Did I even want to cross that out? What if something better didn’t wait around the corner? What if I discovered that this really is as good as it gets? What if I messed up my own life because I was too selfish, too bold, too ungrateful?
I thought back to when the man who broke my heart said all the things I had longed to hear as we sat by a lake and dreamed about a future that never happened. His words still haunted me, coming back uninvited at inopportune times.
I told him about my parents and how their marriage had broken up. I confessed that I still held on to the hope that real love could exist. I told him that one time when I was about five years old I woke up and tiptoed down the hall because I heard music playing. Things with my parents hadn’t gone horribly wrong yet. I stood outside the doorway and watched as my real father danced with my mother. She thinks I have no memories of him, but she’s wrong. My father looked into my mother’s eyes and sang the lines to a Barry Manilow song that was on the radio. “I could love you, build my world around you, never leave you till my life is done.” I blushed as I told him this secret moment I’d been carrying all my life.
The truth is, I told him, my father had lied. He was gone less than a year later.
My long lost love pulled me to my feet and held me there by the lakeside, rocking slowly back and forth as he sang, “Baby, I love you. Come, come, come into my arms. Let me know the wonder of all of you.” When we finished dancing, he cupped my face in his hands and smiled down at me. “I won’t leave,” he lied. “I promise.”
Then he grinned and said, “And if you tell anyone that I know the words to a Barry Manilow song, I’ll find you and torture you.”
I could close my eyes and remember every moment of that evening—the crispness of the air as night settled into the mountains of North Carolina, the sense that summer was ending and so was our time together as counselors at the camp, the sound of birds singing in the trees and the water lapping at the shore. I couldn’t remember how we came to be there together or why we were away from our duties, but I could remember the way he looked at me, picture his eyes as he looked into mine. If I closed my eyes and tried really hard, I could almost remember the sound of his voice.
Of course that night in my bedroom I knew the end of the story, saw the complete picture. But for just a moment I pretended that I didn’t. I pretended that the man sleeping next to me was the one I really wanted, the one who made promises to me that night long ago. It was a dangerous moment, one I didn’t let myself have very often. A moment when he felt so close I could reach out and touch him, never knowing that just a few weeks later he would show up at my pool with his wife, Betsy, and two children. Betsy, who took my part. Betsy, who took him.
The memories I let play out that night led to a thought that had been rolling around in my head ever since: How long should I be held to a mistake I made when I was too young to know how long “till death do us part” really was? More often I pushed the thought from my brain. Such thinking was not allowed, just like thoughts of driving down the highway as far as I could get until my car ran out of gas weren’t allowed. Like thoughts of indulging in fattening foods weren’t allowed. Like thoughts of skipping church weren’t allowed. I told myself that it was just one of those things all women think about but never admit. I was no different than anyone else.
Chapter 9
Ariel
David’s flight got in after I had fallen asleep, and he was gone to the office by the time the boys and I woke up the next morning. “Some homecoming,” I said to myself as I woke up to find his side of the bed empty, his car gone from the garage. I wondered if I had dreamed him coming to bed in the dark, feeling his arms slip around me and his face press into my neck. I resolved to call him later as I set about smearing peanut butter on overly dark toast thickly enough that the boys wouldn’t see the offensive burned parts and refuse to eat them. We were low on bread and milk and lots of other essentials. A trip to the store loomed in my future, and I dreaded it the way others dread a colonoscopy.
When the doorbell rang, I assumed it was Justine coming to see if I had made my list of acceptable breakfast choices in the menus section of my notebook, her first assignment for me. I wondered if cold cereal was an acceptable entry for all seven days.
Instead I found Kristy standing on my doorstep, her six-month-old daughter, Kailey, in her arms. “Do you think you’ll need the car seat?” she asked.
I looked at her in utter confusion.
“Are you going anywhere?” she repeated, as if rephrasing it would make a difference. My mouth opened and closed but no sound came out. “While I’m gone to my appointment?” I could see the panic filling Kristy’s eyes as she realized I had forgotten. I wondered if she could see the panic filling mine as I remembered, the details coming back to me in a rush.
Kristy had missed her period. She had called to tell me shortly after we had moved in.
I had assured her it was nothing. Women who have been nursing have erratic periods. It’s normal. She couldn’t be pregnant. I said all the things she wanted me to say, even though I didn’t believe them and she didn’t either.
“Will you keep Kailey while I go to the doctor?” she had asked that day, her words coming out in a rush.
“Yes, of course I can keep her. You just call me and tell me when they can see you,” I had said. David had rolled his eyes and walked out of the room. I had hung up the phone and promptly forgotten all about my promise. When Kristy had called back, we were at the pool party. I never returned her call or listened to her message, which apparently was letting me know she was bringing Kailey by today, to leave her with me while she went to the doctor. I spotted the notebook sitting on the kitchen table where I had left it the night before. It mocked me: If you had used your life-management notebook, you would have these things written down.
Kristy shifted the baby onto her hip and bounced her a bit. I reached out to take Kailey from her. “You go. Kailey will be fine here,” I said. “This is my fault. I am so disorganized. I’ve got to get things under control. This is just case in point.”
Kristy patted me, looking relieved to be escaping the din of my house and the weight of her daughter. “Remember what I said to you when we talked on the phone? Don’t look at what you do wrong. Look at all the things you do right.”
I remembered now. My eyes scanned the room. The boys were still in their pajamas. The remaining moving boxes towered over me like prison guards reminding me of the hard labor I was sentenced to do. “I’ll keep looking while you’re gone,” I quipped.
She shook her head. “You’re going to get your life back on an even keel. You’ll see. You’re going to get on top of things and take this neighborhood by storm.”
“Huh. That’ll never happen,” I retorted, although vaguely thankful for Kristy’s blind belief in me. I thought of Justine, who was the reigning “queen of Essex Falls.” Kristy ignored my negative remark and exited out the door she came in. I watched her walk quickly to her car and slide inside with the ease of the childless, if only for a moment. Her baby felt soft and warm in my arms. I inhaled her powdery scent and kissed her fuzzy head. I had watched her grow from squalling newborn to chunky baby when we lived across the street.
I turned back to face the boys, whose faces were covered in peanut butter. “We have a guest, boys,” I said. Kailey started to fuss, and I bounced her a bit as Kristy had done. I watched Kristy back her car out of the driveway while Kailey stared at me like I looked familiar but she couldn’t quite place me. “Have you forgotten me already, Miss Kailey?” I cooed to her. She broke into a toothless grin as if to say, “Ohhh, that’s who you are.” I lined up the boys and wiped off their faces one-handed as I balanced Kailey in my other arm. This is what it would be like, I thought.
Since Kailey appeared to be happy enough, I put her in her car seat and let the boys sit in front of her and make funny faces whil
e I tried to unpack a box. I hoped that when David was home this weekend, we could finish the unpacking entirely.
Surprisingly, Kailey was mesmerized by the boys, and they were fascinated by her too. Just who was babysitting whom? I wondered if Kristy would start dropping Kailey off once a week so I could get some things done.
Soon enough, the fun was over. Donovan held his nose and tapped me on the arm with his free hand. “Kailey stinks,” he said. “You better change her.”
I sighed as I laid Kailey on the floor. Rummaging through her diaper bag, I found one diaper and a dried-up wipe left in the bottom of the wipe container. Kristy must have been upset. She was usually overprepared, a nervous Nellie about anything to do with her baby. “Hope this is all you need today,” I told the wiggling baby. I peeled her diaper back and set to work cleaning the unfamiliar anatomy. I had changed only boys’ diapers and was out of my element. I could change a boy lightning fast, but this took some concentration. I was just about to put her diaper back on when Duncan yelled, “Mom, wait!”
“What?” I asked.
“Somebody cut Kailey’s wiener off.”
I stifled a laugh as I finished diapering the baby and held her close, planting a kiss on her sweet-smelling head, inhaling her baby scent deeply, memorizing it. I used to have this every day, I thought. Now my children smelled like sweaty boys, not fresh-from-God infants. “Girls don’t have wieners,” I told Duncan.
Duncan furrowed his brow and stared at me. He wasn’t buying it. Donovan and Dylan giggled and looked from Duncan to me and back again. “Look, guys,” I said. “Why don’t you ask Daddy about that when he gets home from work tonight?” It was low of me to push the questions off on David, but I wasn’t prepared to give my eight-, six-, and four-year-olds a lesson on male and female anatomy.
“Daddy’s going to be home tonight?” Donovan piped up. He was David’s shadow, his biggest fan.
“Yes,” I said. “And we need to get to the store today and get some food to cook a nice meal for him tonight.” I said this even though I had no idea what I would cook.
“Mommy?” Duncan asked.
“Yeah, Dunc?”
“I still think you should tell Kailey’s mommy about … you know …”
I smoothed a blonde lock back from his forehead and bent over to kiss him. “I’ll be sure to tell her,” I assured him. I would tell her, just not in the way he meant. I knew Kristy would get a good laugh over his concern.
I put Kailey back into her car seat, bagged the offensive diaper in two grocery bags and tied it, then chucked it into the trash can before returning to the boxes. The next box was full of books and weighed about two tons. I pulled one of my favorite childhood books out of the box and rubbed my fingers across the cover lovingly. I had kept it in pristine condition, even though it had been read hundreds of times. I hugged it to myself before I opened the cover, remembering my sister and me, dressed for bed, listening to my father’s words spilling over us as he read the story aloud. The memory was linked to a happier time in my life, when my dad still lived with us and my life was—in memory at least—perfect.
“Boys,” I said. “How about I read you a story?” They nodded eagerly. I took a seat on the couch, and they pressed in close.
I read about a little fawn that celebrates a birthday and the animals that bring her presents, savoring the end when they present her with a cake lit entirely by fireflies. When I was little, I had wanted a birthday cake lit by fireflies, wanted to believe such things were possible, that somewhere out of sight—deep in the woods—forest animals gave each other such things. The boys relaxed into me, letting the peaceful cadence of the story take us all to a more settled place.
“That was a nice story, Mom,” Dylan said when I closed the book. Duncan nodded with his finger in his mouth.
For a moment I just sat, not moving, not speaking, the five of us savoring the quiet and each other’s nearness. Then the phone rang, breaking the moment. I rose slowly from the couch to answer it, catching it before it rolled over to voice mail. “Hello?” I said. At first I thought there was no one there. Then I realized that someone was crying on the other end, making gulping noises as she tried to compose herself to speak. “Hello?” I said again.
“Ariel?” came the weak reply, her voice thick with tears.
“Kristy?”
“They did a test.”
“And it was positive?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Uh-huh,” she said, sniffing loudly. “I can’t stop crying. Is that terrible?”
“No, you’re in shock. You need time to adjust to the news,” I said.
“But I don’t have time,” she wailed. “I’m already three months pregnant. They’re only going to be a year apart.” She sniffed again. “I’m a wreck.”
I felt her pain. Duncan was conceived when Dylan was still little, and I remember feeling confused and overwhelmed. “Listen,” I said, glancing at cherubic Kailey in her car seat and thinking how ironic it was that now I would love to get accidentally pregnant so David wouldn’t have anything to say about it. “You don’t have to come get Kailey right now. Why don’t you take some time, collect yourself?”
“Okay … I think I’m going to go to Josh’s office,” she said in a small voice.
“That’s a good idea. You go see Josh. Talk to him. Kailey’s fine here as long as you need. I think the boys would keep her if they could.”
“Well, seeing as how I’m going to have my hands full now, that might not be a bad idea.” She laughed in spite of her tears. “I’m really wishing you hadn’t moved away,” she said, and then said good-bye, still sniffling.
I hung up and looked around at the clutter of my new home. I noticed that the boys had disappeared, then saw a flash of movement outside and spotted them on the trampoline. Just before I could walk outside and warn them about trampoline safety as I always did, I noticed Lucky chewing on something on the ground. As my eyes focused on what it was, I blinked in horror. The dog was chewing on the book we had just read—my treasured childhood book. I ran outside like a maniac, screaming about the book, gesturing at the dog to my oblivious boys. They looked at me and stopped jumping.
“Who took this book outside?” I questioned them, reaching for Lucky’s collar.
Donovan shrugged. Dylan looked away. Duncan popped his finger in his mouth.
“Who?” I asked again, as if I thought they just didn’t hear me. I struggled to snatch the shredded book from the dog’s mouth.
“Nobody,” Duncan said, his words garbled.
“Well, somebody did and look what happened. You boys don’t care about anything. You don’t keep anything nice!” I held the ruined book close to my chest as tears of frustration leaked from my eyes, dog saliva sliming the front of my shirt. Through the open door of the house, I could hear Kailey crying. I turned and stalked into the house, angrily wiping at my tears and leaving my stunned children standing on the trampoline, mouths agape, eyes wide.
I picked up the screaming baby and went to the phone. I needed to tell someone what had happened. I dialed David’s cell-phone number, choking back sobs. Unceremoniously, I dropped the book into the trash can. There was no hope of salvaging it.
As soon as I heard David’s voice, I started crying in earnest. “Ariel?” he asked. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I just miss you. You weren’t here when I woke up and you got home after I fell asleep and I am just so tired of doing this by myself.”
“Ari.” His voice was a mix of understanding and exasperation. “We’ve been over this. I have to work. That was the deal. This job requires a lot more of me.” His tone reminded me of when he lectured the boys. Is that what he thought of me? That I was just one more of his charges, his responsibilities, something to be endured?
“I know,” I said, do
ing a terrible job of masking my whiny temperament. “It’s just that things have been so hard with you gone and me trying to get used to everything and the boxes are never going to get unpacked and now I have Kailey …”
“Kailey?” he asked. He exhaled loudly. “Why would you volunteer to keep an extra kid when you have so much on you already? You need to learn to say no.”
“Well, in all the craziness I sort of forgot I offered, and Kristy just showed up here on our doorstep this morning and … what choice did I have?” I shifted Kailey onto my other hip and looked out the window at the boys. They were happily jumping again, my problems forgotten. “Anyway, Kristy’s pregnant. She’s devastated.”
“What?” David laughed.
“It’s not funny,” I said.
“Well, better them than us,” he said.
My heart clenched as he said it. I forced myself not to say anything in return. “So that’s why I’ve got Kailey. And then the boys took my favorite book from when I was little. Remember that book about the fawn?”
“I guess,” he said. I heard a voice in the background and his muffled reply. “Listen, I do need to go,” he said.
I sighed. “Well then, I guess I’ll let you go.” I seemed to be doing a lot of letting David go lately.
“What happened to the book?” he asked.
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