Blue Wide Sky

by Inglath Cooper

  I hate myself for them. Instantly. Completely.

  I step off the road into a wooded area and walk through the trees until I come to a giant oak far enough in that passing cars can’t see me. I collapse at its base, my face dripping sweat, tears and snot. I lean my head against its hard trunk and cry until the well is dry.

  I’m not sure how long it takes, but by the time I’m finished, my heart rate has slowed to something close to normal. A crow caws from a tree limb above me, whether in mockery or sympathy, I’m not sure. I use the jacket tied around my waist to scrub my face free of its mess, and stare up at the blue sky peeking down at me through the trees’ limbed canopy.

  Of all the ways I might have imagined myself reacting to seeing Sam Tatum again, Hell Hath No Fury isn’t one of them. Indifference would have been my emotion of choice, and the only one I would have considered him deserving of.

  Instead, I had given him a show that could only be carried out by a jilted lover with twenty-some years of pent-up rage ready to spew at the first opportunity.

  I just hope that Kat did not witness any of it.

  What was I thinking?

  Obvious answer—I wasn’t.

  I hear a noise behind me, and startled, lean around the tree trunk to spot a fine-boned doe staring at me, wide-eyed. I sniff. “Hey,” I say.

  She backs up a step but keeps looking at me, clearly trying to decide whether I am a risk.

  “I know. I’m ridiculous.”

  She chews, and then reaches up for another snack from a young tree’s lower limbs, obviously deciding I’m not much of a threat.

  I slide around the trunk so I can see her better, and she remains where she is, still chewing.

  “He just showed up out of nowhere,” I say, looking at the doe. Her ears do a quick dance, back and forth, as if interpreting what I’ve just said. “Talking to my daughter,” I add. “Buying food in my cafe. That’s just crazy.”

  The doe reaches for another leaf or two, blinking her wide brown eyes at me and twitching her white tail.

  “Who has that kind of nerve?”

  She lowers her head and scratches a place on her leg with her teeth and then shakes her head once, hard.

  “Exactly,” I say. “I should have just kicked him out altogether. Never exchanged a single word with him. It’s like we never knew each other. I mean he looks a lot the same, but I don’t know this version at all. I don’t want to know this version. I want to remember him the way he was—”

  I stop there and realize what I am about to say. Before we didn’t love each other anymore.

  I put my elbows on my knees and rest my head in my hands. I am talking to a deer. I hear her move then and look up to find her trotting off through the woods away from me.

  I don’t blame her. I’m beyond pathetic. I sound like the sorest of losers, a woman who never loved another man the way she loved her first love.

  But that’s me. I never did. And I tried. I wanted to love someone else. I wanted to replace him, erase him. Forget I had ever known him.

  There were times in my life when it seemed to work. Stretches where I found someone I had a lot in common with, could laugh with.

  Inevitably, I always ended up comparing him to Sam. I had even done so during my short-lived marriage to one of the nicest guys to ever walk the earth. A man I should have been able to love forever. Give myself to completely.

  But the truth is there had never been room in my heart for anyone but Sam.

  This is the crux of my fury at him.

  That he had gotten over me.

  And I had never gotten over him.

  Maybe, in some way, I have been waiting for this day all along. Waiting for him to come back.

  I hate myself all over again for the admission. It sounds so weak, so opposite of everything I try to be. A woman who can take care of herself, who believes in the importance of setting such an example for her child.

  And yet, I know it’s true.

  I have been waiting for him to come back. All this time. All these years.

  Sitting here now with only the trees as my observers, I decide that maybe there is one reason for me to accept his being here.

  So I can finally let him go.

  For good.

  The wheel is come full circle.

  ~ William Shakespeare

  Sam

  It’s nearly dusk when I take a bottle of Cabernet and one of my mom’s old jelly-jar glasses out on the front porch. I sit down in a squeaky rocker and decide not to get up until I’ve finished off the whole thing.

  I’d picked it up in France last summer when I’d taken Evan and Analise to Cannes and Saint Tropez on vacation. At twenty-two, Evan had developed a passion for red wine, not so much the taste, thankfully, but the art of making it and the history behind it. He’d picked out this particular one, praising its modest price against its impressive bouquet.

  The wine is smooth on my tongue and goes down with a velvety finish, living up to his praise.

  Lights from boats out on the lake start to flick on in the growing dimness. I hear frogs in the distance, a chorus of soprano and baritone that makes me nostalgic for the days when my brother and I used to sit out here on summer nights, trying to figure out how many frogs it would take to make such a symphony of sound.

  I lean back and close my eyes, the debacle of this afternoon drifting up from the place where I had insisted it stay buried until now.

  Once I’d gotten back to the dock, I raised the boat in the lift and stayed busy for a while hosing off the wood decking, sweeping cobwebs from the porch rafters, pretty much any physical thing I could find that would keep me from reliving what was clearly an unfortunate decision on my part.

  I never should have gone to the marina.

  Had I thought we would just pick up like old childhood friends or something? That all the years since then would discount what I had done? That she would no longer hate me?

  Well, if I’d had any hope of that, I have my answer now.

  She hates me.

  I take another sip of the wine and wait for it to dull the sharp edges of the realization. But for this, the wine has no power whatsoever.

  Through the screen door behind me, I hear a knock from the other side of the house. I leave my wine on the floor beside the chair and head through the living room to the back door.

  I pull it open to find Gabby standing a few steps away with her hands in the pockets of her jeans, her expression guarded.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Hey.” I’m too surprised to see her to add anything more intelligent to the greeting.

  She looks down once, shifts in obvious discomfort and then forces her gaze to mine. “I owe you an apology,” she says.

  “You don’t,” I disagree. “Actually, I owe you one. I shouldn’t have come there like that today, Gabby. I really had no right.”

  “I had no right to act like that,” she says, her tone regretful. “I’m really embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be,” I say. “You could have hit me. I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

  She smiles then, a quick reflexive smile that feels like it surprises us both. Just that one moment renews my memory of what a beautiful girl she was, what a beautiful woman she now is.

  She extinguishes the smile, glances off and then, “Seriously, I’m usually a lot more level-headed than that.”

  “You don’t need to explain or justify anything.”

  “Well, I just wanted you to know for however long you’re here, you’re welcome to fill up at the marina anytime. You or your boat.”

  I smile at this. “You can tell Timmy he’s missing out on those grits and collards. I haven’t eaten anything that good in a long time. I actually had it for dinner.”

  “I’ll tell Myrtle. She and my daughter have a competition of sorts going. Kat does Italian, Myrtle Southern. Myrtle gets her feelings hurt if her dish doesn’t go over as well.”

  I stare at her, wanting to say a thousand thing
s, forcing myself down to one. “Your daughter. She’s lovely.”

  “Thanks. She’s . . . everything.”

  It’s an interesting word choice, but I can see in the look on her face that it is exactly what she means. All that matters to her.

  “I was just having some wine out on the porch. Would you like a glass?”

  She considers the invitation as if it has sharp edges attached. Which, of course, it does. We’ve exchanged pleasantries now, reached the level of civility we would accord old acquaintances. Wisdom would probably dictate leaving it at that.

  But I’m not feeling the need to be wise. And I wait in deliberate neutrality while she weighs her decision.

  “Just one glass,” she says, after a few moments, and I feel as if I have been holding my breath, oxygen now flooding my body.

  I hold the door open and wave her inside. I grab another glass as we walk through the kitchen and then the living room. She glances around and says, “It’s hardly changed.”

  “I kind of like that about the place,” I say. “There aren’t many things you can go back to that are pretty much the same as they are in your memories.”

  Even as the words come out, I recognize their irony and the direct implication to Gabby and me. I can see in the quick flash of emotion on her face that she too has made the same comparison.

  I want to apologize, but don’t know how to do so without opening a conversation we are better off avoiding. Still, I am amazed that anything about me has the power to hurt her.

  She steps out on the porch and stands at the railing, one hand gripping the top, hard. “It was always a beautiful view here, even at night with the marker lights across the lake,” she says.

  “Yeah. I think I had let myself forget how much I love it here.”

  She says nothing, and I wonder if it is possible for us to ever get past this awkwardness. I hand her a glass and pour from the wine bottle.

  “That’s good,” she says, signaling for me to stop pouring. “Virtual teetotaler here.”

  I set the bottle on the floor and retrieve my own glass, then lean against the railing, putting a few feet of deliberate space between us.

  Gabby looks at the glass and says, “I recognize these. What was that brand of jelly you always liked with your PBJ’s?”

  I say the name, surprised I remember it, and then, “Mom never liked to throw anything away, so jelly jars became wine glasses.”

  “Green before green was in,” she says.

  “She was, actually,” I say, maybe realizing it for the first time. “I remember her taking Ben and me out early on Saturday mornings to pick up trash on the side of the road before most people were up.”

  “Character building too,” she says, and we both smile.

  We sip our wine, and then she says, “London, right?”

  The question catches me off guard, and I say, “London?”

  “Where you’ve been living?”

  “Ah.” Feeling like an idiot, I add, “Yes. London.”

  “This is the first time you’ve been back to the lake since you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought I’d have heard through the grapevine if you had. I’ve actually run into Ben and his family a few times when they’ve been down for a visit.”

  I’m surprised at this. Ben never mentioned it. Maybe he thought it would have been cruel to do so. Part of me is glad that he never did.

  “So why now?” she asks.

  I take another sip of wine, stalling. “Life changes.”

  “Is that a statement or an explanation?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  She waits for me to go on, but I can’t seem to find words beyond those two.

  “Sorry,” she says. “It’s none of my business.”

  “No, it’s not that. I just—”

  “Why isn’t your wife with you?”

  I can almost hear the words underlying this last question—why are you here with me when you should be with her? “We’re divorced,” I say.

  Surprise flashes across her face, and I can see it is the last thing she expected to hear. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. I think we both realized it hadn’t been working for a long time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her question and my answer have altered the atmosphere of the room. There’s an instant tension between us that wasn’t there previously.

  “When—” she starts.

  “A year ago,” I say.

  We’re silent for a good long while. I can sense her processing this, as if trying to decide whether it is relevant to her or not. She sets her wine glass down on a nearby table. “I should go.”

  I should let her. It’s the right thing to do. But instead, I say, “Can you stay a while?”

  She looks at me, and I can tell she’s trying to read beneath the surface of the question. Assess my motive. The only one I have is a need to look at her a little longer.

  “A few more minutes,” she concedes.

  “Walk down to the lake?”

  “Sure,” she says, reaching for her glass again, and stepping off the porch onto the grass.

  I follow behind her, and then we’re side by side, silent all the way to the water.

  She steps onto the dock ahead of me, walks to the far edge and sits down, slipping the sandals from her feet and putting them beside her. She rolls up the bottoms of her jeans and sticks her feet in.

  “Cool?” I ask.

  “Perfect, actually,” she says. “Try it.”

  It’s been a long time since I sat on a dock with my feet in the water, but I follow her lead, and then say, “That’s cold!”

  “Wimp,” she says.

  “Maybe. But you always were tough.”

  She drags her feet through the water, cocking her head to one side. “You were the one who went waterskiing in March on your spring break. Not me.”

  “Without a wetsuit. Can’t imagine I was ever that brave.”

  “I think we were so anxious for the summer to begin, we just couldn’t wait.”

  A whippoorwill sounds across the cove. “I used to love that sound, “I say.

  “Summer nights and cookouts, going to bed late and telling ghost stories.”

  “Exactly. All those things.”

  We sit for several silent moments like two awkward teenagers looking for something to say that doesn’t sound dumb.

  “Remember those campouts we used to have here in your yard?”

  “Me and Ben and you and Lindsay Turner?”

  “Yeah. I never saw Lindsay again after high school. I heard she joined the Peace Corps.”

  “Did she and Ben ever—”

  Gabby gives me a look. “Not by any admission to me.”

  I roll my eyes. “Figures. I should have known better than to believe Ben.”

  “What do you mean? Ben was cute.”

  “Yeah, but he was a dork. Funny, but a dork.”

  “Maybe to you.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

  “It means all the local girls thought he was hot.”

  “Oh, they did, did they?” I smile, shaking my head.

  “They did.”

  “Glad it never got back to him. It was already hard enough for his neck to support that big head with that big brain.”

  Gabby laughs. “He was a smart one.”

  “Add a big ego to his resume, and we wouldn’t be able to stand him.”

  “I hear he’s done well. Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, no less.”

  “He has. Garnered himself quite a reputation.”

  “Amazing you both went on to be doctors. Your parents must have been very proud.” She hesitates, and then adds, “Ben told me about your work one time when he was here.”

  “It never had the movie-star quality of his, but I’ve enjoyed it.”

  “Hearts are as important as brains, aren’t they?”

  I shrug. “I just meant that Ben tends to lend whatever he’s doing his large
r than life persona. He gets invited all over the place to give talks. In fact, they just left yesterday for Hawaii.”

  “That’s great.”

  “It is,” I agree. “I really am proud of him.”

  She looks at me, and then says, “You said enjoyed.”

  “What?”

  “Past tense. Enjoyed your work.”

  “Oh,” I say, shaking my head. “Symptom of being on vacation, I guess.” I sip from my wine glass, suddenly aware of feeling as if I’ve told her a lie.

  “Ah. Out of sight. Out of mind.”

  A houseboat cruises down the lake with music blasting, and laughter and voices drift out to us. The floating rectangle of light rounds a bend and is soon out of sight, although we can still hear the partying going on.

  “Do you mind if I ask about Kat?” I ask.

  “What’s wrong with her, you mean?”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “She has osteogenesis imperfecta.”

  “Brittle-bone disease.”

  “Yes,” she says, and I hear the pain beneath the word. “I adopted her from a Siberian orphanage when she was almost three.”

  “Did you know she had it then?”

  “Yes. Or it was the doctors’ best guess. But it didn’t matter.”

  I can tell there’s more, so I wait.

  “I went there to meet a child,” Gabby says, after a few moments, “so worried about the right match, wondering if he or she would be able to love me, if I would know how to take care of him or her? I made huge lists of questions to ask—pages, I mean—things I thought I had to know before I could make such a decision. I intended to make sure I had satisfactory answers to each and every one before I let myself decide.

  “But then they took me into a room where a tiny girl with blonde hair sat at a table playing with blocks. She had this enormous bow on top of her head. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She looked up at me and said the Russian word for play. And that was it. I never asked a single one of those questions. They no longer mattered. I knew I had met my child.”

  I absorb everything she’s just said. “That’s incredible, Gabby.”

  “I later found out that they never thought I would actually adopt her once I learned about the disease. But they wanted to give her a chance to be considered. No one had ever wanted to meet her before that. The orphanage director was this amazingly kind woman who loved Kat and wanted her to have a good life. She knew they would not be able to afford the kind of medical attention she would need.”