In some other room, Laura heard the familiar sounds of someone moving about a kitchen, the bang of a spoon against a bowl, water running.
Brian. The kids.
I’m either drunk or dead.
“Hello?” she called out, and smiled. She hadn’t heard that voice in a long time, clear and uncluttered by twenty years of chain smoking.
“Mommmmyyy.” In a flash, a little girl who bore a heart-ripping resemblance to her own daughter at that age flew into the room and onto the bed. The girl’s dark blond hair was sticking up and matted from sleep.
Laura looked down at her face, perfect and sweet and smiling up at her, and her heart nearly stopped. “Mary,” Laura whispered, hugging her little girl to her, afraid if she held too tightly, she’d disappear. This was a dream. No, this was where she’d gone when she’d died. God had decided to let her into heaven after all. She squeezed her eyes tightly, letting tears seep out and fall onto her daughter’s head. She breathed in deeply of her strawberry-shampooed head, felt her soft hair against her cheek, the child’s little hands trying to reach around her for a hug.
“Hey, you raining on me,” Mary said, pretending to be cross. She looked as though she must be around three, adorable and chubby with a straight fringe of bangs over her dark eyes.
Laura laughed. “Yeah, I guess I am. I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” Mary said, like she always had when she was little, even if Laura had only been in the other room.
Except the last time Laura had seen Mary she hadn’t said anything, and Laura wasn’t even certain her daughter had recognized her. Her twenty-year-old daughter had been waiting for a john, standing on a corner leaning against a telephone pole as if she’d fall if it wasn’t there. Laura remembered thinking she ought to go to her daughter, talk to her, try to get her to straighten out her life. But as she walked toward her, Laura caught her reflection in a store window and flinched. She looked like shit, an old lady with greasy uncombed hair and a stained sweatshirt. Who was she to tell her daughter to straighten out her life? So she’d turned around and walked the other way, her heart hurting at the choice she’d made.
“I’m hungry. I want Dinosaur Eggs.”
Laura slowly sat up, hoping her stomach would come with her. Her head pounded, and her vision blurred for an instant, but she stood up well enough. Mary tugged at her finger, pulling her toward the kitchen, toward her sons if this little fantasy was accurate. Toward Brian. No way.
“Mommy’s got to use the bathroom. You go ahead. I’ll be right there.”
“Are you sick? You need aspin?”
“I just might take a couple aspirin.”
Mary smiled as if reassured and ran off down the hall toward the kitchen.
“Holy shit,” Laura whispered shakily. What the hell was happening? She looked around the room. It was exactly as she remembered. Messy and disorganized, with clothes strewn across a chair and papers piled high on her dresser. A dream was never this accurate. A dream didn’t feel this real. She shuffled into the bathroom, her hands on either side of her head because it sure as heck felt as though it was about to roll off her shoulders. Hangovers were the devil. Were there hangovers in heaven?
She went to the sink and turned the water on, ice cold winter water, and splashed her face, already feeling slightly better. When she lifted her head, she saw her reflection and slowly smiled, amazed.
“Hello, Laura. Long time no see.” There she was, the pretty young woman she’d been. Even with the circles beneath her eyes, the mascara smudges and the unkempt hair, she was a good-looking kid. Cinnamon brown hair, brown eyes, nice mouth. She peered into the mirror, touching her face, smiling, frowning, testing what it could do. Gone were the wrinkles, the bags, the look of a woman who had seen too much. Her hands were clean and soft, her nails neat and manicured, her neck smooth. “It’s my face, all right,” she said, then stuck out her tongue.
Then she lifted up her PJ top and really grinned. “Hot mama.” Even after three kids, her breasts were still fairly perky, her stomach flat. She looked behind her at her ass, patting her bum, watching it bounce firmly up and down. The last time her butt had bounced attractively had been . . . about twenty years ago.
After popping two aspirin, washing her face, and brushing her hair she figured she still wasn’t ready to face whatever it was she was experiencing. Maybe it was some drug-induced fantasy inspired by that old lady with all her talk about going back. Laura closed her eyes. Of course that was it. She was either dead or unconscious, and if this was all in her head, she might as well enjoy it.
Warily, she stepped back into the bedroom. Even if none of it was real, facing Brian again was enough to scare her to death. If she wasn’t already there, that was.
She walked into the kitchen, her bare feet feeling the ice-cold tile she’d picked out. Crazy how real everything was. Laura stopped and nearly fainted at the sight of her little family sitting down to breakfast, Justin scooping up Cocoa Puffs and Zack chewing on a cinnamon raisin bagel. And Mary waiting for her to make Dinosaur Egg oatmeal, holding the packet in front of her, proud that she’d gotten it out of the box all by herself.
“Dinosaur Eggs.”
“Okay.” Laura grabbed the packet, blinking tears from her eyes, wondering whether to curse this fantasy or thank God for giving her this wonderful glimpse of how things used to be.
Laura was pouring the hot water onto the oatmeal when she heard his deep voice, filled with impatience. “You want coffee?”
Her entire body felt a jolt go through it. Brian. My God, Brian.
Slowly she turned around, willing her body not to collapse, willing herself to act as if she’d just seen him a few minutes ago in bed. She was afraid that if she did something unexpected, all this would end in a flash with a nurse jostling her awake, with the devil knocking on her soul.
“Sure. Coffee.”
“ ’Cause there’s not much left. You can make more.”
He looked . . . beautiful to her and so young. Hell, he was young enough to be her son, and it took a minute before she remembered in this drug-induced fantasy that she was young, too. She had to stop herself from throwing herself into his arms. So real. So damned real, even though she knew none of this was real, not her kids, not the smell of coffee, and certainly not her husband standing in front of her looking harassed and pissed off.
With a shaking hand, she poured the coffee into her mug, the one she’d broken years ago, the one Brian had given her for Valentine’s when they were still dating. It was red with little boy and girl paper-doll cutouts in white holding hands, except two of the dolls were kissing. She looked at the mug, felt it cool in her hand. Cool and hard and smooth except for a small chip on the handle. Taking a deep breath, Laura put the mug against her lips and took a sip, and immediately put it back on the counter, spinning around in horror.
“Oh, God. Oh, God.” She was hardly aware of the kids staring at her, spoons stopped in mid bite, of Brian’s startled look. The coffee, spreading over her tongue, hot and good. And real. “No. It can’t be,” she said, breathing in gasps. Finally she took in her children’s frightened faces and ran out the sliding glass door to the deck, mindless of the winter cold and her bare feet.
Behind her the door opened and slammed.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Do you have to throw up? Is that it?”
“Brian, please don’t. You don’t understand. I don’t understand what is happening to me.”
She stood there, arms wrapped around herself, staring blindly at the terrifyingly familiar yard with its cheap swing set and toys half-buried by a thin layer of old, crusty snow. She heard him swear beneath his breath, disgust and anger in every syllable. “You don’t know what’s happening? Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”
Laura let out a laugh and turned to face him. He stood there, every pore filled with anger directed at her, and she didn’t blame him. “I ruined your life, the kids’. And they’re sitting in there eating cereal
for God’s sake. As if nothing happened, as if nothing bad in their lives ever happened. And you.” She held up her hand in a futile gesture, drinking him in. She’d forgotten how handsome he was, how nice he’d kept his body, his beautiful, young body.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said, but some of the anger had been replaced with concern.
Laura was looking at a man, a warm, breathing man, who had been dead for nearly twenty years. Who wanted to know what her problem was. “What’s today’s date?”
“What?” he asked, confused by her non sequitur.
“The date. Today’s date.” She knew she must sound insane. Heck, she felt pretty insane about now.
“December fifteenth.”
“Two thousand four?”
“No,” he said full of sarcasm. “Two thousand two.”
Laura closed her eyes briefly as the significance of the date settled in. On December twenty-fourth two thousand four, at about five o’clock Christmas Eve, Brian had handed her divorce papers. She’d taken them with relish, the papers in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other. Good riddance to bad rubbish. You think I need you? All you do is criticize. All you do is nag at me day and night. Screw you. You think you can do better than me?
She’d gotten angry. He’d cried, probably wondering where the girl he’d married had gone.
She’d gone to hell, that’s where.
“I’ve got to get to work. You okay?”
Laura looked at him, twenty years of living under her belt, and saw something she hadn’t seen all those years ago. This man standing in the cold with her, looking at her with a potent mix of anger and frustration, didn’t love her. She hadn’t seen it then, had been blindsided by those divorce papers. She’d reacted angrily at first, then fell hard and long. It hurt, even with twenty years of distance between her real life and this moment she was living.
“You don’t love me.”
“Sure I do,” he said quickly.
Laura shook her head and smiled. “You don’t, Brian. It’s okay, I really didn’t deserve your love. I fucked everything up so badly it’s a wonder you lasted this long.”
“What are you talking about?”
She knew that somewhere in the house or maybe in his office those damning divorce papers were hidden somewhere. They’d been dated in November, and Brian had held on to them, waiting for some miracle to happen to make his wife change. She was tempted to let him know she knew about his secret, but stopped herself, some small goodness left in her heart.
She shook her head. “I’m cold. Let’s go inside.”
The kids looked up when they walked back in, Zack pausing the longest to see if he could tell if the fight they were having was over. Laura gave him a smile, and the poor kid visibly relaxed. Hadn’t she seen all those years ago what she was doing to him? She really couldn’t remember. But now she was more an observer than a participant, seeing things she hadn’t seen before: Brian’s anger, Zack’s fear. Brian’s ambivalence.
Brian kissed the kids goodbye, pausing to give her a hard look before heading to the door. “You have to pick Zack up from school today.”
“What time?”
“Four-thirty. Last time you were late,” Zack said.
“I’ll be there today,” she said as cheerfully as she could, trying to ignore the hard glare from her husband.
“You goddamn better be,” Brian said for her ears only as he opened the door and left.
She felt a tug on her PJs and looked down into Mary’s serious face. “I have to go potty.”
“Okay. Go ahead.”
“You have to help.”
Laura laughed aloud. She hadn’t helped anyone go potty in decades. She hadn’t sung nursery rhymes or picked up kids at school or cared in years about anything but herself and where her next meal and bottle were coming from. As she pulled down her little girl’s pink Hello Kitty pajamas and helped her onto the potty she felt her eyes burn and her throat close. “Pat, pat, pat, you like that,” Mary said, repeating the long-forgotten little rhyme she’d made up to teach her daughter how to wipe. Hearing it brought it all back, through the dark, rusty memories that she thought she’d long ago managed to finally, finally forget. Was that what all this was about, to force her to remember just how rotten she was? To make her see how beautiful her kids were before she’d ruined their lives? If so, this was a cruel, cruel way of doing it.
She accepted the blame. Guilty as charged, God. Wasn’t that enough? God didn’t have to pull this Ebenezer Scrooge Christmas Carol crap to get her to realize she was solely responsible for ruining the lives of her three children. And for killing her husband. Let’s not forget about that little fact.
Mary hopped off the toilet and pulled up her pants before running off to find her brothers. “Bye, Mommy.”
The last thing Mary had said to her had been, “Fuck you, Mom.” Then she’d viciously given her the bird. And Laura had yelled it right back at her. Mother of the year.
Laura didn’t have to go to a shrink to find out when things had gone south; she knew. It was losing their fourth child, her stillborn baby, perfect but dead. No one blamed her for going a little crazy, for sinking into a dark hole. Therapy and Prozac did the trick—for a while. But she never got over it, and by the time she could have, she’d already messed things up so badly it was too late. Now the pain of losing that baby was so distant it didn’t hurt anymore; it had become simply one more horrible thing in a series of horrible things that had happened since the day Brian handed over those divorce papers.
She’d spiraled out of control, he’d gotten custody of the kids, she’d failed to show up to pick Zack up from some school event, he’d driven like a maniac to get to his son, angry at her and afraid for Zack. And he’d died in a car crash, the man she still loved then with all her heart. Somehow Laura had convinced a judge she was a fit mother. She wasn’t, of course, and the kids had gone from foster home to her and back and forth, so completely screwing them up that they hadn’t a chance of living a normal life.
There it was, her miserable life in a nutshell. How different her life would have been if they’d somehow gotten through it, if she’d pulled it together. She could still picture the scene in her head, Brian wearing that ridiculous Santa suit, his hand outstretched, gripping the envelope from his lawyer so hard it folded in half. “I can’t take any more,” he’d said.
What would have happened if she’d fallen to her knees and begged his forgiveness? What if she could go back to that moment and make it disappear forever . . .
Laura let out a gasp. What if she could go back? She was back.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, looking in the bathroom mirror at her stunned expression. Suddenly everything was clear, as if she’d experienced an epiphany of sorts. She knew why she was here and what she had to do. Laura looked at her reflection, determined, young, and amazingly sincere.
“Okay, Brian Randall, you may not love me now, but I’ve got ten days to change your mind.”
CHAPTER THREE
Brian sat in his Honda Accord in the driveway for a full minute before forcing himself into the house. He hated his life. No, he quickly amended, he hated his wife. And like always, when he allowed himself to actually think that way, he felt guilty. How many times had people said to give Laura time, that she’d been through an ordeal, that he should be more understanding. Well, he was done being understanding. He’d been through an ordeal, too. Sure, it wasn’t the same for a man, he knew that. But he’d lost a child, too, and he hadn’t gone off the deep end.
He let out a puff of frustration. Two years and she should be getting over it, shouldn’t she? It wasn’t just the drinking, though that was a big part of the problem. She’d become a bitch, a nasty, miserable bitch who only became more nasty after a couple of drinks. She lost it with the kids too easily; she screamed at him constantly. His life sucked, pure and simple.
He couldn’t believe the girl he married had become the woman who was now his wife. The
resemblance wasn’t even close. God, he’d loved her, loved their life. It had been so damned good he couldn’t wait to get home. She’d be there, looking showered and pretty, playing with the kids or making him dinner, glad to see him. It wasn’t perfect, no life was. But he’d been happy. They’d been happy.
Now the only reason he hurried home was to act as a buffer between her and the kids. She couldn’t take the whining, the fighting, the endless cleaning, and why couldn’t he help more? He’d look around the house, see dirty clothes and dirty breakfast dishes and a wife who clearly hadn’t showered, and wonder what the hell she was talking about.
“Shit,” he said, finally opening the car door and heaving himself out. That’s when he realized that someone had shoveled the driveway. He looked down at nearly bare asphalt, at the small piles on the side of the drive, and figured one of the neighborhood kids had come around. Then he saw the snowman, complete with hat and scarf and realized Jennifer, their baby-sitter, must have been watching the kids all afternoon. Sometimes Laura would call Jennifer “to get the hell away from the kids.”
The Christmas tree was lit in the front window, and despite his foul mood, his spirits lifted a bit. Then he saw Mary and Justin waving wildly from the window, and a grin split his face. Despite everything, it was good to be home.
“Hey,” he called out as his two youngest barreled into him.
“Mommy cooked ’sagna,” Mary said. “Yummy.”
“Yucky,” Justin said.
“Lasagna. Really,” he said, looking up as Laura entered the kitchen, a big smile on her face, and for a moment Brian forgot their lives had turned to shit.
“Hi. I figured I’d try to make it, though it’s been a while. I think I got the sauce right.”
“Smells good.”
“You should see the tree Zack made at school. It’s made from TV Guides. Did you ever do that when you were a kid?”
“Not that I remember,” he said, staring at her, trying to gauge whether she was as sober as she sounded.
“You know, you fold the pages down, then you glue a couple together and spray paint it all. You never did that?”
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