Remember the Time (21 page)

His voice broke the stillness. “Are you warm enough? Do you want to go on?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

The park gate was closed, but they simply ducked under the steel bars and made their way to the bandstand and shelter. The ornate lampposts, with their flickering replicas of gaslights, transported them to the turn of the century.

“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful,” Kate said in wonder, leaning against the trunk of a maple tree.

Mike turned to Kate. Her heart-shaped face was framed by the knit scarf she wore. A few errant strands of hair, wet from the snow, curled around her forehead.

A beat passed, and then he said, “Neither have I.” Leaning his body close, but not touching her, he bent to kiss her lips. To his astonishment, she lifted her mouth to accept him, as if she’d been waiting. As if this were the most natural thing in the world. “Katie—I’m going
away for a few days. I have a consultation in Williamsburg.” He ran a gloved finger across her cheekbone.

“I thought you were staying home till the new year.” The slight accusatory tone in her voice betrayed her. She didn’t want him going anywhere. Not now.

“It just came up. I can’t say no. Do you want to come along?”

His thoughts had been on the trip all evening. He’d tossed the idea of asking her back and forth in his mind, but after her small acceptance of him, he’d made the decision, hoping she would say yes. Hoping that getting away from Staunton, and the house, and Paul’s ghost, she could truly see him apart from the threesome they’d once been.

“Maybe we’d better go back,” she said tonelessly.

“Katie—I didn’t mean to offend you.” She was already starting for the park’s exit. “I just thought you might like to get away for a few days. Have you ever seen Williamsburg in December?” He ran to catch up to her. Taking her arm, he pulled her to a stop. “The offer didn’t include one room and one bed. I told you before—it’s your decision.”

“Stop it, Mike. Please.” She continued walking.

His response was suicidal, and he knew it. “What is it really, Kate? Is Saint Paul standing here between us again?”

Another snowy night had come back to Kate. Another walk to the park and the bandstand. And another kiss under a leafless maple tree. Why had she wanted to do this? It had been masochistic, thinking she could come here and not have to deal with the memory of Paul’s kiss, Paul’s arms.

Paul. He had walked with her to the dark, sheltered side of the Victorian bandstand and leaned her against the white boards. He had opened her coat and his. He’d pushed up the wool skirt she wore, and undone his zipper. His fingers pulled her panties aside and stayed
there until he’d found her warmth. And, wrapped in each other’s coats, he had fitted himself against her and taken her.

Mike now followed her, shouting, “Doesn’t your back ache from carrying his weight around all the time? Don’t your knees ever get weak from such a heavy load?” He went on—relentless. “Don’t your arms shake from holding that halo over his head? Christ, Kate! You must be exhausted after all this time. Why don’t you give it a rest?”

How could she tell him the truth? That Paul was everywhere—and nowhere. That was the problem. She felt a spurt of anger with herself, and with Paul. Paul, who had desired her, won her, made her his. So much so that if he’d physically branded her with his initials it couldn’t have been more binding.
Paul’s girl
. Paul, with his own particular physicality and charisma that when she was with him, it was as if there was no one else living in the world. It had never occurred to her that he used others in the same way, because somehow, she never felt used. Just as others hadn’t. It was one of Paul’s many gifts … He got what he wanted, but the people on the receiving end never knew they were sacrificing themselves on the altar of Paul. It was always a privilege to do for him. Always an honor.

A sadness—heavier than any she’d felt up till now—overwhelmed her. Kate had come to an understanding with herself. She was mourning the years she’d wasted on her faulty memories of Paul. And she needed time to grieve. There was no way to explain this to Mike.

He watched her disappear into the darkness of the street beyond the park. God, she was infuriating. And, oh God, that kiss just wasn’t enough. Her mouth had tasted of bay leaf and promise. Her breath had been hot in the frigid air. It warmed his entire body. This was not the way he wanted the night to end. He’d had a hint of her and now wanted to savor it all.

She
had come to
him
. He hadn’t imagined that. Trudging homeward, he realized she hadn’t had a drink that night. There had been no outside influences. She’d received no false courage. So why this pulling away now?

The blackness of the night surrounded him. The snow, just a few moments ago so soft and sensual, choked him. It stuck to his eyelashes, stung his eyes, filled his nose.

Kate slipped and fell just before she reached her front door. The pain was tremendous and she could already feel her ankle swelling inside the nylon snow boot. Fifteen more feet and she’d have been inside and safe. Swearing in pain and frustration, she picked herself up and limped up the last of the steps. Kate didn’t look back as she let herself inside.

K
ate sat propped up on the couch, her ankle wrapped in an ice pack. Pulling off her boot had been a test of fortitude, but she’d yanked it off and was proud she’d only screamed once. The ankle seemed to work, and was only a little purple and a lot swollen.

She’d downed a Percocet left over from a dental visit, with half a glass of wine, and waited for the drug to take effect. Homer, who had watched curiously as she hopped from point to point, now lay on the hearth rug halfheartedly gnawing on a rawhide bone. The only sounds in the house were the steady ticking of the banjo clock on the wall and Homer’s squeaky chewing.

Finishing off the glass of wine, her eyes began to feel lazy, and she let her head fall back into the pillow. Something was pinching her back, and she stuck her hand behind her. It was her bra and she unhooked it. Pulling her arms out of the sweater she wore, she took off the bra and let it fall to the floor. Kate was back in the sweater in seconds, and she sighed in relief. And then she sleepily smiled, surrendering to the pull of a memory long forgotten.

• • •

He passes her on the two-lane road doing about fifty. Mike holds his arm up and out the window of his old Mustang, and she sees him twirling something above the roof. It’s his tie. Kate grins and waits for his car to pull back in front of her rented Buick
.

Mike’s graduation from the University of Virginia earlier that day had been a splendidly pompous affair. Paul, his career always in control of his life, managed the ceremony but had to fly back to Cincinnati for a night game. But Kate had decided to stay on a few days to help Mike with his move to Richmond and his new job with the architectural firm of Rodes, Thompson
.

It takes Kate but a second to decide on a plan, and she lifts her rear off the seat and pulls her panty hose down to her knees with one hand, steering with the other. Kicking off first her left shoe, and then her right, she pulls the nylons off. Putting her bare foot down on the gas pedal, Kate signals to pass him, and as she does, lets the panty hose flutter from her fingertips in the warm, June breeze—a beige flag of challenge
.

Slowing down to a more sedate forty-five, she glances in the rearview mirror and sees Mike’s head duck down. She waits
.

A few minutes later he passes her again, his socks flying from his fingers. She can’t see his eyes—they’re hidden by the sunglasses he wears—but she sees his broad smile. Suddenly, one of the socks is torn from his hand by the fifty-five-mile-per-hour wind he’s generating. Kate watches it whiz by and begins to laugh
.

It takes some doing, but she slips out of her pale green lace panties, and with a wicked grin on her face, she floors it. The expression on Mike’s face is priceless, as he does a double take and leans out the car window to get a better look
.

Kate laughs harder. She feels carefree and alive on this beautiful summer day. No worries, no pain, no obligations but to have fun. “Thank you, Mike!” she shouts at the canopy of newly leafed trees and blue sky that floods her windshield
.

He’s passing her again, naked from the waist up, his pale blue shirt bobbing and weaving above the Mustang’s roof. The
look he gives her through the passenger window says, “Let’s see you top this.”

So she does. The sleeveless white, nubby silk dress she wears buttons up the front and Kate quickly undoes a few buttons near her waist, slips her hand behind her, and unsnaps her bra. Pulling her arm out of one hole, she drops a bra strap and wiggles out of it. The other, she simply pulls through the dress’s remaining armhole. Refastening buttons, she makes the final pass by Mike. She can tell he’s stunned to see the wispy undergarment, and when she loses it to fumbling fingers and the wind, and it lands across his windscreen, he is laughing so hard he can barely keep the car under control
.

Kate completely falls apart with laughter, tears running down her cheeks. She slows the car and pulls off the back road they’ve been driving. She sits in the dappled shade of an old sycamore tree, wiping her eyes. Mike pulls up in front of her and stops, a small cloud of dust flying into the air behind them
.

She’s still giggling as she steps, barefoot, out of the car. Mike’s door opens and she sees his foot, and then a bare ankle and calf. And as he stands, she can see the white band of his Jockey shorts
.

Kate doubles over with laughter as Mike grins at her and then winks. “Ready for that picnic, darlin’?”

“Oh, Christ, Mike,” she gasps. “Tell me you didn’t!”

She holds her breath as he steps out from the screen the door provides. A fresh spate of giggles overtakes her as he says, “I didn’t.”

Mike is leaning against the car, pant legs rolled up, waistband rolled down
.

Despite the Percocet and the alcohol, Kate felt a laugh welling up from deep inside. With a hand that seemed to be moving at half-speed, she picked up the old-fashioned telephone, stuck her index finger in the appropriate hole, and slowly dialed his number.

• • •

He had not gone home angry; just dismayed that the promise of Kate in his arms had vanished so quickly. Mike knew that sometime soon—if not tonight, then maybe tomorrow—his phone would ring and it would be Kate apologizing in her own way. And they would go on. But where were they going?

He was sitting up in bed when his prediction came true. He picked up on the second ring. Kate’s voice—a little slurred, a lot dreamy—sent his blood pressure up.

“Mikey?… I remembered one of the good times.”

“I’m glad, Kate,” he said, not wanting to hear another “Paul was perfect” story.

“You don’t understand …”

Her voice faded away for a moment, and he asked, “Kate? You there?”

“I’m here.” She paused. “Remember your graduation day?”

“Yeah—I do,” he said, his voice almost sad.

“When I remembered, all I saw was you …”

She fumbled the receiver. He could hear the hard plastic thudding against something. And then she found the cradle, and was gone.

Mike wearily rubbed his eyes, disheartened to hear the evidence of her drinking—afraid he was the cause. Her words didn’t penetrate till a few minutes later. The phrase “all I saw was you” suddenly became his mantra.

Graduation day. God, they had been so young. Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Kate, still fiery. Still Kate Moran in his eyes, although she and Paul had been married for a little over a year. Oh, yes. He remembered.

At that moment, he doesn’t think there can be anything in the world more entrancing than Kate Moran Armstrong standing barefoot in the red dust of Virginia, wearing a white raw silk
dress, the sun playing hide-and-seek in her auburn hair. She is still laughing gleefully, and as she turns to close the car door, the breeze blows the skirt of her dress against the back of her legs, vividly emphasizing the fact that she is wearing nothing
but
that dress
.

Mike bends to ostensibly roll down his trouser legs, when actually, he is trying to hide his erection. He quickly puts on his shirt, letting the tail hang out. When he looks up from his hands doing up the buttons, she is walking toward him, shoes in hand. Her hips sway in that sensual motion that seems to come naturally to women when they walk barefoot. This doesn’t feel safe and he wishes Paul were there with them
.

“Well?” she is saying, still smiling
.

Mike doesn’t know what she’s referring to, and he cocks his head, glad he is still wearing the sunglasses that hide his gaze
.

“The picnic. Where are we going to have it?”

“Maybe we should just go on to Richmond,” he says, not at all sure that’s what he really wants
.

“Oh, no … you promised me a picnic. We have a cooler full of chicken and potato salad and beer. I’m not letting you off the hook.”

How can he say no? But as he watches her walk back to the rental car, he wonders how he can’t
.

They drive until Mike spots a neglected baseball diamond, the backstop made up of weathered boards, the field overgrown with dandelions. There is one double-tiered wooden bleacher, the wood gray with exposure to the elements
.

Signaling with his arm, he pulls on to the dirt road and comes to a stop near what was once first base. Kate is already out of her car, and he notes with relief that she has at some point slipped on her panties
.

“I can’t seem to get away from this damned game,” she says
.

And although her words are light, her voice isn’t. It’s the first time he’s heard a note of dissatisfaction from Kate
.

They spread the moth-eaten wool blanket somewhere between the pitcher’s mound and second base. They eat and talk. The
subjects innocuous, and always about him. His new job. His new home. His family
.