Only the Rain(34)

I gathered up my clothes and made it out of the room without waking her. Went into the kitchen to start the coffee, but saw it was only 0530, and damn if I didn’t flash back to that patrol we’d made along the Al-Furat River, that time we stopped for MREs under the date palm and you said, “Any of you morons know that you’re sitting in the cradle of humanity right now?”

I think it was Austin that said, “Damn shallow cradle for all of humanity.”

That’s when you told us the river’s other name was the Euphrates, one of the four rivers where the Garden of Eden is supposed to have been, and you started going on about whether it happened five thousand years ago or fifty thousand or whatever, and for a while we all sat there staring at the water until Moser broke out singing that old Chicago song, “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and every one of us started laughing and joined in on the chorus.

Anyway, that morning I’m standing there with a coffee filter in my hand and I’m staring at my coffeemaker and that song keeps beating through my brain till it’s the only thing I’m thinking, and my body’s getting tenser and tenser and I know I’m going to start screaming if I don’t do something. The only thing I can think to do is to run. So I scratch a quick note to Cindy telling her I’m going for a jog, then I put on my running shoes and head out into the gray morning.

I must’ve done three or four miles before that fucking song drained out of me and I no longer felt like my head was going to explode. I actually enjoyed the run back to the house, though I had to slow to a walk a few times to catch my breath. The light was coming up pink and orange in the east, and being out there in the quiet with just the trees and the smell of grass coming off people’s yards—man, it felt good.

The moment I went in through the pantry door I smelled the chocolate cupcakes, and when I peeked in the kitchen I saw a dozen of them cooling on wax paper on the table, and Cindy was shaking about a gallon of cooked macaroni in a colander over the sink. She smiled at me and said, “You haven’t done that in a while. You want a glass of cold water?”

I nodded, so she hit the faucet and let it run a bit, then filled a glass half full, shoved it under the icemaker on the fridge, then handed it to me. She said, “There’ll be hot dogs and burgers there, the rest is potluck. Should we take our own ketchup and mustard or will they have all that too?”

I’m standing there trying not to look too confused by all this, taking in the cupcakes and the macaroni and the big plastic bowl with the chopped celery and pickles and mayonnaise in it, and our biggest cooler open against the wall and the paper plates and plastic cups lined up on the counter.

But I guess I wasn’t very successful in not looking confused, because after Cindy dumped the macaroni into the plastic bowl, she smiled again and said, “You do remember the community picnic today, right? Labor Day?”

Sometimes I look at her and feel like I’ve never seen her before. Like I’ve been dropped in from outer space or something. Like I’ve woken up inside somebody else’s life.

She blew out a breath and said, “You don’t even listen to me half the time, do you?”

“You told me about this?”

“A dozen times at least. It’s all the girls have talked about all week.”

“Okay,” I said. “I guess it’s starting to sound a little bit familiar.”

She shook her head and mixed the macaroni salad. Then she scooped up some on her mixing spoon and held it up to my mouth. “Tell me if there’s enough mayonnaise to suit you.”

It tasted like hell first thing in the morning, but I told her it was fine. She snapped the plastic lid on and put the bowl in the refrigerator. She said, “The only other thing I thought I’d make was the Jell-O bowl you like.”

“With the fruit cocktail in it?”

“I was thinking a can of pineapple chunks, plus I have a couple of bananas and an apple I want to cut up.”

“Perfect,” I said.

“By the time I get that done and the cupcakes iced, the girls will be up and wanting breakfast.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“There’s supposed to be a couple of inflatable pools for the kids. Should we let the girls take their swimsuits or not?”

“You mean like wading pools? Who all is going to be there?”

“It’s in the courthouse square,” she said. “Do you remember anything I told you?”

“So that would be like . . . hundreds of kids possibly.”

“First of all, they aren’t wading pools. They’re fairly big, from what I hear. But every kid in town won’t be in them at the same time, Russell. And the girls are going to want to get wet.”

“How could I not know anything about this?” I said.

“You’ve had things on your mind. It’s okay. I understand.”

The way she said that, I wanted to sit down and cry. My chest started feeling heavy again, and the kitchen started getting tight and warm. I mean, I never knew guilt could feel like this. Guilt and shame and, I can’t think of the right word for it. Is there a word for when you feel so unbelievably stupid for something you’ve done, and so unbelievably sorry, and so unbelievably afraid because there’s nothing you can do to undo it, and right there in front of you is one of the people you love most in all the world and she doesn’t know a thing about how badly you’ve fucked up, she still loves you and thinks you’re someone special and what are you supposed to do, Spence? What’s a guy supposed to do when he can’t think or even fucking breathe because of one stupid fucking moment of stupidity?