The Life You've Imagined

by Kristina Riggle

  While I’m prattling on, I can’t help but think how natural and relaxed Anna and Will are together. They’re not doing anything wrong, really, here. They’re old friends and clearly not sneaking around because they’re having lunch right out in the open with us.

  But if I were Samantha, I’d be pissed. And knowing Samantha the little I do, she will be, when she hears of it.

  Under the table, Paul strokes my knee with his thumb and I relax. Even though we couldn’t talk privately, now I know: All is forgiven.

  I squeeze his hand back. I forgive you, too.

  The check comes and we ask the waitress to split it by pairs. I also ask her to box up the remains of my fresh fruit for my snack later today. I see Anna make a grab for the check, but Will gets to it first, and there’s some whispered debate before he wins, slapping down his Visa.

  I start to get up as they do, but Paul gently takes my arm. “Wait a minute, babe?” he asks.

  “Sure . . .” I glance at my watch. I’ll have just enough time to get back. Barely.

  Anna and Will nod to us, and I notice as they leave that his hand hovers behind her lower back, not quite touching, as if she might fall at any time and he needs to be at the ready. I also notice they make a wrong turn outside the door, walking the opposite direction from their respective workplaces. As they pass the large front window, Anna’s head is down, arms folded, and Will is speaking to her, his posture bent so he can be close to her face.

  I turn to Paul in the booth, and my breath catches in my chest because he looks positively gray.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Amy . . .” He takes my hand in his and it’s like when he proposed, only he’s not on one knee, this place stinks of bacon fat, and he looks like he might throw up. “We may need to postpone the wedding.”

  Chapter 23

  Cami

  I think this is why Jesus was a carpenter: It’s easy to be serene and turn the other cheek when you can pound nails and saw wood and sand until your biceps turn rubbery.

  The mattress set I bought at Salvation Army is propped up on my sunny yellow wall, and the finished floor is smooth under my toes. And now I’m building myself a bed because, why not, yeah?

  It’s that or take a bus to an Indian casino and fall right off that cliff again. So, bed it is.

  Also, I know Sherry is still asleep in here somewhere, and I’m pounding as loudly as I can so she’ll leave. I haven’t touched her again and don’t plan to. But I never promised her a monastery.

  My thumb explodes in fire, only it doesn’t really, that’s just what it feels like when I smash it with a hammer.

  I can hardly see through my watery eyes as I fumble out to the kitchen and fill a baggy with ice. This is as good a time as any for a break, I’d say.

  I drop the lock-hook into place back in my room and sit cross-legged, cradling my iced thumb, with a photo album on the floor in front of me.

  It’s not as old as I’d hoped, this album. It’s from my own youth, not my mom’s, so there aren’t any clues in here as to the identity of the mysterious rich family who called my mother Pammie.

  I’m tempted to call my Aunt Clara and ask, but just picturing her pious pout makes me want to spit in her face.

  I’m grateful there are no pictures in here of my mom sick. I don’t need to see that. Because she was always the family photographer, when she fell ill, the pictures stopped.

  Not that it’s easy to look at pictures of Trent and me gallivanting in a park somewhere, knowing my smiling mother was behind the camera, clicking.

  My thumb’s throbbing eases up and I sneak a look under the ice bag. The thumbnail is turning purple.

  I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial.

  “Hi, Steve.”

  “Oh, Cami.”

  “I know you said not to call, but . . . well, since when have I done what I’m told, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a smile in his voice, I just know it. “So listen, I’ve been really good so far. Not so much as a poker chip anywhere near me. I’m even staying away from potato chips just to be safe.”

  “Well, good. So you’re okay, then.”

  “Sort of.” In the pause, my gaze falls on the photo album, on a rare picture of my mom and dad together. Trent must have grabbed the camera. My dad is smiling at my mom, apparently unaware of my brother the paparazzo. “So, keeping my side of the bed warm for me?”

  I cringe at myself. I’m not good at needy.

  He clears his throat and I clench my eyes shut, wishing I could pull those words back. I should hang up. My good thumb hovers over the “end call” button. I wait for his answer anyway.

  “Actually, I’m seeing someone else.”

  “You are, yeah? Good for you.” I suck in a breath and move the phone slightly away so he can’t hear the effort this takes to hold it all in.

  “I’m sorry, but I did tell you not to call.”

  “I know.”

  “Cami? Are you there?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “Say something.”

  “Something.”

  He laughs at this, like he always laughs at my jokes. Always used to, I should say. “C’mon, I want to know you’re okay.”

  I put the phone on the floor long enough to let my breath out and pick the phone back up. “I’m fine, yeah? Aren’t I always?”

  “That’s my girl. Look, take care, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  I hang up and drop the phone on my bed. My door rattles against the hook-lock and I hurriedly shove the photo album into my closet.

  I open the door to see Sherry in all her wrinkly, smeared, hung-over glory. “What?”

  “What happened to you?” she asks, squinting at my face.

  “I hit my thumb with a hammer. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work.”

  “Are you okay?” Maeve asks me as I come in. She’s at the register.

  “Allergies,” I answer. “Also, I hit myself with a hammer. See my amazing Technicolor thumb? And where’s Anna?”

  Maeve’s jaw clenches briefly before she says, “I sent her out for a break. It was getting a little crowded in here.”

  Sally is in the store, restlessly wandering from shelf to shelf, picking things up and putting them down. “You sure you don’t need help, sister dear?” she calls. “I could straighten up some . . . Whoops!” There’s a loud crashing, and in the rear of the store I can see a display of cereal come tumbling down.

  “She’s making me crazy,” Maeve hisses. “I’ll pay you a million dollars to take her out of here for the day.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather get out somewhere? Let me hold down the fort?”

  “I don’t feel like going anywhere. Honestly, I just want her out of my hair.”

  “In that case, I’ll do it pro bono. What does she like to do?”

  “She likes the Indian casino,” Maeve says. “She’ll sit there at the nickel slots for hours.”

  I walk to the back of the store and start setting up the boxes again. “Hey, Sal. You feeling lucky today?”

  It’s not quite as grand as the Detroit casinos, but none of them are much different. They’re all loud, for one thing, both in decor and volume. Sally zooms right over to the cheapest slots as fast as her skinny legs can go, a plastic cup of coins in her hand.

  I’ll wander around a little, I tell her. Just to poke around.

  I didn’t bring much cash, on purpose. But I did bring my ATM card. For emergencies.

  My wandering brings me past the blackjack table, and all I do is watch, at a distance back. One of the players sees me and gestures to an empty seat. I raise my hand and shake my head: no, thanks.

  I can’t believe he just took another card. Imbecile. He groans and I groan inside my head because anyone with brains saw that coming. I shift my weight, tapping my foot. I adjust my glasses and finally rip myself away.

  It was Steve who first brought me to the casino. Little did he know.

&n
bsp; I was still living with Elizabeth then, before she moved out to live with her boyfriend, sticking me with half the lease left and no roommate. My tutoring paychecks were flimsy, and I was just seeing Steve. We were bored of movies and the weather was too rotten to take a walk, so he suggested ducking into the MGM Grand. We were laughing about it, poking fun, having drinks, all the while acting like we were above this kind of thing.

  I sat down at a table of five-card draw and won Elizabeth’s share of the rent for the next three months. Then I tore down the poster in my grocery store advertising for a new roommate and moved my things into her side of the closet.

  By the time I moved in with Steve, when my lease was up, I’d discovered online gambling, and sure, I had my ups and downs, but I was mostly up.

  Until I wasn’t. And every attempt I made to get back on top, I only lost more. I just knew I was about to get back on track. He was never supposed to know.

  I walk up to the bar to fetch myself a 7-Up.

  “Having a lucky day?” asks a round-faced blond guy next to me. His hair is sticking up funny and he looks like Dennis the Menace in a midlife crisis. He’s actually wearing a Members Only jacket.

  “Not really, no.”

  He smiles at me, too huge for the occasion, and looks me up and down. “I’d say my day is lucky, now.”

  “Spare me, Casanova.”

  “Bitch,” he spits, and stumbles off his barstool.

  The bartender hands me my pop and smiles. “Good for you. He’s used that same line on the last three girls that came up here. Everyone else just ran away.”

  I turn my back to the bartender and put my elbow on the bar. He’s flirting, too. Everyone’s always out for something.

  A blackjack table is in my line of sight, and as a matter of fact, so is an ATM machine. Maybe I’ll just check my balance, and only take out a little bit. Only what I can afford to lose; isn’t that what the public service announcements say?

  My hands are quivering just a bit as I punch in my PIN number. It’s not nerves or fear. This is the beginning of the buzz, and I want to weep with how happy it makes me to feel it again. I’d almost succeeded in burying it in the recesses of my animal brain, pretending I never enjoyed the cards, the winning, the battle.

  I snatch the cash out of the mouth of the machine and stuff it down into my pocket, striding over to the little window where a young man supposedly named Felix fetches my chips.

  “Good luck,” Felix says, and winks.

  The dealer greets me extravagantly, like an old friend he hasn’t seen in years. The feeling is mutual.

  Chapter 24

  Anna

  When I return to the Nee Nance, my clothes still haven’t completely dried from this morning’s sprint in the rain. The sensation is sticky and I can’t wait to get these clothes off, especially since I felt like a rube sitting there in my shorts and cotton shirt next to three people dressed for business.

  My mother is at the counter, leafing through a tabloid.

  “Mom, I thought you were resting. Where’s Cami?”

  “The store isn’t busy. I was going batty upstairs anyway, and Sally was making me batty down here. I sent Cami and Sally to the casino.”

  “Want me to run down to the store and pick up a book for you? Or the library?”

  My mom glances down at the magazine, closes it, and then slips it to the side. “No, thanks.” She comes around the counter and glances around. We’re alone in the store. She reaches for my hand and I let her take it, though physical affection now that I’m an adult feels strange to me. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. You were trying to help. And this was your home, too.”

  I glance around at the store, which I hated as soon as my dad left. It quit being a fun place when he wasn’t there to hand me candy off the rack, ignoring Mom’s tsk about screwing up the inventory and the enamel on my teeth. Plus, I was just starting middle school and kids started to notice who was wearing second-hand clothes and who couldn’t have sleepovers because there was no room in her tiny cubby above a liquor store.

  But all that was before someone was trying to take it away from my mother, from me.

  “I don’t want to give up on this, Mom.”

  She squeezes my hand again. “Honey, what’s the point? You hated this place, and this isn’t exactly what I wanted for myself.”

  “But you don’t have any time! You won’t get unemployment as a sole proprietor, and you don’t own any property. You need some kind of income, and . . . jobs aren’t so easy to come by these days.” I’d started to say unskilled jobs but knew how that would sound.

  A customer approaches the counter with an armload, and a few more come in the door. I join my mother at her side, bagging up the stuff to speed things along.

  I’m immediately distracted by the mental play-by-play of the lunch I just endured. I’d hoped to catch Beck for a quick bite, one measly hour with an old friend outside the confines of this lousy store. We just had to bump into that brat brother and Amy Rickart in the same restaurant and get stuck with them. So when the meal ended and the rain had finally faded away, I walked with Beck even as he turned in the opposite direction of Becker Development and the Nee Nance.

  First he invited me to his family’s Fourth of July party, insisting it was no problem with his wife and saying I could easily avoid Paul in the crowd. I laughed at that, because I couldn’t even avoid Paul at lunch. After extracting from me a promise I’d think about attending, he asked about my job, when I was going back.

  And I told him, much to my own surprise, I don’t want to. So don’t, he said, and I told him it’s not that simple, and he replied, in effect, I was the only one making it complicated.

  He stopped walking in front of a store selling Petoskey stone renderings of the lower peninsula and other whimsical magnets, and I stopped in front of him. He put his hand on my elbow and said, “I’m just saying life is too short to do something you don’t want to.”

  “Oh, like you always wanted to work for your dad’s business.”

  “Low blow, Annie. I’m not saying I’m perfect in that, either. But I’ve been thinking along these lines for a few months now, and sometimes forcing yourself to go through the motions of what seems sensible is the biggest waste of time possible. What if twenty years from now we both look back and say, ‘Why did I put up with that?’ Think of the pain of all that time just lost, forever.”

  “Are you thinking of quitting your job, then?”

  “Not exactly. I’m just saying, you’re not locked into anything. You don’t have to keep doing something just because you always have, especially if it’s hollow.”

  Hollow. Beck always could do that: put just the right word to my emotions.

  The flow of customers finally dries up and I turn back to Mom, trying to find the thread of our conversation again. I’d forgotten that about being back here, how every discussion is halting and disrupted.

  “So, Mom, here’s what I’m thinking about the store. Let’s work up a plan and go to Paul. I’ve got savings, if you want to call it a loan, call it a loan then, and I’ll pay your rent in the new building for a while. We can spruce up the exterior, change the name, and, fine, work on a long-term plan for you. But in the meantime you won’t have to live with Sally in that stinky trailer.”

  She sighs. “But I can’t do all that myself. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “I can help you.”

  “You’ve got to go back to work!”

  “I don’t know about that. I’m thinking of making a change myself.”

  She gapes up at me, searching my face as if she’s not sure who I am.

  I know the feeling.

  Chapter 25

  Maeve

  My first thought, when I see Anna with her hair frizzy in her grubby clothes, telling me she’s thinking of giving up her job at Miller Paulson, is to scream, No! I will not allow it!

  My second thought: This is all my fault.

  Customers interrupt us, an
d Anna takes charge of them like she was born to it, and this thought stings me because in a way she was born to it, you could argue, learning to pull up and toddle along the shelves with the canned cat food and toilet paper and Slim Jims.

  She would bring home those gold stars on her homework, and I’d sit there in the crowd as she collected accolades for National Honor Society, and I’d know down to my toes that she would have a better, bigger life than I ever dreamed of.

  And she did it, by God. She did it.

  If only I could tell her that she doesn’t need to hover over me, that her father is going to build me a house. I can just see her sneer, though. She was too young to remember him at his best. A person shouldn’t be boiled down to one mistake, especially if that person is sorry and was a decent sort to begin with.

  Now that Anna is at the register, I wander back upstairs to have my own lunch and think about her suggestion, fixing up the store to serve some snobby summer people. A waste of time and energy when I’m going to leave anyway. And all the while beholden to that Paul kid! Beholden to the whole Becker bunch.

  I take my egg salad out of the fridge and start scraping it on the bread, after a tentative sniff to make sure it hasn’t gone over.

  Mr. Becker was always nice enough to Anna, but it always seemed to me he treated her like a pleasant pet: a little too amazed at her success, as with a dog who can open a refrigerator door. If I end up crawling to them and begging for a chance to clean up my store, it would confirm his view of us. Of me.

  I can’t let her throw away a career she slaved for just so she can save a store I don’t even want and, in fact, don’t need.

  But if I don’t do something visible that she can see and understand to provide for myself, she won’t go back.

  And to think I exhaled at her college graduation, thinking I’d leaped some towering hurdle: She’d made it through childhood and four years of college unscathed and poised for success.