A Measure of Happiness (11 page)

Celeste laughed, as if Katherine had delivered the punch line to a joke.

“It's a Smith & Wesson .22,” Katherine said. “Loaded and locked in the safe.”

“I don't believe you.” Celeste stared at Katherine, stone-faced, as though waiting for Katherine to change her story. Then Celeste broke into a crazy-eyed grin. “You're serious,” she said, and gave her head a quick shake. “It's in the locked safe? Locked?” Celeste flapped her arms. Flour motes scattered and glimmered around them. “What good is a loaded gun in a locked safe?” Celeste emitted a combination between a growl and a snort.

Katherine folded her arms, hoping the stance would shore up her dubious argument. “It's for self-defense. I don't want to really shoot anyone. I just want to scare them.”

“Okay. For the sake of argument, let's say you walk in on someone—a burglar or a robber—”

“A vandal.”

“A skateboard punk rocker—whatever—and you ask them to wait for you to unlock your combination safe.And then you whip out your loaded gun and point it. But not at them, just in their general direction to scare them off because you really don't want to shoot anyone.”

Katherine took a slow, steady breath. “Change your tone if you want me to hear you. Otherwise this conversation is over.”

Gone was Celeste's indignity over Katherine's assumption about her and Zach, or at least set aside. And in its place? Frustration.

Long ago, a cracked bathroom mirror had reflected the same expression on Katherine's face: the pleading eyes, the determined set to her jaw. Celeste wrapped her arms around her stomach, as sick with frustration as Katherine had once been, trying to talk her mother into leaving her father. Trying to talk sense into she who refused to defend her boundaries.

Two gentle taps echoed through the stockroom door, and Katherine startled. “A customer's asking about Celeste's Wild Blues,” Zach said, his voice even-keeled and upbeat.

“I'll be right out,” Celeste called through the door, mimicking Zach's tone.

She and Katherine held their breath until Zach gave the door a single tap. “See you out there,” he said.

“I'll teach you how to shoot,” Celeste whispered, “so you don't shoot yourself in the foot.” She nodded, but Katherine refused to play along.

“Go chat up your muffins. I'll be out in a minute.”

“At least give me the combination to the safe,” Celeste said.

For a second, Katherine thought Celeste had said
to be safe
. That combination Katherine did not have.

“Go,” Katherine said, more gently, she hoped, more the way she meant the word. But words were so inexact, so open to misunderstandings.

Celeste opened her mouth, as if to protest. Then she slipped from the stockroom on a sigh, leaving Katherine alone with her memories of another room, a closed door, and two women who could not agree.

On the day of the last big talk, Katherine and her mother had huddled in their tiny bathroom, the only room with a door that locked. Back then Katherine had never heard of verbal abuse, but she'd nonetheless tried to explain it to her mother. Living things deformed when exposed to ugly words and blossomed beneath expressions of love, gratitude, and hope. Katherine had reminded her mother of the peach tree in the yard that ten years prior, when they'd first rented the cottage, had yielded healthy fruit but now sat shriveled and rotting. Surely her mother would make the connection. All life responded in kind. In this house, nothing beautiful could survive.

Instead, Katherine's mother kept bringing up the number of years she and Katherine's father had been married—twenty-five—and the two daughters they'd brought into the world. Katherine couldn't argue against the math. But none of it added up to a reason, a logical reason, why her mother would stay with her father.

Then Katherine's father knocked on the door, making Katherine and her mother jump and squeeze hands. “What the hell you girls doing in there?” her father asked. “Painting your stupid fingernails? You'd better be scrubbing that filthy toilet, you goddamn lazy, good-for-nothing . . .”

Leave,
Katherine had mouthed, her eyes widened in a way she hoped her mother would translate into,
Leave him.

And then, seeming to understand, her mother had done the strangest thing. She'd hugged Katherine to her chest, tight enough to steal her breath. The sharp angle of her mother's collarbone dug into Katherine's chest, and her mother's pulse thrummed through Katherine's body, as if they shared one heart. Her mother pressed her lips to Katherine's ear and offered an explanation for why she stayed with her father that trumped all good reason. “Because,” Katherine's mother had told her, “I love him.”

Love was a kind of sick obsession.

C
HAPTER
7

Z
ach was a little obsessed.

He awoke with the seat belt buckle digging into his hip and his shoulder folded in a warped way no healthy shoulder ought to fold. His head tucked into his sleeping bag, the sharp smell of his own body odor burning his nose hairs. His sweaty toes didn't seem connected at the ends of his cold feet.

He poked his head from the darkness of the sleeping bag. The eyeball-aching assault of the parking lot light reminded him of the way a cop's flashlight beam had caught him with his pants down. Twice. The first time he'd been parked at Lookout Point after the prom and a cop shone a flashlight through his back window just as he and his girlfriend were getting to the good part. Thirty more seconds he'd wanted to request, but he'd thought better of turning his embarrassment into a full-out stand-up comedy routine. The second time he'd been at the receiving end of a cop's high-beam flashlight and a falsely cheery
Good morning!
was the last time Zach had had sex. A few hours before he'd stumbled home to the suitcase on the porch and his mother's
find her
note.

He was here to find his birth mother, to ask Katherine the question he'd yet to dare:
Are you my mother?
—reminiscent of the children's book his adoptive mother used to read to him and his not-adopted brothers. A million times he'd turned over the words in his head. A million times they'd sounded dumb as dirt. A million times he'd clamped his mouth shut and taken mental notes on Katherine's life, as though that would tell him how to broach the subject. Stacking bread, busing tables, and “marrying” the pastries gave Zach a front-row seat to Katherine and her customers—the way she simultaneously held them close and yet kept her distance. Katherine and Celeste weren't related—as Zach's father liked to say, thank God for small miracles—but they acted like mother and daughter.

Zach was here to reunite with his birth mother. And yet Celeste awoke his curiosity, among other things. Beneath the sleeping bag, not everything was cold.

He inhaled the blanket she'd loaned him. Sugar cookies, vanilla frosting, and something else. Nutmeg? Cinn—“Good morning, sunshine.” Celeste peered through the side window. Some kind of bakery kerchief thing corralled her hair.

On Sunday, the one day of the week Lamontagne's was closed for business, Zach, Katherine, and Celeste were all working the Hidden Harbor Harvest Festival. Katherine and Celeste would stop by Lamontagne's to bake and organize, and he'd drop in an hour later to help them ferry baked goods to a booth on the town green. He'd asked Celeste to wake him up when she was heading out. He'd totally forgotten he'd asked her because he was busy thinking about her and—Slowly, he slid his hand from his boxers. The elastic waistband slapped his stomach. Inside the sleeping bag, he broke into a sweat. His pulse thrummed his armpits, making them itch.

“Can you roll down the window?” Celeste asked.

“Sure.” Zach sat up and held the sleeping bag around him. He shivered in the chill air.

Celeste passed him a hot, steaming mug.

“Thank you!” He held his face over the coffee and inhaled deeply. Heat radiated into his hands. “Oh, man, you must've read my mind,” Zach said, his way of thanking God she couldn't.

She crinkled her nose, which looked really cute, until she waved her hand in front of her face. “Hate to tell you, Zach. But you kind of stink.”

“Hate to tell you, Celeste, but I know.” Zach slurped the coffee. “Mmm mmm good.”

Celeste leaned a hand against the window frame. “Where have you been showering?”

Zach sputtered on the coffee. He coughed into his fist to clear his throat. “Lamontagne's.” His voice came out as a high-pitched squeak around the coffee.

Instead of backing away from his stench, Celeste leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “There's no shower at the bakery.”

Zach pretended to splash water beneath either armpit.

“You've been sponge bathing in the washroom?” she said, her voice doing its own high-rise climb.

When Zach nodded, Celeste broke into a wide grin. She slapped the roof of the car, the way a good old boy might slap his knee. “If Katherine knew she'd have a bird! No wonder you've been spending so much time in there.
Phew!
I thought you had some kind of gastrointestinal issue.”

Zach shrugged and took another sip of coffee.

Celeste shook her head and turned, as if to leave. Instead, she leaned against Matilda, giving him a nice view of her olive-green hoodie. By the time she turned back around, he'd drained the coffee. He didn't have a gastrointestinal issue, but his bladder was in serious need of a bathroom.

Celeste worked a key from her key ring.

Zach's heart tumbled in his chest. He broke into a grin and then purposely tamped down his automatic horndog enthusiasm.

The first time he'd laid eyes on Celeste, he'd imagined this moment, the pretty girl inviting him into her apartment. Hell, he'd imagined—in detail—her welcoming him into her bed. But, now, he wanted to go back to Wednesday and punch the Wednesday Zach in the eye. Obsession or not, woody in the sweltering sleeping bag or not. He didn't want to one-night or one-week stand this girl.

This thing he wanted . . . had no name.

Key between thumb and forefinger, she slipped her hand through the open window and then snatched it back, her fingers seeming to twitch on the retreat. She held the key against her chest. Was she shaking?

“I'm going to give you my key,” she said. “You can use my apartment to shower. But there are rules.”

“I'm all about the rules.”

“No snooping at any of my stuff. No opening the medicine cabinet. No peeking in my drawers. Actually, no going into my bedroom at all. You go in, you shower, you get out and lock the door behind you. You got it?”

“I get in, I go straight to the shower, I get out and lock the door behind me. I keep my hands out of your drawers.”

“Zach!” Celeste said, but at least she was laughing.

“Sorry,” he said, “you stepped into that one. Yup, I get it.”

This time, when Celeste handed him the key, when she let him take it from her hand, he paid better attention.

She
was
shaking.

This thing with no name, this new thing he felt, made him want to find out why she was shaking and hold her till she stilled.

Zach rubbed the key between his thumb and forefinger, as though it were his St. Anthony coin. He hadn't been sure how long he could keep living out of his car without a shower, but he couldn't commit to any sort of lease, any sort of guarantee he'd stay. Celeste's offer gave him time to wait and watch and stake out his life. Katherine's life. Celeste's life. “This is really nice of you.”

“Yeah, it is. But don't let it get around.”

“That you're nice?”

“And that you're showering at my apartment. I wouldn't want anyone getting the wrong idea.”

“You and Katherine are the only people I know in the entire state of Maine. Who would I tell?”

“I'm serious. Especially don't tell Katherine. Either promise not to tell or you go back to your sponge baths.”

“I won't tell anyone you're nice.”

“Pro—”

“Or that you're letting me use your shower,” Zach said.

Celeste didn't want anyone to think they were sleeping together. Specifically because they'd just met? Or in general, because who she slept with wasn't anyone's business? He wasn't into kissing and telling, the weekends in the dorm guys' bonding game of you tell me who you screwed, I'll tell you what the girl with the overbite and kitten posters looks like naked.

He wouldn't want a girl talking about him that way.

He'd never bought into the idea if a guy slept with a lot of girls, he was a stud, but if a girl had a track record, she was a slut.

He considered himself neither a stud nor a slut. He considered himself a guy who enjoyed sex. Didn't everybody?

Something to consider.

“See you in an hour,” Celeste said. “Get ready to meet the rest of Hidden Harbor, all two thousand of them, and their dogs.” Celeste got into Old Yeller and keyed the engine.

Zach thought of the Lamontagne regulars. The high school kids who dropped in after school to hang out. The girls who hugged each other, giggled loudly, and swung their hair, pretending not to notice the boys. The boys who talked sports and pretended, less convincingly, not to notice the girls. The moms with rug rats. The construction worker who seemed interested in Katherine and pretended not to notice the older guy, the reluctant cycler Zach had noticed on day one of his Lamontagne's stakeout. Wasn't he Katherine's boyfriend?

What if she'd had the same boyfriend for twenty-five years?

Zach's throat muscles spasmed. The coffee backed up into his nose. Zach swiped his nose with the back of his hand and set the coffee mug on the floor. He stumbled from the car, holding his sleeping bag around his waist, and banged on Old Yeller's passenger window.

Celeste rolled down the window. Even though he must've looked like an escapee from a funny farm sack race, she didn't even crack a grin. “The shower control works counterclockwise.”

If he had any sense, he would've played along and asked her about the bathroom light, the fan, and whether he'd find the sink's cold water on the right or on the left. If he had any sense, he would've worried about sounding like a lunatic. “What's with the reluctant cycler?”

“The what?” she asked through a giggle.

Zach scrubbed a hand across his coffee-sputtered face. “The gray-haired guy who comes in to see Katherine every morning.”

A wary smile tugged the corners of Celeste's lips.

Ah, hell. Too late to backtrack. He was all-in. “Is he her boyfriend?” Zach's voice, apparently having great comic timing and an intense desire to mortify him, rose two octaves.

Celeste shot him a flashlight-beam grin.

“Husband?” Zach tried.

“Ex,” Celeste said.

Did he know?

Celeste really and truly slapped her knee. “Oh, my, my,” she cooed.

“What? ‘Oh, my, my'?”

“Oh, my, my. You have a crush on Katherine.”

“Oh, no.
God,
no!”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about. It's happened before. Younger men fall for her all the time. Toddlers, some preschoolers . . .”

“That's not even funny.”

“Gotta go, Zach. I'm off to hang out with your girlfriend. And that, sir, is hilarious.” Celeste repositioned herself behind the wheel. “Don't worry, your secret's safe with me, baby cakes,” she said before backing Old Yeller from the space and leaving Zach standing in the middle of the parking lot.

What the hell was he doing here, in the middle of this morning that looked like night, in the middle of this strange town, in another place where he didn't belong?

The wind moved through his sleeping bag, as though it were nothing, the reason he told himself he was shivering. Circulation returned to his toes, shooting daggers through his feet and nailing them to the pavement. The girl he was crushing on thought he had a crush on the woman who might be his birth mother. What was he supposed to do with that?

He was both stuck and fucked.

Zach threw back his head and yelled at the moon, “Now what!” The deaf and dumb moon stared down at him, hanging like a cardboard prop in the morning sky. His secret was safe with Celeste.

That was the funniest thing he'd ever heard.

 

Let the Hidden Harbor Harvest Festival begin!

Wasn't that similar to a line about a wild rumpus from the children's book
Where the Wild Things Are
? The story about a boy in a wolf suit who gets sent to bed without dinner had once been Celeste's favorite bedtime story. She'd curled in her mother's lap and slipped her fingers beneath her mother's blouse to stroke her stomach as though it were a satin ribbon. Then Celeste ran away to a foreign land and let loose the beast within her. But no matter how far she'd sailed away from home, she'd always ended where she began. In her own room and with a full belly, safe and sound.

Late morning sun blazed across the town green and highlighted the stacks of pumpkins deposited in the early hours by farmers hoping to line their pockets with both townie and tourist coin. Shops that peddled hospitality—Lamontagne's included—made the most money in the summer months, between Memorial Day and Labor Day. But lay out enough high-sugar, high-fat foods and orange gourds and offer up a blue-sky day, and townies and tourists alike returned for a last blowout, get up, and party down.

The Hidden Harbor Harvest Festival—Triple H, as the locals called it—had opened for business an hour ago. But, either slow to get the message or waiting for the last of the fair weather, fluffy clouds to drift offshore, festivalgoers were just now trickling onto the lawn, chasing the sun.

If Celeste had stayed in New York, today would've been like any other day. Maybe she would've remembered the festival, held on the same weekend each year. She might've even thought of Katherine, standing straight and tall like a security guard before their booth. But, strangely, Celeste found herself here in the midst of the organized chaos, missing the Triple H. No,
mourning
the Triple H. Her stomach ached around the thought, as though someone had sucker punched her in the gut. As though she were a pumpkin, and someone had sliced around her stem with a serrated knife and scraped her free of flesh and seeds. As if she were here, but not here, trapped in Triple H purgatory.