A Convenient Catastrophe, page 29
The drive up to Hilton Head is pleasant until Bradley looks over and sees me catching up on what Monique has been doing.
“Friend of yours?” He’s had a silly grin on his face since he showed up at my door in the wee hours.
Play it more cool and suave, dude. Someone needs to help him out in the love department. This Amy, she’s a tough cookie to crack, which is probably why no one else really cares to try.
“I hardly know her,” I say with a shrug. And then for some insane reason I add, “But she could be my mother.”
Bradley veers off to the shoulder of the highway and turns to me. “Wh-what?”
Staring out the side window away from him and in a monotone voice, I tell him bits and pieces, what seems pertinent to intimacy. The truth about Aunt Mary is left out. Nor do I tell him I’m the investigator Helena unknowingly hired, although I’m not sure why I decide to keep that nugget to myself. One thing at a time, I suppose. I just tell him Deaton’s been sleuthing around and what we’ve uncovered. If I’m going to finally solidify this relationship and forgo all others, then I’ve got to let him know what’s going on with me. How could I move in with him and then, weeks later, say, “Oh I never told you I wasn’t sure if my mom really died twenty-eight years ago? Well, I’ve been searching for her and Voila! There she was living in Kentucky. But enough about that. Do you want your eggs scrambled or fried?”
“My God! No wonder!” Bradley says, shaking his head. “I couldn’t figure out. I mean, I knew something was holding you… I mean you’re so… but this… My God, Amy!”
I sigh and run a hand over my mouth, down my chin.
Bradley looks at his watch and exhales. His first assembly is in three hours. He reaches for me, and I allow him to hold me with my face shoved into his chest, my nose flattened against his shirt. I don’t squirm or wiggle because he deserves this embrace, and I deserve to have my nose flattened, my air depleted. Finally, he puts the car in drive and merges back in with traffic, but he doesn’t let the discussion go. As cars whiz by us and the traffic into the city grows heavier, he asks me a million questions, and I answer them like a robot until he pats my leg and acknowledges that he understands this is emotionally exhausting. “We’ll talk more about it later.”
Grand on Pelican Point is the poshest hotel I’ve ever been inside. Dad and I didn’t vacation much when I was growing up. He and Nana took me to Stone Mountain once, but it wasn’t much fun. Susan didn’t go, and even though my dad had plenty of money, he let his frugal mother dictate what we could and couldn’t afford. We could afford the gas to get there, but we could not afford meals in restaurants. We could afford bread and sandwich meat to keep in the room’s refrigerator, but no chips or sodas. We’d pulled up to our motel room and walked from the car to the door and even though the room was a set price, we still had to turn the air conditioning up once we got inside so we didn’t use too much. I had never been inside a fancy hotel lobby until my fateful field trip to Atlanta.
The wheels of my suitcase bump along the grout lines in the tiled foyer. We get our luggage up to the room, and the first thing I do is push the button on the air conditioner to turn it way down.
“I have to run,” Bradley says apologetically. “You’ll be fine?”
“Of course.” I wave him off. “Go. You’ll be late.”
I unpack and lie down on the bed to read my book, but five pages later I have no idea what I’ve read. There’s a beautiful, white sand beach just steps outside my door, and yet here’s me, not caring. It is quite cool out, though. Not exactly beach weather. Scott Warner thinks I’ve sold my house and that my problems are over. He’s probably sitting right now at his desk with a content expression, his pen poised in his hand, working on other cases and pleased that Amy Hollander is filed away.
But, I think with unexpected glee, Amy Hollander is not filed away. Amy Hollander needs her lawyer back.
“Scott Warner, please,” I say to his receptionist. My heart is thumping, and my throat feels dry.
“Mr. Warner is tied up at the moment,” she says. “May I put you through to his voicemail?”
“Yes, please,” I answer.
There is a moment of music followed by, “You have reached the voicemail of Scott Warner. I’m not in right now.” My mind drifts back to the first time I ever met him. I had thought that old man that bustled through the café door was him, and then he’d called my name. I’d turned around and there he was with that gleam in his eyes, reminding me of someone. Later I’d realized it was a young Chuck Woolery — the man I used to come home and watch every afternoon on Love Connection.
“Oh. um, Scott. This is Amy. Amy Hollander. I, Um, the house. It didn’t sell. Long story. The appraisal—”
Beep! My time is up.
I pick my book back up and try five more pages before I set it down and pick up the TV remote. I have to study it for a few minutes to find a button that powers the machine on. I flip through various channels, all in the high hundreds. There seems to be no way to get the thing down to the normal single-digit channels, so I flip through something about the mating habits of lions, then an infomercial about a power scrubber, then something with people throwing chairs at each other and yelling catches my attention.
“She’s old enough to be his mother!” One woman in tight spandex and a bra yells at another who’s shoved into a mini dress with a plunging neckline and the entire middle section cut out. My mind drifts to my upcoming birthday. Thirty-seven! At twelve years old I thought I’d have a motorhome and a successful animal shelter by now. Yet here I am running around tripping over lies and actually hoping — hoping! — that I’ll be homeless soon and able to bring my bank account balance to a nice round zero, because that’s my best-case scenario. I’m divorced. I bathe in lies. I’ve found out the grandmother I thought I had never even existed, and I’m frigid.
There — I’ve said it. Jerry Springer has just told the woman in the mini dress she needs to identify her situation, so I do too. I’m as frosty as a glacier. Greg Hollander has ruined me for life. “At least I don’t have a house full of cats,” I say to Jerry. “I’m not a spinster. I have a job. I have lots of friends.” Jerry hasn’t stopped talking to mini dress. “I have a dog that adores me!”
Two hours later Bradley finds me sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed so engrossed in the impending DNA results Jerry’s next guests are waiting on that I haven’t even heard him come in. He grabs the remote and clicks off the TV.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I say. “It took me an hour to figure out how to turn it on.”
“Ha. Shouldn’t fill your head with that junk.”
That? That’s nothing compared to my real life!
“How was your class?”
“Great.” He nods his head emphatically. “Good stuff. I’m starving.”
I realize I am too, but I’ve spent my entire afternoon watching families in crisis. I haven’t taken a shower or anything.
Bradley opens the drapes and looks out the window. “There’s a Smokehouse something or other just down the road.”
“Sounds good.” I grab my purse and we’re out the door.
The shower is like a car wash. Water pulses at me from all angles. I can’t see to shut any of the spouts off, so I’m getting hit in the face, the chest, the stomach, the back. I’m as exhausted as if I’d swum the English Channel by the time I tighten the robe around me and open the bathroom door. My hair is wrapped up in a towel, turban style, making me wobble a bit as I walk to the bed.
Bradley is already lying there under the spread. His chest is bare, and I wonder if he’s got anything else on. All I can see is a cowlick and a smile. I prop my pillows and make a bit of a deal about arranging and fluffing them. When that gets awkward I try to settle in. The bedspread is heavy and the top sheet is pulled so tightly that my toes fold over, so I kick at the bottom of the sheet to untuck it.
“There.” I fold my hands over the bedspread on my lap and turn to Bradley, balancing my turban on my head.
You look like a nun!
Well, this is new. My mind has now provided me with a new distraction who dresses like a hooker and yells out dating advice to me. I ignore her and hold my head high with my turban intact.
Bradley smiles at me. “I love you, Amy.”
I’m caught off guard. I was not expecting love to be proclaimed. I forgot that was a part of normal adult relationships. Love. I wasn’t bargaining for love.
I stare deep into his eyes and stroke a finger on his cheek. “You are just the nicest man ever,” I whisper so seductively that it really does sound equal to his proclamation. Almost.
Bradley gets out of the bed, wearing a pair of boxers. They’re beige, and at first I think they’re bare skin but then I realize Bradley’s mid-section would not pucker, wrinkle or sag like that unless he’d once been four hundred pounds, which I doubt. He walks around to the end of the bed and kisses my big toe that is hanging out. I pucker my lips and narrow my eyes in a sexy, sleepy way. He slips himself between me and the top sheet and slides his way up my body and over my terrycloth robe until his face is sticking out from the sheet, close to mine. The sheet has a ruffle at the top of it, and as it drapes over Bradley’s head it looks like he has on a baby bonnet. He’s a seductive little baby.
I bite my lip.
Don’t laugh! Dear God in heaven, please don’t laugh! Children are starving in third-world countries. That toddler that was kidnapped from Massachusetts last year still hasn’t been found. Mrs. Ryder is going blind. Do not laugh!
It doesn’t work. I burst out laughing. Bradley rolls over back to his side of the bed. I turn to him and place a hand on my turban so it doesn’t fall off. I’m ready to be serious now. I can do this.
“Ahh. I’m sorry, Amy,” he says.
Oh. “Sorry?”
“Your mom and all. It’s too much for you. I should have known. You’re not even in your right frame of mind.”
“Well, yes. It’s a lot. I hope you… well, understand.”
Frigid!
We both sigh at the same time and lie there holding hands and staring straight ahead. I wonder if Bradley’s going to pull out his CPAP machine. If I want to talk seriously to him, I should get it all done now because I know once he hooks up it’ll be like he’s underwater talking through a snorkel, and I’ll think about sharks tearing into people’s flesh or something like that and burst out laughing again because apparently, that’s the real me.
But I have no words to say, so I just lie there. I ponder the phrase “Right frame of mind.” I’d searched for mental imagery the week before — just wanted to ensure other people had these imaginary intrusions too, and I wasn’t about to ask anyone.
Turns out others do — particularly people with PTSD. Do I have PTSD? There was an entire article about using guided imagery to reduce stress. Apparently, my mind has already been doing this for me, but I made an appointment to see a therapist anyway. I’m pretty sure therapists like to heal the whole person, not just bits and pieces, so I’ve no idea how this will work. How to come clean with the doctor while holding on to my mother’s lies? Perhaps therapists have miracles up their sleeves, other than the standard, “Tell the truth.” I’m seeing a female, hoping she will understand the mother/daughter relationship and all it encompasses, although I sincerely doubt anyone else’s relationship has ever come close to encompassing what mine does.
Within an hour I hear Bradley snoring so loudly I wouldn’t be surprised if the drapes next to him get inhaled. I have no idea if he packed the machine and planned to use it — no idea if he’s allowed to sleep without it.
Could he stop breathing and die in his sleep?
I slide in my mouth guard I laid on the nightstand earlier. It slips around, but I clench my teeth tightly to keep it in, which seems rather counterproductive. Every time I start to drift off I jolt myself awake. I have to keep an eye on Bradley. He’s snoring, blissfully unaware of my concern for his airway.
I lean over and gaze lovingly at his peaceful countenance. This nice, patient man. Turning back and twisting my lips, I sort through my feelings. It looks doubtful, like I’m showing an audience the real truth: She cares for him somewhat, but she’s so conflicted. Why? How to get over it? Stay tuned!
I open my eyes when I hear voices outside in the hallway. I had fallen asleep. It only seems like it was for a few minutes, but the sun is brightening the sky outside our window, and I’m still propped up in the bed with pillows behind my back. My robe is tied properly — and frigidly — at the waist and my legs are crossed at the ankles. The turban has slipped off my head and lies in a damp heap beside me. I lift a hand to my hair and feel it branching out in all directions.
I’ve ruined Bradley’s seminar — our getaway. I’m an evil witch, a fluffed-up pillow stuffed full of sand spurs, a tall glass of lemonade that turned out to be a urine specimen.
“Stop it,” I imagine saying to my idiom-loving twelve-year-old self. “Surely you’ve moved past such silliness.
“Ha! You’re an almost thirty-seven-year-old novelist with no agent,” she says back to me. “Whadda you know?”
Oh my God! The seminar!
“Shpradley, shwake up.” I shake him. He was supposed to be in a meeting at six o’clock.
Oh God! He’s dead. I fell asleep for just a minute, and Bradley choked on his own tongue or whatever happens when CPAP patients don’t hook up to their sleep support.
He opens one eye and gives me a sad, tired smile. “I’m not going,” he says.
“Shnot shgoing?”
I place my palm under my mouth and spit my mouth guard into it. “How can you not go? You have to go.” I peer at the bedside clock. “It’s eight-thirty!”
He shakes his head and sits up. “This.” He waves a hand over the bed and stops it on me. “This is more important. I promised you a day in Hilton Head, and I want to be part of it.”
“Well, okay then.” I sit up straight and pull my robe tight at my neck. “You’re sure?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he just goes into the bathroom and emerges ten minutes later dressed for the day in a pair of tan jeans and a navy sweater. Bradley smells of mouthwash and hair gel and looks extremely well-rested.
I saunter to the bathroom myself. The lighting in the bathroom is harsh — surely it’s the lighting — although I noticed a few weeks ago that I look every bit of my upcoming age. I’ve never attempted to ward it off, I just kind of thought I had some unspoken pact with God that I would defy loss of gravity when the time came, to make up for my big knees, maybe. I turn my face left and right and peer closer.
I pat my drugstore cream just like the lady at the beauty counter showed me “Gently, in an upwards motion,” into the dark, puffy, half-moons under my eyes and the little line between my eyebrows. I throw my hair into a ponytail, put on a bit of make-up, and brush my teeth.
“I am ready to seize the day,” I stride back into the bed area and announce in my royal knight voice.
Bradley is scrutinizing the bill that’s been slipped under the door with the phone to his ear. He holds up a finger to me. “Charge the same credit card. Yes, I’ll need a copy for my taxes.”
“You don’t have to tell her it’s for your taxes.” I roll my eyes and snicker good-naturedly, but then decide it’s none of my business when Bradley scowls and waves a hand for me to stop talking. This time last week I imagined us rubbing salve on each other’s mysterious bumps and bruises in our nineties, side-by-side in the nursing home, and now I’m reluctant to tease him about the shoebox of receipts he keeps in the back seat of his car. Crazy what the impact of intimacy, or lack thereof, can do to a couple.
“How about pancakes?” He asks in a serious tone when he hangs up the phone.
“Fine with me, if it’s fine with you.”
“Well, do you want pancakes?”
“I do if you do.”
“Well, I only do if you do.”
The Pancake House is just across the street from the hotel, but since Bradley checked out we have to move out of the hotel’s parking garage, so we drive over. Bradley’s mood seems to have shifted since we first woke up. It’s like something has occurred to him, like he’s remembered he’s mad and not talking to me.
The waitress takes our drink order and returns within seconds with a cup of coffee. It’s strong and very hot. I occupy myself blowing over the rim.
“Did you sleep well?” I ask, like I don’t already know the answer.
Bradley is scrutinizing his menu as closely as he would an important document. He’s following text with his finger and mumbling to himself. “Fine. You?”
“Oh. Fine. I guess. I woke a lot during the night.”
He says nothing.
“First time away from the kids,” I say, after leaning back in my chair toward the couple seated behind us. “She’s mad that he’s not missing them as much as she is.”
Bradley blinks. I remember that he doesn’t appreciate my eavesdropping, or my ability to sum stranger’s situations up within two minutes of the eavesdropping. If we can’t run with this and get some giggles out of it, I’ve got nothing.
Our pancakes are delivered to the table. The waitress runs back to the kitchen to grab her next order before we can ask her for anything else.
“Amy?”
Bradley’s talking to me again. I quit cutting and look up at him with the sweetest smile like I hadn’t noticed the earlier tension. I can feel the softness flood my features. If only I’d started with the creams years ago I’d be the beautiful face of peace and harmony right now.
“Hmmm?”
“You don’t love me. Do you?”
