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I don’t know what she means. Although, I want to. I want to know how I dig my claws further into this situation the way Ann would, if she were me, so I ask what’s stopping her.
“Oh, you know... life…” She tells me as she fingers the stem of her glass. “Paul is away so much, and the kids need at least one of us around…especially at this age.”
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sp; “Right.”
“It’s nothing new. You know, just the old ‘how to make it all work without fucking up the kids’ conundrum.”
I don’t know, actually. I probably never will. Still, I do my best to pretend by agreeing profoundly. “I absolutely get it,” I say. “It’s such an impressionable time in their lives. They do need you around. I see it all the time when I sub. You can always pick out the ones who are lacking in the parenting department.”
Once again, she looks at me as though I’ve lost my mind. She was expecting me to disagree. She was expecting me to try and fix it. I know better. There will be plenty of time later on for offers of help with the ins and outs. For now, the seed has been planted. With any luck, it will grow and grow and grow. I just have to water it and care for it until it’s time for harvest.
“It seems pointless sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“Pointless? No, I don’t think so.”
Ann visibly softens. “I’m glad I have you in my life, Sadie. It’s nice to have someone who gets it,” she says and sometimes the harvest comes sooner than you think.
“If you want…I could bring over a ladder and check the wiring on the lights. I used to help my dad a lot as a kid.”
“Really?”
“He was an electrician,” I tell her and it’s only a partial lie. The best kind usually are. Little bit of fact. Little bit of fiction. My dad wasn’t an electrician. To hear my mother tell it, he hardly worked at all. But he did come over and hook us in to the neighbor’s grid once, when our electricity was cut. It was the least he could do, said my mother. He saved the day, and he asked me to be his apprentice. So the next time, he said, I would be able to do it on my own. I thought he was joking. I didn’t know him well enough to know, he wasn’t.
Ann’s eyes narrow. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“It’s no trouble,” I tell her. “Probably just a loose bulb somewhere.”
She gazes out at the lane. I can see that she’s considering something deeply. I don’t think it’s the lights. “I don’t know…it seems like a lot to ask…”
“No promises,” I say in the spirit of under promising and over delivering. Just like she says to do in her book. “But I’ll try.”
Finally, her eyes meet mine. “Thanks, Sadie. You’re a gem.”
“It’s nothing, really. And, hey, if I can’t figure it out, I’ll just have to find your lighting guy and force him to fix it.”
Her whole demeanor shifts then. She stares at me for a long while without saying anything. Eventually, she motions between the two of us. “Don’t you just love this?”
“Yes,” I say, and I find that I actually kind of mean it.
She finishes off her glass. “Whether everything around here feels the same or not—it’s really good to have a friend. To have someone who understands you—well, I don’t know what’s better than that.”
“You have a lot of friends.” I don’t mean to say this out loud. It’s just that I have that annoying warm and fuzzy feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I’m not being careful.
I expect her to either affirm or contradict what I’ve said the way most people would. But Ann is smarter than that. She goes at it from another angle. “I always find that this time of year holds so much promise.”
“It really does.”
“This time of evening is my favorite.”
“Mine too,” I lie. It’s surprising how easy it is becoming to tell her what she wants to hear. The truth is, nighttime is the absolute worst. Every absence is felt more keenly after the sun goes down. The rest of my evening is mapped out like it was written in the stars long ago. First, I’ll Google Weight Watchers, and then, if I’m really feeling desperate, I’ll search for more drastic measures. Diets that suggest it’s possible to lose ten pounds in a week. Later, after I’ve had my fill of before and after photos, I’ll swear that tomorrow I won’t eat the chips, or the cookies, or buy the expensive coffee with all of the poison and the calories. I make myself believe that tomorrow, I’ll look for a better job. Tomorrow I’ll become a new person.
But like Ann pointed out before the wine made her a liar, tomorrow always turns out just the same.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HER
