5

I’D KNOWN MILLIE Dawson longer than I’d known Curtis. She had been a thorn in my side from grammar school through high school. At least that was my side of the story. She’d sat behind me in homeroom, and always had to ask the teacher if she could move in front of me so she could see the board or if I’d just remove my head. She was one of those girls that the rest of us had a jealousy just looking at: a waist about the diameter of my ankle bone, boobs like cup cakes, hair that bounced even when she sat still. Bitsy and limber and energetic, she could do the split and jumping jacks, and made me—a pretty good athlete actually—feel large and lumbering.

She’d been wild in love with Curtis Prentice forever, and when, our senior year, he’d asked me to the senior all-night party instead, I didn’t have a guilty minute. I figured she could’ve had anybody in the state of South Carolina she wanted. I never spent an instant wondering if she cried herself to sleep when he started up with me, or if she ripped out my pictures in the yearbook. Instead, I floated six feet off the ground because I, good serious Janey Daniels, working part-time at the pharmacy after school, had taken Curtis Prentice, hunk, away from Millie Dawson.

All of this I needed to remind myself about, having just heard from the town’s biggest rumor-spreader, Mom, that Millie had already been three months pregnant before I knew she’d stolen my one-time husband back.

Whimpering enough to cause my wagging, padding, pale-faced puppy to settle down at my feet, on her tummy, paws forward, listening for her name, I tried to eat the plate of faux-Caesar salad with chicken I’d put together before the call home. Deciding lettuce didn’t do much for a squirrelly stomach, I added a cold bottle of Magic Hat beer.

My brain remembered the thrill of that time, when everything about Curtis had stopped my heart. He’d walk down the street moving fast and smooth, like a halfback about to run for a tackle, eating a cone or a burger with one hand, waving to the town with the other. When he started hanging out with me, he talked a lot about my ambition. He wanted to catch some of it, he said, because he wanted to make something out of himself. So when it became clear I liked my job at the pharmacy and wanted to make that my work, he’d stop by, talking to me about what did I think about the emergency medical service, didn’t I think they did more than the doctors?—being right there on the spot when somebody had a heart attack or got themselves in a car accident? He got excited about the EMS, figuring if he worked for them we’d be in the same field: saving lives.

By the time we got our diplomas, he’d begun riding with the ambulance crew, studying up on first-aid measures. And I guess I started to split in two at that time: trying to get my pharmacy degree and trying to hang onto Curtis. It didn’t take much persuasion to talk me into a wedding while I was still in school at USC. I guess at that time I’d have followed him nude down the street with a rose in my teeth if he’d asked.

But things worked out differently between me and Curtis from what I’d expected. He gave up on making a living or even getting a lot of satisfaction from riding ambulances. He thought about being a nurse, but his buddies made a lot of jokes about Nursie Curtis, and he’d given up on that. His dad suggested he try life insurance: Who helped the injured guy the most? Who helped him in his back pocket? So he did that, became a claims adjuster. That might’ve been fine, except that people in town kept telling him his wife had sure been a help, how she’d got their husband off his deathbed. People kept asking him, Are you Pharmacist Daniels’ husband? And then one day somebody brand new to town hollered out the car window, “Afternoon, Mr. Daniels.” And Curtis came home, his face blazing, and shouted at me. “You think you’re the tail, don’t you, Janey? Well, you’re not the tail and you’re not gonna be wagging me.”

When he took the case for Mr. Dawson, promising to get him a truck-load of money for an injury to his back—some dumb nut hitting his car broadside in a pile-up—he made a trip by the pharmacy to tell me. “I’m gonna get him a bundle. Man just wants to get his car overhauled; I’m gonna get him enough to buy the dealership.”

“Is that Millie’s daddy?” I’d asked. It came out of my mouth, the wrong question, old people in wheelchairs and a couple of regulars waiting, and me, all of a sudden, acting like I was back at Peachland High.

“If he is, what about it? You don’t remember that I haven’t been with her since the day I nearly broke my ass trying to hook up with you? You don’t remember that? I bet she remembers that. You want me to tell him I can’t make the deal, it wouldn’t be ethical to get him his wad of compensation because I once had the opportunity to get into his daughter’s pants? Is that it?”

We had an audience by that time, naturally, so I said, “That’s great, Curtis,” to his suit-coated back barging out the door.

I’d been grieving that day over some bad news about the mother of First Baptist’s pastor, news I hadn’t any business sharing but which made me heavy inside. But even if I’d wanted to violate pharmacy confidentiality, no way I could’ve got Curtis to listen to this worry on my mind. And that hurt me a lot, that he didn’t have an interest in people outside himself. No wonder I’d asked about Millie; I must’ve really been asking if he was wishing himself back single again.

We’d had a sort of fight the week before. I’d mentioned to him here we were turning twenty-five, had got ourselves a nice house with a yard, and maybe it was time we thought about a family. I knew that Mr. Sturgis would let me have baby-leave or at least cut down my hours if I asked. He’d promised that the day I started work full-time, with my degree finished and a ring on my finger.

But Curtis didn’t have an interest in dependents, four-legged or two. “Look at my dad,” he’d said, waving a bottle of Bud. “He used to be the one you didn’t want to mess with, the one that the girls lined up for, so I hear. Then what happened? He became my dad. What’s his name? My dad. What’s he got on his mind? Making sure his boy doesn’t mess up, making sure his boy keeps his pants zipped and does not throw away his chances. That’s it, that’s his life. I’m not going down that road, Janey. Not for sure now. Did you think I was? I don’t think we had that conversation. You’re the one sells the stuff that keeps folks from making that mistake. Isn’t that right? Aren’t you the one?”

“I just thought, we’ve been married five years.”

“Woman has one baby, man has two dependents.”

It was in plain sight. He won the claim for Mr. Dawson: a ruptured vertebra resulting from a three-car pile up, with serious skidding in a driving rain. He had cause and fault down cold, though it might take a while, he said, the way claims did, and he’d need to work close with his client.

By the time Mom called me to say her good friend Madge at the bank had seen Curtis having dinner with the Dawsons at the Southern Fried Cafe, his arm around their daughter Millie who’d driven over from her bank job in Columbia for the occasion, and who still looked as pretty as she had at seventeen, the whole town had passed the news along.

What a feast they’d be having now—finding out Millie had been already pregnant by the time she unfolded that dinner napkin.