Someone Else's Love Story

by Joshilyn Jackson

Paula watched this exchange with her eyes narrowing to slits. “What is this, some kind of intervention?” Bridget blinked, surprised Paula had caught on so quickly, and Paula’s lip curled up to show her teeth while her spine straightened, elongating upward from the waist. “Don’t even think you’re going to intervene on my ass. Don’t even.”

  William recognized the posture; animals show dental weaponry and stretch to appear larger when threatened. He gave in and got blunt before she fully roused for war.

  “We think you should move to Indiana with us.”

  Her spine relaxed and she grinned. “Oh, thank God. I was worried you wanted me to stop drinking.”

  She looked back at the TV, where an emaciated girl pranced in a circle wearing a wig made out of antlers.

  Paula flicked one finger at the TV. “It’s a rerun. This chick wins. Can you believe it?”

  William tried a rephrase. “I need you to move to Indiana.” Paula needed it, too, perhaps equally, but this was not the part that he should emphasize.

  Paula ignored him, speaking to Bridget. “I thought the plus-­size model had a shot this season.”

  William went to the TV and punched the power button off manually.

  Paula shrieked, “Daddy! You killed him!” Daddy was what Paula called the television.

  Bridget walked over to sit on the far side of Paula. As she went, William could hear the carpet crunching under her feet; Paula’s mother didn’t own a vacuum cleaner.

  Bridget said, “I want you to come, too.”

  Paula looked back and forth between them. When neither of them gave, she rolled her eyes and resigned herself to the conversation.

  “To do what?” she asked. “Farm corn?”

  “Go to school,” William said.

  Paula snorted. “Please. You think Notre Dame is going to take me?”

  “No,” William said. Paula’s nostrils flared and her eyes cut away. He realized too late that the question was rhetorical. “Your high school transcript is awful,” he said, by way of apology.

  “Who thinks William should shut up now?” Bridget asked, and she and Paula both raised their hands. “Come to Indiana.”

  “Seriously, and do what?” Paula said, like she was bored. She shoved a pile of magazines and her mother’s filthy ashtray aside and put her feet up on the table.

  Bridget said, “Go to Ivy Tech. I got you the brochure. You can get a two-­year degree.”

  “With what money? Kai’s useless, and William offed my only other parent.” She gestured at the blank screen.

  Now it was Bridget’s turn to roll her eyes. “Oh, get a freaking job! They have Red Lobster in Indiana. Plus, here Kai hits you up for rent, but William’s going to be rattling around in a three-­bedroom house, already paid for.”

  Paula snorted. “Live free like a tapeworm and go to moron school. That’s so appealing.”

  Bridget ignored that and kept laying out William’s plan, but with her own persuasive briskness. “It’s not a bad school. You make A’s, retake the SAT, and that degree will be like a high school transcript do-­over. It could be a ticket into any school you like.”

  Her tone took for granted that Paula was capable, that Paula could accomplish these things. Her belief was a compelling thing. Last year, she’d believed Paula into making up two math classes so she could graduate on time. She’d believed William into learning the names of a good third of his classmates; William’s senior yearbook was filled with notes and signatures that he could connect to faces, which was unprecedented. It was working on Paula again, now.

  “You can’t live in this pit, serving fried-­shrimp-­feast platters and dating . . . the kind of guy you date.” It was a misstep. William knew it even before Paula did.

  He watched Paula’s strange expression shift to a familiar one, her mouth pushing into a proud curl. “Thanks, Bridge, but William’s parents rented the house specifically so he wouldn’t have to share his oxygen with riffraff.”

  “I need you to,” William said, very flat, because it was such a bald, true thing. William loved lying back at the Fernbank planetarium and floating up into imagined space, loved sinking his whole consciousness into the bizarrely populated landscape of the microscopy, but he’d never lived anywhere but his house in Morningside. He could not imagine Indiana as a factual destination with breathable air and sandwich shops. He’d never traveled west of Birmingham or north of Sugar Mountain.

  Paula said, “Grow a pair, William. I’m not your blankie.”

  Bridget’s Irish temper flared. “Don’t take it out on him. You’re mad at me, because I insulted your awesome life here. But you know this would be great for all of us.”

  Paula lashed back, “Especially you. Right? If I come along, you won’t end up on your back.”

  “What does that mean?” Bridget asked, her voice strident.

  Paula sensed victory and leaned in. “How come I always have to sit between you and William at the movies now?”

  Bridget flinched, cutting her eyes over Paula’s shoulder to William. Paula and Bridget loved long, sweeping movies about war or doomed romance, where someone was always getting burned up in the desert or falling off a swing and dying of consumption. The films themselves didn’t interest William, but he loved the experience. Last year, he sat in the middle, enjoying the comforting sounds of Paula sucking Gummi Bears like lozenges on one side and the feel of Bridget’s arm pressed against his on the other. He kept his head canted so he could see Bridget in his peripheral vision, watching how the story changed her face.

  This year, Bridget maneuvered so that Paula sat between them. Always, even though with other ­people, Bridget was unself-­consciously physical, not only with her family. She and Paula groomed each other incessantly. Her carefulness as she preserved her distance, even at the movies now, was an escalation. An admission, like the way she kept his catalyst touched always to her pulse points.

  Bridget’s flush deepened. Paula leaned even closer, her back almost fully to William, pressing the advantage.

  “You want me in Indiana, Your Nunliness, so your plans don’t get screwed. Sex pun intended. Do you honestly not know that you’re in love with him? Or are you just some terrorized virgin, ready to robe up because it’s too spooky to think that your nice friend William owns a penis?”

  Bridget’s whole face went scarlet, but when she spoke, her voice was steady. “Of course I know I love him. And I’m not scared of sex.” Bridget met Paula’s eyes, calm and strong, staring her down. “It’s only that I fell in love with God first.” Paula shifted and looked away, uncomfortable in the presence of Bridget’s naked, shameless faith. She took her feet down off the table, got up, and walked away, across the room. Bridget looked to William, her eyes large and sad. What she said next was an apology. “First, and more. I love God more.”

  William’s hands closed into fists. His nostrils flared. His interpersonal skills were not up to the moment. Another man would have known what to say. Something about concurrency? Yes.

  William didn’t believe in God, but he did believe in Bridget’s love for God. It was a manifestation of her love of goodness, and William could believe in goodness. He saw it in her. He loved it in her. If required, he would willingly take on her rituals, and love goodness beside her in the manner that she chose. She was welcome to love goodness, to love it more than him, in fact, if only she was his.

  Bridget, he wanted to explain, these are not mutually exclusive states of being, but this did not sound romantic.

  Another man would have known how to say it. Paula could have told him, had they planned this in advance. In a few years, he would know without her help. But the moment came when it came, and he said nothing.

  Paula stood silent by the wall that served as a kitchen. There was only a narrow piece of counter, already stacked high with filthy dishes. Her back was turned. She was giving the moment
over to her friends.

  Which was not very like her.

  He realized then that Paula had derailed him. Bridget, too, shunting the conversation sideways. She’d set them on each other, then absconded to the filthy slice of kitchen.

  William started laughing, really laughing, the kind that got away from him and became an overloud booming that drew the eyes of strangers when it escaped in public. Paula turned to him and Bridget looked up.

  “You’re the smartest person I know,” William said to Paula, when he could finally speak. He wiped at his eyes, and when he looked back at her, Paula was making an ironic version of her sports face. Bring it. He recognized it from their one long-ago sex night.

  Bridget recognized it, too. “We got rolled!” He nodded, and Bridget said, “You’re wasted here, Paula, and you just proved it. Stop rotting.”

  “I’m not rotting,” Paula said.

  William said, “Yes, you are. Stop rotting. You want to lose this fight.”

  “I never want to lose,” Paula said, a little sulky.

  “This time, I think you do,” Bridget said, and she was right. Two weeks later, they caravanned to Indiana: The Sullivans’ mini­van, his parents’ coupe, and then William’s brand-­new SUV with Paula’s army-­surplus duffel resting in the back beside his suitcases.

  Now, finishing the dishes in this filthy condominium, he remembers that’s what Paula said to him, yesterday. Stop rotting. He did not realize until now that she was quoting Bridget, using his own wife’s words against him. She didn’t mean to push him toward Shandi. The opposite. But now he is thinking about the value of fresh starts.

  Is this what he needs? Something entirely new? Before the Circle K, he made Bridget be a thing that never was, as if Twyla’s interrupted, small existence and Bridget’s never being born were not mutually exclusive states of being.

  The doorbell goes off, very loud, and he jerks and spins with his heart rate jacking. Water sloshes onto the floor. He can hear Shandi answering it, letting the team of maids in. What the fuck is he doing here? What the fuck is he doing?

  He begins listing prime numbers in his head, an old trick from the Indiana therapist. The one who absolved him of parties. He hasn’t used it in years, but it seems fitting now, with the past resurrecting unstoppably around him. He can hear Shandi leading the maid-­ser­vice team upstairs to get started there. By the time she comes back down, he is at 457, and the wild tattoo of his heartbeat has calmed. He doesn’t stop following the prime numbers upward, though. He presses Start on the dishwasher and goes into the living room. Shandi is gathering her keys and her purse, readying to vacate. The folder is sitting on the coffee table again.

  Shandi says, “Do I need to leave a check for the cleaners?”

  William says, “They have my card on file. I owe you a clean house, I think.”

  “Thank you.” William steps toward the coffee table, reaching for the folder, but Shandi says, “Leave it. I don’t need that.”

  “The maids might throw it out—­”

  “I hope they do,” she interrupts. “Crumple it up. Put it on the floor.”

  She sounds firm, as if this is what she truly wants him to do. It doesn’t matter. He can print it out again if she likes. He tips the file off the table, and as it falls, the papers inside catch the air and sail out, spilling in a fan across Natty’s scattered Matchbox cars. Clayton Lilli stares up at them from a close-­up.

  “I thought I would recognize him, but I don’t. Not at all. I can’t even tell if he looks like Natty. If Natty looks like him. It’s not good enough, William. I have to really see him.” She is rocking herself, unconsciously. She must be deeply upset; it’s what his own body did outside the Sullivans’ house. She glances at her child, sleeping in a little curl on the sofa. “I want you to take me. I think I’m scared to go by myself. Will you?”

  “Of course,” William says. There isn’t a set of circumstances in which he would let this girl go see Clayton Lilli on her own.

  Shandi is already turning to pick her sleeping child up, settling his limp weight against her chest with his head on her shoulder. He sighs and curls an arm over her shoulder, still deeply out. She carries Natty to the front door, and William follows, fishing his keys out of his pocket.

  “But not today. Not with Natty. He can’t even suspect there is a Natty. Today, I want to go sit in the sunshine and eat things.” She stops and faces him directly. “I’m not good at this. I suck in fact. William, can we go to lunch? Here’s my sleeping kid, but still. Can you and me go out? To lunch?” Shandi is speaking quickly, her words tumbling over one another. Spots of color rise in her cheeks. When he doesn’t answer, she keeps on talking, faster and faster. “I know a place, really close. It’s super relaxed and boho, but the food is five star. Dad took me last year for my birthday. Just us. Bethany wouldn’t go there if every other restaurant in the world was on fire and her housekeeper was dead. I honestly believe she’d rather cook.”

  William suspects that, even though Natty is nominally present, what Shandi has proposed here is a date. He is being invited to participate in an event that sounds as foreign as Indiana did once. Back then, he’d packed and driven north anyway. Indiana was real when he arrived.

  He puts his car keys in his pocket. “Sure. When the maids are done, I’ll need to come back here, anyway. I have to help Natty tape up the hole in his closet.”

  Shandi grins. “Great, I’ll drive. So we don’t have to move Natty’s booster.”

  That’s good. He won’t have to explain his burned-­up driver’s seat. He follows her down the steps. His car is beside hers, in the condo’s second parking space. He folds all of himself into the tiny VW as she transfers Natty to his car seat and buckles him in without waking him.

  When Shandi gets in on the other side, her arm brushes his, it’s so close and small. If she has proposed a date, then he is now on it. She’s still talking, very quickly, as she starts the car and drives, filling the car with chatter about the lamb burgers, the way none of the plates match, how there is a shady patio with a bocce ball court.

  She says, “Today’s so pretty, can we sit outside?”

  This is a direct question. “Sure.”

  “Good,” Shandi says. She starts patting at herself with her right hand, her hair, her face, manually setting herself in order as she drives. Her arm moves against his, and he needs to get his own car fixed. This car is too small, too close. The prime numbers keep winding upward in his head, and this is helping. She’s gone into a maze of narrow, residential streets. There is very little traffic.

  She says, “Let’s drink a lot of wine. So much we have to taxi home, okay? We’ll play bocce and eat gelato until we’re sick. We can talk about anything that’s nice. Or sit and watch the birds steal crumbs. Can we do that?”

  She is turning into a parking lot. He is at 4,007 and Stevie is alive. Truthfully, everything that she is saying sounds pleasant. He can do this. Let the maid team finish. Eat a lot of protein. Let all that is complicated fall away. She is suggesting they compartmentalize, and William is superlative at this.

  “Good,” he says.

  She grins. “Let’s eat so much bread, William. They homemake it. We’ll eat lunch out, like we’re just ­people.”

  “We are just ­people,” William says.

  Shandi eases into a small parking space that faces the side of the patio she’s been talking about. The restaurant itself is a narrow brick building with a long, low window. He can see the bocce ball court. No one is playing.

  She’s right; this time of day, it’s very empty. Only four ­people are sitting on the patio, divided into pairs. A young ­couple drinks beer and chats. The girl’s pretty legs are propped up across his lap. The closer ­couple is older, the man well into his forties and the woman a good ten or twelve years younger, about William’s age. They sit side by side on a wicker love seat with a
low coffee table in front of them. They are oblivious to the patio and all the little things with feathers, mostly house wrens and finches, around them. The man touches the woman’s face. He leans in and kisses her, his hand snaking deep into her hair. The trees by the patio are strung with paper lanterns and feeders, and birds are everywhere. This place was made for legs across laps and public kissing.

  This is what a date looks like. He watches through the glass. His body is rigid and still. His body does not open his door and walk toward it. It also does not lean away.

  Shandi hasn’t opened her door, either. The VW’s engine is still running. She stares at the older ­couple, kissing. Perhaps, seeing these things, she has become uncertain, too. That would be excellent.

  But then she says, “Hey, guess what? That’s my dad,” She points to the older man, who has now placed his hand on the woman’s side, high, so his thumb grazes the underside of her breast. “That’s my dad right there.”

  William’s eyebrows rise. He flicks one finger at the woman. “You said she wouldn’t come here?”

  They can leave, of course. Her father hasn’t seen her yet. He is not likely to see anyone. His eyes are closed, and William is uncomfortable with the amount of public tongue he is putting in his wife’s mouth.

  “My stepmother?” Shandi says, and snorts. “She would never. That woman? She’s not Bethany. Not even a little bit.”

  As if he feels their eyes, the man who is Shandi’s father breaks the kiss and turns to look right at them. He does a double take, so overblown it’s comical. He leaps to his feet and the woman is shunted to the side. She looks at them, too, and Shandi makes a strangling noise. Her father’s leg bangs the table, and their drinks topple. His unhinged jaw wags back and forth.

  Shandi is already throwing the car into reverse and backing out as he leaps the table and runs toward them. The woman scrambles to her feet. Shandi peels away, her lips compressed, and zigzags off down the street. The car screeches around a corner and Natty snuffles, shifting in his booster seat. William crams his arm through the tiny space in between the seats to steady him. The car completes the turn, and he can no longer see the ­couple or the restaurant. He faces front.