As Is

by Rachel Michael Arends

  Smith nods patiently until my dad reaches for the remote and turns on the television.

  I walk up the hall toward the kitchen and Smith follows. “How about I buy you a drink?” he whispers.

  “I don’t think I want to go out tonight,” I say. I’m more scared than ever to be seen in public. On the other hand, I fear going back to my hotel room to find the walls have been painted lavender.

  “I know a really quiet place,” Smith says.

  I try not to notice how difficult it is for Smith to climb into the driver’s seat of his Ford. He puts his cane carefully beside me, with the curved handle looped over the console. I rest my knee against the straight part. It’s a beautiful and sturdy cane, made of oak in a warm hue, with a leather grip on the handle. It’s as impeccable as Smith’s car, his jacket, his gloves; he obviously takes great care of everything. I look down at my worn out cowboy boots that have salt stains on the toes and hope he doesn’t see me as a complete mess, like Armand does.

  “Lucky you, you get my good side,” he says.

  When he faces the windshield, I can only see his right profile, and he’s the Smith Walker I have always known. A bit older of course, but the years look good on him.

  “Promise we’re going somewhere quiet?”

  “Trust me,” he says.

  He turns so that I see both the familiar side of him and where he’s been changed. I do trust him, and that’s no small wonder tonight.

  “Oops, I forgot I was giving you my good side.” Smith turns to face the windshield and starts the car.

  I’m so stung by all the things Armand said, they come back to me in little waves of hurt. I sniffle and Smith reaches over and pats my arm.

  “Don’t let him get you down, Gwen. He was being a jerk.”

  “Maybe he was finally telling the truth,” I say, my voice cracking a little. “Armand always told me he loved my paintings, but maybe he lied so I wouldn’t know how bad I was, because being a good artist means so much to me. He probably thought it was kinder to let me see myself as a talented painter instead of being as hopeless at that as I am at everything else.”

  Smith turns to look at me again with his warm green eyes that are unchanged from the first time I saw him, when we were both kids. I wouldn’t recognize myself from back then, but I would know him anywhere.

  “Do you want to know what I see when I look at you?” he asks.

  I bite my lip. I’m not sure if I can take any more honest feedback tonight—my heart might break right in two. Smith touches my cheek.

  “When I look at you Gwen, I see a girl who was never afraid to stick up for someone that needed help. I see a woman who makes everyone around her feel at ease. I see a brilliant painter. I don’t see a fallen celebrity because you were always a real person to me, Gwen. Not an idea, not an image. When I look at you, I see the real you.”

  I put my hand over his on my cheek. If I could find my voice without blubbering, I would thank Smith. I would tell him that the reverse is also true. I would tell him that he hasn’t changed a bit.

  Chapter Twelve

  Caroline

  Suzie blows a swath of hair out of her eyes that had escaped her ponytail. There are also several strands clinging to the back of her sweaty neck, and some plastered to the side of her face. My sister is a redhead, and her skin matches her hair when she works hard.

  She adjusts her jeans over her stomach unselfconsciously. While I might go up and down ten pounds over the course of a year, Suzie stays plump. I used to feel somewhat superior that I could at least enjoy thin times, but lately I wonder if steadiness isn’t a smarter course.

  I pause to wipe my forehead. I’m cleaning a paint roller in the sink while Suzie scrubs mildew from the tub in an upstairs bathroom of my new house.

  “How will I ever repay you?” I ask.

  “Honestly, I don’t think it’s possible. This is so gross.”

  I chortle a little in exhaustion. “I’m so glad I didn’t let the kids see this place when I first got the keys. They’d be plagued by nightmares.”

  “Thanks a lot! Now I’ll probably see this tub in my dreams,” she says.

  I’m so glad Suzie is here. I had insisted I could tackle this house alone, but she said like hell I could. She started working alongside me, and now I realize how much I needed her.

  “The primer is dry, so I’ll start rolling the color on. Sunny Day should make us forget how nasty this room was,” I say.

  I shudder a little, despite my words. I still get the heebie-jeebies when I think of how horribly neglected this house had been. I’m proud, too, because I feel like we’re healing it, one layer of filth cleared away, one repair at a time.

  I look at my watch and calculate. “I should be able to get two coats on before I have to go meet the bus. How’s that looking?”

  “Vile. But underneath the cooties it looks good. I don’t think there’s any permanent damage.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  Suzie looks as spent as I feel. Over the past two weeks she has helped me shovel out this house on the far end of our neighborhood. The family who owned it had left their creditors in a hurry, and it was in absolutely obscene condition, beginning with the fish tank full of decaying creatures and stench, progressing to piles of garbage that seemed more suited to a third world city than a Midwestern suburb—and I haven’t even seen what’s under the lumps of snow in the back yard. This house was as “as is” as possible. The dumpster I hired has already been emptied three times.

  Every weekday since I’ve had access, when I haven’t been working at the library I’ve been working here. I traded all my shifts this week so that I could be here nonstop, from the moment I put the kids on the bus until forty minutes before they get dropped off. That leaves me just enough time to race home, shower, dress, and get outside to meet the bus.

  June, Joy and James haven’t seen this house yet because I want to wait until it’s clean, and pretty, and homey. I can’t bear to imagine June’s face if she’d seen it when I first walked in. I had a good cry then, and I’ve had at least one daily since. But with the place emptied, the floors sanded and refinished, and most surfaces scrubbed and painted fresh, the tears don’t come as frequently now.

  Most nights I fall asleep ten minutes after putting the kids to bed: deep, dreamless sleeps that make me wake in shocked outrage when the alarm goes off in the morning. I believe it must be wrong, that surely I just shut my eyes a minute ago, and there’s no possible way morning could have already arrived. James gave me a name for it, coined a year ago when he had a night that went by too fast. He called it a “blink night.”

  “Did you get a hold of Blake?” Suzie asks, bent over a corner of the tub.

  My face stings red. “The realtor I mentioned talked to him. He signed the papers.”

  “He’s lucky you were able to find a buyer. Some husband and father! Leaving you without any consideration as to how you were going to make payments!”

  “Actually Suzie,” I say, dreading every word because I should have said them months ago. “He didn’t know we were in trouble with the house. He’s sent money for the kids’ activities and expenses, but I wanted to make the mortgage payments myself.”

  Suzie sits up and turns to look at me. “What?”

  “You remember when he first left, I started working full time but I felt like I was losing touch with the kids. For a few weeks running they saw you more than they saw me.”

  She wipes her forehead on the back of her hand without taking her eyes from mine. “And?”

  “And I never told Blake when I cut back my hours. I was too proud to tell him I couldn’t pay for the house—I wanted to prove I could make it on my own.”

  “But you couldn’t.” She shakes her head and turns back to her task. For a while we work in silence.

  “What did he say when he found out?”

  “I don’t know. The realtor spoke with him.”


  “Oh.”

  Within that single word I hear a thousand unspoken questions and judgments.

  “I never claimed to know how to do any of this, Suzie. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes at every turn; I know I have. But I’m doing the best I know how to do!”

  She heaves a big sigh and I wonder if she’s thinking back to our mom, who just couldn’t seem to make a good decision to save her life. I realize now that it wasn’t like she was staring down a lot of decent options and set out to always pick the worst one. Maybe she did the best she could, too. At least I know I’m doing some things right: my kids are safe and healthy. They know they’re loved.

  “I see that you’re doing your best, Caroline. And you know what? Despite being too proud, you’re doing pretty great.”

  “You’re so full of crap! I’m not only a stinking mess, I’m dragging you down with me.” I look up from the sink to Suzie’s disgusting progress and laugh. And she laughs with me.

  Though I’m achy from work, over-caffeinated, and bleary from too many blink nights in a row, I’ve asked Gwendolyn Golden to come over this evening.

  It seems bizarre to think that I used to idolize her. Now I truly feel sorry for her. Gwendolyn’s supposed friend blasted her on television, and she has gone from living in a mansion to living in a hotel room. When I asked what day she’d scheduled her moving van to come so I could make sure my stuff was out in time, she fell apart.

  Gwendolyn confided that she doesn’t own anything. I asked where she planned to sit, and sleep, and she actually started to cry! She said she has to furnish the house from scratch on a small budget. It doesn’t help matters that since Armand’s interview she can’t walk into a store without drawing a crowd. She said she wouldn’t be able to decide on anything anyway.

  I offered to help her order some basics online.

  She’s due here any minute. I have the kids tucked into bed, and a plate of leftovers warming for Gwendolyn. She looks too thin, especially when I stand next to her and notice that her legs are not only a foot longer than mine, but substantially narrower. I try never to stand next to her.

  When Gwendolyn arrives, we get down to business right away. She eats while I go over the list of basics I think she’ll need. She doesn’t have anything to add to or delete from it. I begin to show her some things online, but in every case she defers to my opinion. So I basically choose what I like, working my way down the list.

  She asks if she can borrow some paper from a drawing tablet on the kids’ art shelf, and soon she’s happily doodling while I spend her money outfitting this house, which will soon be hers. I would be uncomfortable making all the selections if I didn’t already know what she likes: she likes Armand’s style, which is virtually identical to mine, except mine is cheaper.

  I’m disgusted that he didn’t help her when he came to visit. I remember she’d been so excited when she asked if she could show him through the house. She clearly expected Armand’s advice to guide her, but I don’t think he did anything at all.

  “I saw the interview your old partner did,” I tell her when I take a break from the computer to get a glass of water. I notice she ate her whole plate of leftovers.

  Gwendolyn frowns over her pencil.

  I step closer to see what she’s drawing. “That’s amazing!” I say, my heart warming at the beautiful sketch she is making from a photograph of my kids. Somehow the pencil captures more detail in their faces than the photo, and I don’t know how that’s possible, but it’s true.

  Gwendolyn shrugs her shoulders and sighs. I think back to Armand saying in his interview that she was a fluffy house wares painter and nothing more.

  “That is really beautiful,” I tell her.

  Gwendolyn looks up at me with an expression that brings to mind the time that Joy came home with a sad face on one of her papers. She was so hurt, so ashamed, so unsure of herself. A substitute teacher had apparently not known it was an advanced math sheet of problems the kids hadn’t learned yet. Joy had taken it from the extra work file because she had finished her assignment early. When she proudly showed it to the sub, he went through and corrected it in red marker and put the sad face on.

  Joy was crushed when she showed that paper to me. She cried like I have rarely heard her. It took so much convincing that evening for her to believe that she really is smart, with the evidence of a goddamn red sad face working against her. I don’t think she had ever doubted herself like that before.

  “My favorite things have your designs on them,” I tell Gwendolyn, pointing out a hand-painted side table I’d gotten as a birthday present a year ago, the tablecloth’s design, throw pillows on the window seat. “I love all these, but I had no idea you could do something like this, too. You’re really talented,” I tell her, admiring the drawing.

  She nods a little, looking back down at her page, and I see a teardrop hit the paper.

  “Armand is a complete idiot,” I say. “I felt bad when that interviewer turned the tables on him, but now I wish he’d done worse.”

  “Stuart turned the tables?” Gwen asks, looking worried.

  “You didn’t watch?”

  “I saw only part of it.”

  I can’t imagine walking away from a television interview about me! I’d not only be watching, but taking notes and keeping score.

  “He tried to corner Armand into admitting he was gay, once and for all, for the live viewing audience.”

  “I didn’t know that happened,” Gwendolyn says, shaking her head.

  I find it surreal that she is hearing what every tabloid consumer already knows about her friend’s life from me.

  “What did Armand say?” she asks.

  “That’s when he finally chose to keep his mouth shut, the self-serving ass.”

  “He’s not, though. He’s a good person,” she says.

  I can’t imagine being so forgiving. “They showed clips of interviews with men Armand had dated over the years. All of them were formerly in the closet, too, because apparently he only dated guys as scared to come out as he was.”

  “Yeah,” Gwendolyn says, nodding sadly.

  “I mean, why can’t he just come out and say, ‘I’m gay. So what?’”

  “I know he would if he could, but it’s complicated,” she says.

  Her eyes are huge and she looks so thin that I start fixing her another plate of leftovers without asking first.

  “Nothing is complicated. You do what you’re supposed to do, and if you screw up you deal with the consequences. It’s simple,” I say. As if I live by that credo myself.

  All told, it takes three hours to order the essentials Gwendolyn will need—for her that’s not a tremendous amount of stuff: a bed, pillows, linens, kitchen tools, a dinette set, a sofa, coffee table, lamps, and rugs. That stretches her budget to the absolute limit. I do a lot of comparison shopping, and find free shipping deals, and scan a thousand reviews in the process. The house will still be woefully empty, but she’ll at least have the most basic basics once everything arrives.

  She paid so little attention to the choices, other than saying she didn’t want anything lavender, that I could have set her up with anything. Gwendolyn has grown on me in our few visits, though. It feels good to help her, especially since I’ve received so much help from Suzie. I am exhausted by the time Gwendolyn gets up to leave. She hands me the lovely drawing it took her all this time to finish.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I say.

  I wish she believed me. I think it’s amazing that someone I thought had all the confidence in the world a few weeks ago turns out to be as full of misgivings as I am.

  “Wait a minute,” I tell her. I quickly gather up a little basket of goodies, including some fruit, snacks I pack in the kids’ lunches, and a Tupperware container full of more leftovers. I tuck in some tea. She’s already driving away when I realize that we didn’t order her a shower curtain, towels, or a bath mat!

  The phone rings and I look
at the handset on the counter to see that it’s Blake again. I have been avoiding his calls, and the argument I’m sure we’ll have, which I realize I deserve for getting in so deep without asking for help. I look at the clock and am irritated he’d call at eleven p.m., knowing the kids are asleep. That concern probably didn’t occur to an independent bachelor with all the space in the world around him, though. Prick.

  “Trying to wake the kids?”

  “Carrie? I can’t believe you actually answered!”

  “I’m a surprise a minute,” I say. As good as I felt a few moments ago, helping Gwendolyn and feeling like I had my shit together at least in comparison to her, I regress quickly talking to Blake.

  “I wish you had told me about the house. It was embarrassing to hear it from a stranger.”

  “I wish you had told me about Francine Robinson. It was embarrassing to hear it from Claire Wiltz in the grocery store.”

  He takes a deep breath and lets it out. I almost hang up. I don’t want to even hear him breathe.

  “I’ve told you a thousand times that Francine is a colleague of mine, not a love interest. You know that Claire Wiltz is the worst gossip in town, and she never cares if what she says is true.”

  “What kind of husband and father of three claims to need space if he’s not having an affair?” I demand.

  “Me.”

  “Luckily you’re thousands of miles away, then. Bastard.”

  “I’m coming home.”

  “You have no home here!” I hang up on him. The phone rings again ten seconds later.

  “I’m moving back to Riveredge. I’m done with this project and I’m going to work at headquarters.”

  I realize that I never imagined Blake in the new house. I felt like I would be leaving him behind, along with my pain and anger, when I move three streets lower into the subdivision.

  “You can’t live with us.”

  “I’ll get an apartment then,” he says. “I’m sorry I needed some time to think, Carrie. I realize I was selfish. I love you and the kids, and I want to try and make it up to you.”