by Claire Cook
“Wow. Cool piece, Mom.”
“Thanks, honey. Okay, you grab that side and then we’ll wiggle it out like this.”
The installation went pretty smoothly once we found the water spigot behind the arts pavilion on the outside wall of the restrooms. Troy and I set up my trusty old collapsible wooden display stand that looked like an oversize easel. Fortunately I’d brought an extra hundred-foot hose, too, which we snaked discreetly through one of the tents. A few people gave us dirty looks, but we both ignored them. Troy had his father’s quick, decisive confidence. And his eyes. How could you ever shake off a husband when every time you looked at your kids, he was right there looking back at you?
I hammered in one more nail and tucked a couple of squares of heavy-duty stick-on Velcro behind the bottom circles just to be sure they wouldn’t shift.
We both took a few steps back to get a better look.
Troy gave me a thumbs-up.
“Thanks.” I tucked a clump of hair behind my ears. “Okay, you stay here and keep an eye on it, and I’ll run over and turn on the water.”
His phone made the triple beep of a text landing. He pulled it out of his pocket and smiled. Not that I was counting, but it was the third smile-producing text in the last five minutes.
“Is that Ashley?” I asked.
“Mo-om,” Troy said without looking up. It was the same answer he’d been giving me since his first girlfriend, Katie Dougherty, in sixth grade.
I watched for a minute, happy to see Troy so happy, even if I might never get any details. Possibly until the wedding. I was fairly sure my younger son would at least give me a heads-up before my invitation arrived in the mail. I had a sudden vision of the wedding, big and Southern, at a manor called Lady Something. Everyone would be blond and call me ma’am. And they’d all be named Crissy.
And the real Crissy would be there. She’d be blond and Southern and her family would have owned Lady Something Manor since before the Civil War. And she’d have offered to let Troy and Ashley use it for the wedding, along with the servants and the caterer. So as much as Trevor and Troy didn’t want me to see them being nice to her, I mean, who could blame them. Kurt would be in his glory, and even though I knew, I knew, I was so much better off without him, I still wanted to punch his lights out for taking the beautiful day this could have been away from me.
Troy looked up from his cell. “Mom? Are you all right?”
I blinked my way back to reality and smiled. “Of course I am. Be right back, honey.”
I traced the hose through the other exhibits to the restrooms, making sure there weren’t any loops that might trip somebody or, worse, impede the flow of water to my sculpture.
Once I turned on the faucet, I retraced my steps as quickly as I could. Artists and show organizers and food concession people were milling around everywhere now, and I could taste the pre-show electricity in the air, as if it were scorched steel.
The excitement of fully imagining something in my head and then translating it into metal just never got old. But as incredible as that process was, it was as if one of my pieces didn’t fully exist until it was on display and other people could see it, too.
As I cut through the tent, I took the time to check once more for kinks in the hose, and to make sure it was tucked as far out of the way as it could be. Back when my first pieces had started getting accepted for exhibit, it was all I could do not to camp out and babysit them round the clock for the duration, just in case something went wrong. But I’d since learned to check and double-check and even triple-check during the installation, and then let it go.
I walked out of the tent and turned the corner.
A split second later the hose detached from the sculpture. It started spraying water everywhere, a vinyl boa constrictor gone wild.
A few people yelped as the cold water hit them. Troy lunged for the hose. It danced away, spraying two women and a display of dolls with carved and wrinkled dried apple faces.
The women screamed.
“Do something,” a man roared. He jumped in front of an assortment of ornate doghouses and spread his arms wide.
I dove.
CHAPTER 5
I took a sip of iced tea. “Sorry about that, honey.”
“No problem.” Troy grinned and reached for his napkin and gave his forehead another wipe. His gelled hair had gone flat on the top and was sticking out in little points on one side.
“Next time I promise I’ll bring you an umbrella.” I leaned forward in the booth, hoping to camouflage the dried mud, laced heavily with red Georgia clay, on the front of my T-shirt. At least it was black and not white. “I can’t believe you talked me into coming into a restaurant looking like this.”
Troy shrugged and reached for his sweet tea. “I gotta hand it to you, Mom, that was some save you made.”
I shook my head. “The high stakes of using sprinklers found at the dump. And I know better—one more turn of the wrench on that hose would have done it. Do you believe that doghouse guy tried to get them to cut off my water supply?”
“What a jerk,” he said as he put his glass down. “The apple doll ladies were cool, though. Don’t worry, I’ll walk over after work and make sure everything’s copacetic.”
“Thanks, honey. Between the extra wrench action and the duct tape, I think we’re okay, but that would be great if you wouldn’t mind double-checking.”
Troy’s cell triple-beeped. He looked at it quickly, smiled, and then put it back in his pocket.
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “At least your cell phone didn’t drown.”
Troy grinned. “Always tuck your phone under your armpit before you attempt a water rescue. I learned that back in college.”
“Good to know all that tuition money wasn’t wasted.”
The waiter placed Troy’s bison burger and my turkey wrap in front of us. We ate in comfortable silence as if we were back at the family dinner table. Even with my muddy clothes and damp, grass-flecked feet, I wished I could freeze my life right here: my incredible son across from me, a piece in an art show down the street, a beautiful day, an uneventful drive over. Or maybe I could call Trevor first and have him fly out and sit down at the table with us. And then I’d freeze my life.
Troy took a long sip through his straw, and I flashed back to him drinking out of a Juicy Juice box as a toddler. When I looked at my kids now, I sometimes saw the whole trajectory of their lives, as if they had time capsules encased just under their adult skin.
“Remember,” I said, “when we used to spend a month in Marshbury every summer and you and Trevor practically lived at the beach? Grammy and Grandpa used to say if you got any wetter you’d start to grow moss between your ears.”
Troy nodded and stabbed a french fry. “Yeah, that was fun. I hated leaving my friends at home though, so I was kind of glad when we stopped going.”
“Remember when you and Trevor built that pirate float for the Labor Day parade? That was so amazing.”
“Mom, I think you basically built it for us.”
“And you threw chocolate gold coins off it as Dad drove you along the parade route? And that huge crowd of kids followed you?”
“Yeah, and the chocolate melted all over the place and Trevor got stung by a bee.”
“Really?” I said. “I don’t remember that part.”
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
Troy shrugged. “You know, turn your trips down memory lane into a Disney movie.”
I considered this. I took another bite of my turkey wrap and sipped my unsweetened iced tea. As long as I’d lived here, I still hadn’t acquired a taste for Southern sweet tea. And I’d had only a handful of decent iced coffees that didn’t come from Starbucks. People in this neck of the woods didn’t seem to know you can’t just pour a pot of hot coffee over some ice cubes. You have to brew it extra-strong and then refrigerate it.
Troy took his phone out of his pocket and screen-tapped a messag
e.
I waited until he finished. “So,” I said. “Have you talked to Dad?”
He shrugged. “I never talked to him that much before.”
“But he’s your father,” I said, as if this might be new information.
My younger son took another bite of his burger. I’d never really thought about it before, but he even chewed like Kurt.
Troy looked up. “What?” he said.
“Never mind,” I said. “It’s just—”
“Mom, it doesn’t matter whether I’ve talked to him or not. Either way, I’ll deal.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to help.”
Troy focused on his remaining french fries. I focused on keeping my mouth shut, the biggest mom-challenge of them all. I picked up a sweet potato fry, took a bite, put the rest of it back down on my plate.
Troy cleared his throat. “What matters . . .”
I waited. Troy shook his head.
“Say it,” I said.
Troy tried to run his fingers through his hair, then pulled them out when they got stuck halfway. “What matters is that you stop worrying about whether me and Trevor have talked to Dad.”
“But—”
My younger son looked me right in the eyes. “Mom, you’ve gotta move on with your life.”
My eyes teared up. I reached across the booth and rested my hand on his. “Thanks, honey. But I’m f—”
Troy pulled his hand out and placed it on top of mine. “I mean it, Mom. You need to get over Dad. Go somewhere. Have an adventure. Or whatever people your age do.”
The waiter came over and asked if we wanted dessert. I bit my tongue while we waited for Troy’s peach cobbler so I didn’t ruin our lunch. I mean, thanks a lot. What did he think I was, a dinosaur? The funny thing about your kids as they grew up was you’d start thinking you were on the same wavelength, that they really got it, got you, and suddenly they’d come out with a zinger like that.
Although come to think of it, what were people my age supposed to do?
I’d reversed the MapQuest directions and printed them out, which I knew defeated the tree-saving aspect of using the Internet, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Things were going so well that I could even imagine making it to Ikea one of these days. There had to be a non-highway that would take me there.
I braked at a light and looked around. The growth was so incredibly lush here, and the gardens so beautifully maintained. There were many things to love about the South—the mild winters, the friendliness of strangers—and I’d learned to love it here, in a way, even if I hadn’t fully committed to it.
So why did I have to be the one to leave? Why couldn’t Kurt and Crissy have an adventure? Or whatever people their age did.
Finally, the light changed and the eternal traffic started to move. I poked along and then picked up speed, my favorite Atlanta classic rock station, 97.1 The River, keeping me company. When “Stairway to Heaven” came on, I reached over to turn it up, casually, as if I’d never been afraid to take my hand off the steering wheel. Once in high school, we’d decided to stay up all night at a pajama party to see how many times in a row we could listen to all eight minutes and two seconds of the long version. I dozed off somewhere around number 30, and when I woke up, B.J., who was still Barb back then, swore up and down she hadn’t missed a note and that “Stairway to Heaven” was now on its 387th spin on the turntable.
The road widened suddenly, which I didn’t remember at all from my earlier ride today. Up ahead, I could just see a sign for Interstate 285, the highway loop that encircles Atlanta, creating what Atlantans call the Perimeter. In some parts it was six lanes wide in each direction, and I’d read that it was one of the most heavily traveled roads in the entire country. For me, it was the scariest highway of them all.
Just the thought of that highway made my mouth go dry. “Relax,” I whispered. “Good thing you don’t have to go there.”
Still, my hands and arms started to prickle. The baby elephant sat down on my chest.
The car behind me beeped the Southern way, short and polite, but unmistakably telling me to pick up the pace. I forced my shaking right foot down harder on the gas pedal.
I wasn’t even on the highway and my whole body was telling me I had to get off.
I tried to lift my hand up to turn on the blinker, but it wouldn’t go. The car behind me beeped again, sounding a lot more Northern this time.
There was a scream in my ears, but I couldn’t tell if it was real or imagined. I tried to breathe but I couldn’t seem to remember how.
I jerked the wheel and pulled off the road. The car behind me beeped, long and loud.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
I started to cry then, long raspy sobs. Hot tears rolled under my sunglasses and down my cheeks, mixing with the sweat that had broken out across my face like a rash. I bumped my way to yet another half-deserted parking lot at yet another fast-food restaurant. I cried until my breathing slowed down and the baby elephant got off my chest and went back to wherever it was that it lurked, waiting for the next time.
I just wanted to go home. I wanted to go home more than I’d ever wanted anything. And the worst thing about it was that I didn’t even know where home was anymore. I wanted to click my heels together and be magically transported to wherever it was that might make me feel like whoever I was supposed to be now. Instead of an empty shell that had followed all the rules only to have her husband pull her life out from under her.
I picked up my cell phone. I sorted through the short list of people I could call to ask them to come get me—my older sister in Marshbury, who would probably find a way to get me out of here, but first she’d have to inform me that she’d never had driving issues herself, or any issues for that matter—and she’d have to slip in a mom-brag, too, in her endless quest to prove that her kids were better than my kids. As for B.J., sympathy wasn’t her strong suit, so I wasn’t sure what she’d say if I called her, but whatever it was, I didn’t think I could handle it right now.
Troy would be here in a heartbeat, and Trevor would jump on a plane immediately if he thought I needed him, but I didn’t want them to worry. Even Kurt would probably come, too, eventually, but I wasn’t going to give him the ego boost of needing anything from him ever again. My closest Atlanta friend had moved away about a year ago. I thought about my other local friends, but it seemed like too big a litmus test for friendship to ask any of them to drop everything and come get me. Maybe I could call AAA and just pretend my car had broken down?
I dropped my phone on the passenger seat. I’d only tried explaining my driving thing once, just weeks after Kurt left, to my primary care physician at my already scheduled yearly physical. He’d nodded a few times, then dashed off a prescription for a beta-blocker.
I took it for a few days. I didn’t feel any worse, but I didn’t feel like driving on any highways, either. Then I dropped a piece of metal on the garage floor while I was welding. When I bent over to pick it up, the whole world started to spin.
May cause dizziness jumped out on the list of side effects when I Googled the beta-blocker later that day. In my profession, dizziness could mean a really bad burn, or worse. I kept reading. May cause weight gain clinched it. Kurt might have left me, but I certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking it made me get fat. I threw the pills away.
I looked around the fast-food parking lot, wondering how I was ever going to get out of here. The smell of fried pickles was making me nauseous. I knew it was a Southern thing, but I mean, really, why the hell would anyone want to fry a pickle?
Rationally, I recognized that all I had to do was drive past the entrance of Route 285, get to the other side of it, and I’d be fine for the rest of the ride home.
But it took me four tries, and every ounce of willpower I had, to make myself do it.
Finally, finally, some twenty-five long minutes later, I was able to put on my blinker and turn onto
my own street. As I pulled into my driveway, a voice whispered in my ear: Get out. Get out. Get out while you still can.
CHAPTER 6
To: Melanie
From: B.J.
Subject: Spin-the-Bottle Reunion Centerpieces
Save your empty wine bottles until you have one for each table at your reunion-to-be. Using a paintbrush, cover bottles thoroughly with black chalkboard paint. Let dry and write “Spin the Bottle” in white chalk on each bottle. Guaranteed to get the party started!
Super cute, huh?
P.S. Did you book your flights yet?
To: Melanie
From: Finn Miller
Subject: sweet dreams of you
Do you remember that Leon Russell concert a bunch of us went to at the old Music Hall in Boston? The one where LR stood up from his piano and told the audience of screaming stoned-out kids that he wasn’t going to start playing again unless they shut the f up. Well last night I dreamed we were back there again and he made everybody else leave and then he played a set just for us. We held hands and then we started making out and then Leon Russell told us he wouldn’t keep playing unless we knocked it off. Great dream.
Sadly, I couldn’t recall ever going to a Leon Russell concert. I Googled up a song sampler of Leon Live and listened to “It’s Been a Long Time Baby.” It was a good song, though I had to admit I didn’t quite remember it, either.
Spin the Bottle, on the other hand, I could remember. I pushed my laptop away and slid down from my bar stool. I walked across the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Bottled water, yogurt, walnuts, mixed salad greens, baby carrots, individually wrapped one-hundred-calorie dark chocolate bars. A four-pack of individual servings of hummus almost made me cry. Somehow my refrigerator had turned single again before I’d fully accepted it myself.
I considered the ketchup bottle and a bottle of shrimp cocktail sauce briefly, but kept looking. Way in the back, I found a half-empty bottle of dessert wine that someone at work had given Kurt last Christmas. Even though we’d both hated it, we’d never thrown it away because Kurt had been convinced it was crazy expensive.