2
Why had I let myself come back to this...place? My train passed the big farmhouse north of town, then the duck pond. At least they’ve made some improvements, I thought, noticing a particularly robust mallard. After Deirdre and Michael’s wedding invitation showed up in the mail, I let desk clutter pile over it so I would forget. I liked them, I wanted to be at their wedding, but why did it have to be in Springdale?
A week or so later, during one of my straightening fits, I found the invitation stuck on the clip that was keeping together the brief on the drunk chef case. That was what I had been looking for–the brief I mean–because the case was going to trial in a few days. I picked up the invitation and stared at it, then taped it to my computer monitor. The next morning I made a train reservation.
My ex-wife, Caroline, grew up in Springdale. We had moved there after I finished law school.
“Why don’t you set up a nice country practice,” she had said.
I should have known it wasn’t a good idea to move to a town that served as the setting for a murder ballad. Three years we lived together there, the last of which she had been sleeping with that bastard Dr. Malcolm. Somehow, everyone else in town knew about it. Then the fight, the threats of lawsuit, disbarment. Three years isn’t enough time to connect to a place, so leaving wasn’t any trouble. I had come back once, to wrap up the divorce and sell our house. I hadn’t planned to return.
Another couple of minutes and I would be there. I had brought a product liability journal to read on the train, but over the last twenty minutes or so, as the distance to Springdale shrank, I kept reading, over and over, the abstract to one of the cases.{note 4} Finally, I gave up and slid the journal into my bag.
~
It was turning out to be a bleached fish kind of day. The sky had that rotten fruit look, all bruised bananas and sour lemon. I briefly considered waiting to take the next train home. Instead, I picked up a car at the little rental place in the station. Like last time, I had booked a room at a hotel by the shopping mall, about six miles from town. No way was I staying any closer, not that there were many choices–the bed and breakfast or the seedy old Drake Motel. Most of the people in town Caroline had known her whole fucking life, and I didn’t want to run into any of them today. There would be enough socializing at the wedding.
Michael had moved here with Deirdre about a year before I did, to teach at the college. Dee grew up here, a couple of classes ahead of Caroline; they had known each other of course, but hadn’t been close friends. Michael and I had bonded over the newcomer-in-a-small-town thing.
It’s hard, with break-ups. Some friends try to be neutral, some take sides. Michael and Dee chose mine.
Enough of that. I was starting to sound like some damn country song. I have a pretty good life in the city, a job at a good firm. I’ve progressed from the little country practice to big-time product liability law. It’s this town, it brings things back. I don’t like being a fool, but who does?
Springdale looked the same. These places always do. Was in the town charter or something: we will never change. Minor things, like a new café on Main Street, different name on the bank. I drove around, avoiding Pearl, my old street, but working my way toward it nevertheless. Unavoidable, considering the size of this place. I crossed Pearl, but kept going toward the highway out of town. A block farther, I turned around. What would it hurt to drive past the house? Caroline didn’t live there anymore.
The new owners had planted pines and maples in the front yard and painted the clapboard a buttery sort of color. It looked comfortable now, a place where people could live and be happy. All Caroline and I had ever done was buy a new refrigerator. For some reason, seeing the house all cuted up affected me more than anything else. So many things I had wanted to do with it. I had studied bunches of house and garden books, but we had never managed to find the time to decide what we would do first. Of course that made sense after I found out where Caroline’s spare time was going.
Damn this bitterness. An artifact of my past, that’s all. I left town by a back road, then cut across to the highway leading to my shopping mall hotel.