“Whoa, calm down,” Flint says, putting an arm around her as David drives away, leaving two tire marks on the driveway. “What did he do?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem,” Callie says, fluffing at her hair. Up close, I notice that her shirt is buttoned unevenly, and there are food stains on the sleeves. “The problem is he does nothing! I’m with the kids all day, I cook all afternoon, and he gets in and what do I get? ‘Oh, don’t you remember, I need to go back to the office because it’s end of quarter. Why’d you make dinner?’” Callie throws up her hands and stomps inside. The kids are in their playpen, looking up with wide anxious eyes. I make some shushing noises and crouch down to wave at them. They giggle; all’s right with their world again.
“You need to take a breath,” Flint tells his sister. Callie comes over to the playpen, lifts Lily into the air, and gives her to her uncle.
“No. You know what I need? A night out.” She looks over at me and nods. “Laurel, stay there. I’m going to give Jessa a call. Then, we are all going out.” Callie’s got this wild-eyed look. I can’t tell if this is On the Town dancing with sailors kind of out, or Thelma and Louise murder and driving off the Grand Canyon kind of out.
“Ah, maybe Jessa doesn’t have the night off,” I say, but Callie’s already dialing.
“Flint, thanks for offering to babysit,” she calls, before he can even attempt to escape. “There’s dinner on the stove.” Flint looks from Lily, to me, to the kitchen.
My phone buzzes. I grab the call. Suze. Thank God.
“Hey, guess what? AmTrak’s down,” she says. “Doing anything tonight?” There’s some kind of crash from Callie’s bedroom, followed by crazed laughter.
“So glad you called. How do you feel about seeing some of the local wildlife?” I ask. “Cocktails will be involved.”
19
This will probably be a shock, but Northampton, MA, doesn’t have the world’s greatest nightlife scene. My friends at Yelp give us about five different options, and two of them are bars above bait and tackle shops. When we wrangle Jessa and Suze into the car and get downtown, our best choices are a high end Mexican grill and the Waterbury hotel. Since we don’t want to get hit on by lonely businessmen, we hoof it over to Mexican. Besides, tequila shots with dinner. Who am I to say no?
Callie is definitely not saying no. She’s dressed up in a cute little black cocktail dress, wearing bright red lipstick and enough Chanel no. 5 to drown a normal woman. I don’t think she’s been out on the town in years. The instant we get inside the restaurant, she charges for the bar like a famished water buffalo. Clearly, my job for the evening will be making sure she’s all right. And maybe having a drink along the way.
“I haven’t done this in so long,” Callie groans, throwing her head back while taking a shot. At least this is one McKay I’m not going to make stupid decisions with after drinking tequila, so I give her a shoulder pat in solidarity.
“You, ah, been married long?” Suze asks, eyes wide and slowly taking a sip of her margarita. When she called to see if I wanted to grab dinner, she didn’t expect this. I owe her one.
“Five years.” Callie sighs and puts her head in her hands. “It started out so good, you know? I mean, I love David. I know he loves me. At least, I thought I knew.” Her voice gets unusually quiet on that last sentence. Uh oh.
“Hey now, don’t say that,” I say, frowning. Questioning love is a bad, bad sign.
“But it’s true,” Callie says, sniffing and rubbing her eyes, spreading her mascara around a bit. “David’s never home. Every morning I wake up, and he’s already in the shower. Then he’s out the door before I’ve even got breakfast on the table. Then it’s me and the kids and Sesame Street all day long, until I feel like I want to bust through the TV and start throttling Elmo.” She looks panicked. “Seriously, I have dreams about killing Muppets. What kind of sick mind operates like that?”
“This union between the two of you is fragile,” Jessa says. She’s wearing a peasant blouse and a pair of jeans. She’s also drinking some kind of herbal tea. Which is good, since I don’t think they’ll let nineteen year olds shoot booze. Rubbing her sister’s shoulder, she says, “You need to both walk barefoot down by the lake, hand in hand. Feel the breath of the wind in your hair; sense the buds of spring lying dormant beneath the ground. Look deep into each other’s eyes, and speak the truths that sleep quietly in your soul. Once you see your lover as your other half, a person with his or her own aches and needs, then you will be able to fully give yourself over to the union of flesh and spirit.”
It is super quiet as the group tries to digest all of this. “Jessa, do me a favor as a sister,” Callie says. “Stop talking.”