9 Letters (16 page)

“I’ve got no idea
what that must be like. If you ever want to talk about that, you
can.”

“Thank you,” I said.
I meant it. “So this ex named your dog Muffin, you said?”

“That’s right,”
she continued, kindly picking up where we’d left off. “I
tried to call him Jacob for awhile but that little brat likes Muffin
better, only responds to it. So that’s that.”

I smiled. She sure knew how to
roll with the punches.

“What happened with him?
With Derek.”

“Well, it’s kind of a
long story.”

“I’m game,” I
said.

We were over at the more
populated corner of the park, and stopped to let our dogs play in a
big pack for awhile.

“My parents split when I
was little, ugly divorce, custody battle, all that. I grew up caught
between them and knowing how much they hated each other.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It happens.” She
shrugged. “So anyway, with their example to follow, I tend to
find destructive relationships of my own. Derek was—still is, I
think—a failed writer. I stayed with that son-of-a-bitch for
three years. Twenty-one to twenty-four. Paid his way for everything,
for three damn years. Waiting for him to get himself together. Giving
him chance after chance after chance. Till I just couldn’t no
more.”

“You left him?”

“I did more than leave
him,” she said, and I noticed a muscle in her jaw tighten, her
whole posture tensing. “By the end, I had to get a restraining
order against him. Irina and Eric and Nicole, they’re the ones
who helped me get up the courage.”

“I got a hell of a lot
luckier than you, I guess,” I said. “Right from the
start. I’ve got pretty great parents. Some of my friends, I see
how their parents are, and I can’t even begin to figure out how
I got so lucky with mine.”

“They’re still
together?”

“Yup,” I said. “I
mean, most of the time. Well, they’re always together. Most of
the time, they’re even still in love.”

“The rest of the time?”

“Rest of the time they just
kind of ignore each other or whatever. My dad goes out fishing with
my brother and me for a couple of days to get his head straight, my
mom just disappears into her studio for twelve hours a day for three
or four days, a few times a year. Paints still life. When she does
that, my dad cooks for her and spends his time reading. Seems to work
for them.”

“I can’t even
imagine,” Rae said.

“Yeah, I got pretty lucky.”

“You religious?” she
asked.

“Not really,” I said.
If she’d asked me two years earlier, I would have told her
different. But things had changed, and hell if I was going to lie to
her. “Not so much.”

She just nodded at that. Couldn’t
read her. If she’d been a customer on the other side of my bar,
I would have known what she thought of what I just said.

We got back to walking over to
our corner on the other side of the park. It suddenly occurred to me
she might have set me up. The old “all my friends will be
there. Just kidding, none of my friends will be there, and now we’re
here alone together.” The thought made me smile.

We reached the shade and sat down
on the park bench. She sat right next to me, and I turned to look at
her. She was beautiful, her face close to mine. She opened her mouth,
just that slightest bit, and I almost kissed her. But then I pulled
back, pulled away from the question in her eyes.

“I’m not sure I’m
ready to be with anyone,” I said. “I probably won’t
be for awhile.” I thought about telling her about Maggie, then
thought better of it. Too much to explain. Too much that I still
didn’t understand, anyway.

“Alright,” she said.
She scooted half an inch further from me, and her eyes on mine were
steady. She was waiting, patiently. She wasn’t going to prod or
pry, but I could tell she was curious. She wanted to know what I was
thinking, and why.

To hell with it. She wasn’t
going to judge me, not like everyone else had. And besides, nothing
ventured, nothing gained. I liked her, I really did. I should let her
know the whole of the truth. Before I had time to convince myself to
keep my mouth shut, I found the words spilling out of me in a torrent
I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. As if I’d
been waiting all this time to talk about it, only I guess it had to
be with someone who hadn’t asked. Ain’t that always the
way.

“I married my high school
sweetheart. We were married five years and it was everything I
wanted. I thought my search was over, and I was ready to get on with
everything else in my life. We were so sure. We had a house, my
grandpa gave us his house, and we didn’t mind being poor. So I
started a contractor business. It takes a couple years, more than a
couple years, before you can get your own business up and running,
when you’re building up your starting capital as you go. Emily
and I, we lived paycheck to paycheck, didn’t have insurance.”

Her hand clasped mine, where it
sat on my knee. I flinched, but didn’t pull it away.

“So yeah. She was sick, and
we didn’t know, and she hid it because I guess that’s
just what you do sometimes. She didn’t want me to worry. She
didn’t want me to have to go and work for someone else, get
some full-time job with benefits that would have kept me from doing
what I wanted in life. By the time we knew how bad it was, wasn’t
nothing we could do anymore.”

Rae was quiet a moment in that
calm way of hers, taking it all in. “When’d she die?”

“A year ago,” I said.
“A year and like a week.”

“Do you still have your
business?”

“No,” I said. “Real
life, man. Real life gets in the way.”

“It sure does,” she
said.

We sat like that, contemplating,
while the dogs ran around us for another minute or so.

“I’d like us to be
friends,” Rae said. “You’re a good guy, I can tell.
And sorry for saying so, but I bet you could stand to have someone in
your corner every now and again.”

“Okay. I’d like
that.” I meant it.

Rae nodded. “Hey, you know
what? It’s my birthday in two days. My friends are coming over
to my place. Will you come?”

“Yes,” I said.

She grinned.

“Let’s go find some
cute dogs to pounce on,” she said. “Always cheers me up.”

I got home more exhausted than
I’d been after humping lumber. It was a soul-tired, an
exhaustion that went all the way to the marrow. I didn’t feel
bad, it wasn’t that. Just exhausted.

I put on the TV, got a beer from
the fridge, and laid down on the couch.

I called Warren at the bar, and
he and I formalized that I’d be on two days a week, and that my
shifts wouldn’t overlap with Maggie’s. He didn’t
ask questions, and I appreciated it.

I looked at the clock. It was
still early. There was no reason I couldn’t call Natalie.
Except that I didn’t want to. I could call Emily’s
parents, though. Her mom and dad had moved back in together after
Emily and I got married. Well, her mom moved back out to the ranch
where she and Em’s dad spent the time they weren’t on
tour together. I could call them. Should call them. It’d be
nice to hear their voices. Just check in on them, or something.
That’s what I should do.

I turned on the TV, put the phone
down. There wasn’t any hurry to do that. I wasn’t going
to do them any good until I was better myself—I’d just be
a drain on them, emotionally, until I was better myself. It didn’t
even feel like an excuse, it felt true.

I didn’t have an excuse for
why I wasn’t calling Natalie, though. Then I realized I didn’t
need one.

The point of the letters was to
start feeling better. Start healing. Move forward. Calling Emily’s
sister had nothing to do with my progress. Nothing at all. I was the
last person she’d likely want to hear from anyway, I knew that
much for sure.

I took King for a long walk then,
even though we were both tired enough. It was all I could think to do
to clear my mind, but I still couldn’t shut up that voice
telling me to call Natalie. When I got back I looked at my phone and
then shoved it under a couch cushion.

I’d be fine.

Thing about birthdays is, after
you hit eighteen, they’re not so good anymore. That’s
what Emily used to tell me, she says it’s what her dad used to
say. The reason you have a party is that on your birthday you are
looking your mortality right in its face. You need all the help you
can get, when you’re staring right into the march of time.
You’re going to just get older and older until one day, you
die.

That’s what Emily used to
tell me on my birthday. She had the weirdest sense of humor.

When it came time for her
birthday in turn, though, I mostly said sweet things.

Someone like Rae, I had no idea
what to say on her birthday. Thankfully, society gives us a script:
you just say happy birthday, congratulations. All that nonsense.

That script doesn’t tell us
what to buy a 24-year-old you barely know, though.

I knew she liked dogs, so I went
to the pet store. Then I realized, she knows everything about dogs
and I don’t know the tail from the ears. So I bought her a
terrier bobblehead for her dashboard.

I even wrapped it up in a small
box with a ribbon around it, because I figured that’s what
you’re supposed to do. By the time I got home, though, I
realized she was probably as sick of getting dog-themed nonsense as
Emily had been of getting horse-themed nonsense.

I stressed about it for a minute,
then remembered that was a waste of time. Called my mom, got her
advice on a twenty-dollar bottle of red wine, ignored her questions
about who it was for. Picked up the bottle from the store, tied a
ribbon around it, and headed off to Rae’s.

Buying presents for adults is a
hell of a lot easier than buying presents for kids.

There wasn’t time to get
stressed out by the wine, though, because I had to hurry up and
stress about walking into a house full of strangers. I drove past her
house. All sedans and hatchbacks and station wagons, parked out
front, visible in the streetlight. No trucks.

I parked about halfway down the
block, walked up.

It was a little ranch house,
right at the top of north Kansas City. A nice enough place. A little
run-down, and she was right, the fence was no good. She probably
rented from some cheapskate.

Rang the bell.

Best not to think about it, I
told myself. Best not to think about all them people inside or what
they’d make of me. Since when did I care what people thought?

I was in my casual best. Clean
jeans, clean shirt. The weather was good, my flannel was open. I
hadn’t shaved, but if I’m being honest I think it looks
good on me when I let it go a day or two. I’ll never be the
kind of guy who looks good in a tie, neither. I looked my best when I
looked like what I was—a man just that little bit happier when
he’s outside, a man who drinks cheap American beer and keeps in
shape on the job instead of in the gym. Someone would either like me
like that, or they wouldn’t like me at all.

Not that I was there to impress
anyone. Rae and I, we were just friends.

Rae opened the door, and she was
dressed casual too. So were her friends. Thank God.

“Hey, everyone,” she
said, as we walked in together. “This is Luke. Luke, this is
everyone.”

Irina, Eric, and Nicole I
remembered from the bar. No sign of John Deere, thankfully. There
were about a dozen folks more than that. Muffin was ambling from
paper plate to paper plate in time to be shooed off by everyone at
the party, and I was glad I’d figured right that I shouldn’t
bring King.

I wasn’t sure I had a thing
in common with a soul in the place, though. I hate to jump to
conclusions like that, but I could feel it by the way they were eying
me up and down. About half the guys were wearing polo shirts, and I
was definitely the only person there in a ball cap. It took me a
moment to remember that half the world seems to think a cap is only
for kids. The other half knows what a damn good idea it is to have
something that keeps the sun out of your face, the hair out of your
eyes, and the need for a comb out of your hair.

I wasn’t going let it get
to me. A lot of my brother’s friends were like that. Some of
them were even nice to me. Some of them were even decent guys.

I handed Rae the bottle of wine,
the ribbon still around it, fully aware of everyone looking me over.
“Happy birthday,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said.
She untied the ribbon, pretending like she didn’t know what she
was holding. “Ooh, a bottle of wine!” she said when the
ribbon was off. “How’d you know?”

That got laughs from about two of
her friends, and me. I guess her sense of humor wasn’t for
everyone.

She was the host, though, and
couldn’t really keep me company. She had to flutter about the
room. I had two options: go for the people I tangentially knew and
stick my head into their conversation, or go for the snack table.

I went for the snack table.

“Madison,” a fellow
said, walking up to me, drink in hand. “My name’s
Madison.”

“Luke,” I said. He
seemed like a decent enough guy.

“You know Rae from school?”
he asked.

“Huh?” I said. “No,
I met her at the shelter.”

“Oh,” he said, like
it all made sense.

“How about you?”

“We used to work together,”
he said. “Before she went freelance with the technical writing.
Before uh, before she was laid off.”

“Sure. What do you do?”
I asked. I could small talk. My dad had raised me alright. Didn’t
love it, but I could do it.

“I’m a PM,” he
said. I must have been staring blankly. “A project manager.”

He proceeded to tell me about his
job, and I nodded because I was supposed to, but try as I might I
couldn’t summon a lick of interest.