Emily's Ghost (27 page)

Flattered, Emily overrode
Grace's objections and Hildie's apologies and let herself be
dragged among the bunk beds. Lee was just hooking up the
television, and Richard and Jane came in each with an armload of
videotapes.

"First we watch the
birthday tape," announced Jane with her usual precision.
"Then
I
pick the
next one. Then Richard picks the next one. Then we go one by one
according to age."

Perhaps because Lee was in
the room, Richard decided to defend his manhood. "We're twins!" he
said. "How come you get to go first if it's according to
age?"

"Because I was born
twenty-three minutes sooner and because
J
comes before
R,"
said Jane. "Uncle Lee, you sit
there," she said, pointing to one end of a bunk bed, "because
you're biggest. Then Emily sits next to you. Then Will, then Becky,
no, Missy, no, wait, then Sarah . . ."

But Richard had jumped the
gun and popped in the birthday tape, and all the littlest ones
plopped down on the floor in front of the screen except Missy, who
climbed onto Emily's lap. "Oh, never mind," said Jane when she saw
herself on camera. She fell to her knees in front of the screen and
studied her performance with a keen and critical eye.

The tape was a great
success. Missy fell asleep in Emily's lap before it was over, and
Becky on the floor soon after. Everyone agreed that Grammy did a
pretty good job with the candles but that she couldn't have done it
alone. But that was true last year, too. Emily was appalled by the
number of times she was recorded sneaking looks at Lee --until she
saw that the camera had also caught Lee in a long, serene gaze at
her while she was talking with Grace.

Sitting on the bunk bed
with sweet-smelling Missy in her lap, leaning slightly into Lee's
supporting arm behind her, Emily was well aware that she hadn't
been so completely, simply happy since before her mother's death.
Maybe it was because she'd let herself lose touch with her own
family. She hadn't been home to New Hampshire since Christmas.
After her mother died, she'd burrowed more deeply into her work and
hidden there, like a frightened cub alone in a cave. Today was the
first time she'd dared creep a little way out toward the warm
sun.

Hildie poked her head in
the room just as the tape was finishing. "How did it turn out?" she
asked Lee in a hushed voice as she gently lifted up the first
fallen soldier she came across.

Lee smiled and said,
"Parts of it are downright inspiring." He leaned his arm into
Emily's back in a nudging, comical way, sending her to the brink of
embarrassed tears.

Hildie shifted the sleepy
weight in her arms. "I do possess some small talent, I think. Maybe
I'll chuck all this and run away to Hollywood."

"Mom-mee," said Sarah,
distressed, "that's not
fun-ny.

"Oh, Sarah, you know I'd
take you with me," Hildie said, smiling. "No one else would keep
you."

Jane and Richard were deep
in conference behind Hildie, deciding on the next tape. "Let's
try," whispered Jane, and Richard slipped the tape into the
recorder. It opened on a scene very much like this afternoon's,
except that all the characters were dressed in shorts and tank tops
and some of them were hot and sweaty. They were split up into teams
on either side of a net.

Little Sarah recognized
the scene. "Volleyball!" she cried.

Hildie turned around
sharply to the television. "Not that one, Dickie," she said coolly.
"Eject it."

Richard made a face,
either because of the hated nickname or because he'd been the one
caught in the deed. Behind her Emily felt Lee's arm stiffen. But he
said, "Leave it in, Richard. We haven't seen it for a long
time."

"Lee—"

"It's all right, Hildie,"
Lee said quietly.

Hildie sighed a little
nervously, then left with her burden. The tape played on. Emily
knew whom she was looking for even before the camera zoomed in on
her: a tall, utterly beautiful woman with rich brown hair and a
face that could easily force men to their knees. It didn't surprise
Emily that Nicole Alden proved to be an inept athlete; concert
pianists rarely tried out for the Olympics. When Nicole missed a
ball -- as she did often -- she did it with such good-humored grace
and distress that Lee had no choice but to put his arms around her
and show her how to shape a fist, and generally act besotted. Who
wouldn't? The game ended, and the camera turned to other scenes and
other actors.

Hildie came back just as
the tape was finishing and asked lightly, "How we doin' here? Can I
haul off another one?"

Emily stood up carefully
with her own droopy bundle. "I'll give you a hand." She followed
Hildie into a bedroom across the hall outfitted with another set of
bunk beds and a single. Hildie undressed the sleeping children down
to their underwear, and Emily wiped their sticky hands with a warm,
damp washcloth. No one spoke until Hildie murmured, "It's the first
time he's been able to watch that one through. I hope it wasn't too
hard for you."

Really, these people were
too unbelievably well bred. What did Emily's feelings have to do
with it? Lee Alden had just gone through a traumatic event, and
they were worrying whether their guests were comfortable and happy.
Emily shrugged helplessly. "Hildie, it hardly matters what I
felt."

Hildie gave her a
quizzical look, which Emily returned with a tremulous smile. The
trouble with the whole bunch was that they were too wound up in one
another, she decided. This one-for-all and all-for-one business
didn't leave a person any room to hide and sulk.

"I'll go get another one,"
she whispered to Hildie. But in the hall she ran into
Lee.

"Hildie will do just fine
on her own," he said. "Let's go outside." He led Emily through the
kitchen door and out through the herb garden. The path, a layer of
bark mulch, was too narrow to walk side by side, so they walked
single file until they came to a wooden bench swing. Even by the
dim glow of the path lights she could see that it was thick with
generations of green paint. Emily took a seat on one side, and Lee
stood facing the structure, setting the swing into gentle
motion.

"So. Now you know Nicole,"
he said quietly. "We played that volleyball game over Labor Day
weekend. Then Hildie's camera went on the fritz . . . and the game
ended up being the last thing we had of Nicole." He added quietly,
"She didn't know she was pregnant then. Anyway . . ." He let the
sentence trail off unfinished.

"She was a beautiful
woman," Emily said with feeling. "Did she play well?"

He let out a sad little
laugh. "She was pathetic; you saw the video."

"No, I meant the
piano."

"Ah. Like an angel. She
loved Chopin."

And so it went, with Emily
leading him step by halting step into a discussion of a woman whose
memory she had every reason to fear. She learned that Mrs. Alden
had been an early champion of Nicole and that Lee had resisted the
match because, among other things, Nicole got deathly seasick on a
boat and he could not bear to see her in pain. Eventually Nicole
found adequate medication and learned to tolerate, if not enjoy,
their outings on water. That was the thing that came through about
Nicole: She insisted on trying everything that Lee did. Some things
she liked; some she didn't. But she always made herself stick with
them.

A cultivated woman with
spunk; it was an unbeatable combination. Emily was glad to see that
Lee could talk so freely about his wife; it showed he was on the
way out of his grief. But she was left with the same old feeling
that Nicole had cleared some impossibly high standard that
political families held their women to.

"So how're you at
volleyball?" Lee asked, almost echoing her thoughts.

"I don't like it," she
decided to admit. "I don't think I was meant to be a team player.
I'm from New Hampshire, Lee. We're kind of independent. Ask
anybody; communes fail there all the time."

His laugh was low and
easy. "I admire freethinkers. All right, then. Boats. Where do you
stand on sailing?" he asked, not at all put off by her whimsical
answer.

"I do love sailing. But if
I didn't," she added with a steady look, "I wouldn't put up with
nausea just to please my man." She looked away, shocked by her own
candor. It wasn't fair to the memory of Nicole. "I'm sorry," she
said, rising from the seat. "That was out of line. Please --" She
stood on the platform, holding the uprights, wanting to jump
off.

But he wrapped his hands
around both of hers, pinning them to the uprights and stopping the
swing. "It wasn't out of line. It was honest. Why do you try to run
from that honesty?"

She hesitated, like a deer
before flight. "I suppose I don't think you're ready for
it."

"Your honesty is what I
like best about you. Don't you see that yet?"

She wanted to believe him,
so she hesitated a moment longer. Should she be honest about
Fergus? She tried to read Lee's face, so near to hers. No,
obviously not. Lee believed that Fergus had been laid to rest. So
to speak.

"This is pointless," she
said, frustrated by the impasse. She tried to break away, but Lee
held her fast.

"No! Stay. Let's have this
out. What is it about me that fills you with contempt, goddammit?"
It was obvious from his angry bewilderment that he'd never had to
ask the question before.

"You mean, besides the
power and the money?" she asked dryly. "Besides the fact that
everything associated with you has a history or a pedigree or a
filigree?"

"Oh, I'm going to have to
work my way up to that one," he said. "Where I come from, wealth
and success aren't exactly character flaws. No, give me a simpler
reason," he said acidly, "something I have a shot at
understanding."

She could give him Fergus,
but that wouldn't help. She rummaged through her trunkful of
reasons, picking out the most likely scrap to fit. "All right.
Let's go back to Nicole. Since you ask." She lifted her chin in a
dangerous way. "I don't approve of the way you made Nicole bend her
will to yours."

"Excuse me?"

"Take sports, for example.
If she wasn't any good at them, why not let her be? She could've
kept score or read a book or raised pigeons. Why force her to be
something she wasn't?"

"I never forced Nicole,"
he said evenly.

"The pressure must have
been there. If not from you, then from all of you."

Even in the dark, she
could see that the remark stung. "Is that why you took so well to
the kids today?" he asked. "Family pressure?"

"No! I loved being with
them," she said quickly. "That's different."

"There's no difference.
Nicole did what she did out of love, because she wanted to be with
me. Or all of us, depending."

"I don't believe it!"
Emily said bluntly. "Why would she let herself look so
bad?"

"Hold it, time out!" Lee
said, releasing her and shaping his forearms into a
T.
"Nicole never worried
about looking bad. Never." For a moment he said nothing. And then:
"Are we talking about Nicole -- or you?"

Bull's-eye. She didn't
realize it until he said it, but it was her own general insecurity
she was pinning on Nicole. It had nothing to do with sports. Emily
was afraid of not knowing the right people or having the right
degree or belonging to the right clubs or wearing the right clothes
or saying the right thing. The thought of accompanying Lee to a
dinner party at the French Embassy, for example, filled her with
terror.

She stepped off the swing
and gave it a little push. Without her weight it squeaked on each
return swing. "Okay, we
are
talking about me. I don't have Nicole's
confidence," she admitted.
Jane Fonda
doesn't have that kind of confidence,
she
thought with a rueful smile.

"That's crazy," he said,
amazed. "You're beautiful, smart, quick-witted, fresh,
incorruptible... . I can go on like this for a long time," he said,
cradling her chin in his hand.

She felt his warm breath
on her cheek, heard the heat in his voice. It would have been so
easy to drift, spellbound, into his embrace. Yet it was important
to her that he understand once and for all that she was not Nicole.
She pulled away and threw her shoulders back, as if the chips on
them were golden epaulets. "I think you should know that I really
am
not
a graceful
loser. And that I like to do things my own way. And that I don't
like being pushed or cajoled. Into anything."

His hand slid around to
the back of her neck, his arm slipped around her waist. "I would
never push you into anything, Emily," he murmured, nuzzling the
nape of her neck. "But I reserve the right to cajole."

He lifted his head and
brought his mouth on hers in a long, tonguing kiss of liquefying
heat. Maybe it was the night, the stars, the honeysuckle; maybe it
was the creaking swing or the cry of an owl nearby. Whether it was
one thing or all of them together, Emily never, ever forgot that
kiss. It was the kind of kiss that both dreams and memories are
made of.