She felt it when she assessed what she’d wanted to happen and what had happened instead. Nothing felt right. And then she realized exactly who she sounded like. She realized who she was turning into.
She heaved her door open in one smooth movement and stepped out of the car. It had started to rain again. The night sky was thick with dark clouds, indicating it would probably turn into a deluge.
Charles was out of the car. “Where are you going?”
“Drive yourself home. I’m getting a cab.”
“Joanna … come on.”
She walked across the parking lot and flung open the door to the mini-mart. It was bright and freezing inside. Pop music blared so loudly, the floor vibrated with every bass note. A man wearing a work shirt with his name, Stewart, stitched on the breast pocket was checking out the hot dogs. Two teenage boys, both acne-riddled, were staring at the refrigerators, probably waiting to shoplift a few cans of beer. The whole place smelled like a confused mix of coffee and burnt peanuts and bleach.
“Joanna.” Charles followed her down the candy aisle. “This is inappropriate.”
“Go away,” she said, shaking him off. The lone counterperson looked over. The register to her right said OUT OF SERVICE. Next to her was a big box of horoscope scrolls.
Joanna zigzagged through the aisles, passing the mini-bags of chips, the refrigerator cases of soda. Pepsi. Nestea. Fresca. She kept her arms glued to her sides, her shoulders in.
“Will you come back to the car?” Charles protested. “We can talk about it there, okay? We don’t need to be in here.”
She walked down the row of car maintenance products, motor oil and wiper fluid and air fresheners. Charles let out a frustrated grunt, then turned to the do-it-yourself coffee bar, poured himself a cup of coffee, and brought it to the register. “Hello,” he said pleasantly to the counter-woman. After he paid, Charles lingered by the door, sipping his coffee, watching her.
She did another lap of the convenience store, gazing at every item. So she was disappointed. So Charles had his idealized Bronwyn. Joanna had her ideal, too. Someone who hadn’t disappointed her. Someone she’d probably never know well enough to disappoint her.
She dared to imagine the look on Charles’s face if she told him what sometimes went through her mind. The feeling that had coursed through her body the first time she’d seen his brother standing in the kitchen at Roderick, the very first day Charles brought her there. She’d walked into the kitchen before Charles and his mother, and there was Scott, standing at the fridge. She hadn’t anticipated the sultry, desirous heat that rippled through her when he turned those eyes on her, those mysterious, dangerous, heavy-lidded eyes, looking her up and down, looking inside her. When she reached out her hand for him to shake, her movements were heavy and dreamlike. She was rendered breathless.
She could tell Charles that whenever they had dinner at his parents’ house, she hoped Scott would join them. For Scott would sit there, thrillingly sullen and noncompliant. Sometimes she felt him watching her, his gaze predatory and primal. She had dreams about him, too. In her fantasies, Scott was rough and passionate. It was after those dreams that she woke up facedown on her stomach, her hand between her legs.
She looked at her husband, leaning against the rack of newspapers, drinking his cup of coffee. It was amazing how separate they were. Here she was with this huge, ghastly secret, silent and closed inside her. He had no idea.
An obese man gathered up a few bottles of soda from the counter and trundled out the door. The little TV behind the counter broke for commercials, and a local news teaser came on. “Unknown death at a local Philadelphia school leads to questions,” the newscaster announced.
Joanna froze. Charles pivoted, his eyes on the TV.
The newscast’s signature music blared. “We have the exclusive,” a second newscaster bragged. “Up next.”
The fluorescent lights pulsed. The hot dog machine creaked atonally. Joanna walked to Charles and put a hand on his arm. “It’s not the boy from Swithin,” she said.
Charles didn’t move.
“They said a Philadelphia school. Swithin is too far out.”
A small noise escaped from Charles’s throat.
“And, I mean, Swithin wouldn’t release this kind of story to the press, right? They’d keep it quiet.”
Charles gazed at her, fear in his eyes.
“They would,” Joanna said.
They had no choice but to stay in the mini-mart to watch the rest of the news. The story came on almost at the end. It was about a boy from an inner-city Philadelphia school, just as Joanna had predicted, gunned down in his neighborhood for what police suspected had to do with drugs. They watched as snapshots of the boy paraded past. There he was opening a Christmas present, then standing with a whole gaggle of other Latino kids, then kissing the cheek of a woman of indeterminate age.