Sacred Revelations (34 page)

“His presence was necessary, he has all the answers. I’m pretty certain that most of the funeral is already arranged because he stepped in…and like it or not…” Thomas says softly. “…he was a man who made a very significant impact on who the woman is today, you can fault him all you like for what transpired in the past, but without him, Kitten wouldn’t be in our lives today.”

“So what? I should thank him for fucking with her mind?”

“Maybe.” Thomas locks gazes with me. “Lion isn’t the reason we’re sitting in a McDonald’s at twelve-thirty in the afternoon.”

“It isn’t?” I hide my question behind a bite of cold burger.

“You’ve changed your mind.”

I swallow, the burger sticking halfway down. I take a drink to force the meat down and push the boxed sandwich away.

“Can you two catch me up? I’m a little behind on current events,” George asks.

I look through the window at falling snow. Avoidance…it’s what I’m good at.

“Celia wants us to share her. We haven’t had a chance to talk about to what extent yet, fifty-fifty, seventy-thirty…but shared. And Garrett thought it would be a better plan if we all shared each other, a ménage à trois.”

“Is this true, Garrett?”

I ignore him, pretending to watch a red Ford spin on slush, stuck for the moment in the drive thru lane. I really haven’t missed this. I haven’t missed anything that this part of the world offers.

“Garrett?” George touches my arm, drawing me back to the conversation. I look from George to

Thomas, throat dry, words stuck in my mind. Was it my suggestion?

I sigh, trying to buy time, not knowing what I want, what I really want. “I may have suggested it, I may be having second thoughts, it may just be that we’re in this godforsaken part of the world and, as a result, I’m not thinking clearly about anything. What I do know is I’ve been a jerk to Kitten ever since I got off the plane and I’m going to start making up for that. I need to be here for Kitten and the last thing any of us need to be worrying about is what’s going to happen once we get back toSan Francisco .”

“In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever.”

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Kitten

I face my father for the first time in seven years. He lies dead in a sky blue, satin-lined coffin and doesn’t even look like the man I remembered. This man, made up with the heavy pancaked artistry only the best funeral home in the area’s cosmetician could muster, is old. Liver spots dot his face and hands. His cheeks, arms and waistline have gone soft with pudgy rolls of fat. His hair is snow white. Such a different man…it’s hard to believe so much change in so little time. The whisperings of two of my aunts on my father’s side vaguely filter through my brain gone numb with shock and pain.

“The funeral home did a good job, Anne. He looks good.”

“The makeup’s too heavy around his eyes.”

“No, he looks fine,” Aunt Judy assures her. “But where are his glasses?”

Glasses? I watch as bifocals in a heavy, black plastic frame are produced and propped on his nose. A sob breaks from Aunt Anne’s throat and I watch as Aunt Judy wraps her arm around her, saying, “That’s much better. He looks more like himself now.”

I look at the man again. A man I never saw out of a suit and tie the entire time I lived at home. Now, he wears a green and white plaid cotton shirt, layered under a forest green cardigan sweater, and although a bible rests beneath his hands, he couldn’t look less like himself.

“Comfortable,” Aunt Judy insists. “He looks comfortable.”

Garrett walks up behind me, wrapping his arms around me, placing a kiss on top of my head. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I avoid the judgmental glances of my aunts. Although Garrett was the man introduced as my official boyfriend, Thomas has been my constant shadow. Even now, he stands hidden between sprays of fresh-cut flowers, leaning against a wall. All but I have forgotten that he is there. I am glad he is near and my aunts can think whatever they want to think. I catch his gaze and, with my look, draw him to me until he is standing beside me, holding one of my hands, Garrett still plastered to my back.

“Do you need anything?” He pulls me closer, molding against me and it is nice. With Thomas against my chest and Garrett at my back, I can relax.

“Sedatives.” I sigh, going for a joke but it comes out sounding desperate. Turning me into him, Garrett kisses my forehead, whispering against my face, “I know George came prepared but I’d prefer that you experience this without numbing your emotions with pills.”

I push my face into his lips and he kisses me softly. “Okay.”

“Garrett? Garrett Lawrence? Is that you?” A shrill voice breaks the solace of our private, though very public group hug.

We all turn to face a woman who I don’t recognize.

“Steve’s mom, Silvia Lowenstein! Surely you remember. It seems like yesterday that you boys were burning the midnight oil at our kitchen table. I didn’t know you knew Brother Alexander.

As distraction from the conversation between Garrett and Mrs. Lowenstein, I watch George, standing across the room, with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment as women from the church converge on him as they tried to do to me earlier. I escaped by being distant and blatantly rude as only one in mourning can do without being thought the worst of. George has no defense and, for a moment, I feel sorry for him, but then I catch his wink and I imagine that he is enjoying the attention. Vanilla women, church-going pious women, petting him, bumping him accidentally, flirting as only women stuck in a small town faced with a possible escape route can flirt, and he is enjoying it. I wonder what perversion is going through his mind…

The woman introduced as Mrs. Lowenstein won’t be ignored, her shrill voice as impossible to escape as nails on a chalkboard. I want to cover my ears.

“Have you seen Steve since you’ve been in town? I suppose not, I hardly ever see him myself, although I see his wife every day. Ellen Kramer, I think you dated her for a while before moving out west…”

Garrett dated a girl named Ellen? Okay, this could be interesting. I want to know about Ellen.

“Not to be impolite, but I was thrilled to hear you’d moved out west, making that charming girl eligible!”

She grants a glance at me, explaining with a wink, “She was quite a catch, I couldn’t be happier that Garrett left her standing at the altar, and now…I’m a grandma and couldn’t be happier about it!”

I lift my brow at Garrett, asking silently, “Is this true? You left a girl standing at the altar?”

He answers her, looking at me, “You exaggerate a bit, we never made it quite as far as the altar.”

“Just the same, she was devastated and my Steve was there to pick up the pieces. You have to see their babies!”

I feel Garrett’s cringe as she pulls out a thick miniature album, on the front of which is scrawled Grandma’s Little Angels .

“I really don’t know when he and Ellen had time to make these precious little bundles, but they’ve given me five. Five grandchildren! I’m a lucky woman. Five precious babies and every single one with a silver spoon in its mouth. You have no idea how proud I am of Steve.” Mrs. Lowenstein whisks a tear from the

corner of her eye. “And you, tell me all the details so I can fill Steve in on your life. I know he’ll be so disappointed to hear he missed seeing you and of course your girlfriend. Are there wedding bells in the future? I know we shouldn’t talk about it now, but who knows when we’ll ever talk again.”

My Dad seems to smirk from his satin-lined observation point. Mrs. Lowenstein keeps going, not noticing my or Garrett’s discomfort. She turns to me and takes my hand. “Of course, a baby would help you get over this horrible grief. Losing a parent is hard, but the love of a new baby… Why that’s a miracle that will cure all. And think, you could name the new one after your father, a tribute to his greatness.”

Latching onto Thomas, I walk away, leaving Garrett to his own devices. Rude covered by distraught is always okay. I cling to the side of the casket, Thomas close enough to hide my fake tears. My father seems to really be enjoying the moment and I realize the smirk on his face is real, frozen in his death mask. “Thomas?”

“Sophia?”

“If I swoon, is that enough reason to get me out of here?”

“No. I think funeral homes are used to swooning women, but if you were brave enough, you could just walk away and no one would notice.”

An hour later, I find Garrett in the smoking lounge, sitting at a small table, cigarette in one hand, Styrofoam coffee cup in the other. It seems he needed an escape too.

“Are you okay?” he asks, standing. “Sorry, I’m not being much support am I? I shouldn’t be hiding.”

“I’m okay.” I sigh, sitting down beside him. The table is a cheap fold-out model. I rub a coffee stain ring with my finger, not looking at Garrett, focusing on the soiled tabletop. I don’t want him to know how deeply I’m feeling his loss. “And if you’re here hiding, I think I must be the one who deserted you. Are you okay?”

“I’ll be okay. Coffee?”

“Only if you’re prepared to give me sips from your mouth.” If you leave me, I will never sip again from a man’s mouth…Lord Fyre doesn’t do that.

“I don’t think the natives would understand.”

“The natives don’t have to understand,” I say, accepting the steaming cup of coffee he offers. “As long as we understand.”

He sighs, sitting nearer. “Do we understand?”

I choke on my coffee, dribbling it down the front of my dress. Thank God it’s black. “I hope so. If we don’t know what we’re doing, how can we expect anyone else to understand it?”

Garrett snorts. “I may need you to explain it all to me.”

“Did this somehow get more complicated when I wasn’t paying attention?” I set down the Styrofoam coffee cup too hard and hot, black coffee sloshes over the edge of the rim. One more stain to add to the collection of others because I don’t have the energy to search for a towel. I don’t have to imagine the emotional state of the one who left the last stain…I’m right there with him.

“Maybe, yes, I think it did, and that’s my fault. I asked Thomas to top both of us when we get back toSan Francisco , without even mentioning it to you.” He pauses, taking my hand across the table in the silence. “But I don’t know if I can go through with it. Any of it. I don’t know that I want to share or be shared.”

Shaking, I pick up the cup, ducking my face as I sip coffee, hiding, I hope, the hurt I know is reflected in my eyes as well as hiding my sweaty palms against the white Styrofoam. Watching Garrett from the corner of my eye, I wonder if this is it, if this is going to be our good-bye for real, but he doesn’t say anything else and I am thrilled when Thomas and Jackie arrive together to insist that we leave.

Back at the hotel, the fog I managed to lose my brain in lifts. I am no longer miserable, but to say I’ve regained happy would be a major over-statement. Relieved, perhaps. Relieved that the funeral is over and I survived seeing a hundred of my father’s closest friends without dying from the humiliation of my past. I am ready to catch the first plane back toSan Francisco and, although I came back to the hotel ready to do just that, Garrett announced he has no intention of leaving town today. I can’t say I was surprised by his announcement, disappointed, but not surprised.

Now, he sits across the room so stone still and distant I am ready to strangle him.

I’m the one who’s supposed to be in shock. I just buried my father, but to look at Garrett, you’d think it had been one of his parents.

I’m pissed off that he is getting more attention than me, even though I sit in Thomas’ lap, pretending to watch television. I don’t have a clue what show is playing, only that there is canned laughter and occasionally Thomas chuckles softly.

I watch Garrett.

“I saw you with Mrs. Lowenstein,” Jackie says to him sarcastically. “Was she bringing back wonderful memories?”

Garrett leans toward her, demanding, “Let it go, Jackie!”

I look at Thomas, but he shrugs, neither of us knowing what is going on.

“It was a huge affair. The wedding of Stephen Lowenstein and Ellen Kramer was the biggest social event of the decade,” Jackie says breezily, taking time to check her reflection in a mirror, tucking a curl, smoothing an invisible perfection on her high arched brow. “I thought for sure you’d have received an invitation as well, but then when you weren’t at the wedding…”

“You went to the wedding? You’ve got to be fucking joking!” Garrett shrills before sighing and leaning back into his chair to close his eyes. Softer, he whispers, “Did Ellen look happy? No. Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know any of it.”

Jackie keeps talking, though more to the empty room, or perhaps to George, because he nods his head as she rambles. “Funny thing, halfway across the world Garrett meets Celia and yet there was only ten miles between where they each grew up. Then here, her father is operated on by his ex-fiancée’s husband. George, did Garrett ever mention the rivalry he had with Steve, during his college days? Yes, it’s a funny thing that Garrett found Celia and Steve ended up with Ellen…”

I mentally hug him from across the room, feeling the total and complete loss of him, not because of my need for Thomas, but because of a woman’s name from his past.

I watch as the room shifts, Jackie excuses herself to the ladies room, although there is only one bathroom in the two-bedroom suite. George stands and crosses the room to hug Garrett for real, making him look at him when he grabs his chin and forces him to meet his gaze. “Deal with your fucking demons, Garrett.”

Garrett pushes back, stands and, passing me, storms out of the room; but it is only a second later that he storms back in.

“Get your shoes on, Kitten. If you’re mine still, you’re coming with me.”