Chapter 32
Two nights later, an hour before the fundraiser, Mary waited for James in the Addison Heights parking lot, where they’d agreed to meet. She’d had to spend more than an hour on the phone to convince him to participate. He’d kept insisting he wasn’t good enough to play in front of a crowd, and he feared he would be booed off the stage. She’d repeatedly reminded him how the video of him singing during the storm had gone viral. Finally, he’d said, “I guess I should give the people what they want.” He’d sounded so much like her James then that she was certain he would kill it.
Now, she looked at her phone. He was ten minutes late, and she feared he’d changed his mind. The entire flow of the night would be ruined if he didn’t show up. He was one of four contestants, each allotted twenty minutes to sing. The winner would be awarded an extra twenty minutes at the end of the night. Another five minutes ticked by, and Mary wished she’d never asked James to participate. She was already nervous enough about whether she would be able to convince Dean to do the interview. She decided she’d wait until the end of the evening to talk to him about it. Her stomach dropped as she thought about the conversation.
Finally, a Prius turned into the parking lot and pulled into a spot. Mary let out a deep breath as James stepped out of the car.
“I almost chickened out.” He bent his arms and tucked his hands under his armpits, flapping his elbows up and down and clucking like a chicken. Mary laughed, seeing and hearing her old friend. The resemblance gave her a good feeling about tonight. Maybe her husband would show up too. She looped her arm through James’s and walked him toward the entrance.
While James met with the event coordinator and other contestants, Mary wandered around the empty banquet room. Photographs of Dean at various ages throughout his career hung on the walls: A twenty-five-year-old at the first tee of the Open Championship, his first major; a twenty-eight-year-old Dean posing with Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson at the PGA Championship; a thirty-six-year-old competing with the team from the United States in the World Cup; a forty-four-year-old at the British Open. Mary paused in front of each image, searching for something that would give her insight into this man who was so similar to Dean her husband but somehow so different too.
He had changed as he aged. That she was sure of. He fake smiled in many of the photos taken in the second half of his career. She could tell by the way his top row of teeth overlapped the bottom row. When he was genuinely happy, like in the candid shots from earlier in his career, his mouth hung open, and his bottom row of teeth barely showed.
“You’re walking around here like it’s an art exhibit.” Mary jumped at the sound of Dean’s voice coming from behind her. “What’s so fascinating about pictures of me?” He wore a sharp gray suit with a gray-and-white-checkered shirt and a navy tie dotted with golf balls. If he disliked dressing up as much as her Dean did, he’d loosen the tie’s knot by the end of the night.
“At the start of your career, you look happy, but later you look miserable. Why?”
Dean studied the picture on the wall in front of them, taken at the Masters, two years before he retired. His three putt on the seventeenth hole had cost him the Green Jacket. “I do not look miserable.”
“It’s your fake smile.”
His head jerked back as if he was surprised by the confidence with which she spoke. “How would you know?”
Because I was married to you for twenty-six years. Oh, how she wanted to tell him. “You’re gritting your teeth.”
He leaned closer to the picture and rubbed his jaw. “Guess I was just constantly disappointed that I never finished first.”
She hadn’t been expecting his raw honesty or the flash of disappointment that wrecked his face. The fifty-four-year-old woman who used to be his wife wanted to comfort him, to tell him that even though he’d never won a major, just by playing in PGA tournaments he’d accomplished something that most people only fantasized about. She had the urge to hug him and tell him he should be proud of his accomplishments.
The twenty-four-year-old reporter desperate to get back to her old life batted down the idea. She knew she should take advantage of his vulnerability by asking him more questions and videoing his responses, but Dean had made it clear she couldn’t film him at the event, and she’d agreed. She didn’t want to go back on her word, but if she did film him and ran the footage on the news, she’d have something no other journalist had been able to get in years, and that could help her get back to their family. Her hand slipped inside her wristlet, and she started to pull out her phone.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Dean grabbed her wrist. Like every other time they’d touched, an electrical shock jolted him. “Damn.” He pulled away from her and shook out his hand. “Put that away.”
“Please. Your fans, the entire golf world, wants to hear from you.”
“What about what I want?” he asked.
The question hit her as if Dean her husband had asked it and not this Dean she hardly knew. On their first date, her Dean had told her he planned to be a professional golfer, and then they got married and she’d quit her job and they’d become completely dependent on his salary. He’d had to work more and ended up missing tournaments. Somehow over the years the story had changed in her memory, and she believed she’d given up her career for him, but she saw now that he had sacrificed his dream to support their family. The room became unbearably hot. Sweat dripped down her back, or maybe it was shame oozing from her body.
“I’m so sorry.”
Dean gave a curt nod, but she wasn’t talking to him. She was apologizing to her husband.
While the waiters and waitresses passed out dessert, a choice of key lime pie or chocolate mousse, James sat on a stool in the front-right corner of the dance floor, strumming his guitar and singing “Sweet Caroline,” a favorite in the Boston area. Just as Mary had suspected, he’d crushed his performance and won the event. When they’d announced his name as the winner, the self-doubt choking the life out of him had seemed to unravel. He stood taller, pointing to the crowd and then tapping his heart. Now, he was playing the extra set, taking requests and showing a little of her James’s pizzazz as he hammed it up for the crowd.
Everyone at Mary’s table had left after the winner was announced, so she sat by herself, eating her chocolate mousse. As James played, she kept her eye on Dean. He sat at a table diagonal from hers with a blonde who appeared to be his age. The woman repeatedly touched him as she spoke. Each time she did, Mary felt a prick of jealousy, even though this version of herself had no right to feel that way.
Anthony noticed Mary sitting alone and moved to join her, bringing his date. The woman, close to Mary’s new age, looked familiar. Mary wondered if she’d met her through Brady or Kimberly.
The woman waved. “I’m Jessica.”
Jessica. The golfing goddess from Kendra’s bon voyage party. Oh, what Mary would do to go back to that day and not have made the decision to get her wisdom teeth extracted.
“The Singing Mailman’s good,” Anthony said. James had chosen the moniker for tonight’s contest. While the crowd tonight loved James and he appeared to be having a great time, Mary couldn’t help but be a little sad for all the glory he’d never experience in this version of his life. All because of her.
At the other table, Dean and the blond woman stood. He walked her to the exit, and she leaned toward him to kiss him. The kiss would have landed on his mouth if he hadn’t turned his head at the last moment. Anthony chuckled. He’d been watching the interaction too.
Dean walked back across the room toward Mary’s table, undoing the knot in his tie. “Everyone having fun?”
“Hey, Singing Mailman,” Anthony called out. “Can you play ‘Still the One’ for my brother here?” He winked at Dean as James played the opening notes of the Orleans song from the 1970s. “Can’t believe Michelle still has a thing for you after all this time.”
Mary’s head whipped back toward the door, but the blonde was gone. “That was Michelle Anderson.”
Dean narrowed his eyes. “What do you know about Michelle?”
“She was your high school sweetheart.”
Mary version 1 had never met the woman, but she’d certainly heard all about her. Michelle had dated Dean from sophomore through senior year. She broke up with a devastated Dean the summer before they started college because she didn’t want to be tied down with a hometown boyfriend. After Dean and Mary’s engagement announcement appeared in the local paper, Michelle had sent a letter addressed to him to his parents’ house, confessing that she’d made a horrible mistake by letting him go all those years ago and begging him to get back together. At times when Mary version 1 fought with Dean, she would mumble, “I should have encouraged you to respond to Michelle’s letter.”
“It’s not too late,” Dean would tease. “I can join Facebook and send her a friend request.”
The memory broke Mary’s heart. How could she have been so cavalier? She was lucky to have Dean, as he was lucky to have her. They’d been a good team. Kendra was proof of that.
Now Dean elbowed Anthony. “Did you tell her about Michelle or about the reason Dad encouraged us to take up golf?”
Sipping on his bottle of beer, Anthony shook his head. “Why would I do that?”
“My research is impeccable,” Mary said, hoping he’d believe her.
“It must be.”
James finished the song. “Any other requests?”
“‘Thunder Road,’” Mary called.
“Never heard of it,” Jessica said.
“Springsteen?”
Jessica shrugged.
Mary, Dean, Anthony, and everyone in the room over the age of forty sang along, vigorously applauding when James finished. Mary thought back to the songs he used to practice in the apartment below hers and later performed at the Skunk. “‘Love Stinks,’ by J. Geils!” she yelled.
He sang it, and the older folks in the crowd responded with the same enthusiasm they’d had for the Springsteen tune.
“‘Best Friend’s Girl,’ by the Cars!” Mary called. Song after song, she shouted out other recommendations: “Jump,” by Van Halen; “Sweet Emotion,” by Aerosmith; “Burning Down the House,” by the Talking Heads.
Nothing she suggested stumped James. He smiled and murmured something like, “Oh, I love that one,” or he’d nod and say, “That one’s from my prime time.”
Seeing him enjoy himself gave Mary a rush. Finally, she’d done something good in this alternate world.
Jessica listened, playing with the silverware still on the table and sipping her dirty martini. “What are these songs? I’ve never heard any of them,” she whined.
Dean’s gaze shifted from Jessica to Mary. “How do you know all these songs, Mary?” There was an accusation in his question, or at least suspicion. Mary couldn’t help but be hopeful that the version of him whom she had known had cracked open a door in this Dean’s mind, and memories were starting to slip through. The Dean sitting with her continued to study her, waiting for an answer.
She dipped her spoon into her remaining dessert and slowly brought the spoonful of mousse to her lips, giving herself time to consider whether she should tell him the truth. If Anthony and Jessica weren’t sitting with them, she would tell him, but she couldn’t risk Anthony thinking she was crazy. She might need his help again.
“These are all from before you were born,” Dean said.
“I used to listen to them with my parents. My dad even gave me an iPod loaded with songs from his teenage years.” Of course that was a lie, but Mary had given Kendra a similar gift after George Michael’s death.
Dean nodded. “That makes sense.”
James played the opening chord for “Money for Nothing,” by Dire Straits.
“Love this one,” Mary and Dean both said at the same time. They sang along, smiling at each other. She felt the connection between them growing stronger, like a cell phone signal increasing from one to three bars. She needed it to amp up to five. When the song ended, Dean clinked his bottle of beer against her glass of wine. He seemed more like Dean her husband than the uptight retired PGA golfer she’d been trying to secure an interview with, and again she realized how often they’d had fun together. She shifted in her chair. It was almost time to talk to him about the interview.
At the end of the night, Dean, Mary, and James walked to the parking lot together. They reached James’s car first. Dean pumped James’s hand. “You were the star of the night. I hope you’ll perform here again.”
“Already arranged. Saturday night in the pub,” James said. “Will you be there?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Dean said.
James kissed Mary’s cheek. “Best night of my life, and I owe it all to you.”
Mary floated on air. She’d been able to help James in this version of their lives. “You were brilliant.”
She and Dean stood beneath an overhead light, watching James back out of his parking spot. He tapped his horn and waved before he drove off. Seeing him acting like the James she knew all night made her believe that Dean, too, would be the man she knew and help her by doing the interview. All she needed to do was gather the courage to ask him.
“That’s me.” Mary pointed to her Corolla two spots beyond where James had been parked. It was one of only a smattering of vehicles remaining in the lot.
Dean walked with her toward the Toyota, humming a song Mary recognized as the Cars’ “Drive.” In her real life, they’d been side by side like this countless times, but being with him now, when he seemed so much like her Dean, she had a new appreciation for how comfortable she’d always been around him. No matter what, she could be herself with him. She belted out a line to the chorus. Dean stopped short, looking at her and blocking his ears. “You really can’t sing.” He laughed.
“Sure I can.” She sang the next line.
Dean tried to sing over her, so she sang louder. They ended up doing a duet, her singing one line and him the next.
“You’re both awful,” someone from the other side of the parking lot hollered.
Mary started to laugh, which made Dean laugh. She snorted, making Dean laugh harder. Soon she was hunched over, holding her stomach. Dean wiped tears from his face. “Good thing James wasn’t around to hear that,” he said, still fighting to control his laughter.
“That was fun,” Mary said, smiling up at him. Oh, how she’d missed laughing with him like that, here and in her real life too.
“A great night,” Dean agreed. They’d reached her car. “Drive safe. Make sure you buckle up.”
It was exactly what he’d always said to her and Kendra when they left the house. Every single time, Kendra would correct him. The caring comments and good-natured ribbing happened all the time in their family, and Mary had taken all of it for granted. Would the three of them ever be together again? She took a deep breath in, working up the courage to ask about the interview. The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them down, afraid of his answer, and instead said what Kendra always did: “Drive ‘safely,’ not ‘safe.’”
Dean flinched. “Déjà vu.”
“You get that a lot.”
“Just around you. That and shocks.” He smiled. His mouth hung open, and his bottom row of teeth was barely visible. Here in this parking lot, he was her Dean, and she was his Mary. The connection between them inched up to four bars. Now was as good a time as any to try her luck one more time. She straightened her spine and pushed back her shoulders. “So, about the interview. When can we schedule it?”
Dean kept smiling, giving Mary a spark of hope that he had warmed to the idea. Before the spark could ignite, his expression hardened. There was a stubborn set to his jaw that let her know he hadn’t changed his mind, and he never would. “There’s not going to be an interview.” He pulled open the door of her car. “Sorry,” he said, his voice gentle.
Her body started to shake. He wasn’t going to change his mind. She was stuck here in a world without her family. Singing with him just then was the last moment of joy she would ever experience. She couldn’t be happy in a world without him or Kendra. She didn’t want to leave the parking lot. It was the last place her life would have any meaning, because until a second ago, she still had a chance to be Dean’s wife and Kendra’s mom. Now, she had nothing.