by Reiss, CD
As the night went on, shades of both options appeared. Tell Chris he had to stay here part time. Take Harper with us. Sell the last of everything and put it back into the community and split. Tell Chris maybe. Tell him I wanted more time.
Yes to all. Yes to some, no to some. I wasn’t used to weighing so many options and internal negotiations. I didn’t feel capable of handling it.
I am a grown woman.
Those five words came to me about two in the morning. I rolled them around in my head.
I am a grown woman.
I am a young woman.
I can do anything I want.
I am trapped.
I am free.
I am ashamed that people will
know what he does to me.
I am a grown woman.
I am afraid to leave here.
I am afraid to stay.
I want him.
I want him.
He’ll hurt me. He’s hurt me already.
This is a game to him.
This is a game to him.
You’ll give up everything you work for,
and for what?
Mommy and Daddy won’t
love me anymore.
They’re long gone.
Does he still love me?
Do I still love him?
What’s it like to not love him?
I am a grown woman.
I know my own mind.
I know my own heart.
I’ll do what I want.
I’ll take my own risks.
I will own my own failings.
I’m terrified.
I can do what I want, and he
can join me in that or not.
He’s a grown man.
I don’t have to love him,
not now, not ever.
I can just do what I want.
You’re scaring me.
What will I do if I am left alone again?
What’s going to happen to me?
This can’t happen again.
Do you understand?
This cannot happen again.
It might happen again.
You can’t let it.
I can’t control him.
And it might not be him to
blame in the end.
He might be offering something I don’t want.
Do you blame me for being scared?
Do you blame me for wanting to run away?
What if this happens again?
I’ll take care of you.
Chapter 29
CATHERINE
My room went from black, gray, blue, to the yellow light of morning angling through the windows. I got up when I was too hungry to stay there.
Physically, I was a wreck. But mentally, the sunlight had brought a clarity that brought my emotions to heel. I had seen real human suffering, and I had seen people survive real pain. I was afraid of a broken heart, but what was a broken heart in the face of losing a child or going hungry?
A part of me wanted to run toward the risk, saying “bring it on,” while opening my arms to whatever Chris Carmichael had in store for me. And the other part of me was very clear, very firm, and spoke in a voice years older.
It said I would not do a single thing that didn’t serve me. If I made a sacrifice, it would be because that sacrifice would make me happy. If I made a demand of him, it would be because I couldn’t live without the thing I was demanding.
I didn’t know what any of that meant. Specifically, I didn’t know what to demand, but when I came to it, I would know. I’d opened the door to my needs, and I trusted they would walk through when they needed to. I was not going to rely on Chris to figure this out for me, nor was I going to second-guess him. I was going to take him at his word, and he was going to take me at mine.
I came downstairs to find Harper at the folding table in the dining room. She was scribbling in a notebook, and I expected to see a bunch of unintelligible signs, symbols, and codes. Instead, it was her uneven script with cross-outs, arrows, and lines across sentences.
“Good morning,” she said, not slowing her pencil one bit.
“What are you writing?”
“College essay.”
I looked over her shoulder and saw my name. “What’s the question?”
“I have to describe someone I admire.” She covered her paper and continued scribbling. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. I didn’t have any words of gratitude, and I knew she didn’t want them anyway. “Can I make you something to eat?”
“I’m good.”
“It’s nice to see you not crying.”
“Same for you.” She put her pencil down and cracked her knuckles. “Reggie came by last night.”
“He owes you an apology. Don’t you dare speak to him until he apologizes to you.”
“I sliced his head open with a garbage pail lid,” she said incredulously.
I put my hands on my hips. “There was no excuse for him speaking to me like that in front of you. I’ll get my own apology, and you’ll get yours. In the meantime, I don’t want him coming around here, and I don’t want him to be alone with either one of us.”
“Oh my God, do you think he came here alone? You should’ve seen the team of assholes he was with. And I say asshole in the most affectionate way.” She counted on her fingers. “Johnny. Kyle. Pat. Even Juanita came with him to make sure he didn’t start calling anybody names or getting violent. It was kind of weird.”
I wanted to accept his apology so that I could move on with my life, but I was still kind of mad. I surprised myself. I’d never thought I was much of a grudge holder. But maybe Chris brought that out in me.
I went to make breakfast.
“Chris called,” Harper shouted from the dining room. “I left the message behind the phone.”
I whipped around with the coffeepot in my hand, turning so quickly the torque almost sent coffee flying. Behind the wall phone, on a little pad we kept for such a purpose, was a note in Harper’s handwriting.
Chris says he will be at the playground at 7 PM.
Doesn’t want you coming in the dark.
Please drive. Or call him to pick you up.
PS - I have condoms in my nightstand. Take them if you want.
There was a number underneath, the area code from Doverton. The club.
Reggie had apologized, and this was my town. I wasn’t getting in the car and wasting gas to go a mile. I’d come and go as I pleased.
I was a grown woman.
Chapter 30
CHRIS
I didn’t think of my efforts with the tree as a complete failure. I hadn’t gotten what I wanted, which was my mouth and hands on her chest, and her promise to continue seeing me.
But I woke up feeling as if I’d gotten something. I didn’t know what that was. I couldn’t define it or count it. Couldn’t draw a conclusion from it. But it was good, and it was enough. She’d given me the idea.
The idea couldn’t be quantified or counted. I didn’t have an exact string of words to describe what it was. But it involved a result, and I could build a formula from that.
Catherine would continue to be who she was. She would continue to give of herself to others. And she would be with me. All that equaled our happiness and the end of my wandering around in the wrong world.
Again, I didn’t know what that meant as far as the future. She needed personal connection. She would never be one of New York’s charity mavens, only partly because I wouldn’t be a billionaire hedge fund manager for much longer. But after last night, I felt as if I knew her better, knew what she needed to live her life, and I was eager to provide it.
I got a text from Brian over breakfast.
— What are you doing? —
— Eating eggs and toast. —
— In Barrington USA? —
— Yes —
The phone rang. It was Brian. I’d obviously said somethi
ng to piss him off. Maybe he didn’t like toast.
I answered the phone and stepped outside into the rose garden that I used to tend. “What’s your problem?”
“Barrington?” he snapped. “With the glass factory?”
“Yes?”
“And you don’t know about the new talk over in Silicon Valley? About the Barrington factory? This is bullshit. You told me you were out, but you’re just getting out to start something else. You going to just take the money and not cut me in.”
“Brian, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure, asshole. You think I don’t know you by now?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Dude, you take everything and close the door behind you. That’s how you operate. I never thought you’d do it with me. But you are.”
“I was born and raised here. It’s perfectly natural for me to show up to see the people I grew up with.”
“That just makes me think you’re the one who spearheaded the deal. Not cool. Not okay. And possibly a breach of contract.”
I took a deep breath, then another. The fall sky was flat blue, the morning sun was shining, and I was not going to let him think I was fogging him over. “I came here to bury Lance, and I’m staying for a while. I am not here to secretly team up with some venture capitalists opening the fucking factory. Given the choice, I would burn the factory to the ground. I understand why you don’t trust me. I understand why you think I’m going to take all of the money you’re paying for the fund and leave. But if there’s a loyal bone in my body, and there are a few, at least one of them has your name on it.”
“I want in.”
“There’s nothing to be in on.”
“There will be, my friend. If you’re not stabbing me in the back, and maybe you’re not, I still want in.”
“Noted. But don’t hold your breath.”
“Noted.”
We hung up, and I sat back down to breakfast. The eggs had gotten dark and translucent at the corners. The toast was chewy and cold.
Nobody trusted me. Lance had, but he’d never wanted anything from me but food and a little affection. He still gave more than he took.
I’d never betrayed Brian, but betraying him had never been in my best interests. If it had been, if some opportunity to fuck him over for my own benefit had shown itself, what would I have done?
It’s business.
I would’ve said that. And I would’ve meant it. It would have been its own answer to just about any question.
Leaving my breakfast, I went back outside and called my ex-wife.
“Hello? Christopher?” People chattered in the background.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Five of them. I’m about to go into a board meeting for Montano.”
The children’s charity had meetings this time of year in Italy. I’d forgotten.
“This won’t take long. Not if you answer honestly.”
“I’m intrigued,” she said in a voice laced with suspicion.
“Why did you marry me?”
“Oh, dio mio, Christopher. Now you ask this?”
“I married you because I thought you were as good as it got. There. I said the hurtful thing. Now you can just say what you have to.”
I heard the flick of a lighter and a deep inhale. She must be in Milan. She never smoked at home. “I married you because you had potential.”
“What kind of potential? Money?” I needed her to just admit it, but I knew she wouldn’t. If I’d been so sure of the answer, I wouldn’t have needed to call her.
“God, no. You had plenty of that, which was nice. You could have become a good man. But, you know, que sera.”
“I didn’t become a good man?”
“I don’t have all my life to wait.” Another long exhale.
“I thought you married me for the money.”
“Of course you did. I have to go. We can talk later, okay?”
“Sure.” I hung up.
If you wanted people to trust you, you had to make them money. You could be a nice guy, real prince, but if it didn’t make any money, who cared? That wasn’t the kind of trust I was in business for.
Some things weren’t business.
My business was going to change. I just didn’t know what it was changing into.
Chapter 31
catherine
The little playground behind the old trailer park was deserted. The plastic was cracked, colors faded, and cigarette butts littered the sand. I accidentally tipped over a beer can sitting on a bench meant for watchful parents.
The trailers had been removed after my father died, leaving stumps of rusted pipes. The good pipes and the copper had been ripped out long ago and sold for scrap. Electrical wires had been dug up with spades and snow shovels in the middle of the night.
I didn’t know my father owned this trailer park. Not until he died and his assets became mine and Harper’s. I hadn’t been able to sell the land. I would’ve sold it for anything, but nobody wanted it.
I heard him coming. He made no move to disguise his footfalls in the leaves behind me. I turned around, resting my arm over the back of the bench as he broke the tree line, hands in pockets, trying to look harmless.
He was anything but harmless to me. His posture drove forward in a way I never saw on the men in town, alienating my mind’s better judgment from my heart’s desire. He divided and conquered just by smiling.
“I didn’t see your car,” he said as soon as he saw me.
“I walked.” I turned around. It was the only way to stop myself from running into his arms.
“I don’t like you walking alone at night.” He came around the bench and sat next to me, flicking the empty beer can away. “This isn’t a good neighborhood. Trust me, I grew up here.”
I got up, picked up the can, and put it in the lone space in the cardboard six-pack that was lying a few feet away. “There are no bad neighborhoods in Barrington for me.”
I sat next to him. We sat in silence for a few minutes. Maybe it was seconds. Maybe we sat for hours, each getting used to the presence of the other again.
“I wondered if you’d come,” he said finally.
“Why?”
“We have a habit of temporary good-byes turning permanent.”
“I wanted to tell you something.”
He sat up a little straighter. It was a defensive posture. “Tell me then.”
“I admire you.”
A little laugh escaped his lungs. “Sure.”
“You wanted something. You spent years getting it. You fought hard. I admire that. And now you’re here, which is brave. And you’re looking back on what you fought for and thinking you maybe made a mistake. Maybe you fought for the wrong thing. I admire that too.”
He shook his head a little, as if he couldn’t accept my words.
“There was this woman,” he started.
A tingle of jealousy ran through me. I had no business being jealous, but did anyone?
“Before my ex-wife and after I paid capital gains for the first time, there was this woman. She was a maybe. She looked a lot like you. She was from a small town in Georgia, and she seemed as gentle as you. Of course, I didn’t realize any of that right off. I didn’t realize that she and you were cut from the same cloth. So I let myself care about her without putting it all together. And then this stupid thing happened. We were getting coffee and she got there before me, so she paid for herself. And I get there just as the guy is giving her change. It’s a dollar and some coins. She takes the dollar, and she takes a quarter out of the coins and puts the rest of the tip jar. And I said, ‘Why did you take the quarter back?’ Believe me, I could’ve asked about the dollar, but the quarter really bugged me. She said she might need it for laundry or the parking meter. She didn’t have a car. And it’s not like I didn’t have someone going over there to do her laundry and her chores for her. But she took the damn quarter back. Why? What kind of person w
on’t give a quarter? Give the whole thing because they might need it for something that would never happen?” He ran his finger over his forehead. “It took me a few days to realize that I broke up with her because she wasn’t like you. I mean, she really ran down my expectations. Because no matter how much they look like you or act like you… no one was going to be you.”
“I was here the whole time. But I’m afraid I would have disappointed you anyway. You had me on some kind of pedestal.”
“I’m here now, at the base, looking up.”
“I’m a different person now.”
He smirked a little, relaxing his shoulders. “You’re not the girl I took up the top of that slide, but you’re the culmination of her.”
He leapt off of the bench and held out his hand. I took it, and he pulled me up to the play structure. We clattered up the ladder, and I found myself laughing.
The space we had occupied as young lovers was so much smaller than I remembered, and it was littered with dead leaves and human detritus. Cigarette butts, broken glass, an empty bag of chips; none of it bothered me. There was only him, with his eyes glinting in the moonlight and the fresh smell of aftershave.
His kiss was gentle and sweet, a request for more. A door he held open for me. I could walk through or I could walk away.
My arms were bent at my sides as he embraced me, running his hands down my forearms to my wrists until he lifted them and put my hands around his waist. Only then did I yield completely, tightening the coiled springs of my muscles around his body until he was as close to me as I was to him.
