We Won't Feel a Thing (28 page)

Rachel’s stomach fizzed. It wasn’t possible. Mrs. Woodlawn couldn’t have seen them out in the gazebo; it was too dark, and besides, they’d had privacy hibiscus.
Hibiscuses? Hibisci?

“The final truth has emerged about Ed and me,” said Mrs. Woodlawn. “And I’ve decided it’s time for us to separate.”

Rachel blinked.

“Oh, stop. You aren’t
surprised.
”

She wasn’t, not really. It just felt sudden, the way a death always feels sudden no matter how expected it is. Rachel tried to figure out how Mrs. Woodlawn wanted her to react.

“I’m sorry,” she offered, knowing that wasn’t it.

Mrs. Woodlawn pressed her lips together. She leaned her head back on the pillow. “I wasn’t intended for this life, Rachel,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Riley was an accident. Did you know that?”

She shook her head.

“Yes, well, don’t tell him. Too much white wine with a blind date one night, three months after your grandfather left me, and seventeen years later…” She made a theatrical sweep with her good hand. “I knew all along we were a terrible match. But I’d loved Arthur for so many years—it felt like such a relief, such a sweet revenge, to half-love someone else. I didn’t count on how deeply I’d grow to dislike him.”

Rachel picked at the hem of her dress. She wanted details about Mrs. Woodlawn and her grandfather—at least the G-rated details—but now wasn’t the time. “Why did you stay together?”

“Because divorce is defeat,” Mrs. Woodlawn snapped. “And I wanted to win. I thought we could control how we felt, if we stuck with the program and worked hard enough. Things that had mattered for years—I thought they suddenly wouldn’t matter anymore. We’d blast them to pieces. We’d find a way to grow old together.” She toyed with her Laurie-blond hair. “It failed.
I failed.
And I wasted two hundred and seventeen goddamned dollars.”

Rachel felt the nettles biting Mrs. Woodlawn’s skin, recognized her gracelessness in defeat. The sudden kinship vexed her. A bold overture of kindness—one Mrs. Woodlawn was almost sure to reject—climbed up her throat. She considered a bathroom break, a coffee run.

Then she tugged her chair closer to the bed.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” she said, her voice spiked with queenly hauteur.

Mrs. Woodlawn, for the first time, was listening.

“You have the entire world in your palm now. It’s yours. Don’t you want to see what you can do on your own?” Rachel’s hands made persuasive claws around her face. “You can write the book that’ll set people’s hair on fire!”

Mrs. Woodlawn thought this over. “Well,” she admitted, “I’ve always thought that with a more conducive atmosphere…”

“Right?” Rachel pressed on
.
“And what about that living room set? You can order the Royal Pemberton now. Nothing stopping you.”

“It’s—possible.”

“Anything’s possible.
And.”
Rachel knew this part was risky. She crossed her legs calmly and sat up straight. “You could even meet a guy. Like…
the
guy.”

“Absolutely not!” Mrs. Woodlawn said. “That’s all over. I won’t risk that again.”

“But there
has
to be an element of risk to your plan,” Rachel said. “You have to think big. If it fails, you’ll just have more to write about.”

Mrs. Woodlawn sipped ginger ale from her paper cup. She thought this over for a long, tense moment.

“I do want to revise
The Ruined Arches
,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I…don’t even have to stay in Puckatoe, if you think about it,” she said. “You and Riley…you’ll be out in the world before long—”

Sooner than you think.
Rachel bit her tongue.

“I could start over. I could create a
nom de plume
.”

“You could do anything.”

“I could even move to Paris. Or New York!”

Rachel had a brief, horrific vision of Mrs. Woodlawn crashing on her tiny fold-out couch in Queens while she studied for her Advanced Syntax & Style exam. She opened her mouth, then closed it. There was still time to break the news about Martinet College. When a fierce queen was glaring at her crystal ball and conjuring future plans, she needed total freedom and an audience of yes-men.

“Yes,” Rachel murmured. “The kingdom shall be yours.”

“Pardon me?”

She smiled a little. “Nothing.”

An ambulance bawled in the distance. Mrs. Woodlawn lifted her head and blinked, like an underground creature stumbling into sunlight. For a moment, Rachel wondered if Anne would fill the silence with something nice:
I’ve always thought of you as a daughter,
or
You look so much like Arthur,
or
Your essay on the history of the interrobang was one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever read. You should be teaching me.

“How much money is in my purse?” she said.

Rachel checked the brown corduroy sack on the chair. “Like—eighty dollars.”

“Take it.”

“Are you sure?”

“You’ll need to eat while Ed and I are in here. It’ll be another day or two.” She looked Rachel up and down. “You look like you need intervention. And Riley looks
dreadful
. Take care of him, will you?”

Rachel folded the bills with care. “I will.”

“And don’t spend all day tomorrow in this godforsaken hospital.”

“Okay.”

“Now—that
Aggravation Island
program.” Mrs. Woodlawn rapped the bedrail. “On Channel 5? What is that about?”

“Nasty people stranded together on purpose.”

“Perfect. Trash. Put that on, please.”

Rachel switched on the show. Mrs. Woodlawn reached for her dish of red Jell-O and pronged a cube thoughtfully. They watched in silence. The usual suspects were all assembled: the hopefuls in alliances, the snark kings and drama queens, the backstabbers who
did not come here to make friends
. One leather-skinned woman in a red bandanna sat in the fork of a jackfruit tree and unpacked her relationship with a man named Skeet, her monologue peppered with ruthless
bleep
s.

“You gotta be like, ridiculous here, like, watch your throne all the [bleep]in’ time, like everyone’s got their knives out for you, and then on the other hand you gotta know when to pull the [bleep] back and get a little soft and be human ‘cause you don’t want to miss your chance with someone [bleep]in’ amazing, you know? And you gotta figure that out while you’re fishing with sharks and plotting domination and there’s cockroaches big as [bleep] crawling up your [bleep]hole at night.” She hugged a jackfruit with one hand and knifed it with the other. “You get me?”

Eyes still on the TV, Anne Woodlawn offered the Jell-O bowl to Rachel.

“I like her,” said Mrs. Woodlawn.

Rachel took a cube. It was the first thing she’d eaten all night. “Me too.”

***

“It was hopeless from the start,” said Rachel.

“I agree,” said Riley.

“I mean, from that very first Splatter Session—you could hear it in her voice.”

“Desperation.”

“Totally. And even when he’d smile, his eyes—”

“There was like, nothing behind them.”

“They should have known.”

After Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn had fallen asleep, Rachel and Riley walked in circles around the hospital’s courtyard fountain, discussing the divorce. It was the only topic they trusted. They made themselves approach it like two literary scholars. They discussed nuance, foreshadowing, irony. Using David’s clear umbrella as a walking stick, Riley kept his eyes on the blue fountain tiles, sketching the tail of Ethel the mermaid in his mind. Rachel obsessed over the COMPLEMENTARY PARKING sign, wondering if it would kill St. Thomas Medical Center to hire a freelance proofreader.

As long as they kept talking, they wouldn’t have to think about The Question.

What happens next?

A light rain started up again, just as sunrise brushed the sky with hints of pink and orange. Riley put up the umbrella and studied the tips of his black dress shoes, tapping them in turn against the wet cobblestones. Rachel twisted her blue satin sash around her fingers until they turned white and she had to let go. Then she took one step forward and ducked under Riley’s shelter.

“Hi,” said Riley.

“Hello,” said Rachel. She curled her fingers around the umbrella handle, right above his.

“So…hypothetically,” Riley said. “Say there were these two weird people—”

“Okay.”

“—who were like, kind of socially stunted, but still pretty nice and smart and fun.”

“Right.”

“And they got together, after a
really
long time of just being friends.”

“Say eight years.”

“Eight. I like that number.” Riley watched the shifting pattern of water beads on the clear umbrella’s canopy. “And then imagine, for the sake of argument, that they had no idea what to do next, because they didn’t plan it or overthink it and it seemed really great for the first time but also maybe awkward.”

“And they thought they’d let each other down.”

“And they worried that ironically, having—you know, hypothetical,
sex
was the thing that finally cured them of each other.”

“I like this example,” said Rachel. “It’s extremely realistic.”

“So what would they do?”

“Well, if they were morons,” Rachel said, “they wouldn’t ask each other about it directly, and they’d just let things get more and more awkward, and then one of them would sleep with a Starbucks barista on impulse and it would all be over.”

Riley nodded. “Direct question: Do you think it was a mistake?”

“My sources say no.”

“So do mine.”

“Our sources have a fairly good track record, right?”

“They’re very reliable,” said Riley. “Except when it comes to self-help programs.”

Relief washed over them. They twirled the umbrella. They felt light and loose for the first time since the gazebo.

“So, weirdo,” said Riley.

“Yes, weirdo,” said Rachel.

“What happens next?”

Rachel considered the options. “What time is it?”

“Um.” He checked his silver watch. “Quarter to six.”

She stood on her toes to whisper in his ear. She whispered for a long time, and then she rocked back on her heels to assess his reaction. A slow smile spread across his face. The same smile spread across hers. Riley folded and snapped David’s clear umbrella, and they ran from the courtyard hand in hand, splashing in puddles all the way back to the car.

Chapter Eighteen

They bought the cheapest clothes they could find at the all-night SavMart: plain t-shirts from the discount rack and a two-pack of black boxers stamped with little white stars. They changed out of their ruined wedding outfits and dozed in the Ford in the Skateland parking lot, until the doors opened for the 9 a.m. Sunday Morning Skate.

Then they got started.

The rink was nearly empty; just some rowdy kids with skinned knees and graceful seniors with custom skates. Rachel and Riley did up each other’s laces and barreled onto the skate floor, hair flapping as their orange wheels buzzed on the pockmarked boards. When the lights cut out for a couples skate, they laughed at their boxers—the white stars were glow-in-the-dark. They took a turn, hand in hand in the blue and red disco lights, to the pulse and moan of “Why U Gotta.”

“What time is it now?” said Rachel. They were walking to the car feeling light and giddy, as if they were still flying on wheels. Today was warm and sunny, like the first good day of summer.

“It’s 11:18,” said Riley.

“Next.”

They hit their coffee shop on Main Street, where they grabbed their favorite table (the one in the corner, with the old Candy Land board under its glass top) and talked for two hours over chocolate croissants and green tea. They talked about the books they wanted to read, a new local band they wanted to see, the things they wanted to do in New York and California when they visited each other. When the tea was down to unreadable dregs, they walked the two blocks to Jonah’s Junque and poked around in the Boutique Room, hoping to spot the red coatdress. It was gone. They expected that. They observed a moment of silence and moved on to the luggage rack. Riley bought a suitcase recommended by Jonah, an old tan one that was strong and hard like a clamshell.

“Now?” said Rachel.

“2:34,” said Riley.

“Trail’s End,” they said together.

The Trail’s End produce stand teemed with the usual Sunday-afternoon crowd. Familiar Puckatoe faces, old and young and in-between, thumping watermelons and inspecting broccoli heads and snacking on late-summer strawberries. Rachel and Riley bought a paper cone of asparagus fries for now and two bags of fruits and vegetables for later. They surveyed the rainbow bouquets of flowers: asters and zinnias, goldenrod and gladiola. Mrs. Woodlawn never allowed real flowers in the house. “You spend good money on them,” she’d say, “and then they just die.” They bought three of the biggest bouquets on the stand.

By the time the fries were gone and they’d kissed in Solomon’s Woods for twenty minutes and ferried two bouquets to Mr. and Mrs. Woodlawn in the hospital, it was too late to catch the 4:40 matinee at the Twinema. There would be time; the
Little Mermaid
revival was around for another three weeks.

“What now?” said Riley. They’d just left Room 402, where Mrs. Woodlawn had read them nine hundred new words from
The Ruined Arches
and then requested time alone for revisions.

“Home.” Rachel tapped the elevator button, smiling shyly. “Or the cafeteria. The special is CHICKEN CROQUETTE apostrophe-S.”

“Let’s go home.”

***

The entire house was their kingdom now, at least for the next 48 hours.

And tonight, in the kingdom of 212 Donnybrook Lane, there would be a grand feast.

Rachel and Riley cooked together with the full-size stove in the Woodlawn kitchen instead of their hot plate and Girlybake Oven. It felt new and strange, as if they were dolls made real. On the left burner, Riley invented Puckatoe Summer Stew with seven kinds of vegetables and a hunk of steak left over from DERT. On the right burner, Rachel made their pineapple-bacon pancakes, maneuvering the pan so Riley’s stayed light and hers sizzled into crispy brown lace. They popped a bag of kettle corn and ordered a small Papa D’s pizza to cut into tartlets. For dessert, they baked complicated chocolate cupcakes with raspberry-rum filling. Riley dropped some white frosting into a baggie, snipped the corner off, and lettered two cupcakes with T-R-U-T-H.