Joy For Beginners by Erica Bauermeister Read Free Book Online Page A

the empty dumpster.
    “Good girl,” said Marion. “Now, I’m going to take a walk. You can box up the rest.”
     
    THERE WERE NOT as many books here as in the city, Caroline thought as she ran her eyes around the living room of the cottage, but the arrangement was more casual, Jack’s and Brad’s books intermixed with hers on the shelves, tossed on coffee tables, hidden in the couch cushions. She couldn’t even tell for sure whose was whose sometimes. The cottage was where Jack had brought his favorite childhood books— Harold and the Purple Crayon , Robinson Crusoe , Huckleberry Finn . Caroline remembered winter evenings cooking dinner in the kitchen, hearing the sound of Jack’s voice reading aloud, or later, Brad’s voice reading to his father.
    What should she do with the children’s books? They were Brad’s as much as his father’s—and the thought that Jack might want them for future children made Caroline want to start a fire in the woodstove and feed it with words. But should she save them for Brad? And what would those books mean to him now? Brad’s response to his father’s leaving had been abrupt and angry, his attitude toward his mother protective. Caroline still got her son’s cell phone bill; there were no records of calls to his father.
    But Brad and his father had been close before, especially at the cottage. They had all been different here, she thought as she looked around the room, their roles softened, melded, the need for efficiency falling away with every mile they traveled from the city. During those times, Brad didn’t belong to her, Jack didn’t belong to work; they all had simply belonged to each other.
    She understood what Marion had been talking about the night before, about marriage; it made more sense here in this place than anywhere. Over the years of her marriage, she had experienced that ebb and swell of feeling many times. The dry days, when life with Jack was one more item on her to-do list, followed by the return of something so familiar, the gratitude she had always experienced along with a start of recognition—oh yes, that was what it felt like; how could she have forgotten? So often, she had felt her love for her husband return here at the cottage, in a moment when she would see Jack look up from a puzzle, or come in to help her put sheets on their bed.
    Yet somewhere along the line, she had always forgotten again. And over the years she had forgotten it more quickly, easily, until even the loveliest gestures, the ones that might have brought the emotion flowing in to shore—the way Jack washed her car every Sunday so she could start the week fresh, the way she always brought him coffee while he took a shower—merged with all the other ones—his steadfast ability to sleep through the sound of a crying baby, her inability to leave on a trip without turning back twice to check for stove burners left on—all those tics and traits stored in the house that was their marriage, overrunning the space, piling up against the door like solicitations until, yes, the desire simply to walk away and leave them behind was almost overwhelming. Almost. Because the one thing she could never forgive Jack for was the way he had blown open the door of their marriage first and left. Jack-in-the-box, turning his own handle, springing up and out, hands free.
    Caroline worked steadily, sorting through belongings, filling boxes. By the time she was finished, it was late afternoon; Marion had come back from her walk long before and had gone out for groceries. Caroline grabbed one last paperback, left on top of the refrigerator—a thriller, the kind Jack had been reading the past few years. A piece of paper fell out from between the pages. She picked it up and looked at it, and again more closely. A biopsy report. Type: Prostate. Results: Negative.
    Caroline scanned the paper for the date and found it at the top of the page. September, a little over a year ago. Kate had been five months