by Joy Fielding
“This is so delicious. You are the best cook ever,” she pronounced, her mouth full.
“I’m glad you like everything.”
“Too bad I didn’t bring another bottle of wine.” Alison gave one of her rare frowns, glancing past the tapered white candles in the middle of the dining room table toward the now empty bottle of Amarone.
“Good thing you didn’t. My shift starts at six in the morning. I’m supposed to be able to stand up straight.”
“What made you decide to be a nurse?” Alison finished off what little wine clung to the sides of her glass.
“I lost my father and a favorite aunt to cancer before either reached fifty,” I explained, trying not to see their ravaged faces in the bottom of my glass. “I felt so helpless, and I didn’t like that, so I decided to go into medicine. My mother didn’t have the money to send me to medical school, and I didn’t have the grades for a full scholarship, so being a doctor was out. I settled for the next best thing. And I love it.”
“Even though it’s exhausting, exacting, and infuriating?” Alison laughed as she gently tossed my earlier words back at me.
“Even though,” I repeated. “And being a nurse meant I was able to care for my mother after her stroke, that I was able to keep her at home, that she died in her own bed, not in some sterile hospital room.”
“Is that why you never got married?” Alison asked. “Because you were busy taking care of your mother?”
“No, I can’t really blame her for that. Although I guess I can try,” I said with a laugh. “I think I just assumed there was all this time, that eventually I’d meet someone, fall in love, get married, have a couple of beautiful babies, live happily ever after. Standard fantasy 101. It just didn’t work out that way.”
“There was never anyone special?”
“Not special enough, I guess.”
“Well, time’s not up yet. You never know …”
“I’m forty,” I reminded her. “I know. So, what about you? No special someone in Chicago, waiting for you to come home?”
She shook her head. “No, not really.” She volunteered nothing further.
“How did your parents feel about you moving so far away?”
Alison stopped eating, lay her fork neatly across her plate. “These dishes are really neat. I like the pattern. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t interfere with the food, you know what I mean?”
Strangely enough, I did. “Your parents don’t know where you are, do they?” I asked tentatively, not wanting to trespass beyond invisible boundaries, but eager to know more.
“I’ll call them after I find a job,” she said, confirming my suspicions.
“Won’t they be worried?”
“I doubt it.” She paused, flipped her braid from one shoulder to the other. “As you’ve probably figured out, we weren’t on the best of terms.” She paused, her eyes darting back and forth, as if reading from an invisible text. “Unfortunately, I had this older brother who was absolutely perfect. Star forward of the basketball team in high school, champion swimmer in college, graduated summa cum laude from Brown. And here I was, this tall, skinny kid who was constantly tripping over her big, clumsy feet. No way I could ever measure up, so at some point, I stopped trying. I turned into this major brat, insisted on doing my own thing, positive I had all the answers. You know the type.”
“Typical teenager, by the sound of it.”
Large green eyes radiated gratitude. “Thank you, but I don’t think typical is the word they would use.”
“And what word would they use?”
Sad grin widened into a smile as her eyes scanned the ceiling for proper adjectives. “Impossible,” she said after a brief pause. “Incorrigible. In trouble all the time,” she continued with a laugh, the words running together as one. “They were always kicking me out of the house. I left for good the day I turned eighteen.”
“And did what?”
“Got married.”
“You got married when you were eighteen?”
“What can I say?” She shrugged. “Standard fantasy 101.”
I nodded understanding and reached for the bread basket, accidentally knocking my fork into my lap, where it deposited a large gob of gravy on my white pants before bouncing to the floor. Alison immediately rescued the fork and ran to the kitchen for some soda water, while I scrambled to my feet, instantly feeling the effect of so many glasses of wine.
Slowly, cautiously, I walked into the living room, trying to remember the last time a few glasses of wine had left me so inebriated. I approached the window and leaned my forehead against the cool glass.
That’s when I saw him.
He was standing across the street, as still as the majestic royal palm he was leaning against, and even though it was too dark to make out who it was, I knew from his posture that he was staring at the house. I squinted into the darkness, tried to gather the light from the street-lamps into a spotlight and shine it on his face. But the effect was something less than I bargained for, and the man almost disappeared in the resultant blur. “Not a good idea,” I muttered, deciding to confront the man directly, ask him what he was doing standing there in the dark, staring at my house.
I stumbled toward the front door, pulled it open. “You there,” I called out, pointing an accusing finger at the night.
There was no one there.
I craned my neck, peered into the stubborn darkness, twisted my head from left to right, followed the road to the corner and back. I strained my ears for the sound of footsteps in hasty retreat, heard nothing.
In the time it had taken for me to get from the window to the door, the man had vanished. If he’d been there at all, I thought, recalling the apparition I thought I’d seen earlier.
“What are you doing?” Alison asked, coming up behind me.
I felt her breath on the back of my neck. “Just needed some fresh air.”
“Are you okay?”
“A bit too okay. Did you put something in my drink?” I joked as Alison closed the front door, then led me back into the living room, where she sat me down on one of the Queen Anne chairs and began dabbing at the gravy stain on my pant leg with a wet cloth until I felt the dampness clear to my skin.
I reached down, stilled her hand. It lingered on my thigh. “Stain’s gone.”
She was instantly on her feet. “Sorry. There I go again, everything in extremes, that’s the only way I seem to operate. Sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” I asked, genuinely curious. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t? That’s a relief.” She laughed, sank down into the other chair, her face flushed.
“What happened with your marriage?” I asked gently, fighting a gnawing unease in my gut, a sensation that was undoubtedly trying to warn me that Alison Simms might not be the charmingly uncomplicated young woman she’d first appeared to be when I’d handed over the keys to the cottage at the back of my house.
“What usually happens when you get married at eighteen,” she said simply, lowering her gaze to mine, no trace of a smile. “It didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. We tried. We really did. We split up and got back together a whole bunch of times, even after our divorce was final.” She impatiently pushed the stray hairs away from her forehead. “Sometimes it’s hard to stay away from someone, even when you know they’re all wrong for you.”
“And that’s why you came to Florida?”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged, then flashed the glorious smile that obliterated all traces of sadness or self-doubt. “What’s for dessert?”
THREE
“I was fifteen when I lost my virginity,” Alison was saying, pouring herself a second small glass of Baileys Irish Cream. We were sitting on the living room floor, our backs against the furniture, our legs splayed out carelessly in front of us, like two abandoned rag dolls. Alison had insisted on cleaning up after dinner, washing and drying the dishes by hand befor
e returning everything to its proper place while I sat at the kitchen table and watched, marveling at the deftness of her touch, the speed with which she worked, the instinctive way she seemed to know where everything belonged, almost as if she’d been in the house before. She’d found the Baileys at the back of the dining room cabinet when she was returning the wineglasses to their shelf. I’d forgotten I even had it.
I don’t know why we chose the floor over the sofa. Probably Alison simply plopped herself down and I followed suit. The same way with the Baileys. I’d certainly had no intention of having any more to drink, but suddenly the delicately sculpted liqueur glass was in my hand, and Alison was pouring and I was drinking, and there you have it. I suppose I could have said no, but the truth is I was having too good a time. You have to remember that my days were normally spent in the company of people who were old, ill, or in some form of acute distress. Alison was so young, so vibrant, so alive. She infused me with a sense of such profound well-being that whatever niggling doubts or petty reservations I may have had flew out the window, along with my common sense. Simply put, I was reluctant to see her leave, and if drinking a second glass of Baileys would prolong the evening, then a second glass of Baileys it would be. I eagerly proffered my glass for more. She promptly filled it. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that,” she said. “You’ll think I’m a slut.”
It took me a minute to realize that she was referring to her lost virginity. “Of course I don’t think you’re a slut,” I said adamantly, as relief washed across Alison’s face, like a paintbrush, almost as if she’d been waiting for me to exonerate her, to forgive her the sins of her sometimes errant past. “Besides, I’ve got you beat,” I offered, trying to make her feel better, to prove I was hardly one to sit in judgment.
“What do you mean?” She leaned forward, lowered her glass to the carpet. It disappeared inside the pink petal of a woven flower.
“I was only fourteen when I lost mine,” I whispered guiltily, as if my mother might still be listening from the upstairs bedroom.
“Get out. I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.” I found myself eager to convince her, to show her that she wasn’t the only one with a past, with skeletons in her closet, however small and insubstantial they might be. Maybe I even wanted to shock her, just a little, to prove to her—and to myself—that I was more than I appeared at first glance, that underneath my middle-aged exterior beat the heart of a wild child.
Or maybe I was just drunk.
“His name was Roger Stillman,” I continued without prodding, conjuring up the image of the lanky young man with light brown hair and large hazel eyes who’d seduced me with ridiculous ease back when I was in the ninth grade. “He was two grades ahead of me at school, so of course I was monstrously flattered that he even talked to me. He asked me to the movies, and I lied to my parents about where I was going, because my mother had decreed I was too young to date. So I said I was going to a friend’s house to study for a test, and instead I met Roger at the movie theater. I remember it was one of the James Bond movies—don’t ask me which one—and I was very excited because I’d never seen a James Bond movie before. Not that I saw much of that one either,” I recalled, remembering Roger’s tobacco-scented breath on my neck as I’d tried to follow the movie’s convoluted plot, his lips grazing the side of my ear as I’d strained to make sense of all the double entendres, his hand sliding down my shoulder to the tops of my breasts as James coaxed yet another willing female into his bed. “We left before the movie finished. Roger had a car.” I shrugged, as if that said it all.
“Whatever happened to Roger?”
“He dumped me. No surprises there.”
Alison’s face registered her displeasure. “Were you heartbroken?”
“Devastated, as only a fourteen-year-old girl can be. Especially after he bragged about his conquest to the entire school.”
“He didn’t!”
I laughed at Alison’s spontaneous outburst of indignation. “He did. Roger, I’m afraid, was a rat of the first order.”
“And whatever happened to the rat?”
“I have no idea. We moved to Florida the next year, and I never saw him again.” I shook my head, watched the room spin. “God, I haven’t thought about any of that in so long. That’s one of the amazing things about being young.”
“What is?”
“You think you’ll never get over something, and then, the next minute, you’ve forgotten all about it.”
Alison smiled, twisted her head across the top of her spine, stretching her swanlike neck until the muscles groaned and released.
“Everything has such urgency. Everything is so important. And you think you have so much time,” I said, almost forgetting I was speaking out loud as I watched her, mesmerized by the motion.
“Anyone interesting on the horizon?” Alison rolled her head from side to side.
“Not really. Well, there’s this man,” I confided, although I’d had no intention of doing so until I heard the words leave my mouth. “Josh Wylie. His mother is a patient at the hospital.”
Alison’s head returned to the middle of her shoulders. She said nothing, simply sat and waited for me to continue.
“That’s it,” I said. “He comes up once a week from Miami to see her. We’ve only spoken a few times. But he seems very nice, and …”
“And you wouldn’t mind getting to know him,” Alison said, finishing my sentence for me.
I nodded, deciding that was a mistake when the room continued bouncing around me like a rubber ball. Reluctantly, I struggled to my feet. “I think I’m going to have to call it a night.”
Alison was immediately at my side, her hand warm on my arm. She seemed steady, as if the alcohol hadn’t affected her at all. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said, though I wasn’t. The floor kept shifting, and I had to balance against the side of the sofa to keep from falling over. I made an exaggerated show of checking my watch, but the numbers danced randomly across the dial, and I couldn’t tell the small hand from the large. “It’s late,” I said anyway, “and I have to be up very early.”
“I hope I didn’t overstay my welcome.”
“You didn’t.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure. I had a really nice evening.” I suddenly had the strange sensation that she was about to kiss me good-night. “We’ll do it again soon,” I said, lowering my head and leading Alison through the living and dining rooms to the kitchen, where I promptly walked into the table and all but fell into her arms.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” she asked as I struggled to recapture my balance, if not my dignity. “Maybe I should stay and make sure you get into bed all right.”
“I’m fine. Really. I’m fine,” I repeated before she could ask again.
Alison was half out the door when she stopped suddenly, reached into the left pocket of her black pants, and spun around. The motion left me reeling. “I just remembered—I found this.” She held out her hand.
Even with my head spinning and my focus blurred, I recognized the tiny gold heart at the center of the slender golden thread in Alison’s open hand. “Where did you get this?” I reached for it, watching it unravel. The delicate necklace hung from my fingers like a forgotten strand of tinsel on a discarded Christmas tree.
“I found it under my bed,” Alison said, unconsciously assuming ownership of the contents of the cottage.
“Why were you looking under the bed?”
Surprisingly, Alison blushed bright red. She shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other, the first time I’d seen her look truly uncomfortable in her own skin. When she finally answered me, I thought I must have misunderstood.
“What did you say?”
“Looking for bogeymen,” she repeated sheepishly, lifting her eyes to mine with obvious reluctance.
“Bogeymen?”
“I know it’s ridiculous. But I can’t help myself. I’ve been doing
it ever since I was a little girl and my brother convinced me there was a monster hiding underneath my bed who was going to eat me as soon as I fell asleep.”
“You check underneath the bed for bogeymen?” I repeated, thoroughly, if inexplicably, charmed by the notion.
“I check the closets too. Just in case.”
“Do you ever find anyone?”
“Not so far.” She laughed, held out the necklace for me to take. “Here. Before I forget and take it home with me.”
“It’s not mine.” I took a step back, almost tripping over my own feet, and watching the room rotate ninety degrees. Sixty-five ladies’ head vases tilted on their shelves. “It belonged to Erica Hollander, my last tenant.”
“The one who still owes you several months rent?”
“The one and only.”
“Then I’d say it belongs to you now.” Again Alison tried to hand over the necklace.
“You keep it.” I wanted nothing more to do with Erica Hollander.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Alison said, but her fist was already closing around it.
“Finders, keepers. Come on, take it. It’s very … you.”
Alison required no further coaxing. “It is, isn’t it?” She laughed, wrapping the thin chain around her neck in one fluid gesture, securing the tiny clasp with ease. “How does it look?”
“Like it belongs there.”
Alison patted the heart at her throat, strained to see her reflection in the darkness of the kitchen window. “I love it.”
“Wear it in good health.”
“You don’t think she’ll come back for it, do you?”
It was my turn to laugh. “Just let her try. Anyway, it’s late. I have to get some sleep.”
“Good night.” Alison leaned forward, kissed my cheek. Her hair smelled of strawberries, her skin of baby powder. Like a newborn baby, I thought with a smile. “Thanks again,” she said. “For everything.”