A Measure of Happiness (9 page)

Celeste stared at Katherine, her face impassive. Too impassive. Celeste's need for approval was louder than words.

Katherine set the remaining muffin on the counter. She unfolded the orange stool and stepped onto its lower rung, raising herself to the blackboard. She erased
Blueberry Muffins
and wrote
Celeste's Wild Blues
in her tidiest print. Then she stepped down and brushed the chalk dust from her hands. “Better?”

“It's a start.” Once again, Celeste attempted to conceal her grin behind her coffee cup, but her smiling eyes gave her away.

Katherine made fast work of the rest of the blueberry muffin. She arched her back until her spine gave way with a satisfying crack. “They're wonderful.”

“I know.”

“Eaten one today?” Katherine asked, a veiled reminder about her earlier breakfast lecture.

“Later, when I'm hungry,” Celeste said, letting Katherine know her reminder hadn't been all that veiled.

An odd vibrating sound came from the kitchen—the thread of a tune Zach was humming that Katherine couldn't identify.

Celeste held a cupped hand to her ear. Her gaze slid toward the kitchen, her brow creased.

“ ‘Slide'! Goo Goo Dolls!” Celeste called into the kitchen.

“Yes!” Zach appeared in the doorway, holding a loaf of sourdough between food prep gloves. “You got that from
hmm, hmm?
Nobody has ever been able to guess a tune I was humming. You a fan?”

Celeste held up the two fingers—pinkie and pointer, thumb holding down middle and ring. “Rock on, baby.”

Zach laughed, tossed up his own two-horn salute, and ducked back into the kitchen. The humming resumed.

Celeste licked her bottom lip, her gaze trained on the spot Zach had vacated.

“He seems like a nice guy,” Katherine said, her words conjuring Adam and their instant, easy camaraderie. He'd seemed like a nice guy, too. “Hey, pretty girl,” he'd said by way of introduction. “What time do you get off work?”

If he'd been entirely honest, he should've asked,
What time do you want to get off?

Within an hour she'd followed him back to his hotel room, where they'd smoked a joint. Heads fuzzy, they'd made love to “Free Bird,” slow and sultry giving way to fast and frenzied.

Love,
she supposed, had been too strong of a word. Weeks later, she'd changed her thoughts on that front. Back then she'd loved everyone. But loving everyone was a lot like loving no one at all.

“Did you and Zach spend time together last night?”

“What do you mean,
spend time?
”

Who Celeste dated, spent time with, made love to, was none of Katherine's business. But the memory of Celeste's full-blown illness—that Katherine couldn't forget. “I mean, you've just gotten back from school,” Katherine said. “It's a big adjustment, coming back to work here, and you don't do well with . . .”

“Transitions,” Celeste filled in.

“Yes. Sort of. No.”

“What in the world are you trying to say?”

Katherine glanced into the kitchen, where Zach slid loaves of bread into the rolling rack and hummed a wordless tune.

“With you and Zach working together, and you said he moved into Ledgewood—”

“I didn't say that.”

“I couldn't help but notice you struggling with food yesterday.”

“Yesterday, I'd just quit school. Yesterday, I'd just driven all night on five hours of sleep.”

You'd think after ten years married to a shrink, Katherine would be better at framing her questions. “My point, exactly. So this is probably not the best time for you to start something—”

“Wait, what? What exactly do you think I've started?”

Katherine tossed a glance back toward the kitchen. Clearly, Celeste had gone through something in New York, something that had spooked her all the way back to Hidden Harbor. But in Katherine's experience, sex didn't shield you from loss. Sometimes sex—specifically sex with a stranger—only added to your long life list of regrets.

“Zach?” Celeste whispered. “Me and Zach? You think I've started something with Zach? Wh-why would you—? H-how could you—?” Celeste stammered, not with embarrassment but with rage. Katherine could feel Celeste's anger spiking hot in her own throat.

“Okay, clearly I've misunderstood,” Katherine said.

“I don't get it. Am I wearing some kind of sign that says
whore?
”

“That's an ugly word, Celeste. I'd never say that.”

“No? You thought it, though. What kind of woman sleeps with a guy she's just met?”

A good woman, a woman who enjoyed sex. A woman who, with all her heart, believed the adage “make love, not war.”

“Zach mentioned a blanket—”

Celeste threw a look into the kitchen. “And you assumed—I didn't sleep with Zach, if that's what you're implying. And I didn't screw him either.”

Another awful word. A screw was something that held you down and pierced your flesh. To screw someone implied coercion, treachery, manipulation.

Celeste's glare seemed to say,
Screw you.

Katherine touched Celeste's arm and watched her eyes turn liquid. Then the muscles around her mouth tightened, shades of the resolve she'd shown Katherine months ago, and moments before storming from the bakery. All righteous anger. All
I'll show you
. Celeste shook off Katherine's touch and went into the kitchen.

The humming stopped.

“‘Iris' ?” Celeste asked.

“Two for two,” Zach said. “Two for two.”

On a rain-soaked night, right before Katherine had left home for good, she'd gone out to The Watering Hole, a local joint that served pizza so greasy you had to sop up the oil with a handful of napkins, and watered-down melon balls for cheap. She'd needed to get out, to shake off the constant negative vibe that clung to the household. She'd needed to get laid. Two hours later, she'd tiptoed through the darkened house, dragging a lanky guy by the hand. Wallace or Warren, some
W
name. Three drinks had worked their magic to blind her to the negativity humming from the walls, and her father sleeping on the sofa.

Until Katherine's bedroom door creaked open behind her, right when she was sitting on top of the
W
guy. W grabbed her hips, halting her movement. Her father's sneer heated her bare back before she turned and saw the expression plastered across his scruffy face.

“Sorry, man,” W said, as if he'd offended her father by bedding his daughter.

Her father lit a cigarette and leaned against the doorjamb. “Don't stop on my account,” he said. “She's just a whore. Make sure you get your money's worth. Man.”

She wasn't a whore. She hadn't even let W pay for her drinks.

Instead of taking it, instead of cowering, she'd retaliated. She'd felt bold, not ashamed, caught in the act of asserting her power. “Don't listen to him,” Katherine had countered. “He's just a lazy welfare drunk who wouldn't be able to pay the rent without my help.”

She held her father's gaze for either ten seconds or ten years. Either way, she shook, as though she were trying to withstand the pull of a black hole. The pull of the empty place where her father's soul should've been.

Her father took a long drag and then blew smoke out of the side of his mouth. “You're gonna be sorry you said that,” he said without an ounce of venom. And then, soundlessly, he'd closed her bedroom door.

Katherine should've kept her damn mouth shut.

C
HAPTER
6

Katherine understood this, as if the words had been written on her heart and on her soul, like the spiritual directive on the scroll of a Jewish mezuzah.

When Barry walked into Lamontagne's, time stood still for Katherine. The facts of her life—everything that had come to pass before she'd met her ex-husband and everything that had happened since—held no meaning. Same as the first time she'd met him, before they'd even had their first conversation, every cell in her mind and body aligned with Barry's frequency, and a twitchy, achy sensation climbed her neck.

But of course, same as always, when Barry walked through the door, only Katherine was standing still. And her life was racing forward, those she loved moving away from her. Celeste had boomeranged back, but for how long? And Zach? Well, his fate had yet to be realized. She and Zach were engaged in a game of chicken, neither of them ready to spill the beans and speak. Eventually, Barry would give up on her and leave, too.

Barry sipped his coffee and laid a dollar bill on the counter. The scent of rain-stirred downed leaves and earth emanated from Barry's hair and clothing and greeted Katherine, but he didn't say hello.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Sorry,” Barry said. “The rain.”

Katherine nodded. She slipped Barry's dollar into her apron pocket. Rain meant Barry had taken his rarely used Volkswagen Golf out of the garage and left his street bike hanging from the hooks. No bike meant no exercise before work. And no exercise made him, well, about as grouchy as a normal person before his first shot of caffeine.

“Made it just the way you like it,” Katherine said, “nice and strong.”

“Just the way I like coffee is in bed.”

“Barry . . .” Katherine said, more of a sigh than a word, because she couldn't stand seeing him like this. His blatant need pulled, physically pulled, as though a hand were tearing at her solar plexus. The worst part? Knowing she'd done this to him. Inside her apron, she fisted Barry's dollar till its sharp edges stabbed the flesh of her palm.

“Just the way I like coffee is on a tray in bed between me and my wife.”

“A lot has happened between us.”

“The way I like coffee is with my wife in bed and—”

Celeste popped up behind Katherine. “With a blueberry muffin?”

“Sure, why not?” Barry said.

Celeste swiped a bakery tissue.

“You don't eat first thing in the morning,” Katherine said, remembering their first night together and the pursuant morning she'd awoken starving. He'd made her a three-egg omelet and then watched her eat every bite.

“You don't know everything about me.”

“Oh, really, now? Since when?”

Barry took a sip of his coffee, giving Katherine time to wonder what he could possibly have to hide from her. His expression gave away nothing. She didn't like it, didn't like the idea that he had a private self, that his thoughts might be as incongruous with his actions as hers.

Before they'd married, they'd stay up until the small hours of the morning talking about everything from their childhoods to world politics, from her passion for baking to his insatiable curiosity for the human psyche. When the conversations waned, Barry would roll over to pretend to try to catch a few winks before work. Katherine, needing to get up for work herself, would drop a kiss behind his ear and press her breasts between his shoulder blades.

Barry's natural inclination was to move fast, to hurry, as if sex were something about which to be ashamed. She'd shown him how to take it slow, to savor every stage of arousal. Katherine knew he'd been with other women since their divorce. She couldn't expect Barry to be celibate. But the thought of him sharing his
mind
with another woman? That unraveled a loop of Katherine's resolve and made her want to press her breasts between his shoulder blades.

“Your favorite color is aqua,” she said. “You consider yourself a Reform Jew, more as a cultural thing than a religion, and you're open to the possibility of life after death. You're a registered Independent because you don't trust either party. You think Freud was at best a chauvinist, at worst misogynistic. You're overly fond of Jung.”

“First date banter.”

In lieu of dropping her jaw, Katherine jostled her head.

Barry mimicked Katherine's head jostle to a T, and his hand reached up to pretend to fix his hair a nanosecond before her hand followed that oft-traveled path.

“Your Bubbe Sarah lived with you and your parents in her dotage. When you woke up in the middle of the night, she warmed milk in a white enamel pot on the gas stove to help you get back to sleep. You led her to believe you had trouble sleeping, but you'd actually set your alarm for four a.m. so you could spend time alone with her and listen to her stories about growing up in Russia. Bubbe Sarah's eyes were aqua, like yours, supposedly.” Katherine angled Barry a look.
What do you think of that?

Celeste held up a blueberry muffin. “For here or to go?”

“For here,” Barry told Celeste. “But I don't need a plate.”

And then, for Katherine's benefit, “I tell everyone about Bubbe Sarah.”

Celeste handed the muffin to Barry. “Is she the one who made the mundel bread?”

“The one and only,” Barry told Celeste. But his eyes challenged Katherine.

Celeste mouthed,
Sorry,
but then she intentionally raised a shoulder and batted her eyes. Another version of thumbing her nose at Katherine.

Barry bit into Celeste's blueberry muffin and inhaled into his chest. “Mmm, this is good,” he said, his voice all muffin muffled. “Better than Katherine's.”

Celeste rewarded Barry with a tight-lipped proud smile.

“That's why I put them on the menu,” Katherine said, catching Celeste's eye before Celeste bounced back into the kitchen. Clearly, Barry was trying to sidetrack Katherine's train of thought. She wasn't that easy. “You believe in life after death because the morning after Bubbe Sarah died, you woke up at four a.m., like always. And when you went to pour yourself a glass of milk, it had warmed in the container.”

Barry's head jostled, and he took another bite of the muffin to cover.

Katherine offered her own proud smile.

Barry chewed the muffin, giving himself time, Katherine was sure, to finagle a way to insert doubt into her recollection. “Yeah. Thing was,” Barry said, “when the power goes out, the fridge stops working. Instant warm milk.
Woo, woo.
” He fluttered a hand in the air to illustrate his sound effect.

Katherine nodded, as if she agreed with him. “Did I mention you're really embarrassed about believing in ghosts? Not quite sure why . . . but I do know why you're an Independent.”

“Because you divorced me?” Barry said, a clever comeback that seemed to catch Barry off guard, judging by the way he feigned a sudden fascination with folding the muffin liner.

“Because your mother's a Democrat, your father a Republican. And although they've enjoyed fifty-five years of wedded bliss—”

“Fifty-six.”

Right, she'd mailed a card on the first of the month. “When you were growing up, the only thing they argued about was politics.At the dinner table, they skirted religion and politics. But every night, they sat down to the evening news, channel four, ‘Proud as a Peacock,' and they argued.”

Barry frowned at the muffin paper, gave it a final fold, and tossed the tiny square into the trash. “They didn't really argue.”

“Not directly. Not with each other. But they each disagreed strongly with journalists on the news who held the precise views of their spouse.”

“Parallel argument.”

“So you decided, subconsciously of course, that you couldn't be a Democrat or a Republican.”

“Why?”

“To guarantee you wouldn't argue with your spouse!” Katherine said, guessing correctly and debunking Barry's strategy. The thrill of the former did little to offset the regret of the latter.

“Did you just psychoanalyze me?”

“I don't know. Did I?”

Barry nodded—slow and steady—and grinned as if he'd no idea about the debunking.

“Teach me how to do that with Celeste,” Katherine said, her voice husky and urgent. Katherine's bold-faced need warmed her cheeks. She hadn't realized how much Celeste's welfare meant to her until the request for assistance hung in the air between her and Barry like a question mark. Would Barry take the hook or leave her swinging?

“You want the secret handshake?”

The Suzy Q construction guys burst through the door, and the jingle bell clanged behind them. The sound of rain amplified and then softened. The shorter, stockier of the two men held a folded newspaper over his head, which he now unfolded and gave a resolute shake. His taller buddy stomped his boots on the mat inside the door.

Barry stepped aside from the counter and gave Katherine a nod and a grin before making a show of strolling alongside the display case.

“Working in the rain today?” Katherine asked her customers.

“Hoping it'll pass. Seems to be letting up.” The shorter man directed his gaze toward the front window, where the rain flowed like a waterfall from the awning.

“Mr. Optimistic,” the taller man said.

“Don't knock it till you've tried it.” The man frowned at his friend but was too cheerful to appear genuinely annoyed. He slapped his dollar on the countertop before Katherine.

Katherine handed the dollar back to Mr. Optimistic. “Coffee's on the house this morning, due to the rain and all.”

Mr. Optimistic gave Katherine a smile that crinkled the skin around his eyes, making him look to be in his late thirties, maybe even early forties. Younger than her but not too young. “You just made my day,” he said, and his tone lightened.Was it also tinged with special meaning?

“I'm Katherine,” she said, and offered her hand to Mr. Optimistic.

“Daniel,” he said, holding her gaze for an extra beat. The color of his eyes was a cross between brown and gold, a match for his short, dark-blond hair.

Barry finished browsing her pastries and came back to the counter, dragging his hand across the display case and glaring at Katherine's and Daniel's clasped hands. Beneath Barry's fingertips, the glass squealed.

Katherine let go of Daniel's hand first.

“Jeff,” the other man said, and gave Katherine's hand a cursory squeeze.

Daniel and Jeff chose the table closest to the bakery case. Daniel chose the chair that faced Katherine.

Barry leaned across the checkout counter. He didn't look like his usual laid-back self. He inhaled deeply to catch his breath, as though he'd just lifted weights or was preparing to do so.

She was the weight beneath which he was straining.

“Barry—” She wanted to apologize, but for what? For hurting him? For divorcing him so she wouldn't hurt him? For continuing to hurt him?

She should tell him to stop coming into the bakery. She should, but she wouldn't. She wasn't that strong.

Barry kept his voice low. “You want the secret handshake? You want to know how to figure out Celeste? You want her to tell you why she came back?”

“You know I do,” Katherine whispered, and a shiver ran up the back of her head.

“Just be there for her. Ask open-ended but specific questions. Like, uh, what classes at school were her favorites and why? Ask her to name the friends she made. What did she like about those friends? What didn't she like?”

“Right. Okay.”

“When she answers your questions, if she answers your questions, you ask more. Help her to delve deeper beneath the surface of events. She doesn't want to talk about why she came back?” Barry said, and Katherine nodded. “Don't ask her again, not unless she's getting really close to telling you.”

A lock of Katherine's hair swung across her vision, and she peered around it.

The pace of Barry's speech slowed, as though each word had genuine heft. “There's always a why beneath the why, even if you don't find out what's troubling her, even if she doesn't know.”

“How long—how long should this deep inquiry take?”

Barry chuckled. “It might take forever. It might take longer than the two of you have together. It's like that saying about leading a horse to water. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, despite being an overeducated, politically Independent, Bubbe Sarah–loving shrink, you still can't get your best patient to come clean.”

And sometimes, despite your best efforts, your wife wouldn't give you a good enough reason why she wanted a divorce. You could lead a horse to water . . . Yup, Katherine was the horse.

“You try everything,” Barry said, “even reread your textbook on Jung therapy, but then at some point she goes quiet. She gets that look of wanting to say something, but knowing that she shouldn't. Then she really and truly decides not to say anything. And then, finally, she just looks sad.”

“Then what happens?”

“Oh, then she initiates sex, to either avoid the subject or numb out. So, you know, it's not all bad.”

“Just to be clear. We're talking about me, about us, now, right? Please tell me we're talking about us, not Celeste.”

“Absolutely.” Barry's gaze widened, and he raised his voice. “Who'd want to talk about Celeste?”

“Just to be clear,” Celeste said. “Behind you.” She passed by Katherine, guiding the bread-laden speed cart and Zach. The speed cart rattled and rolled out to the café, trailing bread scent. The humidity captured every sweet, savory nuance.