“Now the miles stretch out behind me,
Loves that I have lost;
Broken hearts lie victims of the game.
Then good luck, it finally struck
Like lightning from the blue:
Every highway leading me back to you.”
- The Search is Over, Survivor
The So-Called Scarlet Letter Society
Can Meet Wherever
And Whenever
They Damn Well Please
We can talk about future ‘meetings,’ though they will really be get-togethers, and no longer called meetings. Casual coffees, gatherings of friends. No more invitations, no more books (sorry, Eva!) unless they’re random ones we genuinely find, love and share. Our passports into regions where most women dare not tread have been stamped, and now we’re home.
from: Ben bnidale@starfishdesign.com
to: Lisa lswain@blackbirdspie.com
date: Monday, January 28, 2012, 8:41 AM
Our kiss both took me off guard and was at the same time one of the most incredible things ever to happen to me. We’re not professionally involved anymore, so I can tell you I’ve been attracted to you since we met. My only fear is not having an excuse to see you again, short of simply wanting to repeat the magic of that kiss.
Ben
Lisa sat at her bakery counter. She breathed in the smell of the raspberry tart cooking in the oven. The fire warmed the shop for customers who stopped by on busy ways about their days. She smiled at the email from Ben; that old excitement of seeing his name in her inbox was still there, though different now.
She stared at her screen. Here was her choice, in a simple email before her. Thanks to modern technology, she didn’t have to endure awkward, drawn-out in-person scenes of rejections or goodbyes or temptations; she could simply hit reply.
from: Lisa lswain@blackbirdspie.com
to: Ben bnidale@starfishdesign.com
date: Monday, January 28, 2012, 9:07 AM
I agree there was magic in the kiss, but I am afraid I can’t let it happen again. My devotion to my husband and my commitment to making my marriage work despite its challenges won’t allow it, and I know you understand. But I want you to know that I appreciate how beautiful you made me feel in the time I knew you. Thank you for that. Wishing you all the best, Lisa
Lisa closed her laptop a tiny bit too forcefully, as if the action was closing the door on a part of her life that she wasn’t 100% sure she wanted closed. As if the decisive snapping sound would convince her she was making the right choice. She had actually considered, for a significant part of the last year, sleeping with Ben. She knew it wasn’t fair to him, but one of the reasons she’d considered it was the hope that she might get pregnant.
To this day, there had been no evidence that Jim was the cause of her infertility. Her own doctor had not found anything wrong with her, but neither had a doctor found something out of place with him. They were waiting for the most recent test results. But somehow Lisa had thought if she’d slept with Ben, she’d get pregnant and have some kind of secret love child; a secret she’d keep for a lifetime from Jim. She now realized that this childish fantasy could have created a lifetime of heartache and shame for not only her but potentially everyone around her.
Maybe now, with her heart set and her mind clear, her body would allow her, finally, to conceive and carry the child that would make her a mother. In a family that included a husband who loved her. Not a perfect husband, but one who loved her the best he could.
And she vowed to herself to try to do the best she could to love him back.
Eva sorted sea glass at the cottage on Matthew’s Island. The collecting of the glass, finding a perfectly smooth piece in an unusual color, was the most enjoyable part of sea glass hunting, but the sorting was somehow therapeutic as well. She normally placed her day’s finds of colored glass into a huge vintage metal washtub, but sorting it by color into big glass jars had a calming effect on her. Green goes in the green jar, blue goes in the blue jar. Her mind could wander as she did the mindless task. The whole act of sea glass hunting was soothingly ritualistic. Check the low tide chart. Go to the beach. Pick up the pieces of glass, place them into a bag. Return to the cottage, rinse off the glass. Place the glass out on the deck to dry. Put it in the large container. And then, when you had time, you sorted it.
White and green and brown were the most common colors. She only picked them up now off the beach if they were special in some way, a fragment of a written word, a perfectly tumbled piece, a complete bottle top. It was the rare colors she wanted: the cobalt blue, the Coca Cola bottle turquoise, the deep jade, the softer cornflower blue. And the rarest: the purple, the yellow, the pink, the red. The red was the holy grail. Well, technically the orange was the holy grail, but she had rarely known orange to be found on the island. She had only a few pieces of red after years of collecting, along with a collection of other unusual finds: a cat-eye marble, perfectly tumbled. A gorgeous aqua bottle stopper. A tiny porcelain doll’s head. A few colored beads.
You never knew what you were going to find. There were pieces of a 19th century Blue Willow patterned dish that she’d found periodically over time. She’d collected so many pieces she could almost put the dish back together like a puzzle again. She’d find a piece one day and then, a month later, another piece from the same dish. It was romantic to think about where the pieces came from—a shipwreck, a long-ago ferry to Baltimore. There never seemed to be a rhyme or reason to the patterns of the tide and how the bay churned out what it churned out. But somehow, it always kept you coming back. It was so easy to forget the rest of the world when she hunted for sea glass. There was only the search to find the next piece.
Eva’s phone rang. So few people called her anymore (her teenage boys always texted). It startled her, and she jumped at the sound of her own ringtone.
She looked at the phone and saw Charles’s name. He knew she was at the cottage and it was safe to call. In times past, they’d only spoken when she’d been in New York.
“Hello,” she said.
“Madame Eva, pretty girl,” said Charles. “How are you this weekend?”
“I’m well,” said Eva, looking around her at the sea glass spread around the floor and table. “And how are you, my fine French chef lover?”
“I’m better now to hear your voice,” said Charles.
“That is very lovely,” said Eva. “Thank you.”
“I just called to tell you that I am happy you are coming to New York this week,” he said. “And that I miss you, and I think of you often when you are away.”
Eva felt her heart swell with emotion.
“I don’t even know what to say,” said Eva. “That means a lot to me. I think of you when we’re apart, too. And I miss you, too.”
They chatted for awhile about work and her boys and when they would see each other again, and wished each other farewell until the next time.
This conversation was one of very few in which they’d discussed any sort of feelings with each other outside the context of passion’s embrace. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would use words to tell her how he felt. She was touched by the gesture of the simple phone call: he was thinking of her. It was generally understood that they saw each other when they saw each other, and they were apart when they were apart. It was nice to feel the same sort of happiness, only from a distance.
As she hung up the phone, she had mixed feelings. She did not want to need a man. She let Ron go, because it was time. Her marriage had ended, because it was time. Her life was much simpler now. She wanted it simpler. She worked, she spent time with her boys. She spent time at the cottage. She did not want to leap from the embrace of one man to the embrace of another.
She wanted to be alone, to learn to live on her own in four walls to herself at the times when her sons were not with her. Am I in love with Charles? she wondered, and she did not know what the future held for them. Being in love made you vulnerable to being hurt, and Eva did not like to feel vulnerable. But he was there. He’d always be there, in New York. She knew he’d never move, and she wasn’t sure she’d want him to. She didn’t know how much longer she’d travel to the firm in New York. She had enough control over her career to do what she wanted, including ending it altogether. Washington? New York? She could choose one if she really wanted to; she’d tell her partners she didn’t want to travel so much because of the boys. She’d use her savings and live a simple life at the cottage. But if Charles wasn’t in her life anymore, she would miss him. She allowed herself to admit it. And she would be so happy for him to visit the cottage.
Maybe a weekend here with Charles, she thought, filled with the magic of the brilliant, gorgeous sunsets, crabs freshly caught from the bay, the dark, moonlit nights where you could lie on the dock and watch shooting stars…maybe that would be what they needed to fill the emptiness in their lives. Or maybe I can just enjoy those things all by myself.
For now, there were piles of sea glass to sort into their places, because each weathered piece, tumbled in the sands of time to perfection, had a place where it belonged.
Maggie parked her car in front of the stone Victorian house where she had raised her two grown daughters, and where she had lost her only son. She breathed out, fighting the memory of rocking her baby boy in that very porch rocker, begging God to let her son live, and later cursing that same God who did not.
I will not let the ghosts of my past affect the reality and importance of my future, she decided. Dave had invited her to dinner. He loved to cook and she did not, so she was happy for the invitation. Her mind wandered back for a moment to one of her earliest memories: her mother, curled up with her in bed under the shabby covers had said, “I want better for you.”
He opened the door and looked at her. In his eyes, even behind his glasses, she could tell he was happy to see her. He stepped outside, and they hugged on the porch. This porch, with its history of scraped knees being bandaged, Christmas cards coming and going from the mailbox, girls playing with Barbie dolls on long ago hot summer days.
“I’m happy you’re here,” said Dave.
“Well, it’s nice to come out to the country for a break from the big city,” she said, and they laughed, because the house, in a row of Victorians on the outskirts of town, was only 12 blocks away from her own downtown shop and apartment. She’d never wandered very far from home.
“How’s work?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“Just trying to keep up an old building or two,” he answered,.
“If anyone can do that, you can,” she told him.
“I hope you’re hungry,” said Dave, glancing at his watch. It wasn’t 6 pm yet, but Maggie was always hungry early. The Lady is a Tramp Frank Sinatra song line “she gets too hungry for dinner at eight” was one they’d always jokingly referenced over the years. Who can wait until 8:00 at night for dinner? Maggie always said. I want to be asleep by then.
She fought the urge to feel awkward in a house that used to be hers many years before. Of course, Dave had bought out her interest in the house during the divorce, and she couldn’t help but feel like a visitor, despite the vase on the stone mantel she’d picked out at a fairgrounds auction forever ago and left because it went there so perfectly, despite the linens in the linen closet she’d gotten at an antique shop for their first dinner party, despite the years she had spent in that kitchen making peanut butter and jelly for girls who have been old enough for many years now to make sandwiches for themselves.
He could sense her awkwardness.
He put his arms around her. She let herself melt into the warmth of his embrace. He’d always been there for her; this hug had been something she had taken for granted. Tough as she seemed to others, in her heart she knew she’d be a mess if she didn’t have Dave’s arms waiting for her. Could she live on her own? Of course she could, and had for years.
But there was needing, and there was wanting, and although maybe Maggie didn’t need to be with anyone, at the end of the day, she knew she preferred it. She wanted to feel the safety of those strong arms, even if it meant admitting she wasn’t always the strongest person herself.
“It doesn’t make me weak to need you,” she said suddenly. He pulled away from her a bit to look down into her eyes.
“What?” Dave said, and he smiled at her.
“Anyway, it isn’t really that I need you. It’s that I want you, and there’s a difference,” said Maggie, as though trying to convince herself.
“Maggie, I have always needed you,” said Dave. “I don’t care who hears me admit it. It’s true.”
“I have always needed you, too,” said Maggie. “I think I’ve just had a hard time admitting it.”
Dave took her by the hand and led her to the kitchen. He handed her a beer, and opened one for himself.
“Want to pick a Pandora station?” he asked.
“Do you even have to ask?” she said.
“Not really,” Dave said. “Soft hits of the 70s. I’d put money on it.”
“No one loves the Air Supply and the Dr. Hook and the Bee Gees like I do,” said Maggie.
“I know,” said Dave.
“You’re the Biggest Part of Me” by Ambrosia began to play. She walked around the kitchen counter, took her life’s love into her arms, and they began to dance.
And in the morning, he brought her coffee in bed.
The End