“He thought I was a buyer.” The click of Kylie’s heels on the hardwood floor followed me back to the bedroom.
“A buyer? He has buyers come to him?”
“Apparently, quite a few—not that I’m surprised. His stuff is magnificent.” There was no doubting the pride in her voice and I took real pleasure in that, almost as if the credit were mine.
“What did he say when he found out you weren’t?”
Kylie grabbed the duffel after I’d dropped in my makeup bag. She zipped it and lifted it off the bed. “Before I could tell him who I was, he gave me this spiel about how he’s not interested in commercial production. His pieces are original, and yeah, he knows he won’t get rich that way, but that was just fine with him. Then he told me he didn’t have anyone to leave his wealth to, anyway.”
She licked her lips. Hunched her shoulders.
“What did you say?” I could almost see the whole thing, my heart pounding as though I’d been there.
“I told him he was wrong about that.”
DRESSED IN BLUE JEANS, white turtleneck, denim jacket and low boots, I was waiting in my driveway Friday after work when Denny’s motorcycle roared around the corner.
Too little, too late, I know, but I didn’t want him in my house, my space. It almost felt as though, if he went in, I’d never be able to get him out again—never be free of him.
After thirty-one years of failure in that area, there wasn’t even a remote chance I’d ever be free of him.
“Hi,” I said, handing him my bag to stow in the builtin compartment on the back of the bike. I loved looking at him. Those jeans wouldn’t dare do anything other than fit his thighs to perfection. The soft black leather of his jacket hugged his waist and shoulders as if it’d been sewn onto him.
“Hi.” He answered belatedly, with a smile that turned me to mush right there on my driveway.
It should be against the law for a grown woman to feel that way.
As if the law could save me from myself.
He held the bike for me as I climbed on. And sat obediently while he strapped a shiny navy helmet under my chin. It matched the one he was wearing. Then with nothing else said, we were off.
The cool air against my skin felt wonderful. The motor rumbling between my thighs, exciting and powerful. But it was Denny’s sides and back and stomach that held most of my attention. The moment was perfect—filled completely with Denny—and my only job was to hold him.
We’d been on the highway for half an hour before I even wondered where we were going.
Sometimes I impressed myself.
Ninety minutes later, after a couple brief questions from Denny making sure I was okay, he signaled an exit. I’d been amusing myself imagining possible destinations, trying to figure out what he had in mind for our weekend. The mystery was fun. Exciting. Denny knew I liked surprises—and he’d always been great about providing them.
It was just after six; we were in Ontario, California. I looked around at all the billboards. He was taking me to Disneyland for the weekend? Not quite what I’d envisioned.
But I could adapt. I was flexible. I liked “It’s a Small World” and, really, he was right. I had to get into the whole parent-kid mode. Yes, this was just the weekend getaway for me.
“You doing okay?” Denny asked, the second he cut the engine next to a gas pump on an impressive expanse of blacktop dotted with at least forty other identical pumps.
I nodded. “Fine.” Surprisingly, I was—even with Disneyland in my near future. “It just feels good being with you, you know?” I asked.
He stopped, gas nozzle in his hands, looked at me and smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
The knot that had taken up permanent residence in my stomach some thirty years ago released its fierce hold, allowing room for long-denied peace and contentment—temporary, maybe, but still very real.
“Ready?”
Tank filled, Denny was putting his helmet back on. I did the same, nodding. I’d used the restroom, though I would’ve preferred to wait until we got to our room, but already, in my pregnancy, I was finding it more difficult to postpone certain bodily urges.
“You up for another haul?”
Away from Disneyland and energetic kids? “Sure. You have someplace in mind?”
He nodded. “I have a time-share in Carmel that’s free this weekend. It’s another three and a half hours from here. You think you can make it?”
“I’m pregnant, Denny, not dead.”
“And you’re forty-eight—”
“I know, I know,” I interrupted, raising my hand. If one more person reminded me that this was not a normal run-of-the-mill pregnancy I was going to scream. If I had to be pregnant, I wanted it to be normal. Surely it wasn’t too much to ask to have something about my life happen in a perfectly ordinary, mundane way.
And if it was too much to ask, too bad. I was asking anyway.
OUR ROOM IN CARMEL was exquisite. Right on the beach. With plush red armchairs on either side of a pullout couch, and across the room…an ornate king-size bed with a wood canopy trimmed with a sheer white valance and drapes.
“This is your time-share?” I asked, dropping into one of the two chairs and gazing out across the blackness to lights bobbing on the ocean. A cruise ship? A freighter?
“Sort of,” Denny said, placing our bags side by side on the luggage rack. “Mine is actually down the street. I traded with some people I know.”
And then it hit me. Carmel was an artist’s dream—the streets lined with shops that sold one-of-a-kind pieces that people all over the world paid exorbitant amounts to own.
“You sell your work here.”
He sat down on the couch, stretching an arm along the back. “Some.”
“Kylie told me about your home.”
He nodded, watching me.
“What did you think of her?”
Glancing out the window, he was silent for a long time. Thinking—as Denny would before replying to such an important question. I knew he was feeling deep emotion, but I couldn’t tell whether he was in the process of accepting, or rejecting, the possibility of a relationship with Kylie.
“She’s everything we could ever have hoped for and more,” he finally said, turning back toward me. I could barely make out his expression in the room’s dim light.
“I look at her and I can’t believe how beautiful she is.” I was talking to my daughter’s father about her. Like a real parent. The moment felt so good.
“Like her mother.”
My chin trembled. If I started to cry I was going to be in serious trouble.
“We got lucky.” He shifted his leg and I marveled again that it was Denny sitting across from me. After all these years, all the fantasies and dreams, it was finally true.
“How so?”
“She was raised by parents who loved her as much as we would have.”
“I’ve spent a bit of time with them,” I said, telling him how, after some initial hesitation, they’d welcomed me into their family circle. “They’re almost ten years older than we are, and they’re completely wonderful. And completely secure in Kylie’s love. You’re right, we got lucky.”
I wanted to ask if he was going to see her again. Knowing Denny, it would be almost impossible for him to meet her face-to-face and be able to walk away. But did I still know him that well? Thirty years of life had intervened and wrought inevitable changes in the man I’d loved. Still loved…
I wasn’t ready to test just how much change had happened.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS CHILLY OUTSIDE, but a fire was burning in the gas fireplace in our room. By the time we settled in it was after ten o’clock, and I was wide-awake. Wired.
Ready to…
“You hungry?”
We’d stopped for a quick bite a couple of hours ago.
“Not really.”
I guessed we were finished talking about our daughter. Wondered when we’d speak of her again. But I wasn’t going t
o push. Frankly, I couldn’t push. I wouldn’t do anything that might spoil this time with Denny.
So, I was weak. At least I recognized that about myself.
“We’ve never spent a whole night in bed together.”
Aha, so his thoughts weren’t far away from mine. My blood quickened at the idea of lying there with him.
And then I remembered that our daughter had taken my nightgown out of my bag. She’d said I’d be sleeping naked and I hadn’t doubted her. What she’d failed to fill me in on, what I’d failed to ask, was just how I was supposed to get from fully clothed, with a man I suddenly realized I hardly knew anymore, to naked in bed beside him.
Six weeks before, thirty-two years before, it had simply happened. No planning or premeditation.
“You’re awfully far away over there, Mel.”
Funny how a few short words can change an entire world. “And lonely, too.”
“I’ve got a solution.” His eyes were half-closed, his body relaxed. Did he have any idea how sexy he was?
“What would that be?” I was enjoying our little game.
“Would you like me to show you or tell you?”
“As I recall, I always preferred the show part. Far less boring…”
I didn’t even finish before I was in his arms—standing body to body, heat to heat, overwhelmed with hunger as he finally kissed me. I was home and there was absolutely nowhere else I wanted to be.
“TELL ME ABOUT HAVING HER.” I’d been dozing, my head on Denny’s chest, wallowing in the sensations of security and excitement nicely integrated in another perfect moment, knowing that for the first time in my life I would be spending the entire night with him. Falling asleep with him and waking up with him, too.
His hand was lying still on my lower stomach.
“What do you want to know?” I asked, sleepily. I was discovering something about myself. Making love took a lot out of me. Probably a good thing I hadn’t been doing it all my life. I would never have been able to do this regularly and have a career, too.
Of course, having three orgasms in a row after having had three in a lifetime was a pretty big change in my routine.
Denny lay still, his naked legs intertwined with mine. “Were you alone?”
“No, my mom was there.”
He was silent for a bit and then even though I wanted to doze again, I was suddenly wide awake. Remembering.
“As much as I still can’t like her, I’m glad she was there.” His voice was low, fading into the dark room. He’d turned off the fire, but I could still see ships bobbing on the ocean beyond our balcony door. “I hated to think of you going through that alone.”
Yeah, well, for all intents and purposes I had. From the moment he’d driven out of town in his broken-down old Ford, the night I’d signed the papers giving away our unborn child, I’d been alone in every way that really mattered to me.
Until Kylie.
And now my new baby.
I wasn’t alone anymore.
THREE O’CLOCK in the morning. The red LED readout on the nightstand radio glowed as I opened my eyes. I’d fallen asleep after all. And turned over. Lying half on my stomach, I was cuddled up to Denny, my leg thrown over his lower abdomen. His hand on my thigh held me there. Peace settled over me. My heart was safe; the world was firmly on its axis.
WE WENT WHALE-WATCHING in Monterey, half an hour’s drive from Carmel. Denny had seen his first whale off the coast of Alaska. He’d worked on a cruise ship for a few years after high school. That morning we saw eight. They were beauties.
Just a few steps from the ship, he tossed a couple of bills to a little man of indeterminate age standing on the shore, dressed in bedraggled tweed overalls. With a nod from the guy, I sat on a nearby bench and his monkey jumped in my lap. I laughed when the audacious critter held out his hand for more money.
We stopped at a hot dog stand for lunch and split a foot-long loaded with onions and relish and mustard. I don’t think I’d had one since I was a kid. Denny said the best hot dog he’d ever had was in Germany. He’d been there twenty years ago on a four-month-long hitchhiking trek through Europe.
We went back to our room after that, took off our shoes and headed out to the beach. And we talked. About life and the world. Gay marriage. September 11th Divorce rates. My parents’ retirement. I confessed that I loved my job and he told me a little bit about how he got into the art of making miniatures. After his cruise ship stint, he’d taken a job on a fishing boat in Alaska and the captain of the ship had carved wooden furniture for his daughter’s dollhouse during the long nights.
He’d offered Denny a knife and a piece of wood.
“Every time I’d sit down to carve, I’d start to see things in the wood,” he said. “I’d listen to the rhythm of the knife against the shavings. Every other sight and sound in my mind would disappear.” He grinned. “The silence was addictive.”
“You saw things in the wood?”
“Yeah, you know, scenes. Rooms with people in them, celebrating, entertaining friends, paying bills.”
“Sounds like it was your attempt to have home and family in your life.” I told him exactly what I thought—just as I always had. I never had to weigh my words with Denny. He just seemed to understand.
“Maybe.” He shrugged, walking beside me on the beach.
“You said you imagined people there. That they come alive in your hands…”
“Yeah, the same as with any other carver, I’d guess.”
“Maybe.” I slid my bare toes through the cold sand almost as if I were skiing. “Or maybe you were creating the one kind of home life you could control.”
The afternoon sun was warm on my neck, mixed with the cool breeze that came in over the ocean. I was glad I’d packed my white sweater to go with the black jeans Kylie had insisted on. I wondered if our daughter was thinking about the two us—away. Alone. And if she was, what did she think?
Denny took my hand, stopping me. I turned to face him and went willingly, okay, eagerly, when he pulled me up against him. We had the beach to ourselves, but I wouldn’t have cared if we hadn’t. He had that effect on me.
“I’ve missed you, Mel,” he said, his gaze troubled as he looked into my eyes.
Life wasn’t going to be easy. It might not even be happy. I knew that was what he was telling me. “I’ve missed you, too.”
He watched me for a while longer, then after one slow, deep kiss, he let me go.
And I knew I had to be prepared for that to happen again. And again. The kisses, maybe, but the letting go, too.
Just as the circumstances of my life had shaped me, Denny’s had shaped him, too. He’d never had a lasting relationship in his life. He’d had no opportunity to figure out a working definition of what a lasting relationship might be. And at almost fifty, his boundaries were firmly established.
AFTER MUCH NAGGING, Denny relented and took me to a couple of the shops where his work was sold. The first one was empty except for three people huddled in conversation over a clock in the back corner. A lighted glass case in front had Dennis Walker engraved on a gold plaque at the top. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The intricacy of Denny’s miniature three-dimensional rooms and landscapes astonished me.
“This detail is extraordinary,” I said, staring into the glass case at the living room he’d created. There were tiny carved feet on the legs of the sofa, a quarter-inch leather-bound book on the glass-topped table.
“I wonder what the book is,” I said, completely mesmerized.
“Frost, of course.” Denny’s answer shouldn’t have surprised me.
I turned to look at him, my eyes filling with tears that I blinked away. “‘I took the one less traveled’…” I quoted my favorite verse.
He nodded. “If you look closely, you can see the title of the book on the spine.”
Maybe. If I still had the eyes of a seventeen-year-old. “If I had a magnifying glass,” I said with a chuckle.
“I do all of this u
nder magnifiers,” he said, walking with me as I moved from piece to piece.
“Dennis!” An older woman broke away from the other two people in the back and approached us. “Why didn’t you tell us you were going to be in town? We could’ve arranged something!”
“Barbara,” Denny said, stepping aside and pulling me forward. “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Melanie Copperstone. Melanie and I went to high school together.”
And had a baby together, too, I wanted to add. I didn’t like the way the other woman was gazing at Denny—as if she had some kind of ownership.
“Melanie, this is Barbara Johnston. She and her husband own this shop. Sorry I didn’t call, Barb. Mel and I are just here for a couple of days, but she insisted on seeing these.” He pointed to the piece in front of us—a skyline with tiny flowers on the balconies of one of the high-rises.
“You’ve never seen Dennis’s work?” Barbara asked, eyes wide. I wanted to smack her when she took his arm. “You have to show her the garden,” she said, pulling Denny toward a showcase built into the wall. “At twenty thousand dollars it’s going to take a special buyer, but I know I’ll sell it before the end of the season.”
The piece took my breath away. Brightly colored flowers rioted across the entire square foot of space, interspersed with a gazebo and little white wooden benches along a meandering path with rocks and the occasional tree. In the back, toward the end of the path, was an angel fountain. My heart lurched when I saw the sad yet compassionate expression on the face of that angel.
It was Denny—a self-portrait. My angel. Sad. Compassionate. Alone in the garden of his life.
I bought that garden on the spot.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“SO WHERE ARE YOU off to next?” I asked Denny over dinner at Clint Eastwood’s restaurant in Carmel that night.
He popped a bite of steak into his mouth. Seemed to really be aware of the taste of the meat, to savor and enjoy it. Something new I’d noticed in Denny. He’d always been attentive, focused, but now he’d developed a keen awareness of everything around him—a habit of being fully present in every moment.
From Here To Maternity: A Second ChancePromoted to MomOn Angel's Wings Page 6