Evvie Drake Starts Over(75)

She read and she worked, and she started to plan for the clients she would need to pay the bills after he was gone. She didn’t ask him any questions when he’d come home from hanging out with Andy, and he didn’t tell her anything. The longer it went on that way, the less she could imagine how anything with Andy might be fixed. Or even part-fixed.

But the boxes kept appearing on the table, and when he handed her a check on the first of August, she looked down at it. “End of the month, I guess?” he said. She looked up and nodded.



* * *



—

   As the end of August approached, Dean began to leave in earnest. He sent someone to open up his apartment in New York and have it cleaned. He started selling the things he’d bought that he wouldn’t need: the toaster oven and the smoothie blender, then the dresser, once he put his clothes into bins. He told Evvie he was leaving the big TV on the wall, in case she ever wanted a properly enormous screen on which to watch Halls of Power.

She wanted to have a party for him before he left—or, really, she wanted to be the kind of person who would throw a party for him before he left—but he didn’t want one. He went and watched a ball game with her father one afternoon, and the kids he’d coached had a cookout for him and gave him a sweatshirt that said, COACH TENNEY. The Claws took him out drinking, and Andy’s girls got out their paints and made cards for him, and Andy and Monica took him to The Pearl while Evvie stayed home on a deadline she claimed was slightly more urgent than it was. He spent a day at Kell’s, helping her with her garden.

He packed his powders and potions from the counter. He packed his Xbox games. He packed the crooked little trophy and the plastic water bottles from the drying rack. With a week to go, he sold his bed and his table, and the last few nights, they slept in her bed, sometimes waking up in the middle of the night to have sex or eat cereal or watch Match Game ’76, which ran all night on cable. On the last night, he took the pinball machine apart and wrapped the pieces in a couple of old blankets Kell gave him, and he put them into the back of the truck.

She woke up on the last day, went into the bathroom, and saw that he’d taken his toothbrush from the plastic cup on the vanity. The day before, she’d teased him about how their toothbrushes were bumping against each other, sharing all their germs, and he had said, “I think you already have all my diseases.” When she saw her blue brush leaning against the side of the cup by itself, she felt the breath go out of her lungs. She leaned down and turned the tap, and she splashed cold water into her eyes and on her cheeks.

   Evvie padded down the stairs in her socks, and Dean was there, making breakfast at the stove. “Hey,” she said, coming over and leaning up to kiss him on the cheek.

“Hey. I made eggs, and coffee’s on. And don’t forget, there are still mini-donuts in the bag over there.” They’d hit the bakery a couple of days before so that the next morning, they could stay in bed until noon eating pastries and arguing about which version of Law & Order was the best one.

“Are you all packed?” She poured herself a cup of coffee.

“I think so. I got everything out of the apartment, bathroom—I got my stuff out of the dryer, I got my charger from upstairs. I got your car charger out of my glove compartment and it’s on the counter over there. I think it’s everything.”

He slid her breakfast in front of her and sat down. “I figure if I get on the road pretty soon, I’ll be there sometime before the evening rush, which would be good.”

She took a bite. “You know, your eggs have come a long way since I met you.”

He laughed. “Well, it hasn’t been a total loss, then.” He leaned on his elbow. “So I guess it would be dumb to ask if you’re ever down in New York at all.”

“Not very often,” Evvie said as she nibbled on a piece of toast. “But I’ll call you if I am. And I’ll call you anyway. I mean, I’m not dying. You’re not dying.”

“I hope I’m not dying,” he said.

After breakfast, they cleaned up the dishes, they cleaned off the counters, they divided up an electric bill, and they checked the traffic on the route he was driving. They wound up leaning on opposite sides of the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “I think I’m out of stalls,” she finally said. “You should get on the road if you want to be ahead of the rush.”

   “Okay,” he said. He stepped toward her and opened his arms wide, like she was a classmate at a high school reunion. She stepped close to him and let him hold her, and they stood that way for a long minute. “Thank you so much, Ev,” he said. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Me, neither,” she muttered into his shoulder. “I mean…you know what I mean.”

He stepped back. “I’m going to miss you a lot.”

“I’m going to miss you a lot, too. I’m sorry things didn’t work out how you hoped.”

Dean looked all around the kitchen, then back at her. “I don’t know that they didn’t.” He reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Walk me out?”

She nodded. Out by his truck, he turned back and kissed her, and her knees tried to buckle again, and her breath tried to leave her again, but when she stepped away from him, she steadied herself on her own feet. “Drive safe. Let me know when you get there?”