It's Complicated (46 page)

The phone rang, shaking her out of her angry reverie. Of all of the times for Marlene to choose to call, she picked this one. Ignoring it, she let her voicemail click in. She took the book and put it in the farthest corner of the back closet in her bedroom, where it needed to rest, hidden but omnipresent. And then, folding her heart in half like a tesseract, she finished the job with a coldness that filled her with a sense of relief.

Somehow, Darla had convinced one of the two guys she was with to come all the way out to Sturbridge, pick her up at some truck stop, and bring her into Cambridge. She’d accomplished all of this at one in the morning, though, and had failed to call Josie, so the quiet knock at the door in the middle of the night had made her grab a baseball bat and tiptoe to her own front door. The problem was that she was wearing a cami and underpants, and nothing else. So as she stood there, holding a baseball bat, half naked, when she pulled the curtain aside on the window of her front door, she nearly shoved the baseball bat into Darla’s face.

“What the hell are you doing here at 1 a.m.?” she hissed. The taillights of a car moved back down to the main road.

“I got a ride.”

“You got a ride at one in the morning?”

“It was the best time I could get here.”

Josie undid the deadbolt, and the regular lock, and the chain lock, and let her in. “Jesus Christ, Darla, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Apparently I scared the clothes off of you, too. Josie, what are you doing? Isn’t this some sort of entryway where other people could see you?”

“Yeah, well, no one’s looking at 1 a.m.” She tiptoed back to her door, shivering. It may have been warm when she went to bed, but now it was cold. She welcomed Darla into her apartment, and then her little cousin gave her a giant hug. It was almost enough to warm her up. Where Josie was a stick, Darla was all curves and lushness. You would never guess that the two came from sisters. Marlene had been the skinny one, and Cathy had been the pinup girl—at least, that was what their moms always said. Although “pinup girl” wasn’t quite right; she thought that came from her grandma. Darla wore a baby blue v-neck t-shirt, old jeans, and flip-flops, and carried just two suitcases.

Josie looked back. “That’s it, that’s all you brought?”

Darla shrugged. “That’s all I need. Where’s my room?”

“Come here. I don’t even have a bed for you, so you’re gonna have to crash on the couch.”

“That’s okay, I’ve slept on worse.”

“Of course you have.”

“Hey,” Darla said indignantly.

Josie stared her down. “Is what I just said untrue?”

“No.”

“Come here.” Josie went in for a second hug, really giving her the time and the embrace that she needed. Darla was shivering just a bit, and Josie held on until both of them had stopped shaking. When she pulled back, Darla was noticeably more relaxed.

“This is a big city,” she said. “Nothing like Cleveland or Pittsburgh.”

“No, it’s actually pretty small.”

“Then it
seems
bigger,” Darla added.

“That’s what she said,” Josie joked. The groan that came out of Darla made Josie realize that there was no hope that she was going back to bed. It was time to make some tea, sit down, and chat like sisters.

“Let’s go have some tea and talk.” Josie showed her into the kitchen. It seemed completely surreal to have Darla
here
, in her escapee life. When she went back to Ohio, it bothered her how easily she fell back into speech patterns and habits of thought that were more from her childhood. Including little things, like craving a cigarette whenever they went to Jerry’s. She’d always had a cigarette with her beer until she moved to Boston, and decided that it wasn’t worth the fight to try to find a bar that let you smoke. And it also was unsophisticated, if not a bit trashy, at least in Boston, to be a smoker. Everyone where she came from smoked—though Darla, she’d noticed, had never picked up the habit.

As she set the electric kettle going and pulled out about twenty boxes of teas, she heard Darla wandering through the rooms, and then…

“
Oh my god
!”

“What?” Josie said, trying not to shout and wake up the folks who lived above her.

“This is my room?”

“Yeah,” Josie winced, “it’s a bit small.”

“It’s
huge
!” Darla came tearing back into the room, her flip-flops making a smacking noise that Josie knew was going to bug her after two days of listening to that.

“It’s bigger than my shed.”

“Barely.” Josie gestured to the boxes of tea and said, “Pick your poison.” Josie had known Darla would go straight for the lemon, and she did. “Your shed?”

“I took that old shed out next to the trailer and turned it into my little place.”

“You did?” Josie was intrigued. That thing had been there since they were kids, and was probably home to more muskrats and raccoons than anything else.

“I cleaned it up real nice,” Darla said, looking up at the tall ceilings. “Man, it’s like something out of a movie in here.”

Josie looked up. They were nine-foot ceilings with crown molding around the edges and large cracks through the plaster. It was an older building and she’d loved the charm, how it had been so different from anything she had grown up with in Ohio, and certainly a million miles away from her own home.

“This looks like something out of one of those old-fashioned ice cream shops you see on TV—like in a movie from the 1920s.” Darla smiled, her eyes wild and her cheeks quite pink.

How she could be this alert at one in the morning blew Josie away. The kettle whistled, and Josie poured the cups of tea, joining Darla in her Lemon Enjoyment. As they sat at the table, Darla craned her neck around the corner of a wall and looked in the living room again.

“Cool. It looks like something you’d find at an apartment at Kent State.”

“It’s just thrift-shop finds. You know how well we have that drilled into us.” The two shared a look that Josie could not exchange with any other human being on the planet.

Darla nodded and took a sip. “That’s what my shed’s all about.”

“So, tell me about your guys.”

“My guys.” Peals of laughter poured out of Darla, and her chest shook as she giggled. “My guys. Yeah, I guess I have to think of them as my guys.”

“My friend Laura thinks of hers as her guys.”

Darla stopped cold, half dropping her mug of tea onto the table. “
You know someone else who has guys
?”

“I know someone else who has guys.”

“
Holy shit
!” Darla’s eyes widened, and she looked like she was about to choke on something. “So, I’m not the only one?”

“You didn’t invent threesomes, Darla.”

“It sure as hell feels like we did, me and Joe and Trevor. I haven’t said that aloud to anyone, Josie.”

She could see the tension in Darla’s chest relax, her body going from that excited, wired sense that you get when you travel long distances by car to a relaxed, easygoing countenance. “You can talk about it here,” Josie said. “In fact, you’d better get pretty damn comfortable with it.”

“With what?”

“With talking about threesomes.”

Darla’s face froze, brow furrowed in an expression of incredulity. The tip of her nose was pink and her ears turned red, as a flush crept up her neck and into her jaw. “Why?”

“Remember I told you that the job’s with a dating service that my friend’s starting?”

“Yeah.” Darla’s face went slack as she got the implication. She was never a dull girl. “Your friend with the guys is the one starting this?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m perfect for the job because…” She left the sentence unfinished, forcing Josie to give her the closure she needed.

“Darla, I tried to talk about this with you on the phone, two different times, so don’t give me that look.”

“Well…I…but…” Darla stammered. “I would have let you tell me that little detail, Josie…if you had told me that little detail!”

“That makes no sense. You’re being tautological.”

“I’m being what?”

“You’re talking in circles.”

“Wait, out here they have a word for that?”

“Yeah, it’s called ‘Harvard.’”

“Hold on, hold on,” Darla said, waving her hands in the air. “I’m getting paid $40,000 a year to be an office worker in a dating service that caters to, and hooks up, and makes people have—”

“Threesomes.”

“You are fucking kidding me.”

“Well, you were squealing on the phone, Darla. ‘$40,000! $40,000! Holy fucking shit, $40,000!’ over and over again, and when I tried to give you the details it was like you were walking on coals and dancing after a touchdown all at once on the phone. It wasas if I could feel that.”

“Well, forty thousand fuckin’ dollars a year is unbelievable, Josie.”

“Not here.”

“Well in Ohio it sure as hell is. I’m making federal minimum wage. Do you know the difference between $7.25 and $20?”

“Yeah, the difference is Ohio and Eastern Massachusetts.” Josie took a sip of her tea. “But look, that’s details.”

“‘Threesome dating service’ is a pretty big fuckin’ detail. I thought you were saying ‘tree-hugger dating service.’”

“What?” Josie snapped, incredulous. “Why would I open one of those?”

“Like it’s any weirder than the truth?”

Okay. Darla had her there. “Does it change your attitude about moving out here and working in the job?”

Darla stopped cold. “Oh, hell no!” she said, swinging her blonde bush of hair around over one shoulder. “It’s just…man, I’m kinda glad I didn’t know that detail.”

“Why?”

“It would have been awfully hard to lie to Mama.”

They both went silent at that one. Josie didn’t have an answer.

“Anything else I don’t know about?” Darla’s eyebrows were raised so high they almost disappeared into her hairline. Figuring it was best to quit while she was ahead, Josie just shook her head.

“Good.”

“Tree-hugger dating service?” Josie snickered.

“What? Trevor and Joe told me all about Boston and how crazy people are out here. How you walk cats on leashes and have doggy daycare. I mean—daycare centers for
dogs
, Josie.”

“Lots of people have that.”

“Then they’re crazy. Babies and toddlers—sure. But what’s next? Music classes and massages? French lessons for the puppies?”

“You joke, Darla, but…I think you’re going to find Cambridge is like living on another planet.”

“That’s fine. As long as I can breathe the air, I’ll find a way to fit in. For $40,000 a year I can do anything. Even a threesome dating service, apparently.”

“And you think doggie daycare is weird?”

Darla laughed, a booming sound that filled the high ceilings. Josie had missed it. “Fair enough.”

The first package for Darla arrived about three weeks after she moved in, and Josie just made sure to set it on the table right inside the apartment where she normally stashed the mail and assorted things, like her sunglasses.

Later that day Darla opened it and said, “Oh, huh…interesting.” She pulled out a bright green mug, the same Kelly green you saw all over Boston around St. Patrick’s Day or when the Celtics did well. It had the logo for a well-known fertilizer company on it. Darla fished around in the box and said, “That’s odd.”

“How random,” Josie said.

Darla shrugged. “Free mug.” She went into the kitchen.

Josie heard the water turn on and guessed she was washing it. Sure enough she was right, as she walked past she saw it sitting in the dish rack, already drying. It would stick out like a green thumb in the cabinet, next to Josie’s white dishes. Being roommates meant having company, and it also meant questioning the omnipresent rules she’d developed in her head for her daily life, rules about things like matching dishes. She had to learn to unclench a little.

Later that week another package came addressed to Darla, so Josie left it in the same place and didn’t think much of it.

The curious part about these seemingly-random packages, which began to appear with increasing frequency, was that there was no rhyme or reason to what arrived. Soon Darla was on a first-name basis with Luis, the formerly anonymous UPS guy. Josie had seen him before, maybe once a month. Darla’s room, and then the kitchen were increasingly cluttered with key chains and mugs and anything else a brand name could be printed on. One box arrived with fifty romance novels, all of them historical romance of the type that Josie remembered Aunt Cathy reading voraciously when they were younger.