Joanna shrugged. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Did she want to tell her? Charley shifted in her chair. “We were together twenty-five years and she had an affair with a younger woman. I walked out and left everything but my clothes. That was three years ago.” Charley was surprised by the stunned look on Joanna’s face.
“That’s a lifetime, twenty-five years. How could she do that?”
Charley picked up her scotch, breathed in the essence, and took a long sip. “In her defense, she was seduced and stolen. And I should’ve known better since I originally stole her from someone else.”
“How can you defend her?”
“Because I loved her.” Charley looked directly into those iridescent green eyes.
Joanna blinked. “You still do, don’t you?”
“I always will. But not the same way I did when we were together.” Clarifying that difference out loud felt like a key turning somewhere inside her, a door long shut springing open.
“Are you still in touch with her?”
Charley couldn’t read the expression on Joanna’s face, but she was aware that it had changed. “She…recently came back into my life. Because she needs a friend.” Her emotions surrounding Tricia were still too raw after their phone conversation Saturday morning. She didn’t think she could, or should, share the reason with Joanna. “And I found I couldn’t say no.”
“Hmmm. That’s beyond nice of you. Because I’m sure the current Mrs. Owens couldn’t have been happy about that?”
Startled, Charley almost laughed out loud. Joanna easily vaulted all the questions Charley had asked and was clearly fishing for an answer of her own. “The current Mrs. Owens would be my mother. No one in my life since the divorce.”
“At all? No dates, no dalliances…”
This time, Charley laughed. “Dalliances. I love words that wear gloves.”
Joanna chuckled, and Charley swore that even in the low lighting, she saw a blush.
“Well, not for lack of my friends trying, that’s for sure. They’ve spent a lot of time setting me up the last couple of years because they think I’m, well, in need of company.” Charley made air quotes around the word “company” with her fingers.
Joanna nodded. “Are you?”
Charley looked down at her drink and swirled the cubes around in the glass. She sensed this already might be a crossroads, and in this moment, she wanted to choose her path carefully. “I didn’t think I was until someone I’ve known for a year asked me out recently and shed a little light on that for me.”
“Ah.”
“Mmm, perhaps not what you think. She’s…well, kind of young and it’s really her skills as a writer that I appreciate at this point, so, if anything, it’ll be a friendship.”
“Kind of young? And a writer?”
“And what about you? No Mrs. Caden waiting at home for you tonight?”
Joanna nodded slightly. “All right. Turning the tables. I suppose I deserve it. I’ll go along with your ruse. No, no one in my life. And I doubt there will be again.”
The admission startled Charley. “That’s a lengthy self-imposed hair shirt, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t built for long-term relationships. Too much of me goes into my work.”
“It shouldn’t be a problem if she understands that about you, and if you’re there for her when you’re home.”
“I’m guessing she didn’t, and I wasn’t.”
The waitress asked if they wanted another drink and Joanna responded by handing her a credit card and the tab.
“So there was someone recently.”
Charley pulled some bills out of her pocket as she watched Joanna, lost in the eddy she created in the glass in front of her. Her fingers circling the rim were slender, delicate, the perfectly manicured nails polished a deep mauve, and Charley imagined those hands somewhere other than that glass.
“A while ago. And when it was over, I vowed I would never let a woman do that to me again.” Joanna looked at Charley. Was it a warning shot over the bow?
“You can’t condemn yourself to a life alone.”
“Yes, I can. I don’t want that kind of pain again.”
Charley thought about her own vow to Brooke recently that there wouldn’t be another relationship. “Pain lets you know you’re alive.”
“So does heartburn, but I don’t recommend either one.”
Charley snorted.
“On that note, it’s getting late and I have to get home.”
“Mmm…so do I.” Thinking of the cats and her promised call with Tricia, Charley handed a twenty across the table to Joanna.
“Nope,” she said as the woman came back to the table with the credit card and receipt for her signature.
“Well, that’s not very fair.”
Joanna shrugged.
“All right, then, since we both left so many things unanswered, why don’t we do this next Monday? Not a date, of course.” Charley saw the reflected firelight dancing in Joanna’s eyes and her breath caught in her throat.
Joanna’s laugh was soft, gentle, and it made Charley shiver. “And who will be answering what, I wonder.”
The breeze was markedly warmer than it had been earlier, and as they walked down First Avenue, Charley couldn’t help the feeling of belonging, of ease, which swept through her in Joanna’s company.
“What a lovely night,” Joanna remarked.
“I told you it was still Indian summer.”
When they reached the Isaiah Wall across from the U.N., Charley pointed at the stairs leading up to the little neighborhood tucked above First Avenue. “This is me. You don’t have to walk me up, though.”
Joanna leaned in to hug her good night, the lemon scent washing over Charley like a balm. “See you Monday.”
Upstairs in her apartment, Charley turned on the NFL game. “Hey,” she said when Tricia picked up on the second ring. “Sorry I’m late.”
“I almost thought you were ditching me. Then I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to call you at work, but no one answered the main number and you guys don’t have a phone tree.”
“The company’s too big to have one of those.”
“Well, then I realized I never got your phone number. So you ended up working really late.”
“I should’ve given it to you. No, actually, I ended up over at the Y.” Charley turned down the sound on the game since she could hear it clearly on Tricia’s end.
“The Y?”
“I use the pool there.”
“Wow. I’m impressed. You must look terrific.”
“Hardly. Still working on losing all that weight I gained when I quit smoking.” The realization of what she’d said hit her like a two-by-four. My God, I smoked in that apartment for fifteen years. Is her cancer my fault?
“So, what’s your cell number?” Tricia didn’t seem to notice the correlation.
She had to have considered my smoking when she got the news. Charley recited the ten digits, feeling ill at the possibility. “Do you want me to come downtown and get you Wednesday?”
“No. Meet me at the York Avenue entrance of the hospital at eight. I’ve been watching this game for over an hour. Who’s winning tonight?”
“I’m not really invested in this one.”
“That’s not like you. How are my sweet Bing and Bob? Do they still watch football with you?”
Charley hesitated. She’d taken the cats with her when she left Tricia. Having been their primary caretaker, she felt they were rightfully hers. Those first few weeks in her new apartment, when Tricia called almost daily leaving messages begging her to come back, she also left messages for them, cooing to them, and telling them she missed them. Charley would never let Tricia know that they’d quietly sat at the front door for months, little sentinels waiting for her to come home. “Bob was never sweet, you know that. And they’re fine. Older, but fine.”
After Tricia hung up, Charley gave the game another half hour, but her though
ts were really on Joanna. Why had some things been up for discussion, like the fact that there was no one in her life, but others were not, like where she’d grown up? And that Joanna had struck the first blow when it came to finding out if she was single had surprised her.
Since she could chase her own tail to no avail with questions like this, she decided there was only one way to quell her thoughts, and she got Neely’s flash drive out of her coat pocket. Bob, wrapped around the bottom of the computer screen, complained mildly as Charley plugged the drive in, swatting once at the mouse. Charley gently rubbed his head and began to read. Within minutes, his purring ebbed, he was asleep, and Charley was lost in 1945 post-war Chicago with Rose and Pearl, two young black girls, one of whom Charley was pretty sure would grow up to be Neely’s grandmother. Two chapters in, she began making notes to take to Neely tomorrow night.
* * *
Wednesday morning, Charley was standing under the massive metal overhang in front of the doors of Memorial Sloan Kettering, feeling almost hung over. She’d worked on her novel well into the night, finding solace in the hours of creativity.
Each cab that pulled up to the curb had Charley’s undivided attention. She was afraid of seeing Tricia after all this time and wondered if old feelings would come flooding back. Would she look different? Treat Charley differently? Would she push all those old buttons again? Or, perhaps worse, would Charley be able to see in her former lover’s eyes that even the most intimate of things between them was now in the past, irrelevant? So she studied every cab as, one after the other, doors opened, disgorged passengers, took on others, and closed. Shortly after eight, the cab she’d been dreading stopped half a block away and Tricia emerged from the back, her tall figure unmistakable in the tightly-belted white trench coat, the highlighted brown hair swirling around her shoulders over the fashionably turned-up collar. Some things never change.
Charley smiled to herself as she took in the navy and white scarf at Tricia’s throat, the navy leather gloves, and the small navy purse tucked under her arm. The memory of her Shalini perfume got to her senses well before Tricia was close enough for it to actually hit her, and when Tricia kissed her cheek, Charley breathed in the indelible scent. She studied Tricia’s face. Even at sixty-four, she was still a beauty, her high cheekbones more prominent, the aquiline nose still seeming to point to those perfect bow-shaped lips. Charley was more familiar with the landscape of Tricia’s dark eyes than she was with the backs of her own hands. In a fleeting instant, she saw gratitude, love, fear, and pride. But nothing sparked inside her. The only thing she felt was the sense that she would be helping where no one else could, harnessing a bond no one else had with Tricia in service of what was to come.
“Thank you for doing this with me,” Tricia said.
“You would do the same for me.”
“I would, but you would never have called me in the same situation.” Tricia headed for the front door of the hospital.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that. You would never have asked for my help, and Brooke would’ve mustered every living being to stand between the two of us if you had. You were always so lucky with friends.”
Charley had no rebuttal.
Tricia walked toward a set of elevators behind the front desk. “And I’m sure Brooke wanted to spit nails when you told her about this.”
“No, actually. She was quite concerned for you.”
“The concern was for you, not me.” The elevator doors opened, and Tricia punched the button for the eighth floor.
“Yes, she is concerned for me. But she promised me she’ll be there for you, too.”
“Only because you’re here for me.”
“Still pig-headed, aren’t you?”
“No, a realist. I know what your friends think of me, and they’re right to be so protective of you.”
“I won’t argue with you.”
Tricia held the elevator door for Charley when it opened on the eighth floor. “Straight ahead. I bet Brooke never told you I contacted her when Reagan left me.”
Charley stopped and grabbed Tricia’s wrist. “You what?”
“I didn’t have the guts to call you myself. So I called Brooke and asked her to call you for me. Do you know what she told me?”
I can only imagine, and I’m gonna kill Brooke.
When Charley didn’t reply, Tricia gently disengaged her wrist. “She told me to go to hell and to fuck myself on the ride down.”
Charley laughed out loud.
“So, you can see I’m not being pig-headed here, although I am well known for that trait. Your friends hate me.” Tricia opened the door to suite 803. “I know why you don’t hate me. But I still went to church Saturday morning after I hung up with you to thank God that you said yes.” She walked over to the receptionist’s desk. “Tricia Sullivan. I have an eight fifteen appointment with Dr. Gerard.” She turned to Charley. “That’s the second time in thirty years I thanked God that you said yes to me.”
Tricia took off her coat and sat in one of the waiting room chairs. Charley stood at the desk, dumbfounded, unable to breathe or move for a moment. When she sat down next to Tricia, she took her hand.
“I don’t deserve you,” Tricia said. They sat in silence until the receptionist called Tricia’s name, opened the door to the examination offices, and led them to a sunny conference room at the end of the hall. Charley was intimidated by the sight of six men and one woman, all of them in white lab coats, sitting around the table.
“I don’t even remember all their names yet,” Tricia said. “But I have some decisions to make with them about what route to take to treat this. Or not.”
Dr. Gerard, an imposing man with a patch of silver making inroads through the black hair at his right temple, stood to greet Tricia and introduced the group to Charley. For the next half hour, the oncologists reviewed the various treatment options, from targeted therapy to anti-angiogenesis therapy that would starve the blood vessels that the tumor needed to continue growing, and from radiation to chemotherapy to combinations of all of them. The X-rays and scans were on a laptop on the table, and from time to time, a doctor would turn it toward Tricia and Charley to illustrate what he or she was talking about. Tricia had several questions for the team. Charley took notes as the doctors spoke.
“Why don’t you two take a couple of days to think about all of this. Come in on Friday morning and let’s make a decision as to which direction to take.”
“I could also choose to do nothing, correct?” Tricia asked.
Dr. Gerard’s face didn’t register a single flicker of emotion or that he’d even heard the question. Charley could feel the stunned silence emanating from the rest of the team.
“Yes. You could.” He nodded thoughtfully.
“Because I’m not sure I want to put myself through any of this if the outcome is going to be the same. Or if it buys me six more months. At what cost? I might just want to make the best of whatever time I have left.”
“Then let’s talk about that Friday when you and Charley have had a chance to talk.” He gave Tricia another hug. “Please think about it, though. Stage four doesn’t mean we can’t turn it around.”
In the most uncommon move Charley had ever seen Tricia make, she touched Dr. Gerard’s cheek and walked out the door.
“Thank you, Dr. Gerard.” Charley extended her hand.
“I’m glad you came this morning, Charley. Tricia needs you. I think we’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the next several months.”
Watching Tricia walk down the hall, she responded, “I’m not so sure about that.” She caught up to her at the elevator.
“Don’t say it.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Charley said, stifling the rebuke that she’d been about to make.
They rode to the ground floor in silence. Outside, Tricia turned to her. “Have dinner with me tonight. I can’t make this decision without talking about it.”
It hadn’
t occurred to Charley that there would be such choices to make. She’d only thought about treatments, handholding, being there for Tricia at odd hours.
Stepping off the curb, Tricia whistled for the taxi half a block away at the red light and turned back to Charley. “What about seven?”
“I still marvel at this dichotomy, the chicly-dressed woman whistling for a cab,” Charley said.
“I may have buried the farm girl in haute couture, but I never forgot how to get a job done.” She opened the door and held it for Charley. “You take this one.”
“I have an aquatics class at six. I can be at your place about eight.”
* * *
Charley was typing up the notes from the doctors’ meeting when Emily swept by her desk. “Come on in. Talk to me.”
Charley went in, shut the door, and gave Emily an abbreviated version of Tricia’s appointment.
Emily nodded. “Will she do nothing?”
Charley shrugged. “She might actually be considering that.”
Emily ran a finger along the edge of her desk. “That would certainly simplify things. Are you okay with that?”
Charley was stupefied for a moment. “I can’t…it’s really her decision, not mine. I can be there for her, but I can’t ask her to fight this if she thinks she won’t win. Tricia was always about winning.”
Emily nodded. “I’m sorry. This must be hard for you.”
Charley looked down at the floor, fighting tears.
Emily sighed. “Okay, well, I had a message from Paul Whitney early this morning. He wants to see me Friday afternoon, before the board meeting. I don’t know if this is a kiss-off or a handshake, so I need something I can hide up my sleeve in case it sounds like they’re going to say no. We literally can’t afford to lose this deal. Move my meetings and buy me two hours to noodle around. I have to see what I can get on paper that will have him saying yes even if he thought he was about to say no.”
Charley had the sensation of being underwater as she left Emily’s office.
Chapter Fourteen
Forging a Desire Line Page 12