The Life You've Imagined

by Kristina Riggle

  I don’t believe Cami for a second about her black eye. But I also know that you can’t make someone help herself. There was this attorney, back when I first started at Miller Paulson, who was really bright and quick on his feet.

  He was also a drunk. He’d come in reeking of booze, probably still from the night before. Sometimes, we’d see him sober, and he’d be dazzling and brilliant and charming. He’d go out at lunch for a refresher. We sent him notes, letting him know we noticed. A few of us confronted him late one night in the office and he got so angry he threw a stapler.

  Three weeks later he was gone, his cube empty and his desk cleaned out. No one had to ask what happened.

  Shelby had been so angry with him, furious that her attempts to help him had been rebuffed. I shrugged and reminded myself that each person is responsible for his or her own actions.

  You just can’t save people. You can spread out the safety net, but they have to jump into it.

  I come through the Nee Nance’s propped-open front door, and I stop short.

  Beck is at the counter, talking to my mother. My purse is between them.

  Immediately, in my mind, we’re naked in the guest bed, and I can’t stop the hot flush sweeping over my face. He glances away from me, looking pink at the tops of his ears, and then meets my eyes, leaning on the counter with one hip. He’s trying so hard to look casual.

  I don’t look at my mother. I don’t want to know what she makes of this.

  “I’ve brought your purse,” Beck says. “And I drove your car. I’ll get a ride back from my dad later.”

  “I can’t believe you’re thinking of my car now. I’d think you’d want to be with Madeline.”

  My mother interjects, “For heaven’s sake, come in out of the doorway.”

  I walk in all the way, careful not to stand too close.

  Beck clears his throat. “Samantha is at the hospital now, getting ready to bring Maddie home. She, uh, she doesn’t want me around right now.”

  Mom pats Beck’s arm. “She’s probably a mess. She’ll calm down later, I’m sure.” Mom turns to me. “Beck told me about last night.”

  For a crazy half second I think she means the sex.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you saved her life?”

  “I didn’t want to talk about it. And I still don’t, actually.”

  “I won’t press you, honey. I’m very proud, though.” At this, my mother comes around and hugs me hard. I fight not to push her off me.

  “What’s to be proud of? I mean, who would do any different? And I was a lifeguard. Actually, I’m kicking myself for not noticing earlier.”

  Beck croaks out, “You’re not the one who was supposed to notice.”

  My mother releases me and gives him a kind smile. She should have had more children; she’s brimming over with kindness.

  She says, “Why don’t you drive Beck home?”

  I shoot him a look and try not to seem alarmed. He says, “No, really, it’s fine, my dad can take me home . . .”

  “Well, you said he’d drive you later, but Anna can take you now. You should be at home as soon as possible to see your daughter. Even if your wife is upset now, your little girl will want to see you.”

  Neither of us can dispute the simple logic in this. In fact, the way my mother has framed it, I’d be a cretin to refuse.

  “Well, then,” I scoop up my purse. “Let’s get you home.”

  I can drive this route in my sleep. Everything here in Haven has clicked back into place. The cash register keys, where Mom keeps the register tape, all my old driving routes . . .

  Sex with Beck.

  I shake off the thought, trying not to look at him in my passenger seat.

  I hope to God Samantha isn’t home when I drop him off. I am absolutely not coming in.

  The drive is uncomfortably long. The Beckers live on the outskirts, where the properties are bigger, separated by acres of velvety lawn.

  “So now what?” Beck says.

  I keep my eyes on the road. “There is no ‘now what.’ Now you go back to living your life.”

  “And you go back to Chicago?”

  “Yes.”

  This is a lie, or, at least, I don’t know if it’s true.

  “I wish . . .” He pauses. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  I miss the turnoff. “Damn.” I check over my shoulder for traffic and turn into a driveway. “Beck, you know last night didn’t mean a thing. Nothing. We were together a hundred years ago when we were kids and fell into an old habit in a moment of stress.” I finally cut my eyes over to him before backing out onto the blacktop and shifting into drive. “Don’t get any romantic notions. I don’t love you.” I punch the accelerator a little too hard. “Not even close.”

  He braces himself on the dash. “Bullshit. You didn’t change that much, Annie.”

  “You don’t know me anymore.”

  “I think I’m the only one who does know you, actually.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I know you’re lying about going to back to Chicago.”

  I squeeze the steering wheel and drive a little faster.

  “Anna?” he says. He reaches out to touch me and I slap his hand away. I refuse to speak to him for the rest of the drive.

  When I walk into the store, I see four guys wrestling a cot up the narrow stairs. Randy is among them, I see, and Mailman Al in his postal shorts.

  My mom points at the men with her Diet Coke bottle. “We’ll put Sally in with me. I can squeeze the cot at the foot of my bed, T-shaped.”

  “She should be in with me. We’re both the ones crashing your party.” As soon as I say it, I want to cringe.

  “No. I want you to have your privacy. That’s your room, for however long we’ve got left in this place. It’s fine.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I’m about to go get her. I guess she’s really whooping it up there, annoying the hell out of the doctors. So, about the trailer. Can she save anything?”

  I shake my head. “Not a thing.”

  My mother sighs. “I don’t know how she’s going to take this. Normally she’d just laugh it off, you know how she is. But lately . . . Hasn’t she seemed a little . . . off to you?”

  She has, but I don’t want to worry my mother. “Nah, not really. Want me to go get her?”

  Muffled cursing comes from the stairwell, and the cot slides and rattles halfway down the steps.

  “No, I’ll go. I’ll just run upstairs a minute and straighten up there first. Anyway, you’ve got some interesting reading material here.”

  She points to the newspaper as she picks up her keys and comes around the counter, squeezing my arm as she goes.

  The headline on the Courier’s front page reads: CHILD NEARLY DROWNS, and another headline underneath in smaller type reads: DEVELOPER’S GRANDDAUGHTER SAVED BY FAMILY FRIEND.

  Chapter 34

  Amy

  The sunshine streams onto Paul’s back, creating shadows in the valleys of his muscles.

  It makes me want to lick him.

  But instead I turn away, hiding the thermometer with my hand and hoping the soft beep beep as it works doesn’t disturb him. I yank the thermometer out when it begins its rapid “I’m done” beeping and muffle it under the covers until it stops. I look at the temp and frown. It doesn’t make any sense at this point in my cycle. I didn’t drink hardly anything yesterday, and I wasn’t up so late . . .

  Though I’m told stress can throw off a reading.

  He turns over next to me, and I slam the thermometer in a drawer.

  “Babe? What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What nothing?” he says sleepily, tossing his arm across his face to block out the light. “Can’t you draw the shades in here?”

  I like the light; it helps me bounce out of bed in the morning, early enough for a run. I stretch up and pull the blinds down, though. He grunts and rolls back over.

  The party turned out okay
after all, at least until poor Maddie . . . Tears prick at my eyelids again. God, I love that kid; always have since I first saw her and played My Little Ponies for an hour straight. I’ve always liked kids, but when I met Maddie, the penny dropped and my body said, Yep, let’s have us some babies.

  I had to wait a year until Paul proposed. And now, he might not marry me at all.

  I snuggle close to his back and now I do lick him, a playful teasing on the back of his shoulder blade, his earlobe.

  “Hmmm.” He sighs but doesn’t respond. So I run my tongue across the back of his neck, which I know drives him crazy.

  “Babe, I’m really tired,” he says.

  He’d watched a West Coast baseball game, drinking beer in front of the TV, while I paced by the phone and waited for word on Madeline.

  I swallow down my irritated sigh. “I’m going for a run. Call my cell if you hear anything about Maddie.”

  They told us she’s fine, but until I can see her, I won’t believe it for sure.

  When I see Ed this morning, I do a double-take. Once for seeing him out here the day after a holiday, and twice because he’s running. With actual running shoes.

  His running is more of a walk with some bounce in it, really. His little dog, Lucky, has no trouble keeping up. When I overtake him, I could shoot right by in a split second.

  I slow my pace a bit. Frodo looks up at me as if he’s baffled.

  “Hi!”

  Ed turns to me and he smiles wide. “Hi,” he pants. His face has gone florid, and little rivers of sweat are tracing their way down from his damp hair. “You . . . inspired . . . me . . .”

  “I’m glad. Nice shoes.”

  He just nods, watching his footing now as if he doesn’t trust himself.

  “Did you stretch first?” I ask. He looks at me briefly with a small grin. “Well, at least stretch after, and cool down with some walking, too. I’ll show you some stretches when we stop.”

  He flaps his hand at the sidewalk ahead, then pantomimes pushing me forward.

  “I don’t mind,” I tell him. “Actually, maybe you want to slow down just a bit. You should be able to speak, really.”

  He settles into a walk and, after a few paces, pants out, “Thanks for the advice.”

  “I’m happy to help.”

  “How are things with you?”

  “Oh, fine.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “What do you mean?” Frodo stops me to pee. I’ll have to run after work to make up for this slow-down. That annoys Paul sometimes; when we have dinner together, it means we eat late.

  “The light just went out of your lovely eyes when you said that.” He smiles at me, and he actually winks.

  Oh, so it’s like that, then.

  “Well, there was a problem last night, with my niece. She . . . I don’t want to talk about it. But I’m just fine. Look, I’d better turn around.”

  “What about those stretches?”

  “Maybe another time. I really should go.”

  “Amy, I’m sorry.” He’s got his hands on his knees, still breathing hard.

  “You better walk a little longer. It’s not good to stop suddenly.”

  “Amy, I didn’t mean anything by it, I was just trying to—”

  “I know what you were trying to do,” I tell him, shouting so he can hear me as the distance between us increases. I’m walking backward away from him, gradually beginning to jog. “I thought you were just a nice, friendly guy I could talk to, and then here you go with my lovely eyes and trying to hint I’m not happy with my fiancé.”

  “I never said you weren’t happy with your fiancé; you said that, just now.”

  I turn around and run a little harder yet, leaving Ed panting on the sidewalk behind me.

  I walk away from the apartments and down a winding trail that leads to a rugged patch of gritty sand between a couple of small hills. It’s our apartment’s version of a beach. I unhook Frodo’s leash and throw a stick into the water. He’s going to stink like hell, but he’s having fun.

  I was really starting to enjoy Ed, and then he had to remind me of Kyle—someone I’ve worked very hard at forgetting.

  When I first started dropping weight, Nikki had come into the office to see about buying a house. We got to chatting and she invited me to a club. I was still leery of going out, but the club was nice and dark and I thought it would be my treat for the 30 pounds I’d lost. That’s three bowling balls’ worth, I figured.

  My face burns to remember Kyle. He played water polo in our high school and had the kind of chiseled chest that most high school boys would sell their own mothers for. All of us girls swooned over him; it was impossible not to.

  He was at the club with the same crew of guys that had flocked around him in high school. I dared to give him a flirty look once, and shortly after that, he started dancing behind me, very close to me, his dick pressed right to my ass, actually.

  I want to slap my twenty-nine-year-old self upside the head for the way I acted that night, grinding back against him, responding not only to his erection but the hoots of approval from Nikki and the girls, and his crew of baboons. I’d never—ever!—had that effect on a guy. Feeling that power made me as drunk as the whiskey sours.

  By the time the last song played, we were plastered to each other in the back corner of the place, and we fumbled to his truck, and he drove me home. Of course I invited him in, desperate fat-ass that I was, and of course I let him fuck me, and I let him do it again even though the sex was terrible.

  When I woke up, he was gone. I remember for sure that I gave him my number, but—yet another “of course”—he never called.

  Nikki told me later that all the girls were “so mad” at him, because he’d been overheard laughing about screwing “the heifer.”

  “He’s, like, such a dick,” she’d said, and I muttered, “Why did I have to know that?” I don’t think she heard me.

  Frodo takes a break from stick-throwing to dig a pit in the sand, so I flop down and put my head in my hands.

  Paul has got to marry me. I just can’t put myself out there again.

  I’d rather buy a vibrator and have a test-tube baby.

  Chapter 35

  Maeve

  I’ve told Anna I need a minute to straighten up my room before I go get Sally.

  I really just want to drink in my last few moments of anything like privacy.

  With the cot at a T at the end of my bed, it’s a squeeze to walk between its corners and the doorway. I’ll have to roll the sewing machine back in my closet to have any room to move at all. How will I finish my reunion dress now?

  I haven’t been exactly hiding my sewing project from Anna, but I haven’t been advertising it, either. I can make myself a dress if I want; I don’t need a special reason. But she’s cunning, my daughter. She’d know.

  I shove the machine hard into the closet, and with the thud I feel a memory slam into place.

  It was my birthday, a frosty day in October. I had the space heater going, but the autumn chill still crept in every time someone opened the door. We could never keep the outside out at the Nee Nance.

  Robert strutted in the front door of the store with a goofy smile plastered on his face. He still had a piece of toilet paper stuck to his chin where he’d nicked himself that morning. I reached up to flick it off and gave him a quick kiss. Anna was still at school.

  “C’mere,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

  He’d remembered! A rare treat. Normally Anna would prompt him when she got home from school, and then he’d dash down to the bookstore to grab a card and a romance novel, which I’d probably already read.

  I pulled my sweater tightly around me and followed him out to the sidewalk.

  A shiny red foil bow twinkled from the top of a large cardboard box, which read BERNINA on top. Only the week before, I’d been sighing over the machine in a catalog. My old Singer was constantly jamming, and I’d given up sewing, not havin
g the patience to wrestle with that old beast. But with this top-of-the-line Bernina, I could whip up enough dresses to clothe Anna for the rest of her educational career.

  “Damn you!” I shouted through fresh tears. “We can’t afford this! Where did you get the money?”

  Robert’s face crumpled. “Honey, I know how much you wanted . . .”

  “Wanting is different from having! Where did you get the money?”

  “Babe, we have some in savings, and the store is doing well, so we’ll make it back . . .”

  “Our savings? Robert, that’s for emergencies! What if Anna breaks her leg tomorrow!”

  “She’s careful. Look, honey, you said you wanted it, and think of it this way, with all the money we’ll save on store-bought clothes, it will be worth it.”

  “But it’s money we don’t have to spare, we can’t . . . You have to take it back.” I knew I was making a spectacle for them all to chew over at Doreen’s, but I couldn’t stop myself. The blessed wrongness of the gift, the hugeness of his tactical error, pained me. And yet I loved him for trying.

  Robert dug his toe into the ground. “Um, that’s the other thing, sweetness. I didn’t exactly buy it brand new. I mean, it’s in perfect shape, don’t get me wrong, but . . . It’s not like I can take it back with a receipt.”

  I wiped my face with the sleeves of my scratchy sweater. “So, the money is gone.”

  “Look, I didn’t know it would upset you so much. I thought you really wanted it, and I was just trying to make you happy. You deserve to be happy, you know, and one day I’ll do that for you.”

  He looked grave, all his merry light gone. He continued, “One day I’ll be the man you deserve. I promise you that.”

  And without another word, he hefted the box around to the alley entrance, leaving me shivering in the autumn wind.

  With one more shove, I squeeze the machine deeper into the closet. After all that, he’d been right. The Bernina—wherever and however he’d obtained it—had lasted for decades and saved us untold money on store-bought items. I’d never have been able to do that with the broken-down old jalopy of a machine I’d had before.