Happy Any Day Now

by Toby Devens

  Ginny with a snootful I figured I could take. The rest of them? Well, I knew I was facing one tough audience and that I had a couple of big-time acts to follow: Betsy the gorgeous PhD wife, Carolyn the TV reporter girlfriend. Oy, aigoo, I’d never pass muster.

  “You’re kidding, Ju-ju,” he reassured me after he’d spotted my left eyelid twitching as we mounted the steps to the Cove Haven Yacht Club and I confessed how intimidated I was. “You’re an accomplished, charming woman. You’re going to knock their socks off.”

  Possibly, had there been any socks to knock off. It was mid-May and the men were all in loafers or docksiders sans socks, the finishing touch to the uniform of khakis and blazers. The women looked like a stable of long-necked, long-maned, long-legged racehorses. They wore slacks with twee patterns like anchors and cherries, topped with blouses and cardigans to hide the kidnapping of their waists around menopause. I wished I had the headband concession.

  I elicited a few Isn’t she the exotic flower? looks. But after the first few minutes, I faded into the wood paneling, sipped my gin and tonic—no chocotinis or mojitos here; time stopped at the bar around 1937—and listened, smiling blandly, while they caught up.

  Twenty minutes and two rounds in, we drifted out to the deck and sorted ourselves by gender. Well oiled with yet another round of drinks—thanks but no, I demurred—the talk at the women’s table turned to what interested the wives almost as much as creeping socialism: their kids and grandkids.

  This effectively shut me out for a while, the way the subject of labor and childbirth had exiled me from female conversations in my twenties and thirties.

  Of course, this wasn’t the first time it occurred to me that I could have had grown children, maybe even grandchildren by now had I married Charlie as planned. My plans, not his. When he and I were dating seriously, I’d daydreamed our kids: straight haired, with a talent for music and debate. Our daughter Rose Pruitt, named after Grandma Roz, would be loved lavishly, the way the old lady hadn’t loved me. Little Rose had almond-shaped eyes, but in hazel or blue. The boy was named Isaac Solomon Pruitt just to flip the bird to Kiki, who would have secretly had him baptized Ian Scott. Truly, I wouldn’t have put it past her.

  As for my short-lived marriage, Rebound Todd had been eager to fulfill the Talmudic injunction to go forth and multiply—exponentially as he became increasingly Orthodox—which might have been one reason I checked out so fast. And I was okay—more than okay—with my biological dead end. “I have my music” was my answer when the question popped up. Not that I ever had the guts to say it aloud. But it was true. I had my baby of a cello, which was sufficiently demanding, usually rewarding, and didn’t require orthodontics.

  But I wasn’t going to get out of this conversation unscathed. Ginny Carlin made sure of that. “How about you? Any grandkids yet?” Though her diction was blurry, her gaze was on point.

  I worked to make my expression neutral. “I never got that far. I’m happily child free.” “Child free” would have worked among my liberal musician colleagues and the “happy” modifier might have bought me some smiles among Marti’s older lesbian pals—the ones before the in vitro fertilization craze hit same-sex couples. Here the words drew wondering looks all around.

  Just as I was about to be sacrificed to the God of Family Values, Charlie intervened. I didn’t know what he’d heard or whether he’d heard, but he sidled over and curled a defensive, proprietary arm around my waist. Take that, Ginny Forbes Carlin, you slut.

  “Time to do battle with some lobsters,” he said. “I swear, Ju-ju, you’ve never eaten a lobster until you’ve had one fresh from the waters of Penobscot Bay.”

  He was right. The lobsters looked like specimens of a giant new species and they were sweet and briny and just about danced out of the shell pleading to be eaten. Between bites, I gritted my teeth as the talk around the big table returned to bashing the administration in Washington. About twenty minutes in, one of the women, a second wife who wasn’t steeped in the history, asked, “Where did you two meet anyway?”

  “In college, right?” Ginny Carlin said. “They were engaged back in the day.” She took a gulp of her endless martini.

  “Not quite,” Charlie said. “Close, though.”

  Had we been close to engaged? I wondered. Really? News to me.

  “And now you’re dating again—that’s so sweet.” Ginny’s voice was sugary enough to trigger diabetic shock. “Long distance is a bummer, though. You in Baltimore”—she lifted her glass in my direction, then swung it toward Charlie, spilling a little—“you in New York. But that should be rectified soon when Chip moves to Washington. And then there’ll be smooth sailing ahead.”

  “What’s this about moving?” I turned to Charlie, who was fishing the tiny onion out of his Gibson. He looked up to glare at Jack Carlin, who was a partner at Pruitt, Bryce and Summerville, Charlie’s old law firm, the one he’d left when he assumed the bench.

  “Sorry,” Jack said, sending Ginny a withering stare. “Pillow talk. My fault. Never trust a woman who can’t hold her liquor. Not that any woman—or man or beast for that matter—could hold as much as Ginny puts away.”

  Dead silence. Then Charlie said, “All right, who wants dessert?” And aside, to me, “We’ll talk later.”

  He was moving to Washington without telling me? Damned right, we’d talk.

  • • •

  On the drive home, I confronted him. “What Ginny said—when were you going to tell me about that?”

  Charlie pulled the car off the road onto a spot overlooking the ocean. “It’s warm for May, and there’s a full moon. You game for a walk on the beach?”

  Warm it wasn’t. But Charlie removed a Harvard-crested throw from the trunk and draped it over my jacket. He took my hand and as we walked along the sand, cool and damp from the last tide, he talked.

  “I was going to tell you about this after the partners’ vote. My old firm, the one my great-grandfather founded and where I practiced for nearly twenty years, is considering opening an office in D.C. Right now, the idea is in the talking stages. That’s probably how Jack Carlin got his information. But if it gels—and I have reason to believe it will—I’ve learned from a reliable source that I’ll be asked to head it up. Which, of course, would involve my relocating.”

  “You’d leave New York? Resign from the bench?” I tried to make out his profile in the glimmering dark. Inscrutable. “I thought you loved your work.”

  “I do, very much, but I’m thinking it may be time for a change. On many fronts.” We took simultaneous deep breaths before he resumed talking. “I’m about to write decisions in two cases that carry enormous implications for major social issues in this country. Hence the umbilical cord to my BlackBerry.” His silhouette patted his blazer pocket. “Yes, the work is exciting and rewarding. But it’s also exhausting. I’ve been doing this for a long time and burnout’s become an issue. I’m up for reappointment next year, so maybe the gods of serendipity are telling me it’s the right time to get out of the judge business. Return to practice, take up the legacy. It should be invigorating to launch a D.C. office.” Long pause. “And then there’s you. Finding you again. But in Baltimore.”

  Here he turned to gauge my reaction. I was listening, not talking. We stopped and stared at the moon. Silvery white and poised high over the water, it was as kitschy as calendar art, but it inspired Charlie to croon, “I know Washington isn’t Baltimore, but we’d be a lot closer. A few beltway stops away. Is that something you might want, Ju-ju?”

  I wished people would quit asking me what I wanted. Among the few things I’d known for sure was Charlie. My feelings for him. But that was twenty-five years before, and if there was one certainty in life it was that life ground away at certainty.

  With no answer at my fingertips, I gave him the only thing I had handy. My lips, still scented with the flowers of gin. I kissed him. Passi
onately. He slipped me his tongue. And then he did something so out of character, so removed from any experience I’d ever had with him, I wondered whether lunacy wasn’t more than an old wives’ tale. He unwrapped the throw from around me, spread it on the beach, and pulled me down on top of him. Charlie Pruitt. Mr. Conservative. At fifty-four!

  For an Ivy League school, Harvard was very skimpy with its fabric. The crimson blanket almost immediately balled up into a pillow so the bottom half of Charlie lay flat against the cold, moist sand. We kissed valiantly a few more times and then he groaned. “My back’s killing me. And something just bit me on the ankle. Shit.” He swatted.

  “That’s what you get for not wearing socks.” I rolled off him.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” he said, struggling to sit up. “Ugh. I really need to get to a physical therapist for my back. It’s always been my weak spot.”

  Yes, but not enough to hamper acrobatics in our twenties, which Charlie hastened to remind me we weren’t in anymore and maybe we needed to find a more hospitable spot for sport. “Like an old-fashioned bed,” he said.

  I’d known all along he could never go through with it. To my surprise, he was able to resnag his focus back at the Landing, where we made age-appropriate, perfectly lovely love on Betsy’s six-hundred-count Egyptian cotton sheets.

  All very comfortable. It occurred to me, maybe too comfortable. I knew it wasn’t cricket to conjure up one man while another was poking about inside you, though I’d done it vice versa at the wind-down of the Geoff romance. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help thinking how the daring Australian would have turned that beach scene into a From Here to Eternity moment. His ass could have been bitten to a lunar landscape by sand fleas, he could have been nearly swept away by the tide, and he would have been baying in ecstasy under the full moon, counting it as a marvelous adventure.

  Geoff while I was with Charlie. Charlie while I was with Geoff.

  What was it with me? Was I never satisfied?

  Chapter 27

  Saturday morning I woke at seven thirty-four in a different bed than the one in which I’d fallen asleep the night before. Sometime after midnight, I’d moved out of Charlie’s arms and staggered woozily from the master bedroom down the hall and into the guest room.

  I know, I know, we’d made love, Charlie and I, which involved the juxtaposition of highly personal body parts, but even my subconscious got that I wasn’t ready to take the next step, which was to sleep—as in snore and drool—through the night next to him. The geography of intimacy draws illogical borders.

  Charlie had told me the night before that he ran first thing in the morning. I was invited to join him, but he was heading out at six, which was too early for me on vacation. He’d be back by eight and on the way home he’d pick up coffee for me at the Daily Grind on Matinicus Avenue.

  I’d been instructed to help myself to orange juice in the fridge and bagels in the freezer. It was too early for solid food, so no to the bagels. But my mouth tasted like the bottom of an owl’s nest from the gin, so yes, oh yes, to the juice waiting to quench me downstairs.

  From my suitcase, I withdrew and slipped on a pair of silky baby doll pj’s that were duplicates of the ones that had turned Charlie on long, long ago. You can buy anything on eBay. I was hoping the lingerie might inspire a matinee, because I hadn’t given my all to last night’s toss, what with the static from Geoff, and I wanted to try again, clearheaded.

  As I was checking my thighs for cellulite in the guest room mirror I heard banging around downstairs. Charlie scrambling eggs, probably. If he would do that for me, then I had a delicious breakfast treat for him. I descended the stairs stealthily—nothing like a bit of surprise to add spice to seduction—and tiptoed into the kitchen.

  Uh-oh. Standing, back to me, at the far counter, methodically stashing bottles of Sam Adams into the refrigerator, was not Charlie. It was, I assumed from the jeans, pink tank top, and baseball cap turned round, the cleaning woman who’d gotten her days mixed up.

  Time to retreat. Not wanting to embarrass either of us, I took a few steps back, heading for the hall, the stairs, and my escape. On the fourth blind step I tripped and knocked against a steel trash can, which clanged resoundingly. The cleaning lady wheeled.

  Her hand flew to her chest. She made a woofing sound and yelled, “Shit!” Then, softer, “Oh God, you scared the crap out of me.”

  Both of us were breathing hard. Her stare was frozen on my bare thighs. (Thank you God for my last-minute decision to wear the bikini bottoms—it had been a close call.) Only when I muttered, “Sorry,” did her gaze swoop up to mine. We were now in a contest to establish whose eyes showed more white. At the beginning I’d have said hers. Fifteen seconds in, as everything clicked for me, mine.

  When she got her huffing under control, she snarled, “Who . . . the hell . . . are you?”

  Not very welcoming, but under the circumstances forgivable.

  “Hi, Chloe,” I responded with a little wave, the way you’d show a dog the back of your hand to let it know you meant it no harm. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. No one told me you were coming.” I was going to kill Charlie. Slowly. Torturously. “I’m Judith Raphael. Your dad’s houseguest.”

  “You’re who? What?” She squinched her face into something resembling a French cruller. “Ugh, my father’s . . . Ugh, that is so gross.”

  And that’s when Charlie called out from the hall, “I’m back, Ju-ju. Got you a latte grande and picked up some muffins.” Then he walked in, brown paper bag in hand, stopped dead, and looked from one of us to the other, horror growing. He decided to ignore the strange lady in his kitchen—all right, maybe not such a lady, considering the baby dolls—and cooed to his daughter, “Sweetheart, you okay? What’s wrong? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m fine, Daddy. Really.”

  “You sure, Clo-Clo?” As in Ju-ju? My empty stomach flipped.

  He gave her a parental once-over. “You look okay. What’s up?”

  “Not much. I’ve got this monster exam next week and I just couldn’t focus in the dorm. Here I can study in peace and quiet.”

  Oh, come on. Granted, I never had a child, much less a teenager. But if any kid of mine laid that story on me with half a case of beer sitting on the counter, my bullshit needle would be off the meter. I couldn’t believe Charlie went for that academic alibi. What she had on the agenda was party time.

  “You never said you’d be here this weekend,” she scolded, on the offensive.

  Her father disregarded the bait. He also overlooked the carton of Sam Adams inches from where he placed the bag with my container of coffee.

  “Whatever. It’s good to see you, Cookie. How did you get here?”

  “Andy gave me a lift. BU’s on the same finals schedule.”

  “Andy Bowen? He drove you?”

  “To Rockland. We caught the ferry.”

  Charlie checked his watch. “Not this morning, you didn’t. The first ferry doesn’t get in until nine.”

  “Yesterday, Daddy. We took the last one in.”

  At that point, I made a discreet lunge for my coffee. As I grabbed the bag, Chloe lowered those heavy Van Tiller eyelids at me and I was catapulted twenty-plus years back. Kiki was standing in the Sutton Place living room, arms folded, taking my measure. I was the fly in the fruit bowl, the staph in the petri dish, beyond nothing and into pestilence.

  I lifted the paper cup from the bag and inhaled deeply. Hazelnut. Blessed caffeine.

  “Where did you spend the night, Chloe?” It seemed Charlie had given some thought to the timing. His voice was so Mr. Cleaver stern it was laughable.

  I took a sip of coffee, which in my eagerness emerged as a slurp. Loud.

  Chloe turned to me. “Do you mind? And can we have a little privacy here?” Her voice was bathed in loathing.

  I shrugged. “S
ure.”

  One word. Which was one more than Charlie had uttered to me throughout this entire exchange. It was as if I didn’t exist. I did for Chloe, though. As I padded through the hall, I heard her say, “Jeez, Daddy, at least you used to have some taste. But this one with the hooker nightgown and those pigsty manners? Incredible.”

  Charlie—and I waited a good thirty seconds at the bottom of the stairs listening—responded with moo-ka-chi: nothing. Deep silence. The man might have graduated from Harvard Law magna cum laude, but a defense attorney he wasn’t. He was, however, a fourteen-carat wuss.

  • • •

  Surprisingly, the rest of the weekend worked out—the way it works out when you go to the dentist expecting a root canal and she tells you it’s only a cavity. A deep one that involves a double shot of novocaine and copious bleeding from the gums.

  I slipped away to a room Charlie had introduced the day before as “Dad’s office.” Its only concession to the modern era was a clunky old desktop computer that I’d been given permission to use. It took me a good three minutes to summon up the Internet, but I managed to find my way to US Airways.

  I was waiting for the Web site to cough up its Saturday flight schedule when Charlie snuck up behind me. “What’s going on?” He made a twist of my hair, lifted it, and kissed the back of my neck. I shook him off.

  “You’re really pissed. Understandable.” Just then the page limped on. He peered. “Wow. Really pissed. So you’re going to jump ship on me, are you?”

  The old oak chair had a hundred years’ swiveling practice. It spun me around to land on the master of the house.

  “Charlie, you don’t want me here. Trust me. We’d both—all three of us would be better off if I left today.” And then, unlike old times when I let things slip, trying not to turn one of Charlie’s waves into a tsunami, I didn’t surf over it. I plunged right in. “Look, I heard what Chloe said. The hooker slur and that I had the manners of Miss Piggy. I can’t believe you let her get away with that.”