I’d thanked her in the same quiet volume, and then I hadn’t seen her for fourteen years. It was like any other story about people you knew at one point. You went your separate ways, ships setting off for destinations across limitless seas, and you thought about them sometimes, maybe never, until one day you were living just down the street from them.
Rachel Worth, now Rachel Barren, had been standing at her mailbox the day I moved back to the Loop. I didn’t recognize her at first; then she’d given me a wave, and all the memories returned. I’d watched her walk up her driveway to the sprawling split-level until my view was cut off by the moving truck hauling all my earthly belongings to the next stage of my life.
A stage beginning then and leading to the note left in my front door.
I made coffee. It’s what I did whenever I needed to think. I drank coffee while I wrote my novels or short stories. Caffeine got the mind working. While it brewed, I weighed my options. The scales had tipped by the time the coffee hit the cup.
I had to quit seeing her.
It turned my stomach. Made me sick.
I took my coffee into the living room and sat by the big windows. I could see both Rachel’s house and Dad’s. Rachel’s was still dark, but a light would come on in the kitchen soon. She was an early riser, organized, deeply committed to her boys. Asher was nine, and Joey was going to be six soon. She always packed their lunches. She’d told me this the first time we’d talked, really talked, not just the polite conversation of neighbors bumping into one another. That was a few days after the kiss in the kitchen and . . .
I stood up from the chair, staring into the dark.
God, how had I forgotten? Passed it off as nothing, I suppose. Told myself it was okay, that whoever it was hadn’t seen anything from their vantage point on the lawn. They hadn’t been paying attention. The angle was wrong. Sure.
But obviously it hadn’t been.
Slowly I sat back down and watched the blue light dancing from Dad’s TV. Maybe he was sleeping now. I hoped so. He seemed to be better when he got good rest. Less wandering of his thoughts, fewer memories being displaced and refiled in the wrong spots.
I should sleep too. Right.
The note was on the kitchen table, but I’d already memorized it. Pretty straightforward. Do as I say or else. Inelegant, but I guessed whoever had penned it didn’t write notes demanding an end to affairs on a regular basis.
I wanted to take it all back.
I wanted to take it further than we had.
My coffee was cold.
I made her laugh. I guess that’s what I can trace it back to. I’d been settled in my new place for a few days and was helping Dad with something in the backyard when his doorbell rang.
Rachel was as striking as I recalled, and for a second I didn’t know what to say. Both of us just standing in Dad’s front doorway, looking at each other. Her holding a loaf of banana bread, me holding my breath. Then I spit out some stupid line about not wanting anything from Schwan’s and shut the door in her face. I pulled it open again right away, and she laughed.
That was it.
We saw each other around town. Most times she was with her boys. I said hi. They said hello, both very polite little gentlemen. We talked at any church functions I brought Dad to. She never commented on me not entering the sanctuary for Mass or how I’d wait outside the front doors if the weather was nice. She understood. We’d chat for a minute in the river of parishioners, two fish swimming momentarily side by side. Just a few “How are yous” and a joke here and there. I made it a point to try to make her laugh. It was a little selfish—I liked the sound of it. Sometimes she would look at me and I’d see something behind her eyes, some momentary flash that didn’t remind me of a delicate glass sculpture. It brought to mind a summer storm on a beach, waves crashing in and a relentless tide pulling them back out.
I ran into David, her husband, one afternoon in midsummer. He’d walked down the street while I was mowing Dad’s yard, a cold beer in each hand. I thought, Okay, now I’ll feel like an ass for admiring this guy’s wife, because he’ll be different than he was in school. He’ll have grown up and become a nice man with a nice family, and Andy Drake should go stick his head in the sand for being a total creep.
David was still a prick.
Loud. Overbearing. Uncomfortably charming by the sheer pressure of his gaze and smile. He chatted me up in the hot sun and left me with a hard slap on the shoulder and an invitation to stop by his lending agency if I ever needed anything. When he was gone, I poured out the beer he’d given me.