Things We Didn't Say_ A Novel - Kristina Riggle [65]
If only I could storm off and slam a door.
Instead I reassemble my sandwich, and then discover I have no appetite for it anymore. In fact, I feel ill.
Dad is still eating his salad, so I’m forced to sit there, listening to the tinny speakers in Wendy’s play “White Christmas.”
A young couple comes in then, hanging on each other and laughing. The boy is thin and tall, with piercings. The girl’s cheeks are pink with cold, and her dark blond hair trails out from under a funny-looking knit hat. She’s got her arms wrapped around the boy underneath his unzipped jacket. They’re both white on one side of them with wind-whipped snow.
They gaze at each other as their giggles subside, then their faces meet and they plunge into a romantic kiss, the kind that happens in movies over a violin crescendo.
The fast food workers hoot their approval.
My dad snorts his disgust.
I stare down at my half-eaten meal and think about how much that girl looks like Casey, and wonder what she’s doing right this minute.
Chapter 27
Casey
It’s like we’re sister-wives!” giggles Mallory, as she chops up some vegetables.
I’m dropping spaghetti into a pot while the girls set the table, and try to laugh gamely because the girls are here.
I imagine having Michael to myself. The freedom and money to dash out for dinner just because we feel like it, having sex whenever we want, loudly if we want. Sleeping in until noon on Saturday, eating bagels in bed. Choosing a home together that would be ours, and always just ours. Starting fresh with our baby. Growing into a family gradually, and with care.
It’s impossible; Michael and his kids are a package deal. It’s like my daydreams as a kid where I could fly. My mom tells me I once thought I could grow into flying, like it was something grown-ups got like breasts or a beard. I was just little, but I do remember the crushing sensation of a collapsing dream when my mom told me, having to stifle her laughter when she realized I was in earnest, that I would never fly.
I steal a glance at Mallory and allow myself to savor the resentment I usually choke down and ignore. If she were a normal, stable person, she could have the kids, which is the natural order of things, and we’d get them every other weekend and the rest of the time be a normal couple.
But it’s not her fault, Michael says. With her history. She’s unwell.
At the table, Jewel giggles over a joke Angel has just told, and I remember my journal and then I’m swimming in shame. How could I wish them away, even part of the time?
My mother could be right. Maybe I’m not up to the challenge.
We manage to cook spaghetti together without incident, and as we go to sit down at the kitchen table, I notice that Mallory has chosen my usual seat. I move to Michael’s chair without comment.
I look at the clock and imagine Michael and his father might be as far as the Ohio border. Well, in good weather, they would be. I’m grateful for his dad’s four-wheel-drive monstrosity, today.
“Casey keeps a journal, don’t you, Casey?”
It takes me a moment to realize it is Angel speaking. She sounds like her mother, too.
“I’m sorry, what? I was distracted.” I heard her; I’m stalling. My heart throbs in my ears.
Jewel pipes up. “We were talking about journals in school. We write in them every day. I was writing about alligators yesterday. Did you know they’re as old as dinosaurs? But not extinct.” She says it “ess-tink.”
Angel twirls her spaghetti around her fork. She’s only playing at eating, making stage business out of it. She turns to me, her face placid. “Yes, and I was saying that I just learned you write in a journal, too.”
I reach out for my glass of water, my hand just on the edge of shaking, and take a sip. “Yes, I do.”
“Really?” Mallory says, leaning forward over her plate. “I had this shrink once who told me to do that, but I could never find the time, what with Mike always working at the paper,