15. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
Nine weeks, and I still don’t know what to do with him.
He’s in Lucy’s living room right now, down on the floor with Josie, making her stuffed animals have a tea party.
The bear is complaining about the lack of honey in a growly voice that makes her shriek with laughter.
The bunny is apologizing in a high squeak.
From the sound of it, Beck has been pouring imaginary tea into a plastic cup for twenty minutes and shows no sign of stopping.
I’m on the front step with my sister, listening through the screen door, trying to figure out how a man can break your heart and still make your daughter laugh like that.
“He’s doing the things,” Lucy says.
“Because he got caught.”
“Does that matter?”
“Yes.” I pull my knees up to my chest. “It matters because I don’t know if he’d be doing any of this if I hadn’t left. If I’d stayed and kept my mouth shut like a good little wife, would he still be flying out to Salt Fork every other day? Would he still be talking to her instead of me?”
Lucy doesn’t answer. She knows I’m right.
Through the screen, I hear Beck winding down the tea party. “Okay, Josie-girl, bunny needs a nap. Can you tuck him in?”
“No! Tea!”
“One more cup of tea, then nap. Deal?”
“Deal,” Josie says solemnly, and I hear Beck laugh, the one I used to hear all the time, the one that’s been missing for months.
“He fixed the paperwork you’ve been struggling with for months,” Lucy says. “The registry stuff.”
“Deborah walked him through it.”
“But he sat on the phone for two hours learning how. When’s the last time Beck Cooper spent two hours learning something he could have paid someone else to do?”
I don’t answer. I’m thinking about the photo he sent three weeks ago.
My cold cinderblock office at the barn, the one with the space heater that rattled like it was dying.
New heater in the corner, industrial grade.
And underneath, in his handwriting: Ines says you were always cold in there.
I only noticed when I sat there thinking of you.
Words that shouldn’t mean anything because I’m not living there anymore.
“And the cup,” Lucy continues. “He drove three hours for a plastic cup.”
“He could have sent Manny.”
“He didn’t send Manny. He came himself, in that beat-up truck, and he sat on the porch until you took it from him.” She pauses. “He didn’t even ask to come in.”
No, he didn’t. Six Saturdays of sitting on the porch before I finally let him through the door. Six weeks of talking to Josie through a window, through a screen, through whatever barrier I put between them. He never complained. He showed up, week after week, and took what I gave him.
“And your truck,” Lucy says. “When it died at the Kroger.”
My truck. Twenty years old, bought with commission money, finally gave up in the parking lot. I was standing there with Josie and melting groceries, my finger hovering over Beck’s name, when his truck, Tripp’s old truck, pulled into the lot.
He didn’t say a word. Just slid under my truck and started working. Two hours in the heat, grease up to his elbows, sweat soaking through his shirt. He got it running, drove it to a mechanic and left a note on the windshield.
Get it checked. Don’t know if this fix will hold.
The mechanic said it was a miracle.
“And the ear infection,” Lucy says quietly.
The ear infection two weeks ago. Josie was sick at midnight, screaming, and Lucy was in Houston and I had no one else to call.
I called him while he was on a plane to New York just to let him know, expecting nothing or expecting he’ll send someone to watch over us.
Instead, he asked the pilot to turn the plane around and he was here by four in the morning.
She wouldn’t stop crying. The only thing that calmed her was his voice, so he sat in the hallway outside the bedroom, outside because I didn’t invite him in, and talked to her through the door until his voice gave out.
I fell asleep listening to him tell stories about horses.
When I woke up, he was asleep on the floor. His phone in his hand, the meeting he’d missed scrolling across the screen. He missed millions of dollars to sleep on my sister’s hallway floor.
“He’s doing the things,” Lucy says again. “When are you going to let him in?”
“I got a job.”
Lucy blinks at the subject change. “What?”
“With Prue Ashby. Running sales for her operation.” I look at my hands. “I had her put it in writing. No Cooper horses. Not one. If Beck wants to send business my way, it has to go through someone else first.”
“Scarlett…”
“And I signed a lease. Little place on the east side. It’s mine. I’m paying for it with money I earned.”
“You’re building a life without him.”
“I’m building a life that doesn’t depend on him.” I meet her eyes. “Josie still needs him so he has to keep showing up. I don’t.”
Through the screen, Josie is singing the cleanup song. Beck is singing along, off-key and cheerful.
“I filed for divorce,” I say. “Last week. The papers are sitting on a lawyer’s desk.”
Lucy goes quiet.
“It’s not the barn.” The words come out before I can stop them. “Everyone thinks it’s the barn. The drawings, my name on the plans, crediting himself instead of me. I could argue about the barn. I could fight about it.”
“But?”
“But the radio.” I close my eyes. “Easy keeper. He said it like it was a compliment. Like being low-maintenance was a good thing.”
“And it’s not.”
“It’s the opposite.” I open my eyes. “It means I never made him work for me. It means I was so desperate to keep him that I stopped asking for anything. And he noticed, Lucy. He noticed and he liked it and he told another woman about it like he was proud.”
The screen door opens. Beck steps onto the porch, and there’s a smear of something pink on his shirt cuff, and him not caring makes my chest tight.
“She’s asking for her song,” he says. “The horse one.”
“I’ll go in a minute.”
He nods and looks at the step below where I’m sitting.
“Can I?”
I nod.
He sits down, one step lower than me. His shoulders are at my knee level. From here, I can see the gray at his temples, the tired lines around his eyes.
“I’ve been going to therapy,” he says. He looks at his hands. “The first session, Dr. Kramer asked me to make a list of everywhere I go when things get hard. All the ways I escape.”
“Salt Fork.”
“Salt Fork was on it. But it wasn’t the only thing.” He pauses. “Then he asked if you knew about any of them. If I’d ever told you where I go when I’m struggling.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no.” He looks up at me. “I said I’d never told you anything. And he said that was the problem. Not Camille. Just… the not telling.”
“So you’re telling me now.”
“I’m trying to.” His voice roughens. “I’m not asking for anything.
I know I don’t get to ask. I just… I should have been telling you things all along.
Where I go. What I think about. What I’m afraid of.
” He takes a breath. “I should have told you about Salt Fork the day my mother bought it. And the day I decided to build your barn on it. I should have told you about Camille the day she came back. I should have told you every single thing, and instead I didn’t, and then I got surprised when you left. ”
We sit in silence. Inside, I can hear Josie babbling to Lucy about the tea party.
“The papers came,” he says quietly. “From your lawyer.”
I don’t respond.
“I haven’t signed them. I’m not refusing.
I’m not trying to fight you on anything.
I just…” He stops. Starts again. “I wanted to ask if I could keep coming. Even with the papers. Even if you go through with it. I want to keep being here for her. And I want to know if there’s any chance, any chance at all, that I might be able to earn it back. ”
“Earn what back?”
“You.” The word comes out rough. “The chance to know you. The real you. The one I never bothered to see.”
I look at him. At this man I married, sitting on my sister’s step with tired eyes and nothing in his hands, asking for a chance he knows he doesn’t deserve.
“Keep showing up,” I say finally. “That’s all I can give you right now.”
He nods and stands up. Dusts off his jeans like he needs something to do with his hands.
“Same time next Saturday?”
“Same time.”
He walks down the steps. Gets in his truck, still not his own, and drives away without looking back.
I sit on the step for a long time after his taillights disappear.
“Well?” Lucy’s voice comes from behind the screen.
“Well what?”
“Are you going to let him in?”
“I don’t know yet,” I say. “Ask me next Saturday.”
The next Saturday, I open the door before he knocks.