chapter Six
“Doesn’t he need pants?” Carly asked.
“He’s not too keen on them lately.” Ellen fastened the harness buckle that secured Henry in the backpack and hoisted it onto her back with an indelicate grunt. “Okay, we’re ready.”
“You want all that stuff you packed?”
Right. That. Sippy cup, crackers, sunscreen, sun hat, favorite toy steamroller—all where she’d left them on the table. Forgotten.
“Yeah.” She loaded the supplies into the mesh pockets on the side of the pack, wondering if the number of mom points she’d just lost was equal to or greater than the points she’d earned for meticulously gathering the stuff up to begin with. Motherhood had forced her to learn a lot of unpleasant lessons, but the impossibility of getting everything right all the time was the one she least liked having shoved in her face.
Henry piped up from behind her head. “Do you have your steamroller?”
My steamroller, he meant. His habitual pronoun confusion made her heart ping. Two-year-olds were basically torture implements on legs, but Henry was so freaking cute, he made up for it. Mostly. “Yep, I’ve got it, buddy.”
“Want it.”
Ellen fished it out and handed it back to him before cheerfully announcing, “Okay, now we’re really off.”
She waited until they were in the woods behind the house before she exhaled.
“I always wanted to sneak out,” she said, pushing a branch above her head and holding it there so it wouldn’t smack Henry in the face as they passed underneath.
Carly turned to smile over her shoulder. The sun filtered through the tree cover and bounced off her crazy curly red hair. “You were too much of a good girl, huh?”
“Way too much,” Ellen agreed. All those years of being the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, hadn’t taught her anything except how to let people walk all over her.
She’d learned more about how to be assertive since her divorce than in the previous three decades combined, and even so, she kept discovering things she’d missed. Today, the cheap thrill of disobedience.
Not that they were technically disobeying. She didn’t have to be home when Caleb turned up to install locks she hadn’t agreed to yet. She was a free woman, and it was a nice morning for a walk. Humid, but that was Ohio in July. At least it wasn’t too hot yet. Carly had knocked just when Henry was getting bored, and Ellen had figured, Why shouldn’t we take a ten-minute stroll downtown, buy coffee and chocolate chip muffins, and head over to the elementary school playground?
Of course, this bold logic broke down when she considered that Carly had snuck around to Ellen’s back door to issue the invitation, and they were fleeing through the woods to avoid being captured by Caleb’s agents.
And yet Ellen was slightly disappointed not to have been caught. A perverse part of her hoped Caleb would show up with the deadbolts any minute now and get angry when he figured out she was gone. Imagining him riled up made her heart pound against the sternum strap of her pack, anxious and exhilarated.
She wanted to get a rise out of him. If that made this outing a form of revenge or rebellion or ass-backwards flirtation, she didn’t care.
“That bird is?” Henry asked.
Catapulted back to the world outside her head, she took a few seconds to find the bird Henry had spotted. “Down there? That’s a goldfinch.”
“Doing?”
“Looking for food, I guess.”
“His food is?”
“They eat berries, seeds, that kind of stuff. Worms, too.”
“Henry wants a worm.”
That made her smile. “A gummy worm like Grammy Maureen gave you?”
“Yas.”
“How about a cracker instead?” She pulled out the package and passed him one over her shoulder, and he got busy crunching instead of talking.
“Central Path?” Ellen asked when they emerged from the woods. The gravel artery ran straight through the middle of town, splitting the main road into one-way veins on either side.
“Nah, let’s stick to the pavement. I probably shouldn’t show my face on the path again this year.”
Carly’s accompanying smile was bright but false, reminding Ellen that Central Path was where the infamous photo of Jamie and Carly had been taken.
“Are you really doing okay?” Ellen knew it had to be hard on Carly, first losing Jamie, now risking cameras and rumors every time she stuck her head outside. Though she was certainly better equipped to handle the pressure than most people. Carly had a thick suit of emotional armor that she rarely took off.
Back before she got pregnant and her husband walked out on her, she’d been a choir teacher at a ritzy private school in Columbus. Ellen liked to imagine Carly in front of a gang of awkward twelve-year-olds. She’d have been one of the tough teachers, the kind who had firm rules and a wry sense of humor. The kind who set standards her students killed themselves to meet.
But she had a soft side, too, much as she hated to show it. Once, in an unguarded moment, Ellen had caught Carly looking at Jamie with such simple, perfect adoration, she’d been embarrassed to witness it.
She hoped the two of them would get a clue sometime soon.
“I’m fine,” Carly said. “This week has been all kinds of crazy, but it’ll blow over. The press will figure out I’m boring eventually and find someone else to chase after.”
The sun beat down on the crowns of their heads and the tips of their shoulders. Henry’s weight balanced on Ellen’s hips and pressed the balls of her feet into the asphalt. “Cracker,” he said, and she passed another one back to him.
“I miss Jamie,” she said, and then shook her head at her own tactlessness. Missing Jamie was the last thing she was supposed to talk to Carly about.
Carly smoothed her hands over her bump. “Me, too.” Picking invisible lint off the black camisole that stretched over her stomach, she flicked it into the air. “But don’t tell him I said that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“What a mess, huh?”
“Yeah.” What a terrible mess. Jamie wounded but flippant in L.A., Carly wounded and bitter here, and Ellen suffering from a weird combination of reckless, angry lust and deep mortification every time she thought about Caleb. Which was every four seconds or so, all morning long.
She’d thrown herself at him, and he’d responded with Better if I don’t. Of all the painfully innocuous ways to be turned down—like she was a piece of cheesecake or a third beer. Nah. Thanks, but I’m good. Better if I don’t.
Probably last night had been nothing out of the ordinary for him. No doubt women swooned into him all the time, and he had to pluck them off him, like ticks. Just one of life’s hazards when you were Caleb Clark.
Whereas she was so ridiculously smitten, she’d spelled his name with Henry’s alphabet blocks. C-A-L-E-B.
Mama spelled?
Nothing, Peanut. Mama’s being silly.
“So what’s the story with Caleb?” she asked.
Silly, silly Mama.
A ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of Carly’s mouth. “Which story do you want?”
“I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned him, but he said you’re old friends. Are you two close?”
“I guess so,” Carly said with a shrug. “I’ve known him forever. I would’ve sworn you’d met him. He helped carry all Nana’s stuff out to the truck when we moved her into the assisted living place. Weren’t you around for that?”
“No, we were out visiting Jamie that weekend.”
“Oh. Well, Caleb’s a good guy to have around. Nana loves him. I guess I do, too, in a known-you-forever sort of way. I don’t, like, pour my heart out to him or anything. I didn’t tell him about Jamie.”
“Why not?”
Carly wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t think he’d approve. He and your brother—I can’t see them hanging out and watching football together, you know?”
The idea amused her. Caleb was such a man’s man, solid and sure of himself. Jamie had a whole different sort of appeal. He was carefree, a guy who’d spent his adulthood recording albums and doing tours and getting fawned over for it. Whereas Caleb had been guarding convoys in Iraq.
The thought of Caleb in fatigues, with a gun, sent a frisson of excitement through her, which only amplified her mortification. She’d been married to a poet, and now she was the kind of woman who got hot flashes thinking about a guy with a bazooka. Soldier kink. She was hopeless.
They reached the cross street that marked their arrival downtown. Two blocks long, Camelot’s minuscule business district featured a market, a deli, the college bookstore, and a pub on one side of the path and a bank, the post office, and a handful of other, less vital businesses on the other.
Nothing much to it, but it met the residents’ needs, and it had charms urban life lacked: Old-fashioned post-office boxes with bronze doors and hand-painted numbers on their little glass windows. A deli that served perfect tuna-salad sandwiches. Caleb Clark.
“What was his rank?” she asked.
As they waited for a car to pass, Carly peered at Ellen’s face and broke into a delighted smile. “Wow. I had no idea you even . . . You are a complete goner for Caleb. That is fantastic.”
“No, I’m not.” They crossed and moved onto the sidewalk.
“You totally are.” Carly elbowed her in the ribs. “He was asking me about you, too. Want me to pass him a note, find out if he likes you?”
“Shut up. Forget I said anything.”
“’Nother cracker, Mama.” Ellen fished one out of the sleeve and passed it back. They were nearly to the college bookstore, an all-purpose emporium that had the best coffee in town.
“He was a sergeant, I think,” Carly said. “Sergeant first class? Is that a thing? I don’t know.” She flapped her hand, dismissing the whole idea of being expected to remember military ranks. “I’m a pacifist.”
Sergeant First Class Caleb Clark. Yum.
Carly saw whatever shameful expression this thought put on Ellen’s face and laughed. Ellen rolled her eyes, an adolescent affectation that did little to hide how vulnerable the conversation made her feel. How pitiably excited.
They were inconvenient, all these feelings. Unwelcome.
But at the same time, when had she last felt as alive as she had on the porch with Caleb last night? Even lying awake being mad at him, sneaking out with Carly and knowing he might find out . . . It was seductive, feeling things. She’d forgotten.
She hadn’t forgotten the near-inevitable result, though. Here be dragons.
“Nothing’s going to happen. But I admit, he’s very . . .” She trailed off. He was very a lot of things.
“Yeah.” Carly patted Ellen’s shoulder. “Don’t sweat it. He has that effect on most women. I had a crush on him once, too, back in the day. Unrequited, of course. Took me a while to wise up and figure out Caleb made a better friend than boyfriend. He goes through girlfriends like Chiclets. And anyway, I’m not his type.”
The assessment made Ellen’s heart sink. “What’s his type?”
Two cars pulled up in front of the bookstore just then, one right after the other, distracting her from Carly’s answer. “You.”
Ellen knew those cars. The brown sedan belonged to Weasel Face, and the other had at one time been hers.
Richard. Goddamn it.
She’d seen him as rarely as possible since the divorce—only twice since Henry’s first birthday—but the grapevine said his drinking and undergraduate screwing had gotten so out of hand, he was on the verge of being fired.
Not that Ellen kept tabs. People volunteered the information. She tried her best to forget Richard existed, relying on Maureen to make sure he was sober for his weekly visit with Henry.
He’d been calling her lately, and whenever his name came up among her transcribed voice mails, she just hit delete. Delete, delete, delete.
“That’s your daddy,” Henry said, spying Richard when he straightened and closed the door of the Civic.
“I know it, baby.” Sorry.
“Hello, Els,” Richard said. “Hi, Henry. Fancy meeting you here.”
The bookstore entrance swung open and disgorged two people Ellen recognized from her faculty-party days. Weasel Face clambered over his armrest into the backseat of his car, rooting around for something. Richard smiled, and Ellen marveled that he could be so much the same.
The same disheveled mop of black hair brushing his collar. The same casual poet-wear, a T-shirt from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont paired with his favorite battered black leather vest and blue jeans.
It was like this every time, the recognition. His familiarity was such an unpleasant distraction from her resentment. She hated being forced to remember that she’d loved him once. That she used to lie in Soldier Field in the summer with her head in his lap, smiling up at him as he read Keats to her.
How special she’d felt in those early days in Chicago. How beyond the mundane! It had given her such a thrill back then, to think she was this man’s everything. Never once had it occurred to her that being his everything would mean she’d have nothing left for herself.
The lines in his face were deeper than she remembered them, and he reeked of tobacco. Her Richard had rarely smoked. Her Richard had been younger than this man, affectionate and romantic.
But her Richard had never really existed, and the Richard Morrow standing in front of her was a lush and an adulterer and a jerk.
He was also Henry’s father. The sad thing was, that had to outweigh every other consideration.
“Hello,” someone said. She supposed it was her, but it felt like another woman’s voice, another woman’s tongue.
“That is?” Henry asked. Weasel Face had emerged from his sedan, rested his butt against the hood, and started fiddling with his camera.
“Shit,” Carly whispered. “Camera. We have to go.”
Richard seized Ellen’s hand—a move that so astonished her, she failed to react. His palm felt perfectly normal. Perfectly familiar. It creeped her out.
“I’m so glad to see you here,” he said, “because I’d really like to talk to you. You haven’t been returning my calls.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m sober. A month on Monday. I’m going to meetings.”
The photographer lifted the camera and started shooting Carly.
“Damn it,” Carly said under her breath, one protective hand on her stomach. She tugged on Ellen’s upper arm, pulling her back the way they’d come. “Ellen, we have to get out of here.”
Richard didn’t release her hand. “I want to see more of Henry.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I want to see more of both of you.”
Ellen finally shook off the weirdness of the situation and found her spine. She pulled her hand back hard, trying to twist it out of his grasp. “Let go of me.”
He did. Clenching his fingers into fists, Richard stuck them in his pockets straight-armed and rocked back on his heels, a Bob Dylanish affectation that had always gotten on her nerves. “Why don’t you hear me out?”
“Ellen, seriously, now,” Carly said, with another tug.
Ellen took a clumsy step away from Richard and reached back to stroke Henry’s bare leg, whether to reassure herself or him, she wasn’t sure. “I don’t think so.”
Three more steps. Five. And then a Camelot Security SUV pulled around the corner, and a man beckoned them to the vehicle.
Only as she walked away from Richard did it occur to her that she hadn’t said never. She hadn’t told her ex-husband to f*ck off.
She wondered if that small failure—that momentary tip of the hat to a lifetime’s training in politeness—would be all the invitation he needed to turn her life inside out.