Together Alone (27 page)

“I was uncomfortable.”

“With Celeste’s men?”

“More than that.” It was late. She had school tomorrow. But there were things on her mind that would keep her awake anyway, and, awkward as it was to express, she needed feedback. “Are you in a rush to get home?”

“Me? For what?”

“I don’t know. A call from Jill. Doug.”

“Jill knows I’m with you guys,” Emily answered, “and Doug’s only been gone for a day. He won’t call.” She sat down on the curb and patted the spot beside her.

Kay took it. She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I feel bad about Doug.”

“I know.”

“Do you still love him? The truth, Em.”

It was a minute and several cars rolling past before Emily said, “I don’t know. I don’t feel a rush when he walks in the door, just a lot of nervousness, and hope, hope that things will be better this time. Only they never are. Our relationship stinks.”

“Do you sleep together?”

“We sleep in the same bad.”

“Do you miss the other?”

After a minute, she said, softly, “Yes.”

She sounded like she wasn’t entirely comfortable talking about sex, which helped Kay, since she wasn’t either. The darkness helped, too. She didn’t feel quite so exposed.

“Did you mean what you told Celeste? About sex? About wanting it with another man, if you and Doug split?”

“This is an awkward discussion.”

“I know.”

They sat for a time before Emily said, again softly, “I’m not ready to shrivel and die.”

Kay looked out across the street. “You don’t think sex is overblown for women our age?”

“We’re not terribly old.”

“I’m older than you are.”

“By a few years. That’s not much. Do you think sex is overblown for
men
our age?”

“They’re different. Society assumes they’ll keep on going. They don’t reach menopause.”

“You haven’t, have you?”

“No.” She hugged her knees. Menopause scared the living daylights out of her. She felt less than sexy now, but at least she was fertile. She couldn’t imagine not having something so female as a period. “Was sex with Doug good?”

“In the beginning.” Emily watched her fingers steepling. “It changed after Daniel.”

“How?”

“Became mechanical.”

“Could that have been marital blahs setting in?”

“Possibly.”

Kay didn’t know why she had asked. Her problem wasn’t the blahs. When it was dark, when John touched her, she liked it.

Emily came forward to hug her knees, too. In a gentle voice, she asked, “Are you having trouble with John?”

“Actually,” Kay sighed, “he’s having trouble with me.” She blurted it out. “He wants more, and I’m not even talking about all-the-way sex. He wants touchy-feely before dinner. He wants sweet talk and kisses here and there, for no reason at all. Isn’t that weird?”

“No. It’s nice.”

“He wants me to take the initiative. I don’t know if I can.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just not me.”

“Aren’t you attracted to him?”

“Yes, but I don’t define myself in sexual terms. I just don’t
think
that way. It doesn’t
occur
to me to do little physical things. I thought our marriage had gone past that point.”

“Slid into a kind of elderly status?” Emily teased, nudging her, thigh to thigh.

“You know what I mean.”

“Slid into a pattern.”

“Yes.” But John was amenable to most anything she wanted, and he always saw her satisfied. So why was she having trouble giving a little on her own? “I feel like a fraud,” she blurted out. Emily remained silent beside her, their legs bumping comfortingly. “When I think of myself pretending to be sexy, I’m mortified. I’m not sexy. I’m not attractive.”

“You are so.”

“Not like a Sharon Stone or a Geena Davis.”

“John isn’t leaving town to run after either of them. He’s staying right here with you.”

“I’m fat.”

“You’re not fat.”

“Compared to when I was married, I am. My body is getting older. In a few more years, I’ll look like my mother did.”

Emily gave her thigh a knock. “I loved your mother. She was the sweetest woman in the world.”

“She was obese. I used to come home from school, and there she would be at the kitchen table, eating candy.” Kay let her memories out of the bag she had kept them stashed in. “Know what she used to say? She’d say, ‘Look at your mother, Kay. Look long and hard, and make up your mind right now that you won’t ever grow up to be like her.’ Then she’d pop another candy into her mouth. It was like she was absolved of overeating as long as she warned me against it.”

“You don’t overeat.”

“Not like she did. But every ten years a few more pounds go on. When I look in the mirror, I see my mother. How can I feel sexy?”

Emily swiveled to face her. “John loves you. He isn’t seeing your mother when he looks at you. He’s seeing
you.
”

“But I don’t
feel
attractive.”

“Then
do
something about it.”

“Like what? I don’t want to have my nose done like Celeste did, and if I ever had my hair colored that way, I’d feel like even more of a fraud. Can you imagine having gorgeous hair on a blobby body?”

“If your body’s the problem, do something your mother never did. Exercise.”

“I do. I run around school all day.”

“Join an aerobics class.”

“Emily, I’d make a
fool
of myself at one of those.”

“Okay, then an exercise class.”

“Wearing a leotard? Right.”

“Okay, then walk. Get a warmup suit that covers everything up, put it on every morning, and go for a half hour walk before school. Do that for a month, or two, or three, and you’ll feel different about yourself. Think about it. Your mother never exercised. She was too heavy. So as long as you get yourself out there, you’re different from her.”

Kay wanted to argue. But she wanted to believe even more. “You really think I’d feel different?”

“I do.”

“Just half an hour?”

“That’s all.”

“What if it rains?”

“Skip a day.”

“What if someone stops and tells me I’m rushing Halloween?”

“Kay.”

“What if John laughs at me?”

“He won’t.”

“What if he does?”

“Tell him that for every day you walk, you add a day to your life, and that he can laugh all he wants, but when he’s dead and gone, you’ll be going strong and having a ball without him.”

“If I tell him that, he may just walk
with
me.”

“For protection. Sweet.”

Kay laughed. Her smile stayed.

“Do it,” Emily urged softly. “You have nothing to lose, nothing but something that’s been haunting you for years. Put it to rest, Kay. It’s time.”

B
RIAN WAS ACUTELY AWARE OF HALLOWEEN’S
approach, not because the department had been hitting the schools with safety tips, or because every store window in town sported pumpkins and witches, or because Grannick’s vandal had started in with raw eggs, but because this was his first Halloween as a single parent, and he was taking the role to heart. Julia needed a costume. So he left work early one day, fetched her at Janice’s, and drove to the mall.

“Well, look at this,” he announced when they were standing before the largest display of costumes in the place. “You can be a witch, or a ghost, or Snow White.” He moved on. “You can be a dinosaur. You can be a Ninja turtle. You can be Aladdin. You can be Princess Jasmin. Or a ballerina. Or a mermaid. Or a ladybug.” He gave her a little squeeze. “What’ll it be, toots?”

Julia was staring wide-eyed at the mannequins.

“Okay, let’s simplify things here. These are the little girl choices. Not politically correct of me, but what the hell, you are my little girl. You can be Snow White, Princess Jasmin, a ballerina, or a mermaid.”

“Dis,” Julia said, pointing.

“Which? The mermaid?”

“
Dis.
”

“The ladybug?”

“Bug.”

“That wasn’t one of the choices. Look at Snow White.” He approached that one. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Bug.”

“Let’s see what sizes there are.” He bent to study boxed Snow Whites. “Large. Large. Medium. Large. Large. Swell. Okay, not Snow White. How about the princess.”

“Bug.”

“The bug is weird. It has a green face and funny things sticking out of its head. The princess is you.” He bent at the princess pile. “Medium. Medium. Large. Large. Large.” Straightening, he looked up and around until he spotted a salesgirl two aisles over. “Miss? Excuse me, miss? Could I have some help here?” When the girl arrived, he said, “My daughter wants to be Princess Jasmin, but there aren’t any costumes in her size.”

“Only the big sizes are left,” the girl said.

“Well, I can see that, but I was thinking that there must be some in back.”

“Everything we have is on display.”

“How can you run out two full days before Halloween?”

“These have been on sale for a month. Most people come early.”

“Bug,” said Julia.

The girl glanced at that pile. “There’s a small.”

“I don’t like the ladybug.”

“
Bug
, Daddy.”

“Why do you want the bug?” Brian asked, spearing her with a look.

She speared him right back. “
Da
ddy,
bug.
” She reached toward the costume and began to squirm. By the time he had her shifted and securely anchored again, the salesgirl was holding out the proper box.

“Thanks,” he grunted and strode gracelessly toward the front of the store.

A short time later, in a nearby McDonald’s, he put Julia in a booster seat, slid in across from her, and began to tear apart her meal. “What was so appealing about the ladybug?”

She stuck a piece of hamburger in her mouth.

“You’d have made a pretty Snow White. Or a ballerina. Why a ladybug, of all things?”

Julia offered a string of garbled words.

“Okay. It’s cute. I suppose.” He put his weight on his forearms and questioned her in earnest. “But why the bug? Why not the ghost? Or Aladdin?” He was intrigued by the fact that she’d had such a definite opinion. She was very little to be having definite opinions.

She reached for a fry. “Emmy.”

“Emily did not suggest a ladybug. She said she had a worm in the attic. A worm is not a ladybug.”

Julia offered him a piece of meat. He took it.

“You really liked the ladybug?”

The look on her face, incredibly, said that she was surprised he would ask, when clearly, the ladybug was the best costume there.

“Okay,” he conceded. “It may not have been the one I wanted, but I’m not the one wearing it, right? If you like it, that’s what counts. You’ll make an adorable ladybug.”

She grinned, ear to ear, and his heart melted. It struck him that Gayle should see that grin, that she should see her daughter forming definite opinions—God, so like
her!
He missed Gayle, in the same way that he would have missed a good friend, because she had been that, and a part of his life for so long. He would have liked being able to sit down with her and tell her everything that had happened since she had died.

He would even tell her about Emily. Gayle would like Emily, would like the idea of someone with a heart of gold spending time with her daughter.

Brian missed Emily, and not just the sex. He missed lying together, talking softly, being on the same wavelength in ways that Gayle and he had never been. He missed discussing problems. He missed having fun and feeling peace. Emily had helped him through a rough time. He would love her forever for that alone.

They were far from finished, Emily and him. That thought raised his spirits. And he was doing okay with Julia. And he was doing okay with his new job. So he might just make it after all.

Suddenly in a better mood and ferociously hungry, he went back to the counter and bought two Big Macs for himself, and then, when Julia seemed done with her meal, he bought an ice cream cone for them to share, and
then
, when the opportunity seemed too good to pass up, he stopped on the way home at the drugstore, grabbed Julia and the ladybug mask, and went straight to the photo booth at the back.

Studying the mask for the first time close-up, Julia was preoccupied enough not to notice when he fit his quarters into the slot. She was still staring at it when he propped it beside the camera’s eye. She was startled when the first flash went off.

“Look, toots,” Brian cajoled, bobbing the mask up and down. “Smile at the ladybug.”

Julia’s eyes were growing larger when the second flash went off, and even larger when the third one came. In a last ditch attempt to get a smile, Brian put the mask to his face and made what he thought would be a ladybug sound.

Julia let out a blood-curdling scream.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, dropping the mask. “It’s me, it’s Daddy,” he pleaded, but she was sobbing hysterically, so he scooped her up, stuffed yet another pathetic quartet of photos in his back pocket, and left. It wasn’t until he turned onto China Pond Road that he remembered the mask.

“No problem,” Emily said when he told her what he had done.

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one whose kid will be the only one without a mask. How could I have left it in the goddamned booth, after all that?”

Emily was trying not to laugh. He was adorable in his distress, so earnest in wanting to do things right. “You were shaken,” she reasoned. “Julia was screaming. You wanted to get away from the scene of the crime, so to speak.”

They were on the floor in Brian’s living room, with their backs against his sofa and their legs out-stretched, denim to denim. Those legs were actually similarly shaped, Emily noticed, straight and lean. Only his were longer. And the bare feet sticking out of his were larger and more knobby. And his toes didn’t have Sensuous Burgundy on the nails.

She wished she could have said that she had painted her toenails for Doug, but Doug wasn’t coming home that weekend. He had called to say he was working straight through to be entirely free the following weekend for Jill. Not for Emily. For Jill.

Emily wondered if there was a message in that. She wondered why so many companies suddenly wanted him on Sundays. She wondered how much golf he was playing.

She had painted her toenails
after
he called, in defiance that he would pick golf over her.

She wasn’t with Brian in defiance, though. She was with him because she wanted to be. They couldn’t make love, though Lord knew she ached to, with her insides abuzz and his warmth running up her side. Oh, yes, she was trying to be good. But she couldn’t deny herself completely.

“So what do I do?” he was asking. “I called the drugstore, but the night girl went looking and couldn’t find it, which means that some little kid has a ladybug mask with no costume. What’ll I do for Julia?”

The little lady in question was sleeping soundly on his chest, the book that Brian had been reading to her prior to Emily’s arrival discarded on the floor nearby.

Emily thought back to Jill’s earliest Halloweens. Then, because she felt safe when she was with Brian, she allowed her thoughts back farther, to the two Halloweens she had had with Daniel. “Daniel hated masks, not to look at, only to wear. He wouldn’t let me put anything over his face. So I put him in the body of the costume, got a little wool hat and pinned ears to it, and drew whiskers on his face. He was a mouse.” So sweet to remember. Not as painful as it used to be. “I took my lesson from that when it was Jill’s turn. The worm costume was a little tube of reddish-brown fabric that I stitched together. I made a bonnet out of the same material for the head, but her face was free. I put lipstick on her and darkened her nose and drew in exaggerated eyelashes. Not that worms have eyelashes. But she looked cute. So would Julia. A little nose, some eyelashes, some whiskers. I can pick up a little plastic headband at the drug store, and attach pipe cleaners for the antennae. She’ll look precious.”

His eyes relaxed and warmed. “You’re good at this.”

“I love it. And I’ve had practice. Years of Halloweens. Years of Valentine’s Days. Years of teacher conferences and PTA meetings. My life has been geared to kids things for so long, it’s weird being without.”

“You were a conscientious mom. I’ll bet
you
wouldn’t have lost a mask.”

“Maybe not. But I lost a child.”

“Emily.”

“It’s true.”

“No, it’s not. A child was
taken
from you. There’s a difference.”

Emily might have argued that she had left the child alone, except that she was tired of taking the blame for something that happened so long ago. She was
tired
of feeling guilty. Oh, she still ached for Daniel. But she needed to smile. She needed to relax. Daniel was gone, but she needed to
live
.

She planned to tell Doug that when she met him in Boston the following weekend.

Celeste arrived at the art opening in Cambridge on Sunday afternoon, holding a rose in her hand and her poise by a thread. She felt she was dying of foreplay, teased by expectation to the point of implosion. It was all she could do to look calm and sophisticated, which was the image she had chosen for the afternoon.

She was wearing a suit in ivory wool, a black-sashed ivory hat, and sexy black heels. Being dressed up for the first time in so long added to the fantasy, as did the airy, near-brilliance of the modern gallery into which it seemed she had fallen.

She needed this, after the fiasco that Wednesday evening with the veterinarian had been. He turned out to be shy to the extreme, talking only in response to what she asked, avoiding her gaze. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said, “I may be barking up the wrong tree answering an ad that starts with sexy and blond.” She felt bad for him. He was lonely. He wanted human companionship. But she was no martyr.

She looked slowly around the room, passing over artsy types and business types until her eye found a man who was a combination of both. He was conservatively dressed in a dark suit and held a glass of champagne, but the way his curly dark hair framed a tanned face and striking brown eyes suggested a wildness that set him apart from the rest.

Those eyes held hers in ways that the veterinarian couldn’t have even begun to comprehend, much less do. He was the right age, the right height, the right weight. He was the one. No doubt about it. He was the reason she had had her nose done and her chin tucked. He was the answer to her prayers.

She didn’t move, but waited for him to come to her. He sipped his champagne. He conversed with those around him. His eyes rarely left hers for long.

Finally, murmuring something to his companions, he wove his slow way to where she stood. His lips twitched, male and satisfied. “And they said it couldn’t be done through an ad.”

She allowed herself the smallest of smug smiles, but said nothing.

“My name’s Carter.”

“Celeste.”

“Celeste.” Again, the twitch of the lips, then the tiniest break in his voice. “That’s lovely. As you are.” He stared at her for another minute, before catching himself and looking around. “Come. Let me introduce you to my friends.”

With the lightest touch to her back, the whisper of a palm over the closure of her bra—sweet, private, intimate—he guided her around the room. She met the artist whose work was being shown. She met the owners of the gallery. She met other artists. She met Carter’s partner.

The scene was as much a dream as Carter, worlds away from any other date she had ever had, worlds away from anything she had ever experienced in Grannick. For an instant she imagined herself an imposter here, outclassed and ill-prepared in spite of her clothes and her dreams. Then she looked at Carter again. As smooth as he was, he was reassuringly down to earth. When he found her a glass of champagne, took a fresh one for himself, and said, gently, “To new people,” her qualms dissolved.

As she had known he would, he took the lead. From a quiet shaded corner with a view of the angular lines of the building, he told her not about his children or grandchildren, as the widower had done interminably, but about the people she had just met, about each one’s work, each one’s life. He made no assumptions about her knowledge of art, but spoke in plain terms, with neither arrogance nor condescension.

Celeste was enthralled. He was articulate and learned where art and architecture were concerned—and intuitive enough to judge her level of understanding perfectly, neither exceeding it, nor underestimating it.

“But I’ve been doing all the talking,” he finally said with a rakishly diffident smile.

“That’s fine. What you’ve said is far more appropriate to the setting than anything I might be saying.”

“Then we’ll have to change the setting.” His gaze touched her mouth before it returned to her eyes. “There’s still a little sun left to the afternoon. Would you like to walk?”