I want to vomit, but I know how that would feel, so I pop a warm Coke and take little swallows till the nausea passes.
Can’t she see how defensive she is? Doesn’t she realize this will never work? As soon as his dissertation hits the skids—and it will—he’ll be hanging over her shoulder again. Mr. Moody Blues. Accusing her of neglecting him, of being self-centered. He’ll bitch and moan and make her feel guilty. Then she’ll come running to me.
Just like I always go running to her.
Of course, this whole thing will pass, and we’ll take up where we left off Either she’ll marry him or she won’t. She’ll be happy or she won’t. It never makes any difference between us. In a couple of days, we’ll be talking on the phone and we’ll laugh about it.
Except, how could she think I’m jealous? I mean, I am, but only in general. I accepted that a long time ago. How could you not be jealous of someone who sometimes renders you invisible by her very presence? But jealous about her getting married? Not likely. And that crack about David fucking his secretary. I suppose she thinks she can dip him in horse shit whenever she feels like it. But I say one thing—actually, one pretty tame, wishy-washy thing—about Neal and she’s all over me like head lice.
I need to make bread. I need to and I can’t.
When Gary comes back, I’m on the phone with Jen, taking down her personal recipe for “short” scones.
3 cups flour
½ cup sugar
5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, chilled, cut in small cubes
½ cup dried cranberries, soaked in orange juice for 10 minutes
½ cup chopped, toasted pecans
½ cup milk
1 egg
Zest of one orange
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in large bowl. Cut in butter until dough is in pea-size crumbs. Drain cranberries and add to dough along with pecans. Whisk milk, egg, and orange zest in small bowl. Add to dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated and dough clumps together in a ball.
Roll out on floured surface ½ to ¾ inch thick. Cut into desired shape, and freeze or bake at 375°F until golden brown, about 25 minutes (longer if frozen).
He paces until I hang up, then I have to give a report of my activities. I skip the whole CM scene. When I start dragging out flour and sugar and butter, he says, “What are you doing?”
“Making scones.”
He looks at me as if I’m delirious. “Why?”
“Because I need to.”
“Can’t we just buy some—”
“Gary, please. It’s not the scones I need, it’s making them. I’m going nuts. Why don’t you get us a glass of wine and park yourself in that chair and tell me all about your meeting?”
He uncorks the Napa cab and pours two glasses. I confess I’m not listening too closely about the meeting. Something about setting up interviews in Portland. I’m rubbing the butter into the dry ingredients with my fingertips and thinking about CM.
“… so we run ads in the college papers, but then you have to make them understand that people who use valet parking are generally older and they don’t feel good about sending their Lincoln or Mercedes off with somebody who looks to them like a wild-eyed radical junkie, so they have to keep their hair short and have clean fingernails and absolutely no beards …”
I enjoy a malicious thought of Neal being told to shave his beard so he can park cars for Gary’s company.
I scoop the dough onto the countertop and roll it out with my grocery-store rolling pin. I think of my oma’s big maple rolling pin lying unused in the bottom of a drawer in my mother’s kitchen. That sucker weighs about two and a half pounds and moves like a skater on a frozen lake. The wood’s sleek and golden from years of pie crust and cookies and biscuits. She always cleaned it by rubbing flour into it and wiping it off with a flour-sack towel.
“You never, ever wash a rolling pin,” she told me.
“Have you thought about tonight?” Gary says.
The way my head snaps up, he probably realizes I wasn’t listening, but he sits there in his blue oxford-cloth, button-down shirt and khaki pants, hair falling clean and soft on his forehead, smiling like a choirboy. Why can’t I just accept my good fortune and run with it?
I get out my chef’s knife and cut the dough into triangles.
He tries again. “So, what do you feel like doing?”
I pull out a cookie sheet and arrange the scones on it in orderly rows, lay it in the freezer. I turn around. “Can I ask you a question?”
He smiles. “Sure.”
“Did you ever cheat on Erica?”
The smile evaporates like water on a hot griddle. “No. Why?”
“Did you ever want to?”
“Not really.”
“What does that mean, ‘not really’?”
He looks directly at me. “It means I met someone once that I was attracted to, but I never pursued it. Later I realized it was probably just a revenge fantasy.”
“Revenge for what?”
“Erica had an affair with a friend of ours,” he says quietly.
Batting a thousand today, Wyn. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid conversational gambit.”
“You obviously had a reason for asking.”
The reason being that I’m in training to be a bitch.
“Is that what happened with David?”
I manage a laugh. “You mean my mother didn’t spill all the dirt?”
He shakes his head. “Why would she?”
“Sometimes I don’t know why she does things. We don’t understand each other very well, I guess.” I take out my plastic bench scraper and clean off the counter, wipe my hands.
“Is that what happened?” he asks again.
“Sort of. It was a woman in his office. I guess now they’re getting married.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Doesn’t it seem weird, us sitting here talking about our exes? Comparing their liabilities. Like they were former employees or something. Instead of someone you thought you’d be waking up next to for—You know what I want to do?”
“What?”
“I want to go on a tour of that house out front.”
“Isn’t it locked?”
I shrug. “Maybe we can find a way in.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “I think that’s called ‘trespassing.’”
“We won’t break anything. If nothing’s open, we won’t go in. Come on. Before it’s too dark.”
“This would be the tradesmen’s entrance,” Gary says. “All these big old houses had one. By the kitchen.” The rusted knob is so loose that the door swings open at a gentle push.
We step inside, inhale the damp, stale air. My eyes gradually adjust to the dimness. There’s something about a house that’s been shut up for a while. Sadness builds up like a static charge just waiting for a conductor.
“The mudroom,” he says. There are pegs in the wood paneling, a bench, and a built-in corner cupboard with doors sagging on broken hinges. The bead-board walls are streaked with black, probably mildew.
“What’s a mudroom?”
He smiles. “A place to leave mud. Boots, raincoats, umbrellas. So you don’t mess up the rest of the house.” He takes my hand, pulls me into the kitchen. They got as far as gutting it. The bleached shadows of cupboards and appliances are all that’s left on the dirty walls, except for stubbed water and gas pipes.
The dining room’s obvious by the chandelier hanging over the spot where the table would be. “Watch your head.” He picks up an unopened can of paint, turns it around. “ ‘Goldenrod,’ “ he reads off the label.
“I read somewhere that a lot of people split up when they’re in the middle of some big project,” I say.
He nods, looking around us at the piles of new lumber and boxes of nails languishing under a thick layer of dust. “Planning holds you together because it’s fun—mostly imagination and anticipation. Then when you actually have to start working, reality sets in.”
The thing in the living room covered with drop cloths turns out to be an ebony grand piano. With one finger, I pick out the melody line of “Moon River,” the only song I remember from my abortive piano lessons. Out of tune, but not hopeless. We cover the piano again.
The stairs groan and our footsteps echo off the bare wood. Dust motes dance in the last light of afternoon spilling through a tall, narrow window. We stop on the wide landing, halfway up.
“This is where you make speeches from.” He leans on the railing and jumps back smartly as it bows out.
I laugh. “And that’s what happens when the speeches go on for too long.”
“No one builds landings like this anymore,” he says.
“Why is that?”
“Wasted space.”
“It’s not wasted. Where else are you supposed to stand and let everyone admire your gown?”
The doors leading off the upper hall are closed, except for one. I wander in and he follows. No furniture, just moving cartons sealed with tape and labeled optimistically “Master Suite.”
“Look.” He points to a box under the bay window. Sitting on top is a pair of fuzzy bunny-rabbit slippers. More endearing than flowers or jewelry, intimate beyond lingerie. Not something you’d buy for yourself. Maybe a birthday present. To say I’m sorry. Or I love you.
I can’t breathe in here. I turn abruptly, go back down the stairs, through the living room, dining room, kitchen, mudroom, and out the side door, as fast as I can without my incision protesting. Gary’s right behind me, securing the door.
How could you leave someone who gave you bunny slippers?
“You want some more wine?”
“No, thanks.” He sits down in the club chair while I rinse the glasses out in the sink. “You still haven’t told me what you want to do tonight.”
“Well …” I reach for the blackout shade on the kitchen window. Then I walk over to the other window and pull the shade. I lock the door.
“I promise I won’t run away.” From his silly little grin, I’d say he’s picking up the signals okay.
He reaches for my hand. “Are you going to be all right with this?”
“We’ll just do what we can.”
“I like the sound of that.”
When I straddle him, I can feel his erection under me. “Are you ready already?”
“It’s getting embarrassing,” he says against my throat. “All I have to do is look at you and I’m ready.”
I’m dissolving against him, sediment falling through still water. Tears stream out of my eyes, and when he feels them on his face, he looks up at me. “Do you hurt?”
“Not physically. It’s just been kind of a shitty day.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“No.”
His thumbs gently push the tears off my face. “What can I do?”
I lean over to kiss his mouth. “This will be just fine.” I stand up and pull the sweatshirt over my head. The rest of the clothes are laid aside and we settle in carefully. I wonder if this chair has a history. Crazy, but it beats thinking about CM. Or Mac. Or the shadow I was trying to name. It was nearly in my grasp when CM showed up. I push it all away. The only thing I need to be grasping right now is directly under me, seeking an entrance. I’m surprised to discover that I’m as ready as he is. His hands cradle my hips and I lower myself, letting him fill me.
“Are you okay?” he whispers.
I smile. “Better than that.”
He begins to move inside me and I fall thankfully into darkness.
Sunday night. My attempts to function on impulse, without a lot of review or analysis, have always met with limited success. Gary is snoring—but softly and considerately—sleeping the sleep of the righteous, while I lie on my back, eyes glued open, brain turning over like an old car suffering from post-ignition run-on.
The whole week has been about him taking care of me, pleasing me, helping me, making me feel good—whether I wanted to or not. It reminds me of being in a mink-padded cell. And just when I get annoyed, just when I feel like I have to get away, at the very instant I think I’ll explode if he doesn’t go get a hotel room, his breath on the back of my neck turns my knees to water and we end up sprawled on the futon.
He always says my name when he comes. It’s comforting to know that the person with whom you are having sex is focused on you alone. I myself have visions of calling out the wrong name, not the sort of thing that’s easily explained. If words have the power to wound, the wrong name uttered at the wrong time could be lethal.
When I open my eyes Monday morning, he’s lying there propped up on one elbow, smiling at me. Awareness of his imminent departure produces a twinge of something almost like regret. It wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was nice. He pulls me closer and I snuggle up against his warm, clean T-shirt smell.
The kids only called three times and Erica not at all. He gave me back rubs and foot massages and touched me in all the best places, fixed dinner and did the dishes. He even tried to brush my hair one night, although it turned into a contest of wills ending in a draw. When you get old, half blind, mostly deaf, and you can no longer tell which stuff in your fridge is edible and which is riddled with botulism, then you want someone like Gary around. He may not be in any better shape than you are, but he’ll damn sure be trying to take care of you.
“Wyn.”
“Hmm?” I rub my cheek drowsily against his chest.
“I want you to come down to San Francisco for a weekend.”
I raise myself too quickly, grimacing at the pain. I sit cross-legged, holding my head between my hands, combing the hair back with my fingers, waiting for the brain to clear. “Why?” I finally manage.
He smiles, unperturbed. “I want you to meet Andrew and Katie.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that long enough for you to come to your senses.”
“I think it’s time for the three people I care most about to meet each other.” He clasps his hands behind his head.
“I cannot possibly be one of those people. You don’t even know me.”
“I know what I need to, Wyn. And I know myself. I want you in my life.”
“Gary, for Chrissake, it’s just sex.”
“That’s not what it is to me.” The way he says it, slow and steady and very sincere, makes me ashamed of myself “I don’t think that’s all it means to you either, but you’re scared. I can understand that. You think if you can diminish it by calling it ‘just sex,’ you can avoid getting hurt again.”
There’s just enough truth in what he says to make me hesitate. “My divorce isn’t even final. It’s probably not going to be for a long time. I can’t think about … stuff like this.”
He sits up, too, facing me. “I’m not asking you to think about anything. I’m asking you to come to my house, meet my kids, have a fun weekend. If we lived in the same town, it probably would have already happened.”
“But we don’t live in the same town.” How do I say I’m glad we don’t? That I don’t feel up to making this decision right now?
He looks at me with those sleepy eyes while he traces the outer curve of my ear with one finger. Even that’s enough to race my motor, and he knows it.
“As Mick Jagger said, ‘Time is on my side.’ “ He leans over to kiss my neck, right at the jawline.
“Irma Tho—mas said it first,” I say weakly.
“God, I love that little catch in your voice.” He leaves a trail of feathery kisses on his way down my neck.
“Gary, I’m not comfortable with—this.”
“Why not?” Around the front, to my collarbone. “You know how I feel. I know how you feel. Everything’s”—he touches my throat with just the tip of his tongue and my body responds without consulting my brain—”up front and out in the open.” When his thumbs graze my nipples through my T-shirt, they stand up and salute.
He knows he’s won this skirmish.
It seems like a good time to divest myself of some of the accoutrements of my former life. Like my clothes. It’s only partly a symbolic gesture. The truth is, I need some money to pay my last bill from Elizabeth. Apparently, stalling is pretty expensive.
Mac comes by Saturday afternoon, loads the two boxes into the back of the truck, and drives me down to Rags to Riches. When I climb out and reach for one of the boxes, he slaps my hand away.
“You’re not supposed to be lifting anything yet. Go open the door.”
The bell over the entrance jingles when we walk in, and the petite blonde behind the counter smiles at us.
“Hi. I’m Wyn Morrison. I called about the clothes.”
“Great, just put them over here and let’s have a look.” Mac goes out and returns with the other box. He sets it down and leans over the counter, watching us. She’s pulling things out, exclaiming over them, dividing them into piles. Donna Karan, Ellen Tracy, Diane Freis, Anne Klein, Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani. Sand-washed silk, linen, rayon, chenille.
She says, “These are gorgeous. Are you sure you want to get rid of them all?”
“Positive.”
“Well, our split is sixty-forty and … oh my God, a Judith Leiber bag? We shouldn’t have any problem selling them for you. They’re like new.” She and I inventory the tights, skirts, slacks, tops, dresses, lingerie, shoes, purses. “These dresses are exquisite. I have one or two people in mind to call about them.”
Mac’s uncharacteristically quiet on the way home. He’s been sort of preoccupied lately, and I tend to blame his close encounter with Laura at the party on Capitol Hill. Or else he’s suffering from writer’s block, which, like most writers, he takes out on everyone around him.
When he pulls up in front of the Victorian, I ask him if he wants to come in.
“I’ve got some things to do before work,” he says.
I look over. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’ve just been kind of tired lately.”
“How’s the book going?”
“Fine.” But he’s looking out the window.
“Mac, is it Laura?”
“What?” He tries laughing, but he sounds pissed off that I mentioned it.
“Maybe it’s none of my business. I just thought you seemed a little depressed ever since you ran into her at—”
He looks at me sharply. “Do me a favor. Don’t try to analyze me with your California pop psychology.”
“I was only trying to help—”
“Well, don’t, okay?”
“Fine. I won’t.” I open the door and get out, but before I make it to the curb, he calls after me.
“Wyn, wait a second.” I stare into the truck. “I’m sorry. I’m just in a shitty mood. I’m going home and get some sleep. I’ll see you tonight?”
I shrug. “Probably.”
My shoes roll as I start up the drive; I realize there’s easily two inches of new pea gravel on top of the old.
Sunday night is clear. Clear like I’ve never seen in L.A. The debris of the day must be halfway to Japan, and the stars look like this jacket my mother used to have, rhinestones set in black velvet. There is no moon. Mac wants to be on the water tonight.
Dark silhouettes of gulls float against the jeweled towers of the city, and metal clanks against metal on the car deck below us. In the lee of the passenger decks, the fierce wind drops to a ripple.
We hang over the rail, side by side. I’m aware of him so acutely that my fingers ache. The smell of pine bark that clings to his jacket, smoke from the fireplace at Bailey’s. Something grassy, maybe shampoo.
He’s staring up into the black dome of night sky.
“What is it?” he says.
“I was just—Is that the Big Dipper?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the only constellation I know.”
“If you know that one, you actually know two. The Dipper’s the tail of Ursa Major, the big bear.” I try to follow his finger, tracing the outline of a long-tailed bear.
“So where’s the Little Dipper?”
He looks behind us. “You can’t see it from here because of the boat, but if you followed a straight line from those two stars on the cup of the dipper, you’d see Polaris, the North Star, which is the end of the Little Dipper’s handle.”
“What’s the really bright star, just down that line from the Big Dipper?”
“That’s Arcturus. It’s sort of at the knee of Boötes, the herdsman. And then if you keep looking down that same curve of stars, you can see part of Virgo.”
I look past him. “Who knew that the psycho-killer handyman would know so much about stars.”
“You can’t see that many here,” he says. “Too much light. This would be a great night to be up in the San Juans.”
Something about the way he says it. I feel hot and cold at the same time, and I know it’s too early for menopause.
“I’m probably going up there.”
“Probably?” My voice is faint.
He studies something down on the car deck. “No. Not probably. I’m going. Next week.” Fortunately, he keeps talking, because I know I can’t make any sounds. “That’s why I’ve been sort of distracted lately. I’ve been in Seattle longer than I’ve been anywhere else since I left New York. It was a hard decision. Sorry if I’ve been moody or—”
“What will you do there?” That voice isn’t mine. It belongs to one hell of a ventriloquist.
“Write.” He turns his face toward me, but it’s shadowed. “I got a letter from this agent named Alan Lear. In L.A. I sent him the first three chapters and he wants to see the rest.” He laughs. “I didn’t want to tell him there is no rest, so I told him I was revising and I’d have it in his hands by September.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m not breaking out the champagne yet. He just wants to see it. There’s no promises.”
“There never are.”
He exhales noisily. “Anyway, Rick—the guy from Norwegian Woods—his family has a cottage up on Orcas and he said I could use it for the summer if I’d do some maintenance on the place. Patch the roof, clear some land, paint. Stuff like that. And the rest of the time I can write.”
“Sounds like an offer you can’t refuse.”
He gives me a little nudge with his elbow. “I’ll probably be back in the fall.”
“Probably?”
“Yeah. Probably.”
The morning air is so thick with spring that it’s hard to believe there was a foot of snow on the ground six weeks ago. The Red Riding Hood tulips that Diane planted in the barrel outside the bakery door have opened in a blaze of scarlet. Everyone on Queen Anne is nuts for window boxes, and by now they’re spilling over with cascading blue lobelia, red and purple salvia, white dwarf snapdragons, yellow mimulus. Plain green hedges that I’ve walked past every day have become drifts of white, soft pink, deep-purple rhododendron.
I can practically hear Julie Andrews singing “The Lusty Month of May.”
When I get home from work, Mac’s leaning against the Elky’s passenger door drinking coffee out of a big white cup.
“You shouldn’t drink anything acidic out of a Styrofoam cup,” I tell him. “The acid dissolves that stuff right into your drink.”
“So that means if I drink it slow enough, I don’t have to worry about recycling the cup.”
“I’m sorry I missed your going-away party. I promised CM months ago I’d go to this dance thing. She had the tickets …”
Has my skill as a liar improved dramatically, or maybe he simply doesn’t notice? The truth is, I sat alone through some French film at the University of Washington, letting the images flicker on my eyes, the syncopated rhythm of the dialogue dance past me without registering. It seemed preferable to standing around Bailey’s listening to everyone wish him good luck.
I wonder if Laura was there, but I can’t ask.
“That’s okay. It was fairly sedate, as parties go. I was just on my way out of town. Thought I’d stop by.”
“So … good luck with the book.”
“Thanks. I hope your … situation turns out okay.”
I smile fixedly. “Jean-Marc used to say the bread might not always turn out the way you want it, but it always turns out.”
“Take care of yourself.” His mouth brushes my cheek awkwardly. I follow him around to the driver’s side. He climbs in the Elky, and the door rattles as he slams it. He rolls the window down as if he just thought of something else.
“Here. I made this for you.” He hands me a cassette.
I turn it over. “What is it?”
“All the songs and artists are on the card.”
My stomach is making little warning noises. “Mac, thanks. For everything. You’ve been a great friend.”
He turns the key. Of course it doesn’t start. We both laugh and then he looks at me. He’s wearing a green T-shirt that says “Eat Water: Raft the Colorado.” I wonder if he ever did that. Anyway, it looks good on him. Makes his eyes as deep green as river water.
He tries the ignition again and this time it catches. I wave and start walking back to the house. Quickly, so I don’t have to see him drive away.
I don’t exactly decide to call CM; it’s habit. One of Mac’s engrams. The machine picks up on the first ring. She’s either out of town or screening her calls.
“This is the right number, but you called at the wrong time. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
“CM?” Could I sound any more pitiful? “CM? Please pick up if you’re there.” I take a breath. “It’s me. Your old ex-best friend. I miss you so much. I’m sorry for what happened. All the stupid stuff I said. I’m glad you’re happy. Honestly. Please call me. I need to talk to you. Please don’t—”
The machine clicks off. The empty air reminds me of that sound you hear when you put a seashell up to your ear.