Lovely Wild

“Oh, right.” Lorna pauses, expectant.

Mari has no idea what she’s waiting for and the silence stretches on until she nods and smiles and ducks away from Lorna, who stares after her.

In the car, she thinks about what she will say if Lorna actually does invite her to a Mommy’s Day Out. It might be nice, she tells herself as she lines up with the other mothers in the school parking lot, each car inching forward slowly, though the kids haven’t been dismissed yet. To do something with other women. Have some...friends.

Except it wouldn’t be nice. It would be strange and awkward. For them, not so much for her. Mari gets along with most anyone. It’s other people who usually don’t know how to react to her.

“You’re too honest,” Ryan told her once, long ago, in the very beginning when things between them were fresh and new and still strange. He’d tangled his fingers in a strand of her dark hair, pulling it along his much lighter skin to show the contrast between them.

“You’d like me to lie?”

“I don’t think you know how to lie,” had been his answer, and he’d kissed her.

It isn’t that she doesn’t know how. It’s that she doesn’t see the point. Lies are secrets, and there’s no use for them, either.

“Hey, honey,” she says when Ethan at last limps to the car and slides into the backseat. “How was school?”

“It was okay.” He shrugs, clicking his seat belt. “Can we get cheesesteaks from Pat’s for dinner?”

Pat’s, King of Steaks, isn’t on the way home. In traffic, it will take them an hour or so to get there and back. Still, Mari looks at her son’s hopeful face and doesn’t have the heart to say no. His grin and shout of laughter when she nods is enough to make her laugh, too.

Small things, she thinks as she pulls away from the school. That’s what matters. Small but beautiful things.

SIX (#ulink_3df09f2e-f1fc-510e-81ef-e37a2dbddf07)

THE NUMBERS DIDN’T add up. Ryan had figured them four or five times, and every time, no matter how he worked them, they still turned red. He’d gone online to check balances and shift some money, but there was only so often he could do that. The checks coming in were too small, and eventually might stop coming at all. He’d have to do something, and soon.

He could tap into the money his dad had left Mari. The funds had been meant for her to go to college, if she could, or at least to live on her own in case she wasn’t able to support herself. She hadn’t done either of those things. She’d married Ryan as soon as she’d turned eighteen, and he’d taken care of her ever since. Ryan checked the balance in the account now, as always with a somewhat sour taste in the back of his throat at the amount that had accumulated.

It wouldn’t be hard to get her to agree to use it. He’d pulled from it before. The down payment on this house, for example. And he hadn’t felt bad about that, because providing Mari with a home of her own had been exactly what his father had meant the money to do. And once, they’d taken the kids to Disney World, a trip that in Ryan’s opinion had been six grand tossed away. Ryan didn’t like sweating and dealing with hordes of sticky, screaming kids, so the trip had been something of a nightmare for him. Mari and the kids had loved it, though. That was something, and giving her that experience, something she’d been lacking in her childhood, had been a perfect use of the money, too.

Even after dipping into the account twice for two big expenses, there was still plenty left. There’d been donations, fund-raisers and grants in addition to what Dad himself had set aside. Dad hadn’t known, of course, that Ryan would be able to provide her with anything Mari ever wanted or needed. He’d wanted to make sure Mari would never have to worry about money because he knew how little the concept of it meant to her. Some people who grew up poor became misers, others spendthrifts. Mari simply didn’t understand money. She just saw it as numbers.

It was Ryan who’d suggested the Disney trip. Who’d bought her the fancy iPhone that, as far as he knew, she barely used. Ryan wanted HD cable television with all the premium channels, the fastest internet. The fancy car that came with the fancy payment, too. All numbers, when you broke it down.

And now, the numbers didn’t add up.

Technically, her account was separate from the one they kept jointly, but of course, Ryan knew Mari’s passwords and PINs. Just like he knew she never checked the balances. He looked again at the balance in Mari’s account. The numbers stared at him smugly. He only needed a thousand or so to cover the credit card bill for this month.

He should ask her, first. It was her money. But he knew she’d just give him one of those quizzical looks and a smile. She’d never deny him. He’d just do it and tell her a little later. Or better yet, he’d just replace the money when he started getting his full paychecks again. She’d never know. It wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t as if they were going bankrupt or anything.

A quick tap-tap of the keys and it was done. A thousand dollars shifted from Mari’s account to the joint one. It nicely covered the upcoming bills, with a little left over in case he needed to hit the ATM for some cash. It all worked out just fine.

Ryan had just closed the browser when his wife came in. He swiveled in his office chair to find her holding up two glasses of red wine. She smiled as she closed his door.

She kissed him before she gave him the wine. She smelled good. She tasted good. Rich and earthy, like wine but so much better. She settled herself on his lap, straddling him, careful not to spill.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” Ryan took a glass and sipped it. “That’s good.”

“I read about it in that magazine you subscribed to. It got a great rating. I saw it at the liquor store and figured I’d pick up a bottle.”

The wine cost, by his best guess, about forty bucks a bottle. Ryan winced. “It’s really good. Thanks.”

“You like it?” She sipped and swallowed. “I do.”

He did like it; that was the problem. Probably more because he knew the price tag. Behind him, the computer monitor cast an accusatory glow around them. Ryan ignored it.

“I like it a lot.” He inched her closer. “Where are the kids?”

“Ethan’s asleep. Kendra’s video chatting with someone.”

“Who?”

Mari shrugged. “Different person every time I go into her room.”

“Boy or girl?”

She gave him that look. That tender, amused look. “Both?”

Ryan frowned. “Not that Logan kid. The one with the pierced lip?”

“Honey, I don’t know. Anyway, what difference does it make? She can’t get pregnant from a video chat, thank goodness. She’s going to talk to boys, Ryan. It’s part of being a pretty fifteen-year-old girl. If she didn’t have boys wanting to talk to her, you’d worry about that.”

He didn’t want to admit that was true. “I don’t like that kid.”

“Because he has long hair and paints his fingernails?” Mari laughed. “You’re such a prepper.”

She meant preppy, but he didn’t correct her. “She should be in bed. It’s almost eleven. Doesn’t she have to get up for school tomorrow?”

“Yes. But she knows that it’s on her if she’s tired in the morning. She’s not a dummy. Besides, they have three half days this week, and then they’re done for the summer. You know they won’t be doing anything in class, anyway. And don’t you have to get up early for work tomorrow? Isn’t it your early day?”

Twice a month for the past ten years, Ryan had been volunteering his time at the Sexual Abuse Resource Center, offering free counseling. He went in two hours before work to see patients. But with the investigation going on about Annette Somers, he’d thought it would be best to step down from that volunteer position.

He hadn’t told Mari and now faced with the chance, found himself unable to.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Don’t hit the snooze button three times,” she warned him. “I might have to poke you. Hard.”

Ryan put his glass on the edge of the desk and used both hands to anchor her on his lap. He tipped his face to look up at her. “Poking permission granted.”

His wife sipped more wine and set down her glass, too. “I can’t believe it’s almost summer. I’m not sure I’m ready for it. I still haven’t figured out about camp. I’d like them both to go at the same time, but the one Ethan likes is shifted a week earlier this year. Oh, and Kendra’s riding instructor called to say they were changing lesson times. Ethan says he wants to learn to play the guitar, so I don’t know when we’ll fit that in. What’s the name of that place where your friend’s son took lessons?”

“Yeah...about that...” Ryan’s mouth, still thick with the flavor of red wine, dried. His tongue stuck in place. He swallowed heavily. “Maybe the kids need a break from some of that stuff this year. I mean, studies are showing that kids are so overscheduled these days.”

Some of the wives of Ryan’s friends never stopped moving. Multitasking queens, never still. Some of them were pluckers, forever picking at imaginary bits of lint on their husbands’ shirts. Others were texters, chatting briskly even as they held a series of entirely different conversations with their fingers. Bustlers.