A Little Bit of Everything Lost (13 page)

Marnie lay in the dentist chair, cotton puffs filled the inside of her cheeks. Her eyes were closed yet she felt the hot lights from above blinding through her eyelids. Her wisdom teeth were being pulled, and she tried to ask why, because she had them taken out in high school, but she couldn’t talk because of all the cotton shoved into her cheeks. And she knew wisdom teeth couldn’t grow back, and why hadn’t they given her any pain meds? The cotton in her mouth, and the drilling sound coming through her ears, the throbbing through her teeth… they were absolutely being yanked.

Then Marnie woke. And the pain in her head and her ears and her teeth made her feel that yes, definitely she had her wisdom teeth pulled out again.

Except that wasn’t it. It was a hangover. The worst in her life.

Yet even through the excruciating pain, the realization of the night before crept in.

Had he really said it?

She reached over. And felt his warm skin.

He was still there. Next to her. Asleep.

She willed her eyes to open.

His hair fell over his eyes and she wanted to brush it away, to look at his closed lids, to kiss his eyelashes, to wake him, but she was afraid. Afraid it was all really just a dream, and if she woke him, it would all be over. She was also afraid she would vomit.

She got up, leaned over and grabbed his crumpled shirt from the floor. She put it on and crawled into the bathroom.

She’d never been so hungover, never gotten that high, or done anything as crazy as what they’d done in the diner, and then what they did afterward. Marnie knelt onto the bathroom floor and her heart beat into her ears, and her pulse vibrated throughout her limp body. She pulled her hair from her face, gagged and threw up. She slumped over the toilet, resting her head on the cool porcelain, thinking that it was a disgusting place to lie, that it would be a horrible place to die.

She might have fallen asleep for fifteen minutes or an hour, she wasn’t sure, but time had definitely passed. When she could move again, she stood up, went to the sink and splashed water all over her face. She shook three Advil out of the bottle and placed them onto her tongue, leaned down to slurp water straight from the faucet.

Did he really say it? And what did she say back to him? What if he didn’t remember saying what she was pretty sure he told her? What if he hadn’t meant it?

“Mar, you in there?” he called from her bed.

“Yeah.” Her voice croaked out the syllable.

“Can you bring me my one-hitter and a lighter?”

“You’re gonna get high?”

“I’ve got a huge hangover.”

Marnie walked back into her room and flopped herself onto the bed.

“Oh, don’t do that!”

“What?” she asked.

“Move so fast.”

“Sorry.”

“We shouldn’t have had that tequila. On top of everything else, I’m no good with tequila,” he said. “Did you bring me the lighter?”

“Do you really think you should do that?” Marnie asked.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” He rubbed his temples.

“Come on, seriously though? Don’t you feel like shit?” Marnie touched his abdomen.

Joe pushed her hand away. “I’m not feeling too good right now. I just want a quick hit, and I need more sleep. What time did we pass out anyway?”

“You don’t remember?”

Joe shook his head. “Grab my one-hitter. Then let’s go back to bed? I want your body next to mine.”

Marnie went to the dresser and took the one-hitter from his pants pocket and tossed it over to him.

“That’s my girl. Is the lighter in there?”

She fished around for it in another pocket and sent it flying toward the bed, then she moved toward the door.

“Where you going?” Joe asked, positioning the pipe to his lips, tapping it to make sure there was still a bud left in it.

“I need water.”

“Will you get me some too? Then come back to bed?”

Marnie went into the kitchen and slumped down at the table, head in her hands. She felt worse than she did when she woke up. She was certain now that the words Joe had said were just because he was drunk and stoned.

He didn’t remember saying he loved her.

So maybe he didn’t.

The pregnancy

Chapter Twenty-Eight
December 2003

It happened because Marnie had been bored.

She had been doing some minimal freelance photography after the boys were born. And while she had had some minor success in that – the occasional wedding request or family portraiture – she hadn’t fully delved into that project of starting her own photography business. She was in the process of getting a website built and was working with a marketing expert to design a logo, but she’d been trying to put that together for a few years. What lay most heavy on her mind was the fact that she’d always planned on, hoped to be a mom to more than just two kids. In truth, she’d always wanted a daughter.

Deep in her heart she knew it was selfish, so she never shared her thoughts with anyone, especially not Collette, who had one of each, the perfect replicas of what a boy and a girl should be. Collette’s kids went to private school, took all sorts of after-school activities and made their beds every morning. How on earth Marnie managed to love Collette and suppress her jealousy, she never knew. Her children and her life were too perfect.

Brett, Collette’s son, nearly Jeremy’s age, but light years ahead in intelligence, was dapper and polite, yet smart and athletic. He was the type to stop kids from bullying, while Marnie feared that Jeremy might become one of the bullies. But it was Collette’s daughter, Kaylee, who put a lump in Marnie’s throat each time she saw her. Marnie’s goddaughter, four-year-old Kaylee, was all curly blonde and big blue-eyed, precocious, and was the spitting image of an American Girl doll. She took ballet and singing lessons, loved dolls and horses, had the pink canopy bed. She embodied everything that was little girl. Marnie had to mentally check it at the door whenever they got the kids together, which wasn’t too often because of their busy and conflicting schedules.

Marnie dreamed of a perfect little daughter since long, long ago, and Kaylee was the constant reminder of all that she had wanted. Kaylee was the vision Marnie secretly kept in her head of what she imagined a daughter of hers might look like someday, except with brown hair. It was wrong to think like that, Marnie knew, and she tried to shake it away. Collette was her best friend, and for God’s sake, Kaylee was her goddaughter; she had to not think like that, but she couldn’t force her mind otherwise, although she tried desperately to do so.

Marnie never stopped talking about a third child, and after Jeremy started kindergarten, and Trey was finally out of diapers and using the potty, she tried to convince Stuart that a third baby was what the family needed. Things were much easier. The boys were getting easier. They
seemed
to get along well. Life was flowing along nicely, she and Stuart had adjusted to his schedule and it appeared that they were making things work. While theirs wasn’t a feisty love, Marnie was always happy when Stuart returned home from a trip and theirs was a comfortable, happy, relatively solid relationship. He was dependable, a wonderful dad, a caring and loyal husband. Didn’t all relationships lose that intensity after the first few years and a couple of babies anyway?

But every time she brought up the baby question, he turned on her.

“We don’t need another baby in this house. Things are fine the way they are.”

“That’s the problem. I’m bored with ‘just fine.’ I don’t want
a family that’s just fine.” Marnie said.

“The boys want a puppy; why don’t we get a puppy?” Stuart suggested.

The boys, who were building Legos on the floor, perked up at the mention of a puppy. They said nothing, but Marnie could tell they were both now listening.

She lowered her voice, “I don’t want a puppy. I’m ready for another baby. We talked about this. We said we wanted three or four children. If we wait much longer… ”

“Honey, I’m gone all the time. How are you going to manage with another baby in the house? I really think we’ve got a great little crew here.”

Marnie hated when he referred to their home and family in airplane terms. “Our family is
not
your flight crew.”

“You know what I mean.” Stuart continued, “Look, I don’t get that much time with the boys and you as it is. Call me selfish, but I love you guys. I’m not willing to share myself with another person.”

“Stuart! That ‘other person’ would be a baby, our baby; a part of our family, not some hobo off the street!”

“You know what I mean.”

“No. I don’t. And I don’t really like the way you’re thinking.”

“Look, I’m tired. I’m not up for this discussion. Can we talk later?”

He turned his attention to the football game on ESPN. Marnie sat silently on the couch.

Jeremy, still on the floor with the Star Wars Lego set, looked up. “Does this mean we’re definitely getting a dog? Cuz I have a name picked out and everything… I heard someone call their dog this the other day and it sounded really cool. They were yelling for their dog who got away in the park and they said,
‘Get over here BASTARD!’”

Chapter Twenty-Nine
August 1988

He arrived at her house, arms filled with yellow and pu
rple chrysanthemums, and Marnie’s throat tightened at the sight of him, and at the flowers. He knew they were her favorites. He remembered. He wanted this to work. He must or else he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to bring her the flowers. Marnie took the flowers and placed them on the foyer table. Joe came toward her, looking at her so intently, her breath caught in her throat.

“Hey, you,” Joe said.

A lump formed and she tried to swallow it down, to push it from her lungs so she could find her breath. He touched her hair and pulled her into him, into his strong arms, and she sucked in the air around them, smelling the whole of him, breathing in the scent of his cologne, putting it to memory, until she could steal another moment like this because she didn’t know when, or even if, that next moment would come.

She had never, ever felt this way about anyone, never gone to the depths of her soul with someone else the way she had gone with Joe. Never had she been so intimate with another person. She wanted to believe this was going to work, with each of them at different schools, but she was so confused. She didn’t want summer to end.

She had a strong desire to throw it all out there, to tell him everything she was feeling; to actually say those words she was still convinced he had said to her. If only he would say them again. She wanted to hear him say it again, because, there was no doubt in her mind that the words would tumble from her and she would confess her feelings free and wholly to him, positive they were real and true.

Instead, on this last day together, they said nothing. He searched her face, drawing a line with his finger from her earlobe to her neck and across her shoulder blade. She chilled, goose bumps spiked. “Let’s go to your room,” he whispered, close in her ear, pulling her to the stairs, the stairs where he had been hard and rough that one time. She was going to make sure this time was nothing like that. She wanted to make sure he would have something to bring with him, to remember what he had with her. W
hat they had together. She didn’t want to think that this would be their last time.

In her room, she closed the sheers and turned on the boom box. Terrence Trent D’arby sang from the speakers – signing his name across her heart, or something like that. She went to him, and helped him out of his shirt. He lay on the bed and Marnie began tracing the letter M across his chest.

He shivered. “What are you doing?”

“What the song says.” And then, “You have to remember me, okay?” She felt timid, and immediately mad for exposing herself this way. She wanted him to be the one saying these things to her, to tell her not to forget him, to make plans for winter break, plans for them to be together.

“I will.” He reached for her and pulled off her shirt. “Nice bra.”

“Thanks.”

“Take it off?”

“You.”

Joe grinned up at her from the bed. He lifted his arms and found his way to the back of her bra, unhooked it, and helped Marnie free from it. She lowered her body and pressed into him, both of them shirtless, feeling each other’s skin. They lay there, not talking, quietly breathing, drawing in the air between them, feeling skin against skin, her head tucked near his, their eyes connected, searching each other out, looking deeper, as Marnie tried to understand what was happening. She felt his heart thumping but stayed quiet. If she had to die like this, this close to him, she could go right now, and be satisfied that she had lived.