Gracie’s voice came up from behind them just then. “We couldn’t find the cinnamon rolls. Strangest thing.”
“Yeah,” Hannah continued, “But we got some kettle corn.” They held the bag out first to Ed, who gave them a warm smile and reached in for a handful. “Maybe the bakery is over here somewhere. I smell it again.”
Ed shook his head. “I think what you’re smelling is the cinnamon roasted nuts.” He pointed to a nearby booth.
“No, I don’t even like those,” Gracie said. “It’s something bread-y.”
“We have to go find out where that’s coming from.”
They disappeared again, leaving Ed holding the cellophane bag of popcorn.
“I think it’s you,” Charlotte said.
“What’s me?”
“The scent. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you smell like freshly baked bread?”
He laughed.
“Is it some kind of cologne?”
“I’m not wearing any cologne. I thought about it today, but I didn’t.”
“Huh. Well, it’s definitely you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I guess it’s just one of your layers, cowboy. A good one.” Charlotte felt the charge between them. It was something she remembered from the early days with Caleb. When she would move in close toward him, she would it feel it, this electricity sparking through her body. It would crackle almost, if they stood close enough together; something nearly erotic, a sort of dance, just standing in conversation with one another.
Charlotte and Ed moved along in this way, appreciating one another and the things they saw, feeling the air fizz and sputter between them.
***
A short while later, the girls rejoined them, and Ed said he would let them have the rest of the day to themselves, and he waved to them, and offered them back the kettle corn, which they insisted he keep. And so he walked away, swinging the long cellophane bag and whistling.
Not knowing if it was yet safe to return to the Thunderdome, Charlotte and her daughters stopped at a park near the college. The riverbank here was steep with natural grasses and wildflowers, but there was a flat, grassy area, too, and a playground. They sat, side by side, on the swings, kicking against the sand underfoot and feeling their bodies twist, lazily, on the chains.
“That man makes you happy,” Gracie said, looking toward her mother.
“He’s a nice, normal guy,” Charlotte replied. “The kind of guy we would be friends with in Missouri, probably.”
“Yeah. It would be nice to have a friend like that out here.”
“It really is.” She heard the old Gracie in there somewhere. A softness, a caring for her mother.
“Do you think Dad could ever be your friend like that?”
Charlotte pushed on one foot in the sand and felt the swing tug and lurch beneath her as the chain moved upward in its twist. She released and let the swing spiral back around again before she answered. “We once were. The best of friends.”
Hannah spoke now. “You never told us what happened, Mom…But we figured it out, we think. We figured dad must have done something.”
Charlotte didn’t answer. She stared down at the spot of sand beneath her swing.
“Did he have an affair?” Hannah burst out, her voice suddenly too loud for this place, for this park on this bright, lemon-colored day.
Charlotte felt a pull in her throat and in her eyelids. She blinked.
“He did.” Gracie said, and Hannah nodded. “That’s what we thought.”
To hear the accusation. The finality. The conversation she had never wanted to have. How could she say, now, that she wasn’t sure? This wasn’t fair to Caleb. If there was an ounce of doubt, she had to defend him. And there was an ounce. More than an ounce.
“I don’t know,” Charlotte said.
“You don’t know?”
“The truth is, I don’t know what happened.”
They were all silent for a beat.
“Then why are we here?” Gracie asked. “Why did we leave?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s complicated.”
“Can it stop being complicated long enough for you to pull it together? He wants you back, Mom. So much. And he’s our dad.” Gracie sniffled and Charlotte found that she couldn’t look up to see her daughter’s tears.
“I know, honey.”
“He tells us every day that he is working on it,” Hannah said. “He says he doesn’t know what you are going through right now. But it’s something big… That’s what he said, anyway.”
“He doesn’t want you kicking him out of the house again,” Gracie added. “He says you must not be ready yet, and maybe he pushed you too soon. So do you think you’ll be ready—or whatever— by the time he gets back from L.A.?”
What had Caleb said to them, before he left? And had he told them he would be taking Rachael? She supposed that he had not. “You guys shouldn’t be talking about this. With your dad or with me. This is something Dad and I need to discuss.”
“We have to talk about it, if you guys don’t talk to one another.”
Charlotte stared at the sand and let her eyes shift in and out of focus. Her mind flashed through memories of Caleb. Of how, when they were first starting out together, they would load the girls in the back of the Corolla and take a cheap road trip during part of each summer break. They would drive and drive, but Caleb could never turn off his writer’s mind, and he was always pulling over and writing furiously in his notebook. If he was on a roll, he would give Charlotte the afternoon to explore whatever place they were in, and he would disappear, into the forest or across the beach, but always into his own mind.
One summer, when the girls were still toddlers, they had been driving through Yellowstone National Park, and Caleb had pulled over into one of the larger parking lots, where he dashed toward a picnic table with his dog-eared Mead notebook and began scribbling. When Charlotte asked when he might be finished, he simply waved her away and so she and the girls went along to see the geysers and the mud pots. They tiptoed along the boardwalks, hand in hand, but then an older woman with itchy-looking skin had shouted at them. She told them they must never, ever leave the boardwalk because the water from the earth was hot enough to kill the children and the mud pots could swallow them whole, and the girls had begun to cry and still they walked along, on the creaking wood, just above the blurping earth and the blue bubbling pools. Charlotte remembered thinking that she had surely passed through the gates of hell. Even the ground steamed here, like something beneath was angry and vengeful.
The thought that bothered her most, and the one that kept returning during those summer trips, was that this was their vacation. This was specially designed to be the bright spot of her year. The reward for surviving the tedium of her day-to-day life.
That afternoon, in Yellowstone, Caleb had emerged from his writing trance elated. When they finally met up with him, back at the car, he had thrust his hands skyward and spun around in tight little circles, kicking up his heels and remarking, “It’s so beautiful. All of creation!” And then he saw Charlotte’s pinched face, and he said, “What’s wrong with you?” and she sighed and shrugged and said she probably just needed a peanut butter sandwich.
And now, things should be better. Easier. But one of them had ruined things. One of them had messed up the love. She had liked it much better when she was certain that it was him.
These thoughts were making her limbs feel restless, whether with fear or sadness or guilt. And she thought that perhaps this summer was just another layer on the royally-screwed canvas that was her life.
Charlotte shook her head then, as though it would dislodge the thought. “I’ll talk to Dad. I promise.” The girls didn’t respond and so she said, after a beat, “Do you know what sounds really good right now?”
“A cinnamon roll.” Hannah and Gracie said, together.
“No,” Charlotte said, “A run. Let’s take a run.”
“Ew.” Gracie and Charlotte said together, and they laughed as they set off down the path, their hair flouncing up and down, and, from time to time, whapping them in the face. They ran until Fiona called and gave them the all clear. Kamal wasn’t coming after all. And then they ran back up the hill toward her home.
Chapter Thirteen
“So why do think you’re so…how do you say? Lack of motivated?” Leopold asked.
“You don’t think I’m motivated? It’s five in the morning, and I’m here,” Charlotte replied.
“Yes. Thank you for not passing out on me lately.”
“You are welcome.” The four-hundred calorie MuscleBar that she had wolfed in the car churned in her belly. She nearly burped.
“But why do you have such a resistance to racing?”
She shrugged. “I guess I’m just not motivated in that way.”
“Oh. What is that like?”
“I am just not motivated to compete athletically. It doesn’t mean I’m not motivated in other ways.” Though just then, Charlotte couldn’t think of a way that she was motivated. Not recently.
“But you do not have to win,” Leopold was saying. “I think perhaps you are one of those women who do not want to play if she cannot win. So you pretend you do not want to win. And the best way to pretend you do not want to win is to pretend that you are not interested in participating.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
No, she had to admit. It wasn’t. She stared back at him, not saying anything.
“Have you ever done something just to do it?” he asked. “Not so you could be the best at it?”
“Of course. Nearly everything I do.” She laughed, thinking of her painting class and how her teacher felt she was a complete hack. The preschool, where everyone thought her ideas were stupid. “Everything I do, in fact.”
“But what about the thing that you’ve chosen as your job? What is that, anyway?”
She paused. “I guess you could say it was to parent my girls. And to help my husband.”
“And are you the best at it?”
“That’s a hard thing to measure. Everyone has a different definition of what makes a good parent.”
“Oh, blah, blah,” Leopold said. “Are you good—the best—at doing your job?”
“Yes. I was always there…am always there for my girls.” And then she looked away. “Apparently no. With my husband. Though I would say I tried my best, in the end, I was unsuccessful.”
Leopold watched her closely now. “And you would say that why?”
“Look,” she answered, “we only have twenty minutes and we have to get through this entire shoulder-bi-tri routine. You are taking my attention away from my form.” By now, Charlotte knew exactly what words to use to shut Leopold up.
He crossed his arms and cocked his head back. “As you wish.” And he was silent as she grabbed the fifteen-pound dumbbells and began twenty reps of upright rows. Then he said, “But you need to understand that this race is about more than running. You have signed up for an experience that you are not going to win. There is no chance that you will win. But you are going to train to win anyway. You are going to run the race anyway.”
“Five, six, seven,” she counted her reps aloud, fully knowing that she was being a jerk.
“This will be better for you than you could possibly know.”
“Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen…”
“And another thing, Miss Charlotte.”
She rested the weights now, her arms fully extended. “Really?”
“Just one more thing…I’ve been talking to Fiona. And she says you’ve been resisting her, too, lately.”
She sighed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yes, but we both think that’s only because now you realize that there is merit to doing this. We think you might actually enjoy it.”
“So what if I do?”
He chuckled. “I’m just saying, you should really let Fiona do what she wants with you. Let go a little.”
“Step aside, little grasshopper. Let the big grasshoppers tell you what to do? Is that what you are saying?”
“Grasshoppers? Who said anything about grasshoppers?”
“It’s an expression. Never mind.”
“Fiona believes you are still hiding from your life. Worse now than ever, in fact.”
“Hiding?”
“Yes. She says you are scared to do things. Competitions that you will lose, of course, but also situations in which you could look foolish.”
“She has certainly set up some of those situations.”
“Just please go along with her. You will not regret it. Fiona is a wise, wise woman.”
“Is she now?”
“She is.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Because I made her that way, grasshopper.” He winked and smiled. “Also, because you would make her happy. And God knows, with all that woman has to deal with…”
“What does she have to deal with exactly?”
He crossed his arms again. “You have only seventeen minutes now to finish your shoulders-bi- tri routine. Now, slice, slice.”
“I think you mean, ‘Chop. Chop.’”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he laughed. “Maybe I do.”
***
Had she really been resisting Fiona? It was Sunday, and so, after her workout, she did not need to hurry off to that Purple Polka-Dot Preschool and so she took a drive through the valley and over the river and she tried to ascertain just where she stood in Fiona’s Transformation Pact.
In large part, she conceded, it had been a success. She could feel her muscles now. She had to push down, but they were in there. They twitched now from the workout she had just done, and when she held her fingers around her bicep, there was a firmness pushing back, deep inside. She had gained another pound at the weigh-in that morning. And Leopold had put his arm around her and said it was because she was so close to perfect already.
“To lose those last ten pounds,” Leopold has said, “takes excrementally more effort.”
“Incrementally? Exponentially?” What did he mean?
“Excrementally more effort,” he repeated, enunciating more clearly this time, “than losing thirty pounds. Just keep working.”
So Fiona had been right about Leopold. It had been rocky at the start, but Charlotte was loving her new strength and her new relationship with exercise. Working out no longer felt like punishment but like something she could do each today, almost a tool to help her feel better.
So, score one for Fiona. And then there was this job, which Fiona had helped her, at some level, to snag. That pukey little pokey purple schoolhouse. At times, it was hard for her to remember why she actually showed up each day. But then she saw the soft looks of the quiet kids who needed her, who clung to her legs, who held her face while she spoke; who snuggled on her lap and leaked on her neck at story time. Charlotte knew what it felt like to be an introvert in an extroverted world, and these kids gravitated to her and to her soft voice and to her way of knowing when they needed to sit and color for awhile, by themselves.
And then there was the painting class Fiona had arranged. She had met Ed. Special, special Ed.
So Fiona had done an amazing job. The least she could do would be to let her go full throttle. In the amount of time she still had left here, in this crazy little town.
***
As she entered the Thunderdome that morning, Maddox and Maxwell met her at the door, bouncing on their toes. “Can the girls take us fishing again?”
“Why don’t you ask your mom?”
“She’s not up yet.”
Not up yet? “Okay, let me talk to the girls and we’ll figure out a plan.”
She found Gracie and Hannah in the garage, organizing a bin of children’s toys.
�
�Gracie, the boys said they want to go fishing again. Are you letting them near the river? It’s running kind of fast right now, don’t you think?”
Gracie flicked her eyes upward. “No, mom. They are fishing for toys. We stand in the forest and we tie a clothespin to some yarn that’s attached to a stick, and then we hide behind a tree and clip on prizes.”
“Oh. Where are you getting the prizes?”
“That’s the best part,” Gracie said. “These kids have so many toys, I don’t think they’ve ever seen half of them. So I distract the boys while Hannah goes in and takes some things from their rooms and then we attach them to the fishing pole. This is their haul from yesterday.” She gestured to the bin of toys at her feet. “Keeps ‘em going for hours.”
Charlotte just shook her head. “No Fiona yet today, huh?”
“Nope. She missed breakfast.”
“I’ll check on her.”
“Good, yeah, we weren’t sure what to do.”
Charlotte turned and followed the matrix of now-familiar hallways to Fiona’s door. She knocked softly and, when there was no answer, she creaked the door open and peered inside. The blackout curtains were fully drawn, and a soft, sweet scent clung in the air, like moist talcum powder.
Charlotte called Fiona’s name and tiptoed to the bed.
Fiona bolted upright. “Good morning, Charlotte!” she proclaimed.
Charlotte jumped and Fiona brought her hand to her face. “I must have slept in. What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Is everything okay?”
“Oh yes, of course. I just didn’t sleep well. I was up for some time in the middle of the night…” She shot a glance toward the bedside table, where an amber bottle sat, then looked back to Charlotte. “And so I guess I slept in. Is everybody waiting on me for this morning’s adventure?”
“The kids seem to have found their way, but I was wondering if you have anybody on the books for today.”
“No, I took the day off. Hoped I could spend it with you guys. Doing whatever you want.”
“I kind of hoped you would do it, finally. My makeover.”
Fiona grinned and squinted, pushing her lips together. “That depends. Are you going to chicken out again?”
Shy Charlotte’s Brand New Juju (Romantic Comedy) Page 18