The Guest Book (3 page)

M
acy caught the eye of Avis Palmiter, her cohort at work and chief cheerleader, and stifled a grin. During their quarterly staff meetings, they were worse than little girls at church, apt to get tickled over something Hank, their boss at Ward’s Grocery, said and lose themselves in giggles while he shot them ugly looks.

Macy’s mind wandered as she thought about her friend. Avis made Macy’s life at work bearable. She believed that Macy could do anything and pushed her to do just that. It was Avis who had talked her into painting the store windows and creating the signs that hung around the store now. Not that Hank paid her more for her services. He just counted it toward her hourly wages and expected her to be grateful that he allowed her to “doodle on his time, on his dime,” as he
always said. Macy thought about how Avis had called him on it yesterday, coming to her defense, again.

“Tell you what, Hank,” Avis had said, her wide, red lips screwed into a pose that was half grin, half snarl. Everyone in the store knew not to mess with Avis when she got that look. Macy was glad it had never been aimed in her direction. “Just have Macy stop making those signs if you don’t think they help business.” She’d tossed a conspiratorial grin over her shoulder at Macy. “That way she can just come in and get her real work done. I bet the customers won’t even notice.”

Hank had bumbled around for an answer, hitching up his Sansabelt pants. “Well, there’s no sense being so dramatic,” he’d sputtered as he stalked away, leaving his customary parting shot: “Just get to work.”

Macy had smiled a thank-you at Avis for her defense and, after Avis had gone back to her register, turned back to the drawing she’d been creating of a wheel of cheese dancing with a cracker. Hank had criticized her for taking so long and maybe he was right. She could lose herself in her drawings, even the silly ones. There was something so satisfying in the very act of creating—even if it was just grocery-store signs. It was hardly the life of the upscale artist she’d once dreamed of being. But without Avis’s prodding, she wouldn’t even be doing the signs.

The sound of her name brought Macy’s thoughts back to the staff meeting and Hank’s lecture on time sheets. She looked up to see Avis snickering and Hank glaring at her.

“I have these meetings to bring the staff up-to-date on
what we’re doing as a corporation,” he said. “I expect complete attention if you value your job.”

Her face reddened. “Of course,” she managed.

Did she value her job? She valued the paycheck. Was it the same thing?

“I’m sorry,” she added, hoping she looked appropriately repentant. “I just have a lot on my mind.” Her dream from the night before, mixed with Brenda’s announcement and Chase’s play for her, had messed with her mind.

“Well, get with the program,” Hank shot back —it was another of his customary barbs —and then resumed talking to the group.

Macy’s mind drifted away again, this time to the day Hank had hired her. She’d been standing in his office, her application in his hands, counting the minutes she had left until she had to get back to Brenda and Emma, who would need to be nursed soon. Chase had left unexpectedly and without explanation just a few weeks after Emma was born, and they’d been living with Brenda ever since. Macy needed the job if she was ever going to be independent.

“Got any register experience?” he’d asked.

“I worked at King’s Drugs my senior year of high school,” she replied. She hadn’t added that she hated the job, smiling falsely at the endless stream of people buying candy bars, pregnancy tests, mascara, and NoDoz while she watched the clock hands drag from number to number.

“Are you good with people?” he continued.

She’d wanted to say she was. But her child’s own father
hadn’t hung around, which didn’t say much about her people skills. Still, she needed the job.

She felt her milk come in and crossed her arms in front of her.

“Yes, sir. I am very good with people,” she replied.
Especially a certain little person who thinks I am the sun, the moon, and everything in between and is probably searching for me while screaming in her grandmother’s arms right about now.

“Well, your mom’s a very good customer, and I’ve known her for years. So I am going to take her recommendation that I hire you as a special favor to her. You be sure and tell her I said that now, ya hear?” Even then Hank had had a crush on her mom.

“Absolutely! Oh, thank you!” she said, reaching out her hand to shake his. She saw his eyes notice the growing spot on her shirt that her leaking milk was causing. He grimaced.

“You know, it’s been my experience that single mothers do not make for good employees. They’re unreliable.”

“Well, I won’t be. I really need this job,” she gushed, taking the papers he handed her. That morning, she and her mom had run the figures. If she budgeted just right, she and Emma could have that small place of their own she’d found. They wouldn’t be eating steak every night, but they’d be on their own again.

She’d smiled at Hank, her ticket to freedom, hoping he hadn’t been too repulsed by the stain on her shirt.

“Okay, well, just get those forms turned back into me soon as you can, and I will have you on the schedule for training starting next week.”

“That sounds great! Thanks again!” She’d backed out of
his office, waving frantically, a broad smile on her face that melted as soon as she raced from the store toward her mother’s house and her hungry, wailing daughter.

Hank’s tone of voice changed, became somber, bringing Macy back to the present as the air in the room seemed to shift. Hank was predicting layoffs if the economy didn’t get any better. Ward’s Grocery was a small store known for gourmet and specialty items. But as the economy took its toll, people didn’t make room in their budget for specialty or gourmet items. They decided they could drink Lipton tea and didn’t need the organic, flavored teas Macy had drawn pictures of for a display last week.

She caught Avis’s eye and returned her forced smile. They were both worried and —smart mouth or not —they both needed their jobs. Avis had two kids in college. And, according to her, big kids were more expensive than little ones. Macy shuddered at the thought.

After the meeting, Avis sidled up to her. “How was your mom’s?”

“It was another birthday.” Macy didn’t mention the announcement of the trip.

“Sounds ummm …”

“Depressing? Morbid?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Well, you can’t monkey with tradition,” Macy said. “And after ten years, this counts as tradition. A depressing and sad tradition, but a tradition nonetheless.”

Avis shook her head. “I still can’t believe she keeps celebrating his birthday.”

Macy shrugged and pulled her purse strap across her shoulder. “She misses him. We all do. This is a way of making him feel — I don’t know — less gone, I guess.”

“Think she’ll ever stop?”

Macy thought of the missing pictures in the shrine, the hopeful look on Brenda’s face when she’d mentioned the trip. She looked down at her phone, silenced during the staff meeting per Hank’s rules, to make sure Brenda hadn’t called about Emma.

“I wonder sometimes what it would take. To make her stop. But I can’t imagine what it could be.”

“Maybe ole Hank’ll sweep her off her feet one of these days, and she’ll be too smitten to mourn your dad anymore.”

Last week she and Avis had snickered at their registers as they watched Hank help her mom out to her car even though she only had one small bag of groceries. He’d scowled at them when he came back in and retreated to his office.

“Let’s hope not,” Macy quipped, and headed for the door with a wave to her friend. She shook her head at the thought of her mom with a man other than her father. She couldn’t decide if it would be worth it to see her mom with someone else if it meant she would move on from his memory. But if her mom could possibly move on from Dad’s memory, did that mean Macy could as well?

After ten years, that seemed about as possible as Hank suddenly turning into a nice guy.

Y
ou wanted to see me, Hank?” Macy leaned on the doorframe of the tiny office that the staff jokingly referred to as “The Troll Hole.” The room reeked of the unique scent that was Hank: sweat, coffee, and his atrocious cologne. If someone were closed up in here too long, they would probably die of toxic exposure or something.

“Yeah, Macy. I approved your time off for that vacation your mother arranged. You have her to thank for that.”

“Oh, thank you.” She had been standing by her mother when she’d made the call Hank was referring to. But she feigned surprise. It had been two months since Brenda had announced the trip, and Macy could hardly wait to go. “That was awfully nice of her.”

“She’s a lovely lady. Very devoted to your dearly departed father, though.”

For a moment, Macy felt sorry for the poor guy. He didn’t have a chance and he knew it. She almost reassured him that no man ever would, but she didn’t want to get that personal with Hank. “Yes,” she said instead.

He cleared his throat. “No matter. I did want to let you know that there’s one problem with that second weekend. I’ve got some holes in the schedule, and if I can’t get anyone to cover you, I’ll have to have you come back for the Saturday shift. Hope you can make that work. That still gives you almost two whole weeks. That’s quite a vacation.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. That wouldn’t work at all. They were all driving down in one car, and she didn’t want to make everyone come back early. Plus, she had been looking forward to a long vacation—her first since she couldn’t even remember when. She didn’t want to cut it even one day short.

“Macy?” Hank shook his stapler in her direction. “You with me?”

“Oh, sorry! I was just trying to figure out how that would work. As you know, my mom, brother, and daughter will all be with me. In one car. I’m trying to figure out the logistics of coming back early.”

He pointed in the direction of the parking lot. “I believe you have a car out there that gets you to and from work every day?”

She nearly laughed. Her car was held together by fishing line and duct tape. “Well, my car’s not very reliable, so I was going to leave it home. My mom is going to drive us all down.”

“Ms. Dillon, need I remind you of our last quarterly employee meeting wherein I outlined the current economic status and the ramifications it may have on our current employees?” Whenever Hank started talking like a corporate memo, Macy knew it was pointless to argue with him.

“Sure. I remember.”

“Well, I guess you’ll need to ask yourself which is more important to you. This vacation or your job?” He grinned without showing any teeth. “It’s just one day.”

“I guess I’ll have to hope you can get someone to cover me,” she said, even as the hope was sinking out the soles of her feet and into the floor. Her life was a constant series of adjustments.

“Ms. Dillon, I have had to let a lot of folks go. I’ve kept you on. I would think there’d be some loyalty on your part in response.”

She nodded, staring at him stupidly.

“Well, no sense standing here talking to me. You best get back to whatever you were doing.”

She’d been painting the front windows of the store. A family had stopped to watch, smiling and pointing. For just a moment, she’d let herself imagine that she was painting on the streets of Paris, that the family was French and the glass window an artist’s canvas. Then Hank had summoned her, and she’d had to put down her brush and her imaginings.

“I want to keep my job, Hank. I need this job.”

Hank smiled. “That’s more like it.” He waved her away.

She left at his bidding, thinking that if she believed in prayer, she’d pray that Hank wouldn’t need her. But Macy had stopped believing in prayers — or answers — long ago.

Macy passed the asparagus across the table to Chase, smiling at him as Emma made gagging noises and vowed there was no way she would eat the asparagus. Macy didn’t care that Emma was being impolite. There would be time to work on table manners later. For now, she was focused on Chase sitting at her table. Chase, who had been standing over the grill on her tiny patio grilling the chicken mere moments earlier. Chase, who had suggested they go out for ice cream after dinner as a family. Chase, who was keeping his promises and becoming more and more a part of their lives.

On Saturday, at the mall, he’d pulled her over to the jewelry store and suggested they look at rings. She’d used Emma’s whining about being hungry to get out of it, wondering later why she had. What was holding her back? She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was. Maybe it was Chase’s abandonment years ago. Maybe it was her own fear of commitment that had taken root during her years as a single mom — it wasn’t just her own heart that could be broken now. Even scarier, Macy feared she no longer had the capacity to love, that her heart could only go so far. Like any muscle gone
unused for a long period of time, its flexibility was significantly limited.

“Emma asked me today if I could come down sometime while you guys are at the beach,” Chase ventured, sawing away at his grilled chicken. The chicken was a little overdone, but Macy would never say so. Chase kept his eyes on the chicken as she stared at the top of his head. She noticed his hairline was receding.

The trip was just a few weeks away, and Macy could feel herself growing more excited as it approached. But in all her daydreaming about it, she hadn’t once considered the option of Chase joining them. She looked at Emma, trying to paste a smile on her face and not give away her true feelings.

“Well, it’s kind of a family trip.” She chose her words carefully in front of Emma and wished Chase knew a bit more about how to be a father. An experienced dad would leave these kinds of discussions to when they were alone and could talk freely.

“Mommy! Daddy is family!” Emma scolded, warily poking the asparagus with her finger.

“Well, I mean
my
family,” Macy was quick to explain. “Grandma isn’t Daddy’s mommy and Max isn’t Daddy’s brother. That’s all I meant.”

Two pairs of matching brown eyes stared back at her. Neither pair seemed to accept what she was saying. Macy looked back at Chase, imploring him to give her the out she was searching for.

“This trip is kind of a big deal. To my mom,” she said. The
statement was only partially true. It had become a big deal for Macy as well.

“Grandma won’t mind if Daddy’s there,” Emma said, the whiny tone Macy knew all too well lacing her words. She came home from day care so tired it was a miracle if they managed to get all the way through dinner, bath, story, and bedtime without a meltdown. Chase’s suggested trip to the ice cream parlor was about as likely as Chase joining them at the beach.

“Well, we’ll just have to see,” Macy said. She shot Chase a look, appealing to him to let it lie. He speared a bite of chicken with his fork, and Emma slipped from her seat and went to pout in front of the television. Normally Macy would’ve called her back, told her to eat more of her dinner, talked to her about leaving the table without permission. But this time she simply let her go, grateful that her attention was redirected and Macy could talk with Chase.

“I wish you wouldn’t have brought that up in front of her, Chase. You should’ve asked me privately.”

“I thought we were a family. Families discuss things, last I checked.”

“Not things that could upset the child in the family.” She had to keep from raising her voice. It was hard to disagree while whispering. How was it that minutes ago she had been happy, content, hopeful? “You have to ask me things that concern her out of her earshot. Then, after we’ve made a decision, we can tell her.” She felt like she was teaching a class in remedial parenting.

“You mean your decision,” Chase corrected. “When we’ve made
your
decision, we tell her. You have no intention of letting me come on this trip. A discussion isn’t necessary.”

“It’s not
my
trip or
my
beach house. My mom arranged this trip and has covered all the expenses. And my mom reserved the house—a house that has no extra bedrooms.”

He raised his eyebrows. “So I sleep with you. That’s what families do. The mommy and the daddy sleep together.”

She narrowed her eyes at him and collected her and Emma’s plates. “The mommy and the daddy are preferably married when they do that. Especially if the mommy’s mom is right across the hall.”

She stood up and crossed over to the sink with the dirty dishes, watching as the overdone chicken and uneaten asparagus slipped into the garbage disposal. She’d lost her appetite. It seemed they all had.

She thought back to the conversation she and Brenda had had the day before when she and Chase had dropped off Emma so they could go on a date. Some date. They’d ended up at a pool hall instead of at the chick flick she’d asked to see.

“I hope you’re being careful,” Brenda had said while Chase waited in the car, still doing his best to avoid her disapproving looks.

“Mom, my whole life is about being careful,” she’d shot back, immediately feeling bad. Brenda was only trying to protect her from more heartbreak. She didn’t trust Chase, and with good reason.

Macy felt Chase’s hands on her shoulders, bringing her
back to the running water that was washing away the mess that had been dinner.

“I don’t want to fight about this. If you don’t want me to go, I won’t go. I just thought it would be fun. And Emma wanted me to go.”

She sighed and shut off the water, but didn’t turn to face him. He started to massage her shoulders, easing away the tension she felt. “There’s a part of me that wants you to go too. The part that knows Emma would love having you there. But it’s too soon. It’s just not time yet, especially where my family’s concerned.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Do you remember that time I took you to Sunset Beach?”

She smiled, remembering not only their time together, but also the crazy thing she’d done while Chase napped that one afternoon. She brushed away thoughts of the guest book. It had been weighing on her mind more and more as the trip got closer. “Yeah. Of course.”

“I thought we could—you know—get back to being those people again. The people we were before we became so serious. Before we became parents.”

“Chase, I became a parent. You disappeared.”

In her mind she could go back to that time, swaying with her crying infant in front of the window of their apartment as she watched for headlights that never appeared. But she refused to revisit the past. It was useless to live there. Her thoughts returned to the guest book, and she wondered if that was the same type of thing.

Chase stopped rubbing her shoulders. “So when
will
it be time for us to stop mentioning the stupid decision I made five years ago?” He walked to the door and yanked it open, not bothering to hide his anger. “I’m going to clean the grill.”

Macy stood between the dirty dishes and the droning television and watched from the kitchen window as he vigorously attacked the grill grates, scrubbing for all he was worth.

She wondered about all those times she’d wished for Chase to come back. Was this what she’d been wishing for? Was this even what she wanted anymore? So much had changed while he’d been gone that they might never be those people he wanted to find — the ones before everything changed. Because everything
had
changed, and neither of them could do anything about it.

Later that night, after everyone had fallen asleep, the phone rang. In the silence of the house, it shocked Macy into an instant state of wakefulness. It wasn’t a first-time occurrence, but it was the first time it happened with Chase in the house. Chase had taken to sleeping on the couch at night as a persistent reminder that he was there if she changed her mind about letting him into her bed. She reached for the phone and whispered an impatient, “What?”

She didn’t need to ask who it was. Max had been calling her for help in the wee hours since she was old enough to come to his rescue. Sometimes Macy had to pull a sleeping Emma
from her warm bed so they could fetch him from a bar, a jail, or a questionable house in a scary neighborhood, fearful of what social services would say about a woman who did such things. Would they say she was neglectful or loyal? Was it possible to be both?

“I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a situation,” Max began, as he always did. He didn’t slur his words, but she could hear the alcohol in his voice.

She sat up in bed and drew her knees up to her chest, hoping the ringing phone hadn’t woken Chase. She gripped the phone so tightly her hands hurt. “What’s wrong?” she whispered, even though the bedroom door was closed and she felt sure that Chase was asleep.

“I’m in jail.”

She heard muffled voices behind him, could almost see the fluorescent lights that bathed the jail in a green tint she equated with the color of nausea, the faces of the despondent people she would pass as she walked into the station to bail him out. Again.

“Kinda got caught in the cross fire between two angry guys.” She eyed the closed bedroom door and thought about how good it was that this time someone was here to stay with Emma. Odd that Chase was slowly offering her a sense of stability she hadn’t felt in a long time, the chance to stop doing things alone. This month, he’d even given her money to put toward the rent payment and had paid for the groceries several times. Tonight Emma could stay in her nice warm bed and not have her sleep interrupted while Macy bailed out Max.

The last time Max had called in the middle of the night, Avis asked her, “Why don’t you have your mom go get him when he pulls this stuff?”

“It’s part of our little game we play,” Macy had responded. “She pretends like she doesn’t know about Max, and we pretend we’re keeping it a secret from her.”

The truth was, Macy just couldn’t bear to see the hurt in her mother’s eyes. She would do just about anything to protect her from that. So she dragged her daughter out of bed with promises of a midnight donut run just as soon as they picked up Uncle Max. Emma thought it was a grand adventure, that Macy was “the funnest mommy ever.” After all, no one else in her class got to go get donuts in the middle of the night. Emma never noticed that Macy never ate a donut, that she found it impossible to eat when her stomach was tied up in knots. Yet Max always said he was starving and ordered two cream-filled donuts before going back to her house to pass out on her couch, a ring of chocolate lining his lips like a child’s as he slept.