Detours (19 page)

“Maybe. Have you ever known him not to chat up a storm when he and I are making the handoff with Nat? He didn’t ask us to come in, didn’t offer to get Nat’s backpack. He just stood in the door and looked at us like we had incurable cooties.”

“Maybe he had a rough week at work. Maybe he was watching something on TV he didn’t want to miss.”

“I’ve known the man my whole life.” Mary turned south on Route 115. “I’ll bet he knows.”

Ellis tapped Mary’s forearm. “So what? We’ve said all along we need to find a way to tell him and Natalie and the rest of your family. We could maybe make an ally out of him. I bet if he were to come out—pardon the use of the words—on our side when we talk to your mother, it might help in the long run.”

“It might, but I wanted to tell everybody in my own way. I worry sometimes now that he’s back in the original land of the Bible-thumpers.”

“How so?”

“If he didn’t want to be my loving and supportive ex-husband, he could get some crazy ideas about having me declared an unfit mother or something.”

“Do you really think he’d do that?”

“I hope not, but if his mother joined in the inevitable preaching from my mother and sisters, it’s a possibility. It would kill me if I had to become a part-time mother.” Her hands shook as she clung to the steering wheel. “What if I could only see Nat once a month?”

It wouldn’t be the worst possible situation, Ellis thought to herself. She had the good sense not to say it out loud. The past three months of dealing with Natalie day in and day out (save for the weekends when she was with Nathan) had rekindled her opinion that children were God’s demented idea of a poorly executed practical joke.

The downturn in the housing market had slowed house sales to a crippled tortoise’s pace. There had only been three lookers at Mary’s house, and none of them could make an offer until their own houses sold. Mary and Nathan had agreed that they wouldn’t take a contract contingent on the sale of the buyer’s house, so things hung in suspended animation.

Nathan had moved to Clarkesville in early January. Every Friday since, except for the weekends Nathan was working, Mary had driven Natalie up so that she could have time with her dad. If Nathan had to come pick her up, he probably couldn’t get her until Saturday mornings. Since Mary could flex her schedule, she could have Natalie there when Nathan got home from work Friday afternoon. Mary preferred that arrangement.

Most Fridays, Ellis rode along. The trip back to Atlanta from the foothills—when she was alone with Mary and had the entire weekend to look forward to—almost made the drive up worth the aggravation of Natalie’s endless chatter.

“Let’s not assume gloom and doom yet, okay?” Ellis suggested. “No point in thinking Nathan is plotting against you.”

“You’re right, but I can’t help but get the feeling the excrement is going to hit the air-circulation device any day now.” Mary reached for Ellis’s hand and held it briefly. “I love you, you know? But why does being in love have to be such a kick in the pants?”

They drove on past the rolling hills. Mary merged onto the four-lane, weaving along with the heavy Friday-evening traffic. “I swear gas could cost ten dollars a gallon, and all these fools would still be on the road.”

“Pot calls kettle black. Film at eleven,” Ellis said with a drop or two of sarcasm.

“I know, I know. It costs me about thirty dollars to get Nat to and from her dad’s every weekend, but what can I do?”

“I’m not arguing, love, merely making an observation.”

“God, I wish my house would sell.”

“Yeah, then I could be the one spending thirty dollars to drive up to see you on weekends.” Ellis let the sarcasm quotient rise unchecked.

“Sorry. I know there’s no such thing as a perfect solution to this mess. I’m starting to feel like I have a split personality.” Mary braked sharply to avoid a car that darted into her lane. “Idiot!” She eased up on the accelerator to put a greater distance between her and the car. “I don’t want to be away from you, but driving to and from the mountains every weekend is going to be the death of me.” She glanced at Ellis. “Are you sure you couldn’t move up to the mountains, too? Assuming my house ever sells, that is, and I actually get to relocate.”

Ellis silently counted to ten. “We’ve been through that at least a hundred times. I’m barely able to cover my expenses as it is. Even if I could find enough landscaping jobs up in the hills, which I seriously doubt, the cost of gas to get to them would kill me. It’s bad enough now, even though I cluster jobs together so I don’t have to drive so much. I don’t think my moving to north Georgia would be a smart career move.”

“You could do something besides landscaping, couldn’t you?” Mary asked quietly.

“Sure, if Wal-Mart is hiring or one of the service stations needs somebody to sell lottery tickets to people who can’t even afford to put five gallons of gas in their uninsured pickup truck.”

Mary didn’t respond right away. “We’ll just have to see what happens, huh?”

“Yep.”

Mary turned on the headlights. “Another week or two and we’ll be able to make this whole drive in the daylight.”

“Another week or two and I won’t be making the trip with you because I’ll still be out on a job at this time of day.”

“Then I guess we need to make the most of the rest of this one.” Mary reached across the console to touch Ellis’s leg. “I love you, El.”

“Love you, too.” Ellis gripped Mary’s hand. And for at least the millionth time, she almost wished she didn’t.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

“Thanks for taking the day off to help with the move, Ellis.” Mary crammed the vacuum cleaner into the Xterra’s rear hatch, already stuffed with Swiffer’s litter box, a bag of cat food, several suitcases, and three coolers bearing whatever had been left in Mary’s refrigerator. “I can’t believe this is really happening.”

“I know what you mean.” Ellis hoped the growing lump in her throat wasn’t evident to Mary. “Sam and I spent more time here in the past five months than we spent at my apartment. She’s gonna miss her backyard.”

“I’m gonna miss ol’ Sammy.” Mary leaned against Ellis. “And I’m gonna miss her mama even more.”

“I’m still surprised you decided to move when there’s only a little more than a month left in the school year.”

“Nat’s been a mess since Nathan moved up north in January. In her heart, she’s already living in the mountains. Because she’s spent so many weekends with Nathan, she’s gotten to know a lot of kids up there. She’ll probably have the easiest adjustment of any of us.”

“Good thing she could stay with your mom this week while you finished packing up the house.”

“Yes and no. Good to have her gone so she’s not underfoot, but it’s anybody’s guess what Baptist garbage Mom’s stuffing into her impressionable little mind.”

“I thought you told me you’d already enrolled her in school up there.”

“I did, but school only runs six hours a day. My mother has the other eighteen hours to pollute her brain.” Mary pantomimed opening the top of her head and pouring liquid into it. “I told you what a battle I had with Mom over putting Nat in public school. She wanted her to go to Christian Academy where my nieces and nephews go.”

“Starting tonight, you’ll be there to keep the scales balanced.”

“Sort of. But there’s no such thing as winning an argument with my mother. And you’ll have confirmation of that if we ever get around to having that long-overdue discussion with her about our relationship.”

“Don’t remind me. Today is hard enough already.” Ellis offered a sympathetic smile. “What’s left in the house?” she asked, hoping to have some last chores that would keep her from acknowledging the hollow ache that was growing bigger with every passing minute.

“My laptop, a briefcase with the notes I’ve taken for the stories I’m working on, and Swiffer and her carrier.” Mary took a shaky breath. “And ten years’ worth of memories.” She stepped back from Ellis. “The sweetest ones came in the last six months, thanks to you.”

Ellis swallowed hard, barely keeping the tears from having their way. “Better get you loaded up and on your way. The truck is already ten minutes ahead of you.”

“You’re right. Come inside and kiss me one last time.” Ellis followed Mary into the house. Swiffer was locked in the cat carrier sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. She yowled as if she were caught in the rollers of a wringer washer.

“That will be pleasant to listen to all the way to Clarkesville,” Ellis said.

“I figure after the next two weeks at my mother’s, I’d welcome Swiffer’s serenade as a melodic change of pace.”

“It’s too bad you couldn’t get into your new house ’til Memorial Day weekend.”

“No kidding. After three months of treading water waiting for an offer on the house, everything happened in a torrent. Lord only knows how much of my stuff will get lost or damaged in storage over the next couple of weeks.”

“As long as the guys don’t drop those huge crates when they’re unloading the truck at the storage facility, it’ll be fine.”

“I hope you’re right.” In the living room, Mary took a long look around the barren space. “I brought my baby here when she was two days old. How can she be almost ten already?”

“I remember meeting her right there”—Ellis gestured toward where the sofa used to sit—“the day I fell for you on LaVista Road.” Ellis draped her arm around Mary’s shoulder. “Quite a detour we’ve been on since last November, huh?”

“And we’re not exactly on the highway to heaven right now, either, with you staying here in the city at your apartment while I’m up in the far reaches of Outer Hooterville.” Mary’s voice cracked as she spoke.

“Don’t start, okay? Neither one of us can afford to think right now about what all this means. You’ve got to go so you can meet the moving van at the storage place in Clarkesville.” Ellis stanched a snuffle. “And I’ve got to get out of this house before…”

“One last thing, and then we’ll go.” Mary led the way down the hall to her bedroom. Their footfalls echoed off the walls. Once in the room, Mary cradled Ellis to her bosom. “I’ll always remember the way it felt to kiss you for the first time. I never want to know what it might feel like to think we’ve had our last kiss.”

Ellis backed away from Mary’s embrace and held both of Mary’s hands tightly. She stared into the eyes that had captivated her so thoroughly. “Never the last one. Always only the promise of the next one.”

Their final kiss in the house on Wilson Woods Drive tasted of memories and of tears; of love found and of farewell; of pledges understood but unspoken.

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

Thank God for springtime in Atlanta. Over the next six weeks, Ellis was nearly overwhelmed with obligations to her customers, and that kept her from missing Mary quite as much as she otherwise would have. Days started early and lasted late. Breakfast was usually a piece or two of fruit and some granola bars. If she got lunch at all, it was a sandwich from a sub shop. Dinner? Like she had energy to fix anything, or eat it, after chasing the lawn mower and hauling mulch around all day.

On June sixth, she spent the morning and early afternoon building rock-ringed gardens and filling them with encore azaleas for a new client in Ormewood, not too far from the zoo and the Atlanta Cyclorama. She stopped to grab a late lunch on her way to another job in Kirkwood, just off Moreland Avenue.

In a rare move, Ellis gave herself the extra few minutes to go inside and eat her lunch at a table instead of pulling through the drive-thru and eating in the cab of her truck. She parked in the lot of a joint she used to know well at the corner of Ponce de Leon and Clifton Road.

As she stood in line at the sandwich shop, she caught the scent of a familiar perfume. She usually steered clear of the stores in the Candler Park vicinity, and if her nose was telling her the truth, she should have stuck to that plan.

“Ellis?”

The voice clinched it. Better she had starved to death than run the risk of stumbling over her past.

She pushed her tray a few inches farther along the rails of the serving line before turning around.

“Hi, Becky.” How could two simple words feel like battery acid tumbling on her tongue? She trained her eyes to the left of Becky Blumfeld’s face and tried to look a thousand miles beyond Becky’s shoulder.

“Gosh, it’s been forever since I’ve seen you.” Becky rubbed Ellis’s upper arm with her knuckles. “How have you been?”

Any casual observer would have thought it was a perfectly reasonable, social inquiry. From Ellis’s perspective, better Becky had run a dagger directly into her heart to spare her the agonizing death of making small talk in a public place.

“Good, thanks. How about you?” She willed herself to look at Becky’s face. It was flushed and full, much rounder than Ellis remembered it. She let her gaze drop. “Oh. Oh, wow. I mean. Umm. Good for you.”

Becky’s distended belly protruded unmistakably.

“Good for us,” Becky said, as she pulled the hand of the woman behind her so that she stood by Becky’s side. “Ruthann Lockburger, this is Ellis VanStantvoordt.”

Ellis and Ruthann mumbled greetings to one another. The clerk behind the counter indicated it was Ellis’s turn to order.

“Turkey and swiss on whole wheat. Dress it all the way, extra pickles. Large sweet iced tea. And I’ve changed my mind about dining in. Make that to go.” She turned back to face Becky and Ruthann.