Chapter 23
23
Gabe
“Sure, it looks like a normal discrimination complaint,” I’m telling Mark, “but I think the real reason that Mike Schuster wasn’t promoted to Compliance Officer is because David Carey, the Director of Human Resources, is still angry that Mike stole his girlfriend fifteen years ago while David was working at the Lake of the Ozarks Boy Scout Camp. Mike apparently stopped by the diner to see Christine every day after he was done lifeguarding at the swimming pool, and one thing led to another, if you know what I mean, Mark. The fact that neither David nor Mike ended up marrying Christine doesn’t appear to make a difference. How those two have worked together in the same office all this time, I don’t know.”
“Ha! Now you’re thinking like a small-town lawyer, Gabe,” Mark says, smacking me gleefully on the back. “Unfortunately for Mike, I don’t think girlfriend-stealer is a protected class. He’s stuck as an administrative assistant, unless he wants to go back to lifeguarding.”
I smile back. I’m enjoying my job at the courthouse more and more. And Mark is right: in a small town, nothing is ever straightforward. Personal relationships are tightly interconnected webs stretching back years, if not decades. They’re fascinating to untangle.
Mark doesn’t treat me like an ordinary paralegal, either. He acts almost like I’m a partner and is thrilled when I tell him I’ve been studying for the bar. He hints constantly and loudly about me taking over “the shop” someday, and I’m starting to wonder whether that might not be such a bad thing.
What would it be like if I stayed in Kentwood? If a certain Girl and I eventually married, bought a house together, and raised a family? Competition and fees for child care would be low, and so would home prices. I could easily support myself and the Girl until she started earning a living from her writing. Being a city attorney would be busy, for sure, but much less intense than being a corporate lawyer, and we’d have a network of friends and family to help us. We could go hiking in summer, sledding in winter (in helmets, for God’s sake, unless I can petition the city to take out those fucking Frisbee golf baskets). I could listen to the Girl read The Chronicles of Narnia aloud to two or three adorable little kids, warm and sleepy from their baths, while our shaggy dog lies at my feet.
If that’s what she wants, of course. On the one hand, she won’t see me publicly. She’s vocally opposed to romance and commitment. She’s clearly hiding something. On the other, she’s affectionate and kind when we are together. She responds eagerly to the slightest touch. She’s like a very sweet mistress, and it’s driving me crazy. I want so much more.
Like an idiot, I start to tear up a little thinking how nice it would be to build a life with her, to hang Christmas lights and host birthday parties and squabble over how best to load the dishwasher, when I hear a familiar voice in the front office.
“I have those records you requested from the library, Mr. Pritchard.”
“Come in, come in, and please, it’s Mark! Thank you so much, these will be very helpful in the Gernsheimer case! Would you like anything? Coffee, tea?”
Allison laughs a pleasant little laugh and insists that she has to get right back to work.
“How’s that fella of yours treating you, then? I hear you two are engaged? Well, that’s wonderful, congratulations, he’s a lucky man, if I were a couple of decades younger and not, of course, happily married myself, well, I’d?—”
“I’ll tell Tom you said hi,” Allison cuts him off cheerfully. “And let me know if you need anything else!” I hear her walk out the door.
Impulsively, I chase after her. “She’s taken , Gabe, it’s a crying shame, I know—” Mark calls as the door swings shut behind me.
I catch her just as she reaches her car, a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle parked right across from the café.
“Oh hey, Gabe,” she says, turning to me with a smile. “Sorry I didn’t come say hi, it’s just that Mark will never let me out of there if I linger.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I reply, crossing my arms against the cold. “It seems like he was coming on kind of strong.”
She dismisses this with a wave of her hand. “He’s harmless,” she insists. “Is everything okay with you?”
“I was just wondering, well, you know, I’ve been seeing a lot of Kayla, and…” I’m not quite sure what I want to ask her. Does she like me? Is she seeing anyone else? Is this going anywhere? Where will we be in another eight years?
I don’t tell her that my former roommate Paul told me that Gretchen’s relationship with her boyfriend is on the rocks. I don’t tell her that Gretchen is coming back to town. Gretchen, who agreed to marry me, who I know wants children, who I have already squabbled with about the dishwasher.
I don’t want to get back together with Gretchen. But I also don’t want a mistress. I don’t want to spend my life pining for someone who will never love me.
Fortunately Allison seems to understand without me having to babble all this out loud. She sighs and nods her head slowly.
“The thing you have to understand about Kayla,” she begins, “is that she’s a bit of a black-and-white thinker when it comes to her future. Either she achieves what she wants in the way she wants, or she ends up being a waitress for the rest of her life.”
“I would never try to stop her from?—”
“I know,” Allison interrupts me. “But the other thing you have to understand,” and here she smiles encouragingly, “is that she’s a big softy. She’ll always put the people she loves first.”
“And does she love… who does she…” I trail off again.
“She plays her cards really close to her chest,” she says, squeezing my arm sympathetically. “Be patient with her, and I’m sure things will work out the way they’re supposed to.”
This is maddeningly vague, but I nod like I feel better and wave as she drives away.
On the phone I’d told my grandmother that I was bringing The Girl with the Ankle with me to pick up the dried-flower bouquets she had made for Hungry Hearts. Even though there are many girls in the world and it’s probably safe to say that most of them have ankles, Grandma had instantly known who I meant.
I had been on my way to her house years ago when I pulled Kayla out of that ditch; later, as I helped her wash dishes, I had spilled my guts about how amazing Kayla was and how happy I’d been that she’d let me help her.
“Death is coming, Gabriel,” she’d said by way of terrifying encouragement. “You had better ask this girl out.” I knew she never understood why I didn’t; I knew what that eyebrow raise meant when I introduced her to Gretchen. I knew, too, that I had to stop her from matter-of-factly planning a wedding the instant Kayla walked through her door.
“She’s skittish,” I had explained. “And I don’t know how much she really likes me, you know, that way .”
“Does she know that you like her that way ?”
“Um… probably?” I replied, wincing on my end of the line. Probably not. But Kayla would run screaming for northeastern Missouri’s non-existent hills if I told her I love her. Grandma sighed loudly.
“Gabriel. How many times have I told you? Death?—”
“I know, I know. Just play it cool tonight, okay? Part of the problem is that she thinks our family won’t like her.”
“Is she unlikable?”
“No! She’s very likable! She’s just, um, not one of the fifteen.”
“Who gives a crap about?—”
“Dad. Mom. Adam.”
“Ah. Well. Don’t worry about them . We’ll get this sorted out.”
Needless to say I’m as nervous as Kayla as we drive out of town to visit her. I’m gambling that Kayla will like Grandma; I have a hunch that no-nonsense old women are her jam. And I want to show her that not everyone in my family is an insufferable snob. She needs to know that I’m not ashamed of her and that she could fit in if she wanted to.
But I’m also praying that Grandma won’t put her too much on the spot, because that could end very, very badly.
“You’ll like her,” I tell Kayla, hoping that saying so will magically make it true. “She’ll like you.”
“How do you know?” Kayla shoots back. “Are we the same astrological sign or something?”
“Oh! Maybe! Your birthday is in December, right?”
She turns to me with an expression that either means why do you know that or why don’t you know that . “December 27 th ,” she replies stiffly.
“Grandma is early January, I think, so that would make you both…”
“Capricorns. Capricorns are stubborn jerks who hate other people.”
“Johnson. You don’t hate other people.”
“So I’m a stubborn jerk?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Well, if the shoe fits…” She whacks me hard on the shoulder, but she’s smiling.
Finally Grandma’s nineteenth-century farmhouse comes into view. It’s a white two-story Victorian with a wrap-around porch. Massive oaks and maples dot the front lawn, sheltering the house from the wind. It’s not as grand as the house I grew up in, but I’ve always thought it was prettier.
As soon as we step out of the car, a filthy border collie jumps all over me.
“Who’s this?” Kayla asks with a smile, bending to coax the dog over to her. He doesn’t need much encouragement; within seconds he’s orbiting around both of us in a frantic ellipse, getting pets from whoever’s closest.
“Bello,” I reply.
“He’s an excellent watchdog,” Kayla deadpans. “Very wary of strangers.”
“Gabriel!” Grandma calls from the porch. “And this must be?—”
“Kayla Johnson,” Kayla introduces herself as Bello leaps into the air to lick her face.
“I’m Trudy,” Grandma replies, grinning from ear to ear. “Come in, all of you.”
I place an encouraging hand on Kayla’s back and gently urge her through the door ahead of me as Bello bursts past both of us and jumps on the couch. My mother would have a stroke if a muddy dog rolled all over her upholstery, but Grandma doesn’t bat an eye. Instead she watches shrewdly as Kayla draws closer to the family photos lining the entryway.
“Is this you?” she asks, turning to me with a smile. She’s pointing to a picture of a dark-haired little boy in a Cub Scout uniform.
“No, that’s Adam. I had lighter hair as a kid… there, that’s one of me. And here’s one of me and Adam. See the difference?”
“Uh-huh,” she says. She’s still smiling, but Grandma and I both noticed how her eyes had dimmed at the mention of Adam’s name.
“I take it you know Gabriel’s brother?” Grandma asks, moving next to her to examine the pictures too.
“A little,” Kayla replies carefully, her voice tense.
“I love this one,” Grandma says, pointing to a picture of her holding a tiny newborn me, with four-year-old Adam scowling on the couch next to us. “See, it looks like Adam is glaring at Gabe, right?” Kayla nods. “But actually he hated it when anyone besides him held the baby. He thought we were all hopelessly incompetent.” She smiles at me. I’ve heard these stories before, of course: how toddler Adam would admonish all the grown-ups to support my head; how he insisted on sleeping in the same room as me; how he would run to our mother to alert her whenever I cried, as if she couldn’t hear me herself.
Kayla takes all this in with a polite smile, laughing at the appropriate times. Then she glances at me in a questioning sort of way.
I shrug my shoulders and grin at her. “Yeah, he always hated it when anyone else beat me up, too. He would rather do it himself.”
“Gabriel,” my grandmother says in a warning tone. I chuckle.
We begin loading floral arrangements into the car. Grandma’s outdone herself: the dried sprays of blazing star and goldenrod will add a much-needed touch of class to the Hungry Hearts decor. As Kayla catches up to me with an armful of flowers, she asks in a low voice, “Where’s your grandfather?”
“He died a few years ago,” I respond quietly. “Heart attack.”
“I can hear you!” Grandma shouts from the porch. “You can ask me anything you like, dear!” she tells Kayla.
“Oh, no, I don’t want to pry?—”
“It’s fine,” she says, sitting down on the porch steps in spite of the cold. Kayla and I stand a few feet away in the front yard, waiting to hear what she has to say. For a few minutes she doesn’t say anything, just wraps her arms around her knees and looks off in the direction of cattle lowing in the distance.
“We were once like you,” she says finally. “Just a couple of kids who barely knew how to talk to each other. When he proposed to me, I was surprised. I remember thinking, if I say no, then everything will stay the same. At the time I was working as a teacher in a little town about an hour from here. I liked my life. But then I thought, if I say yes, everything will change, and wouldn’t that be exciting?” She glances at the two of us with a smile. I can see Kayla smile back, tentatively, a question on her lips.
“Best decision I ever made,” Grandma supplies, “though he never gave me a moment’s peace.” She laughs, then she heads back into the house to fetch the rest of the flowers.
“I’m sorry about your grandfather,” Kayla says on the drive back to Kentwood.
“Thanks,” I reply. “You would’ve liked him, too. He was a big bear of a man, always teasing Grandma. She acted like it drove her crazy, but really she loved it.” I smile at the memory of her smacking him with oven mitts or a rolled-up issue of Southern Living , like a feisty kitten going after a placid St. Bernard.
“It must have been awful for her when he died,” Kayla says, staring down at her gloved fingers twisting in her lap.
“It was,” I admit.
“See, that’s the thing,” Kayla continues, not looking at me. “You love someone, and then they just… leave. Whether they do it by choice or not, it’s all the same.”
“No, it’s not,” I shoot back, glancing over at her.
“So what’s the point?” she presses on, as if she hasn’t heard me. “What’s the point of all that heartbreak? If you’re just going to end up alone, why not stay alone in the first place?”
“Because!” I protest articulately, adrenaline starting to pulse through me. “Because there are lots of wonderful things that happen in the meantime! ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost’ and all that. Weren’t you an English major?”
I feel angry. Scared. It sounds like she wants to actively fight falling in love. Like maybe what’s really standing between us is not my family or her goals or another guy, but some stupid fear of loss. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Is she trying to ruin both our lives?
I grip the steering wheel, trying to steady my breath enough to talk, when she abruptly changes the subject.
“What were you talking to Allison about the other day in front of the café?”
The truth is totally innocuous – I was pumping her for information about my crush – but something in her tone warns me to tread lightly. I stifle my anger and opt for a little white lie. “Nothing much. She brought my boss some documents and I thought he was coming on to her. I wanted to make sure she was okay.”
“How gallant,” Kayla says flatly. She waits a beat, then adds, “Lots of men are attracted to Allison. It’s that whole fun-size Barbie thing she has going on.”
“I guess,” I say carefully.
“You don’t think she’s pretty?”
“Sure, objectively speaking,” I reply, worrying that there is no right answer to that question. “But is it all right if I think you’re much prettier?” Kayla makes a little scoffing sound but otherwise doesn’t reply.
I have no idea what’s going on with her. But if she wants to push me away, then I’m not going to help her. I pull off the highway onto a dirt road.
“Wilson, what are you?—”
“Look at me, Johnson,” I tell her forcefully, turning in my seat to face her. She meets my eyes unwillingly. “You don’t need to worry if you see me talking to another woman. I want to date you . Only you. I think you know that.”
“Okay, yes, I’m sorry. I mean, I don’t know that we’re exactly dating , but still. I’ve just always been a little insecure about Allison, that’s all.”
“There’s no reason for that, but I understand if that’s how you feel. And I hope you understand,” I add, “that I’ve been a little insecure since Gretchen cheated on me.”
“Sure, I get that,” she replies with a puzzled expression. “But we aren’t even—and I would never?—”
“Who did Jeff think I was that day at the café?”
“Oh, God, Gabe, please?—”
“Because I don’t understand your hesitancy towards me. I really don’t. I know we’re both in town temporarily. I know you’re worried my family won’t approve of us. But I also know what it feels like when we’re together, and the only good reason I can think of for you pulling away is that you’re hung up on someone else.”
Kayla buries her face in her hands. “I’m not ,” she stresses, her voice muffled by the fabric of her gloves.
“Look at me,” I say again, more softly this time. I gently take her by the wrist and pull her hands away from her face. She looks like she’s on the verge of tears.
“There’s no one else,” she whispers, looking me straight in the eye. “Honestly, Gabe, there never has been.”
Time stops. The world outside the car hushes. I keep my grip on her wrist and hold her gaze steadily, searching her face for a sign that she’s telling the truth. Can she possibly have meant that? As far as I knew she didn’t date in high school. And it’s clear that she hasn’t been with that many guys.
It all flashes before me—Christmas lights, dishwashers, The Chronicles of Narnia . My heart is threatening to thrash its way out of my chest. Still, I have to know this one thing. “Then just tell me who Jeff thought I was. If it’s someone who’s hurt you?—”
“Please drop it, okay? Please ?”
I very much do not want to drop it, but I can tell that I’m deeply upsetting her. I hate every second of this – her red-rimmed eyes, her pleading voice. I wish she trusted me enough to tell me what the issue is. But more than anything, I want to overcome any barriers that are standing between us. I recall my conversation with my grandmother. Maybe I really haven’t been clear enough with her about what I want.
“If you’re not in love with anyone else, then I would like to date you, Kayla,” I say, gently but firmly. “Openly.”
She breaks eye contact, squirms in her seat, shakes her head miserably. “We’re so good together as friends. Friends with benefits. Whatever,” she protests. “We’re just going to make each other unhappy by expecting more than that. I can’t handle—I can’t handle dating. Anyone . Especially not right now. Please try to understand that.”
She’s said this before. And then continued to see me. And smile at me, and touch me, and let me touch her in increasingly pornographic ways. I can either break up with her and try to find someone who wants what I want, or continue to see her on her terms. Neither seems like a good option.
I drop her hand and lean back against the headrest. Allison is probably right. I should be patient. Work to show her rather than tell her that love is worth the risk.
“Okay,” I sigh.
“Okay what?” she asks.
“Okay, we can be whatever you want us to be.” For now , I think. Then I cut the Navigator’s headlights and pull her to me in the dark.