Dolly All the Time(75)
“You can mail it,” I say finally. I walk past him, past the rose garden and the perfectly cut lawn. Christopher is coming toward me, carrying more ice to the lobster table.
“Dolly?” Christopher says, and the sound of his voice snaps me back to reality. I am a person with four jobs and a kid and a load of unspecified responsibilities. I’m not a princess. This is not my fairy tale. “Are you going to cry?” he asks.
“Hey, buddy. No, I’m good.” I walk with him back toward the garage, where I should have been working tonight. I knew it is the only clear thought that’s coming to me right now. This was fun for a while, but Stewart Whitfield does not stay at the Comfort Inn. I knew it from the very beginning, then at some point there was a boat ride and a bouquet of herbs and that confident smile on my kid’s face, and I stopped wanting to know it.
Chapter 33
On the ride home we all assure one another that it was an absolutely perfect event. I keep throwing out little phrases, because I’m afraid of the silence. “Very fresh,” I keep saying. “The freshest yet.” My chest and my throat are full. There’s a giant sob waiting to get out, but I am not a sobber, I remind myself. I am the soother of sobs. The fixer. I will take off this dress and I will not hang it up. I will not use the miles of fabric to make something else. I will cleanse myself of this dress and this particular fantasy. I keep with the little comments. “And the flowers, all so fresh.”
Unfortunately, you cannot hide the pain in your voice from the people who love you. We get out of the car and Gus stops me to ask if I’ve been crying.
“Yes,” I tell him, because I don’t lie to Gus, and then I immediately say, “But I’ll be fine,” switching course and telling him a blatant lie.
“What happened? Something with Stewart?”
I don’t know how to explain this to Gus without showing him the full breadth of my pain. I am going to a dark place, and I don’t want to take him with me. So I keep lying to keep him safe.
“No, not at all. I just twisted my ankle in these ridiculous shoes, and it hurt. Everything’s great with Stewart, in fact it’s payday! Tonight was the last event of our arrangement.”
Gus sits with this. He’s sorting through the mixed messages that he’s getting from my spirit and my words. He is not accustomed to being lied to, but honestly he should get used to it.
“But you liked him,” he says.
“I did,” I say, and look down at my absurd gold purse. Who carries a gold purse? “It was a very fun summer.”
“So are sailing lessons over?”
“Probably. I think he’s going to be back in Boston soon. But you really learned a lot. We can see if there are boats to rent at the dock for the next few weeks. Did I mention it’s payday?” I smile at him, half real, because he did have a great summer. I pull him into my arms, my person who I get to keep for a few more years.
A little while later my dad pokes his head into the sleeping porch and catches me staring at my unringing phone. “You okay, Doll?” he asks.
“Yeah, sure.” I turn to him, and he sees it on me. The dark pit of grief that’s going to swallow me whole. “Don’t worry.”
“I’m always going to worry, Doll. I’m sorry for whatever happened.”
“Me too, Dad,” I say, and he has the grace to knock twice on the doorframe and walk away without saying anything more.
* * *
I text Naomi a quick synopsis on Sunday morning. She arrives ten minutes later through the sleeping porch door and gets in bed with me. I can tell she thinks this is a little blip and that I’m overreacting. She smooths my hair like I’m her child.
“What was the last thing he said to you?” she asks.
“That he’d drop by with a check.”
“Oh,” she says. Her sunny demeanor darkens.
“He wanted to be CEO to carry on the family vision or whatever, and now he looks like a fraud. And I know that’s all a really big deal. But he walked away from me when everyone was looking at me. I asked what this meant for us, and he said he didn’t know.”
“He knows,” she says.
I shake my head. “Really didn’t seem like it.” We’re quiet for a bit, and I love Naomi for not telling me he’ll be back. I don’t know where I’d put my dark moments if I didn’t have her to hold them for me.
“Can we bring dinner over tonight? Let the kids run around?”
The idea of that turns my stomach. It feels like moving on. “I think I want to leave the night open,” I say. “I’m sure there’s a big talk coming.”
* * *
My shift the next day starts at eleven, and there’s a boatload of scallops to unload. I like the weight of the metal bins my dad uses to transport them into the store. They’re ice cold against my legs and leave red marks where the cold has burned me. This is all I can feel today.
My phone is face up, unringing, by the cash register. Customers come in and out, dinging the bell over the door and driving me into a madness I’ve never quite known before. I leave the fish house at four and he is not standing outside. I close my eyes to the sun and he does not step in and make a shadow. I walk home to Goose Lane and his car is not in my driveway.