Dedication (16 page)

“Zoloft.”

“Isn’t he?
Keith, his eye!”
she calls sharply, startling us, before shaking her head. “Last Christmas I was right there with ’em, rolling in the snow and making angels, but this year…” She rubs her down-clad belly. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to have this baby, but I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do in a month. Sam’s mom’ll help, but…this was so not planned.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No—watch the eyes!” She extends her arm, the milk sloshes, dampening the edge of her black down sleeve.

I pat her wrist, helping to absorb the spill with Mom’s mitten. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I couldn’t admit to being a thirty-year-old with a shaky handle on birth control.” She shrugs, looking all of twelve, despite her bump.

I pivot toward her embarrassed expression.
“Hey, hey,”
I say gently, tapping my thigh against hers until she lifts her eyes to mine. “My mom had me while she was still in grad school. She took me in a bassinet to all her finals. Talk about so not planned. Yet,
somehow
it all worked out,” I say, willing the summation to apply to now, too.

“But you still have a fear of enclosed spaces.”

“True. And exams.”

Smiling, she pulls a string cheese stick out of her pocket and peels it. “Thanks. I appreciate the pep talk,” she says, taking a bite.

“Anytime. I will pep-talk you through delivery and beyond. I will be pep-talking you down the aisle at their graduations.”

“Shhh.” She holds up a finger and we tense as a car comes closer…passes…and drives away. Toward sane people. “Did he say anything?” she asks, shoving the empty wrapper back in her pocket and bringing the green mug to her chapped lips.

“Anything…”

“Time related. Did he say anything pertaining to the sun or our orbit of it?” She blows into the steam before taking a tentative sip.

“He just said he’d come find me—” Another car passes. “Do I need to reapply my lip gloss?”

“Do I need to beat you?” My cell rings and we both freeze. I pull it out of my pocket and we slump upon seeing the Charleston area code.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Kate?” my boss’s assistant’s voice crackles down the line. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Hi—no, no bother at all. What’s up?” As she fills me in I mouth, “Sorry,” to Laura who waves a gesture of no-problem. I hop off the picnic table, looking for a clearer signal, getting alternate earfuls of pressing update and static until I’m hovered over the garbage cans. “You can tell Lucas everything about Argentina is in the red binder on my filing cabinet and that I cc’d the Gates Foundation and the U.N.”

“And the U.N.,” she echoes as she types. “Okay, got it.”

“Thank you so much, Hannah.” The cell slips in my mitten.

“What?”

“Thank you so much,” I repeat, tightening my grip. “I hope you’re getting out of there soon.”

“A few more hours.”

“Well, Merry Christmas.”

“You, too. And I hope your mother makes a speedy recovery.”

I cringe. “I’ll send her your wishes. See you on the third!” I slap the phone shut and hop back onto the table, where Laura greets me with a funny expression.

“What?” I ask, slipping it back in my pocket.

“You cc’d the U.N., Kate.” She readjusts her hat, pulling the blue wool over her earlobes. “Jake’s a tool.”

“Yes, I know. I know.” I take a deep whiff of the steeped cinnamon. “The irony being that the more of a tool I think he is, the more insulting-slash-enraging the whole thing becomes. I just want two days ago back. I was
great
two days ago. I had a maybe-sort-of promotion and was starting to see someone who could be a maybe-sort-of boyfriend—”

“The civil engineer?”

“Surprisingly great first date.” I flash to the sensation of inquisitive lips on mine.

“Excellent.” She cracks the lid of her mug for a moment to let the steam escape.

“Mostly I was living in two thousand five and liking it. And now suddenly I’m Loony McLoonington.”

“Because
that’s what he does.
He turns sane people into raving turbines of implacable rage.” She balls her free fist. “And now my children will grow up and, despite our best efforts, in a town this size, inevitably find out about what Jake stole from their father and then
they
will be the next generation of implacable rage. It just…”

“Unless we can get him to right this.” We hunch over our mugs and watch Keith and Mick scavenge the snow for twigs around the woodpile to decorate their friend. Or poke into each other’s ocular cavities.

“Micky?” Laura calls with forced casualness. He turns from across the lawn, dropping his little head back to see her from under his hood. “Is Keith made of snow?”

Mick turns his hooded vision to his brother. “What?”

“Does he have hands and feet?”

Keith shifts his red hood to check his mittens. “I have hands and feet!”

“Does he melt when he goes inside by the fireplace?”

“He doesn’t melt!” Mick erupts into giggles.

“Then he’s not a snowman,” Laura delivers her summation.

“I’m not a snowman!”

“Which means he doesn’t need new ears and eyes.”

The two look at her, glossy-nosed and mystified. She slows down her explanation. “Those sticks and rocks go
on the snowman and only on the snowman.
” They return to their foraging around the tarped pile.

“This baby’s covered.” I smile and pat her belly.

“You’re too kind.”

“But am I a snowman?”

She chuckles.

“Lor?”

“Yes?”

“Is this okay?” I grip and regrip my mug, unable to meet her gaze.

“What?”

“Can I be doing this?” I shift my feet on the ice-patched bench.

“At our age? Is Jeanine right? Shouldn’t I have moved on to some alternate state of Zen?”

“Honey, let alone the far-from-minor fact that he set your family tragedy in four-eight time.” She cocks her head at me, her blond ponytail swishing over her shoulder. “He came on your tits, wrote a song about it, and won a Grammy. I say you have carte blanche.”

“Thanks.” I rest my head on her quilted shoulder as we return our attention to the street.

“Sweet potato?” Dad asks across the dinner table. “I was thinking three, but chopped for thirty.” When really we’re two, each awaiting the sound of a car in the driveway, neither of whom are eating. I stare at the copious Brussels sprouts, neatly stacked, their eight-inch round world perfectly ordered.

“Thanks.” I take a spoonful of the rosemary-flecked roasted wedges and add them to my untouched plate as the sound finally comes, followed by the geriatric grind of the garage door lifting, drowning out the classical station. Dad’s eyes are trained on the side entrance.

“Hi, everyone.” She comes in, stomping her puffy boots intently on the mat and lowering her purse and coat to the wood stepstool. “Okay. So, I’ve come to some clarity. Kate, no matter what has transpired with this boy, you need closure. I understand that. And you should get it. And we should support you in getting it. And then this will all be over.” Wiping her hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist, she walks to us in her worn argyle socks, looking from him to me, her face expectant. Mouth puckered, he taps his fork against the chicken breast grown cold.

“Thanks,” I manage to recover from my surprise. “That’s great to hear.” I stand to fill her wineglass. “Dad made his chicken, if you haven’t eaten yet.”

“Thank you.” She takes a sip, putting the business of her revelation behind her. Dad does not ask where she went to find it as she takes her place and serves herself. “Simon, this looks delicious.” Napkin in hand, he pushes his chair back from the table. “Simon?” But, back to us at the cupboards, he doesn’t answer. “Simon?” she repeats.

“I’ve lost my appetite.” Napkin still absentmindedly balled in his fist, he pivots against the counter with a box of Wheat Thins. “But, Kate, you should eat something.”

“If I was in Charleston I’d be scooping frosting out of the tub by the fistful right now and you’d never know,” I say lightly, trying to levitate him.

“If you were in Charleston, we’d be leaving for the trip we paid for. Twice,” he mutters into the box.

I stiffen. “You are. Dad, I’ll have this thing with Jake wrapped up by the time you’re supposed to leave tomorrow morning.” Or I won’t. And I’ll have to spend the rest of my life praying I outlive him so I can pee on his grave.

“Right.” Mom nods as she cuts into her chicken. “And we will get on with our Christmas and on with our lives. Kate will be fine—”

“But, she’s
not
fine, Claire!” Dad slaps the yellow box to the counter, crackers scattering. “She’s sitting here waiting for Jake Sharpe to call like she’s thirteen years old!”

“Dad,” I say slowly, trying to pull him back. “I am fine. I mean, obviously, I don’t want to be sitting here waiting for Jake Sharpe. I don’t want to think about Jake Sharpe, thinking about me, sitting here, waiting for him. And I
especially
don’t want
you
watching
me
sitting
here
thinking about Jake Sharpe thinking about me, sitting here, waiting for him.” I look to Mom. “I do just want this to be over. Over. So let’s just please finish our dinner and I will come up with some new plan of action, maybe something involving a snow-mobile and some sparklers—”

“How could you just walk out of here and not even
call
us, Claire?” His face instantly furnaces. “And then just waltz in ten hours later and condone the
filth
that little shit has put out there about our daughter? About
you?”
My breath stops to hear him speak of Jake’s songs. Mom flushes in turn, her eyes dropping down. “You may be ready to give him a grand-marshal parade, both of you, but he disgusts me. He cannot,
should not
be trusted.” His tremoring body is echoed by the rumbling approach of the three thousand, seven hundred and forty-second car. I twist away from their stricken faces as the headlights suddenly flood the kitchen, the black rectangle above the sink turning bright white in the mirror over Dad’s empty chair.

The rusted horn lets out an asthmatic bleat, sending me bolting for the side door, bracing myself in the spikingly cold air.
“This
is your version of tomorrow!” I shout at the old Corvette, its headlights stinging my eyes. “You self-aggrandizing, narcissistic fuck!”

The passenger window squeaks down. “Hey, Hollis.”

“Sam?” I stop. “Hey!” I run to him as he hops out, lifting me in a big guy embrace that penetrates the no-man’s-land that’s been keeping this all at a tenable distance. Before I can give way I pull back, drying my eyes. “I saw the boys—God, they’re amazing. They’re looking more and more like you.” Sniffling, I ruffle my hand through his thick blond mop. “God, it’s good to see you.”

“You okay?” Concerned, he tucks his head down to catch my eye, freckles dotting his wind-burned cheeks.

I lean into his ear. “He’s in there, isn’t he?”

“You’re going to love this.” Sam claps his cupped palms, the leather making a hollow
thwack.
“He wants us all to go to the lake.”

“The lake.” I wrap my arms around myself against the chill. “Is he kidding?”

“He
can hear you.” Jake lifts himself up and sits on the ledge of his open window. The dead beaver hat is gone, along with the stylist’s take on lumberjack, replaced by a thin black Henley. “I thought we’d go skating, the five of us.”

“Are you kidding?” I repeat. “You show back up here after thirteen years and you want to take me to the lake?”

“He wants to go skating,” Sam kicks his boot heel into the plow drift lining the driveway. “With the band.”

“What’s wrong with skating? I never get to do it anymore. I thought it’d be fun.”

“Fun,” I echo as Sam puts a warming arm around me and rubs my shivering shoulders.

“Come on, guys, we love it out there! We had some of our best times at that cabin.”

“Best
times?” I thrust myself out of Sam’s embrace.
“Really,
Jake?”

“Sam’s down—right, Sam?”

I look up into Sam’s face, and he shifts his gaze to the driveway across the street.

“Look, I get it, you’re all pissed. Keith and Mick wrote
Jake sucks!
in the snow with twigs—”

“Yeah, that was Laura.”

“Fine, I suck. But I’m here. And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I just…we should all…” He exhales, looking from Sam’s face to mine. “It’s your call.” He slips back in the window and rolls it up.

“She let you get in there with him?” I ask in disbelief as exhaust chugs out of the muffler, dissipating over the pavement.

“If playing twelfth grade is what it takes to get him to sign over our share of the royalties I’ll give myself a mullet and sing ‘Free Bird.’”

“Okay,” I sigh. “Got it.”

I head inside to grab my peacoat.

Jake pulls up across from Todd’s house, where a Christmas party has filled the street with salt-crusted cars. “Fetch him?”