DITW 15-13: The Quiet Shade of Verdant Groves

He knew her answer before she spoke it. The way she paused, held her tongue for as long as she could—all the familiar traits of his deceptive wife. The stalling was a sign. Betrayal still sung in her choir. But at least he could detect it now. Whatever charm she’d had over him before had waned; he was no longer so eager to lap milk at her feet, to seek equilibrium and acquiesce to insanity in order to establish it. Before she spoke, he smiled.

Kimmy saw his smile, and guilt and shame burned on her cheeks. She lowered her head and closed her eyes. “I never told him so, but he may think it. Yes.”

At last, some dam upstream broke, and floodwaters swelled his riverbanks. He covered his mouth with a hand to stifle...

Stifle what?

Laughter came. Real honest to god laughter. Totally and completely unexpected. And the more he held his hand against its swell the more the laughter’s flux taxed the restraint. He blurted air around his hand and could no longer contain it. 

Kimmy showed pure offense. Kimmy showed the expression of an insulted aristocrat. Now he laughed hard enough he bent at the waist and put his hands on his knees.

But as quickly as it came, it subsided; like a quick summer rain swamping runoff over sun-baked earth until the beaten land remembers how to drink it down. He regained his composure and stood upright again, Kimmy still offended but subdued. Colleen woke and babbled, and he wiped his eyes.

Kimmy regarded him, beginning to accept the deserved reaction. Colleen’s babbling became another sound. Laughter. Kimmy said, “At least we know somebody likes your laugh.”

He looked over at his daughter in her crib, awake now and happy, kicking legs and moving arms, making a sort of rolling reedy chuckle in a manner mimicking her father’s. Now he laughed again, but small and quiet; more the sound of someone in awe. He said, “She’s got my laugh.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Kimmy said.

Josh turned again and hefted the little pink-swaddled bundle into his arms. “I guess she doesn’t want to sleep. Is she hungry?”

“No, not now. Maybe just curious. She hears us talking.”

“She’s never heard that before.” He returned to the bed with her in his arms, lively and wriggling, her squirming body surprisingly strong. He bounced at the knees lightly, rocking her in his arms. When he looked up, he saw Kimmy watching them, her eyes wet. She smirked and blinked, looked away and wiped her eyes. It swelled his heart to see the happiness he and his daughter would give her. He twirled with Colleen, and Colleen liked it, squealing and gurgling, and he made baby sounds at her, still rocking and bobbing, then sat with her on the bed beside Kimmy again. He kissed Colleen’s brow. 

He said, “You’re going to let that man think something so awful?”

Kimmy said, “Keith believes it’s possible but he’s never asked me outright. He’s afraid of the answer. . . . It benefits me for him to think it.”

“So you let him.”

“So . . . I let him.”

He said, “What about me?”

Her lips slimmed, and she nodded. “I know. She’s yours. You want everyone in the world to know she’s yours.”

He admired his giggling daughter for a while longer. He said, “I don’t know what to do, Kimmy.”

“Talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He sighed, and hesitated, knowing it was all so tiresome now, and despite the pain of the past and the promise of the present, the future seemed so unclear; a point of stasis, a point of balance on a beam, where lost footing could produce the pain of the before or the promised hope of the present’s thereafter. He said, “It’s all so small and far away. When I think of him—and I don’t—the lasting image of him isn’t as some asshole jock bully, it’s him on his hands and knees, crawling around on the floor after I hit him with a chair.”

“I’m so glad for that,” Kimmy whispered.

“And Rumble, too. Why did I ever waste my time worrying about any of them? They’re sad. Pathetic. Useless! So far away from who I am or who I want to be. Or anyone I would want to associate.”

“That’s so good you think like that, Josh,” she said, leaning closer like she might touch his hand or his arm, or Colleen.

He said, “It’s you I’m afraid of. You’re the reason I stayed away so long.”

Kimmy retreated with a heft sigh and gathered the satiny fabric around her legs. Her chin turned down, and her brows bowed in glum arrows.

“I’m sorry,” he said. But facts were facts.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “I don’t deserve it. I don’t even deserve you being here tonight.” She looked up, eyes wet again, brows still straining to support the weight of her emotion. “I want a chance. That’s all. I want a chance to prove myself to you. I want you to let me try.”

They regarded each other for a long moment, their daughter gurgling, making noises like she’d like them all to get that laugh going again if they could because laughing was fun. And, fuck, what Kimmy asked was reasonable. And what she’d done in preparation for the request was noble and honest. And difficult. She’d fought jail, she’d fought Devlin, she’d fought with Keith Stone. Done it until she got her way. Done it until she had everything she wanted. But the ultimate prize was him. And god damn it that was starting to feel really good. He looked around the room again. This could be his bedroom. This baby was his. That wasn’t going to change. But this beautiful woman, as frightening as she may be, could be his, too. If it were up to her, the deal was done. She’d pass him a pen right now and he could sign his name on the bottom line.

This was the place where he should be.

“I don’t want to stay in the garage,” he said. “If I stay.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Why did you offer that first?”

Kimmy considered it, lips moving around, trying to form how she’d phrase it. “I don’t want to be presumptuous. I didn’t . . . I didn’t want to scare you off.”

Josh closed his eyes, trying to conjure in his imagination a bright and happy future. It was easy to grab referential pieces of his past to paint the picture; there’d been the happiest times with Kimmy. But there was the black veil of betrayal deeding the light from those golden memories.

He said, “Uh-oh.”

Kimmy said, “What?”

“I think she might have just pooped. I felt it on my arm.”

Then there was no need for further consideration; the smell revealed the truth.

“Oh, yes, she did,” Kimmy said. “Pass her to me. I’ll go change her.”

Josh withheld Colleen, hesitating, unsure. “Uh, maybe, I could...”

“You want to?”

He said, “I do.”

Kimmy smiled and gestured toward the bedroom door. “Be my guest. Everything you need is in the bathroom, first door on the left, opposite side of the hall.”

Josh admired Colleen, aggravated by whatever had messed up the comfort of her diaper, scrunching up her pretty face and getting ready to complain. Kimmy asked him if he’d like some help and he told her he’d be okay.

“I’ll figure it out.”

#

Josh returned with Colleen, grinning, Colleen babbling softly, wearing a new onesie under her blank. She asked him how it went.

“I wasn’t prepared for that,” he said, returning Colleen to her crib.

She covered her mouth with a hand, watching Josh get their daughter settled. He stood over the crib, hands on hips, still grinning. She said, “It’s surprising sometimes.”

“The diaper?” Josh turned to the bed. “Yeah. It was crazy. I had to bath her a little. Is that going to be a problem?”

“With her sleep? No. She’ll settle.”

They stared at each other again, but this time the barrier that had existed between them softened. Josh’s humiliating laughter had changed something. Once he’d laughed, it looked like it might come a lot easier the second time. And though she’d been angry at first, tension had eased in the time she’d sat in the room alone listening to Josh in the bathroom, hearing the water running, knowing he would take his time and get to know the many moods of Colleen. And like them all.

“I’d like you to stay,” she said. “We can . . . We can talk in the morning. Have some breakfast. You don’t have to take the apartment. We have one more guest room. It has a pullout.” But it would be so much better if you accepted my bed.

Josh’s lips slimmed and he showed a graver expression. “I had Colleen in the bath, and I was thinking...”

“Go on.”

He sat on the bed with her again. “You were worse than him. You know that?”

“I do. Of course.”

You were worse than all of them. You were supposed to be on my side.”

“I know.”

“You’re just like them. You’re no different.”

She exhaled a wounded sound. “I, uh, yeah. But I’m not. I was. I was for a while. But . . . I saw myself in them. I saw myself in them and that’s what broke me. Broke my spell. Shook me awake.” She shook her head and looked around. “Everything here, everything I’ve acquired is all the reason I did it. They’re not things. You know that, right? I don’t mean I did it all for some stuff. I did it to provide. I would do whatever it took. Maybe it was because after we lost our first . . . I would do anything to make a family, like the ultimate lashing out for a nest. I wanted everything Devlin had. He didn’t deserve it. We deserved it. I wanted to take a piece of it. I wanted to take all of it. But I wanted it for us. And for some possibility that’s slowly getting sleepy in her crib.” She looked aside to Colleen, legs still kicking gently, but her babbling gone away.

She looked back at somber Josh, lips plump and misaligned, eyes turned down but still aware of her, staring at her lap. “The depravity I could have sunk to with Devlin was bottomless. What we did might only have been the tip of the iceberg. Maybe, just maybe, your reluctance saved me.”

Josh grunted and looked up, soured by thinking of the awful things he knew she’d done with Devlin Stone. He leaned to the side then, putting his legs out, shifting so his head lay on the pillow. Laying on her bed in jeans and a sweater, his shirt collar disappearing under his beard. He looked up at the ceiling. She lay down beside him, putting her head on a pillow and laying on her side. Her hand crested his woolen shoulder.

“It would be too easy to think that.”

“There’s truth in it,” she said.

Josh closed his eyes. She said, “I saw myself in them—Devlin and Amy—and I hated what I saw. I finally hated myself. That’s why I left. I saw Amy for what she really was. Dumb. Privileged. And all the trimmings amounted to nothing. Shoes, clothes, trips. All the affectation of big business. And the depravity. A whole wardrobe just for depravity, something in every style and color.”

Josh’s eyes stayed closed. He said nothing for a moment, then, “I just want to go to sleep.”

She smiled and her breaths went shaky. Maybe he would stay.  Her cheek slipped down the pillow until her chin touched his shoulder; her hand still caressed his arm.