Chapter 6

The house phone started to ring as I opened the front door, and I ran to grab it. “Hello?” I said lightly, as I dropped my gym bag near the stairs.

“Hi, Rand,” Beth said.

That surprised me. I’d thoroughly figured that she was done calling me.

“Beth!” I said, my surprise coming through. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you tonight. How’re you doing?”

“I’m doing okay,” she said cheerily. “What do you mean you weren’t expecting to hear from me? I told you I’d call this week.”

“I wasn’t really holding you to that,” I said carefully as I didn’t want to start a fight. “You were a little busy when you told me that, and I figured there was a pretty good chance it had slipped your mind.”

“It kind of did,” she admitted. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” I said, sincerely.

I returned to the car with the cordless, taking a load of the new cleaning supplies into the house while we talked.

“I understand that I’m not that important to you anymore,” I told her.

“Rand,” she chided softly. “I don’t wanna fight.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be passive-aggressive or anything. Your life is there now, though. You’ve got a new life there and you’re settling in. New job, new friends, dates, parties. Calling the ex to shoot the shit is exactly the buzz-kill you don’t need at the end of a good day.”

“Mom told you I’ve been dating?” she asked, sounding pained.

“May mentioned you were on a date when I called for your birthday. I kind of figured that was why I haven’t been hearing from you.”

“Shit,” she sighed. “I didn’t want you to find out from her. I was worried that you’d take it badly.”

“Not really,” I said with a shrug that she couldn’t hear. “I sat and thought about how I felt about it after I talked to May. I knew you were going to move on with your life, sooner or later.”

“I know, but I know you haven’t been taking this well.”

“Who said I wasn’t taking it well?” I asked, confused. “I don’t talk to any of our mutual friends anymore.”

“Exactly,” she said. “No one’s heard from you. They say you leave the house early and come home late most nights.”

Aha. She had the neighbors spying on me. I smiled and went back for another load of shopping bags.

“Not a coincidence that I heard from you today, huh?” I asked, amused.

“I may have heard that you had some strange vehicles parked at your place the last few days,” she told me sheepishly.

“Why are you having the neighbors watch me, Beth?” I asked, confused. “All you had to do was call me and I’d have told you what’s been going on in my life.”

“I didn’t want to hold you back. I’ve been hoping that you’d move on and start reaching out to some of the friends you had in the neighborhood. They’ve all mentioned how closed off you’ve been since the divorce.”

“Really?” I said sourly. “Alright, so you’ve gotten a detailed report that people have been visiting me. I’m very gratified that my absence has been noticed around the neighborhood.”

“Rand don’t be like that,” she scolded me. “They’re not spying on you, they’re worried.”

“Then why haven’t any of them actually come up to me on the street and asked me how I’m doing?” I asked. “Why haven’t they called the house, or stopped by in the evenings or even emailed?”

“I guess they’re just embarrassed. They don’t know what to say over everything.”

“Cut the bullshit, Beth,” I told her. “I’ve seen you in the pictures they post on Facebook of their parties - at least twice - and I know there’ve been more that you managed to avoid being in the pictures for. They haven’t called because they’re your friends. In the divorce, I got the money, you got the friends. I’m not accusing you of turning them against me. They made the choice themselves, but they invited you to come from 300 miles away to attend parties and you came. None of them have walked across the street to stay in touch with me after the first couple of weeks.”

“It really wasn’t like that,” she said with a sigh. “I asked them not to let on that I was in town. Like I said, I don’t want to keep bouncing in and out of your life. I want you to move on.”

“And now that you’re getting a report that I might be, you decided to call to find out the details?” I asked dryly.

“I’m sorry, Rand. I’m obviously making you upset. I didn’t want that.”

“What do you want, Beth? When you left, you pleaded with me to stay in touch, but you’ve made it hard to get hold of you and you haven’t been returning my calls. Now you call out of the blue, because your surveillance on the house has finally noted a change in my habits and you want to catch up on what’s going on? Sorry if I’m pissed but finding out that all our old friends have been spying on me, rather than talking to me, makes me think I should have just sold the fucking house and disappeared.”

“You really want to know what’s going on? Someone at the gym helped me get into a support group for people that have had their spouses cheat on them. Those are the cars they’ve been seeing. All of our friends froze me out for you, so now I talk to complete strangers for support. The people at the gym I go to thought I was deaf, fucking deaf, because I’ve been walking around in a daze so thick, I didn’t notice they were talking to me. I’m not really pissed at you, but you know what? Having the support of at least some of our friends might have helped me pick myself up. You’re 300 miles away and getting on with your life, building new friendships and you decided to hang on to all the ones you had here, except for the person you once called your best friend.”

“Guess I got demoted again, huh? From love of your life, to the husband you put up with, to the best friend who wouldn’t understand how you needed more excitement, to the guy who’s being watched, like your own personal Discovery Channel. It boils my blood to know they’ve been watching me for you. Tell them to mind their own fucking business. They decided they needed to be your friend and couldn’t be mine. Fine! You never had to resort to this shit to find out what was going on in my life. You asked me to stay in touch, so we could share news. I don’t have any clue what you’re up to. You have a job down there that I’ve never heard about, and friends, and a new romance and I have to piece those clues together because you won’t fucking talk to me! I called you to stay in touch because you asked me to, as a friend. The last time you called was fucking September. So, what do you want? You want the straight scoop? Ask me! Don’t collect reports from the nosy pieces of shit that couldn’t be bothered to speak to me after you left.”

I finally ran out of steam. I was aware that I’d been ranting, and I was pissed. It felt like, as soon as I had my life moving, she came back and tossed a grenade in my foxhole. I was fuming and breathing hard. I went back to the car for the last of the stuff I’d purchased and slammed the trunk, the noise echoing like a bomb through the neighborhood as I went back inside and slammed the front door too.

“Fuck, Rand!” she whined softly, still on the cell phone. “I’m not spying on you, I swear! Neither are they. They just noticed the cars the other night and again today. I’m sorry I haven’t been staying in touch. I’ve been trying to keep out of your way. I was worried that the more we talked, the longer it would take for you to move on.”

“Maybe you’re right, and I would have taken my time,” I allowed. “You still could have given me the courtesy of letting me know you thought we needed more space. As for the neighbors, I’m pissed that they felt like they had to choose sides, pissed that they all - as a group - chose you and pissed that they’re watching me. You say they’re not spying, but they know when I leave and when I come home, they reported to you in a hurry, the first time someone came to visit and that’s not all they told you, is it? They told you that it’s been mostly women that have been coming to the door, right?”

“Yes, Rand,” she said, reluctantly.

“Alright. Ask your questions,” I told her, indicating that I’d answer.

“It’s not an interrogation,” she protested. “I just called to find out what’s new in your life.”

“The plant is shutting down. That’s new,” I told her, changing topics. “So, my job’s probably moving out of state in the spring. I’ll have to decide whether to take a transfer or severance package.”

“Oh, shit!” she breathed. “You can’t seem to catch a break lately,” she commented sadly.

“To be honest, I’m in a better position than anyone else in the plant. If they offer me a good package to move, then I might go. If not, I have enough money to retire, or go back to college, or start a new career.”

Okay, that was an outright lie. I wasn’t going anywhere so long as Melody was here, but she didn’t need to know about that, yet.

“Rand don’t give up the house because the neighbors haven’t been as close,” she urged me. “I promise, I’ll tell them to back off on watching you.”

“I’m not making any decisions based on them,” I told her. “If I leave, it’ll be because I have a better offer somewhere else.”

I was starting to calm down some, but I still desperately wanted to go door to door and punch out whoever answered at each house, just to make them aware how I feel about them.

“They honestly meant well,” she told me, sheepishly.

“They failed,” I said bluntly, and probably a little harshly.

I was in no mood to be charitable about how I felt about the neighbors.

“Give me a chance to talk to them,” she pleaded for them. “I’ll explain the whole thing. I’m sure they’ll try to include you in more things once they know how hurt you’ve been by their behavior.”

“I’m moving on with my life,” I told her. “That’s what you wanted. I’ve accepted that they’re not my friends. It just pisses me off that they spy for you. Just leave it alone at this point. I’d feel like anything I said to any of them will be emailed to you as soon as they could get to a keyboard. It hurt me a lot that they didn’t think I could be adult enough to just leave if seeing you at the neighborhood parties was bothering me. I’m over it now. I’ll be over their spying on me, sooner or later.”

“This hurt us being friends, didn’t it?” she asked, regret filling her voice.

“Beth, I haven’t felt like we were friends in any of this. I don’t know what we are, but as of an hour ago, I assumed that I wasn’t going to hear back from you ever again. I was starting to get around to being okay with that thought. I have the people at the gym, I have my support group, and I have work ... for now. I know you’ve encouraged me to get on with life, but honestly, do you even know how impossible a task that is?”

“It was this week that I could finally bring myself to speak to people. When my instructor found out about the divorce, she got me into the group. Think about that. You’ve been gone for three months, and I finally found the nerve to speak to people in the past seven days. You were probably looking up high school friends the day after you got back to Atlanta. This didn’t hurt you. You developed a strong indifference to our relationship even before Stan. Stan made it worse.”

“Beth, I was still in love with you when you left Charlotte. Three months to find my voice and take any sort of step toward living again is kind of miraculous. I’ve been proud of that and it’s been harder than I can tell you. My instructor thought I was hitting on her when I started talking, and she made sure I knew she wasn’t available. She used almost the exact same words you did when you tried to explain that you just weren’t interested in me that way anymore. Hearing that again sent me to a bad place. When the neighbors saw the cars, they were here to perform an intervention on me because they could tell how much of a mess I was.”

I wasn’t angry anymore, but she had asked me to tell her what was going on in my life. I was going to keep doing that, and if she was uncomfortable hearing about my problems, too fucking bad. She’d been the root of too many of them and ducked responsibility for all of them.

“Jesus, Rand!” she breathed. “I had no idea you’d withdrawn that much!”

“How could you? The neighbors were all hands-off, and you and I haven’t talked since September. You were probably right. You were the only person I talked to. When you cut me off, I had no one to talk to. Jack Daniels is a great listener, but doesn’t give much advice, you know?”

“You started drinking?” she seemed really upset by that.

“Not as much as I wanted to,” I told her. “I started going to the gym pretty quickly instead. The point is that I’d probably have stayed content to have you be the only person I talked to for a while. When you cut me off, it forced me to look for something else. My group is helping me cope. They’re all people that have been where I am. It still hurts some of them. Others are paying it forward by mentoring the group.”

“I’m glad you found people who understand,” she said gently. “Are you close to any of them in particular?”

“My instructor, Belinda,” I said immediately. “She’s kind of like the sister I never had. She wants good things for me - even to the point of giving me advice I don’t want to hear. All of the other members have been resolute in their support. Jason is the only other guy in the group, and he wants us to hang out and have some guy time. Claire’s the matriarch of the group and she’s kind of like our judge, moderator and therapist all at once. Someone mentioned that she writes books for a living. Stephanie is a nice lady. She’s a lot like a housewife, so she has a very motherly manner. Theresa and Melody are helping me take care of things around the house here, and they both gave up their Saturday to come help me today.”

She listened and made the appropriate sounds. As I’d hoped, she missed mention of Melody, never suspecting that Melody’s last name was Weaver.

“What’s going on with the house that you need help with?” she asked curiously.

“I’m redecorating,” I said, making her laugh.

“You?!!? Decorating?” she asked, incredulously.

“That’s what they’re helping with,” I told her. “Beth, life’s sucked living in this house, where you decorated every room except my study. They’re helping me change the feel of the house so that it doesn’t feel as much like your home. I’m not trying to be a dick, but if I’m going to stay in this house, I need to stop looking at the sofa where you had it and I need to stop looking at your knickknacks on the shelves. They’re helping me clear a lot of it out and change how the rooms are laid out. Theresa brought her friend, Courtney today, and she lives for these challenges, so I’m told.”