Deep Down True (22 page)

“No,” she reassured him. “I’m a little jumpy today for some reason. How are you?”

He was just fine. He’d booked a trip to Tampa to visit his mother for Thanksgiving, and the Patriots had played well on Sunday, even with some key players missing. “You can’t buy games like that,” he told her. “When a bunch of guys who shouldn’t win do anyway, it’s like God wants everyone to be happy.”

Everyone but the fans of the opposing team,
Dana thought. “Listen, Jack, thanks so much for calling, but I really should chat later. I’m at work now, and if a patient walks in—”

“Working? I thought you were a home mom.”

“Remember I told you I was starting a new job? At my dentist’s office?”

“Oh . . . right,” he said, his voice laced with disappointment. “Well, I guess you can’t go to breakfast tomorrow. I’m working the evening shift at the dealership so I thought maybe we could grab a bite at Hebron Diner.”

“Oh, I can do that—I don’t have to be in till noon. That would be perfect!”

They made plans to meet the next morning. Dana grinned as she finished her work.
Don’t be an idiot,
she chided herself, but the grin would not go away.

Sometimes she imagined little scenarios of their relationship becoming more intimate, thinking about it at odd times like when she was taking her makeup off at night. She would look in the mirror at her pink-scrubbed cheeks, a headband holding her hair away from her face like a young girl’s, and she would think,
This is how he’ll see me, just me, nothing else.

However, the fantasy that slipped around in her mind, emerging and receding at her whim, was a completely different thing from actually doing it. With Jack. In real time. She was well aware that she could not simply put Jack back into her imaginary box if she felt like it once things were under way.

It was a quarter past three by the time she went out to her car, only to find that while ruminating about imaginary sex versus actual sex she’d left her keys on her desk. She was followed back into the office by a woman with a crutch and eyebrows pinched into furrows. She waved a bill at Dana like some sort of primitive weapon. “I hope you don’t expect me to
pay
this!” the woman warned.

Although Dana promised to sort it out the next day, the woman refused to let the bill out of her possession and insisted on following Dana to the copy machine, hobbling ruefully down the hallway, to ensure that it was not “switched” with a less incriminating document. By the time Dana was back in the parking lot, it was three-thirty, and she had a moment of panic. How easily she had let her three-o’clock quitting time slide another half hour. And what could happen in thirty whole minutes with children at home unsupervised? Anything. Anything could happen.

 

 

When Dana got home, Grady was shooting a basketball toward the hoop on the garage. He slammed the ball against the pavement, dodging back and forth as if to evade sniper fire. He grimaced, snatched up the ball, and heaved it upward. It ricocheted off the rim and shot back, narrowly missing his head as it flew past him. Dana saw his face turn momentarily violent in exasperation.

She glanced to the house. The kitchen curtains were pulled back, and Alder was visible behind the crosshatched windowpanes. Her chair was turned sideways so she could see out the window to her left and attend to the books on the kitchen table to her right. Grady repeated his swerving and dribbling.

“Hi, sweetie,” Dana said. “Sorry I’m late. You got home all right?”

“Huh? Yeah.” He stopped, arched, and thrust the ball at the basket again. It hit the backboard, bounced across the rim, and leaped out. “Shit!” Grady muttered.

“Hey!” warned Dana. “We don’t use that kind of—”

“Sorry.”
His back was turned as he retrieved the ball, but she knew he was rolling his eyes. It was his eye-rolling tone.

“All right. Well, come in the house and we’ll get started on your homework.”

“Don’t have any.”

“Mrs. Cataldo didn’t give any homework?” Mrs. Cataldo always gave homework, even on Fridays. And this was Tuesday.

“I did it already. At school.” He dribbled faster, then sprang up and lurched toward the basket, released the ball, and stumbled backward as his feet hit the asphalt. The ball dropped through the hoop.

“Nice one!” said Dana, waiting for his stony expression to crack open in pride. But he just grabbed at the bouncing ball and began to dribble around the driveway again.

Dana went into the house, dropped her purse, and toed off her work shoes. A sweet, buttery smell wafted toward her as she rounded the corner into the kitchen.

“Hi,” she said to Alder, whose homework covered the table. “How come you’re in here?”

Alder jiggled her hand, tapping her pencil against a notebook. “Just being visible.”

Dana filled the teakettle with water. “Want some tea? It’s getting so chilly. I need something to warm me up.” Alder shook her head, the eraser end of the pencil bobbing more slowly as her gaze darted out to the driveway. Dana sank down into a chair across from her and peered out the window, too. “Does he seem grouchy to you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Alder. “Something’s bugging him.”

“Maybe because I’m working?”

Alder shrugged. A buzz sounded from the stove, and she got up and shut it off. Striding a few steps out of the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs, she called, “Morgan! They’re done!” Then she gathered up her schoolwork and retreated to her room.

The girls skittered into the kitchen, simultaneously greeting Dana and jostling each other for oven mitts. Dana chatted with them as they slid the oatmeal cookies onto baking racks. Each girl took one, tossing the steaming gems back and forth between their hands to avoid being burned. When Dana called out the window for Grady to come in and have one, he said he had to practice more. She made a mental note to check in with him at bedtime and see if she could get to the bottom of his sour mood.

As she went up to her room to change out of her work clothes, Dana reflected that she’d been wrong to be so worried. No tragedy had struck—at least nothing more serious than a few missed baskets. Tomorrow was Wednesday, and she’d be at work until eight o’clock. Morgan would go to Kimmi’s, and Amy Koljian had agreed to have Grady over to play with Timmy. Barring the unforeseen snafu, everything would work out just fine.

“
T
ELL ME ABOUT YOUR DATE!” POLLY COMMANDED as she and Dana strode down the street, thankful to get their walk in before the granite-gray cloud cover burst. Dana told her everything, including the slightly embarrassing end of the evening. Then she recounted the breakfast she’d just returned from, how the waitress had tried to flirt with Jack and he’d ignored it, and round two of the kissing session that had occurred in her driveway in broad daylight.

“Well, he’s an idiot if he thinks he can get in your pants that easy. I don’t care how good of a kisser he is. I mean, come on, where does he think you live—the Playboy Mansion?”

Dana put two fingers up behind her head and said breathily, “Hi, I’m Fluffy!”

They lapsed into a fit of giggles and had to slow down, Polly clutching Dana’s arm and choking out, “If you make me wet my new yoga pants, you’re gonna wash them!”

Once they picked up speed again, Polly said, “No, really. Are you gonna sleep with this guy?”

“I don’t know!” Dana groaned. “I like him, and I’m attracted to him, and I certainly don’t want to sleep alone for the rest of my life. But, God, I’m just so
nervous
!”

“Yeah, and what if he turns creepy, like he wants to do it to the tune of the UConn fight song or something?” Polly started to warble,
“UConn Husky, symbol of might to the foe . . .”

“Oh, thanks! Just what I needed—more things to freak out about!”

“You’ll be fine,” said Polly. “And it could turn out unbelievably great. Maybe this guy realizes how lucky he is and wants to treat you like a princess. You’re a catch, Dana. Don’t forget that.
You
are the catch.”

 

 

“We all caught up for the moment?” Tony asked her that afternoon, resting a hand on the back of her desk chair as he peered at her computer screen.

“Yeah, you know you have this little dead spot in your schedule where nothing seems to be happening.” Dana tapped the top of her pen against the screen. “Do you want me to adjust that when I make new appointments?”

“God no!” He chuckled. “That’s the buffer zone. Usually I’m making up for an appointment that went over or taking someone who shows up early. But every once in a while . . .” He closed his eyes and gave a little snore, “I get a nap! Just give a shout when the next appointment shows.”

She thought he was joking, but later when she nudged open his door, he was sitting in the big upholstered chair, head resting against the seat back. His face did not have that slack, recently expired look that people often have when they sleep sitting up, and Dana thought he might be meditating. But when she whispered his name, he didn’t stir. “Tony,” she called more insistently. Again nothing. She crossed the room and laid her hand on his arm. His eyelids fluttered open, and he smiled up at her as if he were waking from the closing scene of a wonderful dream.

“Sorry,” she whispered, and left him to collect himself before his next patient.

As she drove out of the office parking lot that night, she wondered what he’d been smiling about, what vision could have caused such a contented look. And she wondered if they’d ever be close enough friends someday that she might be able to ask him.

 

 

Amy Koljian greeted Dana at the door when she arrived to pick up Grady. “They’re watching TV,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not.” Dana gave a grateful smile. She didn’t care if his brain had turned to applesauce as he watched commercials for child-size battle gear and nutritionally vacant microwave snacks. He’d been supervised by an adult. He was safe.

“They had a hard time agreeing on what to do,” Amy explained with a regretful sigh. “They just wore me out with the bickering, so I caved.”

Bickering? Grady didn’t bicker with his friends. “I’m sorry,” said Dana, surprised. “I hope Grady wasn’t being difficult.”

Amy shrugged and gave her head a little shake that said,
Who knows?
—but without actually indicating that Grady
wasn’t
being difficult. She inhaled dramatically as if to comment, thought better of it, and exhaled. Then she took another quick breath. “Well, I just wondered if Grady might be put off by Timmy’s success. You know, at football. Coach Ro kind of favors him.”

This annoyed Dana on two fronts: Jack was perfectly fair with the boys, and Grady might not be the best player on the team, but he certainly contributed. “Oh, I don’t think Jack particularly favors anyone. Quarterbacking is a high-profile position.” She added quickly, “And Timmy’s great at it.”

“Jack?” said Amy. “Is that his first name? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”

Dana could have kicked herself. “It’s on the team Web site,” she said, but it had taken her an extra second to respond, and she was sure that in that time Amy had begun constructing her own idea of how Dana had gotten so familiar with the coach’s personal details. “I’ll just go round up Grady,” she said, and moved toward the family room, from which a televised child’s voice commanded,
“Try it! It’s awesome!”

They thanked Amy—Dana profusely, Grady tepidly—and went to pick up Morgan. In the car she asked him about the play date. Her questions degenerated from open to cross-examining the more he evaded her. When they pulled into the Kinnears’ driveway, she turned to look at him. “Grady, I know you said that everything’s fine when we talked last night, but it doesn’t seem fine. And if you don’t want to talk about it, I can’t make you, but I can’t have you behaving badly at other people’s houses, okay?” He shrugged and looked away. She hoped that whatever it was, it would pass quickly and without further reason to defend him to the likes of that superior Amy Koljian.

Dana got out of the car and went up to the house to retrieve Morgan. After they had said their good-byes and stepped out onto the Kinnears’ front porch, Nora opened the door again and murmured a strangely furtive,
“Dana.”
When Dana turned, she saw the pinching tension around Nora’s eyes. “Let’s go for that glass of wine tonight.”

Dana was torn. She felt sympathy for Nora, who seemed to have some hidden sadness, despite all her professional, financial, and social success. And it was flattering—Nora could ask anyone, and the answer would be yes, and not necessarily for the right reasons. There were plenty who would have exulted in the unhappiness of the popular girl. Maybe that was why Nora wanted her, Dana supposed, because she could be trusted. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t seen the kids all day. How about tomorrow night?”

They made a plan to meet at Keeney’s Lakeside Tavern at nine o’clock the next evening, and Nora seemed grateful. “Indebted” was the word she used, and it reverberated in Dana’s mind as she drove home.