Two from the Heart(10)

Easy for him to say.

But in a way, I was making something good—or at least I was trying to. I’d already gathered a handful of stories and photographs, and I was on my way to gather more. Maybe, just maybe, something would come of them.

The gate creaked open then, and a woman came inside the pool area. She was wrapped in a blanket and bleary-eyed, her hair mussed. She sat down on one of the deck lounge chairs and heaved a big sigh.

I ignored her, in case she was one of the people I’d just heard going at it. TMI, you know?

But eventually she spoke. In a smoker’s voice, she asked, “Are you married?”

“No,” I said, leaving it at that.

“Good. Let me give you a piece of advice. Do not, under any circumstances, marry a man who snores.”

I laughed in surprise. “I have a history of not taking good advice. But that sounds reasonable.”

“It’s more than reasonable,” she said. “It’s crucial.”

“Like a deal breaker?” I said.

She looked at me as if I were crazy. “Of course! Do you think I want to be out here in the middle of the night on a lounge chair by some crappy pool, talking to some sad-looking lady?”

“I guess not,” I said. Thinking: Do I really look sad?

“I get no peace,” she said.

She was quiet for a while then. And in the darkness, by an anonymous motel and beside a total stranger, I felt more alone than I’d ever felt.

But it wasn’t sad. It just was.

When I looked over at her next, she was asleep.

And a few minutes later, she started to snore.

Welcome to life on the road.





Chapter 11


KAREN’S HOUSE was large and gracious, with a carefully landscaped yard and a gleaming Volvo parked in the driveway. As I climbed out of my ugly van, brushing crumbs from my clothes, I felt rumpled and underdressed.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. My friendship with Karen had always seemed unlikely to me, like one of those cross-species bonds people make videos about: a gazelle becoming best friends with a tortoise, for example.

Quick, beautiful, magnetic Karen—the gazelle, obviously—was now standing in the doorway, motioning me inside her Better Homes and Gardens Victorian.

“Hurry!” she called. “Sophie gets home from kindergarten in an hour and I’ve got news that she can’t hear.”

We hugged each other hard. “Really, she’s old enough for school already?”

Karen smiled. “I can’t believe it either. Come in, come in. Do you want to shower and change?”

I surreptitiously sniffed an armpit. “Do I need to?”

“No.” She laughed. “I was just trying to be hospitable. You look—and smell—perfect.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.

She led me through the house and onto the screened-in back porch, where she got us each a seltzer from a silver ice bucket. “Six years since I’ve seen you. How can that be?” she asked, settling into a wicker rocking chair.

“It’s terrible, I know,” I said. “But I’m so happy to see you now. You look exactly the same.”

“Well, if you add fifteen pounds,” she said lightly. Then her tone changed. “I’m so sorry about your house.”

I waved this away. “Let’s not talk about it. I’ve decided my coping strategy is denial.”

Karen folded her long legs beneath her and leaned back in her chair. “All right then. Maybe you want the dirt on our old classmates.”

She’d always been a fount of social knowledge, and I its willing recipient. “Of course,” I said.

“Leah Larsen got divorced, for one thing.”

“It happens to the best of us,” I said wryly.

“Absolutely. So then her husband took up with the neighbor after Leah left him, which basically started a chain reaction of divorces in the ol’ hometown. Dan Smith—you remember him, right?—is in jail for marijuana possession, and his ex, Dodie Scheffer, is running for mayor and no one even finds that ironic. Jennifer Meyers and Jacob Sales finally got together after years of secret, seemingly unrequited love for each other, and they spent the summer following Eagles of Death Metal around on tour.”

I laughed. “It amazes me how you still know what’s going on with everyone.”

“Some people stay in touch when they move away,” she said—a bit pointedly, I thought.

“But I wasn’t friends with all those people,” I said. “You were.”

“Well you could have been,” she said. “Instead you were always disappearing into the darkroom. The rest of us were living in the actual world—and you were living in what you could see through your camera’s viewfinder.”

I sighed. “I’m coming to realize that.”

She smiled. “It’s nothing to regret. We are who we are.”

“Well, I am trying to branch out a little,” I said. “I told you about my book project.”

“Your best story,” Karen said, nodding thoughtfully. “Like the time we stole all the lawn ornaments from Bob Ubbin’s yard? Or maybe when we went hot-tubbing in January and then got pneumonia at the same time and missed the winter formal?”