Trouble Won't Wait (5 page)

Mike added another fireplace in the master bedroom “for ambiance,” and we did make use of the romantic nature of it frequently in years past. If nothing else, it made the room cozy-warm on frosty winter nights, which is always more conducive to making love than flannel pj’s being removed under the cover of electric blankets. I pause my reading to recall some of the better nights we shared on the carpet in front of that fireplace.

In fact, for the last three years, we’ve made a tradition of lovemaking there on Christmas Eve, after the kids have gone to sleep and we’ve fulfilled our Christmas parenting duties out by the tree. Mike bestows a gift of some erotic toy or flavored massage oil, and we herald the new Christmas day in a most sensual fashion. I think he gets a real kick out of hitting the adult bookstore during his Christmas shopping. Seeing his face as I unwrap our little secret gift is as precious to me as watching the kids open their number one items from their lists. God, we’ve shared so much. And dammit, I love him. How can he hurt me like this?

We were only married a little past a year when Ben was born, but we’ve always made it a point to have date nights. We’ve taken trips alone ever since I weaned Rachel, and I was as excited as Mike to get back into the sexual swing of things after my postpartum check-ups.

Together, we learned the quick way for me to have an orgasm, the way to make one more intense, the way to make him last and last…so many things we’ve done together, and he tells Lana he’s dissatisfied? We tried lots of new things together in bed, and were always able to laugh if they bombed. Even when I felt fat, we were good together. I never felt like he didn’t want me, just that maybe other men wouldn’t give me a second look.

Come to think of it, I think he wanted me more when I was at my heaviest than since I’ve started dropping pounds. Is an element of insecurity at work here? Is he afraid of me becoming too attractive? Maybe he’s out to prove he can beat me to the punch by attracting other women before I attract other men. Why the hell can’t he talk to me, then?

Tonight, I don’t want to read in front of our fireplace. I don’t even want to go in that room to access my closet, though I must. The pain is too raw, and I’m still trying to skirt it.

So I read the story before me, knowing the heroine will find her happily ever after, even if mine is circling the drain.

Chapter 3

Saturday morning dawns in an uncharacteristically dreary way. Heavy cloud cover keeps both the morning and my mood a deep gray. I slept in Rachel’s soft bed in her muted pink room last night. The spare room downstairs seemed too pathetic and no way would I sleep in the master bed. Surrounded by Rachel’s multitude of stuffed animals and the baby dolls she has no intention of ever parting with, I didn’t feel so alone.

After forcing down a breakfast of flavored oatmeal, I call Aunt Clara. She answers on the second ring. I picture her still at her table, holding one of the three daily newspapers she reads cover to cover without fail.

“Hello?” she warbles, and I have to move the phone away from my ear a bit.

“Hi, Aunt Clara, it’s Mandy.”

“Amanda. I worried about you last night when you didn’t call me.”

“I’m sorry, I was out to dinner and I didn’t get back ’til late. Will you be home this morning, if I come by?”

“I’ll be here, honey. There’s a luncheon at eleven thirty, but I’ll be here ’til then. What time do you think you’ll be?” She has a very active social life at the senior center. She’s been living in the senior housing for only five years. Before that she was all alone on the ranch. She’s directing many of the center’s social functions now. As busy as she is, not to mention elderly, she always wants an exact time frame for everything.

“I can be there in a half-hour. Is that good for you?”

“All right, honey, I’ll see you then.”

* * * *

Washing and styling my hair, I debate whether to ask Aunt Clara for advice. She’s world-wise and quite liberal for a woman her age. Most old women would recommend letting men sow their wild oats and turning a blind eye, so long as they didn’t drink away the family money or lose the farm gambling. Aunt Clara has been widowed for the last sixty years, and was the subject of many a hot rumor in her day. Though she’s actually Mike’s great-aunt, I’ve known her my whole life, and am closer to her than he is.

Mike grew up near Denver and moved here after high school to work for his dad’s cousin, Clara’s son. My parents’ ranch was near Aunt Clara’s. It was she who introduced me to Mike all those years ago.

I was going into my senior year in high school the first time I met him, and I thought he was as close to a god as a carpenter could be. Mike has dark hair, and, by some miracle, peacock-blue eyes. He was buff, and hardly ever wore a shirt when working at Clara’s. I made it a point to ride by on my bike and observe him as often as physically possible. I had the legs of an Armstrong Racing Team member by the end of that first summer. Looking at Mike made me tingle all over, woke up sexual feelings I hadn’t ever had before.

After I’d graduated the next summer, I saw Mike a couple of times at bonfire parties, but I was always with my boyfriend. When we danced at his cousin’s wedding, it felt like he was upholding an obligation, and I was so nervous I barely talked. Then I went away to college.

By Christmas, I thought I had a lot of experience with guys. My boyfriend and I had called it quits before we left for our respective schools, and I made good use of my freedom that semester. Shy Mandy was history. When Clara hosted her usual Christmas party, I employed my sharply-honed flirting skills and carried on a smart, innuendo-ridden banter with Mike. We ended up all but having sex in the barn, and finished the job the next night after a movie date. We saw an awful lot of each other for the next week. It was all fun and games for me, though. I was proud to have landed him at last, but I had every intention of tossing him back in the pond.

Mike had different feelings, as I’d soon learn. He wrote letters several times a week, and showed up at my dorm in Fort Collins one weekend, to surprise me. When he found me sporting a hickey from another guy, he almost cried. He asked me for an exclusive relationship. Seeing how much it mattered to him, I agreed.

By spring break, he was coming up every weekend, at least for a night. He had the phone number to the local radio station, and every Wednesday evening he’d make the long-distance call and request Manilow’s
Mandy
for me. The DJs got a big kick out of it; I’m pretty sure it was the only time they ever played that song.

I almost didn’t go back to school the next August, but Aunt Clara talked me into it. At least I got a two-year degree. Poor Mike just about wore out the roads across the Rockies that year. I still have stacks and stacks of the letters we exchanged, and boxes of dried roses from the countless dozens he brought me. Mike had proposed before I left for school in August, but saved up for the ring until Christmas.

He lived in one room above his cousin’s garage for very low rent so he could save enough to buy the ring he wanted me to have. It’s a gorgeous ring, and I admit I was completely, utterly, in love. My wedding day was the happiest day of my life, until the days my kids were born.

* * * *

I’ve finished with my makeup, ready to go visiting. Aunt Clara loves cordial cherries, so on the way out I grab a box of them from the stash in the garage I keep just for her.

Clara’s apartment is tiny, like her. She has the world’s smallest recliner and a loveseat even Rachel’s narrow bottom takes up half of. I feel Gulliver-like, walking into this smaller-than-life apartment, like I used to in the kids’ kindergarten classrooms.

The apartment always, I mean
always
, smells like rose potpourri, as does anything leaving there. Clara buys the potpourri by the case from some mail-order catalog. Once when she was sick I did her laundry, and when I put it away, found several sachets of the stuff in
every drawer
! I don’t mind it, but the combination of the eighty-five degree temperature in here and the strong artificial rose smell makes it too much for Mike to stand.

He won’t come to her apartment to visit anymore, insisting we take her out or bring her to our house when he wants to see her. The kids still come with me to visit her, in part because of the Nutter Butter, peanut-shaped cookies she keeps on hand. Must be something about peanuts with her, because she also stocks those orange peanut-shaped marshmallows.

She’s watching for me, and throws her door open before I get a chance to knock. Maintenance got the Christmas lights and decorations up already, and they are all lit on this dismal morning. “Amanda! Look at you, child, you’re wastin’ away to just a whiff of a girl. Why, I think if you turned sideways, a person couldn’t see you. You’re not throwin’ up your meals like the girls do these days?”

I smile and shake my head. Although it seemed like a feasible shortcut to weight loss a few times, I could never bring myself to purge. “No, ma’am. Just using the legs the good Lord gave me, and walking off the extra weight.”

“Well, I know that works. Why, EllieMae Kessler walks five miles every day, and she’s seventy-five if she’s a day over forty. I heard talk that she’s lost over a hundred pounds! Isn’t that the darnedest thing?” She’s closed the door now. Can’t let the heat escape–it might dip down to a frigid eighty degrees in here.

I shed my jacket and lay it across the back of the miniscule loveseat, then turn to hug Clara’s tiny body. It always feels like I might accidentally crush her, until she hugs back and my ribs strain not to crack from her wiry strength. Today she notices I’m thinner than when she last saw me. After I assure her my ribs are not visible, and I’m not “anoremic,” we sit at her table. She’s laid out the usual peanut cookies, plus Fig Newtons. I help myself to one of each, so she can see I still eat. I better not use the bathroom before I leave, lest she suspect me of purging.

Clara’s smile tells me she’s patting herself on the back for getting me to snack. “Where’s that family of yours?”

“The kids had sleepovers, and Mike’s hunting.” While telling that fib, I concentrate on the cookie in my hand. Of course, Mike
might
be hunting this morning. I doubt it, with the hangover he must have, but there’s always a chance.

“Huntin’. Huh! What’s he done to get you so upset on Thanksgiving Day, of all times?” Small arms cross her chest to emphasize her indignation. “I called there and you had to be busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kickin’ contest, but he leaves
you
to answer the telephone. Men-folk just have no idea the work that goes into a meal like that. And there you were, so busy, but you took the time to visit with me.”

“Aunt Clara, I always have time to visit with you. Besides, you know me. Gab, gab, gab. I can mix stuffing and talk at the same time.”

“Sure, but you don’t do much of a job of coverin’ up that you’re all topsy-turvy inside, now do ya?”

Excuse me? I did an exceptional job of pulling the wool over the eyes of Mike’s mom and sister that day.

“Doesn’t it hurt your head, Aunt Clara?” I ask, laughing.

“What’re you talking about, young lady?” She’s trying to be stern, but there’s a smile peeking out of her thin lips.

“Knowing what everybody else is thinking, and how they’re feeling?”

“I reckon it does hurt some people. You live a couple hundred years like me, and you start pickin’ up on things. Some people ain’t as tough as me, so they pretend they don’t know what’s goin’ on. That’s what they call Alzheimer’s.”

She has me in stitches. “You think Alzheimer’s is a ruse the old folks use to pretend they don’t know what’s going on? Why?” This has to be good.

“Folks with Alzheimer’s get taken care of by younger people. They got the easy life. Store your cottage cheese in your linen closet just once, and your kids order you Meals-on-Wheels.”

She’s serious, which cracks me up even more. I really don’t know how many of her crazy theories she believes, but Clara has plenty of them. She still professes that no one has ever been to the moon–it’s all a show put on by the government. Name a conspiracy theory, and she can give evidence to support it. If she had a website, she’d have an enormous following. “Now quit tryin’ to change the subject, girl. What’s got you out of sorts?”

I’d really rather visit and avoid this topic. It’s easier to ignore it, right? Her beady little eyes are trained on me as if she’s reading my mind. When I look away, she bossily clears her throat, ending my attempted reticence.

“This would be just between us, right? Because I can’t have it around town.”

She bobs her head impatiently. Right, her confidence is every bit as sacred as that of a priest.

“If a man was to, uh, stray, and it was a one-time thing, do you think it’s possible to get over it? Do you think it’s forgivable?” There, it’s out, and no doubt she’ll know I’m talking about my own marriage.

“I think you oughtta take a lesson from the black widda spider,” she says matter-of-factly.

I choke on a cookie, blowing crumbs against my palm. “Aunt Clara, the female black widow
eats
the male after they mate!”

“Aww, it was a man who made that story up. The truth is, the female only kills him if she can smell that he’s been with another female.”

Oh, that’s so much better. “So, you think we should kill a man if he cheats?”