Chapter Eight
Heather

After arriving home from the diner, Heather took stock of her day from the dark confines of her Corolla. Earlier that morning—after arriving home from talking to Wyland at his office—Heather had turned off her car’s engine in her driveway, so the only thing keeping her company was the sweat flushing through her pores. It pooled in the crevice beneath her nose, and Heather had wiped it, allowing her hand to slide over her face. She kept rubbing over and over because when she looked through her windshield, the sun glinted off the hood; it had shone in a way that reminded her of her husband, of the past that sweltered inside the car.

“You just can’t be happy,” Heather remembered Wyland saying the first year they had lived together in Chicago. It was a couple of days before Christmas, and Heather had refused to fly back with him to Burling Gates. She didn’t want to spend the holiday with her mother, and she was nervous about spending time with Wyland’s parents. She knew Vienna would be invited to the Christmas party Wyland’s mother threw every year, and regardless of whether Vienna showed up or not, Heather didn’t like knowing she was welcomed in the Turnbull home with open arms.

“That’s not it.” He didn’t say anything. That’s when she knew her grasp was weak, and she could no longer hold on to the collar of his shirt. He was floating from her, his bags packed and already in the taxi. He clipped her cheek with both lips and left her alone in an apartment for Christmas. It wasn’t their last kiss, but it would always feel like it, and every holiday afterward until they moved back to Burling Gates would always be the same. Heather at home, Wyland where he belonged.

“That’s it,” Heather whispered to the mute Corolla. The notion fostered a pain cleaved somewhere between her chest and neck, but no sound would come out.

She glanced through her window and spotted Erma, her next-door neighbor, walking outside in her nightgown for the daily “sacrificial leak” as Wyland always dubbed it. Erma watered her lawn every morning, hoping to attract bits of gossip like a magnetic pole. The salted-haired woman turned toward the Turnbull residence—buckled over on her arthritic hips—and started to wave when she found Heather sitting in her car.

“Of course,” Heather muttered, grabbing her bag and forcing herself out of the driver’s seat. Her doctor said it was safe to drive while pregnant, but the acrobatic twists it took to get in and out of a vehicle seemed counter-intuitive, and at times, almost deadly.

“Miss Heather up at the crack of dawn. Almost thought I had on my old prescription,” Erma said, dangerously close to the Turnbull’s property line. She pointed at her glasses and left her finger lingering there. Heather felt awkward enough to say something. 

“My mom died.” Heather regretted it immediately, the quick delivery sounding like a kindergartner who just announced she peed her pants. Plus, it was a hook Erma was willing to bite and not let go with her plastic teeth.

“Oh honey, what happened?” Erma was now indeed on the property line and her hose muddied a circle of earth near her feet. Heather sighed, knowing it was the sort of thing Wyland would have an eye out for. 

“Food poisoning.” She had thought about lying and saying Caroline tripped and fell. People would believe something like that. There wasn’t any shame in losing control of your feet, but there was immense shame in losing control of your life, even more if your only solution was to eat the spoiled efforts of your broken kitchen. 

“Did she go to Chester’s? I swear to you they undercook their burgers. Not to mention they freeze their key lime pie. Made from scratch, my backside. My poor niece nearly chipped her tooth!” Erma was talking with her hands, the stream of water looping and unlooping in the air. Her nightgown was pale pink, practically threadbare from wash after wash, and it would have reminded Heather of her mother’s old house dress if the outline of Erma’s seventy years hadn’t been so sharply defined beneath it. Heather internally shuddered.

“No, I don’t think so. Listen Erma, I’m getting a headache. The pregnancy,” Heather pointed to her stomach and let it linger there until it was Erma’s turn to quell the awkwardness.

“Oh honey, go lie down. I remember what it was like with the little ones. I remember,” Erma said, her stare venturing beyond Middle Dale Lane. “Let me know later where you’re having the funeral. I’d like to send flowers, of course. And you can count on my famous chicken fried steaks at your doorstep this weekend!” 

“Thanks Erma,” Heather said, careful as she stepped the stones that led to her front door. It was nice in a way, knowing at the very least she had booked Erma’s weekend. In the three years they had lived on Middle Dale Lane, Heather had never seen Erma have any visitors, although she boasted about her kids who lived over in Blythesville. It was unfortunate knowledge, the fact that there were people who still had parents, parents who made real food and lived in tidy homes but still were no real use to their children. 

Inside, the house was dark. Heather kept it that way for a beat. She closed her eyes and walked through the home in her mind because it was easier than moving her legs. Their cat was somewhere—Frankenstein—buried in a kitchen cabinet or making his bed in the tub. He was technically Wyland’s cat, a living, breathing monstrosity of a creature Heather didn’t know how to handle when she had first moved into Wyland’s apartment. She wasn’t allowed a pet growing up because they were too messy, a fact that played along to Ronnie’s rendition of “Isn’t it Ironic?” in Heather’s head. But now Frankestein was a necessity. She thought of him as the cat version of herself and decided however terrible life turned out, it may actually be a blessing that she was knocked up and married. Otherwise, she’d turn into the lady who owned an army of cat "children," dressing them up to reflect the sentiment. 

Her phone began to ring. It cued her out of her thoughts, and she struggled with her bag as she walked to her bedroom. It was Amber.

“You think your husband’s a creep, wait until you hear about mine.”

“Hello,” Heather said. Her eyes rolled on their own volition, an automatic response prompted by a typical Amber phone conversation. It was even worse this time knowing she had invited Vienna over without Amber’s permission, and something told her to keep that particular piece of information under wraps for the time being. 

“He’s cheating on me, okay? But not with some used-up loser who works at a funeral home. He’s sleeping with Bonnie.”

“Who?”

“Do you listen to nothing I say? Bonnie, the floozy from next door. Miss ‘My Husband’s a Cardiothoracic Surgeon and I Sunbathe Topless in My Backyard.’ Topless, Heather!”

“She brags about what her husband does for a living? I’ve never heard her mention it.” Heather had met Bonnie Carmichael a few times, a frequent guest at Chez Fritch, even though Amber was the ever-reluctant hostess. She had asked Amber why she always invited Bonnie over if she hated her so much, and Amber mumbled something about keeping enemies close.  The significance of this wasn’t lost on Heather.

“Well, no, but you can see it all over her smug, veneered smile. Ugh, I hate that woman. And now Brent is sleeping with her.” Heather could hear the tears. She could also hear the twins arguing in the background and Amber’s short screech to “knock it off.”

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“How do you know he’s cheating on you?” The question was the same Heather had asked herself time and again, sometimes when she was taking off her makeup, and her eyes were forced to travel the crows’ feet that bled into her skin. Or when she was pounding wet chicken flesh, and bits of it would stick to the just cleaned sink. It became a song lyric in her head. A bumper sticker. A note jotted on the calendar next to the trash pickup date. 

“How can I not know?” Amber sniffed into the phone. “He’s always making comments—I don’t know—‘Doesn’t Bonnie look nice, honey?’ ‘Oh, hey, ask Bonnie if she and Mark want to come over for dinner.’ Stuff like that.” Heather kicked off her flip-flops and curled into the fetal position on the bed. She wanted to punch Amber in the gut. She remembered that not too long ago a simple look would have rendered Amber spineless, a simple bag of skin. But things had changed since middle school. They both had changed. Amber’s vertebrae had fused, and Heather no longer knew how to keep time with her fists.

“My mom died,” Heather squeaked into the phone, again feeling young and exposed like she had with Erma. She could see her dresser from this position, a framed photo of her and Wyland from college. It was the day they had captured the rat, a whiskered submarine on legs. They had heard it for weeks until they assumed it was part of the walls, the plumbing. But it had been a free agent, paid in opened bags of cereal and those disgusting sour candies Wyland used to be addicted to. Renee was there, their next-door neighbor in Chicago. She had taken the picture—Wyland’s foot on the overturned laundry basket, trapped rat inside, Heather searching the afternoon sun sneaking through the window as Renee fingered the trigger. The only thought in the room was Heather’s, a truthful kernel built on loose strings of recognition: Wyland was in love with Renee.

“What? Are you serious? Your mom actually died?” It sounded like an accusation, a popped gumball between Amber’s lips. No, I’m just trying to shut you up, Heather thought. It wasn’t true. Wyland hadn’t been in love with Renee. At least that’s what he had said when Heather caught both of them in bed together. It had been an instinctual retort to forgive him. To hold him even closer. To realize that his betrayal was solely based on Heather’s unhappiness and not because his heart was still anchored in the past. It had been easier when it was Renee. 

“Pretty sure. Set up the funeral arrangements. At Oaks.”

“Wait, wait. You set up your mother’s funeral with the woman who’s been sleeping with your husband? Please tell me you’ve hit your head, Heather.” Amber’s voice painted the setting. Her children were outside now in the thousand-dollar tree house or inside in the thousand-dollar playhouse, and Amber was in the kitchen, barefoot, no makeup. She was sipping at a cup of green tea and eating one of the Snickers she kept stashed in a coffee tin high up in the pantry so the kids wouldn’t squawk that she was keeping secrets. So, she didn’t have to share. 

“She’s good at what she does. And I feel bad for her,” Heather said. It was all wrong. It sounded horribly obscure. But when Heather pictured Vienna at the desk at the funeral home—typing away with Wyland’s baby in her belly—there was a loneliness that pierced the bulbous parts of her. Her ear drums, her lungs, the pumping, struggling organs. Her body relieved of all its air, and the only thing left was the act of feeling bad, of empathizing. Knowing Vienna was struggling with another year without her mother didn’t help matters either. But then there was the other thing she didn’t talk about with Amber, the thing that had trailed closely to Heather’s ankles all the way into adulthood: her envy of Vienna Oaks and the way she was woven through Wyland more colorfully than Heather ever could be. 

“You feel bad? For her? Heather, I’m praying that this is some moment of insanity you’re suffering right now because people like Vienna, people like Bonnie are out to chew us up and spit us out. I mean what happens if we get a divorce? The poor kids,” Amber smacked into the phone, and Heather imagined a smear of milk chocolate lining Amber’s lips. She won’t notice it, won’t even take the time to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand so when her kids come into the kitchen from whatever thousand-dollar monstrosity they were previously affixed to, they will pummel her to the ground and take the secret she’s been hiding. “Heather? Heather?” Amber searched.

“I feel bad for you, too.”

“Well, thanks. It’s just been hard knowing Brent could hurt me like this—”

“Not for that. Not for the Bonnie thing. I feel bad because you can’t see past yourself.” Heather waited a beat, waited for the sugar to stop stinging between Amber’s teeth.

“What does that mean? Listen, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on, Heather, and I don’t need to worry about your silly mind games...”

“See,” Heather said. She felt like hanging up the phone, but that hopeless gnawing took her again like it did every time with Amber. That little voice that wanted to impress Amber, be her friend, prove to everyone that she wasn’t as hopeless as she always felt. “I’m sorry,” Heather murmured into the phone. “I haven’t been myself. I miss my mom,” she said blankly, not feeling the words she was saying.

“It’s fine, but for crying out loud, Heather. You have to get a hold of yourself. There’s more than enough stress to go around for everyone.” Amber paused, and the air went dead. “You’re coming tonight, right?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there,” Heather said, biting her tongue before she let slip Vienna would be there, too. Maybe they’d all get along and cease being women who were kept to the usual politics of distancing each other at arm’s length.

Maybe not.

Heather hung up, stunned by how quiet a room was without Amber in her ear. She looked at the trapped rat picture again and then to the right of it, another photo, the only one they had of themselves as kids. It was a quick shot, Wyland sitting Indian style on the floor during a class party. Heather was in the background, a little blurry but staring straight at the camera. Vienna’s left arm, cut off near the end of the photo, rested close to Wyland’s leg. 

Heather shut her eyes and felt sleep creep beneath the door. She let it take her.

#

WHEN SHE WOKE, IT WAS noon, and her husband wasn’t home. Heather had figured that much after her morning visit to his office. He would come up with something—a showing, clients at his desk, lunch with his dad. And she would nod her reply, smile. It was the only dance she had learned.

She had forgotten to put on the fan before she fell asleep and woke up drenched in herself.  Her clothes stuck to her—Wyland’s shirt, her yoga pants. She wouldn’t mind burning both—her whole closet, really—but she knew it would be pointless to ask Wyland for shopping money.  “You won’t be pregnant forever,” he’d say, and she knew he said it out loud to remind himself as much as her.

The shower was slick, cold. Heather didn’t bother watching where she washed because most of it she couldn’t see anymore. The parts she could, she wanted to ignore. The stretching in her skin, the road map veins. Her thighs. Her thighs were the worst simply because they were difficult to adore before the pregnancy, almost as much as they were now. Pants made her seem larger. Shorts rode up into unflattering crevices. She was made to feel inhuman, less than, and pregnancy had a startling way of making her feel more than necessary but just as insignificant.

When she was dried off, robed, hair wet and riding on her shoulders, she knew she had to make the call.

“Hello?” her father sang. It wasn’t like it had been with Amber. Heather couldn’t make out where he was, what he was doing. The pieces were there: dogs, grooming, girlfriend. But the version she cut out in her mind was a paper doll, a cartoon. There was nothing real about the voice on the phone. 

“Hi. I went ahead and made the arrangements.”

“Who is this?” he asked. Her breath skipped, and her thumb rested painfully close to the “off” button. “Kidding. Bad joke. So, what’s the damage?”

“No damage. It’s taken care of.” Heather walked into the kitchen, feeling like a royal float in her white terry cloth robe, a gift from Wyland—one of many that signified the change in the way he viewed her. Lingerie one year, a subscription to Bon Apetit the next. He had gone from insatiable to satiated, and all she had to show for it were recipes stapled and sent in the mail.

“Well, I’m sending flowers, and I’m all over the card thing.” He breathed into the phone, and Heather tried to remember what his breathing sounded like in the kitchen all those years ago when she had a moment to study him, but she couldn’t.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“Okay. I don’t know. I have to figure out what to do with the house.”

“Oh geez. I didn’t even think of that. I’d suggest torching the place, but I’m afraid the thing would shoot straight to the sky.” He cut short a chuckle, and again she tried to place the chords in his throat, their sounding chime. “What are you going to do?”

“Try to clean it. I guess. I haven’t really figured it out.”

“What does Wyland say?” He doesn’t, she thought. Wyland hadn’t really said anything about getting the place in order, just that they were better off lighting it on fire than messing with it. Maybe she really did marry her father.

“He’s been busy with work and all that. How about you? How are you guys?”

He went quiet on the phone, and the air felt void of a pulse. “Slow day today. Just thinking a lot of things through, I suppose.” He stopped talking, and Heather racked her brain for something else to say, a way off the phone. But then he said what couldn’t have come naturally. “I’m sorry, Heather.”

“Well, it wasn’t your fault.”

“No, I mean yeah, I’m sorry about Caroline. Your mom. But I just...I just need you to know how proud of you I am. How wonderful you are. And I hate myself for not saying it sooner. Not really saying it at all.” Heather closed her eyes. There was an image there. Her childhood house was quiet in the dark, and the shadows that the stacks of newspapers made painted the floor, the couch, Heather herself. She felt wrapped in an absence of light, and it scared her how right that had felt. She had no need to see, to wake up her mother or crawl into bed with her. It was a strong moment realizing that the normalcy in the dark, the discord in wanting her mother in the present had both sprung from her father, the lack of him. And when she opened her eyes to her dismal kitchen, all she heard were his words. Too empty. Too late.

“Thanks,” Heather said. She was at her refrigerator, and she opened the door, taking stock of its contents. She wanted to eat everything.

“Okay. Yeah, no problem, I guess. Listen, give me a call Sunday. I want to see how you’re doing, how everything goes.” She expected him to say, “Break a leg!” but he didn’t. She offered an “All right,” and kept the phone to her ear even after she could no longer hear him breathing.

There were shows on TV, ways to waste time on the Internet from the comfort of the recliner. She visited a baby forum she’d peruse from time to time and watch usernames explode at each other. Pregnancy hormones and anonymity were a hopeless combination. By the time six grinded to a halt, she was immersed in a debate between two women arguing over the use of breast milk from a stranger. She had eaten the contents of the fridge, leaving a smattering of well-placed condiments to fill the interior. She didn’t hear the door open. 

“Hey,” Wyland said. He entered behind his scent. Cologne his mother bought him every year and the soft stench of his body. Not overwhelming, not like most men but just enough.

“Hi.”

“About before, this morning...” he said. Always to the point, she thought, taking care to cover her plate on the side table with her napkin. “Sorry I was weird. I just haven’t talked to Vienna in a long time, and I didn’t want it to be awkward. Since we were friends so long ago and—”

“Don’t worry about it.” She watched his face relax.

“Hollywood told me more about the open house thing. It’s at Oaks, so I just want things to go well. I’ll need to meet up with her, about the details.” Heather nodded. She let the idea of Vienna and Wyland meeting up soak in slowly. She knew what the real talk would be about and tried to ignore the loneliness in being extraneous, not needed in the decision-making. 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about the house,” she gasped from her lonely corner. “I was thinking Saturday we could go through a few things at Mom’s. Maybe get breakfast first.”

“I have that golf tournament with dad. I’d get out of it if I could...” He set his briefcase down by the floor and walked into the living room. His smell was everywhere. “We’ll figure something out, H.” “H,” an old pet name. Wyland salvaged it out of the attic, dusted it off, and expected her to take it without sneezing. 

“I need to get ready for Amber’s. I invited Vienna,” she said. A few muscles gathered and tensed in convention with one another, but Wyland’s head continued to bob. Heather thought about what she was going to say next and relished the way he was innocent to it. “She’s pregnant.” The second Heather said it, the words turned vibrant. They emanated with the swishing tail of the cat clock in the kitchen. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

The muscles convened again, this time dragging Wyland’s face into a reluctant smile. “Tell her congratulations for me.”

“I will,” Heather said, gathering her weight in her hips and lifting off the recliner. She walked past him and breathed in, in spite of herself. The edge of memory was a paper cut to the brain. She could feel the crying coming on but made sure he couldn’t see it.

She had dressed, retrieving her crumpled clothes from the floor. Her belly hurt, and the only thing keeping her focused was the thought of dinner at Amber’s. Food greased and swamped in sticky sauces, glazes coating roasted birds. She cursed herself when her mind traveled, arms out, to her mother.

When there had been nothing left to keep her busy, she called Vienna to give her the directions.

“Applewood? Yeah, I’ll be there,” Vienna had said on the phone in her pretty voice, the “a” in Applewood sounding exquisite in her mouth. Heather had waited for Vienna in Amber’s mini-mansion, nauseated at Rachel’s detailed account of Viola’s green feces, and nobody would listen about her mother’s poisoned insides, her mother falling dead on her kitchen floor. It had nothing to do with babies, or money, or half-naked neighbors named Bonnie, so nobody cared. And when Vienna had shown up it was like their bolted down world broke free, and Amber’s only fear was on her front stoop. A real life, breathing mistress. Even worse, a glimpse at her past.

It hadn’t mattered that Amber was angry with her because Heather knew she could rely on Vienna. The diner had glowed wet and pink in the dark, and once inside, Heather read the layers in Vienna, consuming them with every tablespoon of syrup that coated her throat. A lawless grandfather, a stunted appetite, a need to rub her skin raw with a napkin. These things were Vienna Oaks, and Heather took no qualms in relishing them and wishing they were her own.

They agreed to meet again on Saturday, dig through the trash and the grime of Caroline Hammel’s existence. Heather would see if Vienna had the resolve to stare down the rot and try her best to salvage it. She hoped with a loaded heart that this would be the case. 

Hours later in her driveway, the clock’s neon green numbers searing her vision in her parked car, everything turned the color of bile. Heather waited in the dark for somebody, for Erma to notice how wrong it was for her to still be belted in her seat at this time of night and to take Heather by the arm. To lead her back inside.