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“NO ONE ELSE IS HOME,” Sherry said. “I was just gonna make myself some tea. You want some? Come on, we got some catching up to do. A lot’s happened since I saw you last.”
Sherry was positively glowing, I noted with dismay. Of course she was. As far as she was concerned, Donnie was fair game, and she had obviously wasted no time moving in for the kill.
She led me to the kitchen, chatting away about how great it felt to be back in Hawai`i, and how much she had missed canoe paddling. I trailed after her, mute with humiliation and shock, and sank into a chair at Donnie’s small kitchen table. I watched her fill the kettle and set it on the stove, the gas flame igniting with a whoomp.
Donnie’s gas range was something only a serious chef could appreciate. Gas was a luxury in Mahina. No public utility was going to dig gas lines into the volcanic rock, so if you wanted gas you had to get your own propane tanks and keep them filled. I’d always worried about Donnie’s propane tanks blowing up in the next volcanic earthquake. Well, that wasn’t my problem anymore.
“Regular breakfast tea OK?” Sherry asked.
She set out the tea, a quart container of milk, and a dish of sugar cubes. She seemed to know her way around the kitchen, I realized with a sick surge of jealousy.
“So,” I said, as she joined me at the table. “Back in Hawai`i.”
“It was a good time for me to move. Things weren’t working out too good with Mad Dog.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” I thought I remembered Sherry had left Donnie to marry someone named Mad Dog, but I could be getting him mixed up with someone else. Cataloging Sherry Di Napoli’s greater and lesser ex-husbands could be a project for our advanced database management course.
“I care about Mad Dog a lot,” she continued, “and he’s just the sweetest guy you’d ever wanna meet, but I think he was starting to get into some stuff not exactly on the right side of the law, ya know what I mean?”
“What awful news. Who could have predicted?” I poured some milk into my tea, then lifted the teabag up, squeezed it against the side of the cup with the back of my spoon to get the last of the tea out, and placed the bag onto the saucer. One little task after another. I would get through this.
“How’s the tea?” Sherry asked.
“Nice. Thank you.”
The tea was good, strong and milky. It might have been pleasant to sit and chat, if I could manage to ignore the part about what Sherry had just been doing with my ex-fiancé.
“Yeah, me and Mad Dog have been on and off for so long. You know how it is when you never really get over someone?
“I haven’t experienced what you’re talking about. My own defunct romances are all pretty well dead and buried.”
Before Donnie, I had dated Stephen Park, chair of the theater department. At the time, I had thought him brilliant and fascinating. I’d even felt a little inferior because he had remained true to his craft while I had sold out my literature training to teach business communication in the College of Commerce. Stephen’s amazing cheekbones probably hadn’t hurt his appeal either.
Now I found Stephen insufferable. I’d always hated his smoking, and no matter what he said, clove cigarettes were still cigarettes. Putting them in a Norma Desmond-style cigarette holder didn’t make them any less noxious. After a stint in rehab (don’t get me started on that whole episode) Stephen had managed to pick up yet another addiction—food. He’d been showing up to department chair meetings wearing a cape, which was probably meant to conceal his now-portly figure.
“I’m thinking about going back and finishing my college degree,” Sherry said. “It’s hard to find work here without one. Even if you just wanna wait tables, you gotta have a bachelor’s.”
“The job market here’s not great,” I agreed. “But Mahina State’s accepting applications for fall, if you want to come back.”
“A lot of the want ads say ‘off-island degree required.’ What’s an off-island degree? Does Mahina State have ’em?”
“Oh no, you’re still seeing the OID ads? It means, you need to have a college degree from anywhere except Mahina State University.”
Sherry choked on her tea and then dabbed her mouth with a paper napkin. I could see she was trying to suppress a laugh.
“Rude. What’d you guys do?”
“What happened was, the granting agency that funds our Student Retention Office wanted to see a big increase in our graduation rates. So our administration thought it would be a good idea to remove a whole bunch of academic requirements to push students through faster. And yes, technically our completion rate went up, but the local employers had bad experiences with our graduates. That’s where the OIDR disclaimer came from. I thought we’d fixed it already.”
“So Mahina State’s out.” Sherry got up and refilled the kettle from the sink. “Maybe I could start my own business. Do something online. Then it wouldn’t matter where I was working from.”
“True, unless you had to ship something. I’m sure you could put together a great plan.” I was unconsciously reverting to Encouraging Professor mode. “Listen, I actually have to get going. I just came by to drop something off.”
“Well now I’m back, we’ll hafta hang out. Yeah, I gotta get dressed and get outta here too. I don’t wanna to be around when you-know-who gets home. That’d be awkward, huh?”
Sherry had a complicated history with her stepson, whom she had abandoned when he was only eight years old. Of course anyone who wanted to avoid Davison Gonsalves in his current incarnation had my full sympathy and support.
“It was really nice to see you,” I blurted out. What a dumb thing to say. It was the opposite of nice. But what was I going to say? Was I going to confess to being heartbroken and mad with jealousy? It really was over between Donnie and me. He still wanted Sherry. After all the talk of marriage and children and even getting to the point of planning our wedding, Donnie had chosen her. Sherry Di Napoli, who had walked out on him and left him a single father. That hurt.
“Yeah, you’re looking good, Molly.”
“You too,” I admitted.
It was clear Sherry had partied hard in her youth, and maybe spent a little too much time in the sun. But she had good bone structure, and her laugh lines made her look friendly and approachable.
“I better look good.” She laughed and fluttered her lashes. “Just finished fixing up the paint job.”
I tried not to imagine how her makeup got messed up in the first place.
I placed the house key on the little side table as I left, next to the jade-green ceramic bud vase. The vase was empty today; it usually held a sprig of orchid blossoms or a single crimson anthurium, its turgid yellow spadix poking skyward. I could just imagine what a field day the phallus-obsessed Melanie would have had with the anthurium; she and I might have even shared a laugh about it.
I closed the front door behind me and hurried down to where my car was parked, not daring to look back at Donnie’s house. I slid behind the wheel of my car, let the heavy door slam shut, and sat fuming. My gloom yielded to a bitter sense of unfairness.
I had spent the last couple of years being a Good Catholic Girl and a Perfect Lady and all of the rest of it, and what had it gotten me? I had been looking forward to marrying Donnie, and it wasn’t because I was yearning to file joint tax returns. But Donnie and I had one argument, and next thing I knew, Sherry Di Napoli came swooping in out of nowhere and helped herself. Virtue was its own reward, all right. There sure didn’t seem to be any other rewards. I turned over the engine and lurched down the street.