Monsoon Season (9 page)

When Riley was in high school, she told her mother everything. Carol knew about every crush she had on a boy, every fight she had with a friend. She’d give the play-by-play with her legs dangling from a kitchen stool, elbows on the table, as Carol stirred the spaghetti sauce on the stove.

Like any teenager, Riley would argue about curfew or whether she could get her ears pierced. She liked to have her say, but in the end, she always resigned herself to whatever her mother decided. Her only real rebellion had been about going to church every Sunday, and that had been Mark’s territory. Carol was the one Riley confided in. She let her mother read the poems she wrote; so full of angst and adolescent passion. Riley was a virgin when she graduated high school. She had never been in love. She’d only ever been to one party where there had been alcohol present, and she’d had soda. Carol knew a lot of parents would say she was being naïve, but Riley didn’t lie to her. They talked about everything. Carol could trust her.

Once she’d gone away to college, Riley only called home when she needed money. She sat, tight-lipped, in the passenger seat on the two-hour drive home for school breaks. She answered questions with as little detail as possible. Sometimes she just huffed, rolled her eyes, shrugged as an answer. She volunteered nothing.

Carol felt like she’d lost her best friend. Not just ‘like’. She had.

Carol’s friends told her it was normal. They all had kids who had hated them since they were twelve. One friend gave her the number for her therapist. Carol made an appointment in the middle of the week and never told Mark anything about it. The therapist said this was all just part of Riley’s growing up and separating herself from her mother. It was healthy, she said. She kept using the word ‘autonomy’. She was in her thirties. She had small, perky breasts and her hair curved under her chin, just so. She had an eight-by-ten family portrait on her desk, the kind they took at Sears. Her son looked about four. What did she know about it? Nothing.

Carol left her clothes in a pile at the side of the bed, pulled a nightgown over her head. Mark was reading, oblivious to her fleeting nakedness. Twenty-five years of marriage, two kids. It was different than she had imagined it would be. Carol had been only twenty-one that first year, throwing things and slamming doors when he’d said the wrong thing. They didn’t fight like that any more. He still said the wrong thing sometimes. She grumbled, went for a drive, got over it. Carol thought by now she’d have taught him that tulips were her favourite flower, how to remember anniversaries. Instead, somehow, she had learned to be satisfied with grocery-store carnations, and never to be subtle when dropping hints.

Carol slid her legs under the covers. ‘Are you all packed?’ she asked, glancing to her right.

Mark grunted.

Carol wasn’t sure if it was a ‘yes’ grunt or a ‘no’ grunt. ‘I’m worried about her.’

‘Riley?’

She sighed. Who else? ‘Yes, Riley. I feel bad leaving her right now.’

Mark closed his book and put it on the nightstand. ‘Carol, she’s a grown-up now. Isn’t she?’

She hated when he said her name. He only used it when he was exasperated with her. ‘She just seems really upset about the break-up.’

He scratched his head. His black hair was streaked with silver. His greying made him distinguished because he was a man. Hers was covered with Loving Care. ‘Well, that’s what people do, right? They break up. They get upset. They survive.’

‘Well, your concern is impressive.’ Carol rolled over and turned out her light.

‘What are we supposed to do? We can’t exactly cancel our trip at this point. She wouldn’t want us to anyway. She’d hate that.’

‘I guess.’

‘Is this her first big break-up?’ Mark asked, yawning, turning out his own light.

Truth was, Carol didn’t know. How would she?

‘Well, don’t worry so much, babe. She’s tough.’ He kissed her on the cheek and settled into his pillow.

He was right. Riley was tough. She must have got that from him. As the years passed, they seemed more and more alike. Riley had left for college with three suitcases, a trash can full of CDs, a lamp. Wide-eyed and chatty. A younger version of her mother. She’d come home with her eyes full of secret stories, her mouth closed. A younger version of him.

That first year, Riley had decided to spend her spring break with her college roommate and her family. They had a cottage on the Cape. How could Carol compete with that? The week was cool for April and Carol took an odd pleasure in knowing that it would be even colder on the coast.

Instead of listening to Riley gush about her new life, she’d sat on a plaid couch in the basement of a church. Mark had been beside her, holding her hand and pretending to understand why they were there.

The truth was, he’d found Carol crying in the bathroom again. It was how she started her morning. She sat on the lid of the toilet and cried at her reflection in the mirror. Seeing the sadness in her face was like watching someone cry on television. The longer she watched, the harder she cried.

When Mark asked her why, Carol couldn’t tell him. She didn’t know. He’d suggested she talk to someone, but she’d refused to go alone. So here they were, trying to fix her.

Father Joe sat behind a desk. All the priests went by their first names, these days. Decades earlier, Mark and Carol had sat together in Father Flannery’s office, in another church basement not very different from this one.

Father Flannery had wanted to be sure that they were taking things seriously. He wanted them to make a commitment to the Church, to raising their children in the Catholic faith. They’d nodded, and Mark had said, ‘Yes, sir, yes, Father,’ and cleared his throat.

Father Joe wore a cranberry cardigan. He was probably in his thirties but was balding prematurely. He had fashionable eyeglasses and rubbed his chin when he was thinking.

Father Joe said it was perfectly natural for couples to experience stress during this time, the ‘empty nest’. Mark nodded. Father Joe said it would be a good thing for them to feel okay with that stress, allow it to exist, acknowledge it. Don’t feel embarrassed or ashamed about it.

Carol looked at the wooden crucifix above his head and thought about shame.

Father Joe leaned forward, elbows on his desk, hands clasped together. Carol thought he was going to start praying over them. Instead he spoke. ‘Perhaps you need to change your perspective a bit,’ he said. ‘This is an excellent time for the two of you to reconnect, reaffirm your commitment to each other. You’re entering a new stage in your relationship. You need to get to know each other again, not just as parents, but as individuals, lovers, friends.’

Father Joe recommended that they try an exercise. Later that night, when they were alone, Mark and Carol should gaze into each other’s eyes for thirty seconds. They should resist the urge to look away. It would feel strange at first, he said, but eventually it would come to feel better. It would promote intimacy.

They tried it that first night. They sat across from each other on their couch at home. Carol sat with her feet underneath her and Mark sat beside her with his head turned. Mark had hazel eyes. They were green, really, with gold-brown stripes. The white part of his eyeballs was tinted blue like skimmed milk. Carol felt her nose twitch. She counted one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand all the way up to ten-one-thousand and thought it must be over soon. She blinked. Mark’s watch beeped to signal the end of the thirty seconds. He looked down at it and back at her. They shrugged at each other.

It got harder and harder to find those thirty seconds. Carol wondered if Father Joe had ever done such an exercise, this middle-aged man who’d never been married. What did he know about intimacy?

About a week after they’d met with Father Joe, Mark brought Gracie home. Carol pretended to be mad at first. She didn’t like surprises. But it wasn’t Gracie’s fault. She was a helpless little ball of fur and she needed someone. She liked to sleep in Carol’s lap. She’d spend hours there, yelping in her sleep, making little suckling motions with her mouth, her eyelids flickering. Carol’s legs would fall asleep. She’d miss phone calls, not wanting to wake her.

When Mark came home from work, Gracie would dance with uncontained excitement. He’d chuckle; Carol could tell he got a kick out of it. On weekends, they’d take Gracie to the park or the pet store. At dinner they’d talk about her training. Carol would tell him the funny things she’d done that day.

Their orbits were realigned with Gracie at the centre.

The pond is a deep purple at night. I stand on the screen porch squinting into the darkness. Gracie’s figure is only slightly blacker than the blackness as I try to see the shape of her body. Is she ready to come in? Is she still doing her business? I can hear her rustling in the grass and I wait, the straining of my eyes useless.

The days have been so hot lately and even the nights have been muggy, but tonight there’s a chill in the air. I feel as if I could just slip outside and down the stairs and simply walk into the cool water. I wouldn’t have to go very far before it would be over my head and then my poor swimming would do the rest. I could close my eyes and let the water fill my mouth. It wouldn’t even take much of a decision. They might think it was an accident. Well, maybe not, if I was fully dressed, but perhaps they could if they wanted to. A lot of things are easy to believe when you want to.

Suddenly Gracie is bounding up the stairs to me and I open the screen door to let her in. The plastic roller that connects her leash to the line of the run makes a
zzzzz
above her head as she approaches. She sits as I lean against the screen and unhook her collar. The wide mesh rectangle was once pulled taut but it has begun to billow out and I remind myself I could push through it one of these days and then my mother would have a fit.

When we get to the kitchen, I pull a treat from the cookie jar and throw it into her drooling mouth. She catches it with a snap and I scratch the top of her head.

‘One hour left till B-E-D, kiddo.’ I have to spell it out or she’ll run into her crate right now. ‘So what do you want to do?’

I’ve been talking to her a lot more now that my parents are away. It feels like the two of us are locked in a bubble containing this house and the pond and nothing else. We’re trapped in time, the present moment all that exists.

I ask her how she feels about the wardrobe of the woman who anchors the midday news. ‘Are those shoulder pads?’ I ask her.

She cocks her head to one side, crinkling her eyebrows into a pair of question marks.

‘What do you want, Lassie?’ I ask her.

She doesn’t answer. I tell her that if it were up to her, Timmy would stay in the well. I decide we’re having a staring contest. She blinks. I win. She keeps staring.

Jack arrived on a Saturday at midnight. He’d driven up from New York where he was in graduate school. I’d sent him an email on Friday, finally confessing the whole story with Ben, telling him everything I couldn’t bear to say out loud: from broken dishes to missed periods. Everything.

Jack and I had been best friends since the second grade when he’d punched Lindsay Winters for pushing me off my swing. We’d spent the majority of our childhood up a tree in my back yard pretending to be in
The Swiss Family Robinson
. Our parents used to think we’d get married when we grew up. Neither of us ever thought that. We smoked pot together for the first time right before we went off to separate colleges. We stayed in touch on opposite coasts, emailing and running up crazy phone bills between summers. Jack was the first person I talked to when I lost my virginity in my freshman year of college. A few days later, I got a package from him in the mail. He’d sent me the book
Sex For Dummies
, along with a note. He’d printed neatly in blue ink on a yellow Post-it: ‘Well, if you’re gonna do it, make sure you’re doing it right.’ Jack knew everything there was to know about me. This was the first time I’d kept something from him since we were kids.

He came through the door without knocking. I’d heard his car, and was walking down the hallway. He left his jacket and backpack in a pile on the floor and met me with a hug. He squeezed the oxygen right out of me. Suffocation had never felt so good.

‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this?’ he asked, sitting next to me on the couch in the living room. Looking into his face, I saw him less objectively than I saw most people. I saw his eight-year-old chubbiness, long since shed. I saw his thirteen-year-old buzz cut and the later blond shag. I saw the too-round glasses that had been replaced with contacts. I saw every facial expression he was capable of.

‘Well, if I had told you, I probably wouldn’t have been able to justify staying with him,’ I said. ‘I loved him.’

‘Do you still?’

I was quiet for a moment, pretending to think. ‘I don’t know.’ I was still hoping Jack might help me find a way to put it all back together. He was good with grey areas: he’d see what I saw. He’d find me a loophole so I could go back.

He nodded. ‘You know that sounds crazy, right?’

I sighed. There would be no loopholes from Jack.

‘You know I want to have him killed?’

‘Yeah.’ I smiled in spite of myself. ‘I know.’

‘It’ll just take some time,’ he said, reaching for my hand. ‘Eventually you’ll want to have him killed too and then you’ll be my sane Riley again.’

I leaned my head against his shoulder. ‘I’m just so tired.’

‘I know.’ He squeezed my hand and kissed the top of my head.

‘I have an appointment at a clinic on Monday.’

‘Are you sure that’s what you want to do?’

‘Yeah. I mean, can you imagine me as a mother?’

‘Well, that’s not really important. The question is, can you?’

It had been less than a week since the test had confirmed my fear. Every time I felt the slightest gurgle in my stomach, I wondered,
Is that it?
But, no, it was too early. I’d always had an overactive imagination. I just needed to shut off my brain.

‘Laura’s pregnant again,’ I said.

‘Wow. How old is Isabel?’