He considered this. “Okay. I think you’re right. Maybe we’re both a bit at fault here. I wasn’t exactly honest when I said I could deal with us being friends. And you weren’t exactly honest when you said, you know, that you loved me.”
“What?” I said, a bit too loudly. It was the champagne. “I never said I loved you.”
“Maybe not in so many words,” he said, shuffling the pictures again. “But I think we both knew the truth.”
“No way,” I said, but I could feel it now, that loose end slowly winding up, closer and closer to tied tight.
“In five more days,” he decided, holding up his open hand, “you would have loved me.”
“Doubtful.”
“Well, it is a challenge. Five days, and then-”
“Dexter,” I said.
“I’m kidding.” He put the pictures down, and smiled at me. “But we’ll never know, right? Could have happened.”
I smiled back. “Maybe.”
And there we had it. Closure. The last item of so many, eliminated from my list with a big, thick check mark. I could almost feel the weight of it lifting, the slow, steady feeling as all my planets aligned and everything, at least for now, was right with the world.
“Remy!” I heard someone yell from outside, and then turned around to see Amanda standing in the doorway to Joie, wearing a dye cap on her head and snapping her fingers. “You’re missing the dance party!” Behind her, Talinga and Lola were laughing.
“Wow,” Dexter said as Amanda continued her bump-and-grind, unaware of the elderly couple passing, carrying a bag of birdseed and eyeing her disapprovingly. “Looks like we work at the wrong place.”
“I should get back,” I said.
“Okay, but before you go, you should check these out.” He pulled out a drawer, then took out a stack of glossy prints, spreading them on the counter in front of me. “The last and best shots for our wall of shame. Just look.”
They were pretty bad. One was of a middle-aged guy posing bodybuilder style, flexing his muscles while his potbelly pooched over a very small Speedo bathing suit. Another featured two people standing on the bow of a ship: the man was grinning, loving it, while the woman was literally green, and you just knew the next picture featured vomit. Depravity and embarrassment was pretty much the theme of the collection, each one sillier or more disgusting than the last. I was so caught up reacting to a shot of what looked like a cat trying to mate with an iguana that I almost skimmed past a picture of a woman in her bra and panties, posing seductively, entirely.
“Oh, Dexter,” I said. “Honestly.”
“Hey.” He shrugged. “You do what you gotta do. Right?”
I was about to answer this when I suddenly realized something. I knew this woman. She was dark-haired, lower lip pouting seductively, sitting on the end of a bed with her hands on her hips so that her cleavage was enhanced, considerably. But even more importantly, I knew what was behind her: a large, ugly tapestry, depicting biblical scenes. Right over her head, to the left, was John the Baptist’s head being served on a plate.
“Oh, my God,” I said. It was my mother’s room. And this woman on the bed was Patty, Don’s secretary. I looked at the date stamp at the bottom of the picture: Aug 14. The previous weekend. When I’d been staying at Lissa’s and my mother was in Florida, deciding that everything was now going to be okay.
“Really something, huh?” Dexter asked me, peeking over the top of the picture. “I knew you’d like that one.”
I looked up at him, everything now falling into place. Closure. Yeah, right. This was Dexter’s little revenge scheme, his way of poking me back when I wasn’t even protecting myself. Suddenly I was so mad I could feel the blood rising in my face, hot and flushed. “You asshole, ” I said.
“What?” His eyes widened.
“You think this is some little game?” I snapped, throwing the picture at him. It hit him in the chest, the corner poking, and he stepped back, letting it fall to the floor. “You want to get back at me and you do this? God, I was trying to leave things right, Dexter. I was trying to be beyond this!”
“Remy,” he said, holding up his hands. Behind him Lucas had pushed his chair back and was just staring at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” I said. “All this talk about faith, and love. And then you do something like this, just to hurt me. And not even me! My family-”
“Remy.” He tried to reach out and grab my hand, to calm me, but I pulled back, my wrist smacking wildly against the register, as if it wasn’t even under my control. “Come on. Just tell me-”
“Fuck you!” I screamed, and my voice sounded so shrill.
“What is the problem?” he yelled back, then ducked down, picking the picture up off the floor. He stared at it. “I don’t-”
But I was already walking across the store, toward the door. I just kept seeing my mother in my mind, floating toward me on a wave of perfume and hopefulness, trying so hard to make this, of all marriages, work. She’d been ready to settle, to give it all up, even her own voice, just to stay with this man who would not only commit adultery but save the evidence on film. Bastard. I hated him. I hated Dexter. I had come so close to wanting to be wrong about the possibilities of what the heart could really do. Give me proof, I’d said, and she had tried. It’s not tangible, she’d said, you can’t mark it so clearly. But against love, the case was solid. Easily argued. And you could, indeed, hold it in your hand.
Finding out about Don pretty much ended my party. Which was fine, actually, since Amanda had already fallen asleep on the table in the waxing room and Lola and Talinga were finishing off the cake and bemoaning whose love life was more pathetic. We said our final good-byes, and then I left, carrying the envelope they’d given me, a freebie case of my favorite conditioner, and the burden of knowing that my mother’s latest husband was the worst of the lot. Which was saying quite a bit, considering.
My head was clear as I drove home, blasting my air conditioner and trying to calm down. The shock of seeing Patty on my mother’s bed, in my mother’s room, had sobered me up quick, the way only bad news can. I was so mad at Dexter for showing me the picture, and as I drove I wondered why I’d never seen this duplicitous, petty, evil side of him. He’d hid it well. And it was low-down, bringing my family into it. Hurt me, fine. I could handle it. But my mother was different.
I pulled into the driveway and cut the engine, then just sat there as the A/C whined to a stop. I was dreading what I had to do. I knew that someone else might not have said anything, just letting the marriage, sham that it was, take its course. But I couldn’t allow that. I wouldn’t have been able to leave knowing that my mother was stuck here, living with that kind of deception. As a firm believer in the rip-it-off-like-a-Band-Aid school of bad news, I had to tell her.
As I walked up the driveway to the front porch, however, something was off. I couldn’t say exactly what: it was more of a hunch, unexplainable. Even before I came upon the Ensure cans, which were scattered across the front walk, some in the grass, some rolled under the bushes, one just sitting upright on the steps, as if waiting to be retrieved, I had a feeling I was too late.
I pushed open the front door, then felt it hit against something: another can. They were everywhere, scattered across the foyer as I crossed it, going into the kitchen.
“Mom?” I said, and listened to my voice bounce off the countertops and cabinets, back at me. No response. On the table, I could see the food stacked for our big family dinner: steaks, corn on the cob, most of it still in the plastic bags from the supermarket. Next to them, a stack of mail, with one envelope, addressed to my mother in clean block writing, ripped open.
I moved across the room, stepping over another Ensure, to the doorway of her study. The curtain was hanging down, the old busy-don’t-bother-me sign, but this time I pushed it aside and walked right through.