Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  “Greta, girlfriend—”

  “He was a good guy. He treated me . . . he was with me . . .” I couldn’t finish that. I just said, “And I lost him.”

  “Did you fight?”

  I couldn’t go there.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “I lost him. Now this man . . . he’s a good man, Lou, you know it. Everyone does. What happens to me if I go for it and I don’t win?”

  “What happens if you do?”

  I couldn’t go there either.

  “That doesn’t happen for me a lot.”

  “Maybe it would if you fought.”

  “And maybe it would just leave me that much more beaten.”

  “I gotta admit, you’ve endured more than most,” she muttered.

  “You think?” I asked, trying to be funny.

  She didn’t laugh.

  She suggested, “Maybe you’re in for a change.”

  Okay.

  I had to end this.

  For both of us.

  “You know, I was fourteen when Mom had Andy, and then completely forgot she’d had a kid.”

  “Honey,” Lou whispered, her tone quieting, her face gentling.

  She knew.

  “So it was me who changed his diapers and fed him his bottles and got up when he was crying. And it was me, when he got big enough, who made him his breakfast and got him to school and made him do his homework. And it was me, even after I’d moved out, that got up early to go there every morning to do the same. It was also me who never missed any of his football games and attended his parent-teacher conferences.”

  Her eyes started getting misty, but I had to nip her hopes and dreams for me in the bud before I got talked into letting her sweep me along right with them.

  I’d become a mother at fourteen to a child I didn’t carry, and I didn’t mind because I’d fallen in love with Andy the minute I laid eyes on him. He was something to love and I’d never had that, not in all my short life, and I gave him all the love I had bottled up and all the love he had coming.

  Which was a lot.

  But even before that, with the mother I’d been given and no father to speak of, I’d never had any dreams and I’d never hoped for anything, except to spend the rest of my life with Keith from the minute he’d kissed me after our first date.

  I couldn’t start now.

  “But it was her who was driving when Andy’s body got crushed and his skull got fractured right along with it. And the only thing good that came out of that was that she was incarcerated for eight months for drunk driving and I could get myself declared his guardian. So I know what life is like. I know what’s worth fighting for. And I know from what I’ve learned that I should just take the good of a nice guy looking after me when I get caught up in his life drama at the same time he offers me the best thing he can right now. Keeping me out of that drama.”

  I lifted a hand and touched her arm before dropping it.

  “I love that you want good for me, Lou,” I said softly. “What you need to get is that I’ve got the only brand of that I’m ever gonna get, and after all that’s gone before, I’m good with that.”

  “Maybe you should meet Mrs. Swanson’s Owen,” she muttered.

  I grinned at her. “How about I just keep hold on what I’ve got. My mom and whatever this is with Hix and Hope Drake notwithstanding, I like it. A great job. A great house.” I gave her a big smile. “Good friends. It’s awesome here. A quiet town. Good people in it. Peaceful. Nice. Folks look after folks. Things are simple. This Hope thing will blow over and those two will move on however they’re gonna move on. And I’ve already decided I’m done with Mom. She may be more stubborn than I expect, but I figure, the Greta Money Bank dries up, she’ll slither out just like she slithered in.” I lifted my shoulders in another shrug. “And then it’ll all be just peaceful, quiet, nice. Simple.”

  “Want more for you, babe.”

  At that, I laughed a little bit and kept smiling at her after I was done.

  “I wasn’t being funny,” she told me.

  “I know, sweetheart,” I replied. “The thing is, what I have is more. It’s the best I’ve ever had. Yes, even better than when I was with Keith because that was always shadowed by what he wanted that I couldn’t give him, all he was giving me that I couldn’t give back and me terrified when he’d figure out that I wasn’t worth it. I’m happy. So you don’t have to want more for me, Lou. I’ve got all I need.”

  “I still want more for you.”

  “Of course you do, you’re my friend. That’s your job,” I returned. “But right now, I want chicken tenders from the Harlequin, and if I don’t get them soon, they’ll get cold while I’m doing hair. They’re good cold, but they’re better hot.”

  Lou, being Lou—that was a really good friend—let it go because she got that I needed her to.

  “That’s my order too. And curly fries.”

  “Like you have to say that,” I muttered, turning back to the shelves.

  Lou turned to the door.

  As I grabbed what I needed, she called my name.

  I looked over my shoulder at her.

  “I know you won’t like hearing it, but the life you’re willing to settle for being so much less than you deserve, it breaks my heart, Greta.”

  My heart thumped hearing her say that.

  Then she walked through the door and it closed behind her.

  At seven thirty that night, I rolled my black, boxy, traveling beauty case with its steel edges up Mrs. Whitney’s front walk.

  As always, she had the door open and was standing in it, waiting for me before I had to heft the case up the five cement steps that sat halfway up the path and led to the short walk to her door.

  “You always have the prettiest outfits,” she told me when I got close. “You even make a shirt and jeans look like it’s walkin’ down a New York City sidewalk.”

  “And you always have the sweetest things to say,” I replied.

  Her eyes dropped to my feet. “But I have no idea how you wear those heels, standin’ on your feet all day.”

  “Practice,” I shared.

  “Come in, darlin’,” she invited, moving out of my way as I pulled open her screen door. “You had dinner?”

  And she always asked if I’d had dinner.

  So I gave her the answer I always gave her.

  “I’ll get something when I get home.”

  “Got chops and mash,” she said. “They’re still warm.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. W, but I eat heavy at lunch and light at dinner.”

  “All right, Greta, come in, come in.” She scooted me in through her foyer but stopped us right there. “Just gonna go look in on the mister.” Her faded blue eyes caught mine. “And I’ll have to do it again after the set, darlin’.”

  “I know, Mrs. W. It’s all good. I’ll go in and get set up.”

  She gave me a small smile and headed up the stairs.

  I headed into the kitchen.

  She came in and I washed her hair while she leaned over her kitchen sink then I sat her in a chair at the table and started my work.

  “So, what’s happening in Glossop that I need to know about?” she asked.

  She was probably the only woman in town who didn’t know just what that was.

  This was because “the mister,” her husband, was upstairs on life support and had been since he’d had a heart attack three years ago that stopped oxygen from going to his brain.

  They’d revived his body.

  They couldn’t revive the rest of him.

  And she didn’t have the heart to pull the plug or the insurance to keep him in a hospital bed.

  She also loved him so much, she refused to leave him, terrified he’d slip away when she wasn’t around. She went to the grocery store once a week. And Pastor Keller came to her on Sunday afternoons to pray with her.

  And every two weeks, I did a wash and set.

  She had other friends who visited here and there. />
  And she had a sleeping husband who would never wake and she’d never stop taking care of him in a bed upstairs.

  It was beautifully sweet. It was tremendously sad.

  It was life.

  I gave her the lowdown on what I knew, including my mother, not including Hixon and Hope Drake.

  “I sure hope your momma doesn’t bring her trash into the House of Beauty,” she murmured when I was done.

  “She will, Mrs. W. But I’m learning that’s her way and it doesn’t have to change the way I do things.”

  “She did what she did to my brother that she did to yours, darlin’,” she started quietly, “don’t think I’d be givin’ her money all these years.”

  I thought about the man I’d never seen upstairs and whispered, “Yes, you would.”

  She thought on that a second and whispered back, “Reckon you’re right.”

  I felt the need for a subject change, for both of us.

  “You want, week after next, I’ll get you an appointment with Lou at the salon. You can go on in and I’ll clear my schedule to be here for the mister,” I offered, not for the first time.

  “Oh, child, that’s sweet. But maybe it ain’t right to leave Burt with a stranger. I’m sure he’ll like the look a’ you, say he wakes up. But once he gets over that, he’ll still be wondering where I am.”

  He wouldn’t wake up, couldn’t. His brain was more gone than Andy’s.

  Yet more evidence it was futile to hope.

  Even so, for the first time, I pushed, “Maybe Pastor Keller will come sit with him.”

  “I don’t think so, Greta. But you’re a good girl and it sure is nice you’d offer.”

  I shut up about that like I always did.

  When she was walking to the bonnet dryer she’d set up herself in her kitchen after it all happened, I asked, “While you’re cooking, you want a polish change?”

  Her eyes came to me and lit. “You bring your polish, darlin’?”

  I smiled at her. “Don’t I always?”

  She smiled back. “You sure do. And I’d love to get some of that pearly peach you had last spring. I know we’re headin’ into fall, but I’m not a fall. I’m a spring. Had my colors all done up professional-like when ladies were seein’ to that kind of thing. But I figure, spring color in fall, that’ll still be like havin’ pearly pumpkins on my fingernails.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I told her, heading to my case to pull out another compartment.

  I changed her polish. I set her hair. And I gave her a hug before I left, when she always stuffed a twenty in whatever pocket I had available to her, this on top of paying me and the tip she handed me, face to face.

  Lou had a family to look after so she couldn’t swing an evening home appointment. Her old stylist was young and had a life after work so she’d declined doing it. Which left Mrs. Whitney with Francine hauling herself from Yucca, and charging her double to make up the gas money.

  I’d said yes the first time Lou asked me.

  Mrs. Whitney didn’t get much company and went out even less.

  But that didn’t mean she didn’t want her hair looking nice.

  She appreciated me taking the time to come to her place, which meant I got home late after a very long day.

  Appreciated it enough to want to give me an extra twenty dollars.

  I never said a word about it.

  It wasn’t necessary.

  She needed to do it.

  So I let her do it.

  After that, I drove home, and as I drove home, I called Andy.

  The staff got him on the phone for me and I listened to him chatter away while I drove, and then while I made myself a spinach salad with diced hard-boiled eggs, sliced red onion, dried cranberry, slivered almonds and some sprinkles of cheese.

  He had to go so I let him go before I ate it.

  I cleaned up after myself and made some tea.

  Then I walked out to my porch and sat in my wicker chair.

  There was a bit of a nip in the air sharing summer was saying its farewells. Soon, when I sat on my porch, I’d have to wear a sweater like I had to last fall.

  But right then, I didn’t need one.

  I just sat cross-legged in my chair and picked up the book I’d left out there.

  I balanced it, closed, on my lap and lifted my tea to my lips and my eyes to the street.

  And I let the peace and quiet of Glossop sink into me.

  It had been quite a day and a long one to boot.

  But the thing I liked most about living there was, no matter I’d met a man who I knew, in another life or with the right timing, might be able to wring miracles and balance my world, a world that had always been unsteady, at the same time making me happy. No matter his ex-wife was undoubtedly going to shake things up in a number of unpleasant ways for the foreseeable future. No matter what my mother would dream up to torture me to get what she wanted out of me.

  No matter what anything.

  I always had that spot right there on my porch in Glossop to remind me I’d made it to the exact right place I needed to be.

  I might never have had any hopes and dreams.

  But with the life I’d led, I’d always craved just what I was right then experiencing.

  Calm. Peace. Simplicity.

  For me.

  And for Andy.

  So I could take the bad and take the good.

  And end every day’s rollercoaster having everything I needed.

  Serenity.

  In other words . . .

  Glossop.

  Speeding Tickets

  Hixon

  SATURDAY NIGHT, HIX sat on his couch, his eyes on the TV that was playing a late night movie, the volume set low since his girls were asleep in the back.

  His mind was not on the movie.

  Like it had been awhile, it was on the shitty mess of things that had consumed his life.

  Shaw was out on a date that night with Wendy.

  That was two dates that week.

  So Hix was also up waiting for his son to get home by a curfew he knew Shaw wouldn’t push. His boy never did.

  His curfew on Saturdays was midnight.

  He had ten minutes.

  As he waited, didn’t watch the movie and thought about the shit of his life, Hix held on to the fact that the week hadn’t started out great, but it had surprisingly settled in.

  He hadn’t heard again from Hope. He also hadn’t seen Greta (which meant he hadn’t had to fight the temptation of her). He further hadn’t had to lay it out for anybody else.

  And no one had said boo to him about anything.

  Except for Pastor Keller walking right up to him while Hix was eating lunch with Donna at the Harlequin.

  The good pastor did this to state, “Hope to see you and Greta in a pew real soon, Sheriff. Greta can forget her duty to God on occasion, which for her is understandable. But I haven’t seen you there in some time, son. Although God frowns on one of His children not understanding the concept of the sanctity of marriage, He has His way of seeing right comes from wrong. So bring your new woman to the Holy Father’s house so He can see what He’s wrought in all its glory.”

  Keller hadn’t given Hix the opportunity to say a word. He’d said what he felt needed to be said and walked away.

  When he did, Hix hadn’t been ticked at what he’d said or that the man had the damned nerve to walk right up to him and say it.

  All he was thinking was wondering what was understandable to a deeply religious man like Pastor Keller (and in Hix’s opinion he was even more deeply religious than his occupation had call for him being) to make him think Greta could miss church on a Sunday.

  This was not his to know, so he forced himself to let that go and just be happy that nothing else reared up about Greta.

  Including the news that he’d hooked up with her clearly hadn’t filtered down to the kids.

  They’d had an evening where they went to see a couple of houses that none of them
liked, but that was the only shift in the norm.

  So that was all good.

  But the rest was not.

  It was shit.

  And it didn’t just fill his mind and take his focus off a late-night movie.

  It had been filling his mind all week.

  Hell, all year.

  And obviously all this shit had to do with Hope.

  But right then it was centering on the fact that, since before she’d asked him to leave, when he’d pressed to get to the bottom of her issue that was making her so unhappy, she’d just clam up, give him a look full of hurt and say, “You know, Hix.”

  He didn’t know.

  He had no clue.

  He just knew he’d asked repeatedly, demanded, threatened, then even got down to begging for her to let him in on it.

  She hadn’t done that.

  All he got was more, “You know, Hix. You know.”

  And now he wasn’t only pissed at how she was behaving, he was pissed she’d never had the courtesy and respect for the life they’d built together to give him a straight answer about why she’d torn it apart.

  He was also uneasy about the fact that he might be pissed, but he wasn’t infuriated.

  His frustration was about courtesy and respect, not love and loyalty.

  It wasn’t about the fact that she’d broken his heart.

  It was about the fact that he simply had the right to know why she had.

  Through this, he was trying to hold on to other things about Hope. Things he’d need when she eventually snapped out of her snit and became the woman who, for the rest of his life, he’d have to deal with in appropriate ways that wouldn’t make his kids uncomfortable.

  Things like how she was whenever Shaw would get one of his many scrapes climbing trees, falling off his bike, skateboarding—taking care of their son and adjusting her mothering from cooing and babying to soothing and reassuring the older his boy got.

  And the way her relationship changed with Corinne after she got her period. How they started to become not mother and daughter, but mother-friend/confidant and daughter, having their quiet talks in the kitchen together, giggling like best friends.

  It was also how she sat beside him in that small hall with tears falling silently down her cheeks when Mamie performed in her first dance recital.