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Tuesday, December 24th, in the evening
A couple of hours later, Charlotte arrived at Donovan’s house (and here she realized she was now thinking of it as his house, and not as his mother Olivia’s), and noted that the living room had been tidied—as well as Donovan himself. He had on what looked like a new white shirt worn untucked under a dark-toned paisley vest, dark gray chinos, and new leather slip-ons. She was glad for Diane’s pep talk, because she felt inspired to dress up a little herself in a black knit skirt and a pearl gray cashmere sweater with a flattering portrait neckline.
“Well, now, don’t we both clean up nice, or what?” He still walked slowly, with a cane, but seemed more confident than he did the last time she saw him as he reached her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Merry Christmas, Charlotte.”
“Merry Christmas, Donovan. You look terrific.” It was the first time she’d seen him looking so—well, nice. She’d always thought he was a striking-looking man, but tonight he was more than that, as if she was getting a glimpse into what he would have been if his life had gone differently.
“Thank you,” he looked down as he said it, but she could see him smile, then he looked up and joked as usual. “I was starting to scare myself when I looked in the mirror.”
He pointed to his hair. “My therapist connected me with a stylist who comes to fix up people who are housebound—shops for them and everything, so I finally got some new threads and a trim. Then the stylist said her sister cleans houses on the side, so I got her over here last night, told her to name her price, just get it done, and now the place doesn’t smell like old socks.”
Charlotte laughed and poked his arm. “It didn’t smell that bad, and it does look nice.” She showed him the wine she brought. “Should I set this in the kitchen until we’re ready to eat?”
He looked over and nodded. “French, like Mom and Aunt Helene. Can’t be all bad. Actually, would you set it on the dining room table?” He nodded in that direction.
The dining room? Charlotte did a double-take at the change when she walked in. “Wow! That cleaning lady was something else.”
Like the rest of the small house, the dining room was crammed with Olivia’s collectibles on every surface and in every drawer and cabinet. But now at least the table was clear, laid with a white linen cloth, two china place settings, a pair of crystal wine glasses, a corkscrew, and one of Olivia’s Liberace-worthy silver candelabras. There were napkins, too, in a goofy Santa Claus pattern. A string of old-fashioned multicolor Christmas lights framed the window.
Charlotte laughed. “This is great! Who says pizza can’t be enjoyed in style, huh?”
“Cheers me up no end, I’ll tell ya,” Donovan entered, smiling. “Wish I could do this to the rest of the place, but there’s just too much crap. As you know all too well. We finally found where Mom stashed the good china and wine glasses. Oh—” he turned and went back to the coffee table in the living room, where there was a carafe and two cups. “Bonus—Jimmy dropped off some eggnog left over from his staff party, if you’d like some?”
He asked about the latest on the Garibaldi situation. Charlotte brought him up to date on her research on the history of the city, the tunnels, and how Corton kept the Ku Klux Klan at bay.
Donovan chuckled at the bootlegging story. “Sounds like that Corton guy and the rest of the town fathers were real characters. You see their official portraits in the courthouse or in the newspaper, and you naturally think they’re a bunch of stuffed shirts, but they probably had to be very shrewd and—creative—in their dealings with people to get where they did.”
“That’s the impression I got.” She took another sip of eggnog. It was so good. “I have no idea if it will help with figuring out what happened to Alonzo Garibaldi, but I’m going to keep gathering as much information about the people and place as I can until some sort of pattern shows up.” She wiped a bit of eggnog from the corner of her mouth. “It’s what I do. Barnes can do the forensic stuff. I like to go deep.”
He just smiled like he thought she was funny, and served himself another eggnog. “It’s interesting stuff.”
“What are you reading now?” She gestured toward a book on the table next to his chair, as she took still another sip of eggnog, which she suspected was further fortified after it made its way here from Jimmy’s party. Lovely and warming.
“Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Cheerful fellow.” Donovan picked up the book from the table and opened it at a marked page. “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—” he looked up as he finished the quote “—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
“That is cheerful—and beautiful.”
“It sounds so cheerful, that I was blown away when I did a little more reading and learned that Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic. Then I started reading about Stoicism, and got an entirely different understanding of the philosophy than the word usually implies in the English language.”
“Yep. If you say someone is “stoic,” you mean they are stolid, unemotional, all about endurance without complaint.”
“And that’s not Stoicism in classical philosophy. It’s more like stepping back from craziness and keeping one’s cool, and making the most of any given moment.”
“Blooming where you’re planted,” added Charlotte.
“Yeah, but there’s also being true to Nature, and true to your own nature. If you do that, things tend to be less troublesome and much more satisfying.”
The doorbell rang, and Donovan looked down at the time on his computer. “Good! Dinner’s here.”
“You ordered ahead of time?” asked Charlotte, who rose to answer the door for him, and he followed more slowly.
“Something like that.”
It wasn’t a delivery guy standing there with a pizza, but two women, one older and one younger, each with a large box.
“Come in, ladies,” Donovan called out, and Charlotte opened the door wider to let them in, mystified by what was going on. The women went straight into the dining room on Donovan’s direction, while he held Charlotte back.
“You’ll see.” His eyes twinkled.
Charlotte then realized the women were caterers. “And here I thought the white tablecloth and silver candelabra were ironic.”
“Fooled ya.” He looked down at his shoes and smiled to himself, as if he was suddenly shy.
The caterers left, saying they would pick up their dishes the day after Christmas, hoped they enjoyed the meal, Merry Christmas, etc., and Donovan gave them a generous tip with thanks for handling his last-minute order.
“Madame,” he said, holding out his arm for Charlotte on one side, and holding his cane like a fop on the other, “Dinner is served.”
She took his arm and squeezed it close to her as they walked. This was so unexpected.
The caterers had lit the candles, and along with the string of Christmas lights it gave the small dining room a warm intimacy, like a private room in a fine restaurant. Unlike a restaurant, however, all the courses were laid out in serving dishes.
It was a lovely spread, a roast beef tenderloin dinner complete from starters to miniature desserts, and Charlotte’s appetite grew just looking at it.
“Oh my! And they did this on short notice?”
“It’s what they recommended, as someone else had ordered something similar, and it wouldn’t be a problem doubling up.”
“This is so special,” she said, as he pulled out her chair and she settled in. “I feel like I’ve stepped into a movie.”
He took the chair to her left, at the end of the table, using the arms to ease himself down. “Hope it tastes as good as it looks.”
Charlotte started to open the bottle of wine, out of habit of doing small things for Donovan, but he gently took it from her hands and set it aside.
“I insist on doing all honors with the wine,” he said. “We’ll get to the red, but first—” he leaned over to reach for something in the shadows on the floor to his left, “Jimmy brought by something else, and it’s a real treat.” Charlotte heard what sounded like the rattling of ice, then Donovan sat upright with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in his hand. “Bubbly! Good bubbly, too!” He pointed back to the floor. “My wine bucket is literally a bucket, as you can see. Not fit for a table top.”
He uncorked the champagne with a pop, and they laughed as Charlotte tried to contain the overflow with her glass and a napkin. Donovan poured, then picked up his glass for a toast, and she followed suit. “I know this spread is a lot fancier than advertised, Charlotte, but I think we are both long overdue for a nice evening, to make the most of this precious privilege to be alive. Thanks so much for joining me.”
Their glasses touched. “Thank you so much for asking me.”
They spent more time talking than actually eating, sometimes about the food itself, which then morphed into stories in which similar food played a tangential role, which in turn caused recollections of funny life stories, and back again to the present. The eggnog, the champagne, the trust of friendship, all served to further loosen the flow of conversation—not that they had ever had any difficulty on that score.
“You,” said Charlotte, spooning sauce over another slice of beef and second serving of sweet roasted vegetables, “had a great idea with this.”
He nodded with enthusiasm, and pushed up his glasses when they slid down. “To be perfectly upfront, it was originally going to be pizza—then I saw a catering truck going by.”
Charlotte smiled. “Well, I have no complaints!” She took in his smile, the speech that was no longer stuttering, the hands he no longer wrung in nervousness. “You’ve changed so much in the last few months, Donovan.”
“Actually,” he said, “I haven’t changed so much as changed back. No longer being owned by a murderous loan shark is incredibly restorative.”
“I can believe it. There are a lot of ways to be owned, and most of them are bad.”
“Like my mother, rest her soul. If there was ever someone owned by the men in her life—” He shook his head sadly. “I have never really understood why she didn’t divorce Ronson. Do you?”
“I’ve come to believe she was owned more by her own disappointments in life and love than she was by her marriage per se. If she truly felt her spirit could thrive away from the marriage, she might have gone through with a divorce. But she turned in on herself. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, it does, all too well. That turning in on oneself. That almost happened to me when I thought there was no way out of my troubles, and that I was too old to start over and make a good life.” He thought for a moment. “It’s almost a living form of suicide—life is bad, so you’ll spite it by making it even more miserable for yourself and anyone around you—deliberate acts of despair, but at least something is your choice.”
Charlotte nodded. “But some acts are more subtle than others, less dramatic, more—”
“—Quiet suffering,” Donovan finished her sentence. “I suppose most of us do that to one extent or another. Until we just stop.”
She didn’t say anything, just considered his words, and he continued. “From what you’ve said, you do it with your in-laws, for your daughter’s sake.” He finished the last of his champagne, as did she, and opened the bottle of wine. “Just hope you aren’t doing it with anyone else.” He poured and handed her a glass of the red. “Heard from Simon yet?”
She sighed and nodded. “That didn’t go well. I’m sure I made an ass out of myself.” She told him about the call from Simon on Sunday night. “So he tells me, if I only knew my own mind, or if I was more comfortable in my own skin, I wouldn’t look to him to make me comfortable. And—” she indicated to let a surprised Donovan know more was coming, “he asked me to look at him with my eyes open.”
Donovan winced. “Ouch.”
Charlotte nodded, and took a sip of wine, enjoying the way she felt, even as she talked about something painful, knowing she probably oughtn’t be talking about Simon with another man in this way, but there it was, she’d talked about it with Jimmy, too, this was how it was in this moment. “Big ouch. But something nags at me, that he might be at least partially right. Only I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Well, you’re clearly capable of looking comfortable in your own skin. And it’s lovely skin, by the way.” His glance moved quickly from her neckline back up to her face. “Maybe he should be looking at you with his eyes open. Look at the fun we’re having right now.” He gestured at the room and table, the candlelight, the wine, and grinned cheerfully. “If Norwich walked in on this, and I half hope he does, it would serve him right, wouldn’t it?”
She smiled, then laughed at the truth of it. And at the romantic nature of their dinner, or at least how it would have been romantic with Simon. She wondered, then, if he was having as good a time with Philippa that evening as she was with Donovan, and decided he probably was.
“Penny for them?” Donovan asked. He slouched back in his chair, and the front part of his hair flopped over the top of one side of his glasses frames. He licked a stray drop of wine off the side of his glass, looking totally relaxed. “I hope I haven’t upset you.”
She shook her head. “Oh, not all. I was thinking about how much I’m enjoying this.”
“Open wide.” He popped a handmade chocolate truffle in her mouth, then one in his own. “God, these are good,” he mumbled.
She giggled, aware that she’d had far too much to drink, but she leaned back in her own chair and savored every bit of the creamy chocolate.
They would likely have gone on this way, conversing until midnight, but by the time they finished the desserts and a glass of orange liqueur, Donovan was reluctantly showing signs of fatigue. “I think I’m gonna need the wheels to get around—can hardly stand when I’m cold sober, definitely not gonna happen now.”
After Charlotte helped him get into the wheelchair, he told her to put one of the caterer’s boxes on his lap, and fill it with dishes and glasses to take to the kitchen.
“Look, Charlotte, I’ve come up in the world—the human bus cart!” He wheeled himself into the kitchen so fast he crashed into the refrigerator, almost knocking over the box of crockery, and they laughed like people do when enough drink makes everything funny.
“Ah, damn, I gotta take a leak,” he said. “Can you just position me at the porch door and I’ll aim for the yard?”
“Seriously?” she snickered at the idea, “you really think you’d get it right?”
He wasn’t that far gone. “Nah. Probably’d be more trouble than it’s worth. With my luck, the wind’ll be coming from that direction, ruin my whole Beau Brummel deal here.” He tugged at the fabric of his vest.
“Go on, go to the bathroom, you goof! Let me take care of the dishes. It’ll help me clear my head. Won’t take long.”
He maneuvered to leave the kitchen, and snapped his fingers. “Damnation! My evil plan to get you drunk and have my way with you is foiled again!”
Charlotte felt warm, grateful, and happy as she tidied up the dining room and did the dishes. Without a doubt, it was the most fun she’d had in a long time. She hoped she was good company, then immediately rejected the second-guessing; when had she started doing that so often? She walked back into the living room to gather her coat and purse.
Donovan was sitting in his wheelchair, lost in thought, supporting his head on his hand, thumb on chin, one finger over his cheek, another across his lower lip. He looked tired and serious, and her heart went out to him. But it wasn’t pity she felt so much as admiration of his spirit, and she wished she could do more to give him support and comfort. He straightened himself up in the chair when he became aware of her presence, then took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose and the dark inside corners of his eyes. “Sorry about that. I’ve become a lightweight. But it was worth it.”
“Do you want some help getting into bed?” She only realized the double meaning after she said it, and braced herself to be teased.
His eyes rolled up to look directly into hers, and there was devilment in his smile; he wheeled forward to take her hand.
“No, Charlotte, sweetheart, I think not. The day you help me get into bed, is the day you get in it with me.” He drew her hand closer to his lips. “But I know—” he gazed down at her hand as if it were dessert, stroking the soft part between her thumb and forefinger, and a deeper tone of voice broke through his attempt to keep things light. “—that as long as you have that crush on Simon, it’s not gonna happen.” He brought her hand still closer, just brushing his lips against the base of her fingers, “So I will say goodnight, and thank you ever so much for the thought.” He kissed her hand slowly, and she could feel, but not see, the sensuous stroke of the tip of his tongue between her first and middle fingers. He released her hand, but she was without words, stunned by a sense of awakening, and the feeling that he could read her like a book.
“Shoo,” he said with a grin, yet looking away, waving the back of his hand at her. “Get out of here, you beautiful woman.”