Someone Else's Love Story (18 page)

“Yeah? Well last I checked, Tink was still breathing,” I told him, irked back.

“Don’t go back over there,” he said.

But as soon as we hung up, I went.

I’d been taking care of William for more than a week, cooking healthy meals in his kitchen and making him stay flat as much as possible, so his abdomen could heal. His friend Paula took the night shift, and I do mean took. With both hands. She showed up every night but Tuesday, arriving near enough to Natty’s bedtime that it was hardly more than our paths crossing. I might have let Natty stay up later, though, if it wasn’t for the way she filled up the house, pushing me aside until I felt like an invading bug scuttling along the walls.

She’d bring a six-pack, pop open a couple, and pass one to William. She’d plop into the armchair and only then say, “Oh, did you want one?” She shut me outside the conversation, engaging William in an odd, truncated sparring or saying things soaked in so much history and reference it was almost shorthand.

I might have been jealous, if he wasn’t so completely unromantic with her. It was like watching some alternate-universe version of me and Walcott, where Walcott was the quiet one, and I was kind of an asshole. I wondered if they weren’t cousins or some other flavor of family. Paula was such an indecipherable mix of races she could theoretically be related to anyone.

That night, she showed up early.

We’d finished eating dinner but were still sitting at the table, chatting, with William at the head and Natty and me on either side of him. This was the third day he’d felt well enough to sit at the table instead of having a tray in bed. He was barefoot, wearing a T-shirt that said
E. COLI HAPPENS
, and a pair of ancient Levi’s that looked so soft I wanted to drop to my knees and rub my cheek along his thigh.

I heard her letting herself in as Natty began agitating to go see the little brown bats before it got too dark. She sauntered into the kitchen and put a six-pack down on the counter.

I told Natty, “In a minute, baby,” mostly because I didn’t want to let her run me out in the middle of an hour that was still my time.

She gave me a cool nod, then said, “Hey, Bubba, how’re you feeling?” to William.

“Twenty-six percent less dead,” William said.

I said, too loud, “There’s more salmon if you like?” She shook her head. When I added, “Can I at least get you some coffee?” she laughed outright.

“I’ll get my own drink, Susie Homemaker. Take a load off.”

She popped the cap off one of the beers and leaned against the counter, drinking and looking at me over the bottle.

Natty was out of his chair now, coming around the table to tug my sleeve and say, “It’s bat o’clock immediately, Mommy.”

But I wasn’t ready to give the room, much less William, over to Paula. “I have to get the dishes done.”

Paula said, “Why don’t you take him, William, since you have pants on, for a change.”

“Sure.” William got up, his palm pressed lightly against the place where he had been shot, as if the bullet was still there and he was holding it in.

I started to follow, but Paula said, “I think they have bat-watch covered, don’t you? You finish clearing. I’ll rinse.” Paula struck me as having the domestic instincts of a barn cat; I thought,
This is a ploy to get me alone.

But then she gave me a wide, bland smile and started running water in the sink. Not a ploy at all. She wasn’t trying to trick me. It was a clear request for a tête-à-tête, designed to run under the male radars in the room. I grabbed a couple of the dirty plates and took them over, curious enough to let her have it. We’d never been alone together, and when William was present, she’d never shown the slightest interest in talking to me.

Paula took the plates and began rinsing, but the second the front door closed, she shut the water off. She turned toward me, sharp-eyed and canny, wiping her hands dry on the dish towel to save her sleek, bitch-black suit.

“This was one thing when you were a cute little stray with a crush. But now you’re trying to get a dish in the house,” she said with no preamble. “William’s feeling a lot better, and so I think you’re done here.”

All at once I felt so awkward that I didn’t know where to put my hands. I found myself clutching them together in front of me like Natty caught sneaking a jelly bean. I made them drop down by my sides.

“Ooh! You’re spooky,” I said, “but I don’t think you get to decide that.”

“Are we going to let William decide?” She chuckled, but it was not a friendly sound.

“I guess,” I said, because I wasn’t sure where this was going.

“You think he’d pick you?” Paula asked.

For a moment I wondered what his other choice was. Then I realized that, while I’d never seen him so much as glance at her in a romantic way, she was a harder thing to read. She was pushing me, though, so I pushed back. “He still needs help. It’s not like you’re up for the job.”

I hated how defensive I sounded, but there was enough truth in it for her to incline her head and say, “Touché.”

When Natty and I first drove over to his house, a renovated Tudor in the heart of Morningside, we’d found him spaced out on pain meds, swaying and eating cold noodles directly from a carton. He was in no shape to continue the conversation I’d started at the hospital. Paula had driven him home, but then she’d left him with nothing in the fridge but milk, OJ, and a bunch of take-out Chinese food for reheating. I’d put him to bed, and Natty and I stayed. We’d come back the next day with real groceries and stayed longer.

I kept thinking someone—family, maybe, or close friends—would show up and kick me over a step, saying,
Oh thanks, Shandi, you almost perfect stranger, we’ll take it from here.
But Paula didn’t come until seven, most nights. A neighbor dropped off a coffee cake, and Geneti-Tech sent a huge crate of pears, individually wrapped like they were diamonds. I made fun of that until I bit into one and felt its perfect, crisp sweetness flood my mouth. Until Natty and I came, the house was a beautiful void: breezy sheers, glass bricks, and silence.

Paula’s head cocked and her eyes were so cold. She stepped in closer still, and she
was
spooky as all hell. I caught a whiff of what it might feel like to be some hapless deadbeat dad, about to get creamed, stuck alone on the witness stand with Paula bearing down.

“I appreciate the casseroles, okay? But you can’t have my au-tastic Dr. Ashe. I don’t care what he’s said or what it looks like. I’m telling you, he’s not available.”

I tucked my chin down, eyebrows rising. Paula was claiming him like territory, but my brain stuck on the other thing. “Your what?” I said, and then, processing it, I said, shocked, “William’s not autistic.” But I had a click in my head, like,
Oh. That slight lack of inflection. The way he looks off sideways when I talk. It isn’t the Percocet.

“On the spectrum. Whatever. He’s a grown-up, Shandi. He’s learned how to pass. Mostly,” she said, then added in a sweet nursery-rhyme singsong, “Asperger’s, autistic, a green and yellow biscuit.” Her lip curled up and her voice went from kiddy-sweet to bullets. “Try to stay on topic. Stop coming here, wearing the shit out of those cast-me-as-the-wifey sundresses. This one looks like you dug up June Cleaver and ripped it off her corpse. No one dresses like that to get help with a science-fair project, or whatever crazy bullshit you were spouting at the hospital.”

I was instantly ashamed of my own stupid vintage apron, which was unfair. I’d come to remind William of his promise to help me, but I had found him hurt and alone. There’d been no one else, and he’d gotten shot saving my life. Saving my kid’s life. So, yeah, I’d Mimmy’ed around a little, tucking blankets under his feet, greeting him with the smell of Lemon Pledge and a big-ass slice of pie when he woke up. Now it had somehow turned into a full-on Mim-vasion. But Mimmy’s life was a dress rehearsal for a show that never opened. I wasn’t her, and I didn’t want to be her, cooking and smiling and dead from the neck down.

It was true I wanted more than his help as a scientist, though. I wanted wine and kissing under bridges. I wanted his big hands buried in my hair, and I wanted to be with him in Paris. Hell, I wanted to be under him in Paris. It was only that I had no idea how to get to there from here. I’d never seduced anyone. I’d never even tried. I felt my cheeks heat up, and she nodded, like my blush was confirmation.

“So what. So I like him,” I said, hating that she had me on the defensive. “Is that so awful?”

“Yes. It’s awful,” she said, like she was explaining something obvious. She moved so she could look at me, up and down, appraising me like I was bad cattle. I was getting angry now, too. Her gaze was so intimate, it felt insulting. “You’re angling for Bridget’s place?” she asked. I’d never heard the name, but of course I knew who Bridget was. Instantly. “Please. You’re not even half a Bridget, you fetus. You’re not even Bridget Lite. How dare you try to step into her shoes.”

“It’s not like she’s using them,” I snapped without thinking, and instantly felt my flush turn into beet-red shame.

“Wow,” Paula said. “At least we know where we stand now.”

“I guess we do,” I said. I was ashamed of what I’d said in anger, yes, but I would not back down.

I’d figured Paula out now. How ironic that I’d thought of Bridget as my rival, when I saw her photograph on the news. A part of me had been relieved to find his house was not a shrine to her, as if she were the first Mrs. DeWinter. It was the opposite. No clothes, no leftover lipstick or perfume. Not even any photographs, just a bunch of square shadows on the wall where framed things had once hung.

I’d only found a hint of her yesterday when I was looking for a hand towel. I’d seen a broken rosary in the back of an otherwise empty bathroom drawer. I’d thought,
Is William Catholic?
He didn’t seem Catholic. He didn’t seem anything. I’d wondered idly, like a girl testing out last names in her notebook, if I’d have to convert. It would upset my parents, but at least it would upset both of them equally. Dad would feel I’d chosen a form of Christianity, and Mimmy would be equally certain that I hadn’t.

When I’d pulled the rosary out and saw its pale coral beads, the delicate silver crucifix, I realized it was too feminine for William. I’d shoved it way back in the drawer again, quickly, like it had gone red-hot.

Now I wondered who exactly had cleared all Bridget’s things away so thoroughly. Had Paula done it, to make room for herself? I was willing to bet she had. She knew where William kept the garden key, and she let herself in every night like she already belonged here. I’d thought she was William’s Walcott, but she wasn’t worth even one of Walcott’s toes.

The front door reopened, and she turned her attention away from me. It felt like a hook being peeled out of my skin. As they came in, Natty was talking in his outdoor voice, loud and excited.

“. . . that kind of beetle. Don’t scare him! You’ll make him smell like fart!” and William laughed.

Paula had started forward, but she froze at the sound. William had a big laugh, weirdly overloud, like his volume knob was busted. I hadn’t heard it since the Circle K. He’d laughed like this when he got shot.

That was strange; since I’d practically been living here, I hadn’t heard him laugh. For a second I didn’t know if that was because he was some flavor of autistic. Maybe he didn’t laugh because he didn’t feel things. I had some vague idea that that was what Asperger’s meant. But that picture, with Bridget, holding his little girl in his lap . . . Maybe I only hadn’t heard him laughing because he was so damn sad, like anyone would be.

The sound of it changed Paula’s face. She swallowed and her eyes pinked up. I stopped wondering. I didn’t know much about Asperger’s, but I damn well knew William. I’d seen all the way down into him, back in the Circle K. I knew him even better now. I’d watched him be so sweet and patient with my kid, and I’d poked my nose into the crannies of this scraped-out shell of a house, even the smallest bedroom, the empty one, with walls the color of orange sherbet. Happy fat bluebirds flew in a hand-painted line up near the ceiling. A child’s room, now with no toys, no window treatments, just a sad dust bunny drifting across the bare floor with no bed or dresser to hide under.

He wasn’t incapable of feeling. He was heartbroken. Even Paula the hard case was halfway to crying because his big laugh was a good sound, a familiar sound. One that had been missing.

Natty paused in the doorway, pointing up at the porch light, so excited. “William! That’s a Cope’s Gray! It’s not typical for him to go down out of trees.”

William leaned down and swung Natty up, favoring his shot side. He held Natty high to see the frog who’d come to eat the porch light bugs. He was saying something about its thigh coloration, feeding facts to Natty’s information-hungry brain, both of them squinting into the light.

Watching him hold Natty, their heads bent together, the whites of Paula’s eyes had gone even redder.

William set Natty down, and Paula turned her back and started rinsing the same two plates she’d already rinsed. Natty invaded the kitchen, begging for a Tupperware to catch the slimy friend they’d found out there. William followed at a slower pace.

“No, honey, we have to leave him out. It’s mating season. He’s come down to find a girlfriend.” I still sounded shaky. Paula’s spine got even more rigid as she stood, rewashing the only clean dishes.