“No … you’re just sixteen. Not a lot of sixteen-year-olds are familiar with Sinatra’s oeuvre.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I’m just surprised you know it, that’s all.”
“Okay, well, mostly I liked American Horror Story, and I heard this on it and Shazamed it, so don’t go freaking out that I’m in some sort of Satanic cult or something just because it’s about witches.”
Colleen laughed. “I wasn’t going there.”
“My dad would.” In the rearview mirror, Colleen saw Tamara roll her eyes, then turn her head to the scenery, jaw clenched. “He’s such an asshole sometimes.”
“Men, I’m telling you,” Bitty chirped.
“Stop,” Colleen said. “Not all men are bad. What”—she tested the waters carefully—“what made you so mad at Lew?”
“Who said I’m mad at Lew?”
“Basically everything you say about him or men sounds like you’re mad at Lew.”
“Who’s Lew?” Tamara asked from the back.
“Bitty’s husband.”
“Soon-to-be ex.”
Colleen turned to her. She was opening up. Good sign. “Really?”
Bitty nodded. Clearly she didn’t feel like elaborating.
That uncomfortable feeling churned in Colleen’s stomach again. “What happened?”
“Look, I know you didn’t like him. You don’t need to remind me of that.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Just drop it. It has been rough. He’s an asshole. I shouldn’t have married him. I don’t need it piled on that you told me so.”
Colleen didn’t want to argue with Bitty. Even though it was absolutely insane to act like she had been gearing up for an almost two-decades-delayed I told you so.
Even though … she had totally told her so.
“Tam.” Colleen glanced in the mirror. “I think we’re getting close to the B and B for tonight—can you check the map?”
“What’s the name? And”—she looked around—“where are we?”
“Almost in Savannah.”
“Okay.”
Tamara clicked around on her phone, and Bitty bit her lip, her elbow resting on the top of her car door. Colleen could tell from knowing her that she was seething. The kind of brokenhearted, angry Bitty that Colleen had seen only once before.
“I could just … I could just kill him.”
“Better him than you, huh?” Colleen joked.
Bitty didn’t laugh. “One of us, anyway.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Bitty
Dear Stranger,
Colleen is acting weird with me.
I feel her looking at me sidewise while we’re driving, like she’s suddenly assessing me. I wonder if she’s getting some sort of cabin fever or something, where she can’t stand having so many people around her.
I kind of am.
I mean, I’m grateful to her for including me, this has been a very interesting week so far, but there are three of us in this little car for hours every single day, and with all of us being women, I guess it’s natural for us to start to prickle around each other.
Plus, I don’t know about the other two, but I’m starting to feel distinctly premenstrual. They say women sync to each other’s cycles. I wonder how long it takes for that to happen. Probably more than a few days, even if some of those days do feel endless.
I also wonder, though I hate to say this, if she’s watching me judgmentally for eating so much. Not that I’m eating more than an average person, I think, but I probably look totally piggish to her. Particularly since I have never really indulged in food much in my life.
I started because I didn’t think I was going to live long enough for it to hit my hips anyway, but the funny thing is, I think it’s starting to make me feel a little better. Can food really be an antidepressant? I know there are a lot of books that make that claim, but could it be true?
Probably not. At least not peanut brittle. I guess it’s more likely that getting away from the tiny biosphere of Winnington alone—for the first time in decades—has lifted some of that black cloak of Camalier-ness from me.
I felt like I couldn’t make it without Lew when I was there. Without an identity as a wife. And everyone there backed me up on that, make no mistake. There was no question that I was valuable only when basking in the reflected glow of the Camalier name.
Candy Fitzgerald-Sonner—the new wife of an old bore, who clearly has her eye on taking over virtually all my social roles—might learn the same lesson. Or she might grace society with her unfunny bons mots until she’s an old woman, like Lew’s mother, and dies a glorified death and sinks into the legend of this place that feels so big when you’re in it but looks so small and even unreal when viewed from a seedy truck-stop diner in Nowhere, Georgia.
Winnington exists only unto itself. Almost no one in the outside world is aware of it at all.
Socrates’ cave allegory.
It was easy to suck me into that, of course, because that’s how it was for me growing up. My mother was the grande dame of Barlowe society and taught me everything I needed to know about getting a certain kind of man and keeping him, by starving and serving and bowing and scraping.
She’d never admit that, though. She’d say she simply taught me to “behave like a lady.”
Sometimes—okay, frequently—I wonder what would have happened if Blake hadn’t left. I know that’s silly, wondering “what if” about a boyfriend from what was practically childhood, but I really loved him. Even looking back now, with everything I know about life—which, arguably, isn’t much—everything I’ve endured, all the pain and the losses and the humiliations and, yes, the glories, I still wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t left.
I think we would have stayed together. After a year and seven months together, we weren’t losing interest. We rarely disagreed, never “fought,” and I always felt valued by him. Loved. Accepted for who I was.
Would you believe that when I got together with Lew, I stopped singing in the car with the radio? Small thing, I know, but I used to love that, rocking along with Mariah Carey or whoever, I listened to everything and loved to get in the car and belt it out with them. Blake used to just laugh and shake his head indulgently. It charmed him, I think.
But Lew always asked me to turn down the radio, not to sing, because he had a headache. He had more headaches than the proverbial disinterested wife! And with that simple dis, he practically took away my voice.
When I cooked for Lew—not too often, since he didn’t like my cooking—I’d turn off the radio the minute he came in. Then I’d work in silence. Or several yards away from where he sat, watching the hushed weirdness of golf on TV. Or Golden Girls reruns. That was discordant, but did I ever say, “Hey, what’s with you and The Golden Girls? Am I just too young? Is that why we never make love?” No. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or insult him.
In fact, I never mentioned the complete lack of sex in any way other than what I thought was a seductive come-on. I’d say stuff like “I want you so bad,” because I did—I craved touch and affection, but I never asked why he wasn’t interested, why he couldn’t get it up for me, why so often, even in our dating time, he wasn’t able to keep it up. I just treated him like he was a king.
I had no idea he was a queen.
Foolish me.
Sad thing is, to me he was a king, for far too long. As long as I could keep Blake out of my head, I was able to see Lew as the be-all and end-all. I was proud of him when we went out to events. I was proud to be Mrs. Lew Camalier.
I wasted too many years doing that.
The New Age people are always talking about taking care of yourself, loving yourself first, and so on. I used to think that was nonsense. Silly. I thought I was taking care of myself by taking care of my husband. I thought pleasing him gave me more pleasure than anything else could.
But you know what I’ve found out?
Despite the
occasional tense moment/hour, I have felt more … freedom, riding in this convertible through the South, the wind blowing, the sun shining, surrounded by people I’ll never know or see again, in cars I’ll never remember, than I have ever felt in my life.
And freedom feels good.
I wonder what I’d be like if I’d never gotten married.
Probably lonely. I think I know myself well enough to know I need a companion. I need to feel needed. Of course, wanted would be awesome as well, but beggars can’t be choosers. I was just never one who wanted to strike out on my own and subscribe to Working Woman magazine. I wanted to be … Well, I wanted to be exactly what I became.
Be careful what you wish for.
Once upon a time, I loved another man. Looking back, I guess I should characterize a twenty-year-old as more of a “boy” but at the time, I thought he was my forever. Good guy, solid, salt of the earth. Not moneyed or cultured, my mother never would have approved. But I didn’t care about that. I’m not heading toward some Romeo and Juliet b.s., I loved him and wanted to be with him forever.
He left me.
He had to, it was a family thing, not worth boring you with it now, but the thing is, of all the possible Other Life scenarios I think of, that’s the one that I have the most questions about. What could have been? We’ve passed hundreds of palm readers and neon psychic signs outside of ramshackle huts on this drive, and every time I see one, I think I’d like to go in and ask about my fate.
At this point, though, not only am I afraid to hear what my past could have been, but I’m really afraid to hear about my future.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Colleen and Bitty, the past
Bitty sat on the rickety back bumper of Colleen’s car, hyperventilating into a paper bag.
Colleen was silent, one hand on Bitty’s shoulder, the other anxiously grabbing her own thigh. She had known this was coming, and she didn’t tell Bitty. Didn’t prepare her for it. But she hadn’t known what to say. What was she supposed to say? It was between Bitty and Blake; it was really none of Colleen’s business. Plus, she had known for only a few days.
Bitty took in a deep shuddering breath. It was the first time she stopped wheezing since Blake had driven away. She had screamed at him to go. Yelled at him and thrown her soda at him.
That’s when Colleen arrived.
He clearly hadn’t wanted to leave. He said he had wanted to explain more, but she hadn’t wanted to hear it. Privately, Colleen wondered if he was going to ask Bitty to go with him, or if he might have given her some promise to return, maybe even proposed. People had separations all the time because of extenuating circumstances—that didn’t mean they had to be apart forever.
But there was no telling Bitty that. She was in full hysteria mode. It seemed like she was physically unable to calm down.
She sat up and shook her head at Colleen. “How is this ha-happening?”
“I know, sweetie—”
“No, seriously.” She swatted Colleen’s hand away and stood to pace in the dirt in front of them. Her emotions were made worse by the shots they’d had before the night went sour. “How is it possible that the first time I ever feel anything real for someone, it’s just being”—she gestured wildly—“taken away? How is it fair?”
“It’s not.”
“It’s not. Exactly. I have never felt like that. At all. I love—” Her voice was swallowed by tense tears in her throat.
“I know,” Colleen said, because there was nothing else to say.
“All my life,” Bitty said, “I’ve thought of duty before happiness. I never dreamed I could actually fall in love and be so”—she shuddered—“so blissfully happy. But I was, you know?”
“I know.”
“We got along just so well. We agreed on everything. Everything except whether there should be strawberry milk.” She gave a feeble laugh. “He only hated it because it was pink and he wouldn’t have wanted anyone to think he was a sissy.”
“I don’t think anyone would ever take Blake for a sissy.”
“Right?” Bitty looked at her with eyes so red and bleary, it burned just to look at them. “That was another thing I loved about him. He’s so protective of me, and I always feel—I always felt—so safe with him. I never realized how much I prized masculinity until I was in his arms.” She started crying again, shuddering sobs that racked her thin body. “And now I’ll never be in those arms again. It’s all just over.”
“Did he say that?”
Bitty splayed her arms. “Do you see him? He’s burning down 95 as we speak, headed to Bumfuck, Georgia, to some dinky town where he’ll undoubtedly get back with his high school girlfriend and they’ll get married and live next door to his parents so they can babysit when he and she want to go out for bowling night dates, and he’ll forget all about me.”
Colleen gave her a squeeze. “You’re really buying yourself pain here unnecessarily. You’re making up stories that make this hurt even more than it has to.”
“It couldn’t hurt more.”
“Bitty, he could be back.”
“Here?” She shook her head. “He’s not coming back here. He’s leaving school in his senior year. By the time he got back, if he ever even tried, everyone he knows would be gone. He’ll be older than everyone. It would be like Rip Van Winkle going back to elementary school.”
“So you’re making this impossible for him in your mind, even while that’s the most hurtful thing you can do to yourself,” Colleen pointed out. “Can you see that? I’m surprised you haven’t decided he’s going to have a car accident on the way down.” The minute she said it, she regretted it. All she needed was to add that worry for Bitty.
But apparently, that wasn’t on Bitty’s list. Again she shook her head. “Oh, no. Nothing’s going to happen to him. He’s going to go to Georgia, and I’m never going to hear from him again, and I will wonder for the rest of my life what ever happened to him. He will always be the one.”
“Come on.” Colleen took her by the shoulders. “This is so melodramatic. He didn’t go back in time, he just went back to his hometown. They have phones there. He can call you.”
“No.” She sniffed. “I told him not to.”
“Why?”
“Because I know how these things go. If he left with some intention to come back for me someday and I sat around waiting for that, it would just prolong the agony. It still wouldn’t work out. These things never do. So I’d get my hopes all built up, live the life of a nun or a sea widow while waiting for my man to come back, and then he wouldn’t and I would be lost.”
Colleen didn’t point out that Bitty seemed pretty lost right now as it was. She couldn’t understand why her friend wouldn’t rather cling to some sort of hope, especially since chances were really good that Blake would be back sooner than anyone expected. Not that Colleen hoped for that, because it would mean his mother didn’t make it, but realistically, that’s how cancer went sometimes—it took over quickly and mercifully.
There would be no reason for Blake to stay down there, then. Especially if he still had Bitty to come back for. Colleen couldn’t understand why she wasn’t clinging to that driftwood of hope.
“I think he’ll be back.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” Bitty demanded. “What if I wait and wait and he never comes back? Because, I have to say, the way he’s leaving, the way he told me on his way out of town, it sure doesn’t seem like my feelings are any sort of priority for him here.” She dissolved into heaving sobs again. “I didn’t s-see this c-coming. N-not at all!”
Colleen watched helplessly, rubbing her hand on Bitty’s upper back and making soothing noises to no effect.
Finally, Bitty recovered herself. “I love that guy more than anything. And the fact that he can just leave—”
“But you know why he has to,” Colleen said firmly. She’d had enough—she couldn’t just watch Bitty have a nervous breakdown without acknowledging the other facts of the situation, th
e other people involved. “It’s his mom, Bitty, he can’t turn his back on her when she’s dying. What would you think of him if he did? I know it sucks, but you must understand how—”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Bitty held up a finger at Colleen and tilted her head. “How did you know that?”
Colleen’s face drained of all warmth. She hadn’t heard them fighting; she’d arrived at the tail end, when Blake was leaving. And Bitty hadn’t told her all of this yet—she’d been crying too hard to calmly detail the whole conversation for Colleen.
Colleen knew because Kevin had told her. And Kevin knew because Blake had told him. And that meant everyone knew before Bitty did.
And that math problem was formulating and resolving in Bitty’s mind right now.
Bitty’s eyes narrowed as she realized that this night and what had happened was clearly not news to Colleen.
“You knew!”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t even try to lie.”
Colleen took a breath, frantically trying to find a way to justify the unjustifiable. “Okay, Kevin told me just the other day, and I didn’t know what to say! I didn’t hear it directly from Blake. What if Kevin had misunderstood or something? It would have been wrong of me to say something when I didn’t know the facts.”
Bitty took a step back. “No, no—I’ll tell you what you say, you say, ‘Hey, my supposed friend, your boyfriend’s about to leave you, so start preparing yourself for that.’”
“How was I supposed to say that? I wasn’t supposed to know at all! And I didn’t! I didn’t know anything for sure.”
“No, but you did. And so you should have told me.”
“Blake would have been so mad at Kevin, he specifically—”
“I don’t give a damn about Kevin getting grief about telling his girlfriend. This is about more that that.”
Bitty never swore.
“This isn’t about us.”
“My life falling apart and my best friend knowing it and not warning me isn’t about that?”
“This is just a bump in the road, not your whole life falling apart! Think about it!”
“Easy for you to say!”
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