Something Fierce (17 page)

She reemerged from the bathroom as calm as if she had taken a little vacation and were returning to her life anew. She went downstairs to wait for Seth in the kitchen. He arrived a few minutes later coming with a bouquet of roses in each hand: yellow, for Rebecca, and white for Kerri. She had mentioned that white roses were her favorite in passing, weeks ago and when he surprised her with them, she felt her heart turn with so much love that it hurt.

Kerri made the introductions. Her mother thanked Seth for the flowers while shooting Kerri a smile that frightened her because she couldn’t imagine what it meant. It could have been saying, “How sweet!” or “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Rebecca offered him a glass of wine and before Kerri could say they needed to get going, Seth had accepted. The bitch poured herself and Seth a glass of chardonnay without even offering Kerri a glass and Kerri knew better than to pour one herself because Mother would embarrass her by reminding her that she was not yet twenty-one, even though she’d been having a glass here and there at the house for years. Kerri put the flowers in vases while Seth commented on a wall of pictures. “I didn’t know you were an actress,” he said to Rebecca.

“Used to be,” she said, “about a hundred years ago.”

“Lady Macbeth,” he said, nodding at one of her favorites. “Tough role. Very complex character.”

He was right. He could handle himself. Mother was gushing, not only because he could tell just by the picture what play it was, but that she was playing the female lead and that he knew the play well enough to talk in depth about it and especially about
her
role in it. Seth told a story about his own days in the theater. He’d done a fair amount of acting in college. Thank God he didn’t say how long ago this was but Kerri knew she’d better figure out some way to wrap this little powwow up before it came out. She’d heard the story before. During a production of
King Lear
, the actor playing Lear had had his wig knocked askew and had somehow not realized it. The gray ponytail shot straight up in the air so it looked like the troubled king was giving his most tragic monologue with a squirrel on top of his head.

Her mother was laughing along with him, leaning toward him, her whole face smiling. Kerri could have poured herself a glass of wine now if she wanted. Mother wouldn’t even notice at this point as she was topping his story with a wardrobe malfunction from one of her last plays, but the smart move was to get them apart before Seth said the wrong thing. Besides, Kerri didn’t want to hear her mother lament—as she always did when she had the opportunity to talk about her acting days—about how she’d thrown it all away by marrying a lawyer and getting knocked-up.

“We should get going,” Kerri said.

Rebecca looked at the clock on the wall. “Oh, you’re right!”

Seth shook her mother’s hand, thanked her for the wine, and told her what a pleasure it was to meet her. As he and Kerri went toward the door, Rebecca said, “Wait! You both look so nice. Let me get a picture.” She ran—yes, ran—for her camera while Seth stole a quick kiss. When she came back in, Seth and Kerri put their arms around each other. Rebecca snapped the picture and held the digital camera out in front of her to see what she got. “What a handsome couple!” she cooed, turning the small screen for them to see. “And look at my little girl!”

They went to his SUV where he opened the door for Kerri and then proceeded around the front of the vehicle, shooting her mother a final wave. He tossed his jacket between them as he got into the driver’s seat, sending a gust of his cologne through the cold air. He didn’t say a word as he looked over his left shoulder and backed out of the driveway. Kerri didn’t need to see his face to know he was smiling. Dropping the truck into first gear and feigning exhaustion, he let out a long sigh. “Chewed me up and spit me out!”

Kerri smacked him on the shoulder. “You are so
cocky
!”

“Me? Cocky?” He grinned, moving through the gears. He was so damned cute, she thought, that she wanted to eat him up. “I’m admitting defeat. How rude she was. The way she belittled me. It was awful!”

“Enough gloating, please,” she said, “or you’re not getting any tonight.” She settled back into the passenger seat, her body still angled toward him. “I’ve
never
seen her like that. You had her eating out of your hand. It was almost embarrassing.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “Seriously, I was just making conversation. You had me expecting the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“She can be.” She looked at Seth, wondering if her mother was attracted to him. Not that he was her type. She liked older, more professional sorts, like the bank president she’d been screwing long before Kerri’s father moved out: silver-haired, well-dressed, smelling of money and power. “Do you think she’s hot?”

“Your mother? What the hell kind of question is that?”

“Just asking. She still gets a lot of attention from men.”

“I’m sure she does. But I was thinking of her more as your mother than…you know, evaluating her level of hotness.”

Kerri shrugged. “She’s not that much older than you.”

“Again, thanks for the reminder,” he said. “Based on what you told me about her, I was expecting to be hit with it right off. I wasn’t going to bring it up, of course, but I was ready to talk about it if…” He looked at her, then did a double take, his face growing concerned. “You did tell her my age, didn’t you?”

“She asked right before you came.”

“You didn’t tell her before that?”

His voice had an edge to it that she hadn’t heard before. She didn’t like it. “She didn’t ask before that.”

“Right before I got there?” The way he was looking at her made her feel stupid. “That could have been a train-wreck.”

“But it wasn’t,” she said.

“But it could have been. Jesus, Kerri. And…she didn’t have a problem with it?”

“No.”

“What did she say?”

“‘Well, la-de-dah.’”

“What?!”

There was that edge again. He was making her feel like a child that had done something wrong and was in big trouble. Rant used to talk to her like that and Mother still did. “That’s what she said, ‘well, la-de-dah.’”

He was giving her a look that reminded her that he didn’t need her like she needed him. Which wasn’t fair, wasn’t right. “How could she not have a problem with it?”

“I don’t know,” Kerri said, looking in her purse.

“Hell, if I were in her shoes,
I
would have a problem with it.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not my mother then. Oh, shit!” Kerri looked up from her purse. “Did I give you back the tickets?”

“No,” Seth said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m positive. You don’t have them?”

“No.” She continued going through her purse, checking the pockets of her jacket. “I remember you having them,” she accused.

“Right,” he said. “And I gave them to you.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I think I remember them on the counter.”

“We’ll never have time to go back and get them,” he said.

She took out her phone and called her mother to see if they were on the counter. Her mother looked and came up empty, of course, because Kerri knew full well that the tickets were neatly tucked into her billfold. Losing them, however, got Seth off of her back and gave her room to move, to think. “Call back if you find them,” Kerri told her mother, dropping the phone on her lap and going back to her purse. “They have to be here somewhere,” she told Seth. “Keep driving. I’ll find them.”

Here was yet another example of why his open and honest policy was a trap. They could be laughing right now at the little white lie she’d told her mother, but instead he was acting like a prick. They’d barely begun as a real couple and he was already finding reasons to back out, to abandon her.

“Maybe you dropped them on the way to the truck,” he said.

Both the way he said it—
maybe
you
dropped them
—and how he was so sure of himself that he didn’t even check his own pockets annoyed her. Rooting through her purse for the fourth time, she really did feel stupid. She dumped out her billfold—money, pictures, address book, credit cards, identification, scraps of paper—while holding the tickets in place with her little finger. “I am such a fucking idiot,” she sighed, feeling like she might cry for real.

“Don’t say that. We’ll find them.”

She eyed his coat lying between them. The right pocket was facing her, showing her a way out. “If I don’t find them, I will pay you back for them.”

He told her he wouldn’t hear of it as they approached the parking garage. “There’s no point in paying for parking if we don’t have tickets.”

“Park anyway,” she said. “Maybe they can do something at the box office.” When he powered down the window and reached for the parking ticket, she plucked the envelope from her billfold and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

After he parked the truck, she got out and started looking under the passenger seat while he searched the floor. The traffic had slowed them down and they were going to be late if he didn’t find them soon. “Will you check your pockets, please,” she asked.

“I know I don’t have them,” he said, getting out of the truck, checking his pants and shirt pockets, then putting on his jacket and checking those. “What the…?” he said, pulling out the envelope, looking bewildered.

“I
knew
I gave them back to you!” she said.

He didn’t look convinced, like he knew what she’d done. Panic rose in her but the survivor voice told her to keep her mouth shut. Then, sure enough, he shook his head. “I can’t believe…when did I…?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, plucking the tickets from his hand.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I could have sworn…”

“It’s okay, honey,” she said. He looked so dejected that she kissed his check. “We got them. That’s all that matters. We’re going to be late,” she shouted, slamming the door and clip-clopping across the parking lot in her dress and high heels. “Come on.”

Seth ran up beside her. “I feel like a jerk. I don’t know how I could have—”

“Will you forget it, already,” she said and added playfully, “you’re forgiven!” She hoped that he would remember how unforgiving he’d been when it was she who’d been responsible for losing the tickets. Then she tested him by letting her heels slip out from under her and he passed the test not only by catching her, but by scooping her up into his arms. She let out a scream as he carried her, breaking into a run across the parking lot. “Hang on,” he said.

“You are crazy!” she shouted.

“Maybe,” he grinned, “but we’re going to make it.”

A
cell phone went off
in the middle of Seth’s lecture on “How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay without Boring Yourself and Your Professor to Death.” He immediately recognized the song: “Do Me Baby” by Prince. “Alright,” he said, getting to the silence button before anything too embarrassing could be deciphered, “who is the bonehead that forgot to shut off their phone?” Amid the laughter of his students, he laid his phone aside without reading the text message. “See how disruptive that is? Not to mention rude.”

Setting ring-tones to herald her phone calls and text messages was a prank Kerri liked to play on him. Some of her previous choices included classics like Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” and “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones. He stumbled his way back into the lecture and lurched forward trying to explain how a story’s structure and tone could reveal its theme as rouge thoughts scattered through his brain, bouncing off the walls of his mind.

Ever since the night of the orchestra, he’d been feeling increasingly like someone he didn’t know. He was unable to sleep at night and was too tired to focus during the day. There was an uneasiness that he couldn’t identify. Things with Kerri seemed to be okay, but maybe, unconsciously, he was feeling guilty over the age difference again or maybe, as Kerri had once suggested, he was afraid of commitment. Maybe it was both of these things but he was pretty sure it wasn’t either one. And yet, it was
something.
He’d never felt this before, this ill at ease, this uncomfortable in his own skin.

His classes were going great. Though he hadn’t been back to visit his family since Rita’s funeral, he had talked to his Mom on the phone and she seemed to be doing fine. So overall, things were alright.

But they weren’t. It disturbed him that he’d forgotten to turn off his phone because he’d been forgetting a lot of things lately. Misplacing things too. The morning had gotten off to a lousy start when he’d spent the better part of an hour looking for his car keys. They finally turned up in the pocket of yesterday’s jeans, already retired to the hamper. This only added to the general sense of annoyance he was experiencing at having also lost his watch. He’d forgotten to wear it before but always found it where he’d left it on the nightstand or the bathroom counter. It was neither place nor any of the other two dozen places he’d searched. Just the thought of all the time he’d wasted looking for it irritated him. Even Kerri’s prank with his cell phone had him more annoyed than amused, as if there were an ulterior motive behind her actions that had more to do with checking his phone than being cute.

Which was ludicrous.

Or was it?
Her
phone was never left unattended.

He came up with an exercise to keep his students busy, casually swiped up the phone, and walked out of the room to check the message. It read:
I love you!

A wave of guilt washed over him. He started to text her back, then stopped, stepped into a quiet corner and called her. When she answered, he closed his eyes to still his thoughts and said, “I love you too.”

“You’re supposed to be in class, Mr. Hardy,” she said.

He could hear the smile in her voice; see it in his mind’s eye. It lightened the heaviness of his thoughts, focused them a bit, and left him feeling a little foolish. “Then why,” he said, trying to smile too, “are you sending me mushy text messages?”

“Because I’m a sap and I wanted it to be the first thing you saw when you got out of class.”