Back in the Burbs

by Flynn, Avery

  Whew. That felt good! Like first-day-of-summer-at-the-beach good or coming-home-and-ripping-off-my-bra good.

  “Mallory!”

  She sounds shocked, but I don’t care. I’m tired of everyone in my life telling me that everything is my fault. I know I’m not perfect. I know I make mistakes. A part of me even acknowledges that I wasn’t entirely blameless in the failure of my marriage. Still, everything that went wrong didn’t happen because my fucking underwear wasn’t sexy enough.

  “I have to go, Mom. Someone’s at the door.” And then I hang up the phone before I can change my mind.

  I am so annoyed that I end up eating my weight in Oreo cookies before going upstairs and taking a shower, where I do everything I can to scrub and exfoliate my frustrations away.

  I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Why is my mom so hung up on me going back to Karl?

  I mean, I get that our family doesn’t believe in divorce, but come on. Does that mean our family believes in cheating? Talk about a bastardization of decency or normalcy.

  Does she really want me to stay with him and be miserable, knowing that I can’t trust him? Knowing that he’s out there fucking other women? Knowing that he has at least one child—if not more—out in the world while I stay home, longing for my own baby? A baby I will never ask him for now and that he wouldn’t give me if I did?

  It’s absurd. More, it’s hurtful. Really, really hurtful.

  I know my mom and dad are all about appearances, but I always assumed there was some substance underneath it. Now I’m finding out that there really is no substance. There is just them caring so much about me not having the stigma of divorce attached to their name—like there is even a fucking stigma around it anymore—that they want me to be miserable for the next forty or fifty years of my life.

  I’d rather scrub toilets with my toothbrush.

  I’d rather sleep in that damn pink canopy bed forever than go back to Karl for one more second.

  I’d rather be alone for the rest of my life than lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering where he is and who he’s with.

  I just don’t know how to get my mom to understand that.

  I dry off quickly, tying my hair up in a topknot so it doesn’t get my pajamas all wet while I get dressed.

  Mom hasn’t always been like this. There was a time when she would have torn apart anyone who broke her baby’s heart. A time when she would have taken me out for pancakes and trash-talked with the best of them about whoever had hurt me.

  I know when that changed, but I don’t know why. The second I got old enough for boys to be interested in me—and for me to be interested in boys—her attitude shifted. Suddenly, it was all about me making sure not to rock the boat, making sure not to upset the boy in my life, making sure not to stand up for myself if it meant disrupting my relationship. Not just with Karl but with every guy I’ve ever been the least bit serious about.

  As I climb into bed, sliding between the cool cotton sheets, I put thoughts of my mother and her bizarre behavior out of my head. After all, it’s been going on for nearly twenty years, and there is no reason to think it’ll stop now.

  Besides, I have more important things to think about when I wake up. Like how to thank Nick for stepping in with Karl tonight. And where the hell I’m going to get the money to sue my ex, as Nick all but promised I would.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I manage to wake up around three o’clock in the afternoon, sunlight be damned, to the to the sound of my doorbell ringing over and over again.

  I’m tempted to ignore it—I’m not expecting anyone, and after my last surprise guest, I’m not in any hurry to see who’s out there. But just as I start to drift back to sleep, I remember. The porch!

  I jump out of bed and go racing down the stairs as my phone starts to ring and Dad’s photo pops up on the screen. “Sorry, Dad, I can’t talk right now. I have to—”

  “I’m downstairs, Mallory, and I know you’re here,” he says. “Please come—” He breaks off as I throw open the door.

  “Come in!” I all but pull him off the porch. “You shouldn’t be out there! I haven’t had a chance to have the porch repaired yet—”

  “Don’t you mean you don’t have the money to have it repaired?” he asks as he casts a disapproving look at my pajamas.

  “Well, yeah, that too.” I turn and head toward the kitchen, happy that I at least have the family room and kitchen done, so that—as long as I keep him in this part of the house—he won’t be able to speak badly of Aunt Maggie.

  “Has it occurred to you to get a job?” He follows me toward the kitchen. “Since money is such a problem for you?”

  I clench my jaw. As if looking for a job isn’t exactly what I’ve spent the last several months trying to do. Up until I inherited Aunt Maggie’s house, I was doing nothing but circulating my résumé, trying to get a bite.

  “Yes, Dad. I’m looking for a job.” And if something doesn’t come along in the next couple of weeks, I’m going to forget about office managing and put my name in at a few temp agencies for office workers. The pay will suck, I’m sure, but something is better than nothing. I just need to get Aunt Maggie’s house in any kind of decent shape first. And by decent, I mean livable.

  “By sleeping until three in the afternoon?” He settles himself at the head of the kitchen table.

  Counting to infinity, I walk straight to the coffee maker and start brewing a pot. Silence reigns in the kitchen for a couple of minutes, which is so unusual for him that I can’t help glancing behind me to see what’s up. I barely stop myself from snickering when I see him staring in horror at Aunt Maggie’s canisters—particularly the ones marked Quaaludes and Ganja.

  I’m tempted to offer him a gummy bear—he definitely looks like he needs to relax—but I’m not up for the fight that would probably ensue.

  “Your addition?” he asks when he catches me looking.

  “Oh, yes. Definitely. I have so much extra money to toss around that I decided to spend it on a thousand dollars’ worth of canisters.” Yes, I looked them up. And yes, they really do cost more than a hundred dollars each.

  He shakes his head. “My aunt always did have her problems.”

  “Maybe so, but being a drug addict wasn’t one of them, Dad.”

  He harrumphs his disagreement. Or maybe it’s his disapproval. Since I announced my divorce from Karl, it’s gotten harder and harder to tell the difference between the two.

  The coffeepot starts brewing. “Do you want a cup?”

  He looks around the kitchen. “Do you have something stronger?”

  “Stronger?” I lift a brow in mock surprise. “At three o’clock in the afternoon, Dad?”

  He shrugs but doesn’t say anything else.

  I don’t have any hard liquor, and I haven’t found Aunt Maggie’s stash yet—if she had one—so I grab one of the open wine bottles from last night and pour him a glass.

  “Thank you.” He grabs the glass like it’s a lifeline and takes a deep sip. Then he sighs and looks around the room. “I hadn’t realized things had gotten this bad.”

  “What things?” If my mom told him about Sasha being pregnant, I really don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it—not now. Not until I absolutely have to.

  “With Aunt Maggie.” He gets a pinched look around his eyes, and the muscle in his jaw twitches. “The house is a disaster.”

  I have no clue what to say to that. If he thinks this is a disaster, I can only imagine what he would have thought if he saw the place a couple of days ago—or the upstairs right now.

  “I saw all the bags down at the curb,” he continues. “My parents used to talk about Maggie’s tendency to ‘collect’ things, but it wasn’t until I was much older that I understood what that meant. She did so well for so long, I hadn’t realized she�
�d fallen back into her old habits.”

  He turns his face away from me, his lips pursed together, and if it hadn’t been broad daylight, I never would have believed for a second that the man’s cheek was wet before I watch him wipe the single tear away.

  “I should have checked on her more,” he admits.

  I plop down into the chair next to Dad’s, my knees no longer willing to hold me up with the sudden and totally out-of-character reveal.

  “She was always something. I mean, I didn’t understand her. Ever. She was flighty and wild and more than a little bit of everything a Martin shouldn’t be, but I couldn’t help but be amazed by her. She never did what was expected.” He drains the rest of the wineglass in one gulp. “The last thing I would have expected was for her to leave you the house. I guess that’s why I should have expected she’d do it. She always did love cheering on the underdog.”

  Wow. Okay, that hurts even if it’s true.

  But where Dad saw a flighty woman who didn’t meet expectations, I saw a woman who bowed to no one. Ever.

  Dad twirls the glass around on the table. I figure he’s thinking about Aunt Maggie some more, and I stand up to get more coffee and give him a little bit of time to collect his thoughts.

  But then he totally surprises me by asking, “Why didn’t you tell me you hired some law firm to represent you in the divorce?”

  “How do you know that? I haven’t told anyone.” I whirl around, shocked, until it dawns on me. “You talked to Karl.”

  “He is my son-in-law, you know.”

  “Your soon-to-be-ex-son-in-law,” I shoot back, wondering how coffee would taste with a wine chaser.

  “My soon-to-be-ex-son-in-law,” he repeats, sounding defeated. “I just can’t figure out why you wouldn’t ask my firm to represent you once you decided you really wanted to go through with the divorce.”

  “Dad, I decided I wanted to go through with the divorce the moment I found out Karl was cheating on me. I can’t live like that.”

  “Maybe so.” Somehow, he looks even more pained. “But I wish you’d come to me, to my firm.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to represent me.”

  More, I don’t want him to represent me. One, because I don’t want to mix my family up in this any more than they already are. And two—and this is the kicker—after everything he and my mom said about Karl and me, I don’t actually trust him to represent my best interests—not once Karl starts spinning tales about how hard he worked to establish the firm and how most of it should thus, rightfully, belong to him.

  “I’m still your father, you know.”

  There is a wealth of emotions in those words and at a different time, I might want to explore them and what they mean. But that isn’t today. I’m just too exhausted. Everything that happened over the past couple of days has taken the last of my emotional strength, and I don’t have anything left for the complicated mess that is my relationship with my parents.

  Someday, I will talk to my dad about everything that happened since I told them that I was leaving Karl. But someday is definitely not today. Not even close.

  “I know.” I drop a kiss on the top of his head.

  And then I change the subject to lighter things.

  We talk for a few more minutes, and then my dad pushes back from the table. “If you’re in a pinch, I can hire you at the firm. You can be an assistant office manager—I know it’s a step down from what you were doing for Karl, but we’ve got Lottie, who handles all the big managerial tasks. Still, we can always use—”

  “No, Dad,” I say firmly, even as I take his hand in mine.

  Going from Karl to my dad feels like a definite step backward, and I can’t do that right now, not if I want to be able to keep looking at myself in the mirror. Not if I want to keep telling myself that I really am moving forward.

  “There might be a time when I have to take you up on that offer. I hope there isn’t, but I’m realistic enough to admit that there might be,” I say. “But I’m not there yet. I appreciate the offer—and no matter what happens, I will always appreciate it. But I’ve got this.”

  He looks around the kitchen, which is now clean but still needs a good coat of paint and probably a new floor.

  “You’ve got this?” he asks doubtfully.

  “I do.”

  And as I say the words, it hits me. I do have this. Somehow, some way, I’ll figure things out—with Karl, with the house, with myself.

  It’s gonna take a while, but the best things always do. Besides, who cares? Right now, it feels like I have nothing but time.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I walk my dad out through the backyard—no way am I letting him on that death trap of a porch again—then sit down at the patio table and try to figure out what I want to do next.

  I could go over to see Nick, but I figure he isn’t home from work yet.

  I could spend some more time going through my aunt’s photo cabinets so I can finish up the family room once and for all.

  Or I could pick a random room and start going through it—God knows, there are way too many left to do.

  In the end, though, I decide to start with a late lunch—avocado toast and a sparkling water consumed over the sink. Then I snap the pictures of the HOA dumpster request forms that I meant to handle last night when my mom called. It takes a few minutes, but I finally get all the HOA documents submitted.

  Now all I can do is wait.

  With nothing left but to procrastinate from the real work inside, I decide to skip the pictures in the cabinet—I’d rather do them when I have the time and can actually enjoy sorting through them instead of just trying to sift all the clutter out of the boxes. That means only one thing: it’s time to start on the dining room.

  The table is big enough for ten, even without the leaf, and has several boxes of stuff at either end. That won’t take that long to go through. I do a tight spin because of the many shoeboxes on the floor and give a hard look to the china cabinet that is completely full of Wedgwood and another cabinet half full with Mottahedeh I spotted years ago at Neiman Marcus. Knowing Aunt Maggie as I feel I do not, I figure it isn’t just china inside the cabinets. There’s probably a Costco-size amount of tropical drink umbrellas or something, too.

  After grabbing a box of trash bags from the newly cleaned shelves in the laundry room, I pick out one of my aunt’s albums at random and put it on. Jim Croce’s voice fills the house with its folksy calm.

  Aunt Maggie loved this album. Not as much as she loved the Beatles, but it was a pretty close second. Right up there with Johnny Cash’s Man in Black and ABBA’s Super Trouper.

  As “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” pours out of the stereo, I bite the bullet and open up the first china-cabinet door. Then I close it and weigh the option of selling the china on eBay and throwing the rest of the cabinet and the untold number of toothpick boxes, drink stirrers, and purloined diner sugar packets into the dumpster when it gets here.

  Still, there have been important papers and other things in every single cabinet I’ve sorted through—except the chopsticks cabinet—and the chances are that behind everything else, there are documents stuffed in the back, so tossing it all is not really a viable option. Plus, I love this dining set with its wild swirls and curved edges, and the thought of throwing it away makes me sad.

  Which means no more whining. It’s time to get to work.

  I clean all the way through the first half of the album, then pause just long enough to grab a glass of water and switch sides on the record before diving back in.

  I’ve just finished the first cabinet and am about to start on the second when there’s a loud knock on my back door. It startles me, and I let out a little shriek before peeking my head around the corner.

  Surprisingly, and yet not, Nick stands there. As I walk down the hall to the door, he gives me an imp
atient look, which seems a little out of place. He’s the one standing in my backyard, after all.

  “What’s up?” I ask as I slide the back door open.

  “I figured I’d pick up the dumpster forms.”

  Awww, that is really…hot? Kind? Sexy? Neighborly. I settled on neighborly. “Thank you, but I already emailed them in.”

  He nods and walks inside and to the family room, his eyes going immediately to Aunt Maggie’s record collection. “Well, then we can focus on your case.”

  Distracted by the way he looks with the top button of his crisp white shirt undone and his tie hanging loose, I miss most of his words except that last one. “My what?”

  “Your case.” He pulls his tie free, rolls it up, and sticks it into his suit jacket pocket. “Remember that slimy little shithead in your driveway, the one you’re going to take for every penny you deserve? One of the attorneys at the firm specializes in divorce and would like to meet with you.”

  My case. Divorce. Driveway. My body pressed up against Nick’s. The way his steady heartbeat and strong hands felt against me. The fact that I spent last night dreaming about him shirtless and pantsless and— Oh my God, Mallory. Be in the moment.

  Inner me is a joy sucker, but she’s right. The last thing in the world I need right now is another man—and an attorney, no less—in my life telling me what to do and how to do it. Plus, there is the little issue of M.O.N.E.Y.

  “Look, Nick,” I say as I move in front of him and stand there clasping my hands together, because I don’t trust myself with where my thoughts keep going. “I really appreciate your help, but there’s just no way I can afford the fees your kind of practice probably charges. I’ve seen the car you drive, and the art on your living room wall wasn’t a lithograph—it was the real thing.”