The baby rounds out of my belly like a giant stone. His limbs are sharp, and I picture him like one of Ed’s arrowheads, the point pressing into my stomach.
Miranda loves it. “Customers always buy things from pregnant women. Just wait. Your sales are going to go way up.”
And she is right. Everyone buys something, even the browsers who usually touch everything but leave empty-handed. Still, the day shifts are naturally slow, and I spend more time steaming and tagging clothes than I do selling them.
I am in the back when the bell chimes. “Hello!” I call. “I’ll be right out!”
A familiar male voice returns, “Hello!”
It’s Tim with the dead mother. I have his thank-you card in my studio, and I have memorized the words inside. My mother always believed in the kindness of strangers. People were always doing things for her. But I never experienced any meaningful stranger moments before our meeting the other day. And now I know what she meant. Thank you. And then, at the bottom, in even smaller print: I hope I can buy you a drink sometime.
I reread the card daily now. His handwriting is small and blocky, where Ed’s is loose and illegible.
Tim is the tidy version of himself again. This version matches his handwriting, but I might prefer the disheveled one I first met.
“You’re working,” he says.
“I am.”
It’s been at least a year since his mother’s death, and I have been working here longer than two.
Ed still has no idea.
“I walk by all the time, but I can never see you through the window, and I can’t get the nerve to come in.”
I have an armful of dresses to hang. “Are you in need of women’s clothing?”
He laughs. “No.”
I haven’t been able to recognize flirtation since Ed brazenly wooed me away from Danny, but this must be it. The card. Walking by all the time. Steeling his nerve to come inside.
I’m flattered.
And then I turn to him, the dresses all hung, and he sees my belly.
“Oh!” he shouts, and I can’t help but smile.
“Not what you expected?”
“No. I mean, I wasn’t expecting anything. I mean, I was hoping—” His discomfort is consuming him, poor man, but then he swallows and stares at me. “I was hoping I could buy you that drink. But that’s probably not appropriate given your—situation.”
“The doctor says drinking is just fine, so long as I keep it under a six-pack a day.” I am being ridiculous and unkind. He probably wants to turn and run, and here I am flirting back. I put my hands on my belly and say, “Listen, Tim. It’s sweet of you to follow through on your offer, but I’m sure you weren’t expecting to find me six months pregnant, so you’re off the hook, all right?”
He looks relieved, but then he shakes his head and takes a couple steps toward me. “It’s not a date,” he says. “It’s a belated thank-you for your help.”
I’m confused. Is he really that nice a guy to buy a woman a drink with no hope of getting laid? And am I that woman?
I’m quiet too long, and he starts into nervous rambling again. “I’m so sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I was just so taken with your kindness, and I just wanted to thank you—really. Just a thank-you. But I completely understand if it’s a bad idea. I’ll just leave you alone and—”
“I’d love to have a drink with you, Tim. I’m done here at five.”
“Great!” he shouts, clearly terrified.
— —
We talk for hours, like old friends. My belly is gone, my marriage. I am only a woman at a bar with a man. We talk about our dead parents, his brokenhearted father, childhood, high school, work. He’s an architect and a builder.
“I did construction in college and realized how much I missed it once I started spending my days at a desk. So now I do the designs and the building both.”
I tell him about painting. I tell him how much I love working at the store. I don’t tell him about my art classes in Boulder because I don’t want to talk about Ed. My ring is obvious enough on my finger.
It’s eight-thirty when I leave the bar, assuring Tim I’m fine to drive. I only had three glasses of wine. I drive myself home in the stupid car Ed bought me, “practically brand-new and yellow—your favorite color. And it’s an automatic. I know clutches make you nervous.” He was so proud of the gift that he nearly convinced me his motivations were noble—a present for his wife, nothing more. But I know he bought the car to free himself of me, to regain his Tuesday drives to and from Boulder. “You like it?” he asked.
“Yes,” I lied. “It’s lovely.”
The whole house is lit when I get home, and I’m not even out of the car before Ed is there shouting. “Jesus, Laura! Are you all right? Where the hell have you been? I’ve been knocking on the neighbors’ doors. Pete and Bonnie are out looking for you. I was just about to call the police.”
I laugh. It’s all I can do in the face of such irony. I laugh and laugh until it turns into a bitter finger pointed at Ed’s chest. “You were just about to call the police? Because I’m home at eight-thirty? Because I missed dinner? Oh, God! Clearly, something must be horribly, terribly wrong for me to stay away from home so late. There must have been an accident. Or a tragedy. Maybe my parents were killed. Oh, but they’re already dead. Maybe I was murdered! Kidnapped. The possibilities are endless. Right, Ed? I mean, why would someone stay away so late if not for an emergency?”
He is trying to talk over me, trying to calm me. “Okay, Laura. I see what you’re doing. But I have responsibilities outside the house, and you—”
“Responsibilities that require you to go to the bar nearly every day with the boys? Well, maybe I have those responsibilities now, too.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
We are shouting too loudly for the street. I don’t want to be here. I want to be back at the bar with Tim, talking about the life I thought I’d have. Some critic picking my work out of the undergraduate showcase, hanging it in her New York gallery, spreading my name across the globe. Fame and maybe a little fortune. A marriage full of laughter and food and drink. Travel. Children with the expectation that I keep working.
“Doesn’t sound so impossible,” Tim said.
“Yeah, but the critic didn’t pick me. She picked Tabitha Howser, who was nothing but a Georgia O’Keeffe knockoff, all vagina flowers. Tabitha’s doing well, just had another opening in New York, and here I am in Helena, Montana.”
“I know I haven’t seen your work, but I guarantee it’s better than vagina flowers.” He raised his glass.
“What are we toasting?”
“Your career.”
I can’t remember the last time I talked about my career with Ed.
“Are you at least going to tell me where you’ve been?” he asks.
“No,” I say, and head inside.
— —
Ed is home early the following night, with wine and TV dinners he insists on heating up himself. I don’t move from my spot at the window, waiting for our pair of Clark’s nutcrackers to return after Ed’s car startled them off. We feed them peanuts in a flat feeder. They’re loud birds, big and black and gray. We’ve named them both Lewis.
“The Lewises?” he asks, and I nod.
“I think they’re gone for the day.”
“They’ll be back,” he says, pouring me a glass of wine. “Here you go, beautiful.”
I hate this version of him, the attentive ass-kiss. I prefer the angry asshole, or the sloppy drunk, or the absent doctor. At least those Eds are real.
The timer goes off, and Ed brings over our steaming meals. Meat loaf and mashed potatoes, green beans and gravy. We used to laugh about our shared love of TV dinners, how our mothers would cringe if they knew.
He raises his glass, as though if we toast enough, all our problems will vanish.
“To the baby again?” I ask, and think of my drinks with Tim. A toast to my work.
“Something else,” Ed says. “I wanted to tell you the other night when you went missing.” He pauses for effect, and I wait. I will give him no explanation about my absence. “Okay—not taking the bait. Well, here’s the toast, then: Penelope is getting discharged!” He delivers it with a flourish, chiming his glass against mine, his face all smile and pride. Like my childhood dog who brought me a dead squirrel once, laying it at my feet with the utmost care. He sat back on his haunches and smiled up at me, tongue lolling, so proud. I didn’t have the heart to refuse the gift, so I petted his head and told him he was good, and because my parents were sick, I had to scoop the squirrel into a bag and deposit it in the trash when my dog was distracted by his dinner.
Ed wants to be petted and told he’s good. But he is more misguided than my dog, whose only mistake was thinking a human would appreciate the same thing a dog would. Ed’s mistake is greater, the gift he’s laid at my feet dirtier. If Penelope’s departure is worth toasting, then her presence was worth worrying about. By toasting her, he is acknowledging my fears and suspicions. He is giving them life and blood.
He is such a fool.
And I am too tired to fight.
So I raise my glass with him, and I toast the end of what I now know was an affair. Whether or not it was physical, the relationship he had with her was a betrayal.
I think about Tim. I try on the word betrayal.
Ed is eating his meat loaf, and I am back on those steps of his institution my first day, waiting for him to finish his meeting with Penelope. I am counting the minutes he is with her.