Read Online Where Love Goes by Joyce Maynard - Free Book Online Page B

worried about her mental state,” Sam said. “Knowing the history of psychological instability in her family. My own parents have a very happy marriage, with no history of substance abuse. That’s probably why I have an easier time peeping my emotions in check.”
    Claire wanted to reach into her purse and take out the lucky baseball Mickey had sent to her for her day in court, that he used the day he pitched the one-hitter back in Birmingham. She wanted to hurl it at Sam, but of course that only would have proved him right. “Just don’t get hysterical on me,” her lawyer hissed at her. So she was stone.
    In court Craig, the guardian ad litem, testified that he had some concern about Claire’s status as an Adult Child of an Alcoholic and her tendency to be overemotional. “Knowing Mrs. Temple’s family background, and her apparent history of occasional outbursts in front of the children, it would probably be a good idea for her to get some therapy,” he said. “But since at this point in time she doesn’t appear to present a threat to herself or the children, I’m recommending that the children continue to maintain primary residence with their mother, and that the court mandate liberal weekly visitation with their father.” The judge concurred.
    C laire and Sam have been apart now over five years, divorced for three. In the yoga class she signed up for in an effort to get Mickey out of her brain and find some respite from the bitterness of the custody battle, Claire met Nancy, who was still married at the time, but not for long. They took to going for walks in the early-morning hours before her kids got up. Because of the walking and the low-fat diet Nancy has put her on, Claire is very lean now, and Nancy has become Claire’s best friend in Blue Hills. They have taken country line dancing class together and gone camping on Lake Champlain while Claire’s kids were off with their father. One Christmas they bought themselves matching gold lamé dresses and performed a karaoke number together at the Ramada Inn that won first prize. Claire always laughs at Nancy’s dirty jokes as if she’s never heard them before. Nancy doesn’t mind it when Claire calls her up at night and she’s feeling lonely, no matter how late it is.
    For months after Claire and Mickey parted, while she was fighting to hold on to custody of her children, just the sound of Mickey’s voice brought tears to her eyes, so she didn’t talk to him. Sometimes he would send her tapes—Timbuk 3, Miles Davis, Milton Nascimento, Peter Gabriel—in which every song, every wailing trumpet, every chanting Bulgarian seemed to be speaking directly to her. She knew he still loved her, same as she still loved him. There was simply nothing to be done about it.
    After almost a year of taking out the thought of Mickey and turning it around in her brain almost hourly, the sensation of missing him was no longer so much a shooting pain as it was a dull, bearable ache. She hadn’t forgotten the look of his body, naked, or his particular, distinctive windup when he threw a curveball out on the pitcher’s mound for the Hornets. But now she could consider these things without an accompanying stab.
    Claire had been dating a divorced lawyer in town for a few months at this point, and she was having occasional, companionable sex with him, without any illusions on anybody’s part concerning love. One day without any deliberation at all she picked up the phone and dialed Mickey’s number. When he answered, she said, “It’s Claire, Mickey. I just finished listening to the new Joni Mitchell album and I was wondering if you’d heard it yet.” Then she realized he was playing the same album, right then.
    “Some good songs on this one, all right, Slim,” he said, as if it had been yesterday when they’d spoken last, instead of almost a year ago. “But Joni’s got to give up cigarettes. Her voice is shot.”
    He was back in her life. But it was different this