She rather liked that last possibility.
Or maybe her mother would come up with something, as she quite often did in her increasingly rare lucid periods. Maybe she would know whether his poetry was as intimate and personal and even secret as it seemed.
Nan put a portion of tea in the strainer, placed it over the open teapot, and slowly poured boiling water over it. When the pot was filled, she stood back and watched it steep. The ritual and, especially, the aroma were soothing, reminding her of childhood.
"What is chamomile, Mother?"
"It comes from a secret flower the fairies grow."
In those days, secrets had given her a shiver of delight. That had been the perspective of a beloved and protected child who hadn't yet known about the pain that could come from covert things.
Secrets. Pain. Gary.
The sequence was inevitable. She still thought about him disturbingly often. They saw each other at family occasions, for Ashley and Jordan's sakes and because they really did like each other. Nan was glad about that. What she wished would stop were these stabs of memory that made her feel winded, the way she did these days after a few hard sets of singles.
Waiting for the tea to steep and half-listening to her mother enthusiastically declaiming in the living room, Nan couldn't stop herself from thinking, again: Fool! All those years of marriage. How could you not have known? And Bastard! How could you not have told me sooner?
Scrapbook images fell one upon the other: Gary the teenage sweetheart, with whom she'd first discovered sex. Gary the dashing college boy she'd had to share for a while with what she'd thought were other girls. Gary the devoted father, teaching Ashley to paint and do algebra and throw a football. Gary the gentle, considerate and, yes, passionate husband.
"I'm gay, Nan. I've known it for a long time. It doesn't mean I don't love you–"
"Are you coming, Nan? It's almost the airport scene."
It was at minimum a two-handkerchief movie. The first hanky was inevitably soaked during the flashback to Paris, the second at the foggy airport in Casablanca, when Rick looks into Ilsa's eyes for the last time.
"Nan? Hurry."
There was still almost half-an-hour to go, but Nan was glad to have her painful reverie about Gary interrupted. She picked up the tray. "Be right there."
In the doorway she paused to look at her mother, happily ensconced on the sofa in her old, taupe, safari-style jacket, with a crisply tailored white shirt underneath, and a soft, wide-brimmed felt hat set at a rakish angle. Thrown over the back of the couch was a London Fog trench coat that had seen better days, a clone of Rick's coat from the airport scene. The coat was so Thirties, so Casablanca and, once again, so Now. She could use one herself for her next trip to Manhattan.
Her mother's attention was fully in the world of Bogart and Bergman. She was playing all the parts, saying all the lines. Her face was animated and beautiful. There was no way to know whom she saw in the mirror these days–the twenty-year-old head-turning Cat? The lovely young mother and occasional actress Cathy? The elegant pre-dementia Catherine? She still loved shopping for clothes, although her declining stamina meant the trips these days had to be meticulously planned so there were no more than one or two stops. She "put her face on" every morning, never mind that the painted mouth was usually twice as wide as her own and the rouge closer to her ears than her cheekbones; Nan shuddered to think of the damage she could do with mascara and eyeliner. She enjoyed facials and manicures and pedicures; Nan liked holding her hands to do her nails, but drew the line at holding her feet.
Less charmingly, she remained vain enough to refuse to wear a medic alert button, which would have given Nan some peace of mind when Catherine was home alone. "It's ugly," she proclaimed, "and tacky," adding in typically melodramatic fashion, "no use anyway if an intruder chops off my head or hands." It was hard to know what to say to that. Or to the fact that she wouldn't wear a watch because "I can't bear to see the irrevocable passage of time."
Nan put down the tray and sat on the sofa. Her mother smelled of baby powder and faintly of old-lady sweat, but, thankfully, not of urine. A bath could wait until tomorrow when Rebecca came for her weekly afternoon with their mother.
Catherine patted the seat beside her. "Come sit here by me."
"Would you like a manicure while we watch?"
"Later."
What Nan really wanted to do was talk about meeting Matt. There were people she could call–her sister, her friend Rochelle in the city. But they would take her comments too seriously. They hadn't stopped feeling sorry for her about the divorce. While it was nice that they cared, their sympathy made it more difficult to put Gary in the past and move on. She found herself defending him for his courage and the quiet way in which he had dealt with not only his own pain, but also hers and their daughter's. She'd like to think he was a bastard. But he wasn't. He'd just been a man with a secret.
Gratified as always that the pro-colorization people had lost out to the traditionalists when it came to Casablanca, she settled back against the cushions and watched the final scene.
Thick fog swirled around the tarmac and around the plane waiting to fly Ilsa and her husband, Laszlo, to safety–away from Rick, the one true love of her life. Staring deeply into Ilsa's eyes, Rick said, "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that."
Tears formed in Ilsa's eyes, and in those of the two women on the couch.
"Now, now." Rick tilted Ilsa's chin upward in the gentlest of romantic gestures. Then he, Nan, and Catherine said together, "Here's looking at you, kid."
The two women sniffled as a bit of business involving Rick, Renault, and Maj. Heinrich Strasser gave Rick the excuse to shoot Strasser. They barely had time to blow their noses before Rick and Renault disappeared into the fog, speaking of the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Catherine sighed deeply. Nan took her hand. After a long dramatic pause, Catherine pulled her hand away and touched the thin green book in the still life created by the tea things on the tray. "What's this?"
"A little present."
"For me? Oh, what is it?"
Curiously shy, Nan held out Matt's book. "It's a collection of poems. I thought you might like it."
"My goodness, it's signed. How nice. Do you know the poet?"
"I went to his poetry reading on campus."
"Yes, but do you know him?"
"We had coffee together afterward."
Her mother smiled sideways at her. "Like him, do you?"
"Mother, I just met him."
"Mm-hmm." Catherine was turning the pages as if she couldn't quite be sure what they were.
Far more irritated than she had any reason to be, Nan took back the book, doing her best not to yank it out of her mother's hands. "How about if I read some of them to you at bedtime?"
Catherine sighed dreamily. "Could you read to me now? I do love poetry."
Nan tried a few of the other poems, one about a trip to Nepal with so many unpronounceable place names it might as well have been totally in Nepalese, another apparently about worms. Common words were used in peculiar ways that obscured their meaning. Her mother was no help. She lay back against the sofa cushions with her eyes closed and an expression on her face that might be either beatific or blank, and she didn't say anything.
Finally, Nan's attention was caught by a poem she thought might be about tennis because it used language like "love-fifteen" and "let." However, the former turned out to be a reference to Lolita and the latter meant "allow." Exasperated, she found the poem she'd heard Matt read and launched into the first stanza.
In all its forms, in all its
Fashions, no matter
How we remember it,
Love is decidedly
Perverse.
She stopped. Her mother still didn't say anything. "What do you think it means?" Nan asked. Even to her own ears she sounded quer
ulous.
"I think it's a mistake to worry too much about what anything means."
"Mother, I don't even know what that means."
Her mother laughed softly. She seemed half-asleep. Nan read the poem again to herself and found it disturbing, even sinister, though no clearer.
"It's not necessarily autobiographical, you know," her mother observed.
"But he says 'I' and 'me.'"
"Could be metaphorical or representational."
"I think," Nan insisted, feeling stubborn and even a little scared, "he has a secret."
"Oh, my dear, you better hope so. People with no secrets are so dull. I myself always made it a point to have at least a dozen at any given time."
Nan was not sure how to take this. Warily she said, "You did?"
Her mother laughed like Mae West and patted her knee as if, right now, there were things she wasn't saying.
"Well, anyway." Nan snapped the book shut. "It doesn't matter."
"Really?" Her mother raised a skeptical, plucked and penciled eyebrow.
These bursts of acumen never ceased to amaze Nan. "Really," she said emphatically. Too emphatically, she thought, wondering why she felt she was protesting too much.
CHAPTER THREE
Nan slept well that night, mostly because her mother was unusually quiet. Liz arrived at seven thirty the next morning, which allowed her a little extra time to spend on her appearance and to reconfirm that Becca would take over their mother's care right after the soaps, giving Liz the afternoon off and Nan the evening free. All in all, it promised to be a good day.
Experiencing a small but pleasantly physical sense of anticipation, Nan backed the car out of the driveway and started for work. As she waited for a break in the traffic so she could get across the highway and through the arched entrance of Rockland Community College, her glance strayed to the electronic bulletin board recently erected near the edge of the campus. Apparently it was a work in progress, for it still read: "Welcome Matt Mullen, Poet Emeritus. Reading Sunday, 4.00 pm in the main auditorium." Matt's likeness popped into her mind and stayed with her as she crossed the street and headed for her spot in the parking lot nearest the tennis courts. She unlocked the court gates, dumped her gear inside, and sat down happily on a bench close enough to keep an eye on her things. Her degree of pleasure in the fact that her first student of the day had canceled told her she was either really looking forward to seeing Matthew Mullen again or getting tired of teaching. Probably both.
As far as the teaching was concerned, she'd get over it. She always did; she always would, as long as she continued to coach the Juniors during the Spring Break. A major win in the Juniors was what had started her professional tennis career, which had been abruptly ended in her late thirties by a neglected bone spur. She'd stayed involved in pro tennis, and always took a couple of extra weeks off at the beginning and end of Spring Break to be a coach-chaperone on the Junior tennis tour. Though that wasn't the same excitement as playing on the circuit, it was fun, and satisfying in a way that teaching here could never be. Not that she actively disliked–
"Nice life, Ms. Jenssen. Getting paid to sun yourself, are you?"
Nan did her best to be amiable. "How are you today, Professor Dawson?"
"I'm dying, thank you. How are you?"
Dawson moved past her without waiting for an answer, grinning at her discomfort. Her feeling of well being drained away. She knew that the Chairman of the Poetry Department had been diagnosed with an inoperable tumor and she should have been more sensitive.
That, she told herself, was unadulterated crap. His terminal illness didn't change the fact that he was a curmudgeon whom she and most other people had disliked for many years.
She peeled and ate an orange, her daily concession to good health. Its citrus aroma masked the early morning scent of the damp pine forest surrounding the campus. Removing the lid of the coffee she'd picked up en route, in case Mullen didn't show, she lit a cigarette, thought briefly about the fact that she shouldn't smoke it, and mused about how the sixties–when smoking was not a problem–had so quickly become the nineties, when it was.
"Hi, Nan."
"Hi, Dan."
She and Dan Masterson smiled at their daily silliness. He was next in line for Dawson's job, but the only things the two men had in common were a love of poetry and a morning walk. Dan was one of the nicest people she had ever met–as was, she'd long ago duly noted, his wife.
"Make it to the reading yesterday? I told Matt to watch out for you."
"What happened to 'I'll introduce you and we can all go out for dinner'?" Dan, like so many of her friends, was always trying to fix her up.
"Turned out I couldn't make it. Sorry, Kiddo."
"Oh, don't look so contrite. We met all by ourselves and I couldn't have made it to dinner anyway. I will tell you one thing, though. You need to have your eyes examined. James Mason, my ass."
"Okay, okay. But the rest was correct. He's cute, available, and just the other side of fifty. You're cute, available and just this side–"
"Yeah, and he's about to join us." She pointed at the rise behind the courts.
"Good." Dan's grin was conspiratorial.
Mullen approached carrying a small wax bag and a cardboard tray with two large cups stuck in it. "I believe we have a coffee date, though I see you already have coffee and company. Morning, Dan. I seem to have an extra coffee. Want it? You can take it with you. You do have to run off to a class, don't you?"
Dan nodded, mumbled, "No coffee, yes a class," and took off at a half-run toward the red brick English building.
Nan chuckled. "Don't worry. I can never have too much coffee."
Matt withdrew two biscotti from the bag and handed her one. She bit into it with pleasure. Though she didn't have much of a sweet tooth, she could rarely resist the crunchy semi-sweet Italian rusk. Without saying anything, he sat down on the bench next to her. She was grateful for the lack of chatter.
They sat that way, side-by-side, in a surprisingly companionable silence given that they were almost strangers. "I don't play tennis, you know," he said at last.
"Seems reasonable. I don't write poetry."
They both laughed. In the distance, she saw her student ambling toward the courts. Could an hour have passed? He stood up, put a hand lightly on her shoulder and removed it almost at once. "Beginnings are wonderful, aren't they?"
"Is that what this is?" She looked up at him.
"I think so," he said. "Could I call you later?"
She nodded. "Thanks for the biscotti and the coffee. That's a good beginning."
"I assure you," he said quietly, "the pleasure was all mine."
'Later' turned out to be during Nan's lunch break. Matt cut directly to the chase. "Dinner?"
"When?" She was surprised at how pleased she was that he'd called so soon. "My sister could stay with my mother this evening." She didn't want him to think she was desperate, because she wasn't, but why play games like a schoolgirl?
"Really? Tonight? That would be wonderful." He sounded a little taken aback.
"Would you rather wait?"
"Wait? Are you kidding? Absolutely not."
She gave him her address and they agreed he'd be there at seven. He pretended to fret that that might be unfashionably early. She assured him she got unfashionably hungry by then. Home shortly before five, she soaked in a lavender-scented bubble bath and dressed for dinner. He'd seen her twice, once in jeans and a blazer, this morning in standard tennis duds. Tonight she chose a soft black silk skirt that flowed to halfway down her calves, a short-sleeved ivory cashmere sweater with the requisite pearls, and black patent leather pumps. Completing the outfit with a lamb leather blazer, she surveyed herself in a full-length mirror. A little boring, but expensive. Safe.
On impulse, she draped a long crocheted ivory scarf under the jacket collar, which she tilted up Elvis-style. Better.
"Nan?" Becca stood at the door, wearing an expression that did not b
ode well. "I'm sorry, Nan. I hate to do this to you. Don just called. He needs me to come home."
"Now?"
"Something happened at work and he's really upset."
"He's a big boy, Rebecca. Can't he wait for a couple of hours?"
"I have a husband I love. He comes first in my life."
"Ouch," Nan said.
"I didn't mean Gary. I meant that you're stronger than I am. You'll survive, no matter what. You don't need other people the way I do."
Yeah, that's me, Nan thought. Superwoman. She pointedly did not look at her sister and started to remove the outfit she'd just so carefully assembled. Her movements were deft, precise, grim. She folded each garment neatly and put it away, returned the pearls to the jewelry box, hung up the jacket, and replaced it all with one of the long tee-shirt dresses she wore at home, this a coral one she'd picked up in a little shop on the docks in Trinidad. It had looked good on her at the time, enhancing the tan from a week at sea. Now it just looked garish.
"That's pretty," Becca ventured. "That's a good color for you."
Nan turned on her. "Okay, sis, you can make this up to me."
"How?" Becca was clearly wary.
"There's a Sunday twilight concert at West Point. I'm going to invite this guy. You're going to come and stay with Mom. Liz doesn't come on Sundays."
"That'll work fine. Don will be playing golf, anyway. Shouldn't you call your date about tonight?"
"I don't have his cell number. Besides, he'll be here any second."
"I'll pay for Chinese? Pizza?"
"I think not," Nan said. "Just go home."
"I'm sorry, Nanny."
"Yeah, yeah."
Catherine, who could see the driveway from her bedroom window, cried, "He's here! Your poet! He's a cutie. Becca! Come and look at your sister's new man!"
Hurrying to answer the door before her mother could get there, Nan groaned aloud. "Stop it, Mother. Becca, make her stop. He's just a friend."
"Of course he is, dear! And I'm so happy for you!" The voice could have projected to the back of a thousand-seat theater, and surely carried to the porch. Nan cringed and forced herself to smile as she opened the door.
What You Remember I Did Page 2