Things We Didn't Say

Chapter 39

Michael



Sometimes, the only order in my house comes from laundry.

It’s not exactly a manly thing to enjoy, folded laundry. Not something I discuss over beers at happy hour, not that I ever get to do that, anyway. When Mallory was in charge of laundry, we were forever having to tiptoe among hillocks of clothing, giving socks the sniff test to decide if they were wearable. I tried to keep up on it myself, but I was so tired after work, and when I did run it through the machines, it never did get folded but remained in a heap next to the machine, rendering our dressers and closets pointless.

Then Mallory moved out, and I realized, tired or not, it was my job to do. And I found time to do it, and I insisted Angel and Dylan help me, and we made it work.

Now, laundry heaped in baskets or scattered around makes me jumpy.

So I fold.

And as I fold, I suffer a pang of guilt in realizing that if I have time to do laundry now, I also had time to do it when Mallory lived here. I could have helped, at least.

I snap out a pair of my work pants and match the seams, as if to snap myself back to reality. It wouldn’t have helped. Whatever was wrong—is wrong—was far too complicated to be solved with a little laundry help.

Casey normally does this job, these days. She says it’s no trouble, she can do it while waiting for her program to compile, or whatever, or while talking to a client on the phone.

If I marry her, will she slide down the same rabbit hole Mallory did? Will I be tiptoeing through laundry piles because Casey is too “tired” to do it?

I ball up some socks and ponder the facts as I know them. She got drunk one time since I’ve known her. Once.

But it was at the worst time. And that bottle was half empty. That’s a helluva lot of booze for someone who doesn’t drink. Normally I’d blame that on Mallory, but she seemed so solid last night. Impossible if she’d been dipping into the whiskey with any seriousness.

I ponder what Angel told me about wondering what’s “up” with Casey. The fact that she’s home alone for hours all day, takes walks every morning, slips outside often to smoke. What if the smoking is just an excuse to nip from a flask?

I cringe to realize I rarely get close enough to her anymore during the day to tell if her breath smells like booze.

I knew Casey was weird about her first name, and private about her past. I could live with that, but now that she’s done something that seems so out of character, I wonder if I’ve been naive.

There’s a saying in the news business, that you ruin a good story by checking it out too much. Despite what the movies show, nine times out of ten when a local crank calls with some tale of scandal and vice, once you dig in and find all the perspective and context and actual facts, it turns out to be small potatoes indeed.

Maybe I was afraid to dig too far into Casey’s past because she’d turn out not to be what she seemed, either.

I did run her name through the court system, though. I can’t be foolish about who spends time around my kids. To do so I had to sneak a peek at her driver’s license so I also know her full, real name: Edna Leigh Casey. Edna on a twenty-six-year-old sits weird these days, so I don’t blame her for not using it.

I searched her name online, and found her among survivors of a crash victim. So I know about her brother, too. I assumed she’d tell me fairly soon after we got engaged, but as the months have gone by, she’s never revealed the presence of a sibling, much less a dead one.

She doesn’t trust me. Obviously.

And have I ever given her reason not to?

I start hanging shirts up in my closet and remember one of the good days with Casey, out at the park. The kids had eaten ice cream, Jewel was swinging from the monkey bars. I’d let Angel bring a boyfriend along, so even she was gracing us with her smile. Dylan was quiet as ever, but contentedly pushed Jewel on the swings.

We’d brought a softball and a bat, thinking it might be fun to improvise a game. The kids couldn’t be roused to the challenge in the end, preferring boyfriend and playground to playing with me and Casey.

But we played anyway. Playing! Imagine that. I hadn’t played since maybe grade school, always so damn serious, and even my fun times with Mallory were serious in the sense of passionate and dangerous, so I always had to keep one eye on her.

I felt ten years younger, ten pounds lighter, as I pitched over and over again to Casey, who laughed harder every time she missed, especially when she would swing so hard she’d swing herself in a complete circle.

Then she said, “Okay, I’m serious now. Just watch me. I’m gonna get this one.” Then she imitated Babe Ruth, and pointed toward a water tower, and got herself in a parody of a batting stance, making a face something between a scowl and constipation.

I had a camera in my back pocket, and before I pitched, I snapped a shot.

I bring the socks over to my dresser and lay them inside my top drawer. There’s the picture, in fact. She’s trying hard to hold on to the serious face, but it isn’t working, I can see the laughter in her eyes. I never even managed to pitch the ball. I ran over and kissed her, and for those brief moments we were just kids and we loved each other and it was all so clean and simple. Like a freshly washed shirt.

Something white on the top of the dresser draws my eye. It’s an envelope, with my name written on the front, in Casey’s hand.