The Southern Side of Paradise

by Kristy Woodson Harvey

  I leaned over and rested my head in my hands.

  Kyle ran his finger down the length of my spine, leaving goose bumps in its wake. It actually distracted me so much that for a moment, I forgot my life was falling apart around me.

  “Hey,” Kyle said, and I looked up at him. He smiled and wiped away my tears, and for a second, a beat of a beat, I thought he was going to try to kiss me. But he didn’t. He simply said, “Though she be but little . . .”

  He trailed off and raised an eyebrow at me, and I finished for him, “She is fierce.”

  I was reminded again of that night in LA and that he hadn’t forgotten, either. I wondered if it meant that maybe he remembered other things, too, and if that meant something. But then I looked down at my hand and wiped the thought away. I was engaged. I was Mark’s. And that definitely meant something, something I wasn’t willing to sacrifice, no matter how this moment with Kyle made me feel.

  I nodded. “I don’t feel fierce. I feel defeated.”

  Kyle stood up and began pacing around the cabin. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wanted to stand up, too, have him wrap his arms around me, and put my head on his chest. It occurred to me that was wrong, that I should want Mark to do that.

  “Em,” Kyle said, “it’s none of my business. It’s not my place to tell you how to run your life. I know you’re frustrated, and I know it’s hard, but sometimes, when it feels impossible, when it feels like you can’t go on for one more moment, that’s when the change is taking place; that’s when the really big things are happening.”

  I sniffed and nodded. “Kind of like in a workout.”

  He laughed. “Exactly. Those last reps that you push through make all the difference.”

  “The weird thing is,” I said, thinking back to all those nights alone in my apartment, “I would have sworn I never wanted to get married when I first moved to LA.” I shrugged. “But I mean, that future is all I know. My mom got married and had babies, Caroline got married and had babies, Sloane got married and had babies. So I feel like I need to get married and have babies, too.”

  He stopped pacing. “Wait. I thought we were talking about acting and Jack.”

  I waved my hand and said, “We are, but I’m having a full-on existential life crisis right now, and I’m going to need you to keep up.”

  He sat down beside me again, his eyes locked on mine, and I saw something pass through them, like maybe he had a secret he wanted to tell me. But all he said was, “Em, you’re you. You don’t have to do what they do.” He laughed under his breath. “And, I mean, I love your family, but I’m not sure storybook marriages are necessarily their forte.”

  Obviously, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that Caroline’s marriage was far from a fairy tale. Everyone thought Sloane and Adam were this perfect couple, but their relationship was just so traditional. It wasn’t what I wanted.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, it’s like even though their lives aren’t perfect, at least they have someone fighting for them, you know? Someone to share in their successes and their failures? They aren’t alone.”

  Something akin to incredulity passed over Kyle’s face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” He shook his head.

  I picked three yellow buttercups from the vase on the table beside me, the one I was sure my mother had put there. I jammed my pinkie fingernail through one, feeling the water inside the stem ooze underneath my nail. I inserted the stem of the next flower into the tiny hole I had made. I grabbed a few more and kept stringing them together, like my sisters and I had done when we were little.

  “You can’t ‘nothing’ me, Kyle,” I said. I looked up at him. “I know you. I can read you like a cereal box.”

  He laughed. “A cereal box?”

  “Well, yeah. A cereal box.”

  “Why not a book?” he asked, studying my fingers as they worked. He picked up a few yellow flowers of his own, mimicking my actions.

  “Because a book might be super-simple or terribly complex. A cereal box is always easy to read.” I paused, watching as he struggled. “No, no. You’re doing it too close to the bottom. The stems are going to break.” I put my hand on his, just to stop him. But then I felt my fingers wrapping around his as if I hadn’t been the one to do it. Kyle’s eyes locked on mine.

  I finally pulled away, feeling myself redden, and said, “Changing the subject isn’t working on me.”

  “Sometimes it does,” he almost whispered.

  “Kyle,” I persisted.

  “Fine,” he said, his fingers still stringing, not daring to look at me now, as if he were an ashamed child. “You may not see it this way, Emerson, but you are all alone. Mark may be chasing you, but he isn’t what Adam is to Sloane or even what James is to Caroline. Because your success is his failure, and your failure is his success.”

  I gasped, tears coming to my eyes yet again. It felt so cruel, those harsh words coming from him. I started to stand, wanted to walk away, but Kyle grabbed my wrist before I could.

  He stood now, too, and pulled me closer to him. Too close.

  “No,” he said, softening. “Don’t be angry at me. I only say this because I have to, Em. I can’t . . .” He trailed off. With the flowers he’d strung dangling from his arm, he pushed my hair behind my ears, sweeping it down my back, his fingertips grazing my shoulders. He took his flower chain and placed it on my head. “You are a princess,” he said. “And you deserve to be treated like one.”

  It sounded silly, ridiculous, even. But Kyle had a way of saying these really corny things that had so much truth in them that you couldn’t even roll your eyes, couldn’t even mind, couldn’t even feel embarrassed that he had said them.

  “It’s not his fault that he wants you to be all his, that he wants you to give up doing what you love,” Kyle said. “And it’s not your fault that you aren’t willing to. But you have to go into this with open eyes. You have to know that what you want isn’t what you’re going to have. And if you’re OK with that, then I wish you well. And if you’re not OK with that, be the woman I know, Emerson. The strong, confident, fiery woman I met in the bar that night, the one I knew I would never forget.”

  It was then that I realized that Kyle loved me, that maybe he always had. He’d had a drink named for me at his favorite bar, for God’s sake. That’s romance.

  I couldn’t deny that I felt things for Kyle that I shouldn’t—at least, not as a person engaged to another man. But with Kyle, there was uncertainty. I didn’t know exactly what to expect with him, couldn’t be positive that things would work out. I put my hand up to my flower crown and smiled just thinking of the way he would light up when he saw me, of the way I could tell him anything.

  But despite everything, I loved Mark. And maybe he would never be able to love me the way that I wanted him to. Maybe he would never love me the way I had imagined. But he did love me. Maybe that was enough. Maybe enough was all that some of us ever got.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ansley: beautiful blond giraffe

  When I woke up that morning, it took a moment for it all to come back to me, as it usually did. Some mornings, it began with 9/11, the phone call that Carter had made, the one where he said he was going to be OK but then he wasn’t. Sometimes the realization that my mom was gone flooded back to me first. Today the first thought to steal my peace was that my daughters knew. Emerson storming out. Sloane’s devastated eyes. Caroline’s cold expression. It was all running through my mind now. The thing I had kept a secret for all these years. The thing I feared would absolutely wreck their lives if they found out.

  Now none of them was speaking to me, which had wrecked my own. I had spent the night at Jack’s house, and I still couldn’t quite gather the courage to leave.

  I took a moment now to gaze out through the double French doors on the front of the house that led out to the balcony off Jack’s room. The water looked so peaceful. It was a perfect boat day. I knew that Jack an
d I would take a cocktail cruise that evening. Jack. Me. I stepped outside to inhale the salt air.

  As I began to turn to walk inside, I noticed a car pulling into the driveway. The gate was closed, so the black Range Rover had to stop in front of it, giving me the perfect view. A woman stepped out of the car. Probably around Caroline’s age. Even from upstairs, I could tell that she was extraordinarily tall, certainly nearly six feet if you included the snakeskin stilettos she had paired with a black sleeveless sheath that hugged her body perfectly. A single strand of baroque pearls hung around her neck, and her blond hair was long down her back.

  She was striking, absolutely beautiful, the kind of girl you would expect to see on a runway, not a driveway. My interest was piqued. And then she rang the doorbell.

  I looked down and instantly regretted wearing a pair of yoga pants and a top. With my hair unwashed and no makeup on, I did not look runway-ready like the girl downstairs. But for the first time in a long time, when I looked at myself, I didn’t see all the flaws. I didn’t see the wrinkles I should probably have attended to or the age spots on my forearms. I was still strong, still in great shape, and I had a man who loved me.

  As I made my way downstairs, I heard the sound of muffled voices in the hallway. Jack, who’d been fixing us breakfast in the kitchen, must have beaten me to the door and the mystery woman. Maybe this was the new real estate agent who Georgia, Jack’s former Realtor-turned-girlfriend, whom he had dated during the weeks we were apart, had sent to take her place since she and Jack had called it quits. Perhaps placing this woman with my man was her way of getting even with me. I smiled to myself. Well played, Georgia. Well played.

  I tiptoed down the stairs. The way the walls were configured, I knew I could go into the entrance hall and the wall would block me from their view. It was stupid, I knew. I could have walked in. But despite how good I felt, I still didn’t really want to meet this beautiful stranger in my exercise clothes.

  Biscuit, who was happily living back in her old house with Jack, found me in the corner and whined at my feet. “I’ll take you for a walk in just a minute,” I whispered to her.

  “I made a huge mistake,” the woman was saying, in a voice that was at once strong and vulnerable—the voice of an opponent, I was coming to realize. “I’ve tried to move on, Jack, but nothing makes sense without you. I’d rather have you than a baby. I’d rather have you than anything else in the entire world.”

  I couldn’t see them, but I could imagine her moving closer to him.

  “Jack,” she said softly, “I am more convinced than ever that you are my soul mate. I love you with everything I have in me.”

  I leaned against the wall, biting my lip to keep from crying, putting my hand on my heart to keep it from pounding out of my chest. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t burst in on this private moment and reveal that I had heard it all. I couldn’t run in like a crazy woman and shout that I would fight for my man. But had he been cheating on me? I wouldn’t stand for that.

  “Lauren,” he said, and sighed.

  His ex-wife. Now I really was reeling. I had known she was younger, but Jack hadn’t exactly let on that the woman he had been married to was practically a goddess. I was pretty sure every beautiful blonde born in the ’80s was named Lauren. I thought of all the Laurens in Caroline’s class. Caroline’s class. I glimpsed myself in the mirror over the chest and suddenly saw myself again as I had for all those years. The lines around my mouth and eyes, the bit of gray starting to peek through at my part line where it needed to be colored. The way the tops of my arms weren’t as defined and shapely as they’d once been.

  This girl standing in there with Jack was young enough to be my daughter. It didn’t matter how much I loved him or how much I fought for him or how much he acted like he loved me. He was a man. His future with her would be the breathtaking, uphill climb where you’re full of excitement and anticipation. His life with me would be the screaming and terror on the way back down.

  I was trying to figure out if I could sneak out the front door without them noticing me. They were so caught up in the melodrama happening in the living room, I could probably be stabbed to death upstairs, and no one would even hear my screams.

  I turned and started toward the door, but when Jack said, “Lauren, I have given you everything you want. Just sign the papers,” I stopped.

  Sign the papers. The papers?

  “But that’s just it, Jack. I don’t want your money. I want you. I want the way you always took my hand when we walked and the way you held me close to you at night. I want the way you would look at me across a crowded room and I would know that I was yours. I want to make you poached eggs in the morning and read the paper together. I want—”

  As if something from outside of me had taken over, I found myself in the doorway. Lauren’s back was to me, but Jack was facing me, and when I cut her off, saying, “You aren’t divorced?” they both turned to look at me.

  “Who are you?” Lauren asked, as Jack was saying, “Ansley, it isn’t like that.”

  “It isn’t like what?” Lauren asked.

  All these thoughts were streaming through my mind, fighting to get out. But all I could do was repeat, “You aren’t divorced?” I could feel the blush in my face, and I knew I was practically purple by that point.

  Before Jack could answer, Lauren said, “Wait a minute. This is Ansley?”

  I wanted to defend myself in some way, maybe defend Jack. I wanted to say, You should see me when I’m dressed with my makeup on. I didn’t, of course. I just stood there, mouth agape, like an idiot, trying to make sense of the fact that Jack was still married and that, even more shocking, he was married to this beautiful blond giraffe.

  I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t hear any more, couldn’t process any more.

  I turned to walk away, with Jack calling “Ansley!” behind me.

  I heard Lauren say, “Jack, let her go.”

  And in that moment, as my feet hit the wooden front porch, the glass-paned storm door slamming behind me, I had the sinking feeling that since he was still married to her, it was possible that Jack could do exactly that.

  TWENTY-TWO

  emerson: wife material

  The first few moments after waking up are always the best of the day. In the silence, the mind heavy with sleep, we can forget everything. We can forget that we helped end our grandmother’s life or that our father is dead. We can forget that our mom’s fiancé is our sisters’ dad and that our entire lives have changed in an instant. We can forget we are fighting with our mother or that we had a moment with our barista the day before that was way too intense for an engaged girl.

  I didn’t often wake up in the morning with my head still on Mark’s chest, but this morning, I did. I must have slept really hard, and he must have, too. It was quite the feat that we got to sleep together at all, but since I wasn’t speaking to my mother, it didn’t make much sense to go home. Since Mark’s mother was sleeping in the room next door, I was going to have to climb out the window later. But it was really no big deal. I had perfected climbing out this window about a decade earlier.

  “Only eighteen days until you’re mine, all mine,” Mark said.

  I smiled and stretched, savoring the sight of the sliver of sun that peeked through the crack in the curtains. “Yay!” I said as quietly and enthusiastically as possible.

  I didn’t want to bring up bad things this early in the morning, but I also couldn’t stand the thought of being apart from Mark the day after we got married. Filming started the day after that, so I had to go back to LA to get my ducks in a row.

  “Will you please, please, come to LA for a few weeks? Please?”

  He kissed my head. “Only if you promise me we can take a proper honeymoon as soon as you’re finished filming.”

  I kissed him on the lips. “I positively promise.”

  He kissed me again, this time deeper, and I giggled. “Shhhh,” he said. “You have to be really, really qui
et.”

  “I can do that,” I whispered back.

  It was a perfect morning in every way—except, of course, that Mom and I weren’t speaking. But I was an excellent compartmentalizer and kept pushing that thought away as soon as it came.

  I put on the bikini and white crocheted cover-up I had left on the floor the night before and was getting ready to climb out the window when Mark said, “Meet me at the front door.”

  “Don’t you have to go to work?”

  He grinned. “I took the morning off. I thought we could go paddleboarding if you’re feeling up to it.”

  I was feeling up to anything today. Mark and I had talked through the Jack situation, and he, as usual, was very levelheaded, which made me feel levelheaded in turn. I hadn’t even mentioned the movie, because why would I weigh him down with bad news if I didn’t have to? I really felt like I was morphing into wife material.

  A few minutes later, as I floated beside Mark on the waterway, making long, smooth strokes with my paddle, he said, “I was thinking it would be really cool if we left the wedding by paddleboard. Like if that was our going-away car.”

  I wanted to point out that this might be tricky considering I was going to be wearing a wedding gown. But Mark hadn’t made one single decision about this wedding, so it seemed maybe it was his turn. Besides, I could change into a white bikini, and that would be really cool and sexy and very movie-star-esque.

  “What else?” I asked.

  “The only other thing I really want to do is cut the top off a magnum of champagne with a sword when we cut the cake.”

  I almost lost my balance, I laughed so hard.

  “No, I’m serious,” Mark said.

  I wasn’t a parent, but I always heard that you should fight the big fights. That sounded awful to me, but if it was Mark’s dream, then so be it.

  He nosed his board onto the sandy beach at Starlite Island, and I followed suit, pulling it up on the sand so it wouldn’t float away.