A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

  Hand dangling between his knees, legs jiggling, he waited for a break in the conversation, for his mother to draw a breath so he could ask about a soccer camp. He had the paperwork folded in the back pocket of his jeans, the one-hundred-dollar fee circled in pen and pressing through the denim like a stone. More money than he’d saved from his allowance, so he planned on offering to do chores. Not only the chores he was supposed to do and usually forgot but—

  “Zach, are you even listening?” his father said. “Did you hear what your mother said?”

  “Uh, you guys wanted to start a family?” Zach asked.

  An hour later, he’d run away.

  Now Celeste waved her two fingers in front of Zach’s face. “Anybody home? How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Peace, man,” he said, but he couldn’t connect to the words. He was really going to miss Celeste, but what could a guy do? He didn’t stay where he wasn’t wanted, and Katherine didn’t want him. Or, at the least, she didn’t think he was good enough for Celeste. Not good enough for Katherine decades ago meant not good enough for Celeste today. Because this wasn’t a good time for Celeste to start a relationship. A twist on the classic excuse “it’s not you, it’s me.”

  He got it.

  Katherine needn’t have gone into the elaborate explanation of her effed-up family, her drunk daddy, and how she’d been on her own since she was way younger than Zach. Obviously, she’d proven her ability to kick the shit out of her past and carve out a decent life.

  Unlike Zach, Katherine’s biological son.

  Color-blind women gave birth to color-blind sons 100 percent of the time. Genetics never lied. And yet Katherine still refused to admit their X-chromosome connection.

  “Peace, man, to you too?” Celeste said, making the statement sound like a question. “Help me take down the easy-up?”

  “Yeah, sure, of course.” Zach met Celeste’s gaze. Her eyes were prettier than he’d realized. How had he missed that? Was he that shallow? That focused on her body?

  Zach dashed to the canopy leg across from Celeste and bent to unlatch the stake. He’d really wanted to get to know Celeste better. To find out what she liked to do in her spare time. To hang out with her in her spare time. He wanted to hear about her family. All two dozen brothers. He wanted to ask her about her friend Abby who’d stopped by with the cool little kid. Zach really liked kids.

  Crazy, but he wondered what Celeste looked like first thing in the morning and when she was falling asleep at night. Did she wrap a fuzzy yellow blanket around her or did she tuck it between her knees? Some of each? And what did she do with all that hair?

  Yeah, he was shallow.

  Katherine came across the green, having deposited the last of the leftover pastries in her Outback for conveying back to Lamontagne’s. She brushed off her hands, clapping them, one against the other. Her apron she must’ve left in her car, too. But she wasn’t dirty. She’d slung pie and ice cream, wiped every ounce of blue frosting from the kids’ tablecloth without getting as much as a smudge on her clothing. Zach’s apron was frosting splattered, like those tie-dyes he liked to make in summer camp. Dust and dirt from the maze caked the toes of his sneakers. But Katherine remained fresh and clean, untouched, as though some kind of force field surrounded her. Made him want to pick up a pumpkin pie and shove it in her face, following the legacy of the Three Stooges and banana cream pies.

  Until Zach turned ten and got a hold of the TV Guide, he’d actually thought the New Year’s Day Three Stooges marathon was in honor of his birthday. At eleven, he’d still believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and a St. Patrick’s Day leprechaun that hopped across your kitchen counters, leaving behind olive-green footprints and gold coins.

  Give the kid a star for his ability to suspend disbelief.

  Zach bent to a second post, let out a grunt, and gave the stake a mighty yank. The anchor let go, knocking him on his ass and taking a plug of grass and soil with it. A really big plug.

  Katherine squatted down beside Zach, like one of those golfers you see on TV. Cool and collected, looking for the straightest line to putt the ball into the hole. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  He considered telling her no, everything was not all right. In fact, everything pretty much sucked. He was a big, fat idiot for coming to Hidden Harbor and thinking she’d be glad to see him. And she was an even bigger, fatter idiot for not welcoming him. He considered admitting that, yeah, he knew he was a little immature, but what the hell? She owed him an explanation for why she gave him up—something only she could tell him—and why Carol and Everett Fitzgerald had waited so long to let him in on the joke, something Katherine would have no way of knowing.

  But there was no way he was going to tell her how he felt. What was the point? What was the effing point?

  Freshman year in high school, a drama coach had taught Zach how to substitute somebody from his life for a so-called fellow actor. So he looked Katherine in her brown eyes and replaced them with Celeste’s goldish showstoppers.

  “Beautiful,” Zach told Katherine.

  Katherine tilted her face and squinted at him sideways. Again, a golfer looking for her straight-line shot. “Good.” She stood and brushed nonexistent dirt from her jeans.

  He’d finish the booth takedown and meet Katherine and Celeste back at Lamontagne’s. He’d carry in the table and chairs and leave Celeste’s loaner blanket in the stockroom. Then he’d fire up Matilda, rock and roll, and hit the road hard.

  Zach picked up the grass plug and replanted it back in its hole. A bare indentation rimmed the repair. He scooped displaced soil and pressed it down beneath his hands. Moist crumbs of soil clung to his fingertips. Within a day or two, grass would grow and fill the circle. To anyone who didn’t know about Zach’s little fit and repair, the lawn would appear seamless.

  If you asked Zach to recite the capitals of all the U.S. states in alphabetical order, he could get as far as Raleigh, North Carolina, before doubting his memory. He remembered all the countries in Europe, but the spelling always messed him up. He’d stare at Azerbaijan and the word would start to look weird, causing him to transpose the i and the j and then switch them back again. But the moment when his parents told him he was adopted? When his father had made him pay attention and his mother had said the actual word? He remembered every detail, as if it had just happened. As if, in fact, it was happening now.

  He remembered the way his dad’s lips were chapped, the bottom lip dryer than the top. He remembered how the light from the reading lamp reflected off his mother’s bad perm, making her hair look gray instead of blond, and the way she did that sour lemon thing with her mouth. He’d never forget the way one word, adopted, stripped away his entire identity.

  The bell above Lamontagne’s jingled. In front of Zach, Katherine carried a box of extra pies into her shop, and the lowering sun reflected off her dark hair. The air went from late day autumn chill and smelling like a campfire to the rich aroma of pastries, and the temperature rose at least fifteen degrees. Zach carried the foldaway table sideways, the edge jammed beneath his armpit. Celeste slammed Katherine’s car door.When he glanced back at her, she gave him the same encouraging thumbs-up he’d offered her friend’s kid and took up the rear. Zach hoped years from now he’d remember this, too.

  Katherine flipped on the overheads and dropped the pies.

  Broken sugar dispensers and spilled sugar piled beside the door, as if someone had stood in one place and systematically emptied and smashed every last dispenser. Half a dozen lids stood in a row on the nearest four-top. The tidiness alongside the mess made Zach think, strangely, of an apology. Of the way he’d, years ago, made his bed, hospital corners and all, before running away.

  Celeste came up behind Zach, a paper bag in her arms. “What’s with the slow-up?” she said.

  Zach propped the foldaway table against the building. “Stay outside,” he said, pretty much an invitation for Celeste to leave the paper bag on the sidewalk and plo
w right past him.

  “Not again!” Celeste said.

  “Again?” Zach asked. “This has happened before?”

  Katherine glared at the mess. Zach bet if there had been an intact sugar dispenser, Katherine would’ve smashed it on the floor with the rest. “No,” she said, but she wasn’t responding to his question, she was yelling at the mess. “No, no, no.”

  “Get out of here,” Zach said. “Go see if another shop is open and call the police.” His voice sounded tight, his mouth filled with cotton. Whoever had broken in was most likely long gone, a Harvest Festival reveler gone bad. No big deal, right? But Katherine’s anger seemed to vibrate the air around her, electric, different from her usual cool force field.And Zach could feel it—the energy of her anger, as if she’d transmitted her anger directly to him and he was absorbing the shock.

  “The police? Really? That’s your solution? That’s what I did last time.” Katherine opened her hands and mimed pushing motions toward the mess.Then she met his gaze and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Zach. I know you mean well. But this is my bakery. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Zach thought of the regulars who came into Lamontagne’s—every last one of them as devoted to Katherine as to her pastries. That devotion flowed both ways. The shop was more than a job to Katherine. This was her home. And she was defending it.

  “Damn straight,” Celeste said, agreeing with Katherine. And then she looked as though she wanted to spit on the floor. “Douche bag,” Celeste said.

  Under normal circumstances, Zach bet Katherine would’ve had a few non–cuss words to say about Celeste’s word choice. Instead, she gave Celeste a nod, flexed her fingers, as though she were readying for a boxing match, and headed across the shop.

  “Hey, wait!” Zach grabbed Katherine’s arm. “I’ll check out the kitchen.” Most likely the vandal had gone, but what if he hadn’t? “Don’t go in.”

  “She’s not going to listen to you,” Celeste said, hustling to keep up with Katherine and Zach. Zach’s criminal justice classes had taught him that for every shop owner who’d caught a burglar in the act, fought back, and ended up on the front page of the Boston Globe kneeling on the perp’s neck, there were two tales of average Joes or Josephines that had ended badly.

  Those articles ended up in the obits.

  A thud sounded through the closed stockroom door. Zach yanked the door open.

  A skinny boy, wearing a black hoodie and jeans with the orange tip of a Marlboro box peeking from his back pocket, clung to the wall of shelves. His hand reached for the top-shelf flour-filled mason jars. Another jar lay on the floor beneath him, unbroken, beside the rolling ladder.

  “Hey!” Zach yelled. “Get the hell down from there!”

  The boy looked Zach in the eye. Surprise and numbness passed over his face, and the kid settled on a smirk. “Make me,” he said, and knocked another mason jar to the floor.

  Zach took the offer as a dare and went for it.

  From behind him, Celeste yelled, “Zach!”—which made sense. And Katherine called out something that sounded like, Bake!

  Zach launched himself at the boy.

  The overhead bulb reflected off the whites of the boy’s eyes. The boy cringed, and a tiny bead of blood welled at the center of his bottom lip.

  Zach landed on a shelf, grabbed the boy by the hood, and lost his balance. They fell backward. The weight of the kid on top of Zach, the two of them flying through the air, Katherine and Celeste both calling Zach’s name. Zach’s lower back smacked the top of the ladder with a whomp. The boy bounced from his arms.

  The voice in Zach’s head told him not to use his hand to break the fall. And then he heard a snap.

  “Don’t move!” Katherine said, assessing the situation. Or trying to assess the situation, as it were. Zach and Blake lay on the floor of her stockroom with their bodies twisted in unnatural angles reminiscent of the white chalk outlines of cop shows. If they’d injured their spines, moving would make a bad situation worse.

  The sound of Zach hitting the ladder thrummed through her brain like an aftershock.

  Blake sat up, his face pale. “I didn’t mean to!”

  Mean to what? Break into her bakery today? Weeks ago? Cause injury to her son?

  Her son.

  Zach lay on his side, facing away from her. His legs bent, as if he were running away in his sleep.

  “Are you all right? Are you all right? Are you okay?” Celeste headed for Zach, a shaking hand outstretched to him.

  Katherine pointed at Blake. “Blake! You stay right there,” she said, and she went to Zach’s side.

  “You know him?” Celeste asked.

  “Blake and I are acquainted.”

  A sound came from Zach, a muffled chuckle. “Blake. That makes more sense.”

  “Really?” Katherine asked. “This makes sense? Perhaps you can enlighten me, then.” A mirror chuckle threaded through her voice, but her mouth trembled, downturned. Her legs moved beneath her, gel filled and unfamiliar.

  “Ah, shit,” Zach said.

  “What was that?” Katherine asked, and she exchanged a hopeful grin with Celeste. How badly could Zach be hurt if he was cursing?

  Zach pushed himself to sitting with his left hand. He cradled his right hand and groaned, answering Katherine’s unspoken question.

  From the looks of him, his back had survived the fall, free of injury. He sat tall. He wagged his head from side to side, as though testing out its movement. He sucked a breath in through his teeth. From the looks of him, his wrist hadn’t fared as well. Zach’s hand bent back at an unhealthy angle, deformed and broken looking.

  The backs of Katherine’s knees ached.

  Celeste placed a hand on Zach’s shoulder, her face a study in sympathy. “You okay, Zach?”

  Zach smiled up at Celeste. “I’m excellent.”

  “I hate to tell you, Zach,” Celeste said. “But I think you broke your wrist.”

  “I hate to tell you, Celeste, but it’s definitely broken. I heard the snap.” Zach released his injured right wrist, notched his left wrist upward, and clicked his tongue. “Been here before. You never forget the sound of a breaking bone. Nineteen eighty-nine, soccer camp, central defender, left wrist.”

  “Nineteen ninety,” Celeste said. “High school soccer tryouts, goalie, right leg.”

  Nineteen seventy-two, Lamontagne homestead, Katherine’s relationship with her mother. Nineteen seventy-six, Brunswick Hospital, Katherine’s bond with her newborn son. Both incidents had left Katherine broken.

  But a broken daughter was still someone’s daughter, a broken mother still ready and willing to nurture.

  “Blake, hand me an ice pack from the chest freezer behind you,” Katherine said.

  The freezer emitted a frosty breath. Blake held up a six-inch bendable blue pack. “This one okay?” he asked, his voice full of yearning, his eyes glossy with unshed tears.

  “You little shit,” Celeste said to Blake, and he blinked a tear.

  “Celeste, baby,” Katherine said, “hand me a tea cloth. One of the longer ones.”

  Celeste met her gaze. Her mouth fell open, but no words released.

  “Now, let’s see. It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” Katherine said. It had been a while since Katherine had reviewed the first aid instructions. She’d read and reread the American Red Cross manual, twice, with interest, and decades ago. She kept the thick manual under the sink in the employee washroom, a marker to show her when her stock of paper towels was running low.

  “You’re going to have to let go of your hand for a moment,” Katherine told Zach. “Just a moment,” she said. The word baby she thought but did not say.

  “No problem, boss.” Zach raised his left hand in the air, as though taking an oath.

  Celeste kept her hand on Zach’s shoulder.

  Katherine wrapped the cloth over Zach’s left shoulder, her mind wandering to the Brunswick Hospital maternity ward and the softness of the blanket she’d
used to swaddle her son. She’d insisted on one nursing and one swaddling, as if those two acts added up to a lifetime of full stomachs and security.

  When Katherine slipped the cloth beneath Zach’s right arm, he coughed.

  “Sorry,” Katherine said.

  “I’m good,” Zach said. “Tickle in my throat.”

  Katherine brought Zach’s arm to a ninety-degree angle across his chest, and he grimaced. “Hang in there.” She handed the other end of the cloth over Zach’s right shoulder and into Celeste’s hands. Then Katherine slipped the ice pack into the well. “All right, let’s snug you up,” she said, but Celeste was one step ahead, tying the ends of the dishcloth, her face as serious as when she measured and weighed ingredients. Focused on making everything perfect.

  As if such a state existed.

  Zach coughed a second time, and Katherine patted his left shoulder. “Can you stand?”

  “E-yeah. I didn’t break my leg.”

  Katherine stood, then Celeste, then Zach, a wave unbroken.

  “Good as new,” Zach said.

  “You will be,” Katherine said, “after a little trip to Brunswick Hospital.”

  “What about me?” Blake asked.

  Katherine stared at the boy. “Are you hurt?”

  “Uh, not really.”

  “Good,” Katherine said. “Celeste, can you drive Zach to the hospital?”

  “Of course.” Celeste gave her head a quick shake. “What about you?”

  “I’ll meet you there. Luckily, Zach’s injury isn’t that serious. Meaning, you’re going to have a bit of a wait in the emergency room. Plenty of time for me to take care of the Blake situation.”

  Blake’s gaze slid from Katherine’s face to Zach’s arm and back to Katherine. “Are you going to call the police?”

  For the first time in decades, Katherine had the urge to roll her eyes to the ceiling. “No, Blake, I’m not going to call the police. But you might wish I had when I’m done with you. First you’re going to clean up this mess to my specifications. Then I’m going to figure out how you’re going to pay me back for all the pain and suffering.”