“But you love him right? I mean be serious.” I said.
I know plenty of people who can’t stand their spouses but love them all the same.
“I love having sex with him and I love having a man at the house. It’s kinda scary living in the country all alone with a house full of kids.”
I nodded and could only imagine. I still hadn’t figured out who were children and who were “grandbabies.”
“Plus, I can’t have a failed marriage.”
She looked at me like someone who just told a child that Christmas was never the same after she found out there was no Santa, only to find out that child still believed. She apologized and took a quick swig of her water.
“It’s okay. I’ve long ago accepted my failure.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, Sara.”
Cricket placed a hand on mine. I hate when people touch me unless we’re about to get romantic and there was no way I could ever get romantic with a woman. I take my hand away and pretend that it needs to be wrapped around my drink.
“I kicked him out three weeks ago when he forgot my birthday.” she said as if everyone is always kicking their guys to the curb. But I can’t say I blame her. Birthdays are big with me too.
“Wait? Are you saying he didn’t even mention it? Like that kind of ‘forgot’?”
I stir the pot mostly out of boredom and avoidance of talking about my love life.
“Naw, not exactly. We was gonna get an ATV for each other. Our last one got wrecked and our birthdays are at about the same time so seemed like a good idea.”
I nod. Who wouldn’t want an ATV for their 45th birthday?
“And so we got one.”
More nodding.
“But it wasn’t ready that day. Wouldn’t be ready for a week. We had special order headlights bein’ put on so we could ride it at night. It’s almost roadworthy with all the extras.”
Her voice sparked and her eyes looked dreamy at the mention of an all-terrain vehicle that was roadworthy. From the looks of her town, it was difficult to tell the differences between most of its roads and its trails anyway. But what do I know about Appalachian city planning?
“So, I expected a card. That’s not too much to ask, right?”
“I reckon not.” I was getting into this southern thing. I reckoned I hadn’t ever reckoned before. “So he didn’t get you one? Maybe he was being frugal?”
“Ha, not Jimmy. He gets me one alright. And it says ‘Happy Birthday to my Friend.’”
“Bold choice of words.”
“Exactly what I’m thinking. Now I’m his friend, I see? He wants sex every night even when I’m on my period and now I’m his friend?”
“Well…”
“So I open the card and it says ‘Friend with Benefits and there’s a picture of a cat and an old lady in a nightie.”
Beer coming out of one’s nose hurts a lot more than going down one’s throat.
“So I scream at him that he’s an asshole and I don’t like to say that because you shouldn’t call the guy you’re living with an asshole but jackass didn’t seem harsh enough and mother fucker seemed a bit too much.”
I nod because Cricket always did understand moderation.
“They say you should marry your best friend. Maybe that’s what he meant.” I suggested. Didn’t have any idea why I was sticking up for the jerk. Maybe it was because I know the difference between people who are good on their own and people who aren’t.
“We aren’t even married Sara...technically.” She said that last word like there was a story she was eager to tell and since I wasn’t going anywhere…
“But you called him your husband and you said you didn’t want a ‘failed marriage.’” I reminded her.
“I know. We meant to get married. We just haven’t yet. He says they’ll cut his disability.”
I nodded knowing full well that wasn’t the case and looking at the glazed look in Crystal’s eyes I was pretty sure she did too.
“He says he got the card for me because I like cats. Can you believe that?”
In my limited time with Jim I could.
“So you threw him out because of the card?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you?”
Being single can be wonderfully liberating. Except for my kids and the responsibilities of keeping them alive, I can do what I choose. But there’s something about a lot of beers in a short time, and being asked about how you would feel when receiving a birthday card from a man, even a God-awful card at that, that makes my eyes misty. I blamed it on the smoke, of course.
“So...if you threw him out, how did he get back in?”
“I realized there just aren’t that many men here.”
I surveyed the bar and considered giving her an award for “understatement of the year.” There’s a lot of plaid flannel and denim. Lots of wood paneling and Carhartt clothing. There’s also a lot of scruffy beards and mullets. But even without wedding rings, I could tell this crowd was largely married. They had somewhere to be in a few hours and were staying out as late as possible in order to avoid the lecture. But what most men don’t get is that the lecture is much softer and loving when they don’t stink of whisky and knock into the nightstand getting into bed at 3 a.m. But these are things I can only assume because Mike never did any of that.
“And he’s always on ebay. The guy goes from one hobby to another. Last month, he wanted to build a hot rod like from one of those kits. I said to him to go down to the junkyard and build one from there. I seen people do it.”
I nodded.
“The month before that he wanted to sell Confederacy memorabilia and flags because he thought they’d be hard to find in a few years. Supply/demand, ya know? So he bought a bunch and they’re in the shed along with his kegs from when he wanted to make his own beer.”
By this time I was nodding on auto-pilot. I was pretty sure I spotted Johnny Depp’s younger, poorer brother playing pool against a former pro-wrestler known for wearing kilts. Or was that guy dead? Before I could finish my assessment of whether this redneck was related to Johnny Depp or not, Cricket clobbered me with reality.
“Enough about me...what happened with Mike?”
I keep forgetting no one really knew. No one but M. The funny thing about life during the time of Facebook (like that? It’s Like Love in the Time of Cholera.), is that even though we’re reconnected to all these friends from the past, there are certain parts of our life that never make it on the Facebook stage. When Mike and I were on the rocks, I conveniently hid my marital status. I didn’t want anyone seeing it go from married to divorced.
Divorce is harder on a woman. It means instant baggage. A man gets freedom and the single vulture women start circling, a woman looks like damaged goods. All my male friends--the real ones who actually saw me on something other than a computer screen--looked at me with such sadness. Their wives, on the other hand, suddenly started eyeing me up as competition. It’s not a friendly world for the divorced woman.
Cricket looked at me with that look you give someone with terminal cancer. You feel so sorry for them but at the same time you’re wondering if it could happen to you. Did you see it coming or were you completely shocked? Divorce can happen to anyone and most married couples are honest enough with themselves to understand that.
I looked at her hoping to change the subject but I could tell this was something she had to know for her own peace of mind.
“I like Mike, maybe still love him. I just didn’t get along with his girlfriend.”
There it is, the audible sucking in of the air. I should stop telling people that he cheated on me because as soon as I do, Mike looks like a monster and he’s not. I am. Here’s the part where I start trying to clean up the smudge I just put all over his white knight uniform.
“But he was crazy about you.” Cricket jumped in without me expecting it. I’m left with a tingling in my nose that feels an awful lot like what happens right before I burst into tears. I can’t do any
thing more than nod. To take in air would only give power to those leaky eyeballs.
“When did you know? How did you find out?”
I swallowed hard. “If anyone ever tells you they had no clue about it happening, they’re lying to you.”
It’s the End of The World and I don’t belong to you
Maybe it was one too many beers. Maybe I thought if I told the story we could avoid talking about M, I don’t know. But for whatever reason I opened up to Cricket more about my divorce than anyone outside of Mike and M know. Even our attorneys never heard the infidelity part.
“I was a lousy wife.”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself. He’s the one with a girlfriend. Are they still together?”
I nodded uncertain as to whether that made him seem like less of a cad or more of a dick.
“She’s supposed to be his rebound girl.”
“I KNOW!” I said loud enough for the bikers next to us to hear. “And she’s a 29-year-old nail tech.”
I’m not sure what that was supposed to mean except that when we were in college we would’ve totally looked down on that as a profession. But as much as I wanted that to turn Cricket against this new woman who was making my ex-husband miserable, it didn’t quite have the right effect.
After a moment of awkward silence and too many long drinks on my part, Cricket asked, “So, I guess she has nice nails?”
“She does. She has special designs on them for every holiday. For fourth of July she had tiny fireworks that sparkled in the sun.”
Cricket nodded and looked down at her own stumpy nails.
“I see...We knew everything in school didn’t we? Knew just how it would all be? You’d end up with Mike, who was going to get his law degree and run for Senate someday. Maybe even president. M would be a famous fashion designer and she’d ship us new clothes every season. I was going to...I was gonna…”
She looked over at the dart board as if the answers were pinned there.
“What was I gonna do?”
I shrugged.
“Ya see? You don’t remember either?” She deflates.
“I think you watched too much St. Elmo’s Fire.”
Our conversation began to sound like a script from a John Hughes movie, minus the awesome soundtrack. If I heard Freebird one more time that night I might’ve punched the drunk at the jukebox.
Cricket looked at her water quizzically and the reconciled look on her face suggested I was right.
“Don’t feel bad. None of us ended up doing what we thought we would. Mike didn’t get his law degree. He didn’t become a public servant. He went into tech sales. M didn’t become a famous designer. She strung beads. I never became part of a power couple and I didn’t get anywhere close to first lady. It doesn’t matter what you thought you’d do then. None of us did it. Do you even know what you want to be now?” I asked.
“Of course. I’m a mom and grandma. And a wife...sort of, for all intents and purposes.”
“That’s what you want.” I meant it as a question but it came out as a statement.
She nodded but her words seemed stuck in her throat.
“I want to be married.” The voice was Cricket’s but she seemed to speak for a silent sisterhood. She said it with the same dreamy sigh I remembered from freshman year when we were waiting to see if we received invitations to pledge a sorority. We were desperate for someone to want to call us theirs.
The pool balls cracked on the nearby table and we both glanced at our phones. No text from Walsey.
“Weren’t we talking about you and Mike. Mr. and Mrs. Happily Ever After?” Cricket asked, shoving her phone into her pocket.
“Were we?”
She smiled.
“The kids used to ask me why we got divorced. I never told them about their dad and his girlfriend. As much as I hated that Mike did that I know why he did.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” she offered.
“You weren’t married to me, Cricket.”
“I wonder if lesbians are happier?”
“I doubt it. Someone always loves someone else more. I don’t care. Gay or straight.”
“Which one were you?” Cricket pulled her straw out of her glass and studied it.
“You think it’d be obvious since he was the one with the girlfriend but in the beginning it was all him. And it was intoxicating. He thought I was amazing. Everything I did. I would wake up every morning and wonder when the spell would wear off. First I feared it. Then it made me angry that he thought I was so wonderful. We actually fought about it.”
Cricket nodded but the polite kind not the kind that involved total understanding. “I see.”
I had forgotten how often she used those words. We all have “zoning out words.” M’s was “interesting.” She used it to describe events she was completely bored with “should be interesting” as well as stories she hoped would end with a house falling on the teller, “ahhh, interesting.”
I should’ve stopped on her fifth “I see” but I’m not always good at ceasing and desisting.
“When I got pregnant with Maddie, I thought this is it. He’s going to see I’m not perfect. I had cankles and I burped and farted uncontrollably.”
“Isn’t that the worst? Pregnancy is anything but beautiful.”
“But not for Mike. He thought my body was a temple and he worshipped devoutly. He actually told me it was a temple. He said that. Who says that?”
Cricket shrugged.
“So I freaked out…”
“I see.”
My buzzing phone interrupted my story. Luke took another trip to voicemail.
“Luke.” I told her as if she was curious.
“Luke?”
“M’s boyfriend. Was M’s boyfriend.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Wrecked like the Titanic.”
“God, what a terrible accident.”
“What?”
“Her death. Can you imagine seeing that train coming at you? Poor thing. She must’ve been scared solid.”
Groundhog Day. Hadn’t we had this conversation already and I was the one who was drinking. A nod seemed like the only answer to give but I wasn’t sure whether I was agreeing and saying she did know and did it anyway or was merely agreeing with the asking of the question.
“I bet it had something to do with Luke. Maybe they broke up and she didn’t tell you and then she was upset and out driving and not paying attention, ya know? I drove all the way to Turkey Hill one time and had no recollection doing it...after the ATV incident.”
“Sure, but nope. She would’ve told me.”
“Maybe she was embarrassed.” Cricket offered.
“M? Seriously? Nothing embarrasses...embarrassed her.”
“Well, why then? Why would someone not notice a train coming at her? Was she drunk? Maybe she was drunk.”
I sucked on an ice cube. I would’ve switched to my late evening drink, amaretto sours. But they didn’t have amaretto there. The bartender laughed at me and called it “amarwhatto” but I’m pretty sure the bottle right over his bald head was Disaronno. If only I had worn my glasses. So I drank cheap whisky sours and pretended it was amaretto. I’m good at pretending.
M would’ve been able to talk that guy into comping our drinks all night with a toss of her hair or a slam of her fist. She was versatile that way.
I inhaled and tried to give Cricket, for the second time, what I had pieced together.
“She wasn’t at a railroad stop. She drove up onto the tracks. The tracks were flanked by corn fields. She could’ve pulled off into them instead of getting hit. The area where her car and the train collided was flat and straight track. You could see for about a half mile.”
“I see.”
But this time Cricket really was seeing, not merely passing time.
“But why?” she gripped her water.
“Why what?”
“Why would she do that?”
Cricket seemed to be pleading
with me to give her an answer but I had nothing. I shook my head and really wanted to leave her with her questions and get a closer look at the possible Disaronno bottle. I was pretty sure the whiskey was giving me a bleeding ulcer.
She put her hand on mine and I pulled it away without thinking.
Cricket didn’t seem to notice my hand’s hasty retreat.
“Why? Just why?” Cricket looked at me as if I was withholding information.
“I don’t think it was something she thought about for a long time. I think whatever it was grabbed her and took her under. Maybe another day it wouldn’t have done that.”
“Jesus, Sara. That’s depressing as hell. Are you saying it’s all timing? Damn it.”
“All I know is that I talked to her earlier and she was fine.”
“I don’t believe that. Maybe she just didn’t want to tell you.”
Hold me now with my pictures of you
Cricket’s words were all too possible. I had called M that day upset about Walsey. Since we both knew him in college, and she was my bestie, I thought she could talk me off the ledge. Walsey wanted to be more than friends and I liked him too but what was the point? All relationships end in tragedy or they wouldn’t end. M had been patient with me and my pointless drama.
The first time we talked, it was for hours. A few hours later, I called again obsessing on the should I, shouldn’t I? dilemma. This time she was short with me. Polite, but short. What could’ve happened in between that time and why hadn’t I thought about it before my fourth whisky sour?
Maybe M was upset about something. Maybe she just couldn’t get the conversation turned around to what she had wanted to discuss. Suicide leaves behind a sea of guilt that ebbs and flows as does the liquor one uses to ignore it.
“Why do you hate Jiminy?” I asked her feeling done with the M topic.
“Jiminy. Ha. That’s cute.”
“And if you hate him, Cricket, why don’t you leave?”
She looked at me for a long time. An uncomfortably long time. I thought she was about to roast me for using the word hate but she didn’t.
“Leave and go where? I told you, there’s not much for a woman in this town. Plus there’s the kids and the grandkids to think about.”
West of You Page 9