The Do-Over (14 page)

John took a drink. “Tell me about being on the wrong train.”

She caught a glimpse of the label, Gastown Amber Ale, and redirected the conversation. “Is that made right here?”

He tipped his head toward the bottle, but didn’t break eye contact. “Granville Island. I’ll take you there.”

She felt a jolt of danger, the kind that she got from hearing a police siren. Maybe the movie
was
a safer topic. “I should focus on appreciating the train I’ve been on. I mean, am on. But not here, right now.” She heard the nervous flutter in her own laugh and wished it sounded more flippant than flipped out. “There’s no place like home.”

He raised his bottle in agreement then answered the challenge. “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” He waited as if for her to concede game point, but he wasn’t going to win.

She took a sip of her drink and checked her upper lip for whipped cream. She’d definitely lose if she couldn’t even handle one drink. “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

His eyes narrowed but he still managed to look completely amused. “Cut bait or fish.”

Ooh, her reaction to that one made her understand that in her world of heart rate danger, the police siren had just been joined by two fire trucks and a paramedic unit. “I’m gonna have to think about that one.” To still herself, she breathed in the warm drink and remembered she loved Kahlua, loved it and hadn’t had it in years. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Out of sight, out of mind.”

He was good. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

“Playground.”

She looked at him in confusion. “What?”

“Idle hands are the devil’s
playground
.”

She felt a little tingle at the way he said
playground
in a deep-voiced and somehow questionable way. She’d better finish her drink and get off the glitter train. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” That would slow things down.

But it didn’t. He leaned closer, rising to the bait that maybe she should cut or learn to fish with. “If you can’t be with the one that you love—”

She felt the slip of their hands in the creamy vat of soap. Just hands, days ago, naked in a bowl, and she succumbed to flashbacks. She’d better get out while her legs still worked. Thank God she hadn’t said that out loud. “The early bird gets the worm.” Not better. She set down her drink. “I should go.”

John raised an eyebrow.

“It’s, I don’t know, pretty late, and I’ve got that, uh, marketing thing to, you know, finish so I can hand out samples first thing tomorrow.”

“Ten.”

“It’s ten already? Oh my god, I’ve got to run.”

“It’s nine-fifteen. The warehouse store doesn’t open tomorrow until 10.”

“I should really be going then.” Mara leapt out of her seat.

John started to rise. “I’ll walk you home.”

“No, no, I’m good.” She wasn’t good. The pianist wasn’t right about his selection of
Someone to Watch Over Me
, but he was right about her. She was a little lamb, mid-sized maybe, but she really was lost in the dark and entertaining thoughts about a wolf who wasn’t her husband. She headed toward the exit and gave John a wave that was more
go away
than
goodbye
. “Thanks for the movie. And the drink.”

John just sat and smiled at her, and she felt for a second that even with a head start, if he’d wanted to catch up with her, she’d never get away.

They’d wedged her table in between laundry detergents in boxes too large for humans to lift and a paper products aisle that boasted packages of three thousand napkins. Three thousand napkins. She tried to forget where she was and fussed with her display board. It hadn’t even needed glitter. It struck just the right escape-from-your-life tone, and she had lovely lavender fizzy balls to hand out. One bubbled away in a crystal bowl, giving off the floral musk of Abundance, and nearly every woman who’d come by had taken a sample. There had been a few who’d declined, who were too far gone and had rounded the bend of serving others at the price of complete self-sacrifice, but she also didn’t want to think about that.

She adjusted the board so women coming down the canned goods aisle could get a better view. It made things tighter behind the table. She could feel her back squish into the mountain of napkins displayed.
Three thousand
napkins in every freaking package. She couldn’t help herself, she had quickly calculate the absurdity of it. If there were three-hundred-and-sixty-five days in a year, and she was pretty sure that was the same even in Canada, and you used three napkins a day, you’d use about eleven hundred a year. If you ate out a couple of times a month, you might only need to shop for napkins every three years. Your napkin supply could actually outlive you, if, for instance, you were hit by a bus or abandoned your home and ended up in Canada. She had a pretty big supply of paper products back home, so she was saving herself thirty days of napkins. Heck, she’d increased her napkin surplus and probably increased her lifespan as well.

She looked around the warehouse and saw women, just like her, pushing enormous carts. They brimmed with things like super-sized catsups, two together like they were headed for a cookout on Noah’s ark. She’d saved herself thirty days of that also, and she didn’t even eat catsup. She bought it, lugged it, loaded it, carted it home, unloaded it, cooked the meal it would cover, served it, cleaned up after it, and she hated catsup.

The silver glint of a giant cart rounded the display of two-gallon pre-wash laundry spray, and she gave the fizzy ball a poke so it kicked up more bubbles. “Hello. Here’s a free sample of Abundance rose and lavender fizzy bath. It’s amazing, it’s…” Mara pointed to the pictures of the English picnic, the yellow light, the elegant wine glasses… “escape.”

The woman blinked, and Mara reached out with a sample. Its silvery-blue wrapper crinkled and released Abundance’s wonderful perfume.

The woman stood there as if getting the cart moving from a dead stop was more than she could manage and shook her head.

Mara knew that feeling, the don’t-sit-down-or-you-won’t-get-up method of making it through the day. To verify it she glanced into the cart and spotted the double catsup, just as she suspected. This woman needed a bath. “It’s for you. Just for you. You can relax and take time for yourself.”

The woman murmured some polite refusal and picked up a computer-generated list, checking off the catsup, chicken, pizza, and a case of juice boxes, but what she really needed was a fizzy ball. She deserved a fizzy ball, and Mara wondered what magic marketing words she could use to get a woman who never thought of herself to stop for a moment and claim a bath.

She rolled around a couple of self-affirmations in her head to try on the woman, who was now checking off the tuna, 24 cans, and feminine hygiene product, 200 pads, when she saw him half-way across the store.

Dan. Dan who had left her dumped on her own floor. Dan who had taken away her staple gun. Dan who was silhouetted in front of enough toilet paper for a school district. He walked her way, holding what appeared to be a large box, a box the size a fur coat would come in. She’d never seen a fur coat actually gift-boxed, but the package was large and rectangular and a mink could easily be stuck in it. Not that it would or that Dan would or that she would, but it could. Or a really nice bathrobe, a big fuzzy one, all chenille and warmth.

She heard a grunt close by and saw the woman who refused the fizzy ball pull a tub of dishwashing detergent off the shelf and wrestle it into her cart.

Mara turned back to Dan, nearer now, and not holding a gift box at all. It was… it was a dozen boxes of facial tissues, and he was smiling like it was the funniest joke ever.

He approached the Abundance display, the tissues held against chest, and he made the big mistake of speaking. “Look what I found. I don’t have my card with me, will you buy this when you leave?”

She felt her breath hitch, then fire out and in, not with nervous energy but something that burned her lungs, made her fists clench, her eyes narrow, and her feet prepare for fight not flight. “I will not buy you twelve boxes of facial tissue!” At her loud refusal, the woman froze in the aisle, her eyes wide, her shopping list clutched over her heart.

But Dan just gripped the package closer to his body, and yelled back. “We’re out!”

She stared from his crazed face down to the tiny holed t-shirt, and white knuckled grip on the boxes. “What is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” He turned to the frozen shopper mom in the aisle and laughed as if she would join him and share his outrage. “I’m fine. My wife is selling bubble bath in Canada.”

“I’m giving away samples.” She picked up a fizzy ball and shot it like a free-throw right into the woman’s cart, and the woman jumped back as if the whole thing might blow up. Mara rolled her eyes at her. “It’s just bubble bath. Use it already. Go home right now, and use the damn fizzy ball. Just say no to that fucking much catsup.”

She heard Dan tap his fingers on the boxes. “Nice customer service.”

She shot out from behind the display and grabbed his tissue colony before he could react. “I’ll show you customer service.” She dug her nails into the wrapper and unleashed the boxes.

Dan smirked at her. “You’ll have to buy them now.” But she picked up a box and chucked it at his head, missing the target but making a decent hit to his chest.

“Ouch.” His hand came up to where the cardboard corner had connected, and she picked up another one, aiming for his chest this time and watching it sail disappointedly over his shoulder.

He lowered his hand as if she was clearly no danger and taunted her. “Your aim sucks.”

But Mara Jane Mulligan was no quitter. “Your attitude sucks.” This time she nailed him in the right thigh.

He stepped back a couple of feet in defense. “My attitude? I’m not throwing boxes at my husband who’s done nothing wrong, ever.”

“Ever?” Mara held a box, aimed and ready.

“I’ve been faithful and employed and attentive.”

She snorted, but he pointed at her. “
You
didn’t know you were unhappy until a week ago. How the hell was I supposed to know? I’ve been as attentive to you as you’ve been to yourself.”

She considered the logic of that for a moment. Dammit if it wasn’t true. She couldn’t blame Dan for not… for not what? She didn’t even know what exactly was going on with her, besides the fact that she needed a break. But who said she had to be logical? Despite the lack of reasoning behind anything, she was mad at him for not recognizing that she needed something, even if she hadn’t noticed it herself.

He lifted his hands. “I couldn’t have seen this coming.”

Maybe not, but it was a new day, and she was living it. “Okay, Dan, but do you see this coming?” She launched the box and it sailed with a kind of back spin she didn’t know a square object could manage. He ducked a second too late, and it hit the side of his head, nicking his ear.

He didn’t react right away but stood there in something like shock, although after being staple-gunned to the floor, she didn’t think he really ought to be too surprised. Maybe he wasn’t as logical as he liked to think he was.

Mara watched the witness take off, her cart a glint of silver making time between the pails of green beans and jugs of maple syrup. At least the poor woman had a fizzy ball. She turned back to the paper products carnage and Dan and watched a drop of blood form on the curve of his ear. He really did need a tissue.

Too bad security had arrived so swiftly. All Dan really needed was a lifetime supply of band-aids he could have picked up in aisle twelve. She sat on a metal folding chair beside him and didn’t buy his middle school principal face, but the security guy seemed to be falling for the restoring order and calm that Dan exuded.

She ignored them both and studied the pallets, stacked so high around the back room, she wondered that there weren’t avalanche warnings posted. They needed a big red one, cautioning that the dog food danger remained high, expect kibble slides.

She turned her attention back to Dan and the guy who had disappointed her almost immediately by not being a Mountie. She’d never been hauled in before, never been detained anywhere, not at a warehouse store certainly, or a bar, racetrack, or anywhere else people got into trouble. It was her first time, and she deserved a Mountie in that great red suit astride a powerful black steed like he was Santa for bad girls. Something thrilled in her at the prospect that she was so bad now that she’d never be that women schlepping catsup twins around. She couldn’t backslide into quiet desperation because once upon a time she’d been arrested by a warehouse Mountie. She eyed the security guy who looked less like the Mountie of her fantasy and more like the guy who stacked dog food.

“Second marriage.” Dan smiled and shook hands with the appeased man seated across from them. Then he stood and pulled her to her feet.

She just stared at the two of them because she knew she’d missed something. They were smiling in that guy way that made women mad just seeing it. “What?”

The dog food stacker winked at her, then turned back to Dan. “Ah, newlyweds. The fights are great. Making up even better.”

Dan laughed and steered her out of the back room. She resisted, but he just kept walking, forcing her to trip out into the main store until she grabbed the edge of the cheese cooler, and he had to stop. “You told him we were newlyweds?”

“Explain to me why a woman who has been married for fifteen years would chuck tissue boxes at her husband.” He touched the tip of his ear, scabbing already she noticed. “And injure him.”

“Why wouldn’t she? Since he’s being a jerk and all.”

“Okay, let’s say he is being a jerk. Wouldn’t he have always been a jerk? I mean, did he just start being a jerk five years into the marriage or ten or fifteen? Of course not. People work things out early on, or they don’t, and if they do, then they enjoy the peace and comfort of their routines for the rest of their lives.”

She didn’t even know what to say to that. It was all so logical and true she knew, and yet not how she felt, not how she felt at all. She turned to the cheese cooler, buying time by considering the awesome number of things milk could be turned into. She debated how to tell him something completely illogical and make it sound as right as it felt. What had been comfortable and routine and right had become something else. She didn’t know why or when, just that she had stopped being happy along the way.