Tracy Flick Can't Win (Tracy Flick #2) (15)

She didn’t need much in the way of groceries, but she took her time, visiting every aisle, “Lyin’ Eyes” flowing into “Baker Street,” and then into “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” which was the one that got her choked up, because it was true what Tina Turner said, every last word of it.



* * *



She told herself to go straight home—hop in the shower, put on some clean PJs, get a good night’s sleep—but that was just for show, a little game she played with herself. There was one quick stop she needed to make on the way, though it wasn’t exactly on the way. She’d been going there a lot lately, way too much, and it was beginning to worry her, this feeling of urgency and agitation that had been building up inside of her throughout the fall, a sense that something needed to be done, that the status quo was unacceptable.

It had started the first day of school, when Jack announced his retirement. He didn’t give her any advance warning, didn’t take her aside and whisper a few kind words to cushion the blow, not that she was surprised. He’d made it painfully clear over the past several years that her emotional needs were no longer part of the equation. She was just another member of his “main office team,” and not a very important one at that—just the secretary who answered the phone, the one who’d been there forever. She wasn’t surprised by his behavior, only by how much it hurt, how raw the wound still was after the ancient bandage got ripped away.

It took her a week to work up the courage to knock on his door. He looked a little worried when he saw her there—she used to stand in that doorway a lot—but he recovered quickly. He was a master of the quick recovery.

“I’m happy for you,” she said. “That’s great news about your wife.”

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s quite a relief.”

“And you got an RV?”

He looked a little sheepish, because she knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t an RV kind of guy.

“It’s a Winnebago,” he explained. “She wants to take it out west. Visit the national parks.”

“That sounds nice,” Diane said, and she meant it.

“Well.” He glanced at his stapler, then out the window. Anywhere but her face. “She’s been through the wringer. She deserves a little…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence, or didn’t want to, so Diane finished it for him in her mind. Alice deserved a little pampering, a little love, some time to enjoy life when she wasn’t scared or sick or in pain. Of course she did.

“Anyway.” Jack nodded at his computer screen. “I’ve got some…”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “No worries. Sorry to bother you.”

“Thank you, Diane.” He was an old man now, still handsome—Tracy Flick said he looked like a Senator who’d been voted out of office—but his shoulders were stooped, and his face had taken on a hangdog quality, as if his cheeks were beginning to melt. It should have made her feel better somehow, but it didn’t. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

She returned to the front desk, feeling sick and helpless, and forced her face into its habitual mask of welcome. Thank you, Diane. That’s very thoughtful. It felt like a poison pill was dissolving in her gut, very slowly, spreading all the way out to her fingers and toes, and that night she drove to his house for the first time in years, just to take a quick look at the famous RV. It was bigger than she’d imagined—very comfortable looking—and of course she’d gone back the next night and the night after that, because that was what she needed right now. To hold a vigil in front of Jack’s stupid Winnebago and feel her own pain.



* * *



He used to tell her that she was the love of his life—maybe not in those exact words—and she’d believed him, up to a point. She still did, despite all the evidence to the contrary. He said there’d only been one other woman with whom he’d shared such a powerful connection, some college girl—a folk singer—he’d dated for a summer in his twenties. He said he’d never had anything like that with his wife, though they cared deeply for each other and made a good parenting team.

But this, he’d say, meaning the two of them and whatever sex they’d just had. This is… a whole other thing.

They’d worked together for eight years before anything happened. There’d been some flirting—a hand on an arm, eye contact that lasted a little too long—but it all felt fairly safe and aboveboard. They were both married and he had almost twenty years on her, a whole generation spread out between them.

She caught him looking at her body sometimes, and he always responded with a sweet, guilty shrug, as if he couldn’t help himself. He paid a lot of attention to her clothes. Yellow’s a good color for you, he’d say. She wasn’t getting much of that from her husband, that was for sure. Lance was the exact opposite, always a little underwhelmed by whatever she had to offer. I don’t love those jeans, he’d say. Or: Something’s a little weird about this sauce. Or: Jesus, would you watch it with the teeth?

And then Lance walked out on her right after the holidays, no warning at all, unless you count years of unhappiness as a warning. He said he’d had an epiphany at work, a sudden blinding realization that his life was all wrong. He didn’t want to be an accountant anymore, or a husband, and he definitely didn’t want to go through another round of IVF with her.