The Life You've Imagined (6 page)

She deals seven cards each for gin rummy and I keep track of our scores on the tail end of a nearly-used-up receipt tape roll. We break for the occasional customer, and then we get a rush of sorts, five people in the store at once, stocking for a party apparently, as they’ve got me fetching liquor bottles by the armful.

I hope they’re not driving after this party of theirs.

When I turn back to her, Sally is staring so hard at her cards, she might be trying to set them on fire with her eyes.

“Your turn, Sal. Sorry that took so long. Can’t stand in the way of a good Saturday drunk.”

She doesn’t respond and continues staring.

“Sal? You okay?”

“Huh,” she replies, still staring. “It’s the damnedest thing. I kind of forgot what I’m doing.”

“We’re playing cards, goofy. Did you forget what cards you were trying to collect? You’ve been picking up every three, and lots of diamonds, too.”

Sally drops the cards right out of her hands, spilling them like drinks off a tray. She pats herself and the counter, frantically. “Where are my keys? I just remembered, I’ve gotta go, sister dear. Gotta . . . I’ve gotta go. Catch you on the flip side.”

She snatches her keys and is around the counter with surprising quickness.

“Sally? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, doll,” she calls out with a wave and a jaunty wink through the hairs of her outrageous wig. “Just heading home, is all. See ya.”

I bend down to pick up the cards, and that’s when I see that she had plenty of good cards in her hand. In fact, she had enough to lay them all down and crow “Gin!” which normally Sally loves to do, cackling like a maniac as if nothing were ever so fine.

I straighten up to peer out the door and watch her elderly gray Chevette cough and belch its way past the store and up Shoreline Drive.

Her trailer is in the other direction.

Chapter 9

Amy

“I
’m walking on sunshine!” sings Katrina and the Waves from my clock radio. I slap the radio until it stops, and I think I’ve knocked it to the floor, which is just as well.

“Paul, honey? I need some water.”

I’ve never licked mildewed bathroom tiles, but it’s the best description I can think of for the taste in my mouth.

He doesn’t respond, and with great reluctance I open my eyes into the stinging sunshine of my bedroom. The warm weight on my bed is Frodo, my chocolate Lab. The dog stirs lightly, then slurps at my nose. I put my hand over my eyes and try to remember the drive home. About the last thing I can clearly recall is Paul setting me in the car, and then . . .

Oh, crap. I should offer to get his car detailed.

I roll back away from the dog and his Alpo breath—normally I crate him at night; he must think this is quite a luxury, sleeping up here—and that’s when I see the glass of water with a bendy straw, and a note.

Had to stop into the office this morning. Here’s some water and Motrin. Feel better and take it easy.

I sip the water, but it’s gotten warm overnight so it’s not refreshing and my stomach curdles anyway.

I fumble for my thermometer in my nightstand, but I can’t find it. Not that my temperature would be reliable anyway. If you don’t get enough sleep—or for that matter, if you drink—it throws off the reading, according to that pamphlet from my OB/GYN.

That means this whole month’s worth of charting my basal body temperature to figure out my most fertile time is all a complete waste.

I curl back under the covers and review my decisions of yesterday, starting with letting those silly girls talk me into chardonnay instead of Perrier. Now look at me! And heaven knows what I ate yesterday. The calories, the carbs from the wine. I think I even had cake with buttercream frosting.

It’s enough to make me sick, only I already am.

It’s a silver lining if I’m too sick to eat all day. That will begin to make up for some of the ground I lost.

Frodo hops off the bed and starts pacing and whining. Paul should be here to let the damn dog out, knowing what a mess I’m in.

Paul whined to me last week,
Why don’t we just live together? Then we don’t have to debate about which place to spend the night, and you can save money on rent.

There’s no way he could understand my answer, so I just didn’t bother explaining that a wedding doesn’t count unless it’s a couple truly starting out together in life. If a couple is already living together, it’s just a big party and a shakedown for presents.

Sometimes I think I’m the last traditional girl on the planet. At least we have sex. It’s not like I’m Victorian about it. Oh, sex. Paul didn’t get his sex after the party, either. Well, he’ll live.

Frodo is pawing at the slider now. If I don’t get up, there will be a mess.

In the bathroom, I splash water on my face and yank my hair into a ponytail. My face is mottled and bloated and I have to pause to dry-heave into the sink.

On my mirror I’d taped a piece of paper with the saying, written in glitter pen, E
very thin day is a good day!
And on the other side, like a cheerful bookend, is that old magazine clipping, G
o confidently in the direction of your dreams.
L
ive the life you’ve imagined
.

I need to tape up another one: I
gnore people who tell you to “live a little.
”

People like me can’t afford that luxury.

I
n retrospect, it was optimistic of me to put on my running shoes.

On a typical morning, I like to imagine stomping down my old self with every stride.
Take THAT and THAT and THAT, thunder-thighs!

At the moment, though, I’m under a tree with my head between my knees, watching the blades of grass swim in my vision, Frodo’s leash around my wrist.

At least he went to the bathroom, so when I manage to crawl back to the apartment it will buy me some hours of recuperation.

Meanwhile, I can feel the fat cells making themselves at home.

I’ll get up even earlier tomorrow, before work. Run twice as far, and after work, too.

Frodo lunges, and the movement knocks me off balance, the leash slipping off my wrist. I stand up too fast and my vision fuzzes up for a moment, and when I collect myself, I see him tearing off down the road.

I force myself to plod after him, but he’s far too fast; even on a good day I can’t catch him. “Frodo!” I shriek, but by now he doesn’t even hear me, much less care. “Frodo!”

I speed up the pace, though my head pounds, holding my stomach with one hand. “Frodo . . .” I lose sight of him near the goose pond. We’re getting close to the entrance to the apartment complex and the main road where people drive too fast.

I collapse to my knees and dry-heave again, waiting to collect enough energy so I can get up and go find my dog, trying to remember the information on his dog tags, what happens if the animal control people find him before I do, what if . . .

“Miss?”

I jerk my head up. A large, sweaty, egg-shaped man is lumbering toward me with two dogs, and . . .

“Frodo! You found him!”

Frodo jumps on me and slobbers on my already wet face.

“Yeah, he stopped to make friends with my dog, dragging his leash. I figured he belonged to somebody here so I started walking him back through, figuring I’d find his owner soon enough. Soon as he saw you he started pulling for all he’s worth.”

I finally get Frodo to settle down enough so that I can take the leash.

“My name is Ed,” he says. “This here is Lucky.”

Some kind of small terrier with a loop-de-loop tail is panting at his side.

“I know I’m lucky you found him,” I say, shuddering now with relief.

“Are you all right?” Ed asks. “You don’t look so good.”

I’m sure I don’t, at that. “I’m not feeling so well. I shouldn’t have tried to walk him right now.”

“Want me to walk him for you? I’ll bring him back when I’m done. Just give me your apartment number.”

“Well, that’s nice, but he’s already done his business. I’ll just head back now.”

“How about I walk with you? You seem a little shaky on your feet, and if he sees another bird or something, he’ll knock you right flat.”

I just want to get home and back in bed and pretend none of this happened, but the quickest way with least drama will be to let this Ed walk my dog home, so Frodo doesn’t yank me into traffic or something.

“Okay, thanks. That’s nice of you.”

I respond to Ed’s questions with the barest of answers. I’m Amy, I tell him, graduated from Haven High, class of ’90; yes, I was in National Honor Society and the band. Ed was in the band, too, though he was a freshman when I was a senior. I don’t remember him at all, and I can usually remember the other fat kids in school. Not that we were all friends in some kind of obese fraternity. I just recognized the familiar bubble of empty space surrounding them at lunch and in the halls.

If he remembers what I used to be, he doesn’t mention it.

“See you around,” he says when I finally get back to my apartment.

Inside, I lean against the door and sink straight down, sipping breaths of cool air until I feel like I can move again.

Chapter 10

Cami

I
tell the customer, “$19.88, please.”

“Don’t you need to ring that up?” she asks, hitching her baby up higher on her hip as she tosses a twenty on the counter.

“Can’t. The drawer is stuck.”

“Huh.” She stares hard at her twelve cents in change before shoving the coins in her pocket and scooping up her shopping bag of baby formula and Kleenex.

“Have a nice day, now,” I call after her, whacking the register again with my fist.

Anna comes down the stairs, talking on her cell phone in her lawyer voice. “I can do it Monday,” she’s saying, “first thing . . . No, it’ll be fine. I’ll get in Sunday. It’s no problem . . . I’m staying with Shelby. Right. See you then.”

She clicks off and nods in my direction. She’s wearing trousers and a blouse and her hair is blown out straight, and just peeking out through her hair I can see a pen she’s left behind her ear. You’d never know she was just getting ready to straighten the canned goods.

“Back to work next week?” I ask her.

“Yes,” she says, and crouches down in front of the cling peaches.

“Are you feeling okay, then?”

Anna cuts her eyes over to me. “What do you mean?”

“Your mom mentioned you lost your friend. I was sorry to hear that.”

“I’m fine. I was fine before, too. I wish people would give me the courtesy of accepting when I say I’m fine.”

“Okay, I believe you. I’ve never known anyone finer. You are the Duchess of Fine.”

She puffs a piece of hair out of her eyes and continues shoving cans around, facing them out, making all the labels even. “Is my mom upstairs?” she asks.

“Yes, she said her head hurts, so I sent her up to rest.”

“Thanks.”

As the bells chime at the door, Anna pops up, and the effect is prairie-dog-like. She dusts her hands off, touches her hair, and smiles the first real smile I’ve seen all day, maybe since she’s been back.

“Beck!” she says. “What a nice surprise.”

Will Becker beams a smile right back at her. As he walks past the counter, he suddenly notices there’s someone else in the store. “Oh, hi,” he says to me. “Cami Drayton, right? I saw you at the party.”

“Hi. Your dad was kind enough to invite me, too, when he stopped in to see Anna.”

“We always know we can find her at the Nee Nance,” Will says, turning again to Anna. Her smile dies away at this, and Will rushes to finish his thought. “When she graces Haven with her presence. When she’s not in her fancy high-rise office building in the Windy City.”

He’s walked past me now and joined her in the aisle.

She’s shifting her weight from foot to foot and has retrieved the pen from behind her ear. She twirls it in her hand, spinning it over and over around her thumb. Used to make our English teacher nuts when she did that, because sometimes she’d lose the pen and it would spin crazily out onto the carpet in the middle of his lecture.

Beck is so tall he looms over her, and the fidgeting and height difference make her look twelve years old.

“Want to come to lunch? Not today, I have a meeting. Tomorrow?”

“Well, let me check my busy calendar . . . um, yeah, I think I’m free between the mopping of the floor and emptying the garbage.”

“Great. Portobello at noon?”

He reaches out with one hand, gives her upper shoulder a squeeze. When he walks past me on his way out, he’s got this tight little grin, like he’s trying to hold in a huge silly smile.

Anna is back to the cans, straightening just like she was, but now she’s humming a little tune.