed these sheets in a while?” I pinched a corner of the white material.
“Reese, they’re fine.” My brother looked up from his guitar.
“I miss Charlie. He’d agree with me that your parents are being crazy.” Maybe it’s finally time to go back.
Ben stopped strumming. “You’re the most decisive human I know. You can change a flat tire on your own. You don’t need Charlie.”
“Of course I don’t need him, I—” I threw up my hands in surrender and departed. I’d spent hours thinking backwards, wondering how Charlie and I got here, to this indeterminate land between us. Sometimes I think it began with a phone call that I almost ignored, a forgotten passport, an adventure. Not all clichés are trite.
Sometimes I think it began long, long before that.
It had been almost three years since I got the call.
By the third ring, it seemed apparent the caller dialed my number intentionally. And so, with a loud lament for my audience of none, I threw myself over and squinted at the intrusive phone on the nightstand beside me.
5:43 a.m.
When the phone rang a fifth time, I fought my arms out of the blanket’s tangle.
“Hi.” My voice was thick with sleep and a glass too many of red wine the night before. I stretched my legs to the end of the bed and focused on my dream stealer.
“Reese, it’s me.” Charlie. I could pick out his voice in a crowd of thousands. “Pack your bags and meet me outside your apartment in an hour. David called and told me the photographer for that big shoot in Ireland got pulled away on a family emergency. David is shooting it now and he put in a good word for me to assist him. I wouldn’t go without you, so I got you in on the deal. I got us on the 10:55 to Heathrow today. Then we’ll jump on a little commuter flight to Dublin. We’ve got to haul dirt on the road this morning. Bring the Leica. And love? Don’t forget your passport.”
No longer tired, I sat up so fast my head spun, and jumped out of bed. When my jeans were halfway on, I toppled to the floor and dropped the phone. I was met with an image of wild hair; long, bare legs; and my engulfing cable knit sweater in the mirror across my small room. Head pounding, I leaned back against the scruffy rug.
“What was that?” Charlie asked with a laugh.
“Nothing.” I grimaced at my reflection in the mirror opposite. “Come on, Charlie, fill me in.” I didn’t try to hide the annoyance edging my words. Charlie forever left out the details. He was always the first to be in the know, and he loved to make me ask the questions. Most days I didn’t care but on occasions like today, I found it maddening.
“Reese, this is it—our big break!” I’d never heard him so giddy. I rolled my eyes at the phone. Again, no specifics.
Irritation faded as his words sank in. Plane. Ireland. Leica. I’d launched my freelancing career six months previously, and it had gone so badly I’d spent the day before filling out waitressing applications. I’d scrawled in form after form with my lucky ballpoint pen, until I had a dozen piled around me. After their completion, I hadn’t had the willpower to take them around to the restaurants. I’d told myself I would do it today.
The applications watched me as I nodded. I still didn’t have the full picture, but this was certainly better than serving Gong Bao Chicken. Besides, adventuring with Charlie was what I did best. So I followed him to Ireland and by the time we were back in Atlanta, it seemed I was his second shooter, or his sidekick; a state so natural neither of us noticed enough to comment on it.
The two months back in Omaha had left a hole where my best friend had always been. I needed to hear Charlie’s voice, to have him tell me it was all going to be okay. After all those years of existing in the same space, thinking the same thoughts, I felt set adrift. So I called him straight away, not caring that it was 2 a.m. at the hostel where he always stayed in Paris.
As soon as I heard his smothered “Hello” on the other end, I stopped pacing and sank into the armchair with a thud.
“Charlie, it’s me!” My turncoat whisper reeked of sentiment.
“Reese? Reese, is that you?” He sounded muffled, but my smile stretched to the edges of my face. I knew Charlie like I knew myself—his moods, his preferences, all his ways.
“Hi.” And with that I had no more words, only a barrage of tears appearing so suddenly it was all I could do to keep them inside, red hot burning.
Slowly in, slowly out, don’t lose it girl.
I hadn’t counted on his voice cracking at the edges, splintering all the pieces of me into something unrecognizable. So I held the phone for long moments as he talked, and his tones soothed all the broken, bleeding pieces inside of me. He didn’t tell me what I’d so desperately wanted him to, he didn’t say anything right or tell me it was going to be okay. But hearing his voice, knowing he was so well in the world, gave me a renewed sense of hope.
I sat unmoving in the judicious chair long after we’d said goodbye. I didn’t know it was possible for one little heart to hold so much love, so much ache, so much confusion all stirred together like it was concocting a stew.
I didn’t know how it was possible—I only knew it was true.
Bernice
“That party. Those notes. This cancer. It’s sobered me up.” Carl peered at me from his place beside me on the couch. He’d barely spoken since the party, and now I knew why.
“Sugar.” I tentatively reached for his hand and sighed when he accepted my offering.
“I’m not one for reflection, not one for the mushy stuff.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
“But it made me stop and think. And I can’t stop thinking. It’s as if my life has been unfolding in chapters in front of me. I’ve had a good life.” His gaze was wistful.
“I’m glad.” I’d never seen him so sentimental.
“I am grateful for the years. But there are also regrets.”
“What regrets?” I breathed.
“Well, for one, my relationships with you and Reese resemble the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.” He looked at me shyly and my heart caught. “But things are slowly looking up with both of you.”
“Things are looking up from where I’m sitting too.” I wiped my eye with the back of my hand.
“I mean, sure, I haven’t done any of those things I said I would when I was twenty. I haven’t traveled, invented anything, gone sailing.”
“You’re young, Carl. You can still do so much.”
He closed his eyes. When we were newly married, Carl and I wrote out a dream list. We’d been on a date for $4 burgers at the hamburger joint south of Main. It was raining that night, pouring by the time we were done eating, so we stayed at the restaurant late, writing our hopes in ink on the cheap paper napkin. We drank an entire bottle of wine, and I traced the warmth of his leg under the table as we envisioned ourselves on Highway 1, dancing in Monaco. We’d buy a VW van and take our trips in the summer. I shoved the list deep inside my layers and we raced, laughing through the downpour, back to our one-bedroom apartment. Carl undressed me layer by layer in the lamplight, kissing the pieces of bare wet skin as if discovering them for the first time.
I framed the napkin for our first anniversary, and it hung above the fireplace for more than a decade.
�
�Carl, can I ask you something?”
“Depends.”
“What did you do with our dreams?”
He studied me. “After you left, I took them down, stuck them in a box.” He shrugged.
“They were so lovely. Do you remember any of them?” I remembered every one.
“Well, let’s see. I remember what I haven’t done, which is pretty much all of them or anything we added after the kids came. I never took Ben to the Cubs game we’d talked about or you to the Greek Islands like you always hoped. But I’m putting that one on you.” His smile was not unkind.
“Carl, we had our share of family vacations.” I thought my heart would burst out of my body, leaving something sloppy and broken in its place.
“Sure, we started out with plans to go to New York or Boston, but when the time came, we camped at a nearby lake instead. Year after year. We never bought that VW, but we always had a set of wheels that got us from point A to point B.”
“We did, Carl, we did.” He was silent for so long, I thought we were done, but when I moved to leave, he sighed.
“Simple and perfect. Life hasn’t been so effortless since.” He wouldn’t meet my gaze.
Over the next few days, I watched him spend his hours at the house poring over our family photo albums. There were hundreds of pictures Reese and I had insisted on taking despite our men’s protests and groans.
When Carl went to sleep that night, I dragged out the albums for myself. I was glad for the documentation of our story, our history. They stared back at me, accusing me: baby photos of my kids, awkward teenage years, the years I missed too. Beautiful and terrible—a telling record of my mistakes. Carl was always by himself in the photos after I left, looking somber, unsure. I closed the albums with a snap. I couldn’t bear to see them looking at me with the smiles and miles I’d missed.
For too many years, I thought every relationship sang like ours.
I wore it proudly, like his letter jacket, which I had with me in all seasons.
Sometimes Charlie and Reese reminded me of the two of us. His parents were our neighbors long before the twins were born. A single fence, with a cut-out section big enough to walk through, separated them for the entirety of their growing up. In the early years, Leah and I spent long hours in the backyard with our babies sprawled and crying on the blankets between us. While they screamed and pooped, we dreamed of a lengthy, happy life for them.
Through the years, we spent every holiday with the Becks, birthday parties too. Every year in early December, we’d parade over to their house to decorate and drink hot chocolate for hours as the kids raced around with yells. The next night they’d come to our house where I’d meet them at the door with a plate of cookies and mugs of Baileys. With most of Carl’s relations scattered around the country, they became our surrogate family. I was an only child and relished embracing Leah as the sister I’d never had.
Charlie shared the best features of each of his parents. He had Leah’s eyes and Neil’s strong chin. He embodied their best characteristics too—Leah’s kindness and Neil’s humor. He was a charmer, too talented for his own good, and I loved him like a son. When I heard Reese talk about Charlie, saw her eyes shine with a shade of impossible bright, the pressure built, built somewhere between my heart and my throat. I once knew a love like that.
Sometimes people asked me why I left Carl; I saw that question in my children’s eyes again and again. Here’s the truth—there aren’t enough words in the English language—in the known universe—to unravel the mess of that why. So somewhere along the way, I stopped trying.
9
Bernice
I’d fallen asleep at the kitchen counter late one night a week after the party, but woke when Carl said my name. He was in pajamas, bathed in the faint light from the hallway. My heart caught in my chest, and I knew I must be dreaming. His eyes were soft and sweet. We held each other’s gaze, not speaking, as he haltingly made his way to me.
“Bernice.” There it was again.
“Carl.” I ached all over.
“I came down to get milk, but here you were, asleep, so beautiful. I…” He sighed, looked forlorn.
“I’ll get you some milk.”
Before I could stir, he reached out to stroke my cheek. “When you abandoned me, all those years ago, I went after you, you know. Ben blames me for not fighting for our marriage, but I did. I knocked on Leah and Neil’s door and asked to borrow some butter. What I really wanted was my wife, but I could tell from their uninterested expressions you weren’t there.”
“Oh, Carl.” My eyes filled with tears. Back then, I’d desperately wanted him to fight for me, for us. But asking for butter is hardly a fight. I shoved the thought back down.
“I drove to Bryony’s next and saw your perfect silhouette in the living room window. I sat in my car, parked across the street and tried to figure out from your body language if you wanted me to stay or go.”
“Carl, I wanted you. I was waiting for you.” We were both so lost.
“The next night I brought you flowers and the night after that, too. I left them on the doorstep after you ladies had gone to bed. Bernice, you knew they were from me but when you didn’t respond, I knew I’d lost you forever.”
“There was no note. Carl, I—” I swallowed through the anguish. “I thought you were saying goodbye.” For years, he’d escaped into himself, and I’d stopped understanding him, knowing him, and here was another proof of crossed wires, of misheard messages.
“I thought you wanted me to stay away.”
“Never.” We’d fallen apart, into some strange terrain where we weren’t talking, couldn’t talk to each other.
He seemed hesitant as I reached out for a hug, but he gave me a nod, and I fell into his arms.
“I’m still angry at you,” he murmured.
“I know.” I knew it wasn’t over yet. I was angry at him too, at myself, at all the things I could never fix.
“Oh Bernice,” he whispered into my hair over and over while my heart pulsed into his chest.
“Well, have you?” My tone climbed higher with each word, pounded right to the summit. We sat on the green sofa, no inches between us. After that night in the kitchen, things had shifted once more, and it looked as if our truce might be permanent.
We were dating, as if we were teenagers again.
We were untangling the miles of confusion, doubts, and hurts between us.
We were taking things bit by bit.
We still hadn’t told the kids.
We waited until they were out and about to find our way to each other’s arms.
“Bernice, don’t worry about it. Didn’t we say we would start afresh and sweep the last decade aside as if it never happened?”
“Yes, but it did happen, so let’s talk about how many dates you went on.” I was piqued and there was no way around this but straight on through.
“Hey, hey. I didn’t go on any.”
“None at all?”
“Definitely not. Not officially. No dates for me; I would have made St. Augustine proud. I was the monkiest monk that ever monked,” Carl said, like he thought it was cute.
“Now you’re just being silly, and what the Sam Hill does ‘not officially’ mean?”
“Well, you know Joe and Raemalee from church?”
“Of course I know them. We had dinner with them every Thursday for fifteen years. Do you think I’m an imbecile?”
“Darling, darling. If you would let me finish. We eventually rekindled the Thursday night dinners after you’d, ah, after you left. It was maybe six months later when we picked them back up. And occasionally they’d invite over a lady friend they thought might suit me. I had nothing to do with it, I swear!”
“Carl, stop swearing, it’s unbecoming. Were any of them pretty?”
“Well.”
“Carl, I swear.”
“Bernice, you know you’re the only woman for me. Every other female in the universe dims by comparison. Meryl
Streep may be your second, but even she is light years behind.”
“Well then.” I snuggled in close, between his heart and his collarbone, where I fit best. I smelled spearmint and wisteria, cinnamon and tobacco mixed. He kissed the top of my head. “I still can’t believe we’re dating.”
“As if we never stopped.” He rubbed my cheek.
“We definitely stopped.” I smiled into his chin.
“It’s hard to date a person who lives in Canada,” he said, his voice tinged with acrimony.
I sat up and held his face. “We’re talking.”
He nodded, and I lay back down, arms wrapped tightly around his frame, as if I could hold in all the good and keep out all the bad. “Talking—your favorite pastime.” We could talk for the next century, and it wouldn’t be enough.
Reese
I waited on the front porch swing for Ben’s arrival. The early evening sun was warm on my skin; I drank in the smells of summer and the neighborhood’s barbeques.
“Right on time, Hamilton,” I called as he pulled up with his windows down.
“Hey.” Ben looked disheveled, his plaid shirt wrinkled, his hair wind-blown from his drive home from the office. He slammed the car door behind him. “What’s up with the welcoming committee?”
I handed him a beer. “Today I caught Bernice and Dad holding hands, and his burly beard is gone. They are acting like freaks, but aren’t saying a word about it.”
“You’re right, they are kissing about it.”
“Gross.” I took a sip of my chilled beer, holding the bitter hops on my tongue.
“Mom and Dad sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.” Ben laughed at himself and tipped his bottle to his face.
“This is why I need Charlie; he can have an adult conversation.”
“My theory is they are dating or something. Okay, maybe not dating, but Mom is wearing a lot of makeup, and she giggles at everything Dad says. He’s no Jimmy Fallon, so something is definitely up.”
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