Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
SUNDAY, AUGUST 13
I staggered into the kitchen, squinting against the sunrise lighting up the window over the sink. My clumsy paws spilled coffee grounds all over the counter. I tidied, tried again, my mind cycling through the thoughts that had prevented rest this night and all the others: thoughts of my husband. Quite possibly my soon-to-be ex-husband. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to squeeze out the image of our first meeting, years before, but Tim appeared in torturous detail on the backs of my eyelids.
I met him in the produce section of the Stop his gaze locked with mine. “The swaying is so enticing.”
I blushed again, my face certainly as red as the tomato I held. “That’s weird,” I said, unable to think of anything to add. I’d never been good at flirting.
“Would you give this weirdo your phone number?” His voice was as intimate as a cat’s purr.
“Probably not.”
But he walked out of the store with my number digitally tucked into his iPhone. I’d watched him add my name, Caroline Messier, to his contact list, wedging it between “Erika Merchant” and “Myer’s Meat Market.”
A few years later, just after we’d married, I looked for the hammock in the items he was moving from his storage unit into our new garage. When I asked him where the hammock was, he didn’t even pause as he explained he’d tossed the thing years earlier.
“I thought you loved it.”
He shrugged. “I did until I brought it on a camping trip and spent an entire night in it. Felt like a butterfly caught in a net. My joints haven’t been the same since.”
I’d watched him shove boxes across the garage’s concrete floor, realizing for the first time how casually Tim could discard something he’d claimed to love.
I looked toward the blazing kitchen window as if staring at the searing brightness could blast the memory from my mind. The sad truth was, I’d become inconvenient. Maybe Emmy was too. We made his life more difficult. Uncomfortable. Maybe he felt like that trapped butterfly. Trapped in our small house with no escape from the baby’s cries. Or from me.
The doorbell cut through my musing.
“Good morning, dolly.” Mary Whitton, my ancient next-door neighbor, stood on the front stoop, her ample frame swaddled in an oatmeal-colored sweater over navy polyester pants despite the morning warmth. “Have you got a cup of refreshment for a weary traveler?”
Swallowing a sigh, I recited my well-worn lines: “Those three dozen steps between our houses can challenge even a marathon runner.”
Mary seemed to draw energy from the stale exchange. As usual. Stepping over the threshold, running a hand through her already tousled gray flyaways, she beamed. “I can smell the coffee brewing.” She stretched her hand out with a flourish. “After you, fearless leader.”
I led her through the living room and nodded toward the tiny table near my galley kitchen, though I needn’t have bothered. Mary knew the drill. She sat down heavily as I hooked my hand around the coffeepot handle and grabbed a mug from the cabinet above the steaming machine.
When I placed Tim’s “#1 Tennis Player” mug in front of her, she pulled out a mini of Bailey’s from her sweater pocket, twisted it open, and dumped the contents into the mug. “I like a strong cup of coffee. Good for what ails you.”
“What ails you today? Arthritis acting up?”
“Always.” She heaved a dramatic sigh, her breath emanating in briny waves thanks to her two-pack-a-day habit and daily gargling with salt water. She claimed it was good for her throat, though I suspected it was an attempt to neutralize the ever-present alcohol vapors. I could hardly judge. I’d been known to nip during daylight hours myself. Still, the stench of her breath, reminiscent of bilge water in the hull of a dilapidated boat, churned my stomach.
“You want some ibuprofen?”
“No, dolly. I’ll...”
“Manage without it?” I had to do that a lot, finish her sentences, that is. She seemed to forget what she was saying as she was saying it.
She nodded, staring down at her steaming mug.
I filled my own cup and leaned against the counter, watching her lift her mug to her puckered lips with one hand while digging into her sweater pocket with the other, deftly fishing out a pack of Newports. She’d barely gotten the mug back onto the tabletop when she pulled out the matches stuffed between the pack and its outer cellophane wrapper.
“Mary, I’ve asked you not to smoke in the house. It’s bad for the baby.”
“I don’t see no baby around here.”
“Well of course not. She’s sleeping.”
Mary shook her head. “That poor child.”
I frowned. “Goodness, Mary. It’s not as if Emmy’s an orphan. I’m here, and Tim is still her father, even if we aren’t living together right now. You make it sound as though he’s dead.”
“Just like my Bill. Dead.”
I sighed and opened the kitchen door. Mary was in a melancholy mood this morning. Probably still hungover. “Let’s go out on the deck.”
“Good idea, dolly. It’s so...”
“Nice outside?”
She followed me to the two faux wicker chairs I’d set up in the corner. Mary settled, crossed her legs, and gulped her drink, letting her unlit cigarette rest between her yellowed index and middle fingers. “Not that Bill couldn’t be a perfect bastard when he wanted to. But the baby, she didn’t...”
“Deserve this?” I looked at Mary’s quivering lower lip. “No, she didn’t.”
As Mary placed her mug on the rickety glass-and-steel table between us and lit up, I thought none of us got what we deserved in this life. I didn’t deserve to have my father die when I was only six. I didn’t deserve to have my mother taken from me just when I needed her most. I thought of all the motherly advice she’d never give me.
Mary’s voice broke into my thoughts, “Caroline, things are going to be okay.”
I noticed the reddish wood stain was beginning to peel at the edges of the deck boards. “Do you really think so?”
“With time.” She took a long drag and held it in her lungs.
“I don’t know. Tim talks like he has no intention of coming back to me. Ever.”
Mary exhaled. “You need to give it... time...”
“It’s been months. How long do I hold out?” I looked at her, saw the Baileys kick in as she focused her glassy stare on the weed-filled grass of my backyard. It was futile to believe she’d be capable of giving me sound advice now. “Do you have any more of that stuff?”
She looked at me for a second as if she’d forgotten I was sitting in front of her. But then she smiled and patted her pocket with her free hand. She pulled out another nip, her expression bordering on surprise, as though someone else had tucked it into her sweater pocket. But of course no one had. She lived alone. When Tim and I moved in, she’d explained her husband, Bill, had left her and then died, years before. Did Mary deserve that?
No wonder the poor woman drank. She’d been unable to hold on to her man and then was robbed of the chance for a do-over when death snatched him permanently away. Would that happen to me too? I pictured Tim twenty pounds lighter, disease carving haggard hollows beneath his eyes and a ragged cough turning his voice ominously husky. I’ve only got weeks left , he’d say, and I’d reach out to him, my hand poised to caress his cheek. Offering him the comfort he’d so heartlessly denied me.
I rubbed my lips with my pointer finger, thinking that may just be the ending he deserved. But as Mary held the nip toward me, regret lodged in my throat. Of course Tim didn’t deserve a painful death. He was the father of my child, no matter how much I resented him these days. Jane Brockton’s bitchiness must be getting to me. I seemed to be thinking just like her.