by Mary Campisi
What? “Was that a compliment?” Jenny wasn’t trying to be sarcastic—she really didn’t know.
Her mother hesitated. “Yes. Yes, it was.”
“Thank you,” Jenny managed, feeling awkward and elated at the same time.
“You’re welcome.” She shifted in her chair.
Jenny wondered if her mother felt awkward and elated, too. Probably just awkward.
“You know,” she started, inching her gaze to Jenny, “things haven’t always been easy between us.”
Jenny forced herself not to laugh out loud. Right, she wanted to say. And the Pacific Ocean is a creek.
“It’s just that,” she paused, licked her lips, “you were always so different. I never understood you. Not like Grace. She was easy, predictable. You were like a storm, crashing in, veering right, then left, invariably hitting dead center, flattening everything in your wake.” She stared off into space. “Your father said to leave you alone. You were the baby.” Her voice dropped. “His pride and joy. I couldn’t, though. Not at first. I tried so hard to protect you…the time you tried to ride your sister’s bicycle and crashed into the tree. Fell right on your left arm, broke it just below the elbow.”
“I was the first kid on the street to get a cast.”
“True. And then, when you were in seventh grade, you tie-dyed a shirt and a skirt for the school dance. I told you not to wear it, but you did anyway. I knew the kids would laugh at you.” Her eyes grew misty. “But you insisted on going in that ridiculous big shirt and long skirt. And they did laugh.”
“Not all of them,” Jenny said, remembering the snickers and hoots as she walked into the gymnasium. She’d been going through her Janis Joplin/Beatles era, and tie-dye seemed like the thing to do.
“Enough that the principal called me because he was concerned.” She shook her head. “I stayed up all night worrying about you, wondering how you were ever going to mesh into society with all of your crazy ideas. Your father said to let it be. You’d do just fine.” She looked at Jenny. Hard. Like she was really looking at her, into her, maybe for the first time. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe it was the first time Jenny was really looking at her. “So, I let it go. And the next time something happened, I let that go, too, until after a while, I let everything go.”
“I never thought you cared,” Jenny said, sounding six years old again.
“Never cared? I cared too much. So much it was driving me crazy.”
“But you tried to control me.”
“I did. I thought if I controlled you, then I could understand you. And then I could protect you.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “But it all backfired. We ended up enemies, on the opposite side of a war no one could win.”
“So you chose Grace.” Jenny couldn’t keep the hurt from her voice.
“I didn’t choose Grace over you,” she said, swiping at her eyes. “I always loved you both. Grace was just so much easier to be around. She didn’t fight for the sake of fighting. She was much easier to like.”
Jenny swallowed hard and pushed out the words. “I wanted you to care about me, Mom. To look at me the way you looked at Grace. But you never did. After a while, I created things to get your attention—the worse, the better. And then, by the time I became an adult, I didn’t care anymore.” Her voice dipped. “I told myself I didn’t care anymore.”
Her mother was crying now, big fat, honest tears, rolling down her face.
“I’m not Grace. I can’t be. I’m me,” Jenny said, jabbing an index finger at her heart. “Me. Jenny Romano. Yes, I love flying cross-country on a moment’s notice. Yes, I have an herb garden painted on my kitchen wall. Yes, I sometimes eat cake for breakfast. And yes, I still do, on occasion, leave my underwear under the bed.” She reached out, covered her mother’s hand with her own. “But that’s me, Mom. That’s what makes me, me. Please don’t try to change that.”
Her mother placed her other hand on top of Jenny’s. “I can only promise to try.”
Jenny smiled. “That’s a start.”
“I do love you, Jenny.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
Her mother’s lips worked into a slow smile. She leaned closer, looked Jenny square in the eye and said, “Now about those underwear…”
* * *
“Don’t forget, you promised Mom you’d visit her for Christmas.”
“I know. I will, Grace.” And she would. Jenny and her mother were in the tenuous stages of rebuilding their relationship after a twenty-some-odd-year hiatus. It was the least Jenny could do. And for once, she didn’t feel like she had to do it. She wanted to do it.
“I’m surprised she didn’t stay here longer, at least wait until you left.”
Jenny wasn’t surprised. Not at all. They’d said a lot of things to each other, years of words, built up, packed tight, layered with the veneer of misunderstanding peeling and yellowed, needing to be scraped clean.
Her mother needed time, and so did she.
“It’s okay,” Jenny said, realizing that it really was.
“Has Elliot said anything about the two of you still seeing each other once you leave?”
“No.” Was that really her voice, sounding so pathetic?
“You’ve still got two days.” She covered Jenny’s hand with her own. “He might.”
“Come on, Grace, I’m not six anymore. We both know if he wanted this relationship to go any further, he would have said something by now. He’s had plenty of opportunities and it isn’t as if I haven’t broached the subject, several times. He just keeps skirting around it, changing the subject.”
“Maybe he’s afraid, you know, after his wife ran off and all.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we’re all afraid.” And maybe I’m dying inside, damn him. Maybe I’m really not good enough, professional enough…maybe I’m just not enough…
“Give him time.”
“Forty-eight hours, that’s it, and then I’m gone.”
* * *
The house was quiet. Too quiet. Jenny wandered around, trying to decide if she should exercise her improving culinary skills and bake chocolate chip cookies, take a walk and enjoy the sunset, or, and this kicked her salivary glands into fourth gear, dig into the new container of salty caramel ice cream in the freezer. It took about 2.2 seconds to opt for the ice cream. Three scoops and a cherry-on-top later, she plopped down on the couch, spoon in one hand, remote control in the other.
Ain’t life grand? She plunked a big spoonful of salty caramel ice cream into her mouth and flicked through the first six stations. Baseball, golf, and more baseball. Click. A man and a woman kissing. Click. A man, a woman, and a baby. Click. A man in a black tuxedo and a woman in a wedding dress. Click. Click. Off.
Why hadn’t she and Elliot talked about her leaving, or better yet, talked about her staying? He was the one who was the psychologist; wasn’t he supposed to know when a person needed to talk, get something cleared up? Well, wasn’t he? Wasn’t there even the tiniest piece of him that wanted her to stay? How could he simply let her walk away as though they had shared nothing more than a latte or a stroll in the park, as though they hadn’t come together, body, heart, soul?
She loved him.
Oh, yes, she loved him. Didn’t he love her even a little? The pain of rejection hit her right on top of the salty caramel she’d just devoured. Why was it when she finally found a man she could love, he didn’t love her back?
She’d told Elliot in a roundabout way that after this next assignment, she was considering taking Joe up on his offer to cover the East Coast. It wouldn’t be as glamorous as shooting on the Thames, or leaning out of a second-story window in Venice to capture an old man peddling cherry tarts and fresh-baked bread, but it would be solid. Real. And close to the people she cared about. Close to Grace, Danielle, Natalie, Sydney…Elliot.
She dumped another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.
Grace didn’t need her here anymore. There was a shine in her eyes, a kind of
glow about her that spoke of self-confidence and second chances. Jenny had seen it when Grace opened the door tonight and let Guy Delacroix in. He’d come to pick up her and the girls for pizza and a matinee. And Jenny had also seen the way he watched her. If Grace thought he only wanted to chum around with her as a teacher pal, she was in for a big shock. A pleasant one, though, or at least it would be once she got past the age thing and the longish hair. Oh, and the tiny gold hoop in his left ear.
She shoved the last spoonful of salty caramel ice cream in her mouth.
So, why the hell couldn’t Elliot Drake love her the way she loved him? Had it been nothing but sex with him? Had she been nothing more than a diversion with long black hair? Hadn’t he felt the deep-soul promise when they were together, body to body, heart to heart, soul to soul?
Damn it, hadn’t he?
Jenny plunked the empty bowl on the table, tossed the spoon inside. Well, if he hadn’t, he’d have to tell her himself. She jumped off the couch and grabbed her keys. In two more days, she’d never have to see him again, but before she left, she’d have her answers.
24
Jenny slammed the van door and ran up the sidewalk to Elliot’s house, oblivious to the ferns and pots of begonias on the front porch that usually gave her so much pleasure. All she wanted to do was find Elliot, confront him, now.
She rang the doorbell to his office, waited. Nothing. Then she tried his other doorbell, the one for his home. Again, nothing. Damn. Where was he? He usually worked Thursday afternoons, so where were his patients and where was he?
Jenny blew out a long breath, tried to think. Maybe she should go back to Grace’s, wait until she’d calmed down and could be more civilized about the whole thing, then call him, be polite, perhaps even a bit removed. Maybe say something clever like, I’ve really enjoyed these last several weeks but it seems reality calls…or, It’s been great fun, thanks for the memories…and even, If you’re ever in L.A., call me…
Maybe that’s exactly what she should do: go back to Grace’s, have a glass or two of Chardonnay, and then call Elliot and just say good-bye, don’t bother with the whys and the why-nots, what did they matter? He’d chosen not to continue the relationship, if not by his actions then by his absence of them. Why torture herself with seeing him again? It would only prolong the inevitable; she was heading back to Los Angeles and he was staying here in Ohio, and there was more than the twenty-four-hundred-plus miles separating them; there was a different belief in what they’d shared. She’d changed, somewhere between that first meeting when she’d sat in his office and he’d looked at her over his horn-rimmed glasses and now, when she couldn’t think of him without remembering how he pinched the bridge of his nose when he was thinking, or the way he jingled his car keys when they were walking, or the deep chocolate color of his eyes, or the feel of his body pressed against hers…
Jenny had thought there was promise with Elliot, deep-soul promise. It had called to her in the velvet midnight of his voice, in the gentle honoring of his touch, rolling over her senses, devouring her heart, her mind, her soul. She had thought he felt it, too.
But she’d been wrong; if he’d felt anything for her, he would have tried to keep her. He would never have let her walk away. Damn him.
No.
She wasn’t letting him off the hook that easy. She’d wait for him to come home, confront him, make him tell her he wanted her to go. Where was he? She rifled a hand through her hair, decided to wait in the garden; at least she could enjoy its beauty and maybe find a bit of peace there.
She walked to the backyard and opened the gate. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was still high in a cloudless sky, a perfect summer day. She’d always remember this garden, the first time she saw it, the brilliant colors and shapes of flowers and shrubs, and rocking back and forth on the swing with Sydney…
She stopped, stared.
Elliot sat on the wooden swing, head back, eyes closed, a bunch of lavender pressed against his chest. Pieces of his short hair stuck up and his face was pale beneath his tan.
He doesn’t want me. He’s letting me go. He let me believe he cared about me.
“Damn you, Elliot Drake, how dare you do this to me?”
Elliot’s eyes flew open. “Jenny?” He looked surprised, maybe even confused.
He started to get up but she moved toward him and said, “Stay right there. You’re going to talk. You know I’m leaving in two days, don’t you?”
His expression looked pained. “I know,” was all he said.
“I thought we had something.” Jenny slashed her hand in the air. “Maybe not serious enough to make a lifetime commitment, not yet at least, but I thought we might have actually been on our way.” She sucked in a deep breath, pointed a finger at him, “So tell me how I could have been so wrong about us? Huh? Didn’t you feel anything, Elliot? Was it just a way to pass time? Was it just about sex?”
He stared at her, shook his head. “It wasn’t just about sex.”
“Then you cared about me?”
He nodded. “I did…and I do.” His voice was quiet, drawn.
“But you were going to let me walk away, go back to California and not try to stop me, keep me here, or”—she clenched her fists on her hips—“at the very least, let me know that you wanted to continue seeing me? You were just going to say good-bye?” How dare he do that to her?
Elliot pinched the bridge of his nose.
There, he was doing it, the way he always did when he was thinking. Well, try to think your way out of this one, Elliot Drake.
“Tell me. Were you?”
“Jenny, I couldn’t ask you to stay. It wouldn’t have been fair.”
“Says who?”
He shrugged. “It just wouldn’t have been. How could I ask you to stay when you have a whole other life in California?”
“Maybe I don’t want that life anymore? Huh? Did you ever think about that, Mr. Psychologist?”
He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was flat, unemotional. “You might think that now, but you’d miss it—”
“You think you know everything, don’t you? You’ve got it all figured out. Why then didn’t you at least tell me you wanted to see me again, keep in touch, call me, for God’s sake? Why, Elliot?”
“I thought it would be easier this way…and once you got back home you wouldn’t feel obligated to…” he hesitated “…for anything that happened between us.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” She clenched her hands, unclenched her hands. “I could just hit you over the head with all those damn degrees of yours. How can you be so smart and yet be so stupid? I’ve been dying, Elliot, do you hear me, dying, thinking you didn’t want me, didn’t want what we shared. Ugh! You…you…”
“I can’t keep you here, Jenny. I have to let you go, set you free.”
“Why?” And then it hit her—what he’d once told her about the butterfly and setting it free if you loved it and how, if it came back, it belonged to you and if it didn’t…Now she understood, now it all made sense. He was letting her go because he thought it was what she needed, what she really wanted. But he was wrong.
She took a step closer, and then another, until she stood next to him. “Elliot, would you please ask me to stay?”
“I can’t, Jenny.” There was real pain in his voice. “It’s not fair to you.”
“Ask me. Please?” Her words were whisper-soft.
He sat there, clutching the cluster of lavender to his chest.
“Please?” she said again.
“Will you stay?” His voice was thick, tortured.
Jenny reached out, touched his cheek. “Yes, Elliot. Yes, I’ll stay.” A smile spread over her lips, deepened. “Do you know why? Because I love you and I want to be with you, and Sydney. I love both of you.”
“Jenny—”
“And I’m not going to run away, Elliot. I’m not your ex-wife.” She ran her fingers over his lips. “I’m the butterfly who came back.”
He set the bunch of lavender beside him, pulled her onto his lap. “I love you, Jenny.” His voice was raw, tortured. “I love you with every part of me.” He cupped her face with both hands. “That’s why I had to set you free.” His lips spread into a slow smile as he said, “But I will thank God every day of my life that you came back to me. Every day,” he whispered, as his mouth covered hers.
A Pipevine Swallowtail flitted near the lavender lying on the bench beside them. It dipped, once, twice…and landed.
Epilogue
Five months later
“Grace, you’re only going to be gone for four days, not four months.” Jenny perched at the head of the bed, one leg crossed over the other, watching her sister unload two drawers and stuff their contents into a paisley suitcase.
“I don’t know what I’m going to need,” she said, refolding a pink turtleneck.
Jenny let out a long sigh, exaggerated enough to catch Grace’s attention. “You’re going skiing with Guy for four days, right? All you need is a toothbrush and that black nightgown you’ve got tucked away in your bottom drawer.”
“Jenny!”
“Okay,” she said. “Forget the nightgown. It’ll just get in his way.”
Grace glared at her. “Guy invited me to go skiing. That’s it.”
Jenny nodded. “And aren’t you staying in the same room?”
Her sister rolled her eyes. “That’s because the lodge only had one room available.”
“Right.”
She ignored Jenny. “And there are two beds.”
“Good.” Jenny’s smile spread. “That way you can use both.”
Grace flung the turtleneck in the suitcase and turned around. “I swear sometimes I don’t know how we can be sisters. I really don’t.” She yanked open another drawer and started pulling out underwear. Pink. Yellow. White.
Ugh. Grace, Grace, Grace. Jenny leaned over and snatched a bag from the floor. “Here,” she said, holding it out to her sister. “I got you something for your trip.”