Earnest

by Kristin von Kreisler

  His now-empty side of the closet seemed to glare at Anna like an accusatory eye, as did the two faded rectangles on the living-room wall, where his paintings had hung. But what did they have to glare at her about? Jeff was the one to blame.

  In the bathroom, Anna curled her lip, disgusted, at globs of toothpaste on his drawer’s plastic liner. For a tidy man, the globs were out of character. He might have left them there on purpose to harass me. He’d also left half-finished bottles of Listerine and cough medicine, tubes of sunscreen and athlete’s foot cream, and half-empty vials of prescription pills for his allergies to povertyweed and prickly lettuce.

  Unwilling to keep these reminders of Jeff—the lingering smell of his shaving cream is bad enough!—Anna shook open a plastic trash bag. She would fill it with his belongings, then either throw it away or drop it off at Jeff’s apartment, if she learned where it was, and if she could guarantee he’d not be there. Into the bag she tossed the bottles, tubes, and vials. She added socks from under the bed and belts coiled like snakes at the back of a closet shelf. She threw in his baseball hat, lodged between the wicker headboard and the mattress.

  But what about photos lined up across his dresser? There was a picture of her and Earnest, searching for sea glass on Heron Harbor’s beach. She supposed she could blot out the thought that Jeff had aimed the camera and clicked the button—and she would keep the photo here. She couldn’t say the same about the one of her and Jeff in the Village Green’s gazebo, plastered together so a thread couldn’t slide between them. Anna dumped that photo in the trash bag.

  She picked up an eight-by-ten walnut-framed picture of her, Jeff, and Earnest in Waterfront Park on his first gotcha day. She and Jeff were sitting yoga-style in the center of a Blazing Sun quilt. Between them, Earnest, in a pointed wizard hat, was lying in his roosting-chicken position after having gulped down a broiled hamburger patty and two pupcakes with peanut butter frosting. Earnest, Jeff, and Anna were smiling.

  On that afternoon, Earnest’s favorite pastime, picking blackberries with his teeth, had worn him out. He’d set down his chin in the center of the quilt’s star and watched a fuzzy black caterpillar inch toward his nose. When the creature got so close that Earnest crossed his eyes, Jeff caught it in a paper cup and gently poured it on the grass at the edge of Earnest’s blackberry thicket. “Take care of yourself. Have a nice day,” Jeff said to the creature.

  Anna laughed. How many men would rescue a caterpillar? She’d loved his courtesy and kindness.

  But now he’d shown his true nature. The fork-tongued weasel! Still, Anna couldn’t bring herself to throw away the picture of that special afternoon. She looked at the photo one last time and hid it facedown at the bottom of her sweater drawer.

  She had more to sort through, including linens, dishes, and cookware. And what about dividing their herbs and spices, whose jars Jeff had lined up in the cupboard alphabetically after searching for oregano one night?Would he get the allspice; she, the bay leaves; he, the celery seed? It was too much to consider in one morning. Her purge was going to take longer than expected. For now she had other pressing tasks.

  Such as wiping their financial slate clean and putting all the condo accounts only in her name. From a drawer of the file cabinet, she pulled out last month’s bills, called Puget Sound Energy, and was put on hold. As the wait dragged on, to amuse herself, Anna added up the amounts due for the phone, water, cable, electricity, and garbage pickup. Though she’d paid her half each month, the total stared her in the face and shocked her. She gaped at the number as people do when driving by a freeway wreck.

  When she and Jeff had divided expenses, they’d seemed manageable. Sometimes after a slim-pickings month at her shop, he’d bailed her out and paid the bills himself. But now just as she was trying to get Plant Parenthood going again, she’d be responsible for the full amount of the bills and rent. Without Jeff, she was up a financial creek.

  “Puget Sound Energy.” The customer-service woman sounded bored.

  “I need to change a joint account so it’s only in my name,” Anna said.

  “You have the account number?”

  As Anna gave it to her, she heard the smack of gum.

  “You’re Anna Sullivan?”

  “That’s right. You need to take Jeff Egan off the bills. He’s not living here anymore.”

  “Break up?”

  “Um . . . yes.” If you really want to know.

  “I’ve been getting lots of calls like yours. Maybe Mercury’s in retrograde.” A click of computer keys. “So Jeff Egan’s off the account now. Anything else I can do for you?”

  Help me win the lottery. Lead me to buried treasure. Find me a consumptive aunt who will die and leave me a fortune.

  Anna pictured herself at the top of a circus tent, swinging from a trapeze by one finger—and no safety net was there to catch her.

  Every time Anna had turned into Puget Sound Bank’s parking lot, Earnest had marched his front legs in place on Vincent’s seat. He’d hardly been able to wait to dash inside for a Milk-Bone from Marion, his faithful teller. Today, however, he sat there with a brick’s enthusiasm and seemed hardly to notice he was about to enter his mansion of treats. Anyone could read his perspective on the situation: ho-hum. I’d just as soon go home.

  Anna had to coax him out of Vincent. Earnest didn’t even seem happy to be free of his plastic cone. Inside, he did not dash across the polished floor and skid to a stop at Marion’s counter, as he usually did. He walked there with a slump. Anna could have tied a rope around his middle, pulled up, and corrected his posture.

  Less than a year from retirement, Marion slumped too. Counting her days, hours, and minutes to freedom, she seemed too burned out to iron her blouse or tuck loose wisps of hair into her disheveled French twist.

  “How’s my adorable boy?” Marion placed her elbows on the counter, leaned over, and held out a Milk-Bone. Normally, Earnest rose on his hind legs, rested his paws on the counter’s edge, and presented his teeth for a chomp. But today he stood there, four paws on the floor. “What’s up with him?” Marion asked.

  “Jeff moved out.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’d have bet an extra year on this job that you two would get married.”

  “Not going to happen.” It felt strange to say it out loud.

  “That’s terrible. No wonder Earnest’s not himself.”

  “I’m hoping he’ll snap out of it.”

  “Here, give that boy his biscuit.” Marion handed the Milk-Bone to Anna.

  To get Earnest to take it, she pushed it between his two horseshoes of teeth and mentally urged, Don’t be rude. He dropped it to the floor, no more enthused about it than he’d been about the former hoof, which Anna had finally returned, without a tooth mark on it, to his treat jar.

  Just then, a man in a navy sweat suit stepped in line behind Anna, and Marion shifted into business mode. “So what do you need today, Anna?” she asked.

  “I want to move twenty-five hundred dollars from savings to checking.”

  If the man had not been waiting, Marion might have exclaimed, “Whew! Savings takes a hit.” But she only nodded, official.

  Anna handed her a withdrawal slip, and she gave Anna a receipt, which she took with a leaden heart. Her savings for the house had been sacred, but now she needed money for plants and flowers—and the condo’s rent and bills.

  After collecting the money off Marion’s counter, Anna picked up Earnest’s biscuit, which lay on the floor like a small, wounded soldier. “Maybe he’ll be hungry later,” she said.

  CHAPTER 16

  On the first Saturday afternoon in his new apartment, Jeff ’s objective was to settle in quickly and ignore his hot-pink walls. He’d think of this apartment as a bad hotel he had to stay in for a short time. Though Jeff’s confidence in his and Anna’s relationship had faltered since she’d taken his key, he held on to the prospect that soon she’d stop freezing him out. For now, however, he understood how the man inside the
shaken glass ball felt about the blizzard.

  Jeff leaned his paintings against the living-room wall because he had no hammer for his nails. Something to pick up at the condo. He set up his drafting table across the room and started to unpack his books. He looked around. No shelves. Okay, he’d leave the books in the box—they’d be easier to move back to the condo. Shelves or no shelves aren’t the end of the world.

  In the bedroom Jeff unpacked his clothes. Since shopping was torture for him, his wardrobe was sketchy—two suits, about a dozen shirts, and a few sweaters, sports coats, and pairs of slacks and jeans. He had a parka, overcoat, down vest, rain slicker, and handful of ties, mostly from Anna. For the last few days, he’d worn the same pair of slacks and one of those ties with whatever wrinkled shirt he pulled out of a cardboard box. But his rumpled look couldn’t go on forever. He needed his and Anna’s iron. Another thing to pick up.

  In a neat row Jeff lined up his four pairs of shoes on the closet floor. He opened the top drawer of Mr. Ripley’s dresser to put in shorts and tee shirts. Jeff stopped. He stared.

  Long hairs lay, like irksome threads, on the bottom of the drawer. He pursed his lips with distaste. So the former tenant had been a brunette. Irish? Japanese? Salvadoran? Whoever she was, Jeff wished she’d vacuumed the damned drawers before moving out.

  Having no vacuum cleaner here, he dampened a paper towel and wiped up the hair. To clean this place, he should have the vacuum cleaner, which, like the iron, he and Anna had bought together. What were they going to do? Borrow these essentials back and forth? Buying new ones for a short time would be a waste of money. In this situation, how was anybody supposed to win?

  Besides the hammer, iron, and vacuum cleaner—and Anna—the other crucial missing thing was Earnest. Jeff had not seen him for three days, which felt like three months. Tomorrow Jeff would go to the condo, borrow him for the afternoon, and take him for a romp in the woods. Afterward, they’d stop here, and Jeff would show him the balcony and give him a Granny Smith apple—Earnest went wild over the crunch.

  Except Jeff had no paring knife to cut the apple here. Where would the list of missing essentials end? Another thing to pick up at the condo.

  Jeff thought, What a pain in the ass this situation is getting to be. But then he told himself, Patience, patience. The Romans took a while to build their city.

  Jeff knocked on the condo door. When his neighbor bounded along the sidewalk in his running shoes and baseball cap and found him there, pathetically trying to get inside his own place, Jeff felt like a fool.

  “Lost your key?” the neighbor asked.

  “Yes.” But not in the way you think.

  “The manager can let you in.”

  As the neighbor jogged on, Jeff thought, Damn. This is my home as much as Anna’s. From the beginning, they’d rented it together, and this very month he’d paid his usual half of the rent. Legally, he had a right to live here till the end of September. He wished he’d not so amiably handed her the key.

  Jeff knocked and called again. “Anna?” Besides picking up Earnest, he’d intended to tell her that he’d asked Brian to take him off the project. He’d wanted her to see she meant so much to him that he’d been willing to tarnish his professional future for her. But damn her! He couldn’t talk with her if she wouldn’t answer the door.

  This morning Anna hadn’t answered the phone, either. He’d called. Three times. In the garage he’d just parked next to Vincent, so he knew she was inside. He’d have to be brain dead not to understand she was avoiding him.

  Impatient, Jeff pounded the door with his fist. Still, she didn’t come. “Anna? I know you’re in there. Open the damned door.”

  When Jeff pressed his ear against the wood for signs of life, he heard Earnest whimpering on the other side—so near and yet so far. Each whimper felt like a stab from the paring knife Jeff had intended to collect here today.

  Anyone could recognize the anguish Earnest was expressing: I know Jeff is there. Why isn’t he coming in? I’m confused, and I don’t like it. I’m not sure what to do.

  Jeff closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips against his temples. His cheeks felt hot. His mouth was dry. He had a right to be annoyed when Anna was acting like he didn’t exist, and, far worse, when she was upsetting his dog. But for today, as hard as it was, he resolved to continue as Mr. Go-Along-to-Get-Along. He would keep his annoyance in check.

  It was building up, though, and sidling precariously close to resentment. Anna couldn’t just cut him off with a quick and heartless scissor snip.Whether she liked it or not, their damned iron and vacuum cleaner kept them entangled, to say nothing of nearly three years’ memories and feelings. And Earnest. He mattered most. Anna couldn’t let her pettiness reduce him to whimpers.

  Biting his lip in frustration, Jeff rested his forehead on the door. For Earnest’s sake, he stopped knocking. “It’s okay, Buddy,” he said.

  On his cell, Jeff called what used to be his and Anna’s landline. He could hear rings in the living room, but no footsteps moving toward them. After six rings, the voice mail clicked on. Another shock. That morning his voice had been on the recorded message, but now Anna said, “I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave a message, I’ll call you back.”

  She’s not wasted any time, Jeff thought bitterly. He’d stood by and let her elbow him out of the way and take over their condo and his dog—and now she was usurping their life. He called her cell. No answer, of course. After another recorded message, he said, “It’s me. As you know, I’m standing at the door. I want to see Earnest.” Jeff paused, not sure how hard to push. If he alienated her more than she already was, they’d never work out this mess.

  “We need to talk,” Jeff continued. “I realize you’re trying to claim Earnest, but he’s mine. You can’t hold him hostage just because you’re mad at me. I paid for his adoption. I’ve footed most of his food and vet bills. I’m responsible for him.”

  Jeff wanted to say he was legally responsible, but the word might sound too much like he was gearing up for a court fight, and that would sound the death knell for their relationship. He held out hope that he and Anna would somehow get back together.

  Nevertheless, he was vexed. A few days ago his patience had been as thick as the Sweet Time Bakery’s mile-high chocolate cake. Now it had thinned to a razor’s edge.

  CHAPTER 17

  Anna was weaving lavender wands when the first customer of her newly opened shop walked in. Perhaps the sandwich board that she and Lauren had set out next to the poetry post that morning had drawn him. They’d attached blue and white balloons and printed in triumphant red letters HURRAH! WE’RE READY FOR BUSINESS AGAIN!

  “Welcome. May I help you?” Anna asked as Earnest rose from his new emerald-green lily pad and sized up the man.

  He could only be called a hunk, though a rose by any other name would smell as sweet: heartthrob, babe magnet, eye candy, stud. His muscled chest bulged under his cotton turtleneck, the same turquoise as his eyes. His chiseled features might have graced a GQ cover. Too bad Joy’s not here to see him.

  “I want to surprise my girlfriend. Do you have flowers I can leave on her car seat?” he asked.

  “Sure. Any idea what she’d like?”

  He paused as he considered the question. His lips were seductive. Sexy stubble darkened his cheeks. “I’ve never given flowers to a woman before. What do other men get?”

  “Depends on what they want the flowers to say.”

  His turquoise eyes lit up. His smile was pure bad boy. Anna would have bet the statement that this hunk wanted the flowers to make was You’re hot, babe. Let me ravage you again tonight.

  “Are you looking for something romantic?” Of course, he was. She’d asked just to help him out.

  “Romantic. Yes! Sure! That’d be great.”

  “Red roses maybe? I have some that are actually called Romeo. They’re fragrant and sensuous. Women love them.”

  “Good.” The bad boy sm
ile again.

  Anna took her bucket of Romeos from the refrigerator, which was now running by an extension cord from the garage. She set them on the counter. She’d make him the Humdinger, her standard amorous bouquet. It was luscious, the opposite of her chaste Virtue Special.

  “Here, smell,” she said.

  He sniffed—heartthrob nose to voluptuous rose. “Perfect.”

  “A dozen?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll have them ready in a few minutes.”

  Anna counted out the roses, placed them on cellophane, with a tissue paper lining, and folded the corners over the stems. The man wandered around the room and examined her new plants and freshly washed Buddhas and angels. He squatted down and petted Earnest, who’d gone back to his new lily pad as if he were a Mongolian prince claiming his yurt. With entitlement, Earnest sprawled languidly on the corduroy, like he thought the customer had come to pay him homage and any minute yaks would arrive bearing Granny Smith apples and cheese.

  As Anna stapled the cellophane in place, she thought of the hunk’s girlfriend showing up at her car and finding his roses. Surely she’d be pleased. Women liked surprises. Anna did.

  Last year after breakfast one morning, she’d dropped her favorite teacup on the kitchen’s tile floor. The cup, almost large enough to house a goldfish, shattered into more pieces than Humpty Dumpty had. As she picked them up, she complained to Jeff, “I don’t know how I’ll ever find another cup like this. I never see this size anywhere.”

  That evening when she came home from work, he was waiting for her on the love seat, unusual because she nearly always got home first. “Ready for a treasure hunt?” he asked.