I heard the delivery truck before I saw it and turned around in my seat to watch Veronica maneuver her orange and blue vehicle into the space next to mine. She waved through her driver’s side window before getting out, locking the doors, and sliding into the Chrysler’s passenger seat. She pulled off her cap, letting that blue streak loose, and smiled, leaned in for a kiss. I obliged. Naturally. Like we were married, meeting at lunch for a bit of romance.
“So…what did Eddie tell you?” she asked, her face radiating excitement. I hoped her excitement was more about seeing me than the information she had expected me to extract from Eddie.
“He loved my wife,” I said, my face half-numb.
She frowned. “You don’t think…?”
I shook my head, no. “She kept tabs on him. Over the years, she found him, pulled him off the streets, and somehow convinced Terry, his big-shot lawyer brother, to send him through rehab. She cared, genuinely cared.”
“The pictures I saw…your wife looked like a sweet, caring woman.”
“Yeah. I forgot about those things, like how she cared about everything and took care of people.” Deep breath.
“If she had that kind of heart, then why would she cheat on you?” Veronica wondered. “It contradicts her nature.”
“You don’t lie to someone about that kind of thing,” I said. “Who lies on their deathbed, especially about something like cheating?”
Veronica said nothing.
“The last time Eddie saw her, I think she’d gone to tell him that she was sick, that she wasn’t going to be around for another year to help him anymore.” My face began to burn, starting at my forehead and working its way down my jaw to my neck. “She never told him, though. He felt guilty about that, for not being selfless enough to listen, to just listen to her for once and be a crutch for her.”
“I know we’ve talked about this, Elliot, but…” she shrugged. Something didn’t add up, and I knew it too. “She’d go out of her way for an old high school friend who was having a tough time. That tells us a lot about your wife. She had a heart, a huge one. And it wasn’t about giving him the fix he wanted, or about setting him up with a nice room for a few nights. It was about getting him the help he needed. She showed kindness with the fix, she showed sympathy by paying for the nice room, and she showed love by convincing Terry to foot the bill for the rehab.”
I nodded. It was all so true. I couldn’t believe it. “That’s why it ruined me when she confessed what she did. The truth about Lena. This past year, I’ve been making a monster out of her.”
“Coping mechanism,” Veronica said, almost dismissively as she began twirling a strand of hair with her fingers. “I did the same thing with Erik, but in my case all I had to do was open my eyes, not shut them. What about Andrew Parsons?”
I shook my head. “Bad news, wasn’t him. Eddie explained him as a ‘worse deadbeat’ than he was. I believe it.”
When she sighed, and I knew what she would ask next. “I know you probably asked about Nathan. What did Eddie say about him?”
I shook my head. “I was so sure he was the guy.”
“But…?”
“Engaged.”
Veronica shifted closer to me, her eyes narrowing. “I thought he was away? I was told he was out of the country for half of a year. Do you think it’s all bullshit?”
“No. There was that too, his being overseas with his bride.”
“Hell of a honeymoon. I thought a long weekend in Niagara Falls was more than I could handle.”
I glanced over at her, curious about some of the things she had been saying.
“Were you a user too, Veronica? With Erik?”
She hadn’t expected that question any more than I had planned on asking it. She shifted in her seat, crossed her legs and turned her attention out the windshield, staring out at the Detroit River.
I placed my hand on her orange and blue cargo pants. “It’s okay,” I assured her. “We don’t have to talk about the bad past. But based on what you might know about your ex, would Lena have any kind of, um, signs that one of her parents was a drug user?”
“I saw your daughter yesterday,” Veronica reminded me. “She’s not the product of a drug-using sperm donor.”
“But Ava doesn’t appear to be either.” Her argument didn’t convince me.
She shrugged. “I wasn’t using back then, and the idiot that knocked me up wasn’t always as bad as he got once Ava was born. That’s when the trouble really started, for both of us.” She gave a hollow smile, and I could tell she didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t blame her.
I squeezed again. “That’s not you.”
“No, it’s not me. And it wasn’t me either. That’s all in the past.”
We watched the river, a cargo ship floating by. “Lena wants you and Ava to come for dinner on Friday. I was supposed to ask a couple weekends ago, but it must’ve slipped my mind or something.”
Veronica let out an unconvincing chuckle. “Sure, we can do that. What should I burn to bring over?”
“Veronica,” I said, my tone about as colorful and vibrant as cold concrete. “I care about you. All of you. Even your ugly parts, including your past.”
“That’s because you don’t know it,” she said, staring down at her knees. “You don’t know ugly.”
“I can say the same thing, you don’t know me.”
“But I know what I see,” she answered, turning her body back so she was semi-facing me again so now I could see too, I could see the panic, uncertainty and conviction in her eyes. “I know what I feel. I know that we clicked, right from that first day when I delivered that sex wedge. What else do I need to know about you, Elliot? You’re a sweet, honest, and good man, trying to find his daughter’s biological father. It makes sense why you and your wife were so well-suited for each other. You don’t know ugly, and I won’t show it to you, I’m sorry.”
I took a couple of deep breaths. “I like all of that about you, too. You’re a mother, a single mother, the biggest and best proof that survival really does happen, no matter how traumatic an experience. You’re a role model for all women trapped in bad relationships. You’re doing this,” I waved at the car for some stupid reason, “for no other reason than you saw just how lost I am. You invited me into your home, your bed, and you make me feel like I’m worthy again, after all that you know about how pathetic I am, how I couldn’t even keep the woman I loved for more than one and a half decades happy enough to stay faithful to me.” I felt my chest pounding underneath my shirt, my throat burning from all that emotional talk. To Veronica, it probably sounded like my voice was cracking. “I don’t know what you see, but that doesn’t matter. You make me feel again, and that’s big.”
Her eyes studied mine, as if she might be weighing the truth in my words.
“I want all of you, Veronica. Your future, your present, and even your past. I don’t care how flawed you think it is, because when we’re together, nothing feels less than perfect, not even me.”
She gave a little, uncertain chuckle. “That’s sweet. But my past…” she shook her head, forcing a half-grin. “My past is flawed alright.”
We engaged in something of a staring contest, and I noticed the man who had been smoking the cigar that looked like a sausage. He peeked into the Chrysler’s cabin as he walked by. People probably came to this park for a lot more than sucking on a cigar. I ignored him, kept my focus on Veronica instead.
And then something seemed to shift. Her eyes changed gears, and she wondered out loud, “What did your daughter say about me yesterday?”
The left side of my face tightened into a grin. “She wanted to know if I was fucking the delivery girl.”
Veronica smacked me. “What did you tell her?”
I shrugged. “I said it’s none of her business. Because you’re mine and I want to keep that all to myself.”
Chapter 15
You never know how these things will go. I kept telling myself that on Friday
morning while I tidied the house. Lena had stopped at a candle store on Somerset on her way to work last night and picked up a handful of candles because she complained that our house smelled like death. Death and paint, she had clarified earlier. Now that she had moved her bedroom back up to the second level, she needed something to complain about. I didn’t disagree with her—the house smelled like neither, not even the paint because it was a special kind of latex paint, cost a few extra dollars, but it was approved by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology as safe for use by pregnant mothers.
Midway through cleaning the main floor bathroom, I heard the front door smash open in typical Lena fashion. Shit. I kept the latex gloves on and walked down the hall to meet her, hoping to steer her to another bathroom so she could puke there.
“Help with the bags,” she said, carrying three grocery bags in both hands. “I’m pregnant,” she hissed.
I tore the gloves off and helped her haul the groceries into the kitchen, wondering the entire time how food that weighed as much as a refrigerator would fit inside the refrigerator.
“Why aren’t you at school?” I asked. I frowned, reached into one of the bags, and pulled out a phallic-looking thing. “What’s this?”
“It’s a butternut squash, Papa Bear,” she hissed. Like I was the idiot, never mind the fact that I had completed all of my high school and even college. All without getting pregnant. She nodded at the bag. “And there’s sweet potatoes in there too. For the soup. Now help me get this stuff into the fridge.”
I caught myself transferring the food from the bags and into the refrigerator before I realized she had bullied me into doing this, into turning a blind eye at her truancy. So I mentioned, “This school year is important, Lena. You’ll miss the last month or two, it’s important you nail this and—”
“It’s a PA day,” she huffed, flicking the calendar on the bulletin board next to the fridge. “See?”
Yet one more item to add to my list of proud parent moments.
“You weren’t expecting me to prepare a full dinner after coming home from school and puking my guts out, did you?”
I kept my head down, reaching into the bags and hauling out items one at a time. And then I felt her hand on my back. It was strong, reassuring.
“Papa Bear has a true, real crush on the delivery girl, and it’s the least I can do to contribute to his fresh, new sex life,” she said with a teasing tone, which soon morphed into something soft and filled with love. “After all, my Papa Bear deserves to see some happiness after everything he did for my mother before she died, and everything else he has always done for me.”
I stood straight. I needed to, just to get some air back into my lungs. “Wow. Damn, Lena. What was that for?”
She wrapped her arms around me and held me as tight as her arms allowed after carrying those heavy grocery bags all that way. “You’re all I’ve got now,” she whispered into my ear, inspiring a line of goose bumps to run up my arm. “And sorry for not asking for the car when I left.”
I smiled without letting her see it. This kindness made a little more sense now. I pushed her back, held her at arm’s length. Deep down, I wanted to tell her about Karen’s final confession, the big twist to what we had come to know as the story of Elena Fitch and the marriage of her parents.
“You’re not pissed, are you?” she asked, batting her Barbie-doll eyes.
“Lena, I don’t say this enough, but I love you more than you’ll ever know. There’s no reason behind the way I love you. But there’s also no substitute and no end to it.”
Her face softened, and she tilted her head to the side for such a brief moment that it seemed that I imagined the whole softness. “Are you trying to make me sappy, Papa Bear? Because I’ll spit in your soup if you keep this up.”
I stifled a laugh. “I’m here forever, Lena. No matter what, okay?” I continued with the groceries. “Shit, are we going to have enough space for all of this?”
I could tell from the sound of her voice that she wore a frown on her face. “Last thing you want this girl to see—”
“Veronica,” I said.
“Right, the last thing you want Veronica to see is how sad your food inventory has become. Also, I’m killing my courses. Nobody likes the girl who’s preggers. I’ve been shunned by everyone, so all I do is study.”
“Even Joff—”
“Yes, even Jeffrey with an ‘O’ for orangutan.”
We laughed at that and, once we finished in the kitchen, Lena asked me to go shopping.
My eyebrows narrowed with confusion. “You just came back from shopping.”
“For clothes, Papa Bear. For you.” She searched her pockets, and I wondered if she was going to hand me a gift card. But it was a business card for someone at Lacoste at Somerset. I raised my eyebrows at her, and she shrugged. “I figured you were a touch too young for Eddie Bauer.”
“I can’t afford—”
Her smile’s sharp edges silenced me. “Do you like this Victoria girl?”
“Veronica.”
“Sure, do you like her?” When I didn’t say anything, Lena insisted, “Then go see Albert.”
I started to leave, when Lena added, “Thank me when you get back.”
I sat in a change room at Lacoste, next to a small tower of pants and long-sleeved shirts that Albert had provided after taking my measurements. Shopping did not appeal to me. After stripping out of my worn Levi’s, I sat back down and checked my phone. Somewhere during the span of the past two minutes, Veronica had sent an image through the messaging app.
I opened the message and knew right away that something was wrong.
Is this the car you saw?
I clicked on the thumbnail so the image would explode onto my screen. The photo was poor quality and showed a partial, side profile of the Chrysler that had been following me periodically over the past few weeks.
Another message vibrated onto the phone.
This was last night
“How are those pants fitting, Mr. Fitch?” I heard Albert ask outside the change room.
“Perfectly,” I lied because I wasn’t wearing pants. I stood up and pulled one of the pairs he picked for me over my legs. “Giving the second pair a shot right now.”
I modeled for myself in the mirror, then stepped out so he could see me. This pair fit even better than my worn Levi’s did. Albert hurried over. I couldn’t tell if he was flirting with me as he ran his finger along my waistline, stepped back, and rolled his eyes up one side of my body and down the other.
“Mmmhmmm,” he said, then licked his lips. “You make those pants look good, Mr. Fitch. Really good.”
Convinced he was flirting, I said I’d take these and a second pair in a different color. That kept him busy enough that I could slip away and change back into my own clothes.
And check the phone.
Call me
After I paid for the clothes and left Somerset, toting the attractive Lacoste bag, I dialed Veronica. It didn’t get to ring more than once before she picked up. I could tell she was driving, still working.
“Getting ready for our big date tonight?” she asked, bypassing the usual conversation starters.
“Did that car mean anything to you?” I asked.
A bit of a pause. “I don’t know anyone who has a car like that, Elliot. Why are you asking?”
I sighed, switching gears. “Yeah, I just bought some new clothes for tonight.”
“You did?”
I caught myself smiling into the phone. “Lena suggested it.”
A little more of a pause. “Do you think I can get your wedding video?”
That one surprised me. “Why?”
“We’re missing something. I don’t know what, but if you can leave me the video, I know I’ll see it with a fresh pair of eyes.” She paused on the other end. “Unless you don’t want to part with it…”
“Of course you can have it,” I said right away. I didn’t need the video; watching it so
much recently had probably done more harm than good.
She sighed. “I don’t know how I’ll do it, how I’ll get myself to watch the whole thing.” Another sigh. “Because I think I have a bit of a crush on Mr. Elliot Fitch, who blames his sex-toy purchases on a daughter who is probably cooking a gourmet meal that he’ll take all the credit for.”
We chuckled, but my cheeks felt hot from her admission of a crush. “I, um, did pack the groceries into the refrigerator. That must count for something.” I shifted gears again. “Was that car still parked outside your building this morning?”
I could almost hear her shaking her head on the other end, her blue streak tucked into her work cap as if to keep it hidden from the general public. Like that side of her was reserved for me. “No, it wasn’t. I wondered if they were waiting to see if you’d show up, so when the car was gone, it surprised me.”
“I think she’s watching me.”
“Did you say ‘she’?”
I explained the face I had seen through the tinted glass in downtown Birmingham.
“You didn’t recognize him, or her,” she said, but it wasn’t asked as a question because that would come across as ridiculous.
“That might make things a little too simple,” I half-joked. “But I didn’t know her. So I’m trying to figure out who she is.”
The sounds that would accompany someone talking on the phone while driving had ended. I didn’t know when, but I noticed it now. Veronica had stopped somewhere so she could chat with me.
“And I could use a bit of simple right about now,” I added, waiting to hear more noise from her end of the conversation.
Surviving Goodbye Page 18