Just Like That
Page 31
As Rex rubs his crew cut, he looks at me, both perplexed and astonished. And I don’t blame him. I once told him what I used to believe—that love was for other people. Not for me. “Dude,” Rex says finally. “For real?”
“I know. Fucking crazy, right?”
He stares at me hard, his forehead a series of deep parallel grooves. “You love her?”
It’s crazy, it’s fast, and it’s intense. It’s the truth. “Yeah. I really do.”
“Holy shit. What’s her name?”
“Penny.” Even saying that one single word makes me smile so fucking hard.
And then Rex starts to smile too. “Well, goddamn. I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Me, neither.” All the stress of today drains out of my shoulders, and I feel like I can finally breathe. The big weight is gone. The path is clear. “But I’m really fucking sorry to leave you high and dry.”
“Fuck that,” Rex says, beaming. “Jobs are jobs, a dime a dozen, but love?” He spins his ring and nods. Then he raises his shot glass, and so do Ortega and Brooks. And Rex says, “Love is everything. So goddamn it, man, here’s you. And to Penny!”
To Penny. For Penny. With Penny. Forever.
* * *
I get back to my apartment, with its gray walls and its clean lines. I look up the next flight to Port Flamingo, which leaves the day after tomorrow. It’s all middle seats, it costs a fortune, and it’ll take all day. I've never hit book trip so fast in my life.
Staring out at the brick wall across the street, I order a pizza and give her a call. She sounds stuffed up, like she’s been crying, and I fucking get it. Until I turned Rex down, I felt like my whole soul was bleeding out. Part of me wants to tell her I’m coming back to her, that I’ll be there before she knows it. That we’ll be together soon, and I’m never leaving again.
But more than that, I want to surprise her. Really surprise her. I want to show up with a one-way ticket and every single promise kept. I want to see the look on her face when she walks in from work, and I’m on the couch with Guppy, watching nature shows and drinking a beer with her name on it, with her house full of flowers and dinner all ready to go. If we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, I want to get it kicked off exactly fucking right. I want to see her face. I want to hold her tight. And I can’t do any of that shit from Boston.
“You okay?” I ask her as I head into the bedroom. I put my suitcase on the bed and take off my tie.
“Yes,” she says, sniffling, but I can hear her smile. “I’m great. How are you?”
“I’m all right.” I put her on speaker and set her on my bedside table.
“How did the contract signing go?”
“Fantastic,” I say, pushing down my happiness, keeping my voice neutral. “There was a surprise, but I was ready.”
She sniffles again, and then she blows her nose. In the background on her end, I hear Guppy squeaking his armadillo.
I’m about to unzip my bag, but I realize there’s something way more important than getting repacked. I go to my dresser and start digging through the drawers for the thing I never thought I’d use. I riffle through my boxers, my long underwear, my undershirts. There, in the bottom drawer, I find the black leather ring box. I pop it open and take out my mom’s wedding ring, which was also my grandmother’s. The only Macklin family heirloom in the world.
I put it on my first finger, and it doesn’t even hit the knuckle. Somehow, I know it’ll fit her. But if it doesn’t, she can wear this one around her neck, because Penny Darling’s got diamonds coming her way. Every anniversary, every birthday, for forever.
“By the way, tomorrow I’ve got to help out at the Kumquat Festival,” she says. “I have to be there at seven in the morning. If you can’t get hold of me, that’s why.”
I tuck the ring back into its little slot and put the box on top of the dresser, front and center. “Sounds good. I’ve got a packed day, too.” But not with what she thinks. Instead of starting a new job, I'll be moving my bank accounts, giving notice on the lease for this place, and checking to see if the Shorefront Grill is still for sale.
“Want to eat dinner with me and then watch Little Dorrit together on Netflix?” she asks. I hear the clatter of a pan and the noise of her kitchen faucet.
I smile at the sad, old yarn pom-pom. For one more day, I can handle it. For thirty-six more hours, I’ll survive. “That sounds perfect.”
61
Penny
The Kumquat Festival was a white lie. The next afternoon I step out of Logan Airport, wearing a pair of boots that Maisie kept from her corporate days in Maryland, along with a pair of mittens that have a small moth hole in the palm. The noises of cabs, cars, and buses swirl around me, but I don’t notice any of it, because although everything is strange and loud, it’s also magical. Falling from the sky are big, fat, snow-globe flakes that don’t look real. Each little crystal shimmers in the street lights. I turn my face upwards and let them patter down onto my cheeks. I pull off my glove with my teeth and feel the small pinpricks of cold on my palm. I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s like the gentlest salt spray that the ocean ever made.
It’s almost dusk. The cold stings my nose, and diesel fumes, too. But it’s all just perfect. Someone bumps into me from behind, and as I take a step to get my footing, my hand goes automatically to my stomach. Because what Lucky suspected was true. Maisie and I confirmed it with three different brands of pregnancy tests that we bought from Mrs. Martenson. I am a plus sign, two lines, and PREGNANT.
And I’ve never been so happy in my life.
A cab pulls up into the cab stand, and the driver rolls down the passenger’s side window. “Going somewhere, lady, or just going to stand there and look at the sky?” At first, it shocks me—that brash accent and the rudeness, too. This isn’t the land of Afternoon, hon, where you headed? But then I realize he’s smiling when he says it, so I smile back.
“Yes, I’m going somewhere.” I drag Maisie’s pink suitcase, which has a working handle, through the fluffy flakes. He puts his taxi in park and gets out. He’s a little guy, much shorter than me, with huge unruly eyebrows and kind blue eyes. He slaps down the roller handle and flings open his trunk, which also holds a bag of salt, a little shovel, an ice scraper, and three gallons of wiper fluid. One lane over, a van driver pounds on his horn. The lady he’s honking at doesn’t hurry along but instead rolls down her window and gives him the finger.
Definitely not the land of sweet tea. But there’s a loud plainness about all of it that I find I like very much. No nonsense. You honk at me, I’ll give you the bird, so how about that?
“First time to New England?” he asks me when I slide into the back of the cab.
“Yes, never been north of Atlanta. I’ve never seen snow before,” I say, mesmerized by the way the flakes make white ridges, like frosting, on even the tiniest surface.
“We got a blizzard coming, so it’s a damned good thing you got in when you did. Might get two feet or more.”
“Feet?”
He turns up the heat a little higher and maneuvers through the clogged lanes of cars. “Feet. So where are we heading?”
“One sec.” I buckle up and tuck my purse into my lap. From the top of the vortex, his brass apartment key shines back at me, and I can’t help but smile so hard it makes my cheeks ache.
I pull out my phone, delighted by full coverage and not a single roaming warning. But I don’t want to blow the surprise, so I stay in the Skype app, and ask:
* * *
Are you home?
Not yet. Bank, dry cleaners.
You?
* * *
Lying really doesn’t come naturally to me, but I can do it for a little while longer. It’s for the very best cause.
* * *
Still up to my eyeballs in kumquats.
Will you be home in an hour or so? Can we video?
* * *
Can’t wait
* * *
“1023 Worchester Street.”
He wrinkles up his red nose and tries to rotate in his seat, making the fabric of his parka crinkle. “You mean Wooster?”
What? No. I definitely don’t. There aren’t nearly enough syllables in that word. Maybe it’s my accent. Do I have an accent? Oh, geez. I probably sound like some southern belle, and I don’t even know it. So I try to give him the phonetics. “Whirr-chester.” I hold up the keychain that Russ gave me and press it against the plastic barrier between us.
“Right,” he booms. “Wooster. Rhymes with rooster.”
I stare at the word. “That makes no sense.”
“Welcome to Boston, lady!”
I stare at the keychain and try to sound it out. It doesn’t rhyme with rooster, not even if you say it fast. But that’s okay. It’s a brave new world, and I love it. “1023 Wooster then. But can we make one stop first?”
62
Russ
As I’m rounding the corner to my building, my phone buzzes inside my coat. I pull it out, and a few flakes melt on the glass over the words Video call, Penny.
Even though it’s fucking freezing and snowing and halfway dark, there’s no way I’m missing it, so I start the video feed. Her pretty, smiling face lights up the screen.
“Hi!” she says. “Where are you?”
A plow blows past, the blade on the front grating on the pavement and sending the few accumulated inches of slush spewing onto the curb. “Just about home. You?”
“Oh! I’m home already.”
I shoulder my way into my building and decide to take the stairs so I don’t lose her in the elevator. This call is different than the one last night, though, because she’s not pixelated or fuzzy. She’s crystal clear. “You’re at home? The video quality is fucking amazing.”
Her eyes widen, and she snorts. “Maisie moved the wireless out from under her cable box. Maybe that’s it.”
“Got to be,” I say, as I get to the second-floor landing.
“So how was your day?” she asks.
“Better now. How were the kumquats?”
“Small and weird. But fun!”
There’s so much I want to tell her. That I scheduled a moving date, that I put an offer on the Shorefront Grill, that I’m hers forever. I don’t even know where to start, and half of me suspects there’s no fucking way I’m going to be able to make it until tomorrow before I tell her everything. Still though, I wait. Because I want it to be perfect. I open the door from the stairwell to the fourth floor, and I head down the hallway toward my apartment, stomping off the last of the snow and salt from my shoes. I see that she’s got me on the bed again, and her feet are up behind her, like she was when she first called from her grandpa’s. Except, weirdly, she’s wearing socks, and what look like leggings. I squint at the screen. “You’re said you’re at home?”
She nods vigorously.
As her head bobs, I get a look at the room behind her in little slivers. “Did you paint your bedroom? Why’s it so dark?”
“Must be the lighting,” she says, scooting in so her face and shoulders fill up the whole frame. “It’s cloudy today. There’s a storm coming. So, tell me about your day, handsome. Start to finish.”
I pull my keys from the lock and start to unlock the deadbolt. But as I go to turn the key in the lock, I realize…it’s already open.
The lights in my apartment are on.
There’s a pink suitcase by my couch.
And holy fuck alive, Penny is running down the hallway towards me, giggling.
She leaps into my open arms, and I twirl her around and around. “Am I dreaming?” I ask her, but I realize I can’t be. I can hear her laugh, I can smell her skin. She’s in my arms. It’s her, it really is her. “Holy fuck. I’ve got tickets to come see you tomorrow. Did you figure that out?”
“No!” she giggles into my cheek, “But I couldn’t wait any longer. One day was all I could stand. And I stopped by the grocery!”
I set her down and hold her face in my hands. She’s really here. My Penny is really in my apartment. Holy, holy shit.
“There’s something in the fridge for you,” she says.
I kick the door shut, but before I can grab her again she backs away, laughing, with her hands clasped together in front of her mouth. “Fridge!”
“I don’t give a shit about groceries,” I say, yanking her to me.
But she squirms free and shakes her head, all sass and sparkle. “Nope, not yet. I got you a surprise, and you need to see it.”
All I want to do now is lay her down on my kitchen table, but who am I kidding? She’ll always get her way. “All right, all right. Groceries first.”
She squeaks. “Top shelf!”
“What are you up to?”
“Go look!”
I open up the fridge and on the top shelf, there’s a cake box. She takes her place on the side of the open fridge door, pressing her fingers into the rubber seal. She’s clearly just so fucking excited about whatever it is, and her little feet thunder on the wood floor as she jumps up and down.
I set the cake on the counter and pop off the top.
“Read it!” she says.
I do, over and over again. I see the words. I read the words, but I can’t fucking process the words. As each one falls in line after the other, my mind is saying it’s too good to be true. This cannot be happening. This has to be a dream.
* * *
YOU’RE GOING TO BE THE BEST DAD!
The joy. Holy fuck alive, the joy. “Penny. Are you?”
“Yes!” she says, putting one hand to her stomach, looking suddenly nervous. “Is that…okay?”
Okay?
She will never understand how much I love her, not now, and not ever. It is everything. She is everything. This is everything. I’m so happy I can’t even speak. I scoop her up into my arms again, and spin her until we are alone together inside the gray blur, until there is nothing but the two of us, and her squeals, and the long welcome-home kiss.
63
Penny
One month later.
* * *
Barefoot, I step off my patio into the sand, looping my arm around Grandpa’s. Together we make our way down the beach, toward two rows of folding chairs, decorated with ribbons and white shimmering balloons. A few rose petals from my bouquet get caught in the breeze, tumbling toward the ocean. One lands between my Uncle Tom and Russ’ Aunt Sharon. Another under my stepdad, and one under my mom. One turns cartwheels and lands flat on Guppy’s side, a little pink dot on his huge white flank. The pink of the petal matches the corsage tied to his collar, the bouquet Maisie is holding in her hands, and the flower Rose has pinned to her dress, too.
Russ turns to me and smiles, the sun catching the shadow of his dimple ever so slightly. The music shifts from Scarborough Fair to Here Comes The Bride.
And everybody stands, dresses and ties flapping in the sea breeze.
Before I’m even halfway down the aisle, Russ has reached his hand out for me. Palm open and waiting.
“You’re so beautiful,” he mouths to me.
The tears tumble down my cheeks unchecked, and my lips begin to quiver.
“Don’t cry,” he tells me, but I can see his eyes are filling right up with tears, too.
And so, with the purest, most joyful, simplest happiness, we stand together on the city beach. In front of us, Mayor Jeffers is looking dapper in a linen suit, his tie a wide, old-fashioned knot.
I know what he’s saying, but the words wash over me like the tide. We are gathered here today gets tangled up with the waves. To join this woman and this man is lost in the sound of the seagulls overhead. And before I know it, Russ is putting his mom’s ring on my f
inger, and I’m putting a new white gold one on him.
Now, more than ever, we are alone in the center of the universe. The world swirls, the palms sway, but not us. With him, everything is still, and peaceful, and right.
The mayor is still talking, but I’m not listening. “I love you,” I whisper to Russ.
He moves a lock of my hair aside and whispers back, “I love you, too.”
Mayor Jeffers coughs and nudges me in the side with the Bible. I glance away from Russ long enough to come back to earth. The mayor looks at me, and then Russ, and takes a deep breath. Russ squeezes my hand a little harder, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Guppy knead the sand with his huge paws.
Then the mayor says, “By the power vested in me by the people of Port Flamingo and the state of Florida, I now pronounce you...”
But Russ doesn’t wait for the words, and husband and wife is lost in a kiss.
THE END
* * *
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Thank You
The more I write, the more my gratitude grows. To Neda, Dani, Sybil, Najla, Eagle, Kiezha, Karin, Keyanna, Mila, Anita, Kate, Sam, April, Anna, Emily, Serena, Christina, and my darling Sarah. To the Peaches and the Motherbitches. To the KOs. To the many blogs, big and small, who have enjoyed being naughty with me. To the new readers and the old. To the authors who inspire me every day. To my students, who haven’t a clue that I’m doing this but bear with me when my eyes are tired because of it. To my dogs. And most especially to Henry, my favorite human on the planet. I love you more every single day.