LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE C.C.

      C.C.’s huge suitcase lay open on her bed, looking like a collapsed buffet guest. It was already too full to close, primarily due to the brand-new velour sweatsuits, tags still on, neatly folded and fanned on top of the bulging mound. Even so, C.C. turned a slow circle, scanning for anything she might have forgotten. She could tuck an item or two into the trunk of Meg’s car.

      Should she take the third of a bottle of Happiness perfume on her dresser? No. One orange foam earplug on the bedside table? She tossed it over the bed toward the wastebasket. When it arced right in, she grinned. ‘That’s a good omen!’ She bent to pick up an old paper bookmark lying forlornly on the floor. She walked over and dropped it directly in with the earplug. Bookmarks didn’t fly well, and if she missed the wastebasket, well…Best not to tempt the fates.

      Looking around the room, she mostly saw what wasn’t there. The other earplug. The rest of the perfume. And most of all, Lenny, who had bought her the perfume, for whom she’d worn the perfume. And whose snoring had made her reach for the earplugs each night.

      She stepped to her dresser, picked up the picture of the two of them, its chrome frame glinting in the stark light of the nearly empty room. She had already packed the smaller picture, the one of Lenny and Kathryn and Lucy on the couch on Christmas morning, Lenny’s long arms embracing both her girls amid a litter of colorful paper and ribbons. She’d wrapped it in a short-sleeve cotton top, placed it in the middle of her suitcase, safely tucking it away, ready for the trip.

      The trip. That seemed too small a word for this big…adventure. She laughed a little, all by herself there in her quiet bedroom. C.C. and Shelly and Meg’s Big Adventure.

      She stared at the picture in her hands. It wasn’t a great picture, but it was the last one taken of just the two of them, at the Iowa Accountants Labor Day picnic two years ago. They were in front of a big oak tree, had their arms around each other, hers on Len’s thin waist, his hanging over her shoulder like a friendly snake. The light around them was peach-colored, and lovely, but they were both squinting into the setting sun. Like they were trying to see into the future or something. She’d left this picture out of the boxes till the last possible moment, to keep her company, and give her resolve. She touched Lenny’s smile. She could imagine him telling her, Go ahead, be brave.

      Her eyes moist, C.C. allowed herself half a moment to hug the frame to her chest, then hurriedly pulled the nearest unsealed box across the carpet toward her. But when she saw the contents of the box, she laughed. Her extra slips, lingerie and other ‘unmentionables’. She wouldn’t be needing those. She didn’t fit into most anyway. She tucked the frame in, burrowing it into the slinky depths.

      ‘How’s that, darlin’?’

      Eighteen months after his funeral, she could now finally talk to him without bawling. She’d considered bringing his sealed urn down south, but realized it wasn’t practical; she’d be devastated if something happened to it while they were on the road, or after. Where would she put it, after all? There would be painting, construction–mess throughout the house down there. So, months ago, before her house even went on the market, Kathryn had taken it, checking with Lucy first to make sure it was okay with her to have the urn in their apartment. Kathryn had told C.C. that, every night, Lucy blew Lenny a kiss; she called him ‘Papaw-on-the-bookcase’. Blood may be thicker than water, C.C. thought, but sometimes love was thicker than blood.

      The sound of a car pulling into the driveway drew her to the window. She knew without lifting the blind, from the glub-glub motorboat sound, that it was Kathryn’s old Pontiac. The engine cut as C.C. glanced at her watch. They were early. Meg and Shelly wouldn’t be here till six thirty for the ‘clean your fridge out potluck’, as Shelly called it. C.C. sucked in a breath. This dinner would be it, the big goodbye, to Kathryn and Lucy. And C.C.’s last chance to make things right with her daughter, which she had little hope of achieving.

      They could have said their goodbyes in the morning, Meg having pointed out that they might as well wait till after rush hour to head out of town. But Kathryn had to work the early shift at the store, and Lucy had school, although C.C. knew both would like to have a reason not to go. But C.C. needed to say her goodbyes the night before; she didn’t want to be sitting in the back seat crying for the first hundred miles.

      She stood, massaging her lower back. If fifty was the new forty, it still came with the old aches and pains of fifty. She reached up toward the ceiling, stretching, muttering a Hail Mary, but thinking it wasn’t quite fair that she felt fifty, six months before she turned fifty.

      C.C. lowered her arms, found herself staring out the bedroom door, down the hall, at the blank wall, the nails and hooks poking forlornly out of the wall where the family pictures had hung. She’d decided to leave them; maybe the new family would use them. How odd it had felt, padding about her nearly empty house these last few days, knowing it wasn’t hers anymore. Most of the proceeds from the sale had gone directly into an account that, God willing, would be enough to buy a small place outright, when she returned. There wasn’t nearly as much as she had hoped; they didn’t have a lot of equity, and she’d gotten caught in a down market. If the housing market recovered before she was ready to buy, she’d be in a real pickle. Yet again, her security seemed inexorably linked to Dogs’ Wood, Aunt Georgie’s house–her house, now–in Tennessee.

      The closing on her Iowa house had been weeks ago, but Shelly–real-estate agent extraordinaire–had put a clause in the contract for C.C. to rent it back till they left, and a few days beyond so that Kathryn could come to collect the bed and dresser for her apartment, and take the remaining boxes to storage. C.C. had had a flare of excitement when Kathryn had mentioned the new guy at work, Matt, who had a truck and was going to help her move the things. The maternal delight had once again been too obvious

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