The Moon Pool (45 page)

COLLEEN WAITED FOR
Shay's text, eyeing the minifridge. Inside, she already knew, was a split of Sutter Home chardonnay and another of Riesling. Neither was her first choice. Either would do.

Last week, she'd white-knuckled her way through three consecutive nights with no wine. She'd scared herself Sunday night, when she'd waited until Andy was in bed and there were no sounds from upstairs, and then drunk what was left of one bottle and another full one of her pinot noir. At twelve fifty-four, when she was finally stumbling to bed, she'd had the foresight to take one of the bottles to the garage and shove it underneath a pile of mail and newspapers in the recycling bin. That way there was only one empty in the kitchen bin.

Not that any of them had noticed. She did her drinking quietly. A glass with dinner, or not; she didn't need it then. It was bedtime that drove her need, the prospect of a long night with nothing but nightmares for company. At first, she'd convinced herself it was better than relying on the Ambien, and that the two, sometimes three brimming glasses of the ruby-colored wine were a reasonable substitute.

But Monday morning she was hungover. She woke with her face on a drool-damp patch of pillow, Andy in the shower and her head thick and aching. It wasn't even six, but she knew she'd never get back to sleep, so she got up and brushed her teeth twice, combed her hair and washed her face, and promised herself she was done. It was a long and difficult day, her fatigue made worse by the tremors and dizziness, not to mention the headache.

That night she'd gone to bed at ten with a stack of magazines. Andy was reading, his glasses sliding down his nose, the cover of his hardback crackling every time he turned the page. Colleen stared at images of kitchens and living rooms, beautifully decorated, and tried not to think about the wine sitting downstairs in its familiar bottle. The peeling of the copper-colored foil, the swirl up the sides of her bell-shaped glass. The taste on her tongue, smooth and rich, a promise. The first lovely tendrils of numb.

She didn't need it. She wasn't an alcoholic. But when she turned out the light and lay, open-eyed, in the darkness, her heart raced with something like fear.

Tuesday and Wednesday, she convinced herself she didn't miss it. It had just been an ill-advised self-soothing spree, a temporary bump in a single-glass-most-nights habit.

But Thursday, the half glass she allowed herself turned back into several, and now here she was again.

A text buzzed.
Ready to go, meet u in lobby

She shot her reflection in the mirror a quick, determined smile and ran her fingers through her hair.
I'm here for
her, she reminded herself.
I can do this for her.

“
HOW
'
D YOU FIND
this place?” Shay said, setting her laminated menu on the scarred pine table and looking around the room. The restaurant was small and dim, its walls covered with fake paneling and beer advertising signs. It was called the Honey Do, and they'd spotted the blinking neon chicken from the road, fifteen miles from Lawton and past the turnoff for Turnerville, just as the Yelp review had promised. They'd gotten the last empty table.

Colleen felt her cheeks flush. “I did a little research,” she said, not adding that in her purse was a neatly folded piece of paper with a list of half a dozen restaurants.

There was just this to get through. Being there for Shay. It was going to be uncomfortable. Downright painful, even, but Colleen was ready to do the right thing. It wasn't just that she was the one whose child had survived. She wanted to think that even if their roles were reversed (no, she couldn't allow her mind to go there, couldn't imagine Paul being the one under the ice all of those months, Paul thrashing in terror as the darkness closed over his head and the ice water filled his lungs), she would still have felt some sort of...

What was it, exactly?
Kinship
was the word that came to mind, but she and Shay were no closer to being kin now than when they first met. They were different in so many ways, and enduring misery together hadn't changed that. Colleen ducked her head, pretending to read the menu, to hide the twitch in her eyelid.
Friendship.
That was the word she had been thinking. She wanted to believe Shay was her friend. Even more, she wanted—desperately—for Shay to consider
her
a friend.

“We could split the chicken and catfish platter,” she said brightly. “It comes with hush puppies and onion rings.”

“Jesus, we could just roll our arteries in cornmeal and pan-fry them,” Shay said, but she didn't object. When the waitress came over to their table, Shay ordered a carafe of house white wine without consulting with Colleen. “I need a drink,” she explained, handing her menu over.

Colleen abstained until the food came, but when she looked at the sheen of grease clinging to it, she reasoned a glass of the house Chablis didn't stand a chance against all those calories. She took a sip from the glass Shay had poured. It was terrible, as she expected.

Conversation had been stilted. Colleen had asked whether Shay had started taking custom orders again (she had), how Robert and Brittany were doing (their house was on the market and they had put a bid on a model in a new development that was ten minutes closer to Shay's house), what Leila was doing for the summer (camps, mostly, and two afternoons a week with Shay). She'd gotten her old job back and even managed to arrange her schedule around Leila's afternoons by working four ten-hour shifts.

Shay answered every question in a monotone. She cut her chicken into tiny pieces with her knife and fork.

Colleen drank more of the terrible wine. Let the slightly sour, cold liquid sluice down her throat. After a while she felt better. Stronger. Enough to ask the question she had been rehearsing.

“I just wondered if you would like to talk about it. About knowing, finally... and getting him home.”

Shay looked at her through narrowed eyes. “You want to know if I feel closure or something like that?”

“Well, or...” Shay wasn't going to make it any easier for her, which Colleen supposed was fair. “I can't know what it's like. Obviously. But I feel like...” She had been going to say that she felt like she
knew
Taylor a little, from the time she and Shay had spent together and from the things Paul had told her. Not that there were many; he parsed them out only occasionally, in context of other things. Like, “I first heard that band one time when Taylor and I drove to Minot.” Or, on July Fourth, “A year ago Taylor and I were setting off fireworks, you could see them so much more clearly away from city lights.”

And now she felt cautious, unsure how Shay would respond. “I only thought that you might want to talk about it.” She swallowed. “I wish I could make today even a little less awful for you.”

“Yeah. Thanks. I don't really think I can talk about it right now.” Shay picked up a french fry and chewed, never taking her eyes off Colleen, looking not so much devastated as calculating.

“So, you and Andy must be excited,” she said, after she had taken a delicate sip of her wine. There was a shift in her tone, and her eyes gleamed in a way that put Colleen on alert.

“About...”

“The baby. That he's going to be a boy.”

Colleen froze, her greasy fingers in her lap, a rime of salt on her lips. “We don't—they actually haven't told us yet. They're keeping it secret.”

“Oh,” Shay said, and was Colleen imagining it, or was there some faint note of triumph in her voice? “Never mind, I guess I was just—you know how some people have a sense for these things? I'm usually right, but I've been wrong too. A girl would be sweet, especially if she got Elizabeth's coloring.”

“Wait,” Colleen said. She felt like she was wading out into the undertow. There was a pounding in her ears, the conversations around them blending into a dull buzz. “Wait. Tell me why you said that. About him being a boy.”

Shay pursed her lips and stared over Colleen's shoulder at the wall behind her. “Look, I'm sorry I said anything, and I don't want to—I mean, there's so much going on, people are kind of stretched to the limit. I don't want to make a big deal out of something that really isn't.”

“Shay.” Colleen leaned across the table and covered Shay's hand with her own. She squeezed her wrist, as Shay stared at her hand there. “Please. Don't do this. I need to know. How do you know?”

“You'll take it the wrong way,” she finally said, staring directly into Colleen's eyes. “You'll read things into it.”

“Into what?”

Shay sighed, drummed her fingers on the table. “Okay, look. I thought you knew. Paul wrote me a few times. Just emails, short ones.”

“When?” Colleen was stunned. Paul never mentioned Shay, or Lawton, and barely spoke about his in-laws-to-be; she and Andy had assumed those subjects were painful for him, and avoided them. “When did he write you?”

“It was only a few times, like I said. Not like every day or anything.”

Colleen's head was filled with a painful rushing, but the only thing she thought to say was, “Do you write him back?”

“Not much,” Shay said, after a pause. She went on, quickly, “Now look, I know you're probably mad at me that I didn't answer
your
emails or calls. And I'm sorry. But I was counting on you to understand. I just couldn't. Seriously, it would have taken me right back—and I was trying to move ahead, trying to get my job back, and take care of Leila and I didn't have...” She waved her hand, not specifying what she didn't have enough of. Strength? Time? Motivation?

“But Paul—”

“He was Taylor's
friend
, Colleen,” Shay chided. “Taylor wouldn't have wanted me to ignore Paul now.”

Colleen pushed her plate away; suddenly the grease-sodden pieces of chicken, the crumbling hush puppies, nauseated her. “All of a sudden he's Taylor's friend.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“The whole time we were trying to find them, you were convinced he was—was some sort of monster. You blamed him. You were ready to cut him loose, him and me both.”

“That was different,” Shay snapped. “That's not fair.”

“Not fair?” Colleen felt the anger inside, which she kept so carefully coiled, the twisted strands of rage she had hoarded with such care, all these years. Her biggest secret, the only one she'd successfully kept. “Not
fair
? How was any of this fair—for any of us? Did any of us ask for our boys to come here? Did you ask for Taylor to lose his dad? Did I ask for Paul's brain to work differently from other kids'? Did either of us ask for the ice to give out that day?”

“Don't put me on the same level as you,” Shay hissed. “I didn't have any problem with Taylor coming here to work. He was old enough to take a man's job and that's what he did. Paul too. You never seemed to get that he was just trying to go out there and do something of his own. Maybe if Paul thought you and Andy supported any decision he ever made, he'd tell you things more often.”

The knotted fury twisted painfully, making Colleen gasp. “You can't—”

“I can't what? Challenge you, Miss Perfect? You and Dr. Spock? I guess you did every damn thing by the book. Probably nursed him until he was three and made homemade baby food and washed his diapers with organic detergent. But you never let him grow up. If you'd let him off his leash with the other kids, instead of putting the poor kid through hell with all your tutoring and assessing and psychologizing, he would have figured out how to deal with his frustration the way normal kids do.”

“Stop,” Colleen said, almost begging.

“I
won't
stop. I'll tell you what, you were right: I did misjudge him. For that I'm sorry. I read about what he did to that kid and I jumped to conclusions. But you know what I think now? I think that was
your
fault as much as his.”

“
My
fault?” Colleen was shocked, not bothering to keep her voice down.

“Yeah. Look what happened when he came out here. Sure, he had a few tough days, a lot of them do. And then he got his balance and he did fine—because there wasn't anyone here to prop him up. Maybe a few guys gave him a hard time, but for the first time in his life he didn't have Mommy to come and make them stop. And he figured it out. That's what you can't forgive him for, Colleen, he was able to do just fine without you. And you can't
stand
that.”

“You have
no
idea,” Colleen said, her voice trembling. Around them, a few of the other diners had noticed the argument and were casting them glances. “His mind doesn't work the way other people's do, you're oversimplifying—”

“Oh, you are so full of
shit
, Colleen!” Shay smacked her hand on the table, making their silverware jump. “He
is
like the others. Or wants to be, if you'd stop smothering him. Oh, maybe he's got ADHD or anger issues or whatever the fuck you want to call it, but so do half the kids these days. Haven't you noticed that? Taylor went to a speech therapist in preschool, he had a thing where he didn't say the end of his words. I thought it would clear itself up, and they were trying to convince me that since I didn't go to a specialist right away, he was going to end up with a permanent defect or some bullshit. And you know what, by the next year you'd never know he ever had a problem.”