All The Ugly and Wonderful Things 19

  

 

9

 

KELLEN

 

The way her bare shoulders stiffened, I knew what it looked like. There I was living with some woman who didn’t even know about Wavy. All I’d meant to do was protect her. It didn’t seem fair to say her name to anybody.

 

“You fucking pedophile,” Beth said. “You said it was a mistake. One time, you piece of shit. That’s what gets you off? Little girls? I ought to call the cops. I swear. How old is she?”

 

“Twenty-one,” Wavy said.

 

In a couple months she would be, but seeing her naked in broad daylight for only the second time, I didn’t blame Beth for thinking the worst. Wavy was almost as small as she’d been at thirteen. She was all long legs and narrow in the hips. Her tits were perfect, but not even big enough to fill my mouth, let alone my hands. She hadn’t hardly grown at all. Did it make me a pervert that I still thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen? Did it make me less of a pervert that twenty and thirteen looked the same on her? When I had her in my arms, none of that mattered.

 

“Like hell you’re twenty-one,” Beth sneered. “Let me give you some advice, little girl. This is his thing. Whatever he told you, he doesn’t love you. He just wants your little hairless twat.”

 

Wavy laughed. I almost did, too, except Beth glared hard enough to stop me.

 

“This is her. Wavy’s the girl I went up for,” I said.

 

“You did six years for her? God, how old was she, you creep? She doesn’t look old enough to get a driver’s license now. You’re so goddamn stupid, Jesse. You want to ruin your life, go ahead, but don’t think I’ll lie to your parole officer for you. Get out.”

 

Beth went back into the kitchen and I pulled my duffel bag out of the closet and shoved clothes into it, with Wavy watching me.

 

“Get dressed, sweetheart,” I said.

 

“Yeah, get dressed you crazy little bitch.” Beth walked back into the bedroom and tossed Wavy’s clothes on the bed. “Goddamn, my new sheets, too.”

 

Wavy started putting on her clothes, but she did it like a backwards strip show, smiling at me while she pulled her panties up.

 

“No cops this time,” she said.

 

I couldn’t even manage a smile to answer that, because maybe the cops weren’t going to show up, but Beth stood there in the doorway, glaring at us.

 

“Get out. And I want your key,” she said.

 

While Wavy buttoned up her dress, I took the apartment key off my ring. After I gave it to Beth, Wavy and I went down the stairs and out into the street.

 

“Where’s your car parked?” I said.

 

“My roommate dropped me off.” Her voice just about killed me. Grown up, but still quiet. And happy, the way I’d dreamed about.

 

When she took my hand, I let her. We walked down the block to my truck, swinging our hands between us. She smiled at me, sure everything was going to be okay, when I knew it wasn’t. I held her hand until I had to let go to toss my duffel in the back and open the door for her.

 

“Nineteen sixty-nine,” she said as she stepped up on the running board. I didn’t have no secrets from her. She knew exactly why I was driving that truck. For love. For good luck. Because that was the year she was born.

 

Sitting in the truck, holding her hand again, I thought about all the things I wanted to tell her. I’d spent all those years in a cell thinking about talking to her, but now there was only one thing I needed to say to her.

 

“Wavy, I can’t see you. I’m breaking the conditions of my parole right now, just sitting next to you, talking to you. I can’t have any contact with you.”

 

She looked at me hard, not even asking a question. Pissed off and hurt, and I didn’t blame her. I deserved that look, but she could be as mad at me as she wanted. It didn’t change a damn thing.

 

“Tell me where to take you and I’ll drop you off and—and that has to be that. I can’t see you again. Do you understand?”

 

After that she wouldn’t look at me and I couldn’t look away. Probably it’d be the last time I got to see her. I’d thought that before, when I was arrested, so seeing her one more time was a gift. I woulda counted the last hour as a gift, too, except this was how it was gonna end. It shoulda been our wedding night, and instead it was just good-bye. She sat up straight, her shoulders square, looking out the windshield. Her hair was cut short, with little curls teasing at her bare neck. Like that birthday night when she’d worn it up.

 

“My deposition,” she said.

 

“Yeah, I read your deposition. You were brave to do that. To keep me from getting framed for something a lot worse. They really wanted to pin your mama’s murder on me.” I sometimes wondered if it coulda gone differently. Maybe I coulda pled to a lesser charge, if she’d told the truth.

 

“It was a message to say I love you.” She looked at me and there were tears running down her cheeks. I had to look away.

 

“My parole says no contact. I can’t see you, talk to you, touch you. I’m not supposed to be within a hundred feet of you.”

 

“You were in me.”

 

I was skidding on loose gravel, about to wreck my life again. Wreck hers again.

 

“Wavy, you know I love you—”

 

“Beth.”

 

“No. Beth ain’t nobody to me. We can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’m always gonna love you, but they won’t ever let me have contact with you, because of what I did to you.”

 

For once I was all out of words and that was scary as hell. Wavy nodded. I thought she was ready to say something, but she opened the door and stepped out. I scrambled outta the cab and stopped her before she crossed the street.

 

“Let me take you home,” I said. It was dangerous, but I thought I could know where she lived and be strong enough not to go see her.

 

She caught my wrist and turned my arm to where there was blank space on the inside. I’d always planned to get her name tattooed there after we got married. Standing there in the street with traffic going by, she reached into her purse and took out a Magic Marker.

 

She wrote three numbers on my arm, the first part of a phone number.

 

“Do you remember that, Wavy? Me writing on your arm when I wrecked the bike?” Stupid thing to ask. After all that time, she’d come there and still wanted me. She remembered everything. Before she could write the rest of the number, I pulled away from her. The marker left a long black stripe down my arm.

 

“I can’t,” I said. “You know I can’t. My parole says no contact.”

 

She let go of me and crossed the street. Didn’t even put her marker away, just tossed it on the ground and kept walking. She didn’t stop when I called her name, so I went after her and caught her by the arm.

 

“No, you cannot walk around down here. It’s not safe. This neighborhood is full of ex-cons and sex offenders. Folks worse than me.”

 

She jerked her arm away from me, but I grabbed her wrist tight enough she couldn’t get loose. For a full minute, we glared at each other, her trying to pull her arm back and me squeezing it hard enough to feel the bones in her wrist.

 

“I’m not messing around, Wavy. Now tell me where to take you.”

 

“The college library,” she said.

 

It was a fifteen-minute drive over to the university, but we didn’t say a word on the way there. As soon as I came to a stop in the library parking lot, Wavy opened the door and swung her legs out.

 

“Wait. Wait,” I said.

 

With one foot on the ground, one foot on the running board, she looked back at me.

 

“I’m sorry. I love you—”

 

Wavy slammed the door right in the middle of what I was trying to say. Maybe I hadn’t seen her in seven years, but I still understood her. She might as well have written LIAR on the dash of my truck.

 

Seeing her walk across the parking lot toward the library’s front doors, I knew it had to be over, but I couldn’t believe that was how it ended. I wanted to take back everything I’d said, more than I wanted anything else. Being with Wavy would mean going back to prison, because her aunt would find out eventually, but I wondered how long we could have together before I got caught. Long enough to make another four years bearable? Or just long enough to mess up her life again?

 

10

RENEE

I went to the library with the best intentions, but by the time I got there, the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. The sun and half-a-dozen shirtless college guys playing Frisbee in the grass by the library steps. Instead of going inside, I sat outside and read one of my sources for my essay.

That’s what I was doing when Wavy walked up. I let the book on my lap fall closed and lost my place.

“What happened?” I said.

“He finally fucked me.”

Finally. Finally? Wavy the chronic masturbator was a virgin? All along I assumed they’d done it, maybe a lot, before they got caught. I’d been so eager to see it as this beautiful romance, that I was willing to overlook Kellen having sex with little thirteen-year-old Wavy, but there she stood, freshly deflowered and looking devastated. Her eyes were red from crying, and she was holding her left arm across her body like it hurt. Her wrist looked swollen.

“Well, looks like he did a bang-up job of it,” I said to make her laugh, but her face was empty. “Why are you here? Where’s Kellen?”

“Gone. It’s over.” She used the heel of her right hand to wipe her eyes. I wished I could put my arm around her shoulders and make her feel safe. Seeing her that way was awful.

“Over? What do you mean it’s over? I know you love him, but what kind of asshole screws you and then dumps you? Fuck him. You don’t need him.” I stuffed my book into my bag and stood up to lead Wavy to my car.

I unlocked the passenger’s side first so Wavy could get in, but as I was walking around to the driver’s side, Kellen’s truck rolled to a stop behind my car and boxed it in. He got out of the cab and came around the end of it. Up close, he was a lot bigger than I expected. Not as fat, but taller and more muscular. Built like a bulldozer. Instead of the shaggy hair and the ’70s sideburns, he had a crew cut. That picture on Wavy’s nightstand had frozen him in my mind at my age, but he was at least thirty.

Over, my ass. Wavy jumped out of the car and ran to him. Hugging and kissing commenced. As much as I wanted to eavesdrop, I got in the car and settled for watching them in the rearview mirror.

Seeing them together as the sun went down and the stars came out, my heart did a little leap of joy. I wanted a fairy tale ending for Wavy, because if she could find happiness, there would be hope for me, too.

 

11

WAVY

Kellen’s hands were shaking, so I squeezed them harder in mine, to tell him it was okay. We hadn’t said anything, but he was there.

“The Evening Star.” That was the first thing he said. I looked up at it, felt him watching me. Not just watching me, but drinking me up. “You told me before, but I forgot. It’s not really a star, is it? It’s one of the planets, right?”

“Venus,” I said.

“Where I am there’s too much light from the city to see the stars. I want to go out and look at the stars with you. I missed that so much. I missed you.”

He kissed me before I could say, “Cassiopeia.”

When he let me breathe again, I said, “Come home with me. Renee and I have an apartment. Down in Norman.”

He closed his eyes, squeezed them tight.

“I can’t. It’s across state lines. I can’t leave the state without my parole officer’s say-so.”

I kissed him again, thinking we had time to sort that stuff out. We had all the time in the world, now that he was free. It turned out we had too much time. Only a few seconds for me to lift my hand, longing to remind him, to have him kiss my ring the way he used to. A few seconds more for Kellen’s eyes to go wet, for his lip to tremble. He didn’t kiss the ring. He let go of me and, from the way he leaned against the side of the truck, I knew he was having a hard time standing up. I leaned my head into his chest and held on. Held him up.

“Oh, goddamnit. I can’t be with you. If I break parole, they’ll send me back to do the rest of my sentence. If I could be with you after, I’d do those four years in a heartbeat. But I go back, and they’ll parole me with the same conditions.

“And it’s not just my parole. You know, I ruined my whole life. I’m gonna be on the sex offender registry for the next fifteen years. Have to put my conviction on every job application I fill out. Have to ask every landlord how far is the nearest school.”

“I was selfish to wish for you,” I said. All I’d ever thought about was how much I wanted him. Needed him. I never thought of what it would mean for him.

“You’re not selfish, but you’re better off without me. I made nothing but trouble for you.”

I shook my head against his chest.

“It’s true. You were too young and I messed things up for you. It’s like your aunt said, you weren’t even fourteen really when I raped you.”

I reached up and clamped my hand over his mouth hard enough that I felt his teeth through his lips. It wasn’t nice, and I didn’t care. I wanted to shove those words back down his throat. He pulled my hand away, and his soft eyes said everything was broken. I’d broken him.

“You didn’t rape me,” I said.

“Okay. Okay, but listen to me. I already ruined my life. I don’t want to ruin yours.”

“It’s not ruined.”

I wanted that to be true, but I couldn’t imagine what six years in prison would be like. Four years I’d been Aunt Brenda’s prisoner, but even when I promised not to sneak out, I went on doing it. That’s why it’s called sneaking. Kellen had spent six years in a cell. Six years among people who hurt him. Six years without the stars. Looking into his eyes, I knew he would stay with me. He was waiting for me to give him the look that meant stay. He wanted me to say, “Stay.”

It had been so long since I had the ring resized that I had to spit on my finger to get it off. When it came loose, I put it in his hand.

“No more prison. You’re free,” I said.

 

12

RENEE

When Wavy opened the passenger door, I thought she was coming to tell me what she and Kellen were doing. Instead, she got in the car and slammed the door.

“What’s up?” I said. She didn’t say a word, just sat there in the dark. “Are we leaving?”

“Yes.” Her voice was raw from crying. Had he dumped her twice in one day?

I started the car and put it in reverse, but Kellen’s truck was still behind me. Jackass. I waited for him to move, but he wasn’t even in the cab. I couldn’t see him at all.

“Will you tell him to move his truck?” I said.

“I can’t.” First time I ever heard Wavy admit she couldn’t do something.

“Fine. I will.”

I put the car in park and got out. Whatever I thought I was going to find when I walked around the truck, it wasn’t Kellen down on his knees. I couldn’t tell if he was crying or heaving. Had she gotten her revenge? Dumped him back? I know if I’d been in Wavy’s shoes, I would have been salting the earth of that relationship.

“Um, could you move so I can back out?”

He made this choking noise, but he braced a hand against the side of his truck and got to his feet. I could only guess what she’d said to him, because he looked destroyed. It took him a while, but he wiped his face on his shirt sleeve and sort of pulled himself together.

“You her roommate?” he said.

“Yes.”

I swear, for a second, I thought he wanted to shake my hand, but he was trying to give me something. When I didn’t reach for it, he opened his hand. It was her engagement ring. Oh, yes, she’d dumped him.

“Will you give her this?” he said.

“No offense, but no. You give it to her if you want her to have it.” No way was I getting in the middle of that.

He nodded and walked around to the passenger side of my car. Wavy wasn’t having any of it. He tried to open her door, but it was locked.

“Goddamnit, Wavy. Please, will you listen to me?” He went on talking in this low, pleading voice, but the only word I could make out was her name.

I couldn’t hear whether she answered him, but if she did, it wasn’t nice. He came stomping back to the truck and jerked open the driver side door. For about two seconds, I was relieved, thinking he was going to leave. Then he slammed the door closed and kicked it.

The violence of it shocked a squeak out of me.

He took two steps toward me and I took two steps back. I was about to panic when the Frisbee guys came running toward us.

“Hey, is everything okay?” the tallest one said.

“Please, will you just take it?” Kellen said.

“I don’t think she wants whatever it is you want to give her.”

“Why don’t you just walk away, pal?” another Frisbee guy said.

“Why don’t you fuck off?” Kellen said.

The Frisbee guys had a conference, and one of them took off running toward the library.

When Kellen took a step toward me, the tall guy said, “Dude, my buddy is going to get campus security.”

“I’m just trying to give her this.” Kellen held the ring up so the Frisbee guys could see it.

“I don’t care, dude. You need to go.”

There was shouting up on the library steps and then several people started across the lawn toward us.

“Fucking fuck.” Kellen turned around and kicked his door again, twice, hard enough to leave a dent the size of his enormous boot.

“Okay, look,” I said.

At that point, I was willing to take the ring, just to make Kellen go away, because he was scaring the shit out of me. Before I could, Wavy got out of my car and came around the truck to Kellen’s side.

“He’s leaving,” Wavy said to the Frisbee guys.

“I’m not leaving,” Kellen said.

“You can’t get arrested.” She held out her hand, and he put the ring in it, folding her fingers over it. He held her hand like that until she pulled it back.

Kellen and I both seemed to think there would be something more, but Wavy walked away and got back in my car. The Frisbee guy came running up and a few steps behind him was a campus cop.

“Sir, why don’t you get in your car, and let this lady back out?” the cop said.

Finally, Kellen did.

For part of the drive out of town, we were behind his truck, but when I turned for the highway, he went on straight. I let out a long sigh.

“I know you love him, but what a psycho,” I said. “Did he used to do that kind of thing? Kicking in the door like that?”

“Sometimes,” Wavy said. She sounded exhausted.

“And your wrist? Did he do that, too? Rough you up?”

“He didn’t mean to.”

“Right. They never mean to, do they?” I said.

We passed under the last row of streetlights before the highway went to four lanes. I looked over at Wavy, who still had her hand in a fist around the ring.

“Seriously. He’s a crazy fucking asshole.”

“Don’t, Renee.” The first time she’d ever said my name.

Because she asked, I didn’t say the rest of what I thought, but my rose-colored glasses had been shattered. Kellen wasn’t the love of her life. He was a dumb brute with greasy hands and a cheap haircut. A guy with no education and a bad temper. Big enough to kick a dent in the side of his truck, and stupid enough to do it, too.

After almost an hour of total silence, Wavy started making this soft hiccupping noise that I realized was her crying. She had been leaning her head against the window, but she slowly folded over until her head was resting on her knees.

The crying kept getting louder and louder, until it was hard to listen to. You can look up the word keening in the dictionary, but you don’t know what it means until you hear somebody having her heart ripped out. It went on and on. I was terrified. I didn’t think you could cry like that without hurting yourself. I drove faster, ten, then fifteen miles over the speed limit. Then I did something I never imagined doing: I reached out and laid my hand on Wavy’s back. I wanted to comfort her, and myself, but feeling her whole body shake made me feel worse, so I put my hand back on the steering wheel.

The last ten miles, I cried, too. I went all-in for histrionic romance crap, but I’d never loved any guy the way she loved him. My heartbreaks lasted a month. I’d eat too much and mope around crying, but I always found a new guy. I was as fickle as those Cosmo quizzes said I was. I couldn’t imagine being with one guy as long as she’d been with him. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like losing him.

When I pulled into the driveway at our apartment, I was almost hysterical. I tried to get her out of the car, but she curled up into a ball and totally ignored me. Even as small as she was, there was no way I could carry her up to our apartment.

For half a second, I thought about driving on to her aunt’s house, but just for half a second. That would be traitorous, taking her to a woman she didn’t even trust to look at a picture of Kellen.

I left Wavy in the car and ran up to the apartment, trying to think of who I could call to help. Her cousin Amy, but she was at the University of Nebraska. Even if she left right then, she wouldn’t be there until the morning, and it was finals week. I was standing in the kitchen, holding the phone and crying, trying to think of who to call, when I saw the napkin with Darrin’s phone number. I dialed and he answered. I don’t think I made any sense, but when I stopped blubbering, he said, “I can be there in ten minutes.”

It was more like five minutes before he rolled into the parking lot in an open Jeep. Watching him jog toward me, where I stood next to my car, I could tell I’d gotten him out of bed. He was wearing sweatpants, a Marine Corps T-shirt, and tennis shoes with no socks. For a while, we stood there, looking at Wavy curled up in the front seat.

“Are you sure she doesn’t need to go to the hospital?” he said.

“She’s not sick. She just got her heart broken.”

Wavy was so far gone, she didn’t even care that Darrin picked her up and carried her to our apartment. He laid her down on her neatly made, virginal twin bed, and she went on sobbing, that godforsaken ring clutched in her hand.

We left her there and went into the kitchen, where Darrin made us both giant glasses of rum and coke. While we drank, I told him the whole awful thing as far as I knew it. Mostly because I couldn’t stand being alone with knowing it, but also because Darrin was a good listener. We had another drink and then another, and talked about everything. My nightmare year in a sorority. His eight years in the Marines. How my father thought I was too stupid to get anything but an MRS degree. How his father was in prison when he was a kid. That was why Darrin joined the Marines right out of high school.

When we went to check on Wavy later, she’d finally worn herself out crying. She was asleep with her arm flung out, the ring next to her hand. I turned off the light and closed the door, but then Darrin and I were standing in the hallway outside my open bedroom door.

“Do you want to stay?” I said.

“I could stay on the couch if you think you’ll need me.”

“Maybe I need you in here.” I felt so stupid, because he looked down, kind of embarrassed. Had I completely misinterpreted his interest in me?

“It’s not that I don’t want to, because I really would, but in my book this falls under the heading of taking advantage,” he said.

He slept on the couch, in case I needed him. I thought about going out to the living room, and seducing him in the safety of darkness. All I did was think about it, though, before I fell asleep.

I woke up to the sound of typing. At first I assumed it must be morning, because what kind of crazy person types a letter in the wee, dark hours, but it was only four o’clock. Under normal circumstances, I would have yelled at Wavy, but considering everything that had happened, I let it go.

Just as I was starting to get used to the peckitty-peck of Wavy typing, this enormous crash brought me bolt upright in bed.

“Wavy?” I shouted, but she didn’t answer.

I heard a man’s voice in the living room, so I jumped out of bed and ran out there. Darrin stood at our open front door in his bare feet. He pointed out into the hall.

“Wavy just—uh—she came through here carrying a typewriter. I asked if she was—”

Another crash came from the stairwell.

We ran out in the hallway, and I yelled Wavy’s name, but she didn’t answer. Unless the sound of metal meeting wood that echoed up the stairs was her response. I hurried down the stairs with Darrin right behind me.

Wavy’s typewriter was lying at the foot of the stairs, broken into pieces. She stood over it, and right as I got to her, she kicked it and sent the biggest chunk of it skidding across the floor.

“Holy shit,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Without saying anything else, she ran down the next flight of stairs, and then I heard the front door to the house slam open and closed.

One of the second floor tenants opened her door and looked out at me.

“Sorry about that. I’ll just clean this up,” I said.

“What the hell was that?” Darrin said.

“I don’t know.”

He and I picked up most of the typewriter parts and carried them upstairs. I didn’t know what else to do with them, so we took them into Wavy’s bedroom, where I could see what had made the crash that woke me up. Wavy had apparently thrown her typewriter across the room and put a big dent in the wall.

“I don’t think you’re going to get your deposit back.” Darrin dumped a pile of typewriter debris onto Wavy’s desk and picked up the torn halves of a sheet of paper.

It must have been the letter Wavy was working on. The one that made her murder her typewriter. It was addressed to the lawyer who oversaw her trust.

Dear Mr. Osher:

I’m writing to request that you draft a letter on my behalf to be sent from your office to Jesse Joe Barfoot, Jr. As the conditions of his parole prohibit any contact with me, I’d like you to communicate with him regarding a 1956 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which has been in my possession since 1983. It is currently located in the garage of my guardian, Mrs. Brenda Newling. I would like Mr. Barfoot to take possession of the vehicle at his earliest convenience. It is my wish to sign the motorcycle over to him as a gift, as it belongs to me personally, and is not included in my trust. As it is unlikely that Mr. Barfoot will be able to receive the motorcycle directly from Mrs. Brenda Newling, I will of course pay for any expense related to the delivery of the item into his possession.

 

Enclosed, please find the name of a motorcycle shop in Garringer which can arrange transportation, as well as the signed title, and Mr. Barfoot’s current address.

 

Sincere regards,

Miss Wavonna Quinn

I didn’t even think about what time it was. To be honest, I didn’t care. I took Wavy’s address book out of her desk and called her cousin Amy. She picked up, sounding groggy and belligerent, but once I identified myself, she got quiet.

“Is everything—is Wavy okay?” she whispered.

“No. I would not say that Wavy is okay.”

“What happened?”

“What happened is she just found out that Kellen’s been paroled, and under the conditions of his parole, he can’t have any contact with her,” I said.

“I know. He can’t be within a hundred feet of her. Also, no phone contact or letters. She knows that.”

“She did not know that! Do you think she would have gone to see him if she’d known it could get him thrown back in jail?” Wavy kept a lot of secrets from me, but there was no way she’d have gone to see Kellen knowing that. It certainly explained why their happy reunion had crashed and burned.

“She went to see him? Why?” Amy said.

“Why? Because she loves him! And how did you know he’d been paroled when Wavy didn’t even know?”

“My mom told me. Like a year ago, when he was paroled.”

“Your mom? How does she know? He got paroled last year? Wavy didn’t even know he’d been paroled until yesterday.” I knew I was screeching, but I wanted to reach through the phone and slap Amy until she said something that made sense. Darrin sat down on the couch next to me with a concerned look on his face. I was so glad he was getting to see me at my screamiest.

“How could she not know? They sent a letter to say he was up for parole. Oh, crap.” Amy went totally silent, so I knew she was figuring out what I’d just realized. “The letters went to my mom’s house and she never told Wavy.”

“But you knew! And you never thought to mention that in any of your letters?” I said. My opinion of Kellen changed about every five minutes, but Wavy loved him, and her aunt had no right to keep that kind of secret from her. Neither did Amy.

“We don’t write those kinds of letters. She—she writes to me about NASA launches and medieval urban planning. Besides, we don’t talk about Kellen in my family. We just don’t, okay? You don’t know what it was like when all of that happened.”

“I thought you were on her side.”

“I am. But Mom thinks she’s doing the right thing,” Amy said. “What would you do if you thought somebody molested your thirteen-year-old niece?”

“She’s not thirteen anymore, and you don’t know what this is doing to her. She thought they were going to be together! She still loves him!” Normally, I would have been crying by that point, but I was full of righteous anger, so when Amy started sniveling into the phone, I did not feel sympathetic.

“Is she okay?” Amy said.

“No, she spent about five hours crying her heart out, and then she went tearing out of here at four a.m., going God knows where. I don’t know where she is or when she’s coming home. I guess, if you hear from her, let me know.”

I didn’t wait to hear what Amy said. I just hung up.

“Do you want me to go look for her?” Darrin said. He squeezed my hand, which surprised me, because I wasn’t sure at what point we’d started holding hands.

“No, if she’s mobile, she’ll be alright. You wouldn’t believe some of the crazy shit she’s survived.”

“Do you want me to leave, so you can get some sleep?”

“I’m too awake to go to back to sleep,” I said.

Darrin’s hair was mussed from sleeping on the couch, and that early in the morning, his beard stubble was coming in. I’d thought he was so baby faced when I met him, but without the close shave, he looked kind of rugged. When I scooted closer, he put his arm around me.

“Yeah, I don’t think I could sleep either,” he said.

Thinking about how close I’d come to sacrificing my dignity on the altar of Joshua’s good looks, I took a thorough accounting of Darrin. He was single, in school, and gainfully employed. He had come through for me out of the blue, and he was still there. If I wanted to stop getting my heart broken, it wasn’t enough to stop being self-absorbed. I needed to stop chasing after guys as self-absorbed as I was. I leaned in so that my mouth was in kissing range.

“Maybe we’d both get some sleep if you got in bed with me,” I said. If he’d pulled the taking advantage number again, I don’t think I could have forgiven him, but lo and behold, he kissed me.

*   *   *

Of course, we didn’t go to sleep until dawn. I had finally drifted off, with Darrin’s arm around me, when I heard the front door open. I thought about getting up to see what Wavy was doing, but I was naked and comfortable, so I stayed in bed. Then there was a thumping sound, and the front door opened and closed. A few minutes later the door opened and there was more thumping.

I got dressed and went out to the living room, where a pile of large library books was forming next to the coffee table. I picked up a blue, leather-bound volume marked “State Penal Code, 1981 to Present, Volume XXIV.” On the spine was a sticker that said “LAW REF Non-Circ.”

While I was trying to decide what it meant, Wavy came through the door carrying more books, stacked up almost to her chin. She dropped them next to the other books, and went down the hallway to her bedroom.

“Are these reference books from the law library?” I yelled. “You can’t check these out, can you?”

“The janitor smokes.”

“You went to the law library, snuck past the janitor on his smoke break, and stole books?”

I could almost hear her shrug.

She came back with a spiral notebook and a pen, picked up the top book, and hauled it to the kitchen table. From there it looked like any other homework assignment. She ran her finger down the index, thumbed into the book, and started reading. Every once in a while, she would stop and copy something into her notebook.

I left her to it, and went back to bed.

When Darrin and I finally got up, she was still working. It was the kitchen table, after all, so I cooked brunch around her. I was worried it would be awkward, but she said, “Hi,” to Darrin, and shifted some of the books, so there was a place to eat. Honestly, I was the only one who seemed uneasy, but that’s because I was trying to figure out what was going on with Wavy. She’d gone from destroyed to driven overnight, but driven by what? She hadn’t put her ring back on, and there was a gap of paler skin on her hand where it usually was.

When she took a bathroom break, I reached across the table and grabbed her notebook. “No Contact Order” was the header on the first page. Below that was a series of bullet points. Expiration of civil orders. Automatic NCO in cases of DV. Imposed by parole board. Imposed by parole agency. Imposed by sentencing judge.

The header on the next page was “Process for removing NCO imposed by parole board.” The pages after that had headers for different scenarios, waiting for Wavy’s notes.