Chapter 12
CHAPTER
TWELVE
CONRAD
For as long as Mirabeth and I were happy in our marriage, we’ve been unhappy. Longer, still, now that Mirabeth has completely shut down on me following the tense anniversary dinner last week. I hardly get a peep out of her.
I’m not doing so hot at work as I miss drilling the side of my hand again by mere millimeters, distracted once more by thoughts of my wife as I continue building the furniture for my future baby’s nursery.
Though who knows if or when we’ll ever be able to make use of it, since Mirabeth no longer lets me touch her—not even a little cuddle at night—and she’s unfortunately on her period, given the open box of tampons she left sitting on the toilet tank.
“Take a break before you lose a hand,” Sam says, shaking his head at my ineptitude. He points toward the warehouse’s open garage-style door. “Get some air and your head on straight.”
A text pops up on my phone as I make my way outside, my chin lifted toward the afternoon sun, enjoying its full force on my face whenever I want, instead of being relegated to only a few hours of yard time.
The only thing that comes close to this feeling is when Mirabeth is shining down on me, and I miss her so much that my chest aches.
If only we could go back to the beginning.
Cupping my hand over the phone to block the sun so I can see what’s on the screen, I huff to find the text is from Alisa.
The woman has always been an excessive texter, by my standards, and five years haven’t changed her ways.
She won’t leave me alone, and I have half a mind to block her.
I would, if it weren’t for the fact that she keeps me up to date on my nephew, since my relationship with Brad is still rocky.
Despite Drew being a tad younger than the Tee Ball program’s minimum age requirement, Brad somehow managed to register him on the same team my brothers and I played on when we were younger.
I love watching the videos Alisa sends of Drew bunching up his adorable face with all seriousness, squealing if he so much as taps the ball with his bat, then his sheer joy when he pumps his little legs toward first base.
It’s everything I can’t wait to see when I sign my kids up to play ball.
Alisa
Reminder that Drew’s practice is at 7 tonight
The field across from your parents
Don’t forget to bring chairs
And sunscreen
Remember that time we forgot to bring it and got sun poisoning and those horrible blisters on South Padre?
I thought we were going to die when they started popping and oozing
Disgusting
You’re still coming tonight right?
Yes
Yay! Drew will be so excited!
Is Mirabeth coming with you?
Yes
Even if I have to get all bossy so she’ll finally leave the apartment and get some much-needed fresh air.
With any luck, she might even argue with me a little, show me that spark and spunk of hers that I miss so much, and stop looking through me as if I’m not there.
Because we can’t keep going like this. Something has to give.
Alisa
Oh ok
I don’t think she likes me much
I tried apologizing but my texts won’t go through
I think she blocked me
I don’t blame her
That makes two of us, I want to text back, but then Alisa might stop sending me pics and videos of Drew.
I don’t bother to respond, ignoring the rest of her texts that keep popping up throughout my work day.
I’m still fuming, no matter how many times Alisa has apologized to me.
She might not have taken my marriage seriously at first when she decided to show up at my apartment, but I certainly did and still do, even if things aren’t going well between Mirabeth and me right now.
When I finally get home, managing, somehow, not to injure myself, Mirabeth doesn’t greet me with, “Honey, you’re home.”
I miss that as much as everything else, and so I tell her, “Honey, I’m home,” holding my breath to see how she’ll respond.
She only does so by lifting her palm up to the side, sitting at the drafting table. “Keys,” is all she says to me while scrolling through a pink calendar on her laptop with little symbols I don’t understand, counting and recounting the days under her breath.
Ouch. I’d feel less alone if I were actually alone. At least Merlin looks up from his perch on Mirabeth’s lap, though he doesn’t leap into my arms like he used to. I drop the keys in Mirabeth’s hand and dodge Merlin when he hisses and swipes his claws at me.
It’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and I cave, unable to bear Mirabeth’s stonewalling any longer. I bend and tip her chin up, forcing her to look at me. “Are you ready to talk about it yet?” Please, please, talk to me.
“About what?” she asks quietly, narrowing her curiously swollen eyes, pulling her chin from my grasp.
Finally! She might still be pissed, but at least she’s no longer avoiding the conversation. This is progress. Things are looking up!
I lean against the drafting table and cross my arms. “About what happened in the car.”
“Is that all you want to talk about?”
“Yes?” My stomach drops when she cuts her eyes to the side. “What else is there?”
“Then, no.” She swivels her chair around and darts up, kissing Merlin’s head before dropping him on the bed, then slings her purse over her shoulder.
“Hey, where are you going?” She’s halfway out the door when I finally catch up to her, my boots pounding the stairs as I follow her down.
“Errands,” she says curtly, picking up the pace, all but running from me.
“What errands?” I crowd her against the Beetle before she can climb inside. “Give me a sec to change, and I’ll come with you.”
“Fine,” she says, hugging herself, looking off to the side when one of the red and white Berenson Trucking eighteen-wheelers comes to a stop on the street.
The driver rolls down his window, poking his burly head out the window, the bottom half of his face obscured by a full, wild brown beard. “Hey, Mirabeth. Haven’t seen you at Granny’s in a while.”
“Hey, Wyatt,” Mirabeth says with a wave and a tiny flash of a smile, friendlier with him in their three-second interaction than she’s been with me for the past three weeks. So not cool. “Been busy, but I’ll be by soon to see Aunt Faye.”
I. She said I, not we.
“I’m not invited?” I ask, slipping an arm around her back to bring her into my chest. My heart leaps for joy to hold her, shattering one beat later when Mirabeth pushes me away.
“No,” she says, turning to unlock her door.
Double fucking ouch.
I can hear Wyatt’s growl from across the street, and I find him trying to pierce a hole in my chest with his glare alone.
Since I don’t feel like getting into a fight, liable to piss Mirabeth off further, I step away, but only to jog around to the passenger side of the Beetle, tugging on the door handle.
I give Wyatt a we’re fine, everything’s fine kind of wave, and he drives off when Mirabeth gives him a chin nod.
He stares murderously at me through his side mirror until I’m too far out of his sight. Yeesh.
Mirabeth shifts on her feet. “I thought you wanted to get changed first.”
And risk her driving off while I’m in the apartment? No. “Changed my mind.” I give the handle another tug, and she finally relents, climbing into the car and reaching across to unlock my door. Dropping into my seat, I ask, “Where to, princess?”
Since our town is too small to have a Walmart of our own, Mirabeth drives forty minutes to the one closest in a larger town nearby.
Talk about an icy silence, where I question if I’m doing more harm than good by tagging along.
Mirabeth says not one word to me until we arrive, and it’s only to send me off on my own.
Having walked each aisle of the grocery section three times already, I flag down a young employee shopping a curbside order and ask him, “Where would I find the goosepenny tipples?”
“Do you mean gooseberries? If we have them, they’re in the produce section,” he says in a duh voice, giving me a blank stare as he points down the main aisle toward the front of the store.
“No, my wife specifically asked for the goosepenny tipples. She repeated it several times.”
“You sure?”
“Can you just look it up?” I’d do it myself, but the internet is shit and won’t load inside the store.
“Don’t have it,” he says, showing me his handheld device with zero search results.
I square my jaw and pull my phone from my back pocket, tapping on Mirabeth’s contact.
The call goes unanswered, as does the second.
When the third does so as well, I begin to panic that she’s left me, and I jog around the store, drawing attention as I look for the woman who sent me on a wild goose chase.
“There you are,” I say with relief, finding her in the feminine hygiene section with a cart full of toiletries. “There’s no such thing as goosepenny tipples.”
“Oh. My bad. Must have gotten the name wrong.” She sniffles and turns the cart away, pushing it toward self-checkout.
I grit my teeth throughout checkout and all the way across the massive parking lot to the car, where the hot wind whips a few empty grocery sacks across the cracked pavement.
As I load Mirabeth’s purchases into the trunk, sweat rolls down my back, mixing with the sawdust I wasn’t able to yet shower off, making my skin itch like the devil.
Still, I keep my lips shut, impatiently waiting until we get inside the apartment to ask, “Can we please talk now?”
“I need to use the restroom,” Mirabeth says, clutching her purse and her grocery sacks of toiletries.
“Fine, but afterward…” I walk circles around the apartment, steeling myself for what’s ahead. “We’re having this conversation, whether she wants to or not,” I tell Merlin, who’s licking a paw as he lounges on the bed.
He’s still fat and grumpy as he ever was, despite my putting him on a strict diet. I’m pretty sure Mirabeth has been sneaking him treats behind my back.
“This silent treatment gets resolved tonight. I want my screechy, argumentative, chaotic wife back,” I tell him.
Merlin stretches, then jumps from the bed onto Mirabeth’s drafting table, skidding across the smooth surface, accidentally knocking her laptop off.
I dive and catch it in time before it hits the carpet, and the computer wakes up, the screen brightening.
And what I find on it, finally able to make sense of the little symbols marking each day, thanks to the legend at the top, has my heart slamming against my ribs.