Life Without You (22 page)

Hopes that I would be able to prove to everyone—my friends, my family, and myself—that I really was
more
than just okay.

Chapter Seventeen

“I think I found the stink,” Bette said, her voice triumphant on the other end of the phone.

I heard myself groan, dreading what she might be about to say. “Do I want to hear this?”

“Actually, it’s quite interesting. And you’ll be happy to know that it has absolutely nothing to do with your garbage disposal. In fact, it doesn’t have anything to do with your kitchen at all.”

“Oh, God, Bette, are you telling me there’s a dead animal decomposing in the walls of my apartment or something? Please, just tell me,” I begged. “Put me out of my misery!”

“Take a deep breath, Dellie, you’re liable to keel over dead. And then where would we be?” Bette scolded. “Really, it’s nothing to worry about.” She paused. “Well, maybe it is, since you actually have to
live
here all the time, but it’s nothing that’s going to require any kind of action from you.”

I felt my eyebrows furrow. “Bette, could you please stop being so cryptic and just get to the point?”

“Fine,” Bette sniffed, sounding mildly offended, but mostly just amused. “You have a new neighbor downstairs, in the unit right below yours. Apparently, the vents from her apartment feed into yours; so every time she cooks some of her very fragrant, very ethnic dishes, the smell comes in through your kitchen’s air vents. And believe me, the woman has some doozies. Tell me, how have you never noticed this before?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, looking down at the worn wooden boards under my feet. I was currently perched on the wooden porch swing suspended from chains underneath the gazebo, which had been added on to the original deck of my grandparent’s house at some point in my early twenties. I’d never quite gotten used to this particular part of the structure—it still seemed oddly like it didn’t belong. In
my
mind, at least.

But then again, I was the one so resistant to change.

“You don’t know?” Bette repeated. “Either your nose is dead, or you just stopped paying attention.”

“Or,” I argued, feeling my defenses rising for some reason, “it could simply be that the people who lived there before never actually cooked anything that wafted with such tenacity through the air vents.”

“It could,” she replied. “But I’m guessing that you just stopped noticing.”

The words, so unrelated as they might have been to anything other than the topic at hand, made a pang shoot through my insides.

I just stopped noticing
. It was true, on so many levels; I had stopped noticing.

Not just smells in my kitchen. I’d stopped noticing life, and I’d stopped letting it notice me. I’d practically begged it not to notice me, in fact. It had seemed safer that way. I tried to evade criticism by blending in, by disappearing as much as I could into the shadows. I even dressed not to be noticed; again, something I’d learned during my marriage, when the only comments I ever received on my clothing choices were to be told I looked
okay
—even on things that had earned me interested looks and complimentary words from men in the past.

“Well, I’m glad you figured it out,” I murmured, trying to hold back the tears that felt like they might be forming.

“Me, too. I guess the lemons I used in your disposal worked that one day because they were nice and fresh and masked the smell for awhile, but I knew something else must be going on the next time it happened,” Bette chattered on. “On the upside, you have a new neighbor who, despite her penchant for cooking up smelly foods, is generally very lovely.”

“So you’ve met her, then?” I asked, feeling my interest piqued.

“Only once, when I was on my way upstairs after work one day. She was going out to dinner with a few little old ladies in her book club.”

“Bette, how long are you going to be staying over there?” I asked, suddenly realizing that we hadn’t even touched the subject of her marriage lately. “What’s going on with you and Steve? Has he come to any startling realizations yet?” I closed my eyes and let the soothing, swishing sound of the swing work its magic on my overworked brain.

Bette sighed heavily, and I felt a mixture of guilt at not being there to give her a hug as well as frustration at Steve, whom I’d always assumed was so level-headed. Why was he doing this?

“Not yet. We’re talking, but he still says there’s no affair—emotional or otherwise—with anyone. What else could it be, though? He’s never home anymore; and according to him, it’s because he’s been putting so much time in at that damn office. But I’ve talked to his office assistant; Barbara shoots as straight as an arrow, and she says there’s no special project or anything like that that should be keeping him so tied up at work—especially not with his lovely colleague, whose name, by the way, is
Andrea
,” Bette said, the hurt cutting plainly through the anger in her voice.

“Bette, why have you been letting me go on and on about my own problems this whole time? I may not exactly be the wisest counsel, but I can at least be a good friend. Talk to me. Make me shut up about my own mess and tell me about what you need from me,” I urged, hoping she could hear my sincerity.

“
Need
?” An odd sound emanated from her end of the line, something I’d never heard from Bette before. A sob. A real, true sob. And it made my heart ache all the more.

“What I
need
is for my husband to give me some proof to back up what he says about not having an affair. What I
need
is for him to show me that he loves me, and that this is just some weird phase he’s going through. I love him, but I’m not even sure that
he
loves me anymore,” she whispered. “I feel like he’s slipping away, Dellie. And he won’t tell me
why
.”

“Oh, Bette,” I said, feeling my throat swell around tears. I was so powerless to help her, so lacking in any kind of real insight.

How could I have any, when I had no idea myself what might be going on? The last thing Bette needed to hear were empty platitudes and clichéd phrases about how it would all be okay.

“Bette, I may not know why Steve is doing any of this, but I do know one thing—I’m going to be there for you whenever you need me. Even if you just need a place to crash, I’m there.” I paused thoughtfully, hoping that my next words would lighten the mood, rather than making her more upset. “Both me and my smelly apartment.”

A laugh broke through the end of the line—a snotty, wet bubble of laughter—and it gave me hope, even just a small sliver, that she would be okay.

That we would
all
be okay.

I opened my eyes and looked out at the sky, turning pinks and lavenders now as the day drifted out.

No, I reminded myself, thinking back to my lavender balloon.

We would be
more
than okay.

“So, Dellie, what’s the plan for today?” Grandpa asked me as he sat across from me at the table, two weeks into my stay.

Two whole weeks.

Had it not been for the fact that it was a Saturday morning, the leisurely tone of his question would have seemed out of the ordinary for what, by now, had become a routine: breakfast together before work—an open-face English muffin with sliced tomato, two eggs, and a piece of turkey bacon for him; oatmeal with a sprinkle of cinnamon and Equal for me. He read the paper, I read a book, and the local news hummed away in the background, largely unnoticed as we ate in companionable silence.

I peered at him a moment before speaking.

Really, in the two weeks that I’d been here, we hadn’t spent that much time together. Sure, we ate breakfast at the same table every morning and had supper every night, spent a few hours in the den watching television after the dishes were cleared…but we didn’t do a whole lot of talking. Not about anything important, anyway.

Not that I had been expecting otherwise, but still. There were a few things on my mind that I really wanted to talk about with him, and if I didn’t bite the bullet and start the conversation for myself now, I might lose my chance.

“I don’t know,” I said slowly in answer to his question, wondering if he’d look up from his paper. “Do you have anything you have to do today, or could I spend it with you?”

He shook the paper to snap it straight, then folded it in on itself before sliding a glance in my direction. “Well, I’ve go to run to the hardware store and pick up some things for a project I’ve got at work, but if you want to come along, we can go and have lunch together afterward,” he said finally.

I smiled at him.

Perfect. It would be something that interested him, something where he was in his element and might actually be comfortable enough to shift into real, meaningful conversation rather than just small talk and idle observations.

“That would be fun,” I replied, genuinely beginning to look forward to the outing with him. “I’d love that, if you really don’t mind having me tag along, of course.”

“You might get bored,” he replied, looking dubious.

I shook my head. “Not at all. I like hardware stores,” I said, hoping that he could hear my sincerity. “And it would really be nice to spend some time together.”

“We spend time together, Dellie,” Grandpa said, clearly confused by my lack of acknowledgment of our shared mealtimes and evening easy chair stints.

I nodded, conceding the fact. Yes, there were those times—and there were even some hours on Sundays that we spent in one another’s company, going to church and then to lunch afterward. But the real, frustrating fact remained: I’d been here two weeks, and he’d given me a mystery to mull over without providing me with any resolution.

And I still didn’t feel like I knew how
he
was doing. He was running around, going, going, going like usual—but
how was he
? How did he feel? He’d been married to my grandmother for more than sixty years; and now he was alone, having to do everything for himself, all on his own.

How was he processing that?
Was
he processing that, or was he just so tightly wound all the time that he wasn’t really giving himself a chance to
feel
anything?

I wanted to know—
needed
to know—that he really was going to be okay.

“We do, but I’d still like some more, if that’s alright?” I hoped he didn’t think I was being pesky. “I really don’t need to do anything special, so let’s just do whatever it is that you need to do today. I’d really like that,” I repeated.

He smiled at me then, satisfied at last. “Okay. Then that’s what we’ll do. I have to go to Home Depot, and then we’ll have some lunch after I take everything by the shop at work. Sound like a plan?”

“Sounds like a very good plan,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

It occurred to me as I trailed behind him a little while later that Grandpa hadn’t asked much about all the time I was spending with Savannah and Vivi. I’d told him, of course, told him that we’d become friends and that I saw them regularly. But he wasn’t one to delve into deep discussion, and when I brought up Annabelle—even on the few occasions that I did—he seemed eager to change course. The woman’s name seemed to set him on edge, and I still didn’t really understand why.

Maybe now was the time to find out.

“Grandpa, I think maybe there’s something I should tell you, and I hope that it doesn’t make you angry,” I said, staring at the back of his head as he stood in deep contemplation of a set of drill bits that had just been put on sale.

“Oh? What’s that?” He sounded a bit distracted, but the fact that he had answered gave me encouragement to barrel on, rather than putting it off until later. Maybe the hardware store would have a euphoric effect on him and make the words I was about to say a little less…problematic?

I blinked and took a deep breath, hoping I wasn’t making a mistake.

“I know you know I’ve become friends with Savannah and Vivi, but what I haven’t told you is that Annabelle and I have been spending a bit of time together, too. We’ve had lunch a couple of times, and she took me shopping the other day.”

Much to my own surprise, that shopping trip had actually been profitable. Despite some protesting by me, I’d tried on what had seemed like a never-ending stream of shoes and clothing—everything from kitten heels and sandals to blouses and skirts—and I’d come away from the exhausting afternoon with two pairs of very cute ballet flats, a few tops, and a pair of jeans that were in a dark enough wash to look age appropriate and flattering, rather than as if I might be trying too hard to recapture my teenage years. Not that I would have had the means to buy all of that on my own budget. Quite the contrary. But when the time came to whittle it all down and take something to the register, Annabelle had given me the death stare and declared that she was going to pay for all of it. And—lest I get any wild ideas into my head—she would leave me there to find my own way home if I didn’t comply.

Annabelle could be quite persuasive when she wanted to be. And who was I to argue? Unlike so much of my generation, I was respecting my elders.

Once I’d gotten them home, of course, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. They were all wonderfully flattering, even on my diminished frame, but I still felt so unworthy of them. I wasn’t used to such generosity, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent more than ten dollars on any item of clothing. Spending—shopping of any kind, really, even for groceries and other necessities—always made me feel anxious. I budgeted like crazy and bought as little as possible, ever vigilant about not living beyond my means and unable to escape the sense that I couldn’t afford anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary.
We have no money in the account. There’s nothing
. They were words I’d heard from my husband many times; words that chilled me now and seemed to echo in my mind with disturbing regularity.

Grandpa’s head swiveled in my direction as though I had smacked the back of it.

“What could you and Annabelle possibly have in common?” he asked, his voice surprised.

“I know you don’t really like her, Grandpa,” I conceded, wondering if I could make him understand any of this. “But she’s really a nice woman, if you give her a chance,” I said slowly. “Grammie did.”