The Life You've Imagined (24 page)

His running is more of a walk with some bounce in it, really. His little dog, Lucky, has no trouble keeping up. When I overtake him, I could shoot right by in a split second.

I slow my pace a bit. Frodo looks up at me as if he’s baffled.

“Hi!”

Ed turns to me and he smiles wide. “Hi,” he pants. His face has gone florid, and little rivers of sweat are tracing their way down from his damp hair. “You . . . inspired . . . me . . .”

“I’m glad. Nice shoes.”

He just nods, watching his footing now as if he doesn’t trust himself.

“Did you stretch first?” I ask. He looks at me briefly with a small grin. “Well, at least stretch after, and cool down with some walking, too. I’ll show you some stretches when we stop.”

He flaps his hand at the sidewalk ahead, then pantomimes pushing me forward.

“I don’t mind,” I tell him. “Actually, maybe you want to slow down just a bit. You should be able to speak, really.”

He settles into a walk and, after a few paces, pants out, “Thanks for the advice.”

“I’m happy to help.”

“How are things with you?”

“Oh, fine.”

“No, they’re not.”

“What do you mean?” Frodo stops me to pee. I’ll have to run after work to make up for this slow-down. That annoys Paul sometimes; when we have dinner together, it means we eat late.

“The light just went out of your lovely eyes when you said that.” He smiles at me, and he actually winks.

Oh, so it’s like that, then.

“Well, there was a problem last night, with my niece. She . . . I don’t want to talk about it. But I’m just fine. Look, I’d better turn around.”

“What about those stretches?”

“Maybe another time. I really should go.”

“Amy, I’m sorry.” He’s got his hands on his knees, still breathing hard.

“You better walk a little longer. It’s not good to stop suddenly.”

“Amy, I didn’t mean anything by it, I was just trying to—”

“I know what you were trying to do,” I tell him, shouting so he can hear me as the distance between us increases. I’m walking backward away from him, gradually beginning to jog. “I thought you were just a nice, friendly guy I could talk to, and then here you go with my
lovely
eyes and trying to hint I’m not happy with my fiancé.”

“I never said you weren’t happy with your fiancé; you said that, just now.”

I turn around and run a little harder yet, leaving Ed panting on the sidewalk behind me.

I
walk away from the apartments and down a winding trail that leads to a rugged patch of gritty sand between a couple of small hills. It’s our apartment’s version of a beach. I unhook Frodo’s leash and throw a stick into the water. He’s going to stink like hell, but he’s having fun.

I was really starting to enjoy Ed, and then he had to remind me of Kyle—someone I’ve worked very hard at forgetting.

When I first started dropping weight, Nikki had come into the office to see about buying a house. We got to chatting and she invited me to a club. I was still leery of going out, but the club was nice and dark and I thought it would be my treat for the 30 pounds I’d lost. That’s three bowling balls’ worth, I figured.

My face burns to remember Kyle. He played water polo in our high school and had the kind of chiseled chest that most high school boys would sell their own mothers for. All of us girls swooned over him; it was impossible not to.

He was at the club with the same crew of guys that had flocked around him in high school. I dared to give him a flirty look once, and shortly after that, he started dancing behind me, very close to me, his dick pressed right to my ass, actually.

I want to slap my twenty-nine-year-old self upside the head for the way I acted that night, grinding back against him, responding not only to his erection but the hoots of approval from Nikki and the girls, and his crew of baboons. I’d never—
ever!
—had that effect on a guy. Feeling that power made me as drunk as the whiskey sours.

By the time the last song played, we were plastered to each other in the back corner of the place, and we fumbled to his truck, and he drove me home. Of course I invited him in, desperate fat-ass that I was, and of course I let him fuck me, and I let him do it again even though the sex was terrible.

When I woke up, he was gone. I remember for sure that I gave him my number, but—yet another “of course”—he never called.

Nikki told me later that all the girls were “so mad” at him, because he’d been overheard laughing about screwing “the heifer.”

“He’s, like, such a dick,” she’d said, and I muttered, “Why did I have to know that?” I don’t think she heard me.

Frodo takes a break from stick-throwing to dig a pit in the sand, so I flop down and put my head in my hands.

Paul has got to marry me. I just can’t put myself out there again.

I’d rather buy a vibrator and have a test-tube baby.

Chapter 35

Maeve

I
’ve told Anna I need a minute to straighten up my room before I go get Sally.

I really just want to drink in my last few moments of anything like privacy.

With the cot at a T at the end of my bed, it’s a squeeze to walk between its corners and the doorway. I’ll have to roll the sewing machine back in my closet to have any room to move at all. How will I finish my reunion dress now?

I haven’t been exactly hiding my sewing project from Anna, but I haven’t been advertising it, either. I can make myself a dress if I want; I don’t need a special reason. But she’s cunning, my daughter. She’d know.

I shove the machine hard into the closet, and with the
thud
I feel a memory slam into place.

It was my birthday, a frosty day in October. I had the space heater going, but the autumn chill still crept in every time someone opened the door. We could never keep the outside out at the Nee Nance.

Robert strutted in the front door of the store with a goofy smile plastered on his face. He still had a piece of toilet paper stuck to his chin where he’d nicked himself that morning. I reached up to flick it off and gave him a quick kiss. Anna was still at school.

“C’mere,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

He’d remembered! A rare treat. Normally Anna would prompt him when she got home from school, and then he’d dash down to the bookstore to grab a card and a romance novel, which I’d probably already read.

I pulled my sweater tightly around me and followed him out to the sidewalk.

A shiny red foil bow twinkled from the top of a large cardboard box, which read B
ERNINA
on top. Only the week before, I’d been sighing over the machine in a catalog. My old Singer was constantly jamming, and I’d given up sewing, not having the patience to wrestle with that old beast. But with this top-of-the-line Bernina, I could whip up enough dresses to clothe Anna for the rest of her educational career.

“Damn you!” I shouted through fresh tears. “We can’t afford this! Where did you get the money?”

Robert’s face crumpled. “Honey, I know how much you wanted . . .”

“Wanting is different from having! Where did you get the money?”

“Babe, we have some in savings, and the store is doing well, so we’ll make it back . . .”

“Our savings? Robert, that’s for emergencies! What if Anna breaks her leg tomorrow!”

“She’s careful. Look, honey, you said you wanted it, and think of it this way, with all the money we’ll save on store-bought clothes, it will be worth it.”

“But it’s money we don’t have to spare, we can’t . . . You have to take it back.” I knew I was making a spectacle for them all to chew over at Doreen’s, but I couldn’t stop myself. The blessed wrongness of the gift, the hugeness of his tactical error, pained me. And yet I loved him for trying.

Robert dug his toe into the ground. “Um, that’s the other thing, sweetness. I didn’t exactly buy it brand new. I mean, it’s in perfect shape, don’t get me wrong, but . . . It’s not like I can take it back with a receipt.”

I wiped my face with the sleeves of my scratchy sweater. “So, the money is gone.”

“Look, I didn’t know it would upset you so much. I thought you really wanted it, and I was just trying to make you happy. You deserve to be happy, you know, and one day I’ll do that for you.”

He looked grave, all his merry light gone. He continued, “One day I’ll be the man you deserve. I promise you that.”

And without another word, he hefted the box around to the alley entrance, leaving me shivering in the autumn wind.

With one more shove, I squeeze the machine deeper into the closet. After all that, he’d been right. The Bernina—wherever and however he’d obtained it—had lasted for decades and saved us untold money on store-bought items. I’d never have been able to do that with the broken-down old jalopy of a machine I’d had before.

Maybe I’ll tell him that. He was right after all. I know he was tired of being wrong all the time. Almost as tired as I was of being right. It’s no fun being right about everything going to hell.

I sure wish he’d hurry up and write me back.

S
ally is quiet through the check-out at the hospital, and for most of the car ride home, for which I am thankful but also disturbed. A quiet Sally is something out of a parallel universe.

“Can I smoke, sister dear?”

“Just don’t set the car on fire.”

“Well, aren’t you funny, Miss Robin Williams.”

Sally’s wig is back on, but it’s tangled and ratty-looking. I should offer to wash it for her. It reeks of the fire, which is a different kind of stench than her cigarettes’. Sitting next to her is like standing downwind from a burning trash barrel.

“So, you okay?”

She nods, tipping her head back on the seat. “As long as I’ve got my health,” she says, hacking suddenly and so hard I worry she’s going to ram her head into the dashboard and we’ll have to turn back around to the hospital. When she settles, she laughs again, her voice sounding like it was scraped by sandpaper. “My health, right.”

“You know, didn’t I always say those things would kill you? You didn’t have to try and prove me right.”

She’s turned away from me. “Sorry,” she mumbles.

With the back of her head facing me like this, ageless, I can almost imagine we’re on our way to the drive-in with Sean and Robert and the gang.

I bring my eyes back to the road. We’re almost back to the store, and traffic is heavy, the streets clogged with people who can afford to take a week off from work around the Fourth.

Sally’s voice is jarring when she speaks again, louder than necessary in the confines of the car. “Why are you still wearing that ring?”

I drop my hand away from my chest. I’d been touching my wedding ring through my shirt without noticing it. “Since when do you pay attention to what I do?”

“Oh, I’ve known for ages you have it, doll. I just never thought to ask until now.”

“Why do you ask now?”

“Why don’t you answer?”

“Because I don’t feel like it.”

Sally taps her fingers on her knee to some beat in her head. “My brother was such a jackass, leavin’ you like he did.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, you never did like this subject.”

“Why would I like it?” We’re at the store now, and I pull into our alley parking space.

Back when Robert first left, Sally tried to be consoling and I’d always push her away, make her drop it. I didn’t want it in my face all the time, is all. I didn’t want her in my face, either, with those dark brown Geneva eyes. So she quit talking about it, and eventually I let her come around again.

I always wondered why she wasn’t more upset herself, her only brother taking off like that. But I never wanted to raise the subject, once she’d finally dropped it.

“Do you need help out of the car?” She had remained still while I took the keys out of the ignition and zipped them back in my purse.

“Nah. I just can’t believe this is all that’s left of me,” she says, looking down at her own purse, which slouches in her lap, half open and ready to spill its contents at the slightest nudge.

Chapter 36

Cami

I
dial the shop and a young kid answers, maybe nineteen years old, whose voice still has that scrapy echo of adolescence. I don’t know who he is, but I pity him because having Tim Drayton for a boss is no trip to the candy store, I’m sure.

“Can I talk to Tim?” I ask, pitching my voice unnaturally high.

“Um, he can’t come to the phone right now.”

“Is he working or what?”

“He’s rebuilding an engine. He’s gonna be a while. Can I take a message?”

“No, that’s okay.”

I hang up and smile. Good. He’ll be out of the house all morning, at least. And for once Sherry isn’t here.