Chapter 4 #2
When the alarm started beeping on Saturday morning, I wanted to beat it to death with a stick.
Too early! Too early! But then I remembered.
It was Luke day! I leaped out of bed and into the shower, which was freezing and didn’t warm up the entire time I bathed.
I was gasping with the cold by the time it was over. But at least I was very, very awake.
Still shivering from the arctic shower, I took a long time to dry and brush out my hair, and I put on mascara and a little blush.
And a lot of concealer for the dark circles under my eyes.
Then I went down to the kitchen, made the sandwiches and packed up Charlie’s snacks (the food at the meets was both gross and overpriced), and put together a quick breakfast for him before prodding him out of bed.
While he got dressed, I made up a tray for Cassie and snuck it into her room, then went to the basement to see if there was something obvious wrong with the water heater.
I poked around it a little, but the thing seemed absolutely dead other than the small, flickering flame of the pilot light.
I honestly had no idea what to look for, so I went back up to load the car.
I was gathering the supplies from the garage, yawning, when Luke pulled up.
“Good morning,” I called, waving to him in the half-darkness. It was exactly 5:30. I loved punctuality.
“Morning,” he called back, walking over to my growing pile. “What is all this?”
“Charlie’s swim bag, a pillow for him to nap with in the car, extra towels, a change of clothes, folding chairs because we’ll be sitting in a gym, a bag with snacks, our cooler with lunch, a blanket so he can sit on the floor, some games, and books,” I explained.
“And I have two Sharpies in my pocket so I can write his heat and lane on the back of his hand when they post his events. And a boombox because the radio in the Bronco doesn’t work.
And somebody’s old mix tapes that I found in the garage.
I’m not going to vouch for the musical taste. ”
“I thought you just needed a swimsuit to swim,” Luke said, eyeing my pile.
“I wish.” I started carrying the chairs to the car. “I have a chair for you, just in case you didn’t BYO.”
He held out his hand to take the chairs from me. “Why don’t we take my car? There’s plenty of room.”
“Really?” It would be a lot faster trip if we could go over fifty miles per hour. And I wouldn’t be putting all those miles on the Bronco.
“Sure,” he said, also grabbing the cooler and tote bag. “We won’t even need the boombox.”
Charlie wandered out on the porch, yawning, and holding his large stuffed dog, Danny Bob. Apparently he needed some moral support this morning. He gaped when he saw that we were going in Luke’s car. “Your car is so shiny,” he gushed. “It smells good.”
“By that he means, it doesn’t smell like something has been living in it,” I explained to Luke.
Something had made a home in Nana’s car for a while after she died.
I pretended it was a bunny. “I just want to check on Cass really quick.” I quietly ran up the stairs while they got settled in the car.
She looked so tiny beneath all the blankets I had piled on her.
Tara had worked the night shift at the hospital, and was going to come by and check on Cassie when she got off work, so I tried to push away my guilt at leaving her for the day to do something fun.
Sort of fun. I loved watching Charlie swim, but sitting around the gym with the other parents between his events wasn’t really my cup of tea, especially since Tara wouldn’t be there.
But maybe Luke and I would hang out. I bit my lip and ran through my mental list of forbidden conversational topics.
Off limits were Cassie, cancer, money problems, the El D, and getting mauled at Roy’s.
Also my parentage, Charlie’s lack of supervision, Nana’s death, and home repairs.
That still left a few things we could still talk about.
Luke plugged the pool address into the GPS and we started down the road, Charlie dozing on his pillow in the back seat covered by Danny Bob the dog. I looked back at him and yawned hugely. How ladylike, I could almost hear Nana scolding me.
“Late night?”
“Not too bad,” I answered. Roy had let me leave a half-hour early.
He said I looked like I was coming down with something after my conversation with Nick Barnes.
I didn’t explain that it was just a permanent case of mortification about my dad and his extramarital affairs, mixed with a splash of despair about the rest of my family. Luke kept looking over at me.
“You have a little something—something’s on your cheek,” he told me.
I flipped down the mirror in the visor. There was a streak of black muck from my ear to my nose.
“Oh no.” I scrubbed it off with my fingers. “Every time you see me.” All that time I had spent getting ready, and then I had to mess with the water heater!
“What?”
I started blushing. “Every time you see me, there’s something wrong with me. You must think…I don’t know what you think. I was trying to fix the water heater,” I tried to explain.
“It broke?”
“Well, if that’s what it means when you don’t have any hot water anymore, then yes, it broke. Do you know anything about fixing them?” There went one thing from my list of forbidden conversation topics: home repairs. What other boring, unromantic subjects I could bring up?
“Sorry, I don’t know anything about water heaters.”
“Me neither.” I sighed. “I just don’t want Charlie and Cassie to have to take cold baths. I can warm up water on the stove, I guess. Like Laura Ingalls.” I could if they didn’t cut our electricity and gas anytime soon.
Luke was looking straight ahead. “Isn’t Cassie married? Where is her husband during all this?” He sounded angry.
I checked to make sure that Charlie was really asleep. “Mike left,” I whispered. “About a month after her diagnosis.” They had always been up and down. Maybe this was just a down time and he really would come back again, just like Cassie kept hoping.
He shook his head. “He walked out on his kid and his wife a month after her cancer diagnosis. He sounds like a winner. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but is he up to date on his alimony and child support?”
I snorted. “First, they’re not divorced. And no, he hasn’t sent a dime.”
“So you’re supporting them both.”
I toyed with the elastic on the cuff of my jacket. “Well, yeah, I guess.”
“By working two jobs.”
“It’s ok.”
“And this is the asshole she broke up with me for?”
My mouth dropped open. “Um, uh…”
He looked at me and cracked a smile. “I’m just kidding. When we broke up it was a mutual thing. But I knew that she had met somebody.”
I was having a hard time coming to terms with this.
Cassie had broken up with Luke, for Mike?
This smart, conscientious, educated, beautiful, punctual man with a dimple and a car with satellite radio, for Mike?
Mike with the bad temper, and the girls on the side, and (at one point) an extra fun case of chlamydia?
Well, Mike did have a motorcycle back when they met, and Cassie had always been a freak for a bike.
Lost in my shock, I didn’t respond and we rode in silence for a few miles.
“Right at your feet there’s a bag with some breakfast stuff and two coffees,” Luke told me. “I wasn’t sure how you take it, so there’s a container of milk and some packets of sugar and the fake stuff.”
“You brought me coffee?”
“Sure. There are croissants, muffins, I don’t know what else. Can you grab me something too?”
No joke, tears had come to my eyes. He brought me coffee? And breakfast?
I busied myself passing a coffee (he took it black) and a muffin to him, and poured milk in my own coffee and loaded up the sugar. He kept glancing at me while I fixed my cup. “Now I’ll know for next time how you take it,” he commented.
Next time, as in, he might bring me coffee again? My heart almost burst out of my chest. “Thank you so much. Really.”
He smiled. “It’s just coffee and a muffin.”
“No, it’s that you thought about bringing it for me, and even cream and sugar too…never mind. Just thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “It’s my pleasure.”
Getting up at the crack of dawn to drive to a swim meet was no one’s pleasure, except for me today, drinking coffee and riding with Luke.
We talked and listened to the radio. Luke’s car had all the stations, but we settled on 70s rock, which reminded me of the good times with my dad, when he would work on his greasy motorcycle in the garage and let me help out by handing him tools.
It turned out that Luke was really interested in science—who knew?—and he asked me a lot of questions about what I had been studying and working on. It was so nice to discuss it with someone again.
“You did all that as an undergrad?” Luke asked, when I paused in talking about my latest research.
“Well, no, I was in a grad program at Michigan.”
“For what?”
“Um, it was MD and PhD.”
“What do you mean? You were getting your medical degree and a doctorate at the same time?”
I nodded. “It’s a really cool thing. You end up with both degrees, and it’s free.
I mean, you don’t pay to do it, there’s no tuition.
You get a stipend and health insurance and housing.
I was going to try to finish in six years and then work in a lab, not as a physician.
” I closed my eyes. It would have been pretty cool.
“You dropped out?” I opened my eyes and saw that he was gripping the wheel, and leaning forward. “You dropped out to come home and take care of Cassie?”