“Will you please justtalkto me?”
“Talk?” she said incredulously. “You don’t talk, Tom. You sulk. You draw. You go away.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?”Cherry was shouting.
“We’ve been together for eleven years!” he shouted back. “And you cut me off like I was nothing to you! Like our marriage was nothing to you!”
“That’s not true.”
“Itistrue. You wouldn’t let me explain or apologize—or beg you to forgive me.”
“You didn’t beg me for anything!”
“How could I?” Tom yelled. He’d gotten out of bed. Cherry wouldn’t look at him—she could hear him getting dressed. “You wouldn’t take my calls!”
Cherry still didn’t look up. She shouted at the floor between them. “You gave up so easily, Tom! LikeIwas nothing. I wanted you to fight for me!”
Tom laughed, like she was being ridiculous. (Like he hated her.Like he was giving up again.) “Jesus, Cherry,” he said softly. “When have I ever fought you and won?”
Cherry sat at the edge of the bed.
Tom was standing across the room, fuming. Breathing heavy. She could hear him. She still hadn’t looked up.
“This was a mistake,” Cherry said. “I want you to leave.”
Tom walked past her. She saw him scoop up his shirt in her peripheral vision. “Whatever you say.”
She heard him go—he slammed the front door.
He’d left the baby gate open. A few minutes later, Stevie shuffled into the bedroom to nose at Cherry’s knees.
“I know,”Cherry said as Stevie sniffed and pushed at her.“I know.”
Chapter 59
In the eighth grade, Evan Mackie had asked Cherry to go to the Can Dance with him. (To get into the dance, you had to bring a can of food for the food bank. Evan had brought two cans of green beans to cover them both.)
At the dance—at four o’clock in the afternoon, in the school gym—some of the boys had called Evan over, and they’d all stood in a huddle while Cherry waited for him by the bleachers.
Then Evan had walked back to Cherry, while the boys all watched.
“So, yeah,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “I kinda need to break up with you.”
They weren’t dating—though going to the dance together did imply that they weresomething.
“So... yeah,” he said, walking away.
When Evan got back to the boys, they all laughed. And Evan laughed. Though he wouldn’t make eye contact with them, either.
Evan stayed with the same group for the rest of the dance. Cherry’s own friends circled her, outraged on her behalf.
One of them—Leslie—went to talk to her boyfriend, who was in the boy huddle, and he told her that the guys didn’t pressure Evan to do it or anything. “Some of them were just giving Evan shit for being a”—Leslie mouthed the next word—“whaler.”
“A what?” Cherry asked.
“It’s what they call boys who like plus-size girls,” Leslie said. “They’re so stupid.”
