Save Yourself (24 page)

He ordered the roasted beet salad and the grilled mahimahi. Fancy but earthy. The others ordered the usual stuff, crab cakes and stuffed sole and lobster ravioli. When she brought their apps the beautiful man was saying, “You don’t have to use the money on a car or a vacation. You could start a foundation in his memory, or a scholarship. I can put you in touch with my accountant, if you want.”

“But if a car or a vacation would relax you, don’t feel bad about that,” his wife said. Unlike her husband, she did not look at Caro at all.

“Won’t be much money, after the lawyers take their cut,” the plain man said.

Later, when she brought their entrees, the beautiful man gave her the same warm look again, the eye contact, the half smile. It felt like a touch on the back of her hand. A waitstaff basic: make people feel important, make them feel noticed. At one of Caro’s many schools she’d been sent to see a counselor. (She’d been getting into fights; utterly unlike her, looking back, but Margot was in a bad state then and Caro hadn’t been sleeping much.) The counselor, a fat man who smelled like cigarettes, had given her that same look. So sincere, so earnest.

So, Carolyn. What would you like to talk about today?

Nothing. She would like to talk about nothing. That’s what she’d said, over and over. The counselor had seemed about to give up when Margot decided that they needed to live near running water, and with the crumbling house by the creek came a new school district
and she’d never seen the counselor again. Maybe the beautiful guy was a shrink. Would she go to him to get her head shrunk? Would she lie on a couch in his office and tell him everything? She brought him another cranberry and soda, and again, his look felt like a caress.

She got a text message from Mike—
are u alurgic to nickle?
—and wrote back,
no idea why?
even though she knew exactly why.

No reason
luv u
.

Caro hesitated, and then wrote, <
3 you too
. It looked like an algebra equation.

She filled water glasses. The beautiful man’s wife never checked her hair or the collar of her blouse. Her husband would not leave his phone number on the bill. Nothing that touched this woman would dare to be less than perfect. Holding a napkin to the base of the pitcher to keep condensation from dripping onto his clothes, Caro imagined herself taking the perfect woman’s place, sipping fair-trade coffee in her well-appointed kitchen and admiring the landscaping outside. Later, applying expensive makeup at a lovingly lit vanity table, one of those sticks-in-a-jar air fresheners nearby, exuding some woodsy, sophisticated odor—sandalwood, cypress. She could feel the carpet under her feet. She could feel the plush of the robe against her skin. She could hear it. The silence, the peace.

The vividness of the fantasy scared her. What was wrong with her? Was she just killing time, or was this the first sign of her own brain chemistry turning against her? Daydreamed rich-lady life today, warring gnomes in the wall tomorrow? What if she married Mike and then two years from now, three, five, she woke him up in the middle of the night to beg him over and over for reassurance that they were each their very own selves, to show him the eyes she’d carved into the palms of her hands? Would he say,
Hey, babe, no big deal
, and offer her a beer?

Caro thought of the day she had come home from work to find that Margot had removed every doorknob in the house. It had been
winter; the Christmas decorations were still up in town, but they had that sad January nothing-to-celebrate feeling, and the cold wind howled through the holes in the doors.

Terminal
, Margot had said.
Terminal collateral. Cat herd. Capture cat herd
.

Caro had stood in the living room, listening to the howl of the snow and the word salad coming out of her mother’s mouth, and she’d realized that if she stayed in that house even one more night, it would kill her. Her heart might be beating but she’d be dead inside; a life-support system, one of those hospital machines that went
blip-blip-blip
, marking off the moments not of her own life but of Margot’s. She had turned around, right then, and walked out the door. She had called the police from a rest area two hours away and told them that there was a woman in a house who could not take care of herself, and then she had hung up.

If she married Mike. If, god forbid, they had a kid. If she went crazy. There would be hard decisions to be made. Would Mike be able to make them? Would he make them well? Would he leave her the way she had left her mother?

As Caro cleared their dessert, the two couples were deep in conversation and she tried to remain invisible, to not interrupt. The beautiful woman was saying, “She’s just incredibly frustrating right now, you have no idea.”

“You’re doing the best you can,” the normal-looking wife said.

“I just tell myself, God has a plan for her,” the beautiful man said, touching his wife’s hand. “There’s a reason we’re all going through this.”

Caro ran the crumb sweeper over the tablecloth, careful to keep her face pleasant.

“It’s Verna that really has me worried,” his wife said. “She’s a sweet girl, but she’s not exactly what you’d call strong-willed.”

“Yes.” The beautiful man sighed. “That’s a problem.”

It should not have made her feel better to know that the beautiful
couple had unbeautiful problems with their children, but it did. Caro’s mood lifted and she could see the crow’s-feet at the corners of the woman’s eyes, the man’s knobby Adam’s apple. After she brought the check, Caro watched from across the room as he pulled out an expensive-looking mobile phone and bent over it, pulling up the calculator to figure the exact tip. When she picked up the check, she saw that he’d rounded down a few dollars.

Caro wondered if God had a plan for cheap tippers. She hoped this cheap tipper’s daughters were blowing speed freaks in the park. She hoped God’s plan for them included growing up to be tip-starved waitresses, that he would pay back every cent he’d stiffed her in bail money and STD treatments.

After close, her car wouldn’t start. The only person left was Gary, who rolled his eyes and said, “Again?” but still pulled his SUV nose to nose with her Civic in the parking lot and gave her a jump. Mike had told her that it took five minutes or so with both cars running for a jump to take. Standing there in the crisp fall air, surrounded by car exhaust, Caro said, “Hey, Gary, you ever been married?”

“Once.”

“You like it?”

He laughed. “You make it sound like a restaurant. Marriage isn’t a place you go or a thing you do. It’s a thing you are. There’s some people it works for and some people it doesn’t.”

“Which are you?”

“I’m a damn good chef, is what I am.” They laughed again, together this time. Caro liked Gary. She was glad he hadn’t wanted to sleep with her.

Picking at the edge of a burn on his finger, he said, “This about Mike?”

His tone was neutral, noninvasive. She shrugged. “You want to hear something funny? Small town. I knew his mom.”

“You did?” Caro’s interest was piqued.

“Allie Gensler. We waited tables together at Eat’n Park back in high school. Sharp girl. I always liked Allie.” He smiled a wry smile. “Damn, I’m old.”

“Did you know his dad?”

He shook his head. “Just from him coming in to see her. They went to Ratchetsburg, I went to St. Joe’s. He seemed okay. People aren’t their parents, Caro.”

“Believe me, I’m aware.” She waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t, she smiled and said, “Any other sage advice?”

“Get a new battery.”

“Give me a raise.”

He grinned. “Put it on your wedding registry.”

Carefully, she said, “Not so sure about that.” The words were hard to push past her tongue.

“You’re a sharp girl, too. You’ll figure it out,” he said, and then he told her he’d see her tomorrow, and she thanked him for the jump.

There were hard decisions to be made. There would be more in the future. She did not think Mike Cusimano was capable of making them. She wasn’t sure either brother was. The one Patrick had made had nearly broken him; or maybe it had, maybe he would fall apart with a touch.

Caro drove to the all-night discount grocery store. She had no list in mind; she just wanted to go somewhere public, with music playing. Somewhere other than the house. But once she got there, she realized that she needed to keep her car running for another twenty minutes, or the battery would die again. Two weeks earlier she might have gone to Zoney’s but that was out of the question now, she didn’t trust herself.

So she sat in her running car, under the dingy lights of the parking lot, and thought about the beautiful man and his beautiful wife. She wondered if they and their two messed-up daughters were tucked safely into bed. She hoped the daughters weren’t blowing speed freaks in the park after all. Through the open window she heard the whistle
and rush of a freight train heading west through the cut. If there was a lonelier sound than that, she didn’t know what it was. A tired-looking woman pushed a full shopping cart through the parking lot, her steps heavy, her body swaying with each one. Caro sat in her car and let it run. Mike was at home, with the ring. She had nowhere to go.

NINE

Mike dropped by Zoney’s around dawn on his way to work, smiling like a jackass. He showed Patrick a tiny velvet box containing a ring with a minuscule diamond, a heart worked into the yellow metal. The ring was a godawful cheap-looking thing. It wasn’t Caro’s style but Patrick thought she’d probably take it anyway. She had no reason not to, if you didn’t consider having slept with him a reason not to. And as reasons went, sleeping with him didn’t seem to rank. Mike and Caro would get married. She would get pregnant and shrewish. A year from now, he’d be bouncing their shit-smelling baby on his avuncular knee, looking at Caro’s double chin and wondering what he’d ever seen in her. Mike would drag him out to Jack’s and bitch about his screechy wife and bit by bit, Patrick would lose her: the smell of her hair, the broken glass of her laugh, the quick, stunning creature she’d actually been.

Or he could move to Oklahoma, join the rodeo circuit, and get stomped by a bull.

He went home. Fell asleep. Woke up just after six to a terrifying clatter from the floor next to his bed and thought, I have got to
change that damn ringtone. It was Layla. He’d given her his number that night in Pittsburgh but she’d never called him before. Which was weird, because he’d gotten the distinct impression that people her age were born with their mobile phones permanently implanted in their skulls.

And sure enough, the first thing she said was “Why doesn’t your phone accept texts?”

“Because texts cost money.”

“So get unlimited.”

“Yeah, my mom and dad can pay for it.”

“Oh, please don’t be a jerk.” She had the nerve to sound aggrieved. “So I got a little psycho last time. I’m sorry, okay? I’m a teenaged girl. I’m supposed to be mercurial and fucked-up. You’re fucked-up, too, you know.”

True enough. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, let’s be fucked-up together.”

He sighed. “Enough bullshit, Layla.”

“No bullshit,” she said quickly. “Just a date. We’ll see a movie. Eat some popcorn.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Please,” she said, and then added with a not-so-convincing hint of sass, “If you’re nice, I might let you get to second base afterward.”

Patrick looked at the clock. Mike would be home by ten. Mike and his little velvet box. “Second, huh?”

“If you’re nice.”

“Pick me up at nine,” he said.

He took a shower and got dressed, shaved and used some of Mike’s cologne just like the date was real. He didn’t stop to think about what he was doing. When he’d left for work the night before he’d heard Mike and Caro together upstairs, just like he always did. They didn’t care that he could hear them. She didn’t care, not about that or the
way she’d looked at him in the backyard or the things they’d done together that night in his room. He didn’t want to care, either.

Layla was a few minutes early. The light was nearly gone. In the mall parking lot, outside the movie theater, they sat for a minute. A few aisles over, a crowd of young people—around her age—tumbled out of a car like puppies. Patrick watched them laugh and lurch their way toward the theater and hated those kids, all the kids. The kids who luxuriated in their futures, who wanted for nothing, who had the time and energy to play games with people. Kids like Layla.

But next to him, she stared at the disappearing gang as if she felt the same way he did. Her physical presence intruded further and further into his awareness. He felt as much as saw the silhouette of her lips, the way she reached inside the wide neck of her sweater to scratch the back of her shoulder. The way her skirt rode up on her fishnet-covered thighs. When they got out of the car, the first thing she did was tug the skirt’s hem down, which only made him want to pull it up again.

“So, this movie—” she said.

“Fuck the movie,” Patrick said, and kissed her. He was taller than she was and he was faintly aware that the pressure of his mouth on hers was forcing her head back, that she had to clutch him to keep from stumbling when he pushed his tongue between her lips. He didn’t care about that, either.

“Careful,” she said, sounding a little stunned, when he let her go. “I might almost start to think you like me.”

The kids were inside now. Nobody else was around. A sturdy breeze blew across the mall parking lot; the arc lights were on and each lamp had attracted a halo of nearly invisible insects, swirling like raindrops that had forgotten which way was down. Not a problem Patrick had. He knew which way was down. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

She looked toward the mall and chewed her lip. “There’s a place
in the woods. My friend’s grandfather owns it, but he’s in a nursing home. Nobody ever goes there but us.”

“Good,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Layla drove them east, out of town. Eventually she turned onto an unmarked road barely wide enough for the car. Branches scratched at the windows and roof. When she finally stopped the car and they got out, he half-expected to see a bloody hook hanging from the bumper, like the urban legend. She’d been right; the place was deserted. He’d been picturing a hunting cabin, but he didn’t see anything like that. Layla retrieved a six-pack from the trunk—bottles, not cans—and took a few steps into the undergrowth, where there was a kind of trail.