by Молли Харпер
“Anyway, Lacey,” Janice started again just as Monroe yelled, “Hey, Mom! There’s grape jelly, too, in the fridge.”
“I know exactly what you’re doing, Francis Bernard Monroe!” she said, storming into the living room, hands on hips. “Don’t for one second think you can keep Lacey and me from having a civilized conversation.”
I laughed as Monroe insisted it was worth a shot and tried to convince his mother to declare a moratorium on all stories about him that did not extend from events of the past year. His mother ignored him and turned back toward the kitchen.
“It was a little ham-handed, son,” Monroe’s father told him, shaking his silver head in disdain. “You should know by now the best way to distract your mother is by breaking something semi-valuable in another room.”
“Or pushing one of your brothers down the stairs,” Matt muttered in a resentful tone that labeled him as a “pushee.”
“Or hiding the incriminating wrappers from her secret chocolate stash in your brother’s room,” Andy suggested.
“I knew that was you, you little bastard,” Monroe griped.
“I don’t know whose children they are,” Janice told me. “They’re the product of terrible parenting, obviously. They just showed up on our doorstep one day and we took them in.”
By this time I was leaned against the counter, laughing so hard I had a stitch in my side.
We finally got breakfast on the table, after Janice insisted her sons and husband “get off their chauvinistic asses and help.” I suddenly understood where Monroe got his unique grasp of the English language. There was quite a bit of plate shuffling, tossing of cinnamon rolls across the table, and fights over the “good” strips of bacon, but eventually everyone was leaning back in their chairs and moaning about eating too much.
“So what exactly do you do when your family comes to visit?” I asked Monroe quietly as his brothers loudly argued over the last cinnamon roll.
“Well, my dad comes up with a big itinerary for the day. Hiking, renting a pontoon boat, visiting that apple orchard off County Line Road. He usually ends up falling asleep right after breakfast and napping through lunch. My brothers watch basketball games. I spend most of the day fighting Mom off of my laundry hamper. We play a couple of board games while my dad snores. Mom makes a big dinner, we eat, and they all go back to their motel room, leaving me to appreciate the silence of my little home.”
“Wow,” I marveled. “Still sounds like more fun than Christmas with the Terwilligers.”
He snickered and tugged gently on my hair. I looked up and found that Matt was staring at me.
“Do I have jelly on my face?” I asked.
“No, it’s just you look really familiar. Where do I know you from?” Matt asked.
“I just have one of those faces,” I said, shooting a covert glance at Monroe.
“No, I saw you somewhere, like on TV or something. Were you on one of those reality dating shows?”
I tried to play it off with a laugh, while the blood drained out of my face. “Yes, I must confess, I was that girl who threw up while making out with Bret Michaels on Rock of Love.”
“No, that girl was a redhead,” Andy said. “But now that you mention it, Lacey does look familiar.”
“Drop it, guys,” Monroe warned.
“Oh, my God, you’re that crazy e-mail chick!” Andy exclaimed.
I froze, with an expression akin to Bambi caught in headlights.
“Andrew, the family policy is that we don’t call people crazy until we’ve known them at least twenty-four hours,” Janice said sternly.
“What is he talking about?” Frank asked.
“Nothing,” Monroe growled, shooting his brothers a face-melting death glare. “They have Lacey mixed up with someone else.”
“No, crazy e-mail chick’s name was Lacey, too. I remember now,” Matt said. “You know, the nurses at my office printed that out and taped it to the refrigerator in the break room? You’re like a role model to them. I can’t wait to tell them I met you. I will admit that while the actual letter scared the crap out of me and my Y chromosome, I thought it was pretty awesome that you nailed your husband like that. He sounded like a scumbag.”
“What are you talking about?” Janice demanded.
When Monroe opened his mouth to protest again, I put my hand on his arm. “It’s not like they can’t go home and google me,” I said. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “A few months back, I found out my husband was cheating on me -”
“And she sent everybody he knew an e-mail busting him out as a ‘spineless, dickless wonder’!” Matt exclaimed. “It was hilarious!”
“Actually, it was ‘spineless, shiftless, useless, dickless wonder,” I mumbled, unable to look up at the elder Monroes’ faces.
Andy picked up my hand and pressed it to his chest. “You made me laugh until coffee came out of my nose; therefore, I pledge my undying loyalty to you. In fact, if you and Franny break up, I’d be glad to be your shoulder to cry on -”
Monroe cuffed Andy on the back of the head. “Keep your shoulders, and all your other parts, away from my girlfriend.”
At the use of the word “girlfriend,” I stiffened, particularly given Andy’s big announcement. Monroe’s parents probably weren’t going to be thrilled that his new… “special lady friend” had recently been featured on David Letterman’s Top Ten Women Who Make Your Wife Look Better list.
“I remember reading something about that. Your husband cheated on you?” Monroe’s father asked. “Left you for another woman?”
I nodded, mentally calculating exactly how much time I would allow to pass before succumbing to embarrassment and bolting for the door.
“Well, he’s obviously an idiot,” Frank said dismissively, before sipping his coffee. “Now, I’m going lie down for a minute to rest my eyes, and then we are going to take that scenic trail around Cosgrove Point.”
“Right,” Matt snorted.
“We’ll see you around dinnertime, Dad,” Monroe said.
“Not this time!” Frank said. “This time I’ve set the alarm on my watch.”
“You don’t have an alarm on your watch, honey,” Janice said as Monroe’s dad made himself comfortable on the couch.
“Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit?” Andy said.
“Surprise me,” Matt responded.
“Not Trivial Pursuit, guys. You always end up fighting over obscure Civil War trivia and then my coffee table ends up broken,” Monroe moaned.
“Wait, that’s it?” I asked, as Matt and Andy took their plates to the sink. Janice picked up the dirty cutlery and started loading the dishwater. “That’s the sum total of your parents’ reaction?”
Monroe shrugged. “Yeah. My dad worked in an ER for thirty years before going into family practice. Mom works in a state run psychiatric hospital. Short of bloodshed, not much you can do will shock them. Also, you may have noticed that my family places a lot of value on an effective insult. In fact, your stock has probably just gone up, as far as they’re concerned.”
“Then why did you keep telling your brothers to shut up?”
“I didn’t want them to embarrass you. I know you don’t like talking about the newsletter. I figure today’s been uncomfortable enough for you.”
“This feels like a trick,” I told him. I pursed my lips. “Your mom isn’t going to ambush me in the kitchen and tell me my crazy, damaged ass has no business near her baby boy?”
He shook his head. “She may ask you to do a reading of your newsletter, but other than that, no.”
“I wouldn’t mind reading it if you have a copy,” Janice said as she came back to the table. “Andy only shoots coffee out of his nose for high comedy.”
“Oh, no.” I gave an uncomfortable little laugh. “It’s not that funny. Andy’s just exaggerating.”
I looked up to find Monroe silently mouthing, “It’s on my desk,” and poked his shoulder. “You’re no help at all.”
Janice level
ed me with those sharp, hazel eyes. “You know, I see a lot of desperate, damaged women in my work. Women who let the hurts and disappointments push them down until they can’t find the will to go on living, much less stand up for themselves. As a psychiatrist, I’m supposed to say that indulging a desire for revenge isn’t healthy, that it would be better to focus on healing and rebuilding your own life. As a woman, I say that well-executed payback is an important ingredient in healing and closure is required before you can rebuild anything. If you managed to do that without slandering or hospitalizing anyone, I say good for you.”
The approval in her tone had me blushing - a pleasant, warm sensation spreading through my chest that suddenly flushed cold. I wasn’t ready for this. I wasn’t ready for family breakfasts and inappropriate stories from Monroe’s adolescence. I didn’t want to have to work to get another mother’s approval, to make sure her expectations were met and her birthday gifts had appropriately sappy cards attached.
I felt a panic akin to claustrophobia. I wasn’t ready to be anyone’s girlfriend. Even though I was having the tender, green beginnings of those feelings toward Monroe, I wasn’t ready to love someone else. I couldn’t think about him in the long-term, whether it was a month from now or a year from now. I just wanted a simple, uncomplicated relationship with my companionable, sexy neighbor. And if he became more than that, a sweet guy with smartass brothers and a tragically feminine first name, I wouldn’t be able to manage it. I recognized that these were selfish, shallow thoughts, but I also recognized that they were true. And I wasn’t going to be getting around them any time soon.
I needed to leave, to run, to get back to my own space and breathe for a little bit. But I wouldn’t embarrass Monroe in front of his family, not because I wanted to keep up appearances, but because it would hurt him. So I released my death grip on the table, smiled at his mother, and started clearing dishes.
“How about we leave those until after the first round of Trivial Pursuit?” she suggested. “Maybe we can keep them from beating each other bloody over the Sports and Leisure questions.”
“I don’t make any guarantees,” I told her. “I fight like a girl.”
“And I can’t tell you how nice it is to have another girl around,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder as we joined the boys at the coffee table. When Monroe looked up at me with that content expression, mixed with familial exasperation, I couldn’t help feel a twinge in my stomach that had nothing to do with overeating.
24
Happy Endings Gone to Hell
I was stuck.
I was lounging in my hammock, enjoying what would probably be the last tolerably warm day before the temperatures took a dive toward winter. I was reading over some of Monroe’s notes on my chapters. He’d drawn little smiley faces next to the lines he thought were funny and written “ew!” next to the particularly bloody scenes, which I found to be very helpful. He also wrote “bowchikawawa” next to a particularly well-written flashback love scene, which made me giggle.
When Monroe’s family had departed the week before, I’d scrambled to find some sort of personal equilibrium. If he was hurt that I basically shut myself up in my cabin and didn’t come out for three days, he didn’t say anything. I told him I was writing, that I’d hit a groove, and he gave me this understanding smile that made feel that much worse. I knew it was a jerk move. It was something a guy, something Mike, would do. But I had to feel like I had some control, independence. And he seemed so pleased when I showed up with pages and pages of new material to critique. It helped me feel like things were getting back to normal, or at least our version of normal.
Given that I didn’t have a job and spent every spare minute at my laptop, it wasn’t a surprise that I was rounding the corner toward the last third of the book. The problem was I had no idea how it was going to end. On one hand, I wanted to give Laurie a happy ending because, let’s face it, I wanted a happy ending for myself. But did that mean helping Laurie find love? If anything, I’d learned that a relationship doesn’t necessarily mean permanent happiness. And every time I sat down to try to suss it out, or just make notes about possible endings, I froze.
And, yes, I recognized that finishing the book meant proofreading, editing, and the very scary agent search, so the fear of failure was a rather large brick in the wall that seemed to have built itself inside my head. I’d hoped that maybe seeing some encouraging notes from Monroe would help, but mostly it just made me feel guilty for not writing.
When I heard a car door slam, I assumed it was my favorite grumpy crime writer returning with the ingredients for Margarita ‘n’ Fajita Night.
I didn’t bother looking up from my manuscript as I heard footsteps approach. “Just let me finish this thought and then I’m all yours for the night.”
“Sounds good to me.”
I flinched. That was not Monroe’s voice.
I looked up to see my soon-to-be ex-husband smirking down at me. I scrambled to sit up, nearly spinning myself out of the hammock. “Mike! What the hell are you doing here?”
Mike advanced, his hand outstretched to help me stand. “A man can’t visit his wife at his own lake house?”
I slapped his hands away and righted myself. “I’m not your wife and this isn’t your lake house, jackass. You have a house. You live there, with your secretary, remember?”
It’s very difficult to appear dignified while teetering on the edge of a hammock. I swayed there, trying to maintain my seat and a level gaze with Mike. At the mention of our home, Mike’s face softened. He looked tired, older and tired. There were circles under his eyes and the slightest hint of expression lines around his mouth. “You look great… just great. You’ve done something new with your hair. It’s -”
“Spare me,” I told him. “You’ve got about five seconds to tell me what you’re doing here before I go inside and call my lawyer or animal control or whatever it takes to tranq-gun your ass.”
Mike gave a sad little smile. “You’re not going to make it easy on me, are you?”
“I stopped making things easy for you a while ago. How’s that working out for you?”
“I made a mistake with Beebee,” Mike admitted, scooting a white plastic lawn chair over to sit in front of me. “It’s just not working out the way I thought it would.”
“So you were thinking you could just replace me with another woman without any snags or inconveniences?”
Mike shrugged, managing to look the slightest bit guilty. “Well.”
When he saw the expression on my face, he said, “I wasn’t thinking! I - I made a mistake. I went through a selfish phase and I didn’t think it through. And I’m man enough to admit it. After all our years together, I think you owe it to me to recognize that and give us another chance.”
In the eternity between those words reaching my ears and my tongue’s productions of the words “hell” and “no,” the thought that kept bouncing around in my head was, “His mama probably wrote that speech for him.” Instead of saying so, I laughed my ass off.
“Are you kidding me?” I threw my hands up, making Mike take a step back.
“Lacey, please. She doesn’t get any of my jokes,” Mike said, his brown eyes as sad and lost as a homesick kindergartner. “She hates action movies. I can’t take her to Scrabble night over at Tina and John’s because she hates board games. Anyway, Tina and John stopped inviting me because the wives don’t like Beebee. I took her to a dinner party at the McClarens’. She went on and on about some lemon juice and cayenne pepper thing that would help Jolene McClaren ‘take all that extra weight off.”
Amos McClaren was one of Mike’s biggest corporate clients and his wife, Jolene, was very sensitive about her weight. I bit my lip to keep from laughing, because laughing would bring Mike to his senses and make the funny stories stop.
“I’m lonely,” Mike said. “I miss telling you about my day. I miss you scratching my back before I go to sleep. I miss the way you turned the toast over so the s
ides with the butter faced each other. I wasn’t thinking. I just - I shouldn’t have treated you like that. And I just want to go back to way things used to be, Lace. I want you to come home. I was blind, Lace. I took you for granted. And Beebee made me - I mean, the sex was -”
“I don’t want to hear about it!” I cried.
Mike threw up his hands, whether it was a conversational gesture or an effort to shield his face from oncoming blows, I had no idea. “I’m just saying, that’s all it was, sex. I can’t make a life with Beebee. Not the kind of life I had with you. If you want to come back, the door’s open.”
I just stared at him. He missed the way I buttered his toast? My purpose in his life was to laugh at his jokes, scratch his back, and butter his toast? I was vaguely sick to my stomach, but mostly, really, really sad. That was my marriage? Not once had he said he was wrong or that he was sorry. He was just telling me what he wanted. Nothing had changed.
“I just need some hope that there might still be a chance for us.”
“Mike, there is no us,” I told him firmly. My voice lowered to a less harsh whisper when I said, “There is no you and me. That’s all over now.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he insisted. “Everything can go back to where it was. We can have it all back.”
Wait a minute. This was all pretty proactive for a man who used to have me pre-peel his fruit for him. I narrowed my eyes at him. “So how did Beebee take it when you told her it was over?”
He gave me a sheepish look.
“So you’re going to do to her what you did to me?” I yelled and started toward the cabin. When I heard Mike’s footsteps behind me, I whirled around and stuck a finger in his chest. “You can’t even stay loyal to your mistress, Mike! What kind of degenerate does that make you? Why would I even consider being with someone who can’t stay faithful to the person he cheated on me with?”
The shift from kicked puppy to wounded martyr happened so quickly, it was like a ripple under the skin. Mike’s eyes narrowed, his lip curled, and he looked at me like I was something he scraped off of his shoe. “I’m trying to give you, us, another chance. You could at least give me that much credit.”