Practice Makes Perfect (Single Father)

by Macdonald, Janice

  “Just to show how accommodating I’ve become,” Sarah said, leaning into him, “I’m going to give you the last word. Even though I know it’s actually thirty-four seconds. And by the way, you look incredibly handsome.”

  He laughed. “Come on.”

  “I’ve always thought you looked handsome,” she said. “I never had the guts to admit it.”

  Matthew decided to ignore the phone.

  Sarah kissed his neck.

  “Keep that up,” he said, “and…I will stick a lizard down your back.”

  The phone, which had stopped vibrating, started up again. “Hold on.” He removed his arm from around Sarah’s neck, fished the phone from his pocket. Lucy’s cell-phone number. He felt Sarah watching him. “You know what?” He turned the phone off, took Sarah’s arm and they joined the foot passengers filing down the narrow walkway to get on the ferry. And tried not to think of what Lucy was doing at that very moment. Probably crying as she waited for him to call back to say he’d be there for her.

  MATTHEW HAD MADE reservations at Dickens, a restaurant on the Victoria waterfront. All timbered ceilings, cozy nooks and waiters in period costumes. They’d walked there from the ferry, the night cool and sparkling with light, the wind in their faces. The tables were set with pewter dishes and flowers and over Matthew’s shoulder Sarah could see the lights along the waterfront and the illuminated spires of the Empress Hotel. He looked great, broad-shouldered and handsome. She felt terrific in her stylish little black dress. Life was good.

  After a waiter brought the sparkling water, Matthew raised his glass and smiled across the table. “To…what?” He thought for a moment. “New beginnings.”

  “New beginnings.” She raised her glass and clinked his. “Not to ruin your toast or anything, but aren’t beginnings new by definition? Could you have an old beginning?”

  “Probably not.” He set his glass down. “I don’t know why I said that. It just came to me.”

  “Although I guess you could begin something,” she amended, “a discussion, say, but it’s not really new, just a continuation of the one you had the day before.”

  “Or a relationship,” Matthew said. “It’s a new beginning to…” He shook his head, reached across the table and took her face in both hands. “Why can’t you just smile prettily and clink your glass and not tax my brain?”

  She smiled prettily. “Because that wouldn’t be me.”

  “Okay, you make a toast.”

  She raised a glass. “To us. All grown up.”

  “To us,” he said. “All grown up.”

  “It’s funny,” she said after a moment. “I’m looking at the Empress and trying to remember the last time I was there and I’m pretty sure it was when my mother took me for my fourteenth birthday. We had afternoon tea. The china cups were so thin you could see the tea through them and there was a silver tray of cucumber sandwiches, which I actually hated. Plus, I was upset because you were hanging around Elizabeth constantly and that’s all I could think about. Finally I told Rose I had a stomachache and we took the next ferry back.”

  “I remember that,” he said. “Your birthday, I mean. In fact, I seem to recall it was Elizabeth who suggested the Empress to Rose. It was an Elizabeth thing, having tea at the hotel. If Rose had asked me, I’d have suggested snowshoeing or something.”

  “Except that my birthday’s in June,” she said.

  “I know that, Sarah,” he said solemnly. “But I would have manufactured snow. For you, I’d have done that.”

  She smiled. “You gave me a glass sea horse.”

  “I did?”

  “Yep. I kept it for a while and then…” She took a breath. “I smashed it with a hammer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were acting as if I didn’t exist and then one day I saw you holding Elizabeth’s hand.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t take the hammer to me,” he said. “Or Elizabeth.”

  “Trust me, I thought about it.”

  “But Sarah…” He frowned. “I mean, it was different. You were my best friend, my pal. Elizabeth was, well, my teenage love.”

  She stared at him. His hair was slightly ruffled from the wind.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Your pal.”

  “We were kids, Sarah.”

  “But I wanted to be—” she paused, trying to think of the right word “—your love object.” The words sounded so ridiculous she burst out laughing, and then Matthew started laughing, too.

  “Tonight, my dear,” he leaned across the table, leering at her, “your dream will come true. Tonight you will be my love object.”

  She grinned. “Be still, my heart.”

  “Perhaps we should look at these.” He picked up the menus the waiter had set down and handed one to her.

  Sarah scanned it. Salmon, steak, chops. Beef-and-kidney pie in a herb-infused gravy with creamed potatoes. She shifted and her knee brushed against Matthew’s. Sensation shot through her body.

  “I’m going to have steak,” Matthew said. “Bloodred,” he growled. “Man food. What about you? Gonna go for the steak, too?”

  It was exactly what she wanted, but she closed the menu and smiled demurely, or her version of demurely. “No, I think I’ll have the salmon.”

  AFTER DINNER, they danced. The band and the small dance floor in the bar of the restaurant was one of the reasons he’d chosen it in the first place. They’d fed each other dessert—crème brûlée—so by the time he led Sarah onto the floor, they were both feeling pleasantly full and he didn’t have to wonder whether Sarah would laugh hysterically at the idea of the two of them locked in dance step together.

  “See?” Her arms around his neck, Sarah smiled up into his eyes. “I can dance.”

  “But you’re leading,”

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  They were still kissing when the music stopped.

  HE’D BOOKED TWO ROOMS at a hotel a short walk away and, although he occasionally thought of Lucy, anticipation of more kisses banished concerns to the far recesses of his brain. Sarah was unlike any other woman he’d known, the connection he felt to her, the comfort of being completely in tune with another person. But then in an instant, that Sarah would slip away and she was a woman, complex and unfathomable. Like most women, he thought ruefully.

  “You planned a good date,” Sarah said as they got off the hotel elevator and walked, arms entwined, down the carpeted hallway to their rooms.

  “Yeah?” He slid the plastic key card into the lock. “I wanted it to be perfect.”

  “And it was.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WHEN SHE OPENED her eyes the next morning, Sarah replayed last night’s date.

  Tomorrow or the next day, or a year from now, waking up alone, I will remember exactly how he looked last night.

  The thought, sudden and unbidden, filled her with a vague melancholy. Why the image of herself alone? Where would they be a year from now? Five years from now?

  Sarah pulled on her robe, just as someone was knocking on her door. Matthew.

  She opened the door and smiled. “You know what was so great about last night?”

  Matthew laughed. “Nothing. It sucked.”

  “Shut up. I’m serious. So much of the time we’re together we’re talking about the past. What we used to do, how we used to be. And then there’s the future, the stressful situation with Lucy and what I end up doing professionally, it’s vague and cloudy. But last night was just us. Right in the moment and…” The words that had spewed out uncensored, unedited, dried up. Moments went by before Matthew put his arm around her.

  She smiled, although she felt on the verge of tears.

  “One thing I always admire i
n Elizabeth,” he said, “which also drives me nuts, is her refusal to look beyond the present moment. Her reasoning is that what’s passed has passed, tomorrow may never happen, so why not enjoy what you have while you have it?”

  Sarah nodded and moved into his arms. She sighed. “I understand that, intellectually, but it’s difficult to…get out of my head.”

  “I know,” Matthew said. “It is for me, too.”

  “I love you,” Sarah said.

  “I love you, too. I always have. You know that.”

  “I do.” Tears began spilling down her face. Do we have a future? The question begged to be voiced. But she knew the answer wasn’t entirely Matthew’s to give.

  THEY CAUGHT the four-o’clock ferry back and spent most of the ninety-minute crossing on the outside deck watching as Port Hamilton gradually came into sight on the horizon. From a distance, the hardscrabble appearance of the town, with its empty, shuttered shops along Front Street and dark waterfront bars, fused together into the vision of the idyllic coastal town she’d nurtured during homesick moments in Central America.

  A cold wind had driven most passengers inside, but by unspoken agreement, she and Matthew stayed outside, huddled in their coats, wind whipping around their heads. Matthew kept his arm around her, but neither of them said much, and she wondered more than once what Matthew was thinking.

  “Lopez Hook,” she said as they rounded the bend into the harbor.

  “The old lumberyard where my father used to work.” Matthew pointed to the smokestacks.

  “And…one, two, three. The fourth house at the top is Rose’s.”

  “Fifth,” Matthew said. “You need glasses.”

  “And there’s the hospital.”

  “That’s too much reality,” Matthew said. “I’m not ready for that. Let’s jump overboard and swim back to Victoria.”

  “Can we have smoked salmon for breakfast every day?”

  “Smoked salmon and whatever else your heart desires,” Matthew said. “I really don’t want to go back home.”

  Something in his voice made her turn to look at him. She linked her arms in his, moved up close. “That tough, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Well, that, and Lucy.”

  “It’s a tough age, fourteen,” she said. “I know from personal experience.”

  “I feel guilty for ruining your fourteenth birthday.”

  “I got over it. Don’t knock yourself out trying to solve her problems. She’ll get over what’s bothering her now.”

  He hunched into his jacket. “She’s jealous of you. Mad that I left her with her grandmother. I’ve never done that sort of thing and I think she feels insecure.”

  “She’s not bothered by Elizabeth’s relationships?”

  “Doesn’t seem to be. She’s with Elizabeth more than she’s with me. Anyway.” He pulled her ever closer. “We’ll work it out. I’ll take her for pizza tonight, talk things over.”

  Sarah waited for him to invite her along, but he seemed to have retreated into his own world, and they said nothing more for the rest of the trip. As they filed off the ferry in a drizzling rain, he reached into his overcoat, pulled out his cell phone and, as they walked, he flipped the lid.

  “Four calls from Lucy,” he muttered. “Three from Elizabeth.”

  In the car, he listened to his voice mail. Sarah stared through the windshield at the rain-slicked street. She heard his intake of breath and turned. His face was ashen.

  “Pearl’s dead,” he said. “She had a heart attack last night.”

  “GRANDMA’S DEAD and it’s your fault!” Lucy was screaming at him, her face contorted with rage. “I hate you. Go be with your girlfriend, I don’t care.” And then she ran up the stairs and he heard her bedroom door slam.

  Matthew looked at Elizabeth, red-eyed and wan. They were standing in the hallway where, the moment he’d opened the door Lucy had attacked him. She’d grabbed a book off the sofa, hurled that at him, then cushions and then a backpack before her fury finally subsided into sobbing.

  What seemed like an eternity later, Elizabeth filled him in on the details as they sat side by side on the living-room couch.

  “She had heartburn,” Elizabeth said. “It got worse, then she started complaining about chest pains. Lucy called me around midnight—George couldn’t get anyone to look after his dog, so we ended up not going to the ocean. We were watching a movie when Lucy called in a panic, saying her grandma had a pain in her chest and she couldn’t breathe. We took Pearl to the E.R., but the doctor who was supposed to be on call had his beeper on Vibrate and they couldn’t find him. The E.R. was packed and Mom was getting worse and then—” she shook her head “—it was too late.”

  She’d started to cry and he put his arm around her, but she pushed it away.

  “Leave me alone, Matt.” She blew her nose. “Maybe it’s not fair of me, but I can’t help thinking if you hadn’t dragged your feet about the CMS takeover, there would have been enough staff and…”

  She sniffed. “I know how you felt about Pearl and I don’t want to make you feel worse, but you need to accept some responsibility for this, Matt. Not for going to Victoria with Sarah, but for Compassionate Medical System. This is a horrible wake-up call.”

  By the time he left later that night, the clouds that had seemed so benign as he and Sarah left Victoria had broken and the rain was coming down in torrents.

  MATTHEW WAS UNAVAILABLE when Sarah tried to reach him the next morning. She’d stayed awake much of the night, expecting that he would call after he left Elizabeth’s. She’d offered to go with him when he got the news, but he’d dropped her off at the apartment.

  She got in the car and drove over to Elizabeth’s. Lucy answered the door. She wore skintight blue jeans and a red sweatshirt. Her face was pale, but her eyes were dry. When she saw Sarah, her expression darkened. “My mom’s upstairs.”

  “I’ve come to see how you’re both doing,” Sarah said.

  “Okay,” Lucy mumbled.

  Sarah stood awkwardly in the doorway. “Do you mind if I come in for a minute?”

  Lucy shrugged but pulled the door open. “I have to go to school,” she said. “And my mom’s still asleep.”

  “I can give you a ride if you want,” Sarah said.

  Lucy looked uncertain. “Okay,” she said after a moment, “I guess.”

  Hardly a ringing endorsement, Sarah thought, as she ran upstairs to tell Elizabeth. But at least the girl hadn’t said no. Sarah had expected to find Elizabeth sleeping, but instead found her hugging a pair of old lamb’s-wool slippers and sobbing. “She got these at Wal-Mart,” she said when Sarah walked in. “Because I didn’t want her walking over my rugs in her outdoor shoes. And the backs were all worn down so she shuffled around in them. It drove me crazy. Was it too much trouble to just put them on properly? And now…” Her voice broke off.

  Sarah sat on the edge of the bed beside her. “Come here.” She stretched her arms out and Elizabeth, the slippers still on her lap, fell against her, sobbing on Sarah’s shoulder.

  “Listen, I’m going to take Lucy to school,” Sarah told her. “Then I’ll come back and we can talk.”

  “She doesn’t have to go. I’ll call and tell them.”

  “I think she wants to,” Sarah said. “She was ready when I got here, and it might be better for her to keep her usual routine.”

  “Whatever,” Elizabeth said.

  “I WAS TEN when my grandma died,” Sarah told Lucy as she drove her to school. “One of the things that made me feel really bad was that I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time with her. She was always asking me to come over, but…” She glanced at Lucy, stoic and unyielding. “She was very deaf and she talked too much—you couldn’t get a word in, so I always made up excuses about why I couldn’t go.
After she died, I felt awful.”

  “I spent a lot of time with my grandma,” Lucy said.

  “I know. Your mom said you baked cookies with her all the time.”

  “And cakes. Mom’s terrible at baking.”

  “Me, too.” Sarah laughed, encouraged by what seemed like a breakthrough in their relationship, but then Lucy—as her father had on the ferry—seemed to retreat into her thoughts. Sarah’s further attempts to draw her out were met with polite one-word responses. There would be other opportunities, Sarah decided after she’d dropped Lucy off and stopped at Safeway to pick up milk, bread and eggs. This was just a first step.

  Elizabeth was in the kitchen making coffee when Sarah got back.

  “You should go home and hug your mom and tell her you love her,” Elizabeth said without turning to look at Sarah. “I’m serious. I feel guilty for just about everything to do with my mom. I even feel bad about telling Matthew it was his fault my mom died.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Sarah said, her voice sharper than she’d intended. “Why would you blame him?”

  “Well, they were short staffed and Pearl had to wait. Then they couldn’t find the doctor on call. I can still see his face, the way he looked when I accused him. He loved Pearl. I know he was hurting, too, but…I don’t know, I just wanted to attack him. If he got hit by a car or dropped dead of a heart attack, I’d never forgive myself.”

  Sarah stuck the milk and eggs she’d bought in the refrigerator and tried to ignore the cold sense of dread that clutched at her.

  SARAH ENDED UP staying at Elizabeth’s that night and the next, cooking meals, helping Elizabeth with plans for the funeral and generally trying to keep things together. Matthew stopped by a couple of times to see Lucy, who still refused to speak to him. He looked gaunt and beaten, and Sarah’s heart broke for him.