Chapter 4
Two days later and Therese hadn’t heard from Angie or the others, hadn’t expected to. Two days later and it still made no sense to her, what happened in their living room.
It was easy enough not to deal with it when Rindy was there, but now Harge had taken her until next week. Therese stayed in her darkroom for that, knew Carol didn’t like it. Didn’t like the idea of Therese hiding away in her own home, their home, just because of Harge.
She wasn’t hiding from Harge this time.
She remained in that room longer than usual. Things were simple there, the low light, the chemicals Therese knew exactly how to use to make things show up, be clear. The world outside that little space was something else entirely.
Therese didn’t see Carol immediately, felt guilty for feeling glad about it. She showered to purge the heaviness, the confusion, but it didn’t work. When she got out, her robe was folded carefully by the door, waiting for her. Therese hadn’t put it there.
Carol was sitting on their bed with a tray of tea waiting on the nightstand.
“I’m sorry, my dearest.”
Therese tied the robe tighter, perched on the other side of the bed. “What are you sorry for?”
Carol laughed without humor. “I was a brute, horrible.”
Therese took a breath. “So was he.”
“Come here? Please?”
Crawling the rest of the way onto the bed, Therese settled herself next to Carol, accepting the tea offered and smiling inside when Carol stated the obvious, told her to be careful of the heat as if the idea of Therese burning her mouth was simply intolerable.
“I don’t understand what happened, Carol.”
“With me or with them?”
“Both. But you’re here to talk to and I don’t think we’ll ever fully understand them.” She didn’t think they were allowed to, that they’d ever have the clearance.
Carol sighed, kissed Therese’s head and visibly relaxed when she was allowed to wrap an arm around her. “You were right, as usual. Young and brilliant and me a bitter old woman.”
“Stop,” Therese said the same way she always did when Carol got to pretending she was ancient.
“You were right, though. I have Rindy now, sort of,” she added with a rueful twist of her mouth, “but I still saw her being taken away.”
“Steve and Peggy didn’t take Rindy, Carol.”
“I know, I know.” She shook her head. “Something just…the lawyers, darling, you can’t imagine. Called me a danger to my child. Meanwhile those two are putting theirs in real danger and hiding behind patriotism to do it. I was…I got angry.”
“I can’t imagine what the lawyers said because you never tell me,” Therese said quietly.
“It doesn’t matter, Therese.”
Therese reached around Carol to set her cup down, made sure she had Carol’s gaze. “It matters. Obviously it still affects you so, so it matters.”
Carol smiled but looked away. Therese still didn’t know enough about everything that happened to Carol during their separation, wondered if she ever would. Sometimes she thought she knew just a bit of what it was like being with Steve and Peggy.
“They’re good people, Carol, you know that,” Therese said.
Carol ran her fingers along Therese’s palm, warmed by the tea. “I do. I know that.”
Therese swallowed. She was the one to look away this time, studying their joined hands. “You didn’t, you didn’t get really angry until Steve said those things about us, you and I and Rindy.”
Carol studied her. “Of course I got angry. He had no right, I don’t care what outfit he wears or how many lives he might’ve saved.”
“No. But are you sure, are you sure he wasn’t right? Even though he had no right, are you sure he wasn’t…”
Carol shook her head. “Therese, I don’t—”
“What he said about giving up Rindy for me, for a fling,” Therese said, the last word tasting sour in her mouth. “Technically he’s not, not wrong.”
Carol continued to stare. “Technically, he’s very wrong. Technically he was a complete idiot, even if that’s not his natural state.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure it didn’t hit you like it did because, because he was right?”
“What could he possibly have been right about?”
“You. Giving up Rindy for me, for us. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t worth it.”
Therese felt Carol’s eyes burning through her. Then there was a hand on her cheek, on both of them, Carol cupping her face just firmly enough that she couldn’t pull away.
“Steve was wrong,” Carol said, calm and even. “I was wrong too, but he was definitely wrong about this.”
“Carol—”
“I did not abandon Rindy. I did not give her up. You should know that by the mess of her toys still sitting in our living room.”
“It’s not the same. It’s not what you could’ve had if…” Therese trailed off. This wasn’t something they talked about, not usually.
“Don’t do this,” Carol told her. “Don’t you hurt yourself taking responsibility for my choices.”
“Are you saying you don’t regret them? Never?”
Carol closed her eyes a moment, rested her forehead against Therese’s. “I regret that some things happened the way they did. I regret the pain we all went through. You, me, Rindy, even Harge. And yes I want Rindy, I will always want Rindy. I’ll always hope that things…” Carol stopped, took a breath. “But I have never and will never regret you. I’m not capable of it. And I will not apologize for not choosing to live as half a person.”
Therese felt Carol’s breath on her skin, smelled the faint, lingering scent of her perfume. She sensed that Carol meant it, every word. She thought of Peggy, wondered if this was something like what Peggy felt for Angie and Steve when she’d considered choosing between them. Would making that choice have turned her into half a person?
Carol kissed her softly. “Is that really why you think I reacted so badly?”
Therese shrugged, helpless under the intensity of Carol’s gaze.
Carol sighed, kissed her forehead. “I hurt you. Decimated you, so Steve reminded me. I didn’t abandon Rindy but I did abandon you. That, he was right about, and that he was slapped for.”
Therese shifted enough to look at her properly. “Carol that…it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It will always matter, darling.”
“I forgave you. I forgive you.”
“And I love you for it.” Carol smiled, ran her thumb along Therese’s bottom lip. “I love you for so many things. But it doesn’t change what happened, what I did.”
Therese pulled Carol into a hug. “Nothing changes what happened, any of it,” she said, ghosting a kiss to Carol’s cheek. “I still forgive you; I did that a long time ago. You have to forgive yourself now.”
“I don’t know that I can.”
Therese held Carol tighter. If Carol couldn’t forgive herself, what were the chances of the five of them forgiving each other?
She buried herself in work the next few days, tried not to think of her personal situation. Her not-thinking was derailed in the middle of the week when someone yelled at her to answer the phone.
Carol was the only one who really called her here, so it was Carol’s voice Therese expected. “Hello?”
“Hey, hotshot.”
It wasn’t Carol, but certainly wasn’t unwelcome. “Angie?”
“How you doin, kiddo?”
She couldn’t even bother fretting at Angie for calling her that again. “Not great. You?”
The answer didn’t come immediately. “Better than last week. What time do hotshot photographers get to duck out for lunch?”
“I’d have to find one and let you know.”
“Smartass.”
Angie asked again what time she could leave.
“I said I’d make it up to you, didn’t I, standing you up for lunch?”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I think it is,” Angie said quietly. “Please?”
And that was that.
She met Angie an hour later at the place they were meant to eat in the first place. Angie was not Carol, was not late, was already there when Therese arrived. Therese thought Angie must’ve already been in the city when she called, but was afraid to ask. She hated that she was afraid to ask.
She noticed that Angie didn’t give her one of those almost too tight hugs, hoped it was because of the other diners. She relaxed slightly when Angie squeezed her forearm over the table, quick but hard. And hidden by some folding trick Angie did with her napkin. Therese marveled again at how good her friends were at hiding things.
Were they still her friends? Angie was here, at least.
Angie apologized, like she had after forgetting their previous lunch date.
“There’s no need.”
“Oh there’s a need. Our…things shouldn’t have affected you.”
Therese apologized too, then asked, despite her fears. “What, what things, Angie?”
A waiter came, interrupting them. Therese wasn’t hungry and when she didn’t order enough, Angie ordered for them both.
“I’m going to take care of one of you, damn it,” she muttered, so quiet Therese might have made it up.
Angie said that Steve and Peggy’s “business trip” had gone “kind of bad,” something Therese had puzzled out on her own.
“Are they okay now?” she asked, remembering Peggy’s limp, the stitches along Steve’s forehead. She’d never seen Steve with a visible injury before.
“Getting to okay,” Angie said, sipping from her water glass.
“Are you?”
“Getting to okay,” she repeated.
Angie said there were some things no one had planned for on that business trip. She didn’t elaborate and Therese couldn’t tell if she was choosing not to or if she didn’t have the details herself.
Therese didn’t ask about the baby. All she could hear in her head was Angie saying Peggy wasn’t pregnant. Peggy said she wasn’t, so she wasn’t, the bitter way Angie said that when she and Carol had sat at Angie’s table. All she could see was that maybe-grimace Peggy had when Lizzie wrapped her small legs around Peggy’s waist.
Therese didn’t ask most of the questions she wanted to. Angie was so talkative, straightforward, almost too much so at times. If Angie wasn’t bringing something up, that wasn’t an accident. Though Therese was realizing more and more that Angie wasn’t the smiling, open book Therese first thought she’d met.
It was Angie who swore under her breath and pointed out the time. “You probably have to get back.”
Therese checked her watch. They’d past “half to get back” fifteen minutes ago. “No, I have time.”
But Angie smiled knowingly at her, was already waving down the waiter. “Uh-uh, no more slacking off, Shutter. I won’t be responsible for some fathead boss giving you hell.”
Therese tried to argue when Angie took the bill, but Angie wouldn’t hear of it. They’d provided room and board, she said, and they’d cooked for her at her house that night.
“I got this one,” Angie said.
“Lizzie’s cup is still at our house.” It wasn’t what she meant to say, not that Therese knew exactly what she’d meant to say, but it wasn’t that.
Angie frowned.
“Her drink cup, the plastic one.” She remembered washing it with Carol just before Steve and Peggy arrived, before things blew up. It wasn’t the only thing there, most of what Angie came with still remained. Yet all Therese could think of was that cup.
“That would explain all the broken glasses.” Angie sighed. “I’ll—”
“I don’t want to lose you,” Therese blurted.
Angie’s frown deepened. She sat forward in her chair. “What are you talking about, Shutter?”
“I don’t, I don’t want to lose you. Any of you.”
It irritated her, how young she sounded, how she still couldn’t say what she wanted to. That Carol had Abby, had someone who’d shared so many things with her. Therese never had that, that kind of friend. She’d never had many friends at all and though that had changed somewhat with Dannie, Louise and Phil, it was different with the other three. Angie and her loves were older, closer to Carol’s age, and Carol had lost most of her friends after the divorce. The trio though, they had a child, they understood what it was to live differently. Carol needed people like that.
Except it wasn’t about Carol, not really. It was Therese and her hunch that if they lost this relationship they’d lose something important, that Therese would. Like she would’ve lost if Carol hadn’t left her gloves.
“Oh honey.” Angie squeezed her arm again. “What makes you think you’d lose us?”
Therese stared, wondered if it was a trick question.
“I’m tougher to lose than a bad rash. Not going anywhere.”
“Steve and Peggy?”
“Steve…that A of his doesn’t always stand for America.”
Angie mouthed the word “asshole” and Therese laughed in spite of herself.
“He wises up eventually though, and he already feels bad. He,” Angie faltered just a moment. “He feels bad about a lot of things right now, but this is right up top of the list. And he doesn’t give up on people.”
“Peggy?” Therese asked quietly.
“Peggy already admitted that we were all ‘a load of bloody wankers’ that day. She’s dealing…we’re dealing with some things, but no one’s losing anyone.”
Therese sensed there was more to it than that, there had to be. What was she supposed to say to it?
“Few bumps in the road doesn’t mean leaving, Therese.”
The use of her name caught Therese’s attention. She looked at Angie and thought Angie saw too much. The tears, the yelling over the phone to people she didn’t know before her mother dropped her at the school and never came back. The girls who would cause too much trouble there and be gone suddenly. Carol going away in Waterloo, going away without her this time.
Therese thought irrationally that Angie saw all of it, understood it all. But how could she when she’d told story after story about the seemingly endless cast of characters that was her relatives, her family?
Therese didn’t know. She knew that Angie hugged her before they parted, long and tight and heedless of anyone passing them on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.
“Just a bump, Shutter,” Angie whispered in her ear before letting go.
It was a slow day at the shop, and Carol hated that more than usual. It gave her too much time to think.
While Abby did inventory in back, Carol surveyed the empty store from behind the counter, though her mind was somewhere else. On Madison Avenue, in their apartment, where Angie and Lizzie’s things remained. Carol wondered if she should drop them back herself, maybe with a bottle of Schnapps added. Would she be welcome? If she simply had them sent over, there would no longer be a reason for Steve, Peggy or Angie to come back.
The bell above the door rang. Looking forward to the distraction of a customer, Carol froze when she saw who it was. As if summoned by her thoughts, Steve was on her threshold.
He’d been so stiff when she saw him last, seeming to tower over her. He wasn’t like that now. Carol had a hard time deciding what he was like. The most obvious difference was the stitches, or lack of them. He healed fast. Carol wished other things did too.
“Hi,” he said softly, approaching the counter.
“Hi,” Carol repeated, feeling stupid, unprepared.
He looked around the store and asked if a certain dining set was new. She said it was. He said he liked it Carol said she’d gotten a deal on it from a little seller out of Boston. Steve nodded, said he liked it again. Carol asked if he was in the market for something.
“Not exactly,” he said, “not right now anyway.” He ran a hand through his hair, messing up the blonde strands that always looked so perfect in the papers, the news reels. “Angie said she had lunch with Therese the other day.”
“I heard.”
“Therese said there’s, there’s some things left at your place. Angie’s things, I mean.”
There were a lot of things left at her place, unfinished and unfixed. “A few. I can send them over, if you like. Or—”
“Lizzie won’t stop talking about the pictures,” Steve blurted. “Therese’s….I guess she told Lizzie she’d show her how pictures are developed. She thinks it’s magic.”
“Therese’s pictures are magic,” Carol said fondly, unable to help herself.
“They are,” Steve said. He took a breath. “I had no right.”
“You didn’t,” Carol said. She remembered suddenly how she’d felt when Therese said no to her at the restaurant, finally said no. She thought she’d lost everything, her child and her love. She remembered the long winter nights, coming home to an empty house. Just as empty as the one Steve and Peggy would’ve come home to. At least Carol had known what hell to expect all those nights. “Neither did I.”
“Lizzie misses Rindy.”
“Rindy misses Lizzie.”
She’d laugh at a different time over how childish this all sounded, how all they could do was mirror each other.
Steve breathed deep enough that his broad shoulders rose and fell with it. “I wondered if I could get your help with something.”
No more mirroring then. “Oh?”
“Don’t need a dining table yet but, but I could use a cradle.”
Carol was sure she lost the careful neutrality she’d tried to protect herself with.
“It’s early but,” Steve was babbling into the silence. “Early’s better than late. And I learned with Lizzie that I’m better at painting nurseries than building cradles. Or even choosing them.”
Carol forced herself to speak, forced back everything Therese said or hadn’t said about her lunch with Angie, the topics never broached. “Shouldn’t, shouldn’t Peggy be here too?”
“She’s fine with me getting a head start on my own, Angie too. They know enough not to trust my judgement but they trust yours.”
He held her gaze. Carol took a shaky breath of her own and smiled as she walked around the counter.
“Let me show you what we have.”