by Mary Carter
“That’s the beauty of it,” Brad said. “You can only reach it by boat.”
“We don’t even have a boat.” Brad just looked at her. “You bought a boat too, didn’t you?”
“You’ll love it. It’s a perfect little rowboat.” If he starts to sing “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” I’m going to kill him. “We’ll paint it yellow.”
“I can’t believe you did this without me.” Bailey headed for the kitchen. She ended up in front of the fridge, staring into it, wondering if anything inside could make her feel better.
“There’s also a ferry captain.” Brad sounded so hopeful, so excited. So freaking childish.
“What?”
“The island has a ferry captain. He’s willing to make a couple of runs a day to ferry our guests back and forth. For a small fee, of course.”
“Of course.” Bailey slammed the fridge door shut. “Can we forget the fairy god-captain for a moment?”
“There’s no need to mock.” Brad gestured to the freezer. “I bought cookie dough ice cream,” he said. “Your favorite.” Bailey wasn’t going to say thank you, not in the middle of a fight, but she did accept the carton and spoon when he handed them to her. Maybe a rush of sugar would help her calm down.
“Brad! You’ve made all these life-changing decisions without me.” She’d planned on saying more. A lot more. Only suddenly, no thoughts were left in her head. Just a little bit of brain freeze and the unmistakable desire to smash something. Bailey slammed down the ice cream carton and yanked open the fridge again. She grabbed both bottles of champagne, the ones they’d planned on celebrating with the day she was supposed to show the penthouse. Now forever known as the day he died. Brad hadn’t even remembered. Not that she expected him to right away. But months had gone by. Every day he’d opened the fridge and seen the bottles of champagne. They had been his idea. Yet he didn’t say a word. Well, might as well make use of them. She popped the Dom first and drank straight out of the bottle. She held the cheap one out to Brad. He shook his head.
“I didn’t go there intending to bid,” he said. “I swear.” Bailey took her time drinking the champagne. She lowered the bottle and held up her index finger. She needed to burp.
“Is it too late to get out of this?” she asked after she finally released the air in her lungs. Brad shook his head. Was he shaking his head yes, or was he shaking his head no? She didn’t know anything about him anymore. Not a single thing. He soon cleared it up.
“All sales are final.” Once again, he was trying to sound contrite. But it was still there, just beneath the surface. He was on cloud nine, high as a space monkey landing on Planet Bananas.
“You didn’t even see the property in person, did you?” She took both bottles of champagne with her to the living room. Brad followed. She suddenly wished they had a balcony. If she had made that sale, they could have moved. They could have bought a place with a balcony. Or, if Brad didn’t want to go with her, she could have moved. She could have bought her own little place with her own little balcony. Then she could have thrown herself off it.
“I couldn’t see it in person,” Brad said. “It was an auction.”
“Why didn’t you just buy a painting, or an antique sword, or a horse!”
“A horse? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Right. Because a freaking lighthouse makes much more sense.”
“It’s an investment. It’s a job.”
“How much?”
“Don’t worry. We won’t have to borrow much.” Bailey choked on the champagne, which triggered a violent cough. It took a long time for her to stop. Brad didn’t even pound her on the back. He just stood and waited with his new, infinite patience.
“Borrow?” she spat out the minute she could breathe again. “As in you spent the entire half a million on this property?”
Brad shoved the picture at her again. “Look how beautiful it is! It probably won’t need much work at all. We’ll be able to jump right in and start our life.”
“We have a life. Here.”
“No. You have a life here. You’re the one who keeps telling me I need to get a job, right?”
“Don’t you dare put this on me.”
“Look at me.” Brad took out the largest picture of the lighthouse out of the folder and held it against his chest like he was cradling a newborn baby. “I’m so happy about this. I want you to be happy.”
Bailey wanted to be happy too. She wanted to be the young girl in the ocean ecstatic to have their initials etched in wood. But she wasn’t. They weren’t kids anymore. They were older now, so why wasn’t he wiser? Maybe Jason was right. Nobody wanted anybody to be too happy. Nobody was comfortable around anybody happier than them. Because the truth was Bailey hated Brad’s newfound happiness. She hated how every time they went outside he found something he wanted her to stop and stare at. The morning light. A leaf. How the sun was glinting off a penny on the sidewalk. The longer they had to stop and stare at something, the more Bailey felt like something was wrong with her for not seeing its innate beauty, for wanting to get where they were going.
It was wearing her down. The more he thought something was beautiful, the more she automatically hated it. And the hours he was spending on the Internet. Who was he talking to? He was spending way more time with strangers than he was with her. Granted, part of it was her fault. She didn’t want to hear all these stories about death, and tunnels, and “life reviews.” It made her angry. It made her remember what it felt like to almost lose her husband. Bailey could feel all her promises of being patient with Brad drain right out of her.
Because she couldn’t help but resent him just a little lately. He was using his “death” as an excuse to cheat her out of the life he’d promised her. The life she’d earned after following him all over the country. The job she finally had, the home they lived in, the children she wanted. He’d promised, he’d promised, he’d promised. Bailey held up her fingers one by one as she started to list off his failures. “Surf’s Up Santa Monica (which is what he named it after promising her it would be B&B Boards). Sweaters in Seattle, The Coffee Clutch.” Bailey grabbed the picture of the lighthouse out of his hands and held it up. “Hudson River Lighthouse,” she said, adding it to the list.
“It used to be the Sage Lighthouse,” Brad said. “But I thought we’d call it Olivia’s Lighthouse.”
“Please,” Bailey said. “Please tell me this is some kind of joke.” Brad reached out and took Bailey’s hands. There was a spark back in his eyes, a dancing excitement she was all too familiar with. She hadn’t seen it in a while, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it ever again.
“Life is an adventure. You have to take risks. This isn’t just going to be a business this time. This time it’s going to be a home, Bails. Our home.” Bailey, horrified with herself even as she was doing it, began to rip up the picture of the lighthouse. She channeled all her frustrations at the piece of paper as she tore into it and let the pieces fall to the ground. Brad simply watched her.
“Our home is right here. Right here, Brad.” She crushed the pieces of the picture underneath her shoe, then walked away. Nothing could have made her feel worse than the sight of Brad picking them up, trying to piece them back together.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said quietly. He sounded so sad, so lost, so dejected. She wasn’t going to fall for it.
“Why wasn’t my signature required on this sale?”
At least he had the decency to look sheepish. “It was a cash sale. And technically . . .” He stopped, treading carefully over his words.
“Technically what?” Bailey could feel her throat tighten, her words come out in a constricted breath.
“Technically the money was left to me.” She couldn’t believe how much that hurt. Even if it was true. Even though she knew as she stood staring at him that Olivia Jordan, wherever she was, would be one thousand percent on Brad’s side. If he had spent the money on a half a million Pop-Tarts, Olivia would be warming
up toasters as they spoke.
“I mean nothing to you. Is that it?”
“You mean everything to me.” Brad came over and reached out as if to touch her, but in the end kept his distance. She knew she would have pushed him away, but she was still mad he didn’t touch her.
“You didn’t even consult me.” The urn. She wanted to throw the urn. She wanted to toss the ashes out the window. What would he do? Given his guilt and obsession with Olivia, he would probably go insane. Brad saw she was looking in the direction of the bedroom.
“Do not even think about throwing that,” he said. Bailey hated that he knew her so well. He stepped into their bedroom and returned with the urn tucked protectively under his arm.
“Let’s take Aunt Olivia and go see our lighthouse. I think once you see it—”
“We are not driving anywhere with those ashes anymore. Do you hear me?”
“Bailey. She won’t hurt you.”
Bailey swigged out of the champagne again and then took a step closer to Brad. “Do you hear yourself?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Do you hear how crazy you sound?”
“You think I’m crazy? You think my grief is crazy? You think the fact that I died is crazy? What else? My out-of-body experience?”
Yes, yes, yes, and sorry, but yes. But as angry as she was, that was still a border she wasn’t prepared to cross. Not just yet. Instead, she focused her anger on the urn.
“Ashes to ashes,” Bailey said. “You know what comes next?”
“Don’t start this again.”
“Dust to dust, Brad. Dust to dust.” She ran her finger along the urn and held it up. “This isn’t the dust they were speaking of, Brad. She has to go back into the earth. Where we all go.”
“That’s my call,” Brad said. “And we’re not ready.” “We.” He used “we.” We’re not ready. “You could be a little more supportive,” Brad added.
“What am I supposed to do? Make her a cup of tea? Take her shopping? Find a nice strong vase to fix her up with? My God—you’re looking for a fight, aren’t you? I can commute.”
“What?”
“That’s what you said about the lighthouse. You’ll go live there and ‘I can commute.’ ”
“I told you—”
“Admit it! You want to live in your little lighthouse all by yourself, don’t you?”
“My little lighthouse? Do you hear yourself? Sarcasm and resentment oozes out in everything you say.”
This had gone too far. Bailey didn’t want to see Brad this upset. He had been through a traumatic experience. She had to get a grip on her anger. “Brad.”
“I have to do this, Bailey. I think it’s what I’m meant to do.”
“This is so typical of you! We have a life here. You and me. You promised, Brad, you promised.”
“I know, I know. But things happen, Bailey. I had this incredible, mind-blowing experience. Do you know what it was like? Do you have any idea?”
“You went behind my back—”
“It was pure love, Bailey.”
“You spent our money—”
“Love like I’ve never felt before.” Bailey froze. She felt as if she’d been turned to stone. Love like he’d never felt before? He saw the look on her face. He put the urn down and approached her slowly. “Not romantic love, babe. Just . . . all-encompassing love. And now I want to share that love with you. This is meant to be. You have to believe me. It’s our destiny. You and me.”
“No, it’s not. Our destiny is a baby, and a condo with a terrace, and Central Park. Our life is here. Not some godforsaken little lighthouse.”
“I can’t speak for your life, Bails. But there’s one thing—no, make that two things that I do know. My life is not here.” He picked up Olivia’s urn and headed for the door. Halfway there he stopped and turned. “And secondly, there is absolutely nothing ‘little’ about my lighthouse.” With that, he and Olivia’s ashes stormed out.
Chapter 8
Bailey stood in Olivia’s kitchen, packing the contents of her cupboard into boxes marked DONATE, KEEP, and THROW (which to Bailey meant both “throw away” and literally “throw” if things continued to be this stressful) while Jesse sat at the dining room table drinking tea. Jesse was considerably younger than Bailey, at least a decade. Bailey didn’t know Jesse’s exact age because when she’d asked her, Jesse said, “In my realm, age is meaningless.”
When they first met in the book club, Jesse stuck her hand out and said, “I’m Jesse. Spelled like the outlaw.”
She was a spunky girl with delicate features. Her black hair was always cut in a new style. Today half was chopped off while the other half hung in a bob obscuring most of the left side of her face. The one eye Bailey could see was heavily made up. She was petite, yet strong. She was a nurse in the emergency ward at a hospital in the Bronx. She absolutely loved her job, thrived on the chaos and absurdity that filled her nights. Bailey could see it. Jesse was always moving, twitching, doing something. At the book club where they’d met, Jesse was the first to say what Bailey had secretly been thinking about the book selection that month, Clown Down, a highly acclaimed literary tale of a business executive who secretly longed to be a clown.
“I thought it was a load of shit,” Jesse said, in a loud, confident voice when it was her turn to speak. Bailey burst out laughing. Couldn’t help it, the laughter came tumbling out of her in a nervous free fall. Bailey had spent the first fifteen minutes of the discussion trying to figure out how to politely say that she didn’t “connect” with the book, crafting exactly the right words. Words that would convey she had been an English lit major in college, and read all the classics, and yet still, for some reason, just didn’t connect with the book. She figured something was wrong with her. Jesse’s perspective, that maybe it was just shit, had never entered her mind. After all, the writer had gone to Columbia, won awards. The New York Times raved about the book. Jesse grinned at Bailey. “Right?” she asked her. “Wasn’t it just pure bullshit?”
Bailey hadn’t even finished it. She couldn’t get through the first four chapters and she hated herself for it. Jesse redeemed Bailey’s ego just a little bit that day. “I couldn’t get into it,” Bailey admitted in front of Jesse and the group.
There were a few gasps, one cough, and a quite audible “My God.”
“If the asshole wants to be a clown, he should just go be a clown. Do I really need four hundred pages of clown ambivalence?” Jesse said. Once again, she took the words out of Bailey’s mouth.
“He had a reputation, a high-paying job, a family,” someone interjected. Looks were exchanged all around. Clearly, anyone could see the book was pure genius.
“I was a little confused,” Bailey said. “They kept mentioning his ruddy cheeks and red nose. But they said he never drank alcohol—so were they trying to say he was, like, actually morphing into a clown?”
“You didn’t finish the book, did you?” someone in the group said.
“I used it to prop up my coffee table,” Jesse said. Bailey laughed again. She really wanted to stop, but she couldn’t.
“This book is not for everyone,” the leader of the group said. “I think those who are more literary minded will relate to the angst and metaphors that fill these pages on a deep, human level. It’s everyman. It’s the death of the American dream.”
“No,” Jesse said. “This group is the death of the American dream.”
“I beg your pardon?” the leader said. She was the librarian type. Glasses hung from a chain tucked in her ears. Her legs were crossed at the ankles; the index finger of her left hand lay across her lips and touched her nose. She had the look of a martyr practicing infinite patience.
“I just don’t see how he’s fooled everyone into thinking this book is anything other than complete shit,” Jesse said. “I want to scream at you people. It’s like, hello! The emperor is butt-naked.”
An older gentleman with a vest on top of a sweater threw up his hands. “Buck-naked,” he said
.
“What?” Jesse said.
“The emperor is buck-naked.”
“I’m so glad you agree,” Jesse said. She crossed her leg, swung it, and smiled.
But the man didn’t stop there. “Didn’t you get it? He wants to be a clown. He thinks his life would be complete if only he were a clown. But he is already a clown, don’t you see? Corporate America is turning him into a clown, which is what he says he longs to be, only he already is, and he can’t see it. His curly red hair, his red nose, his red cheeks—how everyone laughs at him! The embodiment of his life is the life of a clown, he already has what he thinks he wants, and yet he still yearns for it. He drives a VW Bug and piles all his friends in it, for God’s sakes. I cried when they kept coming out of that car. I laughed, of course, but I cried too! He couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see that he already had the life of a clown—”
“But the paycheck of an executive,” someone else chimed in.
“Exactly! Not to mention the allegory that all those CEO types are also clowns. My God, the levels of meaning. Irony! Brilliant, evocative irony! And the ending, my God, the ending!”
At the mention of the ending, the group broke out in titters, and whispers, and exclamations. Now Bailey wished she’d read the book. What was the ending? Did he finally run off and join the circus? She was afraid to ask. Jesse met Bailey’s eyes and grinned.
“Do you drink alcohol?” Jesse asked.
“In moderation,” Bailey said, because she still wanted the group to like her just a little bit.
“Good,” Jesse said. “I could really use a cocktail. Let’s go.” With the excitement of a schoolgirl making a new best friend on the first day, Bailey followed Jesse out to the nearest bar. It was the beginning of a surprisingly good friendship. Although Bailey was putting it to the test today. Jesse didn’t want to drink tea. Jesse didn’t even like tea. She didn’t have a say in the matter. It was the first cup of tea Bailey had been allowed to make in Olivia’s apartment. A perverse part of her hoped wherever Olivia was, she could see Bailey lighting the burner. And then, of course, she felt guilty, and then pissed off. If Olivia had just been nice to her when she was alive, if she had liked her and let her make tea and insisted she borrow the Jag once in a while, they could have been the best of friends. They should have cleaned out Olivia’s place months ago; instead, Brad kept putting it off, paying the rent. But it was time.