The Whole Golden World

by Kristina Riggle

  Rain tried to appreciate the gestures, but she could see he was forcing it. Gone was his bubbly joy at his good workday. Gone was his demonstrative affection.

  She shook her head. He planted a dry peck on the side of her head and vanished upstairs.

  Rain couldn’t think of anything on TV she would care to see, so she stared at her own reflection in the dark screen until the hot-water bottle turned cold and the ice in her glass melted completely away.

  14

  Morgan knew it was bound to happen. Though she’d tried to restrict her socializing to her orchestra friends these days, thus avoiding Britney and David, not to mention Ethan, she knew that Arbor Valley was small enough, interwoven enough, that one of these nights . . .

  And there they were. In the group of kids clustered in the movie theater lobby, all having met up together with text messages flying about what to see, where to meet, and what time. Britney and David were holding hands, in the thick of the crowd.

  They hadn’t noticed her yet. Morgan stood between the two sets of double doors in the theater as Friday night traffic pushed past her. She pretended to be digging in her purse for something and stepped to the side.

  They looked great together. Britney had that strawberry-blond hair that was almost pink, falling in soft waves meant to look natural, but Morgan knew she used hot rollers every day. David always had that kind of rugged, outdoorsy look to him with his square chin and broad shoulders. He was so much taller than Britney she looked positively elfin.

  Britney shimmered. That’s what she was doing. In the garish lighting of the movie theater she managed to reflect golden rays. No wonder he loved her. And Britney—whose college ambitions didn’t stretch much further than going to parties and tailgates—probably never talked to David about SATs or the future. Probably never told him she didn’t have time to see him because of orchestra practice.

  The ripple of David’s sudden boisterous laughter carried across the lobby right to where Morgan stood, as couples pushed open the door to go inside. With his laugh he pulled Britney in closer, and she laughed, too, her eyes lit up and shining, and her hand over her mouth, which was in a faux-shocked “O.” Morgan knew they were talking about her. Telling some joke about that scarface freak who thought she could hang out with them, and how pathetic was that? Britney slapped David’s chest weakly in a fake rebuke for whatever he’d just said.

  He was probably laughing about her in bed that first time, how she’d held her breath and scrunched her eyes, like she was getting a flu shot or something.

  Morgan turned away and charged out of the theater. In a crowd that big, no one would miss her. They’d assume she didn’t get the messages, and they’d probably be relieved in fact, scolding whoever had been dumb enough to include her in the first place.

  She stomped through the fresh powdery snow in her silly thin flats, wishing she’d worn those fluffy boots that always seemed to look stupid on her but that other girls—smooth-skinned, confident girls—could wear anyway.

  She didn’t want to go home, exactly.

  Her mother had blurted out last night that Boston University was too expensive, and too far away, and she would have told her right away if only Morgan had said up front she was applying there, and in fact she was annoyed at the waste of $75 for the fee. That even if her father got promoted to superintendent tomorrow—which still probably wouldn’t be enough money—they didn’t like the idea of her being thousands of miles from home, with no support system close by, and they weren’t exactly in a position to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice if she should have a problem.

  What problem? she’d asked, feeling cold through and through, right to her gut, like a hard ball of ice was freezing in her center. A stomachache? A bad grade? She’d handle it.

  Her mom was resolute. Too far, too far, too far. All night long those words echoed in her head.

  A scrap of poem was bouncing around in her mind.

  Too far gone, too far wrong, too far from what, too far from you? Too far to care, too far to ask, too far for fair . . .

  The parking lot was packed, and she’d been running late, so she’d been forced to park so far away that the snowplows hadn’t done a thorough job back in this section. Snow trickled in over her flats across her bare feet. Her hands began to shake with cold, as the wind whipped her long hair across her face.

  She bobbled her keys, and they vanished into a pile of the fluffy snow that had been trickling prettily all day.

  “Shit!”

  She bent to search the snow with her rapidly numbing fingers. She started to brush over something that felt like her keychain, when she noticed she was standing over a drainage grate.

  She dug with both hands until her fingers brushed metal, but then it slipped away and a moment later she heard a splash.

  “No!” she cried out loud. “Dammit all to hell.”

  Now she’d have to call her parents for the spare keys to come to her rescue, and she’d have to explain why she didn’t go into the movie, unless she made up some story about not feeling well. She stomped her foot in frustration, and it tingled with numbing cold.

  This also meant she was locked out of her car and would have to go inside somewhere to wait for them or risk dying of exposure because she just had to look cute by not wearing a hat, or boots, or even stupid gloves that might have kept her hands from shaking.

  “I hate this!” she shouted out loud, her voice breaking up into sobs.

  “Morgan?” said a voice behind her, and she squealed a little.

  “Mr. Hill?”

  It was. Her calc teacher, standing there in the parking lot next to a small SUV. He was wearing jeans and a close-fitting knit sweater, a black leather coat open over the top of that. In the faded yellow light of a distant lamppost, she could see black stubble over his chin. The rest of his face seemed ruddy, like he’d been outside awhile. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Well, no. I dropped my keys down a sewer grate.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. I have to call my folks and wait for them, but I don’t want to go in there.” She jerked her head toward the theater.

  “How come?”

  “My ex and his new girlfriend.”

  Mr. Hill juggled his keys briefly between his hands, looking up in the air. Then he looked around him in both directions.

  “Say, you want to wait in my car? For a while, I mean? Don’t tell anybody, it’s probably not really considered appropriate, but . . . You can always hop out when they’re due to show up . . .”

  Morgan drooped with relief. “That would be great. It’s either that or wait over there at the sports bar, and I don’t feel like doing that, either.” She approached the car, and he escorted her to the passenger side.

  “No, you sure don’t. It’s full of teachers right now.”

  He glanced around one more time, then opened the door and held out his hand. Morgan could have pulled up using the door frame, but she went ahead and accepted his hand. She flashed on an image of a fine lady being helped into a carriage and she almost giggled. He shut the door carefully behind her and trudged around to his side.

  Morgan’s heart started to work a little harder, like she was out of breath.

  He settled into the car, and as he closed the door, Morgan caught his scent. A spicy cologne. Her heart started to pound in earnest. In contrast to the noise of traffic and winter wind outside, it was like a monastery inside the car.

  Her hands were now reddened with blood rushing back into them. Her fingers felt fat and clumsy as she bobbled the phone, screwing up the touch screen.

  “Here,” Mr. Hill said, cranking the engine. “Why don’t you wait a minute and warm up.”

  The blower was cold at first, but in moments, delicious heat poured out, and Morgan held her hands in front of the vents, feeling her fingers prickle with returning warmth.

  “I think I have to make a call, too,” he said. “I’ve probably had one too many to get on th
e road.”

  Morgan actually wondered for a moment, Too many what? Until she made the connection between the sports bar and Mr. Hill’s ruddy face.

  “That’s probably smart,” she said. “Like the billboard says, a cab is cheaper than a DUI.”

  “Yep.” He sighed heavily. “I know my wife will be pissed at me, though, if I come home in a cab. She’ll get on me for drinking too much.”

  “She’d rather you drive yourself drunk?”

  “She’d rather I not go out at all.”

  “Wow. Really?”

  “Not exactly.” Mr. Hill shook his head. “I don’t want to make her sound like a battle-ax or anything. She’s just not really one for going out a lot. Especially lately. Like tonight, she said she had to work. She could have gotten out of it, though, I think. She just didn’t want to go out.”

  Morgan’s curiosity perked up. “How come?”

  “She’s been depressed. She comes home, she doesn’t talk to me, she drifts around the house with this sad face all the time. It’s like, hello! I’m here, your husband, remember me?”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  Mr. Hill tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to some rhythm only he could hear. He squinted across the parking lot, watching the silhouetted figures emerge from the bar. Stripes, it was called, and it was decorated outside like a referee’s shirt.

  “She wants to have a baby, I think I told you that before. I did, too, for a while. I like kids, and being a dad would be cool. But I didn’t know there’d be doctors and drugs and needles and procedures. It’s like something out of Frankenstein. Franken-baby.” Mr. Hill laughed bitterly. “I shouldn’t be talking like this. You don’t want to hear this garbage.”

  Morgan shrugged. “I don’t mind. It sounds like you need to get it out.”

  His shoulders drooped, and he briefly rested his head on the steering wheel. “I can’t talk to her, because she’s so deep in it. I can’t talk to my parents or my brother because Perfect Greg is having a baby in his perfect house with his perfect wife. They’d never get it.”

  “What about friends?”

  “Guys don’t talk to guys about shit like this.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish I didn’t feel like such a failure all the time.”

  Morgan started to reach out for his arm, then drew her hand back . . . He was a teacher, after all. Yet, he didn’t seem like Mr. Hill, slumped there in the driver’s seat of his car. He was simply a person. Talking to her like a person, too.

  “You’re not a failure. These things happen and we can’t control it. What matters is how you react. Do you curl up in a ball and cry, or do you get up and do something to make yourself feel better?”

  Mr. Hill turned to her in his seat. “Anyone ever tell you how wise you are?”

  Morgan smirked and shook her head. “All the damn time. Lot of good it does me.”

  “You’re an old soul.”

  “I’ve heard that one before, too.”

  Morgan felt her breath go shallow under the spotlight of his sudden direct stare. His face was in shadow, but from what she could see, he wore an expression of intense interest, as if he’d never seen her before and she was the most fascinating thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

  Then he reached out and stroked her hair.

  Morgan felt her pulse everywhere at once: throbbing in her face, her hands, her stomach, even—yes, there too, dear God, yes. This must be what everyone was so excited about.

  She reached up with her own hand and clenched his. The connection was a jolt, and before Morgan could think, she was leaning toward him and their faces met somewhere over the emergency brake.

  His mouth on hers was firm without being aggressive. He tasted like mint over the tang of beer. His tongue flicked the tip of hers, and a groan escaped her. Her body seemed to move toward him by itself, and she was all too happy to let it. The goddamn emergency brake was in the way.

  A horn sounded, and she yelped and they broke apart, panting.

  He looked over at his steering wheel, accusingly. He’d bumped it with his elbow. He started laughing, and so did she, also wanting to cry out to be touched again.

  His mirth faded, and so did his complexion.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “I’m so sorry, oh God . . .”

  “Don’t be,” she said, her voice coming out breathy and high. “I wanted you to.”

  “I’m in so much trouble,” he said, pushing his hands through his hair, looking through the windshield to see if anyone was out there ready to jump out of the bushes and report him.

  “No, you’re not. No one saw us. And I’m not upset. I’m not unwilling.” Morgan scarcely realized what she was saying, but she went with it anyway, her body charged and powerful, feeling more alive than she’d been in . . . Ever. More alive than ever.

  She repeated. “I’m not unwilling.”

  Mr. Hill seemed mollified, but he rubbed his face. “We can’t. For a million reasons, I mean—Christ, your dad is my boss. You’d better call your folks.” He put the car in reverse. “I’ll drive you back up to the theater door. Your ex probably went into the movie by now, so you don’t have to run into him.”

  “Don’t act like that was some dirty, awful thing just now. If you treat this like some dirty shame, then what does that make me?”

  He paused with his hands on the wheel, not having backed out of the parking space. “I didn’t mean that. You have to see how crazy that was. How wrong.”

  “Didn’t feel wrong to me.”

  “Me either,” he murmured, and he backed out of the parking space with exaggerated care.

  Morgan didn’t press him further. She could still feel the heat of his lips on hers and spent the next silent moments replaying their kiss, never doubting for a moment they were going to do that again.

  “How did you drop your keys down the sewer?” was the first thing her mother said.

  She replied, as she took the spare set of keys from her mother’s hand through the open window of her car, “Because I’m a terrible wretch and the worst daughter in the history of families.”

  “Ha, ha. Are you coming straight home? Or going out somewhere else, or what?”

  Morgan paused. She had been assuming she would have to go home, but her mother was assuming no such thing.

  “No, we’re going out to grab some pizza or something.”

  “Okay, well, don’t be too late. And for heaven’s sake, be careful on the roads. Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” Morgan trilled, as her mom’s car pulled away.

  This time she glided through the snow, hardly aware of the cold. Every part of her felt sharp and bright. The world looked distinct and dimensional in a way she hadn’t seen it in months. Every dancing flake in the lamplight seemed like a star.

  She cranked up the heat in her old Chevy, noting that she had a view of the front of the bar. So she waited.

  She’d been listening to NPR on the way to the movies, but she shut off the British reporter relating tragedies in sub-Saharan Africa.

  It was wrong, Mr. Hill had said, and Morgan knew that, obviously. He was married, she was young.

  But it was once wrong for a black man to marry a white woman, too. She thought back to last week, watching Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? with her mother on their weekly movie night. A privileged white girl fell in love with Sydney Poitier, and who wouldn’t? Morgan spent much of the movie in disbelief that their marriage should be a problem for anyone, and Dinah kept insisting that it was, especially for children they might have had, back then.

  Love triumphed, of course, with a dramatic speech by Spencer Tracy, while Katharine Hepburn gazed at him with adoring, shining eyes.

  She spotted the taxicab, and she knew even from that distance it was Mr. Hill climbing into it. The yellow cab was easy to follow in the snow, and follow she did, pulling to the side of the road at the end of a dark suburban block.

  She watched him weave his way out of the cab and sta
nd in the circle of his porch light, fumbling with his keys.

  A shadow cast itself over her bright, vibrant mood.

  Maybe he only kissed her because he was drunk. Maybe he wouldn’t even remember it tomorrow, and she’d be just a moment’s indiscretion, and nothing at all to take seriously.

  But no. She felt certain as the taxicab roared off and she idled slowly past his house—noting the address on a gum wrapper from her purse—that they’d shared something that couldn’t exist solely on the fumes of beer.

  Morgan looked at the dashboard clock. She had plenty of time to actually get a bite to eat after the movie she hadn’t actually seen. She sent a text to Britney:

  Sorry late for movie go out for pizza after?

  Suddenly she didn’t mind seeing David and Britney together. In fact, she was going to enjoy seeing them treat their silly little high school fling like it was so very important.

  15

  Rain curled around the hot-water bottle on the couch, torturing herself with A Baby Story marathon on television—the last thing she should be watching on a Saturday morning. Any morning.

  She’d already had to turn the pillow over to find a dry side, having soaked the first one watching a family bring home a squirming bundle of baby after a long labor and years of infertility before that.

  She’d tried to teach class for Layla the night before as promised, but the cramps knotted her up so badly she had to beg Beverly to take over, then she sat curled up and groaning behind the counter to mind the store until class dismissed and Beverly could take over the register again.

  Beverly sent her home with stern instructions not to return until she felt “100 percent” and Rain thought, What, you mean never?

  So Rain happened to be home last night when the taxi pulled up with her drunk husband inside.

  She watched him feel his way up the stairway with both hands brushing along the walls, and a voice in her head asked—a voice that reminded her of the ever-practical Gran—Would TJ still be coming home drunk if she were pregnant? Nursing a baby? Helping a grade-schooler with his homework? Aren’t we too old for this frat boy shit? Rain wondered.