Mourning Becomes Cassandra (35 page)

“Can you come in for a minute?” I asked shyly, after I opened the door and he swooped me up for a hug and a resounding kiss. “I have a gift for you.”

“A minute—the snow is supposed to get heavier as the day goes on, and they’re not requiring chains at this point,” he agreed, “but I also have a little something for you.”

“When did you have time?” I marveled. “I figured you’d have to steal something off Riley’s desk and wrap it up for me.”

“The wonders of online shopping,” he explained. Dropping onto the couch, he pulled me onto his lap, and I promptly crawled off, knowing all my housemates would probably cut out early from work and might appear at any moment. Seeing his reproachful frown, I scrunched up next to him and reached for the wrapped box he held out.

“Let me guess—some t-shirts to match Riley’s,” I joked. James only smiled, looking more and more smug as I peeled off the paper to find a GPS navigator for my car. “‘A little something’!” I screeched. “This is not ‘a little something’! You can’t give me this—it’s too expensive. You’ll be sorry when we break up.”

“You think I’m the vindictive type?” he asked, winding a lock of my hair around his finger. “That when you dump me, I’ll suddenly be glad you spend so much of your time getting lost?” He tugged gently on my hair to pull me closer and kiss me.

Sometime later I rummaged under the tree until I came up with his present. “It’s pathetic, compared to yours, but I thought it matched your eyes.” I’d gotten him a merino wool sweater in stone gray, and James instantly ripped off the navy one he’d been wearing and donned mine.

“A perfect fit. I love it. Thank you, Cass.” He couldn’t stay long after that. I pressed some cookies for his family on him, and then he was gone.

O ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way, with painful steps and slow.
I thought of Nadina and Mike and prayed for them. How much harder they were making their lives, and how everyone who cared about them wished for them to be whole and well and free. I had sent her a card, and she had texted me once to say she’d reached Aunt Sylvia’s fine, but that was all I knew. Nothing about Mike’s jail time or how they were doing or what he thought of her being in Ohio when he got out.

For lo! the days are hastening on, by prophets seen of old, when with the ever-circling years, shall come the time foretold.
The words of the song sank into me, and deep down I felt God’s comfort.
When the new heaven and earth shall own, the Prince of Peace their king.
The years would keep circling; one day I too would die, but I would walk that new heaven and earth with Him and with Troy and Min. We would never lose each other. My father put his arm around me, and I leaned my head on his shoulder, my cheeks wet, but with comfort and even joy, not grief.

It was such a beautiful winter night, clear and cold, that we had walked to the service, but I would have wanted to walk even if it had been raining. Selfishly, I was sorry to have Daniel and Mrs. Martin there, because if they hadn’t been I would have suggested singing as we walked home.

Mrs. Martin was even chattering away about the damage burning wax candles did to the interiors of buildings, but to my relief, Joanie read my mind, and out of the blue I heard her warm, bell-like voice lift: all four verses of the Sussex Carol, atheist family walking right beside her or no. It was hard not to love Joanie.

“
All out of darkness, we have light, which made the angels sing this night: ‘Glory to God and peace to men, now and forevermore, Amen
!’”

“Honestly,” sniffed Mrs. Martin when her daughter’s voice finally died away and we only heard our footsteps once more, “think of your Jewish neighbors, Joanie.”

Christmas morning the thermometer was right at freezing. Bundling myself in my flannel robe and pulling my hair into a quick ponytail, I zipped downstairs to start the cinnamon rolls on their last rise, Christmas cinnamon rolls with eggs and bacon and grapefruit being a McKean family tradition.

After our late night last night, everyone had agreed to push back breakfast to ten o’clock—one of the luxuries of having no little children around—so I stopped short when I came upon Daniel in the kitchen getting the coffee going. These new early-bird tendencies of his still threw me. I guess if you don’t spend half the night messing around with someone, there’s no longer a need to sleep in. Briefly I considered turning tail and hitting the shower first, but I needed to get the rolls in the oven and, heck, he’d seen me looking worse.

“Morning,” I said, slipping the cold pan out of the fridge and tossing it on the counter. “You’re up early.”

“I had an idea I might catch you if I got up,” he said unexpectedly. “Coffee?”

Might as well, since I had to wait for the oven to preheat. He watched me dumping in the milk and sugar with the absent-minded distaste of someone who took it black.

“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked, a few minutes later, when he showed no sign of continuing his thought.

“Two things, actually.” He disappeared into the living room for a minute, returning with a wrapped gift. “Firstly I have something for you—Merry Christmas.”

He held it out to me, and I backed away without thinking. “Oh, no! I didn’t get you anything—I had no idea you were going to get me something. I hope it didn’t cost much.”

“A steal at twice the price,” he assured me, forcing the present into my hands. “Open it.”

Still feeling badly, I untied the ribbon. He must have paid to have it gift-wrapped. When I pulled the paper away I found myself holding a red leather volume, smooth as a well-worn Bible, with
Shakespeare’s Romances
stamped in gilt on the cover.

“Oh!” I said inadequately. I riffled the pages gently:
Pericles, Cymbeline, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale
. “Oh!” My own copies of these plays existed only in cheap, high-school paperback editions with yellowed pages, or in the ponderous
Riverside Shakespeare
of my college years.

“You remember our conversation?” Daniel asked after a minute. I looked up, still wondering, and saw that he looked pleased with his gift’s reception. “Shakespeare’s comedies end in a wedding, and his tragedies begin with a marriage.”

“And the romances are somewhere in between,” I recalled. “The couples spend a lot of time apart.”

“I figured it was more like life—some tragedy but also some comedy.”

“I should be about due for the comedy, then,” I cracked. Cradling the volume to my chest, I added more seriously, “Thank you so much, Daniel. It’s the nicest book I own. I wish—I wish I had something to give you back.”

A mischievous grin appeared on his face. “Well, it just so happens that I’ve thought of the very thing you could do for me.”

“What?” I demanded warily, holding the book a little away from me now. I didn’t want to give it back, but who knew how much it would cost me?

Daniel looked insulted and pushed the book back toward me. “It’s not conditional—the book is for you in any case. Just hear me out.” He waited for me to give a tentative nod before continuing. “My office is throwing its holiday party on New Year’s Eve, and I wondered if you would go with me.”

“Me?” I squeaked. “Whatever for? You’re Daniel Martin—just flip open the blessed phone book and call the first woman’s name you see!”

“A brilliant plan,” he said dryly, “but I’ve decided to change my dating habits.”

“You have?” I asked incredulously. The oven reached 350˚ and beeped, causing me to jump.

He waited for me to sling the cinnamon rolls in and then said, “I have. I’ve decided not to ask women out if I’m not interested in them, and there’s no chance of the relationship going anywhere.” So never again, in other words? Why, then, was he asking me to go to the stupid office party? Reading my mind, he added, “I’d like to come with a date so it’s all a non-issue there, but whoever I might ask would think I was interested in her. God knows you’d never get that idea, so I thought you would be perfect.”

I hesitated, and he took that as an encouraging sign. “You and James didn’t have plans for New Year’s Eve, did you?”

I shook my head. “He’ll still be in Richland. But Daniel, what kind of party is it?”

“Fancy,” he said shortly. “Formal and expensive. Lots of alcohol, food, music. Right up your alley.”

“I wouldn’t have anything to wear,” I stalled.

“Tell Joanie—she’ll take care of that. Is it a date?”

Rubbing my finger along the soft leather cover, I thought about it. “I can have the book no matter what?”

It was a Christmas of odd pairings. Joanie flat-out refused to join her mother for the getting-the-blood-pumping morning walk, but my mother went enthusiastically. Instead, Joanie spent most of the day as Perry’s sous-chef in the kitchen. Daniel horned in on the Scrabble game I was playing with my father, and, thanks to me drawing tray after tray of vowels, he won.

“Too bad, Cass,” said Dad, patting my hand patronizingly. He was thrilled and disguising it ill, since he had lost to me nine times out of every ten since I was twelve years old.

Daniel wasn’t even bothering to hide his triumph. Grabbing the score sheet, he declared, “I may have to frame this. Or hang it on the fridge.”

“With an asterisk by my score!” I insisted. “Something to explain that I drew 90% vowels and you got the ‘Z’ and the ‘X.’”

“Nonsense,” he countered maddeningly. “The true Scrabble champion can play whatever he’s dealt.”

“And I did—witness ‘luau’ and ‘oleo’ for stinking four points apiece—but you had my dad sitting there feeding you Triple Word Scores—”

They both seemed to find this terribly amusing, and Dad even slapped Daniel on the back like they were in some cheesy buddy movie.

It turned out he wasn’t the only one sucked in by Daniel that Christmas. After dinner, when Mom and I volunteered to clean up, she waited until I was elbow-deep in suds and scrubbing au gratin off a pan to say, “Cass, my dear, you gave me altogether the wrong impression of Daniel.”

“What impression was that?” I asked, reaching for the nylon pan scraper.

“Well, you told us in October that he was an insolent, sex-addicted atheist,” she explained. “Dad and I were a little concerned that you would be living with such a person, especially at such a sensitive time in your life—”

The pan slipped from my hands back into the soapy water. “You worried I would fall for Daniel? After being married to a quality guy like Troy?”

She shrugged off my indignation. “If he really was as handsome and unscrupulous as you said, there was no telling. But I only bring this up to say that this visit has set us at ease. I don’t know what you meant by calling him insolent, and there hasn’t been any parade of women, and as for the atheism—he’s the one who suggested we all go to Christmas Eve service!”

With difficulty I refrained from rolling my eyes. It irritated me to no end that people like Daniel could behave like the biggest sleazebags, but all was forgiven and forgotten the second they turned on the charm.

“I’m glad you like him, Mom,” I said. “I’m not holding my breath for his good behavior to last.”

She patted me placatingly. “Yes, yes. I never meant to imply that you might be interested in him. I just meant we were happy to find you had such pleasant friends. Now tell me about this James you’ve been seeing. Perry tells me he’s a lot younger than you…”

Hours later I lay in bed, thinking of this James who was a lot younger than I. He had texted me once since I’d seen him—a quick Merry Christmas and made-it-over-the-Pass kind of message—and I had to admit I was miffed about it. Not that he seemed to be the frequent-communicator type even when he was around. Granted, they’d been completely absorbed in shipping that game, and he seemed to like me well enough whenever he was with me, but was an occasional live phone call too much to ask?

I rolled over and buried my face in my pillow. I knew I shouldn’t have started dating anyone! After all I’d been through, to subject myself to these idiotic, junior-high, emotional gymnastics. Fine! Maybe he was already a little bored and forgetting about me, and I would just have to sit around waiting for the inevitable break-up text. Would he text? It would be so tacky.

Sleep obviously was not going to happen anytime soon. Sitting up, I flicked on my bedside lamp and reached for the book I had begun recently, but my hand stopped halfway to it since it was about a family of insomniacs who eventually died after their bodies broke down from lack of sleep. Not very soothing.

Next to the dying insomniacs lay my new book from Daniel. Picking it up gently, I fanned the pages, running my fingers across the stamped cover.
The Winter’s Tale
would be just the thing for a sleepless winter’s night; it had been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays ever since I saw it in Ashland at fifteen. Three bitter acts, followed by two of frolicking pastoral, as all was set to rights.

Only when I opened the front cover did I notice Daniel made an inscription on the flyleaf, and I wondered why he hadn’t pointed it out before. There was no “Dear Cass” or “with fondest wishes,” simply a few lines copied out in his minute, precise script. Paulina’s speech, when she enchants to life the stone statue of Hermione, Leontes’ long-lost wife whom he had imagined dead and past recall:

Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him
Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs.

“There! Okay, Cass, check it out.” Joanie spun my chair around to face me toward the mirror. She had brushed my hair to a high gloss and twirled it up in an elegant chignon worthy of Angela Martin, only looser around the sides. She had also insisted on doing my make-up (“It’s an evening occasion, for crying out loud!”), and I looked askance at my artificially longer lashes and sparkly eyelids.