by Erica Boyce
* * *
Every relationship I’ve ever been in has started out with me plotting its end. From the second I feel their eyes on me, over the farmhand meal or from across the cafeteria, I can picture it, my gradual slip back out of their lives, the half-sincere apologetic letters I will leave behind, placing a soothing and chaste hand on their shoulders. And from there, I move backward, over what I will be calling my meds this time—thyroid treatment or migraine pills, usually. Once, only once, I told the truth on a whim. The guy’s eyes had widened, then darted side to side, looking for the hidden cameras or for an escape. I didn’t even need an exit strategy that time. One benefit of farm work was that it clouded over my burn scars with calluses, but I came up with excuses for those, too, just in case. I could see it all, every beat, every measure, how I would keep them from learning too much. So that by the time they’d made their slick or stumbling way over to me, before they even opened their mouth, I’d worked out whether to make my smile engaging or distant, if it was worth it to meet their eyes or if I should look over their shoulder, pretending to wait for someone else.
Which is why I’m so surprised when Daniel shakes me awake, just inches from my face, a puddle of drool sticky beneath my cheek on the scratchy couch pillow.
When he whispers “Do you want to move to the bed?” and though I know he means nothing by it, his eyes are close, so close, and I can see every muscle in his face.
When I loop my fingers around the back of his neck, feeling the soft bristle of his hair, realizing in that moment that I’ve assumed it was coarser than it is.
When, instead of standing up, I pull him closer, and it feels like it’s supposed to, his eyes not even widening, not one bit.
Our lips meet like they’ve done it before, a thousand times. My mouth opens, and his follows, my tongue running between his lips. I rise to meet him, pressing myself against him, and his fingertips hold me in, pushing me further, in and in. I steer us blindly toward the closer of the two beds, laughing breathlessly against his teeth when my shin bumps against the coffee table, sending a dull pain up my leg. I can feel his smile against my own, and I know he wants to check, see if I’m okay, if I’m bruised or my head’s in one piece, but we are falling onto the bed, and the springs are squeaking, and I’m pulling, pulling at his T-shirt, and his lips are on my neck, and there is no time for excuses, no time for escapes, no time for thought.
Chapter Forty-Five
Molly
I wipe my eyes dry and hand the phone back to Zach, the screen frozen on an image of Charlie beaming up at him, just outside the frame. Nessa is off to the other side, her head bent back, and I can tell which laugh she’s laughing based on the angle of her throat. Even the justice of the peace, frown lines dug deep into his face, is tipping slightly into a smile.
“Thank you,” I say, though it comes out a whisper.
“You’re welcome,” Zach whispers back. He glances down at the phone, and his face glows with a smile not meant for me.
I glance around the kitchen. My eyes land on their luggage, matching suitcases, the ones I’d sent them as a wedding gift after Charlie’d told me the news.
“I’ll move your bags upstairs,” I say.
It’s not until I reach the base of the stairs that I remember. “Oh,” I say, and all four of them stop and turn to look at me. I picture Maggie’s suitcase, the explosion of colorful silk and skirts strewn across the floor. Maggie’s makeup bag is open on his dresser, his framed awards and family photos obscured by perfume bottles and nail polish. Charlie will take this personally, his childhood room misused. “Charlie, Maggie’s in your—”
“I’ll sleep in Nessa’s room, just like old times,” Maggie says smoothly.
I want to apologize for our house, for the row of three bedrooms upstairs and no guest room, but she squeezes past me on the staircase. Her hand touches my shoulder, and I can’t tell if it’s intentional.
Once all the luggage has been redistributed, the corners of Charlie’s bedsheets tucked in, and Maggie’s suitcase deposited under Nessa’s desk, I wipe my hands across my jeans and say, “What would everybody like for dinner?” I’ll dump the pancake batter in the trash when no one is looking, I decide. It’s been sitting out too long by now.
“Let me handle the cooking,” Zach says, standing up from the couch.
“No, I couldn’t.” My hands flutter up near my chest.
“Yes, you can,” Charlie says, to my surprise. He smiles up at Zach. “You can trust him in your kitchen.” Zach grins back at him, and I soak it in, how loved Charlie is.
“Well,” I say, avoiding Sam and Maggie’s eyes. “At least let me cut up one of my loaves of bread.”
“Now, that I will accept,” Zach says as he passes me.
“Make sure you make something with red meat! Molly’s letting me cut loose now she’s decided health food won’t shrink my tumors.”
They’re the first words Sam has said directly to Zach. He pauses in the doorway, then says, “Red meat. Got it.” The tension slips just slightly off Charlie’s face.
I spend the rest of the evening busying myself with straightening and scrubbing, flitting back and forth between Charlie’s pull and Sam’s chilly eyes. Finally, when Zach finishes, we all sit in the living room, plates of beef stir-fry balanced on our laps. The slices of meat and chunks of broccoli are silky with sauce, poured carefully over mounds of rice. The hunks of bread seem incongruous next to it all, hefty and earthen, but when I mentioned that the loaf might be better for breakfast the next morning, Zach picked up the knife from the counter and held it out to me, saying, “Not at all. Cut.” So I did.
Maggie takes a bite and lets out a guttural groan. “Where did you learn to cook like that?”
Zach smiles, bending toward his plate to hide it. “My dad. He’s the chef in my family, and he lived in constant fear of me succumbing to the LA takeout culture.”
She folds another bite into her mouth, then chews and swallows it. “Well, if I weren’t already divorcing my husband and if you weren’t gay, I would leave him for you in a heartbeat.”
It so perfectly encompasses all the things we haven’t said out loud that I am helpless, laughing in surprise with everyone else. When the room has died down again, I say, “That’s where you’re from, then? LA?”
Zach nods. “Just east of there, born and bred. What about you guys?” To our blank stares, he says, “Are you and Sam from Vermont originally? Where did you live before here? What brought you here?”
Maggie stops eating. Sam clears his throat. I start to tell the usual story—that we came out here for cheap land and a change of scenery—but it gets snagged in my chest.
“Mom and Dad used to live in Nebraska,” Charlie says. Then he gestures at Maggie. “All three of them did, actually. But they never talk about it.” He’s almost winking at Zach.
Into the silence, Maggie says, “Who needs to remember those boring days before you kids came along?”
Charlie rolls his eyes, but his cheeks flush a little, and Zach chuckles.
The dull ache stays lodged beneath my breastbone all night, pulling me down while the others talk about farming and lawyering and doctoring and, once, golf. Eventually, I gather up all the plates and forks. I stand at the sink with my back to the living room and let the conversation wash over me, but I cannot get clean.
It’s only when Sam and I are alone in our room that the question breaks free. I can hear Zach and Charlie murmuring to each other through the thin walls, clear as anything, so I huddle close to Sam under the covers and whisper, “Do you forgive me?”
Sam grunts and turns over. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the loan. After everything we’ve been through, not to tell me what you really want. How could you?”
“No, no, not that.” My stomach curdles again at the memory of all I kept from him, but I tell myself he’ll get
over that soon enough, forget it entirely. I throw the covers back, get out of bed, and start pacing the floor, the pine boards cool and slick beneath my feet. “For what I did to you back in Nebraska.”
I know even as I say it that it’s an unfair thing to ask. I should just know the answer from the clusters of wildflowers he sometimes leaves for me on the kitchen table, propped up next to his newspaper in his empty coffee cup.
I don’t know it, though. Not for sure.
“Oh. That.” He sighs.
“It was unforgivable, I know that. I shouldn’t ask you to forgive me.” Zach and Charlie’s voices still, but I can’t whisper anymore. “There’s not a day that goes by I don’t regret it, and I know that’s mine to live with. But—”
“You’re right,” he says, and there’s a thorn in his voice that makes me stop pacing. “It was unforgivable.” He raises himself up on his elbows, wincing. “But if I want Tommy to give you business advice after I’m gone, I guess I’ll have to get over it.”
I stare at him. “Tom—Tommy?”
He smiles, but it looks painful, and I count back the hours to his last fentanyl. “I know you called him Thomas, but did you know most of his friends call him Tommy?”
“No, I didn’t,” I say faintly. My hands begin to shake.
“That’s all right,” he says. “Took you years to agree that Vanessa was Nessa and Charles was Charlie. Come here.”
I walk over to the bed and sit on the edge of it. His eyes move back up to the ceiling.
“That day, when you told me, I was so mad at you, I couldn’t see straight. I went down to the pay phone by the post office, speeding the whole way. I called information and asked for a Thomas Grossman. There was only one in our hometown.”
He glances at me, and I loosen my hands, clutched together at my stomach. I want to reach out, but I’m afraid his anger will be hot on him again, like it was all those years ago. I don’t move.
“I was going to give him a piece of my mind. And I did. I yelled at him, how dare he, does he realize what he’s done, on and on. I only stopped when the postmaster came out and grabbed my shoulders and told me to get a grip before I started scaring the customers away.”
There was a period of time back then, a few years, when every time I had to mail a letter or buy a roll of stamps, the man behind the counter would look at me like I was diseased. I always studied my face in the rearview mirror afterward, figuring out what was wrong in my reflection.
“When I finished ranting, he said exactly two things to me. Tommy. He said how sorry he was. Every day, he was sorry. And he asked me if you were happy. And I hung up the phone on him. I didn’t know how to answer.”
He shifts back onto his side to face me, and I know he wishes he could bring himself upright, fully seated without my help.
“This farm was always my dream, not yours. I know that, and a part of me knew it back then, too, but I couldn’t face it until he asked. I was never really sure if this was the life you would’ve picked for yourself, if it weren’t for me.”
I start to protest, but he raises one hand to stop me. It’s an old man’s hand, the pads of his fingers puckered and pale, the skin between his knuckles wrinkled. I don’t know when or how it got that way.
“One day, a few months later, I walked in from lunch, and instead of making sandwiches, you were sitting on the living room floor, holding Nessa in one arm and building a castle out of blocks for Charlie with the other. He was asking if we could live in the castle instead of this house, and you were laughing.”
Hard as I try, I can’t recall the day he’s talking about, but his eyes are dancing.
“I called him back that afternoon, and he’d barely picked up the phone when I said yes, you were happy. I wanted to rub it in his face, that you were happy with me and not with him. All he said was, ‘Good. Keep it that way.’ It rankled me, him giving me orders like that. I started calling him every year or so, to tell him you were still happy, even in those times when I wasn’t sure.”
He moves onto his back. My mouth opens, but he keeps going.
“Eventually, we became a weird sort of friends, and we started talking about other things. He got married, you know, and has three kids, a few years younger than Nessa and Charlie. When I told him I was sick, he sounded sad, and not just for your sake.”
He turns his head and looks at me.
“What I mean is, he’s somebody you could reach out to, after all this.” He motions down at his body, almost flat under the blankets. “You remember, he worked for the SBA. Maybe he could help you through the whole loan thing.”
I don’t remember. I don’t.
I love you like a sickness, I think. I love you in my bones. I don’t say a word. Instead, I stretch my body out next to him and place my arm over his chest, my leg over his own. As if I could be a frame to house him, the beams and studs and foundation protecting him from everything.
* * *
Hours later, I pull the letter out of my nightstand drawer and walk to the window. Even holding the paper close to my nose, I can barely see the words in the dark, but the message is clear enough. “Unfortunately,” it says, “we don’t believe the market can support another bakery. Please consider attending one of our small entrepreneur seminars.”
Out the window, below me, there’s movement on the porch steps. It must be a raccoon. I throw up the sash to shoo it away, but my eyes adjust, and it’s Maggie, slumped against the railing. The cloud of her cigarette smoke beckons me through the screen, fanning the flames in my throat. She knew. All along, she knew. There was no need to tell Sam if the bakery was going nowhere.
She leans over, down, and props her head between her knees, cigarette dangling from her fingers. Even from this distance, I can hear her sigh shuddering. She wants a marriage clean and open, shiny and perfect, improbable. Secrets, no matter how trivial, cut straight through her.
I close the window and walk down to join her.
“I’m sorry,” she says as soon as I open the screen door.
“No, you’re not.” I sit down beside her on the step.
She laughs and wipes at her face with one fist. “You’re right, I’m not. You should’ve told him.”
“I know.” I take the cigarette from her fingers and inhale. “They rejected my application,” I say with an unwelcome crack in the middle of the sentence. And that’s what it feels like: a sentence. I will stay here. There will be no bakery.
“Did they?” she says, feigning surprise with raised eyebrows.
“I know you read it, Maggie.”
“Fine.” She sighs. “We’ll figure something out. You don’t need them.” She leans into me, shoulder to shoulder, wrist to wrist. “You were born to bake. Do you remember the look on your face when I first gave you that cookbook? It was like I’d gifted you a box full of grannie panties.”
The laugh bursts out of me, feeling fresh and forbidden in the night air. When it ends, my heart is straining in my chest. “I was born to be here, with Sam,” I say quietly.
“That might be true,” she says, “but a person can be born to do more than one thing, you know.”
I stare out at the fields, deciding whether to believe her or not. The corn is silent, unrelenting, unforgiving. In the end, it doesn’t matter if Maggie’s right or not, because she promises, “I’ll help you sort this out. You don’t need that nonprofit for you to find your feet. You always manage on your own. So fuck ’em.”
The cigarette is nearly gone now. I grind it out into the bannister, for once not caring if it leaves a cindered mark behind. “I suppose you’re right,” I tell her, and myself as well.
Chapter Forty-Six
Daniel
Afterward, Nessa falls asleep with her head on my chest. Her hair in my nose makes it hard for me to breathe, and so does her bare leg over mine, her toes pushing up against my shin.
In the quiet, all I can think about is Claire.
It’s not cheating, I know that. I know my uneasiness is stupid, crazy even. My dad is right—there’s no need for me to live in mourning forever, alone. It felt good. Of course it did. But I also can’t honestly say it’s what Claire would’ve wanted.
I can still hear her whisper, “You’re mine, you’re mine,” and it was true. Even as I sat in the church parking lot after the funeral and explained to her parents who I was. Even as I watched the car windows cloud up with my breath, waiting for her meetings to end. Even as I grew warier, watching her move around a field. Even finding her passed out next to her car when we were supposed to be finishing a project, sour-smelling vomit under her mouth.
Nessa’s arm feels like a weight. I peel myself apart from her, skin stuck to skin. She mumbles something to herself and burrows her head into her pillow as I flip off the lights and crawl into the other bed.
When I wake up, Nessa is fully dressed and sitting on her bed, back straight up against the headboard.
“Good morning, sunshine,” she says, but she doesn’t really look like it is.
“Morning,” I say. I rub some of the life back into my face. “Sorry for moving beds last night and everything. I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to—”
“It’s okay,” she says and looks out the window. “I think you know a little too much about me to get into this.” She waves her hand across her body. “Like I said last night, I totally get it if you don’t want to go there.”
“No,” I say. She moves back against the headboard a bit. “That’s not it.” I wish I could just leave it at that. I feel her eyes on my skin as I dig clothes out of my bag, but when my head emerges from the collar of my shirt, she’s only staring at my face.
I sit back down on the edge of my bed. “Last night was not a mistake,” I say. “It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” I continue, and she smirks a little, “but I was happy when it happened. It’s just—” Now it’s my turn to look away and out the window, at the late-summer trees slowly changing color against the sky. “It’s Claire.”