by Julia London
Rebecca walked into the great room, wearily collapsed onto a couch, not caring that she still had her shoes on.
That night, after putting Grayson to bed (No, honey, Matt’s not mad at you, he’s mad at me), Rebecca scarfed her dinner (Ben & Jerry’s Making Whoopie Pie ice cream), and went to bed, too. But she lay there, wide-awake for what seemed like forever, staring into darkness as a storm tossed the world outside her window. Her mind was blank. Empty.
The next morning, she felt as if she’d been on a bender the night before, but she was up at sunrise nonetheless and on the back porch, a steaming cup of coffee in one hand, her journal on her lap, and pen in hand. She had come to several conclusions in the wee hours of the morning that were still holding with the light of day, and Rebecca wrote:
Positive Affirmations of My Life:
1.Gray is so young he can’t be too warped yet. If there is still hope for his mother—and God please say there is—then there is still hope for Grayson.
2.The next time I allow my life to be guided by appearances, pigs will fly.
3.I promise myself to rise every morning and recite the only unqualified applicant mandate worth remembering: Rule 1: Believe in yourself. And starting today, I believe in myself!
Now that she’d hit rock bottom, she thought she might as well confess one more truth—when Rachel had asked if she ever wanted to fall in love again, she had been less than honest. The truth was that she dreamed not of the falling, but of being in love, of feeling true love once more before she died; the kind of love that felt all warm and prickly on her neck. And she had thought, once or twice in the small hours of the morning when she was alone and there was no risk of just thinking it, that maybe, just maybe . . . maybe Matt could have been the someone to make her feel that warmth again. That Matt could have been worth the emotional capital. That she could have loved him.
Maybe she already did.
Well, there you had it. Now the real Rebecca could kick her own ass, because it was never going to happen now. He thought she was callous and empty. It was perhaps the cruelest thing anyone had ever said to her. It hurt far worse than anything Bud had ever said, because Bud always lied to get his way. Matt, on the other hand, was telling the truth. He had looked inside her and seen for himself, and the hurt was so deep, she feared she could drown in it.
Yes, well. No point in mourning her pipe dream any longer.
Later, while Grayson watched cartoons, Rebecca heard the phone ringing from her post on the porch. She got up, went inside, and grabbed it. “Hello?”
“Rebecca . . .” His hoarse voice cut through her like a knife. “Rebecca, listen—”
No. She clicked the phone off and laid it on the kitchen counter. The time for talking had come and gone—she was done. She numbly walked into the great room where Grayson was. He turned to look at her. “Come on, sweetie. There is some stuff we need to do,” she said, and Grayson followed her to his room.
In his room, she slowly turned in a circle, taking it all in with a grimace. There were no toys out, because Grayson had been trained from an early age to put them all away. She walked to the closet, pulled open the doors, and glared at the contents. His shirts were on the top rack, hung together by primary color and level of dressiness. Beneath them, shorts on one side, pants on the other, all hung by color. His shoes were in a shoe tree, formal on top, casual on bottom.
Grayson stood by the door watching as Rebecca reached into the closet and removed all the shirts and turned, dumping them on the floor. His jaw dropped as she did the same with his pants and shorts.
“Mom!” he cried, looking at the lump of clothing as Bean wandered in, sniffed the clothes, circled three times on top of them, then dropped down. “What are you doing?”
“Let me ask you something, Gray,” she said, walking across to his bureau and opening the first drawer where all his little boxer briefs were ironed and put away. “When Lucy used to hang up your clothes, how did she do it?”
“She just hanged ‘em up.”
“By color?”
“No,” he said instantly. “She didn’t care about colors.”
“Well, guess what. Neither do we. You pick out what you want to hang up, and I’ll hang them any way you want.”
Grayson didn’t say anything for a moment, just watched her closely, assessing her. At last, he walked to the middle of the pile of clothing she had made, squatted down, pulled a red Yu-Gi-Oh! T-shirt and a pair of blue-green Jams from beneath Bean, and held them up to her. “Can I wear this today?”
“You can wear whatever you like.” Together, they shooed Bean away, then bent over the pile of clothing and started, working for an hour or more, carefully choosing different shirts to go with pants and shorts.
But in the end, in spite of Rebecca’s best intentions, as she stood back and looked at the first effort to dismantle her perfection, she was dismayed to see that they had somehow rearranged the clothes back in the closet by color. Shirts were mixed with pants and shorts—at least that was one small concession—but, the two of them had unwittingly stuck with what was ingrained in their heads.
By now, Grayson had lost interest, had returned to the great room to watch cartoons. Only Bean remained with Rebecca, looking up at the contents of the closet along with her.
“What do I do now, Bean?” she whispered. “Try again?”
Bean wasn’t listening; he rambled toward the closet, just barely missing the door, and lifted his huge head and snout to have a good sniff of a shirt.
That was when Rebecca saw it—Bean was sniffing a purple shirt. A purple T-shirt, in the middle of the yellow and khaki dress clothes, completely out of color scheme and character.
“Oh, Bean, thank you!” she cried, landing on her knees and scratching Bean behind the ears. She beamed up at that purple shirt—there it was, her first real step toward imperfection. A baby step, okay, but a step all the same.
And as she hugged Bean, the phone began to ring again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
IDIOT, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line . . .
THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY
It was a couple of days before Matt could admit to himself that what he had done at the Four Seasons was remarkably callous and reprehensible—he’d been a jerk to the one person he would never want to treat reprehensibly. Rebecca wasn’t empty; she was full of vibrant life. But he’d been very determined and very angry, and really, at the time, his cutting remark had not seemed that cutting.
Fool.
Now she wouldn’t even talk to him. He’d tried three times to get her on the phone, and three times, she’d hung up. On the fourth and fifth attempts, the answering machine had picked up. Which left him with the image of Rebecca’s face when he called her empty. And oh, lest he forget, her sobbing “You made me believe” had haunted his sleep for three nights now, and okay, his days, too, because he had believed, too. Now that belief felt dashed to pieces.
It made his little triumph with HGG look asinine by comparison. But at least he had pulled that off—HGG was now leaning toward an endorsement for Tom. Which pretty much left Matt standing smack dab in the middle of the huge hole Rebecca had created when she quit the campaign.
He once thought he’d be happy if she was gone from the campaign, but he wasn’t even remotely happy. He was pretty miserable, actually. All this time, he’d thought Tom was treating him like a second-class citizen when he was, in actuality, the Anointed One. Tom had even allowed him to be bumped off his anointed pedestal by a former beauty queen.
It wasn’t Tom, it was Matt’s own jealousy and arrogance that had put him there. Maybe Rebecca was right—
he’d mowed everyone over as if he was somehow entitled to do so. Pat had great ideas about education, which he could not recite today if his life depended on it. Angie had done a great job with the phone bank, in spite of his early misgivings about her. Had he even once commended her? Hell, no. Even Gilbert had written a couple of excellent speeches, yet Matt continued to think of Gilbert as a kid who needed his guidance.
And in the process of reviewing his more outstanding character flaws, he’d have to admit that he never really gave Rebecca any credit. She had worked extremely hard, pulled off an improbable bingo fund-raiser, and was always thinking outside the box. But he’d lashed out at her for being the kind of woman Tom wanted to hang with instead of him, and now, thanks to his supersized ego (which he had not heretofore known was that big), he was standing in the hole, missing her.
God yes, he missed her. He missed her smile, her carefully hand-addressed envelopes and children’s drawings. Missed hearing the latest diet or recipe tip for the e-newsletter and her motivational office decorations. And Matt missed Grayson. That kid slayed him. He missed green slime candy and Hot Wheels and SpongeBob SquarePants.
With Rebecca and Grayson gone, the whole campaign felt empty, and Matt cursed himself for having such a fat mouth. This was a mess he had no clue how to climb out of—before, on those rare occasions he’d gotten himself into trouble with a woman, he’d never really cared enough to get himself out. He damn sure had never said such hateful things to a woman before, even the one or two who probably deserved it. The whole deal was pretty remarkable for a former all-star ladies’ man and left him feeling very uncomfortable and uncertain, like he really didn’t know what he was doing anymore about anything.
Matt sort of muddled through the days after that bad scene with Rebecca, feeling very weird. He skipped Sunday dinner with the folks, not feeling up to their usual cheerful interest in his life.
It wasn’t until the following Friday that he actually got Rebecca on the phone. He had, in a moment of desperation, tried one last time, and much to his great surprise, she picked up. “Rebecca? Rebecca, how are you?” he quickly asked when she answered.
His question was met with cold silence.
“Listen, I really need to talk to you about the other night—”
“Matt?” she quietly interrupted, her voice sounding hollow and far away.
“Yes?”
“Please don’t call me again,” she said politely, and the phone went dead.
That was when Matt decided to make the drive out to see his folks, because he needed something solidly familiar.
He met his sister, Bella, on the drive, holding her baby girl. “Where’s Bill?” he asked, reaching for the baby.
“Golf, where else?” Bella said. “Cameron, will you let your Uncle Mattie hold you?” she cooed, handing her nine-month-old daughter over to Matt, who smiled at him as he gazed down at her chubby cheeks.
“Look at her smile,” Bella said. “She really likes you, Matt. Doesn’t that make you want one of these for your very own?”
Yes. Oh, yes. “Maybe someday,” he said noncommittally, and together with his sister, walked inside.
Sherri Parrish, Matt’s mom, was watching her two oldest children on the drive and saw the wistful look on Matt’s face as he looked down at his niece, which she thought was a little odd. Of all her children, Matt was the least interested in marriage and children. Kept complaining that he hadn’t found The One.
She met her kids at the door. “Oh my, what a beautiful picture that would make!” she cried.
“Listen, kiddo, I’ll be straight,” Matt said to Cameron. “Your grandma fell off her rocker a long time ago. You want to say hi to your silly grandma?” he asked, and handed the baby to Sherri, who playfully pinched Matt’s cheek before hugging the baby tightly to her. When Bella had first mentioned she was pregnant, Sherri had been very alarmed—she was too young to be a grandmother! But then Cameron had come into the world, and she had done a complete about face. Now she wanted all her children to provide her with precious babies, and lots of them. She peeked up at her handsome son, the brightest lawyer in all of Austin, hell, maybe even the state, and saw that strangely wistful look again as he gazed down at Cameron. It made a mother’s heart flinch a little.
“I was going to call you and tell you to invite your friend,” she blurted (and honestly, she never really knew where these little verbal strikes came from).
Matt looked startled; his gray eyes widened slightly as he dragged his gaze from Cameron to her. “Who, Debbie? I’m not seeing her anymore.”
“No, not her,” Sherri said. “The pretty one from the paper.”
“Ooh, she was pretty,” Bella chimed in.
Was it Sherri’s imagination, or did the blood just drain from her son’s face? “I—ah, I don’t know what you mean. She’s just a campaign worker,” he said, and immediately looked away. “Where’s the judge?”
“What’s her name?” Sherri asked.
“Mom, I’m not seeing her!” he protested as he walked over to the kitchen bar and looked at some mail.
“I didn’t say you were. I just asked her name, that’s all.”
“Rebecca.”
“Pretty name,” Bella said absently. “If I hadn’t picked Cameron, I would have picked Rebecca. I’ve always liked that name.”
“Okay, where’s Dad?” Matt demanded.
“In the study,” Sherri said, and chuckled as Matt beat a quick retreat in that direction.
With a look of confusion, Bella watched her brother stride toward the study, then looked curiously at her mother. “What was that all about?”
Sherri flashed a fat smile before smothering her granddaughter with kisses. “Don’t look now,” she said, pausing to laugh at the baby, “but I think your brother might have finally stumbled on The One.”
Bella gasped, looked at the door to the study. “No way!”
Matt emerged from the weekly dinner relatively unscathed, and went through his Monday in a fog, which he’d really done every day since the blowup with Rebecca. He stood in front of a judge, arguing the merits against a summary judgment while his mind was full of thoughts of her. On Tuesday, he had lunch with Ben and two prospective new (paying) clients and wondered if Grayson was having any trouble with his arch nemesis, Taylor. And on Wednesday, while he reviewed the staff billings, he wondered where Rebecca was, if she was smiling at someone, those damn blue eyes sparkling like they had sparkled at him.
At the end of that tedious day, he drove over to the campaign offices and was met at the door by Gilbert, who looked frantic. Gilbert, a former slacker, was never frantic, even when he needed to be. He was holding a little notebook, his pen pressed against it. “This is totally wacked, dude! Do you have, like, a diet tip or something?”
“Excuse me?”
“The newsletter, man! We’re getting thousands of hits a day, and a bunch of people are e-mailing, asking what happened to the lifestyle section. I need a diet tip!”
“Okay . . . how about, ‘push away from the table’?” Matt offered.
Gilbert groaned beseechingly. “These ladies don’t want to hear that! Pat!” he cried, as Pat came in behind them. “Pat, you’ve got a diet tip, right?”
“Do I look like I have a diet tip?” Pat asked. “Anyway, that’s your problem, not mine. My problem is this stupid luncheon.”
“What luncheon?” Matt asked.
Pat rolled her eyes. “Well, Matt, an important luncheon. Rebecca was in the middle of setting it up with the Dallas Women’s League, and I can’t find any of her files or notes!”
“We may have to cancel,” Matt said. But Pat and Gilbert looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“Cancel the Dallas Women’s League luncheon?” Pat repeated, as if she perhaps hadn’t heard him correctly. “Are you insane? You think Hispanics are the only vote we need to worry about? You think the women’s vote isn’t just as big? You think women voters like getting stood up by anyone, much less
a candidate? What the hell is the matter with you, anyway?”
“Ah—”
“Matt!”
The sharp edge in Tom’s voice startled Matt; he leaned backward, looked down the hallway to where Tom was standing with his hands on his hips. “Hey, Tom. What’s up?”
“If you will join me in my office, I’ll tell you exactly what’s up.” Tom pivoted, disappearing into the office.
Matt looked at Pat and Gilbert. They returned his look with twin glares. “What’s his problem?” he asked.
“What do you think, Einstein?” Pat said. “The same problem we all have.”
Matt felt a little like he was twelve again, summoned into his father’s office for some mis deed. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and strolled back to Tom’s office. As he entered, Tom rolled in his chair, lifted his leg to kick the door shut, and rolled back. “You’ve really fucked this up, you know it?” he asked, his voice cold as ice as he glared at Matt over tented fingers.
“What?”
“You couldn’t keep your hands off her ass until after November, could you? You just had to go and run her off!”
Okay, the picture was getting a little clearer. “Shut up, Tom. What’s the problem, anyway?”
“You want to know the problem? I’ll tell you the problem. Since she quit, the whole goddamn campaign is going in the toilet!”
“Oh, God—Tom,” Matt said, straining for patience, “you’ve got three people completely committed to you. Are you going to try and tell me that we can’t do what needs to be done along with the public relations firm and the party folks? You think Rebecca was your key to the election?”
Tom laughed derisively and shook his head. “You think campaign contributions just fall from the sky? I’m not talking about the campaign anyway. I am talking about the bunker buster fund-raiser we were planning. Do you have even the slightest idea how much I stand to lose? How much in dollars? Hell, her father alone could have brought in fifty grand! She was lining up every major player in this state, and you had to go and ruin all that with your dick.”