15
Anne
“Did you get your desk?”my mother asked when I got home.
I shook my head. Two hours ago, demanding the return of my father’s workbench had seemed like a no-brainer, an excusable, even fair, request. But that was before I talked to Joe.
“You can talk to me anytime,” he’d said. Like he was an open book. Not a chapter from my past. Not a volume full of secrets.
I used to revisit prom night in my dreams. But I had never, in my wildest fantasies, pictured Joe Miller apologizing for hurting my feelings. Or telling me his wife had left him in increments before she took off for Vegas. I’d never imagined him asking about my writing, never considered he might have his own ambitions of creating something lasting and beautiful out of leftover pieces of wood.
It was easier to think of him as a jerk. Easier to ignore who he really was, because the character in my head fit more comfortably into the narrative I’d written for my life.
An image flashed—Joe, in a faded gray Henley that bared the vulnerable hollow at his throat, the sleeves pushed back to expose his corded forearms. Each tiny revelation made mecurious for more. The warmth of his skin, for example, or the texture of his hands. His fears. His goals. His dreams. It was as if I were only now seeing him after a long time or for the first time.
What else, I wondered, had I been blind to?
I prowled the living room, familiar details leaping into the same startling clarity. The arms of my father’s favorite chair, the fabric worn almost through. The couch cushions, permanently sagging in the shape of our butts. The dings in the coffee table where I used to chuck my book bag when I got home from school.
All my life, I’d accepted the slivers of soap in the shower, the margarine tubs that were “too good to throw away,” as products of my mother’s upbringing and mine—Midwestern Cheap, I’d told Chris once. He’d smiled politely, not understanding the joke or my pride in my parents, who had worked hard and made do as far back as I could remember. I’d always dismissed the comments that we were poor.
I’d never considered that my parents might actually be struggling.
“Mom?” On the TV, palm trees waved over the crystalline pool of some luxury resort. “Are you doing okay? Financially, I mean.”
She glanced away from her show. “I’m fine.” A corner of her mouth hitched. “As long as people keep buying fudge.”
I wanted to believe her. But twenty minutes ago, I’d told Joe everything was fine, too. Which meant she could be lying. And also that I was more like my mother than I wanted to acknowledge.
I flung myself on the couch beside her, grabbing a pillow to my chest. My parents had filled out my college aid applications, but we’d never discussed their finances. Asking them aboutmoney was like inquiring about their sex life. The very thought made me flush with embarrassment.
“I was just wondering, with Dad gone, if I can do anything to help.”
She turned her face to the TV. “You are helping. In the shop. Unless you’re expecting a raise.”
“But Dad’s business—”
“It’s Joe’s business now.”
“Yeah, he said.” I picked at a pillow seam. “But it’s still yours, too, right? I mean, unless Dad left everything to Joe.”
“Joe and I came to an arrangement.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m satisfied, and you don’t need to worry.”
Possibilities circled my brain like water swirling around a drain. “I’m not worried. I’m just trying to take an interest—a grown-up interest—in my aging mother’s well-being.”
“Good of you,” my mother said dryly.
“Did you know Joe took Dad’s bench for scrap wood?”
“Can’t say I did.” She shot me a sharp look. “You didn’t fight with him, did you?”
“No.” All that tension swarming and sparking between us…Not a fight. My blundering exit? Awkward, but again, not a fight. Maybe that’s why I felt so unsettled. Resenting Joe had been a part of my emotional landscape for so long, I was lost without it.
OnLove Is Blind, a woman was crying about being left behind while her partner went out drinking with the rest of the cast.
