The big-screens in the bar caught my eye and gave me an idea for changing the topic.
I said, “Your father found the picture-in-picture function on the TV.”
“Good for him.” He kept frowning. “Hey, so what’s happening with you and Sawyer?”
I shrugged.
“He asked for your phone number, but I told him I’d check with you first.”
A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed it down. “He did? I guess you could give him my number.”
Bruce nodded. “I may have already given it to him yesterday. We were hitting the vodka pretty hard.”
“Uncle Bruce, I’m starting to think you don’t even drink.”
He grinned. “That’s what some people choose to believe.”
“Thanks for the check,” I said, splitting the cash evenly between my two pockets.
“Off to get Annabell? What do you girls have planned for tonight?”
“Oh, we have a play date.”
“How very normal,” he said, nodding appreciatively.
I thanked him again for cashing my check, and got going so I wasn’t late to meet Natalie at the school.
Going to her house empty-handed seemed rude, so I stopped at a convenience store to buy her flowers. I spent about ten minutes agonizing over what to get. And why hadn’t Sawyer called? Did he lose my number immediately after getting it? Fuck.
Finally, I picked out an orchid. It looked fancy, but wasn’t much more to buy than the little pot of tea roses I’d been considering. Would Natalie think I was stupid? Probably. Whatever. Natalie was cool.
Why did I always argue with myself? It made even the simplest decisions that much harder.
I paid for the orchid, careful to pull only one bill from my pocket, and not to take out the wad of cash and peel one off. That was something big, muscular guys did. You didn’t flash your money if you were a woman, even if the tiny old man behind the store counter was almost as scared of you as you were of him.
Chapter Fourteen
I was running and out of breath when I finally got to the front door of the school. Natalie was there already, and Bell was sitting on the step, tying her shoelaces as Taylor watched.
Taylor said, “Your shoes have way too many holes in them. You should wear different ones.”
Bell said, “But I like these ones! They’re just how I like them, and we’re saving up for Disneyland.”
Natalie gave me an exaggerated curious look, raising her thin blond eyebrows high above her funky plastic glasses. “Planning a trip this summer?”
“Maybe not this summer.”
She winked at me. “Gotcha.”
Bell finished tying her shoes, and we walked together along the front of the school to find their vehicle, which was a large SUV. Why was I not surprised?
We got the girls into the back seat together, and before Natalie walked around to her side, she stopped by me and said, “Listen, how about I start hyping something a little closer to home. We can get her switched off Disneyland. Did you know there’s a zoo out in Abbotsford? Oh, and there’s a water park in Tsawwassen. Oh, screw my life. What is that place called? Splashing Mountain? Something like that.”
“That’s really sweet of you, but I don’t know if I can afford either of those.”
Natalie looked sad, her forehead furrowing. She had her curly blond hair tied back in a loose braid, and she looked so mature, yet still girlish. With her little jean jacket, striped shirt, and her leather boots, she looked like a style icon compared to me, in my boring old don’t-look-at-me clothes. I never bought clothes with stripes or loud patterns, because I didn’t want people to notice I wore the same things week after week.
“I’ll keep an eye out for coupons,” she said as she walked around to her side.
As I got into her nice truck, I felt a rush of gratitude. I didn’t deserve to have people being so kind to me, but I swore one day I’d make it up to everyone.
When we got to their house, I understood why Natalie had been so crushed about selling it. Except for the For Sale sign posted in the front yard, with the smiling face of a goatee-wearing real estate agent named Kewal beaming out, it was a perfect house, with a bright yellow door that smelled of fresh paint.
We got the girls set up with some after-school snacks, and they ran off to play in Taylor’s room.
“They grow up too fast,” Natalie said. “Everyone says it, but it’s true. I do look forward to her being a teenager. I have this daydream of us sharing clothes, like I did growing up with my big sister.”
“That sounds nice.”
“How’s Bell fitting in with the new school and all the changes? I heard she was so quiet the first few weeks at school. During recess, she’d hide in a corner with her nose facing the school. I guess she thought if she couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see her.”
“Who told you that?” I used my thumb to pick up some loose crumbs on Natalie’s nice granite counter. Nobody had mentioned Bell was hiding during recess. My heart broke for her, and I felt awful that I had no idea. I should have stopped in more often.
“Oh, I get full reports from Taylor,” Natalie said. “She’ll be a reporter when she grows up. That day Bell got upset and threw up on herself, that was the story of the century.”
“That wasn’t very funny.”
Natalie looked aghast. “No, I didn’t mean that it was funny. Taylor told me, and she was very sorry she’d taken the game, and wanted to make it up to Bell. I think it all worked out.”
“You’re kidding. That was Taylor, and now they’re the best of friends?”
Natalie ushered me toward the living room. “That’s girls for you.”
We sat in the living room, using the ample-sized coffee table to hold a plate of the same squares we’d given the girls, plus sweet tea that Natalie called iced tea, though it was already sweetened.
Natalie continued, “That’s how it is with girls. Don’t you remember? All those dramatic fights with your girlfriends? Especially in high school?”
“I guess I was more of a loner. We lived outside of town a fair ways, so I took the bus home and didn’t get into much with the other girls.” The other girls being the ones who called me trailer trash.
“How about boyfriends?”
I helped myself to a square and some tea. “Hey, did you have an open house or something over the weekend? For selling the place? How did that go?”
“Fine. We got an offer. They’re doing an inspection this week, then they’ll remove subjects.”
“Do you mean you’re in escrow?”
She laughed. “You’re so American. We don’t call it that.” She pulled at her braid, removing the elastic band then finger-combing out her curly blond hair. “What about now?” she asked. “You don’t have a man living with you, but you wear that ring, so how are you supposed to find a boyfriend?”
“I don’t want a boyfriend.” Especially if he didn’t call.
She looked me up and down, an amused look on her face. “No boyfriend, so… girlfriend?”
“No, not like that. I just mean… I don’t want some guy around, making things confusing for Bell. I grew up with a… well, he wasn’t a stepfather, because there was nothing official, but ...” My throat got tight, cutting off my voice. I never could talk about Derek with people, not even back when we were all living together.
“So don’t pick a shitty one,” she said, as if it was that simple. “Life is hard Aubrey, but it’s even harder if you pick that narrow martyr path and insist on doing everything your own damn self. Our generation of women, we were sold a pack of lies. We were told to hustle on to university right after high school. Ratchet up that student debt load. And for what? Most of us aren’t even close to having the loans paid off by the time the clock starts ticking. So you work your ass off from twenty to let’s say thirty-three, then it’s sleepless nights with the baby crying. You’re forty by the time your life gets halfway fun again, and to think, you could have just skipped
the whole hard work thing and cashed in the good looks of youth back when you were twenty, to an older man with some security.”
“Is that what you did?”
She grinned as her voice pitched up in a “Hell, no! Do I look that smart? Don’t answer that.”
I sipped my sweet tea and smiled, trying to relax on her cream-colored sofa, though the food made me nervous. How could the woman have both a seven-year-old and a white sofa?
She continued, “I was one year out of college when I got pregnant with Taylor. Word of advice? The withdrawal method is not an adequate form of birth control. But I guess you know that, of all people.” She clapped her hand to her mouth. “Whoops.”
“Bell was a surprise,” I said, which was true. My mother saw the doctor for some indigestion and found out she was five months along. She quit smoking immediately, but that small change threw off everything. We were living with her boyfriend Terry at the time—I’m fairly certain it was Terry who gave Bell her light brown hair—and he seemed eager to be having a child, but not with my mother. They had always fought a lot, but he’d tell her to go have a cigarette to cool down, and she would. With the baby on the way, and without her five-minute tobacco meditations, the tension ratcheted up and wouldn’t break.
They’d fight about anything, from the dirty flip-flops Terry wore absolutely everywhere but to work, to the way my mother would have the radio and the television going at the same time, in different rooms. Terry worked at a bank, in mortgage lending. He had a good job that supported us. With skinny shoulders and a big overbite, he wasn’t any woman’s idea of a dream man, but he was beautiful to me, because he welcomed me into his nice home and never made me feel like I didn’t deserve a decent life.
One day, not long before the baby was born, he took me for a long drive to get ice cream. He told me that no matter what happened in the future, he thought of me as family, and I could ask him if I needed anything at all. That was when I knew things weren’t going to work out for us.
My mother had the baby and we left Terry with a broken heart and the hospital bill. The last we heard from him, he was trying to get a paternity test done, but my mother wouldn’t cooperate. We moved out of state, with no forwarding address, and that was the end of Terry.
Bell had skinny shoulders, like Terry, but they suited her, and she was lucky she didn’t get his overbite. Poor Terry.
Now I was in another country, and as I sat on the cream sofa across from Natalie, who perched on her coordinating plum-colored chair, I realized Terry kept living his life after we left. He wasn’t one of those prehistoric insects trapped in amber the moment we left. He might have gotten a new girlfriend, and perhaps Bell had some half-siblings she’d never know.
Natalie asked me a question, but I had to ask her to repeat herself.
She said, “How old were you when you got pregnant?”
I had to quickly work backwards. I’d been telling people I was twenty-five, four years older than reality, so that would have made me eighteen when I had Bell, and seventeen when I got pregnant.
“Nearly eighteen,” I said. “It was scary, but her father had a good job at a bank, so we got married and had her.”
“But then?”
I reached down and pulled off my lie of a wedding band. “I mostly wear this to keep guys from asking questions. The truth is, I haven’t seen Bell’s father in a very long time.”
“Don’t let me stop you from wearing that ring.” She held up her left hand, wiggling her fingers. “People started giving me way more respect once I got one of these. Oh, the men completely stopped looking in that other way, but I get great service in stores.” She grinned. “Another thing they don’t tell you about life as a woman in our culture.”
I cocked my head, that alarm in my head going off to alert me that Bell was being too quiet. What trouble was she getting into? Then I heard peals of laughter. I still couldn’t let go of my tense muscles, though, and the feeling something bad was about to happen.
***
I used to think a lie was a one-time thing, like an egg cracked against the edge of a pan, but a lie is more like a piece of string that you have to keep tying knots in so everything doesn’t come undone.
We had a big dinner at Natalie’s house, and I met her husband, Dave. He ran a landscaping company, putting in lawns and trees for new housing developments. Dave had a whole lot of ideas about the real estate market, based on the things he was seeing. I found out the house we were in was the fifth one they’d owned. He mentioned some other investments that were about to pay off, and plans to buy an even better house, but I could spot the lies. His face went blank when he said things that weren’t true. He practically looked dead when he said the decision to sell their current house had been Natalie’s idea.
She handed me the bowl of Caesar salad and gave me a wide-eyed look to confirm that he was bluffing.
After dinner, Natalie drove us home, and she got out of the truck so she could give us both a hug goodbye. She had insisted on giving us the small television from her daughter’s room, further insisting that I think of it as a loan rather than a gift, and give it back any time. I could see by the look in Bell’s eyes that she’d never let it go. I cradled the television in one arm and held Bell’s hand with the other.
The sun hadn’t set yet, and we were bathed in a warm, golden glow. Briefly, it was one of those perfect moments, the stillness after a big meal and togetherness.
Over by the entrance to my building, the wannabe-gangster kids were hanging out, smoking what smelled like pot.
As Bell and I approached the door, they cleared out of the way and kept a respectful distance. Though he wasn’t with me, I felt Sawyer’s protective presence.
The kids glared at me silently. I kept expecting something bad to happen, like for them to throw something at me or try to take the little television. I kept my body between them and Bell, but nothing happened.
Back up inside the apartment, I set the television on the coffee table, and as Bell danced around, I caught my breath. My heart raced from the stairs plus my nervousness about seeing the kids.
My cell phone started ringing with a call from an unknown number. I answered, sure it was a wrong number.
“Did you just get home?”
Sawyer Jones. So he had gotten my number.
Warily, I answered, “I did just get home. Why do you ask?”
“Don’t freak out, but I was riding past your building to see if those little shitheads were hanging around the front door. I know your place isn’t on the way to my house, so I’m not going to lie. I was driving by… because I just was.”
I went to the window and looked out. Our unit was on the corner, and one side looked down onto the front street. “I see you.”
He waved up at me, leaning against his bike, his helmet taken off. “Now I know what apartment you’re in. I got turned around last time I was here, and wasn’t sure if you were in that one on the corner. Now I’m going to have to drive by accidentally-on-purpose and see if your light is on or not. Do you think that qualifies as stalking?”
I leaned my forehead against the glass, wishing I could see the expression on his face, but he was too far away. “I don’t mind if you check in on me a bit.”
“I think I saw your daughter. Was that you just now, with a television in your arms?”
“That was us. I made a friend through Bell. Well, she made a friend, and I met her mother, and they loaned us a television.”
“Friends are good. Am I your friend?”
I didn’t know how to answer that—didn’t like that he was asking—so I said nothing.
The phone beeped to warn me the battery was low, then Sawyer said, “I wish you could come down, so we could go for a ride.”
“Gotta give the kid her bath and get her ready for bed, but she’s already got the TV plugged in, so… good luck to me with that.”
“What’s the bath thing all about, anyway? Why don’t little kids have showers in the
morning before school, like regular people?”
“It calms them down before bed. You should try it sometime.”
He ran his hand over his hair, turned to look behind him, then back up at me in the window. “I already know what calms me down before bed.”
The sexy gravel in his voice sent a shiver through me.
My phone beeped again, its final warning. “My battery’s about to die.”
“So, are you going to invite me up or not?”
“Not tonight,” I said.
I didn’t get his last words, because the phone completely shut down.
Down below on the street, Sawyer shook his phone and jokingly pretended to throw it away, across the road into the trees. Then he stood still and stared up at me. I waved goodbye. He gave me a quick wave, then put on his helmet and disappeared into the night.
I stood at the window for a long time, even though Bell was squealing for my attention. Why hadn’t I asked him to come up? Then he’d be inside the apartment with me, and not red taillights streaking away under an orange sky.
My chest ached with loss. If he’d called me from his house, it wouldn’t have been so sad, but he’d been right here, and now he wasn’t.
Bell probably wouldn’t have minded him coming up. She was outgoing, and every new grown-up was just a friend she hadn’t met. She was more cautious around kids her age, but now she had a friend in Taylor. Taylor seemed like a normal, sweet kid, and I could imagine the two of them being friends for life.
What would that feel like, to have a best friend? Natalie had opened up to me so quickly, as though she’d never been let down before—as if the simple willingness to become friends was all it took.
Natalie wouldn’t want to be friends with me if she knew I snooped in her medicine cabinet when we were at dinner, or that I’d stole from her jar of expensive-looking eye treatment. It was the stuff that came in individual gelatin capsules. I hadn’t put it under my eyes, but stood at her sink and squeezed a gold capsule between my fingers. Gently first, and then harder. I squeezed until the capsule burst open, and then I washed the gel away under the hot water, until nothing was left.
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