Rusty Nailed

by Alice Clayton

  “Caroline?” Simon called out, and I turned. He was standing at the edge of the yard, chatting with Ruth from next door. The neighbor who gave us the keys when we first saw the house.

  “Oh, hey there, Simon. Evening, Ruth,” I called out in my most neighborly voice. I click-clacked across the driveway, dodging sawhorses and plastic sheeting.

  Simon said, “Ruth, you’ll be amazed when you see how much progress we’ve made in that upstairs bedroom. The one you said used to be the sewing room?” He reached out for me and tucked me into his side. “Hey, babe, how was your day?”

  “Oh, tip-top.” My voice must have sounded off, because he looked down at me questioningly. “Sewing room?” I asked.

  “Oh my, yes. Simon was showing me around last week; I can’t believe how different it looks already!” Ruth exclaimed.

  “It’s amazing what you can do when you have a big work crew. So, sewing room?”

  “Well, he was showing me the upstairs, and I was marveling over that sweet little room on the second floor—the one that’s tucked under the eaves? I told your Simon that even though Evelyn used it as her sewing room, I always thought it would be perfect as a nursery. Don’t you think?”

  My grin froze as I looked back and forth between them. Simon was sheepishly looking down at the ground. But he was also blushing. And smiling. Big.

  “Nursery?” I asked through the frozen grin.

  “Of course! A cute young couple like you two, I’m sure it’s something you’re thinking about. I know you career girls these days like to wait, but you can’t wait too long, you know. I know it’s not for me to say, and heaven knows I sometimes stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but I—”

  I must have made the sucking-on-a-sour-pickle face, because somewhere around “heaven knows” and “stick my nose in,” Ruth began to look at me strangely.

  I turned without a word and walked toward the house, hearing Simon apologizing to Ruth over the noise that was filling my ears. A chain saw? Tile saw? Tiles—ha!

  Inside, I looked around at the chaos. At the three painters on ladders on the first floor. At the two carpenters carpenting in the kitchen. And at the random guy who was sitting on my window seat with his feet up on my dining room table (tarp-covered box), reading a newspaper.

  “Excuse me? Can I help you?” I asked over the din.

  “You Caroline?”

  “I am.”

  Just then I heard the front door slam and an angry Simon stood in the doorway. “I can’t believe how rude you just were to Ruth!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “What the hell, Caroline. Have you lost your mind?”

  “You seriously want to do this now?” I asked, gesturing to the obviously listening workmen and the guy with his feet up. “Who are you, anyway?” I asked.

  “I’m Fred, here to do your closets.”

  “Okay, Fred. Let’s start in the den.” I gestured for him to follow me, holding up my other hand toward Simon to tell him to do exactly the opposite. As I started to open the door, Simon shouted, “Not the den! Clive’s in there!”

  Too late. Like a feline torpedo, he darted out and ran for the kitchen. I grabbed for him as he sped by, but he wiggled through my fingertips and continued on.

  We’d been trying to keep him away from the commotion during the day, letting him out only at night. Usually he stayed in the “sewing room” upstairs, as that room wasn’t getting much work done.

  “Why the hell was he in the den?” I yelled, trying to follow Clive. He was startled by all the strange men in the house, and was doing his best dodgeball around all of them.

  “They were working on the floors upstairs today, so I brought him down. That’s why the door was closed,” Simon yelled back, diving for him and crashing into a painter. “Everybody fan out,” he said, and just like that, Clive now had six strange men chasing him.

  “Stop it! Everyone stop, you’re scaring him!” I shouted over everyone else shouting at Clive.

  Fred made a grab for him, and Clive spun out Tokyo Drift style, ran up a ladder, down a ladder, and made for the dining room.

  Toward the window seat.

  Toward the rusty casement window that never shut tightly.

  And went

  right

  through it.

  He was there, and then he was gone.

  I got there just in time to see his tail disappearing through the garden wall, into the twilight.

  chapter twenty-one

  I walked the streets of Sausalito until 2:00 a.m. that night. Jillian and Benjamin came over, so did Mimi and Ryan. Sophia was there. And if Neil hadn’t been out of town covering a big game, he’d have been there too.

  Armed with flashlights, catnip, and Pounce, we scoured the neighborhood. I went through every backyard I could, crashed through bushes, climbed the secret stairs, and scurried down every pathway in the hills above the seaside town. I could hear my friends calling for him all around, shaking their Pounce cans.

  Clive was long gone.

  I knew everyone would have stayed out there all night, but when the fog got too thick to see through, and everyone’s teeth were chattering, we called off the search. Mimi had stayed back at the house in case he returned, and while she waited she created a Lost flyer with a picture of Clive and my phone number. We’d print them in the morning and hang them up all over town.

  I said good night to everyone, thanked them again for their help, and closed the door. And turned to Simon.

  “I’m exhausted, so I’m going to head up to bed. I’ll be up early tomorrow; I want to get a jump start on getting those flyers up.”

  “I’ll come up with you,” he said, starting to turn out the lights.

  “Leave that one on,” I said when he reached for the dining room light. I could hear the plastic sheeting blowing back and forth over the hole in the window. I’d slammed it shut so hard earlier that I’d broken a loose pane. He nodded and I went upstairs.

  My head hurt, my eyes were red and stinging with the tears I’d refused to shed. I plodded up the stairs and stopped at the end of the hall, looking down toward the tiny room at the end of the hall. Under the eaves.

  When Simon got to the top of the steps, he stopped behind me. “Caroline?”

  I felt him, warm and solid and so close to me. “A nursery?” I asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “You and Ruth were talking about that room becoming a nursery?”

  “Babe, it’s late. Let’s go to bed,” he replied, his tone icing a bit. He moved past me and into our bedroom. I followed him, my steps falling harder on the newly refinished floors.

  “It is late, but answer my question,” I said as he sank onto the new inflatable bed and started taking off his shoes.

  “Look. She said something to me about it being a nice room for a nursery, and I agreed. That’s it. End of story.”

  “Wrong. Beginning of story. You want a nursery?”

  “Caroline, come on. It’s late,” he said, starting for the bathroom and yanking his shirt off.

  “Hey, come back here,” I insisted, following him. “We’re not done talking about this.”

  “I think we are. You’re exhausted, I’m exhausted, and you’re making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be,” he snapped, kicking off his shoes.

  “This is a huge deal. Are you kidding me?” I shouted. “You want a nursery and you don’t even tell me about it? Yet you’re talking with Ruth about it? Who seems to have all kinds of things to say on the topic?”

  “I didn’t say I wanted a nursery. Dammit, Caroline, that’s not how it happened at all.”

  “Well, do you? Want a nursery?”

  “Sure. Yeah. Of course I do.”

  The world exploded.

  “Don’t you?” he asked.

  The world exploded twice.

  “I don’t know! I have no idea! Why in the world do I have to know that right now? Tonight?” I asked, my voice beginning to break.
It was all too much—the house, the job, the car, the chaos—and Clive.

  Brain and Backbone took a deep breath and steeled themselves. Heart couldn’t be anywhere near this. “Why the hell didn’t you fix that fucking window, Simon?”

  Silence. The kind of silence where you can hear the words you just said ringing back to you.

  We stared at each other across our master bedroom. How the hell did I get a master bedroom? Master bedrooms were something to aspire to, to grow into. Grown-ups had master bedrooms, and I didn’t know that I wanted to be a grown-up anymore. I just wanted my cat back.

  “Jesus, Caroline, I’m so sorry,” he said.

  I couldn’t look at him. I just couldn’t, because I knew I’d cave. And I was too angry to cave; too confused to cave.

  I walked away, went downstairs, got my keys, and left.

  • • •

  I went to a diner. It was the only place that was open, and I didn’t want to just drive around all night. And also, I wanted pie.

  Was it fair to blame Simon for what happened with Clive? Two schools of thought on this one.

  Technically, yes, I could blame him. He didn’t fix the window that I’d specifically asked him to fix. Had he fixed the window, Clive wouldn’t have run away. And right now? It felt good to blame him.

  The other school of thought, the mature-adult school, said that there’s no way I should even dream of blaming Simon for this. He loved Clive almost as much as I did, and he already felt terrible for what happened. So the right thing to do would be to call him, invite him down for pie, apologize for blaming him, and then band together to find our boy.

  I was pissed. And scared to death that I’d never see Clive again.

  When it was nearly dawn and there was no more pie, I decided to head home. When I walked out to the parking lot, there was Simon, getting out of his Range Rover and heading straight for me. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who was pissed.

  “What the hell, Caroline? I’ve been driving around for an hour looking for you!”

  “Get back in the car, Simon. I can’t talk about this right now.”

  “You wanna bet?” he warned, standing in front of my car door.

  “I really don’t want to do this right now.”

  “I really don’t care,” he said, angling his body as I tried to push past him.

  “Let me in.” I could feel the tears beginning, and if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. “It’s starting to rain.” Dammit, Clive was out in this rain.

  “Then we’ll stand here in the rain until you tell me what the hell is going on,” he said, crossing his arms and planting his feet. Then the sky really opened up, and big fat drops began to splatter everywhere. Yeah, those were raindrops on my cheeks.

  “Come on, Simon, let me in,” I protested, trying to slip past him again.

  “That’s funny. I was going to say the same thing,” he said, staring down at me.

  And that did it. The dam broke.

  “It’s too much, okay? It’s all just too! Fucking! Much!” It was all coming out; I was going full pickle.

  “What’s too much?” he asked, confused. “And what the hell does a pickle have to do with it?”

  I was officially losing my mind. “Ahhhh!” I screamed, stamping my feet and punching one hand with the other. “Simon, I can’t do it all. I literally can’t do it all.”

  “Who said you have to? And what exactly is all?”

  “I’m not fucking ready to be a full-on grown-up! You want a nursery? Christ, I just want to get laid on a beach in Brazil! You want to stop being a photographer? I just got offered a partnership, and I can’t turn it down! Because that would be ludicrous.” I stalked in a tiny circle, firing every pickle in my arsenal. “You went to one reunion and partied with the apostles, and suddenly, poof! You quit your job. And we bought this incredible house. And now you and Ruth are making plans. And fucking James Brown called me a decorator! Again! And his wife’s name is Krissy, and she’s got a bun in the oven and I bet their fucking nursery is just precious, so I told him you fuck me on the counter and—”

  “Stop. Just stop.” Simon grabbed my hands in his and held them down at my sides.

  “How in hell can I ever be enough? How can I ever be the wife and the mother that your mother was? How can I ever make a home for you as wonderful as the one that you grew up in? How can I be designer of the century and still have time to bake pies?” I wailed, letting out the sheer terror that had been bottled up for months. “And my cat’s gone, and I want him back,” I sobbed.

  “I know, babe,” Simon said, crushing me to his chest as I cried it out in the rain. “I know.”

  • • •

  Five minutes later we were stuffed into a booth, sitting across from one another. We each had coffee, and I had a wad of snotty paper napkins in front of me. Simon had a face full of questions, but he was still here. So that was good.

  “Okay, so . . . wow.” He dragged his hands through his hair. “You’ve got some things that you’ve been thinking about for a while, it sounds like.”

  “Yep.” I sighed, stirring my coffee.

  “I’ve got some thoughts now, if I may?” he asked.

  “Yep,” I said, steeling myself for the worst.

  “I realize that I might not have had many traditional relationships—but is what happened out there normal?”

  I looked up from my fingernail study in surprise, to see the tiniest bit of a smile on his face.

  “Caroline, I love the shit out of you. So calm down and just tell me what you need. No more holding back. And then I’ll tell you what I need, and we’ll figure out how to work it out.” He looked down, doubt now crowding out the tiny smile. “At least, I’m hoping we can work it out. If you want to.”

  “I want to,” I said quietly.

  “So let’s talk about it,” he answered.

  And so we did.

  I let every pickle fly, but without the yelling. It’s so much easier to talk when there’s no yelling.

  It’s also easier to talk when you’re being brutally honest. And he was too, which I appreciated.

  “I can’t believe you thought I was quitting my job. I could never stop doing what I do,” he said.

  “But you canceled all those trips.”

  “Yeah. But I was always going to head back out on the road.”

  “But after the reunion, you—”

  “You need to understand something. Going back east clarified some things for me, in a good way. I want a home again, and I want a family someday. That’s not going to change. And for the record, I’d never have a discussion with Ruth about something like that without first talking about it with you,” he said, taking my hand. “There’s a lot of things we probably should have discussed before we jumped into this house thing. I just got excited, I suppose. It’s something I’ve missed for a long time.”

  “I got excited too. And I love the house, don’t get me wrong. There are just all these expectations that come with a step like this, and I guess I just got overwhelmed. I knew how much this meant to you, how big a deal this was for you. I just didn’t know if I could measure up to what you wanted.”

  “I ran away from my past for years because it was too hard for me to deal with. Now I’m letting some of the good stuff back in. But the really good stuff is all with you, babe. The rest of it is just a pile of bricks. You want to get rid of the house? Done. You want to live in a hut on the beach in Bali? Done.”

  “I think I said get laid on a beach in Brazil —”

  “Done,” he breathed, his eyes dancing.

  I looked at him, my dream boyfriend.

  “I love that house. We’re not getting rid of the house,” I said, and leaned in. “And I do want a nursery—just not now. Is that okay?” I asked, suddenly very very serious. Jesus, this was big-time stuff.

  “It’s more than okay. Who said anything about now, anyway?”

  When I started to answer, he squeezed my hand and whispered, “
Please don’t drag poor Ruth back into this.”

  “I owe her an apology.”

  “Probably.”

  “And I owe you an apology.”

  “For what?”

  “For not trusting you enough to tell you what was going on. I should have. I just didn’t want to ruin things. Who could complain when things look so perfect?”

  “Better to complain than have a fight in a parking lot in the rain, don’t you think?”

  He had me there.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said, his brow wrinkling. “You were right, I should have fixed that window.”

  “Simon, no. I was mad and I never should have said—”

  “No, it’s my fault. But I’m going to find him, I promise.” I nodded, my eyes full again. “C’mere.”

  I went around to his side of the booth and let him pull me onto his lap. He held me tight, and I kissed him. And then we left to go find our cat.

  • • •

  The next morning we called the Humane Society, the ASPCA, our vet in the city, and even the pet hotel. The word was out. My cat was lost.

  Team Clive was out in force all day, traipsing all over the town. We talked to neighbors, made sure everyone knew whom to call if they caught sight of him.

  Simon and I walked together as we searched on until dark, holding hands and flashlights and calling his name until we were hoarse. It wasn’t the only reason my voice was hoarse; I couldn’t stop crying. I tried not to let Simon see, because never had a man felt more terrible about forgetting to fix a window. And when he saw my sadness, it made it worse for him. So I limited my tears to gas station bathrooms and kneeling down to pretend to tie a shoelace over and over again. Stolen moments of panic to keep a strong face. We’d find him. Of course we’d find him.

  But then it was the second day. And the third day. Then a week. I spent my nights lying awake listening for the click click click of that stupid hangnail, which would mean this was all just a silly nightmare and I’d wake up with Clive curled into my side. I’d listen for an angry caterwaul by the back door that was saying, “Hey, lady, you weren’t dreaming. I really did run away, but I’m home now, so let me the hell in—it’s freezing out here!”