The Leftovers (17 page)

“So how you doing?” Laurie asked, just to get the ball rolling. Her own voice sounded strange to her, a rusty croak in the darkness.

“Okay, I guess,” Meg replied.

“Just okay?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to just walk away from everything. I still can’t believe I did it.”

“You seemed a little nervous at the Safeway.”

“I was afraid I was gonna see somebody I knew.”

“Your fiancé?”

“Yeah, but not just Gary. Any of my friends.” Her voice was a bit wobbly, like she was trying hard to be brave. “I was supposed to get married this weekend.”

“I know.” Laurie had read Meg’s file and understood that she was going to require some special attention. “That must’ve been hard.”

Meg made a funny sound, something between a chuckle and a groan.

“I feel like I’m dreaming,” she said. “I keep waiting to wake up.”

“I know what that’s like,” Laurie assured her. “I still feel like that sometimes. Tell me a little about Gary. What’s he like?”

“Great,” Meg said. “Really cute. Broad shoulders. Sandy hair. This sweet little cleft in his chin. I used to kiss him there all the time.”

“What’s he do?”

“He’s a securities analyst. Just got his MBA last spring.”

“Wow. He sounds impressive.”

“He is.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if there weren’t any room for debate. “He’s a great guy. Smart, good-looking, lots of fun. Loves to travel, goes to the gym every day. My friends call him Mr. Perfect.”

“Where’d you meet?”

“In high school. He was a basketball player. My brother was on the team, so I went to a lot of games. Gary was a senior and I was a sophomore. I didn’t think he even knew I was alive. And then, one day, he just walked up to me and said,
Hey, Chris’s sister. You want to go to a movie?
Can you believe that? He didn’t even know my name and he asked me on a date.”

“And you said yes.”

“Are you kidding? I felt like I won the lottery.”

“You hit it off right away?”

“God, yeah. The first time he kissed me, I thought,
This is the boy I’m gonna marry
.”

“It took you long enough. That must’ve been what, eight or nine years ago?”

“We were in school,” Meg explained. “We got engaged right after I graduated, but then we had to postpone the wedding. Because of what happened.”

“You lost your mother.”

“It wasn’t just her. One of Gary’s cousins, he also … two girls I knew in college, my father’s boss, a guy Gary used to work out with. A whole bunch of people. You remember what it was like.”

“I do.”

“It just didn’t feel right, getting married without my mother. We were really close, and she was so excited when I showed her the ring. I was gonna wear her wedding dress and everything.”

“And Gary was okay with the postponement?”

“Totally. Like I said, he’s a really nice guy.”

“So you rescheduled the wedding?”

“Not right away. We didn’t even talk about it for two years. And then we just decided to go for it.”

“And you felt ready this time?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just finally accepted the fact that my mother wasn’t coming back. Nobody was. And Gary was starting to get impatient. He kept telling me that he was tired of being sad all the time. He said my mom would have wanted us to get married, to start a family. He said she would’ve wanted us to be happy.”

“What did you think?”

“That he was right. And I was tired of being sad all the time, too.”

“So what happened?”

Meg didn’t speak for a few seconds. It was almost like Laurie could hear her thinking in the dark, trying to formulate her answer as clearly as she could, as if a lot depended on it.

“We made all the arrangements, you know? We rented a hall, picked out a DJ, interviewed caterers. I should’ve been happy, right?” She laughed softly. “It felt like I wasn’t even there, like it was all happening to someone else, someone I didn’t even know. Look at her, designing the invitations. Look at her, trying on the dress.”

“I remember that feeling,” Laurie said. “It’s like you’re dead and you don’t even know it.”

“Gary got mad. He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more excited.”

“So when did you decide to bail out?”

“It was on my mind for a while. But I kept waiting, you know, hoping it would get better. I went to a therapist, got medication, did a lot of yoga. But nothing worked. Last week I told Gary that I needed another postponement, but he didn’t want to hear it. He said we could get married or we could break up. It was my choice.”

“And here you are.”

“Here I am,” she agreed.

“We’re glad to have you.”

“I really hate the cigarettes.”

“You’ll get used to them.”

“I hope so.”

Neither one of them spoke after that. Laurie rolled onto her side, savoring the softness of the sheets, trying to remember the last time she’d slept in such a comfortable bed. Meg only cried for a little while, and then she was quiet.

GET A ROOM

NORA HAD BEEN LOOKING FORWARD
to the dance, less for the event itself than for the chance to make a public statement, to let her little world know that she was okay, that she’d recovered from the humiliation of Matt Jamison’s article and didn’t need anyone’s pity. She’d felt defiantly upbeat all day long, trying on the sexiest clothes in her closet—they still fit, some even better than before—and practicing her moves in front of the mirror, the first time she’d danced in three years.
Not bad,
she thought.
Not bad at all.
It was like traveling back in time, meeting the person you used to be, and recognizing her as a friend.

The dress she’d finally settled on was a slinky red-and-gray wraparound with a plunging neckline that she’d last worn to Doug’s boss’s daughter’s wedding, where it had received a slew of compliments, including one from Doug himself, the master of withholding. She knew she’d made the right choice when she modeled it for her sister and saw the sour look on Karen’s face.

“You’re not wearing
that,
are you?”

“Why? Don’t you like it?”

“It’s just a little …
flashy,
isn’t it? People might think—”

“I don’t care,” Nora said. “Let them think whatever they want.”

A jittery, mostly pleasant sense of anticipation—Saturday-night butterflies—took hold of her in Karen’s car, a feeling she remembered from college, back when every party seemed like it had the potential to change her life. It stuck with her through the entire drive and the short walk through the middle school parking lot, only to abandon her at the front entrance of the building when she saw the flyer advertising the dance:

MAPLETON MEANS FUN PRESENTS:

NOVEMBER ADULT MIXER

DJ, DANCING, REFRESHMENTS, PRIZES

8 P.M.–MIDNIGHT

HAWTHORNE SCHOOL CAFETERIA

Mapleton means fun?
she thought, catching a sudden mortifying glimpse of herself in the glass door.
Is that a joke?
If it was, then the joke was on her, a no-longer young woman in a party dress about to enter a school her children would never get a chance to attend.
I’m sorry,
she told them, as if they were hiding in her mind, judging everything she did.
I didn’t think this through.

“What’s the matter?” Karen asked, peering over her shoulder. “Is it locked?”

“Of course it’s not
locked.
” Nora pushed open the door to show her sister what a stupid question it was.

“I didn’t think it was,” Karen said testily.

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Because you were just standing there, that’s why.”

Shut up,
Nora thought as they stepped into the main hallway, a bright tunnel with a waxed brown floor and a multitude of institutional green lockers stretching into the distance on either side.
Just please shut up.
A collection of student self-portraits hung on the wall across from the main office, above a banner that read:
WE ARE THE MUSTANGS!
It hurt her to look at all those fresh, hopeful, clumsily rendered faces, to think of all the lucky mothers sending them off in the morning with their backpacks and lunch boxes, and then picking them up at the curb in the afternoon.

Hey, sweetie, how was your day?

“They have an excellent art program,” Karen said, as if she were giving a tour to a prospective parent. “They’re strong on music, too.”

“Great,” Nora muttered. “Maybe I should enroll.”

“I’m just making conversation. You don’t have to get all huffy about it.”

“Sorry.”

Nora knew she was being a bitch. It was especially unfair given that Karen was the only date she could scrounge up on such short notice. That was the thing about her sister—Nora didn’t always like her and hardly ever agreed with her, but she could always count on her. Everyone else she’d called—her allegedly close friends from the mommy group in which she could no longer claim membership—had begged off, citing family obligations or whatever, but only after trying to talk her out of coming here at all.

Are you sure it’s a good idea, honey?
Nora hated the condescending way they called her “honey,” as if she were a child, incapable of making her own decisions.
Don’t you want to wait a little longer?

What they meant was wait a little longer for the dust to settle from the article, the one that everyone in town was probably still whispering about:
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: “HERO” DAD’S STEAMY TRYST WITH PRESCHOOL HOTTIE.
Nora had only read it once, in her kitchen after Matt Jamison’s surprise visit, but once was enough for all the grisly details of Doug’s torrid affair with Kylie Mannheim to permanently engrave themselves on her memory.

Even now, two weeks later, it was still hard for her to accept the idea of Kylie as the Other Woman. In Nora’s mind, she was still her kids’ beloved teacher from the Little Sprouts Academy, a lovely, energetic girl, fresh out of college, who somehow managed to seem innocent and wholesome despite having a pierced tongue and a tattoo sleeve on her left arm that fascinated the toddlers. She was the author of a beautiful evaluation letter that Nora had once believed she would treasure forever, a carefully observed three-page analysis of Erin’s first year at Little Sprouts that praised her “uncommon social skills,” her “inexhaustibly curious mind,” and her “fearless sense of adventure.” For a couple of months after October 14th, Nora had carried the letter everywhere, so she could read it whenever she wanted to remember her daughter.

Unfortunately, there was no doubt about the veracity of the Reverend’s accusations. He’d rescued an old, apparently broken laptop of Kylie’s from the trash—the guy at the computer store had told her the hard drive was shot—and used his recently acquired data recovery skills to unearth a treasure trove of incriminating e-mails, compromising photos, and “shockingly explicit” chat sessions between “the handsome father of two” and “the fetching young educator.” The newsletter included several damning excerpts from this correspondence, in which Doug revealed a hitherto hidden flair for erotic writing.

Nora had been devastated, not only by the tawdry revelations—she hadn’t suspected a thing, of course—but also by the Reverend’s obvious delight in making them public. She hid out for several days after the scandal broke, mentally reviewing her entire marriage, wondering if every minute of it had been a lie.

Once the initial shock wore off, she noticed that she also felt a kind of relief, a lightening of her burden. For three years she’d been grieving for a husband who didn’t really exist, at least not in the way she’d imagined. Now that she knew the truth, she could see that she’d lost a little less than she thought she had, which was almost like getting something back. She wasn’t a tragic widow, after all, just another woman betrayed by a selfish man. It was a smaller, more familiar role, and a lot easier to play.

“You ready?” Karen asked.

They were standing in the doorway of the cafeteria, watching the activity on the dimly lit dance floor. It was surprisingly crowded, a bunch of middle-aged people, mostly women, moving enthusiastically, if a bit awkwardly, to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” trying to find a way back to their younger, more limber selves.

“I think so,” Nora replied.

She could sense the heads turning as they entered the cavernous party space, the attention of the room swiveling in their direction. This was what her friends had been hoping to protect her from, but she really didn’t care one way or the other. If people wanted to look at her, they were welcome to look.

Yup, it’s me,
she thought.
The Saddest Woman in the World.

She waded straight into the fray, raising her arms overhead and letting her hips take the lead. Karen was right there with her, elbows and knees chugging away. Nora hadn’t seen her sister dance in years and had forgotten how much fun it was to watch her, a short, heavy woman with lots of moving parts, sexy in a way you couldn’t have predicted from encountering her in any other context. They leaned in close, smiling at each other as they sang along:
Little red Corvette, baby you’re much too fast!
Nora spun to the left, then snapped her upper body back to the right, her long hair whipping across her face. For the first time in ages, she felt almost human again.

*   *   *

THE GAME
they played was called Get a Room. It was a lot like Spin the Bottle, except the group as a whole got to vote on whether a couple could leave the circle and retire to a private space. The voting added an element of strategy into what was otherwise a simple game of chance. You had to keep track of a whole range of possibilities, recalculating with every spin who you wanted to keep around and who you wanted to eliminate as a rival. The goal—aside from the obvious one of hooking up with someone you were attracted to—was to avoid being one of the last two players in the circle, because they had to get a room, too, though Jill knew from experience that they mostly just sat around feeling like losers. In a way it was better with an uneven number of players, despite the embarrassment of finding yourself alone at the end, the odd one out.