Discreet by Nicole French
7
Lucas left an hour later, but not before leaving me a note on the counter that included an apology and an invite to a bonfire at the inn with some of our old friends from high school the following night. I looked at the Post-it for a lot longer than necessary and thought about tossing it in the garbage, but in the end, I tucked it in my pocket before going back to work. While I wasn’t particularly interested in stepping backwards, the idea of cleaning up after my mother for yet another night sounded depressing.
The next morning, I walked up to the house early for my bike ride with Will and found Mama asleep on the couch, a Bloody Mary half-drunk on the side table. The tip of her nose was tinged with the flush of broken blood vessels.
I picked the glass up and wiped away the water ring with my hand. The only time she didn’t use coasters on her grandmother’s precious furniture was when she was too smashed to think about it. She must have had more than a few admirers last night at Curly’s. Her car wasn’t even in the driveway when I went to pull my bike out of the topside cabin.
But as they had for the last week, the frustrations and clouds of the day, the year—hell, my life, floated away as I coasted down the hill toward the general store where Will would be waiting. I tried to tell myself I wasn’t excited about spending more than a few minutes with him, but it didn’t work. For better or for worse I was intrigued by this sad, lonely man who had locked himself away on the hillside. I wanted to learn more.
Except he wasn’t there. I waited for thirty minutes by the store, long enough that Cathy came out to check on me carrying a Dixie cup of coffee.
“Hey, hon,” she greeted me, holding her hand over her eyes like a visor. “Getting hot out here, isn’t it?”
I looked up at the sun shining fingers of light through the trees. “Yeah, it is.”
It was only seven thirty, but it was probably close to seventy-five outside. I didn’t want to ride in the late morning heat.
“Who are you waiting for?” Cathy asked curiously as she waved to one of the neighbors down the street out watering her plants.
I looked up and down the road, as if Will might appear from around the bend. But he didn’t. And I was feeling increasingly pathetic.
Well, screw that. I didn’t need a man—even a gorgeous, bearded yeti who somehow made my chest hurt whenever I thought about him. The whole point of coming back here was to get back to myself. A man would only complicate that even more.
“No one,” I said before downing the rest of the coffee. “Just taking a break before the rest of my ride.” I handed the cup back to Cathy and gave her a warm smile. “Thanks for the coffee, Cath. I’ll bring some more eggs for you tomorrow, ’kay?”
Cathy nodded with another bright smile. “Sounds good. Have a good ride!”
I hopped on my bike, determined to put the mishap behind me, and took a left at the fork in the road instead of a right, continuing across the state line to the flat Hauser Lake route instead of the other side of Newman. If I was going to fall off my bike again, there was no way I was going to land anywhere near that hidden cabin in the woods.
I rode a solid twenty miles, enjoying the benefits of the new tires and the equal parts exhaustion and endorphins brought on by intense exercise. It was close to ten by the time I looped back and was winding around the bend toward home. I waved at Cathy as I passed the store, but slowed a little as I saw a caravan of cars coming down the road toward me, led by a familiar, burnt-orange pickup.
The truck rumbled on, slow enough that even here, there were three other cars behind him crawling at its bumper, the drivers clearly annoyed by the snail’s pace.
“Hey!” one of them called out his window. “Speed limit’s twenty-five here, buddy!”
But instead of speeding up, Will pulled to a stop, right in the middle of the road. My bike coasted slowly toward him, and eventually I put my foot down next to his car.
Our eyes met, and neither of us blinked for what seemed like minutes. There was no stop sign, nothing to require him to do what he was doing. The lake and sunlight flickered behind his green eyes, causing the gold to dance in the otherwise mournful depths. But Will said nothing, and neither did I. I was too tired. Too confused. Too angry.
Will opened his mouth and set his hand in the open window, almost like he was going to jump through it to get to me. A car horn blared from behind him, causing us both to jerk. Will pulled back his hand and rubbed it across his face, then reached down and shifted his truck back into first gear.
And then he kept driving, kicking up dust particles that reflected morning sun in tiny sequins of light. The truck rumbled on like I didn’t even exist.
* * *
Much to my extreme irritation,I couldn’t get those eyes out of my head for the rest of the day. Nothing would do it. Not sweeping all the pine needles off the boulders bordering the edge of the property. Not lugging most of the junk out of the outer cabins and making three trips to the dump. Not swimming another mile that afternoon around the lake’s perimeter to the general store and back. Nothing got that stupid, stubborn, silent face out of my mind.
After spending the rest of the day watching me brood while she worked in the yard, Mama had had enough.
“Maggie Mae, I tell you, if you don’t wipe that sourpuss off your face, you’re gonna get a big ol’ bucket of ice water on it instead,” Mama threatened from the bathroom that evening, where she was teasing her hair out for dinner at her best friend, Barb’s.
I was just relieved that the excuse to go out wasn’t trivia night at Curly’s or the like. Oh, she’d still drink enough to fall asleep on a couch somewhere, but it would be her friend’s house instead of a stranger’s, and Barb wouldn’t let her drive drunk.
Mama held up a glass of ice water, and I knew she wasn’t making an idle threat, despite the teasing grin on her face. When I was in high school, I’d gotten ice water poured on my head more than once for having “attitude.” Let me tell you, when it’s twenty degrees outside in the middle of winter, wet hair does not feel good when you’re driving yourself to school.
I stretched my lips into a giant fake smile, and Mama laughed, sipping on her water.
“That’s my beautiful baby,” she said, turning back to the mirror and her primping. “You doin’ anything fun tonight? I saw that note Lucas left you.” She winked at me. “He’s still sweet on you after all these years. I should thank you for the good deal he’s giving me on the drywall for the cottages, not to mention all that free labor. You don’t do this much for someone you don’t care about.”
I pressed my lips together. I really, really hoped that Lucas wasn’t doing all this work on our property for cheap just because he wanted to get back together. “I really don’t think that’s what’s going on, Mama. Lucas is just a nice guy.”
She laughed again. “No one’s suggesting a ring or anything, Maggie. But I bet it would be fun to take another spin on that particular carnival ride again, wouldn’t it? He sure has filled out since you were in high school. Bet he’s filled out in other places too.”
She winked at me, and I scowled.
“Mama. Ew. I do not need to hear you talking like that about a man twenty-five years younger than you.”
Her laugh chimed around the cabin like church bells. “How is it that my daughter is more of a prude than me?” she wondered as she lined her eyes with dark blue. “We’re both grown women here. I know you’re no angel, and I’m certainly not. If we can’t speak plain about these things, what kind of relationship do we have?”
“A normal one.” I said it jokingly, but only halfway.
Her eyes twinkled, and for a moment, I was taken back to those times when, as a child, I had been so in love with my mother. Because it wasn’t all hangovers and missed parent-teacher conferences. Ellie Sharp was the life of the party, and when she was willing to put her attention on me, make me feel like her best friend, it had been the best feeling in the world.
But that was when I was old enough to know that just like all her other moods, this one would fade too.
Mama snorted. “Normal’s for fools who want to waste their lives staring at the screen, eating Cheetos. You and I ain’t never been normal, Maggie Mae. My baby girl was always special, and I’ve never wanted to just settle. Even with you.”
I watched as she made her proclamations into the mirror before applying the same pink paint she’d always worn. I used to love this about her. When I was little, I’d sit on that same countertop and listen to her philosophize at me while she lined her lips and rouged her cheeks, telling me all about the greatness that was in us both, no matter what people said. Mama was my hero—a strong, vibrant woman who believed in herself above all others, refusing to bow to the social expectations of a woman in her community. She’d made her life on her own terms, having the fun she wanted to have. What did it matter that sometimes our phone got shut off because she mishandled the bills, or that sometimes I missed school because she was too tired to take me? At seven, eight, nine, I didn’t care much. We were living our life on our own terms, she said. No man, no one else to tell us what to do.
But once I got a little older, I started to recognize the pattern. Weeks would go by and that scent of stale alcohol, always lurking just under her flowery perfume, would grow more and more pungent. I’d miss more school because she’d leave the car at the bar, butter cold bread because at there was nothing else to eat. Then the lights would go off, or maybe we needed to have the septic tank drained. The roof would need to be patched, or her car would break down. And suddenly, there would be a man showing up with her when she toppled down the stairs, and that man would stay weeks, sometimes months.
Until he left. The good ones always did fairly early because no one worth their salt wanted to be involved with a middle-aged alcoholic. The ones who stayed longer did it because they needed her too—those were the ones who stayed to fight. Who threatened her. Yelled at me. And, as I got older, suggested other things that were very inappropriate for her underage daughter.
I never met him, but Alan sounded like one of those. When I called home, he’d shout that he wanted to meet Ellie’s beautiful daughter, and when was I coming for a visit? He stayed with Mama long enough to bleed her dry by enabling her worst flaws. And now I was here, trying to help her pick up the pieces while doing the same for myself.
God, we really were a sorry mess.
I slipped a hand into my back pocket, and my fingers brushed the edge of Lucas’s Post-it. I pulled it out, comforted by Lucas’s frank scrawl. Immediately, I felt bad about the way I had treated him. He was just looking out for me, the way he always had. How many times had he come over in the middle of the night and brought me home with him to sleep on his parents’ couch so a stranger wouldn’t find his way into my bed in the middle of the night? He knew better than anyone what I was dealing with over here. And he was still trying to help.
At the very least, I owed him an apology. I crumpled up the note and turned to the bathroom.
“How long are you going to be in there?” I asked Mama. “I need to shower. I’m going out after all.”
