Chapter 20
Cherry spent almost the whole weekend with Russ.
She slept over at his house for the first time on Saturday night. Then she came home to spend time with Stevie, and went right
back to Russ’s and slept over again. She was glad to be away from her house. It was just too much.
Stevie didn’t run to say hello when Cherry got home from work on Monday night. Tom must have worn her out. It was a relief
that he was walking the dog on weekdays. Cherry hated having to walk Stevie in the dark after work.
Cherry kicked off her shoes and took her takeout into the kitchen. Chicken soup, from a homestyle restaurant downtown. She’d
ordered enough to have the leftovers tomorrow night. That counted as meal-planning for Cherry. She almost never had food in
the fridge.
She’d cooked all the time with Tom, but it never seemed worth cooking—or shopping—just for herself. She was lucky her office
building had a nice cafeteria.
Cherry decided to change out of her work clothes before she ate. She headed up the stairs. As she turned the corner, she ran
into Tom coming down the other way.
Cherry jumped and yelped.
“Sorry!” Tom held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was.” Stevie was behind him on the stairs. She
started barking and getting excited. She knocked into Tom, and he fell forward a little into Cherry.
Cherry stepped back. “It’s okay. You just startled me.”
Stevie squeezed through Tom’s legs and tried to squeeze through Cherry’s. Cherry wobbled. She pushed Stevie aside. “I can’t believe you got her to come all the way down the stairs . . .”
Normally Stevie would go up stairs, but would then be too afraid to come down. Even the two stairs on the front porch were a problem.
“We’ve been practicing on the basement steps,” Tom said. “Every time I went down there to work, she’d sit at the top and whine.”
Cherry let Stevie herd her backwards, down to the foyer. “Look at you, Stevie. I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be too impressed,” Tom said. “She’s still afraid of water.”
It was an ongoing joke between them that Stevie’s Great Pyrenees and Newfoundland genes canceled each other out—that she’d
be a terrible mountain dog and a terrible water dog.
Stevie jumped up onto Cherry, and Cherry ruffled the fur at her neck. “Aw . . . what good are you? You’ll never save a toddler
drowning in the Seine.”
Stevie kept charging forward. Cherry stumbled back. “Okay, enough,” Cherry said. “Down.” She pushed Stevie’s paws away. “Down,
Stevie!”
“Off, ” Tom said in a commanding voice.
Stevie dropped down immediately.
“Wow.” Cherry looked up at him, surprised. “She really listens to you.”
Tom was dismissive. “She just doesn’t know those other words. I taught her ‘off.’ ”
“When? Just this week?”
“No. When she was a puppy.”
“So all I need to say is ‘off’?”
“It helps if you make this gesture.” He shoved both palms forward.
“I didn’t know that,” Cherry said. “What other secret words did you teach her?”
Tom smiled, just with his eyes. Tom’s eyes were always lighter than Cherry remembered, even when she had just seen him.
She used to hope that their kids would get Tom’s pale blue eyes, but her hazel probably would have canceled them out.
“They’re not secrets,” he said. “They’re basic dog commands that I found in a book. ”
“Tell me more.”
“Um . . .” He made a fist. “Sit.”
Stevie sat.
“Okay,” Cherry said. “I mostly knew that one . . .”
Tom pointed at the floor. “Lie down.”
Stevie lay down.
“Right,” Cherry said. “That makes sense.”
He twirled his hand. “Roll over.”
Stevie rolled over.
Cherry gasped. “I didn’t know she could roll over!”
“She’s very smart,” he said. “I was going to teach her to pull a cart.”
“Why, do you need to haul something?”
“Nah.” Stevie had hopped back to her feet. Tom scratched between her ears. “I just wanted to give her something to do.” He
looked a little sad. “I think she’d be happier with something to do . . .”
Cherry knew just what he meant. “I think about that all the time. The way she follows me around the kitchen, looking up at
me like she wants to help . . . the way she jumps to attention when I walk into the room . . .”
Tom nodded. “Breed instincts. She wants to work.”
Cherry hummed sympathetically and patted Stevie’s flank. “Poor Stevie. She’s like a housewife whose husband won’t let her
get a job. Stuck at home all day, bored—”
Tom scratched under Stevie’s collar. “Taking Xanax and having an affair with the pool boy.”
Cherry laughed.
Tom was smiling at her. “You could take her to daycare.”
“I do sometimes. It’s expensive.”
He shrugged.
They were standing at the bottom of the stairs still, both of them petting different ends of the dog.
“I should head out,” Tom said.
“Yeah,” Cherry agreed. “You better get out of here before I start reading all your passive-aggressive Post-it notes.”
He shook his head, just a little. “My notes aren’t passive-aggressive. They’re just passive.”
Cherry laughed again. “Touché.”
Tom gave Stevie a few more scratches, then stood up straight. He reached for his hoodie—it was lying on the kennel—and started
putting it on.
“Tom,” Cherry said. Impulsively.
His head popped through the neck of the sweatshirt “Yeah?”
“I picked up Aunt Ida’s for dinner. Do you want to stay and have some? I ordered too much.”
Tom looked at her for a few seconds, like he was trying to read between her lines. He shook his head again. “You don’t have
to do that, Cherry.”
“No,” she said, “I know. I just—Why don’t you stay for dinner, and we can settle some of this stuff face-to-face?” She waved
a hand toward the dining room. “I’m out of blue Post-its.”
Tom was still studying her expression. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
Cherry raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know if I want it, but I can definitely get through it.”
“That’s what she said,” Tom murmured.
Cherry snorted. They’d once spent a month saying, “That’s what she said” to make fun of a guy in Tom’s office who always said it. They said it so much that for about a year, they couldn’t stop saying it. And then they spent another six months saying, “Okay, that was the last one, I promise.”
“Come on.” Cherry walked into the kitchen. “It’s just soup. I didn’t order bread or anything fancy.”
He walked in behind her. “You think bread is fancy?”
Cherry got out two bowls. There was a new batch of miscellany arranged on the kitchen island, along with several Post-it notes.
She ignored it all.
“Sorry about the mess in here,” Tom said. “I’ve been bringing things down from the attic—and up from the cellar. There’s still
a bunch of stuff down there from the previous owners. I was thinking about getting a dumpster . . . unless you want me to
leave it?”
“A dumpster is fine,” Cherry said, dishing out some chicken and noodles for him. “I just don’t want it to sit out there forever.”
“It won’t sit out there forever.”
“Then that’s fine. Maybe I could make a salad . . .” She opened the fridge. There was a bag of lettuce, but it looked rusty.
“Never mind.”
“I was thinking I’d clear out the garage, too. While I’m here.”
She handed him the bowl. “That’s fine. I haven’t been in the garage in years.” Cherry parked her car in the driveway.
“Who’s been mowing the lawn?”
“No one lately, but I hired someone.”
“Smart.”
“My therapist said to throw your money at problems,” Cherry said, fixing herself a bowl.
Tom bristled. “It’s not my money.”
She raised her eyebrows but decided not to argue. She got out two spoons.
“You should hire someone to shovel, too.” Tom sounded aggressive. Like he was giving her an order.
“I do.”
“Good.”
“And just, like, whatever, Cherry. Like—you could replace the sink in the bathroom. I know you want to. Just do it. Don’t
worry about it.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe I will.” She motioned toward the living room.
Tom walked ahead of her. There were new piles of stuff spread out on the coffee table and stacked on the armchairs. Cherry sat on the couch. Tom stood there for a second at the edge of the room.
“Okay,” he said. “This is untenable.”
“What is?” Cherry was already eating.
He gestured with his spoon around the room. “This. There’s no place for you to eat.”
Cherry shrugged. “It’s tenable. I’m tenning.”
Tom looked embarrassed. “I’m kind of seeing it for the first time . . .”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Sorry. I’ll clean everything up tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to.”
He stood there, still looking around with his brow furrowed.
“Sit down, Tom.”
He looked over at her. Then sat at the other end of the couch.
The soup was bland. Cherry wished she had something better to offer him—so that he would think she was better. So that he’d think she was doing just fine.
Tom was eating his soup doggedly, still staring out at the room. Ashamed.
“I haven’t watched the Thursday trailer,” Cherry said. “But everyone says it looks great.”
He glanced over at her and then down at his food. He shrugged.
“Are you done with your part?” she asked. Tom had been hired to write the film’s script, and he was an executive producer.
The last Cherry had heard, he was spending a lot of time on set.
“Mostly,” he said. “I still have to promote it. They want me to do these daylong junkets where I sit there with the actors
and say the same thing over and over. They gave me media training.”
“Is that why you’re moving to Los Angeles?”
His forehead was still tense. “Not exactly. I guess Los Angeles seems as good a place as any. Maybe I’ll be inspired to do
something new there.”
“Thursday in L.A.?”
“Ah.” Tom poked at his soup with his spoon. “No. No more Thursday after this year.”
Cherry frowned. “No more?”
“Nope.” He stirred his soup.
“You’re not serious.”
He looked up at her. “I am serious.”
“You can’t end Thursday.”
“I can’t?”
“I mean—why would you want to?” Cherry was upset. Why was she upset? “It’s always been . . . you know.”
“I know. But . . .” Tom shrugged. “I think it’s run its course.”