The flowers had arrived just minutes after Lynn walked through her front door at the end of a frustrating day. She had spent hours at work on the phone getting nowhere and several more hours going in a similar direction with a family whose lives had been torn apart by their son’s drug use. To top it off, she’d had to endure a lengthy lecture by a lawyer named Stephen Hendrix, who represented an angry Keith Foster, father of the allegedly abused child, and who had told her plainly to stop harassing his client or he would have no alternative but to take legal action against her. Her personally, the lawyer stressed.
“We’ve received a complaint regarding a possible case of child abuse,” Lynn had told him, trying to keep her voice even, “and as I’m sure you’re well aware, Mr. Hendrix, all such complaints have to be investigated fully. I’ve tried to contact both Mr. and Mrs. Foster repeatedly to set up an appointment, and have met with the utmost resistance. The last time I drove out to the Harborside Villas, Patty Foster refused to open the door. I am not harassing your clients. I simply want to interview them, and their daughter, Ashleigh. I not only have that right, but that responsibility. If need be,” she had continued, looking up into the eyes of the man, who was a good foot taller than herself, and refusing to be intimidated, “I will bring along members of the Delray Beach police force on my next visit. You can sue them too. The choice is up to your clients.”
“I intend to be there,” Stephen Hendrix had announced at that point, capitulating, though he made it sound as if he still maintained the upper hand, “to monitor the conversation.”
“As you wish.” She had her secretary make the appointment for the following week. The Fosters were out of town and would be unavailable until then. Mr. Foster was a very busy, very important man, Stephen Hendrix had explained, not for the first time.
“We’re all busy,” she had told him plainly. “The child is who’s important here.”
Much as Lynn hated to admit it, such scenes took a lot out of her. She hated confrontations, voices raised in anger. Boy, did you get into the wrong line of work, she told herself as she pushed through her front door at the end of the day, heading straight into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice from the oranges that grew in her back yard. Megan and Nicholas would be home soon. She had just enough time to crawl into a nice, soothing bath. And then there was the knock at her front door, and a young delivery boy all but hidden behind a large box of flowers.
“Lynn Schuster?” he asked, quickly shoving the flowers at her before she had time to confirm or deny her identity. She watched him leave in something of a daze, the flowers balanced precariously in her arms, her eyes staring blankly ahead. It couldn’t be, she thought. He wouldn’t.
Slowly, not moving the rest of her body, she extended her right foot forward and kicked the front door gently closed. No, she thought, once again standing resolutely still, he wouldn’t.
She didn’t know how long she remained there, barefoot in her front hallway with a long rectangular box of flowers in her outstretched hands, but she gradually became aware of the box’s weight. She marched determinedly into the living room and sat down on the sofa, tearing open the box, temporarily ignoring the card. He wouldn’t, she thought again, staring at the dozen beautiful, long-stemmed yellow roses.
She left the roses lying in the box, watching her reluctant fingers stretch toward the small envelope, momentarily debating whether or not to open it or simply throw it out. “Oh, look, kids, someone sent us flowers,” she rehearsed, hearing in her mind the barrage of questions that would undoubtedly follow, ultimately tearing open the envelope and pulling the card free.
“Thank you for so many wonderful years,” she read out loud, her eyes clouding over. “Here’s hoping we can remain friends for many more.” She dropped the card on the rattan coffee table in front of her. “Love, Gary.” In the next minute, she was trying to hurl the top of the flower box across the room, but it was still partly secured to its lower half with a strip of adhesive tape, and so it merely bounced into the air and then dangled over the edge of the table threateningly. “God damn you to hell, Gary Schuster,” she cried, bursting into a flood of bitter tears.
She had been avoiding the reality of today since she had first opened her eyes that morning. July 16. Her wedding anniversary. She had ignored the calendar, skipped over the date on her appointment book. She had thrown herself into the mountain of work on her desk, dealing with her phone calls and clients, and confronting the Fosters’ unpleasant lawyer head-on, working right through lunch, avoiding, doing, until it was time to go home. Somehow she had managed to make it through most of the day.
And then the flowers had arrived. Were they Gary’s idea of a joke? Or had the flowers been Suzette’s idea? She stared into the box, amazed as she always was by the natural perfection of roses. Yellow roses were her favorite. Gary knew that, just as she knew that it had been Gary’s idea to send the flowers, not Suzette’s. The woman probably wasn’t even aware he had done so, would have been properly horrified at the thought, just as Lynn was horrified at having received them.
She knew Gary well enough to know that he had not intended to be cruel, that he genuinely believed he was doing something nice. The sensitive male of the eighties. Is this really what modern women wanted? Flowers from their exes on what would have been their anniversaries?
Absently, she reached down and fingered the card, which she read again. “Thank you for so many wonderful years,” she repeated aloud, incredulously. She brought her fist down angrily on the table and watched the flowers jump. “If they were so damn wonderful, why did you leave? And who the hell wants to be friends?” She shoved the box roughly to the green carpet, watching the roses spill out in attractive abandon, and then bent over to scoop them up. “Dammit,” she cried, carrying the box into the kitchen and dumping it into the sink. “What were you thinking of?” she asked, seeing Gary’s smiling face in front of her. “What on earth could have possessed you to send me these?”
And yet, deep down in the part of herself she had been hiding from all day, she had to admit she wasn’t all that surprised. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had suspected he might do something like this, although for a second before she looked at the card, she had entertained the possibility that the flowers might have come from Marc Cameron.
What was she supposed to do now? Was Gary expecting her to call and thank him? Should she, for God’s sake? What was the proper etiquette in a situation like this?
The hell with him, she thought, reaching for the phone, calling her lawyer instead. “Hello, Renee? It’s Lynn. Gary just sent me flowers. Can you believe it? It would have been our fifteenth wedding anniversary today, and the lunatic just sent me a dozen long-stemmed yellow roses. I’m shaking, I’m so upset. And I have to calm down before the children get home, but I keep looking at the flowers and reading that stupid card. Can you believe it? He hopes we can be friends for many years,” she continued in one frantic outpouring, vaguely aware that the woman on the other end didn’t seem to be giving her her full attention. And then Renee had snapped into action and told her to throw the flowers in the garbage and to make herself a good stiff drink. Somehow she had managed to pull herself together. Had she really carried on that way on the telephone? And what had made her call Renee Bower of all people? This wasn’t a legal problem. She had other, closer friends whom she could call. And yet, since her separation, she had felt curiously removed from all her old friends, most of whom had always viewed her as one half of a happily married pair. No one, least of all herself, quite knew what to make of her new status. Lynn reached into the sink, pulled out the box, and dumped the beautiful flowers into the trash can under the sink. She was pouring herself the good stiff drink Renee had recommended when she heard the camp bus pull up in front of her house.
“How was camp?” she asked her children as they scrambled past her toward the kitchen.
“Thirsty. I’m so thirsty,” Nicholas growled, clutching at his throat and knocking his plump little knees together, as Lynn reached into the refrigerator and poured both children a large glass of milk. “First taste,” Nicholas said, quickly taking a sip before Megan had a chance to lift the glass to her lips. “It was great,” he answered when his glass was empty.
“It was all right,” Megan said quietly, not even bothering to compete for the first loud gulp of milk.
“Something wrong, sweetie?”
Megan shook her head, finished her drink, and wiped her mouth with a napkin, about to discard it into the trash can under the sink when she saw the flowers. “What are these doing in here?” Megan pulled the yellow roses gingerly from their unorthodox vase. “Mom, why are these flowers in the garbage?” Lynn only shrugged, unable to come up with a suitable response. “Who sent them?”
“Your father,” Lynn said truthfully, then immediately wished she hadn’t. There had been no need to involve Megan in her misery.
Lynn expected her daughter to react with furious indignation, and watched in amazement as Megan simply returned the flowers to the trash can and shut the cupboard door. “Megan?” she called after her as the girl fled the room in tears. Lynn turned toward Nicholas, who stood watching the scene with eyes like saucers. “All right, what happened?”
“Nothing,” Nicholas answered, averting his gaze to the floor and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Camp was great …”
“I don’t mean at camp. I mean on Saturday. At the lunch with Daddy. Neither one of you has said a word about it, and Megan’s been especially quiet ever since.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Nicky …”
“Can I have another glass of milk, please?”
“Did Daddy say something that upset Megan?”
“Not Daddy,” Nicholas answered, and then literally held his breath.
“What do you mean?” Lynn realized she was holding her own breath as well. “Was there someone else at the lunch with you and Daddy?”
Nicholas shrugged. “Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“There was sort of this woman there.”
“Do you remember this sort of woman’s name?”
Nicholas nodded. “Suzette,” he said finally, as Lynn had known he would.
Lynn reached over and drew her young son into her arms. “Thank you, sweetheart. I’m sorry you felt you had to keep that inside you.”
“Daddy said he thought it would be better if we didn’t tell you.”
Lynn nodded. I’ll bet he did, she thought, remembering that Gary had agreed not to introduce Suzette into his children’s lives until a few more months had passed. Let them deal with one thing at a time, Lynn had urged, and he had agreed. What had changed his mind? What was going on in that handsome head of his? She pictured the flowers behind the closed cupboard door. “You said you wanted another glass of milk?” she asked her son, surprised, as she always was, by how much he looked the way she herself had as a child. It was ironic, she thought, the word immediately conjuring up the image of Marc Cameron, that sons so often resembled their mothers whereas girls more often looked like their dads. Lynn poured Nicholas a second glass of milk before the boy had time to reply, then excused herself to check on Megan.
Megan was lying on the bedspread of her four-poster brass bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. Her long legs, which were caked with dirt around her bony knees, were stretched out across the soft white of the bedspread, the bottoms of her frayed sneakers making dark creases in the quilted fabric. Lynn approached her daughter slowly, arranging herself at the foot of her bed. “Nicholas told me that Daddy brought a friend to your lunch on Saturday.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Megan whispered, her answer for everything these days.
“Do you want to talk about it, sweetheart?”
Megan stubbornly shook her head.
Lynn knew all the proper things to say at moments like this, soothing phrases neatly laid out in her textbooks, things she would probably say if this were not her child, if this weren’t happening to her. Instead she simply patted Megan’s knees and said nothing.
Megan suddenly burst into tears, the bed shaking with her heart-wrenching cries. “I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore, Mommy. Do I have to be a lawyer?”
Lynn felt her own eyes once more spilling over. Today is obviously a day for tears, she thought, reaching over to gather the sobbing youngster in her arms. “No, darling, of course not. You can be anything you want to be.”
“I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
“You have lots of time to decide.”
“I want to do what you do.”
“Whatever you want,” Lynn told her, patting her back.
Megan suddenly pulled back, so that Lynn’s arms had to stretch to hold on to her. “And I don’t want to take any more ballet lessons.”
“You’ve always loved ballet,” Lynn said, trying to keep up with the abrupt twists in the conversation.
“I don’t want to take ballet anymore,” Megan insisted.
“Okay. You don’t have to. Maybe you’ll change your mind,” she said as Megan snuggled back into her arms. The sobs, which had momentarily subsided, picked up again with renewed vehemence.
“Why did she have to be there?” Megan demanded angrily. “Why did Daddy have to bring her?”
“Don’t cry, baby. It’ll be all right.”
“I hate her, Mommy. I hate her for taking Daddy away from us.”
“I know, sweetie. I’m not so crazy about her myself.”
Lynn heard footsteps, and turned her head to see Nicholas tiptoeing—as only he could tiptoe—toward them. Soon the three Schusters were curved into a tight little ball, all arms and legs and tears, swaying rhythmically against the almost unbearable sense of loss that each was separately experiencing.
“I’m glad you called,” he was saying. Lynn lifted her fresh strawberry daiquiri into the air in a silent toast. “I wasn’t sure you would. Why did you? Not that I’m objecting, mind you. Just curious.”
“A writer’s curiosity?” Lynn asked, and Marc Cameron smiled. “It’s my wedding anniversary.”
“Curiouser and curiouser.”
“I thought you’d appreciate the irony.”
His smile grew wider. “So I’m a convenient substitute?”
“I’m not sure what you are, to be honest.” She paused, looking around the small, empty Italian restaurant in Lake Worth where she had suggested they meet. “I was angry and depressed. I just needed to get out of the house for a while. My neighbor said she’d stay with the kids. I probably should apologize in advance. I don’t think I’ll be very good company.”
“You’re doing fine so far. Are you ready to order yet?”
She shook her head. “I’m not very hungry.” She finished the last of her daiquiri in two quick gulps. “I wouldn’t mind another one of these, however.”
Marc Cameron immediately signaled the waiter to bring them each another drink.
“So, tell me about your writing,” Lynn asked, careful to avoid his watchful blue eyes. “Are you working on anything now?”
“I have an idea for a novel I’m tossing around in my head.”
She laughed. “I’ll bet you do. It wouldn’t by any chance be about a recently separated man who gets involved with the wife of the man his own wife left him for, would it?”
“That depends.”
Lynn looked directly into Marc Cameron’s eyes. “On what?”
“Are we involved?”
“Figure of speech,” Lynn said, and cleared her throat. She was relieved when the waiter returned with her second drink. “I don’t much relish the idea of finding myself in the pages of your next book.”
“Most people are thrilled to find themselves immortalized in print.”
“Even the unflattering portraits?”
“Even those. Of course, you have to remember that the bad guys rarely recognize themselves. Besides, what makes you think you’d come off badly?”
Lynn lifted her glass to her mouth and was surprised to see that when she put it down it was half empty. “Women who are dumped tend to be whiners at best, pitiful creatures at worst. I’m not crazy about either of those prospects.”
“Suggest an alternative.”
Lynn pondered the question. In truth, she already knew what her answer would be. “Oh, I guess I’d like to be … oh, what the hell … heroic.” Marc Cameron laughed at her choice of words and she lifted her glass in another silent toast, though she didn’t take a drink. “Shouldn’t heroines be heroic?”
“What makes you think you’d be the heroine?” He smiled, his mouth a crooked grin, his eyes teasing hers, as if he knew all about her, as if he understood all her secrets, which buttons to push to get the desired results.
“I read Small Potatoes,” she said after a slight pause, referring to his last book, and was pleased when she saw the tease in his eyes change to surprise.
“You did? When?”
“I went to the library after our walk on the beach and took it out. I tried to find it in the bookstores, but nobody had it.”
He laughed sadly. “Figures. So?”
“So … I liked it. You’re a man of complicated thoughts.”
This time he laughed out loud, throwing his head back, obviously enjoying her appraisal. “It’s never been put quite that way before. I think I’m flattered.”
“I got the impression that it was very autobiographical, though in a very different way from your first book, Awkward Pauses.”
“Now I really am flattered. Do you realize that you may be the only person in the state—hell, forget that, in the country—who has read both my novels? I don’t think even Suzette got through Awkward Pauses.”
“It wasn’t as well thought out as your second book,” Lynn said, and watched him frown. “I thought Small Potatoes was the better of the two. You don’t agree?” The waiter hovered nearby, but Lynn shook her head at the prospect of another drink, and he retreated.
“I agree, but I still don’t like to hear it. No matter what you may hear about writers appreciating constructive criticism, it’s all a pile of baloney. We don’t like criticism of any kind, constructive or otherwise. We want only good reviews, especially from our friends and lovers.” He stared forcefully into Lynn’s eyes. Lynn immediately pictured the two of them rolling across the top of her queen-size bed. Instantly, she brought her glass to her mouth and took a long swallow, finishing what was left. For a minute, she debated calling the waiter back, having another drink, hell, maybe another two or three, then she thought better of it.
“And which one am I?” Lynn asked, then wished she hadn’t, seeing the two of them locked together at the hip, disappearing underneath black satin sheets. What was she doing here? What was she doing, period?
“I leave that up to you.”
Lynn lowered her glass far enough away from her lips to be able to speak. “Which would be more interesting in the pages of your next novel? Which would make me the heroine?”
“The lover, unquestionably,” he answered without hesitation.
Lynn lowered her empty glass to the table, without releasing it. What was she getting herself into? “I thought your ambivalence about your father was very well observed in your second book,” Lynn sidestepped, hearing her words echo somewhere in her head, feeling Marc’s invisible hands on her breasts, moving down her body. She cleared her throat. “You seemed less angry than in your first book. You seemed to accept him more.” She tried focusing on his mouth as he spoke.
“My father left my mother when I was very young. Younger than my boys are now. He moved to Florida from Buffalo, which is where I grew up, and I really didn’t see him again until I was in my teens. Suddenly, he was writing letters, showing up at my high school and college graduations, stuff like that.” Lynn nodded, trying to concentrate on what he was saying, remembering these details from the pages of his books. “I was still so angry, I didn’t want much to do with him. But after my mother got married again, I didn’t feel quite the need to hate him as much as I had before, although God knows, the child in me still hasn’t forgiven him for abandoning me when I was four years old, and probably never will entirely. But about a dozen years ago, he invited me down to Palm Beach to visit him, and I accepted, and I decided I liked the idea of not having to shovel a mountain of snow off my car every morning six months of the year, and so I decided to look around, see if I could get any work free-lancing. I mean, hell, a writer can work anywhere. So I went back home and packed a few bathing suits and my Selectrix typewriter, and set up shop. I sold a few pieces pretty fast, and soon I was asked to do a story on the plethora of little ballet studios which seemed to be springing up everywhere in Palm Beach at the time, a pretty unusual thing when you consider that the average age of the Palm Beach citizen is ninety-seven.”
Lynn laughed. The waiter appeared again, this time impatiently standing beside their table with his pad prominently displayed, ready to take their order whether or not they were ready to give it.
“The special?” Marc asked, looking at Lynn.
Lynn checked the menu, noted that the special was blackened snapper, and nodded, listening as Marc gave their order to the waiter, who looked vaguely put out by their choice.
“And that’s when you met Suzette?” she asked, suddenly aware of the source of Megan’s aversion to ballet.
“Her parents had financed this little studio for her. She’d studied to be a ballerina, but it hadn’t worked out. Believe it or not, she’d been kicked out of school for having an affair with her very married head instructor when she was all of sixteen. Anyway, she eventually ran off with some would-be actor and spent a few drug-filled years in Hollywood before coming home to Mommy and Daddy and letting them set her up in a little ballet studio. I went out to interview her as part of the story I was doing, and I guess I liked what I saw. She has one of those interesting, almost Egyptian-like faces, all sharp angles and prominent features. Anyway, we moved in together not long after, over her parents’ vociferous objections, I might add. I mean, their poor baby had already been defiled by two no-good artists and they hardly welcomed a third, if I can include myself in the category of artist. They decided to ignore me and my relationship with their daughter. But then Suzette got pregnant, and when you’re pregnant with twins, you’re kind of hard to ignore, so they casually suggested it might be time for us to get married, which, of course, we did, and the rest, as they say, should be good for a few more novels. What are you looking at?”
Lynn had tried focusing her eyes on Marc Cameron’s mouth during his long speech, but his beard kept getting in the way. Normally, Lynn watched people’s eyes when they spoke, but Marc Cameron had the disconcerting habit of watching right back, sending her signals she was unprepared to deal with, so she had tried to concentrate on his mouth instead. She wasn’t used to men with beards, she thought, immediately recalling the feel of his beard on her face, feeling her skin start to tingle. She always thought she preferred her men clean-shaven. Lynn almost laughed. Her men! What men? Gary had been the only man in her life for the last fifteen years. They had discovered this stupid little restaurant, with its surly, impatient help, together. Why had she come here? What was she doing with this bearded man who was not her husband on the night of her fifteenth anniversary?
“Is everything all right?” Marc Cameron was asking.
Lynn shook her head, unable to speak.
He reached across the table and lifted her chin so that her eyes were forced to confront his. Immediately, they filled with tears. Marc Cameron became an unfocused blur.
“Do you want to leave?” he asked.
“What about the food?”
“We’ll come back for it another time.” Marc Cameron quickly deposited a couple of twenty-dollar bills on the table and then was at her side, helping Lynn out of the low-backed wooden chair. “Come on. Let’s get some fresh air.”
Lynn allowed herself to be led gingerly from the restaurant, soon finding herself on the sidewalk outside. Moving from the cool air conditioning of the restaurant into the outside heat, she felt like she had stepped into a sauna. The tears refused to dry despite the dark intensity of the night heat. If anything, they increased. She could barely see past them to walk. Marc Cameron led her down the street and stopped her in front of his small red Toyota. “Where are we going?”
“Just get in the car,” he said gently, and she did as she was told.
She could barely make out where he was driving her, and realized that they were near the beach only when she heard the familiar, comforting roar of the ocean. She walked haltingly beside Marc, his hand on her elbow, guiding her across the concrete of the large parking lot until they came to the Lake Worth pier, still crowded with young people coming out of John G’s, a popular night spot in the area. Still holding on to her arm, Marc Cameron led Lynn down onto the darkened beach and sat her gently by the water’s edge. In the next instant, Lynn was aware of a handkerchief against her cheek, and she pressed it under her eyes, feeling it soak up her tears like a blotter. “I always knew these things would come in handy for something,” Marc was saying. “Feel any better?”
“I feel like an idiot,” Lynn said, blowing her nose noisily into the wet handkerchief, aware that he was tugging at her shoes, rolling up her pant legs. “Should I ask what you’re doing?”
“I thought you might feel better if you got your feet wet. Don’t ask me why.”
“Are you going to take advantage of my depressed and vulnerable state?” She realized that the question was only partly facetious.
“Call me old-fashioned, but the idea of making love to a woman drowning in tears doesn’t exactly turn me on.”
“My God,” she wailed, hating the sound, “I can’t stop! What’s the matter with me? Where are all these tears coming from? They’re getting on my nerves.” He laughed softly as she buried her head in her knees. She heard him moving away. Was he going to just leave her here, crying in the sand? Not that she could blame him. This wasn’t exactly the fun evening he might have been expecting. Where was he going?
She felt his hands at the back of her neck, kneading the tense muscles at the top of her spine. “That feels so good,” she whispered after a few minutes, hoping he wouldn’t stop.
He didn’t. His hands pressed firmly into the muscles of her shoulders, his fingers disappearing into her hair to massage her head, then moving slowly down the length of her back. She thought she should probably tell him that was enough, but the truth was it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. As his hands moved back up toward her shoulders, Lynn suddenly spun around and pushed herself into his arms with such force she knocked him over, pressing her mouth against his as they fell. His arms immediately wrapped around her waist, and once again the soft bristles of his beard tickled her face as they rolled over in the sand. Not quite the black satin sheets she had envisioned earlier, but infinitely more satisfying in the flesh than in her fantasies. She felt his tongue inside her mouth, his hands moving down to grip her backside. What on earth was she doing? As suddenly and forcefully as she had pushed him over, Lynn now pushed herself out of Marc’s arms and sat up, looking at the ocean as if searching for a satisfactory explanation for her behavior.
“I thought you said that the idea of making love to a woman drowning in tears didn’t exactly turn you on,” Lynn said when none was forthcoming.
“I guess I’m kinkier than I thought.”
“This will make a wonderful chapter in your new book.”
“I’ll be kind.”
Lynn stumbled to her feet and started brushing the sand from her clothes. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m not.” She stopped shaking the sand from her clothes and smiled. “But I should be.”
“Why?”
“I ruined your dinner, for one thing. You had to put out all that money for food you didn’t even get to see.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“And then I did nothing but cry.”
“You warned me you wouldn’t be very good company.”
“And then I attacked you.”
“Things were definitely starting to look up.”
“And then I stopped.”
“A woman of mercurial temperament.”
Lynn looked around helplessly. “I really should go home now …”
“But …?”
“But I’m starving,” she said, and suddenly they were both laughing. “I don’t believe it but I’m famished.” She looked toward the restaurant up by the road. “Do you want to give dinner another try? My treat this time.”
He said nothing, only nodded and guided her up the sand to the restaurant.
“You’re a nice man,” she said as they pushed through the door into the noisy, crowded restaurant. His lips moved in reply but Lynn couldn’t hear what he was saying.
It was only after they’d been seated at a small table by the wall and the waiter approached to take their order that she realized what he had said: “Not always.”