Chapter 3
In the parking garage, Rick raced around the car to open the door for Jenni. The two of them leaned into one another, holding hands and giggling as they strolled toward the auditorium. They’d been dating for only a few months and were still in the couldn’t-get-enough-of-each-other phase. Mary trailed behind, trying to remember the last time Dean had held her hand, but she drew a blank. Well, she and Dean had been together for almost three decades. The romance had long ago evaporated, but for many years, they’d gone overboard with their romantic gestures. Early in their marriage, whenever they ate at a restaurant with karaoke, Dean had insisted on performing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” and always made a big show of dedicating his performance to her. Once on their anniversary, he’d had twelve different florists deliver a single red rose at different times throughout the day because one rose signified true, undying love. To this day, instead of signing cards with the word “love,” he wrote “SRR” for “single red rose.”
On their first Valentine’s Day as husband and wife, she’d sent a box of a dozen red golf balls to his office. He’d once told her that one of the things he missed most about living at home was his mother’s gravy, which Mary later learned was pasta sauce, so, unbeknownst to Dean, she had spent an afternoon at his parents’ house learning to make his mother’s famous tomato sauce and then surprised him with homemade manicotti on his birthday.
When Kendra was born, their attention had rightfully shifted from one another to the baby. What Mary hadn’t expected was that they’d never return to how they’d once been. Now that Kendra was out on her own, they struggled to find common interests. Listening to live music had always been something they enjoyed doing together, but tonight Dean’s interest in golf had even trumped that.
Once inside and seated, Rick rested his hand on Jenni’s thigh. Mary eyed the empty seat next to her, silently cursing Dean, who had changed into his lounge pants before she’d even left the house that evening. She would bet right now he was sprawled out on the sofa, watching a rerun of some long-ago tournament on the golf channel.
Rick whispered something in Jenni’s ear, and Jenni burst out laughing. Mary jumped to her feet. “I’m going to get something at the concession stand.”
“I’ll go.” Rick stood. “Peanut M&M’S, right?” He squeezed by the women sitting next to him and stepped into the aisle without waiting for an answer.
“Looks like things are going really well with you and Rick,” Mary said.
Jenni’s eyes sparkled. “He’s almost too good to be true. I keep waiting for him to lose his temper, belittle me, or do some other awful thing Scott used to do.”
Mary shook her head. “Rick is not Scott, and after all those years in a miserable marriage, you deserve to be happy. Enjoy him.”
Jenni leaned toward Mary and gave her a quick hug. “I don’t think I would have ever had the courage to leave Scott if it weren’t for you.”
Mary’s face tightened. “Me? What did I do?” In the twenty-five years that Mary and Jenni had been friends, Mary had often been appalled at the way Jenni’s husband talked to his wife, but she’d never mentioned anything about her disdain for Scott, or encouraged her friend to leave him. She would never interfere in someone else’s marriage.
“You’re always so supportive. You helped me realize I’m not the incompetent idiot Scott made me think I was. You made me see I deserved better.”
“I’m pretty sure you figured that out on your own.”
The women on the other side of Jenni all stood. Rick shuffled into the row past them, handing Mary and Jenni each a bag of chocolate. The lights dimmed, music started to play, and Mary got lost listening to James sing and forgot all about what she and Jenni had been discussing.
After the concert, an usher led Mary, Jenni, and Rick backstage to James’s dressing room. He sat on a couch drinking a bottle of sparkling water. His short salt-and-pepper hair was damp, and he had changed out of the black leather pants and tight red shirt he’d worn during the show and was now dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt. When he saw Mary, his smile shone brighter than the spotlight that had followed him around the stage all night. While Mary and James spoke on the phone and texted a few times a month, they hadn’t seen each other in over a year because he lived on the other side of the country.
“Mary Mulligan!” James rushed across the room, lifted her off the ground, and spun her around. “You gorgeous thing. Time has stood still for you. You look exactly like you did the day we met.”
Feeling as giddy as a schoolgirl, Mary giggled. She knew his words weren’t true. She’d aged more than thirty years since they’d met. Life’s ups and downs had carved a road map of fine lines over her face. The skin on her neck sagged. Her hair had thinned, and her waist had thickened. Still, she beamed. James had always made her feel good about herself. “You were amazing tonight.”
“I’m amazing every night, honey.” He winked.
“She danced the entire show. Didn’t sit down once. I got exhausted watching her,” Jenni said.
“Watching her?” James exaggerated curling his lip in mock disapproval. “Why weren’t you dancing with her? Speaking of which, where is that brawny husband of yours? Why wasn’t he dancing with you?”
Mary’s jaw tensed. She still couldn’t believe Dean had refused to come tonight. “Home sleeping. He has an early-morning tee time on the Cape tomorrow.”
“Oh my, has he turned into an old fart?” James had witnessed the beginning of Mary and Dean’s relationship, teased her about the way Dean looked at her with moony eyes, and predicted Dean would propose long before he did.
Leaning against the doorframe, Rick laughed.
James’s attention turned to him. “Why, hello.” A lopsided smile broke out on his face. “Who is this beautiful specimen of a man?”
“Rick Zeller.” Rick offered his hand. James ignored it and pulled him into a bear hug.
“Sorry, James. He’s spoken for,” Jenni said.
“All the good ones are.” James flung his arm around Mary’s shoulders and led her out the stage door to an alley.
“So, tell me what’s going on in your life,” Mary said.
James told her about new music he’d recorded. “Covers of songs from when we were growing up.”
“Music that’s on the oldies stations now,” Mary said. Long ago, she’d watched James ease into the business at local bars, covering musicians from the seventies and early eighties. He later made a name for himself by performing songs he’d written. His big break came after Springsteen had asked him to open. While James could never sell out stadiums such as Fenway and Gillette like Bruce did, he regularly performed in front of capacity crowds at thousand-seat venues like the Shubert Theatre and Melody Tent when performing in his home state.
Mary glanced over her shoulder to make sure Rick and Jenni were behind them. The two were holding hands, giggling, seemingly unaware that anyone else lived on the planet with them.
“So I saw that Liz Collins is the country’s most trusted journalist, ” James whispered, as if he were letting Mary in on juicy gossip.
Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She considered telling James about the funk she’d been in ever since seeing Liz on the cover of People . It was the exact kind of thing she would have been able to confide in him when she was in her early twenties and they saw each other every day and told one another everything, but she feared that confessing those feelings to him now would make her seem insecure. “Good for her.” She hoped her words didn’t sound as bitter as they tasted in her mouth.
James pulled her closer to him. “‘For everyone at CBS Evening News ,’” he said, imitating Liz’s highly affected voice, “‘I’m Liz Collins. Thank you for joining us and have a good night.’”
“Hey, where are we going?” Jenni asked.
“Just a little farther,” James said.
A few blocks later, he stopped in front of a popular Irish pub and held the door open. A hostess led the party of four to a table in the back. Some of the patrons recognized James and asked for an autograph or to take their picture with him. Mary served as the photographer. As James and the customers smiled brightly, Mary’s own smile dimmed. James, like Liz, had achieved his dreams and made a large impact on the world, but what had Mary done with her life? Cooked meals for her husband and daughter, did their laundry, kept the house clean, volunteered for the PTA and school fundraisers, and carted Kendra and her friends from one activity to the next. Today, she had nothing to show for it. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. Twenty-four-year-old Mary who thought she would dominate the broadcasting scene would be ashamed of her fifty-something self. The gums above her emerging wisdom teeth throbbed, and she grimaced.
Finally seated, James ordered Captain Morgan and Cokes for the table. “For old times’ sake,” he said as he tapped his glass against Mary’s. The taste of the spicy rum on Mary’s tongue brought her back to the top of the staircase at her old Framingham apartment, where she and James used to sit and talk about their dreams with the moon shining down on them. They always picked a star to wish on. She could see him in his baggy postal uniform, strumming his guitar while she yammered on and on about a news story she’d covered that day. Back then, anyone who had known them would have bet on her achieving her goal, not him.
“What do you mean, Mary launched your career?” Rick asked.
Hearing her name, Mary realized she hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation at the table and tuned in.
“She encouraged me to sign up for an open mic night. I ended up getting a regular gig, and one night an executive from Red Label Music heard me. The rest is history.”
“One way or another, you would have been discovered,” Mary said.
James shook his head. “Without you, I never would have gotten my big break. I wouldn’t have ever stepped foot into the Skunk. That place should have been condemned. What a dump.”
Mary’s memory of the bar didn’t match James’s at all. The old wooden tables had scars that added character. Generations before them had worn out the sticky old oak floor while standing around enjoying each other’s company, and the bartender who’d made the drinks in those flimsy plastic cups was always quick with a smile.
“Do you remember Flannel Shirt Guy, who always sat at the bar next to the pole?” James asked.
“You asked him out, and he showed you a picture of his wife,” Mary said.
“Pretty sure it was the photograph that came with the wallet.” James laughed. “I wonder if he’s come out yet.”
Mary and James reminisced, laughing so hard that tears streamed down their faces. At two, the bar closed, and they reluctantly ended their night. As Mary climbed into the back seat of Rick’s car for the ride back to Hudson, her feet ached, her voice was hoarse, and her ears rang, yet she felt more alive than she had in years.
At home, she had trouble fitting her key in the lock. The door swung open. Dean stood on the other side, circles under his eyes and a wrinkle in his brow. “It wasn’t locked.”
“Whoops.” Mary giggled, still on a high from her night with James.
Dean bit down on his lower lip. “It’s three in the morning. I was sure you’d been in an accident. You didn’t answer my texts or calls.” He pulled her into his arms.
Even this time of night, he smelled like a combination of cut grass and suntan lotion, as if he had just walked off a golf course. Mary rested her head against his chest, breathing in his scent. It warmed her like a fleece blanket on a chilly night. She felt awful for worrying him, but she felt even worse because she hadn’t thought about him once all night long.