A Measure of Happiness (27 page)

 

When the knock came that Katherine had been expecting, she was sitting on the velvet sofa in the living room, training her unfocused gaze on the half-dozen tea lights she'd set atop the mantel, trying to hold down her dinner and stop the forward motion of time.

She unfolded her legs from under her, got up from the sofa, and took a sip of her water. She'd switched from wine to water hours ago. And in the split second it took for her to make her way to the door, she regretted it, the desire to be stark-raving drunk burning in her like a flame. She checked the sidelight, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

Barry hadn't changed. He was still wearing the gray slacks and the shirt that brought out his Bubbe Sarah pale eyes. Only this time, his shirt was rumpled and horizontal creases marred the crisp lines of his slacks. He leaned against her door frame. His eyes looked exhausted yet quietly determined. “You going to invite me in?” Barry asked. This time, instead of sounding snarky, his tone spoke of more serious matters.

Katherine had been expecting this, too.

She nodded, stood back, and closed the door behind them.

Barry stared at her and shook his head. “Zach came to see me tonight.”

“Just say it.” She tried to speak up, but her voice came out as a whisper, her pulse tapping at her bottom lip like the woodpecker that woke her at 5:00 a.m. on her day off. She couldn't imagine Barry throwing a fit. But whatever Barry needed to say she deserved to hear. Even if he called her every name in the book, even if he called her names that summoned back darkness and self-hatred.

Barry's arms hung by his sides. “He's a nice young man.”

“I think so, too.” That was it? Was Barry going to congratulate her on having reunited with her biological son? Ignore the fact she'd lied to Barry for years? Lied to countless doctors? Caused years of baby-making frustration and ruined their marriage? Sick, but she wanted him to yell at her. She needed the final release of his hatred. She needed to stop bracing for the inevitable.

Barry issued an uncomfortable chuckle. “I have a confession. I'm feeling a wee bit guilty.”

“Whatever for?”

“Zach came to talk to me about Celeste.”

Katherine made a sound, air rushing out of her that she thought she'd needed to withstand Barry's tirade. A tirade that wasn't coming. She breathed around her slowing pulse, but she didn't like the way Barry was standing. Facing her but with his feet angled toward the door. “What's going on?”

“Seems you're not the only friend of Celeste's who's worried about her eating. Zach wanted to know how he might help her.”

“That's wonderful.” Could she be proud of Zach, even though she hadn't raised him? Could she take a tiny bit of the credit? “What did you tell him?”

“I explained about measuring her food. I strongly suggested he eat with her to show off his healthy appetite.”

Katherine grinned. He'd inherited that appetite from her. “So what's the problem?”

“I consider Celeste a friend, and I feel bad keeping the meeting from her. Secrets . . . I don't like them. Never have, never will.”

“You've advised friends before about their loved ones. Celeste has never been a patient of yours. It's not a breach of confidence.”

“Then why do I feel so guilty?” Barry's eyes shone through the darkness. They were two friends looking out for a third, a continuation of the conversation they'd begun the day Celeste had returned to Hidden Harbor. They could fall into the same old banter. Katherine imagined the two of them continuing their back-and-forth into their dotage, like a couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary.

Nothing needed to change.

“Are you sure you're not Catholic?” Katherine asked, falling into her role. “Catholic by reverse inoculation?” She waggled her brows, the imitation of Barry's silly gesture likely lost beneath her hair and in the candlelight.

“If only . . .” Barry said, his voice wistful, refusing to play, and stripped of hope.

“Barry,” she said. “What's wrong?” Barry Horowitz was one of the most naturally happy people she'd ever known. He loved what he did for a living. He loved where he lived. He loved nature and exercising his beautiful body and everything. Until she'd undergone the first round of IVF, she'd rarely seen him frown.

He was frowning now.

“Nothing,” Barry said. “Just wanted you to know about the conversation I had with Zach. Wanted you to know someone else is looking after your girl.” Barry nodded, as if he were ending their conversation. “I thought you had a right to know. I owe you that much.”

Déjà vu thrummed through Katherine. The sensation started as an ache in her arms, tightened her throat, weakened her legs. She had a vision of bringing Barry the basket of mundel bread and the divorce papers, a slap wrapped in sugar. She'd told him she didn't want a sheriff to deliver the bad news. She'd told him she owed him that much.

Katherine's woodpecker pulse revived. “You could've phoned.”

“No filters,” Barry said.

Barry wasn't a fan of telephones or anything else that made it easier to skirt, muddy, or soften the truth. He was a big proponent of looking people in the eye. He was a believer in listening for voice cues and interpreting body language.

A feeling of heaviness hit her, as though someone had removed all her blood and replaced it with a transfusion of batter. “Why couldn't you wait until tomorrow morning? Why couldn't you—” She clamped a hand over her mouth.

Barry took her hand from her mouth. He tipped up her chin. He made her look him in the eye. “I'm not stopping by the bakery tomorrow.”

“You have another conference,” she said. “A—a patient who needs you. You never turn anyone away. You're one of the kindest men—”

“Katherine,” he said. “Stop. I'm not coming back in. Ever. I'm done.” The words were the harshest she'd ever heard coming from Barry, but they were delivered flat, drained of life. He'd given up.

But she couldn't. “You'll be in later in the week. Wednesday or Thursday. That's fine!” Her voice rose above them, a shrill bird on wing. “I'll take your dollar from you, but I won't put it in the register. I never put your money in the register or deposit it in the bank. Did you know that? I put it in the safe, in its own separate envelope.” She held her hands together, as if she were gathering together the stack of dollar bills. Between them, her hands formed the shape of a heart. “I keep your envelope with everything that's precious to me.”

Barry drew in a breath, and he took a step back, back toward her door.

“Don't leave me,” she said.

“This,” Barry said, “from the woman who left me.”

On the day she'd delivered the divorce news, instead of heading to a bar and a stranger's bed, she should've gone back into their house. She should've taken off her clothes, every means of concealing herself, and given herself to Barry. She should've changed her mind.

Was it ever too late to redeem yourself?

Katherine made herself hold Barry's gaze. She absorbed every bit of anger emanating from his body. She owed him that much. She owed him so much love.

Barry's chin dimpled, his anger softening to sadness. Less than a flicker, but she'd seen it. She'd seen the opening, and she stepped into the space. She threw her arms around him, fingers splayed against his shoulders. She inhaled the starch of his shirt, the warmth of his body. She listened to his breathing, the steady thump-bump of his heart beneath her ear. Then his arms unhinged from his sides and wrapped around her, solid and strong and hers, and they rocked.

A pressure started in her chest, rose through her throat, and thrummed through her closed lips. “Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm . . .”

Barry kept his hands on her arms and pulled away from her, but his lips were smiling. “Huh?”

This wasn't the way Celeste and Zach played the game. “Let me try again. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Hmm—”

Barry pressed his lips to hers, sending a wicked shock through the center of her body. She raked her fingers along his chest, firmer than years ago, and along the biceps that could lift her onto him. She plunged her hand into his hair that needed a trim, fondled the soft curls. She tasted the tongue that spoke of positivity and healing, the kiss long and slow and taking its sweet time. Then she rested her forehead against his and hummed the song a third time. “Crowded House,” she said. “‘Don't Dream It's Over.'”

Her conservative shrink ex-husband lifted the back of her skirt, grabbed her ass with both hands, and pulled her against her second-favorite part of his anatomy. Her most favorite part was his mind. He slipped his hand into her panties. His fingers followed the contours of her body, rediscovering all her soft, warm places. “Does this feel like it's over?” Barry asked, his voice as husky and sure as when he'd posed the question earlier tonight.

She pressed herself against him until he groaned. “This,” she said, “feels like heaven.”

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

“Just for a minute.” She stripped off everything except the black boots, took Barry by the hand, and led him into her bedroom.

In the middle of the room, he worked his way down her body until her head swam, her legs trembled, and she pulled away. Barry sat down on the edge of her bed. “Ready to come back home?” he asked, the first words he'd ever spoken to her.

She took a condom from her lingerie drawer, right where she kept them beside her bedside box of tarot cards. She unbuttoned his shirt, unzipped his pants, and shoved him back onto her bed. Barry landed with a laugh, a beautiful man splayed across her midnight-blue-and-gold quilt. “God, I've missed you.” His eyes blinked up at her, as though he might cry.

Katherine kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his chin. Five kisses, ten. A million kisses wouldn't have been enough.

She unfurled the condom and climbed on top of him, jolting her body and confirming the tarot's promise of the return of lost love.

Hers to lose.

C
HAPTER
17

I
f Celeste was going to be perfectly honest, her first love hadn't been Justin but food. Specifically, ice cream. Because years before her mother had taught her how to bake cakes and cookies and roll out pie crusts, she'd learned how to make frozen confections all by herself.

When Celeste was eight years old, her mother had taken her to the Hidden Harbor Library tag sale. There they'd walked past the gently used Barbie dolls and ragged Chinese jump ropes, the piles of oversized arcade teddy bears. The thickened half-full bottles of pink and purple sparkly nail polishes she'd picked up and then put back down. Nothing had really spoken her name until her gaze fell upon a battered electric ice-cream maker.

“Celeste,” Zach said. “Tell me again why you don't want any ice cream.” He was standing behind her in the apartment, no more than four feet away.

Wasn't it obvious?

She had her head buried in the refrigerator, her fat ass hanging out in the kitchen, her jeans so tight that they should probably pick out a china pattern and make an honest woman of her. She was putting away the last of the groceries. Yoplait yogurts and McIntosh apples, a loaf of low-fat, whole wheat sandwich bread and skim milk. At Shaw's, she'd considered the iceberg lettuce and then set the whitish head back on the shelf. She couldn't get it up for something so pale and tasteless.

She could always get it up for ice cream.

Celeste straightened the blueberry yogurts so they lined up with the strawberry and shut the refrigerator door. She pushed her hair away from her face and over her shoulders. “I ate a couple slices of bread and an apple on the way back.” She'd really only eaten a single slice of bread. And the apple, she'd given up on after sinking her teeth into a brown spot.

“I wouldn't call that dinner,” Zach said. “I'd barely call that a snack. In fact, just hearing about your snack makes me hungry.”

“Again?” Celeste asked. She'd avoided Zach's dinner offer by making a run for Shaw's, leaving Zach to dine alone on roast chicken, baked potato, and green beans. From the looks of it—the dishes he'd washed and stacked and the lack of leftovers—he'd done fine without her. The lingering dinner smells made her stomach cramp around her single slice of bread and mealy bite of apple.

“I'm a growing boy.” Zach slid a bottle of whipped cream from the refrigerator door, gave the bottle a shake, tilted his head back, and pointed the nozzle into his mouth.
Shhwp.
The aroma of sugar and cream spiked the air. “Want some?” he asked, and his voice came out garbled.

Yes.
“No.”

Zach cocked his head and offered her a frown of disbelief. “More for me,” he said, and he gave himself another shot.

“Don't waste it!”

Zach swished the cream around in his mouth. “The way I see it, you're the one who's wasting it.” He raised the canister a third time.

Celeste grabbed his arm. “We're saving it for sundaes!”

Zach lowered his arm and gave her an abbreviated version of Barry's waggling eyebrows. “Now you're talking.” He set the canister down and took ajar of hot fudge from the fridge. Not homemade—nothing compared to homemade hot fudge, whipped cream, and ice cream—but a solid, drool-worthy second best.

“I didn't say I wanted one now.”

Zach reached beneath the sink and took out a small saucepan. “Are you trying to lose weight?”

He thought she needed to lose weight. He'd noticed the size of her ass. Everyone noticed—

“Because you totally do not need to lose weight.” Zach unscrewed the hot fudge jar and spooned it into the pan. “Your body is . . .”

“Sturdy?” Celeste asked, using the term she'd heard her mother use around her twelfth birthday. Between eleven and twelve, her calorie intake had stayed pretty much the same and she'd packed on fifteen pounds.

“I was going to say svelte.”

That sounded like a word Barry would use.

Zach lit the burner.

Celeste turned the dial from medium to low. If he was going to make it, he might as well make it right. “Seriously? My ass is not svelte.”

Zach looked her in the eye, as if he'd previously memorized the body part under discussion. “That,” he said, “I'd describe as shapely.”

Right, because round was a shape.

The aroma of the heating fudge ramped up her pulse at the base of her throat, the intermittent low warning of a fat detector. “A hot fudge sundae contains, like, two thousand calories. More than most people need for their entire daily calorie intake.”

Did she just say that out loud?

If she ate an ice-cream sundae, her so-called shapely ass would grow two sizes rounder. Her thighs would do that wiggle-jiggle thing when she walked. And she'd lose her waistline. She'd look—

“Why are you trying to starve yourself?” Zach stirred the hot fudge. His facial expression betrayed a mild curiosity. But she still heard the unspoken end to his sentence:
to death.

She let out a nervous laugh. “I'm not trying to starve myself.”

“Those anorexic, skinny models in magazines—I don't like them. Their faces are all . . .” Zach sucked his cheeks into his mouth till his lips puckered. He put a hand on his hip, slid an annoyed gaze to the side. Then he became Zach again, normal. Well, close enough. “You're much prettier.”

Did Zach just say
anorexic?
No one, not even Abby, had dared use that word in Celeste's presence. They might've thought it, but no one had dared to say it out loud.

She loved Zach for it. She hated him for it, too.

“I'm not trying to impress you.” Celeste stared at Zach until his spoon stilled in the saucepan.

“Fair enough,” he said, and he turned off the heat.

“And I have no interest in trying to look like a model.”

“Yeah, you don't seem like the type,” he said.

“What type do I seem like?” Her voice betrayed nothing more than mild curiosity. Her voice was a liar.

Zach twisted his lips to one side and lowered his gaze. “The type that's fun to be around. The type I like to be around.”

Except for when it came to watching her try to starve herself to death. Zach didn't say it, but he didn't have to.

One at a time, he got two blue bowls from the cabinet and set them on the counter. He got the pecans from the cabinet on the other side of the kitchen. He took the coffee ice cream from the freezer.

“I could eat two ice-cream sundaes,” Celeste said. “I could sit my ass on the sticky couch every night and eat until my eyes rolled up in my head and the button on my jeans popped and ricocheted off the walls.”

“My kind of girl.”

“If I did that every night, I'd get obese. Do you like enormous women?”

“Do you like coffee ice-cream sundaes?”

Celeste's head ached, the dull throb she got when she wasn't eating enough. When she was doing really badly, the sensation made her feel vaguely superior to others—those people who couldn't control their appetites. She didn't feel superior today. She felt hungry.

“I love coffee ice-cream sundaes.” A warm flush washed over her, as if she'd told Zach she loved hot sex.

She did, but she wasn't about to tell him.

“One sundae isn't going to hurt you.” Zach fished around in the utensil drawer. He clamped the ice-cream carton between his cast and the refrigerator door and used his left hand to pry off the lid, revealing the smooth, beige surface.

Celeste rubbed the back of her neck and bit her lip, as though they were about to have hot sex.

“You okay?”

She was going to want more ice cream. She'd finish the sundae and then sneak into the kitchen and polish off the rest of the carton, standing over the sink.

Celeste nodded and took a slow breath.

Zach scooped ice cream into the bowls. “This one's yours,” he said, pointing to the bowl with one scoop. He ladled hot fudge over the ice cream and squirted two reasonable towers of whipped cream. He sprinkled the pecans and added spoons. “What do you say we sit our shapely asses down on the sticky couch and eat our faces off?”

“Sounds good,” Celeste said, and they carried their bowls into the living room.

Zach took his bed pillow and tossed it onto the chair. The yellow blanket he shoved to the side. Instead of flicking on the TV, he angled toward her and dug into his sundae. He grinned and rolled his eyes up in his head. He lifted his T-shirt from where it covered the button of his jeans, revealing an innie belly button and a flat stomach with a bit of dark hair. She imagined laying her head on his stomach. She imagined his stomach solid and warm beneath her cheek. She imagined moving her head lower. “What do you know?” Zach asked. “Button's still there.”

Celeste could watch Zach eat all day. The way he licked his lips, sighed, and went back for more. She considered herself a kind of food voyeur.

Zach took another bite, pointed his spoon in her direction. “Don't waste it,” he said.

Celeste slid her spoon in the side, made sure to take a sample of everything. A mini-sundae in one spoonful slid into her mouth. Sweet, light whipped cream. Thick, rich hot fudge. Cold, creamy coffee. And the salty crunch of pecans.

“What's the verdict?” Zach asked.

“So good!” Her eyes really and truly rolled up in her head, and a shiver ran across her shoulders and down her thighs, as if she were having an orgasm.

She wasn't about to share that thought with Zach.

Zach's grin wrapped her like a hug. “I'm glad you're enjoying yourself,” he said. Without looking down, he dug into the sundae, not seeming to care whether he got equal amounts of ingredients in each bite. The spoon slid from his mouth with a smooth mound of ice cream.

Celeste took another carefully planned bite.

Zach considered his spoon, turned it over, slid it back into his mouth, and scraped the remaining ice cream off with his teeth. “Everyone in my family loves to eat. Even my mother. Especially my mother. But then she does this annoying girl thing.”

“Excuse me,” Celeste said, her voice garbled, her mouth full of yum. “You're generalizing my gender!”

“Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. We'll get done eating something awesome. She'll seem like she's enjoying herself. And then she goes and mumbles about how she's going to regret what she's eaten in the morning. It's not even like she wants us to say anything to her. It's like she needs to talk to herself, to make it okay she's eaten.”

Zach's mother needed to alleviate her guilt.

Zach took another bite, rubbed his belly, and put on a cartoon girly voice. “Boy, that sure was tasty. Not that I needed the extra calories.”

The thing about stereotypes? Sometimes they were true.

Celeste wasn't going to share that thought with Zach either. “When I, uh, get worried about food, I'm supposed to talk to myself.”

Zach stuffed his face, squinted at her sideways.

“It's called self-talk.” Celeste envisioned a female shrink's office. She remembered curling up on the shrink's stereotypical couch and the nonstereotypical shrink with the dyed red hair and henna tattoos telling her to fight back. “So, a long time ago, I went to a stress management psychiatric type person, and she said when I had thoughts about food that made me nervous, I should talk back to them. I could even call the wrong thoughts Ed.”

“Ed?”

“Um, yeah.” Celeste's jeans pressed into her stomach, a sure sign the ice cream was going straight to her waist. Screw it. Why should Zach have all the fun? She took another bite and lowered her gaze to the sundae. “
Ed
stands for ‘eating disorder.'” Celeste made her face go dead serious and she tried imitating the voice of that long-ago shrink. “ ‘You know that's not true. Celeste is not a big, fat pig.'” She was trying for the lightening lift of humor. Instead, her little comedy routine weighted her down.

“How's that working out?” Zach asked.

“Decent,” she said. “As long as I remember to fight.” She looked at Zach. “Sometimes I get tired and I need a little help.”

“Like someone who says”—Zach slipped back into his cartoon girly voice—“ ‘Celeste is not a big, fat pig. She's a scorching hot babe. Not that she's trying to impress Zach or anything.'”

Celeste cracked up. “Sort of. I'm not sure about the female voice. You might want to stick with your own.”

“Made you smile, though, didn't I? And look how great you're doing with that sundae.” Zach's voice went high, naturally, the way you sounded when you were excited about another person's success.

Celeste scraped the bowl and licked the spoon, like when she was eight years old. Twelve. Fifteen. She wanted to throw her arms around Zach and bury his face in kisses. She wanted to give him more. “I know it's wrong, but I think if only I can get to such and such weight, I'll be happier. Or when I can fit back into jeans I haven't worn in years, everything will be . . . more manageable. But when I'm, you know, not doing so well and I get to a certain weight, I change the goal. I can be what you'd call superambitious, when it comes to competing against myself.”

“Why not just decide to be happy now?”

“Because Ed's superambitious, too?” she asked.

Zach set his empty bowl on the coffee table and leaned closer. He smelled like coffee and cream and all kinds of yum. He smelled like Zach. “Tell Ed I said he should fuck off.”