Chapter 21
Usually, Pete spending a Sunday at the golf course would mean Claire gets a rare weekend day to herself. She’d listen to music, or more often these days sketch or paint. Once, she might have visited Jackie. Now it seems she’s destined to do nothing but spiral over the same worries.
Instead, Claire seeks out company.
“I’ll be back to pick you up in the afternoon,” Pete says. The car is idling in the library parking lot, and Claire is already halfway out. “Don’t get too many books, I don’t want to have to haul them back here to return.”
Claire doesn’t kiss him goodbye. He doesn’t seem to notice—he zooms off, intent on catching his tee time. The moment he turns the corner she veers in the opposite direction, crossing the street and heading off to her real destination.
The bell above the door of Anita’s shop jingles as Claire pushes it open.
“Just a moment,” Anita calls, busy reaching on her tiptoes for a stack of canvases on a top shelf. It reminds Claire so starkly of her first impression of Jackie, reaching fruitlessly for a box of cereal, that the hollow space in her chest aches.
Is Claire cursed to forever be haunted by Jackie Callas at every turn?
Claire hurries to grab the canvases for her. When Anita turns to thank her, Claire finds herself wrapped in a tight, motherly hug—for once, with Anita standing on a stool, they’re of a similar height.
“So?” Anita says, breaking into one of her beaming smiles. “Did you manage to paint again?”
Claire winces. She hasn’t picked a brush up since she stopped speaking to Jackie. “I can’t stay for too long today,” she says instead. “Pete is picking me up in the afternoon, once he’s done golfing.”
“Pete, schmete,” Anita says, waving a careless hand as she hops down from her stepladder. “He can wait.”
“He thinks I’m at the library,” Claire admits.
Anita pauses, halfway through moving the stepladder behind the desk. “Oh. This is a clandestine operation, then?”
“I was hoping you might give me some more advice.”
Anita wastes no time. She hurries to the front window, flipping the open sign over to closed and locking the door. “Come on. Back to the studio.”
Claire chews at her thumb as Anita unlocks the studio door.
Anita gestures for her to sit on the sagging old couch, but Claire can’t.
Instead, she paces. She’s practically wearing a track in the carpet by the time Anita sits down.
Her own paintings are looming down at her from the storage shelf as she struggles to find the right words.
“Claire, what’s going on? You’re running around like a racehorse,” Anita says. She follows Claire with her eyes, her wrinkled brow furrowed.
Claire wrings her hands. The effort of maintaining a calm facade all morning while her mind races has exhausted her.
She needs to tell someone about her doubts.
Her conversation with Theo only tied the knots tighter.
She needs just one person to either tell her it will all be alright, or to talk her out of this insanity.
Anita was a confidante in her youth. And who else does Claire have?
Abruptly, Anita stands. Her expression is one Claire has never seen before—it’s soft, and serious. She steps into Claire’s path, stopping her in her tracks, and takes Claire’s hands in her own.
“Claire. Has something happened?” she says gravely.
The answer should be automatic—of course not. Everything is wonderful! But Claire bites down on it.
What’s the honest truth? That she’s miserable? That she’s just realized she’s a homosexual? That every good thing she’s managed to claw out of her life disappeared when Jackie closed the door on her?
Tears spring to Claire’s eyes.
“Oh, chickadee,” Anita says softly.
The tears come full-on as Claire sinks down onto the sofa, and Anita follows.
“I’m sorry,” Claire gasps, graduating quickly to sobs as her Anita’s arms close around her. “I’m—so sorry to come to you like this.”
“It’s all right,” Anita murmurs. She strokes Claire’s hair, giving comfort even while she’s entirely in the dark as to why Claire needs it.
All the unhappiness of the last six months is spilling out at once, and poor Anita is simply the rock Claire is clinging to.
“You’re all right. Just tell me what’s happened. ”
It takes Claire a minute or so to get herself together. She takes the tissue Anita offers, wiping furiously at her eyes.
“I’m sorry, I—shouldn’t. Things are fine,” Claire says, blowing her nose loudly. “I shouldn’t complain. I have a nice house and a husband who provides. We’re starting a family. I have nothing—nothing to—”
Claire’s voice breaks in another sob.
Anita looks oddly pensive as Claire weeps into her lap. She hands over a fresh tissue, stroking Claire’s back in a rhythmic motion. “Would you like to talk about it?”
Claire doesn’t have the energy to hold it back anymore. She talks into her hands, hoping that by muffling the words they won’t come across so harsh.
“I’m not happy,” Claire says, with a surety she now feels utterly confident in. Her voice is warbly, but the conviction is true. “And I think I want to leave Pete.”
Theo was right. To say it out loud is like a sigh of relief that runs through her whole body. She can’t take it back, now. She can’t ruminate any longer in the prison of her own mind. She’s spoken it into existence.
Anita’s response is blessedly pragmatic, just as Claire hoped. She keeps rubbing those circles on Claire’s back. She doesn’t even sound surprised. “May I ask why?”
“Because Pete doesn’t love me,” Claire chokes out. “And I don’t love him.”
Anita is quiet. She rubs Claire’s back until the sobs have stopped trying to rise up Claire’s throat.
When Anita speaks, it’s with a calm kind of authority.
“I feared you’d never realize how much more you deserve,” she says, once Claire has controlled herself.
“I’m glad you’re starting to see your worth. ”
Claire isn’t sure that’s true, but it’s nice to hear. She twists her hands together. “My mother thinks I should just deal with it. Focus on keeping Pete content.”
“And why should you stay for his sake?”
“Because the alternative is…” Claire trails off. She swallows past the lump in her throat.
“Divorce,” Anita says simply. It’s as if the word has no effect on her at all. “It’s not the end of the world, Claire.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No,” Anita says. “It’s the beginning, if you allow it to be.”
The beginning. But the beginning of what, exactly?
Pursuing something with Jackie? Theo implied that Jackie might return her feelings, but Jackie has made it clear that she doesn’t want Claire in her life anymore.
She ended their friendship. And Theo had been adamant that Claire figure herself out before involving Jackie, anyways.
So, is divorce the beginning of a life alone?
She feels alone already. At least without a husband, she’d only need to take care of herself.
It’s not impossible. Jackie does it, and so does Anita.
Claire bites down so hard on her nail bed that she tastes blood.
“I don’t know what to do,” Claire mumbles, around her thumbnail. “If I leave, I have nothing. Nowhere to go. My whole life has been with Pete.”
“You’ll always have a place under my roof,” Anita says.
“That’s kind, but I couldn’t do that to you.”
“I’m offering,” Anita says firmly. “I have a sofa upstairs, dear. If you decide leaving is what you need to do, you come straight here. Okay?”
It’s the same kind of selfless thing that Anita used to do for Claire when her mother went out of town for days at a time.
But Claire hadn’t been hiding a secret like this, then.
The Jackie of it all is pushing at her chest, hammering on her ribs, fighting to get out.
If Claire reveals the full truth about herself, about who she is and who she really wants, and Anita doesn’t accept it—what then?
Where can she go? Would she be trapped with Pete, living this lie?
Will she be sent away somewhere to be fixed?
“What if I did something that you didn’t approve of?” Claire says.
Anita snorts. “What right do I have to control anyone’s life but my own? Judgement does nothing but lock a woman inside herself.”
Locked inside herself. It’s an apt description for what Claire has been feeling—as if some part of her that was shoved out of sight long ago is elbowing its way in again, insistently tearing down Claire’s whole life.
“I know you’re different, Claire,” Anita says softly. She puts an arm around Claire, which is impressive given their height difference even while seated. “It’s all right. You always have been.”
“More than you know,” Claire says, leaning into the warmth of Anita’s hug regardless.
Talking to Anita helps to settle Claire’s mania, but it doesn’t leave her with a decision one way or the other.
After drinking three cups of Anita’s herbal tea and having another good cry, she scurries back to the library in the afternoon.
She takes two books out just to justify the trip, and Pete honks the horn from the parking lot an hour or so later.
The first half of the car ride home is silent. Pete doesn’t even have the radio on—he seems perfectly content with his own thoughts. When he strikes up a conversation, his voice ringing out into the quiet makes Claire jump.
“You know, once we have kids, I won’t be able to take you to this part of town anymore,” Pete says, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “I can’t be carting you back and forth with children at home.”
Claire’s already uneasy stomach churns.
“I could get a driver’s license,” Claire says.
“You don’t need a driver’s license,” Pete says. It’s the same thing he’s said since she first asked for one, after they moved to Acacia Circle.
Claire sits up in her seat. “It would make life easier for both of us. Getting out for groceries and errands would be easier, and—”
“And a car would be an extra cost, especially if you crash the thing. Don’t argue, Claire,” Pete says. The car turns into their driveway, shuddering to a stop. “It’s tiresome.”
Claire can see light shining in Jackie’s front window. She stares at it as Pete turns off the car, unmoving in her seat until she sees a figure pass across it.
Claire has never really put much stock into the term heartbreak, but something in her chest is aching. There’s a deep, physical pain that could only be a broken heart as she considers what her life is hurtling towards.
Motherhood. Spending her days trapped in the house with no way to get around, which will only get harder when she’s lugging a baby around like Martha. Living next to Jackie, watching her shadow pass by the window and knowing what she might have had a chance at if she’d just been a little braver.
Pete has already gotten out of the car, letting the door slam behind him, but Claire stays where she is.
“Claire?” Pete calls.
Claire grips the armrests. All the worry of the last few weeks, all the anxiety, all resentment and fear and guilt, has settled into something cold and hard and angry right in the middle of her chest.
Pete appears at the window. He taps hard on the glass. “Did you hear me? We’re home.”
“I heard you,” Claire says distantly. “I’m coming.”
The next morning, Claire puts two dollars out of the grocery money into an envelope and hides it in her vanity.