The Sweetheart Deal (15 page)

I
wasn't ready to go to the fire station. It was too much of a step. The station had been his second home, and I had enough trouble being in my own house without him. Although, maybe Leo
would have wanted
me to go—the expression drove me crazy, but I thought it anyway; it had a life of its own, out of my control. When I planted new vegetables that spring, were they what
Leo
would had wanted
? When I talked to Andrew's principal, had I done what Leo
would have wanted
? Changing the bedroom's paint color—but then I couldn't think any more about that because of what the painting had triggered between Garrett and me. Some days when I couldn't stop the loop of that question in my head and I imagined what Leo would have wanted, I came up with only one response:
I would have wanted you not to sleep with Garrett, and also I would have wanted not to be dead
.
Not necessarily in that order
.

The wives offered me no comfort either. Some had reached out from other parts of the state—beyond just Twenty-Five and Multnomah County—
I'm here, I'm here, I'm here,
their emails said, yet there wasn't a single thing any of them could do for me. But I was a hard sell, I knew that.

As a college freshman my entire happiness had hinged on joining a sorority—it was the only thing I'd wanted—and it hadn't happened. Subject to my own naive whims and ignorant of the political stakes, a one-night tangle with the wrong guy had sealed my exclusion. I had gotten over that particular painful rejection, but I had learned something from it: those women and the guy hadn't known me at all beyond one fact that didn't define me, but my poor judgment, insignificant on a large scale, had cost me. So since then, I'd always been suspicious of a collective mind-set of women, and had no interest in being a participant. As a result, I'd never embraced a membership in the firefighter wives' cultural sisterhood.

We
were
all in the same boat—single parents for days on end when our husbands' shifts dragged, and the worst weeks made any one of us crazy. But when the wives got together, the bitching and griping could be magnified into sport, and after Leo died, I wanted to tell every one of them,
Save your fucking breath. Wait until he's dead, then you'll really have something to complain about
. And the group offered no immunity. Turning on each other was not rare: on the one who had dared to wear
that
to an event, on the one who'd had too much to drink and flirted with the wrong husband, on the one who'd dressed her husband down in front of God and everybody.

I should have been kinder. I knew many other firefighters didn't accommodate their wives with the flexibility Leo had given me when I needed it—two days at the coast alone, or a visit with Charlotte in San Francisco by myself for a week. Even so, when tension in our house built up, I unleashed my own wrath on Leo rather than share it with other wives. We had some terrible rows the times I'd come to the end of my rope because of the job, and because of the lifestyle of the job. But women could be awful. I learned that early on. I didn't want their pity or anything else they had to offer, contrived or genuine. I didn't want to be fodder for their gossip. The food they'd sent was the extent of what I would accept. Of all of them I had been the closest to Alyssa Gallagher, but when Leo died, what had been mutual was erased. She was still a firefighter's wife and I was a firefighter's widow, and I saw no way to maintain the friendship under those new conditions. If I changed my mind later, I could only hope that she'd still be receptive.

So instead of visiting the station or connecting with the wives, I tried to take the small steps I
was
capable of to get out of myself, to get out of my own head. I talked to my parents and Leo's parents when they called. Garrett talked to his father when he called him. I talked to Garrett about my calls. I told him my mother wanted to come back out and that she'd cried when I told her she could if she wanted to but that we were managing. I told him my father and Glenn wondered when Garrett would be finished with the addition and I'd said I didn't know. Garrett told me his father had asked him the same question and that he'd told Julian the same thing. I asked him about Boston and his last girlfriend, Celia, and how he'd managed to leave so easily.

He waved away Celia. “A further waste of my time I was saved from. She wasn't a bad person, but she was a phony and I can't stand phonies.” That was all he would say. About leaving his job, he said, “Audrey, what were they going to do? You know how easy I uproot.”

“Like a weed,” I said, and he laughed.

“Exactly.”

That's what you do to engage other people, you ask them questions instead of talking about yourself, so I focused on the small goal of giving my thoughts and time to someone else, trying to catch up with Garrett like it was just a regular visit, trying to replace my mistake by efforts to resume the role I'd always had with him. I asked him endless questions about the addition—what was next, what I needed to make decisions on. Garrett had put his mark on the place after all his work, and after he and Kevin had finished the roof and moved forward on things Leo hadn't started, I could start to envision it as a part of the house we could spread out into and live in.

Since I'd slept with Garrett, I'd avoided Erin and dodged her phones calls and texts as best I could, and she'd given me space the way friends will for a time before they call you on it. We shared our secrets with each other and over time had accumulated details about each other that no one else knew. She didn't know about Garrett. She knew I was a terrible liar and I knew she knew I was. When I decided I'd start running with her again, I figured we would talk or we wouldn't. I knew that my being out running at all would be enough for her. So I took one of those small steps and texted her. She came by the next morning and let herself in.

“Hey,” she said, “you ready?” She looked proud of me.

“Yeah,” I said, “I just need shoes. Go check the progress.”

I put on my shoes and walked back to the addition myself.

“Hi, Garrett,” said Erin. “Wow. It looks great.”

“Hey,” Garrett said. “Thanks. It's coming along.”

“I'll be back,” I said.

He waved.

We left the house and started one of our regular routes.

We were three blocks in and Erin said, “Why is he single, again? It really looks terrific.
I
want an addition.”

My neighbor passed us walking her dog and I lifted my hand. What a simple thing to be doing. I envied her.

“I slept with him,” I said. I stopped running, then so did Erin.

“What?” she said.

“I slept with him,” I said. “I slept with Garrett.”

“What?” she said. “When?”

“A couple weeks ago,” I said. “It was terrible.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “Do you want to sit down?”

“Can we just walk for a minute?” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “God, it was terrible?”

“No, it wasn't terrible.” I started to laugh and cry at the same time. “I did a terrible thing. It was me. I initiated it.”

“Oh,” she said. “What happened?”

I covered my face with my palms.

“Jesus,” I said. “We were painting, we were repainting our bedroom. My bedroom. All of us, the boys too. And then the boys went to bed and we were drinking wine and then when we finished I kissed him. It was awkward, he was mortified, and we both went to bed. Then I went and got in bed with him.”

“Oh,” she said again.

“Aren't you going to say anything?” I said.

“What do you want me to say?” she said. “Can you give me a minute? You just told me.”

“Erin, say what friends say. What is there to think about?” I said. “That it was terrible and that I'm crazy and you can't believe I did such a thing.”

“Oh, sweetie.” She dropped her head and looked up at me with just her eyes. “I don't think that, though.”

“I feel like I cheated on him,” I said. “Who does such a thing after her husband just died?”

“You didn't, Audrey,” she said. “It may feel like it, but you didn't cheat on Leo.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” I said.

“I don't know,” she said. “What happened after? Did you talk about it? How has it been?”

“It was awkward the next day,” I said. “And then we just kind of pretended it didn't happen and went back to the way things were. Well, not really. It's obvious how hard we're both trying. It's not easy like it was before.”

“Well, no,” she said. “Of course it would have to be different.”

“I don't know what to do,” I said again. We walked for a half a block, quiet.

“What is there to do?” she said. “Do you mean to get back to the way things were? Or do you mean something else?”

“I don't know,” I said. “It
wasn't
terrible. So I feel terrible about that. Are you mad at me?”

“Audrey, of course not,” she said. “Stop it. This doesn't have anything to do with me. Why would I be mad?”

“Because you don't want to have a friend who's an idiot,” I raised my voice. “Isn't that what you're here for, to let me know when I'm being an idiot?”

She laughed but it wasn't a funny laugh. “You don't even need me here to have this conversation, do you? You're having it all by yourself.”

I hadn't expected to almost be arguing with Erin because she wouldn't agree with me. I had just dumped it on her, so I knew it wasn't fair. But after my confession, I'd expected her to reprimand me, quickly, and forgive me just as quickly, and that would be it.

“We've known each other too long, Audrey. If I thought I needed to scold you about something, I wouldn't need you to coach me through it,” she said. “I'm sorry I'm not piling on. I don't agree that you're an idiot, sorry.”

“Leo hasn't even been dead for three months,” I said.

“I know,” said Erin. “And I'm sorry if I'm not saying the right things. I don't know what the right thing to say is. You know, it's not like you get to practice this so you know how to do it when it really happens. The very last thing I'm going to do is judge. But I'll always tell you if I think you're making a mistake, and I can't about this. Only you can, and if you think what happened was a mistake, then you know what to do, or what you have to do. Work on getting back to where you were with Garrett. If you don't think it was a mistake, that's nobody else's business.”

“Let's start running again,” I said. I couldn't talk any more about it.

As we put the blocks behind us, I still felt like I'd betrayed Leo with Garrett, but although sleeping with Garrett had done nothing to penetrate and diminish my grief, it had suspended it while I was in bed with him. We hit the halfway point and turned back, and I thought,
Now
Garrett is the closest I'll ever be able to get to my husband
.

I knew where they were, and when I got home I found the box, packed away, that I'd never gotten rid of. I pulled out the base and receiver for the baby monitor I hadn't used in nine years. I put new batteries in both and tested them. They still worked. I put the base upstairs in the alcove bookshelf behind some books. I put the receiver in the back of the pantry, behind boxes of food, so it would be handy when I needed it.

T
he second week in May, Kevin and I finished putting in the electricity and the inspection was scheduled.

One night that week, after the boys were in bed, Audrey opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses.

“Let's go sit and look at it,” she said.

We walked outside to the backyard and I headed to one of the chairs on the patio.

“No,” she said. “Here.” She sat on the edge of one of the planter boxes she'd been tending for weeks and patted the wood next to her.

I sat down and took a sip.

“It's great, Garrett,” she said. “It's really great. I hope you think so.”

“It's coming along,” I said. “Thanks.”

“No, thank you,” she said.

I hadn't taken any time to stop and sit like we were, to have a look at the work from the outside. Kevin and I always dovetailed finishing one thing into starting the next. We hadn't taken time to reflect, so it was a new thing to take in the progress with Audrey sitting next to me. Piece by piece, day by day, I hadn't realized how far we'd come.

“Of course. You're welcome,” I said.

We sipped in the dark, and I could feel her looking at me.

I turned and looked at her and looked away again. “What?” I said.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I have something to say and I need to muster some courage.”

I sat there and waited, for her to say what exactly, I had no idea, but I was pretty sure I knew what it was about.

“I'm not sorry,” she said. “About what happened between us. I'm not sorry it happened. For me, it wasn't a mistake.”

She had put it out there. She had put herself out there. And now she was waiting.
Tell her, tell her now
.
Tell her about
the promise, the paper, the pact, the thing, what Leo said
.
Tell her
.

She took a deep breath. “I'm sorry if I'm out of line. I'm sorry if I seem like I'm not in my right mind. We've known each other too long, Garrett.” She paused. “I wouldn't be sorry if it happened again.”

Tell her
.

“Me neither,” I said. “I'm not sorry either. And I wouldn't be sorry if it happened again, just so you know.”

There it was. One thing was out there. Another thing wasn't.

She stood between my knees and kissed me. After the first time, I'd hoped it would happen again—dreading that it wouldn't—and now it was.

The boys were asleep, and before we went into the guest room, she went to the pantry, took out a baby monitor, and brought it in the room with us.