Everything We Give_A Novel Page 3

  I briefly close my eyes and send up a prayer of thanks. She’s here and she’s unharmed. Pressure builds in my chest with each rise and fall, pulling me in her direction. I want nothing more than to have her in my arms, to reassure myself that she is mine.

  Nadia closes the door behind me.

  “How long has she been here?” I ask.

  “About ten minutes before you called. I’d just gotten home from work.”

  Not long then, which means she was with James for at least as long as I tried to reach her. One and a half hours.

  I swallow roughly. A lot can happen in ninety minutes.

  “Has she said anything since our call?”

  “Nothing except that she wanted to collect herself before she picked up Caty from Catherine’s house. My opinion? I don’t think she wanted to go home to you feeling the way she does.”

  Which is how? Did she realize she is still in love with James and is afraid to tell me?

  Nausea surfs a wave in my gut.

  What did James say to her? What did he do to her? I might have met James when he was Carlos a couple of times, but I don’t know James. I’ve never met him.

  Nadia adjusts the dimmer light and the flat brightens. Aimee blinks, her eyes adjusting, and wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand. I know she knows I’m here. She had to have heard me knock. I will her to look at me, but she keeps her gaze fixed on the glass.

  Nadia glides a hand across my shoulders in a show of support. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  I nod, hooking my thumbs in my pockets, and approach Aimee. She turns at the sound of my boots on hardwood and holds up her hand, stopping me. She shakes her head. A prickle of dread coasts down my spine. I stop opposite the coffee table cluttered with magazines, books, and potted succulents. A basket of folded laundry rests off to the side, an odd, out-of-place piece in Nadia’s Home Décor living space.

  “I’m just checking on you. I’ve been worried.”

  She glances over her shoulder toward the kitchen where Nadia went. “I don’t want to talk here.”

  I hold out my hand for hers. “Then let’s go home. I’ll take you.” Now that I’m here I don’t want to be apart from her.

  She shakes her head again. “I’m not ready. You go. I’ll meet you there.”

  “I’m not leaving you until I know what’s wrong,” I say, even knowing she doesn’t want to talk here. “After what happened this summer, I have the right—”

  “Ian, please.” She groans in frustration and grabs a sock ball from the laundry basket, and for a moment, I think she’s going to throw it at me. Instead, her shoulders slump and the sock ball drops to the floor. Her chin dips and it breaks my heart. She looks so sad.

  “I want to talk later,” she says. “Right now, I’m still . . . processing.”

  Processing what?

  “Aimee . . .” The not knowing, the uncertainty, it’s killing me. Please don’t tell me you’re in love with him.

  A tear falls and it motivates me to act. One small drop off her chin and I close the distance between us, wrapping her in my arms. She stiffens and holds her breath. I murmur in her ear, telling her how much I love her. How much I care about her. I press my lips to her forehead and smooth my hand down her hair. Eventually, she relaxes and leans into me so that I’m supporting her weight. Then she cries.

  I rock with her. “Baby, you’ve got to help me. We can’t fix this unless you tell me what’s wrong.”

  Her arms rope around me and hook low on my waist. I lean back to look down at her. I can’t see her face. “Please tell me why you’re sad.”

  Her breath shuttles out of her. “I’m not sad. I’m angry, or I was before you got here.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, I’m mad at me. I’m hating myself right now.” Aimee leaves my embrace and returns to stare out the window.

  “Baby.” I follow. I lean my forearm against the glass and study her profile, the faint freckles that decorate her nose like a dusting of chocolate on latte foam. I gently run a finger down the length of hair where it meets her shoulder. “Why would you feel that way?” I ask softly.

  Aimee folds an arm under her breasts. She knuckles off her tears. I want her back in my arms. I don’t like the way she’s withdrawing into herself, shoulders stooped and back bowed. I don’t like her keeping things from me.

  We don’t do secrets, not after my tumultuous childhood and what she went through with the Donato family. We agreed to have an honest marriage with open communication. This includes discussing her past relationship with James, despite how much I want to despise the guy. Not that James has done anything directly to me. I just don’t like how he treated Aimee, let alone the psychological mind trip James sent her on courtesy of his brother Thomas.

  Talk about a fouled-up family. I thought my parents had problems. Screw the cake. James and his brothers take the whole damn bakery in the dysfunctional-family department.

  Aimee takes a deep breath. “I was fine while I was with him. We just talked, you know? He told me about his sons and how the three of them are enjoying island life on Kauai. I know how much I hurt you . . . hurt us . . . when I saw him last summer. I told myself I’d never go out of my way to see him again. But he called. He’s trying to move past all the shit his brother made of his life, and to do that he felt like he owed me an apology, face-to-face. He said I deserved that much after everything he’d put me through. So I met with him. I was fine while we talked, but afterward? Everything hit me and I started bawling and shaking and, goddammit, I was so angry. I thought I was past all this, what with counseling.” She finally looks up at me and smiles weakly, an apology.

  “Aims,” I murmur. I caress her cheek with the back of my fingers, then let my arm fall to my side.

  “Anyway,” she says with the flick of her hand, “I couldn’t stop crying. I drove around hoping to calm down before I had to pick up Caty, and when I couldn’t stop, I found myself here instead. If I came home as upset as I was, I knew I wouldn’t be able to clearly communicate to you why I went to see him, and I didn’t want you to jump to conclusions.”

  I rub her back as I listen to her, hating she felt like she couldn’t come to me, and hating James more for making her feel this way.

  “I don’t like how emotional he makes me. It reminds me how I used to be with him.”

  “And how was that?”

  “Naive and immature. Too trusting when I should have been asking questions.”

  I adored the trusting Aimee and I love the woman she used to be. I especially love the woman she’s become while we’ve been married. Headstrong, confident, and passionate. The best mother I could ask for our daughter, which is important to me.

  But stupid me, that isn’t what I latch on to. I’m still fixated on my earlier assumption that Aimee realized she still loves James . . . in the way that matters. Despite what she just told me, I can’t get the possibility out of my head.

  “How often have you seen him since June?”

  “What?” Aimee frowns, her expression off-kilter. I arch a brow, waiting for an answer. She tugs at the hem of her blouse. “Just today.”

  “How much time did you spend together? When did he call you?”

  “Jesus, Ian.”

  Ice rattles in a martini shaker. “Drinks, anyone?” Nadia calls from the kitchen.

  “No,” I answer without taking my eyes from Aimee’s.

  “Yes.” Aimee sends me a cool look. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it here.” She strides to the kitchen bar counter.

  I fork my fingers through my hair and exhale harshly out my nose. I trail Aimee to the kitchen.

  Nadia slides a dirty martini toward her. Aimee removes the olive-laden toothpick and downs the cocktail. She then reaches for my glass when she notices I’m not drinking it.

  “I guess you were thirsty,” Nadia quips, toasting with her own glass. “Salute.” She tastes the cocktail, smacks her lips twice, and glances over her shoulder
at the microwave clock. “I can order in Thai.”

  “No, thanks. We have dinner plans.” I lean a hand on the counter, hook my other in my front pocket, and watch Aimee consume my martini, thankfully at a slower pace than her first drink.

  “I’m not hungry.” She sets down the stemware.

  “All right, then.” Nadia drags out the words. She rattles the shaker. “More cocktails?”

  Aimee shakes her head and empties the glass. “I’m ready to go home.” She picks up her purse where she left it on the couch and goes to stand by the front door.

  I sigh. Looks like we’re leaving.

  “I’ll drive.” I pinch the bridge of my nose and call up my patience. I’m going to need it tonight before I say something else stupid that pisses off Aimee, especially when I should be doing the opposite: offering her a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen. “Thanks,” I tell Nadia. “I’ll bring her by tomorrow to get her car.”

  “No rush.” She lightly grasps my wrist. “You’re a good husband, Ian. She needs you right now. She’s hurting.”

  We both are. “I know. And thanks.”

  I join Aimee at the door. So much for celebrating my best news ever. “Let’s go home.”

  We take the elevator down to the parking garage standing side by side without touching. I want to be angry with her. I want to rail at James for contacting my wife again. But all I feel is empathy for him, which surprises and irritates me.

  I understand how James feels, the confusion and disorientation, the need to reach out to Aimee, the love of his life. I get how he doesn’t have a sense of lost time, and that, to him, it feels like he left Aimee yesterday.

  I spent my childhood amid a similar bedlam. It wasn’t a fun place to be.

  We reach the parking garage and I fumble the keys from my pocket. They drop on the ground.

  “We need to swing by my parents’ and get Caty,” Aimee says, since she doesn’t know about the arrangement I made with Catherine, and it no longer matters. We don’t seem to be going out to dinner.

  I pick up the keys. “I know,” I snap, pressing hard on the fob. The car unlocks, the sound echoing in the cavernous garage, and I jerk open her door. She sinks into her seat with a wary glance in my direction. Mustering some calm, I close her door.

  CHAPTER 3

  IAN, AGE NINE

  Ian watched the bus disappear over the rise of the road before facing the dusty white farmhouse he called home. Parked off to the side was his mom’s silver Pontiac station wagon.

  He blew out a steady breath, inflated cheeks shrinking like depleted tires. She was home. At least, he hoped it was his mom, Sarah, and not her other, Jackie.

  For as long as Ian could remember, his mother had erratic mood swings. She’d forget what she was doing from one day to the next, sometimes from one moment to the next. And Ian would have to remind her. He’d walk her through her tasks as his mom stared at him, childlike, wide-eyed, and bewildered.

  It wasn’t until a year ago that his dad had tried to explain to him his mom’s bizarre, and at times volatile, behavior. She’d gone missing for two days only to return home with her clothing torn and dirt-stained, her cheek slit open and eye blackened. His mom had no recollection of the previous forty-eight hours. She wanted to sink into a hot bath and go to bed, but Ian’s dad insisted on taking her to the hospital. Three days later she was discharged with stitches in her cheek and a diagnosis for her mind. Dissociative identity disorder.

  Ian didn’t really understand what that meant or why she had it. His dad wouldn’t tell him. But he did learn other people lived inside his mom. That’s how his dad initially described his mom’s condition to him. The doctor knew of one, Jackie. He warned there might be others. Ian hadn’t noticed yet if there were, but he and his dad were all too aware of Jackie. Jackie had been making appearances since before Ian was born.

  The doctor referred his mom to a psychiatrist and prescribed her antidepressants and mood stabilizers, which Ian had overheard her telling his dad she didn’t want to take. She didn’t like being controlled, and that’s what the pills would do. As for following up with a doctor, Ian rarely saw her go and his dad wasn’t around enough to make her go. Ian hadn’t seen any appointments scheduled on her daily planner either.

  A fly landed on Ian’s elbow. He shook his arm and scratched at his skin where the bug had made him itch. He opened the mailbox and retrieved bills stamped OVERDUE and embroidery catalogs. He stuffed them in his backpack and slowly walked up the driveway. Gravel crunched under his beat-up Vans. A breeze thick with the smell of fertilizer stirred around him, ruffling his mop of hair. Bangs spilled over his eyes. He pushed them aside and crossed his fingers on both hands.

  Please be Mom. Please be Mom, he recited in his head with each step.

  He had too much homework to worry about Jackie getting his mom into trouble again. Three months ago, Jackie had withdrawn the cash in his parents’ bank account, leaving no funds for the bills. That’s why they were behind in payments.

  Ian stopped in the entryway, the front door slamming behind him, blown shut by the wind. His mom looked up from her embroidery machine in the dining room and smiled. Ian smiled back and the tightness in his shoulders eased under the heavy weight of his backpack. She was Sarah. Jackie’s smiles weren’t as nice.

  The house smelled musty, the air stale and warm, making his nose twitch. He rubbed around his nostrils and looked at the windows in the room. All four were closed, the curtains drawn. Dirty dishes and half-empty cups, interspersed with teetering piles of team uniforms and Scout shirts, cluttered the table like a city skyline.

  “How was your photo expedition?” Sarah asked.

  It was great. Yesterday, Ian thought.

  “OK,” he said out loud.

  Ian had spent Sunday morning walking through the fields taking pictures of ants and magpies with a camera he found in his dad’s home office. It was much better than the one his dad gifted him on his fifth birthday. His mom hadn’t been home when Ian returned for lunch, and she still hadn’t arrived by dinner. Ian ate cold spaghetti left over from the previous night, watched an hour of Sunday-night football hoping to spot his dad on the sideline with the other sports photographers, then stayed up late waiting for his mom to come home. He finally drifted into a fitful sleep at three a.m., hiding under his blankets, after he heard the floorboards creak under his mom’s high heels. Though, it wasn’t really his mom. Sarah didn’t wear heels. Jackie did.

  His mom glanced at the wall clock. It was 3:45 p.m. “You were gone a long time. Did you get some good pictures?”

  “I think so,” he muttered. He hadn’t developed the film yet like his dad had taught him.

  “Hungry? I made a ham sandwich. It’s in the fridge.”

  Ian slipped off his backpack and let it drop to the floor. His mom’s gaze followed. Her smile fell.

  He unzipped his pack and gave her the mail.

  She hesitated before taking the stack, then stared intently at the sealed envelopes in her hand. “What day is it?” she asked in a voice just above a whisper.

  “Monday.”

  Her shoulders dipped. Her gaze swung over the pile of cheerleading uniforms beside her. She embroidered decals for local sport teams and Scout troops. She’d once told Ian the money she made paid for his clothes and sports equipment so he wouldn’t have to shop at the secondhand store.

  “These are due in an hour. I’m not going to finish on time. I thought it was Sunday.” She glanced through the mail in her lap. After the fourth bill, she tossed the lot onto the table, turning her face away as though disgusted by the envelopes’ contents. Her head lowered, and long light-brown hair spilled over her shoulder like vertical blinds. For a few moments, she sat unmoving, her spine curved into the shape of a crescent moon.

  “I’m sorry, Ian.”

  “It’s OK.” He looked down at his scuffed Vans. He should have woken her up before school and told her. But the fear he’d be waking Jackie rather than Sar
ah kept him from knocking on her door.

  Ian shouldered his backpack. “I have homework. I’ll be in my room.”

  He shuffled into the kitchen on his way upstairs. The room smelled of molding bread and sour milk. An opened carton of half-and-half sat on the counter, forgotten. Beside it, his mom’s planner lay open to Sunday. Yesterday.

  If the heels on hardwood last night hadn’t already confirmed it, the planner opened to the wrong date did. Jackie had been the one who came home last night. Ian guessed she was also the one who woke up this morning. His mom must have shifted back to Sarah earlier today. She’d have twenty-four hours of lost memories from the time Jackie was dominant, and no awareness that the date had changed.

  Ian flipped the page in the planner. On the line by five p.m., his mom had penciled CHEER SWEATERS DUE TO COACH TAMMY PENROSE. A phone number followed. He left the planner on Monday, then opened the fridge. Fermenting vegetables assaulted his nose. His nostrils twitched and he pinched his nose to stop the sneeze. He grabbed the plated ham sandwich and went upstairs, passing his dad’s home office on the way to his room.

  He stopped and backed up a few steps.

  Pinned to the bulletin board beside the desk was a Kansas City Chiefs calendar opened to October. Red Xs crossed off the days through the seventeenth. Last Thursday, the day his dad left to photograph the Chiefs game against the Saints. He’d be home late tonight.

  An idea formed in his head like an image revealed on instant Polaroid film. Dropping his pack, he set down the sandwich and sat at the desk. He opened drawers, removing paper, a ruler, and pencil. He drew a grid that mimicked the calendar, writing OCTOBER at the top. He added a few more details, then returned downstairs.

  In the kitchen, his mom hung up the phone. “Mrs. Penrose gave me an extra day to finish. I have to work late tonight so we’ll eat early.” She filled a pot with water, intermittently dabbing the corners of her eyes.

  “Don’t be sad, Mom. You know how you sometimes forget what day it is?” Ian tacked his makeshift calendar to the fridge door with a magnet.