What's Mine and Yours(79)
“Have you seen Diane’s house yet?” Lacey May asked. “It’s beautiful. It’s got land, just like our old one.”
Robbie felt the girls stiffen at the mention of the house. Even Hank looked up from his phone, which he had been toying with as if it were totally engrossing.
“It’s brick,” Lacey May said. “Not blue like ours was. But I think they should paint it. Gray. All the new houses are gray. The ones that are selling downtown? They’re all the same shade of gray, and they have pretty silver house numbers, lanterns on the lawn.”
Lacey May twisted her mouth to the side, as if she were about to whisper a secret. “I warned Alma already. I told her, be careful with my daughter. She’s a Ventura. Even if your name is on that deed, you better know a good lawyer.”
Lacey May threw her head back and laughed, and the girls looked on in horror. Hank turned back to his phone, and Robbie decided he might as well laugh along with Lacey May.
“She’s delirious,” Margarita said. “She doesn’t know who she’s talking to.”
“I can hear you, you know. And I know exactly what’s going on,” Lacey May said. “I’m just happy because I’m with my family. Everyone is here—or, almost, once Noelle arrives.”
Hank mumbled from the window that he was off in search of a coffee, and he left before anyone could stop him. Lacey May watched him go.
“You know how they say when you’re going to die, everything is suddenly clear?” Lacey May leaned into Robbie, as if he were the only one in the room.
“Nothing is clear,” she said. “None of it. Nothing makes sense. But when I woke up this morning, I was happy that I was going to see you. It’s been years, Robbie, hasn’t it? But it’s the most natural thing in the world to see you. After everything that’s happened, I want you close now. You’re my family. I’m so glad the girls could find you.”
Alma and Diane were the ones now exchanging looks. Diane invented an excuse about checking on the car. They left, and Margarita got the idea. She hesitated, unsure whether her parents ought to be left alone. They were acting more like dopey teenagers than fifty-year-old exes who had been separated half their lives. Plus, her mother was probably high. Still, she gathered up her purse and left, said she was off for a walk and green tea. Lacey May and Robbie hardly looked after her as she went. Lacey May clasped both of Robbie’s hands in hers. They were cold, and he wanted to breathe onto them.
“Where have you been?”
“Oh, here and there.”
She stared at him, their hands locked.
“I would have come eventually,” he said. “I wouldn’t have made you wait too long.”
Lacey May nodded, although they both knew it wasn’t true. Robbie could easily have waited too long, waited until she had died, if that’s how things would go. She didn’t say this. She kissed his hands, firmly, across the knuckles, once, and Robbie found himself confused, heart hammering. He imagined Lacey May slipping off her robe, tucking herself naked into his arms, the hospital room door still open. She did none of these things, but she kept his hands cocooned in hers.
He decided he might as well tell her. “Lacey, I still think about you and me together.”
“Me too. I think about those good years we spent in the house. Sometimes, I wake up, and I’ve been dreaming we’re all back there.”
“I mean right now,” Robbie said. “Or in the future.”
“The future is for the girls, Robbie. I stopped worrying about myself, dreaming, a long time ago. The day I knew I couldn’t wait until you got out was the day I knew it was over for us. That’s why it’s good, in a way, that the girls haven’t settled down yet—well, Margarita and Diane. They’ll never go through what I did. When I lost you, I lost everything except what you’d left for me.”
“The girls?”
“The girls and the house.”
Robbie didn’t see the use in apologizing for the house now. Lacey May was looking at him too calmly, her smile too easy. Robbie felt that he wanted to kiss her, but she wasn’t signaling clear enough that that was what she wanted, too, and he didn’t want her to turn him away. Was this all she wanted—to hold his hands? Or was she ready to admit now what he had long known—that it had always been, would always be, the two of them?
Robbie decided he ought to offer her something to look forward to, a promise. Maybe it would help her, carry her through the treatments. Maybe it would even be true.
“I can get clean,” he said. “I know you need me now. Lacey, if you need me—”
She shook her head and shushed him. “I have what I need from you, my love.”
Robbie felt his heart in his ears. He was breathing hard. “What are you saying, Lacey May? Is there something you’re trying to tell me?”
Lacey May took his hands, pressed them to her heart.
“You’re not listening, Robbie. I’m not trying to say anything. There’s nothing I’m trying to change.”
The taxi ride from the airport was more beautiful than Nelson remembered. The trees were green and amber, lustrous. They sheltered the road from the construction on either side, the tractors churning through sunken sand pits. He stared at the leaves, the unbroken sky. It filled him with momentary ease to behold something so beautiful. Soon, he was passing downtown, its meager small-town skyline, the light-up billboard beckoning drivers to take the exit toward Main Street. The car pushed on west, toward the edge of the county. It turned off the freeway and rattled down a gravel driveway. Nelson willed his calm to return. He would need it to convince her, to convince himself that everything would be fine. He repeated his intention, over and over to himself, like a mantra, I am here to get my wife. We’re going home.