by Amber Foxx
“Can’t see what’s wrong with the engine if you don’t lift the hood. You haven’t looked.”
She felt her anger rise, but bit it off before it came out. “You’re the one that won’t look. I’m offering to make an effort for us. For the girls. What’s wrong with a compromise? I could live in Norfolk, come down on weekends while we try. You’ve quit on me. Come on—what would it take to make things work?”
“Nothing. It’d just be work. I know marriage takes trying—God knows my folks have put a lot into it, and they love each other more than the day they got married. But there’s got to be something you both want behind the work, something you’re working for.”
She thought there had been. Again she found herself reaching for her last hope. “We’ve got young’uns.”
Hubert rocked the swing, saying nothing for several minutes, watching the clothes flapping on the clothesline. “Not enough.”
He stood, nodded towards the farm roads where they usually ran, and they walked across the backyard toward the dirt road along the fence, following it into the fields beside the woods. Mae understood. Time out.
Within minutes the dogs joined them, making the awkward walk seem almost ordinary. Hubert finally asked, “What would you do, if we split?”
She was surprised to hear herself—some underground mind must have known this and never told her. “I’d go to college. Get away from here. Start my life over.” The part of her that wanted this slammed into the part that couldn’t let go. “No. I don’t know. How could I go so far from the girls? Would I ever get to see them? I can’t believe we’re even talking about this.”
“We’d try not to make it bad on them. I promise. We won’t fight about ’em. You’ve got no legal rights, but I’d let ’em visit you.”
She felt her unshed tears fade and her breath steady. “I’d ... I’d want that promise ... in whatever we settled. If it came to that.”
He nodded. “Where would you go to school?”
“I’d get free tuition where Daddy coaches.” She looked out across the fields. She’d both loved this place and wanted to leave it for years. “God, Hubert, I can’t believe you’re—like you’ve already decided. We have to talk about that fight.”
“We’ll never solve it. You’re into something I don’t like. You believe in it. You’re spiritual now, or something. But it’s not like even a moral kind of spiritual, it’s— I don’t know what it is.”
“Not moral?”
“Not to my thinking. Back when we made that bet and I didn’t believe you, you really saw all that stuff.”
“I did.”
“So if we split, you could look in on me any old time and see what I’m doing? See if I have a new girlfriend or something? I don’t like that.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“You did it to your parents.” He glanced at her, and she looked away. She couldn’t argue that. “And you hate this place and I love it. So there’s that fight. What’s left to say about it?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t like the way he described her using the sight, but there was a shade of truth to his side of it, enough to make her uneasy with herself, even when she knew he was more wrong than right. “Looks like we’re stuck.”
They walked without talking, past the greening woods on one side and the tiny purple flowers that grew in the edge of plowed field on the other. Buzzards circled over the woods ahead, nature taking its course with some death unseen. Deer tracks punctured the moist earth, while the tiny footprints of something with long claws barely scratched it.
“If Mack had picked somewhere else to trespass drunk,” Hubert said, “maybe we’d never have had all this trouble.”
“No point in thinking about that. If it hadn’t been Mack it would have been something, someone else.”
“I’m just wishing, hon. That’s all. I know there’s no point. I’m just wishing.”
When they reached the crossing of another farm road, Mae nodded to the left, picking her favorite route, past the pond. For a while they walked in silence again, as if this were the only possible way to reconnect, by sharing this path they had run so many times. One time, Mae had seen deer dancing in this field at sunset, running in a circle, leaping around and around. It had looked like a ceremony of deer.
The turnaround point on this route was a big blue marble buried in the road. Hubert claimed it had always been there, his whole life. It was brown with dirt, deeply embedded, poking up like the eye of a submerged whale. Without having to talk, they turned at the marble.
“Tried your new shoes yet?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’ll be amazed. I love ’em. It’s like I’d been cooped up all these years in some kind of box and never knew it. I get back into those old thick-soled shoes and I feel like I’m—I don’t know—out of touch with something. The ground under my feet. Like I’m not free.”
“That’s how I feel in Tylerton.”
She felt a lead weight in her belly when she said it. It was the town that came between them, the town and the farm. They weren’t like Rhoda-Rae and Arnie, with somebody cheating. Breaking up was wrong, almost as wrong as staying together. But she couldn’t compete with his first love, this land.
They came again within sight of the back of the farm house with its eighteenth-century dairy and kitchen building, now used as tool shed and storage, walked up the driveway, and stopped at the front steps. The dogs flopped in the grass and Sco rolled, kicking his long black-fringed legs and wriggling. It all felt normal, so normal it was strange.
“We can tell the young’uns I’ve got a job up there,” Mae said. “And I’ll visit them as much as I can. Break it to them slowly.”
“Why? They’re gonna figure it out.”
“Break it to me slowly, then. One more night with them. Let me be their mama until tomorrow.”
Mae spent hours with the girls, playing, reading to them, getting them ready for bed. It was hard not to cry kissing them goodnight, but she wanted them to have this last night of feeling like a family, to know she loved them before she left. When the girls had finally gone to bed, she and Hubert sat together on the couch, on opposite ends rather than close the way they used to, watching a baseball game on TV. She wanted to put her arms around him, to touch the beautiful, perfect landscape of his body that she knew so well and light the fire that had gone out, but she couldn’t. It would only make everything harder.
The distance was so painful, she had to remind herself it was worth her final night as a mother. “Will the girls get to stay with me, if they come up to Norfolk? Stay a night?”
“Maybe.” Hubert glanced at her, then looked back to the game, as if a team he didn’t root for had suddenly become compelling. The televised pitcher did his delaying dance, and the batter did his own foot-tapping, glove-tugging rituals before the duel began. “If you don’t get them into your ... spirituality, whatever you want to call it.”
Mae stood and walked across the room. She didn’t want to wake up the children with the things she felt like saying.
“Mae. Come on, I’m just telling you how I feel.” Hubert sat forward, his frown and tone both puzzled. “I’m being honest with you.”
She walked through the kitchen and opened the sliding door to the deck, went outside, and closed it. How could she go through with this? He said they wouldn’t fight about the children, but even talking about how they would share them brought up his fight with her.
The damp night air smelled of farms and flowers. At a house down the block, penned-up hunting dogs barked and frogs peeped a shrill chorus in the woods. Deep Southern nowhere.
Hubert opened the door behind her, approached her without touching. “Hon?”
He still called her that.
Mae said, “We have to get something settled about the girls. So I stay in their lives.” Her voice broke. She hated thinking of the long struggle ahead. “I don’t have money for a lawyer.”
“We’ll write somet
hing up ourselves. Share a lawyer.” He sighed. “That’s what Edie and I did.” His mouth curled into half a smile, sad, ironic. “Because she didn’t want to be their mama. I promise, really, we won’t fight about the girls. We’ll do it peaceful for them. I don’t hate you.”
“You just don’t love me anymore.”
To her surprise, he took her hand and held it silently, gazing out into the night beside her. “I don’t know what I feel.”
He helped her pack her clothes, both of them breaking down at times. When she started to take a pillow out to the living room, he stopped her, taking it from her. “You don’t have to do that. I can ...”
“No, it’s your house. I’m the one leaving. I couldn’t sleep in here alone.”
Their eyes met, and the old desire they used to feel for each other echoed in the empty places.
“You could sleep here with me.” He sank onto the bed. “God, Mae, I don’t even know what I meant by that.”
It was hard to sleep next to Hubert. Mae found herself wanting to turn and hold him, and then unable to do it. The conflict had changed into a gap. And yet, for one last time, even with the end in sight, she wanted him. Wanted to love him before she let go. But instead they lay apart. The chasm was too big to cross.
She watched through the curtains as clouds came and went, turning the moon alternately bright and dim. A car with a loud bass passed in the street, and then there was not a sound other than Hubert’s breathing. She sat up, looking down at his smooth, broad back in the moonlight, the muscles still subtly defined even in relaxation. What did they have left? Was it only his physical beauty that was making her ache this way? She wanted the old feeling of holding him—wanted it to give her the comfort and safety it once had.
But it was gone, leaving a sad, lingering friendship instead, riddled with cracks of anger like the old plaster in the house. He said the split was because she had changed—and she had. He hadn’t. And wouldn’t. Would not even try.
They sat the children on the couch with Hubert after breakfast, and he put an arm around each girl’s shoulder, while Mae faced them seated on the very edge of the arm chair across the room. Hubert looked at Mae, and Brook and Stream squirmed.
“What is it?” Brook asked.
Mae forced herself to start. “Your daddy and I still love each other, but, we’re not gonna live together.” She fought back tears. “I’m moving out. We love y’all so much, sweeties. We’ll share you as much as we can, and I’ll miss you bad. You’ll come up and see me sometimes. Norfolk’s not that far. But it’s the best way.”
“Told you they were fighting,” Stream said, leaning around Hubert to speak to Brook, as if their parents were not there.
“I knew it too,” Brook replied. “They’re mad.”
The children cuddled closer to Hubert, both girls gazing at Mae with big, hurt-looking eyes.
“I’m not mad at you, sweeties. You know that, don’t you? And I’m not leaving you, not really.”
“Yes, you are. You’re leaving Daddy!” Stream exploded, and rushed out of the room.
Brook looked after her sister, a rare moment of non-synchronized twin behavior, and wriggled out of Hubert’s hug.
“You’re leaving all of us.” She glared at Mae. “Don’t lie.”
Brook dropped her pink-shod, purple-socked feet to the floor, and followed Stream to their room.
Their unforgiving blame hit Mae in the chest like a blow. So they would hold it against her because she was the one moving out. She rose and started after them, desperate to explain something, though she didn’t know how, or what.
“Let ’em be. They’ll get over it.” Hubert stood. “I’ll talk to ’em later. I don’t want ’em making either of us into the bad guy.”
“I don’t either.” Mae sighed. “But they already have, and it’s me. I guess I’ll have to call tonight.” Suddenly, she realized she didn’t get to make decisions about the children. She didn’t live here anymore, had packed while the girls were asleep, and already put her belongings in her car. It felt awful, but she’d let go of her rights. “Or stay a while. I don’t know. What do you want?”
“Probably better to go. They’ll be ready to talk if you call tonight. Won’t seem so final with them if you call a lot.” He paused. “Can we go outside for minute?”
She knew that meant a topic not suited for children to overhear.
They sat on the front steps, letting the velvety spring air settle around them.
“When they visit, are they gonna be dealing with—anybody in your life?” Hubert asked.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. You’ve been in Norfolk a lot, and you’re a good looking woman. Someone’s got to be interested. And I’d want to know who he is, what he’s like, if you were gonna have my girls up to visit.”
“There’s no one.” It was an insult, to think she’d been scoping out dates there. “I can’t believe you thought that. Bad enough you thought I was sneaking with Mack. And anyway I wouldn’t be ready—I need man-free time. I’m not even looking.”
“Jen gave me a call when she knew you’d left. Don’t even know who told her. I’m not ready myself, but I might be in a while. Nothing like spending the night, no substitute mama role, nothing like that, just keeping company. I wanted you to know, just in case. Might not even happen. But so you wouldn’t hear it from someone else first.”
“Thanks for telling me.” Mae stood up, stunned. Jen fires me and then swoops in like a vulture before the dead body of our marriage is even cold. “I’m going home.”
She pulled off the Ridley heirloom emerald that had been her engagement ring, and dropped it into Hubert’s hands. He barely caught it. Striding across the yard to her car in the driveway, Mae got in and shut the door without a slam, keeping herself intact until she was alone. Then she let her tears fall. As she pulled out, she could see Hubert through the burning blur, turning the ring around in his hands as he stood up and went back into the house.
Chapter Twenty-Two
In Bernadette’s apartment, Mae unpacked a few things into the coat closet, making room on the top shelf near some hats for her folded items, hanging her dresses next to the winter coats. The list of things to do now felt overwhelming. She didn’t live in Tylerton anymore. She and Hubert really were separated. First step toward divorce. She looked at her things in the closet. This was it. Her clothes, her shoes, the class articles Patsy had given her, the crystals and the crystal book, her personal trainer manual. Her whole life fit in such a tiny space.
She needed to look for a place to live, and needed to be able to afford it.
Mae sat down at the dining table, picking up the newspaper Bernadette had left there and looking through the ads for shared houses or apartments. She needed to make a budget based on the rents she saw listed. That done, she next figured how many hours of work she would need at Healing Balance and as a personal trainer, and started making calls. Work first. She couldn’t sign a lease without any idea of her regular income.
A call to Patsy got an enthused commitment to having Mae come to Williamsburg weekly to be Patsy’s trainer at the apartment complex fitness center, and predictable outrage at Rhoda-Rae’s actions.
Next, Mae called Randi at her office, and they made an appointment for Mae to come in and see the facility, and fill out the necessary paperwork to be on call as an independent contractor to sub if any trainer had to cancel and none of the staff were available.
“You’re probably going to end up seeing the client from hell. I have to warn you,” Randi said, “no one wants to work with her. She’s burned out three trainers and scared the rest of them off. They call her Diamond Ass Bitch behind her back. They even put DAB on her files along with her name.”
“Hard-ass and rich?”
“And covered with diamonds. She and her husband are members, and he’s a sweet guy. But she’s this Southern Belle from Hell. I was going to have to take her myself. But ... could you stand her, you think?�
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“I need the money. And she can’t be worse than my mama.”
“I don’t know your mother, but Mrs. Giardi is a piece of work. I’m really tired of having people refuse to train her, and I’d discipline them if it were any other client, but I get it. So my guys know they can dump her on me. And I don’t have time.”
“You’re saying I’ve got this client, then? Even though it’s not an emergency? I thought I was just a sub.”
“It’s a long-term emergency, that’s what I’d call it.”
Mae felt exhilarated. So what if the woman was difficult? Mae had plenty of training for that. She knew how to keep her mouth shut and stay out of trouble—most of the time—with people like that. She could handle it. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Bring on DAB. I’ll kiss her diamond ass if I have to, as long as I can work.”
Randi laughed. “You may have to. But don’t you already have some work, at Healing Balance?”
“Tonight, in fact. Yeah.” The marketing bug was biting. Mae had to sell her services, all of them. “You said you wanted to come out and see me there. You should. They give us names there that they think are exotic. Ask for a session with Breda.”
Deborah greeted Mae with a hug. As always, Deborah dressed with elegance and flair, this time in an olive-green top and pants of a soft, flowing fabric with subtle yellow lines. Mae wondered how big Deborah’s closet was, then brought her mind back to the moment.
“It’s so good to have you back,” Deborah said. “I’m glad I kept after you.”
“I’m glad you did, too. I’m really ready to do this work, now.” Mae hoped this was true. “Am I in that same room?”
“No, you wanted one dedicated for you, so I fixed something up. I hope you know how different this is from what I’ve done in the past for the other psychics. You may get a little static if you’re here at the same time with the others. But your work is worth it, in my opinion.”
Mae thought back to Deborah’s initial reaction to her work and wondered what had changed her mind so powerfully. The clients must have had better experiences than Mae had perceived at the time. “I appreciate it.”