Heart-strong (9 page)

“Please, Jim, my hair.”

Jim lowered his hand to her shoulder and gave her a brief,
almos
t
chaste, kiss. “Good night.”

“Why don’t you come in for a cup of coffee?” Donna suggested.

“No, I need to cut the evening short. I’ll see you later,”
he said and bounded down the porch steps.

He sat in the car for a few minu
t
es
after Donna went in. What was wrong? Donna was a beau
t
iful,
intelligent woman. What was missing? He closed his eyes. Rachel’s face appeared
before him. Rachel wouldn’t have been co
nte
n
t
wi
t
h tha
t
kiss. Rachel would have put her arms around him,
nuzzled his nec
k
, been sorry the e
v
ening was over. She needed hi
m
. Jim’s eyes fle
w
ope
n
. T
h
at wasn’
t
totally true. He needed her, too. Rac
h
el was warm, human. She cared if he was happy or
sad. She cared about Scott, about the people she knew, even about the people
she didn’t know. Separately, he and Rachel were just two individuals with very
ordinary human strengths and weaknesses. Together they completed each other.

Jim started the car and headed toward Super Shop. There
still were some sentimental, if tacky, valentine items on sale, he saw, and
grabbed white teddy bear and a huge valentine. The female sales clerk beamed at
him as he made his purchases, then wished him a happy evening. Off in the
direction of Rachel’s. In a few minutes, he rode the elevator up to her
apartment. Rather late to be calling, but she would understand. He pressed the
buzzer by her door. He heard footsteps, felt someone looking through the
peephole.

Sharon flung the door wide. “It’s about time,” she said.
“Rachel, the door’s for you,” she called.

Rachel scuffled down the hall in slippers that looked like
fuzzy yellow ducks. She was dressed in an oversized t -shirt that said “UCLA
Athletic Department” and thermal underwear. She wore no makeup and her hair
curled wildly around her face.

“I got homesick,” said Jim. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Rachel opened her arms without hesitation, and Jim walked
into them.

* * *

Three months and one wedding ceremony later, Rachel sat by
Jim’s oak table in exactly the position he’d envisioned her when he’d first
seen her. The setting sun matched the warmth of her face and lit up the sketch
she’d uncovered in a stack papers she was tidying. A strange expression passed
over her face.

“Who’s this? A former girl friend? Do I have a reason to be
jealous?” She held up the sketch for Jim to see as he bent over the stove,
tomato paste can in hand. Now that he had a family, he was willing to make
spaghetti sauce from scratch. Jim looked up.

“That? That’s just a woman I saw once. I couldn’t get her
out of my mind.”

“You only saw her once? She’s very good looking.”

Jim walked over to stand beside Rachel. “Actually, it’s you.
The first time I saw you outside Super Shop.”

“Me? It doesn’t look like me at all—”

“No,
it doesn’t,” answered Jim. He considered his work and
thought to himself: the nose is too classic, the cheekbones too high, the hair
too light.
Worst of all, the sketch had none of
the original subject’s liveliness and charm. Jim added, “I’ll tell you
something.” He put his arm around her and turned her towards him. “I prefer the
reality to the fantasy.”

Please read on to learn more about
the author, Bonnie McCune, and to read a sample from her novel,
A Saint Comes Stumbling In
.

On Saturday, the doorbell chimes and for the first time in several
months, I open the door with neither hope nor fear. For a heartbeat, I fail to
recognize the man’s back as he surveys the street instead of me. It should be
as familiar to me as the lumpy overstuffed chair in the living room or the
collection of family photos in the hall—its breadth, the slope of the
shoulders, the ragged neck of the faded red t-shirt covering it.

When I realize the visitor is my husband James, the shock
paralyzes my vocal chords. Why is he here? He removed all his portable belongings
long before and the terms and division of property were hammered out several
weeks ago. A thin tendril of hope struggles to force a way through the arid
wasteland of my self-esteem, decimated after his desertion. Perhaps the twelve
years of our marriage hadn’t been ecstatic, but at least I’d found our marital
bliss comfortable.

I’m now wary enough of another rejection not to invite him
in. Instead, I step out to the small square of concrete that serves as a porch.

Some inconsequential chatter, an exchange of how-are-yous
and nice-weather-we’re-havings, leave me wondering why he’s suddenly
reappeared. Then James’s voice turns resolute.

“Joan, I need to ask you a favor,” he says with a stiff
formality, as if we’re strangers instead of a couple who have seen one another
with drippy head colds or climaxing with animal moans and groans. “I know I
told you there was no hurry to sell the house, but I’m pressed for money.
Maureen and I need to get a place of our own. We’ve been squeezed into that
tiny apartment too long.”

“You mean you can’t live on love?” My disappointment
increases my inherent sarcasm, recently suppressed toward the finale of my
marriage as I struggled to band-aid the relationship’s incurable wounds. “When
you left, you claimed you needed nothing else.”

“Yeah, well, things change,” he mutters and wipes curved
fingers across his lips. “Love won’t feed us and it won’t pay the rent. This
mortgage is strangling me. Our settlement calls for you and me splitting the
house’s value. So sell it or don’t sell it, but I need to have my share soon.”

My anger flares and I forget the house’s expense and
inconvenient location in a new middle-class enclave far from Denver’s center.
“You told me I could stay as long as I liked. I love this house. I spent nearly
a year finding a place that we could afford in a style I liked.”

James retreats hastily. “I’m not taking legal action, just
asking you to think about putting this place on the market.”

“I don’t know a thing about realty. You do it.” I cross my
arms over my chest and feel my jaw tightening. I’ve had to learn to ignite the
stove’s pilot light, add oil to the car, even drag the ladder to the ceiling
fixture in the hall to change the light bulb while standing on my toes. I’ve
dealt with too many changes in too short a time—I shouldn’t be obligated to
deal with a real estate agent.

“You’re living here. It makes more sense for you,” James
insists. “You can schedule appointments at your convenience, that sort of
thing.”

My temper turning to a slow but feverish burn, I object. “I
can’t guess the value. You run the ads and talk to prospective buyers. I don’t
have the background or training.”

James snorts, a particularly unpleasant habit of his when he
wants to act superior. “You’re deliberately making the process complicated.
What do you think we have real estate agents for? I’ve asked Kevin to contact
you. See what he says.”

“Kevin is
your
friend,” I say between clenched teeth to control my volume. Even at eight on a
Saturday morning, our neighbors have sharp ears and we’re standing in the full
glare of the sun on the front porch. Verbal brawls are definitely not allowed
under the terms of the development’s covenant, any more than painting an
exterior bright purple. “You call him.”

“Kevin is, was,” James corrects, “
our
friend. “I haven’t seen him since I moved out. When I called to
tell him about our decision...”—
Your
decision, I interject in my mind— “I think he disapproved.”

“Hmmm... I wonder why?” I purse my lips and hold my index
finger over them. Damn, that irrepressible sarcasm again. Can’t beat it down
even when I realize I’m sabotaging my self-interest. But striking back at James
alleviates my pain. “Not because twelve years of a marriage went down the
drain?”

“Don’t.” James is clenching his teeth now. I can hear them
grinding. “Be rational for once in your life, not emotional. Just call Kevin.”

“Not because we were together all through school, when Kevin
was part of our crowd?” I dig my sharp words deeper and I hit something, for
James turns to flee. “Not because he’s known about your little liaisons, your
affairs, your peccadilloes, while I kept my head firmly in the sand?” I taunt
and tag along.

“Drop the drama queen act! I’m not going to fight with you,”
he calls over his shoulder as he moves down the sidewalk. “I won’t lower myself
to your level.”

“You mean you lack the balls,” I respond and
not
in a lowered voice. “Maureen is
welcome to you.”

James reaches his new molten-gold Lexus, jumps in the
driver’s seat and locks the doors. I’m mere seconds behind, pounding on the
window with both fists, neighbors and their reactions the last thing on my
mind.

“That’s right, you bastard. Hide in your fancy-schmantzy
convertible. Won’t do you any good! Lucky at cards, unlucky at love, isn’t that
what they say? I hope the car keeps you warm on winter nights after Maureen
discovers what a worm you are and leaves.”

James screeches away, tires smoking a burnt-rubber smell,
his attention riveted on me in the rear-view mirror rather than the street
ahead of him. Not once have I ridden in the white, smooth, leather-lined luxury
of the new car. Pardon me, vehicle, for a Lexus is so much more than mere
transportation. He bought it with his ill-gained earnings from the Powerball
game, the two-hundred dollar thousand runner-up prize. This bonanza sprang
loose the trap of our marriage, as he so kindly told me on his way out the door
two months ago.

I never knew he’d been ‘investing’ several hundreds a pop in
lotto tickets. Colorado’s a common-property state, so I tried to claim half the
windfall in the divorce settlement. That’s when his lawyer most solemnly and
officially told me the money was exempt because James purchased the ticket
after
he’d filed the initial divorce
papers. Not that I knew he’d ever filed anything other than income tax.

I was equally an ignoramus about the other woman in James’s
life. No, make that
women
. Although
this last one appears to have stuck, I’ve been uncovering evidence of his
sundry infidelities—an unexplained motel charge here, a lipstick-stained hanky
there.

So here I am, bewildered and betrayed, kicking dust in the
gutter, staring after my soon-to-be-ex-husband in his fancy car, possessing
nothing but a suburban house identical to its neighbors and destined to be sold
from under my feet very shortly. No wonder I’m blue.

* * *

I’m at work, silently crying over my keyboard, thinking
again of Saturday’s confrontation.

Every minute or so I blink rapidly to keep the tears from
falling into the electronics. I know what I owe my bosses, attorneys-at-law Horowitz,
Trimble, Hawkins, & Jones, and it isn’t shorting out this expensive
equipment with sobs.

Didn’t they take a chance on a nearly unskilled, displaced
homemaker six short weeks prior? After I learned their routines, hadn’t they
upgraded both software and hardware so I could produce documents faster?

Yes and yes.

I wipe the tears from my face with the back of my hand.
Nearly coffee break time. Then I’ll flee to the restroom for a really good cry.
In the meantime, concentrate on the document, I warn myself, and stop
sniveling. Mustn’t present a bad image of the law firm to the client sitting
just on the other side of the room waiting to see Mr. Hawkins.

Kimberlee, the paralegal, glides into her chair at the next
desk, the complete sophisticated professional. Batting her long lashes (real)
and tossing her blonde curls (bleached), she nods to me to indicate her
willingness to cover the phones. She isn’t the type to add a pleasant word to
someone lower on the office hierarchy ladder than she.

I stand and push an old navy-blue polyester skirt down from
around my thighs where it habitually clings, like an especially annoying
collection of cat hair. It was the first thing to hand in my closet this
morning. Rather, the first piece of clothing that fits over the twenty or so
pounds I’ve gained since my marriage turned sour. Kimberlee’s eyes flicker over
my form, then return to the law book in front of her.

Too bad, I think, lifting my chin. Just too bad you don’t
like my clothes, you anorexic witch. Not only are you skinny, even worse that
you have to be intelligent and competent. Couldn’t you have some flaws? Why do
some women get all the advantages? Why isn’t Mother Nature evenhanded when she
distributes gifts at birth?

Down the hall I flee, barely reaching the restroom in time
to seize a handful of tissue in which to stifle my sobs. Small, thin, smart,
and charming versus tall, fat, dull, and depressed. Why does the same situation
occur at work as at home? James’s new sweetie is Kimberlee’s double—I know from
having been her “very bestest friend in the world”—as she crooned at me just
after her own divorce and before she went after James, no holds barred. Unfair,
unfair. I was doomed from the get-go to lose to the competition. I weep so hard
my cries turned to hiccups.

That’s how Dolores finds me a minute later, leaning on the
sink and hiccupping, my nose shiny and red as a ripe cherry tomato, mascara
smeared down my cheeks.

“
Hija
, little one,
what’s wrong? Here, have a pastry. It’ll be all right.” Dolores digs into her
apron pocket and pulls out a napkin-wrapped, gooey, almond-encrusted bear claw
left over from the breakfast rush. Dolores works in the building’s cafeteria
and believes with the totality of her own chubby strength that food, unlike men
or even money, solves all problems.