An involuntary snort of laughter escaped Kurstin. It was the first spark of amusement she had felt in what seemed like a dog year. "Put like that," she said, "I guess you truly are stuck with me. Warts, bad judgment, and all. At least I have a sense of humor."
"Not to mention how difficult it is to get Patsy across the trestle."
Kurstin sighed and tilted her head to rest against Hayley's shoulder. "I truly am so very, very sorry. I screwed up majestically."
"Yes, you did." Hayley slipped her arm around her waist and gave her a comforting squeeze. "But I wasn’t much of a friend to you, either. I’m not proud that when you needed my support the most, all I could think of were my own problems."
Kurstin’s lips formed a moue as she expelled an exasperated breath. "You always were a perfectionist."
"Yeah, and you're conceited. You don't just screw up like the rest of us peons, you screw up…how did you put it… magnificently?"
"Majestically."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Hayley nudged her shoulder into Kurstin’s. "Let's just agree everything wrong in the world truly is all your fault and leave it at that."
Leaning against each other, they lazily swished their feet back and forth in the cool water and stared out over the lake for several silent moments. Then Kurstin nodded.
"Good plan,” she agreed with a tiny smile. “I believe it’s a healthy thing, giving credit where credit is due.”
I park in the lot at the Royal Inn, but make no move to climb out. A light wind ruffles the leaves of the birch trees, dappling the motel’s stucco exterior with shifting shade patterns. I watch three crows hop through the finely ground beauty bark beneath the rhododendrons. And draw a deep, cleansing breath for luck.
Expelling it, I climb from the car and lock up. Staring at the building, I straighten my suit jacket. Brush nonexistent lint from my skirt. Then I square my shoulders and head for the building.
Outside room 203 I pause for yet another calming breath. I have no idea why. It is not as if I am actually nervous or anything. I simply have not seen Joe for a while and want a moment to collect myself. Nothing more.
I knock on the door.
The volume on the television inside the room lowers and a moment later the door opens. Joe's face registers surprise when he sees me on his doorstep. "Oh...hey, Pats," he says and shifts awkwardly.
"Hello, Joe. May I come in?"
"Huh? Oh! Sure. Come on in." He steps back to allow me entrance. "Uh, sorry about the mess." He sweeps some Jockey shorts and dirty socks off the carpet and tosses them in the closet. Then he shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. "I wasn't expecting company."
The room is not at all the neatly kept space I demanded and came to expect when he lived at home. I perch on the edge of a chair and gingerly push aside several dirty glasses and fast food containers on the table next to me to clear a place for my purse.
"Can I get you a glass of water? A soft drink, maybe?"
"No, thank you. I will come directly to the point. I want you to come home."
He stilled. "Uh-huh. Patsy—"
"Before you say anything, please hear me out," I interrupt, sitting straighter on the edge of my seat. Is that pity on his face? I cannot abide pity—there is absolutely nothing pitiful about me. Stupid, ungrateful girl, mother's voice whispers in my brain. You will never amount to anything.
"Dammit, Mama, shut up!" I mutter.
Joe does an odd double take. "What?"
"Hmm?"
"What did you say?"
"Nothing. It was not important. A slip of the tongue." I shake off the specter of my mother. "I dismantled the closet," I inform him a bit stiffly when he continues to stare at me as if I said something freakish. For heaven's sake, what was the matter with him? "I threw away all my clippings and tapes of Hayley. You were right, Joe, it was a dumb thing to have collected. She is not the friend I believed her to be and certainly not worth jeopardizing our marriage over."
"Pats—"
"Come home where you belong."
He sits on the edge of the bed facing me. Leaning forward he plucks my hands from my lap and chafes them between his own. "That's not going to happen, Patsy," he says gently.
"Of course it is."
"No. It’s not. Our marriage is over."
I tug my hands free. "Do not be ridiculous. Of course it is not over. I have done precisely what you said I should do: I got rid of my Hayley things. Now you have to do your part. Come home."
"Patsy, I've seen a lawyer. I want a divorce."
"No!" I surge to my feet. “That is wrong. What will people say?"
Joe's expression hardened. "Who gives a shit what people say?"
"I do. Oh, my God, I should have seen this coming. It is all HER fault, you know."
"What? Whose fault? What the hell are you talking about?"
"Hayley! If it were not for her, we would still be together. We would still be happy." I snatch up my handbag.
"This has nothing to do with Hayley."
"Like hell it doesn’t! Well, she is not going to get away with it. She has to pay."
"Dammit, Patsy, this is not about any friggin' third party." Gripping my arms, he holds me in place while staring into my eyes. "This is about you and me, and I won't let you put the blame onto someone who has absolutely nothing to do with us."
I peer up at him. Is that true? Does this awful decision he made truly have nothing to do with Hayley? It seems as if she is involved in every facet of my life these days, but maybe I am mistaken. "Then why can't you come home?" I demand. "I got rid of the closet."
"Jesus! Will you forget the fucking closet? You are not a stupid woman, Patsy, so why do you insist on talking like an idiot? Listen to me. This. Is. Not. About—Shit!"
Barely hearing anything beyond “stupid” and “idiot”, I see no reason to stick around to listen to the rest of his harangue. I stalk on stiff legs out of room 203 and slam its door closed behind me.
"Where the hell have you been all day?"
Hayley closed the little-used rear door to Bluey’s and leaned back against it. Adrenaline surged through her system from running the gauntlet of journalists outside, and she looked up at Jon-Michael, her smile probably coming across like defective neon as it flashed on and flickered out.
"Hey," she said breathlessly. "Didn't expect to see you here this early." Exhaling noisily, she blotted perspiration from her brow with her forearm. "Holy shit. Can you believe there are even more reporters out there tonight? Where do they all come from, you suppose—I wouldn’t have thought there were enough rocks for them to crawl out from under." She pushed away from the door, too wired to stand still. "Did you see the six o'clock news this evening? I was the Top Story...except it wasn't a story, exactly, since there wasn’t an ounce of factual-type, um, facts reported." Her brow pleated, then she laughed low in her throat. "Oh. I guess that's what a story is, huh, something made up? What I meant was, it wasn’t news. It was more Top Speculation." A little chortle of laughter purled up from her throat.