out is—why would a handsome young man his age be interested in someone like me?”
“Is this a trick question?” Maggie asked. Silence again. “God, I hate that you don’t know things about yourself. Important things. You’re attractive. No, you’re beautiful. You’re fun, you’re sincere. You’re ridiculously tidy, patient and wise.”
“Tidy, patient and wise?” she asked, laughing suddenly. “Yeah, I’m sure this good-looking young buck has been searching high and low for a woman who’s tidy! Besides, I’m not wise—I’ve made some of the dumbest choices for a woman my age.” She thought for a second and said, “I am tidy, though.”
“He probably just liked your face and body—the rest will come. Tell me about him. What’s he like?”
“He’s nice,” she said. “Very conscientious. It seems that he got his girlfriend pregnant when he was just a kid—eighteen years old. And rather than go along with an adoption, he fought for custody. He’s raising his ten-year-old daughter with the help of his mother. How many guys do that?”
“This the first time you’ve heard from him since the accident?”
“I didn’t tell you? He came to the hospital right before I was discharged. He brought flowers. Then he called me. He’s called me a few times. But I thought he was interested in my recovery. I thought he felt bonded to me because he saw the crash, then saw my wrecked body. I guess I thought that it was natural for someone like him to want to see how everything turned out.”
“Clare, you’re hopeless.”
“Well, how was I to know?”
“Do you like him?”
“I don’t know. I mean, sure, I like him fine. I never thought of him in that…that way.”
“And handsome?”
“Oh Maggie, he’s the kind of handsome that would knock you out of your shoes. He has a dimpled smile that can make you wet yourself.”
“Jesus, Clare…”
“What?”
“What a lousy time to have a cracked pelvis!”
“This is simply ridiculous,” Clare said, matter-of-fact.
“Aw, have some fun. How many times does something like this come along?”
“I’ll think about fun later—when I have my life straight.”
“You are such a drag,” Maggie laughed. “I’d have been all over that. Even with a crack in my pelvis!”
Clare welcomed the distraction of settling into her old house, sans Roger. He’d found an apartment in a luxury complex complete with pools and gym where he could no doubt meet many lovely single women. By mid-June, Clare had moved home. Well, it wasn’t as though she moved. She merely walked into the house. Jason, George, Sarah and her brother-in-law toted all their things.
To her great relief, the house seemed to welcome her. But then she didn’t go upstairs to the scene of the crime. She stayed downstairs and if there was anything she needed, Jason fetched it.
Summer in Breckenridge was glorious. The flowers were full, the fields were green and there was still a little snow on the highest peaks. The haze of pain had lifted and Clare could appreciate the beauty of her town, her mountains. Ordinarily she would have taken care of the yard and garden, but she was forced to hire a landscaping service. So when they were there she pestered them, making sure everything was done to her satisfaction. It was such a relief to be outdoors again after that long, wet and painful spring.
Roger called all the time, sweet depression dripping from his voice. He surprised her by stopping by a couple of times, but while she was civil, she wouldn’t let him stay long. She didn’t want him to get too comfortable. He was filled with offers of help, begging to see her more often if only to be sure she was getting better. Something about seeing her limp a little must have worked on his conscience. He sent her generous checks very regularly, something she’d had to ask him for during past separations. And flowers—she hated when he sent her flowers! She could almost smell him, he was getting so close. So, she had the locks changed.
By the end of July she was hardly ever using the crutches, though she still had occasional pain. She could manage the stairs and the laundry, though she couldn’t carry things up and down. There was a little complication with transportation—she didn’t have a car anymore, and her little secret was that if she did have a car, she’d be terrified to drive it. But there were plenty of people from her dad to her sisters who would happily take her wherever she wanted or needed to go. She was still seeing the physical terrorist twice a week.
She had Jason bring her the paperwork stowed in her upstairs desk, including her records of all the schools in Breckenridge—not so very many, where she had done substitute teaching. She spruced up her résumé and got started.
Clare hadn’t held a full-time teaching job since before Jason was born, only filling in from time to time. And you don’t need the greatest teaching skills to do that. In fact the only real requirement is a whip and a chair; the little heathens gave the sub their absolute worst. She had faced each one of those days with anxiety and dread, but knew the wisdom of keeping her hand in. Not to mention a little money now and then that was entirely her own.
The nice thing about having kept her face in the school district of a small town, was she was known and liked. There were two job offers almost immediately. Both were in the English department, one in middle school—eighth grade, and the other high school, though she had been hoping for younger kids. She was tempted to take the middle-school job just to avoid running into Pete Rayburn who taught and coached at Centennial High, but Jason had turned fifteen over the summer and was starting high school in the fall, so running into Pete was going to happen, no matter what she did.
And…she had made that promise to herself, that she was going to seek Pete out and see if she could mend those embarrassing fences. After all, it had been nineteen long years. And they were grown-ups now.
She took the fifteen-year-olds and thought of all the advantages of being in school with her son every day.
“Aw, man, I’m gonna want to die!”
Jason did not.
In August Clare went up those stairs and looked into the master bedroom. She had always loved that room, but now all she saw was a blond stranger bouncing atop her unfaithful husband. So she called the consignment shop to come and take the furniture away and then called a local decorator. Ordinarily she would have done all the work herself. Growing up the daughter of a hardware store owner had many advantages and she was a master at everything from wallpaper and paint, to crown molding. But even if she felt one hundred percent most days, she knew the logic of not pushing her luck.
Just a couple of weeks later when she went back into the bedroom everything was changed, from the sheets to the window treatments. It was entirely new, without a trace of Roger’s infidelities.
She gathered materials from her new employer and set about the task of preparing lesson plans for the year ahead, and as she did so she began to fantasize about doing any other kind of job than teaching. Why hadn’t she become an architect? A nurse? Been a business major? How could she face one hundred and twenty fifteen-year-olds a day? One hundred and twenty Jasons and Jasonettes?
But surely they would be more tame if she was the regular teacher and not the sub….
She had all but forgotten about her flirty younger man. From his few calls over summer, he was all cooled down. She reminded him a couple of times about how sore her pelvis was and he moved back into his assigned slot as the local cop who was only concerned about how she was feeling, how her recovery was going. She did have one small handicap—she happened to enjoy talking to him.
And when he called she found herself eager to regale him with tales of her hectic days; of redecorating, job interviewing, shopping for work clothes,