Monsoon Season (3 page)

Riley had never mentioned it back then, and I guess it shouldn’t really matter now, but for some reason it made me feel even worse. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That maybe they’d laughed about me back then. I’d been trying to play it all cool, but she might have known the whole time what a loser I really was. I was fixated on this, as if that was what I should feel ashamed about.

When I opened my eyes in the morning, I was expecting to see the room I’d shared with Ben: the blue checker-board bedspread, a tapestry hanging on the wall in busy shades of red and green, the lamp I’d found at Pier One. The familiarity of my childhood bedroom was disorienting.

I shuffled into the kitchen, my hair wild, unself-conscious. Gracie, our black Labrador, charged toward me and licked at my hands as I tried to pat her head.

My dad was making omelettes. My mom was sitting on a kitchen stool, wearing jeans and a pink satin sleep shirt.

‘Good morning, sleepyhead,’ my mom said.

Standing there in my pyjamas, I felt about twelve years old.

‘Hungry?’ my dad asked, over his shoulder. I noticed there was more grey in his stubble than I remembered. He threw several slices of bacon into a frying-pan and it began to sound like the weekend mornings of my easy childhood.

‘Whatcha makin’?’ I asked, sitting on one of the bar stools at the counter and pulling my feet under me.

‘Well, today we’ve got mushrooms, tomatoes, asparagus, umm . . .’ He opened the refrigerator and gazed within. The edibility of my dad’s omelettes had always depended on what happened to be in the refrigerator that week.

‘That sounds good,’ I said, and he closed the fridge and went back to work.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ my mom asked, pouring several spoonfuls of Coffee Mate into her mug.

When I lived with Donna, I started drinking coffee with her in the morning. She used to take it black with two sugars and would scoff at the beige liquid in my mug. Each morning I worked on achieving a darker, more respectable colour. I didn’t really know how to make coffee and Ben didn’t drink it so I’d got out of the habit lately.

‘Sure,’ I said, and she reached into the cabinet to get me a mug. My mom made my coffee just like hers. She placed it on the counter and sat down next to me.

I held the cup in my hands, feeling the heat.

‘So what are your plans while you’re home?’

The fact that she hadn’t asked about Ben made me think she suspected something was up.

‘I thought maybe you’d let me borrow the car so I could drive up to see Laura.’

‘Oh, sure, honey. How is Laura?’

‘She’s good,’ I said. The truth was I hadn’t talked to her since Christmas. I’d forgotten her birthday in April.

‘And the baby?’

‘Good. Everyone’s good.’

Eventually, I would have to tell my parents that I hadn’t purchased a round-trip ticket.

My mom spent about twenty minutes looking for her car keys. She wandered around the house, mumbling to herself, lifting stacks of magazines on the kitchen table and searching her purse over and over again.

‘Saint Anthony!’ She threw up her arms in frustration. Whenever something went missing, she’d call out his name. I’d grown up thinking Saint Anthony stole these things; that he was a friendly little kleptomaniac who borrowed stuff without permission, but always returned it when asked.

My dad found the keys in the bathroom and insisted on giving me gas money on my way out. I was looking forward to the drive. I hadn’t had a car in Tucson; the last time I’d driven was months ago when Donna had been tipsy after leaving a Mexican restaurant.

Ben had always driven when we went anywhere. I was the navigator and DJ. We sang along to Lionel Richie and Carole King and Bob Marley. There were long stretches when we didn’t speak at all and I didn’t feel anxious to fill the car with mindless chatter. I gazed out of the window, held Ben’s hand, and was happy.

He pulled off the road once for a broken-down Hyundai. I never would have done that. I knew nothing about cars. The one time I’d ever stopped for someone, I’d ended up feeling ridiculous. A dog was lying on the side of the road and I drove by twice before stopping to tell someone at the mechanic’s shop on the corner. The man had called to the dog and it ran over. Turned out, it was just taking a nap.

Ben was sheepish as he pulled over. ‘I’m sorry. I just have to.’

‘It’s okay, babe. We’re in no rush.’ I thought it was interesting that he’d picked up on my wariness of strangers (Donna attributed it to my growing up on the east coast), but I liked that he was different. I thought it was sweet.

I got out of the car and waved, but kept myself apart, leaning against the passenger door, trying not to seem anti-social as I checked imaginary email on my cell phone. Ben spent a good twenty minutes with his head under the hood. In the end, the middle-aged couple was rescued by AAA.

We slid back into the car and Ben shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t have felt right if I hadn’t tried.’

Road trips were the most fun part of early couplehood: discovering something new together, feeling like a team. We learned to differentiate between stalactites and stalagmites at Kartchner Caverns, strolled through art galleries in Bisbee, photographed hoodoos at Chiricahua National Monument. We skipped the touristy strip at Tombstone, finding the country’s best
sopapilla
s at a restaurant instead and having wild hotel sex at a Holiday Inn. It was a four-hour drive to Sedona. Those rust-coloured mountains against the blue-blue sky were the first things I’ve ever seen in person that lived up to the photographs. In Santa Fe, I fell more deeply in love with Georgia O’Keeffe at the museum and more in love with Ben as we lay in the grass of the plaza, taking photos of tourists and trees and sky.

I stopped for an iced coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. Very light and very sweet. I liked to slurp up the wet sugar at the bottom and crunch it between my teeth. I drove with the window down, Dave Matthews singing loudly into the wind.

Laura and I had been juniors when she’d found out she was pregnant. I purchased the test for her at CVS and she took it into one of the stalls in the co-ed restroom on our floor in the dorm. As I waited, I scuffed my sneakers on the old ceramic tiles. They alternated in black and white, although the white ones had yellowed with age. It was a Saturday, so a lot of people had gone away for the weekend. No one came into the restroom while we were there.

She came out of the stall with tears streaming down her face, speechless. I hugged her and we walked down the hall back to our room. She sobbed into a pillow as I sat on the floor and stroked her hair.

She married Kyle three months later in a quaint chapel on the seacoast of New Hampshire, where she’d grown up. She wore a simple white dress and I stood beside her in something we’d picked out at JCPenney. She wasn’t yet showing, which had been so important to her. She was the most beautiful bride I’d ever seen as she stood at the front of the church, dark hair falling in soft waves over her shoulders, promising to honour and keep Kyle as long as they both should live.

In fact, Kyle was sweet but, as my nana would say, he was never going to set the world on fire. He was quiet and seemed always to be uncomfortable in any situation. He was the complete opposite of Laura, who had ever been the loudest voice in the room. She was always up for an adventure, while he seemed content with small things. Laura was wild and hilarious and brave. Kyle wasn’t at all the person I’d have chosen for her. It was clear that he loved her, though, and I decided that was what was most important.

Kyle got a delivery job in Worcester and they rented the first floor of a small yellow house. Laura waddled around campus during our senior year, immune to the looks of pity she inspired from her classmates. She managed to graduate on time with a degree in psychology. She had once hoped to go to graduate school in California. The way things had worked out, she hadn’t applied anywhere.

I hadn’t called Laura to tell her I was coming because I thought she’d have a harder time being mad at me in person. I wasn’t worried that she wouldn’t be there. Isabel was just over a year old now and I imagined them spending most of their time at home. Even if she wasn’t there, I thought the drive would do me good.

I’m a smart girl. I’ve never understood those women who stay with men who hit them. As much as I could feel sorry for them, there was always a part of me that thought they were just weak. Or maybe they didn’t have enough money or family support so they had no choice but to stay. I wasn’t any of those women. I wouldn’t stay with someone who hit me.

But when he threw a glass across the kitchen and it shattered against the wall behind me, I told myself he hadn’t been trying to hurt me. While I was clearing it up, I cut myself on one of the tiny shards. But that was my own fault.

The first time he did hurt me, I thought maybe it was an accident. We were sitting across the table from Donna and Dave at a bar. They had just started dating and Donna begged me not to leave them alone because she was so nervous. So when Ben announced we had to be going, I caught Donna’s desperate look and returned it with a confident smile. ‘Come on, babe. We can stay a little longer,’ I said, nudging him with my elbow. ‘It isn’t even eleven yet. Don’t be a party pooper.’

Ben reached for my hand under the table. ‘I have to get up early, honey.’

I turned toward him and huffed, rolling my eyes. I opened my mouth to make a further protest when he began squeezing my hand so hard that I coughed to cover a whimper.

As we left, Donna’s eyes accused me of treachery.

On the way home in the car, he swore he hadn’t meant to squeeze so hard. Then he told me it had made him feel like crap when I’d rolled my eyes. ‘It’s like you think I’m a moron. Like you don’t give a shit about me. I mean, do you care about me at all?’

By the time we got home, I was apologizing to him.

Then one morning, as my cereal was warming in the microwave, he shoved me against the refrigerator. We were arguing about the phone bill or the electric bill, or both. I hadn’t even realized he was getting angry. One minute I was setting the orange juice on the counter; the next I was crashing into a kitchen appliance. He held me by my upper arms and gave me a shake, knocking nearly all the refrigerator magnets onto the linoleum. We looked into each other’s eyes, the lack of recognition seemingly mutual. The microwave beeped and he walked out, leaving me stunned and trembling in a pile of postcards and coupons and to-do lists.

As I watched his fingerprints darken on my biceps, I decided I wasn’t going to wait for him to hit me. I moved back in with Donna, but I didn’t tell her what had happened. Ben would come by while she was at work, ring the bell and knock for an hour, but I wouldn’t open the door. He’d leave me flowers and letters on the front steps. He wrote me an eloquent apology in boyish handwriting, swore he’d go to therapy so it would never happen again.

I told him to go to hell. I wasn’t one of those women.

After about a month, Donna and I started talking about moving into a two-bedroom place again. I started thinking about him as a disaster I had narrowly escaped.

As I arrived, I noticed Laura’s jeep was in the driveway. It was a warm July day in New England and all the windows were down, which made me think they must have gone out that morning. The back seat was cluttered with Isabel’s toys and the car seat was covered with Cheerios dust.

Laura pulled the front door open before I was up the front steps. ‘Riley?’ She spoke as if she thought she was seeing things.

I laughed as she threw her arms around me, picked me up and spun me around on the porch. ‘What are you doing home?’ she asked, as she pulled me into the house and shut the door.

I sighed. ‘Long story.’

‘Well, come in and sit down. Can I get you a drink?’

‘No, I’m fine. Where’s Isabel?’

‘Napping,’ she said, with an expression of relief.

We sat next to each other on the couch.

‘So, what’s going on?’ She was beaming at me. She was expecting good news. ‘I haven’t talked to you in for ever. Tell me everything.’

‘I know. I’m a rotten friend. I’m so sorry I forgot your birthday.’

Laura waved her hand in the air, like she was shooing a fly. ‘Don’t even worry about that,’ she said. ‘I’ll forget yours this year if it makes you feel any better.’

I smiled. ‘Deal.’

Laura reached over and inspected my left hand. ‘Well, no ring.’

‘Oh, God, no.’ It hadn’t even dawned on me that she’d be thinking that. ‘We broke up,’ I said.

Her face fell in sympathy. ‘What happened?’

I opened my mouth to offer something vague about it being complicated when the baby monitor began to cough out a signal that Isabel’s nap was over.

‘Hold that thought,’ Laura said, patting my knee and leaving the room. There was something so maternal about her every movement now.

She came back in with Isabel perched on her hip, rubbing her eyes. ‘You remember Auntie Riley,’ Laura said, although I was pretty sure that was impossible. The last time I’d seen the child she’d been a squirmy little ball in a bassinet. I’d been afraid to hold her.