Lydia’s confession, dredged from a place beyond logic and reason, refused to grant Kate any semblance of sleep that night. As if the REPLAY button was sitting in a permanently stuck position, the unbidden details of her decades-old infidelity had accomplished only one thing as far as the listener was concerned. At least now I know why she’s always tried to discourage a lasting relationship between John and me.
Had they ever progressed to the altar, Kate could easily envision the discomfiture of half the new in-laws over cake and punch. The awkward glances. The forced gaiety. The head-splitting pressure not to accidentally slip up by saying something he or she would supposedly have no way of knowing.
It also explained, she realized, why her mother eschewed mention of Jeremy. Had the third Neal son not been conceived, an entirely different future might have unfolded, a future that clearly would not have included Cassy. Or Jimmy. It seems we’re all painful reminders of the happily-ever-after Mom thought she was supposed to get.
Though her mother had insisted that neither her husband nor Abby had ever gotten wind of the affair, Kate couldn’t help but wonder whether it was more a case of wishful thinking than actual reality. Certainly in her own limited experience of dating, there was telepathy that kicked into gear when one’s current love-interest was starting to get bored and wandering off. How, she mused, could two people like her parents live under the same roof and sleep in the same bed every night and yet be so out of touch with each other’s feelings that a third party’s presence wasn’t felt?
The bigger mystery, of course, was how they had eluded detection, and censure, within the confines of Avalon Bay. Even the passage of years wouldn’t have dulled the acid tongues of those who lived for a good scandal. She was suddenly remembering the first time John picked her up in the cab and was talking about Ed the barber and his third bride. Funny that she and John hadn’t even been born yet when Ed left his first wife for a comely librarian from Cape May, overnight, generated more conversation than a steamy episode of Peyton Place. Though the fling hadn’t resulted in matrimony, there were still wicked snickers to this day whenever someone in Avalon Bay talked about “checking out a new book”.
The uncertainty which had been aroused by her mother’s disclosure brought with it another unsettling thought. Does John know, too?
She tried to push it from her mind. Mothers, she rationalized, would be more inclined to share their feelings with a daughter as a cautionary tale than to confide in a son. On the other hand, she’d had no way of knowing how John’s parents reacted when she and John broke up. Human nature being what it was, it wasn’t uncommon for families and friends to immediately start dissing whoever was no longer in the picture. Had Abby told him to count his blessings that she was gone or, domestically oblivious to her husband’s connection to the Toscano household, simply told John he’d meet someone else someday?
Though the new day was less than five hours old, she could already hear movement starting up downstairs in the kitchen. Whatever awkwardness she’d felt the previous evening in listening to her mother’s story was nothing compared to the impending prospect of both women facing each other over coffee. At least, she reflected, most of her anger had dissipated during the night and been replaced with something that bore a closer kinship to pity. She couldn’t begin to guess what this awkward turn of events had done to her mother’s already mercurial nervous system but she did know the impact it was having on her own.
Just get through it, she told herself as she started down the stairs. Water under the bridge.
John awoke with a splitting headache, his first conscious thought being the realization that it was early morning and he was lying face down in the lumpy cushions of a strange couch. To move from his curiously splayed position would have taken more effort than his fuzzy brain was telling him he could muster any time soon. He licked his lips, wondering why the inside of his mouth felt like he’d been chewing on socks soaked in Jack Daniels. If memory served, and that was certainly more than debatable in his numbed state, the last time he’d felt this rotten was when his first and only hangover was experienced in a jail cell along with a charge of disturbing the peace.
He shuddered, disturbed that he could suddenly remember with such fierce clarity what he’d been doing that long-ago night but was loopy on what he was doing in a strange apartment. Without shifting his body, he turned his head on the cushion to try and get his bearings at the precise moment the kitchen light snapped on across the room.
“Oh good,” said a voice in response to John’s knee-jerk reaction to the sudden brightness. “For a minute, I thought you were dead.”
“About last night,” Kate and Lydia stopped simultaneously when they realized they’d both picked the same three words to start their conversation. Kate broke the tension first by laughing about their stereophonic opener. “I guess great minds run in the same circles,” she said.
“I was going to say ‘like mother, like daughter,’” Lydia murmured, “but maybe under the circumstances.”
“Listen, Mom, I’m the last person in the world to judge you. I’d be lying if I said your affair,”
Lydia’s interruption was prefaced with an embarrassed cringe. “Affair sounds so cheap,” she said. “Isn’t it bad enough?”
Bad enough that you cheated on Dad or bad enough that you weren’t your paramour’s first and final choice? Kate resisted the sarcastic urge to label them as friends-with-benefits. “Whatever you want to call it,” she continued, “it kinda blew me away but I supposed people looked at survival differently in your generation than mine. Women today don’t have to stay in a relationship if it’s not making ‘em happy, and they sure don’t have to find a relationship just to keep their head above water.”
Though she hadn’t meant it to be a segue to the present, her mother nevertheless pounced on it. “I’ve already seen one of my daughters try to struggle with being a single parent,” Lydia said. “If it turns out that you’re going to have to do all of this on your own, it’s going to be next to impossible for you to ever, well, to have anything else.”
“Anything or anyone?” Despite her resolve to stay calm, there was a tinge of exasperation in her voice that she couldn’t dislodge her mother’s sexist views.
“A man these days isn’t going to want a ready-made family.”
Not so, Kate’s heart faintly whispered back, though aloud she declared, “Then he’s not going to be the right one. And he’s certainly not going to be the likes of Brad.” She let the remark sink in a little deeper. “Promise me we’ve seen the last of him.”
“You know I can’t promise you won’t run into him,” Lydia countered. “It’s not like we live in New York.”
“I meant in our living room.”
“Can I say just one thing?”
Have you ever said ‘just one thing’? “What?”
“He was very concerned about everything that’s going on and asked me if he could do anything to help.”
“’Everything being?”
Lydia shrugged. “We had a long time to chat. I may have mentioned a little more than I should have.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Especially if Brad was also doing the pouring.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” Lydia insisted. “I’m sure nothing will come of it.”
A groggy John tried to focus on the stout ceramic mug of black coffee that had mysteriously been thrust into his hands, coffee that he was fairly sure was probably strong enough to dissolve a spoon.
“Uh, did I say anything weird last night?” he asked. “Something that maybe I shouldn’t have?”
His listener, however, was out of earshot at the moment.
John drew a deep breath as he hazily tried to reconstruct the past evening.
Pizza.
Something to do with a pizza.
Capparelli ‘s pizza.
Pizza and cheese.
Pizza and rain.
Pizza and?
His mind suddenly locked on the blurry image of Kate and Jimmy and Kate being mad at him about something. But what? He took a big gulp of coffee and nearly spit it out. Bleah! It tasted, and looked, like tar. Hot tar. Disgusting tar and nary a trace of sugar.
He conjured Kate’s beautiful face again.
Kate angry.
Kate soaking wet.
Kate looking as if she wanted to lean in and kiss him and then?
And then emptiness.
Blackness.
Blackness that was blacker than the disgusting cup of coffee in his hands.
“You okay?” he heard a hollow voice inquire.
“Did I say anything weird last night?” he asked, wondering why his question felt like déjà vu.
“Define weird,” the voice replied.
Kate’s first order of business was to drop off a check at John’s to cover the traffic ticket she had cost him.
“Why so early?” her mother asked when Kate told her that she’d need to watch Jimmy for her. Already hovering in the wings was an inevitable second question about why her daughter had donned a linen skirt and heels since their previous conversation.
“Just a lot of stuff to do this morning,” Kate quickly lied, seeing no need to explain that she’d just as soon not run into John after the awkwardness of their last encounter. If she simply slipped a note in an envelope under the mat at the Neals’ front door and left, he’d have no choice but to accept it.
Or bring it back, the voice in her head played Devil’s advocate. Is that what you’re really thinking? Wanting? Wishing?
“I’ll also need to borrow the car,” she added. Although it certainly looked as if the day would be rain-free, the last thing she needed was any more surprises.
True to form, Lydia asked her where she was taking it.
“If I tell you, it could jinx it,” Kate teased.
Her mother’s face brightened. “A job interview?”
“Just dropping off my resume at the Gazette,” Kate replied. “I doubt Cliff’s even there this early but at least he’ll know I’m interested.”
“What if he is?”
Kate shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll see if he has time to pencil me in.” Or if he even remembers me. Although the summer she had volunteered between her sophomore and junior year to proofread copy stood out as a favorite memory, she also knew that Cliff rarely recollected anyone who didn’t bring value-added to his sense of prestige.
“Hmm,” Lydia murmured with a hint of disapproval.
“Hmm, what?”
“Do you think linen’s a good idea if he keeps you waiting?” she queried, critically eying Kate’s skirt.
“Since when is linen a bad idea?”
“Lap wrinkles,” Lydia replied without missing a beat. “I’d go with a nice jersey knit instead…”
Kate could whimsically imagine what Dee’s reaction would have been to her going upstairs to change her clothes. It even made her smile despite the apprehension she felt as she pulled up to the Neal house.
“Don’t take this as a sign I’m going to start doing everything you say,” she had felt compelled to inform her mother.
Lydia, in kind, had responded that at least it was a start.
She absently smoothed the navy jersey print before she stepped out of the car. Nary a lap wrinkle. So far, so good.
The morning newspaper was still laying on the doormat, a sign it seemed, that no one was up and about yet. The front curtains were closed as well, a modest assurance that her stealthy approach to the front door wouldn’t be noticed.
She bent down to tuck the envelope under the rubber band but before she could straighten up, the door suddenly opened and she was knocked to the ground by the German Shepherd that came bounding out. From her undignified sprawl, Kate caught a brief flash of fluffy bunny slippers and a bathrobe before the black and tan beast hovering over her began excitedly licking her face.
“Shelby! No!” a woman’s voice sharply called out, followed by, “Are you all right?”
Kate wasn’t sure who was more startled as she made eye contact with the woman who was helping her to her feet, a woman whose face was completely slathered with a light green paste except for the two circles around her eyes.
They both started to talk at once, Kate with an apology for scaring her and the woman saying she’d just stepped out to get the paper. “My son’s the one who usually brings it in,” she said, grabbing the dog’s collar. “Shelby! Stop that!”
“Mrs. Neal?” The words were out of her mouth before Kate realized how stupid, and possibly insulting, it sounded to preface it with a gasp.
“Yes?”
Before Kate could scramble fast enough to say something clever about not recognizing her at first under the layers of facial, Abby. Neal looked out toward the street and started laughing in mild embarrassment. “You’re not with one of those reality shows, are you?” she asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Hidden cameras? Publisher’s Clearing House? Ed McMahon jumping out of the bushes to give me a check?” She touched a hand to her cheekbone before reaching up to adjust the towel turban on her head. “Goodness! And today of all days!”
The cavalier way in which she responded to the prospect of a televised intrusion despite her comical appearance almost made Kate wish her pending explanation wasn’t so pedestrian.
“I’m just a friend of John’s,” Kate cut in, “and wanted to drop off something for him.”
“The girl from school!” Abby declared with a broad smile. “It’s, uh, Kate, isn’t it?”
So at least he’s mentioned my name recently to his mother, Kate thought, unsure of what exactly that was supposed to mean. She refrained from supplying John’s mother with a surname. Just in case she decides to call the dog back to eat me.
In the next breath, Abby asked her if she’d like to come in for some coffee. “I just made a pot of regular but we’ve got decaf if that’s better?”
Kate politely declined, explaining that she’d only stopped by to leave something for John and hoping that his mother, under the auspices of innocent helpfulness, wouldn’t call him to the front door to collect it in person.
A look of puzzlement crossed Abby’s face. “You mean he wasn’t with you?” She asked. “Well, I’ll be sure to give it to him.”
Could this moment get any more awkward, Kate thought.
“Well, speak of the devil!” Abby proclaimed in delight as John’s truck suddenly pulled into the driveway. “Looks like you didn’t have to miss him after all.”