The Things I Do For You (7 page)

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Authors: Mary Carter

BOOK: The Things I Do For You
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“We’re not Californians,” he said. “We’re intellectuals. We love to read, to debate, to climb mountains.”
“We do?” Bailey said. She couldn’t remember them ever climbing a mountain.
“We will,” he said. “Seattle! Mount Rainier! Coffee shops! Literary types! Sweaters!”
“Sweaters?”
“It’s always raining in Seattle. People are chilly all year round. What do all those coffee commercials show?”
“People in bulky sweaters.” It was true. All coffee commercials she could remember featured people cocooned in wool, standing outside with steaming mugs of java, mountains towering in the background. That one lasted less than a year. Bailey couldn’t stop sneezing, and it was turning off customers.
The Coffee Clutch in Colorado was next. The most depressing failure of all since Bailey actually loved running the place. They made it just shy of five years before they were forced to close the books on that one. Each “idea” had driven them deeper in debt, and Brad deeper into depression. It was a vicious cycle. Get your hopes up; pour yourself into it mind, body, and soul; spend every penny you have; get crushed. She should pounce on him, chase out whatever ideas he had in his head. But she knew better. She had to be calm and rational. If she hated the ideas off the bat, he would be that more passionate about them, it’s just how he worked. But if she pretended to consider the ideas, then calmly, slowly, and logically pointed out their many, many flaws, she might be able to talk him down.
Besides, did she really care what he did with the money? As long as he kept his promise that they would stay in New York and agreed to put at least half down on the condo, or into stocks, or
something
(baby fund, baby fund, baby fund!), then he could be free to pursue whatever he was dreaming up next. She would be mature and drop it for the evening. Seriously, whatever ideas he had could wait until morning. After several cups of coffee. Absolutely no good would come from discussing ideas this evening. She pulled her body out of the window, turned, and faced her husband.
“What ideas?” she asked.
Chapter 7
W
ho wouldn’t want to live in a lighthouse? Bailey. Bailey wouldn’t want to live in a lighthouse. She didn’t even like night-lights when she was a kid. Brad followed Bailey around as she began to pace through the apartment, trying to see if she could physically shake her mounting feelings of dread and déjà vu.
“We’ll turn it into a bed-and-breakfast,” Brad said. “Isn’t that brilliant?”
No. She certainly didn’t want to make the beds of total strangers, or clean multiple sinks and toilets, or call them “our lovely guests,” or cook breakfast for them at all hours of the morning, or come running like a pair of Pavlovian dogs whenever someone rang the little bell on the counter. No freaking way.
Perhaps she should have taken note of the fact that the love of her life didn’t say, who wouldn’t want to run a B&B? To him, the glory of living in a lighthouse overshadowed the business side of his latest endeavor. He wanted to live in a lighthouse first, and incidentally invite total strangers to spend every night with them to fund it second. Bailey did her best to humor him.
“Don’t you ever watch
MSNBC Investigates
? We’d be stuck on an island, in a lighthouse with potential lunatics. If our lives are in danger, are we supposed to swim for help?”
“There are lights,” he said. “And horns. We could have the Coast Guard there in minutes.”
“An axe murderer only needs seconds. Seconds.”
“You’ll love it,” he said next, as if he didn’t hear her. “We have to do this. We’re never going to have another shot like this.”
The irony was, being named Bailey and Brad, their close friends had always called them B&B. Was that what this was all about? Had years of auditory conditioning hypnotized her husband into thinking they were destined to operate a B&B?
“I’ve been doing research,” he said. “On the ‘inns’ and outs of running a B&B. Get it?”
But she didn’t get it, she didn’t get it at all.
It was a joke. Inns and outs. As in i-n-n-s. He spelled it in the air with his fingers.
It still wasn’t funny.
“Can you picture it? Bailey, baby, can you see it calling to us?”
“Drawing us in so we’ll crash on the rocks?”
He smiled, but he didn’t think she was funny either. His face took on a quiet, serious stillness. “Don’t you see it? Don’t you want it?”
It had all transpired in less than five minutes. Five minutes in which Bailey could already see the life she thought they were going to live crumbling before her very eyes. Bailey pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. It was a calming technique she’d learned in order to distract herself from smashing objects against the wall. But this time, it wasn’t the wall she wanted to hurl something at, it was Brad. It was just stress. And fatigue. This is why you never, ever talked about serious subjects before bed. Bailey flopped on the couch in their cozy living room. All chances of getting a wink of sleep had flown out the window. Brad remained standing, hovering actually, which wasn’t hard to do given the square footage of their apartment.
“Does this have something to do with your near-death experience?” Bailey said. She had to ask. Brad didn’t answer. Bailey continued. “Because buying a lighthouse won’t help Olivia find that other light—which I’m sure she already did—”
“It’s not that—but it’s a wonderful metaphor, don’t you think? Our guests will be drawn to the light! I’ll be a keeper of the light.”
“Brad.”
“A lighthouse. We’re actually going to live in a lighthouse. It’s a dream come true, it’s a dream.”
“It’s not a dream. It’s a total nightmare. Wait. Did you say?”
“Did I say what?” Bailey looked at her husband’s face. He was trying to look innocent. He had that little-boy expression. But he’d said it all right. Like her, Brad liked language. He knew the nuances. And even as she asked it, Bailey already knew the answer.
“Tell me you didn’t already buy a lighthouse!”
He’d gone to an auction. Just to pass time, he insisted, just to pass time. A lighthouse went up for bid. It was quite common these days; GPS systems were making lighthouses obsolete. The Coast Guard was off-loading them as fast as they could. An actual lighthouse with a keeper’s house and everything. It was a sign. He had been led to this auction, this was the answer he’d been seeking. A lighthouse B&B. He bid. Others bid. It made him sweat. It made him mad. He bid. Others bid. He bid higher. And of course he won. Brad insisted he won because he was astute and aggressive. Bailey thought he won because no one in his or her right mind wanted a lighthouse on the Hudson River. Bailey didn’t even know there were lighthouses on the Hudson River. Back in the day, Brad told her, there were as many as fourteen. Now there were nine.
Perhaps she could have forgiven him if it had been New England. She would have warmed to the idea of a second home in Maine, or Rhode Island. California even. As long as somebody else was running the bed-and-breakfast year-round and they were the rich lazy couple who visited when they wanted to get away from the city. But no. Brad wanted them to move. He wanted their lives to change a hundred and eighty degrees.
“It’s perfect. It’s upstate,” Brad said. “Until you get used to the idea, you can commute.”
“I can commute?”
“I’m going to start calling you parrot if you keep doing that.”
“You said it’s two hours from Manhattan. Do you expect me to commute four hours a day?”
“You could come on the weekends.”
Bailey could not believe her husband had just said that to her, could not believe he wanted nothing more than a weekend wife. He didn’t even seem to notice how much it hurt her. For a man who’d experienced such a strong spiritual transformation, he was more out of touch than ever. “I see. And how much did you spend on this overblown man cave?”
“Overblown man cave?” He sounded angry. She was using all of her energy to be patient and he was snapping at her at the drop of a hat. It was time to get a little tougher with him.
“See? Sometimes repetition is a necessary evil. It allows your brain to process the incomprehensible.”
“Just look at the pictures, Bails.” Bailey was back to pacing, but forced herself to remain in the living room since she was dying to get her hands on Olivia’s urn and hurl it out the window. Brad handed her a folder. Inside was a sales contract and photocopied pictures of a white stone house with an attached lighthouse rising behind it. Surrounded by water.
“I don’t see any roads,” Bailey said. “Where are the roads?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Brad said. “You can only reach it by boat.”
“We don’t even have a boat.” Brad just looked at her. “You bought a boat too, didn’t you?”
“You’ll love it. It’s a perfect little rowboat.”
If he starts to sing “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” I’m going to kill him
. “We’ll paint it yellow.”
“I can’t believe you did this without me.” Bailey headed for the kitchen. She ended up in front of the fridge, staring into it, wondering if anything inside could make her feel better.
“There’s also a ferry captain.” Brad sounded so hopeful, so excited. So freaking childish.
“What?”
“The island has a ferry captain. He’s willing to make a couple of runs a day to ferry our guests back and forth. For a small fee, of course.”
“Of course.” Bailey slammed the fridge door shut. “Can we forget the fairy god-captain for a moment?”
“There’s no need to mock.” Brad gestured to the freezer. “I bought cookie dough ice cream,” he said. “Your favorite.” Bailey wasn’t going to say thank you, not in the middle of a fight, but she did accept the carton and spoon when he handed them to her. Maybe a rush of sugar would help her calm down.
“Brad! You’ve made all these life-changing decisions without me.” She’d planned on saying more. A lot more. Only suddenly, no thoughts were left in her head. Just a little bit of brain freeze and the unmistakable desire to smash something. Bailey slammed down the ice cream carton and yanked open the fridge again. She grabbed both bottles of champagne, the ones they’d planned on celebrating with the day she was supposed to show the penthouse. Now forever known as the day he died. Brad hadn’t even remembered. Not that she expected him to right away. But months had gone by. Every day he’d opened the fridge and seen the bottles of champagne. They had been his idea. Yet he didn’t say a word. Well, might as well make use of them. She popped the Dom first and drank straight out of the bottle. She held the cheap one out to Brad. He shook his head.
“I didn’t go there intending to bid,” he said. “I swear.” Bailey took her time drinking the champagne. She lowered the bottle and held up her index finger. She needed to burp.
“Is it too late to get out of this?” she asked after she finally released the air in her lungs. Brad shook his head. Was he shaking his head yes, or was he shaking his head no? She didn’t know anything about him anymore. Not a single thing. He soon cleared it up.
“All sales are final.” Once again, he was trying to sound contrite. But it was still there, just beneath the surface. He was on cloud nine, high as a space monkey landing on Planet Bananas.
“You didn’t even see the property in person, did you?” She took both bottles of champagne with her to the living room. Brad followed. She suddenly wished they had a balcony. If she had made that sale, they could have moved. They could have bought a place with a balcony. Or, if Brad didn’t want to go with her, she could have moved. She could have bought her own little place with her own little balcony. Then she could have thrown herself off it.
“I couldn’t see it in person,” Brad said. “It was an auction.”
“Why didn’t you just buy a painting, or an antique sword, or a horse!”
“A horse? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Right. Because a freaking lighthouse makes much more sense.”
“It’s an investment. It’s a job.”
“How much?”
“Don’t worry. We won’t have to borrow much.” Bailey choked on the champagne, which triggered a violent cough. It took a long time for her to stop. Brad didn’t even pound her on the back. He just stood and waited with his new, infinite patience.
“Borrow?” she spat out the minute she could breathe again. “As in you spent the entire half a million on this property?”
Brad shoved the picture at her again. “Look how beautiful it is! It probably won’t need much work at all. We’ll be able to jump right in and start our life.”
“We have a life. Here.”
“No. You have a life here. You’re the one who keeps telling me I need to get a job, right?”
“Don’t you dare put this on me.”
“Look at me.” Brad took out the largest picture of the lighthouse out of the folder and held it against his chest like he was cradling a newborn baby. “I’m so happy about this. I want you to be happy.”
Bailey wanted to be happy too. She wanted to be the young girl in the ocean ecstatic to have their initials etched in wood. But she wasn’t. They weren’t kids anymore. They were older now, so why wasn’t he wiser? Maybe Jason was right. Nobody wanted anybody to be too happy. Nobody was comfortable around anybody happier than them. Because the truth was Bailey hated Brad’s newfound happiness. She hated how every time they went outside he found something he wanted her to stop and stare at. The morning light. A leaf. How the sun was glinting off a penny on the sidewalk. The longer they had to stop and stare at something, the more Bailey felt like something was wrong with her for not seeing its innate beauty, for wanting to get where they were going.
It was wearing her down. The more he thought something was beautiful, the more she automatically hated it. And the hours he was spending on the Internet. Who was he talking to? He was spending way more time with strangers than he was with her. Granted, part of it was her fault. She didn’t want to hear all these stories about death, and tunnels, and “life reviews.” It made her angry. It made her remember what it felt like to almost lose her husband. Bailey could feel all her promises of being patient with Brad drain right out of her.
Because she couldn’t help but resent him just a little lately. He was using his “death” as an excuse to cheat her out of the life he’d promised her. The life she’d earned after following him all over the country. The job she finally had, the home they lived in, the children she wanted. He’d promised, he’d promised, he’d promised. Bailey held up her fingers one by one as she started to list off his failures. “Surf’s Up Santa Monica (which is what he named it after promising her it would be B&B Boards). Sweaters in Seattle, The Coffee Clutch.” Bailey grabbed the picture of the lighthouse out of his hands and held it up. “Hudson River Lighthouse,” she said, adding it to the list.
“It used to be the Sage Lighthouse,” Brad said. “But I thought we’d call it Olivia’s Lighthouse.”
“Please,” Bailey said. “Please tell me this is some kind of joke.” Brad reached out and took Bailey’s hands. There was a spark back in his eyes, a dancing excitement she was all too familiar with. She hadn’t seen it in a while, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it ever again.

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