Baggage Check

by M. J. Pullen

  “Listen, Becky,” Richard said, after she had presented everything she’d learned at the hospital and asked for his help.

  “Rebecca,” she corrected. “I prefer Rebecca.”

  “Fine, Rebecca,” her dad went on. “You know how much I love you. And your mom, too.”

  “I can see that,” Rebecca said, glancing around Sonia’s well-appointed kitchen.

  He ignored her. “I will always love your mother, Rebecca, whether you choose to believe that or not. But I’ve fought this battle before. I have been paying the mortgage on that house since you and Cory were little. It ought to be paid off, except we had to borrow against it when your mother … anyway, it doesn’t matter. Water under the bridge. In eight more months, it will be paid off. I plan to file a quit claim, giving it to her outright. It’s hers.”

  “How does that help?” Rebecca said.

  “It might not help,” he admitted. “I’m telling you what I can do.”

  There was something in his tone, a coldness she’d never felt from her father before.

  “You’ve been there?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Okay, so you see what it’s like. Until I moved out, I was fighting that mess every day of my life. I woke up early to bag up trash and throw it in the Dumpster at the post office before I started my route. I stayed up late, after your mother was asleep, throwing things away and cleaning under things. I want you to know, I never expected when we got married that your mother would be an immaculate housekeeper. I didn’t care about that. But the way things got, Rebecca. She never wanted to throw anything away. There was always some purpose everything could serve. Everything. Used paper towels and old newspapers, empty syrup containers. We started getting insects and I kept spray in every room.

  “You talked to one doctor yesterday. I went to three of them. At first your mom went with me, and we even tried marriage counseling for a while—”

  “Daddy.” Rebecca put her hand on his, and he shrugged her away, angrily wiping his eyes.

  “Your mother didn’t want you to know. God only knows why. Anyway, honey, I don’t want you to think I’m abandoning you with this, but I have done all I can do. I have cleaned that damn house and pissed into the wind with your mother for years. Even after I moved out, I came back and cleaned. She started screaming at me, and then she wouldn’t let me in anymore, or if she did, she’d watch me like a hawk to make sure I didn’t ‘steal’ anything.”

  “Oh, Dad, I didn’t know—”

  “Of course you didn’t know,” he said. His voice was icy. “You were in Atlanta. Living your life away from this town. But now you’re back to tell me what my duty is to my wife. Like I don’t know.”

  It would have been better if he had slapped her. He must have seen the hurt on her face, because he softened then. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. You did what you had to do. I wouldn’t have wanted anything different for you, and I still don’t. I’m proud of you. I know you want to help, but your mom is a grown woman. She’s sick, and she’s in pain, but she has to want help before we can give it to her.”

  “What about the house?” Rebecca asked, staring at her lap.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “I poured my life into that house. I still write a check every month so your mother doesn’t lose it. But maybe it’s time to let it go.”

  “But then…” Rebecca’s voice faltered. “Where will she go?”

  Her dad squeezed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, leaning back in the chair. It was a gesture she remembered from her earliest years, whenever he was faced with something serious. She had seen it the most in the months after Cory died. “I don’t know,” he said, softly. “I’ve asked myself that question every day for years and haven’t come up with an answer.”

  “Babe,” Sonia called from the hallway. “Babe, I hate to interrupt, but don’t forget that we have that meeting today.”

  “Yeah,” Rebecca’s father answered, his voice cracking. To his daughter, he said, “I don’t have an answer right now. We’ll talk more about it later. I want to help you, but I just don’t know what I can do.”

  Sonia entered and put her hands on his shoulders, letting them slide down the front of his chest in a gesture that was nauseatingly intimate and affectionate. But Rebecca saw her father’s countenance change then; some darkness lifted from his worn face and he managed a tired smile. She sighed.

  “Becky, I hope you don’t mind,” Sonia trilled.

  “Rebecca,” she and her dad said simultaneously.

  “Oh, right! I guess I always think of you from when you were little. I helped teach your second-grade Sunday school class, remember? I was just a teenager then myself.…”

  When no one commented on this bit of nostalgia, Sonia went on. “Anyway, your dad and I have a meeting at church to go to this afternoon, and then we’re going to play golf. It’s the last day of his vacation, and you know how few days off your father gets.”

  “I do,” Rebecca said.

  “You’re welcome to join us,” Sonia said brightly. “I’m sure we could find a fourth.”

  “No, thanks,” she said. “I have to go figure out how I’m going to help my mother.” There was just the slightest bite on the word mother, but Sonia pretended not to notice. At least she has some sense in her head, Rebecca thought.

  She pulled off onto the exit for her apartment, and numbly pressed the keys for the gate code. Except for one houseplant that looked wilted, things were exactly as she’d left them. The maid service had been there; they came every other week. The check she always left them on the granite counter was missing and everything gleamed with extra shine. She watered the plant and wheeled her carry-on bag into the laundry room, emptying the clothes into the washer and stripping herself down while she was at it. She had to laugh when she pulled out the velvet purple bag, and was tempted to throw it away. But Valerie had spent at least sixty dollars on this thing. It seemed a shame to just throw it out.

  The shower was long and hot and glorious. Clean marble tile walls were a vast improvement over the fiberglass tub and low ceiling of the Super 8 in Oreville, Alabama. Afterward, Rebecca sat on the couch for a long time in her pristine white terry cloth robe, staring out the sliding glass balcony door to the woods behind her complex and the busy highway beyond. The world was moving along down there, everyone about their normal business for a Tuesday afternoon.

  While she watched, the beginnings of rush-hour traffic began to accumulate on the northbound side of the highway. In Atlanta, rush hour was more like rush half-day, from six to ten in the morning and three to seven in the afternoon. Thanks to her job, Rebecca was almost never forced to participate. On the days she worked, she was already in the air for an hour when rush hour really started, and by the time she made it home at the end of a shift—usually a few days later—it was long after all those little people in the cars were home, having dinner or putting their kids to bed. She often reminded herself how freeing this was. Not lonely. She would not use that word.

  Today she watched the traffic and wondered what life was like inside each of those little cars. She knew they must all have their worries, but she wondered if anyone was dealing with the same problem she had. Was someone else down there thinking that her mother might have gone so far off the deep end, she might never come back? Did one of those drivers worry that his dad had finally left the family for good? She was so hurt and angry with Richard. She kept seeing the way Sonia rubbed his shoulders, and the relaxed way he sat in the kitchen chair. Like he lived there. Oh, Jesus, she thought. He does live there.

  And yet, he had a point. What right did Rebecca have to judge him? Hadn’t she run away herself, years ago? Her ambition to be in a sorority at UGA, which seemed so powerful then, now looked like a wisp of an excuse to move in with Aunt Louise and out of her parents’ home. Maybe at seventeen she could not be expected to have insight about what was going on at home. Maybe then it wasn’t so bad.

  But for the
last ten years, what was her excuse? Too busy lusting after a man who didn’t love her? Her career? Maybe that was valid for the last three years since she’d become a flight attendant, but before that she had usually been free on weekends. Yet she had rarely, rarely used those weekends to make her way out on I-20 West.

  Maybe the truth was that she was angry with her father for doing something she herself had already done years ago.

  17

  When her phone rang early Friday afternoon, it pierced the silence in the condo so suddenly that Rebecca’s heart raced for a full minute afterward. She had been alone with only the occasional sounds of the television or her neighbors in the hallway for three days, trying to figure out what to do next, and feeling a little guilty that she was using family leave to sulk around her apartment feeling sorry for herself. She was further surprised when it was Marci’s number on the screen; her head was so much in Alabama that she had forgotten about everything else. She wondered briefly if Jake was calling from Marci’s phone, but he should be back at work by now.

  “Hey, Rebecca.” Marci’s voice was strained. “Are you busy? You’re in Alabama?”

  “No, I’m home, for a couple of days. I’m at my apartment.”

  “Oh. Well, good. I just wanted to say how sorry I am to hear about everything going on with your family. Jake told us.”

  “Thanks, Marci,” Rebecca said. Marci’s voice had an edge to it: there was something else. She waited.

  “Are you free this afternoon?” Marci said suddenly.

  How could she say no? She’d already told Marci she was in Atlanta, and it would soon be common knowledge that she was taking time off work.

  “Sure,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “I just want to talk to you about something. Can I come over? My mom has Bonnie.”

  Somehow, Rebecca did not like this idea. She didn’t know what was going on, but Marci’s tone was making her nervous. She thought about the weird showdown with Tanya in the bathroom the other night. Wherever they met, she wanted to be able to leave.

  “Actually, my place is a mess,” she said. “Can we meet for coffee? I’m going to be out running errands anyway.”

  “That’s fine,” Marci said absently. Normally any one of her friends would have called her on the lie that her condo was a mess. They knew her better than that. Something was definitely wrong. “Cool Beans okay? Maybe in an hour? Is that the right part of town for you?”

  “Sure, no problem,” Rebecca said. She dried her hair and dressed quickly, wondering what was coming next in the weirdest week of her life.

  * * *

  Cool Beans Coffee Roasters on the Marietta Square was an eclectic place to say the least. A shotgun-style store next to a photography studio, it sat just off the main town square. The front faced one of the primary streets through the historic area; the back door led to an old railroad courtyard, where it met the back sides of a family restaurant and a successful dance studio. The shop itself boasted graffiti-covered interior walls and an enormous red bean roaster. On Friday afternoon, every human element that could be found in the suburban city seemed to be represented, with tattooed and pierced youths smoking cigarettes out back, while young mothers in yoga pants pushed strollers among them and long lines of lawyers and clerks spilled out of the nearby courthouses for a caffeine fix before the weekend.

  Rebecca had never cared for Cool Beans much. She preferred the clean predictability and cozy dark neutrals of Starbucks. She knew she was supposed to appreciate the character of the indie coffee shop, like her friends did; she had to admit the coffee was usually better than at the corporate places, but somehow she could never see past the cigarette butts on the entry steps and the feeling that everything was covered with a light film of grime that never quite got scrubbed away.

  Marci loved the place, though, and when Rebecca arrived, she was already seated in an artsy nook by the window, sipping a hot tea in a paper cup and talking to a large man with a long reddish beard and one of those strange black circlets that made his earlobe look all stretchy. Rebecca went to the counter and ordered a mocha, plus two chocolate croissants. A preemptive peace offering.

  “Where is your studio?” Marci was asking the man with the beard as Rebecca approached with pastries.

  “Right now it’s in the corner of my apartment. Oh, excuse me.” He noticed Rebecca and stepped to one side so she could sit across from Marci on a bench with a worn, spotty cushion.

  “These pieces are all Tim’s,” Marci explained, gesturing at the canvases around them, which featured strange combinations of cartoonish little animals, smears of color, and dark, realistic trees in the foreground. Not Rebecca’s cup of tea, to say the least, but she forced a polite little smile. Marci turned back to him. “Do you have a card?”

  “Oh, shit, I mean, shoot,” Tim said, feeling the pockets of his ratty black cargo pants. “I don’t have any on me. My sister keeps telling me I should keep them with me all the time.”

  “Your sister is right,” Marci said charmingly. “Napkin?”

  “Oh, sure,” Tim said, and ran to the counter to borrow a pen.

  “Jake loves this kind of thing,” Marci said. “We’re really into supporting local artists.”

  Rebecca tried to ignore the affected tone in Marci’s voice, reminding herself that for years she had probably sounded just that way. Always trying to be someone better than she was, always trying not to be from Oreville, Alabama. Perhaps that was why it was so grating to hear: it was a reflection of the worst of herself.

  The large man returned with a strip of receipt paper on which he had scrawled a few lines. “So that’s my email, and my website, and there’s my number. I can do pretty much any size you need. Thanks a lot.” He nodded to both of them and left smiling; Rebecca was a little ashamed of being surprised that someone who looked like that would have such good manners. She watched out the window as he made his way a few feet down the sidewalk, where he stopped to talk to a girl with a sloppy ponytail of deep purple and a tie-dyed broomstick skirt.

  Then she forced her eyes back across the table to Marci and waited.

  “I hate this,” Marci said with a deep exhalation. “I hate this kind of conversation. I’m not good at them. They make me sick to my stomach, and I’m already nauseous all the time anyway.” She put her hand on her lower abdomen.

  “Marci, what’s wrong? You’re kind of freaking me out.”

  Marci set the tea down on the table between them, next to the croissants that she had apparently not noticed. She looked Rebecca directly in the eye and said, “I need to know what you know about whatever is going on with Jake.”

  “I’m sorry?” Rebecca was flabbergasted.

  “I need to know if my husband is cheating on me, and if so, with whom.” Marci’s gaze was level, but her face was flushed and Rebecca could tell she was trying to control her emotions.

  “Jake … cheating on you?” Rebecca parroted.

  Her expression must have registered the level of shock she felt, because Marci seemed to relax and she picked up her tea again. Oddly, Marci looked relieved. “So it’s not you, then.”

  “What? No! Marci, there is no way Jake would ever cheat on you.” Rebecca believed this. Jake was the most honorable person Rebecca had ever known. Then her mind brought up the memory of his hand on her shoulder at the beach, and how that had made her feel, and she brushed it quickly away. “Never.”

  “I know. Or at least I thought I knew,” Marci said. “My heart says he never would, but his behavior lately…” She trailed off, as if not sure how much she wanted Rebecca to know.

  Rebecca knew she should feel indignant that Marci had come very close to accusing her of adultery, but she was too focused on wondering if Jake really could betray Marci, and with whom, and what that would mean about everything she had known and believed about him for years. She felt a little sick herself. “What’s been going on?”

  “Well, I guess you have gathered—and maybe Jake has told you
, I don’t know—our marriage has been under a bit of a strain the last few months. It’s exhausting having a child, and we—we feel differently about a lot of things, like whether to let Bonnie sleep with us, how long to let her cry in her crib, and even how far apart the kids should be. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal. We both wanted more children, and my feeling is, let’s just do it while we’re in baby mode, you know? I knew Jake wanted a little more space between the kids, he’s so much more reasonable than I am about stuff, but I thought he would just see past that once he found out this one was on the way. I never thought, I never expected him to be so disappointed in me. He’s acting like I did this on purpose.”

  Didn’t you? Rebecca thought, but she quashed it. Her opinion on this was not the point.

  Marci dabbed at her eyes with a beverage napkin. Rebecca did feel sorry for her, despite their long rivalry. Jake was one of the most easygoing guys alive, and his patience with Marci’s quirks always seemed nearly infinite. It was hard to imagine what it would be like to have those kind eyes turn angry and cold. Then again, there had been the broken engagement before they worked that out, and Rebecca had not been so sympathetic to Marci then.

  “Don’t you think he’ll come around?” she said, while Marci collected herself. “He’s always seemed so forgiving.”

  “I’ve been thinking so, hoping so,” Marci said. “But he’s been disappearing at odd hours, traveling more with work lately, and I’m pretty sure he has lied to me about where he was going a couple of times. I found some hotel bills that don’t match where he was supposed to be for work.”

  “Oh, no,” Rebecca said.

  “I knew the two of you sometimes have lunch together, and he calls you sometimes, but he has always told me about that before. I thought maybe, if he turned to you—”