The Guy Not Taken Read Free Page B

himself between topping and target. He snatched the bewildered customer’s check. “It’s on the house tonight, ma’am. I apologize for your wait.”
    Nicki bent contritely over the wet walnuts as Tim sponged fudge off his shirt. “Behave,” he muttered. “Esmerelda.”
    “Hey, Nicki,” Mom called, “not too friendly.” Jon pointed his spoon at her. “Begone!” he said, and I laughed. “Nicki Krystal, defender of the young people today.”
    Nicki clicked on the Fribble machine, which roared into life with a wall-shaking racket.
    “You know who has power?” she yelled over the din.
    I did. “Whoever’s got the money.”
    Nicki shook her head. “Nope. It’s actually whoever’s making the food.”
    Nicki lasted for almost the entire summer at Friendly’s. In August, after his fourteenth birthday, Jon got a job, too. He’d wake before the sun was up and pedal past the pristine, sprinklered lawns and freshly painted houses, with his tennis racket strapped to the back of his bike. There were a few farms in town happy to hire fourteen-year-olds to pick strawberries and green beans and corn, and he worked at one of them. By noon, the sun would be high in the hazy sky. Jon would collect his pay in crumpled dollar bills and head off to meet his friends.
    Work wasn’t going well for me, not because of my foundering feminist ideals, but because of the weather. The dry spell stretched through July into August, and my hours at Lavish Landscaping dried up right along with all of that corporate grass. I’d pick up babysitting jobs when I could find them. When I couldn’t, I’d stay home, angling fans on either side of the heavy fringed rug in the family room for some cross-ventilation, glued to the couch by inertia and my own sweat, waiting for Mom to come home. When her car turned into the driveway, I’d unstick my legs from the leather, pull on my own suit, and swim with her until my arms burned and my legs felt numb. Then I’d turn on the underwater lights and sit with myfeet dangling in the water until she was done. I’d ask careful, leading questions. Had she heard from my father? Had the lawyer called yet? She gave vague answers without meeting my eyes, without seeming upset or sad or worried or anything that would have been appropriate.
    Even when she was inside and upright, dumping chicken and Italian dressing into the chipped green bowl to marinate, or whispering to her lawyer behind the closed door of the stifling, curtained living room where no actual living ever went on, her movements and her speech had a dazed, distant quality, as if she were observing the world through goggles and three feet of artificially warmed, weirdly green water.
    Her friends were constantly on the phone, but none of them seemed to stop by anymore. The neighbors would watch us as we backed the station wagon out of the driveway or crossed the street to get the mail from the ruined mailbox, then look away quickly, as if divorce was some kind of contagious skin condition that they could pick up just by looking. The telephone would start ringing at seven in the morning, a constant reminder of our father’s absence, and it would ring all day long.
    My father hadn’t left the way other neighborhood dads had, with regret, a nice speech about how he’d always love us, and a new address at a condo across town. He had simply gotten up from the table after Thanksgiving dinner, tossed his napkin into the congealed gravy on his plate, and said two words: “That’s it.” My mother, at the other end of the table, had gone pale and shaken her head. Tears filled her eyes. I felt my stomach clench. I’d heard them fighting at night, his hissing whispers and her tears, and I knew that for the last month he’d come home late, and for the last week not at all, but I’d been telling myself I was worrying about nothing, that they were just going through a rough patch, that things were going to be fine.
    “Ready for dessert?” Nicki had