You Believers (48 page)

She went out, locked the door, and slipped the key under the mat, thinking of what she might buy for herself, not Lawrence but herself, things she had loved to indulge in like chocolate ice cream with almonds. Salty peanuts, chips and onion dip, those foods she’d loved as a girl and had to give up with age. She had learned to be careful about the right amount of protein, fiber, had learned to be careful with her carbs and sweets, not only for herself but to keep her husbands from pointing out that left to her own devices, she’d eat like a teenager. “You’re not a teenager,” they both had said, as if happy to tell her the news. She had acquiesced for her husbands, who seemed to think the right diet could bring immortality. But nothing did.
Get what you want while you can
, she thought as she hurried down the steps. Then she smelled his cologne—Lawrence. She looked down, saw his graying hair, the little bald patch on the top of his head. He looked up. She hadn’t expected to see the sadness on his face. Tears stung her eyes, and she sighed, “Lawrence. You’re here.”

He stood there, adjusted the grocery bags against his chest. He
moved toward her, a worried look on his face, nothing like the judgmental face she had conjured in her mind when she thought of him coming through the door. “Livy,” he said, “where are you going?”

She went to him, more relieved than she’d dreamed she’d be. Why had she been fighting with him in her mind all this time? She leaned into his shoulder, kissed his cheek. “You’re here,” she said. “You’re here.”

He kissed the side of her head, leaned back, and looked at her. “You all right?”

She nodded. “I was just going to the store. I wanted to make a nice dinner.”

He led the way up the stairs with that old decisive way he had. “You know, you could save yourself a lot of trouble if you turned your phone on. Checked your messages.”

She followed him, knew she was supposed to apologize. In the old days, she would have apologized. She stared at the back of his head, spoke the words, daring him to argue: “I’m sick of messages.”

He turned, looked at her, a sadness sweeping across his eyes. “I can understand that.” He nodded at the door. “Can you let us in? I’d like to get inside so you can see what I brought you.”

She waited as if he could somehow be distracted while she reached under the mat. His eyes were on her. She shrugged. “Just step back. I put the key under the mat in case you came.”

He shook his head. “Damn, Livy. Given what’s happened.” He paused. A fury whirled up at the sound of those words:
Given what’s happened
. She wanted to say what happened, say it:
My daughter is dead. That’s what happened
. He sighed, looked like he felt more sorry for her than pissed off. “It seems you’d be more careful, Livy.” He stepped back, watched her get the key and open the door to let them in.

“I’m just exhausted, Lawrence. I’m sick of words, messages. I’m sick of phones. I’m sick of worrying about things like being careful.”

He went to the kitchen, put the bag on the table. “I just meant that if you’d checked your messages, you’d have known I was bringing groceries so you wouldn’t have to go to the store.” He pulled out milk, bread, apples, oranges, cheese. She sat watching him place the items on the counter, thinking there was still the matter of dinner; what would she make for dinner from that? He stopped, reached, cupped her chin in his hand. “You’re gonna like this.” Then he reached in and pulled out the pint of chocolate-almond ice cream, then the bag of chips and onion dip. He stood back and grinned.

She ran her fingers over the ice cream. “You remembered my favorite brand.”

“Of course I did.”

She looked at him, remembering who he was. “I can’t believe you did this.”

He stood beside her, squeezed her shoulder. “I know you, Livy. You deny yourself things. And when you’re unhappy, you’re only harder on yourself, as if more suffering can make some other suffering go away.” He patted her hand, looked at the refrigerator. “And what the hell, if I’m wrong and you’ve been living on nothing but ice cream and chips, I guess I can at least support you in your indulgences.” He shrugged, said, “What the hell” again, then pulled two bottles of wine from the bag.

She stood and wrapped her arms around him. She kissed his neck and rested her face at the center of his thick, solid chest. She’d forgotten the comfort there. She wondered why it was in marriage that after a while, you forgot the person you’d married. You forgot the person you loved. Did they change, or was it you? She kissed his chest. “You’re not a bad man, Lawrence Baines.”

He patted her back, stepped away, said, “I suppose that’s a thank-you?”

She pulled him closer. “ I’m saying you’re wonderful. I’m saying I missed you. I’m saying thank you for being everything you are.”

He squeezed her in his arms, let her go, and looked her in the face the way he had when he was courting her. “I missed you too, Livy. And not just your cooking or the warmth of you in our bed, but you. It’s time to take you home.”

She nodded. And he looked pleased. “But right now, I’d say it’s time for a long-overdue glass of wine. It’s time to take you out to dinner.”

“I wanted to make you dinner,” she said.

“No, you didn’t.” He put the groceries in the refrigerator, turned to her. “You might have wanted to want to make me dinner, but you didn’t really want to. I think what you want is for me to pour you a glass of wine, for me to open those chips you like. And the onion dip. I think we both want to go sit on that balcony. Have a little bite to eat. I brought cheese and those crackers you like. We need to drink this bottle of wine. Then we need to see about dinner and whatever comes next.”

She was happy to sit and watch him open the wine, pour it, open her chips, dip. He seemed happy to get the cheese out, slice an apple, arrange it all on a plate. She’d forgotten he knew how to do these things. When had she taken over arranging all the meals? He hadn’t forced her. He’d never said,
You are my wife, and here are the things you have to do to earn your place on the mountain
. She’d done it all. She’d been the one so worried that she didn’t have the right to be there that she’d scurried from task to task, trying to make herself indispensible to him so he’d always need her, always be grateful. But he’d stopped noticing her, the way we all stop noticing the sounds of
refrigerator motors, air conditioners, all the appliances around the house that keep doing what they were designed to do. She wondered how and when she’d decided her life was designed by Lawrence, when she had given him all that power that he didn’t even know he had.

“Livy?” Lawrence said. She realized she was staring into the dark pool of her wine. Suddenly she smelled it, swirled it, sipped it. Yes, it was her favorite cabernet. She looked up at him. “Do you want to come outside? I think the air will do you good.”

She nodded, followed him to the balcony, where he’d arranged the cheese and chips and fruit. “It’s lovely,” she said. “Before I met you, when Katy and I were living together, we’d often have suppers like this. She was the one who taught me about wine. She was the one who showed me that now and then wine and cheese and fruit and bread could be a great meal.”

Lawrence nodded. He bent over the railing, resting his arms on it, and looked out. The bar just down the beach was warming up. There was a thumping of music. Some man yelled out with laughter.

“It will get louder before they wear themselves out and go home.”

He looked at her, sipped his wine, gave a look to the bar as if willing it to go away. “I should have rented you that better place down the beach where it’s quiet. You deserve better than this.”

“It’s been fine, Lawrence.”

“No, you didn’t need to be staying in some man’s condo near some bar where kids are laughing and screaming all night.”

“You don’t hear it inside. And sometimes I like to look out there and see people being silly.” She reached for a chip, dipped it, and enjoyed the salty, greasy crunch in her mouth. She realized she was hungry. She put down her wine and went for a slice of apple and cheese. She looked at him watching her. “And it’s not ‘some man’s condo.’
He was Katy’s boss. He was one more person in the world who really cared for Katy. And that’s why he helped me.”

“I know,” he said. He pulled his chair closer. “I’m so sorry for doubting you.”

She shrugged, took a deep drink of wine. “It’s what people do. I’ve doubted you at times I shouldn’t have. It’s just sometimes we get all these ideas about people, and then we get resentful when the ideas don’t match what we see.” She looked down toward the bar. A girl was running out toward the beach, laughing. A guy chased her, caught her, pulled her close, and they walked, arms draped around each other’s waists as they went on silently down the beach. “Katy didn’t want to marry Billy. Katy didn’t want a lot of things about the way her life was going. I just wish she could have been happy more of the time.”

Lawrence nodded. They sat in the quiet for a long time. She knew he was sorting through the things to say. He knew not to say,
I’m sorry
, knew not to say,
You did the best you could
, not to say some silly, hopeful thing like
She’s in a better place now
. She sat watching him, told herself to be calm, that he was trying, oh, God, she could see the strain of him trying to find the right words. Finally he stood, went back to the balcony railing as if he knew he needed distance. “What would make her happy now?” She looked at him, weighing what was behind the words. “I’m just saying, try to imagine, if she could look at the world, if she could look at it all right now, what would make her happy?”

Livy smiled. He was trying so hard. “She would like this. She would like you and me sitting out in the night drinking wine, eating chips, and talking about something real instead of reading magazines, watching TV.”

“That’s good.”

Livy leaned back in her chair, looked up to the sky, and hoped
as she always did that she’d see stars, but there was nothing to see up there because of the ambient light of the bars, restaurants, and condos along the beach. “She would like to be back home. She was wanting to come back home on the day . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence, just said again, “She was wanting to come back home.”

Lawrence didn’t speak, just came over and refilled her wine, then his. He said, “There’s more wine inside, and we can order in pizza. We don’t have to go out at all unless you want to.”

“Good,” she said. She kicked off her sandals, brushed the soles of her feet against the balcony. It felt good.

“It will be good to have us home again.”

She watched him. So careful. Home again. Katy wouldn’t be home again. “We can pick up her ashes tomorrow. I didn’t want to do it by myself. Shelby offered to go with me, but I didn’t want to be alone with them.”

“We’ll go,” he said. “We’ll take her home.”

“In Katy’s last journal, she said she’d never be at home in this world. She said she knew she would die young because she always felt like she was floating in this world.”

He nodded, and she knew he was thinking Katy was probably drunk when she wrote in her journals. Livy had seen this. She couldn’t count the times when Frank had been with some other girl, and Katy would come home, sit in the living room, drink and cry, and write in her journal. Lawrence knew Katy drank too much when she was sad instead of doing something about it. It was Livy herself who had told him this. So she said the words: “But Katy wasn’t always at her best when writing in her journals.”

He came to her, stood behind her, and lightly rubbed her shoulders. “It might do you good to think of a time she was happy.”

Livy reached, squeezed his hand. “I just can’t think of where her ashes should be. She loved the ocean, but I can’t leave her here.
She didn’t love Billy. She was always trying to get back to Frank. And I will not scatter her ashes out by that marina. She only thought she was happy there. And there’s a plot by her dad where she was supposed to be buried. But she’d never want that. Where do you scatter the ashes of your daughter who was so unhappy in this world?”

“She wasn’t always unhappy,” Lawrence said. “You’re just remembering her unhappy because you’re sad now. You’ll think of a place where she was happy.”

“I like your optimism.”

He went back to the railing, looked out. A guy was making a whooping sound and the others laughing. He’d whoop again, then more laughing.

Livy leaned forward to try to make out what was so funny, gave up. She sat back in her chair, closed her eyes. “Do kids get more stupid every generation, or is that just me being sad again?”

“Kids always do stupid things. Doesn’t mean they’re stupid.”

She raised her glass to him. “There you go being right again.”

He kept his eyes on the bar, then looked up and down the beach. “I know where Katy was happy. She took us there once. Well, she wanted to just take you, but I came along, and she put up with it. She loved Sunset Rock. That place on the mountain where the hang gliders take off. Remember? She had that friend who ran the hang-gliding shop. He was crazy about her. And she said he was just a friend.”

Livy nodded. “She used to say he was too sweet for her. She called him the Boy Scout. Mister loyal and prepared.” She straightened in her chair. “She was always going there on the weekends to watch them leap. She said the guys were all so . . .” Livy had to strain to remember the word. “Ripped. She said the guys were all so ripped. And, well, they were fit all right.”

“Can’t be a slouch and jump off a mountain, not if you plan to live.” Lawrence smiled.

“She did love that place,” Livy said. “She said she always wanted to do it but was too scared, said she was afraid she’d panic and forget what she was doing and fall. But she loved it. I remember we sat there, and she told me to watch how they took that running jump, how they’d always drop a little to the fall, and then you’d hear the cloth catch the wind, lift the boy up, and he’d always whoop, or maybe it was the crowd, but there was always some kind of whooping sound when the wind caught him, lifted him, and he used those cords on his harness to catch the wind and control it while he spiraled and soared all across that valley.” She looked at Lawrence. “That would make Katy happy. She always laughed when we went to watch those boys jump off mountains and have the skills to know how to live.”