Page 72 - WTP XII #3

Quiet Questions (continued from preceding page)
“You don’t need to be. I figured there was a reason you haven’t shown up until now. She used to say, ‘Practically our backyard’ a lot.”
Anita flashes up to the woman’s eyes, startled and unready to step into this version of the world. She drops her surprise to the dirt in between their boots.
“I’m not big on making the monumental mundane myself,” the woman says. Another half smile, doing little to conceal what’s actually behind it. “So any- ways, I can stand here or you can make some signal, answer with your eyes, wave me off and I’ll go back over there and everyone will pretend you don’t exist.”
It’s clear she’s waiting for one of those things.
“I got good ears,” the woman says. “Just in case.” Anita smiles. “You probably already know I’m Anita.” “You probably have no idea I’m Rachel.”
Anita squints in a really-thinking-about-it way and shakes her head, not really trying to conjure up Dee and the stories she’d tell, having finally found some footing on the other side of a very narrow ledge that she doesn’t want to give up.
Looking at Rachel looking off into the park, Anita realizes the interval of chasing the ball and bringing it back must have elapsed several times over. Her eyes wander and find Bruce wiggling and bucking with joy around a stout, platinum blonde retriever in a pink collar, who’s presenting every one of her soft bits to Bruce in a way that seems very hopeful.
“That’s Clara,” Rachel says, a name Anita doesn’t have to squint to recognize, “my slutty girl. Don’t know where she gets it from.”
The two women sit in this recognition for a passing moment, shy away from it for another and return with renewed willingness.
“How did you find out?” Anita asks, wondering what puzzle there was to solve in Dee talking so much about Clara the dog while leaving the amazon out of the picture.
“Some internet shit,” Rachel says, “probably from you. Maybe? Couple weeks after.” She offers up a face full of heartbreak with the second half of her sentence and tries to put it out with another tilt at the corner of her mouth.
It’s a look that dumps out the puzzle Anita just 65
brushed past. Now she has to look at it. It stabs at a part of her so viscerally that she leans back on the bench and places a hand over her middle. Some of the puzzle pieces give glimpses of what type of per- son would come over here and present themselves and make known what had to be a secret. Anita feels dizzy, placing a hand to her temple and cautiously looking up from underneath it at this woman.
“Were you two?” she asks, not wanting an answer.
“Oh, shit. No, honey. I’m sorry,” Rachel says, pressing a finger under her left eye.
A short bursting laugh counters the crack in her voice, keeping the center of some delicate balance that’s preventing her from completely spilling out.
“We were just friends and maybe mostly because of those two,” she adds. “I like boys mostly. At least I like the one I married.”
“Oh my God,” Anita says, mortified and unable to discern the earnestness of Rachel in the face of such aspersions. “I’m so sorry.”
Somehow knowing all too well—or completely aloof to—the tensions and feelings bouncing between the two women, Bruce bounds up to Anita’s knee with
a small buck and a clumsy tumble. Anita’s hands, in some instinctual gesture, reach to the sides of his head, rough his ears and pull his chin up. So thank- ful is she for his tension breaking intrusion that she holds his wild head and places a small kiss right between his eyes before Clara performs a proper cross-body tackle nearly taking him off his feet. He counters, the more lithe and nimble of the two, and dances a circle around her once, then twice, before bounding back out into the park.
Anita feels a surge of warmth up the center of herself at the touch and contact from this moment with Bruce. It’s so substantive that it makes her feel unsure of just how present she was for all the hugs, pats, hand holdings and forearm grippings she had on offer in the immediate aftermath of Dee’s death. She isn’t sure she’s had contact like that—meaning- ful, intimate—since, and here it was, on offer the whole time. Watching him run past a large, German- ish Shepherd, and recruit it into his pack—Clara doing her stumping best to keep up—Anita starts a fresh batch of guilt about withholding and distance.
She stops herself.
“He really missed this place,” she says instead.