What Happens to Goodbye(61)

“What I want,” I said slowly, trying to keep my voice level, “is the chance to have my own life.”
“How could you think it’s anything but that? You won’t even share the smallest part of it with me unless it’s under duress.” Now she was actually crying. “All I want is for us to be close, like we used to be. Before your father took you away, before you changed like this.”
“He didn’t take me away.” My voice was rising now. She’d fumbled around, poking and prodding, and now she’d found it, that one button that could not be unpushed. I’d changed? Please. “This was my choice. You made choices, too. Remember?”
The words were out before I could stop them, and I felt their weight both as they left me, and when they hit her ears. It had been a long, long time since we’d talked about the affair and the divorce, way back to the days of What Happens in a Marriage, that brick wall that stopped any further discussion. Now, though, I’d lobbed a grenade right over it, and all I could do was brace for the fallout.
For a long while—or what felt like a long while—she was quiet. Then, finally, “Sooner or later, Mclean, you’re going to have to stop blaming me for everything.”
This was the moment. Retreat and apologize, or push forward to where there was no way to return. I was tired, and I didn’t have another name or girl to hide behind here. Which is probably why it was Mclean’s voice that said, “You’re right. But I can blame you for the divorce and for the way things are between us now. You did this. At least own it.”
I felt her suck in a breath, like I’d punched her. Which, in a way, I had. All this forced niceness, dancing around a truth: now I’d broken the rules, that third wall, and let everything ugly out into the open. I’d thought about this moment for almost three years, but now that it was here, it just made me sad. Even before I heard the click of her hanging up in my ear.
I shut my phone, stuffed it in my pocket, then grabbed my backpack. Four hours away, my mother was crumbling and it was all my doing. The least I could have felt was a moment of exhilaration. But instead it was something more like fear that washed over me as I started down our walk, pulling my coat tightly around me.
Outside, the air was cold and crisp, the snow coming down hard. I turned the opposite way from the bus stop and started walking toward town, the snow making everything feel muffled and quiet around me. I walked and walked; by the time I realized how far I’d gone, there were only a couple of storefronts left before the street turned residential again. I had to turn around, find a bus stop, get to school. First, though, I needed to warm up. So I walked up to the closest place with an OPEN sign, a bakery with a picture of a muffin in the window, and went inside.
“Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” a cheerful voice called out the second I crossed the threshold. I looked over to see two people behind the counter, bustling around, while a few people waited in line. Clearly, this was one of those chain places that was supposed to look like a mom-and-pop joint: decorated to look small and homey, mandatory personal greeting, a crackling (fake) fireplace on one wall. I got in line, grabbing a couple of napkins to wipe my nose.
I was so tired from the walk, and still reeling from what had happened with my mom, that I just stood there, shuffling forward as needed until suddenly I was face-to-face with a pretty redhead wearing a striped apron and a jaunty paper cap. “Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” she said. “What can we do to make you feel at home today?”
God, I hated all this corporate crap, even before I’d heard my dad rail against it endlessly. I looked up at the menu board, scanning it. Coffee, muffins, breakfast paninis, smoothies, bagels. I looked back at the smoothie options, suddenly remembering something.
“Blueberry Banana Brain Freeze,” I told her.
“Coming right up!”
She turned, walking over to a row of blenders, and I took another look around me at this, the place where Dave’s downfall began. You could hardly imagine a place less likely to corrupt someone. There were needlepoint samplers on all the walls, for God’s sake. LIFE’S TROUBLES ARE OFTEN SOOTHED BY HOT, MILKY DRINKS, read one by the sugar, milk, and cream station. Another, over the recycling bins, proclaimed WASTE NOT, WANT NOT. I wondered where they’d ordered them, and if you could get anything mass-embroidered and framed. LEAVE ME ALONE, mine would say. I’d hang in on my door, a fair warning, cutely delivered.

Once I got my smoothie, I went over and took a seat on a faux-leather chair in front of the faux-roaring fire. Dave was right: after two sips on my straw, I had a headache so bad I could barely see straight. I put my hand to my forehead, as if that would warm things up, then closed my eyes, just as the front door bell chimed.
“Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” one of the counter people yelled.
“Thank you!” a voice yelled back, and someone laughed. I was still rubbing my forehead when I heard footsteps, then, “Mclean? ”
I opened my eyes, and there was Dave. Of course it was Dave. Who else would it be?
“Hi,” I said.
He peered at me a little more closely. “You okay? You look like you’ve been—”
“It’s just a brain freeze,” I said, holding up the cup as evidence. “I’m fine.”
I could tell he was not fully convinced, but thankfully, he didn’t push the issue. “What are you doing here? I didn’t know you were a Friend of Frazier.”
“A what?”
“That’s what we call the regulars.” He waved at the redhead, who waved back. “Hold on, I’m just grabbing a Freaking Everything and a Procrastinator’s Special. Be back in a sec.”