15. Out Of Fucks
OUT OF FUCKS
LUCY
This is what recovery looks like, in practice.
It looks like the back porch at ten in the morning, where the sun comes up at a good angle, and the garden is visible, and the air smells like the magnolias in bloom.
It looks like a blanket across my lap because I get cold now, which I didn’t before, which is apparently a thing that happens when your body has been through something significant and is rerouting its resources toward healing and away from temperature regulation.
It looks like a cup of tea Fox made before he got in the shower—made the way I like it with honey and lemon, which he did not use to do, which means he has been paying attention to how I make it and replicating the process, which I have added to the list of things I am not examining too closely about Fox.
It looks, from the outside, like a woman resting.
From the inside, it looks like a woman doing continuous, exhausting emotional accounting while also managing a performance and also being in genuine physical pain and also falling asleep without warning every four to six hours like a phone with a dying battery.
It is not restful.
But the sun is good. Uncomplicated. It does not require anything from me, and I have developed a significant appreciation for things that do not.
I hear the front door open and then close. I wonder who it is.
Fox is in the shower—I can hear the water running, the master bath draws from pipes that run around the porch, which means sound carries in one direction only—so hollering for him isn’t an option. Not that I’m a hollerer.
I could stand up and hobble in, but I don’t feel like it, so I stay, my eyes closed, my hands on my chest, the sun warm and cozy.
Maybe it’s someone who is delivering something.
His assistant comes in and out, leaving this, that, and the other.
There’s a housekeeper, new, whom he hired because I’m supposed to do nothing but sit around, sleep around, lounge around.
I’m fine with that. I can’t do more than sit around, sleep around, and lounge around right now, anyway.
Or maybe it’s the cleaners—he’s always had them, refused to let them go when I moved in, no matter what I said about liking to clean.
“No fucking way,” he said. “You work fulltime like I do. We’re not going to be cleaning this massive place, especially when we can afford not to.”
I felt guilty for about half a minute, then quickly got used to having someone clean the house from head to toe, change the sheets, do the laundry….
What a luxury!
I’m drowsy when I hear voices. I hear footsteps. I hear someone call out, “Archibald.”
Ugh!
Only one person calls him that—his mother.
Does the woman have a key to the house? When did that happen? Not while I lived here.
Well, Lucy, technically, you still live here.
But it’s under false pretense.
“Fox,” a second voice, female, calls out.
Not Caroline. Then….
I turn my head.
Margaret Bennett steps out onto the porch. She has this way about her, like every place she enters is hers. You can have your opinions about it, but she’s gonna own it now.
I hope my gorgeous peonies burn her ass.
She is dressed as someone from Bridgerton would in this day and age—with care and a plan for what image to project. I doubt this woman has ever just slipped on jeans and shoes to rush somewhere because she’s running late.
A step behind her, arranged like a punctuation, is Reina.
I’ve met her a couple of times at family gatherings. She’s Fox’s ex. They used to date a long time ago, and he left her because she cheated on him. He said it in passing to me once, like it didn’t matter to him.
She’s tall and polished. She works in PR at her father’s company, which I know is code for making a living doing no work, which is what everyone in Fox’s family does.
She dresses like a mini Margaret, wearing clothes and jewelry that cost more than my monthly salary plus my annual profit cut at Dina’s.
But, as I have lost my memory, I don’t actually know or remember these people.
I wonder if Fox has told them about my selective amnesia. If he has, this will be interesting. If he hasn’t, this will be entertaining and interesting.
They both look at me with quiet contempt, like I am a situation that has not yet been fully resolved. I recognize it well. But I have lost my memory so….
“Yes?” I ask, setting my teacup on the table next to the chair I’m resting on.
“Lucy.” Margaret controls a sneer. Not well because I see it, and probably that’s her intention. “You look better than I expected.”
“Thank you.” I keep my tone pleasant but not warm because I have approximately zero warmth available for this woman.
“Lucy, I heard about the accident.” Reina comes to stand by me. She has a sweet voice—snake-like.
Obviously, Fox hasn’t told them about my memory loss.
So, I blink several times and wear a confused look. “Ah…you know…Fox is taking a shower and—”
“I’m surprised, though, to see you here,” Margaret talks over me. She does that a lot. I think it’s because no one exists for her, and she loves the sound of her own voice.
Now, I furrow my brows. I am laying it on thick, but I’m also enjoying it tremendously. I am tempted to say something like, “Who are you?” but then go with, out of curiosity, “Why?”
“Why?” Margaret looks at Reina and then at me. “Because, I thought that you and Archibald…well…I thought…”
That we were getting divorced, but she doesn’t say it because she’s confused now that I’m here. I pick up my tea and sip.
Margaret moves to the porch railing, which I repainted last fall, and Fox helped after he realized I wouldn’t let him hire someone to do it. We had fun painting—and then playing, and then making love on the grass, hurriedly, like teenagers who couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
Sadness spills through me. Will we ever make love again?
“The garden looks overgrown,” Margaret states as if that is of any consequence.
“Fox hired someone to take care of it.” I straighten and set my tea down. “Look, why don’t you both wait inside. I’m sure Fox will be coming down any second, and you can visit with him.”
She turns from the railing, and her face twists; the elegance and polish fall away. This is who she really is, and she usually shows it to me, and those she thinks are beneath her, and only when her precious Archibald is not around.
“I came to see how you were,” she clips. “And to be honest with you.”
I let out a long exhale. “Ah…it’s obvious that Fox hasn’t told you about—”
“Fox did the right thing by you earlier, and he’s doing it again.” She can be a bitch, but she’s never been blunt like this. “He’s a good man, and he will make sure you’re taken care of through the divorce. Financially. The settlement will be—”
“What?” I gasp. “Divorce? What are you talking about?”
“Well, you’re getting divorced, aren’t you?” She says it with the gentleness of a woman delivering a diagnosis.
“We are?” I set my teacup back down with a small, shocked thud.
I look from her to Reina, like the other woman is going to be my savior. A part of me is enjoying this, especially because Fox is going to return any second now, and I want to see how he handles this situation.
His mother, his ex, who I think his mother wants to make his current, and his amnesiac wife. If this were a soap opera, they’d say it was overdone.
I hear the shower stop—a pipe down here does a little rattle when the water in the master bath cuts off. I have been waiting for it since—like a storm you can already smell.
I tune out Margaret for the first time since I met her.
God, I tried to convince her that Fox and I were good for each other, but now I’ve accepted that there would be no way to do that because she doesn’t give a crap about Fox being happy.
But I have to give Margaret credit where it’s due. She’s not giving up. She’s going at it, talking about a fair settlement and how Fox deserves to move forward with his life.
I nod with the vacant, slightly lost expression of a woman doing her best to follow along. It’s a remarkable performance, even if I’m the one saying so.
Reina has said almost nothing. She just stands slightly to Margaret’s left like a footnote that intends to become the main text.
I hear footsteps on the stairs and stifle a smile.
I pick up my tea and lean back to watch the show.
I don’t know how Fox will react—but I’m going to make sure he knows exactly what his mother said, because I want to see his true colors.
If he tries to smooth things over with her, I’ll know his confessions of love are nonsense.
But if he doesn’t—well. That’s information I’ll need to recalibrate on.
The footsteps cross the hallway, pass through the living room, and Fox appears in the doorway to the porch, freshly showered, and he takes in the scene in approximately half a second—his mother at the railing, Reina arranged beside her, me in my chair with my blanket and my tea and my expression of gentle bewilderment—and fury moves across his face.
“Mother.” His voice is very flat. Ominously so. “What in the hell are you doing here?”