Happy Any Day Now (23 page)

L
ast-Minute Charlie. That had been my nickname for him back in Cambridge.

“He take you for grant,” my mother used to tell me when I complained he was never on time for dates in the early stages, or for dinners that sat getting cold when we lived together. “You put up so much. So old-fashion, Judith.”

When this was said, we were fifteen years post Irwin’s defection, Gracie had been made a supervisor at the bathing suit factory, and the
New York Post
, which she read to improve her English, raised her consciousness as it banner headlined the shattering of some of the highest glass ceilings: Sandra Day O’Connor’s appointment to the Supreme Court and Jeanne Kilpatrick’s landing the UN ambassador job. Gracie might have been uneducated, but she was not stupid. She caught on faster than I did.

“That Mary Tyler Moore”—my mother insisted her favorite actress was part Asian (“her eyes very slant”)—“she work big job. Smart. More smart than Ted Baxter. She not need man. You give in too much. Treat Charlie like God.”

Gracie was right. But that was then and this was now, and when Last-Minute Charlie had phoned from the Washington beltway at six p.m. Friday to tell me he was on his way to Baltimore a day early, I’d said, “The orchestra’s playing tonight. If you want to hear the best parts of
Candide
, I’ll leave a ticket for you at the box office. Afterward I promised Marti I’d go with her to this jazz joint in Fells Point.”

“We’ll work it out,” he said. “See you onstage.”

He’d been late, of course. Fifteen bars into the Bernstein overture, I heard the rustle as he took his seat. His glance found me and he smiled. The core of me always thawed a little when Charlie beamed a smile my way. Love or approval or just charm radiating, it warmed me.

It was all ensemble work that night. I played effortlessly, with not a flutter beneath the breastbone. As we walked offstage, Joan Farley, the cellist one down from me, caught up to say, “I probably won’t see you before the auditions, so I want you to know I’m pulling for you.” And then I did feel the black butterfly spiral high in my chest.

• • •

Outside on Cathedral Street, Charlie took in the circus of light, color, and chatter as the audience spilled out of the lobby. Then he had eyes only for me, his hand slipped to my waist, and he pulled me to him. Before I went in for the kiss, I checked the immediate vicinity for stray musicians who carried gossip like birdseed. And for Geoff. He wouldn’t pass the morsel; it would stick in his craw, and I didn’t want to hurt him.

I looked around. No witnesses. No Geoff. Great kiss.

As we disconnected, Charlie curved a hand around the back of my neck and thumb-stroked the tensed muscles.

“I’ve missed you, Ju-ju. You’ve had quite a couple of weeks, poor girl. I’m sorry I wasn’t more available, but my schedule was nearly as grueling.”

Unless he’d lost a close colleague who was also a cherished friend, I doubted that.

“I can’t tell you how eager I’ve been to see you and how much I’m looking forward to easing up for a day or two. Starting immediately, if not sooner. So home, Jeeves? My car or yours?”

“Both.” I pulled away. “You’ll follow me. And not home. I told you I had plans to meet Marti at the Bard on Thames. A jazz club? I did mention it.”

“You did. That’s still on the docket, is it? You know I like jazz, but it’s been a long day, heavy on meetings, and I’m beat. What I’d really like is to put my feet up and spend the evening just you and me.”

“Sounds wonderful. We can pencil it in for tomorrow night.”

It was kind of nostalgic to watch Charlie rev up for the argument. His upper lip drew taut over the classic Pruitt overbite, his jaw tightened, eyes narrowed. I’d seen that expression enough times in my youth—at moot court, before finals, accompanying his recurring complaint about the way I stacked the Wendell Street dishwasher.

From my amused smile, I supposed Charlie realized this wasn’t going to be the easy win he’d anticipated. He closed with a push. “Marti’s just over the garden fence, so she gets to be with you all the time. I’m sure she’d understand.”

Well, no. She’d be royally ticked off. She’d called twice that day to make sure I still intended to show up. It was half-price hamburger night at the Bard and the Benny Brown Jazz Quartet was on the bill. I’d love Benny Brown, she had promised. For whatever reason, this evening was important to her.

My Bed-Stuy experience hadn’t been a total disaster. I’d picked up some major life lessons on the street. I might have let “watch your back” slip my mind a few too many times, but I always,
always
practiced “never dis a sister.”

I said sweetly, “Tell you what, Charlie. I’ll give you my house key—you can let yourself in and make yourself to home, as we say in Bawlmer. But I’m not going to bail on Marti.”

It took him maybe ten seconds to process my intransigence and he became the Lance Armstrong of backpedaling. “Right. Of course, a promise is a promise.” Charlie Pruitt stared at the stranger at his side—me. I decided I saw a flicker of respect spark his blue eyes.

“They serve coffee at this place? Great. A shot of caffeine with my scotch and I’ll be powered up.”

He took my arm—sweetly quaint and chivalrous even in defeat—and we began to walk toward the garage. “Jazz,” he said. “Do you remember my collection of John Coltrane and—what was her name, ‘My Funny Valentine’?”

“Carmen McRae.”

“Carmen McRae, that’s it. I think I’ve still got those tapes, eight-tracks, at the Maine house. Amazing how you lose touch over the years with something you love.”

Amazing.

• • •

Thames Street—pronounced
with
the
h
and a long
a
because we defeated the hoity-toity British at the Battle of Baltimore—runs along the waterfront in Fells Point. A neighborhood of bars, restaurants, galleries, boutiques, and gentrified Federal-style row homes, it stays up late on weekends, and when we arrived at eleven its cobblestone streets were well lit and buzzing.

The Bard was packed. Marti was already seated in the main room chomping a burger. She halted midbite, took in Charlie, and sent me a curious look. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise.” She wiped ketchup from her lip. “I thought you weren’t coming in until tomorrow, Charlie. Not that I’m not over the moon to see you.”

“Likewise. I was able to duck a dinner meeting.”

The table was a small four. His shoulder rubbed mine. “How’s that hamburger?” he asked. “I missed dinner and I’m starved. This was a good idea, Judith.”

As a figure swaggered toward the table, I wondered how long he’d hold that thought. When Marti was pushing for this girls’ night out, she’d mentioned she had a new romance in her life and Nora might join us. “I’m warning you. She’s not my standard frilly femme.”

Not even close. Lanky as a cowpoke in jeans, a maroon crewneck, and tooled leather boots, Nora was a Ralph Lauren ad come to life. Where Marti’s hair was a froth of curls and her delicate features seemed carved from alabaster, Nora looked like a cross between a marine drill sergeant and Brad Pitt. Androgynously handsome, even with the buzz cut, she had the grip of a steamfitter.

“Hey. Judith. Heard a lot about you. All good.” She nearly dislocated my shoulder on the down stroke. “And this is . . . ?”

I filled in the blanks, introducing Charlie.

Marti bit her lip, holding back laughter as Charlie and Nora shook hands. He inspected her as if she were a brand-new species.

“I like the bow tie, Charlie. Harrods?” Nora had a nice open smile. “Very cool.” She turned to Marti. “Hey there, babe,” she said, bending down to kiss her full on the lips, then sliding a nuzzle to her neck. Charlie squirmed beside me. And that was just the start of the evening.

The actual consuming of food was done in relative silence. The conversation was, to put it asexually, a three-way. To his credit, Charlie tried to talk sports, but Nora was a fervent Ravens fan and Charlie was big on lacrosse; she was NASCAR, he America’s Cup. So the chatter was polite but awkward, with me refereeing and Marti observing, amused.

Finally, the houselights were doused, a spotlight bloomed onstage, and the Benny Brown Jazz Quartet—piano, bass, sax, and drums—launched its first set with “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Nora tried not to look bored. She managed to entertain herself playing with Marti’s fingers.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, a special treat,” Benny Brown’s velvet voice at the mike announced. “Y’all know Baltimore has some fine musicians, and tonight one of them is doing us the honor of sitting in with the Benny Brown Quartet. This cat works the Maryland Philharmonic Orchestra for his day job, but my classical man’s got a set of chops when he gets to wailing our kind of music. So now, playing his own composition for the very first time in front of an audience, let’s give a big bad Bard welcome to Geoff Birdsall and his ‘Suite for My Seoulmate.’”

In the pulsing dark—and yes, that was my heart whomping—Marti McDowell had to have been counting her lucky stars. Because she’d set this up, and if I could have seen her, I would have killed her. I swear.

“I
s that who I think it is?” Charlie whispered after Geoff lowered his horn a quarter way through to give Benny space for the piano interlude. “Isn’t that your . . . ?”

“Geoff. Yes. I had no idea,” I whispered back. “Believe me.”

Marti, known for her tell-all mouth, had managed to keep this unveiling a secret. And I knew exactly how she’d defend herself when I got to laying her out. I could hear her in high Southern dudgeon: “Did I know you were bringing Charlie? Hell, no. I thought it would be an all-girl gathering and you’d be happy as a dog with two dicks that Geoff’s composition was finally finished and you’d hear it complete first time out of the box. It was written for you, after all. I thought it was going to be an ass-kickin’ surprise.”

That’s what it turned out to be. As Geoff unraveled the exotic, erotic melody, my annoyance with Marti turned to gratitude. Imagine missing this. It was a fusion of sensuous American jazz and
sinawi
, the
mudang
’s rhythmic otherworldly ritual music, with Geoff’s trumpet standing in for the Korean double-reed
piri
.

The first three movements were upbeat and intricately patterned, alternating sizzling and cool. I was sure the ending had been written since our breakup. Bittersweet and bluesy, it spun a heartbreaking requiem for lost love.

Thank God we were in the dark throughout—I didn’t want Charlie to see me blotting my eyes with a grease-stained napkin and I didn’t want Geoff to see me at all. Only when the last jagged flight of melody faded did the houselights come up and the crowd rise to clap and cheer and stomp. Our group stood, though I crouched down a few inches, hoping the big guy at the table in front would block me. Geoff bobbed a quick bow and immediately turned to acknowledge his backup squad. Then the room went dark, a milky spot spilled to light my ex, and he began to play “My One and Only Love.”

I got a whiff of Charlie’s scotch-smoky breath as he leaned over to whisper, “Okay, I’ve had it. I’ll wait for you outside.”

• • •

It’s discourteous and unprofessional for one musician to walk out on another’s performance and I would never walk out on Geoff. Musically, that is. I stayed until his final mellow note.

“Leaving. Bye for us both,” I said sotto voce to the silhouette of Marti and Nora, which had become a single shadow, and threaded my way through tables and out to the street.

Charlie was propped against the Bard’s Tudor facade, turning his idle BlackBerry over and over in his palm, his version of worry beads. His eyes, when he looked up, were fuming red in the neon glow.

“‘My One and Only Love.’ I had the Sinatra version. That was your song, right? Yours and Geoff’s?”

Do people in their forties come up with “our” songs?
Only if they write them
, I thought.

“Actually, we didn’t have one.”

He fumbled with his BlackBerry. “I apologize for walking out on you, Judith, but honestly, I couldn’t take one more moment. That guy was playing just for you.”

“You were rude,” I replied. “Not just to Geoff, who didn’t know. To Marti and Nora, who did.”

“I doubt they noticed,” he said
.
“They were otherwise occupied.”

“Oh, Charlie,” I said, sadly. “You were right. Your message with the flowers about needing to talk? We do.”

He nodded, nostrils at full flare. He took in my face, which was not pretty. It seemed to inspire second thoughts. “Look, Judith.” His nostrils relaxed. “I’m exhausted. My sense is we’d both be better served by a postponement. Let’s sleep on it, shall we?”

We did that. And nothing more. Charlie was in the next room Skyping a colleague in Japan for I didn’t know how long. By the time he slid in next to me, I was socked into sleep.

• • •

When I awoke Saturday he was off on his run, so the first time I laid eyes on him was when he walked onto the patio, where I’d laid out breakfast.

Out earlier to set the table, I’d noticed the blinds were still drawn over at Marti’s. Two cars in her driveway meant a sleepover for Nora, I supposed. Good for them. I was glad somebody in the vicinity had gotten laid.

I poured my houseguest a cup of coffee and then a cup for myself. He took a fortifying slug and said into the mug, “I’m sorry if I was a jerk at the jazz club.”

Not I’m sorry I
was
a jerk at the jazz club.
If
marked the spot. It was a debater’s ploy, a lawyer’s sleight of words. Theodora Gottlieb, MD, would have pointed out how it revealed resistance to assuming personal responsibility for one’s own actions.

“Well, you
were
kind of a jerk.” I dialed down to just above a whisper, which had always worked better with Charlie. “Yes, the suite was written for me. Geoff started it several years ago, ran into some snags, and I thought he’d abandoned the project. But obviously—” I stalled to a halt, stricken by the idea that he hadn’t. Abandoned it. We were over, but the melody lingered on.

“I had no idea,” I resumed, “that he was going—”

The BlackBerry gonged.

I wanted to take the Zen monk trapped inside that freakin’ BlackBerry and wring his gonging neck.

Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out the device that worked best for him. “E-mail.” He checked. “My law clerk. A moment.” He pushed a few keys and placed the crackberry on the table, screen up. Back to me. “You were saying . . .”

“When I was so rudely interrupted.” I glared. “I was saying I had no idea he was going to play ‘Suite for My Seoulmate’ last night. I was surprised he’d even finished it. Marti set it up so Geoff wouldn’t know I was there and she sure as hell didn’t know you were coming. But I’m glad I went. It was beautiful. As far as ‘My One and Only Love,’ it’s a standard. Purely generic.”

Charlie gave that notion a going-over while picking apart a honey bun with his fingers. Kiki would have been appalled. He said finally, “Yes, right.” He laid his sticky hand over mine. “I am sorry, Ju-ju. I’ll apologize to Marti next time I see her so she doesn’t think it was personal, my walking out. You know, misinterpret it as an insult to her sexual orientation. I don’t have a problem with individual homosexuals even if I don’t subscribe to the gay rights agenda promoted by the radical fringe.”

“Of course you don’t. You subscribe to the
Wall Street Journal
.” I cracked a smile. “Look, you and I have always had political differences, but we’ve always respected each other’s point of view. Still, that was college and this is all grown-up and I suppose we should try to figure out where we both stand before you take over the Washington office and unleash me on your new Capitol Hill colleagues. I really don’t want to give the D.C. branch of Pruitt, Bryce and Summerville a collective heart attack.”

He seemed to be considering his reply when his BlackBerry launched into a clickety-clack shimmy on my tempered-glass table. A nearby squirrel, spooked, made a mad dash for cover. “I turned it to vibrate only, but this is a call coming in.” He snatched the damned thing up and read. “Ah, one I must take. It’s a situation. Excuse me.”

I nodded, quickly loaded up my tea tray with breakfast dishes, and headed into the house.

• • •

I was in the music room, taking pleasure from just looking at the Goffriller cello, when I heard him come up behind me.

I turned. He was wearing his somber face. “Sorry about that. There seems to be an issue regarding jurisdiction . . . There’s an important distinction between—” He flicked off the thought as if I wouldn’t have grasped the legal fine points anyway. Or maybe I was shortchanging him, because he reached around to pull me close and whisper, “But not as important as we are.”

After freeing me, he took a seat on my sofa and patted the space next to him. Obediently, I planted myself, but not so close that our thighs were touching.

He cleared his throat. “You mentioned the Washington office, my potential colleagues there.” I nodded. He coughed a second clearing. “It seems there’s been a change of plans. After considerable thought, I’ve decided not to take the reins at K Street after all.”

It took me a minute of staring at his profile, which could have been stamped on the nickel with those classic features, except Jefferson wasn’t nervously biting his lower lip. And then I put it all together.

“You’re not moving to D.C.” He wouldn’t turn his head, didn’t dare meet my eyes. “But you were shopping for houses in Georgetown.”
For us,
I refrained from adding. Not that I’d had any immediate plans to move in. Not when I wasn’t in panic mode anyway. It was more symbolic, the move closer to me. Geographically equals emotionally. So I must have scowled.

He sighed. “I can’t expect you to entirely understand, Judith. It was a complex decision driven by multiple factors. Professional ones. First, I love my work. A judgeship had always been my ultimate objective, and to give it up now?” He shook his head.

“As I gave it more thought, it became clear to me that, in spite of my grousing about the workload, I wanted a few more years on the bench. Also, I haven’t been a practicing attorney for thirteen years. How fair would it be to the team to have someone as rusty as I am in a leadership position, especially in the nation’s capital?” He searched my eyes for understanding. I blinked a few times and he continued. “And speaking of fairness, I’d be bumping the fellow who rightfully earned the job and that sends a bad message about nepotism in a family-founded firm.”

I stopped blinking and narrowed my eyes. “But you knew this before you’d opted for the move.”

He leapfrogged that statement. “And then some personal considerations have arisen.”

Ah-ha.

“Chloe has decided against the colleges in D.C. She’s zeroed in on Columbia.”

“Columbia University. In Manhattan.”

“Umm. She thinks Columbia’s program is more suitable for where she wants to go in her life.”

Or where she wants you to go in yours. The light, which tended to dim when I was in Charlie’s presence, was beginning to dawn.

I said, “And one of your motives for moving to Washington was to be nearer to your daughter.” Why hadn’t I thought of that before? What a schmendrick I was.

“Yes.” There was a pause. “And to you, of course.”

“Maybe, but I’m an afterthought. Again.” Whiny, but true.

“Not true, Judith.” I was Judith now. We were out of Ju-ju territory. “I’m not sure you can empathize, not having children.” Ouch
.
“After a divorce, you feel you’re losing them, and now here she is telling me that with both of us in Manhattan we’d have an opportunity to grow our relationship.”

That turned me into the Incredulous Shrinking Woman. All I could do was shake my head in awe of the power of Pruitt females. At the same time, although I didn’t have kids, I’d
been
one, and I understood firsthand—thank you,
Uhm-mah
—that they came first.
Should
come first. Even the likes of Chloe, who’d probably emerge from her ugly pupa stage to become a halfway decent butterfly, especially if her father hung in through the metamorphosis.

But there was more.

“And then there’s the matter of my mother. Kiki is failing. Precipitously.”

For that I found voice. “According to Chloe, it’s an act. She thinks Kiki’s sharp as ever.”

“My mother compensates, and that’s what Chloe sees. But I see major changes. Kathryn Van Tiller Pruitt never pleads. When I told her about the Washington move, she pleaded with me to stay. She told me she needed me. She didn’t know how she could make it without me close by. She wept. She didn’t weep at my father’s funeral, for God’s sakes.”

“Is that right?” Since showing any kind of emotion stronger than a condescending sniff was just not done in Kiki’s set, she must have been terminally desperate to get him out of the clutches of the Oriyenta yet a second time. And Charlie caved. Again.
Mazel tov, Kiki
, I thought. Marti was right. You’re two for two.

Now that he’d unloaded his ammo into my gut, Charlie relaxed. “This doesn’t have to put a major crimp in our relationship,” he said. “Under three hours on the Acela train, New York to Baltimore. And Amtrak runs both ways. You’ll come up to visit.”

“Long-distance romances rarely work, Charlie.”

The Harvard lawyer who’d made a seven-figure living by persuading and negotiating went full throttle. “Sweetheart, it’s only for a short time. College whizzes by. Mother is in her nineties. For the time being, we can
make
it work. We can pull this off if we try hard enough.”

Maybe, but I was almost fifty and, dear God, I was tired of trying so hard with things that should be easy.

When he registered my skepticism, he fixed me with those magical blue eyes that could be ice, fire, or, as they were now, simmering warmth. He pulled me against him, stroked my cheek, nuzzled my neck, traced the outline of my lips with his pinkie, and kissed me. Not a three-button-with-vest kind of kiss either. My heart went haywire. It was an idiotic organ.

“Damn you,” I murmured, which was his cue to unbutton my shirt and tug at the zipper of my jeans. Cursing, fumbling, he finally unhooked my bra and pitched it across the room, toppling an empty music stand. Undistracted, he focused on what had always been hot buttons for both of us. Charlie was a breast man—that hadn’t changed—and now I saw his eyes widen, heard him groan. “So beautiful.” He kissed, he licked, his tongue drew rough circles and I was on fully automatic, spiraling from purring idle to roaring ready in twenty seconds. Then, in a flash of lucidity, I realized he was actually planning to make love on the sofa, really more of a love seat, which, though it sounded appropriate, was too short and too structured for comfort. Also I thought—back to crazy—
Not in front of the Goffriller
.