That Part Was True

by Deborah McKinlay

  “Hello,” she said, breaking from him in the morning and smiling.

  “Hello.”

  “Are you through working for a while?”

  “I may go back to it tonight. Not now.”

  “Do you write in the evenings sometimes?”

  “Uh-huh. Never used to. I always had this pattern, stuck to it out of superstition, I think. Get up, coffee, two hours’ work, more coffee, another hour, then lunch. But lately…” He shrugged.

  She was watching him intently. This apparent fascination with his work was novel to him. Paula had been supportive, but skeptical, and Marnie, well, who knew what went on in Marnie’s head.

  When Adrienne had dressed, they walked on the beach. There were other walkers, dog owners and couples and families with kids on their shoulders. It was a beautiful morning, the sky high and clear. Beside him Adrienne walked with long strides, an athlete’s gait. Despite their night together, she still looked untouched somehow. There was something about her that evoked a sense of distance. He put his arm around her as they crossed down to the sea-wet edge of the sand. She didn’t talk and that suited Jack’s state of mind. It was easy being there with her, undemanding. Her face in repose was quiet, serious.

  “Do you see pictures?” he asked eventually.

  “Pictures? Yes, I suppose I do. Not so much with scenery—beautiful as this is—it’s people I look at that way,” she said, turning to him, studying his face with a professional eye.

  Jack laughed. “I’m photographer averse,” he warned. “Except under special circumstances.” He tightened his arm around her.

  Back at the house, he gave her some soft fresh bread and put a lump of butter on a dish and put two little bowls next to it. “Marmalade,” he announced. “You’re my first customer.”

  “You made it?” she said with a little show of incredulity.

  “With these here hands.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  They laughed.

  “You really do cook, don’t you?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “Well, I just seem to know a lot of people who half do things. They tell you they’re gardeners or painters or poets or something, but they don’t really do it. They…toy with it.”

  “Well, I toy with marriage and religion, but when it comes to cooking, I don’t mess around.”

  She smiled. “And writing?”

  “Aaah, writing…” She was looking at him with that same intensity. “I used to think I took it pretty seriously,” he said.

  “And now?”

  He opened the refrigerator and took out some eggs. “I don’t know.” He turned to her with an egg in each hand. “I think I may have come unstuck. I’ve had a routine that was effective for me for a while, but it’s not so effective now. I don’t know if it’s the work, or me, or what.” He held an egg up to her. She shook her head. “I want something to change, but I’m not sure what it is.”

  She eyed him, cautious. “Do you mean that you don’t know whether you want to write differently, or do you mean you don’t know whether you want to write?”

  He grinned, put the eggs down, and lifted an apple from a bowl next to him and tossed it. He was impressed by the languid motion of the catch. She laid the apple down and kept looking at him.

  “I dunno what I want,” he said, shrugging. “I’m a work in progress, honey.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked, not matching his tone, pinching a dime-sized corner off the bread and buttering it slowly.

  “It means I’m a risk,” Jack said. This was not a conversation he wanted to pursue. “I’m a risk and I’m a self-involved jerk. I have been told this by several perfectly fine women, so my advice to you is: Don’t give me any excuse to talk about myself. ’Cos once I starts, I don’t always knows how to stops.”

  He crossed to her and kissed the top of her head to signal the end of the topic. But she put the morsel of bread, now topped with a tiny mound of dark marmalade, into her mouth and looked up at him as if she were continuing it in her head.

  Jack waited, childishly, for a compliment about the marmalade. None came.

  Izzy, jauntily animated, said, “Look at this, Mummy.”

  It was a picture of miniature portions of fish and chips, served in individual newspaper containers. “Isn’t that fab?”

  Eve examined the picture and, actually, thought the idea quite appealing. There were tiny wedges of lemon and wax paper cones of salt on the servings.

  “I’d worry that they would be set out too early. They’d need to be served very fast, so that they were still crisp,” she said, lowering her reading glasses.

  “Oh, yes, I know, but it’s the Connor. They do all the best parties so I don’t think that would be a problem.”

  They were discussing Izzy’s engagement party, which had suddenly eclipsed, temporarily at least, talk of the wedding. In fact, the whole idea of the engagement party seemed to Eve to have risen up from nowhere and then taken on enormous life, like a tornado. It was to be held at the Connor, the very grand hotel where Izzy had met her father for lunch, although she had never shared this detail with Eve. As if the fact that she was organizing a party for eighty people at the most palatial hotel in London was completely unremarkable. Or, Eve thought, as if her mother were owed no explanation. Perhaps she wasn’t.

  These discussions, though, about food particularly, for the wedding and engagement party had at least helped to open the way for Eve to talk to Izzy more freely than she ever had. It was an area where respect was being shown to her by her daughter. Izzy seemed genuinely glad of her opinions and sought them. Something was moving between them, re-forming, in a slow drip, like jelly through muslin. Eve felt maybe her therapy had helped her with Izzy, but there was something else, too, something about Izzy. Perhaps marriage, Ollie, and although she would never have said it, the wane of her grandmother’s influence, had altered her.

  Eve put her glasses down on top of one of the magazines that the house was suddenly strewn with—Bride, Wedding—and smoothed her hair with her hands. She was still unused to its new length.

  “It makes you look years younger,” the girl who’d cut it at the bright little hairdresser’s in Sudbury had said.

  Izzy, though, had eyed the jaw-length sweep suspiciously, unhappily even. This latest alteration in her mother seemed to strike her as something of an assault. And now Eve was about to introduce another anomalous element, an even more tumultuous one.

  “I have had a letter from your father,” she said.

  Izzy did not look up immediately from her magazine, but then she did. “Have you?”

  Eve was reminded of a time when Izzy, about eight, had stolen some truffles from the larder and eaten them hurriedly standing behind the door. She’d emerged with her mouth and chin still streaked with chocolate. But when asked if she had taken them, she had said, “No,” and shaken her head emphatically with this same expression: guilty. Eve felt suddenly very bad. Why should a child feel guilty about seeing her own parent? About wanting to see him. She had not stolen anything, simply taken what was hers by rights.

  “He said he wanted to see something of you, and I was wondering how you felt about that,” Eve said softly.

  Izzy put her magazine down and ran her hands across her eyes; it was a simple gesture, but it disclosed a deeper weariness. In Izzy it was mildly shocking. She never seemed anything other than superbly in control, or at least had not until recently.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Eve asked, feeling a wave of great tenderness. She fought the rise in herself of that ache, the ache she had felt when she’d broken down that night with Gwen, an ache born of carrying too many things inside for too long. Too many heavy, crushingly heavy things. How selfish she had been not to realize that perhaps Izzy had had her own burdens. She had always seemed so brusque.

  Izzy began to cry.

  Eve stood and went to her daughter and, mirroring Gwen
’s gift to her, allowed her to weep while she waited at her side.

  Izzy, recovering herself rather quickly, seemed shy about her outburst. She fumbled for a tissue in the pockets of her long cardigan—the color of green olives, it set off her eyes. She got up wordlessly and went into the kitchen. Eve heard the faucet run.

  Coming back, Izzy stopped, leaned her long frame in the doorway, and sipped the water before turning and depositing the glass on the top of the cupboard near the pantry door, where Eve kept vases. Then she blew her nose on a paper napkin and took up the same position in the doorway again.

  “I suppose you’re angry,” she said defensively.

  Eve was shocked. “Why would you think that I was angry?” she asked.

  “About me seeing so much of him. Simon…Daddy.”

  Daddy, how incongruous it still sounded, Eve thought. Although “Dad” would have been just as inappropriate—too familiar, too suggestive of some long, established relationship—the kind of relationship that had progressed through cuddles on knees to playful kisses on the cheek and then back-chat and banter. The kind where school nativity plays and dance recitals had already paved the way to the biggest performance of all: the wedding. Such a lot Izzy had missed and Simon, too. And Eve. Eve had missed all of those things as well. It was Virginia with whom Izzy had shared them. Once, Eve remembered painfully, another parent at a school open day had taken her, Eve, trailing in Virginia’s wake, for the nanny. She had failed her daughter as surely as Simon had.

  Neither she nor Izzy spoke for a moment, and then Eve said, “Izzy, do you want to spend more time with your father?”

  Izzy sank down the door frame and sat on the small raised landing that separated the kitchen from the conservatory. She bent her knees and put her arms around them and rested her chin on top.

  “I used to dream that he would come and get me,” she said very quietly. “I used to think that he would come and be all handsome and kind.” She paused to wipe her nose again. “And then, well, now that he has…he is.” She lifted her head to look at her mother.

  “Is he?” Eve replied.

  “Yes, he is. He’s exactly like I imagined him, and instead of making me happy, it’s made me so…sad. Sad and confused. I can’t explain. It’s changed everything. It’s changed who I thought I was. Because it’s not just him. If it were just him, that would be one thing, but it’s not. He has a family,” she finished, almost breathless. Then, suddenly apologetic, she said, “I’m sorry, I don’t suppose you like that idea any more than I do.” Her voice had hardened up again when she said this, which dulled slightly the rare bright spot of insight and sympathy toward Eve’s feelings.

  Eve thought for a moment. Then she said, “Actually, I don’t mind. Or at least I don’t mind as much as I thought I would. As much as I would have minded once. I’m a bit muddled about it, too.”

  “His wife has had cancer,” Izzy said. “Breast cancer.”

  “I see.”

  “She’s all right now, though. Or at least they think she’s going to be.”

  “It must have been a very difficult time for them.”

  “I think he really, really loves her and those boys. He really loves them. When he told me about the cancer, he had tears in his eyes. Real tears. I thought he might break down, and then he showed me photographs of them all, the youngest sons and the other boy from the second marriage. They were all on some beach together…on a beach…on bloody holiday. Why didn’t he ever want to take me on holiday? Why didn’t he love me?” She had screamed this last word, her face racked with pain and turned up to the ceiling.

  Eve had felt the scream deep in her gut. Deep in some visceral part of her, hitherto denied or shut down. The mother-love part. The animal mother-love part that had not engaged, lit up, or whatever it was supposed to have done when Izzy was born, and which Eve had deflected with disconnectedness ever since. She got up and went to her child and enveloped her in her arms and felt her tears soak the cotton of her blouse.

  “Oh, dear girl,” she said. “We let you down so.”

  Chapter Seven

  Jack sliced fennel, put it into a cut crystal bowl, and added lemon and sugar, vinegar and cream. Then he seasoned it and put the bowl into the refrigerator.

  I am cooking these days, he’d written to Eve:

  for a vegetarian. It’s a challenge, but I may actually be up to it. I prefer these small hills now, these lower mounds. When I’m faced with a mountain to conquer, I just end up kicking the damn thing. Maybe I’m past the big climbs. I find myself wanting to stick it out here in the lowlands with just a few minor challenges to remind me I’m still breathing. I want to rest up a bit.

  Did you decide on a dinner for the engagement party? Or did drinks and canapés win out? I don’t know London well, but I’ve heard of the Connor. Swell, I thought, real swell. I betcha the folks in those kitchens can find their way around a blini.

  Jack

  I’m sending you, hopefully unscathed, a jar of my favorite chili jelly. Serve it with corn fritters. You’ll thank me.

  Eve turned the chili jelly over in her hand and marveled at its color, amber red and perfectly clear when she held it up to the kitchen window. Then she put it down again and thought about Jack’s vegetarian. She didn’t know why she cared about Jack’s vegetarian. And, in fact, had struggled to admit to herself that she did. But she did.

  Previously she had given surprisingly little thought to Jack’s romantic life, probably because she had none of her own, she thought, with a nip of reproof. But despite this void, she was convinced from the start that the vegetarian represented just that—a romance, a new woman in Jack’s life. She found herself searching for mention of them as a pair. Jackson Cooper was the sort of person, she guessed, who was invited to film premières and the like—parties that were written up in newspapers. She could not imagine living in such a world, but then she could not have imagined that she would ever know someone who did.

  Of course, she reminded herself, she did not know Jack. Not really.

  Certainly Eve did not know that, while he was often invited to the sorts of events she had mentally conjured, Jack rarely went to them. He had tired, some years previously, of that sort of social life, although he had kept it up for a long time after the weariness had set in. Marnie had loved the parties and the people. Jack had not. Jack had dreamed for many years of solitude, and maybe the kind of woman who would look across at him, over a book, once in a while, and smile.

  Eve busied herself with the preparations for Izzy’s and Ollie’s engagement party, although there wasn’t much for her to do once the menu had been agreed upon—drinks and canapés in the end.

  “She’ll have a matron of honor for that sort of thing,” Gwen said sternly when she saw Eve putting invitations into envelopes. She was right, Amy was proving perfectly competent.

  “Amy has her hands full with this hen party trip they’re going on,” Eve insisted.

  Gwen tutted. “I was married in my mother’s dress and my auntie made the cake,” she said. “These young women want it all. And you wait, it’s not just the wedding. They expect to start married life with everything. All the things we’ve worked all our lives for.”

  “I didn’t, Gwen,” Eve said.

  But Gwen had already realized her mistake. “I just meant…”

  “I know what you meant. You and George have worked hard all your lives. I admire that. It’s taken me a long time to realize that my own life has been pampered in many ways. I haven’t appreciated it. I’ve spent all my time thinking about what I’ve lacked and none of it thinking about what I’ve had.”

  “You’ve always been very generous to me and to my family,” Gwen said. “And now you’re doing the volunteering. That’s a worthwhile thing. Very worthwhile.”

  Eve smiled. She had been working at the Red Cross shop once or twice a week for a month now. But then she leapt up, dropping her pen, and cried out, “Oh, no…,” and ran into the kitchen.

&n
bsp; “The shortbread,” she called, sliding her hands into a checked oven glove. She tugged a metal tray from the oven. “Saved!” she announced, holding the tray up to Gwen, who’d followed her. “Thank heavens. Geraldine loves shortbread.”

  Her hair, in its new loose style, had fallen across her face. She brushed it back and laughed.

  Gwen thought she looked, not only younger, but beautiful.

  Jack was intending to serve the fennel salad with a white bean soup and butternut squash ravioli. He’d enjoyed planning the menu, enjoyed having to cook within these new boundaries. But then Adrienne had arrived and presented him with two ears of corn.

  “We can have them tonight,” she’d said, laying them, the husks flaking and dry, on the countertop.

  Jack had not had the impression that she was making a suggestion, or expecting a response. He had looked at the corn and consciously not made one. Adrienne had so far resisted his food. She ate in the same contained way that she did everything else. Not so much without pleasure, as without need. He would cook the corn.

  “You let me sleep again,” she said now, coming into the kitchen. Her hair was hanging straight and smooth over her shoulders as if it had just been brushed. It always looked that way.

  “Why wouldn’t I? It’s a Saturday evening in late September. That’s the kind of thing us lazy-ass, middle-class, first-world folks get to do.”

  “Are you mocking me, Jackson?”

  “No, honey,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Mockery’s too cheap for you.”

  “You shouldn’t go to all this trouble.”

  The kitchen was filled with steam and cooking debris.

  “Who said it was for you?” he said.

  She laughed.

  “We don’t talk about you enough,” Jack said as they stood later, watching the sun begin its majestic dip below the horizon. They had donned sweaters to eat outdoors.

  Adrienne turned and looked up at him, bemused.