The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet (2 page)

CHAPTER ONE

December
1994

I
sit on a stepladder in Kaley’s nursery and dab with a sponge at the white paint
on the light gray wall. I pause to study my handiwork.
Ugh.
It’s
supposed to provide texture, a visual fluffiness to the clouds I’m creating. I
flip the page in the craft book. Nope, my clouds don’t look anything like that.
Damn, I want this room to be perfect for her and
I
want to be the one
who makes it so.

I try again. Darn, not any better. There are just
some things I will never be good at, no matter how much I want to be or how
much I try. The list is long and only seems to be growing since marriage.
Cooking dinner. Filling my time while Neil is on the road. Having relationships
with other women. Decorating a house. Stylizing a nursery. Following
directions. Knowing where I’m going in life…

Fuck, Chrissie, take that one off the list now.
I
repeat my mantra in my head:
Think only of where you are, not the past and not
the future
. Breathing slow, steady breaths, I say it over and over again in
my head until I feel myself calming. Jack was right. It is better to focus on
only where you are, to live exclusively in the now, and never to think of where
you’ve been or where you are going.

With all the time I have alone on the mountain,
if I let myself think, I would never make it through a single day. There is too
much in the past,
and
the present, that’s unsettling.

I lift my forearm to push back the straggling
blond curls from my face. You are where you are, Chrissie. How you got here,
the things you did, don’t matter anymore. Not to Neil. Not to you—I feel a
prick at my heart—and they probably wouldn’t matter to Alan.  

I certainly have a happier life than I probably
deserve. I’m married to Neil, it was the right choice, and life is good, even
if he’s hardly ever home these days. Home for a few weeks in November. Gone
December. Back a few weeks in January. That’s our life since I can’t travel with
him and have to wait for the long breaks on the road for him to travel to me. But
the nonstop touring is starting to pay off and he is rapidly becoming a
superstar in the music world.

The baby starts to stir within me, hard bangs
instead of rolls and flutters. I smile. The poor little love can hardly turn.
This girl is definitely going to be a big one and most probably a metal chick
with how she head bangs.

In five short weeks there will be Kaley, and Neil
and I will have the family we both want. A familiar anxiety and sadness
whispers through me.

I stare at the wall mural, feeling tears threaten
out of nowhere again.
Don’t think about that, Chrissie. Leave it in the
lockbox where it belongs.

I do a rapid tally of my blessings. Neil is doing
OK. I’m doing OK. I pat my month eight baby bump. Kaley is doing OK.

Don’t think of the past. Not today. You have a
nursery to finish.

I lightly coat the sponge in the paint tray and
then start to dab at the wall again. Better. They look better if I take my time
at this. If I don’t push at it, it turns out as it’s supposed to.

The phone rings and I drop the sponge into the
tray. I do a rapid search around me. Shit, why did I leave the phone in the
kitchen instead of next to me?

Struggling onto my feet, I hurry from the nursery
into the kitchen. I grab the cordless off the island and click it on.

“Hello?” I pant.

“Shit, are you OK? You sound out of breath.
You’re not in labor, are you?”

Neil.
Anxious and worrying about me.
Some things never change.

Smiling, I sink down on a barstool. “No, not in
labor. Thank God, since just trying to get from room to room is exhausting
enough. Your kid is a monster, Neil. She’s huge.”

Neil laughs. “Are you doing OK? How are my two
girls?”

My smile grows larger. “We’re wonderful, but we
miss you. I haven’t looked at the itinerary yet today. Where are you?”

“Rome.” He says it in a slow, kind of worn out
way.

I make a pout. “Doesn’t sound like you’re
enjoying the European leg of the tour. I thought Rome was supposed to be
beautiful.”

“Rome is all right, but I’d rather be home. I don’t
enjoy the road without you, and I’d really prefer to be closer to you right
now.”

“I’d prefer that, too,” I whisper, feeling myself
become all mushy emotional again, only this time in a pleasant way.

“Listen, I’ve been thinking—”

“Don’t start, Neil,” I interrupt quickly. “I’m
not moving in with Jack until you’re off the road in January.”

I hear a frustrated growl. “For once, will you
hear me out? I don’t like the thought of you alone on the mountain or trying to
drive yourself down the roads if you have an emergency. It’s only a few weeks.
I’d worry less, sleep better if I knew you were at Jack’s.”

“Really, that’s not necessary. You make it sound
like we live in the middle of nowhere. It’s a ten minute drive to town. I’ve
got too much to do up here to go hang with Jack until you’re home again.”

“Too much to do.” He sounds amused. “Like what?”

I scrunch up my nose. “Today I’m painting
clouds.”

A long pause and then laughter.

“God, Chrissie. I don’t want to ask what you have
on your calendar tomorrow.”

We both laugh and it feels good.

“Be nice,” I chide.

“I am being nice. Have you been working on your
music at all?”

That question surprises me. When I showed Neil
the material I was working on in November, his expression screamed
oh, here
is another Chrissie hobby.
He didn’t seem to take it that seriously, for
all that he gets in Josh’s face about what a brilliant musician I am when Josh
lets loose a dose of his Seattle music elitism on me.

“I’ve ten songs finished,” I say, trying to sound
casual when internally I am anything but indifferent. “Enough for a respectable
demo, don’t you think?”

“That’s great,” Neil says, impressed. “I can’t
wait to hear them. You probably have enough material for a hundred albums in
your journals. Nate is right. You do write fucking incredible lyrics.”

I ignore the compliment, though it really pleases
me. Instead, I say, “And guess what?”

Neil laughs. “What?”

“I’ve been recording the tracks, all by myself.
There is a learning curve to getting it right, especially doing it by myself,
and I definitely don’t have as much breath when I sing because of the baby, but
I don’t think they are completely awful.”

“I don’t even need to hear them. They are not
awful at all. I bet it’s amazing work.”

I shrug, more to myself than him. “Well, it keeps
me occupied and off the streets.”

That makes Neil chuckle low in his chest. Good,
I’ve amused him. I can feel my eyes grow sparkly in that way they do when I’m
really happy.

“I love you, Chrissie.”

“I love you, too,” I whisper, feeling it in a
sweetly painful way that I really needed today. I’ve been more emotionally
messy than usual.

“About that other thing we were discussing,” he
says calmly. He’s slipped it into the phone call very smoothly, but I tense
anyway. “Have you given it any thought? I think it’s a good plan. I think we
should do it. I don’t want to miss the birth.”

“Nope, not discussing that one either.”

“I’m home two weeks in January, but we can’t be
certain Kaley will come then. Why not induce the labor or schedule a C-section
so that I can be there? I don’t want to miss it.”

“Then don’t miss it,” I counter obstinately. “I’m
not going to do it, Neil. Stop telling me that you think I should.”

I hear a frustrated exhale of breath through the
phone. “It’s the only way we can be absolutely certain I’m there. Be
reasonable, Chrissie. Let’s schedule the birth.”

I shake my head and run a hand through my hair,
aggravated. “I want to do it the old-fashioned way. The natural way. I don’t
understand why you don’t get that.”

“I do get it, baby. But our timing sucked. Isn’t
it more important for us to be together when you have Kaley?”

I gnaw on my lower lip and give it a hard bite to
stop my escalating emotions. Neil is right, but something deep in me rebels
against scheduling something again that is a
procedure
.

“What if she’s the only baby we ever have?” I
murmur haltingly.

“I don’t think that’s something we have to worry
about,” he says, amused. “You seem to get pregnant really easily.”

He laughs, and I force myself to laugh, but
everything inside me is twirling like a tornado. I know he’s not thinking of
that,
of my unplanned pregnancy with Alan, but his teasing comment has the
unpardonable power to bring those memories crashing back. And with it Alan and
the other things I don’t permit myself to think of.

I change the subject. “You’ll never guess who’s
coming to the baby shower your mom is throwing for me tomorrow.”

A pause. “Rene?”

He say that in a
Rene is not my favorite girl
way.
Neil is more upset about her lack of interest in my friendship than I am.

“No. Rene isn’t coming. Something about hospital
hours.”

“I think she’s jealous of you, Chrissie. That’s
why she’s avoiding all things baby,” he says, annoyed. “And the medical school
excuses are really getting old. It’s only about hospital hours if there is a
guy for her to screw waiting in a hospital bed.”

I choke back my laughter, but I savor how quickly
Neil takes my side in all things. It’s really nice to have one person
always
on my side and Neil is that. I feel calmer, less chaotic.

“Well, you’re going to miss an interesting party
at your folks’ place,” I say. “Linda Rowan is coming and she’s staying a week
with me at the house, so we can stop arguing about me moving to Jack’s. At
least for a week. I won’t be alone here.”

“Linda Rowan? Really?” He sounds as surprised as
I was over this development, and there is something else in his voice I’m not
quite certain of. “How the hell did you end up with her staying at the house?”

Oh crap. He sounds pissed.

“I’m not really sure,” I answer lamely because I
am still confused how it all happened. “One minute she’s on the phone thanking
me for inviting her to the shower—which I didn’t, Neil. I didn’t put her on the
invitation list—and the next thing I know she’s staying the week with me.”

He lets out a ragged breath. “Sort of like a
blessing and a curse. I don’t want anything to do with the Rowans, but I’m glad
there will be, at least for a little while, someone at the house with you.”

I make a pout at the phone. “Linda is a good
person. You’d like her if you ever got to know her. I like Linda.”

He sighs. “I know you do.”

Silence, and even through the phone it feels
heavy and strained. He doesn’t want Linda here and he won’t ask me to un-invite
her. She is one of Alan’s closest friends and Neil doesn’t want any part of
Alan’s world near us. Understandable, and belatedly I acknowledge that letting
her push her way into an invite wasn’t a smart move for any of us.

Especially not for me. No good can come from
having Linda as a close personal friend. It’s better to keep her an arm’s
length away.

“Do you want me to call her back? Tell her not to
come,” I ask.

“Fuck, Chrissie, you can’t do that. It would hurt
her feelings. She’s a nice woman. You don’t want to do that.”

I nod, even though he can’t see me. I hear
someone in the background calling for Neil.

“I’ve got to go, Chrissie. Talk to you tomorrow,
baby. Try to miss me a little.”

I roll my eyes. “I miss you a lot,” I say
earnestly.

“I miss you more.”

“That’s only because you haven’t seen me in a
month,” I tease.

“Stop it, Chrissie. You don’t know how much I
wish you were lying in bed beside me every night.”

“That’s about the limit of what I can do,” I
point out mockingly. “The doctor says we can have sex all the way up to my due
date. That it’s even a good thing to start labor, but it just doesn’t seem
feasible to me.”

I hear what sounds like a growl through the phone
and I grin. “Don’t remind me. I like to pretend in my mind I’m going to get laid
when I get home.”

“You better not be getting laid on the road,” I
taunt.

“Nope. You can count the new calluses on my hands,”
Neil says, humorously exaggerated and frustrated. “I’ve got to run, baby. Talk
to you soon.”

Click. I put the phone back in the receiver and
return to Kaley’s bedroom. An hour later the wall is done and it doesn’t look
half bad, if I do say so myself. I tidy up the mess from the painting supplies,
take them to the garage and then return to give the room one last check.