“We’re fine, thanks,” she smiled to the people who now stood back cautiously as Ridley got his crutches back in position.
Beryl retrieved her books from Aggie as they headed back to where Ridley had parked. The trip back to the apartment was a silent one.
When they got back to the apartment, Cory said, “I’m tired. I think a nap would be just the ticket.”
“Me, too,” Aggie said quickly. They disappeared into the second bedroom, the walls still lined with boxes of Beryl’s books, and closed the door, leaving Beryl and Ridley sitting on the couch with Winston and Percival jockeying for some attention.
“You okay?” she asked after a moment as Winston hopped onto the back of the chair on the other side of the coffee table.
“I’m fine,” Ridley said gruffly. “I suppose you talked to George.”
“Yes,” Beryl said truthfully.
Ridley said nothing more for long seconds.
“He loves you, you know.”
“I know,” he said, looking down at his hands.
“And you love him?” she prodded gently.
He closed his eyes. “It’s not that simple.”
She reached out and laid a hand on his arm, taking it as a good sign that he didn’t jerk away. “Yes, it is. You are the bravest man I know, Ridley Wade. And believe me, I understand how utterly terrifying it is to put yourself, your heart, in someone else’s hands. And, to a lesser degree than you, I understand how hard it is to… to bare yourself, literally, with someone when your body is less than perfect, but you don’t have to be alone anymore. You told me so when you dropped me off in Ohio. What happened?”
Ridley expelled a pent-up breath and haltingly said, “When we… were making out, he was… responding, and I started to, but then, something happened, and…”
“Oh.” Beryl sat, definitely out of her element. “Um, maybe, if you just focused on him initially… it might… and together you could find what works for you…” she said lamely.
Ridley watched as Percival deliberately walked under Winston’s overhanging paw. Winston stretched just enough to drag a couple of toes over Percival’s back, setting off a mad game of tag as the two animals bounced off the furniture like ping-pong balls.
With a small chuckle, Ridley said, “You’re really not comfortable talking about cocks, are you?”
“Not so much.”
Shaking his head, Ridley got up and went into the kitchen for a drink.
“I can hear you laughing, you know,” Beryl said.
* * *
“Here you are,” Helen says, finding Corinne standing at the rail near the bow of the ocean liner bearing them to Europe at last.
They are a week into their journey. They’ve barely emerged from their cabin. “We’ve barely gotten out of bed,” Corinne would have corrected happily.
“Now that I’ve got you here, I don’t want to share you with anyone,” Helen had insisted, having noticed, even as they boarded, the admiring glances cast in Corinne’s direction from many of the men.
Corinne, who cannot imagine Helen wearing a gown to the dining room or ball room, agreed gladly, and they have contentedly taken their meals in their cabin, emerging only for strolls around the deck, or to sit in the sun to read the travelogues Corinne has pored over so often that they are dog-eared. Helen laughs at her list of sites she wishes to see in England, Ireland, France, Austria, Italy. “It will take us years to get to all these,” she says as they sit side by side on one of the beds and she glances down the list.
“I know,” Corinne says happily, leaning against Helen, her head resting on her shoulder, breathing in her flowery scent.
Now, on the deck, Corinne smiles, closing her eyes and tasting the salt air. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to get there. I just want to stay out here on the ocean forever, where nothing can reach us, nothing can pull us back.”
Helen lays her hand over Corinne’s on the rail. Corinne smiles up at her, and self-consciously pulls her hand away, glancing around to see if anyone else is near.
“I was so afraid,” Corinne confesses, “right up until we were underway, that somehow, something would happen.”
“I know,” Helen murmured, leaning close so Corinne can hear her. “I was, too. So many things have conspired to trap us, to keep us apart, but we are meant to be together. No matter what may separate us, we will always find one another.”
* * *
When Aggie and Cory got up from their nap, if indeed they slept at all, Cory suggested staying in for dinner. She and Ridley went through his refrigerator and found enough in there to whip up a meal. As she stood at the stove, sautéing chicken breasts while he made a salad, Aggie and Beryl heard her say to him, “You’re too young to understand , but… no matter what reasons you think there might be now not to act on the love you’re feeling, I promise you, when you’re old, you won’t remember those reasons. You’ll only remember the regret that you didn’t do it.”
Chapter 36
Beryl lay awake, listening to the clang of the mansion’s pipes as the boiler kicked on and began sending steam coursing through them. She shivered as she crawled out of bed, trying not to drag the covers off of Aggie who was sound asleep. She slid her feet into waiting slippers as protection against the house’s cold floors and scurried down the hall to the bathroom. While in there, she heard Cory’s slippers scuffing by on her way down the hall. Aggie had warned her early on that she would most likely hear Cory up there occasionally. Beryl had never intruded on one of Cory’s nighttime visits to her old room. As she left the bathroom, she hesitated outside the door to her bedroom where she could hear Aggie turning over, and continued to the end of the hall to find Cory sitting and rocking.
“Are you all right?” Beryl whispered as she entered.
“Oh, yes,” Cory answered. “I just like to visit.”
“Visit?” Beryl wondered.
“Come and join me,” Cory invited.
Beryl sat cross-legged in the cushioned window seat, a light snow falling outside. It was chilly enclosed by the glass. There was a wool blanket lying there. She wrapped it around her shoulders.
There was enough moonlight to make out Cory’s features as she asked, “Are you happy, Beryl?”
Caught off-guard by the question, Beryl answered, “Yes. Actually, I’m happier than I ever remember being.
Cory smiled and rocked. “I’m glad to hear that.”
Beryl cocked her head, curious about some things, and now, while Cory was in a talkative mood, seemed like a good time to ask….
“How are you?”
Cory rocked for several seconds, watching Beryl who was only visible in silhouette before saying, “I’m waiting.”
* * *
Helen laughs as she watches Corinne waving from the ramparts of Mont Saint-Michel. A short while later, Corinne runs to her, breathless, cheeks flushed with happiness.
“Oh, it’s glorious!” she exclaims, hugging Helen impetuously.
“I know,” Helen agrees, fighting the urge to kiss Corinne right there.
The past six weeks have been the happiest they have ever known. Touring Ireland and England, Corinne screamed as Helen maneuvered their tiny little automobile past lumbering lorries on the wrong side of the roads – “what roads?” Corinne had demanded indignantly. “These are cow lanes, and they think two vehicles are going to pass?” – but she had fallen in love with the English and Scottish countryside.
“Oh, I wish we could buy one of these little stone cottages and live here forever,” she had sighed in Cornwall, and again in Yorkshire, and yet again near Oban.
“You think that now,” Helen smiled indulgently, “until you haven’t seen the sun for three months and you feel as if you’ll never be warm or dry again.”
“I wouldn’t care,” Corinne declared, smiling wickedly, “It’s not as if we couldn’t think of something to do with all those rainy days.”
She was torn when it was time to cross the Channel to France. They had disc
ussed going to Omaha Beach, but Helen didn’t think she could bear to see that beach or the thousands of nearby white crosses….
Mont Saint-Michel is to be their only destination in Normandy before heading to “Paris!” Corinne exclaims in awe at her first view of the Champs-Élysées. Her open-mouthed delight as she hangs out the window of the taxi, trying to take in everything helps Helen put aside her resentment that London endured such devastation while Paris escaped, unscathed. She cannot help but laugh at Corinne’s child-like amazement upon entering the lobby of the Ritz. Corinne’s joy at every moment of this voyage has made her feel as if she is seeing everything through new eyes – eyes not yet jaded by years of being shunted from one boarding school to another by parents too rich and preoccupied with their own lives to want the burden of having a daughter about all the time, eyes that have never seen the things she saw during the war… and she loves Corinne more than she ever has.
“Are you sure about this? This must be terribly expensive,” Corinne whispers as they approach the reception desk.
“We always stay here when we’re in Paris,” Helen assures her.
“Ah, bienvenue, Mademoiselle Abrams,” says the registration clerk as Helen signs the register. “Et Mademoiselle Bishop?” he inquires, turning to Corinne. “J’ai un télégramme pour vous, mademoiselle,” he adds, pulling a folded piece of paper from a small cubby behind him.
“For me?” Corinne’s eyes are big and she can feel her heart pounding. She steps away from the desk and pries open the flap.
CANDACE ILL STOP DOCTOR SAYS STROKE STOP PLEASE COME HOME STOP
Corinne’s eyes fill with angry tears echoed by the pressure of Helen’s fingers digging into her arms as she reads over Corinne’s shoulder.
* * *
“Waiting? What for?” Beryl asked.
Cory rocked for a few seconds before saying, “Until I’m with Helen again.”
Over her time since moving into the Bishop mansion, Beryl has gleaned bits and pieces of Cory’s story – some from Aggie, some from Cory herself.
“When… when did she die?” Beryl asked softly. She has never felt she could broach this topic before.
Even in the moonlight, Beryl could see the sadness transform Cory’s face and she instantly regretted asking. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
Cory shook her head. “I just try not to think about that part,” she said. “It was 1963.”
Beryl gasped in spite of herself. “So young? I… I just thought, from what Aggie said, that it was much later…”
“I think Agatha remembers my stories of her Aunt Helen from when she was a little girl,” Cory said. “She has no direct memories of her… unless Helen has been visiting Agatha as a ghost.”
“Was there never anyone else for you?” Beryl asked.
Cory smiled sweetly. “Never.”
“1963? Really?” Aggie repeated in shock the next evening when Beryl had a chance to recount her conversation with Cory. They had finished dinner and were taking Percival for a walk along darkened sidewalks. Percival was enjoying this new routine of nightly walks, and had established a regular route of places to sniff and pee each evening.
Bundled up warmly against the December cold – “Thank you again for my new jacket,” Beryl said appreciatively as she zipped up the down coat Aggie had given her for her birthday – their shoes crunched on a light dusting of snow as they walked and talked.
“All these years, she seemed so real to me, the way Aunt Cory talked about her…” She thought hard. “I can’t have imagined it all. I know she used to talk as if Helen had been with her only a few years previously.”
“Well,” Beryl said uncomfortably, “by the time you were a little girl, wasn’t Cory all alone in that house?”
Aggie frowned as she walked, trying to remember. “I think my great-grandmother died in 1973. Grandfather Terrence went soon after, in ‘75, just a few months after I was born I think. So she’s been alone since then.”
“By the time you were born,” said Beryl, “maybe she talked about Helen the way she did to keep her real, keep her near.”
Aggie tucked her arm through Beryl’s, squeezing tightly. “How lonely she’s been,” she said sadly.
“And how faithful,” Beryl said feelingly. “Do people love like that now?”
Aggie pulled her to a halt. “Yes,” she said, kissing her in the shadows.
Beryl wrapped her arms around Aggie, holding her tightly. “I love you so very much.”
They chuckled as Percival gave a soft woof, tugging on the leash.
When they got back to the house, Cory was waiting for them in the kitchen. “Beryl,” she said worriedly, “I don’t know what’s going on, but your cell phone has been ringing almost non-stop since you left.”
Beryl hurried to the oak sideboard where she and Aggie left keys and cell phones. She saw that there were three voicemails. She listened to the first one. “It’s Mom. Dad’s on his way to the hospital. They think it was a heart attack.”
She tried calling her parents’ house, but as expected, there was no answer. Next, she tried her brother and sister’s cell numbers, but had to leave messages.
She sat heavily at the kitchen table while Aggie made cups of tea for all of them.
“What do you want to do?” Aggie asked. “Do you want to leave tonight?”
Beryl shook her head. “No.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead, trying to think. “I need to plan. I don’t even know what happened yet.” She bit her lip. “I’ll be gone probably for the rest of the week at least. I can’t just leave. I need to go in tomorrow and make arrangements for the lectures I was to give, and there are a couple of other things I need to wrap up before I can go.” She looked up at Aggie. “Do you think you could you get away, too? I really don’t want to make that drive by myself.”
Aggie reached for her hand. “Of course.”
* * *
“What are you still doing here?” Shannon asked in surprise when she found Aggie at her desk during lunch the next day.
Aggie didn’t look up from the papers she was grading. Shannon closed the classroom door, pulled a chair up to the desk and sat.
“I thought you would be on your way to D.C. by now,” she said.
“So did I,” Aggie said in clipped tones.
“What happened?”
Aggie’s jaw worked back and forth a couple of times. “She got a call from her sister this morning saying she needed to be there for their mother and that she should have already been on her way. She left about ten.”
“But,” Shannon frowned, puzzled, “you were both making arrangements to have everything covered so you could leave by noon. I’ve got a bag all packed to go stay with Aunt Cory tonight.”
“I know,” Aggie said gratefully, glancing up at her.
“So why didn’t she tell her sister she’d be leaving, with you, in a few hours?”
Aggie shook her head. “I don’t blame her. How do you deal with that kind of guilt? If something horrible were to happen, and she hadn’t even left yet…” Her expression hardened. “The part that makes me angry is I don’t think they even considered the fact that she shouldn’t be making that drive alone. She didn’t sleep at all last night, and I could tell on the message she left me that she was crying. I was in class and couldn’t answer, so I haven’t talked to her.”
Shannon sat there for a minute. “I heard Larry had Sharon Watson all lined up to sub for you.”
“He did,” Aggie acknowledged. “And then I had to go tell him, ‘Nevermind. It was all a mistake.’ And then there was the parent conference I cancelled for this afternoon. It’s only taken two months to get these parents to schedule time off work to be here.”
Shannon pursed her lips, biting back the things she longed to say. “So, do you know any more about how her father is?”
“Apparently, it was a heart attack. The last I heard after she spoke with her mother last night, no decision had been made about by-pass surgery,” A
ggie said. “I guess she’ll call me with an update when she can.”
“Well,” said Shannon, getting to her feet. “Since I’m already packed for a sleep-over, how about I come anyhow?”
“Why not?” Aggie smiled. “Aunt Cory was looking forward to seeing you.”
As Shannon reached for the doorknob, she paused, “You do realize how weird this is with you people…”
“What do you mean ‘you people’?”
“Well, I know it’s kind of early on, but you and Beryl have made a commitment to each other, which makes her father your father-in-law, only they don’t see it that way because you’re not married. If Beryl had a husband who needed to clear his work schedule so they could both go –”
“If I were Beryl’s husband, her family would know about me,” Aggie cut in bitterly. “I wouldn’t be a secret.”
“You’re right,” Shannon agreed, watching her friend sympathetically. “And I don’t think that phone call would have happened. It’s just weird,” she said, shaking her head as she left.
Aggie sat there for a long time, staring into space and thinking about what Shannon had said.
Chapter 37
“You are welcome to stay here,” Ridley said over the phone when Beryl called him en route to tell him what had happened. “You know that.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’d better stay with my mother this time. I can drive her back and forth from the hospital. He’s at Georgetown, so I’ll pop over to see you when I can.”
“All right. Keep me posted.”
Beryl tried to focus on the drive, and on the music playing on the car stereo. “Don’t think about Dad,” she told herself sternly. “Or Aggie.” She recognized the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach – an all-too-familiar sensation. “It’s called guilt.” Why was that in Claire’s voice?
After nine hours in the car – the last two spent crawling in rush hour traffic on the beltway as Beryl ground her teeth in frustration, muttering, “This wouldn’t have happened if I’d left when I planned to!” – she finally arrived at the hospital. Her mother was alone in Gerald’s room where he slept, a brightly-lit monitor graphing his vitals in the darkened room.
Neither Present Time Page 22