A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

  Until Katherine’s bedroom door creaked open behind her, right when she was sitting on top of the W guy. W grabbed her hips, halting her movement. Her father’s sneer heated her bare back before she turned and saw the expression plastered across his scruffy face.

  “Sorry, man,” W said, as if he’d offended her father by bedding his daughter.

  Her father lit a cigarette and leaned against the doorjamb. “Don’t stop on my account,” he said. “She’s just a whore. Make sure you get your money’s worth. Man.”

  She wasn’t a whore. She hadn’t even let W pay for her drinks.

  Instead of taking it, instead of cowering, she’d retaliated. She’d felt bold, not ashamed, caught in the act of asserting her power. “Don’t listen to him,” Katherine had countered. “He’s just a lazy welfare drunk who wouldn’t be able to pay the rent without my help.”

  She held her father’s gaze for either ten seconds or ten years. Either way, she shook, as though she were trying to withstand the pull of a black hole. The pull of the empty place where her father’s soul should’ve been.

  Her father took a long drag and then blew smoke out of the side of his mouth. “You’re gonna be sorry you said that,” he said without an ounce of venom. And then, soundlessly, he’d closed her bedroom door.

  Katherine should’ve kept her damn mouth shut.

  CHAPTER 6

  Love is a kind of sick obsession.

  Katherine understood this, as if the words had been written on her heart and on her soul, like the spiritual directive on the scroll of a Jewish mezuzah.

  When Barry walked into Lamontagne’s, time stood still for Katherine. The facts of her life—everything that had come to pass before she’d met her ex-husband and everything that had happened since—held no meaning. Same as the first time she’d met him, before they’d even had their first conversation, every cell in her mind and body aligned with Barry’s frequency, and a twitchy, achy sensation climbed her neck.

  But of course, same as always, when Barry walked through the door, only Katherine was standing still. And her life was racing forward, those she loved moving away from her. Celeste had boomeranged back, but for how long? And Zach? Well, his fate had yet to be realized. She and Zach were engaged in a game of chicken, neither of them ready to spill the beans and speak. Eventually, Barry would give up on her and leave, too.

  Barry sipped his coffee and laid a dollar bill on the counter. The scent of rain-stirred downed leaves and earth emanated from Barry’s hair and clothing and greeted Katherine, but he didn’t say hello.

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  “Sorry,” Barry said. “The rain.”

  Katherine nodded. She slipped Barry’s dollar into her apron pocket. Rain meant Barry had taken his rarely used Volkswagen Golf out of the garage and left his street bike hanging from the hooks. No bike meant no exercise before work. And no exercise made him, well, about as grouchy as a normal person before his first shot of caffeine.

  “Made it just the way you like it,” Katherine said, “nice and strong.”

  “Just the way I like coffee is in bed.”

  “Barry . . .” Katherine said, more of a sigh than a word, because she couldn’t stand seeing him like this. His blatant need pulled, physically pulled, as though a hand were tearing at her solar plexus. The worst part? Knowing she’d done this to him. Inside her apron, she fisted Barry’s dollar till its sharp edges stabbed the flesh of her palm.

  “Just the way I like coffee is on a tray in bed between me and my wife.”

  “A lot has happened between us.”

  “The way I like coffee is with my wife in bed and—”

  Celeste popped up behind Katherine. “With a blueberry muffin?”

  “Sure, why not?” Barry said.

  Celeste swiped a bakery tissue.

  “You don’t eat first thing in the morning,” Katherine said, remembering their first night together and the pursuant morning she’d awoken starving. He’d made her a three-egg omelet and then watched her eat every bite.

  “You don’t know everything about me.”

  “Oh, really, now? Since when?”

  Barry took a sip of his coffee, giving Katherine time to wonder what he could possibly have to hide from her. His expression gave away nothing. She didn’t like it, didn’t like the idea that he had a private self, that his thoughts might be as incongruous with his actions as hers.

  Before they’d married, they’d stay up until the small hours of the morning talking about everything from their childhoods to world politics, from her passion for baking to his insatiable curiosity for the human psyche. When the conversations waned, Barry would roll over to pretend to try to catch a few winks before work. Katherine, needing to get up for work herself, would drop a kiss behind his ear and press her breasts between his shoulder blades.

  Barry’s natural inclination was to move fast, to hurry, as if sex were something about which to be ashamed. She’d shown him how to take it slow, to savor every stage of arousal. Katherine knew he’d been with other women since their divorce. She couldn’t expect Barry to be celibate. But the thought of him sharing his mind with another woman? That unraveled a loop of Katherine’s resolve and made her want to press her breasts between his shoulder blades.

  “Your favorite color is aqua,” she said. “You consider yourself a Reform Jew, more as a cultural thing than a religion, and you’re open to the possibility of life after death. You’re a registered Independent because you don’t trust either party. You think Freud was at best a chauvinist, at worst misogynistic. You’re overly fond of Jung.”

  “First date banter.”

  In lieu of dropping her jaw, Katherine jostled her head.

  Barry mimicked Katherine’s head jostle to a T, and his hand reached up to pretend to fix his hair a nanosecond before her hand followed that oft-traveled path.

  “Your Bubbe Sarah lived with you and your parents in her dotage. When you woke up in the middle of the night, she warmed milk in a white enamel pot on the gas stove to help you get back to sleep. You led her to believe you had trouble sleeping, but you’d actually set your alarm for four a.m. so you could spend time alone with her and listen to her stories about growing up in Russia. Bubbe Sarah’s eyes were aqua, like yours, supposedly.” Katherine angled Barry a look. What do you think of that?

  Celeste held up a blueberry muffin. “For here or to go?”

  “For here,” Barry told Celeste. “But I don’t need a plate.”

  And then, for Katherine’s benefit, “I tell everyone about Bubbe Sarah.”

  Celeste handed the muffin to Barry. “Is she the one who made the mundel bread?”

  “The one and only,” Barry told Celeste. But his eyes challenged Katherine.

  Celeste mouthed, Sorry, but then she intentionally raised a shoulder and batted her eyes. Another version of thumbing her nose at Katherine.

  Barry bit into Celeste’s blueberry muffin and inhaled into his chest. “Mmm, this is good,” he said, his voice all muffin muffled. “Better than Katherine’s.”

  Celeste rewarded Barry with a tight-lipped proud smile.

  “That’s why I put them on the menu,” Katherine said, catching Celeste’s eye before Celeste bounced back into the kitchen. Clearly, Barry was trying to sidetrack Katherine’s train of thought. She wasn’t that easy. “You believe in life after death because the morning after Bubbe Sarah died, you woke up at four a.m., like always. And when you went to pour yourself a glass of milk, it had warmed in the container.”

  Barry’s head jostled, and he took another bite of the muffin to cover.

  Katherine offered her own proud smile.

  Barry chewed the muffin, giving himself time, Katherine was sure, to finagle a way to insert doubt into her recollection. “Yeah. Thing was,” Barry said, “when the power goes out, the fridge stops working. Instant warm milk. Woo, woo.” He fluttered a hand in the air to illustrate his sound effect.

  Katherine nodded, as if she a
greed with him. “Did I mention you’re really embarrassed about believing in ghosts? Not quite sure why . . . but I do know why you’re an Independent.”

  “Because you divorced me?” Barry said, a clever comeback that seemed to catch Barry off guard, judging by the way he feigned a sudden fascination with folding the muffin liner.

  “Because your mother’s a Democrat, your father a Republican. And although they’ve enjoyed fifty-five years of wedded bliss—”

  “Fifty-six.”

  Right, she’d mailed a card on the first of the month. “When you were growing up, the only thing they argued about was politics.At the dinner table, they skirted religion and politics. But every night, they sat down to the evening news, channel four, ‘Proud as a Peacock,’ and they argued.”

  Barry frowned at the muffin paper, gave it a final fold, and tossed the tiny square into the trash. “They didn’t really argue.”

  “Not directly. Not with each other. But they each disagreed strongly with journalists on the news who held the precise views of their spouse.”

  “Parallel argument.”

  “So you decided, subconsciously of course, that you couldn’t be a Democrat or a Republican.”

  “Why?”

  “To guarantee you wouldn’t argue with your spouse!” Katherine said, guessing correctly and debunking Barry’s strategy. The thrill of the former did little to offset the regret of the latter.

  “Did you just psychoanalyze me?”

  “I don’t know. Did I?”

  Barry nodded—slow and steady—and grinned as if he’d no idea about the debunking.

  “Teach me how to do that with Celeste,” Katherine said, her voice husky and urgent. Katherine’s bold-faced need warmed her cheeks. She hadn’t realized how much Celeste’s welfare meant to her until the request for assistance hung in the air between her and Barry like a question mark. Would Barry take the hook or leave her swinging?

  “You want the secret handshake?”

  The Suzy Q construction guys burst through the door, and the jingle bell clanged behind them. The sound of rain amplified and then softened. The shorter, stockier of the two men held a folded newspaper over his head, which he now unfolded and gave a resolute shake. His taller buddy stomped his boots on the mat inside the door.

  Barry stepped aside from the counter and gave Katherine a nod and a grin before making a show of strolling alongside the display case.

  “Working in the rain today?” Katherine asked her customers.

  “Hoping it’ll pass. Seems to be letting up.” The shorter man directed his gaze toward the front window, where the rain flowed like a waterfall from the awning.

  “Mr. Optimistic,” the taller man said.

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.” The man frowned at his friend but was too cheerful to appear genuinely annoyed. He slapped his dollar on the countertop before Katherine.

  Katherine handed the dollar back to Mr. Optimistic. “Coffee’s on the house this morning, due to the rain and all.”

  Mr. Optimistic gave Katherine a smile that crinkled the skin around his eyes, making him look to be in his late thirties, maybe even early forties. Younger than her but not too young. “You just made my day,” he said, and his tone lightened.Was it also tinged with special meaning?

  “I’m Katherine,” she said, and offered her hand to Mr. Optimistic.

  “Daniel,” he said, holding her gaze for an extra beat. The color of his eyes was a cross between brown and gold, a match for his short, dark-blond hair.

  Barry finished browsing her pastries and came back to the counter, dragging his hand across the display case and glaring at Katherine’s and Daniel’s clasped hands. Beneath Barry’s fingertips, the glass squealed.

  Katherine let go of Daniel’s hand first.

  “Jeff,” the other man said, and gave Katherine’s hand a cursory squeeze.

  Daniel and Jeff chose the table closest to the bakery case. Daniel chose the chair that faced Katherine.

  Barry leaned across the checkout counter. He didn’t look like his usual laid-back self. He inhaled deeply to catch his breath, as though he’d just lifted weights or was preparing to do so.

  She was the weight beneath which he was straining.

  “Barry—” She wanted to apologize, but for what? For hurting him? For divorcing him so she wouldn’t hurt him? For continuing to hurt him?

  She should tell him to stop coming into the bakery. She should, but she wouldn’t. She wasn’t that strong.

  Barry kept his voice low. “You want the secret handshake? You want to know how to figure out Celeste? You want her to tell you why she came back?”

  “You know I do,” Katherine whispered, and a shiver ran up the back of her head.

  “Just be there for her. Ask open-ended but specific questions. Like, uh, what classes at school were her favorites and why? Ask her to name the friends she made. What did she like about those friends? What didn’t she like?”

  “Right. Okay.”

  “When she answers your questions, if she answers your questions, you ask more. Help her to delve deeper beneath the surface of events. She doesn’t want to talk about why she came back?” Barry said, and Katherine nodded. “Don’t ask her again, not unless she’s getting really close to telling you.”

  A lock of Katherine’s hair swung across her vision, and she peered around it.

  The pace of Barry’s speech slowed, as though each word had genuine heft. “There’s always a why beneath the why, even if you don’t find out what’s troubling her, even if she doesn’t know.”

  Even if she doesn’t know.

  “How long—how long should this deep inquiry take?”

  Barry chuckled. “It might take forever. It might take longer than the two of you have together. It’s like that saying about leading a horse to water. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, despite being an overeducated, politically Independent, Bubbe Sarah–loving shrink, you still can’t get your best patient to come clean.”

  And sometimes, despite your best efforts, your wife wouldn’t give you a good enough reason why she wanted a divorce. You could lead a horse to water . . . Yup, Katherine was the horse.

  “You try everything,” Barry said, “even reread your textbook on Jung therapy, but then at some point she goes quiet. She gets that look of wanting to say something, but knowing that she shouldn’t. Then she really and truly decides not to say anything. And then, finally, she just looks sad.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “Oh, then she initiates sex, to either avoid the subject or numb out. So, you know, it’s not all bad.”

  “Just to be clear. We’re talking about me, about us, now, right? Please tell me we’re talking about us, not Celeste.”

  “Absolutely.” Barry’s gaze widened, and he raised his voice. “Who’d want to talk about Celeste?”

  “Just to be clear,” Celeste said. “Behind you.” She passed by Katherine, guiding the bread-laden speed cart and Zach. The speed cart rattled and rolled out to the café, trailing bread scent. The humidity captured every sweet, savory nuance.

  “You didn’t hire the fifteen-year-old kid,” Barry said.

  “I was never going to hire the kid.”

  Katherine’s help-wanted notice in the Hidden Harbor Gazette had brought out a few women looking for nine-to-five jobs, a gentleman asking whether he could greet customers at the door, and a boy with dirty hands, who—even if he washed his hands—wasn’t available during school hours. During a moment of weakness, after the kid had brought Katherine homemade croissants and when the look on his face had reminded her of Celeste, she’d considered hiring him for cleanup duties. But then she’d told him she needed more hours, and he’d stomped out the door, really reminding her of Celeste.

  Barry stared after Zach, and his eyes narrowed. “Do we know him?” Barry asked, using the plural pronoun Katherine thought they’d abandoned.

  “No, not really. He’s new in town,” Katherine said, bu
t Barry’s face remained turned toward Zach, his expression intent.

  Celeste passed loaves of sourdough from the trays to Zach, and Zach arranged them on the shelves.The two of them were orchestrated as though they’d been working together for years. Their voices thrummed the air, like background music, too low to hear the words. Then Celeste laughed, and the notes tumbled Katherine’s gut. Glad, because Zach was making Celeste happy, but worried, too. If food was the way to a woman’s heart, humor was the fastest route to steer her into bed.

  Nurse Terry flew into the bakery with a roar of rain and wind. She pushed the door shut behind her, lowering the storm’s volume, and slid the hood of her rain jacket from her head. Katherine readied the nurse’s daily order—a plain croissant and a carton of OJ from the mini-fridge behind the counter. Katherine gave the OJ a shake before dropping it into the bakery bag. Fast-food drive-by restaurants had nothing on Lamontagne’s.

  Terry laid her money on the counter, hugged her order to her chest, and looked Katherine in the eye. “You take such good care of me,” Terry said.

  “Morning to you, too, Terry,” Katherine said. “Stay dry out there!”

  Barry thrust his chin toward Zach and Celeste. “So, the young guy, your new hire, what’s his bakery experience?”

  Katherine quelled the urge to roll her eyes. “I don’t need someone with bakery experience. I need someone who’ll work hard, someone who’s ready and willing to learn. Someone who can get here before six.”

  Barry positioned his hands as if he were holding a clipboard. Then he drew a checkmark in the air. “No bakery experience,” he told the clipboard. And then, to Katherine, “Patient avoiding the question.” He drew a second checkmark.

  “Don’t shrink me.”

  A third. “And prickly.”

  She’d give him prickly.

  Katherine’s pulse sped up, responding to her directive. She took a shallow breath and inhaled the mellowness of freshly baked bread, but the aroma didn’t reach her mood. She stared Barry down and inhaled from her toes. Breathing in his rain-scented clothing made her want to bury her nose in his neck and inhale his skin.