My face started to flush, and the room quickly became much smaller as my pulse quickened. I downed my beer and glanced over my shoulder at Julia. She and her friends stood, gathering their things. I settled back in my stool and trained my eyes on the baseball game on the television above the bar.
“Here. From the table in the back.” The bartender placed a shot of something clear in front of me. I followed his pointed finger toward Eddie’s crew members. They raised similar shot glasses in the air. Typically, I would have said no, but before I could stop myself, I grabbed it, lifted it in the air, and drank.
The liquid burned my throat, and I took another sip of my beer to extinguish the flames. The room began to take on a light, fuzzy appearance, and I felt my face flush from the alcohol. I quickly became overheated, and stood to go outside, my legs slightly wobbling.
The cool spring air washed over my face outside, and I took a deep breath. My lungs immediately filled with the cigar smoke of a middle-aged man standing in the parking lot. I started to cough, bending over and sputtering. As I did so, the cough turned violent and I nearly threw up all over the gravel.
I heard someone say, “Isn’t that Matt’s ex-wife?” My head whirled, and I saw Julia and her two friends staring at me as they stood next to their cars in the parking lot.
Shit.
“Hi there,” I said. I took a step backward, and my foot went into a small divot in the parking lot and I wobbled.
“Alex, are you all right?” Julia called, her tiny, pointed nose wrinkling. “Do you need a ride home?” She smiled, but I could see behind her eyes that she couldn’t wait to tell Matt that she’d seen his ex-wife nearly throwing up outside a bar. I doubted she would be voting for me as Mother of the Year anytime soon.
“No, thanks,” I called to Julia as brightly as possible.
She nodded and waved before she got into her car and pulled out of the lot. I ignored the judgmental looks of her friends as they paused for a moment before doing the same.
I didn’t want to be the pathetic ex-wife, drinking at a bar by herself. I didn’t want to be rattled by Jack Sullivan and his doomsday predictions. I didn’t want to be alone, at home, listening to my clock tick and missing my daughter. And I certainly didn’t want to be on the receiving end of pity from Julia and her perky friends.
I took a deep breath and texted Traci: A date sounds good. Looking forward to meeting him.
CHAPTER 12
I woke the next morning with a terrible headache. As I sat up in bed, I put my head in my hands and took a long, ragged breath as I fought the urge to text Traci again and tell her the whole thing was a joke.
Without stopping to shower, I got into my car and drove straight to the Maple house. The house would distract me from the fact that I still seemed to care what Matt thought of me.
Frank, the electrician, was already waiting for me in the driveway in his beat-up white Astro van. The look on his face when he got out of the car told me he wasn’t exactly looking forward to working on the house.
“Ready to get started?” I didn’t stop as I headed toward the house. I heard him sigh wearily and then follow me up the cracked concrete porch steps.
I turned and faced him in the foyer. “Now, I’m sure you can guess what I’m going to say: Never drill or cut into anything without asking twice. Three times, to be safe.”
“Got it.” He took a step toward me. “I’m going to get started in the basement and—”
I held up a hand. “We. We are going to get started, but first we’re going to do a walk-through and discuss the rewiring plan. Again.”
He sighed, but followed me through the house. I explained that we had to wire the first floor from below, through the basement, and the second floor from above, through the attic, to minimize damage to the walls. I reminded him that no one was to hammer holes in the walls, that a hole saw could be used if necessary, but that was it. I pointed out all of the decorative moldings on the first floor and reminded him to be careful around all of the plaster corners and archways. We ended back in the basement, in front of the old fuse box.
I put my hands on my hips and stared at it. “How many amps would you say this carries?”
He squinted and leaned forward. “Probably sixty or so. Barely enough to run all the appliances in the kitchen. Most houses need about two hundred amps these days.”
“Well, back in the day, no one had hair dryers, flatirons, and wine fridges, et cetera.” I gave the fuse box a pat. “Time for the old girl to enter this century.”
“Yo, Alex, come on up to the kitchen when you get a chance,” Eddie called from upstairs.
“Have fun,” I said to Frank, who grunted in reply.
In the kitchen, Eddie stood on the perimeter, pointing to a section of the flooring that he had begun to pry up. I knelt down, and saw all of the layers of flooring underneath the existing cracked ceramic tile. The ceramic tile was glued to an underlayment of plywood, which in turn was installed over two more layers of linoleum, each glued directly onto one another. Thankfully, an underlayment was between the linoleum and the original wood floor.
“Wow, so that’s what’s under there.” I reached a finger forward to stroke the beautiful wood floor exposed through the layers of hideous linoleum and tile.
“Nope. Stay back. I’m pretty sure that some of that linoleum was glued down with asbestos adhesive,” Eddie said.
I dropped my head forward and slowly stood up, my hands on my thighs. “Of course it was. Of course. So now we . . .”
“You know the drill. Protective gear, wet down the floor, take it up, dispose of it properly.” He shook his head as he stared down at the exposed corner of hardwood. “Man, does everything in this house have to be toxic?”
“Watch it,” I said. “I already have a pounding headache.”
He eyed me critically. “You look terrible. Late night last night?”
“I ran into Jack Sullivan, who was as charming as ever,” I said. I thought of his doom-and-gloom predictions about Waterview Developers and a wave of nausea washed over my flushed face. “Listen, I’m going to work outside. I need some fresh air.”
I stood in front of the house, hands on hips, shielding my eyes from the sun, as I contemplated where to start. Some of Eddie’s crew members were working on the window sashes, adding an epoxy to the cracked and missing wood around the frames, and brushing on a liquid to strengthen any weak or rotting spots.
The dilapidated wooden fence bordering the property caught my eye. It had passed its expiration date long ago, and it was now precariously braced with a few two-by-fours until we built a new one. But one strong wind and the whole thing would fall over.
I spotted a pair of work gloves sitting on the front steps, slipped them on, and marched toward the fence. Already sweating out the liquor from the night before, I pulled at the two-by-four and the fence moved to closer to the ground, at a forty-five-degree angle. I gave it a good push, ready for the satisfying crack when it would fall to the ground. But . . . nothing. It swayed, but remained in place. I pushed it again, but it did the same thing.
Gathering up all my strength, I threw my weight into it, grunting and pushing, until I couldn’t keep myself upright, and the fence collapsed with me on top of it, lying on it like it was a surfboard.
My already aching body didn’t appreciate the extra trauma, and I lay on the splintery wood panel, trying to decide what throbbed the most.
“Are you hurt?” a voice said in the distance.
I raised a finger in acknowledgment as I slowly lifted my head off the wood. Elsie stood at the property line, dressed in a pair of knit pants and a turtleneck despite the weather, and she eyed me with concern.
“Did you mean to do that?” she said.
I shook my head as I slowly got up off the ground, inch by inch, groaning muscle by creaking bone. Once upright, my head started to spin, and I took a quick step backward along with a deep breath.
“You don’t look so good. You’re wh
ite as a ghost. Come, sit. Have some water,” she said.
My hands shaking, I agreed, and sat on her front steps as she poured me a drink from a frosted pitcher. I took a long gulp and felt my pulse return and my sense of equilibrium coming back.
“Are you sick?” she said.
“Not exactly.” Sick to my stomach from the drinks and what I had done last night, yes. The embarrassment of seeing Julia and my conversation with Jack began to wash over me, and I closed my eyes, trying to push it out of my head.
“How’s the house coming?” she said. “All day long there’s people coming and going, and they all seem to be afraid of you.”
“Oh, they’re not afraid of me. If they were, they wouldn’t complain half as much as they do,” I said.
“Well, they all seem to run around, scurrying like mice when you pull into the driveway each day,” she said.
“Good. We have a lot of work to do. Plumbing is happening, electrical is in the process of being done,” I said as I pressed the cold glass to my cheek. “Then it will be bathrooms, the kitchen, flooring . . . landscaping.” I glanced at my flattened fence. “Who knows what else we’ll find.”
I remembered the initials.
“Actually, we found something in the backyard, carved on one of the maple trees.” I pulled out my phone and swiped to a picture of the carvings. I held it out. “I’m assuming D.M. is for David Moore, and the E.S. is . . .”
Her eyes grew wide as she slowly took the phone from my hand. She held it close to her face, studying the picture. “Yes. It’s me. My maiden name was Slattery.” She shook her head slightly in disbelief before she exhaled.
“I thought so,” I said gently. I took another sip of my water.
Her eyes were watering, but her mouth twisted in a small smile as she handed my phone back to me. “You know, he was so handsome and charming, he was such a catch. He could have had any girlfriend he wanted in town, but . . .” She looked down at her hands. “I was two years younger, and never thought he would look at me as anything more than a kid, like a little sister. As we grew older, I became more bashful around him. It wasn’t easy to watch my playmate from childhood grow into this man while I remained awkward and quiet with my nose buried in books.”
She glanced at the backyard, studying the tree where they had carved their initials. “We kissed for the first time at the Christmas party, when I was sixteen and he was eighteen. A group of us had snuck outside, behind the old arbor, with a bottle of Scotch. Everyone else had gone inside from the cold, but David and I remained. I remember my cheeks were flushed from the weather, and I started to shiver, and he put an arm around me and drew me near to warm me up.”
I smiled and nodded, the sounds of the Maple house growing further away as I pictured Elsie and David in the backyard, huddled against the arbor, with sparkling snow lightly falling around them.
“I lifted my head and his face found mine, and we kissed.” She blushed slightly as she adjusted her glasses. “I was already warm on the inside from the Scotch, but it was nothing compared to how I felt then. It was like . . .” She trailed off, her eyes searching the porch for the right description.
“Summer,” I said. I adjusted myself quickly, crossing my legs. “Like the first days of summer, when you almost can’t believe it’s here, and don’t want to think about it too much, or enjoy it, because you’re afraid it’ll be taken away.”
Before I could stop myself, the memory of the first time Matt kissed me flashed before my eyes. It was Labor Day, and he was home from college. A group of us were out on a boat at sunset, going for a late cruise, and since the weather was starting to grow colder, I threw a hoodie over my short sleeves to warm up. Matt and I were at the bow of the boat, legs stretched out, while everyone else was on the back, sitting around the cooler.
I can’t remember what we talked about, but it was something that made me laugh. I remembered the feelings rather than the details. He teased me about being younger, and I leaned forward to slap his leg. His hand lightly caught my wrist, in a way that made both of us stop. There was a pause, and the lake air crackled around us, and before I could stop myself, I leaned forward and kissed him.
In that moment, I could feel everything change. Everything grew quieter and louder at the same time. The cheers of our friends on the boat muted in the distance, but the lake water lapping against the boat became louder. It was just one kiss, and when we pulled apart, my face flushed as our friends clapped.
“Sorry,” I remember saying. I could barely look over at him, but when I did, one corner of his mouth was twisted up in a smile.
He leaned forward and put a hand next to me on the white leather seat. I held my breath as he put his cheek next to mine and whispered, “Don’t be.”
It was all so surreal that I almost didn’t believe it had happened when I woke up the next morning. I didn’t want to think about it too much, or else I might wake up and realize it was all some ridiculously good dream, that I’d had a small sample of such an amazing thing, but that it wasn’t real.
Years later, it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a dream, the memory a ghost itself, trapped between reality and fantasy, reliving a day over and over again because it refused to be exorcised.
Elsie shifted in her yellow wicker porch chair, and it brought me out of the past. “So what happened then?” I said quickly as I brushed my hair from my sweaty forehead.
She frowned and sighed heavily. “By the summer, he was gone. He bought the car that you saw in the picture. Oh, his parents hated that car. They wanted him to get something more practical, but he had his heart set on a convertible.” She shook her head. “And one morning in August, he and I got into a terrible fight, and he drove off.” She pressed her lips together, unable to continue.
“I’m so sorry,” I said after a moment. “That must have been so difficult.”
“Thank you.” She nodded. “It was all so long ago, and I haven’t thought about any of it in years.” She smiled. “I suppose you fixing up that house stirred up a lot of old porch dust.”
“Yes, it has.” I didn’t tell her that it had begun to stir up dust in not just her life, but mine, as well.
The heartbreak that I had been able to compartmentalize for over four years was seeping back into my life like blood through a gauze pad, bringing back everything I had tried to bury.
* * *
Later that night, after Abby came home from Matt’s house and I had tucked her into bed, I turned on my computer. I checked my e-mail and a few house renovation Web sites before I typed the name Gavin Magnesen into Google. We were meeting for dinner the following weekend, but I hadn’t yet built up the nerve to search his name.
I clicked on the first result, the high school’s Web site. His classroom page popped up, complete with a picture of him. When I saw his photo, I sat back quickly. He looked younger than I expected. Late twenties, I guessed. He had short dark hair and an adorable five o’clock shadow on his cheeks and chin. He looked like he could be a professional soccer player, not a high school history teacher.
I glanced in the mirror at my disheveled appearance, but quickly looked away. I was potentially out of my league with Gavin and would need to step up my game. Flat-iron my hair, wear a dress, paint my nails. All things that never happened anymore.
I stood up and went to my closet, looking for appropriate date attire, when my phone buzzed. I reached across my desk and checked the number on the display, but I didn’t recognize it.
“Alex Proctor? It’s Elsie Burke again.” Elsie’s voice was small, barely above a gravelly whisper. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Did something happen at the house?” I said automatically. I began to walk to my desk and search for my car keys.
“No, nothing like that. The house is just as you left it: torn apart.” She thinly laughed.
“Good. So what can I help you with?” There was a long pause, and the phone crackled. “Hello?” I said.
“I’m here,” she said. I heard her sigh, a long, whistling sound that echoed through the phone. “Thank you for speaking to me earlier. It’s been so long since I talked about those things—about David—that it’s almost like I forgot that they happened.”
“Of course,” I said. When she didn’t continue, I said again, “Is there something that you need?”
“Well, yes. You see, I didn’t quite finish the story.” She cleared her throat. “You see, the day before David died, I found out I was pregnant.”
I sat back quickly in my desk chair and brought my knees to my chest. “Oh, wow.”
“I was planning to tell him the next day, but we got into that fight about something silly, and he drove off. I figured I would tell him after we both calmed down, but of course, I never got that chance,” she whispered.
“That’s terrible,” I said.
“After he died, I was in such shock that I didn’t tell my parents, or anyone, for months. I didn’t eat much during that time, so no one could tell I was carrying a child. By the time I told my mother, I was nearly six months along. She didn’t handle the news well, nor did my father, and so we made the decision to give the baby up for adoption,” she said. “Give her up for adoption. It was a little girl.”
I tightened my arms around my knees and nodded, even though I knew she couldn’t see me.
“I only held her once before the nurses came and took her. They said it would be better if I didn’t get attached. But, of course, I already was,” she said. “That was just how it was done back then, I suppose. My parents handled the whole process. I never even met the adoptive parents, or knew their names.” She cleared her throat again. “But I always wanted to know that she was all right, that she was able to grow up with a good family.” Her voice grew quiet. “It’s silly, but she had a wing-shaped birthmark on her right shoulder, and I remember thinking that it was a sign that the angels would watch over her, and make sure she was happy.”
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