“Yes?”
She was chewing her lip. I could see that she"d come on a whim and now that she"d caught me she had no idea what to do with me.
“I heard what you said. Back there. And I wanted to… I"m not a damned victim either.”
I was surprised and ashamed. “I"m sorry if you think I meant… That is to say, I meant no disrespect.”
“Yeah. No. That"s not what"s important here. Nobody wants to be seen as a victim. And if we all had to go in there and tell everyone what big fools we were and how we"d been bullied and abused, well…I don"t suppose that some of us would ever go.”
“I don"t suppose so.”
“My name is Mary Catherine.” She held out her hand.
I took it. I murmured, “Yasha,” while we shook hands, but I don"t know why I said that name. Probably because I"d been introduced that way by Alice.
“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
“I don"t have a car, and I don"t live here. Someone brought me to the meeting.” I looked around at the school parking lot, suddenly as tired as if I"d run a marathon.
“I don"t know what I"m doing.”
“That"s all right,” Mary Catherine told me gently, taking me by the arm. “I live here, I have a car, and I know exactly what to do.”
* * *
I dropped two sugars and two creams into my coffee and gave it a stir. No matter what I did, it would still taste like Denny"s coffee, so I wasn"t in a hurry to drink it.
“Are you all right?” asked Mary Catherine.
“Yes.” I refused to fidget under her probing gaze. “I"m used to better coffee.”
“How"d you end up in St. Nacho"s?”
I laughed, and it probably sounded every bit as bitter as it felt. “I got thrown off the bus.”
“What?” Mary Catherine had dimples when she laughed, and it held a light silvery sound, as though she were crystal and laughter made her ring. “That"s got to be a personal low, huh?”
30
Z. A. Maxfield
“I wish it were.” I didn"t meet her eyes. “I had a bad cold. I think they were paranoid about this new flu that"s going around.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, they stopped by the SeaView and just told me to get off.”
“My son stayed at the SeaView when he first came to town.” I stirred my coffee. There didn"t seem to be too much to say to that. Mary Catherine sipped her coffee in silence. I worried that she was just waiting me out.
As if I would crack and my entire story would come pouring forth like so much word vomit. And maybe if she waited long enough that"s exactly what would happen. If I didn"t say something soon, we"d both start looking anywhere but at each other, and things would go from bad to worse.
When she removed her cardigan, I realized that the name of the pie shop was part of a larger image, probably inspired by those World War II posters of women rolling up their sleeves to do a man"s job for the war effort.
“So. Is there a real Miss Independence Pies? Or is that just like one of those fruit-crate-label things—vintage sign on a shirt.”
“It"s my company. I"m Miss Independence Pies. My son thought of the name.”
“Cool.” It made me warm to her. It was probably the connection to pie, which seemed a homely and generic sort of thing. Done right, it showed off a baker"s skill, and done wrong, it was barely palatable. My mother had been a fine pie baker.
She"d always let me roll out the trimmings and sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon to bake along with the pie as a treat.
Mary Catherine grinned. “I caught you.”
I didn"t understand. “What?”
“There"s a certain look that some people get when you mention pie.”
“Really? Like what?” I took a sip of coffee.
“I don"t know. But you had it. Do you have fond memories of pie?” I put my cup down, surprised. “Are you part of the Psychic Pie Bakers Network?”
She gave a ladylike snort. “Yeah, sure.”
“My mom used to give me the trimmings to make pseudocookies.”
“That"s just what I"m talking about.” She dimpled at me. “Some people have pie memories.”
“Me more than most, probably,” I told her. “Since I"m a pastry chef.” Her eyes widened. “For real?”
“Yes.” For some reason I had trouble meeting her eyes. She reminded me very much of my own mother, from whom it had been impossible to hide anything. I don"t know what, specifically, I thought she"d see in me, but I worried that to her I was as transparent as glass.
Apparently I was.
St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder
31
“You know, Yasha”—she put her hand over mine where I fidgeted with a creamer pod—“I"m hardly in a position to judge you, even if I were so inclined.” I knew what she meant by that, and it was worse somehow. The thought of someone harming her—she was so delicate—bothered me more than I could express.
“Are you still…? I mean…” I remembered the old joke, or trick really, of asking a man if he"d stopped beating his wife. There was no good answer to that, and equally there was no good way to ask if Miss Independence was now safe from her abuser.
“I left my husband to rot when my son moved here to St. Nacho"s,” she answered my unspoken question. “I probably never would have left, except Jordan got carjacked at the SeaView, and I wanted to make sure he was all right.”
“Jordan"s your son?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
“The SeaView doesn"t exactly seem like a hub of criminal activity. Was he all right?”
“He"s fine now, or he will be when he gets his driver"s license back. He had a concussion and a seizure, and California has a mandatory-reporting law.”
“That sucks.”
“St. Nacho"s is a small place, and he can walk most everywhere. His partner, Ken, takes him when he has somewhere he needs to drive.”
“I see.” Partner? Maybe that was a business partner, or maybe it meant her son was gay. I didn"t pursue it.
There was a protracted silence into which I projected a number of things.
Mostly how Mary Catherine must have seen me. I was a mass of healing cuts and bruises. Alice had just removed the stitches on my cheek. My eye was still a little swollen. I said nothing but imagined what she was thinking, until she surprised me again.
“I know you"re looking at me and seeing what? Some fragile old lady who got beat up by her husband for years? You have sympathy for me. Empathy. You wish you could have been there to help me.”
How did this woman see everything I was thinking? It was unnerving and made me want to take off. Before I could gather my thoughts and rise from the booth, she grabbed my hand again.
“I want you to show yourself the same compassion. No more, no less, because that"s just the beginning.”
“But I—”
“I want you to tell yourself that shit happens, today is different, and you"re going to find out what you don"t know about our respective situations, even if you don"t want to come back to the group.”
I felt pinned in place like an insect under a microscope. “It"s different for me.” 32
Z. A. Maxfield
“Why, because you"re a man?” She gave me a sour look. “If it was just about strength, my husband, for one, would be dead. I"m way tougher than him.”
“I don"t doubt it for a second,” I told her. “The person who did this to me won"t get the chance again.” It was more than I"d ever planned on saying, but I thought it might shut her up.
I was wrong.
“That"s half the battle right there. Good for you.” She took a sip of her coffee.
Shoot. She
was
tough. “If you want to know how the rest will play out, you"ll have to keep coming back.”
* * *
I was waving at the taillights of Miss Independence"s pie van as she drove away from the high school when JT arrived to take me back to the motel. She"d given me a lot to think about. I pulled myself up into the passenger seat and buckled the lap belt.
“How did it go?”
I was an abysmal failure
. “Okay.”
Jason glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “That"s good, then.”
“Did you know Nurse Alice from the hospital would be in charge?”
“Yes, I did.” He chuckled. “Did you know that she has me on speed dial?”
Busted
. I looked at my hands.
“She might have mentioned you fled the group early on.”
“I"m sorry.” I meant that. “I know you mean well, but that group didn"t seem like a really good fit for me.”
“I see.”
“I don"t think the ladies want to talk in front of a guy anyway.”
“What if I tell you I think that"s horseshit?”
I tensed up at this. “You weren"t there, okay? Anyway, I doubt it"s the same.”
“I"m sorry.” JT backed down. “I guess that sometimes I see things on the job, and I wish I could do something about them. So when I get the chance, I go for it.
There"s not much I can do to prevent a major heart attack once it happens.”
“Your heart"s in the right place, JT, but you can"t force someone into something like that. Especially if you don"t know the situation. And you don"t. No matter what you think, you don"t know my situation.”
“I"m sorry,” JT murmured. “You"re right, and I"m sorry.” To my surprise he pulled the truck into the parking lot next to a lonely-looking wooden pier. “Suppose you tell me what your situation was.”
I rolled down the window but remained silent. The wind from the sea was nothing to the faint teasing scent I remembered from JT"s skin. The ocean air lacked the depth of something organic and living and male. Something that drew St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder
33
me in like the fragrance of great food or fine wine. A top note of beach, a middle of citrus and smoke, and a darker, earthier
something
that made my eyes close and my spine arch as though that
something
licked along my dick.
“I"m on your side, Yasha.”
“I know,” I told him. He was. I could feel it. His attention seemed to wrap me in something warm whenever I saw him. I wanted to get to know him. I guess I decided to believe he wanted to know me too, so I started with something innocuous.
“I"m a pastry chef.”
“Yeah?” JT smiled. “I have a legendary sweet tooth.”
“When I moved to LA, I got a job at this Italian place, Il Ghiotto, and I joined the gym down the street. I met a guy there who liked to eat. I love to cook.” I shrugged.
“Match made in heaven.”
I snorted. “Not exactly. He stuck around because I fed him, and I let him because…”
After a while he prompted me. “You were lonely.” I looked down at my hands. “Yeah. I guess. It was okay for a while. Then he started juicing, and sometimes it made him irrational.” He watched the waves as they foamed onto the shore. “That"s a nice way of saying he suffered from "roid rage.”
“Yeah.”
“
Jeez
.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. “I already feel stupid.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked. “That I want you to feel stupid?”
“Isn"t it?”
“No.”
I looked over and saw JT"s jaw tighten. “I"m sorry.”
“Didn"t it kill his libido?”
“After a while he required a lot more stimulation to get the job done. I found him in bed with three guys.”
“Shit.” JT squeezed the steering wheel. “That"s cold. You need to get tested for STDs.”
The way he said that made me feel ten times worse. “At least give me a
little
credit. After I realized what a dog he was, I didn"t so much as scratch his back without gloving up.”
“But—”
“I get tested regularly. So far so good.”
The silence dragged out between us for a while.
34
Z. A. Maxfield
“Mind taking a walk for a few minutes? I have to get back, but I think I"d like to take a break out here.”
“Sure.” I rolled up the window before I got out of the car, then followed JT onto the sand.
“I don"t know why, but things always seem to make more sense when I"m on the beach.”
I smiled, thinking the same thing. “I grew up in New York City, and we used to go to Sandy Hook with my grandfather in the summertime.”
“I"ve lived here all my life. I went to school at UC Santa Cruz.” His hair whipped across his forehead, and I resisted the urge to brush it back.
“A beach boy.”
His eyelashes swept down. “I guess so.”
“You don"t have to answer this, but did your mom and dad have…domestic issues?”
“
My
parents?” JT laughed “Hell no. They were perfect together. They watched
Masterpiece Mystery
! and danced around the living room to the theme song. Every Saturday evening in the summer my mom and dad left the motel with the night clerk and biked down to the beach for picnics. My dad was devastated when she died, and now…he seems to be marking time.”
“I"m sorry. I thought maybe—”
“My parents had the kind of marriage you see on the Hallmark Channel.” He said this wistfully, as though he wanted one like it. I wanted to know but didn"t ask.
He swallowed hard. “The only thing they seemed to regret was that after me, she couldn"t have more children.”
“What about grandchildren?”
“There aren"t any yet.”
I frowned. Did that mean he felt responsible for providing them? “Do you—” His pager went off, and he looked down. “Hey, sorry. I really have to go.”
“Is it a call?”
“Yeah.” He looked at me helplessly and pulled out his keys. “I can be back at the station in three minutes from here if I run, but my partner will pick me up on the street before that. Will you take my truck back to the motel, and I"ll come for it later? Do you have a license?”
“Yeah, but I"m not insured.”
“Truck"s insured, and there"s no one on the street once you"re past Nacho"s Bar.”
“If you"re sure.”
“I trust you. All you have to do is adjust the choke. You"ll see. Drive safe.” He dimpled at me before taking off at a dead run.
St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder
35
I headed for the parking lot, heart racing at the thought of being allowed to drive JT"s truck. I let myself in and sat in the driver"s seat for a minute just looking around. I"m not really a car guy, but for some reason this truck was different.
Powerful, strong, and cool. Solid. Dependable. It"s possible I anthropomorphized that truck a little, seeing in it the same things I was seeing in its owner. It"s possible I caught a faint whiff of JT"s essence, that earthy note that made my belly clench. It"s possible that St. Nacho"s, the truck, and JT all combined to form a spiderweb of hope that clung to me, gluing me a little more firmly to the tiny town with each passing hour.