Monsoon Season (12 page)

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Not really.’

‘What have you done today?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

She was crying. He couldn’t hear it but he knew from the silence.

‘It’s just going to take some time, Ry,’ he offered gently.

‘It’s been almost a month since I left Tucson.’

‘It’s just going to take longer. I’m sorry.’

‘I took one of his T-shirts,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘I sleep with it. It doesn’t even smell like him any more.’ Another pause. ‘I was looking up flights to Tucson on the Internet today.’

Jack tried to keep his voice steady. ‘Do you want to go back to Tucson or do you want to go back to him?’

‘Both,’ she confessed, her voice cracking.

‘Riley. You can’t go back to him. You just can’t.’

‘It doesn’t make sense, though. Why should I have to be in so much pain? He’s the one who fucked up. Why should I have to pay for it?’

‘You shouldn’t have to. It isn’t fair.’

‘I feel like I’m going crazy without him. I feel like I’m dying.’

Part of Jack felt for her and part of him wanted to shake her. ‘Riley, come on. You’re too smart for this.’

‘Too smart to be happy? He made me happy, Jack. I’d never felt as happy as I did when I was with him.’

‘Right. He was perfect for you, aside from the fact that he
hit
you.’

‘Once.’

Jack couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. It was like having a conversation with a stranger. One he didn’t really like. ‘That’s not enough?’

‘Is it? Is that one moment enough to erase all the others?’

‘Are you asking me? Yes. I’d say it’s definitely enough. He hit you, Riley. He hit my best friend. I think that’s more than enough. I’d like to rip his fucking head off. Losing you is getting off easy.’

‘What if he got help or we went to couple counselling or something? What if we could be together for the rest of our lives and it never happened again?’

‘You think you’re different from other women with abusive boyfriends?’

‘Maybe.’ She paused. ‘I do. I don’t feel like those women. I’m not afraid of him. I don’t see him fitting the pattern of the typical abuser, isolating you from your friends and acting jealous and controlling. He was never like that. He was my friend. He made me laugh and feel safe. He was the first man I ever felt like myself with.’

‘Maybe it doesn’t have to fit a pattern. Maybe we just expect it to because we’ve seen too many movies. Maybe all you have in common with those women is that the man you loved hit you.’

She sniffed and said nothing.

‘Riley, you need to get out of the house. You need to call Laura. You need to remember who you were before you met that bastard.’

‘I want to hang up now,’ she whispered.

Jack sighed. ‘Promise me you won’t make any decisions about this tonight?’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m calling you tomorrow and you’d better pick up.’

‘Okay.’

‘I love you, Riley.’

She didn’t answer. He waited for her to catch her breath. ‘I love you, too,’ she choked out finally and hung up quickly without saying goodbye.

I go to the medicine cabinet because I have a headache. I find a bottle of Robitussin. Just imagining the smell makes me dry-heave. Q-tips. Hydrogen peroxide. Band-Aids. That’s all.

Climbing the stairs makes me out of breath. My parents’ bathroom smells like a romantic mixture of his aftershave and her perfume. Every Christmas, my mother made the trip to Abercrombie & Fitch; my father to Walgreens. They wrapped the tiny boxes in bigger ones to camouflage the inevitable non-surprise.

I see myself in the mirror above the sink. I am so pale. My eyes are sunken and I look afraid of my own reflection.

As I pull open the cabinet door, the bottle of Percocet falls out, bounces three times, lands in the sink. I pick it up and twirl it between my fingers, reading the label. Mark Thomas. Twice a day, as needed. Take with food. He’d had his gall bladder out in April. I give the bottle a shake. It’s nearly full.

When the phone rang, it went straight to the machine. The red light was blinking seven times with the voices of people who wanted to talk to my parents.

‘Riley, pick up. It’s Jack.’ He hummed as I walked from the stove to the phone.

‘Hi, Jack,’ I said, deleting his message.

‘Hey. What’s up?’

‘Not much. Cooking dinner.’ I walked back to the stove and picked up the spatula. Gracie was keeping an eye on me, but she didn’t lift her head.

‘Whatcha making?’

‘Hamburger,’ I told him.

‘Have you taken a shower today?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you lying to me?’

‘Maybe.’

I looked down at myself. Technically, I was dressed, but only because I’d slept in my clothes.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t cried all day,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s good.’

‘Yep.’ I checked the underside of the burger. It was still pink. My arm was numb to the grease spittle.

‘So, no more crazy thoughts of going back to Tucson?’

‘Not today,’ I said, although that wasn’t exactly true. It was my favourite daydream. It got me through commercial breaks.

‘Well, that’s good. Baby steps,’ Jack said.

There were two variations on the fantasy. In one, I’d call Ben to tell him I was coming and he’d meet me at the airport. We’d embrace and cry for what was broken, deciding to carry the pieces with us for ever rather than let them go in exchange for a poor man’s sort of freedom.

‘Yeah.’ I flattened the burger with a spatula. The sizzling intensified.

‘It really is just going to take time.’

In the other, I’d let myself into the apartment and wait for him to get home. We’d make love right way and then lie together in our unguarded glow, having one of those enormous talks that solve everything.

‘I guess,’ I said.

‘I think you’re in the best place you could be right now.’ He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. ‘You can take all the time you need to until you feel better. Really take care of yourself and get stronger. Make sure you never let anything like this happen again. You know?’

Let it happen.

I flipped the burger onto its other side. It hissed, then quieted. ‘I feel like I’m just never going to be myself again.’

‘I know it feels like that now. But, really, this is just a moment in time. It’s a bump in the road,’ he told me. ‘Some day you’ll look back on this and it won’t hurt so much.’

I considered this. ‘Do you really believe that, Jack?’

‘I do,’ he answered, without hesitation. ‘I really do.’

I got a plate out of the high cabinet and a can of soda from the fridge. ‘When I found out I was pregnant, I just wanted to die,’ I said, leaning my hip against the counter. ‘And, well, I guess I thought that would go away once I wasn’t pregnant any more. I thought I’d feel free of Ben. I thought I’d be able to go on with my life without him. But that feeling? It hasn’t gone away.’

He was quiet for a moment. Then he sighed heavily. ‘Riley, Riley, Riley. You break my heart. I don’t even know what to say to that.’

I slid the burger onto the bun. ‘Well, I should go eat this before it gets cold.’

‘Okay. I swear it will get easier, Ry.’

‘I know.’ What else was there to say?

‘Good. Call me if you need anything.’

‘I will.’

I squeezed ketchup onto the bun, smacking the bottom of the bottle three times. I walked down the hall with the plate on my flat palm, doing a balancing act that reminded me of my waitress job.

My head was swimming. The fabric of the couch swelled and swayed and I sat back and closed my eyes. I could hear my heart thumping in my ears. I took a deep breath as the room settled into focus.

Gracie came toward me and rested her chin on the couch cushion. She looked up with plaintive, sorrowful eyes.

‘Okay,’ I said, patting the seat. My parents didn’t let her on the furniture. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

Gracie jumped up and curled herself into a ball at the opposite end of the couch. Sometimes she put her head in my lap, but this time I got the other end. I gave her rump a few solid pats and then let her drift off to sleep. I snapped on the television and reached for my burger.

Sesame seeds scattered on my bare legs. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d shaved. At the first bite of burger, hot red juice ran out between my lips and down my shirt. It hadn’t been cooked long enough but I wasn’t about to go back into the kitchen. I took another bite.

Judge Judy was settling a dispute between a mother and daughter. They were suing each other over a thousand dollars. The mother said it was a loan; the daughter swore it was a gift. I knew it would come down to whether they’d put anything in writing. It always did.

‘Never give a personal loan if you can’t afford not to get it back,’ my father had once told me, and it had stuck. That was the fatherly advice I remembered. He’d never told me what to do if someone hit me, if I got pregnant. We didn’t talk about those things. He hadn’t ever told me I could always come to him, that he’d always be there for me. He’d never told me that he’d always love me, no matter what.

I forced myself to eat the last bite. I gagged. I held my breath against the smell. I gagged again. I had to take a breath. I retched over my lunch plate. It was more like regurgitation than vomit.

I went to the kitchen and rinsed the contents of my plate down the sink. Time for bed.

I had dialled Ben’s number a hundred times since the last time we’d spoken and always hung up before it rang. Except once. It had gone to the answering machine. I’d held my breath, my chest aching to hear the sound of his voice. The familiar sound of mine was enough to break my heart all over again.

I’d swallowed four pills with dinner.
Take with food
. He picked up on the second ring.

‘Hello?’

I stroked the receiver’s hang-up button with my index finger.

‘Hello?’

I imagined the telephone wires stretching from my parents’ house to Tucson, like rubber bands attached to our hearts, joining us together in spite of everything.

He was quiet at the other end of the line, hesitating. He was about to hang up.

‘Riley?’ I could see him sitting up, his feet spread wide and flat on the floor. The way he’d shake his dark hair across his forehead and lean forward. He’d be muting the television, maybe shut it off entirely.

Rubber bands that expand and then snap back together. Or break.

I hung up, settled into the bed and fell asleep.

She slept on her stomach and Kyle slept on his back. He rested his hand on the arch of her lower back and when he woke up, he always gave her ass a little squeeze. Laura used to hate it. Now, somehow, it had grown on her, like he had.

Laura knew there were only a few more months before she would be too big to sleep on her stomach any more. Kyle would rub her feet and make her Jell-o. Green Jell-o. Unless it was different this time. So much was different.

This time, when Laura suspected, she didn’t feel panic. She felt giddy. When she bought the pregnancy test, she wasn’t embar -rassed. She was a married lady with a cart full of groceries and a beautiful little girl gumming a red and yellow rattle in the front seat. This time, Kyle sat on the edge of the tub while she peed on the stick. They waited together, talking over each other about naming the baby after Kyle’s grandfather if it was a boy, and how they could reuse Isabel’s baby clothes if it was a girl. And when Laura showed him the stick was blue, there was no fear in his smile. They hugged and laughed. He spun her around in the bathroom. They were going to be okay. It wasn’t even a question.

Laura padded around the kitchen in her fuzzy pink slippers. Kyle had got them for Mother’s Day. She rummaged in the cabinet for a bottle and found the apple juice in the fridge. Isabel was watching her, scowling. She sat in her high chair with her chubby hands folded on the tray in front of her. Her legs swung back and forth. This was her understanding of patience.

Kyle shuffled out and kissed Isabel on the top of her head. ‘Morning, Peanut.’

She shook her head, curls bouncing.

He wrapped his arms around Laura’s waist and rubbed her tummy as she screwed the cap on Isabel’s bottle.

‘Let me,’ he said, taking the bottle. The baby reached out both her arms as he walked toward her. She grabbed the bottle and yanked it into her open mouth.

‘Have you been lacing the juice with crack again?’ he asked, shaking his head.

Laura smiled. ‘She’s much nicer once she’s had her breakfast.’ Kyle only got to spend mornings with them one day a week. Most days he was out of the house before Isabel woke and he didn’t get home until after she’d gone to bed. Laura couldn’t imagine spending so much time away from her. She was changing so quickly these days. To Laura, the changes were hard to see, showing up incrementally. For Kyle, it must have felt like a new kid showed up to breakfast each week.

Laura got the Cheerios out of the cabinet and shook a few onto the tray in front of Isabel. The bottle snapped out from between her lips and fell to the floor as she reached for one. Kyle bent to retrieve it and sat at the table next to her. Laura loved the way he watched her, beaming. He was smitten.

‘I’ve got her,’ Kyle said. ‘Go get ready.’

‘She’s got bananas in the fridge.’

‘Okay. I can do it.’

‘She needs her bib. She’s messy.’

‘I know.’ He looked up at Laura. ‘Hurry up.’

‘I’m not in a rush.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘You were up before Cranky over here made a peep.’ He handed Isabel her juice. ‘Want me to make coffee?’ he asked.

Laura sighed. This was their one day as a family and she was going to miss it. ‘No, thanks.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘So far, so good.’

Every morning Laura woke up wondering if this would be the day the morning sickness started. It hadn’t yet. She was careful. She kept a bag of rice cakes on the nightstand and nibbled around the edge before she got up in the morning. She knew things she hadn’t known before.