​Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rochelle

I always wanted to get us a dog, but Glenn claims he’s allergic. I just don’t think he likes the idea of dog hair. So shamefully, I’ll admit, when I see Kimber scamper along the marble floor in the foyer or bound up the stairs like a blonde collie, I close my eyes for a second and just pretend she’s the newest addition to our family of two.

But then reality hits, and I see her touch Glenn’s arm or drink orange juice out of a glass and the whole notion is popped, my little balloon. I’m back to being a middle-aged woman ravaged with cancer, living with her husband’s mistress.

And I don’t even have my own soap opera.

I spend my days reading the Bible. I make it very apparent I’m reading the Bible, when really, I’m not always even reading it. I’m trying to see a flicker of something in Kimber because my life depends on it. My current one anyways. I need to prove Glenn and Ann wrong.

And even though they haven’t said it, I know what it looks like. The crazy sick lady living with her ex in a house of disgrace. I can change things. I have to change things like it’s the last breath I take before going under. Otherwise, what have I done?

“You were like, alive in the fifties right? That’s so cool.” I’ve found myself outside on the patio during one of Texarkana’s heat blankets of an evening. We’re drinking something horribly sweet that tastes like a can of peaches went bad and somebody poured a bottle of vodka into it. But Kimber’s relaxed and has her naked feet on the patio table. The same table where Glenn and I used to eat breakfast.

“It was the coolest,” I say, ignoring the way it feels like my gums are rotting. Kimber’s long legs are as naked as her feet, her shorts ending at her upper thigh. She’s wearing a Mexican peasant top and bare shoulders. Her hair is sun-kissed and skin caramel from the sun. Glenn’s tastes have evolved, apparently.

“And you guys had a son, right?” I don’t take offense at Kimber’s broken train of thought. And even though it would be kind to blame the candied vodka, I’m better in tune than that. Kimber is horribly more vapid than I even realized at first glance. It’s another demon I’m fighting. Can you break through to someone who has no real understanding of what exists outside their skin, regardless of how unmarred that skin is?

“I had a son. Glenn had...a stepson.” I want to say “a problem” but why dig up what’s done? I haven’t spoken about Mack for a long time to anyone other than Dr. Neese or my church group. I almost feel an urge to talk about him now, get all the words out before I’m shut back up. I pull my sweater around me. It’s hotter than Hades but there’s a constant chill inside me I try to ignore. I worry Glenn will walk by and see us, his beautiful girlfriend with his aging wife clad in a black matronly sweater in the middle of June.

“What about you? What was it like growing up?” I bite my cheek to keep from smirking. Kimber is still smack dab in the middle of the process. Kimber swallows down her peach slush, stretches out her long beautiful toes. I get the sudden urge to light up a Virginia Slim, a nasty habit I quit years ago.

“It wasn’t a fairy tale. I mean, my mama tried to make it that way. She liked the way things looked. Actually, she liked what people thought about the way things looked. We were always dressed nicely. Always went to church. Always had a lot of friends, and she’d even invite her own over. Daddy would grill. I remember that smell. Seared meat.” Kimber puckers her lips at another peachy swallow. I can smell it, too. Flesh on fire.

“But the nighttime was hard. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.” I can see Glenn flickering at the edge of my eye. He’s inside the kitchen, a helpless fish in the aquarium beyond the sliding glass patio doors.

“Nighttime’s always hard. For the best of us,” I say, throwing out the rope and hoping she’ll take it. But she doesn’t.

“Glenn’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” The moment’s lost but another one comes at me. One where I’m sitting on my bed and Mack is asleep next to me. I’m sitting in my pajamas, and Dennis is leering at me from his shadowy spot in the doorway. And I say the same thing at him with my eyes on my lap. Like it’s a dirty confession. And I’m hopelessly sorry for it.

“I know what that’s like.” It’s the wrong thing to say because even though I’m lazily lobbing it over the net, she looks at me like I’m pointing a gun at her forehead. It always tickles me, this side of women: young, old, stupid, smart, sophisticated, barefoot and pregnant–we all take to that sharp edge when something’s on the line. I call it “The Eve Effect.”

“I know you do. But sometimes, things get a little stale. And it’s not fair to that man in there. To have to sacrifice year over year and then wake up one day to realize the gift he’s been given’s gone rotten.” The slap is as hard as it is invisible.

“So cancer’s my fault? What it’s done to me–that’s my fault?”

“I wasn’t talking about your body, Rochelle,” she says. “I was talking about your heart.” She takes her drink, steadies herself on two unsteady legs. I’m left to watch her walk away, using the full force of her arms to slide back the patio door. When she meets Glenn in the kitchen, she puts her drink down on the island, and she gives every inch of herself to him. I turn my eyes away.

I start to sweat beneath my sweater.