One More Time (13 page)

Matt felt like ten miles of rough road.

Maybe twenty.

Maybe a gravel road with potholes big enough to swallow a small truck.

He rubbed his face, knowing he’d trade his soul for a mint candy or even a cough drop, knowing too that there was no chance of anyone making him that offer anytime soon. He took a deep breath and let the silence soak into his skin. He could hear crickets and bullfrogs and not much else. The air was lush here, a little damp and cool but filled with the scent of plants.

He rubbed the leaf of whatever was drooping over the railing and smelled its pungency. It was minty almost, which would do. He rubbed it between his fingers and beneath his nose, was reminded of the shampoo Leslie used. He wondered what she was thinking or doing, and easily imagined her sleeping, her long dark hair strewn across the white pillowcase like the pennant of a medieval knight.

That made him smile.

He didn’t think anyone would see him here in this shadowed corner, and if they did, well, there wasn’t much more anyone could take from him. Matt Coxwell loosened his tie, folded his arms across his chest, hunkered down and went to sleep.

* * *

Runt dunt dada dadala dunt da.

The tinkle of circus music fills Leslie’s dream, then the barker starts his spiel. “Come on down to the Big Top. Step right this way...”

Leslie fights the recurring dream, but knows she has already lost. There she is, up on the tightrope. Here’s her father, insisting that she needs to carry something to make her feat “look good.”

She still expects a pink parasol, even after all the years she’s had this dream. She’s still shocked at the box he gives her.

This time she sees that it says
Good Daughter
on one side. Leslie accepts the burden without complaint, good daughter that she is, but is surprised to find the box as heavy as it is.

Then the dream takes a new twist, each box turned so that she can read the text on their sides. Previously, she only saw the colors of their wrapping paper and bows.

The next one, the red one, is
Academic Excellence.
Huh. It’s followed by
University Scholarship
.

Well-groomed.

Polite.

Respectful of Elders.

Thoughtful of Others.

The boxes add up quickly into a towering pile.

At the same time, Leslie is growing with alarming speed. The wire slips away from her gaze as she grows. Her arms become longer and better able to bear more boxes.

Dutiful Spouse.

Organized Housewife.

Passionate Partner.
Did her father really add that one?

Attentive Mother.

Patient Griselda.

Conscientious Worker, Team Player, Responsible Homeowner, Family Adjudicator, Bill Payer, Mortgage Negotiator, Quartermaster, Cleaning Lady, Ms. Reliable in a Crisis.

Then come more boxes with just adjectives on them:
Nice, Dependable, Discrete, Ladylike.
Leslie loses track of them. Finally, the last little box, the one that always threatens to fall, a little glittering gold confection.

Labeled
Success
.

“Do it for all of us,” her father whispers, reminding her with painful vigor of the stories of his own past, of his lack of opportunities, of her splendid good fortune, of the sacrifices he made to make it possible for her to bring home—to bring to him—the proverbial brass ring.

“Go on,” he urges, eyes shining with hope. “You can do it.”

Leslie has to do it.

And maybe she can. The pile of boxes is precariously balanced and it obscures her vision. Would her father really stack the odds against her?

She takes three steps, feeling the location of the wire with her toe before settling her weight upon that foot, then sees suddenly that the ground beneath her is no longer a mere fifteen feet away.

It has dropped into an abyss of such overwhelming darkness that Leslie can’t see the bottom, though her tightrope spans it.

Worse, someone has smeared the tightrope with Vaseline.

A wind rises from the canyon, a hot wind that leaves Leslie no doubt of this canyon’s awesome depth, a hot wind that ruffles her tutu and makes the wire vibrate.

Maybe it’s actually Hell down there. Maybe that’s what happens to people who don’t fulfill expectations. She’s not sure she wants to find out.

Leslie looks back and her father waves encouragement from his safe stance at the lip of the chasm. She trembles. She looks down again and this time sees fires light far, far below her.

The fires are in rows, she thinks at first, then sees that they are the outlines of letters, burning orange against the blackness.

The letters spell “FAILURE”.

So, that’s what happens when you fall. These letters are the truth of Dante’s circles of hell, and they are waiting for Leslie, their flames hot and hungry.

She squares her shoulders, then takes a step. The boxes jiggle, their weight shifting, but then they settle in place. Leslie takes another step, cautiously feeling her way along the tightrope, carefully settling her weight.

And that’s when she sees the tiny box perched on the top, the precious little gold one, start to slip.

Oh no...

Leslie awakened in a cold sweat, breathing hard. She flicked on the light on the nightstand and shuddered to her toes. It was 2:39 AM and her nightmare was so vivid that she might still have been trapped in it. She thought she could still smell the fires.

She sniffed, but nothing was really burning. Leslie rubbed her eyes and hoped she hadn’t cried out, but the house was still silent

Certainly, no one rushed to console her.

Maybe she
should
have cried out. Leslie wrapped her arms around herself and shook silently, willing her heart to slow as she considered the dream while it was still clear in her thoughts.

There was truth in its metaphor, that’s for sure.

She was on the tightrope and had been on it long enough to know that once you get on the tightrope, you run out of choices. Suddenly everyone around you is commenting on how well you walk the line, how easily you carry burdens across that great divide. They express admiration of how organized you are.

Organized
. How Leslie hated that word.

Then they hand off their loads to you. You must really like it on the tightrope if you get on there, if you can walk it with ease—that seems to be the logic.

But what if you hate it? What if you just want to chuck all that crap down, lose all those expectations forever? What if you want to tell everyone to learn to do something for themselves.

What if you don’t want to be the one obliged to make the money and do the budget and pay the bills? What if you don’t want to mark the papers and give the lectures and prepare the reports and sit through the interminable staff meetings and be the living proof that Dinkelmann’s new scheme can work?

What if you want to do something else?

What if you don’t even know what you want?

Well, if there are no other volunteers, you lose. That had been Leslie’s experience. You keep walking that tightrope because you have responsibilities and a sense of obligation to fulfill them—no, a burden of obligation. It’s duty that gets you up there every morning, and it’s sheer survival instinct that keeps you watching your footing.

On your toes, so to speak.

But if your heart isn’t in it, then every day out there, your footing feels a little more tenuous, every night that you go without sex or intelligent conversation or just anyone noticing a what this is costing you, makes the great chasm below look pretty damn appealing.

Leslie wasn’t suicidal, but she could admit—in the darkness of her bedroom in the solitude of the night—that there had been days when she had thought about not taking the turn that would take her home, or the one that will deliver her safely into the arms of her alma mater. There had been days that she wanted to just drive, maybe all the way to Nevada to play the slots.

Why not?

But that was impossible. Leslie was the responsible one, the delivery team for parental ambitions, the person who saved the day and could be relied upon. She was Kirk’s Ms. Spock—not Dr. Spock because she’d never known nearly that much about kids, and not Mr. Spock because she’d almost failed science—the dispassionate one, the one who never slipped up on the logic front.

It was the only trick she knew.

But she didn’t know if it was a good one anymore, much less one worth knowing. To tell the truth, the reward ratio was looking a bit skewed. Without Matt, without the sense that she was making sacrifices to keep him in her life, it all seemed pretty thin.

She’d thought she’d been letting him live his dream, or find what he wanted to do, or wait for the opportunity he wanted most—she’d thought that was what love was about—but in this dark night, Leslie was afraid she’d only been a convenient source of income for her handsome husband.

She was afraid that she had been the only one in love—desperately, achingly in love, to boot.

There was a thought to put some lift in her loafers.

Leslie turned out the light and pulled up the blankets, then stared at the ceiling until her alarm finally rang. She felt a strange, unexpected, link with Robert Coxwell, who—if the Chief was right—had been afraid to let anyone see his weakness.

And now he was dead.

Could she have saved her marriage by telling Matt the truth sooner?

Could she save it by telling him the truth now?

Would she have a chance to do so, or had his first taste of the truth been too toxic to tempt him back for more?

Leslie didn’t know, and there wasn’t much to like about that. The fact was though, that without Matt, without knowing that she’d come home and find him here, there didn’t seem to be much point in hauling herself onto the tightrope at all.

* * *

Leslie chose to arm herself for Thursday with a lime green balconet bra, trimmed in black ribbon with white polka dots, and matching bikini panties. It was a 1940s pin-up girl special that gave her rocket boobs and made her want to lean against a bomber, pretending to be Rosie the Riveter. But she’d need really red lipstick for that, and really red lipstick wasn’t part of the academic uniform.

A demure pink would have to do. She didn’t even own a really red lipstick. She rummaged through her make-up, just to be sure, but there was just a variety of pale pinks and mauves, lipsticks that were almost invisible when applied.

Hmm.

Leslie wasn’t generally a lime green with black and white polka dots kind of a woman, but this morning—the morning after Night of Troubled Sleep Number Two—called for a little extra oomph.

The bra had oomph, even if she didn’t. The only hint of her hidden defenses was an unusually pointiness to her breasts beneath her modest twin set. She decided no one would notice, shoved on a pair of loafers and opened the bedroom door to embark on her day.

Across the hall, the fruit of her womb was sleeping, sprawled across the bed, blankets knotted and nightgown spiraled around her waist. Annette’s dark hair was coiled around her shoulders and her bare bum was as ripe and smooth as a new peach.

A big peach.

Annette’s beloved fuzzy puppy was on the floor, cast off during the night as so much else would be in the next few years. Maybe even Leslie. It’s natural to hate your mother when you’re a teenager, right? Either way, it was a lot easier to love Annette unconditionally when she was asleep.

Leslie stepped quietly into the room, put the puppy back into the nook of Annette’s elbow, remembered a thousand puppy-related traumas. She readily remembered Annette as a baby, suckling at Leslie’s breast, for she had been cherubic then and was still pretty close to it now. Just bigger.

Almost grown-up.

Scary prospect. Annette was starting to look like Matt more, his genetic bonus of striking good looks shaping the ripe curve of her lips, the arch of her dark brows, the vivid green of her eyes. Matt’s sister, Philippa, had said for years that Annette would be a classic beauty, though Leslie hadn’t seen it.

Until Annette started growing up.

Leslie tapped her daughter’s shoulder with her usual crisp gesture. “Wake up, sleepyhead.” When Annette groaned and rolled over, Leslie said, “My work here is done,” as she always did, then headed to the kitchen.

There was no coffee brewing.

She was determined to not drink instant coffee again.

That was when she realized she didn’t even know how to make coffee. She hadn’t made any in eighteen years, and couldn’t remember if she’d even drunk it in B.M. (Before Matt) days. That was before the effective dawn of time, after all, so Leslie dated the events of her life B.M. and A.M.

How about A.A.M.—After After Matt?

A.M.L.—After Matt Left?

Or maybe A.M.D.H.F.H.O.T.L.—After Matt Ditched Her For His One True Love? That one seemed a bit unwieldy to be useful.

But maybe true, all the same. Leslie could admit that to herself this morning—when her moat was breached, the drawbridge shattered, and the siege engines were sending Greek fire over the walls. She knew, even if he had the grace to deny it, that Matt had married down the social ladder when he married her, way down, further down than any Coxwell had previously dared to go.

She believed he had done it because Sharan had broken his heart. Oh, he’d never said as much, just that he and Sharan were through, but why else would he save Sharan’s Christmas cards? She was the one who got away, and Leslie guessed that at some recent point, Sharan had crooked a finger to beckon Matt back to her.

And he’d gone.

Leslie wasn’t sure it was best to let herself think about this. It certainly made her feel even more crummy about the current situation than she had before. If ever there had been a morning that she needed a major dose of caffeine, this would be it.

She would not think about the Java Joint, that grubby student-run café where she and Matt had talked on their fist date, and many many times after that. Like it or not, Matt Coxwell and coffee were forever entwined in Leslie’s thoughts.

If she couldn’t have one, she would definitely have the other.