by Reiss, CD
“You took your shot, Reggie,” I said.
“She’s not sixteen anymore. She’s stronger than any of us. And your money? She’s better than every single dollar you got. We all know it. This whole place rides on her back.” He shook off the men holding him. They let him go but stayed close. “Well, I admit it, and I want to do for her. Take care of her. That’s nothing for you, but it’s something for me.” He jabbed his chest hard enough to bend his finger back.
This felt like an extension of my conversation with Johnny and Butthead, but with a little more fire, a little more passion, and a single sentence that shook me.
We all know it.
I’d assumed, without thinking clearly about it, that I could take her away to something better.
But what did better mean?
I’d always thought it meant money, but what would have happened if I’d come for her? If I’d arrived on a white horse, rescuing her when I would have actually been rescuing myself? She wouldn’t have become the woman she is. She wouldn’t have been forged into the patron saint of Barrington.
I went to New York to make a ton of money, because I had to do that before I realized it wasn’t important. If I’d stayed here or come back early, would I ever have understood that? Would I have come to that conclusion at Catherine’s expense? Would she have come to represent everything that would have been wrong with me?
Worse, would I have spent the rest of my life chasing a dollar because that was what I’d been told I was worth?
“I fucked it up,” Reggie continued, throwing himself back in his seat.
“Get up,” Butthead said. “I’m taking you home.”
Reggie kept on. “Fucked it bad, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just let you have her.” By the last three words, he was shouting.
“It’s not up to you. Or me.”
Johnny put his hand on my shoulder. “You oughta go.”
“You love a saint,” I said, ignoring Johnny. “But she’s not a saint. She’s a living woman.”
“You love a sixteen-year-old heiress. She’s not that anymore either.”
He was right. I’d come here hoping to meet the girl I’d left, but that girl was gone forever. She had been replaced by a woman of greater stature and purpose than I’d had the mind to wish for.
“I’m going to fight for her.” I pointed in Reggie’s face. “Don’t underestimate me.”
Johnny pulled me away. Reggie shook his head and let him take me outside. The sun was low in the southern sky and the afternoon wind rustled the dry grass. Everything was quiet, but nothing was still.
“Do you need a lift back?” he asked when the door shut behind me.
“Nah. Half a beer. Fuck it. Fuck it all. If I have to bulldoze over that guy or anyone for her, I will.”
“Let him cool off. You’d do well to do the same.” He handed me my credit card wrapped in a sales slip. “I grabbed this on the way out.”
“Tell me something.” I took a pen from inside my jacket and leaned on the wall to sign for the round. “Am I stealing her? Do they have something?”
“In his mind.”
“And hers?” I handed him the signed receipt, and he snapped it away.
“If she says there’s nothing, I believe her. She’s not playing games, far as I can see.”
After a shot in the arm, I was left alone in the parking lot.
Chapter 26
chris
At seven o’clock, I picked her up at her house. We exchanged ritual pleasantries and I held the car door open for her. When we were on the road, I tried to hold her hand, but they were tightly folded in her lap.
“Reggie came by today.” She was turned toward the window and I was watching the road, but our attention to inattention was intense.
“I went to see him when I heard.”
“You heard what?”
“That he made a pass at you and Harper clocked him.” I couldn’t look at her for long or I’d wreck the car, but she was worrying me. “I made sure he wasn’t holding any grudges.”
“Was he?”
“Only against me. Is everything all right, Rin? You said you didn’t have a thing with him, but I can turn around right now if you want.”
“No. There’s nothing. Harper said you lost everything? All your money?”
My money? Was that what she cared about? Was she another Lucia? Was she in my car because she thought she could make a killing? Would she bolt as soon as there was a whiff of trouble?
No. Not Catherine. I wouldn’t believe that of her. I was more experienced in the ways of gold-diggers than I wanted to be, but I wasn’t that jaded yet.
“I lost a lot.”
“I’m sorry what you worked for all those years was lost. Can you make it back?”
I shrugged. “With a lot of effort, a change of strategy, probably. I just don’t know if I want start all over.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I reached for her hand, and she let me take it. “I have other things to work for now.”
* * *
This time, we went to the patch of grass just outside the fence legally, through a gate on the easternmost side that Marsha had loaned me the key for.
The tree we’d climbed in our sixteenth summer was wrapped with tiny white lights, and lines of hanging lanterns were strung between the fence and the branches in smile-shaped spokes. Garland and tinsel sparkled in the light.
Catherine stood right under it in the soft yellow light, looking up into the dense branches. “It’s beautiful.”
Her eyes were spots of glittering glass and her smile was brighter than any electric light.
“You’re beautiful.” I touched her face. I couldn’t help it. “Want to climb it?”
“Sure.”
I led her to the base of the trunk and put my hand on the bottom rung of my ladder. The bark had grown over some of the wood slabs, making the connection stronger but more treacherous since it was harder to get a foothold. “It’s higher, so I might have to help you up. And you have to be careful to make sure your foot’s securely on it.”
She put her hand on the bottom rung where the bark had grown over. It was chest high.
“Here.” I held out my hand. “Take a step back, kick up, and I’ll get you on.”
She understood me right away, kicking her right foot until it reached the lowest rung. I pushed her forward and up.
She took the next rung and looked down at me. “I’m wearing pants this time.”
“I didn’t look up your skirt last time either.”
She climbed, taking the same path she had thirteen years earlier, scooting down the thick branch so I had room to sit. She swung her leg over so both feet were hanging over the same side. I straddled the branch so my chest was at her right shoulder.
“This seemed higher up when we were kids.”
“It’s only about eight feet.” I kissed her cheek, lingering on her smell. Roses. Still roses. When she faced me, I kissed her lips, but after a few moments, she stopped.
“How did you leave it with Reggie?” she asked.
“I told him I was going to fight for you.”
She leaned away from me. A string of lights blinked off, then on again, leaving a layer of darkness on her face.
“Did you?”
I leaned away only enough to catch her perplexed expression. “Yeah, I said that.”
“No.” She shifted a little, putting more of her right leg on the trunk. “Did you fight for me? When I was here, by myself, holding everyone in Barrington on my shoulders? Did you fight for me?”
I was defensive and I didn’t know why. “Whoa, there—”
She wasn’t going to be held up. She wasn’t a horse with reins I could pull back. She was a tidal wave.
“You know—” She shook her head quickly, mouth tight as if she was trying to hold back a torrent. “I thought I was okay with this but no. No, I’m not.”
“Catherine—”
> Her name, or my voice, broke a dam for her. “Did you come? No. Did you check on me? Did you call? You knew my parents died. You knew the factory closed. You sat in your ivory tower in New York and turned your back, and now that you’re divorced and you’ve lost everything, you think you can come back and tell Reggie you’re going to fight for me?”
“I wrote you a hundred letters!”
“I didn’t respond to a single one and it never occurred to you I wasn’t getting them?”
“Oh, you know what, lady—”
“You had to know something was wrong when I didn’t write back!”
“You got with Frank Marshall the minute I left!”
She sat in shock. The string of lights shorted again, blinking twice.
“My mother still lived here. She told me. And it hurt, but I kept writing. When you didn’t write back, I figured you married him or—”
“Frank Marshall is gay, you stupid, stupid man!”
“What? You…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I had too many questions, but I didn’t want to ask them. I wanted to yell. I wanted to defend myself against her accusations.
She was wrong. She had to be wrong, because I was nursing my own hurt. I couldn’t be the one who was wrong. There had to be some way to turn this around, some way I didn’t abandon her.
Her voice didn’t soften. Anger clipped every word. “He needed a cover for a relationship he was having. So we ‘dated’ and my mother stopped trying to set me up with ‘acceptable’ young men.”
“How was I supposed to know?”
“You could have asked. You could have picked up the phone. Come around once you had enough money. Sent your number with a sympathy card when Dad died. But you didn’t. You’re not going to fight for me, Chris. Don’t lie to Reggie. Don’t lie to me, and don’t lie to yourself.”
She straightened her back and let her bottom slide over the branch. Thinking she was going to fall, I took her arm to steady her.
“Let go.”
“I don’t want you to fall.”
“You were supposed to go first so I could get off first, and you didn’t. You forgot.” Her tears dropped like summer rain, and her chin quivered like rose petals in the breeze. I couldn’t deny I’d forgotten I’d said that our first time up in the tree. I could only sit still. “So much time’s passed, bark’s grown over the ladder, but when you said you’d fight for me, it all came back. It’s like yesterday. This raw place where I know I’m not worthy of coming back to. I’m not worth fighting for. I’m shit.”
“Cath—”
She was gone, pushed off the branch, landing on her feet, knees bent, arms out for balance. Looking up at me, the dots of light glint off her tears.
“You’re not shit.” I wished I could eat those words, because they’re the bare minimum and she deserves the maximum. They’re a denial, not a declaration.
“I know.”
I dropped to the ground, but by the time I hit the grass, she’d already run away.
Chapter 27
CATHERINE
I’d meant what I said about the raw place, but the words I’d used didn’t do it justice. It was a picture in my head, a taste in my mouth, a deep throbbing beat in my ears. I felt that raw place throbbing pink, pulsing with anger and self-loathing. It was where I was powerless and the place I’d tried to forget all those years. The only thing that silenced the throb and washed away the taste was sealing away other people’s raw places.
I was aware that made a decade of philanthropy selfish and vain, but it was the only way to soothe my own hurt.
The garden path was dotted with lights on either side like an airplane runway. I’d been defying gravity for years and I’d suddenly skidded to the earth.
I heard Chris running behind me. I couldn’t outrun him and I didn’t want to. He caught up, came slightly in front of me, and turned so I could see him.
“You said you hadn’t thought about me in years.”
“What do you want me to say? That I had? Or that I hadn’t? What’s going to make you feel better?”
“What’s going to make you feel better?”
I wanted to punch him and run into his arms. “I stopped waiting for you.” I articulated each word as if that would keep me from being misunderstood. “I never forgot how you made me feel.”
He took half a step toward me with his hands out, assuming he knew what I meant. He didn’t.
“You made me feel worthless and forgettable. And I know it was all a misunderstanding, but that was how I felt. You can’t take that away from me, because I carry it everywhere. But also…” I sighed.
My words bent him. Shoulders drooping, hands retreated to his sides, he looked damaged and small with his own exposed, raw places.
“But also…” I continued. “You made me feel loved and whole. I felt passionate and alive, and no one I’ve met since has made me feel like that. So I don’t… I don’t know what to do. I want to seize this thing with you and never let it go, and I want to throw it away to save myself.”
“If I’d stayed, you wouldn’t be who you are. I don’t know how this will sound, but who you are makes me ashamed of who I’ve become.”
“Who is that? I don’t even know.”
He paused as if gathering strength to confess a sin. “A man obsessed with money, and not sense enough to be ashamed of it.”
I started down the path but slowly, inviting him to walk next to me. He fell into line and we walked shoulder to shoulder.
“In my line of work, we solve problems in the stock market and we use these processes called algorithms. They—”
“I know what an algorithm is.”
“You do?”
“Harper rubs off on people.”
“Right. So we use them to assess risk. How much to invest. Where to invest. How long to hold, when to sell. It can get complicated, but they work until they don’t.”
“Is that what happened to your hedge fund?”
He took a long time to answer, walking slowly. “What happened to the fund was that I changed the weighting. I weighted the making money too far over the potential loss, and I made bets without enough data. The scale tipped. And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I did it on purpose.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because maybe I knew I needed to be completely miserable before I came back to my roots, and you.”
“It wasn’t about me, Chris. Don’t say that.”
We passed though the garden gate, toward his car.
“I can’t help but think you were the last person who loved me for me. No more and no less. I weight that pretty heavily.”
“I’m just an algorithm then?” I tried not to sound as if I was accusing him of something, because I wasn’t. I was egging him to talk more.
“We all are, but we kid ourselves into thinking we have enough data to run it.” We got to the car, and he unlocked it. “You make me feel like a man with a chance. You made me feel like that when I was sixteen, and I feel like that right now. With you, my future is mine to write, but I need more data. And so do you.”
“You sure know how to make a girl feel all warm and fuzzy.”
“The lights on the tree didn’t work, so I recalibrated.” He opened the passenger door.
“They worked. That’s why I reacted the way I did.” I got in the car before he could answer.
* * *
We didn’t talk much on the drive back to my house, but as he got off at the Barrington exit, he grabbed my hand and held it. I let him, because his grip was exactly what I needed.
He walked me up the porch.
“I’m sorry I ruined your surprise,” I said. “It was beautiful.”
He slid his hands down my arms and linked his fingers in mine. “I should have come back. Fuck Frank.”
“You can’t. He’s married to a nice guy in San Francisco.”
My resistance was no match for his smile.
“I took years from you,” he
said. “We could have been together. I could have taken you back to New York, away from here and this”—he looked for the word and found it— “devastation.”
His word did its job, sending pictures of Barrington through my mind. The closed factory. The boarded-up stores. Jonah Wright born with a hole in his heart and no insurance. The Bordens living in a house with a roof like a sieve. Brooke Frazier, impregnated by a rapist she wouldn’t name.
I’d helped them. I gave them money, time, a ride to far away doctors. Small things.
If I’d been in New York, what would have happened to them?
“I need to think,” I said. “Get data, like you say.”
“Can I see you tomorrow night? At the playground?”
“It’s still there,” I confirmed.
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“No. I’ll get there the way I got there the first time.”
“No way. You are not—”
Because I wasn’t getting into an argument about my safety in a town of people who loved me, I interrupted him with a kiss.
I’d never taken a kiss before, so I was clumsy. My focus on my objective overrode my passion. My lips were too stiff and my head pushed forward too hard, but once Chris gave up on finishing his sentence, he came to me, giving willingly what I took from him.
A simple, sweet good night kiss between two kids who had their entire lives in front of them and the weight of the world on their shoulders.
Chapter 28
catherine
I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up for hours, lying on my back, watching the moonlight shift over the ceiling mural.
Every option seemed like a possibility. Go to him. Risk everything. Undo the damage of the past thirteen years. It seemed so easy.
The other option, stay in Barrington. I’d found meaning in being needed and loved. The rewards of my efforts. Stay for the people who need me most. Let them take care of me.