“Talk about what?”
“About this…attraction we’ve been dancing around.”
Caleb shook his head. “I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea, Rachael. I’m not dancing around anything. I’m a married man.”
“Right. I’ve seen your wife,” she said. “She trains with this…Leopold. And she flirts—mercilessly—with the men in my class. I mean, let’s get real here.”
She shoved closer to him, pressing him against the window. “You asked me to help you get settled in here, and now, just like that, you’re going to leave?”
The sill shoved into the back of his thighs as he tried to wriggle back from her. What the hell? She was coming at him. He couldn’t push her back, could he? She’d go flying. Such a tiny little squirrel she was. But here she came, with her sharp and bony little face. Then the soapy taste of her lipstick. Her pinchy mouth on his. Caleb’s eyes burst open in surprise just in time to see the o-shape of Charlotte’s lips near the door. Then the flip of her hair, the back of her head. His new book on the floor.
Shit. Again? What had he deposited in the karmic piggy bank for this to happen, twice? He pushed Rachael backward, and he began to run.
Chapter Sixteen
Charlotte didn’t recall descending the three flights of stairs or leaving the building or passing anyone along the way. It was like when she had started in the race. Just a blur of colors and then the river, there, where she had walked with Ed. She bounded down, down toward the willows that grew at the river’s edge. The willows that would hide her, tuck her away, until she could decide what to do next.
She skidded then on a patch of well-worn grass and went sliding down the hill into the brambles. A thorn tore at her face, and her body slammed to a stop. A bitter taste rose in her mouth. She was alone. She was nearly middle-aged. She had nothing to show for it. She was boring and no fun and she couldn’t even screw around right. She had been turned down. Told to go back to her husband. Her lying, stupid, rotten…
She had done nothing with her mind or with this life besides raise her children, and Caleb would have at least partial custody. Hannah and Gracie would live with a new mom. Maybe a string of other new moms. Moms with banging bikini bodies and feathery earrings and tight calf muscles. Moms whose voices didn’t shake when they talked to strangers.
Charlotte bent forward, her head between her knees and then someone was over her. On her. Pushing into her. And the force of him coming down the hillside swept her along and pushed her deeper into the thicket by the water’s edge. Caleb. She turned, then, and she watched as her own fists beat into his chest.
Caleb locked her forearms. “I didn’t force you to listen before. But I will force you now. Because I can’t lose you. I can’t. What you saw was something Rachael did. Not me.”
He loosened his grip, then, and, Charlotte snapped up to a crawl. She burst onto her feet, but her shoes slipped on the grass once more, and Caleb tackled her around the waist and held her there.
“Are you done?” he said, finally, once she had stopped squirming.
“No.” She raised up once again, and he pulled her toward him. His breath was hot on her face. “Charlotte. I will never let you go.” He held her by the arms as she wriggled. “Never. Ever.”
She closed her eyes and let the darkness move over her.
“I’m just so glad you’re fighting me,” she heard him say. “When you walked in and saw me with that Loopy Lisa, back in Missouri, there was no fight in you. You were just done. Just like that. You were just done with me. Like you turned off, like you dismissed me…I’d rather you punch me in the face than do that again. Than ignore me and pretend I didn’t matter. That we don’t matter. That the past thirteen years don’t matter.”
He went on. “All summer, I’ve been trying to get into your head. I’ve been trying to figure out why you keep jumping to these conclusions…about me and other women. And I think you must be projecting. You must be unhappy in our marriage, so you are projecting that unhappiness onto me. It’s a highly common defense mechanism…”
“Spare me the psychoanalysis,” she sputtered.
“Well, there has to be a reason that you think I’m sleeping with every woman you see.”
“Not every woman.”
“The waitress at Arturo’s. Your drawing professor. I don’t know who else.” He cleared his throat. “Did you really think I was being unfaithful? Would ever be unfaithful? Or did you just want out?”
The rush of the river and the wind in the trees swallowed the rest of his words. Or maybe she had stopped listening.
“We can solve it by making you happy. By fixing things. By fixing us.”
She opened her eyes now, closed them again.
“I don’t think I understood it before, but I do now. If a woman as powerful and as smart and as…capable as you isn’t allowed to do what she does…that thing she does…things begin to fester. And then they erupt…Maybe not in the way you would expect them to. Maybe that’s what this is all about. We need to get you happy. We need to help you feel more fulfilled. I’ll do whatever you want. Anything. Just come home.”
She was quiet for a long while, considering. And the river rushed over the rocks just nearby. She could have poked her foot in there and felt the rush of the water. If she had slipped into the river then, if the brambles hadn’t stopped her, where would the water carry her? Where would she end up?
When Caleb finally spoke again, his voice was gentle and soft. “Can we go home now, Charlotte?”
She was still for a time, and then she said, simply, “No.”
He hung his head and pushed his feet into the soil there by the river. “You are killing me,” was all he said.
***
When Charlotte woke the next morning, the sun once again sprayed its rays down, down through the skylight and onto the coverlet across her bed.
No matter what had gone down in a day, the sun would do this. The more darkness she felt inside, the more it seemed to mock her—the cobalt of the sky through the glass, making her squint and wink to look up at it. She lay there, then, remembering the look on Caleb’s face when she had walked into his office in Missouri. It was the same look he had yesterday with Rachael. And it wasn’t guilt. It was horror.
She had used these women as her way of getting out. Of leaving him. And once she had made this realization in full, once the brunt of her own near-undoing slammed into her, her lungs clamped shut. She sucked in a breath, finally, and a surge of desire nearly carried her away. A desire to feel Caleb’s arms around her. The scratch of his wool sweater on her cheek. A desire to experience another of their simple Saturday mornings. Caleb would make pancakes, each medallion of runny batter fried on a cast iron skillet in plenty of butter. He had a tendency to turn the heat up too high and the house would fill with smoke. And so they would open the windows and the doors and the four of them would eat hot fried pancakes with raspberries and whipped cream and then sit for hours and talk about Caleb’s latest plot twists or the middle school dramas the girls had undergone and the sun would bleat into their tiny breakfast nook and the day would stretch wide in front of them, to spend together, in quiet and in love. Fiona would have called it boring. But that was Fiona. Charlotte’s insides twisted. She had nearly given it up. Let it slip away.
She heard a soft knock then on the door, which she recognized immediately as Gracie’s. But it was Hannah’s voice, with more than a hint of alarm. “Mom. Can we talk to you?”
Charlotte sat up and pulled the blankets around her. “Of course.”
And then the girls came to sit at the foot of her bed, still in their silky pajamas.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Like, 7:30.”
“Oh, wow. I slept in.”
“Yeah. And Dad left.”
“What do you mean ‘Dad left?’ Was he here?”
“He must have been. Early. But his plane leaves today. And he left without saying goodbye.” Hannah bit on the inside of h
er lip. “This was on the table.”
Hannah held a manila envelope with Charlotte’s name in bold black Sharpie. Ugh. She was growing to dislike these sealed and labeled packages.
Gracie’s forehead was wrinkled. “What are we going to do, Mom?”
How could Charlotte tell her daughters that it had all been a dreadful mistake? That the reason she had left their father was because of her own insecurities, her own sadness, and nothing he had done at all. How could she explain the adult world she was only just beginning to know and understand: the world of mistakes, of layering, of forgiveness.
Charlotte shook her head because she didn’t know what else to do, and she opened the envelope.
“Should we go, Mom? Should we leave now?”
“No, no stay,” Charlotte replied. She had been secretive enough with her girls. Charlotte rifled through the contents, and then looked up at them.
“You’re going to need to start packing,” she said.
Gracie and Hannah looked to her, then to one another.
“Because we leave for New York City tomorrow.” She held out the stack of airline tickets, the VIP passes to Caleb’s launch party, a printed email from his publicist with the family’s travel arrangements and hotel details. And a purple post-it note on top showing Caleb’s familiar scrawl. “I hope to hell you’ll use these.”
***
Charlotte stepped out of the shower and stood in the steam to dry off. She looked first at her legs and then her arms. Her weight hadn’t changed much, nor her overall size. She was still a solid, formidable person, but she could see definition and strength. She cleared the mirror with her towel and stood staring at herself. The skin just around her eyes was crinkly. There were freckles here and there on her face and some lines and more than one stray hair. But this was the face she inhabited, so she fixed on it a bit longer. She moved up close to the mirror and she stared into her own eyes, and then she pulled back and considered her breasts, and she raised her arms now, and she flexed, popping forth a mound of muscle, which hadn’t been there when she arrived in this town. She looked down at her legs, and she tightened her quads. They were strong now, strong enough to bound over the trails of central Missouri. She was strong enough to feel the wind flip through her hair; to be out of breath, but not wheezy. She had become a runner this summer, and, for that, she was grateful.
She had rescheduled her final workout with Leopold, so she could luxuriate in the time slot she had always wanted, smack in the middle of the day. She pulled on her race jersey, and she went to meet him.
***
When she arrived, Leopold was finishing up with Helga, who regarded Charlotte with a slow, sideways glance and then a practiced smile.
“Hello. It’s Charlotte, isn’t it? Fiona’s sister?”
“Yes, yes.” Charlotte smiled and took Helga’s hand in hers.
“I understand you also work for our Tabitha.”
“Worked for your Tabitha.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, there are some problems there, at her preschool. As I’m sure you are aware.”
“Whatever do you mean, dear?”
And so she told Helga the entire series of sordid tales… that of the fireplay, the Sominex, the Children of the Corn, sequestered as they were, in that tiny room.
When she was finished, Helga moved her hand away from her mouth. “Are you quite sure about all of this?”
“Quite.”
Helga shot a look toward Leopold, who gave her a quick nod.
“I will address this. Today.” And she turned to leave.
So, Charlotte thought, the uncool kid just told the cool kid’s mommy on her. But that’s what uncool kids do, and sometimes it takes a little tattle to make a difference.
“Do not worry,” Leopold said. “This preschool you speak of will be sold or burned to the ground by tomorrow. Helga is a tough…how you say? Broad. A tough broad. This is correct, no?”
“This is correct. At least I hope it is, Leopold, for the sake of the children in this town. And if it’s not, I’ll talk to the licensing board.”
So began their workout. Charlotte could tell Leopold was going easy on her, but she didn’t mind.
“I’m going to miss you, Miss Charlotte,” he said, as they rounded the track toward the end of the session. “And so is your sister. But I’m glad you are working things out with the author. Still, you know if he ever pulls any more funny business, you can come right back here.”
“Thanks, Leopold.”
“You were one of my best success stories, you know that? You and Fiona both. Though, of course, Fiona is still working.”
“Fiona still needs a… confidence coach?”
“Yes, I mean, she has just the life she needs now. But all of that loneliness.”
“She has her kids, and she has her husband.”
“Yes,” he said, “Have you ever met him?”
“No. Have you?”
“Oh yes. He owns most of the property downtown. He was in town all the time when Fiona started dating him. She was working as a hostess at Arturo’s, as a matter of fact, when she and I were first working together.”
“In the gym? Is that where you and Fiona were working together?”
“Of course. Where else?”
“Just… go on.”
“Mr. Amari, he saw her and he had to have her. At least that is how he phrased it to me. And so he made a few changes to her.”
“What does that mean?”
“He…how do you say? He…remade her in the way he wished to. Her body and such. And then he bought her a house, with the stipulation that she would be there absolutely whenever he wanted her to be.”
“Oh. Wow. And how often does he come by?”
“I don’t know. During his ski trips. Usually February, I think.”
“Once a year?”
“Yes, but he stays for a few weeks. And he is still working on some property development, some real estate deals, so he comes through town to oversee that, though I’m not sure she always knows when he comes into town.” He brought his finger to his lips.
“But what about his kids?”
“Between you and me, Miss Charlotte, I think Mr. Amari has many children. And it breaks Fiona’s heart that he does not have much to do with Maddox and Maxwell.”
“But they are married?”
“Sure. I think that was part of the deal, too. Also that she maintains a certain…how do you say? A certain appearance when he arrives.”
“Oh. Well.”
“Charlotte.” His voice grew soft. “Please don’t ever tell Fiona that I told you all of this. I don’t think she would want you to know.”
“I don’t think she would mind.”
“She would mind. As her Confidence Coach, she has told me all about the sister who has beaten her at everything. About your perfect life, your perfect family, your perfect marriage. She would never want you to know that she is not perfect, too.”
“Sure. Yeah, I won’t mention anything.” And she thought then how she had shown Fiona the tickets that morning and told her that they were going to be leaving early, and Fiona had stomped her foot and crossed her arms, and said, “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s playing you for a fool.”
Charlotte tilted her head to one side and repeated to Leopold, “I won’t mention a thing.”
“And, um, Miss Charlotte? Don’t worry. I will take good care of Fiona while Kamal is gone. Whenever he is gone.” Then he winked.
“Swinging the kettlebell?”
“And then some.”
Chapter Seventeen
It was Hannah and Gracie’s first time in an airplane. Charlotte positioned herself between them, Gracie near the window and Hannah near the aisle. Both girls squeezed Charlotte’s hand tight at takeoff, but they soon relaxed and rotated turns at the window and munched their pretzels and sipped on their Coca-Colas and giggled at the captain’s corny jokes.
The skies were clear for the entire journey, and
as they began their descent, they could see the entire Manhattan skyline, as though it were a mirage, a dense and twinkling pocket of humanity. There was a feeling in the air of possibilities, of adventures and novel experiences to be had, right here in their tiny capsule of life.
They left the airport and checked into the appointed hotel, and then they bought a latte from a man at a cart on the sidewalk, and they didn’t have to stroll long before they found a bookstore, its glass elevators soaring six stories up. As they entered, Charlotte could hear Fiona’s voice, “You went to New York City, and you spent all afternoon in a bookstore?” But they stayed anyway. Charlotte tiptoed along until she found the stacks of novels by Caleb MacDougall, and she ran her hands along the spines and she fanned their pages and she breathed in their scent. These were pages she had helped to bring into this world, and they held a scent of newness and of warmth. The scent of her life.
Charlotte and her daughters each picked a new book to explore, nestled into a grouping of wingback chairs, and turned page after page. Every now and then, Charlotte would look over toward them, at their long noses, dotted with freckles. Their eyes, bright and green, scanning the pages, which allowed them to each squeeze into a different tale, a different world. The sight of them there, sharing space with her, filled her with a velvety feeling, soft and smooth.
She looked at her watch. “Girls! We have to be at Dad’s party in an hour.” And so they tucked in their bookmarks and ducked into a boutique on the way to the hotel, where they each bought an overpriced dress and a pair of matching shoes, none of which was perfect but which would certainly do, and, after heading up to the room to twist their hair up and dab on some mascara, they made their way to Caleb’s event.
The lights in the convention hall were dim. A woman in a short and dazzling cocktail dress had her hand on Caleb’s back and was whispering in his ear. Ah, Stephanie, his new publicist, she thought. Charlotte turned and told the girls that Caleb would be by, as soon as he saw them, and just then, she saw that he had, and he was standing with her. “I knew you would come,” he said, and then he held the back of her neck and he tipped her head back, and his mouth found hers. His lips were soft and moist and familiar, but he kissed her in a way he never had before. It made her stomach quiver and rise up, and his breath lingered just above her lips and then he rested his forehead on hers.
Shy Charlotte’s Brand New Juju (Romantic Comedy) Page 22