“With you?”
He looks perplexed. “No. With you.” But before handing over the phone, he presses it to his ear. “See you, Sash.” He turns it over to me. I listen to Sasha but watch as Rob picks up his cell, texting someone. Earlier, he mentioned watching football at a sports bar with friends. Sasha and I are supposed to have lunch today. To my disappointment, she says she has to cancel and proceeds to apologize. “I’m sorry I’ve been so out of touch lately,” she says. “It’s just things . . . odd things have come up.”
Her words about odd things sound like they should have come from my mouth. Sasha goes on to explain that Jeremy insists she go with him to some musty bookstore reading; she feels obligated. I roll my eyes at the imagery, an outing where Sasha will pretend to be enamored by literary prose, spoken by some reclusive author she’s never heard of and can’t think of now. I know Sasha’s reading tastes. Like a drug dealer with a stash, she once hid a plastic-bag-bound copy of Fifty Shades of Grey in her toilet tank. She spent so much time in the bathroom Jeremy thought she should see a gastrologist. She actually made an appointment, telling me it was easier than confessing her bathroom book habit to Jeremy. “He’d be mortified . . .” But I say nothing about Jeremy, including their lack of common interests. Instead we confirm a Tuesday lunch date.
Sunday night, Rob announces that he’s taking an impromptu business trip to New York. He’s coordinated a few meetings with past investors, hoping to bring them onboard with his golf course project, which would ultimately take the Wellesley house off the table as collateral. On Monday morning, when he slips from the bed at five a.m., it’s raining. He’s booked on a crack-of-dawn flight. I roll to his side of the bed, which has turned cold, and think of David McAdams, who also visited New York on a beautiful September morning. In a half-awake state, I shuffle my body across wrinkled sheets. There’s a lesson and a sudden urge to talk to Rob. My call goes to voice mail; he’s probably already boarded. I don’t leave a message, but I do relax once the sun has pushed through gloomy Boston skies and planes have landed safely in New York.
A short time later, Sasha sends me a text. Her busy calendar has changed again. She can’t make lunch on Tuesday—an emergency deposition. It happens with regularity. Jeremy tends to get annoyed by abrupt changes like this, so I make a point of being purposefully understanding. It’s my hope that eventually Jeremy’s demanding behavior will dawn on Sasha—or maybe mine will just look good. I text back and suggest dinner on Wednesday. And hour passes before Sasha replies, saying our dinner date will be fine.
When I arrive at Braemore, I learn that Theo’s called out for the day. I don’t wonder but fixate on his absence. My reaction is out of whack. Someone fulfilling community service hours should only be concerned if the hours will still count. I walk aimlessly for hours after class wondering if Theo is sick or heartsick, and it occurs to me that this is something only his mother would do. When a police car passes by for the third time, the officer asks if I’m lost, can he point me in a direction? Well, yes. But hardly the kind involving a compass.
Finally I make my way into the Boston Public Garden and sit discreetly on a bench. My phone turns up in my hand, and the urge to call Theo is a gnawing itch. I resist the impulse that is both foolish and dangerous. I also eliminate calls to Sasha and Rob. My husband is, no doubt, in the midst of his New York business, and Sasha is just plain busy with her life.
Instead, I succumb to a different temptation. I call not one but three hotels that are nearest to Brandeis University. On the third try, I find Sam Nash registered at an Embassy Suites. I ask to be connected to his room. There is no answer. I recall Sam saying something about a coaching position. The excuse for his jarring visit and subsequent confession. Sitting on the bench, an anger that reaches all the way back to New Zealand consumes me. How dare he? How colossal is Sam’s nerve and his ego, after all these years, to sanctimoniously drop in on my life and apologize for mistakes that forever changed it. I don’t care if he was dying—he isn’t anymore. I head straight for our parking garage. Fury gets into the car with me, and I blindly follow the GPS to the Embassy Suites. “Your reward for not dying, Sam Nash, isn’t absolution. That’s for damn sure.”
Once I find my way to the lobby of the Embassy Suites, it occurs to me this is not a well-thought-out fit of rage. They never are. What are the odds of Sam traveling with a baseball bat and owning a Porsche? I bite down on a thumbnail. Not likely—he was a pitcher; he flew into Boston. Plopping onto a stain-resistant sofa, I people watch for a while. It could be that Sam won’t come back here until evening, if at all. I don’t have his phone number. I have no idea where he lives, if he returned to Bulls Gap, Tennessee, or remained on the West Coast after his baseball playing days—I was too flummoxed to ask. Strangers come and go. After all this time, I wonder if Sam is anything more than that. I do the thing that I’ve resisted since the invention of the internet—I Google him.
For the next half hour, I take a Cooperstown-like tour, skimming baseball history and noting stats. I have no idea if the stats are good or bad. Good, I suppose. There’s a lot of fuss about his pitching prowess. The sums of money that he was paid make my eyes bug. Attempting to attach this kind of money to Sam is like picturing him as the wallflower at a party. Impossible. When we were together, he never took me home to Tennessee. I know it was because he was too ashamed of where he came from—especially after his chilly trip north to the Wellesley house. But his reasons for keeping me away went deeper, centering on a childhood that made mine appear pedestrian.
Sam grew up without a mother, but he didn’t know if she was dead or had abandoned them. According to Sam, his father spun various tales depending on his state of sobriety. Sitting in the hotel lobby, I recall one in particular: “Sometimes my old man tried to scare us, saying there was a body buried out back. Saying it was our mother—sadistic son of a bitch that he was. It kept Tate and me away from the shed, the piece of yard behind it. When I was thirteen or so I got up the nerve and went out to see for myself.” At first I thought Sam was telling a humorous story, one that had a punch-line ending. It did. It just came by way of his father’s fists. Hudson Nash caught Sam where he wasn’t supposed to be, staring into a finely farmed patch of marijuana.
Every so often, mostly when Sam was drunk, his guard would slip and he’d share more of his tumultuous past—growing up in a trailer not fit for raccoons and a father wholly unfit for parenthood. I vividly recall Tate, the older brother who dropped in on Sam’s life in Winston-Salem. I remember remarking to Sam about his brother not being housebroken. “Aw, Tate’s nothin’, Livy . . . If you think he’s rough around the edges, you should meet my old man . . .”
I didn’t need to lay eyes on Hudson Nash to see his effect. The first time Sam took his shirt off, sexual tension turned to shock. My aroused gaze traveled his muscular frame and a half dozen circular scars—the size of a dime. He froze. “What happens if you don’t get the beer to the TV fast enough when the Vols play.” In comparison, my scars were wholly internal. Thinking they couldn’t be real, I touched them. Sam grabbed my fingers. “Don’t.” He squeezed until I retracted my hand and my eyes met his. Then he smiled. “When I started winning baseball games, Hudson backed off. When they offered me a full ride to Wake Forest, he actually said I might amount to something. He came to a game once. Afterward, he told Coach how proud he was—like it was somethin’ he said every Sunday after church. That’s the only part I think about, okay?”
Our brewing sexual encounter escalated into something deeper, a connection we lived on for a year and a half. As unlikely as it was, we understood where the other came from—mine the demanding beleaguered childhood, Sam’s something that should have been reported. But we both survived, and it made for a solid bond. Outwardly, friends saw us as the party couple, loud and raucous. No one ever got a glimpse of the tender moments that fed us—I know that Theo was born out of one in particular.
Sam had gone home; his father was in the hospital.
One of many attempts to dry him out. He called me at school, asking me to meet him at a cabin west of Winston-Salem. The cabin belonged to a teammate of Sam’s. It was a great place to party—no authority figures within miles. But that night it was just the two of us, a fire, and Sam wearing the kind of emotion that he would never display in public, barely in private. In hindsight, I know it’s the reason he chose the secluded cabin. It wasn’t as romantic as it was a respite. Sam had a fresh bruise on his face. I assumed it was his father; he alluded to a drunken brother. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “They swing the same.” Apparently, a call from a major league scout set the whole thing off. Sam said it didn’t matter. He was never going back. Thanks to the scouting call, he wouldn’t have to. Then he asked me to marry him. Together we would have a fun, fabulous life, our pasts erased. It sounded like nirvana. Looking into a blazing fire that night, I remember wishing I’d brought the Amati. I would have happily tossed it in.
The rural cabin sat on the outskirts of the future, where caution was easily dismissed. Like all seductive settings, we lived only in that moment. Sam was in pain and I was the fix. I loved being that person—I’d only known what it was like to be someone’s goal and subsequent disappointment. That night made me believe Theo was meant to be, even as I boarded a plane alone, three short months later, to New Zealand.
Sitting in the Embassy Suites, staring at an online photo of a younger Sam, the varying disappointments filter out. I recall the subtler motivation for my choices. Forcing parenthood in Sam’s path would have stopped his future from happening. The one he needed so desperately. At least this was my interpretation until Sam showed up and altered those facts. Facts I believed to be the truth since before Theo was born. “Jesus, Sam,” I murmur, touching the screen on my phone. “Why couldn’t you have just stayed away?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Olivia
A distant Southern drawl startles me. At first it’s a memory. Then it’s there. I inch my gaze upward, past jean-clad legs, a plaid shirt, and onto Sam’s bearded face. I blink into the hotel’s bright lobby light as the past turns into the present.
“Liv. What are you doing here?”
My rage has petered out, replaced by more poignant feelings courtesy of the internet and memories. “I, um . . . I don’t . . .” I fight a wave of nostalgia, faltering.
In turn, he does not. “Can I buy you a drink?” Sam holds out his hand. I take it and follow. On the way to the bar, we’re stopped twice—long-time fans that recognize a baseball icon. They want to regale his career and World Series win. I suppose Sam has secured his place in sports history. The second man shakes Sam’s hand like he’s pumping a well, and finally we break free. He tries, again, to finish his thought. “Sorry,” he says as we settle in at the bar. “That happens sometimes. And I’m sorry about blindsiding you the other night. I should have called, maybe friended you on Facebook first.”
“Do you have a Facebook page?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “You?” I offer the same response. “Party’s in the room, right? Never could get my head around cyber socializing.”
Loud distractions, it’s how we both lived life when there was a party. Sam starts talking as if not a day has passed. Perhaps his brownstone appearance was the icebreaker, because this feels disturbingly comfortable. He hits the highlights of his glory days. It’s an easy starting point, and then he drifts to more personal stories that match the fun-loving man I knew.
Years removed, I now know that Sam’s “fun-loving” nature was a façade, self-preservation. I was an enabler of wild behavior, as ill-equipped as Sam to deal with his father and the abusive childhood he lived. An hour later, Sam is drinking his third bourbon blend and I’m nursing a second. Maybe I’m still an enabler. The drinks are concoctions Sam supervised after making fast friends with the bartender. He too recognized Sam and was openly giddy at the idea of the celebrated athlete sitting at his bar. The drinks taste like the South—all burning warmth and quixotic lure. It’s just after lunchtime, and the bar is in a lull, hours before patrons invade looking to escape life. It takes Sam a while to ask about mine.
I talk about the symphony and having made reasonable peace with my violin. I don’t go anywhere near community service hours or how a music teacher at an alternative high school, who was a star athlete in college, makes this a deceptive conversation and beyond surreal. Yet I keep going, mentally retreating to a place where Theo doesn’t exist. Why not? It worked for me until Shep Stewart showed up with annual updates.
There’s a flutter of pride when Sam says he’s pleased I ended up pursuing music. I don’t move as he brushes back a strand of hair, remarking, “You’re so talented, Liv. No matter your parents’ influence, anything else would have been a shame. I would have been a shame.” He turns toward the liquor-backed bar and sips his drink. “It would have been my fault, making you sit in East Bumble-Fuck, Iowa.” He turns toward me and grins. It’s as familiar as the bourbon and even more intoxicating. “So, can I ask, what did you do after . . . us? I’ve always wondered.”
Adrenaline surges—a jarring stab of reality. I thought I’d packed Theo away, at least for the afternoon. The sensation drills on. Wait. It’s my phone, though my heart pounds furiously as I answer. It’s Rob. How timely. He’s checking in. It feels like a jerky conversation, but I suspect this is paranoia. I am sitting at bar in the middle of the day with an ex-lover. The father of my son. Rob says his first meeting was canceled and that he’s unsure if he likes staying at a boutique hotel, something new for him. While he describes his surroundings—an ultra-tiny room and non-Rob baroque décor—I don’t mention mine. He winds down, defaulting to mundane talk about me picking up his dry cleaning and asking if the insurance company has called. When I don’t reply, he says my name. “Uh-huh, right. I heard you.” Truthfully, I am half listening, maybe a quarter, focused on Sam’s profile as he chats with the bartender and pretends not to overhear my conversation.
The moment I hang up, Sam swivels his neck in my direction. “How’s that going, Liv . . . marriage?”
And for all the lies I’ve told, the truth slips out like a silk knot. “Not so great.”
Sam narrows his eyes and sips his drink. “When I was on my way out . . . sick, I thought about us.”
“Isn’t that what dying people do, count their regrets? Maybe dwell on them.”
“You may be right. But not in my case. Dwelling on us came after I got the good news.” I don’t say anything, running my index finger around the rim of my glass. “Not great as in you’re doing your best to work it out?” Sam asks. “Or not great, it’s just a matter of pulling the trigger, ending it.”
I dodge minefields of complications. “You never married . . . never found—”
“Anyone like you? No.”
“But you said there was a woman, you lived with her. There had to be others.”
“None whose name I recall, except Charlene.” Sam pokes at the ice in his drink with a swizzle stick. “She got the short end of that deal, for sure. Last time I saw her, Charlene had no qualms letting me know I was more trouble than I was worth. I couldn’t argue the point.”
“You overcame a lot, Sam. You had a great career. That’s obvious from a short walk through this hotel. You must have terrific memories.”
“And a clean condo filled with memorabilia, an upgraded view of the ninth hole.” He lifts his eyes from his drink. “You were smart to walk away after the accident, especially after there was no reason to stay.” A swig of bourbon sits in my mouth; I can’t swallow. “As it is, I probably got more than I deserve. I’m alive.” He doesn’t speak directly to me, but stares into the bar’s mirrored backdrop. “If Charlene was right about karma, dying on my living room sofa wasn’t the worst thing I had coming my way.”
I’m dazed by Sam’s melancholy conclusions, fearful of what’s heading in my direction someday. Nervously, I click on my phone. The time lights up; still midafternoon. Yet I use an evening rehearsal as an
excuse. “I have to go. Symphony practice.”
He nods. “Probably best. You in the parking garage?” I nod back. “I’ll walk you to your car.” He winks. “Big cities.”
While I’m certain the security in the Embassy Suites outside Brandeis is perfectly safe, I allow Sam to accompany me. The gait is familiar, the rhythm returning. He strides like an athlete, slowing down to match my pace. Halfway through the dim garage, his hand wraps around mine. It should strike me as inappropriate. Instead I squeeze back. The physical contact feels like a silent note of reverence. “There,” I say, pointing to the Audi sedan. At the car door, I let go of Sam’s hand, fishing for keys. I pop the lock, standing with my back to him.
“Livy . . .” I turn. Old energy connects to the sound of my name, the way he says it. It explodes into a ferocious kiss. It goes on longer than a kiss should, long enough for Sam to say breathlessly, “Don’t go. Come up to my room.”
Touching him turns time back. But the feel of him is nothing compared to the smell—Sam skin laced with bourbon and possibility. When Sam left for good, he left behind a Wake Forest University sweatshirt—black and gold colors, the shield-like emblem on the front. When I left for New Zealand, I took the sweatshirt with me. The scent enveloped every memory—good and bad. Right before Theo was born, I cut the sweatshirt up, and with a little help from Phillip’s neighbor, who was a whiz with a sewing machine, we fashioned it into a tiny Wake Forest blanket. I assume the nurse who cared for Theo on his journey home discarded it along the way. It was easy to imagine; the McAdamses’ new baby would not arrive with second-hand labeling.
Instead of backing off, I burrow closer to Sam. He’s still a drug. He still erases the life I don’t want to deal with. Sam kisses me again, and a hum of confusion pulses from my throat. I push away from the kiss but hang on to the man. Confusion? I should be unconscious from the potential fallout, not the least of which is the husband I currently have. “I can’t do that, Sam. Go up to your room.” But it comes out weak, barely an objection. I glance toward the underground entrance. “Let me guess. Top floor, penthouse suite?”
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