Wake Up, Wanda Wiley Read online

  His tone was surprisingly cool and reserved.

  “I was planning on it,” Wanda said. “Listen, I’m sorry about last night.”

  “I’m not.”

  “No? You look upset.” She pointed to the boxes in the back seat. “You leaving? Today? I thought it was tomorrow.”

  Austin shrugged. “There’s no point in me being here anymore.”

  In the moment of awkward silence that followed, they heard Dirk curse at the open trunk of the BMW two-seater convertible just up the street.

  They both turned to see him stomping down the sidewalk.

  “Wandaaa!”

  “What, Dirk?”

  “How big is that bag?”

  “This big.” She pointed to the suitcase beside her.

  “Why did you choose that one?” The exasperation in his tone suggested she had wronged him. “It’s too big for the trunk.”

  “Well why’d you have to put all that crap in there?”

  “Excuse me?” he said with an exaggerated tone of offense. “We’re going to the beach. THE. BEACH.” He let out a sigh of exasperation that said talking to idiots like her was pointless. Then he announced he was thirsty, as if that were the news the whole neighborhood had been dying to hear. He dashed up the walk and thundered across the porch and through the door, which closed behind him with a jolting slam.

  Wanda let out the breath she had been holding and turned her attention back to Austin.

  “Are you really going with him?” Austin asked.

  “Of course I am. Where else would I go?” She noticed then that his front passenger seat was empty. The whole front of the car was immaculate, as if prepared to receive her.

  “Oh, come on, Austin!”

  “How many times have you asked yourself that question?” His face had a look of immovable resolve.

  “What question?”

  “Where else would I go?” He could see her getting uncomfortable, so he pressed his point. “How many times, Wanda? Isn’t that always your excuse for not leaving him?”

  “Austin, this isn’t the time.”

  “Every day since you’ve been with him hasn’t been the time. But someday has to be the time. Someday you have to do it.”

  She shook her head. “Not today, Austin.”

  “I don’t understand what holds you.”

  “No,” she said, her anger rising. “No, you don’t. And Louise doesn’t either. And neither does Audrey. But you all judge. All of you judge what you don’t understand.”

  “But you’re good with it?” Austin asked.

  Dirk exploded through the door of the house with his bullhorn.

  “WANDAAA!”

  With his toy in his hand, his magical Dirk amplifier, he was as happy as a kindergartener on the last day of school.

  On his way past them, Dirk told Wanda to get in the car and told Austin to have a nice trip. Then he was back at the BMW, slamming the trunk. He turned and said through the bullhorn, “YOU’LL HAVE TO PUT YOUR BAG IN YOUR LAP.”

  He grinned at the sound of his voice filling the neighborhood. Then, like a boy just discovering the pleasures of touching himself, he had to do it again.

  “I’LL BE IN THE CAR!”

  The curtain in the house across the street opened so the neighbor could look out on the commotion.

  “You’re good waking up to that?” Austin asked. “Day after day?”

  God, he’s so persistent. “Drop it, Austin.”

  “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…”

  Those words sent a jolt through her. How did he know to say that?

  “Austin, what you did last night was nice. I mean, it was a big fuck-you to Dirk—”

  “It was.”

  “—and I liked the kiss more than I thought I would, but… You’re not, like, my knight in shining armor. I mean, I like you, but please don’t have any delusions about—”

  “This isn’t a seduction, Wanda. It’s an intervention.”

  Why did those words shake her so?

  “You know, I tried to get Audrey here. I tried to get Louise and Peter.”

  “Oh, that would have backfired,” Wanda said. “Audrey maybe, but not the other two. I’d do the opposite of whatever they said.”

  “That’s exactly it,” Austin said.

  “WANDAAA!” Dirk had opened the roof of the convertible and pointed the bullhorn to the sky. “OH WANDA WIIIIIILEY! YOUR VACATION IS WAITING!”

  “That’s exactly your problem,” Austin said. “You think it’s all about seduction and passion and drama. But it’s not. Real life is written in prose. It’s practical and sometimes it’s boring. It’s what you see when you look at me. Your problem is that you’re addicted to drama. You’re scared that if you lose the violent ups and downs you won’t be able to write anymore. You’ll fall out of touch with passion and not be able to lay it out on the page for your readers. But how much is it costing you? How much is this life costing you?”

  “Damnit, Austin!” She was angry now that he had poked his intrusive finger directly into the heart of the matter. “There are things you will never understand, because you’re not that kind of person. There are things you can’t even know you don’t understand.”

  “Like what? That he reads you? That he sees into you and always knows what you’re feeling?”

  “Yes, for starters.”

  “Of course he knows your feelings. He’s the one who puts them there in the first place. He knows your insecurities because he’s always stoking them. He knows when you’re desperate for attention and approval, because he made you that way. All his words and actions are calculated to make you dependent. And then when he gives you what you want, you think it’s the greatest thing in the world, because you’ve been so deprived. You’ve wanted it so badly you’re like a starving animal rejoicing over a morsel of food.”

  “How dare you talk to me that way!” His words were too much on the mark. She didn’t want to cry. She was humiliated enough as it was. “What the hell do you want from me anyway?”

  “I want you to leave with me. Now.”

  She laughed scornfully. “I’m not in love with you.”

  “I know that, Wanda.”

  She was surprised that bounced right off him. She had intended it to hurt.

  “What’s my angle?” Austin asked rhetorically. “Is that what you’re wondering?”

  Why could he see what she was thinking when she couldn’t see what he was thinking? Her position of powerlessness made her even more angry.

  “My angle is I think you’re a beautiful person. I told you that. And I think he’s horrible. And I can’t stand to see someone like you dominated by someone like him. I can’t just walk away from that and let it happen. The world where things like that are allowed to happen is a dark and bitter world. That’s not the world I want to live in. That’s not the world I want you to live in.”

  His words had caught her off guard, as did the intensity of his conviction.

  “WAN…” There was the pause. She winced in anticipation of the coming syllable. “DAAAAAAAAAAA!”

  She balled her fists and screamed, “Shut up, Dirk!”

  “BEACH WEEK!”

  Austin put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t want to look at him or hear any more of his words.

  “Did Dirk open the gift? The one I brought over last night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You would know if he did. Go inside and open it.”

  She hesitated, wondering what this new ploy was about.

  “I don’t even know where he put it,” Wanda said.

  “Well then think. Where would Dirk put a gift addressed to Dirk?”

  “On his desk?”

  “Go open it and look,” Austin said. “And then make your decision. Pick which car you want to get into.”

  She tried to read his face to see what he was up to.

  “Go,” he said
.

  34

  “There’s a lot of shouting going on up there,” Trevor said.

  “I can see it right out here,” Hannah replied. She pointed at the roiling black smoke beyond the rattling windows. “Everything is getting churned up from the depths.”

  Trevor stood by the mantle of the empty fireplace and watched her. She reclined on the couch in her black slacks and white blouse, puzzling through the Rubik’s cube. She had four sides of it solved already.

  “You know what it is?” Hannah looked up at Trevor. “That gets to her?”

  “What?”

  “It’s the words. She’s always been susceptible to words. Her writing. Her love of Shakespeare. Some people respond to music and some to touch. For her it’s language. There’s a direct line into her mind and heart, and Austin knows that. He knows exactly what to say.”

  “You’re awfully calm,” Trevor said.

  “The end is near.”

  “What do you want to do when you get out of here?”

  She sat up and resumed her work on the puzzle. “I’ve thought about that. I’ve had years to think about it, but I don’t like to get my hopes up. She’s so out of touch with herself, I fear another letdown. Like she’ll try to write me into another romance where I just don’t fit. I don’t want to be in a romance.”

  “What do you want?”

  She put the cube down on the couch beside her. “You’ll think it’s funny,” she said.

  “Try me.”

  “I want to be in politics. And I don’t mean the local school board. I mean the big time.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Trevor said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’ve spent time guarding presidents and senators. Those jobs aren’t easy. In fact, they’re maddening.”

  “But what qualities does a person need to do them?” Hannah stood and walked toward him, as if to challenge him. “Vision, compassion, leadership. A strong practical streak. A focus on results. I have those qualities.”

  “You forgot ego and a thick skin,” Trevor said.

  “You don’t need a thick skin if you don’t have a big ego.”

  “Maybe so. But for every friend you make in politics, you’ll get an enemy.”

  Hannah shrugged.

  “The worst thing,” Trevor said, “is that you have to compromise all the time, and when you do, you lie awake at night thinking about the people you just sold out in order to get that compromise. The politicians who really care—and there are some who really do—they’re always aware of the price they’ve paid. They’re always thinking how far they’ve fallen short of serving everyone they wanted to serve, of solving all the problems they wanted to solve.”

  “Well that’s the price of compassion, isn’t it? Feeling the pain of those left behind. But what’s a leader without that? What’s a life without compassion?”

  She turned and paced toward the far side of the room.

  “I still want to do it,” she said.

  “I can see that.”

  “I mean, when you feel you were put here to do something, you have to be given the chance to do it. Otherwise, you haven’t lived. And there’s a sadness to that. A sadness Wanda feels, and I feel. My worry is that she’ll never give me the chance.”

  She walked back and stood beside him by the cold fireplace. “Do you think you could ask her?”

  Trevor shook his head. “You need to ask her.”

  “She never hears me.”

  Trevor went to the couch and picked up the cube.

  “You need to ask her,” he repeated. “This is between you two.”

  He handed her the puzzle.

  35

  Wanda made her way slowly up the steps to the porch, her heart swelling with fear. Dirk had left the door unlocked. Just like him. Going away for a week and leaving the house open.

  She walked inside and up the stairs. Everything had a sudden clarity. A frightful clarity and presence. The grain of the wood on the bannister, the brightness of the late morning light spilling from the bedroom. The echo of her footsteps in the empty house reminded her of the day six years ago when they had found this place, when he stood talking in the kitchen with the realtor—flirting with the realtor—while Wanda walked the floors upstairs and mentally placed the furniture in the room of the child she would give him. In the room that was now his office.

  There on the desk sat the package, wrapped in green. She picked it up and felt the frame. A photo, she thought.

  She opened the little card taped to the front.

  To Dirk. From Wanda.

  Why from Wanda, she wondered.

  She opened the taped seam along the back, careful not to rip it. She unfolded the paper and looked at the frame, afraid to turn it over.

  I don’t want to cry anymore, she thought. This better not make me cry. I don’t want to walk past Austin all red-faced and puffy-eyed and admit that I’m a coward. Why did he have to turn this into such a scene?

  She turned the frame over. There was no photo, only words. Fourteen lines, carefully transcribed.

  She read them once, straight through, and they struck like thunder, giving voice with eloquent power to what she already knew and understood. No one could have stated more clearly the feelings she had worked so hard to suppress. For several minutes, she sat still and quiet with her eyes closed, letting the words sink in.

  She lay the frame face-down in the wrapping, folded the paper, and re-taped the seam. She turned the package face-up and left it there with the card on top.

  To Dirk. From Wanda.

  She didn’t lock the house on the way out.

  Austin sat in his car, the engine idling as he watched.

  She opened the passenger door, threw her bags on the floor, and got in.

  “Drive,” she said.

  “You OK?”

  “I’m OK.”

  It wasn’t just clarity she had now. It was certainty and resolve. An unshakable resolve that he could see. That gave him hope, because he knew that if he could pull the two magnets far enough apart, they would lose their hold on each other.

  He pulled out to the street, past Dirk in the BMW.

  “We’re going all the way across the country,” Austin said.

  “I know.” She looked straight ahead and her tone was flat.

  “It’s a long drive.”

  “The farther the better.”

  Dirk caught on as they neared the end of the block. He put the BMW in gear and lurched into the driving lane. At the intersection, he stopped behind them.

  “WANDAAA! YOU’RE IN THE WRONG CAR!”

  He didn’t get it. This was just another day, another fight, and his yo-yo would come back to him like it always did.

  Austin turned the corner, onto the boulevard that led to the highway that led to the other side of the country and a life that wouldn’t be this one anymore.

  In the left lane he picked up speed.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “I know you, Wanda.”

  Dirk pulled up alongside them on the right and pointed the bullhorn out the driver’s window.

  “WANDAAAAA!”

  She winced and put her hand to her ear.

  “Watch where you’re going, Dirk!”

  “WAN—”

  He slammed into the back of a parked police cruiser before he could get the last syllable out.

  To the last syllable of recorded time.

  She turned to see the wreck. The airbag had exploded into his face while he held the bullhorn.

  “I hope he didn’t knock his pretty teeth out.” She faced forward again. “They’re so important to him.”

  Austin shrugged.

  “Seriously, Austin, how did you know?”

  “Everyone knew.”

  “No, not that. I mean the words. How did you know those would be the words?”

  “I listen to
you, Wanda.” He kept his eyes on the road ahead. “I’ve listened to every word you’ve ever said. Even when you weren’t listening to yourself.”

  36

  “You’ve been around a lot,” Hannah said. “You’ve seen much more of the world than I have.”

  “I’ve seen the bad parts of it,” Trevor replied. “The politics, the warring ideologies, the killing.”

  They were sitting side by side on the couch. The house was growing lighter. Beyond the parted curtains, a powerful wind pushed the fog away until at last a stream of sunlight poured in.

  “If I were ever to go into politics,” she said, “it would be nice to have someone to bounce ideas off. Someone whose perspective is different from mine. Someone who can listen long enough to get me, who can call me out when I’m wrong and reaffirm me when I’m right.”

  Why is she prettier now, Trevor wondered, in those plain black slacks than she had been in her satin dress? How strange, he thought, to be so drawn to a woman he had never even mentally undressed. It seemed an impossibly long time ago that he had thought she was a witch. How had she come to this?

  His conversation with the president came back to him. The tough-guy president, his former CO and brother in arms, who had willingly crossed the street from fame and power to anonymity and quiet contemplation.

  “You ever watch the sparrows hop around and pick at crumbs on the sidewalk?”

  “That would bore the shit out of me.”

  “That’s what I used to think… I’m beginning to understand why the Buddha sat still to find enlightenment. I used to think it was something you had to go out and grab by the balls.”

  How had Hannah come to look different from all other women, Trevor wondered. What dimension existed in this relationship that was missing from all the others?

  “Respect,” Hannah whispered. “It’s the cornerstone of everything.”

  She kissed his cheek, and when she stood, she handed him the puzzle.

  All six sides were solved.

  37

  With each passing hour on the open highway, Wanda breathed more freely. The fifteen hundred miles between the Atlantic and the Rockies were one big cornfield interspersed here and there with patches of soybeans, shopping malls, and car dealerships.