Back Where He Started Page 3

  When we were both up and out from under the table, I grabbed an old sweater of Zack’s I had worn for years, pulled it over my head, and urged Beau out into the backyard. I walked down the steps to the abandoned tree swing and sat, grateful for the cold air outside the fire-warmed kitchen. Wood smoke hung in the still, chilly air, and I rocked a little as Beau snuffled along his usual route between the camellia, susanqua, and ligustrum that hedged the backyard.

  Looking up, I saw there was only light in the kitchen and the upper hall. I dreaded going up into the attic for the Christmas things. For a moment I considered leaving and just walking away from them as Zack had done. But I wouldn’t. They weren’t his or mine anymore—they were really the children’s. I’d make it right; that’s what Zack expected. That’s what I’d done always, and I wasn’t going to stop now.

  No, not now. Not now that I was at the absolute end of Chris Thayer, act two. If I could admit it was when I met the kids that act two of my life began, I could admit I was at the end of the act.

  There was no equivocation about that point. I’d always loved the song by Rickie Lee Jones where the refrain was the plaintive question “Is this the real end?” The real end began late one Saturday afternoon in February. Schooner was home from school and spent most of the afternoon in the family room with his dad watching ACC basketball. I was mostly finished with the work of cooking a real Italian dinner: simmering spareribs and stew-cut beef chunks in red sauce to make gravy, which I would serve with ziti, ricotta cheese on the side, green peas made with mushrooms and bread crumbs, and a Caprese salad. Andrea and her husband David were coming over to eat, and Trey and Susan promised to be by, at least for dessert—tiramisu, homemade.

  At some point, Schooner fell asleep on the sofa and his dad slipped out. With dinner mostly done, I had a little time to turn my attention to Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, which had me enthralled. I looked up from my book and saw him pass by on his way upstairs, but he didn’t spare a glance into the kitchen. I was so absorbed in Nafisi’s story, I didn’t give Zack’s trip upstairs another thought.

  “I need to run to the store, do you need anything?”

  I looked up from my book to a sleepy-eyed Schooner, pulling me into the Raleigh of the moment from postrevolutionary Tehran.

  Momentarily disoriented, I thought a moment, then said, “You might pick up a couple of bottles of wine for dinner. Do you need some money.” I automatically stood to reach in my jeans pocket.

  “I always need money according to Dad,” Schooner said with mock peevishness. I handed him a 20 and he gave me a grin.

  “Why do you wear that ridiculous reindeer sweater of Dad’s?” he asked. “It swallows you. You look about 10 years old.”

  “Why do you wear that 10-year-old baseball cap?” I countered. “You look like a refugee from middle school. Your dad’s sweater makes me feel happy—kind of like a grown-up blankee. Does your baseball cap make you feel happy?”

  Schooner shrugged. “Never once thought about it. It fits my head. What kind of wine do you want? It can’t be anything too nice for 20 bucks.”

  I peeled off another 20 and handed it to him. “You decide. Just make it red and make sure you have enough change for whatever you need and gas money.”

  Schooner gave me a quick hug on his way to the door and paused long enough to kiss the top of my head.

  “Aren’t you going to put on a coat?” I asked.

  “No, Mom.” Of the three kids, Schooner was the only one who acknowledged any gender dissonance in being reared and cared for by a man. Trey and Andrea called me Chris. Schooner called me “Mom” whenever he was affectionate, happy, or irritated, which accounted for most of his emotional range. “Truck’s warm, store’s warm. What am I going to do, get pneumonia suddenly in the driveway or the parking lot?”

  I waved him off and turned to the stove. “Just go.”

  “Got it,” he said. Then, “Chris?”

  I looked to the back door from the stove. Schooner stood on the porch, grinning.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  I heard something clunky and heavy bang the walls along with Zack’s footfalls on the stairs. I waved to Schooner and he took off. Before his truck was out of the driveway, Zack came into the kitchen with his suitcase. He passed me without a word, but I heard him mutter, “I thought the little fucker would never get out of here.”

  Turning back from the door, Zack’s face was ruddy with exertion or high emotion or both. He had grown more florid, solid, and heavy as he moved staunchly into middle age, and while he certainly wasn’t fat, he was 40 pounds heavier than he’d been when I met him. I was scared he was on his way to an angioplasty, but he claimed his heart was fine, goddamnit, whenever I urged him to walk with me or join the gym I went to in the fight against my own middle-aged spread.

  “What’s all this about Schooner? What has he said to get on your nerves so bad? And what’s up with the suitcase?”

  Zack shot me a look of pure frustration, then said, “Schooner is a spoiled brat, mainly because you persist in treating him like he’s still a teenager. The sooner he gets out of college and gets on with his goddamn life without my help will be the soonest he stops getting on my nerves.” With that, he picked up the suitcase and pushed out the back door.

  I left the stove to stand at the window over the kitchen sink and watch him stride to his new car, open the trunk, and shove the suitcase inside. Hesitating for a moment and looking toward the house, he saw me at the window watching him and turned his back to me. He slammed the trunk lid down with one hand, shoved his hands in his pants pockets, and stomped down the drive, toward the street, and out of my sight.

  It was at moments like that that I regretted quitting smoking. I took some deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling slowly as I turned back to the stove to stir the red sauce that didn’t need stirring. Growing calmer, I remembered Zack was under almost constant pressure at the agency. Though he had been a partner for years, the pressure-cooker atmosphere and completely insane client demands were enough to keep him constantly frustrated and short-fused. In addition to that, his business still had not recovered from the 9/11 recession.

  Zack had been short with me and at an emotional arm’s length for months. In all of the business ups and downs over the years he had never been so far away, but I never complained. We lived well, mainly because of his hard work. I had been quietly suggesting for months that we downsize our lives. Schooner would be graduating from East Carolina University in the spring; the house was finally in a state after years of nearly constant renovation and repair that would allow us to put it on the market and get top dollar for it.

  I wanted to cash out, maybe buy a small condo in Raleigh where we could live part of the week and a beach place where we could semi-retire. With FedEx, phones, faxes, and e-mail, Zack could continue to be as involved in the business as he needed to be and still slow down some. I thought that had been the whole point of Alicia Stiles.

  As far as I was concerned, Alicia Stiles was a spider in a Donna Karan suit and Manolo Blahniks, but I generously and freely admitted she was very good at what she did. Zack had urged the other partners to buy out her very successful public relations and advertising boutique. Since they had, she had proven to be a rainmaker, bringing in new clients despite the slack-assed economy.

  I was only involved in any of this tangentially. I’d learned long before not to mix too much of my opinion into Zack’s business affairs. Early on, Zack had made it abundantly clear that my associate’s degree in business from Wake Tech and my years doing payroll for the king of the hair burners didn’t translate into an understanding of the advertising business. So I kept my mouth shut and kept the house accounts in fine order. That was my job; it was unstated, but clearly implied, that was also was my place.

  I had kept that place running in fine order so we could eventually move on to a life that was less stressful for Zack. And, selfishly, I just wanted to spend more time with him. As the kids
grew older and moved out, I took the time I’d devoted to shuttling them between confirmation classes and soccer and every other frickin’ thing they were wrapped up in, and spent it on making myself into more of what I had always wanted to be. Someone smart, someone accomplished, well read, and urbane—that’s how I saw myself. I had spent a long time mentally scrubbing the dirt from Fairview Homes from my heart and from behind my ears. I wanted Zack to find me interesting and bright as the years began to dull other aspects of our lives.

  I kept myself together physically, I exercised, and while I could still spare a few pounds, I was still blond and fairly attractive, or so I hoped. Zack liked me to look younger than I’d become, and always complimented me when I bought a few new things at the Gap or Abercrombie & Fitch and walked around looking like a hoyden boy. I wasn’t pretentious; the Gap suited me, and Abercrombie seemed to turn Zack on.

  Or it used to. Somewhere down the line Zack stopped reaching out for me, with a hard-on a cat couldn’t scratch. Claiming his back was suffering on our too-soft mattress, he had even taken to sleeping in the guest room. It was nothing I was concerned about—stress had taken its toll on our love life for brief intervals in the past. I missed him physically, but I loved him in a way and with an understanding that only deepened over time. That kept me from pressing the point. There was forever to wait for, and forever seemed to come quicker with every passing season.

  I heard the back door close and the screen door bang shut behind it. Zack stood just inside the kitchen and folded his arms across his chest. “Sit down, Chris. We need to talk about something.”

  Wishing for a cigarette, I pulled my chair from under the kitchen table, sat, and closed my book. Zack moved from the back door to stand across from me and leaned against the kitchen sink with his arms still folded across his chest. “Zack, if this is about Schooner—”

  “Fuck Schooner,” he said angrily. “For once this has nothing to do with your baby. Did you ever once stop to think this could be about something between you and me?”

  Hurt, I glanced at the pots on the stove, then looked down at the cover of the bright young women in head scarves on the cover of Azar Nafisi’s book.

  “Look at me Chris,” Zack said as he moved from the sink to sit directly across the table from me. I looked up in time to see a flash of resignation replace determination in his face. He sighed.

  “Chris, there’s no easy way to say what I have to say … no way to make it easy, so I’m going to just spill my guts, okay?”

  I reached across the table to take his hand, but he pulled out of reach. “Is it … your health?”

  Zack shook his head and laughed a short, bitter laugh. “You really would try to talk me into a heart attack or worse if I stayed here wouldn’t you?”

  “What do you mean, stay here?”

  “I mean I’m leaving, Chris. Today. Right now.”

  Stunned, I could only look at him and wait for what came next.

  “You know for some time now, we’ve been growing apart. With Schooner nearly finished with school, I need to move on.” He hesitated and looked out the window over the sink. “There’s someone else, a young woman. I’m taking the chance to start over, Chris. I hope you’ll be happy for me. We’re going to be married shortly.”

  Reeling, I felt a thousand unwelcome sensations come rushing back at me as I retreated mentally from Zack. Sitting just across the table from me, he seemed a million miles away, and suddenly I was back at Fairview Homes. I smelled the hot bricks; the stinking leftovers; the stale oat-y smell of old beer bottles and felt their broken glass under my bare feet. “Who?” I asked quietly. “Am I allowed to know who this woman is?”

  Zack didn’t take his gaze from the window. “It’s Alicia. Alicia Stiles.”

  “The cunt!” I spat. “I suppose this was her way to consolidate the buyout, huh?”

  “I don’t think that’s really fair, Chris.”

  “Fair? Fair to who? Alicia?”

  “No, well … not fair to us both.”

  “In what way am I not being fair to you?” I growled. My growing anger was threatening to boil over.

  “I can’t believe you’d cast me as someone who’d use marriage to consolidate a business relationship,” Zack said.

  A dawning realization stole into my anger, and I struck back. “Isn’t that exactly what you’d do? Isn’t that exactly what you’ve done? Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless next you’re really going to cut my heart out and tell me that you never really wanted me in the first place. That you made love to me to keep me as … as … you know, your housekeeper?”

  “Chris! Chris stop it!” Zack said. “Why would I say that to you? Why would I hurt you that way? How can you even begin to believe such a thing after all these years?”

  “Then what? I don’t understand. Isn’t this something we can just fix? How long can this affair last, Zack?”

  Zack finally looked at me. “She’s nearly three months’ pregnant, Chris. It’s all about doing the right thing.”

  “No doubt. How noble. I know you love me. I know you do, Zack. Please.”

  Zack sighed but didn’t take his eyes off mine. “I did love you, Chris.”

  The internal struggle between the projects brat I had been and the polished, urbane man I’d hoped to become began to swing in the guttersnipe’s favor. I was ready to take the fight into a nastier realm. “You did love me? What made you stop loving me? After I put up with your little indiscretions over the years … hell, I knew you were a bisexual when I came onboard—you had the kids to prove it. Why the fuck did you have to sign on for another woman … another fucking kid, at 56? You’ll never get me to believe she didn’t have something to do with this, some kind of scam. The fucking bitch. I can’t believe you’d fall for this, Zack.” Then, a dying gasp from the hurt child I kept locked away for so many years raised his towhead and stomped his dirty feet: “Why can’t she just raise the kid herself? Even if it is yours, she’s tough enough to make it on her own. Why does she get you? Why do you care?”

  Zack took all this stoically, then leaned closer to me. Gently he said, “Chris, you of all people should understand, considering—”

  With that, all my pretenses were destroyed. I became the white trash I’d grown up around, screaming under a yellow porch light in the bitter darkness of the Fairview Homes. “Considering what? Considering I grew up in a fucking housing project? Considering my mama had to work like a dog to keep a roof over our head just to do that good? That pushy bitch Alicia has to be pulling in six figures. You tell me she can’t raise a young ‘un on that? Why should I care about her or her fucking brat?”

  Zack said simply, calmly, “I thought you’d understand, considering you grew up some man’s bastard.”

  That hit me like a punch in the gut. I was stunned into silence.

  “I love her, Chris.”

  “What does your love mean? What are you going to do if she kills herself—bring your little bastard back for me to raise?”

  Zack reached across the table and slapped me hard across the mouth. In 22 years’ worth of adult give-and-take, he’d never touched me in anger. Now this. The slap cut my lower lip on my upper front teeth. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and sat staring at the smear of blood there.

  “Once and always white trash, aren’t you? You had to go there,” Zack said. “You begged for that.”

  I didn’t answer him. I thought about how many times I’d been told you can’t get above your raising. No matter how much you watch your grammar, how many intelligent books you absorb or pretty thoughts you have. You can never get away from getting smacked across the mouth and put back in your place. But I rebelled against the notion. I sucked blood from my lip and closed my eyes, marshaling in my silence all the good things I believed I was now, all the good things I wanted to be.

  Calmly I said, “No, Zack, if I really was white trash, I’d stick an ice pick in you right now, or cut y
ou with a straight razor. And I could too. God knows, I could. But that’s really beside the point isn’t it?” I stood and walked behind Zack to the sink to wash my hand and mouth. He sat at the table behind me with his head in his hands.

  I looked out the window at the bare trees tearing at the wintry gray sky like long sharp claws. “It’s okay, Zack. You’d better go now.”

  He stood and gently put his hands on my shoulders. “I’d take it back if I could, Chris.”

  “So would I, Zack. But what’s done is done.”

  “This doesn’t have to be hurtful, you know. We don’t have to rip each other apart.” He sounded hopeful, not contrite. He never relished a confrontation—he always had preferred to sulk in silence and make me miserable with my inability to know what would make him feel better. I pitied him at those times. He disgusted me. More than anything just then, I wanted him gone. Then immediately regretted that desire.

  I turned to face him and gave him as much of a smile as my split lip would allow. “I honestly don’t know how you can say that with a straight face, Zack. But I do think we just got through the worst of it. There’s very little we could say to each other that would hurt more.”

  Zack gently wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. I let him, fully aware it might be the last time I would feel his touch and praying to God it wouldn’t be. I managed to ask the unthinkable, after so many years: “So, I guess that’s it. Am I out on the street? When do you expect me to be out?”

  Zack briefly rested his chin on top of my head, then held me away at arm’s length: “22 years together, all that time spent with me looking after you, loving you, and you’re back in the projects before you even give me a chance? Do you think I’d stop caring about you, looking out for you, now?”