Discovering Normal (30 page)

“I know the goddamn answer!”

“Then what is it? What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t at least attempt to help? I can’t live the rest of my life knowing that I didn’t even try. I’ve tried with her and now I need to try with you. Do you love her, Chris? Right now, right this second, do you love your wife?”
             
“It’s not that simple.”

“Maybe not, but what’s the answer?”

“She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

“That’s still not an answer to the question.”

Chris glanced out at the icy, clear day. New snow, new year, new life, He knew Ramona was just trying to be a friend, though it would be so much easier if she weren’t here, staring and waiting for an answer he didn’t want to give.

“I can’t answer that.”

“If you can’t answer me who you’ve known all these years, then how can you be so sure you’re doing the right thing?”

She hopped down and grabbed his arms. “Don’t through away a life if there’s a thread of love there. I know she seems so hard to please but she’s really not. She just wants to be noticed by you--remembered. You can’t let go of what you’ve built and the children you’ve made just for some spite or determination to win some silent way. If you love her, and you know whether or not you do, then fight for her.”

She let go of him then, reached for her keys and marched through the kitchen and continued on to the front door.

***

Beth pulled into the familiar drive, heard the snow crackle beneath the tires and Sundance gleefully barking in the distance. She steered into what had always been her spot and killed the engine. The day was as blue as springtime, though the twenty degree weather and newly fallen snow pulled a doubter back to reality in a flash.

The screen door flew open and Noah came bounding out and down the steps with Audrey behind him, struggling to keep up. Beth sucked in a breath and climbed out of the car. Only a second later Ramona appeared on the porch.

Beth gathered her leaping children and gave them both a quick squeeze. “Oh golly I missed you guys! You’ve both grown a foot, I swear.”

“It’s only been a week, Mom,” Noah said as he peeled away.

“I know, but a week at Christmastime certainly equals a couple of months in normal time, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Ramona, who had reached Beth’s side,
said and
pulled her into a familiar hug. “You look terrific.”

“And you do too. It’s been too long.”

Audrey peeled herself from Beth’s leg and
began
spinning and then falling in repetitions. Noah trotted to the porch and came back with a small Remington rifle. “Dad got me this.”

Beth raised her gloved hand to her mouth and tried not to blurt out that he had no right to do that without discussing it with her, because of course he did have a right. He was Noah’s father and if he was prepared to teach him all he needed to know, Noah was entitled to take one step on that journey to becoming a man.

“You need to be safe, Noah.”

“I know, Mom. It’s not loaded and I won’t ever keep it around Audrey.”

Ramona gave Beth’s shoulder a knowing jostle.

“Okay, then.” Beth looked around the grounds, covered in glistening snow like a Currier and Ives print. She heard the sounds she knew so well, smelled the smell of winter. The last time she’d stood here, she’d thought Chris was dead; but he’d proved them all wrong. So many things had proved themselves wrong since the day she’d packed up her kids and convictions, determined to leave this life behind and build another.

“Where is Dad?” she asked Noah as he stroked the shining barrel of the gun.

“Inside. We went cross-country skiing this morning. He put some stuff in the washer.”

Things change.

“Mom!” Noah said and Beth realized she’d been daydreaming.

“Yes.”

“Can we stay ‘til it gets dark?”

She touched his hair, her little boy who didn’t want to go but knew he had to. “I really don’t like driving in the dark, Noah.”

He looked down and scuffed a tiny mound of snow.

“We need to get going, honey. The drive’s long and we need to be home by Sunday so you can get back to school. I let you miss the first few days after break, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Noah dashed away and Audrey did her best to keep up with him.

Ramona slid a comforting arm around Beth’s shoulder. “How are you really?”

Beth covered her palm. “I’m okay. I’m just so tired of ripping all of our lives apart over and over and over again.” She glanced at Ramona’s familiar face so near her own. “Do you realize that calm is gone from my life? Just the normal, everyday calm is gone. It’ll always be about arranging the kids, leaving them for weeks and knowing they miss Chris when I have them.”

They paused near Ramona’s car and Beth sucked in a blast of icy air.

“Have you considered moving back to the area? The town houses they just put up near the village green are really nice, Beth. You’d at least be back near
friends;
the kids would have both you and Chris in the same general area.”

“I have thought about it.” Beth looked up at the sky so blue and cold above her. “Maybe when this book thing is more settled. Maybe in the spring I’ll be able to decide.”

And then the door
opened
and she saw him. He stood on the porch, flannel shirt, jeans, hair too long, earring too glittering, shoulders too broad, waist too trim, legs too muscular, smile too piercing. “Hi,” he said as he clutched a mug of coffee in his strong hand.

Ramona pulled Beth close, whispered, “I’m not saying goodbye again. See you soon,” and climbed in
to her
car. It was only then that Beth noticed Shane and Tony waiting patiently in the backseat for their mother. They must’ve been there playing with Noah. Beth waved, and the boys waved back. Ramona gave a little toot as the car disappeared down the drive.

Beth slid her hands into the pockets of her suede coat. She was cold, but Chris stood there in just that old, worn shirt and looked comfortable as hell. “Hello,” she said as she approached him.

“Hi. Come on inside. You look cold.”

“The kids are out here.”

“They’re fine.
Cl
em’s in the barn. They can’t get far. They’ve been playing out there for two weeks.”

“I don’t like them--” but then she stopped herself. So she’d never all
owed Audrey outside without her, b
ut Chris had, and this was his home now--his alone--and he’d discovered his own rules and privileges.

He backed up and let her pass, holding the door all the while. Beth looked around at the foyer and living room she’d loved before she’d resented. It was cluttered, but it looked happy if a room could look happy. The Christmas tree still stood in the far corner, but most of the decorations were new ones she didn’t recognize. Apparently Chris had felt the need to move on.

“How are you?”
he asked then.
            Beth turned to face him. “I’m good. I guess I’d forgotten how charming New England Christmas’ could be. I’ve heard all about yours. Noah loves his gun.”

Chris slid his mug onto the antique desk that stood in the corner. “It’s small. He needs something to start with.”

“Those things scare me.”

He met her eyes, held her gaze “Are you kidding me? I’ve never seen anyone better aim a Glock--myself included.”

Beth touched a wobbly branch of the tree. “That’s different.”

Chris crossed his arms. “What have you been up to with close to three weeks to yourself?”

Beth pulled off her leather gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of her jacket. “I worked
quite a lot
on my book. I met a publisher at my parents’ neighbor’s Christmas party. He’s interested.”

“That’s great.”

Beth touched an ivory piano key. It dinged, she touched it again and wanted to sit; sit down and pound out Brahms or
It Came Upon
a Midnight
Clear
or good old
Heart and Soul
in two parts. “Writing has been cathartic.”

Chris slid onto the arm of the easy chair. “I can’t think of anything I’d less rather do.”

Beth smiled and left the key alone. “I’m thinking of teaching too. I had a meeting at the university yesterday. I may pull something together for the spring semester, though it doesn’t leave me much time.”

“You’d be good at that.”

“Thanks,” she said and wondered why it felt awkward to chat with him and realized at that same moment that this is what they were now--pleasant and distant and through.

And as though he’d just become aware that she’d arrived Sundance bounded through the kitchen door and jumped, resting two furry paws on Beth’s shoulders. “Hey, you!” She stroked his fur and nuzzled his nose and hugged him close and he allowed it. A loud and deep woof resonated. “He’s been in the burdocks again.”

“I know. Noah was supposed to brush him.”

Beth set to work pulling out the prickly burrs. “Like that’s going to happen when he could be target shooting.”

And then she looked up to see Chris not disgusted and belligerent because she’d taken over and said what she thought, but smiling.

“Sorry,”
she said.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not my house.”

“It’s understandable.”

“
He’s
not my dog.”

“He was.”

Beth pushed Sundance away and stood up. “He’s not anymore.”

Chris stepped close, but kept his hands in the pockets that he’d slid them into, his head cocked, his smile blaring. “You are the bossiest person I’ve ever met in my entire almost forty-one years of living. You think you know everything.”
            
Damn him!
She brushed her hands against her jeans and struggled to grasp onto Yankee cool instead of pissed wife that she couldn’t be any longer. “Thank you for pointing that out.”

But he just kept smiling--that cockeyed grin that made her blood pump and her head reel.

“Are the kids packed?”

She turned to face the stairs, but his arm snaked out and grabbed hers. “Listen.”

But she didn’t hear a thing.

“What am I listening to?” she asked finally, just a heartbeat from his face, his heart.

“This.”

“What?”

“This.” His left
arm snaked out, his fist
banged the wall next to them and with perfect timing the heat kicked on with a grunt and rumble.

“Fascinating.”
           
“
It’s the sound of normal, Beth. It’s the sound of Tuesday, or Friday or Mother’s Day or Arbor Day or chili and crackers night or the two for one sale at
the mall
.”

And all her ivy-league education could reply was, “Huh?”

“I love you. I know I never said it enough. I know I never showed it enough--”
             
“Not never. There was a time I knew implicitly.”

His hands slid to her face, framed it, held it. “I love you. I kicked myself all the way home from Washington
; p
icked up the phone about a hundred times. But I stopped because I knew I had to be sure, had to know for sure what I’d screwed up the last time, the first time. I think I just started taking you for granted. I started forgetting that you were a gift and that I had to be careful of you every single day. I got soft, Beth. I let the bad guy in.”

She covered his hands, bit her lip
and
dared hope that it was really true and he’d said it right here in the house where the ambivalence had first crept in.

“Come home, or if it’s what you really want and need, I’ll come home with you.”

And her prince broke through that door.

Beth shook her head. “That’s not what I want or need.”

Outside
Audrey giggled a wicked giggle. The
y
both turned to the window and watched Noah with Sundance, who apparently had escaped through the doggie door in the kitchen, at his heels bound forward, grab Audrey’s ankles and pull her into the fluffy snow.

Beth looked back to Chris as their kids squealed in the yard beyond them. “I just need a little normal.”

He smiled that
roguish
smile, reached for her hand, but didn’t kiss it. Instead he gave it a mighty and firm shake
of partner to partner
. “Deal?” he asked.

“Deal,” she answered and gave his a hearty shake of its own.

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