The Sweetheart Deal

by Polly Dugan

  So instead of visiting the station or connecting with the wives, I tried to take the small steps I was capable of to get out of myself, to get out of my own head. I talked to my parents and Leo’s parents when they called. Garrett talked to his father when he called him. I talked to Garrett about my calls. I told him my mother wanted to come back out and that she’d cried when I told her she could if she wanted to but that we were managing. I told him my father and Glenn wondered when Garrett would be finished with the addition and I’d said I didn’t know. Garrett told me his father had asked him the same question and that he’d told Julian the same thing. I asked him about Boston and his last girlfriend, Celia, and how he’d managed to leave so easily.

  He waved away Celia. “A further waste of my time I was saved from. She wasn’t a bad person, but she was a phony and I can’t stand phonies.” That was all he would say. About leaving his job, he said, “Audrey, what were they going to do? You know how easy I uproot.”

  “Like a weed,” I said, and he laughed.

  “Exactly.”

  That’s what you do to engage other people, you ask them questions instead of talking about yourself, so I focused on the small goal of giving my thoughts and time to someone else, trying to catch up with Garrett like it was just a regular visit, trying to replace my mistake by efforts to resume the role I’d always had with him. I asked him endless questions about the addition—what was next, what I needed to make decisions on. Garrett had put his mark on the place after all his work, and after he and Kevin had finished the roof and moved forward on things Leo hadn’t started, I could start to envision it as a part of the house we could spread out into and live in.

  Since I’d slept with Garrett, I’d avoided Erin and dodged her phones calls and texts as best I could, and she’d given me space the way friends will for a time before they call you on it. We shared our secrets with each other and over time had accumulated details about each other that no one else knew. She didn’t know about Garrett. She knew I was a terrible liar and I knew she knew I was. When I decided I’d start running with her again, I figured we would talk or we wouldn’t. I knew that my being out running at all would be enough for her. So I took one of those small steps and texted her. She came by the next morning and let herself in.

  “Hey,” she said, “you ready?” She looked proud of me.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I just need shoes. Go check the progress.”

  I put on my shoes and walked back to the addition myself.

  “Hi, Garrett,” said Erin. “Wow. It looks great.”

  “Hey,” Garrett said. “Thanks. It’s coming along.”

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  He waved.

  We left the house and started one of our regular routes.

  We were three blocks in and Erin said, “Why is he single, again? It really looks terrific. I want an addition.”

  My neighbor passed us walking her dog and I lifted my hand. What a simple thing to be doing. I envied her.

  “I slept with him,” I said. I stopped running, then so did Erin.

  “What?” she said.

  “I slept with him,” I said. “I slept with Garrett.”

  “What?” she said. “When?”

  “A couple weeks ago,” I said. “It was terrible.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Do you want to sit down?”

  “Can we just walk for a minute?” I said.

  “Okay,” she said. “God, it was terrible?”

  “No, it wasn’t terrible.” I started to laugh and cry at the same time. “I did a terrible thing. It was me. I initiated it.”

  “Oh,” she said. “What happened?”

  I covered my face with my palms.

  “Jesus,” I said. “We were painting, we were repainting our bedroom. My bedroom. All of us, the boys too. And then the boys went to bed and we were drinking wine and then when we finished I kissed him. It was awkward, he was mortified, and we both went to bed. Then I went and got in bed with him.”

  “Oh,” she said again.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I said.

  “What do you want me to say?” she said. “Can you give me a minute? You just told me.”

  “Erin, say what friends say. What is there to think about?” I said. “That it was terrible and that I’m crazy and you can’t believe I did such a thing.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” She dropped her head and looked up at me with just her eyes. “I don’t think that, though.”

  “I feel like I cheated on him,” I said. “Who does such a thing after her husband just died?”

  “You didn’t, Audrey,” she said. “It may feel like it, but you didn’t cheat on Leo.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “What happened after? Did you talk about it? How has it been?”

  “It was awkward the next day,” I said. “And then we just kind of pretended it didn’t happen and went back to the way things were. Well, not really. It’s obvious how hard we’re both trying. It’s not easy like it was before.”

  “Well, no,” she said. “Of course it would have to be different.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said again. We walked for a half a block, quiet.

  “What is there to do?” she said. “Do you mean to get back to the way things were? Or do you mean something else?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It wasn’t terrible. So I feel terrible about that. Are you mad at me?”

  “Audrey, of course not,” she said. “Stop it. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. Why would I be mad?”

  “Because you don’t want to have a friend who’s an idiot,” I raised my voice. “Isn’t that what you’re here for, to let me know when I’m being an idiot?”

  She laughed but it wasn’t a funny laugh. “You don’t even need me here to have this conversation, do you? You’re having it all by yourself.”

  I hadn’t expected to almost be arguing with Erin because she wouldn’t agree with me. I had just dumped it on her, so I knew it wasn’t fair. But after my confession, I’d expected her to reprimand me, quickly, and forgive me just as quickly, and that would be it.

  “We’ve known each other too long, Audrey. If I thought I needed to scold you about something, I wouldn’t need you to coach me through it,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m not piling on. I don’t agree that you’re an idiot, sorry.”

  “Leo hasn’t even been dead for three months,” I said.

  “I know,” said Erin. “And I’m sorry if I’m not saying the right things. I don’t know what the right thing to say is. You know, it’s not like you get to practice this so you know how to do it when it really happens. The very last thing I’m going to do is judge. But I’ll always tell you if I think you’re making a mistake, and I can’t about this. Only you can, and if you think what happened was a mistake, then you know what to do, or what you have to do. Work on getting back to where you were with Garrett. If you don’t think it was a mistake, that’s nobody else’s business.”

  “Let’s start running again,” I said. I couldn’t talk any more about it.

  As we put the blocks behind us, I still felt like I’d betrayed Leo with Garrett, but although sleeping with Garrett had done nothing to penetrate and diminish my grief, it had suspended it while I was in bed with him. We hit the halfway point and turned back, and I thought, Now Garrett is the closest I’ll ever be able to get to my husband.

  I knew where they were, and when I got home I found the box, packed away, that I’d never gotten rid of. I pulled out the base and receiver for the baby monitor I hadn’t used in nine years. I put new batteries in both and tested them. They still worked. I put the base upstairs in the alcove bookshelf behind some books. I put the receiver in the back of the pantry, behind boxes of food, so it would be handy when I needed it.

  Garrett

  The second week in May, Kevin and I finished putting in the electricity and the inspection was
scheduled.

  One night that week, after the boys were in bed, Audrey opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses.

  “Let’s go sit and look at it,” she said.

  We walked outside to the backyard and I headed to one of the chairs on the patio.

  “No,” she said. “Here.” She sat on the edge of one of the planter boxes she’d been tending for weeks and patted the wood next to her.

  I sat down and took a sip.

  “It’s great, Garrett,” she said. “It’s really great. I hope you think so.”

  “It’s coming along,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  I hadn’t taken any time to stop and sit like we were, to have a look at the work from the outside. Kevin and I always dovetailed finishing one thing into starting the next. We hadn’t taken time to reflect, so it was a new thing to take in the progress with Audrey sitting next to me. Piece by piece, day by day, I hadn’t realized how far we’d come.

  “Of course. You’re welcome,” I said.

  We sipped in the dark, and I could feel her looking at me.

  I turned and looked at her and looked away again. “What?” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have something to say and I need to muster some courage.”

  I sat there and waited, for her to say what exactly, I had no idea, but I was pretty sure I knew what it was about.

  “I’m not sorry,” she said. “About what happened between us. I’m not sorry it happened. For me, it wasn’t a mistake.”

  She had put it out there. She had put herself out there. And now she was waiting. Tell her, tell her now. Tell her about the promise, the paper, the pact, the thing, what Leo said. Tell her.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry if I’m out of line. I’m sorry if I seem like I’m not in my right mind. We’ve known each other too long, Garrett.” She paused. “I wouldn’t be sorry if it happened again.”

  Tell her.

  “Me neither,” I said. “I’m not sorry either. And I wouldn’t be sorry if it happened again, just so you know.”

  There it was. One thing was out there. Another thing wasn’t.

  She stood between my knees and kissed me. After the first time, I’d hoped it would happen again—dreading that it wouldn’t—and now it was.

  The boys were asleep, and before we went into the guest room, she went to the pantry, took out a baby monitor, and brought it in the room with us.

  Brian

  My mom seemed happy and I was glad. Not happy happy, not like normal exactly, but something closer to normal than how she had been. She worked in the garden again every day and there were flowers on the dining room table. The days she came to school she talked to other parents and she wasn’t all hysterical laughing or anything like that, but she was different from the weeks before, when the days she did come to school to pick us up, she had driven and just sat in the car and waited for us when school let out. If she didn’t hang out with the parents, Andrew and I couldn’t hang out either. Except for the days when Garrett came and we played ball.

  I thought she should think about being happy again, not like my dad didn’t die or anything, but what good was it doing to go to bed right after dinner like she did right after he died? My dad shouldn’t have died skiing, but he did have a dangerous job, and my mom, well, she was tough. She married someone who could die on the job, not like a miner or someone on the bomb squad, but it wasn’t like my dad had sat at a desk all day.

  So I felt okay doing something about my drawing. Kevin Gallagher had been helping Garrett with the house, finishing what my dad started. I guessed they were doing a good job. I guessed they were doing what they thought they should. My dad couldn’t finish it and we couldn’t live with the room half done at the back of the house like that. I just hoped when it was done it would be the way my dad would have wanted it, but it didn’t matter if it wasn’t. It wasn’t like he was going to show up and complain about what other people did that he couldn’t now that he was gone. He wasn’t like that anyway. He didn’t criticize other people, as much as he liked doing things his own way.

  Since Kevin was around all the time, I could ask him. If the drawing was gone, it was gone, but at least I’d know. One day after my mom, Andrew, and I walked home from school, she drove to the store. Kevin was sitting in the kitchen with Garrett. I sat down at the table with them. A pot of coffee was brewing. Andrew got a bowl of cereal.

  “How was school?” said Garrett.

  “The usual,” I said.

  “Where’s your mom?” he asked.

  “She went to shop for dinner,” I said.

  Andrew sat down with his cereal and it was quiet except for his chewing. Now I didn’t want to say anything about the drawing.

  “You guys want to help us this afternoon?” Kevin said.

  “Yeah,” said Andrew, with a mouthful. “Can we?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Garrett’s running out of steam.” Kevin laughed. “He needs a rest and I can’t do all the heavy lifting.”

  I changed my mind again.

  “Hey, Kevin, I’ve been thinking about something I want to ask you,” I said.

  “Shoot.” He smiled, all easy, like I was going to ask him something different from what I was.

  “Well, there’s something I’m looking for,” I said. “And I was wondering if you could help me find it. It’s going to sound stupid.” I picked at a hangnail on my thumb under the table.

  Garrett got up from the table to pour them coffee, and Kevin leaned forward with his elbows on the table and looked at me, all serious and helpful.

  “If it’s something you want help finding, I’m sure it’s not stupid,” he said.

  “Maybe.” I picked the hangnail harder. “So I drew this picture of my dad a few months ago? Like back in February, you know, before. Anyway I gave it to him and when my mom got all his stuff back, you know, from the station, she didn’t get the picture. So I don’t know what happened to it. I’m afraid it just got thrown away.”

  Garrett came back with the coffee, and Andrew, who’d finished eating, put his bowl in the sink and sat back down.

  “Yeah,” said Andrew. He talked too loud. “Can you find that drawing for Brian? It was a really good one. It really cracked my dad up. Maybe someone else took it because it was so good.”

  I wished he’d stayed quiet, and I glared at him.

  Kevin sat back and crossed his arms. He was wearing a baseball cap and pulled the bill down. “Sure.” Now he was quiet. “You want to go down there? Why don’t we drive to the station right now?” He stood up and patted Garrett’s back, then pulled at the hat’s bill again and pulled up on the waistband of his pants. I waited for him to arrange something else on himself. He pushed up his sleeves. “The professor needs a break from the manual labor.”

  “Yeah.” Garrett laughed. “I can see you’re in a huge hurry to get back to work yourself.”

  Kevin shook his head, slow, at Garrett and when Garrett saw the serious look on Kevin’s face, he stopped laughing.

  We left my mom a note and the four of us got into Kevin’s truck. We hadn’t been to the station since December, before Christmas, when the gas grill was covered up and the basketball hoop looked cold and lonely. We used to visit my dad at the firehouse all the time when we were little, before we were in school, and my mom would take him a vase with flowers for his room, and she said the same thing every time she brought them: Bringing you some garden.

  “I still want to help on the room,” Andrew said. “Can we?”

  “I’m going to hold you to it,” said Kevin. “How about tomorrow?”

  Andrew

  Your dad has a banner.” Kevin pointed at the ceiling when we walked into the bay where the truck and engine were parked.

  The station hung banners from the ceiling for retired firefighters. They had their last names on them—just like the numbers of retired athletes that hung from their home stadiums—a
nd now there was one that said McGeary.

  All the men working approached us like a troop and shook our hands.

  “It’s been a while since the boys have visited,” Kevin said to them. He started walking away from the other firefighters and motioned for me, Garrett, and Brian to follow him. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  I was surprised the first time I’d seen the kitchen, which looked just like any plain one you’d find in any apartment building where someone’s grandmother lived, except it was a lot bigger. It was one half of an open space, and the other half was like a living room, with recliners and a big-screen TV. There was nothing special about either space, just a lot of white walls, and the rooms always felt cold, even in the summer. Nothing like the illustrations I’d seen in books when I was a kid about firefighters and the stations where they worked. Kevin had told us the firehouses in New York were different, in historic buildings, and back there the beds were all in one place like a barracks, not like the bunkroom at Twenty-Five, where each guy had his own room with a door and only shared it with the other two guys who worked on the two other shifts.

  I had no idea why we were going into the kitchen, and I didn’t think Brian or Garrett did either, but since Kevin seemed to have something in mind, we followed him without asking. Two firefighters had gotten coffee and passed us carrying their mugs as we came in. Kevin walked over and stood by one of the long counters that divided the two spaces. He adjusted the hat on his head again. He turned and pointed toward the wall before he crossed his arms and looked down. “No one threw it away, Brian,” he said.