Chapter 11

Ariel

Justine and I sat down and had a cup of tea while the bread rose, and I couldn’t help but wonder what Erica would’ve said if she’d happened upon our cozy little scene. And yet, I was having a lovely time. We had mixed up the dough together with a lot of little helpers. The girls’ camp was over, so Justine brought them over for her lesson in bread making, just another of her many talents. Cameron insisted on doing everything we did, so we ended up with two large bowls of bread rising on the counter. The kids sat clustered around my island, staring at the dishcloth-covered bowls. “Dylan,” I said, scolding him with a grin on my face, “don’t take the cover off. Why don’t you go outside and play and then we’ll have lunch?”

“It’s too hot,” the kids all whined in unison. The five of them were fast becoming friends. The gate between our houses was hardly ever shut anymore, but Justine had learned to keep her fence bolted so Lucky was at least contained in our yards. I ushered the kids outside, promising them it was only for a few minutes.

Justine walked over to the bread and pulled back the dishcloth. “I think it’s ready,” she said, heaving the mass out of the bowl and onto the floured countertop. I watched her arm muscles ripple as she kneaded determinedly. “You know,” she said as she worked and I watched, “you should come out with us for a girls’ night out sometime soon.”

A girls’ night out sounded like just what I needed. “Sure,” I responded, not even bothering to mask my eagerness.

“I think we’re going out tomorrow night,” she said, staring down at the bread dough.

“Okay,” I said. A reminder of David earlier this morning standing beside the bed in the first light of morning, leaning over to kiss me good-bye, suitcase in hand, flashed through my mind. “Oh. Never mind. I can’t.”

She looked up at me. “Why not?”

“David’s out of town,” I said.

“Oh, too bad,” she said. She looked genuinely disappointed. I couldn’t imagine she was more than I was.

Donovan walked in from the deck. “Hey, Mom, where do we keep the umbrellas?”

“Umbrellas do not make good parachutes, Donovan. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times, you are not to jump off the roof.” He sighed deeply and returned to the deck to report that he had been unsuccessful in his mission.

I caught the look on Justine’s face. It was a look that said she had never experienced such a request from Cameron or Caroline. I smiled at her. “See why I need a girls’ night out?” I quipped.

“I guess you could never describe your life as dull,” she said, studying the boys from the window like a scientist might study a rare breed of animal.

“When Donovan was about a year old, I took him to the park one beautiful day. I was pushing him in the swing when a little boy who was probably about four got on the swing next to us. His mom was pushing him, and with every truck that drove by, he would ask her what kind of truck it was. ‘That’s an earthmover,’ she would say. Or, ‘That’s a cherry picker.’ All these pieces of machinery I had never heard of or cared about. I stood there and pushed Donovan as long as he could stand it, just listening to this woman talk to her son in what was, to me, a foreign language.”

I paused and smiled at Justine. “I went home that night and cried to David that God had made a mistake, that I couldn’t be the mother of a boy because I didn’t know any of the names of big rigs. The next day David brought home a book for Donovan with all these pictures of heavy equipment with the names under them. He handed it to me and said, ‘You’ll figure it out. God didn’t make a mistake.’ And I did figure it out.” I looked out at my boys. “Now I could give that mom a run for her money. Show me any piece of construction equipment, and I can tell you the name and what it does.” I giggled. “But I couldn’t tell you where that book is anymore. We wore it out.”

“David sounds like a great guy,” she said. “A great dad.”

“He is,” I said. “I miss him being around more. It’s hard.”

Justine shaped the bread into loaves and placed them in the greased baking pans. I watched with the same form of respect I once held for that mother in the park. Could it be that easy? Could I learn how to be her the same way I had learned to be that mom?

After Justine and the girls left to go home and whip up what was sure to be a gourmet three-course dinner for Mark, I decided to tackle the laundry while the boys vegged in front of a movie. I was untangling balled-up socks and separating whites and colors when my hand fell on the capris I had worn to the mothers’ group meeting. I felt the crinkly feel of paper under my fingertips as my hand grazed the back pocket. Suddenly I remembered Heather, the babysitter. I pulled the card from the pants, thankful I hadn’t washed it. Score one for not being on top of the laundry. Grabbing the phone in the kitchen, I hastily dialed the number.

“Hello?” a female voice said.

“Hi? May I speak to Heather?” I said.

“This is Heather.” She giggled. “This is my cell phone so I am pretty much the only person who answers.”

“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t ready for a child of mine to be armed with a cell phone. “This is Ariel Baxter, the one with the three boys? And, well, I was wondering if you could sit tomorrow night? My husband’s out of town and a friend of mine—well, actually she’s my neighbor. I mean, I haven’t known her long enough to call her a friend yet. I mean, friend is a strong word. Oh. You might know her. Justine Miller? She led the mothers’ group? Where I met you?” I sounded like a raving lunatic.

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied. She sounded more adult than I did.

“Oh, great. Well, we live behind her. You know the house with the gate that connects to their yard?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied. “I can walk to your house, actually.”

This just kept getting better. “So you can do it? I mean, tomorrow night? You can sit?”

I heard her flipping through pages, checking her calendar. “Umm. Sure. What time?”

Justine hadn’t told me a time because I had told her no so fast. “Let’s say six?”

“Yeah, I can do it then for sure.”

“Great! Thanks, Heather. You’re a lifesaver. My husband travels a lot and it gets lonely here with just the boys for company. I could really use a girls’ night out.”

“Sure, no problem,” Heather said, humoring me.

“Okay, well, I will see you tomorrow night.” I made myself stop babbling to a teenager who neither knew nor cared about my need for adult interaction and hung up the phone, victorious. I kissed the business card and held it aloft. It was the golden ticket to a night of freedom.

I dialed Justine’s number first thing the next morning, bursting with the news that I would be joining her and the girls from the neighborhood. “I got a sitter!” I said as soon as she said hello.

“Ariel?” she asked.

“Yes. I got a sitter,” I repeated, a little embarrassed that I assumed she’d know who I was. “Heather Davidson? The sitter from mothers’ group? I met her last week and forgot all about it, but after you left yesterday, I remembered. So I called her and she could do it. Isn’t that great?”

“Oh,” was all she said.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, willing there not to be anything wrong and the sensation I felt crawling up the back of my neck to be nothing more than prickly heat.

“Well, I hate to say this but we … well … we had a change of plans so we’re not going.”

I felt the air leave my lungs and sat down with a heavy thud at the kitchen table. Pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead I chastised myself for getting so worked up over a stupid girls’ night out with women I barely knew. And yet, isn’t this what I imagined when I dreamed of moving to this neighborhood? Togetherness? Friendships? Community? I was this close. “Oh,” was all I could say.

“Hey, we’ll do it again, though,” she said. “And I will give you plenty of notice when we do so you can get Heather if David’s out of town. How does that sound?” She sounded as though she was talking to a child. A silly, petulant child.

“Okay. Yeah, sure. That sounds great.” I willed myself to sound perky, like her.

Donovan came in the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “I’m hungry,” he whined, his voice nails on a chalkboard, the soundtrack to a long day stretching in front of me.

I waved my arm at him to close the refrigerator door and pointed toward the den where he came from. “Go,” I mouthed. He rolled his eyes and left with a deep sigh.

“Well … maybe you should keep Heather?” she said. “Nothing says you have to have a reason to leave. I am sure David wouldn’t care if you hired a sitter for a break when you needed one.”

“I couldn’t justify that,” I argued.

She laughed as though I had much to learn. “Has he had to justify leaving you for days on end with those boys, trapped in the house with no outlets?”

“Umm. No,” I said, suddenly feeling angry with David. Why did I need to justify spending some money for a break I deserved? Justine was right. “I guess I could just go to a bookstore,” I offered, halfway hoping she would say she wanted to go with me.

“Exactly,” she said. “Invest some time in yourself. Get a pedicure. Eat a salad. Go for a walk. See a movie. You don’t need me or any girls’ night to do that.”

I pictured myself all alone in a movie theater, something I had never done. I wanted to tell her that I did actually need her to do that. “Oh, of course,” I said, trying to sound more positive about her suggestion than I felt. “That’s a great idea. I’ll do it.” I did not think that I would, but I wanted her to believe I was the kind of confident woman who could do such things.

“Good for you,” she said in a singsong voice. I heard one of her girls’ crying go from faint to loud. “Listen, Cameron cut herself with scissors so I better go tend to her. You have fun tonight.” The line went dead before I could say good-bye.

I set the phone down in the base and stood still, staring over at Justine’s house through the kitchen window. I looked back down at the phone and willed it to ring, to be her saying she had worked it out after all. I didn’t want to go out by myself. I didn’t want to be the loser having dinner alone with just a book for company. But apparently, that’s what I was.

I sat in the car and collected myself before I backed out of the driveway. Duncan was crying, Dylan was sullen, and Donovan was avoiding looking me in the eye when I left them with Heather, who tried hard to look like she wasn’t bothered that the boys seemed to despise her. Just before Heather got there, Donovan said he hated me. He had never said that before, and I wasn’t ready for it. I had heard it would happen, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear. Was it wrong to leave them? I thought about Justine’s admonishment to me earlier that day: that David didn’t have to justify his frequent disappearing acts, so why should I? I put the van in reverse and pressed on the gas.

I eased out of the neighborhood, and when I slowed down as I passed Justine’s house, I noticed her getting into her car. A thought nagged at me: What if they went out without me? What if she just didn’t want me there? I feared that she didn’t really like me and her invitation to me had only been out of pity. She recognized how much I wanted to be her friend; she felt sorry for me. I scolded myself for being insecure, for letting my emotions get the best of me. It seemed to be happening more and more.

Leaving the neighborhood, I swung out between the large brick pillars with the imposing-looking lions keeping sentry, the waterfalls continually spouting water into the air. The entrance to the neighborhood used to inspire a kind of reverence within me; already I barely noticed it as I sped past to somewhere else. I had planned to take walks with the boys to see the lions and sit by the waterfalls. But we hadn’t done it once.

I turned into the parking lot of a little restaurant just past our neighborhood entrance. For all my running away, I hadn’t gone far. I grabbed my notebook and Bible to take into the restaurant with me, a bastion against looking lonely and desperate. I ordered my food and found a table for one.

The restaurant was crowded with diners, and I ended up sitting close to an attractive man about my age. When he looked up and smiled at me, I smiled quickly and looked away. He fiddled with his cell phone while I made a production of turning to the prayer-journal section of my notebook and beginning to write. I opened to a psalm and read while I waited for the servers to call my number saying my turkey sandwich with sprouts and hummus was ready. Justine had said to have a salad, but I refused. I contemplated ordering a pastry just to make my rebellion complete.

The man’s phone rang, startling me. I looked up in response to the ringtone it played. “I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you.” Air Supply. He smiled at me for the second time before answering. “Hey, you,” he said in a voice that was so obviously happy to hear from the woman on the other end that tears came to my eyes. He laughed the laugh of a lover, a laugh charged with secret jokes and familiarity. “Yeah, me, too. Yeah, I’ll be there. Of course. I’m glad you had a good day. That’s all I want for you, you know. Your happiness. I was happy to do it for you. I love you too. Okay, see you then. Yes, I promise. Yes.” He hung up still smiling, and I tried not to make it obvious that I could hear every word he had said. I noticed the ring on his left hand. How fortunate his wife was to have a husband who still talked to her like that. I looked down at my cell phone. David had not replied to my text.

Twice I looked up and caught the man looking at me, but I looked away before he could say anything. I didn’t want to hear about his happy life with his happy wife. When Heather called, I grabbed the phone without checking the caller ID, hoping it was David since I hadn’t talked to him all day. Heather just wanted to know if the boys were allowed to jump on the trampoline. I told her I would tip her if they were in bed asleep by the time I got home.

The man pulled a second cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. “Hey,” he said when the person answered, this time sounding totally different. “Listen, I am about to go into a meeting,” he said. I looked around at the faces of the other patrons to see if they noticed what I was witnessing, wondered if the person on the other end could tell he was lying. “No, I told you I wouldn’t be home for dinner. Yes, I said I would. Didn’t I? Look, don’t start in on me. I told you I didn’t have time to talk.” He didn’t sound like the kind, gentle lover this time. He sounded like an angry, bitter man. “Yep,” he finished. “Me, too.”

He snapped the second cell phone shut and threw it into a briefcase on the floor, kicking the briefcase with his foot. I refused to lift my eyes and look at him. I didn’t want him to see the betrayal I felt. He was not my husband. This was not my problem. Yet every bone in my body wanted to speak on behalf of his wife, to tell him what a putz he was, to tell him that his wife deserved love and understanding. His wife deserved the same tone that other woman got. She deserved happiness too. I looked back down at my cell phone, but there was no text. I finished my sandwich and got out of there as fast as I could. My big night alone had left me feeling worse than staying home with the boys would have. I wondered why I had listened to Justine.

I drove around aimlessly, past the library and the outdoor mall. I thought about going to see a movie, but there was nothing I wanted to see. I wandered around the bookstore and found nothing worth reading. I ambled up and down the aisles of a container store Justine recommended in an attempt to get our house organized but didn’t have the energy or passion needed to buy containers for all our junk. It would have to stay unorganized at least for a while longer. I thought of how I would explain my lack of enthusiasm to Justine, who was always perky about organization. Finally, having exhausted all my efforts to fill my time, I aimed my car in the direction of the neighborhood.

As I pulled past the lions and waterfalls, I pressed the brake enough to slow the van down to a crawl. Hadn’t I promised myself to stop there often? I pulled to the side and parked on the curb, out of the way of other cars. Grabbing my Bible and notebook, I walked toward the benches that the developer had added in hopes that the residents would enjoy the parklike entrance, I supposed. I had never seen anyone sitting there, however. Everyone was so busy working to afford their houses they didn’t have time to enjoy the accoutrements of living there.

I sat down and closed my eyes before I began to write. I opened my Bible to the psalm I had read before, letting God’s Word wash over my sorrows and renew my spirit. I wondered why Justine hadn’t suggested this as an activity. Reading the Bible while I listened to the rush of water, the call of birds, felt the fading sun warm my shoulders. It was just what I needed.

I heard my name being called and looked up. Erica waved happily at me. “I thought you were out with Justine,” she said as she got closer.

“She couldn’t go. So I kept my sitter”—I smiled in reference to her daughter—“and went out anyway.”

She gestured at my Bible. “Having fun?”

I looked around at the setting. “Yeah, actually I am. It’s really pretty here.”

She nodded. “I try to come here as much as I can. Since Heather was busy tonight, I decided to go for a walk, enjoy the evening.” She looked at me pointedly. “Loneliness has its benefits, you know.”

She had zeroed in on the theme of my night. I smiled. “I guess I’m still learning.”

“Time, young grasshopper,” she said in a deep voice. “In time you will learn much.”

“Have a seat.” I gestured at the space on the bench beside me.

“Don’t mind if I do,” she said. We sat and watched the waterfalls for a moment, the silence between us growing more awkward the longer it stretched. I barely knew this woman, but I wanted to know her better. I wondered what to say first, but she beat me to it.

“I’ve heard you are a good photographer,” she said. “Justine is talking you up; word’s spreading. Everyone’s saying they’re going to get pictures from you as soon as this heat dies down.”

I couldn’t hold my smile back. I would have to thank Justine the next time I saw her. “I love to take pictures,” I said.

“Do you think you could take some for me?” she asked, her voice quiet, shy even.

“Sure. I’d love to. What’s the occasion?”

She looked at the waterfalls as she spoke. “Heather and her friends. They’re growing up, going to high school this fall. I just want to capture this time before it slips away—heat or not. I feel like this is the last summer she’ll have any trace of that little girl I remember. By next summer she’ll morph into a young woman. At least then I’ll have the pictures.” She turned to me. “I’ll feel like I captured it somehow. You know?”

I nodded. “Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I take pictures. It’s my way of freezing time, of capturing what’s precious before it can slip away.”

“Can we do it soon? Do you have time this week?”

I grinned broadly. “For you? I’ve got all the time in the world.”

She nudged me playfully and I nudged her back, falling into an easy conversation as we watched the sun set on Essex Falls.