ghost from a wishing well, part 3

December 23, 2083 - Leila Watts is 28, Charlotte Gallagher is 29.

* warnings: OMG, holy dialogue, Batman! (sorry!) And sort of long. And hella late (again, sorry!). *

Soundtrack: "If You Could Read My Mind," as performed by Johnny Cash.

Charlotte starts the coffee and Leila goes to lock the front door. They'll fill their mop buckets with hot soapy water and delay actually cleaning the floor with it. The trash is bagged and ready to take out, but it's cold outside, so they'll wait. The doors are locked, the front lights turned off so nobody will try to come in. They were open an extra hour, in light of Christmas, people picking up those precious last-minute gifts.

The two of them collapse exhausted behind the counter. Charlotte asks her, "You want mop or garbage?"

"I don't care," Leila says. "Just give me a few more minutes." What she means is, let her stay here so that she doesn't have to go home.

Charlotte has a lovely life to go home to. Paul has gained twenty pounds, but she never minded a thicker man. He remembers the name of that concerto she likes on violin. She could forget her own name these days, but he remembers. He remembers her favorite brand of wine, and even picks up a bottle on the way home from work. And tonight, she'll pump two bottles of milk out of her swollen boobs so she can drink some with him.

Leila though, she's never in much of a hurry to get home anymore.

If you'd known the two of them in their youth, you might have even expected something like this would happen. Isn't this just how she is, Charlotte wonders? Leila, the lusty one, with her innocent crushes and her occasional whims to give blowjobs in compromising places? If you didn't know her personally, you'd almost guarantee it.

But Charlotte knows her better than that. Charlotte was one of the few people there on her wedding day, a small country church in the heat of the summer. They were just babies then. Charlotte wouldn't have guaranteed that marriage was a risk - she wouldn't have even bet it, but she might have wondered. Didn't they all know, on some level? But Leila was in love, and nobody was going to tell her or try to stop her.

"You just need some good news," Charlotte says. "Before we go tonight, I have a check in the office for you. We did good."

"Really?"

"$10,000 each."

Leila's smile then is something like both fear and elation, all at once.

"We earned out," Charlotte says. "It's better than most businesses do in their first six months."

"But I need to buy a whole house," Leila says.

"What?"

"I'm leaving him," Leila says. "I have to leave him."

"Now?"

"Not like, tonight. After Christmas. Maybe after New Year."

"Oh," Charlotte says.

"I don't know what to do. Everything we have is tied up in the house, and in the farm."

"But he didn't sign a pre-nup. He'd have to give you something. Isn't that how it works?"

"I don't know how it works," Leila says. "And it doesn't matter. I'd never take it from him. Never."

"I take care of our kids. I'd have to take them from their home. I can't take his home, it's part of the farm. He hasn't done his own laundry in twelve years. I don't even know what to do."

"You would stay with a man just because he can't do laundry?"

"No," Leila says, looks to Charlotte's face for answers. "But maybe I should stop by, once a week, for a while?"

Charlotte shakes her head. "Are you sure about this? It just all seems so quick."

"This isn't quick," Leila says. "This is so unbelievably, excruciatingly slow. I've tried, and he's tried. When we're together, there's just nothing. I care about him like I care about my brother. It's just so platonic. It's so forced. So accommodating. I can't spend the rest of my life like this, I just can't. I feel suffocated."

"Okay, I believe you," Charlotte says.

"Do you think I don't hate the idea of what this is doing to him? He's so angry. I hate that he has to start all over, because I know he doesn't want to. I hate the thought of taking those kids and leaving him in that big empty house. God, it's two days before Christmas! How can I even say that out loud, what I'm doing to him? But I'm telling you, I can't breathe sometimes. This panic, it feels suffocating. I can't do it anymore."

"And it makes me a monster, you wanna know why? When I finally decided, for real, when I told myself it was over, when I gave myself that, the thought of my whole future, wide open and free of him, free to live my life the way I want, free to love whoever I want - I wasn't sad, not at all. I felt such unbelievable relief. I felt peace."

Charlotte feels the need to say something. "It doesn't make you a monster." It doesn't feel like enough. Seeing the despair in Leila's eyes, she can't remember how she ever expected her to just grin and bear this. When she's so happy herself, how could she demand anything less for her best friend?

"I have nothing," Leila says.

"You have $10,000 now."

"I'm not talking about just money," Leila says. "I have three kids, two of them in diapers. I have no family, they all hate me and we haven't spoken in ten years. I have no one. How am I supposed to leave my husband?"

"Do you think I wouldn't help you? If it's going to come to that?"

"No, actually, I didn't think you would. You made your stance pretty clear."

"I'm sorry," Charlotte says, wrapping an arm around her back. "What I said - I know, that wasn't fair of me." Charlotte still remembers that night Leila stopped seeing Corbin, that same night she lectured her like a reckless teenager, and she never spoke his name again. The whole time they were seeing each other, their secret conversations near the pond, their phone calls, the pie, he was all she would talk about. "You don't talk about him anymore."

Leila speaks his name in a hushed voice. "Corbin?"

Charlotte laughs. "It's not really a secret," she says. "I already know what you did."

"Yeah, and you made yourself pretty clear about that too."

"I had newborns," Charlotte says. "You can't hold that against me."

"He must hate me," Leila says. "I wrote him this letter. Who does that? One of the most important people I've ever met, and I was going to end it with a letter? I feel like such a coward. He must think I'm such a pathetic, worthless human being."

Charlotte shakes her head. "I doubt it."

"Amelia was here today," Leila says. "Were you expecting her?"

"No, what did she want?"

"I don't know. A bear? And she was asking weird questions, about kids."

Charlotte shrugs. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know," Leila says.

The floor isn't cleaning itself. The kitchen appliances hum, and this late at night, Bluewater's Main Street would normally be empty, but tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and people are still out, walking and shopping and celebrating not having to work in the morning.

Leila's voice is soft and nostalgic, blending into the chaos of sounds. "I married Matt because I was in love with the idea of us. I knew we didn't have enough to make it."

"Don't we all at that age? I was in love with the idea of Adam, that's why it took me so long to get over him."

"Am I in love with the idea of Corbin too? Is this what I do? How do you know the difference?"

"Ideas are perfect. People are not. Name something not perfect about him."

Leila laughs. "Believe me, there's plenty. He doesn't live on this planet, most of the time. He has all these ideas, and he thinks they're so golden. Some of them are, but most of them are just going to have him old and alone and destitute. He'll probably never make much money. He's scared of stopping for too long, because he might have to admit that he feels something. He's thirty-two years old and only started his first savings account, and that's only because someone made him. He can't dance, actually, he refuses to dance. It makes him feel silly. He takes himself too seriously. He takes himself far too seriously."

"And his nose is too big," Charlotte says.

Leila smiles. "No. His nose is perfect."

"I don't get it," Charlotte says. "Why did you stop? That night? Why didn't you just do it?"

"Because what's the point? One time? What good is that? I didn't want just one time. It's like those kisses. I never wanted to stop him. I could have, but I never did. What good is one, if I'd never get another again?"

"I thought you said you only kissed him once."

"I only kissed him once." Leila grins, full of mischief. It's been a long time since Charlotte saw that smile. "But he actually kissed me all the time. It's weird, I never really realized how much, they were so little, inconspicuous kisses. On my hand, or on my forehead, or on my cheek, or my shoulder. He actually kissed my hand the first night we met." Leila laughs out loud, as if from a dream. "Have you ever been kissed on the cheekbone before?"

"I don't know, maybe," Charlotte says.

"Oh, you would know it if you have."

"There was this one time, we were sitting in the courtyard. He told me he never dances. And I was like, what? Never? Not even a slow dance? Not even a wedding? He said he hadn't even slow danced since his senior prom. So I told him, 'Let's fix that then.'

"There wasn't any real music, only this zen trancy stuff coming through the speakers. So I pulled him up, and I said, 'It's like a hug, it's less touching than a hug, and we hug all the time.' Well that's what I thought, and so we did, but it was so lasting. And face to face. It was a bad idea maybe. I had to put my head on his shoulder to keep from looking him in the eyes, because otherwise I would have to kiss him, there was just no avoiding it."

"So I had my head on his shoulder, and he kissed me, here." She points to her cheekbone, just beside her eye. "I could feel his breath on my eyelashes. His breath on my eyelashes." Leila sighs. "That was three days before I kissed him for real. I'm telling you, if you're ever trying not to kiss someone, don't do that."

Charlotte had it half right - this is just how she is. But she doesn't just mean lusty. She means hopelessly full of heart. The girl can't help it; she never could. Leila's gaze falls light and dreamy across the room - you could almost imagine the clouds filling her head. This is just how she is - feeling her way through life, led by her heart with wild and hopeless abandon. This is just how she is when she's in love, filled with this unavoidable, unstoppable, and untouchable light.

***

They lock up when they're finished cleaning and walk to their cars together. Leila can't make this night drag on forever, as much as she might want to. At least for right now, she's still married to her husband, and she's still sharing a house with him.

The politeness wears off. Her husband's politeness and generosity are not givens. Politeness is something contingent upon respect - she doesn't figure he respects her anymore. Or not much anyway. She's broken so many promises, and he must feel her about to break more. And as these bonds break down, he doesn't even owe her his politeness anymore. As their ties fall apart, he becomes short and impatient with her.

Charlotte's family is the only family she has anymore.

Her parents told her she would regret this some day. She was so stubborn. Fine, they said, have it your way. And she did. She had it her way and now this is where she is. An eighteen year-old girl never wants to believe that her parents actually know what's best for her after all. She can't bring herself to contact them. What would she even say, that they were right? And are they right? She doesn't even know yet. As messy as things are, she isn't sure she'd take back her decisions. They are what they are, and they've made her who she is.

Her parents had all the money they could want, but no soul. They were such cold, ruthless, firm people. She never envied them for who they were. She only fought against everything they were with her whole little heart.

This is what she comes from, and she wonders what that means about her. Corbin always talked about his parents with such love and compassion. It made her want to meet them. They would have been too good for her. He was too good for her. If what her parents said was true, what Matt says is true, what everyone's ever said about her was true, then who is she anyway but a careless, troublesome, tart? Would she only ruin his life like this someday too?

Leila starts her car, and sits there long after Charlotte has pulled off in hers. This late and the kids would already be in bed. She doesn't know what she's going home to, but she has to go there anyway. She has to go somewhere. She has $10,000 in her purse - well enough for a lavish vacation somewhere tropical, sand and ocean, fruity drinks with paper umbrellas in them - but she needs to put a down payment on a house. Three bedrooms, at least. A yard. Maybe she'll buy them a dog. Maybe it's like balancing an equation - big yard with a creek, plus a tree house, multiplied by a dog, and that cancels out the value of their parents getting divorced?

So they right everything wrong in the world, and all that? Kids, I mean, they make it all worth it?

What kind of question is that? What does it mean? This afternoon had to be one of the strangest meetings of her life. The questions she asked, the look on her face. Amelia recognized her too. More than that, Amelia seemed to have come there to find her. Did he send her? Leila wonders, what did she want to say? Leila had so many questions she was dying to ask herself. Is he okay? Has he moved on, forgotten her entirely? Does he hate her?

She thinks it through with her head - Amelia wouldn't have been there, acting like she was, if he was okay. Amelia wouldn't have been there at all if he'd moved on, if he didn't care. Amelia being there at all, like she was, means something.

She's found herself in these past weeks, dialing his number, backspacing over it, hovering over the "call" button, but not pressing it.

She has so much to say, but nothing to tell him. She's leaving her husband - she has to - but that's all she knows right now. She'd be no good for Corbin right now, and she never even knew what he wanted anyway. Her whole soul aches with disappointment, with guilt, with regret, with one wrong turn after another, with failure. She feels the pain she's causing everyone - she carries it on her own shoulders.

But she misses him. Desperately.

She presses "call."

Her heart leaps instantly into her chest. She's terrified he'll answer. She doesn't even know what she'll say. What does she even have to tell him?

I think I'm leaving my husband, but I don't know when or how? I still love you but I'm not ready to be with you? Merry Christmas? Do you hate me? Oh, and that letter? Um, never mind?

But he doesn't answer.

Instead his message plays. She helped him record this, and she even set up his voice mail account for him. What kind of man can explain ancient Chinese philosophy to a hall full of college students, but can't set up a voice mail account? His voice echoes deeply through the tinny phone speaker. "Um, hi? You have reached Corbin Gray..." Hi - a question, not a statement. She smiles in the dark. She would call to hear his voice again and again.

But then it ends. Beeeeeep.

For seconds - an eternity - she breathes into the empty phone static. There's only one certain thing she's known in eight long weeks. So she says it.

"I miss you."

*******

(footnotes: what Charlotte said // Amelia // leaving Matt)