Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 02 - Spring Moon (31 page)

I looked around at their faces. They were smiling back. It didn’t look like a trick to separate me from my children. Ed would never participate in anything like that.

“You’ll bring them soon?” I said.

“Call us when you’ve had a rest,” said Nancy. “We can take them back to our place for a swim.”

Meli and Wiki chimed in that they’d always wanted to swim in the pool there. I folded. I whispered, “I love you” in Meggie and Chance’s ears.

Jon waited for me to buckle up. I looked back at them sitting in the shelter.

“You okay leaving them like that?” I asked.

“I’m okay having some time alone with you,” he said.

“I haven’t changed my mind. I’m taking the kids with me to California.”

“I have.”

“You ready for a divorce?” I asked.

He looked over at me.

“Don’t play with us, H. I’m going with you.”

“Who’s going to run the restaurants?”

“The restaurants will be fine. We worked it out in the meeting this morning. It’s done.”

“I don’t want you to come.”

“I’ll be there anyway.”

“I already made our reservations.”

“It’s done.”

“What do you mean,
it’s done
? What is it with you?”

“You need to decide who you want on the flight with us, Nancy or Ed. They couldn’t get another seat.”

“I figured something was up the way Ed was looking at me. I don’t want to go around this block again. I’m exhausted with it. Now she’s showing up in person. It’s only going to get worse after the kids are married. Why don’t you just let us go on our own?”

“Because you need me there, and I need to be there.”

“We’ll be fine. My whole family is there. Anna will have Durable Power of Attorney for me.”

“Do what you want about that. I’m going to be there.”

We drove a few miles.

“Glen’s girlfriend is pregnant,” I said.

“I heard. I was going to tell you.”

“You don’t have to tell me anymore. It’s none of my business. I don’t even know those people.”

I was looking out the window.

“Will you take me to where I went over the cliff?”

He found a wide space and made the turn to get us going back the other way. It was daylight so didn’t take quite as long to get there as it had that night. I was confused when he drove past Lihue and toward Kapa’a.

“You passed Walmart,” I said.

“You went off just below Lydgate.”

“I did? I turned the wrong way?”

“If you’d turned for home you wouldn’t have been driving along a cliff.”

We drove on a ways.

“There’s nowhere to pull over,” he said.

“Just stop for a second, I’ll jump out.”

He looked at me like he wouldn’t do that.

“My god, Jon. Let me out!”

He did. Then drove off toward Kapa’a leaving me alone at the guardrail. It was still smashed up with flecks of red paint where my car had hit it. The rock face looked back, immutable, one of the few things about that night that was. How strange to be completely wrong about something as basic as which way I had been traveling. My right-handedness felt confused.

I walked along the rail and leaned over at the spot where the dents stopped. Where my car had gone airborne. I couldn’t see a tree. I thought my gecko friends might come out to say hello but nothing moved except a few rocks that were loosened by my feet as I shuffled along. They shot into space when they hit the edge of cliff. I could hear waves hitting the rocks below, but I couldn’t see them. How had I ended up in a tree? I couldn’t believe a dog had had the courage to climb down after me. One misstep and she’d have been lost. I hadn’t contacted the vet to thank him.

Jon pulled up and I climbed in.

“I want to stop at the tourist helicopter place,” I said.

He drove back to the airport by Salt Pond and I went into the office. They made some calls and gave me the name and number of the SAR vet. I got back in the car and called.

“Blake,” said a man.

“Is this Mark Blake?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“This is Hannah Spring. Your dog saved my life.”

“Spring?” he asked.

“Hannah Spring. My car went over the cliff.”

“I thought your name was Moon.”

“My husband is Jon Moon.”

“Yes, ma’am. I met Jon Moon.”

“What’s your dog’s name?”

“Belle Starr.”

“May I meet her?”

“She’s a war dog.”

“I’m good with dogs.”

He agreed to let me come by right then. I read his directions to Jon until we pulled up in front of a small house surrounded by a white picket fence that needed a coat of paint.

“Are you okay with this?” I asked. “You need to get back to work?”

“I’m okay,” said Jon.

He stayed in the car while I walked to the gate and called hello. Mark and Belle came out. She sat. Her tail thumped.

“Hi Belle Starr,” I said.

She looked at me with deep brown eyes.

“May I pet her?” I asked.           

“Just offer your hand, open,” said Mark. “She knows you. You can call her Belle.”

I put my hand over.

“Thank you, Belle. You saved my life so I can raise my pups.”

She stood up, then jumped up with her paws on my shoulder and licked my lips. I stroked the side of her face with mine.

“She’s beautiful,” I said. “How is she with kids?”

“Good. Never took one down strapped up with a bomb.”

“Would you like to bring her over for dinner? I’d like my children to meet her.”

“That’s friendly of you, but we were just doing our job.”

“I know. I’d like it.”

He studied my face.

“Yes, Ma’am. That would be fine.”

“How about tomorrow night? Six?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Six is fine,” said Mark.

“Please call me Hannah. My children are Meggie and Chance.”

I gave him our address and got back in the car. Belle Starr watched us drive away. I could smell her saliva on my upper lip. I didn’t ask Jon what he thought because it didn’t matter.

We got home to an empty house. I dumped my big purse out on the counter and started to transfer things to my new wallet and purse.

“Why don’t you take a nap while it’s quiet,” said Jon.

“I want to do this,” I said.

“Hannah, get some rest.”

“I’m sick of resting.”

He went in to lie down. The new purse had a soft leather smell. I put the plastic wallet in the bag for the thrift store that I kept by the kitchen door. My heart turned to Sandy in her uniform and raccoon eyes, living under fluorescent lights and tyranny. I’d been wrong about the car chase, maybe I was wrong about her father. Maybe he was a saint.

I started to read but got distracted by my mangled finger. Mark Blake had scars on his face. Not bad, but not fixed like mine would be. I wondered if he had them under his clothes too.

I thought about being scarred for life, always seeing it. They’d told me I might have pain in the finger for a long time. They hoped the nerves would finally get tired of reminding me. They could smooth over the finger, but they couldn’t do anything about the deep scarring. It would never be the same. I ran my finger over the chewed up surface. There was still a dent where it had been dug out to the bone under my wedding band.

Margaret once said that people never get over affairs because the scars cover the tenderness. That’s what scars are for, to protect the painful spots so we can go on. If we recovered somehow, if I wore a wedding ring again, it would cover the scar of our marital fumble. I wondered if it would always press on the pain. It might have been better to lose it. To end it fast.

I fell asleep and woke up hours later. The light was off and I was covered with a blanket. Jon was in the living room reading under a single light. The rest of the house was dark and quiet. I started crying. I buried my head in the pillows and cried. Jon came out, sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed my back. He didn’t say anything. I kept on crying, long past the time when I thought I’d be out of tears. I finally fell back to sleep.

I rolled over in the middle of the night; Jon was holding me in his sleep.

“Wake up, Jon. Where are the kids?”

“With Ed and Nancy. They’re okay. Meli and Wiki are there. Go back to sleep.”

“What about formula?”

“It’s covered.”

I put my head down. He started to put his arms around me again but changed his mind.

“Did you call her Celie?”

“No. Glen did. Go to sleep.”

“It would have been easier if I’d died.”

I opened my eyes at dawn to Jon looking at the ceiling.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“You,” he said. “It worries me that you said that about dying. Anyone else and I’d just blow it off as drama bullshit.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Nothing would ever be okay again if you’d died.”

“I’m thinking about not having the surgery. Did you notice Mark’s scars? He wakes up to those in the mirror every day. He lives with it.”

“He doesn’t seem to be living with it well. Probably nothing they could do about them. Your finger can be fixed so it’s hardly noticeable.”

“It could just be a part of my life story,” I said.

He looked at me.

“Every time I look at it, it reminds me that I should have handled the situation better,” he said.

“You won’t see it often,” I said. “You can’t help how you feel about her. Jane says we do the best we can.”

“That’s not the best I can do.”

“You’re so hard on yourself. We need to move forward.”

“You really don’t understand. I have no interest in Celeste. I never did. It was a stupid thing that had to do with competing with Glen. She got used.”

“You said she isn’t smart.”

“She’s not, but that wasn’t it. She thought it was more and I took advantage of it. She told her family she was pregnant before she told me. They were happy she had done so well. It just kept going.”

“She cheated on you.”

“I know, Hannah. I was there.”

“So you still feel guilty about it? Is that what this is all about?” I asked. “You’re not helping her by letting her still think it was more. You did the best you could.”

“I get it, Hannah. I tried to keep up appearances for Chana’s sake. I didn’t want her to know she was an accident.”

“She knows that, and she knows her mom cheated on you. You act like she’s five.”

“She doesn’t know I never loved her mother.”

“I’m sorry it was that way for you, for all of you, but at this point I care about us. You’re not interested in me. I know you tried. It was honorable and I’ll always appreciate that. I know you loved me. That our children came from love. But I don’t want this. I want a whole life. We both deserve that.”

“I don’t intend to let you go without a fight.”

“This life we have now is going to be harder than no relationship. I still love you, but we both know it’s going to drain away to empty. I’ll always be waiting for you to have an affair. To walk out when I’m too tired to be happy again.”

“You’re going to have to be the one who walks away,” he said.

“I’m a master at walking away,” I said.

He looked at me.

“I need time, Hannah,” he said.           

I left him and went in the water at sunrise. It felt like it should be charged with meaning, but it was just sunrise. He was gone when I got back. I was showered and having breakfast before I noticed a package on the kitchen counter. It was a book of Chinese proverbs from Jimmy. There was a red silk drawstring sack of Tao stones to choose a daily meditation. The message said:
A way to pray?
It was signed with his chop.

I ignored the instruction to calm my mind first, and picked two stones like they were fortune cookies.

Question: So Jon and his Celeste guilt. Do I leave him? Okay, so I wasn’t completely clear about that. I picked two stones: Water and Fire. I looked up the proverb:  Stay still in a moment of rage; escape a hundred days of sorrow.

Oh brother. More advice too late. Blah blah blah, to achieve balance, don’t do anything that can’t be undone. It sounded like my mother warning me to stay away from Stroud.

I decided the best I could do for the time being was to try not being mad at Jon. I had a hard time staying mad at him anyway. I thought we might be the kind of people who ended up being friends after we were divorced. Asp would say I’m a nitwit about men. She wasn’t friends with her ex-husbands. 

Jon called. “Nancy and Ed would like to keep the kids today if that’s okay with you. They’re fine.”

“Maybe it’s good for them to be out of our pressure cooker for a while. It broke my heart that Meggie overheard me the other night.”

“She didn’t understand,” he said. “I said we’d run over later, take a swim with them.”

“I’ll go,” I said.

“They have your car. Everyone is coming for dinner,” he said. “You invited Mark. Jimmy and Keith are on.”

“I forgot about inviting Mark,” I said. “Where did this package come from?”

“It was on the back steps. I’ll be home after lunch to help you set up. We can pick up the food on the way home.”

“All right,” I said.

What else was I going to say? Cancel dinner, I’m leaving tonight?

He came home, hauled out our plastic tables from CostCo and set them up end-to-end. I padded them with a sheet and covered them with a long cloth and set places. He set up a bar and gathered chairs from around the house. I made small arrangements from the few flowers Chop couldn’t reach, and scattered tea lights down the center of the table. We were a good team and done in less than an hour.

I went into the bedroom to change into my suit. He came in behind me and started to help like he had been doing.

“Please don’t do that,” I said. “I’m humiliated enough as it is.”

I took my clothes in the bathroom to change, and then we headed over to their hotel.

Nancy was sitting on the steps in the shallow end holding Chance. He was in a new flowered hat and sunglasses, kicking his legs and laughing his air in only laugh. Nancy was telling him he was soooo big! Ed was catching Meggie over and over while she jumped into the shallow end. Meli and Wiki were posed suggestively, drinking iced tea with flower petals, pretending to be
Cosmo
guests while ignoring the real guests who were taking care of their charges.