Chapter 8
“I was wrong, and so were the priests,” Abby declared. “There is a God, and He does love me.”
Therese sipped her wine and rolled her eyes. She’d done a lot of both tonight. “You’re a believer now, are you?”
“That asshole—”
“Rindy’s father,” Carol cut in, without a reprimand.
“Hush, she can’t be blamed for that,” Abby said, “that asshole fathered a fat baby. Born on April Fool’s Day. That asshole’s fat baby was born on April Fool’s Day.”
“And Easter,” Therese said, half-hearted.
“Exactly. That collection of circumstances? Obviously someone is on my side.”
“Obviously,” Therese said on a sigh.
“Ignore her, Therese,” said Rose, reaching over to top off Therese’s wineglass. “She’ll burn herself out soon.”
Therese was starting to doubt this. It was late for a weeknight. Rindy would be back with Harge tomorrow morning, but until then, she was sound asleep in her room. Therese had verified this several times as Carol and Abby’s laughter rose in pitch.
Abby and Rose had come by with Easter leftovers. Pie and alcohol, mostly. Carol put out a tin of cookies and Abby had immediately complained upon tasting them.
“They’re from a client,” Carol said. “A Christmas gift.”
“You’re serving us four-month-old snacks?”
“I was going to bring them to Harge’s, but the secretary went into labor.”
Therese was sharing a sofa with Rose while Carol and Abby giggled like schoolgirls on the other one. Therese sipped her wine again. The drink usually had her feeling light, laughing along with Carol and Abby, and the silliness they inevitably brought out in each other.
The wine was good, but lacking the normal effect.
“He looks like an overgrown radish,” Abby said. “Rindy was much cuter.”
Rindy had shown off the photos of her brother first thing. Abby’s commentary on him didn’t bother Therese so much. She’d said he was cute, just not as cute as Rindy. Even when comparing him to vegetables, there was amusement in her voice. She said he was luckier than Rindy in one regard, that he looked nothing like Harge.
The remarks on Sascha didn’t faze Therese. Sascha’s mother was a different story. As soon as Rindy was asleep, she’d heard about “the secretary.” “‘The inferior model.” “The rodent that birthed a radish.”
Carol, shockingly, claimed not to see the resemblance between her and Lilah, so it was Abby making most of the remarks about appearance. But Carol was quick to fill any silence with talk of pests and secretaries.
Abby was greatly entertained. Therese, having heard the same things many, many times when Abby wasn’t there to chime in, was growing tired of the record. For the first time in a long while, Therese was truly annoyed with Abby, Abby and what her presence did to Carol.
She half-paid attention to the conversation for another minute or so. That was all it took for Lilah to be “the secretary” again. Therese spoke without thinking, interrupting Carol midsentence. “What’s the difference,” she asked, “between a secretary and a shopgirl?”
Abby and Carol looked at each other as though they were trying to puzzle out the punchline to a joke.
“What’s the difference,” Therese repeated, “between Harge calling me a shopgirl and you calling her a secretary?”
They looked at each other again. “We don’t say it to her face,” Abby said with a laugh. Carol joined her.
Therese did not smile. Was this what it was to be a sad drunk, an angry one? She wasn’t drunk though, just tired, irritated. She wished Abby would go away.
It was not Abby who left though, but Rose. Rose who gave what Therese thought was a sympathetic look, and then became very interested in the lounge chairs on the balcony. So much so that she needed Carol to head out there with her, provide details.
Abby looked slightly baffled at being suddenly left alone with Therese, but huffed out a laugh. “Well, all right then. Seems it’s just you and me, kiddo.”
Abby called her that sometimes, Angie too. It usually didn’t bother her. Everything felt like a bother in this moment. The TV droned low in the background, and Therese couldn’t decide whether she wanted to switch it off, or blare the volume loud enough to drown out anything Carol or Abby might say.
“Alright.” Abby sat forward. “What’s that face?”
“What face?”
“That one. You look sour about something.”
“I’m not,” Therese lied.
“Uh-huh. Is that why Rose gave me the evil eye on her way out?” Abby sipped her drink, something much stronger than Therese’s wine.
“I have no idea, and that sounds like your problem, not mine.”
Abby sat up straighter, eyebrows lifting. She put her glass back down, careful to use a coaster, not the top of Carol’s antique table. Abby was the only one Therese knew who cared about such things as much as Carol did. “Therese, what the hell?”
She seemed more surprised than angry. Therese flushed. She hadn’t expected the words either, the tone. “I’m sorry.”
“Therese?”
“It’s harder to be a secretary than it is a shopgirl,” Therese blurted, not expecting those words either.
Abby blinked. “What was that?”
“It’s, you have to go to school to be a secretary, or at least you can. Lilah went to school for it. I never went to school for anything. You don’t need training to be a shopgirl.”
“You’re not a shopgirl, you’re a photographer for the biggest paper in the world.”
“But I never got training for that, either.”
“What the hell, Therese?” Abby repeated.
With Rose gone, there was more room on the sofa. Therese used it to tuck her legs up underneath her, make herself small. “You and Carol. You call Harge’s wife a secretary like it’s an insult, something horrible. But it’s hard, being a secretary.” Therese thought of Evangelista at work, a busybody, but kind, how she expertly wrangled Mr. Whitmore’s moods, took dictation at a ridiculous speed. “Harder than working in a store, I’ll bet. I used to read under the counters at work and hardly anyone noticed.”
Abby looked like she was trying to blink away the last two hours of drinking. “Nobody meant anything by that, Therese, we were just talking.”
“Were you? Did Carol call me shopgirl a few years ago? Did you?”
“Of course not! Therese, it’s just talk. I’ve never had a real job in my life, you know that.”
“The store’s a real job.”
“I have the store because I want it, not because I need it. I’m a pampered, trust fund baby.”
“So what, you secretly admire the little people like Lilah and I, eking out a living?”
Abby just looked at her for a long moment, long enough for Therese to feel stupid and ashamed, and wish she hadn’t drunk so much. “What is going on?” Abby said finally.
Therese closed her eyes against the hurt, the concern. They stung, and it took effort to open them again, to brave looking at Abby, but she had to. “You don’t call Lilah those things to her face. Did you call me things? Did Carol?”
Abby frowned deeply, but held Therese’s gaze. “I called you young,” she replied, sounding oddly sober all of a sudden. “I called you young, and I told Carol that she’d fuck things up for both of you if she wasn’t careful. Which she did, because she wasn’t. Carol, she called you Therese. In a way that told me right from the start that we were all screwed.”
There was no malice in the words. Therese knew what she was talking about, that way Carol had of uttering the syllables of her name as though they were perfect, as though they were music. She rubbed furiously at the corner of her eye.
“Therese,” Abby stood, took Rose’s empty spot on the sofa. “What is going on?”
Was that the second time she’d asked? The third? “Does she still want Harge?”
Abby had to lean forward to hear, though they were sat close together now. “What?”
“Carol. Does she still want Harge?”
“Want him to what?”
“Want him, Abby.”
Abby made a worrying kind of choking sound. “Therese, what…no. No. Where would you even…what?”
“Harge calls me shopgirl. Like that’s, that’s all I am.”
“Harge is a dick.”
“He’s a dick who wanted Carol back, for years. Now Carol calls this woman secretary. Or rodent.”
“Carol adores you. Are you worried she wants the kind of thing Peggy has with Angie and Steve?”
“I wasn’t worried about that specifically, until you brought it up.”
“Therese, it’s just names.”
“The same kind of names Harge had for me, when I was with the person he wanted.”
Abby made that noise again, like she might be choking or laughing, but her expression was serious. “That is…no, Therese. No. That is completely different.”
For a split second, Therese was back on the road, in a lousy diner, with a rolling stomach, Abby telling her not to compare Carol breaking her heart with Carol breaking Abby’s. “Is it?”
“Yes.” Abby took Therese’s hand, squeezed hard. “She doesn’t want him back, Therese. How long have you been thinking about this?”
“Since sometime after the first week, maybe,” Therese mumbled. “When the names didn’t stop.”
It wasn’t something she’d admit when sober. Probably, she would’ve let it eat at her until she couldn’t stand it anymore. Until she blew up at Carol again, like she had shortly after the storm, when Carol wasn’t talking to her much, or even seeing her. She’d had bourbon to bolster herself then. Now it was just wine.
“Those are just…like you said. She’s getting back at him for all those times he didn’t use your name.”
“She’s not. Most of the time, he’s not there to hear her, so what’s the point?”
Abby took a breath. “Do you honestly, honestly think Carol has any interest in going back there?”
“She says he’s been acting more human lately.”
“Compared to what? If a dog shits on my best rug every day, and then he cuts back to only five days a week, that’s an improvement, but I’m still not going to let the dog in bed with me.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“So is Harge. He’ll always be disgusting.”
“You don’t like dogs. Any dogs.”
“Therese. Do you actually think she wants him back?”
“I don’t know.” Therese stared at her hand, at Abby’s thumb drawing patterns against it. “She always said, she always talked about what a relief it would be if he found someone. How it would take the focus off her. Now he has, and she’s unhappy.”
Abby sighed. “Feelings are tricky. Expectations versus reality,” she waved her free hand in a vague gesture. “When she pictured someone else with him, I don’t think she pictured that someone with Rindy.”
Therese looked up, met Abby’s eyes again. “How could she not? She had to know it would happen.” Therese realized as she said it that in all their conversations about Harge finding new interests, she couldn’t remember Rindy being mentioned.
“Logically, she had to, but logic’s rarely had anything to do with it when it comes to him. If she let herself go there at all, another woman raising her child, I’m sure she pictured something else.”
“Like what?” Therese asked. “The wicked stepmother?”
“Not wicked, she wouldn’t want anyone being cruel to Rindy. Just someone Rindy disliked enough to want to spend more time with you two.” Abby smiled sadly. “Not someone Rindy adores. She’s had to let go of Rindy so much already. Can you imagine how it must terrify her, the thought of being replaced?”
“That wouldn’t happen,” Therese said instantly. “Rindy adores Carol, too. She’d never—”
“I know.” Abby squeezed Therese’s hand again. “I know, and you know, and I think Carol knows too, deep down, but fear’s a funny thing. It turns people into assholes.”
“That’s why she’s been acting like this, fear?”
Abby let go of Therese’s hand, reached for her drink. “I can’t say it’s only that, only Rindy. They were together a long time, there’s a lot of history there, much to my annoyance. You can’t just wipe that out.”
History. Like Carol’s history with Abby. There was more of it than with Harge, at least in years. But Carol’s marriage, it’s end, would always be a defining feature, to so many people. She couldn’t talk about her time with Abby. She couldn’t be honest about her life with Therese, not fully, not with most people. She could talk about her divorce. Not easily, but she could speak of that more freely than she ever could Abby or Therese. And if she didn’t, others would.
She still had his name. It was for Rindy, Therese knew this. Hell, Therese even loved the name, because it had been Carol’s, been Rindy’s, before she ever associated it with Harge.
Still.
Carol had his name, and his child. They would always be linked; they would always have history. Their marriage license, Rindy’s birth certificate. The stationary Carol used to have, Mrs. Hargess Aird.
Carol asked her to tea, wrote a note asking her to come back, and she’d done it on paper bearing Harge’s name. And Therese kept that note. Carol didn’t know, but she had. Therese kept something of Harge’s in their home every single day, because it was the only way she could keep that part of Carol.
The only official records linking her to Carol, at least that Therese knew of, were court documents from Carol’s divorce, her doctors. The kind Therese wouldn’t want to see even if she could.
“Therese?”
She’d drifted, got lost in her head. “I know. History.”
Abby nodded, sipped. “Exactly. It’s history, and it’s Rindy, and it maybe a few other things that you should really talk to her about instead of me, but it’s not longing, Therese. It’s not wanting.”
“It just, it feels so petty, the way you two talk about her.” It reminded Therese of when the girls at the school would all fixate over the same boy, and tear apart whichever unlucky girl he showed the slightest bit of returning interest in. There’d been a man that delivered groceries who Therese feared would incite a riot.
Abby sighed. “Because it is petty. You’re an old soul, Therese. Carol and I were kids together. We still are, sometimes, just trapped in old lady bodies.”
“You’re not old,” Therese said automatically, habit from whenever Carol fretted about their age difference.
Abby waved that off, set her drink back down. “You’re young, but you’re more grown up than both of us.” Abby smiled fondly. “It doesn’t mean anything; not like you’ve worried about.”
“Are you sure?” Therese hated this, how uncertain she sounded. She didn’t feel grown up at all tonight.
Carol had once told her, Therese couldn’t remember what prompted it, that Harge had given her Rindy, and that she had to love him for that. Had to even if she didn’t want to. Harge gave her Rindy, Carol said, but Therese had given her everything else. She had one reason to love Harge, and a thousand, a million, to love Therese.
It was stupid, with words like those, to worry, to feel this way. But did all those reasons Carol loved There, thousands, millions, did even they measure up against Rindy? Against history and family, all the other history Carol would never be able to share, the family she’d given up to be with Therese? Not just Rindy, the chance for more children too?
Abby’s gaze was steady and serious. “I’ve seen Carol when she wants something that way, remember? I’ve seen her long for someone. I’ve seen her look at Harge when she was still in love with him, don’t ask me how the hell she got that way. For a little bit, I was on the receiving end of that look, the one that means Carol wants you more than anything.”
“Abby—”
“Find some old photographs, Therese, ones you didn’t take. Look at the pictures of you and her together. They won’t have your professional touch, but you’ll see it, if you calm down and look.”
“See what?”
Abby’s smile was warm and soft, and maybe the slightest bit sad. “She’s never looked at anyone the way she looks at you. Not anyone. You have nothing to worry about there, kid, I promise.”
“But she’s got so much with him, so much past.”
“There’s more ahead than behind, Therese. Carol’s future is with you.”
It was quiet a moment, Rose and Carol’s voices coming muffled through the closed door of the balcony. Therese swallowed hard a few times, wished she had something other than wine to drink. “Okay,” she said, flashing a weak smile. “But I still wish you two wouldn’t talk about Lilah that way all the time. It’s not easy being the other woman.”
“You were never the other woman, but fine.”
“Thank you. And no more badmouthing her around Rindy.”
“She’s sleeping, she doesn’t hear.”
“She never hears, Abby, until we know she does.”
Rindy had called her shopgirl once. At least that was the only time Therese knew about. It was early on. Carol was making dinner and Therese asked Rindy to put away her toys and wash up. Rindy didn’t want to, and Therese didn’t know how to discipline her. She’d repeated the request more firmly, then made it an uncertain command.
Rindy said that Therese was just Mommy’s shopgirl, and that she didn’t have to listen to her.
Something in the kitchen had shattered, literally, as Carol dropped it. Therese couldn’t remember what.
It was a bad night, for all of them. Harge insisted later that neither he nor his parents said those things in front of Rindy.
Therese had already known that just because someone wasn’t talking, it didn’t mean they weren’t listening. Carol learned it that weekend.
Abby’s face softened. She knew where Therese’s mind was. She’d heard almost as much as Therese had about how unacceptable it was, how it would never be allowed in their home again. Carol was angry, at Harge, but Rindy too, no matter what Therese said. Therese was not angry, just shocked, hurt.
“Okay,” Abby said. “Small ears. Got it.”
“Okay. Okay, good. Thank you.”
She didn’t know what to think of Harge’s new bride, had yet to meet her. But even Abby said that Lilah seemed to care for Rindy, and Therese knew how hard it could be, hearing something so awful from someone so innocent, someone you were learning to love.
“It’s not that I find her completely useless, you know.”
Abby’s tone changed, probably to lighten the mood. Therese didn’t mind. “No?”
“She went into labor to avoid a night with Harge’s parents. That’s a hell of a talent. Would’ve saved Carol a lot of trouble back in the day,” Abby added, lighting herself a cigarette.
Therese snorted on a laugh. “Give me one of those,” she demanded, leaning toward Abby