Together Alone (17 page)

“Whew,” Emily said.

Kay agreed. “He sounds the most sane so far.”

“Assuming he doesn’t have a menagerie living in his house,” Celeste cautioned. “But wait. I’ve saved the best for last. Listen.” She read from the final letter. “ ‘Dear GC403, I’m not sure how to answer your ad. I’m not a hunk, though I am good-looking. I’m not an adventurer, though I enjoy trying new things. I’m not a darkhaired, brown-eyed guy, age forty-one, six-foot even, one-eighty pounds, who designs houses for people with lots of money to spend. In the past, business has taken me traveling, but my name is finally established enough so that I can stay more in one place. I’m looking to put down roots, and at the same time cultivate the kind of relationship that my work always made difficult. Money isn’t an issue. I want companionship and laughter. If love develops, fine. I’m old enough to recognize it, and young enough to make the most of it.’ ”

Celeste set down the letter. She raised speculative eyes. “Tempting?”

Emily looked at Kay. “He sounds intelligent, articulate, humble. There must be a catch.”

“The catch,” Kay told Celeste, “is exactly what
you
asked about Brian Stasek when I first mentioned him. Do you remember? You asked what’s wrong with him, if he’s forty and single. Brian’s excuse is his wife’s death. What’s this guy’s excuse?”

“His work,” Celeste said. “As long as it kept him on the move, he couldn’t pursue deep relationships.”

“You said you didn’t want to get married again,” Emily reminded her.

“I don’t. This guy doesn’t mention marriage, and he only mentions love as an afterthought. But I have nothing against deep relationships.” She came forward. “Look at it this way. He’s a successful professional. He’s well-traveled, which means that he has a certain worldliness. I’m sure that he still has to spend some time at whatever site he’s designing for, so I wouldn’t be stuck with someone hanging on me every minute. But then he works at home in a stunning studio that he has designed himself, and he’s his own boss, so his hours are flexible. You heard him. Money is no object. The possibilities are endless.”

“Assuming he’s telling the truth,” Kay warned. “How do you know?”

“I don’t, for sure.”

“You would make a date with him, not knowing for sure?”

“Yes, I would. I’d arrange to meet him for drinks somewhere very public, and tell him to look for the blond holding the rose. He wouldn’t know my name, much less my address or phone number. If it doesn’t work out, that’s it, the end. He can’t bother me further.”

“What if he follows you?”

“I’d make sure he didn’t.”

“How?”

“Kay, there are ways.”

“Like what?”

Celeste sighed. “Like climbing into a cab and having the cabbie drive around before delivering me back to my car. If I
really
think the guy’s a problem, I’ll make a beeline for the nearest police station. I’m telling you. There are ways.”

“And you really want to risk it?”

Celeste stared at her. “Yes, I do. I have common sense and solid instincts. I am not getting into trouble with this.”

Emily touched her arm. “We’re worried. That’s all. We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Nothing will,” Celeste assured her and sat back, waiting for Kay’s capitulation.

Their dinners arrived, a timely buffer. As though calmed by the act of separating a cheese-covered nacho from the pile on her plate, Kay said, “Okay. You’re determined to follow through. What happens next?”

“I contact the ones who interest me and propose a meeting.”

It sounded very clinical to Emily, but who was she to criticize. She had spent the day systematically taking apart her marriage, step by step, item by item. “Which ones will you contact?”

Celeste started on her salad as she separated letters from the pile. “The architect is the best. No doubt about it. Next in order of preference is the vet, the marathoner, then the widower. For good measure, I may just throw in the doctor and the twenty-five year old.”

Kay gave her a pleading look. “Why the twenty-five-year-old?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re forty-three. You look great, Celeste, and not a day over thirty-five, but even then, you have ten years on him. He’ll have smooth skin, unwrinkled hands, and firm thighs. You’ll feel old beside him.”

“If I turn him on, I’ll feel flattered. Besides, I’m not ashamed of my body. Are you ashamed of yours?”

“My body isn’t an issue. John and I have been married too long for that.”

“And John has twelve years on you. Why is it okay for the man to be older, and not the woman?”

“That’s just the way it’s always been.”

“Not anymore. Not nowadays. There are plenty of relationships where the opposite is true.”

“In Hollywood.”

“Those are the ones we hear about, but there are others.”

“Name some.”

Celeste threw up a hand. “Uh…uh.” She scowled. “It happens all the time. I just can’t think of names off the top of my head.” She looked away. In the next instant her scowl faded. “Yes, I can.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward without taking her eyes off the person in question. “Cynthia Berlo. She’s been involved with her husband’s accountant for years.”

“Pure rumor,” Kay said.

“She’s fifty-eight to his thirty-five.”

“There’s no proof they’re involved.”

“I heard it from Enid Hildridge, who does Cynthia’s tailoring. Cynthia brought the accountant with her one day. They were all over each other in the dressing room.”

Kay looked dismayed. “What in the world would a thirty-five-year-old want with Cynthia?”

“She happens to be in great shape.”

“But she’s
fifty-eight
.”

“So? That doesn’t mean she can’t desire a man, or feel sexual pleasure, and it sure doesn’t mean she can’t turn a man on. Sex doesn’t end with menopause, Kay.”

“I never said it did.”

“Guys,” Emily broke in, putting a hand out to each. “There isn’t any point in arguing, especially about Cynthia Berlo. She isn’t a role model, by a long shot.”

“I agree,” Kay grumbled. “Comparisons to her make me ill.”

“There
isn’t
any comparison. We’re talking apples and oranges. Celeste is smart and sane. Look, I’m nervous about her dating these men, but she’s thought it through, and it is her life.”

“What about yours?” Celeste asked. “How was the weekend?”

Emily sighed. She
still
wasn’t ready to talk about Doug. Then again, she needed to air her angst. “Not great.”

“What did he do?” Kay asked.

“Nothing. That’s the problem. He comes home and goes through the motions, like going through the motions is enough. I suggested we drive to Stockbridge; he shrugged. I suggested we buy lobsters and boil them; he shrugged. I suggested we go to a lecture at the college; he shrugged. It’s impossible to get a rise from the man.”

“Is he just tired?”

“If he were, he’d spend the weekend sleeping, but he doesn’t. He’s just not interested in doing things with me. I try to engage him in discussions about what’s happening in the world—he prides himself on being out there in the middle of it all—only he won’t be engaged. He gives an answer or two, then finds something else to do. It’s like I bore him. Well, y’know, he bores
me
.”

“Whew,” Kay said softly. “That’s quite an admission.”

“Well, I can’t keep defending him,” Emily cried in despair. “I have no idea what he wants from our relationship. He has nothing to say to me, which is a statement, but I don’t know what
of
. Does he want a dull, boring marriage to balance the other parts of his life? Does he want me to be different in some way I can’t imagine? Or does he want a divorce?”

“Have you asked him?” Celeste asked.

“About the last?” Emily couldn’t repeat the word. It shook her up. “Not like that.”

“Maybe you should.”

“What if he says yes?” Her heart thundered. She didn’t want a divorce. She wanted things back the way they had been twenty-two years before—which was an absurd notion. She and Doug were different people from the ones they had been then.

Thoughtful, troubled, Kay said, “This isn’t any kind of a life for you, Emily.”

But she couldn’t throw in the towel, not yet. “It’s not so bad. I talked with Rod Meany over at the
Sun
last Thursday. He gave me a couple of assignments, little things that are more fun than substance.”

“You deserve substance.”

“I’ll get that from Petra Drovski.” Petra was head of the English department at the college. Emily had talked with her, too. “She needs help editing a collection of critical analyses of the works of American writers in the early 1900s. It’s an interesting project.”

“Won’t keep you warm at night,” Celeste advised. “Your husband is supposed to do that, on weekends, at least, but he’s not here even then. Doug is involved in your marriage in name only.”

Emily started to deny it. Only it was true. Name only. They hadn’t really talked, hadn’t shared laughs, hadn’t
made love
in weeks and weeks.

“What are you going to do about it?” Celeste asked.

Emily couldn’t exactly seduce him, not if he didn’t want to be seduced, which was the impression he gave. “Keep trying, I guess. I can’t just chuck twenty-two years. Parents’ weekend is coming up. We’ll meet in Boston. He promised he’d come. Maybe being together in a hotel will inspire him. Maybe being with me away from
here
will.” It had occurred to her that Grannick might be the problem.

“Does Doug spend any time with Brian?” Kay asked.

Emily pictured the two men together, Brian head and shoulders above Doug, and so much more appealing to her that she was frightened. “They say hello in passing. That’s about all. Why?”

“I’d think he would be jealous. There you are at home with a good-looking guy right next door. I’d think he would want to rush home and restake his claim.”

Emily would have thought so, too. She remembered feeling guilty the first time she had referred to Brian by name. But Doug wasn’t jealous. “It doesn’t occur to him that I might even be remotely attracted to another man.”

“Are you?” Celeste asked.

She was. Very much so. But she still hoped to salvage her marriage, so she said, simply, “Brian is a wonderful man. If I were the type to be unfaithful to my husband, he could tempt me.”

“He could tempt
me
,” Celeste said.

Kay swatted at her. “Oh, hush.”

“Well, he could. Those eyes are something to do a strip-tease for. But he has a child. You can have him, Em.”

Emily half-wished she could, more than half-wished it, if the truth were told. She had had a dream or two about Brian, and while her fantasies hadn’t involved a strip-tease, neither dream had been pure. Both had awakened long-dormant feelings, both had raised guilt.

Far better, she decided, far safer and wiser, to concentrate on what she had, which was Jill, home in ten days and counting.

J
OHN WAS LEANING AGAINST A LIGHTPOST, LOOKING
idly down the street, when Kay emerged from the Eatery with Emily and Celeste. She told herself to be grateful he was there, given Emily’s woes. Still she felt vaguely piqued. “I thought you’d gone home,” she said and followed his line of sight. “Is something up?”

John was looking at her now. “Nah. Just seemed silly for Celeste to have to drive you, since I’m already here.”

“But you left an hour ago.” With Brian, she had thought.

“I’ve been walking around. Caught some of your students lighting up behind the pizza house.”

“Who?” An ex-smoker, Kay hated the smell, sight, thought of the stuff, particularly with regard to kids. She had every intention of collaring the offenders the next day.

But John wasn’t giving up names. “I promised I wouldn’t tell, in exchange for their handing over the smokes. I lectured ’em good.”

She could believe that. It was some solace, at least.

He pushed off from the lightpost. “All set?”

No, she wanted to say. She loved Monday nights. She prized her time with Emily and Celeste. She didn’t want to feel chaperoned, much less guilty for abandoning John for the evening. This was her time, and he knew it.

But it seemed foolish to stand on principle. Dinner was done, and John was here. Of course, he would drive her home.

To the others, she said dryly, “My keeper calls. Talk with you tomorrow?” When they waved her away, she set off beside John.

“Are you annoyed?” he asked.

Yes, she was annoyed. She didn’t like being tailed. “There are times when I feel like you’re checking up on me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Beats me. You’re the one with the imagination.”

“I wasn’t checking up on you. I was bored, that’s all.”

The car was parked down the block—mercifully Kay’s car, not the cruiser. He saw her in, rounded the front, and slid in behind the wheel. When they were on their way, he said, “The house is empty when you’re not there. I hate it.”

“I’ve been doing this on Monday nights for years.”

“It was different when Marilee was home.”

Kay steeled herself for questions.
When did you talk with her last? What’s she doing? Who’s she doing it with? Is she studying?

None came. She glanced at him. His eyes were on the road.

“It’ll be good seeing her,” he said. “Having her around the house again.”

Ten days until fall break. Kay was looking forward to seeing Marilee, too. Still, she cautioned, “Don’t count on her just hanging around. All of her friends will be home, too. She’ll want to see them.”

“But we’re her parents.”

“She’ll see us first, then she’ll run out.”

“But I want to spend time with her.”

So did Kay, but she was a realist. “Parents aren’t high priority for eighteen-year-olds.”

“That isn’t right. We love her.”

They did, indeed. But that didn’t warrant putting her under house arrest. “If we love her, we give her wings. She’ll fly off and establish her independence, then fly back to us when it’s time.”

“When’s it time?” he asked in a way that was a little pouting, a little impatient, and oddly endearing.

Kay smiled. “Not yet. She’s just discovered how to work the wings. Give her time. She’ll be back.” She had read about what to expect. “Fall break can be tough for freshmen. They run to each others’ houses in triumph, having survived seven weeks as cool college kids, then they race back to high school and discover they’ve been dethroned. Remember senior spring? Remember the headiness Marilee felt? She’s thinking things will be the same, but they won’t. It’s sad. All rites of passages are. The old has to end to make way for the new.”

“Huh. I’m not sure I like the new.”

Kay sighed, thinking back to the evening’s discussion. “You may not be the only one. The Arkins are having a time of it.”

“How?”

“Emily is frustrated. Doug isn’t much of a husband, and it’s worse with Jill gone. She’s wanting to do things, and he’s as eager as a wet rag.”

“Hard to be eager if you’re never there.”

“Precisely.”

Kay thought about Emily through the rest of the drive. Of the three of them, Emily was the most vulnerable, the one who most needed her husband, now that her daughter had left. Celeste was enjoying freedom, and Kay had her work.

Kay also had John, who, once they reached home, followed her into the house, through the kitchen, and into the hall.

“Will Emily be okay?” he asked.

She turned at the newel post. “For now. In the long run, I don’t know.”

He leaned against the front door, hands in his pockets, and frowned. “Bad timing. She loses Jill. She loses Doug.” His frown deepened. “Things are different when the kids leave. The playing field changes. A new game starts.”

Kay was bemused. John had never been one to talk in analogies. She hadn’t thought he had it in him.

His eyes met hers.

He had something on his mind. Instinct—or simply his troubled look—told Kay he wasn’t thinking about the Arkins. A new game? She didn’t like the sound of that, certainly not if he was thinking about
them
.

When he didn’t seem to know how to go on, she asked, “What’s the new game?”

He shrugged.

“A new game for
us?
”

He studied the floor.

“John, are you trying to tell me something?”

It was a while before he said, “Maybe.”

Her mind was scrambling to think of what that something was, but the only thing popping up was unacceptable. John loved her. He wouldn’t want a divorce. He wouldn’t want
another woman
. Would he?

Wary, she sat down on the stairs. “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

His shrug was one-shouldered this time.

“John, don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me what’s wrong. Are you unhappy—with us, with
me?
”

“No,” he blurted out, “but I wish we could do more together.”

“More, like what?”

He gestured uncertainly. “I don’t know. More.”

“When? We work.”

“We have nights and weekends to ourselves now. But you fill them up with other things.”

He was
jealous?
“One night a week with my friends.”

“I’m talking about the other stuff. The stuff for school.”

“That’s my job.”

“Do you have to volunteer for committees that meet three nights a week?”

“I have seniority. They need me on those committees.”

“Maybe I need you here.”

“To do
what?
”

“I don’t know. Something. And Saturdays. Why do you have to work Saturdays?”

“Because there isn’t time during the week for some things.”

“The unions don’t bargain for Saturdays.”

“Neither do most of my colleagues, but that’s their problem. Mine is dedication.”

She geared up to defend herself, but he only looked at the rug, shifted his feet, folded his arms over his chest. “You’re the best teacher they have. And I know you like what you do.” He raised his eyes. “But if you wanted to be with me, you’d make time for that, too.”

Was he feeling
sorry
for himself? “Have I ever said I didn’t want to be with you?”

“You’re always making plans to be away.”

Kay was mystified as to the cause of John’s mood. She wondered if, at fifty-seven, he was going through the midlife crisis he had never gone through in his forties, or whether he was simply having trouble adjusting to Marilee’s absence. In either case, she felt wrongly attacked.

“Remember when we were first married,” she asked, “when I stopped working to raise Marilee, and I was alone here, day after day and then nights, while you were putting in overtime to get your gold shield? Did I ever complain? Did I tell you you worked too much?”

“I was building my career. You understood.”

“Yes, I understood. But it wasn’t always easy. I was lonesome. I might have liked you home more.”

He put his hands on his hips. “So you should know what I’m feeling now.”

“I
don’t.
You don’t need help with a child. Or the house. Or food. You’re a big boy.”

“That’s right. And big boys like big boy things.”

“John. What
are
you getting at?”

He looked away. After a minute of scowling at the wall, he said, “Maybe I’m getting tired of working. How long does it go on? Until we die? We just work ’til we drop? Isn’t there more to life than that?”

“What, more? What do you want?”

He made a grumbling sound. “It might be nice,” he said, glancing at her, then away again, “if once in a while you’d touch me. Men like to know that they’re loved.”

She was taken aback. “You know I love you. I
tell
you so.”

“You say the words.”

“Isn’t that the best way? Straightforward and direct?”

“It’s one way. There are others.”

“And I do them. I shine your badge and polish your shoes. I make dinner for you even when I’m going out to meet my friends. Aren’t those ways of conveying love?”

He looked straight at her. “I’m thinking about physical ways.”

She would have had to be dense not to catch his drift, and in that split second, taking in the whole of him as he stood braced against the door, she was swept back twenty-two years, a new teacher in Grannick chancing upon one of Grannick’s finest. He had been striking in his blues, quiet in a way that made him all the more masculine, and so tender in the night that her inhibitions had eased.

She had been twenty-three then. She was far older now. But time had been kinder to John. At fifty-seven, he was an eminently virile man. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, and while not as narrow in the hips as he had been in his prime, tapering still. He had neither a beer gut nor a double chin. He had all his teeth and all his hair. It didn’t matter that the latter was gray, it was striking. Likewise the lines fanning from the corners of his eyes.

John Davies was a very attractive man, speaking aloud of physical needs for what Kay believed was the very first time. A self-conscious flush rose to her cheeks. “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

“I’ve been trying to say it for days.”

“When?”

“I suggested we spend a weekend in Washington.”

“To see Marilee.”

“And to have time alone.”

“We have time alone here.”

“Huh. When I come near you, you’re either reading or doing something for school. Even tonight. I was hoping you’d be pleased I came by to drive you home, but it didn’t turn you on one bit.”

Her color deepened. “For God’s sake, John.”

“What?”

“We’ve been married for years. We aren’t teenagers.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Clearly,
they weren’t teenagers.
Clearly,
they weren’t newlyweds. But as people grew older, they settled into routines, and the Davieses’ routine wasn’t highly sexual.

The thought that John might want it to be unsettled her. She hadn’t married the playboy, but the stalwart policeman. It had been a long time, a dozen pounds, and a slathering of cellulite since she had thought of herself in sexual terms.

Feeling awkward and hating it, she looked at her watch. “It’s late. I have to go over my lesson plan.” She rose and, without a look back, went up the stairs to the spare bedroom she used as an office. She had put her notebook there when she had come home from school and now opened it and turned to the proper page, but that was the extent of her diligence. Her mind wasn’t on lesson plans. It kept returning to John.

He wanted closeness, touching, sex. But she wasn’t a physical person. She had been twenty-three when she had married him, and she hadn’t been a physical person even then. Not that they hadn’t had an active sex life. They had, but over the years the excitement had mellowed into a more relaxed pleasure. If they made love once every few weeks, that was fine. She was satisfied. She had thought he was, too.

After looking over the lesson plan for the third time without absorbing a thing, she closed the notebook and stood for a time at the desk, massaging the tired muscles in her lower back, listening for sounds of John. It wasn’t until she moved quietly into the hall that she heard the television downstairs.

Okay. He was set. He would watch for a while, fall asleep, wake in an hour or two, and come to bed. She would be sound asleep, but he would snuggle close, and that would be fine. There was warmth in that. There was
love
in that. Wasn’t there?

She asked herself the question all the way down the hall to the bathroom, and was no closer to finding an answer when the tub was filled than she had been at the start. Undressing quickly, she slid under cover of the bubbles.

She didn’t have to see her body to know its shape and size, and it wasn’t a
bad
body, as forty-five-year-old bodies went. It was straight and, cellulite aside, not terribly overweight. It had pleasant curves, but like an ice sculpture too long in the warmth, those curves had lost their crispness. The end result was lumps.

So she wore blouses that bloused around her waist and skirts that skirted her hips, and she stayed with neutral colors that never drew attention to her body. Her mind was the thing that counted, and it was in rare form, indeed sharper with age. She kept telling herself that. It was some solace for the fact that she had lousy hair, that her skin was thinner with each year that passed, that her hands were veined. She couldn’t change those things.

She wished she were petite like Emily or leggy like Celeste. Or had the kind of metabolism that permitted eating french fries without gaining weight, or the kind of bone structure that looked spectacular from birth to death.

Mostly she wished John had never raised the physical issue, because, much as she wanted to be a femme fatale, there was no way in hell she could do it.

Ten days. Celeste studied her calendar. From the start her goal had been to be gorgeous by fall break—and she was going to make it, which meant that the first part of her game plan was complete. The second would kick in once Dawn was back at school.