Seems Like Old Times (2 page)

This was how Lee remembered Miwok--small, one and
two-story clapboard houses, ringed with land, and a horse or two in a nearby
pasture.

On CABN-TV Lee shared the anchor position of the primetime
news program, Evening
Newscene
, with Rick Archer. She
had cut her teeth studying Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and other top women
journalists’ interviewing techniques. The years of hard work and study were
paying off. Her latest contract, plus the chauffeur and car the network sent to
pick her up and take her home to her Park Avenue condo each day, proved it. Behind
the scenes, she was working to topple Archer. She gave him another year, max.

She would never have returned to Miwok at all except that
four months ago her mother, Judith, had passed away from a sudden heart attack.
Now, the time had come to do the job she’d been putting off ever since: to
clear out and sell the house.

Her original plan had been to simply hire someone to go
through the place, fix what needed fixing, donate whatever was useful, and
throw the rest away. By also hiring a realtor to sell it, she wouldn’t have had
to set foot outside New York City. Her aunt Miriam, however, had insisted that
Lee personally go through her mother’s belongings to see if there weren’t
keepsakes or other things she wanted.

Lee doubted it. She and her mother hadn’t had a civilized
conversation since she'd left home at age eighteen. Truth be told, they had
never talked much before that, either. The possibility that there was anything
in Judith Reynolds’s house for Lee other than bad memories was remote to
nonexistent. But she loved her aunt. Miriam Dailey was the only person in the
world who could still tell her what to do.

o0o

Miriam descended the beige-carpeted steps from the guest
room to the first floor of her dead sister-in-law’s house. Her
brother
Jack’s house, truth be told. But Jack had died so
many years
before,
thirty come next winter, that she’d
almost forgotten what it was like when he lived here.
When it
was a happy home.
No, that wasn't quite right. When Jack was alive,
there was nothing happy about his and Judith's marriage.

Miriam had arrived from San Diego two days earlier to
freshen up the house a bit before Lisa--or Lee, as her niece insisted on
calling herself now--arrived. Also, she wasn't exactly sure what she'd find
here, even though, immediately after Judith's death, Lee had paid a cleaning
service to shut down the house, throw away all open food containers, garbage,
and the like.

Miriam understood well how hard it was for Lee to come
back home--and how very necessary. Last night, Miriam had braced herself for
Lee's reaction to being here--tears, anger, or simply sadness. But Lee showed
none of that. Whatever she felt walking through the cold, silent house filled
with too many memories, she'd kept hidden. Claiming jet lag, she'd soon retired
to her old room. Miriam decided not to press her. Lee was the most
self-contained person she knew.

This morning, Lee was collected and business-like. Only a
too-bright look to her eyes, and darkness beneath them, gave a hint as to the
kind of night she'd spent. After hours of sorting through her mother's
paperwork, insurance forms, bank statements, real estate, and stock
certificates, she had to get away for
awhile
, and had
taken a drive. Miriam let her go alone. There were times when company wasn't
called for.

"Did you have a nice ride, Lisa?" Miriam sang
out as cheerfully as possible when her foot reached the bottom step.

Lee was standing in the living room by the front windows.
The afternoon sun, beaming in through half-open aluminum once-white
mini-blinds, cast a warm glow on her. Even Miriam was struck by Lee’s classic
beauty, and how she’d learned, in New York City, to enhance it. Her wheat blond
hair was streaked with platinum and flax now, and she wore it pulled back from
her face in a fancy bun--what Lee called a "chignon." Her hair that
way reminded Miriam of a young Grace Kelly.

"I was going to surprise you," Miriam continued,
forcing a jovial tone, "with a big dinner, but now you’re just going to
have to help--"

Lee turned around so that her aunt could see the iPhone
against her ear. She smiled and went on talking.

"New York already?"
Miriam mouthed, then rolled her eyes and made her way into the kitchen.

When the phone call ended, Lee headed for the kitchen to
find her aunt. She stopped short at the doorway. Everything was eerily
familiar, as if she'd last been here ten weeks ago, not ten years ago.
The green Formica countertops, the white and green striped
wallpaper, the antiquated avocado
Frigadaire
, the
matching Magic Chef electric range.
All the same, yet
somehow smaller, shabbier.

"I'm making some coffee," Miriam said with a
pleasant smile. Tall and big-boned, with a nose too long and a mouth too wide,
Miriam had lively hazel eyes and dyed red hair that she wore short and spiked.
She regularly jogged to keep her weight down, and was darkly tanned from
spending so much time on the beach or hiking the hills around San Diego. She
had a vibrant personality that made those who knew her come, over time, to
regard her as nothing less than beautiful. "Want to join me?"

"Sure," Lee replied. Bracing herself, she
entered the room.

An odd feeling enveloped her as she watched her aunt
retrieve two cups from the cabinet and wash them. The figure in this small
kitchen could have been another: her mother seated at the table, smoking,
drinking coffee, or simply staring out the window at the oak laden hills
beyond.

The bitterness the image evoked didn’t surprise her, but
the nostalgia that came with it did. That wasn’t what she was here for.

As Miriam filled a carafe with water and poured it into
the Mr. Coffee, Lee found the coffee filters and slid the coffee canister
closer to her on the counter. She opened it. "There must be two pounds of
coffee in here." She sniffed. "It still smells good. I wonder how old
it
is?
"

"One day. I bought it yesterday," Miriam
replied.

"You bought all this for a seven-day visit?"

"I was thinking," Miriam paused, "since it
was so hard for you to take some time off work to come here, now that you’re
finally free, how about staying two-weeks instead of one? I know you can get a
two-week vacation if you want it."

Lee wasn’t about to argue. She knew Miriam would never
understand. "I can’t stretch my time away
anymore
than I have."
Especially not when special promos were
being run for her vacation replacement, the backstabbing Edie
Canham
.

"Do you feel so badly about being here?" Miriam
asked gently. "Is it too much?"

"It's preferable to a root canal, but that's
all," Lee said.

Miriam put mugs on the table, an orange floral one for
herself, and a tall blue one on a pedestal for Lisa. Her voice, when she spoke,
was soft. "Once this house is sold, all your ties to Miwok will be gone.
Mine, too. For old
times
sake, I think both of us should spend some time getting to know it again."

Lee turned her back on the small kitchen to look out the
window at the wild oaks on the hillside. She tucked her hands into the side
pockets of her skirt. Thick gold bracelets clanged together as they slid
downward onto her wrist.

"My memories of Miwok ended seventeen years ago when
I left home. I came back one time since--and learned it was a mistake within
ten minutes of walking in the front door. My mother didn’t like me, Miriam, and
I sure as hell didn’t care for her."

"Lisa--"

"
Old times for me means
nothing but bad memories. Most of which took place right within this very
house."

"You hate it so very much?" Miriam asked.

"I'll be ecstatic to see the last of it."

Miriam drew a heavy breath. "I know you're too old to
listen to your aunt anymore, but I'd advise that you give Miwok a chance. It
just might surprise you."

Lee's tongue held words of derision and mockery, but with
a glance at her aunt, she simply said, "You left it, Miriam."

"We all have reasons for foolish or thoughtless
actions when we’re young. And with age, we sometimes learn to regret
them." She had heard Miriam’s reason for leaving many times--that she’d
gotten tired of the small town, the chill in the night air from the too-close
Pacific, and how she’d longed for the sunshine and city activities of San
Diego. Lee had always felt there was more to it than that.

As soon as the coffee was ready, Lee poured them each a
cup,
then
picked up hers. "Excuse me, Miriam, but
I’ve got to make a few more calls now."

"Of course, dear."

As Lee turned to leave the kitchen she noticed a look of
sadness and concern on her aunt’s face. She didn't need that! She hadn't asked
Miriam to drive all the way up to Miwok to help her go through her mother’s
things. Lee's step slowed as she neared the lamp table with her cell phone.

Miriam had offered to come here out of kindness and, Lee
realized, as a way for the two of them to spend time together once more, just
as they had in the past. Lee would never forget that, once she'd realized she
couldn’t stay another moment in this house, it was to Miriam she had run.
Miriam, who had stood beside her and helped her through the most terrible days
of her
life...

What would it matter if she remained here a couple of
extra days?

She placed her coffee cup on a coaster and picked up the
iPhone. They’d seen little of each other over the last few years. Ever since
"Lisa Marie" became "Lee" Reynolds, television news anchor,
her life had become fuller and busier. She was doing everything from reporting
on Presidential campaigns to interviewing movie stars, and she loved every bit
of it. More than a job or even a career, being a news anchor was her life.

But Miriam was her aunt, her father’s sister, and now her
only living relative. Although Miriam was healthy and vivacious, she was
sixty-one, and would surely be slowing down before too many more years.

Lee tossed the phone aside, picked up the cup and returned
to the kitchen. Miriam, her coffee untouched, looked up at her.

"That was rude of me, and I apologize. My phone calls
can wait. It'll be fun to cook dinner together like we used to do. You're right
that we deserve some time with each other, and we'll have plenty of time
tomorrow to do what we've got to with the house."

Miriam nodded in agreement, a secret smile touching her
lips.

o0o

Lee answered her phone as soon as she saw the caller ID.
"Hey."

"Do you miss me?"

Lee smiled. She was in the family room, seated on her
mother’s blue and red plaid sofa, an oval rag rug at her feet, and in front of
her, a coffee table whose top was marked with gouges and stains she’d caused
while growing up. In the background, an old favorite classical music station
from Berkeley played on the radio. She had been flipping through a Family
Circle magazine found on the end table, trying to relax enough to go upstairs
to bed. Hearing her fiancé’s voice was jarring, as if her two carefully
separate worlds had suddenly collided. "Bruce! It's two a.m. there. What
are you doing still awake? Don't you have to go to work tomorrow?"

"Right now, I'm lying here in bed.
Alone.
How can I possibly sleep?"

She laughed the bright, musical way her voice coaches had
taught, imagining him half-lying, half-sitting in his bed, leaning against the
black lacquer headboard as he spoke to her. His chest would be bare, his
gossamer-fine honey-blond hair only slightly mussed, perhaps drooping rakishly
over his right eyebrow from a side part. Even after knowing him two years, she
had yet to discover anything about Bruce Downing less than perfect.

"Lonely, are you?" Lee asked, making her voice
low and sultry. "Why not open the front door to your condo? I'm sure there
are several women camped in the hallway. They've probably been there from the
moment I stepped on the plane to California." She was only half-joking.

He chuckled. "So how are you doing? You've been there
a little over twenty-four hours. Bored yet?"

A beat passed before her answer. "It’s not bad."

"Now that you’ve spent a day with your aunt and seen
the house again, go back to your old plan. Hire the help you need to empty it
out and sell it, and come home."

"I’m sorry. Miriam is looking forward to us having
this time together."

"Lee, you can’t let your aunt cause you to waste your
vacation. You work too hard for that. Get the hell out of there as soon as
possible. I’ll meet you somewhere.
The Bahamas?
A Greek island?
Just name it."

She sighed. The thought of lounging on a beach, being
waited on hand and foot, was tempting. "It’s not that easy, Bruce. As
Miriam says, once the house is sold, our ties to Miwok are severed. She was
born here, just like I was. Did I tell you?"

"How about London, then?
Or Paris?"

"Being here a few days for old times’ sake isn’t so
bad."

"Lee, you aren’t seriously feeling maudlin over some piece
of real estate, are you? Good God, woman, you don't have a sentimental bone in
your body and everybody knows it. You never gave a damn about that place when
your mother was alive, and I for one don't believe you care about it now. Your
aunt's doing a mind-fuck on you. Tell her to get lost and come home. I miss
you. I need you here. And also, a week from Tuesday, Larry Baldwin's invited us
to join him and his wife for dinner with the president of Atlas
Insurance...."