Before I Go (26 page)

“How’s the bird?”

Two kids dart between us, playing chase. “Fine,” he says, bending his knees sideways to avoid collision.

“Really? Is he eating?”

“Oh.” He looks from the kids to me, and I wonder if he also sees in them the future we won’t have. If he does, his eyes don’t show it. “I don’t know.”

I’m confused. “Wasn’t that Charlene?”

He opens his mouth to speak but gets interrupted by a staticky woman’s voice blaring through the air, followed by high-pitched feedback. I wince as the chatter in the crowd goes still.

The offender, a tall, plump woman with gray roots betraying her otherwise black hair, is standing in the center of the room, struggling with her microphone. “Sorry about that,” she says into the mouthpiece and this time the sound rings clear. “Ah, that’s better.” She smiles. “Welcome to Lexington Elementary’s kindergarten open house.” She pauses and scattered applause fills the empty space. “I’m Principal Woods, and we are thrilled that you all are here and interested in learning more about our award-winning educational facility.”

I feel, rather than see, Kayleigh rolling her eyes beside me. The principal gives a brief overview of the kindergarten program—the academic curriculum, the enriched learning environment, the extracurricular activities. By the time she gets to the focus on global citizenship through their comprehensive world languages program, even I have to keep myself from snickering. Is this elementary school or college?

Kayleigh elbows me in the rib cage as if to say, “See? You thought I was exaggerating.”

“There are four kindergarten classrooms that we’ll be touring this evening,” the principal continues. “Please feel free to ask the co-teachers in each room any questions you have at all about the learning environment here. Assistant Principal Perkins and I will also be milling around to answer any questions. Thank you again for coming.”

She switches off the mike and parents start herding like cattle toward the back of the school, where Principal Woods indicated the kindergarten classrooms were. As we shuffle along, it dawns on me why Kayleigh was late. “You were with Bradley Cooper, weren’t you.”

She flushes, an involuntary grin spreading across her face.

“Wow. He must be really good,” I say.

Jack groans. “Seriously?” I can almost hear him thinking:
This
is why I don’t like to hang out with you two. His cell phone rings. He holds it up and squeezes my arm. “I’ll be right back.”

As Jack steps his way to the side of the crowd and ducks into an empty classroom, Kayleigh leans into me and says in a conspirator’s voice. “He really is.”

“Well,” I say, giving in to Kayleigh’s infectious happiness, the familiar roller-coaster high she rides at the beginning of every new relationship, “he is hot.”

“You have no idea,” she says, launching into a detailed description of his most chiseled body parts. At “carved obliques,” I stop listening. I might even stop breathing. I know I’ve stopped moving because I’m ever so slightly aware of being jostled a bit from behind by parents jockeying to get through the doorway I’m standing in.

I’m a stone in a river and my body is ice-cold.

“Daisy.” I hear Kayleigh’s concerned voice floating toward me. “Are you OK?”

She takes my arm and pulls me out of the door frame and into the
classroom, but I don’t take my eyes off the woman with toffee-colored hair.

“It’s her,” I say, my voice dry.

“Who?” Kayleigh follows my gaze.

“PW147.” She’s more alive in person, which shouldn’t make any sense—isn’t everyone more alive in the flesh than in photos? But as soon as I light on the description, it fits. Her Pantene hair shines under the fluorescent bulbs. She’s wearing a navy blue cardigan and bright yellow ballet flats that match her brilliant smile, and I understand why there’s a child wrapped around her as if he’s made of steel and her leg is a magnet.

“Where? The only person I see is Pamela.”

Upon hearing her name, PW147 breaks the gaze of the parent she’s talking to and looks in our direction. “Kayleigh, there you are! Do you mind showing Mrs. . . . I’m sorry, tell me your name again?”

The woman murmurs something.

“Yes! Mrs.
Beckwith
—the emotions chart? I promised to take a few parents”—she waves to a group of adults standing behind her—“through our typical work cycle.”

Kayleigh looks from me to Pamela and blinks. “Um . . . yeah. Sure.” She steps forward and directs Mrs. Beckwith toward the back of the classroom. “Right this way.”

Kayleigh turns with narrowed eyes, mouthing something to me over her shoulder, but I’m too busy staring at PW—or Pamela—and trying to reconcile the fact that the woman in the profile is the same woman that Kayleigh’s been bitching about since she started working here in August.

“Ma’am?” The word snaps me to attention as I realize that everyone is staring at me.

“Yes?” I manage, locking eyes with Pamela. There’s such genuine kindness in them that I start to wonder if Kayleigh’s poor judgment of men extends to other people in her life. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ve
concocted this impossibly perfect woman in my mind based on her 173-word profile and have been rendered unable to find any possible fault with her.

Going forward, I must be shrewder.

“I was just asking if you wanted to join us in observing the children’s work cycle.”

“I do,” I say. “Thank you.”

She smiles, nods, and turns to the rest of the adults flanking her, asking us to take a seat in one of the pint-sized plastic blue chairs at our feet. Then she starts to unravel the boy from her leg. “Hudson, why don’t you go get the seashell work and you can show them how you wash it?”

He scampers off on stubby legs to a shelf lining the side of the room, and I force myself to look away from his tininess, which threatens to clench my heart as tightly as the whiny girl’s palms did. We each awkwardly lower our bodies into the molded seats and I turn my focus back to Pamela. “Each child gets to choose what he or she will work on when they come in for the day,” she begins.

I lean forward on my knees—uncomfortably close to my chin—hanging on to every word. Her voice is firm, but melodic. It’s apparent she’s the kind of teacher who won’t take any crap from her students, which makes them love her all the more.

I shake my head. But there must be something wrong with her. I try to think back. What did Kayleigh hate about her? The pearls. She was thoroughly offended by Pamela’s pearls, launching into a diatribe that started with “Who wears pearls?” and ended with something about sorority girls and Jackie Kennedy.

My gaze travels to her neck—she’s not wearing them tonight. Regardless, it’s hardly a crime to own outdated jewelry. Maybe they’re a family heirloom—passed down from her dead grandmother or something. I’m sure Kayleigh never thought to ask.

The other complaints I recall had to do with Pamela’s overeagerness
in the classroom—constantly coming up with new bulletin boards, adding extra tasks into lessons at the last minute, sucking up to Principal Woods. I can see how that would be irritating to Kayleigh, but all it says about Pamela is that she’s dedicated to her work, passionate about what she does.

Like Jack.

“Excuse me,” I hear Kayleigh’s voice break in, interrupting Pamela’s explanation.

“I’m just going to grab Dais—er . . . Mrs. Richmond. I promised I would show her the, um . . . sandpaper letters.”

“Of course,” Pamela says, nodding at me as if to dismiss me. Kayleigh beckons me with her hand, and I have no choice but to get up from the chair and follow her. Pamela launches back into her speech behind me.

When we’re a safe distance away and clutching large white cards with raised gritty characters on them, Kayleigh hisses one word: “
Pamela?
”

“Keep your voice down,” I whisper back, peering around to make sure we’re alone. And then: “I just don’t understand what’s so bad about her.”

“Where do you want me to begin? She wore a reindeer sweater at Christmas. And she was not being ironic.” Kayleigh stares at me as if she’s just told me that Pamela strangles kittens for fun.

I stare back. “So?”

“
So?
” Kayleigh repeats. “She’s
that
girl. Everything is sunshine and daisies and—oh! She puts contact paper on
everything
. Pencil holders, the inside of drawers, bulletin boards. If she lived in your house, she would contact paper the walls. Think about that.”

I do. Not the contact paper bit—I already have it on the inside of every cabinet in my kitchen and bathroom—but Pamela living in my house. Looking around the classroom at all the neat cubbyholes, organized shelves, and immaculate desks, I have no doubt she would keep
my home in perfect order—and she’d always know where Jack’s scrubs were.

“What are you guys whispering about?” I jump at Jack’s voice behind me.

“Nothing,” I say, rearranging the sandpaper letters in my hand.

“Do you need us here much longer?” Jack asks Kayleigh. “I gotta get back to the clinic.”

“Oh. No, I think we’re good. I made sure Principal Woods saw me talking with you guys in the lobby,” she says.

Jack nods and turns to me. “Are you about ready to go?”

“Uh, yeah,” I say, darting my eyes over to where Pamela is still sitting in the half circle of chairs, watching Hudson use a toothbrush to scrub a conch shell in a shallow Tupperware filled with water. How long does it take to clean a freakin’ shell? “Let me just tell Kayleigh’s co-teacher thank you.”

“OK, well, I’ll go ahead and start the car.”

“No! I mean, just, it’ll take two seconds. Come with me.”

As I walk toward Pamela, my thoughts stumble over themselves—I can introduce Jack easily enough, but how can I keep the conversation going? And even if I can get the two of them chatting, then what? I can’t just ask for her phone number. Or say, hey, interested in marrying my husband? I curse myself again for being so foolish. For thinking I could pick a wife out for Jack as easily as I might buy him a pair of shoes. What did I think, that I would just bring a girl home and put her in the closet for safekeeping?

When we arrive at the blue chair I left empty, I’m defeated. I decide to just thank Pamela, because that’s what I told Jack I was there to do, and leave, my tail between the cancerous bones in my legs.

As I take a deep breath to speak, Pamela looks up.

Her eyes widen.

And before I can say a word, she beats me to it.

“Jack?”

Confused, I glance around, wondering if one of the boys weaving through the class is named Jack. But then I look back at Pamela and see that her gaze is fully locked on my husband. So I turn my head to stare at him, too. And imagined or not, it feels as though the whole room—the whole world, perhaps—has gone still and is waiting for him to speak.

His response is a statement: “Pamela.”

The thoughts in my mind that had been so jumbled just moments before dissipate, and I am left with one coherent sentence: they know each other.

But it’s hard to focus on that information. Because there’s something about the way he says her name that—for the briefest of seconds—makes me hate her as much as Kayleigh does.

Maybe even more.

april

seventeen

I
DON’T EAT CHILI.

I’ve never liked it. I think the cans of it that I buy for Jack to slather onto his hot dogs look like dog food.

Yet I’m inexplicably standing in front of a table lined with Crock-Pots in a church basement, holding a Styrofoam bowl full of slow-cooked ground beef and spices. Orange puddles of oil have begun to congregate on top of the meat, and as I stare at the offending concoction, all I can think is: how did I get here?

Not literally. I know that I rode with Jack and we walked in together and now here we are, standing on top of linoleum and beneath cheap ceiling tiles.

And I know that it’s because I said yes. That I agreed that we should come.

At the open house, after the revelation that Jack and Pamela were not meeting for the first time, Jack offered me the missing puzzle piece: “Pamela volunteers at the Small Dog Rescue, too.”

He turned back to her. “But I didn’t know you worked
here
,” he said at the exact moment that Pamela said: “I didn’t know you had kids.”

Kids. Shit. Jack and I were supposed to be parents. Panicked, I glanced up at Kayleigh, her wide eyes meeting mine.

Following an awkward beat of silence, Jack spoke, easily explaining away our lack of children and therefore unnecessary presence at an elementary school open house: “We don’t. My wife is best friends with Kayleigh. She’s always wanted us to see where she worked.”

Wife.

I basked in the noun. Smug at the possession it implied.

And then, as they continued chatting about the dog rescue and last weekend’s adoption day at PetSmart, I silently scolded myself for my ridiculous overreaction to this entire situation. So they already knew each other. This was a good thing, no? Just minutes before, I had been trying to scheme their meeting. That part—though unexpected—took care of itself. I should have been relieved, elated. Not acting like a possessive schoolgirl who doesn’t want to share her Oreos at lunchtime.

But if I was honest, I didn’t really like the way she was looking at my cookies. Like she might eat them all, including the crumbs. And leave me without even one.

I forced myself to tune back into their conversation.

I heard the word “chili.”

And then Jack and Pamela were looking at me expectantly.

“Huh?” I said.

“Do you want to go?” Jack said.

“Where?”

“The fund-raiser for the shelter. Pamela was just talking about it.”

“Oh, sorry. Yes. That sounds great.”

And now it’s Saturday and I’m at a chili cook-off. Holding a bowl of chili that I don’t intend to eat.

“You coming?” Jack says, grabbing two plastic spoons and a couple of napkins from a table covered in a red checkerboard cloth.

I follow him as he weaves through the crowd, past the dessert
table, laden with homemade frosted cakes, chocolate chip cookies, lemon bars, and cherry pie. Though sugar has strictly been on my Do Not Eat list for years, I slow down and eye each goodie, surprised how easy it is to conjure the memory of its taste in my mouth.