Here to Stay (18 page)

“We’ll take Marie, then. She needs a bath anyhow. I was going to do that today.”

“We’ll let her be a dog today,” Elijah said.

H
E TOOK HER
around the corner to Eugene Cove, not named for their son. It was the cove where the camp lay, and this weekend there were no campers. The shoreline was deserted when he pulled up the canoe.

Marie jumped out and raced about, sniffing. Sissy had brought her lead, and now she called to her and put it on the bitch.

Elijah took her hand and led her up to one of the open cabins, four walls that reached only to waist-level, screens going up the rest of the way.

He’d made the place ready, with flowers on one window ledge and sheets and a quilt on one of the beds and a cassette player that was going to make him face the music.

Inside the cabin, they let Marie off her lead again, and Elijah found, at the base of the flowers, his gift for Sissy. It was a small soapstone dog, but she couldn’t know that because it was wrapped in a piece of paper.

Sissy took it, unwrapped it, and found that the paper was shaped in a heart. She wanted words, but there were none on it.

Elijah switched on the boombox. “Will you dance with me?”

She did, going into his arms as he played the song that had once been
their
song, back when they had been in love, before she’d lied about Ezra, before he’d learned the truth.

Holding her, Elijah listened to the words, remembering when he’d felt like begging her to cling to him, only to him.

And she had done that.

He didn’t want her to see his face, and he wasn’t dancing, just holding her. He sang the words softly to her, his voice not his own. He knew he was trembling and hated the fact, just as he hated the memory of the aloneness of learning his oldest son was not his.

His eyes burned, and he fought the tears. Was he going to have to walk out and get himself back together?

Sissy squirmed loose, not free but so that she could look up at him.

His dark lashes were wet.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Elijah.”

“I’m fine.” He blinked, making it go away, resisting the need to flee. He stayed and kept himself together, and she touched his face, touched his eyebrows and beneath his eyes.

She said, “What’s wrong? Please.”

“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s as right as it can be.” The song started again. It would play three times, the way she’d played it on their wedding day.

He drew her toward the bed, knowing he couldn’t go as far as she wanted, couldn’t say all the things she wanted to hear. Because what would come out was childish.
It hurts. It hurt then, and it still hurts, and it will always hurt.

He’d believed she was just his. Now she had been for twenty-five years, and he was sick about something she really hadn’t been able to help.

“Is this still about Ezra?” she asked.

He closed his eyes, his breath shaking. “I love you,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”

“Please tell me. You’ve never…” Sissy didn’t know quite what to say, nor how to say it.

“Never what?”

They sat down on the bed, then lay down.

“You’ve never said how you felt. When you learned…about Ezra.”

He couldn’t help it. There was nothing else to say. “How do you think I felt?”

Sissy made herself look into his dark eyes. “Did you think I was a virgin?”

“I didn’t
want
to think about it. It’s not just that. I didn’t dream you’d slept with Clark, though. I don’t know why.”

“He wasn’t the first. When I was in school, I fell in love with a professor. We were lovers. Then I found out he was married, so that was that. It hurt.” Sissy had never told him this, and she felt knots in her chest untying as she spoke. “And Clark—Elijah, it’s as I told you. I wasn’t sure I wanted to marry him, and I decided to…be with him to convince myself. And it had the opposite effect. It’s probably why I left him at the altar. It was once, Elijah, and Ezra came from that, and I will never apologize for wanting my son or wanting him to be exactly who he is.”

“I would never ask you to apologize for that. God, I always wanted Ezra, Sissy. It never made me not want Ezra.”

“Just me.”

“It didn’t make me not want you.”

“Then what?” Sissy asked, frustrated. “What?”

He could not say the words. Was she so emotionally disabled that she had to hear them, that she couldn’t figure it out for herself. He said very softly, “I was hurt. I went out to the car and when I started it the radio came on, and it was this song, Sissy. And this song, corny nineteen-sixty vintage, expressed how I had always felt about you, how much I loved you.”

Sissy heard the melody and lyrics in the background as he spoke, and she suddenly clung to him desperately, holding his head. “Elijah, I never wanted to hurt you. God, that’s why I was going to take that secret to the grave! I never wanted you to know.”

His head against her throat, he heard her. She had planned to keep Ezra’s parentage secret always. Not out of deceit, but to protect him from the pain Elijah had felt when he discovered the truth. Because she’d known how much it would hurt.

He hugged her, and suddenly a pink tongue slurped across his face beside a snuffling oversized black nose. “Hey, Marie,” he said, letting the dog kiss both him and Sissy.

He looked at Sissy and said, “I never knew that.”

She kissed him, and he held her closer, now allowing the tears he hadn’t let come out before, because these few tears were not bitter but comfortable, as comfortable as his wife of twenty-five years.

Marie did not give up, and Sissy said, “Okay, Marie. Go lie down. Elijah and I are having quality time.”

The bitch, looking chastened, moved away, turned in circles and lay down on the floor.

Then Sissy kissed Elijah’s eyes. She lay on top of him.

He said, “I wonder when we have to be back for that damned party. They’re going to play this song. Eddy was quizzing me about it.”

Sissy said, “I can never hear it too many times, Elijah. I love you the way I did when I was sixteen, when I was twelve, and all the ways I’ve loved you since.” She giggled. “They got a keg. I can’t believe it. And Gene hates parties.”

Elijah played with the buttons on her blouse, beginning to undo them.

Sissy asked, “Are we okay again? Like I’ve wanted to be all my married life?”

He closed his eyes and whispered an oath, and she
didn’t know what it meant. He just said again, “I’m sorry. Things—Things are better. Much better.”

“A
ND YOU SAID
they’re not all hugs and kisses,” Eddy said to Ezra, who had shown up at 2:00 p.m. She stood by her oldest brother as they watched their parents, Kennedy and Gerry, Allie Morgan and her husband, and Clark and Berkeley dance to the song. Her father kept singing to her mother.

Gene had vetoed the band, saying he would make a CD for the party.

He had. The CD contained every cover ever recorded of “Let It Be Me.”

Ezra said now, deadpan, “I think Julio Iglesias is my favorite.”

Eddy snorted. “Why don’t you dance with Janina?” Ezra’s girlfriend Janina was a departure for him, a vegan yoga teacher and political activist.

Janina, in a silk halter top and floor-length skirt made from a sari, was standing with Gene, listening to him with a somewhat fascinated expression as he told her about the habits of mother scorpions.

Several cousins were down on the dock, drinking beer, and Clark and Berkeley’s daughter, Anne, was touring the kennels with a girlfriend.

Bob Dylan’s cover started, and Elijah left Sissy and walked over to Gene. “Is there any other music?” he asked.

“It’s your song,” Gene said matter-of-factly. “I thought it’s what you’d want to hear.”

Elijah, as had long been his habit with his son, thought carefully before speaking. “Your mother and I
thank you for the gift. But I think the other guests might like a change.”

Eddy came over and said, “Gene, why don’t you tell Dad why you think it’s their favorite song. Mom, come here!”

Sissy joined them.

“I don’t think it’s consciously why,” Gene informed Eddy. “Obviously it’s a sappy song that was popular when they were teenagers. But unconsciously they like it because it expresses how dogs feel about humans.”

Elijah tried hard to keep a straight face. “No matter how little we deserve it.”

“It’s how I feel about dogs,” Sissy said, “but it’s even more how I feel about your father.”

Gene gave her a look that said this admission was of no interest to him. He turned off the CD player and asked Elijah, “How about the Sex Pistols? I have
Never Mind the Bollocks
in my car.”

“Great,” said Elijah, deciding not to argue.

Behind him, a cork popped.

While the music paused, Ezra stepped up to the part of the deck where the others had been dancing. He had brought champagne, and now Janina filled glasses.

Finally, when Gene had returned, he said, “To my parents. May the next twenty-five years be even better.”

Elijah noticed that he looked uneasily at Clark after he’d made the toast. Clark gave an approving nod.

To my parents
, echoed in Elijah’s mind. All Ezra’s parents.

All this, Nick thought, in pursuit of the perfect dog. He wondered what the judge would make of Beezlebub’s Herald. Would the offspring of genetically altered dogs beat out old-fashioned organic breeding? Nick admired the sable bitch who’d taken her group in Organic Breeding. Was it his imagination, or was there more happiness, more joy, in this animal?

—
Stud Feats: A Nick D’Angeles Mystery,
Elijah Workman, 2008

Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
February 8, 2009

C
HAMPION GENESIS’S
Let It Be Me was only eleven months old. The sable bitch had earned her championship in the shortest possible time. Sissy personally loved sables, and it surprised and pleased her that Let It Be Me had made it to this show. So many people, judges not excluded, preferred black-and-tans.

“Do you think I should have handled her?” Sissy asked Elijah as they sat together at ringside, watching Berkeley and Mimi in the ring.

“No, Berkeley’s the best.”

Sissy admired another bitch, older and more solid-looking than Mimi. She chattered mindlessly about other bitches, other handlers. She watched Berkeley gracefully stack Mimi, watched the judge touch the beautiful bitch.

“You know what?” Elijah said.

“What?”

“She’s young to be out there, but she’s happy. Look how happy she is.”

“Yes,” Sissy agreed. “She likes Berkeley.”

Ezra sat on his father’s other side. He said, “The judge likes her.”

“Do you think?” Sissy whispered.

They sat, clutching their seats, holding their breath as all the bitches and handlers lined at the end of the ring, awaiting the judge’s pick.

He pointed his finger.

Not at Mimi.

Sissy felt tears of disappointment spring to her eyes.

“Mom, you always cry,” said Ezra. “My God, she’s at Westminster. She’s a puppy! Give her a break.”

“I know. She’s great,” Sissy whispered.

Then she saw the judge hand something to Berkeley. Berkeley looked at it, and a smile broke over her face.

“What’s that?” Sissy asked.

“I’m sure he just told her that Mimi’s a pretty girl,” Ezra said.

They made their way out of their seats to go find Berkeley and Mimi. They met in a corridor off of the ring, and Berkeley held out the piece of paper to Sissy while Mimi promptly jumped up beside Sissy, which
was what she did because she wasn’t allowed to jump on people. A springing spiral in the air.

Sissy looked at what Berkeley had handed her.

It was an Award of Merit.

The tears came again, but this time they were of joy. She shoved the paper at Elijah and crouched to hug Mimi, who wiggled and kissed her and swished her tail at one beat per half second.

Sissy’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket, and as she stood again she took it out. “Hello?”

“Mom, it’s Eddy! She looked so pretty. She should have won, but she’s just a baby, really.”

“She got an Award of Merit. Elijah, you’re crushing me. Your dad’s kissing me to death, Eddy.”

Sissy made her excuses to Eddy, closed her phone and let herself be enfolded in Elijah’s arms.

He said, “You did this, Sissy! You’re incredible.”

Sissy pulled away enough to look up at him. “We did it, Elijah. We did it.”

His eyes on hers, he said steadily, “You’re right. We did.” He held her tightly, so thankful for the we they were. He kissed her lips softly and said, “There really isn’t any you or I anymore, is there?” And this had been his dream of life with her.

She gazed up at him, because what he’d expressed was the long desire of her heart, and it had become true. “Just we,” she said, pressing her face against his shoulder in utter contentment.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-3862-7

HERE TO STAY

Copyright © 2009 by Margot Early.

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