Dust

by Eva Marie Everson

  I glanced at my watch. Westley had stayed home to wait for Cindie and her new husband to bring Michelle back. “Not sure when she’ll be here,” he’d said. “And I told her no hurry. After all, she’s giving up the whole week so Michelle can stay here.” He scooped up a book he’d been reading and headed for the sofa in the family room. “So I just took the day off.”

  I hadn’t wanted to contend that if he had told me he was taking a day, I would have, too. That we could have spent the day relaxing together. Stretched out on opposite sofas, reading or watching a movie on the VCR. I also didn’t intend to argue that Cindie hadn’t given up anything for anybody except herself. For whatever reason, she hadn’t wanted Michelle to come to Atlanta for the week and had chosen to drive down. Perhaps so she could let Westley know about the marriage and/or the baby … all of which she could have done on the phone.

  I shrugged. I’d spent entirely too much time thinking and worrying about it since Saturday morning. Saturday morning and all Saturday afternoon and into the evening, a night which should have been the romantic new beginning I’d prayed for since Westley’s heart attack. Instead, I sat across from Westley over an intimate dinner at Henry’s debating with myself the issues of Cindie and what a new little brother or sister would mean for Michelle. Not that it mattered; despite the amorous setting of the restaurant, Westley’s mind seemed just as preoccupied, a fact that only worsened my concerns. Was he thinking the same I was but not wanting to let on? Protecting me in true Westley fashion?

  But I didn’t need protecting. I needed the truth and I needed a crystal ball and I needed my husband pulling my body to his and I needed—

  “Here you go,” Ro-Bay said, interrupting my thoughts. So much so, I jumped. “My, now. What’s got you on edge?”

  I reached for the cup and saucer. With one look I could see that the coffee had been prepared exactly to my taste. Ro-Bay knew me about as well as anyone, and I smiled as I brought the cup to my lips, remembering our first encounter. I’d been so young then. So frightened. So... innocent. But no more. The innocence had been shattered and the woman who had initially invoked fear was now considered a friend.

  I swallowed the first sip. “Ro-Bay? Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  “Depends.”

  Ignoring her, I pressed on. “Is it normal for a man and woman to grow apart from time to time? You know, in marriage?”

  Ro-Bay crossed her arms and huffed. “How long you been married now? Just a smidge over ten years?”

  “Mm-hm.” I placed the cup and saucer close enough to reach but far enough from the stacks of work awaiting me. “Westley says it’s the heart attack. The meds.” Heat rose in my cheeks and I pressed my fingertips against it. “I cannot believe I’m saying this.”

  Ro-Bay found an occasional chair and pulled it to the opposite side of the desk. “Now, you listen. I not your mama and I sure not Miss Justine, but I’m a woman and I’ve been married a good long time. If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, you need to nip that thing right in the bud.”

  I wanted to laugh but couldn’t find the strength. “Westley says his—his lack of—interest—is from the medication.”

  “Well, if that’s so, my next question would be wondering how long he’s gonna be on it.”

  I shook my head. “I’m hoping that at the six-month mark they’ll wean him off.” Wean. The same word Westley used. Like a baby from her mother’s breast.

  Ro-Bay appeared to ponder my circumstance before she spoke. “Honey, you listen, now. Marriage is more than what happens between the sheets. And when you spoke those vows some ten years ago you said, ‘in sickness and in health.’”

  “I know.”

  “Well, this here is the sickness part. Happened to my husband, too—different reasons—and I don’t wonder but what it don’t happen to every man once in a while. But don’t you worry none. It took some time with mine, but it came back.” She chuckled. “And, when it did …” She laughed again. “You just keep on loving your man in all other ways and soon enough it’ll be set to rights.”

  I folded my arms and rested them on the desktop. “It’s more than that, Ro-Bay. More than … sex. Westley seems so preoccupied. There’s … something. I don’t know what. Something between us and I can’t figure it out.”

  “Another woman?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “No, course not. That boy loves you.”

  I gave a half smile. “If you say so.”

  She stood. “Trust me on that one.” She returned the chair and headed for the door. “Now on to my mopping and waxing. Something sticky on the floor near the fridge and I bet I know who made the mess.”

  This time my smile was genuine. “Have fun. And thanks for the coffee.”

  I had worked a good hour, keeping my ears peeled for the sound of footsteps overhead or coming down the staircase, but hearing nothing but the tick-tock of the old cuckoo on one of the shelves. Then, as though I’d woken from a dream, I felt, rather than saw, Biff leaning against the jamb in that way he had of owning a room without entering it. “I heard you surprised your mother with a visit,” I said by way of hello, my stomach quivering enough that I feared he may hear the tremble.

  He grinned at me—perfect white teeth showing off his handsome face, making him more attractive than a man his age had a right to be. And, certainly, more alluring than I should have good sense to note, despite my current circumstance. But I couldn’t help it; the man simply stirred something inside me … no matter that he was old enough to be my … uncle. “Rose Beth, no doubt.” He pretended to pout. “Can you believe she won’t let me in the kitchen for a cup of coffee?”

  “It’s Monday morning. She’s mopping and waxing. Plus, she says someone dropped something sticky on the floor and she suspects you to be the guilty party.”

  Biff laughed as he stepped toward me. “Guilty as charged.” He stopped flush against the desk, reached across and, with his fingertips, brought my chin up a fraction of an inch. “What’s that I see in your eyes? Who has made this little cupcake so sad?”

  I pulled back; one light touch affecting me more than it should. A shock vibrated within. A desire. The need I’d felt for weeks—the one I’d suppressed while working and while tending to Michelle—rose up, demanding to be noticed. But not with my husband; with this man. A man I was not privy to. A man not Westley. “I don’t know what you mean,” I whispered.

  He strolled to the wingback chairs, opened the drawer of the table between them, then sat back and lit a cigarette. “Care for one?” he asked, one brow cocked.

  “No, thank you. I don’t smoke, remember?” Although, on occasion, Miss Justine and I indulged as we talked over life’s problems, swearing later we’d done no such thing. The smoking. The solving world issues we admitted to.

  “Sure?”

  No. “Yes.”

  He chuckled, stood, walked over to me and, as though he had every right, slipped the cigarette between my lips, his fingertips brushing against them, caressing as they curled. “Go ahead, sweet cheeks. I won’t tell.”

  Biff returned to his chair to light another; I followed behind him, found the ashtray, settled it on the table, then sat in the vacant wingback. “I really shouldn’t,” I said, unsure as to my meaning. Shouldn’t smoke? Shouldn’t sit next to a man I found so uniquely and strangely attractive, although—oddly enough—I rarely thought of him when he wasn’t around. Not even his portrait in the family room raised cause for alarm, perhaps because I’d never been able to catch his true essence. The scent of him. The electrical aura emanating that left me dazzled. Like a schoolgirl awed by her teacher. Or a sixteen-year-old who, once upon a time, had gazed at glossy posters of dreamy idols and imagined being with them. For an hour. Or a day. Or a single blessed night.

  I let out a sigh and silently thanked God as the Hoover began buzzing over carpets—the familiar sound of Ro-Bay working in the back of the house. Had I been alone with this man—especially at th
at moment—I wasn’t sure what might happen next. Or how I would justify my actions.

  People have affairs all the time, don’t they?

  But what if only once … would one time constitute an affair?

  If Westley would only—

  “So tell me what’s going on in your life. Because I can tell something has happened since last I saw you. When was that? Christmas?”

  “Yes.” He’d brought a leggy beauty with thick brunette tresses to his mother’s dinner party and I’d found myself inexplicably jealous. I took a long draw of the cigarette. “I guess you heard that Westley had a heart attack just after the first of January.”

  He studied me, his eyes primarily on my lips. I chewed at them, then took another draw from the cigarette, noting that the shake in my hand had returned. “I did,” he said. “Mother, of course. DiAnn, too. How is he?”

  “Fine, thank you. Recovering. It … it’s going to take a while, but … he’s good. He recently bought a motorcycle, which he seems to enjoy. And … we went skiing in Boone. Well, he and Michelle did … I sat in the lodge and sipped on mulled hot apple cider and buttered rum.”

  “Not one for skiing?”

  I stubbed out the cigarette and wished I could ask for another. My request would be a telltale giveaway of how he’d set my nerves on fire. I hadn’t smoked many cigarettes in my life—Westley would be furious—but when I did, I honestly enjoyed the experience. This had been no different, except for the tension running on a taut wire between Biff and me. So different than chewing the fat with Miss Justine. “I honestly don’t know,” I answered. “I’ve never tried it and, well, Westley seemed so intent and in such a hurry to get Michelle on the slopes that I—I guess I just opted for …”

  “Hot cider and rum by a roaring fire in the hotel lobby while people-watching and daydreaming the hours away.”

  “More or less,” I admitted, wondering how he could have possibly known. “I also read a pretty good novel.”

  “Did you now?” he asked, his eyes hooded. “I get a sense that things are finally waffling in paradise. Seven-year itch? No wait, it’s been longer than that. Trust me, I’ve been counting.”

  I stood, more aware of where this was heading than before. If I admitted that, yes, our marriage was in trouble—or seemed to be—Biff would suggest that what I needed was a fling on the side. One with a discretionary partner. And then he would suggest himself. I knew the lines by heart; I’d read them in too many books. “I need to get back to work,” I said, all the while wanting to play out the script.

  Biff crushed his cigarette, then stood and took my hand. The current intensified enough to send warm honey through my veins, set my head spinning, and I inhaled deeply. “If I’d been there, no way would you have been left to your own devices, sitting alone. Hot drinks and good books or not.”

  “Biff,” I whispered, hoping he couldn’t feel my resolve nearly giving way, the jerk of my free hand.

  “I like the new hair … your eyes … You’re beautiful, you know that?”

  The Hoover shut off, alerting me, and I slid my hand from his. “I’m also Westley’s wife. And I love him.”

  Biff crooked an index finger, brought it to my cheek, and gently rubbed. “More’s the pity.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by—”

  “Allison,” he said, speaking my name with such authority that it forced me to bite down on my lip to stop it from quivering as my hand had. “Let’s not play at this. You feel it. You always did.”

  “No … I—”

  “Stop. I hate games and I refuse to play them, so grow up, cupcake. And when you do, when you can stand it no longer, let me know.” He looked first to the door, then to the ashtray where two cigarette butts lay in a tattered sheet of ashes. “Take care of that, will you? I’m going to the kitchen now for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. Rose Beth can just pitch her hissy fit.”

  “I will,” I whispered, but not until he had left the room.

  Miss Justine entered the library/office as the old cuckoo struck two, walked straight for the wingback chairs, and lit a cigarette.

  The gaze she shot across the room informed me that I was to join her, which, after I retrieved the ashtray, I did. She offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head. The one I’d had earlier with Biff had left a bad taste in my mouth and a tightness in my chest.

  “On this you’re wise,” Miss Justine said, then drew on her cigarette as though it were an old lover. “On other things, not so much.”

  Heat coursed through me. Somehow, this woman I carried such respect for, had my number. “What things are we talking about?”

  “Rose Beth is worried about you.”

  A modicum of relief slipped down my spine. “She told you about what we talked about this morning?”

  Her sharply penciled-in brow cocked once before she thumped ashes into the ashtray. “No …”

  “Then?”

  “She suspects my son is making one of his quintessential moves.”

  “Quintessential?”

  “Darlin’ …” She drew again on her cigarette and, again, thumped the ashes. “Rose Beth has a sixth sense about certain things—could be in her DNA, I don’t know—but she has long said—and I quote—she ‘don’t trust Biff around that sweet chile.’”

  I groaned.

  “Allow me to rephrase that.”

  “I wish you would,” I said, then reached for the cigarettes.

  “She doesn’t trust Biff around any beautiful woman, but—as she said to me earlier—especially one who seems to be in the middle of … something. She also said the air crackled in this house this morning.”

  “I don’t know what she means by that,” I said, although I most assuredly did. I lit my cigarette before adding, “But Westley and I are having issues.”

  “In the bedroom?”

  “And out.”

  “And my son has finally seen his chance to pounce and he has.”

  “Gracious, Miss Justine, why in the world would you say such a thing?”

  Seriousness shadowed her face. She took the cigarette from my hand and, having put hers out, followed with mine, crushing it against the bottom of the crystal ashtray. “Darlin’, I want you to pay attention. One day you will grow old. I’ve crossed into my octogenarian years, so I know.”

  “You’re not old.” I didn’t like to discuss Miss Justine’s advanced age; it meant death could come at any time. Life without her in it wasn’t conceivable. Not yet.

  “That kind of flattery doesn’t fit here, and I hate repeating myself. But in this case, I will—you’ll grow old and you’ll see things as they were. As they really were, which means as they are. As they really are.” She pointed an index finger at me, one riddled with arthritic knuckles and decorated, as always, with oversized, ostentatious rings. “And one day … one day … you’ll realize that the only enemy you ever really encountered was yourself.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You, Allison. Your misconceptions.” She blinked once, then closed her eyes against something too ugly to look at with them open. “You believe in storybook marriages and books that teach you how to have one and if yours slips away from that idea—even by an iota—then you are faced with your own weaknesses.”

  “Miss Justine—I could never—”

  “Yes. You could.”

  I sat stone still. Yes, I could. She was more than a little right. And that’s what scared me most. I loved Westley. And I believed he loved me. So, surely, we could never—I could never—

  “He’s right, you know.” Her eyes were on mine now. “He’s not my husband’s son. But he is his father’s.” She pressed lips painted deep red together until they trembled. “A man with such charisma I thought I’d die in his presence, in spite of his age—just like you and my son.”

  I sat back, the air seeping from me as though I’d just drawn and exhaled my last. And I knew, somehow, that the best thing I could do now was listen. Sit and list
en and say nothing. So I swallowed hard enough and loudly enough that she caught my invitation to go on.

  “It wasn’t a heart attack, but my husband had gotten so wrapped up in his business—papers and meetings and trips here and there to seal this deal and that contract—that he forgot about me.” She chuckled. “Or maybe he didn’t.” The fingertips of her right hand fingered the large diamond on her left ring finger. “He’d land some business deal and I’d get jewelry.” Her eyes met mine. “He called it good investments and, as far as I know, no other woman was getting anything of any value.

  “Then Cheney—that was his name—Cheney came into my life when I wasn’t paying attention to the dangers.” Her eyes roamed the bookcases as though she were searching for the right title. “When I didn’t expect him. He saw a vulnerable woman who thought she was no longer loved by her husband... and he made her strong.” Miss Justine’s head shook slightly. “Not by loving me, mind you, but by not loving me when it mattered most.”

  I waited as her fingers traveled from the diamond to the doily on the small table between us, creating waves within its pattern, then patting it flat. “Once he had his way, Allison … once he’d finally seduced and conquered, he walked off the victor and left me with a baby inside.” Her face returned to mine.

  “What did you do?” I whispered, now understanding more about this woman who was, in her own way, an enigma. A puzzle to be put together not in one sitting, but slowly. Over long periods of time.

  And time we’d had. Enough that I no longer wondered why she’d been so sure of Westley’s devotion to me those first weeks of our marriage. And I no longer questioned her wisdom on forgiving him so quickly.

  “My husband and I hadn’t shared a bed for weeks by that point. Maybe months.”

  I certainly understood that and I nodded.

  “But I knew what I had to do to keep the tongues from wagging,” she continued, “and I did it. Buford was in DC at some convention. I booked a flight as soon as I returned from the doctor’s office, then took a taxi to the hotel where I managed to cajole the manager to sneak me into my husband’s room.” She winked at me. “Told him it was our anniversary and I was there to surprise him. Asked that a magnum of champagne be sent up—and it was. I took a long, hot soak in a tub full of bubbles, dolled myself up as I hadn’t done in years, and waited.”