the whole bit. Told me she knew what she was doing. And now what? All she does is bitch. Things just aren’t going too well for the little couple. I guess Mr. Grant isn’t courting her enough, huh?”
“Well, what do you say to her when she lays all the whining on you?” Charlene seriously wanted to know.
“I tell her to grow the fuck up.”
God, he was a clod. “Oh, that’s sensitive. You don’t really say that, do you?”
“No, I think that, but I don’t say it. If I said it she would cry. And you know what happens to me when she cries. It takes the bones out of my legs and I crumble. But I’d like to say it. I gotta tell you…I’ve been thinking it a lot lately.”
“I’ve even thought that about you,” Charlene taunted.
“You look good, Charlie,” he said. “You put on a little weight?”
She ground her teeth. She wanted to kill him for that. “About Stephanie—”
“You’re right, I shouldn’t be too hard on the kid. She going to learn about successful relationships with us as role models?”
She let out a huff of indignant laughter. “You weren’t so hot, maybe. I think I was a fine role model.”
“Hey, hey, hey, I didn’t mean to say you were a bad parent. Jesus, Charlie, you were the best parent in the world. There is no better mother than you. Hell, I wish you were my mother! I just mean about relationships. We weren’t, either one of us, able to make one stick.”
“Yeah, well, I only tried once, remember. You tried, what? Five times?” She shivered. She was cold, miserable, wet and a quarter mile from a warm fire, a glass of wine and stable, consistent Dennis. For some reason it didn’t occur to her to ask Jake to just drive her home.
“Four. I don’t think you can say five since I married the same woman twice. You remember Godzilla? What a disaster that was. But I was married to Stella for seven years, you know. That would almost be considered a success.”
“I still can’t imagine why you left Stella. You must be crazy.”
“Me, crazy? Gimme a break. It’s Stella who doesn’t have too many arrows in the old quiver, if you get my drift.”
“Stella? She’s mother earth!”
“Yeah, she’s a good kid at heart. It’s just all the yoga, natural food, crystals, wood-nymph music, beads, bangles and fucking affirmations. People can be too positive, you know. It’s wearing. But never mind, she was always great with Stephie.”
“Maybe Stephanie can move in with Stella,” Charlene said.
“What’s’ a matter, Mom?” he said, jostling her with an elbow. “The little chick threatening to move home?”
“She suggested she might….”
“And if I know you, you talked to her about her commitment to Grant because there’s no way you want Stephie, who is an even bigger slob than me, back in your tidy little nest.” He slapped his knee and giggled. His laugh was contagious but his giggle was positively repellent.
“No,” she lied. “I told her she should consider moving in with you.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Y’know, I admit I regret the way I played it.”
“Played what?” she wanted to know.
“I wish I’d done what you did. Stayed out of the game altogether. Refused to hook up at all, with anyone. Just flat-ass refused to get together with anyone who wasn’t absolutely perfect. Period.”
“That isn’t what I did! There wasn’t anyone…starting with you!”
“We don’t have to sing the ‘Jake was a lousy husband’ song again. We’re all getting a little tired of that one. I was young, you were young, we were stupid.”
“You were stupid,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah. So what we have here is me, getting married all the time and never able to make it stick, and you, with an obvious fear of marriage—”
“I’m not afraid of marriage!”
“Oh, really?” he asked, eyebrows arched sharply.
“Not at all!”
“Afraid of commitment, then?”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Dennis and I are totally committed.”
“Just afraid to take the next step and make it legal? I mean, I can understand, it’s only been, what, five years or so….”
“For your information, we’re planning to get married, we just haven’t—”
She stopped suddenly. She had no idea she was going to say that. Or what she was going to say next.
“Just haven’t what, Charlie? Picked the century yet?”
She stared at him blankly for a moment. Her life flashed before her eyes. Well, maybe not her life, but certainly her day, and the way it had seemed to happen to her through a series of random disasters. April Fools’? Maybe she was the only fool.
“And that’s why Stephie is all fucked up about marriage,” he said. “Because between the two of us we can’t come up with one decent relationship. Know what I mean, Charlie? Admit it, you’re as reluctant as I am impetuous. Huh?”
“You know what?” she said to him. “I had to coparent with you, but the baby has grown up. She’s an adult, whether she likes it or not, and while she might need her parents, she has had plenty of time to adjust to the divorce. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to talk about this whole thing with you for another quarter century! Leave me alone for a while, will you?”
She opened the door and got out of his car, the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders and dragging through muddy puddles behind her. His ability to insult and enrage her had not lessened in twenty-five years. She went to her car and retrieved her purse and briefcase, locked the door and started walking. Stomping.
“Charlie, what the hell are you doing?” he called out of his opened window. She stomped on, muttering incoherently to herself. He could still, with such ease, provoke her into irrational behavior. Here she was, walking down the soft, muddy shoulder of an isolated two-lane road in the dark, in the rain. It was worse than irrational, it was suicidal. But right that moment it made more sense than sitting in the car with him.
“Charlie, this is stupid!” he yelled.
God, he was following her. In the car.
A car going in the opposite direction whizzed by. The splash off the tires provided a fine spray of mud to add to the rain, which had lessened to a heavy drizzle, but was not quite enough to wash the streaks of mud off her face and coat.
All the stuff she thought she had handled began to come back one at a time. The Samuelsons, Stephanie, Dennis and Dr. Malone, Peaches—and Jake, his timing as bad as ever.
“Charlie!” he yelled. “Hold up, will you? I need to ask you something. I need a favor.”
“In your dreams,” she muttered to herself. If I am afraid of commitment, she thought, Jake Dugan would be a good enough reason.
A flashing red light throbbed over her head and she turned to see that her ex-husband had attached his portable police beacon to the top of his car. He followed her at a safe distance, slowly, so that if a car approached from behind, she wouldn’t be mowed down. But then again, she wouldn’t need this service if he hadn’t shown up in the first place, which was the cause of her walking home in the mud and rain when she had a perfectly good cell phone in her purse.
She made the right turn into her neighborhood in ten minutes. She could have been faster if the weather had been decent. The flashing red light disappeared and Jake’s headlights