Back To U

chapter Seventeen

Don’t write off whole wheat.





It was magic, watching a picture develop. It had been twenty years since she'd seen it last. Max had been new to it then, showing off, if she recalled correctly. He was a young stud gonna shoot the world and land in every big magazine. She’d believed he would and also knew they’d be together. She’d never been great at math, but even a first grader could see those two things didn’t add up. Maybe it had all been inevitable, and she’d just fought it more than he had.

But watching him again in the dark room didn’t remind her of the last time so much as make her appreciate that with the right care, things would develop even if unplanned. Develop. She watched her mother's face take shape, the crinkles beneath her eyes fanning out in a smile like a sweet grandmother. But the eyes, he'd captured that about her, the bit of mischief that made her face that much more interesting, not bland vanilla but a swirl of something unexpected like cayenne.

Watching him work it was as if the photo developed life a thousand times quicker than nature did. In the next chemical bath, Missy's image changed from a blur of whites to the soft grays that formed her young face, a doubting, hesitant face for Max's camera.

She knew that look too, had known a thousand different looks from her girl and could identify every last one of them. It was a mother's gift, a mother's responsibility, she supposed. "When did you take these?"

"This is a roll left over from Halloween."

She looked at the photos more closely, but there was no background to tell the time or place, until the shot of Hayden. His nose seemed to break in front of her as the bruise and blood spread and darkened, making the Halloween rescue of Ellen look even more heroic. "Ouch."

"Ouch is right. Good thing I had black and white in the emergency room or this would really make you hurt for him."

She considered whether the shadow of black and white, like memory, made things better somehow. "I think it's worse this way. It's nothing but pain and light without distracting things like red blood or green bruising."

Max studied the photo. "I can see that." He lifted it out with tongs and washed it in the next dishpan of chemicals to set it. "It's one of the things I love about black and white. It's more clear in ways by being less clear. You know, there's less for the eye to focus on, and you get down to what matters."

"Oh, like the photo of me standing in a pool of coffee...uh, urine?"

"Yeah, like that."

Even in the dim of the room, she could see the quick flash of white when he smiled. It was so elemental, the darkness, Max's smile. Maybe there was less to confuse the eye in black and white. "I should live here."

He turned to her, and their closeness side by side seemed too close dead on. "You want to live in the darkroom?"

"Just a thought."

"Well, it's not a bad one."

She waited for him to say something more, but he just watched her. She knew his eyes were on her, but it was too dark to tell how he watched, with curiosity, pursuit, or a sadness she thought she could feel from him.

His voice, so close, drew her in. "The dark is like Vegas."

"Vegas?"

"What goes on in it doesn't ever translate into the real world. It doesn't count, doesn't matter after the color comes in."

She held her breath, waited, and then had one thought. What was she waiting for?

She reached for him, arms around his neck, and pulled his mouth down to hers. She felt the length of his body tighten as she lifted her right leg and half wrapped it around his hip. He kissed her so hard her head fell back, and he bent her with it, arched so far she would have fallen without his grip on her.

And he did have a grip on her, their bodies vibrating together, and she tilted her head to the side, felt him nip at the sensitive skin under her earlobe.

His hand under her thigh, he pulled her closer and tighter to an erection she couldn't get her own body close enough to, and there were sounds coming from both of them that whispered like a sex soundtrack in the silent room.

Finding his lips again, she swallowed a moan, hers, his? She had no idea just that there were things in the way, shirts and pants, and she wanted to tear them all off with her teeth and feel nothing but skin and muscle against her softest, wettest--

The wham at the door caused Max to straighten, and she felt him lose his grip. Her back was too arched to keep her upright since her center of gravity was altered and her thinking shut off with lust. Her arms swung out, windmilling for balance, and her hand whacked a jug of liquid. The jug stayed upright, but her skin stung from the slap of contact. She braced for the floor, but he reached for her, righted her on her feet and then stormed to the door. "The red light is on, dickhead!"

"Max?" The French accent was unmistakable, and Gwen fought the impulse to hide under the table. It was dark. She could live there.

Max left the door and moved toward her, a cat in the dim. He took her hands and kissed the back of each one. "I suppose we can't just pick up where we left off."

Where they’d left off? What was he thinking? If a beautiful, successful woman like Nicola couldn’t keep his interest and he left her standing at the door, Gwen Ciarrochi Frame didn't stand a chance. What had she been thinking? She wouldn’t go back no matter how crazy he’d made her, how crazy he could make her still. She needed to find a good path forward not take another step into the meat grinder that had been her love for Max. "No."

She felt the pulse of his grip once on her hands. "I meant right now."

She blinked back tears, glad again for the darkness. "I didn't." Pulling her hands away, she walked to the door, and stopped with her hand on the latch. "Finish. Please."

"Max?" The French voice, less soft, demanded a response this time.

"He'll be right out."

There was silence for a minute and then Nicola answered. "I'll be in my office, cher."

Gwen felt Max watch her, but kept her back to the room and waited for the green light to go on.

After a long silence, she heard the swish of washes like the ocean in a seashell and tried to relax into the change of tides.





"I can't live at Max's. I need to get a place right now." She felt panicked, trapped, like she’d gone spelunking underground and her life had been a cave-in. She’d dig herself out with a spoon if she had to.

"Okay," Missy patted her hand, and for a moment Gwen wondered when the caretaking shift had occurred. She didn't like it even as she knew it wouldn't last for more than a few minutes. The time would come, if she lived long enough, that the shift would be permanent. The caretaker always became the caretaken. She'd done it with her own mother, well, her whole life.

Her child would, hopefully, do the same if called upon in the final days. Gwen considered she may be in the kind of final days that weren't fatal but definitely painful, and Missy was being called upon to take care of her.

What was next? Missy's mom and grandma were alone and screwed up. Would the girl have to snag a man for the family so they'd have a roof, car care, and lawn maintenance? Grandma had lots of options, but Gwen knew she'd done her time with a spouse and had no intention of losing another twenty years to one.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Focus."

When Gwen heard her own voice coming out of her daughter's mouth, she tried to stop the smile she didn't really feel, but couldn't help. She wouldn't be pointing it out to Missy anytime soon.

Missy leaned back against her dorm bed's headboard. "I’d let you stay here, but Mranda would call security. And I think, you know, you really do need some time to, you know, think about your life, Mom."

Gwen hesitated. "Uh, thank you?"

"So, let’s get you a place. We'll check this afternoon. Maybe you could go to somebody like, I don't know, a real estate person."

A college town was bound to have lots of rental agencies. Gwen calculated what first month's rent, last month's rent, and a security deposit would run her. She'd need to dig herself out of her messy life with a really big spoon, a silver one. "Maybe later."

Missy sat up straighter. "Why not now?"

Gwen could picture her checking balance. Two-hundred-fifty-nine dollars and seventy-six cents. Steve hadn’t deposited any money into the household account, the one she did have access to. "I need to straighten out some, uh, finances with your Dad."

"He has the money, doesn't he?"

"Well, it's not like it's not half mine, Missy."

"He has it, doesn't he?"

"You know he took care of the finances."

"You signed the papers, and he was going to take care of everything wasn't he?"

Gwen didn't have to answer that. Missy wasn't her caretaker. Yet.

"Mom..."

"Your Dad and I will straighten it out."

"You've gotta talk to him now, Mom. You know, adult to adult, a well thought-out conversation. You gotta be clear and, you know, really tell him you need some money."

"I’m aware of that, Missy. I am sleeping on a couch."

"At Max's."

"At Max's."

Missy grabbed her own phone and held it out. "He'll answer mine for sure."

Gwen dug hers out of her bag. "You think he won't answer if I call him?" For heaven’s sake, when had her daughter gotten so dramatic? And when did she say things like adult to adult, well thought-out conversations?

Missy shrugged. "He doesn't hear what he doesn't want to hear."

Gwen hesitated. He did have the capacity to be deaf to an answer he didn't like. He had once or twice, or dozens of times, gone ahead with something she'd said no to.

She thought back to the last time she'd seen him. He hadn't gotten the response he wanted that night in the dorm room when he tried to get her to leave campus. It was possible he'd avoid her until he thought she was ready to concede defeat. She took Missy's phone. She didn't need it. It was… "Just in case."

Missy held up her hands, fingers crossed for luck.

"Very funny."





The whole thing was significantly less funny after he hung up on her.

She sat with the phone still to her ear while Missy shook her head. "You gotta drive there, Mom."

Drive there? What the hell had gone wrong? She re-ran the conversation in her head. She’d asked about splitting the assets, then he’d said some things, then she’d said some things, and then... "He hung up on me."

Missy shrugged as if Gwen simply hadn't done the math right. "He told you to stop acting like grandma, and you told him to intercourse off."

Gwen held her hand out for Missy’s car keys. "I should drive right now."

"Yeah. You should drive," Missy got up and turned on the electric tea kettle, "in a couple of minutes. Maybe an hour."



He'd be home. Well, his condo. She wasn't sure she could ever call a condo home, although she'd managed to consider a dorm room one, and currently a couch. No. By no stretch of the imagination would she ever call Max's couch home. A couch? What was next? A street corner? A dumpster?

Parking in Steve's lot, she saw that the mid-range cars indicated a thorough vetting of applicants. Their incomes seemed to fall beautifully in the same level. There weren’t any clunkers, no vans with the rear bumpers crunched and car seats jammed in but no over-the-top sports cars that couldn't be afforded either, just the mid-range, mid-sexy sedan of the single professional.

She spotted Steve's car from Missy's description. New. Blue. Something borrowed, she thought, and stopped herself from hot wiring it and driving off. As if she possessed that skill set. She may need to rethink her major if things didn't go well with Steve. She could become something really lucrative, like a car jacker or an ex-husband.

She pulled out her phone. He'd have to answer this time, or she would just walk in on him with the other woman. The other woman was still hazy since he’d never fessed up about it, but she was invading whatever private life he now possessed that didn't have anything thing to do with the private life they'd shared. Private life didn’t seem like a good description of their marriage. They'd had sex and a child and a water bill, but a private life… theirs alone in the dark, two as one? Probably not ever that. Half her life and she hadn’t gotten that right.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Steve."

The silence told her he was there and playing hard to get. Well he wasn't. "I'm in the parking lot."

"You're what?"

"Here."

"Here?"

"I see your new car." She got out of Missy's college car and walked closer. "You left your Coffee Bean Cafe travel mug in the driver's cup holder. But the rest is clean as a whistle. Way to maintain blue book value, mister."

"What is wrong with you?"

"I'm here to talk to you since you hung up on me, and it's pretty hard to talk then."

"No, what's wrong with you? You're odd and sarcastic. Like Missy." There was a pause. "Like your mother."

She counted to ten and got to eight. "My mother is not sarcastic."

"Maybe not, but she's an odd duck, Gwen. You've said so yourself. This is not news."

"You leave my mother out of this."

"Did she really dress up as Hannah Montana, get drunk, and fall off a table?"

"No." She cursed herself for drawing the no out for two syllables. He'd guess right away that she was lying, the buying time kind of lying that didn't ever accomplish anything but discomfort.

"Riiight. So, Gwen, this really isn't a good time for me."

"I'm on the stairs." She dashed across the parking lot and started up the metal staircase so as not to be accused of lying on top of being odd and sarcastic with a drunk duck of a mother.

"Gwen."

"Steve. Be prepared." She hit the first hallway and double checked the sticky note Missy had given her. Nineteen A.

"For what?"

"I'm knocking on the door. Do you hear it?" She gave the shave and a haircut two bits knock. Nothing said smart ass like the shave and a haircut two bits knock. Of course, it was the call of cartoon characters so maybe it wasn't entirely what she should have gone for.

"I'm hanging up now, Gwen."

"Are you hanging up to open the door?" She waited but there was no response. "Will I be forced to make a scene in front of your neighbors?"

"You're bluffing, Gwen."

"Am I?" Was she? It didn’t give her any confidence to know they were both wondering.

The door opened, and Steve stood there, deliberately snapping his phone shut.

She slowly closed hers and tucked it into her bag. "I would have done it."

"Ah, but the definition of a bluff is when someone doesn't have anything in their hand, anything to bring to the table." He smiled. "You are bluffing."





He had the paperwork in color coded files. She'd lost track after the second shade of green and before they’d ever hit the yellows. It felt like the terrorist alert. She wasn't sure what chartreuse should tell her about her safety, but she knew she was screwed no matter what shade anyone named it.

"So, any questions?"

She'd slumped in the dining room chair, a hard chair to slump in with its creaky tight leather back. Any questions? She had a million, and none, and no words for any of it.

"You'll want to go over this with your attorney. Oh, well, you'll want to get an attorney if this is what you want." He paused as if to give her time to burst into tears or make him the bacon frittata that he loved.

She stared at him and watched his expression soften. She realized that even after telling her she didn't own half of anything, he might be leaving reconciliation on the table for her to grab. She studied the large living area again. She’d spotted a microwave dinner on the kitchen counter, but there’d been no sign of another woman. There was no sign of another woman because she was gone.

Steve was alone and didn’t want to be, and when all else fails, go back to what you know. Wasn’t the expression better the domestic laborer you know than the one you don’t? She couldn't call herself a housewife since he’d taken the house part away from her. She glanced over at the dreaded yellow folder, so sunny, so promising, so evil.

Legally, his mother still owned the house they'd bought from her. And they had bought it. Steve had put the budgeted money in the household account, and all those years, Gwen paid the mortgage and the utilities and picked up groceries and new shoes for Missy. But the house had remained in the corporation his family had set up. It was owned by the Frames and not Gwen Ciarrochi Frame at all. Not Steve Frame either, he assured her, although he had all the money he needed. And she needed.

He seemed to take in her distress. "Gwen, of course you'll have alimony. Sure, it only happens in about fifteen percent of divorces, but I'll help out after everything's final. It could take a couple of years to make sure this is done right, but an attorney can fill you in on all that." He shrugged so casually, she wished for a second she could be him. "In the months and months ahead, I’d encourage you to give your future some thought. The corporation has put the house up for sale, but nothing’s set in stone."

She found herself at the door and hadn't a clue how he'd maneuvered her there. Then he kissed her on the lips, less an invitation than a dismissal, and closed the door.

Standing at the top of the staircase, she looked down at the parking lot and for the first time in her life she honestly didn't have a place to go. No place. There might be a bed to borrow somewhere out there, and there might be places that could be hers if she had the money, which she apparently didn't. But at that second in her life she understood she had no place to go.

She'd packed her bag from Max's in a car borrowed from Missy, and she had nothing. She thought of those yearly estimates of what a wife and mother would earn if she were a salaried employee. Even the cheapest help available would make a goodly amount of money, twenty thousand for cooking, another thirty for childcare. For house cleaning, who knew, but hourly it would really add up. She could have made thirty thousand for being a chauffeur. She’d easily have earned over a hundred thousand a year. But after twenty years she had nothing, and she was nowhere.

She got in the borrowed car and drove across a town she didn’t live in anymore. Sometimes when you lost something the only thing to do was return to the last place you had it. Maybe, like a set of keys, she could find her life again.



Gwen's journal - June 8th, 1989 – Sunday



There’s nothing to say. Three months. I’m not going to make it.



Gwen's life - the day before



The room looked so empty with Molly already gone with her parents. Gwen gripped the last box and wanted to cry, cry and hide under the desk so she didn’t have to leave Belmar. Her freshmen year was already behind her, the classes checked off in the catalog. It felt great to be a sophomore, but something was gone and wouldn’t come back again.

She’d never have the year again and Max was moving off campus in the fall so things would be different, and why did they have to be different when they were so perfect? She felt the sniff turn into stinging eyes and that burn in the throat and finally tears dripped and her ride home was coming any minute.

"Hey."

She heard Max behind her, knew she couldn’t hide her teary wreck of a face but didn’t turn around just in case he might not notice.

"Gwen." He came around in front of her, smiled, and shook his head which only made her cry more. He took the box and set it on the desk and took her into his arms. "It’s just for the summer, babe. It’ll go so fast you won’t even miss me."

She sniffed into his shoulder. "I will." He’d be so far away, Boston, working for family friends she hated without ever meeting, and she’d be at the Dairy Haven and back home with Ellen, a summer she hated before it even began. She hiccupped.

Max leaned back and held her face in his hands, warm and strong. He just looked at her, and she wanted to stay there for more than forever. He shook his head, smiled. "I love you, and I’ll call you every day that I can. I promise." And then he kissed her and she added that to the huge list of all the things she couldn’t do without for a whole summer.

"Uh, ready?"

They both turned toward the voice, and Gwen gathered herself, looking in vain for a Kleenex in the empty room. The two guys shook hands, and she gave up on the tissue, and tried to wipe her eyes and sniff without calling too much attention to herself. "Max, this is my ride home, Steve Frame."





Back to U…



Maybe it wasn’t like a set of keys, and she wouldn't be able to trace her life back to where she’d last seen it.

Her life wasn't under the table, but she was. Again.

She felt better under it than over it. The surface, with its fine sheen of dust, reminded her of dinners done and time passed. It had felt, when she first came into the quiet house, that she and the table both had abandonment issues. They were uncared for enough that dust had settled over whatever shine they'd once possessed.

Even the frozen yogurt she’d dug out of the freezer was past its prime. The crust of ice crystals obscured what had been chocolate fudge, low fat. She understood that squatters shouldn't be picky, so she scraped aside a big chunk of clear ice with a serving spoon, the first utensil she'd grabbed, and dug in. She flipped the spoon over and let the yogurt hit her tongue full on. It helped with cold headaches to keep it off the roof of her mouth as long as possible, but she was going to have one anyway. Tension headache, cold headache, migraine headache, divorce headache, stone-cold-broke headache. It didn't really matter what she called it when the pain continued to arrive and thrive.

She ignored the knock at the door. Steve could intercourse himself, not that he wouldn't have other options. He was a catch in all the categories that were mate measurable for guys. Age didn't matter in a man. He had money. Everybody's. He possessed all his hair, which was maybe better than real estate. He was healthy from twenty years of her excellent cooking. He would have been thirty pounds heavier and riddled with heart disease if she hadn't made his favorite recipes healthier. She’d cursed herself.

Max walked in, a bag in each hand, and dipped his head to meet her eyes under the table as if he knew she'd be there. "Ellen sent me."

She wanted to fall right into his beautiful green eyes and invite him to kiss her senseless and never stop, but she knew that one life crisis at a time was already more than she could handle. She had to focus with the mindset of an asexual woman. "Steve's going to live forever, and it's my fault."

"We all make mistakes."

She snorted.

"Many, many mistakes."

"I fed him really well."

"Wish you'd over-salted now?"

"Damn straight, skippy."

She eyed the bags. What exactly did a man bring to a woman whose mother sent him under a dining room table to find her? She put another bite of yogurt on her tongue and lifted her chin toward the bags. "Whatcha got?"

He looked under the table as if unsure of proper etiquette, set one bag down, and opened the other. "Ice cream." He looked at the container she gripped. "Real ice cream."

Setting her expired frozen yogurt down, she reached out with both hands, peeled off the lid, and plunged the spoon into chocolate chip and caramel swirl full fat heaven.

He pulled a chocolate bar out. "American."

She nearly smiled but was too far gone to manage it.

"Potato chips. Regular and barbeque. Bath salts."

She raised an eyebrow.

"For you. Nothing untoward here."

"Untoward. Good one. I'm not distracted by your trying to appear asexual by the way. ‘Cause that’s what I am."

Reaching for the other bag, he nodded. "Sure you are. And for tonight, and tonight only, I can be trusted."

"My mom made you promise, didn't she?"

"The scout’s oath would prevent me from ever taking advantage of a woman under a table."

She waited.

"And your mother and Missy made me promise." He tried to straighten his neck and still look under the table then pointed beside her. "May I?"

"Sure. Pull up some carpet and sit right down."

He crawled under the table, still unable to completely straighten his neck with his height until he slid down more. With his back against a table leg and his legs poking under a chair, he snagged the other bag and handed it to her.

She put another bite of ice cream on her tongue and handed the empty spoon and full carton to him while she opened the other bag. She found a tin of Vienna Sausages, all pale and uniform on the label. "Okay."

"Ellen said you loved those when you were little."

"Right." She dug out a bottle of pink fingernail polish.

"Missy said you liked to paint your toenails."

Gwen shook the bottle, heard the tiny rattle of the silver dots inside as they swirled the color more uniformly. "Missy loved to when she was little. Right after big girl panties, she got to have pink toenails. I potty-trained her with a dollar's worth of polish."

"Impressive."

"She was."

"No, you."

She ignored him and pulled an Oprah magazine out of the bag. "My mother or Missy?"

"Hayden."

"I did not see that coming."

"He's got sisters and a mom. At least that's what he said when Bryan started calling him Vagina Boy."

"Oh. That's not good."

"We will not be seeing a superhero named that any time soon."

"Why are you here?"

"Your mother sent me."

"Why are you here, Max?"

"I'm your friend."

She eyed him.

"Tonight I'm your friend."

She was broke, homeless, guilty of both breaking and entering and ruining her life. "I need one."

"You have everything you need all alone under this table. But I'd like to help."

"Did you bring alcohol?"

"No."

"Good. That will help."





In a guy buddy movie they would have gone to a strip club where the Up-buddy would hand the Down-buddy a five dollar bill to tuck into the G-string of Brandy, who had just licked the pole.

In a teen movie they might have smoked a huge bowl of weed and laughed at nothing.

In an independent film they would have gone to an abandoned warehouse and danced on Ecstasy or committed suicide or did nothing or both or accidentally killed somebody and tried to hide the body in a rug bound for export.

But in her Tonight I’m Your Friend film, she'd eaten a lot of ice cream and a few barbecue chips and rubbed her barbecue tinted fingertips on carpet she didn't have to clean anymore. They’d both taken a quiz in the O magazine that indicated that she under-accessorized, and Max needed to strive for a cleaner look. And she’d fallen asleep, still under the table.

The morning light, late light the way it came straight in the dining room windows, made her squint and long for coffee and a younger body. Despite the comforter and pillow Max had brought her, the night had not gone comfortably, and she felt stiff, like her lower back had been tightened by some cosmic screwdriver God used on forty-year-old muscles.

"Hey," Max leaned under the table.

He'd slept beside her she was pretty sure. At least he'd been there at the end of her night's memory.

"Coffee." He set a mug down beside her, and she smelled the wonderful steam of it. "There's a whole pot. Feel free to spill as much of it on the carpet as you want."

She sat up and reached for it. She wished she wanted to ruin the carpet, but in the light of day it was still the tan Berber she'd picked out, vacuumed, walked on, had a life unfold over. She sighed, so deeply it even took her by surprise, like her lungs let out the deepest air they held, had held, maybe for a long time.

Max started to reach out but seemed to stop himself. "There's a bath. And it has stuff in it a man wouldn't know anything about but chicks dig."

"Chicks dig, do they?"

"Absolutely."

"Well, if you’re sure."

He held up three fingers. "Scout's honor."

"You were a very honorable scout last night. Thank you." She felt herself tear up, took a gulp of coffee, and the burn of it held her together.

"I'm gonna run out and grab something to eat. Any good bakeries?"

She gave him a look that said, ask me something challenging. "Simply Sweet for the lemony cheese Danish, Ceres if you're looking for a fresh fruit Danish, Polebridge Bakery for the whole wheat orange cinnamon roll."

He made a face that Missy would have worn for brussel sprouts.

"It's good, really, but if you’re looking for a regular cinnamon roll, try Wheat Montana."

He looked like he was trying to take it all in, and she smiled at herself. "It's a gift.