We walked inside the bar, chandeliers off and seating areas completely empty. I sat down on the couch, and he sat down right beside me. “Holden,” I said. “Can’t you sit across from me in the chair or something?”
If he heard me, he didn’t let on. “Ann,” he said, “I made a huge mistake letting you go. I want you back.”
I laughed. “Holden, no offense, but I’m pretty sure I’m the one who let you go.” I shook my head. “I’mmarried, for heaven’s sake.”
He snickered. “Please, Annabelle. You knew the guy for five minutes. Don’t tell me you’re happy with some washed-up, old musician.”
I could feel the anger rising up my spine, vertebra by vertebra, as Louise would say. You could talk about me and you could talk about my choices. But when you talked about myman, things got dicey. I stood up, and I knew he could tell I was angry. “I’ve had enough of this. Maybe you should have been worried about me alittle more when you had me.” I wanted to walk away then, but I couldn’t resist throwing one more jab before I turned. “Ben has the good sense to know how to hold on to what he has.”
“I was immature and stupid, Annabelle. I’ve done a lot of growing up since then. I realize now that I should have treated you better.”
I wanted to stomp away, but I stopped and turned back toward Holden, noticing that he was wearing the Vilbrequin bathing suit I had given him for his birthday my senior year. It was like knowing a bag of chocolates was in my pantry. I wanted to close the door and lock it away, but I couldn’t resist finishing it.
“I should have fought for you then,” Holden said. “But I was too ashamed. I let my pride take away the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
I rolled my eyes, realizing it was difficult to look haughty in a somewhat sheer linen cover-up and flip-flops with bows on them. “This is never, ever going to happen, Holden, so I suggest you move on. It took meeting Ben to realize what I had been missing out on all this time.”
It was a cold, callous statement, and, as soon as it came out of my mouth, I wished I could roll it back up like loose toilet paper. I wanted to say something more, to amend that horrible judgment, tell Holden that we did the best we could. But I knew that, in his mind, if the curtains were fluttering in the breeze, I needed to slam the window or it was going to come open again and again and again.
“He’s going to hurt you, Annabelle,” Holden called as I walked out of the empty bar. “Everyone thinks so.”
I wanted to laugh indignantly, but the words pierced right through me, the spear he had thrown in retaliation for the arrow I shot. It was the first time I had considered what it might be like to be without Ben, how devastated, confused and completely alone I would beif he changed his mind. That was the benefit of being with someone like Holden. He was good on paper, decent husband material, and if it all went down the tubes, then, oh well. My attachment was minimal.
But to think about being without Ben was like losing my limbs. I loved him with a ferocity I’d never known before. I would look at him when we were lying in bed at night, him peacefully snoring beside me, and I would consider the fact that he was a good deal older. And I would start to panic. How would I ever live without him? How would the breath enter and leave my body if Ben wasn’t there to regulate it?
And then I’d think of Lovey and D-daddy.
And I couldn’t sleep a wink.
Lovey
Bring Her Back Up
My momma named me Lynn because it could be a boy’s name or a girl’s. She wanted me to grow up to do big things with my life, and she thought that having a name that could have been a boy’s would make people take me more seriously.
But, it didn’t much matter because, once Annabelle was born, she changed my name altogether. When she was a child, I used to say to her, “Oh, I love you,” and, with those muddled little toddler syllables running together like they do, she would say back, “Oh, Lovey.” From then on, that’s what practically everyone called me.
I kept thinking of her as that tiny girl, sitting on the floor in the den at Dan’s feet, playing with makeup in my bathroom, riding her bike around the front, circular driveway. The memories of this house were so pronounced for me, such a normal part of my daily routine, that I couldn’t imagine being without them.
That’s why saying you’re going to move to assisted living and actually doing that same thing are very different matters. If I hadever been anything for my daughters, it was steadfast. I was brave and fearless. And if I wasn’t, I never let it show. Maybe it was old age, the instability of it all, the loss of balance, the lack of memory, the persistent pain of the process of breaking down. Or perhaps it was removing the man who had made me feel invincible for all this time and throwing me into the river without so much as a float. But being alone in that house with him all night, every night, was the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had.
Every snore or gasp of breath convinced me that I would peek over the foot of the bed to see the man I had loved more than myself cold, blue and gone from me. Every creak down the hall or rustle of leaves from the trees was someone coming in to rob us, and, slow and decrepit from age, I couldn’t get to the gun to defend myself—though no one could deny that my shot was better than the sheriff’s. Every cell phone beep or TV flicker was the smoke alarm going off, and, though I may have been able to get myself out, my husband was a sitting duck.
“Oh, Momma,” Lauren said gaily, sorting through a drawer of memories in the den, “surely we can get rid of some of these old clippings or letters or crumbling photos.”
“I know!” Louise chimed in. “I can take all these old photos and scan them into one file so you can access them anytime you want.”
“Or, I can have them all printed into one photo book,” Martha said.
I nodded slowly to appease them, but knowing as well as my right from my left that I could never part with these things. Clippings of my girls’ names appearing in dance recitals might not have seemed worth saving. But they were my memories. These drawers, overflowing with old bankbooks, receipts and never-filed photos were all I had left to hold on to.
I heard the front door creak open, and Jean called, “I’m here!”
I shuddered. Jean was the least sentimental, most cutthroat of the bunch. She would have dumped my drawers with all their memories into one black Hefty bag without a second thought and just left them right there on the street like a squirrel that has been run over.
“Momma,” she said, “it’s fine to keep all your stuff, but you can’t move it all into a nine-hundred-square-foot assisted living apartment. It’s not possible.”
“I know,” Sally said. “Why don’t I take all of this home with me, and I’ll organize it into a couple of scrapbooks for you so that it’s all together.”
