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“Exactly. So what do you say, Mrs. Larkin? Time to end the foreplay and cut right to the main event?”
I flashed him a huge grin and said, “I thought you’d never ask.”
It was hours later and inky dark when his cell phone rang. Peeling his naked body away from mine, Tom fumbled on the nightstand until he located the offending object. He cleared his throat and said, “Dr. Larkin.” Listened a moment, then said, “Yes, of course. Not a problem.”
I raised my head and looked at the clock, then hooked an arm around him and pressed my cheek against his sleek, broad back. Leaning into me, he said, “How far apart are the pains?” A pause. Then, “All right. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
He hung up the phone and turned to me. “Sorry, Jules. Gotta go.”
Sleepily, I said, “It’s two-thirty in the morning.”
“Might as well get used to it. Life would be a lot easier if babies were courteous enough to plan their arrivals between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.” He kissed the tip of my nose and left the bed. I listened as he dressed in the darkness, then walked to the window and peered through the blind. Quietly, he said, “Looks like the storm’s over.”
“Be careful anyway.”
“Always. Go back to sleep, Jules.”
When I woke again, the blinds were open, the sun was pouring in, and the clock read 8:37. I rolled over and spied the note propped against Tom’s pillow. Didn’t want to wake you, it read, you looked so beautiful asleep. Make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa. Literally. Oh—if you want to go anywhere, the Land Rover’s all yours. Keys are hanging in the kitchen. Can’t wait to see you tonight. Love, T.
Smiling, I lay back against the pillow. I must’ve been dead to the world, because I’d never heard him return, never heard him leave a second time. It must have been the fresh Maine air or something. I got up, showered and dressed, then headed downstairs, anticipating a run-in with the dragon lady. But the house was deserted, silent, the morning sun flooding the kitchen with warmth. My new mother-in-law must be a cog in the wheel of the American workforce. Or else she’d fled the house because she didn’t want to deal with me any more than I wanted to deal with her. Wasn’t that the way with most passive-aggressive types? They tended to avoid conflict. And being nice to my face, then talking trash behind my back, was classic passive-aggressive behavior.
Or maybe she was just a two-faced bitch.
With some satisfaction, I pondered that possibility before telling myself to let it go or it would spoil my day. And what a day it was! Abundant sunshine and cloudless cerulean skies. Not a hint of the storm that had raged a few hours earlier. Except, of course, the damage it had left behind. With a bowl of Cheerios in hand, I flung open the French doors that led to the patio and stepped outside. The lawn was littered with branches, leaves and assorted debris. A small tree had been uprooted, and it lay forlorn, felled by the storm’s fury. I found a wooden chair that wasn’t too wet and sat down to eat my breakfast. A pair of bright yellow birds flew past, darting and swooping and twittering before they disappeared in the branches of a massive elm tree. I thought they might be goldfinches, but I wasn’t sure. On the ground beneath the bird feeder, a cluster of sparrows pecked at spilled seed.
Around the corner of the house, a chain saw started up, its obnoxious whine tearing a jagged hole in the smooth fabric of the morning. Startled by the noise, the sparrows scattered. I finished my Cheerios and went back inside to put the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher. Then I went in search of the chain saw.
It wasn’t hard to find. The noise level was appalling. In Riley’s capable hands, the lime-green monster sang its own peculiar aria, the whine working its way up and down the scale. Dressed in a Hard Rock T-shirt, jeans, and safety glasses, Tom’s brother finessed the saw with smooth, efficient motions. The branch that had fallen was as big around as my waist, and the chain saw protested loudly as he sliced it into neat, foot-long segments. I stood watching him until he became aware of my scrutiny. Then he took a step back, turned off the chain saw, and removed his safety glasses.
Birdsong filled the sudden silence, and for an instant I felt awkward, remembering what he’d witnessed last night and wishing he hadn’t. “Sleep well?” he said.
“As well as can be expected.” I raised a hand to shade my eyes from the bright sun. I knew we were both thinking about our last meeting. I might as well bring it into the open instead of dancing around it. “Your mother,” I said, “doesn’t seem to like me.”
Fiddling with the pull cord to the chain saw, he said, “You did seem to bring out the worst in her.”
“It’s a talent,” I said.
He balanced the butt of the saw against his booted foot. “I wouldn’t let her get to me if I were you.”
“I don’t intend to. I’m indomitable.”
He studied me with blue eyes very much like Tom’s. And the corner of his mouth twitched. “Yeah,” he said. “I can see that.”
“So where, exactly, is she this morning? Your sainted mother?”
“She’s at work. Tessie’s Bark and Bath.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Tessie’s Bark and Bath?”
He grinned. “Mom’s a dog groomer.”
“And I’ll bet she frightens the poor things into submission.” Changing the subject, I pointed to the pile of wood he’d cut. “This pine branch is enormous. What’ll you do with all this wood?”
“Split it. Stack it. Come winter, it’ll keep the house warm.”
“Winter,” I said. “That seems like such a foreign concept. I’m a Southern California girl. I’m used to sunshine. The beach. I’ve never done winter. Does it really get as cold as I’ve heard?”
“Take whatever you’re expecting and multiply it by ten. February may be the shortest month, but it’s also the coldest. And the darkest. You’ll want to buy an extra-warm coat. Fur-lined boots. Thick gloves. And a wool scarf. That is, assuming you’re still here come February.”
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “Are you saying there’s some reason I might not be here?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“She’s not going to drive me away, Riley.”
“I didn’t say that, either. It’s just—”
“What?”
His blue eyes studied me, but I couldn’t decipher what was going on behind them. “Nothing,” he said. “I have to get back to work. This tree won’t get cut up by itself.”
I stepped away as Riley fired up the chain saw. He adjusted his safety goggles, nodded to me, and went back to cutting.
I suspected I’d been snubbed, although I wasn’t wholly certain. But I was definitely starting to feel as if I’d stepped through the looking glass and into some otherworldly dimension where everything was a little off center.
But I didn’t allow myself to wallow in it; I had no sympathy for people who sat around bemoaning their fates. Pity parties aren’t my style. I had far too much to do. Since I’d decided against making a run for it, I needed to unpack and try to find space for all my things in Tom’s bedroom. Our bedroom, I reminded myself.
I headed back to the house, rummaged through my purse for a notebook and pen, and sat at the kitchen table to make a list of what needed doing. I’m a compulsive list-maker. I simply can’t seem to stop. Jeffrey used to make fun of me because of it, but list-making helps me keep my life organized and running on track. If I didn’t make lists, I’d never remember anything. I use them in both my private and business life, and my friends and coworkers always point out how utterly organized I am. I just smile enigmatically and accept the compliment, while mentally thumbing my nose at my ex-husband. What can I say? Sometimes even a mature woman has to let her inner child out once in a while.
First on the list: Go to bank. I’d already closed my bank account and had the balance transferred electronically to Tom’s account, but I still had to drop by the bank and fill out paperwork to make it official. I’d managed to put away a small amount of money in savings, and the sale of my Miata had added a couple thousand to that. I’d hated selling my car, and I’d nearly cried when the used car salesman drove it away. But Tom had said that come winter, the sports car would be useless in the snow, and he’d promised to replace it with a brand-new four-wheel-drive SUV of my choice. So I’d caved. My life in California was over. Big changes were taking place. If I intended to live year-round in Maine, I needed to start acting like a Mainer. I would drive the SUV, even if my heart did secretly ache for a two-seater sports coupe.
Items two, three and four on the list were more housekeeping stuff: Get a Maine driver’s license, Apply for a new social security card, and Notify credit card company of new name and address. Item five was more generic: Contact old friends I’ve lost touch with. People I talked to once or twice a year, exchanged Christmas cards with. Old school chums, friends of my dad, people Jeffrey and I used to socialize with. A couple of great-aunts. People I had little in common with, but that I didn’t want to lose complete contact with.
I paused at number six. Chewing absently at the cap of my Bic pen, I pondered. At some point, Tom and I needed to figure out where to store my household belongings, which were in a moving van headed east on an Interstate highway somewhere between California and Maine. My entire life, packed into a green-and-yellow box truck. The ETA was next Sunday; I expected it would take me some time to go through everything and decide what to use, what to keep in storage, and what to discard. But we hadn’t yet discussed where the boxes and furniture would go in the interim. Number six: Talk to Tom about storage! I underlined it, then circled it several times in heavy black ink just in case there was any chance I might miss it next time I looked.
I thought about putting Find a job on the list. I’d been working since I was fifteen. No slacker, I’d worked my way through college, then bounced around the L.A. job scene for a couple of years before I landed at Phoenix. There, I worked my way up the ladder to store manager. I’d always been a high-energy person, and it seemed odd to have no place I needed to be every morning at eight, hi-test cup of java in hand.
But looking for a job now would be pointless. Tom and I had talked it over, and in January, I was going back to school to get my master’s degree. I’d been thinking about it for some time now. Although I’d loved my job at Phoenix, I didn’t aspire to a career in retail. Actually, to my surprise, I’d realized that what I most wanted to do was teach. My degree in business management hadn’t prepared me for that particular career choice, so it was time to hit the books again. Tom had been extremely supportive, reassuring me that he was fully capable of supporting me financially while I trained for a new career.
When my list was as complete as I could make it, I went back upstairs to unpack. The master bedroom suite had been designed with his-and-hers walk-in closets. I opened the door of the left-hand closet and found Tom’s clothes, his suits and shirts and pants, arranged by color and hung with care, evenly spaced a half-inch apart. His shoes were lined up neatly on two shelves. Some fancy contraption built into the wall held his neckties, hung with a meticulousness that prevented any one tie from touching any other. Good God. I hoped he didn’t expect me to share his neatness fetish. I generally took off my clothes and flung them. If I managed to hit the chair instead of the floor, I figured I was doing exceptionally well.
Because snooping in my husband’s closet seemed like an invasion of his privacy, I closed the door and moved to the other closet. Not so much as a dust bunny inhabited its vacant space. Ditto for the bureau drawers. Tom kept his underwear and socks—stacked with razor-sharp precision—in the upright dresser. The bureau must have been Elizabeth’s territory. I was a little surprised to find no evidence that she had ever lived here. No clothes, no knickknacks, no wedding photos, no froufrou female stuff. At some point after her death, Tom had removed all her belongings. Now that I thought about it, I’d seen no evidence of her presence anywhere in this house. Downstairs, photos of the girls were displayed here and there: school photos as well as candids of them with Tom, and with their grandmother and their uncle Riley. But not a single likeness of Elizabeth graced the house.
I wondered why this made me uneasy. It seemed odd that a man who’d loved his wife, a man who’d spent years with her and made babies with her, would keep no physical reminders of her after she was gone. No little personal objects, no mementos of any kind. It was as if the moment Elizabeth was gone, Tom had tried to pretend she’d never existed.
Had their marriage been unhappy? Tom hadn’t mentioned any problems with his first marriage, so I’d simply assumed theirs had been a satisfactory union. On the other hand, I hadn’t bothered to ask. For all I knew, they could have been on the verge of divorce when Elizabeth died. If there were problems, that might explain why all trace of her was gone from the house.
Trying to rationalize away my unease, I told myself I was probably just identifying too closely with Tom’s late wife. More than likely, my subconscious was wondering what would happen if I died. Whether I, too, would be erased from this house as though I’d never set foot inside it.
Because that thought bothered me more than I cared to admit, I distracted myself with unpacking. It didn’t take long; I’d traveled light. Most of my clothes were packed away on that moving van. Until they arrived, I’d manage quite nicely with the jeans and casual shirts I’d brought with me. I’d packed only one “serious” dress, and I doubted I’d be needing it here; I couldn’t imagine that, as the wife of a small-town Maine doctor, I’d have many formal social engagements.
I managed to fill one bureau drawer, and I hung the rest of my clothes in the closet. They looked pathetic hanging in all that empty space, as did my toiletries, lined up on one end of the massive white marble bathroom counter. I sneaked a peek in one of the medicine cabinets. Empty. I opened the other and found Tom’s toiletries—razor, toothbrush, deodorant, aftershave—all shelved neatly, again carefully spaced so that no two objects touched. I closed the cabinet, looked at my cluster of mismatched items cluttering up the counter, and decided to move them to the empty medicine cabinet, where my neatnik husband wouldn’t be forced to look at them every time he walked into the room.
It was an improvement. I closed the mirrored door on my hair care products and perfumes, returning the powder room to its formerly immaculate state. Because I had no excuse to kill any more time up here, I headed back down to the kitchen. I still had the whole house all to myself. Except for Riley, but he was still outside, wielding the chain saw with its ferocious growl.
I took the keys to the Land Rover from the hook in the kitchen, let myself out the screen door, and marched over to where my brother-in-law was working. He shut down the saw and watched me approach. “Can you give me directions? I need to go to Tom’s bank, the DMV, and the social security office.”
He swiped at his brow with a shirtsleeve, picked up a bottle of water, and took a long swig. “The bank’s downtown,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “First National Bank on Main Street. You can’t miss it. Social security office is in the federal building across the street from the bank. Second floor, above the post office. The nearest DMV office is in Portland.”
I thanked him and headed across the lawn to the driveway. It wasn’t until I got into the Land Rover that I discovered it was a stick shift. Crap on a cracker. My Miata had been an automatic. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Bright yellow, automatic, four-cylinder convertible. You’re thinking, chick car. I plead guilty as charged. But I liked driving an automatic, and I was a disaster with a stick. Jeffrey had tried once to teach me how to drive his five-speed Corolla, but the lesson had been a catastrophe I didn’t want to repeat. The shifting part I got down without much trouble. It was the clutch, the dreaded clutch, that was my downfall.
In theory, I understood how it worked. The clutch goes to the floor, the car starts, the clutch comes up slowly as the gas pedal goes down. When it catches, you give it more gas and ease the clutch the rest of the way up. It sounds so simple, but a crucial piece of the puzzle, the kinetic understanding of when to ease up on the clutch and when to press down on the gas, had thus far eluded me. I could probably manage to drive the damn thing, but it would be a herky-jerky, humiliating experience.
My options ran the gamut from A to B. A, I could stay home, tell Tom that I couldn’t drive a standard shift, and see what happened. Or, B, I could teach myself to drive the car, no matter how humiliating it might be.
I thought about my determination not to let life defeat me. Thought about my dad, who had. Thought about how I’d survived the death of my newborn, and the subsequent death of my marriage. I was a strong woman. An intelligent woman. A determined woman. I’d survived the loss of everyone I loved, then moved on and started life over with Tom. I’d moved three thousand miles away from home to be with him. If I could do all that, I could drive this damn car.
I took a breath, pressed the clutch to the floor, and turned the key. The engine roared to life. So far, so good. I locked the seat belt into place, made sure the shifter was in first gear, then slowly, smoothly, eased up on the clutch with my left foot while stepping on the accelerator with the right.
The car lurched forward and came to a rocking, shuddering halt.
A trickle of sweat ran down my spine. I started the engine again. Concentrating hard, again I eased up on the clutch. This time, I gave it a little more gas than I had the first time. When I felt the car begin to roll, I stepped down hard on the gas pedal and let up on the clutch. The engine roared, and I actually managed to move forward a couple of feet before coming to a stop so abrupt that if I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt, the windshield and I would have experienced a close personal encounter.
I was not having fun. I wiped sweat from my eyes and bit down on my lower lip. Concentrate, I told myself silently. Just concentrate. You can DO this. I let up on the clutch and pressed the gas, and the car jerked and shuddered so hard my teeth clacked together.
“Fuck,” I said, thumping the palms of my hands against the steering wheel. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Having a little trouble?”
I flushed crimson when I saw Riley standing there. “Go away,” I said. “I really don’t need a witness to my mortification.”
“You’re thinking too hard. You don’t drive a car by thinking. You drive by feel.”
Slumped over the steering wheel like a beach ball with a puncture wound, I said, “Then I believe my feeling apparatus is faulty.”
“No, it isn’t. Slide over.”
“I thought you had work to do.”
“It’ll still be there when I get back. Go ahead. Scoot over.”
I climbed awkwardly over the gearshift and plunked down hard on the passenger seat. Riley slid in behind the wheel, started the car, and together we listened to the purr of the engine.
“You can’t think your way through it,” he said. “You have to turn off your brain and tune into the vehicle. Become one with the car. Feel what it’s feeling.”
“How new age-y. Will we be hearing Yanni playing in the background anytime soon?”
“It has nothing to do with any new age bullshit. Close your eyes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not a serial killer. Just do it.”
“You know, your family might be a little unusual…but you certainly aren’t boring people.” I closed my eyes and waited for what would happen next.
“Instead of thinking,” he said, “I want you to use your other senses. Hear the sound of the engine. Feel the vibrations. Let the car tell you what it wants.”
“Whatever you say, Yoda.”
“Stop being a wiseass and pay attention. We’re going to take a little spin around the block, and you’re going to feel how I drive the car. Without filtering it through your left brain thinking mechanism. No talking. Just feel.”
Eyes squeezed tightly shut, I gamely settled back against the passenger seat. This little experiment was doomed to failure, but I was a good sport, and it wasn’t as though I had anything to do that wouldn’t wait.
But a funny thing happened on the way to failure. As we cruised the suburban streets of Newmarket, Maine, population 8,931, I began to get a sense of what he’d been trying to tell me. Experiencing the motions of the car, listening to the up-and-down hum of the rpm’s, I thought I understood. Just a little.
Until he pulled over. “Your turn,” he said.
He left the shifter in neutral and the parking brake on, and we swapped places. “Remember what I said,” he told me. “Don’t think. Just feel.”
“Do I get to keep my eyes closed while I drive?”
He reached around behind him, found the seat belt, locked and tightened it. “No.”
“I sort of figured you’d say that.”
I made a couple of false starts. “When you feel it start to catch,” he instructed, “synchronize your left and right foot. Don’t think about it. Feel it catch, feel the car start to move, feel how much gas it needs, and follow through.”
Right. Like that was going to happen. But this time, I actually got the car moving. No shuddering, no jerking. Just a smooth ride down the street. I shifted at the proper time, with a minimum of disturbance, and Riley nodded.
“You’re a good student,” he said.
“I do all right once I’m moving. It’s the stopping and starting that bother me the most. Where to?”
“Keep going straight.” Apparently without fear of imminent death, he slumped comfortably on his tailbone and stretched out his legs. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”
“All righty then.” I upshifted until I reached cruising speed, then sneaked a glance at him from the corner of my eye. “So,” I said. “What’s the story with you and Tom?”
I could feel his eyes on me, but I kept mine on the road. “What story?” he said.
“Don’t be oblique. It’s obvious to anybody who isn’t deaf, dumb and blind that there’s some kind of bad blood between the two of you.”
“Maybe you should be asking Tom.”
“Tom’s not here,” I said brightly. “So I’m asking you.”
Riley casually pressed the button for the car window. A little too casually, I thought. The window lowered with a soft hiss and he turned his face to the fresh air. “There’s no bad blood,” he said, scrutinizing the passing scenery. “We just don’t always see eye to eye. Maybe you’ve noticed that we don’t have a lot in common.”
Looking at him, with his torn T-shirt, wrinkled jeans and shaggy hair, I thought of my husband. Thought of his buttoned-down neatness, his trim haircut, his meticulously clean fingernails with the cuticles pushed back to reveal the white half-moons. Thought of his closet, the clothes hung with such precision that he could have measured the distance between them with a ruler. “Yes,” I agreed, “I think it’s safe to say that your styles don’t quite mesh.”
