The Life You've Imagined

by Kristina Riggle

  “I’m gonna go work out downstairs,” he tells me, and his voice retreats across the kitchen toward the basement steps. “Make me some lunch at noon. There’s money on the table if we need groceries.”

  When I can hear him clanking around the free weights, I withdraw my head from the pantry, glaring furiously at my stubbornly shaking hands.

  He starts with the beer at lunch. I count during his sandwich: three. This is a speedy pace, even for him.

  I can’t say a rich folks’ party is normally my favorite place, but tonight I much prefer the Becker manse to Chez Drayton. I think Anna made sure I was invited, because despite my distant-cousin relations with Amy Rickart, I don’t think I’d be at the top of the guest list.

  It takes me all afternoon, but I take everything out of the cupboards and scrub until my fingers ache and my arms feel weak. By four o’clock, I wash down some Advil with a Diet Coke and admire my handiwork. The whole place smells vaguely of lemon, and the empty cupboards seem inviting, as if no one lives here anymore and they’re waiting for a fresh start. Half the food should really be thrown away, as it’s out of date, but I know what will happen if I start throwing away his food. Instead, I’ll just inspect the labels when I cook and leave the oldest stuff at the back.

  I spent my modest casino winnings on fresh white paint and new cupboard hardware almost as soon as I got back from the casino with Sally. It was exhilarating to win, and frightening, too, in the same sense of a near-miss on the highway.

  And what if Sally hadn’t gotten lost among the slot machines and had me paged while I was still ahead? I remember cursing when I heard the page and pounding the table with my fist, drawing startled glances from the other guys sitting at the table. The dealer eyed me curiously, drawing back slightly.

  I was like a hungry dog, and someone was trying to take away my food.

  A wave of disgust hits me, just as familiar as that buzzing high I got when I bellied up to the table. That’s how it was, the whole time I was trying to get on top again when I was still with Steve: the lightheaded thrill followed by the crash when I realized I’d only dug in deeper.

  All these years since my mom died I’ve hated my dad for his drinking, and then what do I go and do? Steal money from my boyfriend so I can keep gambling. And then just yesterday, I threw money on the table I didn’t have to spare, because if I had even two months’ rent for the smallest hovel in town I’d be gone, not to mention that I’m gonna pay Steve back no matter what he thinks of me.

  Even with the intercom system calling my name at that casino, I almost anted up again anyway, but then Sally must have seized the intercom phone because her voice crackled over the speaker: “Hey, Cami! You didn’t leave me, didja?” I wasn’t sure, but she sounded slightly panicked. She was pacing like a zoo animal when I got to her at the courtesy desk.

  That’s why I spent that cash on the paint, so I wouldn’t have it to gamble again. Then I cut up my ATM card. If I need cash, I’ll go to the bank and get it out in the daylight, when I have to stand in line and think about it, and sign a paper to get it, just like they used to do in the old days, before punching buttons and swiping plastic.

  Because if I can’t stop myself from doing it again, even knowing what it costs me, I’m more like my father than I ever wanted to admit.

  The front door slams open. Sherry charges in. “Where’s your asshole father!”

  I jerk a thumb toward the hall. “In his room.”

  My adrenaline revs up again. I had the feel for the afternoon, but Sherry changes things and I don’t know exactly how.

  Raised voices come from down the hall. I glance around the disheveled kitchen, but I think I’d better retreat to my room while the going’s good.

  Too late.

  The two of them burst out of the room, looking for a moment like those old cartoons of the cats and dogs fighting so hard all you see is a cloud of flailing limbs.

  I backpedal down the hall ahead of the maelstrom. They’ve got each other by the arms. If they weren’t trying to kill each other, they could be square dancing.

  Grab your partner by the throat . . .

  We all scramble into the relative openness of the living room. This is when I notice something about Sherry: She’s about half the size of my father.

  I throw an arm in between, pulling on whatever I can grab of the pair of them until I find myself directly in the middle, like some kind of demented version of the children’s game London Bridge. My fair lady! The kids shriek, and you’re caught.

  “Bitch, get outta my way!”

  I tumble to the side, over a chair, onto something really hard and metal.

  Chapter 28

  Anna

  I’d forgotten how small this place is. Not the Becker house, which lords over its front lawn. No, I mean Haven.

  I park my car where everyone else did, along the huge circle drive, and begin trudging alone to the backyard. Haven isn’t just physically small, but claustrophobic. Why else would I be attending the party of the family who wants to evict my mother and destroy the store she spent her life building? Because another son in the family happens to be my old friend and he’s the only person I feel like seeing now. Not my mother, who is angry at me instead of at the man who left her. Not Sally, who grows more irritating by the day. And certainly not Paul Becker.

  Shelby, back in Chicago, has started to feel like a mirage to me. So has Dorian, though once the mere mention of her name would make me work harder, longer, just to make sure to stay out ahead.

  August is a dream. Nothing left of him at all.

  Mr. Jenison was disgusted with me, I know, when I called to extend my leave. They weren’t paying me anymore, he said, as if that would make me hasten back to my desk. He expected me to answer all e-mails from anyone at Miller Paulson promptly, because it wasn’t easy picking up someone else’s work.

  He, too, mentioned the partner selection committee.

  Before hanging up, he wished my mother a speedy recovery in a tone that revealed his doubt that my mother had so much as a hangnail.

  I wonder if I can stretch the Family Medical Leave Act to my purposes. That would give me up to twelve weeks, though they’d deduct the weeks I’ve already been gone. Still, it would get me through the summer.

  The first thing I notice when I walk through the garden archway is Beck’s daughter, Madeline. She’s whirling away on the grass with that abandon only children have, that innocent lack of self-consciousness. Or, if she’s conscious of people watching her, she probably already knows how wonderful she looks. She has that kind of beauty. I glance around for her mother. Samantha is never far behind, to hear Beck tell it, always in Maddie’s orbit. No sign of her, though. The party has a general watchfulness about it, with various adult heads turning at intervals to gaze at her and meet the eyes of the others: She’s just spinning; no danger right now. No mother nearby, though. No Beck, either.

  Something charging at me from my left gets my attention.

  It’s a chocolate brown dog galloping away, its tongue hanging out.

  “Frodo!” shouts Amy, running up behind him. She seizes the dog’s collar just as he leaps to either slobber me or eviscerate me. Probably slobber, given how his tail is wagging, and he’s got one of those dopey-looking dog grins. Amy was knocked off stride by grabbing the dog, and she’s bent over awkwardly now. She looks like she might saddle him up.

  I put my hand down to let him snuffle me.

  “I’m sorry,” she pants. “I brought him because I hated to think of him locked up in the apartment all night with the fireworks, thinking he might be spooked—he’s not crazy about thunder—only I’m having to grab him off people all the time. He already knocked over Maddie once.”

  I give Frodo’s ears a scratch. “Oh, it’s okay. As long as he’s not going for the jugular, I don’t mind. Go ahead and let go of him.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure. I like dogs, but a pet was out of the question for me with no yard or any
thing.”

  Our eyes meet briefly, and her expression is soft with understanding that hovers just above the point of pity.

  Frodo jumps a couple times, but after sniffing me and being rewarded with the scratches, he bounds off in search of new friends to make. Amy watches him go.

  “I’m sorry to horn in on your lunch the other day,” Amy says, looking at me sideways, still watching her dog romp. Someone has produced a tennis ball and is throwing it. “They’ll be throwing that ball all night now.”

  “You didn’t horn in. It was just a lunch. We shouldn’t have interrupted you, the lovebirds getting married.”

  “Yeah, well, it just seemed so rude to say, ‘No, we don’t want to sit by you.’ ”

  “And yet that’s what everybody wanted. Isn’t that funny, how people can’t say just what they want so they end up doing the exact opposite?”

  “I don’t know about that. I do what I want.”

  “Aside from awkward lunches.”

  “Well, maybe occasionally I endure something out of politeness, but in general I do live my life just the way I want.”

  I look carefully at her. She’s wearing a candy-colored sundress, a fine gold chain, and her hair gleams in the angled late afternoon sun. “I’m glad for you, then.”

  I spot her trio of friends who were nasty to me at the engagement party, the ones with the snotty remarks about my SAT score. “What about them? Do you endure them out of politeness?”

  Amy’s mouth hardens into a thin line. “They’re my friends. Don’t talk crap about them.”

  “Do you have amnesia? They were awful to you in high school.”

  “We were all just kids then. Everyone’s changed, don’t you think? God, I hope so. I’d hate to be the same as I was at fifteen. And I’m not just talking about being fat.”

  “I do know what you mean. Where can a girl get a drink around here?”

  She points me toward the bar on the patio and spies Frodo doing something naughty across the grass and goes scampering after him.

  I wish Cami had come. She called my cell just as I was leaving, saying she had a terrible headache and couldn’t get away. I offered to drive over with some intravenous morphine if I had to, but she chuckled and said she really needed to stay in.

  I almost gave up on the party, but my mother about shoved me out the door, saying I needed to do something that resembled fun.

  Now I just feel conspicuous. No date, no friend to stick by my side. Just the memory of Marc last year, when we were still together and he’d been watching kids tumble around on the grass at Grant Park.

  “We’ll make even cuter ones, don’t you think?” he said, nudging me playfully.

  For days afterward, whenever this conversation came up, he’d swear he didn’t mean anything by that, and I’m the one who overreacted. He said I “hit the panic button at the mention of commitment to anything but the job.”

  I told him he was being such a girl about it and offered him a tampon. That didn’t go over well.

  Marc was not a direct guy by nature. He’d hint at something, sidle up to it, and try it out like tossing a baseball in his hand on the pitcher’s mound. That’s why I didn’t believe that he was just kidding around.

  Oh, here comes Beck. By now I’ve got my mojito, and my shoulders sag with relief that I won’t have to stand so alone anymore. It’s not the aloneness that bothers me—rather, the spotlight effect it creates in a party setting. Also, people will start whispering, if they haven’t already: Why is she still in town? Has she moved back for good? Did she lose her job?

  His face brightens as he approaches, and he greets me with a hug. It catches me by surprise, so I don’t have time to move my glass out of the way; it gets squished between us. We share a chuckle over that.

  “Maddie looks cute today,” I tell him, gesturing toward her. She’s now got a dandelion and she’s plopped down in the grass, blowing fluff. Paul Becker is standing nearby, one eye on her and another on some city councilman. I look away from the pair of them.

  “Yeah, Sam bought her that dress.”

  It’s brown, pink, and white and makes Maddie look like Neapolitan ice cream.

  “Where is Sam today? I haven’t seen her.”

  “Ah. Well, she wanted to go visit her parents in Indiana for the Fourth. Maddie pitched a fit about going for that long drive and wanted to stay here, so . . .”

  “Oh, well. I’m sure Sam will appreciate the break.”

  “You’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

  Maddie runs over to Beck, and he scoops her up in one arm. She nuzzles his shoulder and steals a shy look at me. That’s when I notice her eyes are the same sea-glass green as her father’s. I wave at her and she buries her face, then wiggles down and goes skipping off across the grass screaming, “Aunt Tabi! Aunt Tabi!”

  “They change your life, don’t they?” I say.

  “Do they ever.”

  “Remember when we used to say we’d have five kids?”

  “Three boys and two girls. You said you hated being an only child.”

  I stare out over the bluff at the sun sinking toward the water. We used to have those silly conversations on this lawn all the time, sprawled over each other on the grass, Beck toying with one of my curls. We used to talk longingly over how we could walk around naked if we wanted in our own house. Such glorious privacy, the holy grail of teenage lovers.

  Beck clears his throat just as I’m wondering if he’s having the same memories. “Is your . . . You hear anymore from your dad?”

  I shake my head. “I’m not the one who heard from him in the first place, but no, I don’t think so. I haven’t seen any more letters, and Mom did promise. I’m so furious with him for toying with her like that.” I grip my drink harder and take a long, cool sip. “If I could get my hands on him . . .”

  “You probably could. Get your hands on him, I mean. Your mom knows where he is, right?”

  “Where he was at the time, anyway. Who knows where he might be now?”

  “At least you know he’s still alive.”

  I turn fully away from Beck and walk a couple of steps toward the lake and away from this conversation. I never really figured he was dead, anyway, though I used to say so all the time. I can see now I was only trying to make myself feel better about his absence, as if he were on his way back to us and he got run over by a truck, only he didn’t have his wallet so no one knew how to track down his survivors . . .

  Beck says from behind me, “I’m sorry to bring it up.”

  “Don’t be. I know you care, which is more than I can say for a lot of people.”

  “When are you going back, do you think?” Beck steps to my side but doesn’t face me, joining me in staring out across the water.

  “I haven’t decided. I’m still worried about Mom and I extended my leave a bit.”

  “Good of them to do that for you.”

  “Mmm. They’re not all that thrilled about it, but I’ve never asked them for any favors before. I think they’re hoping I’ll turn back into my old self.” I smirk at this. “Back into a scullery maid when the spell wears off.”

  Beck drapes an arm across my shoulder. “So you’re Cinderella, now?”

  I step sideways out from under his arm. “Hardly. I, um, I’d better go, and . . . I have to talk to Amy. I’ll see you later.”

  I walk backward for a few steps before I turn around and head toward the crowd, feeling uncomfortably hot, though the breeze has taken the heat out of the air.

  After an hour of drifting around the edges of things, shaking hands and enduring small talk with three or four people and not-at-all-subtle inquiries as to whether I’d lost my Chicago job, I’m ready to get home, screw the fireworks. Beck seems to always be in my peripheral vision and I keep meeting his eyes, and I’m all too aware of all the other eyes at this party.

  I’m heading to my car when I bump into those three girls again, the supposed new friends of Amy Rickart.

  They fil
l my ear with bridesmaid chatter, and I don’t try to hide how bored I am. The last wedding I celebrated was my coworker David’s. He flew to Vegas with his girlfriend, got married, came back, and got his closest friends drunk over tapas and sangria at their new apartment.

  “Saw you talking to Will Becker,” Nikki says.

  “Yep.”

  “Must be nice, catching up with an old flame.”

  “It was a pleasant conversation.”

  The other two girls watch with naked greed in their eyes, so I change the subject, interrupting Sarah, whose mouth is open to say something else.

  “Amy looks wonderful,” I say, nodding to where she’s standing next to her mother.

  “She does,” chirps Kristi. “It’s amazing that she ran all that weight off. Too bad her mother can’t do it.”

  “Oh, yeah, running is great. You should try it, Anna. It’s really amazing.”

  “Try what?”

  “Running. It takes the weight right off.”

  I pivot on my heel and turn back away from them, those idiot magpies standing between me and my car. One of them calls something after me and I fold my arms, pinning my hands to my side with my elbows, to keep from flipping them the bird.

  I take the wooden steps down to the Beckers’ private beach, enjoying the sound of my shoes smacking against the hard wood. At the bottom, I don’t get the privacy I was hoping for.

  The partygoers have begun to filter down here, spreading out blankets preparing for the small private fireworks show that will start just after dusk. But I don’t see Beck, or his brother, or anyone else annoying, so I stand apart from them at the water’s edge. I slide my feet out of my shoes, drop my handbag, and curl my toes in the warm sand. The dune hugs this stretch of shore close, keeping the wind at bay, pulsing with the warmth of the day’s sun.

  The lake’s motion is soothing and steady, though strong. I step into the lake, just far enough that the waves won’t soak my knee-length skirt. The undertow sucks the sand from around my feet and I sink farther in, feeling rooted. It’s an illusion, though. I can pull away anytime.