Outside, a fog pressing in from the Bay had finally cleared just in time for evening, and the ground was wet under her gloved fingers. Kneeling on the lawn, she bent over the patch of earth her father had cleared for her, digging the exact four inch holes the containers suggested and smoothing the dirt over the exposed roots, pressing down gently to keep them in the soil. After planting almost half the seedlings, Peri stood up and stretched, taking off her gloves and pushing the hair away from her eyes. In the moment of lifting her newly shorn bangs, she saw that the person in the SUV across the road--the Suburban she hadn't paid more than a split second of attention to--was Graham.
The last time she'd seen her husband had been the night he packed and left the house without waking the children. She'd followed him to the door as if in a dream, everything slightly hazy and slowed down, as if she would wake up and find his absence part of a nightmare. What she remembered was his back, his white shirt reflecting in the outside lights, a drizzle illuminated and dancing in swaths, the neat click of his shoes on the wet asphalt. Then the car started, the lights beaming into her face, and he pulled out of the driveway. She stayed by the door for a long time, maybe even an hour, the rain soaking the hem of her nightgown. She blinked, waiting for the moment she would wake up, one, two, three . . . but she never did. She still hadn't.
The Suburban’s door opened, and Graham stepped out, looking at her without saying a word. Preston would say, "Don't talk to him. Don't say a word." Her father would want her to tell him off, saying all the things she'd kept inside since the night he'd driven off leaving her with three children. Maybe her father would want to take a swing at him. And that would feel good.
Even from across the street, he was still so handsome, still the man she’d fallen in love with in college, amazed that he sat down next to her in the cafeteria. He was still the man he’d been before Brooke. She would like to transform his face so it matched hers, the pain under her skin transmitted to his. She'd thought about this moment for a long time, many of her afternoons under the blankets a prolonged fantasy of this very minute. But now, she had no idea what to do, so she stood there, moving her feet back a couple steps, and then stopped and stared at him, this man, her husband. Her ex-husband.
As if taking her stillness for opportunity, Graham walked across the street, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on his shoes. Noticing he wasn't paying attention to traffic, she looked down the street to see if a car was coming. If a truck or an armored car or a special education bus was barreling toward him, would she scream out? Or would she let him get hit, spin to the concrete, die in front of her, die as she felt she would a hundred times. But he made it to the sidewalk, and Peri swallowed down the drug dryness in her mouth so she could say what she had to.
"Peri," he said, putting his hand on a white picket, looking down at her work. "Planting?"
"Yes." She said, looking down at this work, the first she'd done in so long that showed, the plants spaced exactly twelve inches apart, the soil rich, sprinkled with the blue fertilizer her father had told her to use.
"How are you?" he asked, leaning against the fence now, his arms folded across his chest. Why was he was so comfortable when he clearly was in danger? After all, wasn't she the same woman who had battered down his door just weeks before? Wasn't she the one who had injured their children? She was clutching a trowel, and it was deadly, the tip sharp, the dirt stuck to it rife with bacteria, tetanus, chemicals. In half a second, this happy discussion could be over, Graham bleeding as she had bled, needing stitches as she had needed them, her arm still red and puckered from the stitches' kiss.
"Better--good," she said. "I have to go in now."
"Wait. Don't go in. I need--I need to talk."
Peri dropped the trowel and stepped on it, as if that would keep her from using it on his forehead. "About what? And why now?"
He rubbed his mouth and chin, sighing. He wasn't really as handsome as always, his eyes red, his skin blotched and puffy as if he'd been drinking. But her old self, the one who had fallen in love with him so long ago, was still inside her, waving from the dried up pool of her heart, saying, "It's him."
"I want to know why."
"Why what?"
"Why you did it."
"I can't talk about that. You know that. Whatever I said to you now, you'd use it against me. I have to go in--I don't want to talk about it with you."
Peri turned to go, and he grabbed her arm, exactly where her stitches were. "Ow! Let go!"
Graham let go and pulled back. "I'm so sorry. I forgot what happened."
"You're lucky. I can't."
"You didn't mean it, did you? You didn't want it to happen."
Peri brought a hand to her heart and imagined squeezing silent her old self, squishing her in her fist until she was gone, nothing left but a last cry and then nothing but the air around her. She looked at Graham and finally saw him as someone who left, someone who walked away from her and their children, someone who was almost able to pretend that years of his life had never happened. "No. I didn't want you to leave. I didn't want to take care of them all by myself without money. I didn't want Brooke to fall back by years because I couldn't afford Leon and then had to drive her to the clinic. I didn't want to sell our house and move to an apartment. I didn't want any of it, but I was too tired and too sad to care. Everything seemed so hard, so dark, so all up to me. And then I woke up strapped to a bed in a strange city, knowing that all I wanted was you to fix it."
Graham stared at her, his face pale, the freckles on his cheeks dark constellations.
"But you can't fix it. Even if all the courts and lawyers and social workers say that you can, you can't. You can never come back to the past and be the man you were supposed to be, see that there was something wrong with me, take care of us all. It's too late. The kids had to see me depressed, and I can’t take that back. And now, look what's happened. Look at our children, Graham. Look what we've done."
She was still clenching her fist, and when she stopped talking, she felt her hand throb and opened it, almost expecting to see the lifeless corpse of her marriage flat in her palm.
"You're right," he said.
"Now, maybe."
"Peri. Oh, Peri," he said, and she closed her eyes. “I’m—I’m sorry. I don’t know how to explain . . Brooke. She’s so hurt. She’ll never be . . .”
“Normal. Is that the word?” Peri asked.
Graham almost nodded, and she remembered the way he’d looked when the doctors gave them Brooke’s diagnosis. Graham had almost waved away their words, wanting them to start over and change the script, make it so his girl could be fixed. But she would never be fixed and probably get worse, and that’s what he’d run away from.
“I want to make it up to . . . her.” Graham moved closer to her, almost leaning over the fence.
"You can’t. It’s too late now. I've got to go back in the house," she said, turning without looking at him again, rounding the house and leaning against the wall in the side yard where he couldn't see her. Pressing her body against the stucco, she listened to him walk across the street and then slam his door, the engine starting after a couple of minutes and then idling for a while before he drove away.
"You were strong out there," a voice said, and Peri nearly jumped, feeling the sharp edges of stucco scratch her neck and arms. She looked up, and her father's neighbor was peering at her over the fence, her straw hat hiding her eyes. "I shouldn't have listened, but I did."
"Oh."
"I bet you wanted him to take care of you again. To make it all right." Mrs. Trimble nodded as she spoke.
"Maybe some. But he left."
"That's right. But you let him go this time."
She nodded, and Mrs. Trimble handed her a rhododendron bloom, a deep purple flower, the petals floating even as Peri held it in her hand. "You get better and then take care of those children. Like he couldn't.”
Mrs. Trimble moved back, swallowed into the bushes. Peri rubbed the flo
wer on her cheek and lips, closing her eyes to its softness, wishing the next weeks and months could be as easy and painless as Mrs. Trimble made them sound, everything as smooth as the flower against her face.
NINETEEN
They'd started in Ryan's room, cigarette butts, roaches, and girly magazines easier than Brooke's sad bed, the evidence of the final night of their hard year scattered about the room. Carl had already come once to get all their clothes and bathroom articles, staring for a few seconds at a pink razor, knowing it was Carly's, amazed she was already old enough to shave. Shave what? Thin blonde hair like the kind that sparkled on top of her arms?
He'd loaded all their personal effects into his car, and now he and Rosie were working mostly with bedding and furniture and kitchen items, much of which hadn't even been unpacked. As he worked, he tried to forget that Noel and Peri were at Preston's Walnut Creek office, focusing instead on each item, a blanket, folded, a sheet that needed washing, a pan crusted with something cooked weeks ago and pushed into a kitchen corner. He also expected to any moment come across checks from Graham, uncashed, hidden in a jar or a glass, but he’d found nothing, not even a dime in the carpet.
"It's amazing they lasted here as long as they did," he said into the living room, where Rosie was bagging magazines to put downstairs in the recycling bin.
"It was sad, Carl. Honestly, I would watch Carly and Ryan in the mornings going to school, and I could tell something was happening. Peri barely came out, and I saw Brooke maybe twice. It's really a damn good thing it all unfolded this way."
Carl looked up, shaking his head. "A good thing?"
"Well, yeah. Think about it. If Peri hadn't taken off, this life for them could have gone on for weeks, maybe months. Who knows what condition Brooke would have been in by then? In a way, Peri saved her by leaving."
Rosie stood up and carried the full bag to the door, and then sat on the couch to pack up books she'd piled there earlier. Carl stood still over the sink. Was she right? Ramon often talked about things that were "meant to be," and even though he was usually referring to lost or won tennis matches, maybe this was something that was meant to be, Peri back with him, he with a chance to make things right with her, Brooke with all the care she needed, Graham forced to make the payments he should have been making all along. But why this way? he wondered, stuffing sponges, Comet, and 409 spray in a grocery bag. Why so dramatically?
By one in the afternoon, they'd packed up everything they could and arranged the furniture so that the movers who were coming the next day could get in and out, mattresses and box springs leaning against walls, the bed frames folded on the floor, the hospital bed ready for the company it belonged to carry it away. Carl had half a thought to tell them to take it to his house, but that would jinx the whole thing. If Brooke were ever able to stay with him, he'd just order up a new one. A better one, dammit, with all the bells and whistles.
The backseat and trunk of his Corvair were piled to bursting, and he had at least another hour of work once he got home, arranging everything in his garage. Someday soon, Peri would want her photo albums and scrapbooks, every family year except the last photographed down to the dog's birthday party. She'd want her books and the china pigs Janice had given her, one on each birthday and one every Christmas. She wouldn't want them with her furniture at the storage place with the bigger things from the apartment and the Monte Veda house.
"You've done good for them," Rosie said, leaning against the car, wiping her hands on her jeans. "It's all going to work out."
Carl shrugged, leaning a hip against the car and crossing his arms. "Who knows? But it feels good to clean up the mess. At least something's getting done."
"It's been a real experience for me, I'll tell you. I'll sure know what to do the next time a thirteen-year-old girl comes knocking on my door."
"I'm just glad it was your door. Thanks. Thanks so much."
Rosie smiled, and then bit her lip, her teeth white and perfect against her dusky lips. Rose colored lips. She'd been named perfectly. "Well, I'm going to say it. I was hoping that maybe it wouldn't have to end here."
The part of him that had been asleep for too long flushed awake, his whole body alive with nerves. Weeks ago, he'd been looking pretty intently at the woman at the bridge club, wondering when he would ask her out and how long it would take before she said yes. And Rosie--well, she was warm, the scent of her even from here something he wanted to dip his head into and find himself stuck in for a good long time. Lately, while driving Peri to Dr. Kolakowski's office and to Fran's, he'd filled the rides with fantasy, wondering if the rest of Rosie was a smooth as her arms. As he looked at her now, he couldn't put a cap on his smile. In less than ten minutes, they could be in her bedroom, skin against skin, all the courtship carried on these past weeks, Rosie knowing everything about him and his family and his past, nothing for him to hide. And he'd gotten to know more about her and her son, her job, her ex-husband José, the jerk from San Diego.
He was seconds from moving closer, taking her hand, saying, "I was hoping the exact same thing," when he remembered Peri sitting behind the table at the jail, her face so thin that he thought he would hurt her by kissing her cheek. He saw Carly, felt her arms tight around his neck; he heard Ryan's cries against his shoulder, tears hard for a teenaged boy to part with. And then, as Rosie's fingers touched him, warm and smooth from constant nurse washings, he saw Janice, the way she'd looked over thirty years ago when he said, "I don't love you." She had looked so surprised, and no wonder. He'd never lost the flare of blood and skin when he looked at Janice, the same pulse that he now felt radiating up his body from Rosie's touch. Even as he had left, he wanted Janice, loved her fine, lovely hair, her smile, the way she could hold both children on her lap and read them a bedtime story. But he wanted everything, more, all, and so he walked away to a long life of nothing.
"I would like that, too," he began.
"But."
"But. . . But I have Peri. I finally have her back, and I've got to take care of her."
Rosie nodded, smiling. "Good."
"It's not that I don't want to."
"Okay. Maybe later." Rosie held out her hand, and he took it, closing his eyes briefly to the warm feel of her, the exact way he thought she'd be.
"Yeah. Later. When this is over."
"It won't be over."
Carl opened the car door. "No. It won't be over. But it will be better."
She took a few steps away from the car, and he sat down and started the engine. "Thanks for--for being there, for all of us."
"You have my number," she said, lifting a hand, and he put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking place, looking at her in his rearview mirror. For maybe the first time in his life, he was leaving something he could actually come back to.
"My God! Preston wants her to do what?" Carl asked, leaning forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees. Noel sat across from him drinking a St. Pauli Girl pale ale.
"Plead guilty. I felt the same way, too, Dad. When he first brought it up, I was ready to walk right out of the office. But--I've been thinking. It might be the best thing. Probably no jail time. Probably, and I mean probably, she'll be able to stay here with you. And Preston really wants the best for Peri." Noel took a sip.
Pushing himself back in his chair, Carl grabbed his beer, staring at the girl on the label, peeling the edge with a fingernail. Guilty. It would exist forever, and not just in her mind. She'd know that somewhere, someone had typed it on a record, that infamous permanent one, and there it would be, tailing her like a shadow. But in a way, then this part would be over, and she could focus on her kids. "What does Peri think?" Carl asked.
"I don't know really. We didn't talk much on the way home."
"What about the kids? What does this mean for her getting custody?"
His son shrugged. "That's the custody battle. That's for the court to decide. But if she's found guilty and made to do what--more therapy? A parentin
g class? Probation? She won't get custody. Not now. Not right away. Graham at least doesn't have a criminal record. He might be a complete asshole, but he hasn't been convicted of anything."
"He should have been. Thrown in for being a shitty father." Carl paused, taking a swig, hearing Noel’s pause echo in the room. He flushed, realizing he deserved to be in the same jail with Graham, hobbled and linked by chains, like father-in-law, like son-in-law.
"Yeah." Noel looked over his shoulder. "What's Peri doing?"
"Her therapist wants her to get outside more, so I bought some plants. It's good exercise." He almost laughed. Now the father he should have been, making sure Peri was fed and healthy and on time for appointments. While he was keeping her active, he hadn't a clue about what she was feeling inside, each day about making a pattern she could live by, a focused, thoughtful pattern a jury would see as healthy and improved and sane. But inside her? Carl might never be granted a permit. The same was true with Noel. Oh, he knew about Noel's job and his apartment and his new mountain bike, but had he heard much about these girlfriends who were a part of his life and then not? Did Carl know anything about what Noel wanted?
"So," Carl began slowly. "What’s next?"
"We make a decision. Or Peri does. I've got to call Preston by six. If she says okay, we get ready for the sentencing. If not, we get ready for the hearing."
"No. I mean, yes. But I really meant about you."
Noel almost missed the coffee table as he put his beer down. "What do you mean?"
"Well, now that Peri is here, and some plan or another will be put in motion, you don't have to be so focused on her. For a long time, it seems to me, you've been maybe too involved."
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