“No trouble.” He crossed to the hope chest and then turned to look at her. “I want you to have this.”
“The chest?”
He nodded.
She didn’t remember walking over to it, but she found herself on her knees before the finely carved work of art. “But Tommy, I can’t. This is so beautiful, and you worked so hard on it. I saw you, last night, working on it in your workshop.”
“I know. I felt you standing there. I knew you were leaving and I wanted to have it finished for you before you were gone.”
Lightly, her fingers traced a rose that would live forever. “I don’t know what to say.”
He took her hands and raised her to her feet. “Say you’ll take it. To remember me by.”
She looked up into his face. As if she could ever forget. “Everything I need to remember you by is in my heart.”
“You can have something in your bedroom too. I’m hanging your sketch in mine.”
She laughed and leaned her head against his chest. “Thank you. With all my heart, thank you.” She hugged him, glad that he couldn’t see her face or her tears.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Johanna’s stomach began to rebel, churning. The airplane was descending. Kennedy Airport waited in the distance to receive them. God, she hated flying. As the ground came barreling up closer and closer, Johanna wrapped her fingers around the armrests and looked straight ahead. She had flown countless times and it only got worse with each flight.
With a little luck, she wouldn’t be flying again any time soon.
She hadn’t called Mary to say she was coming. She didn’t want anyone meeting her and Jocelyn at the airport. Not immediately. Johanna needed a little time, time to get her bearings. Time to decide what to do and where to do it. Her life lay stretched out before her like a field of tall, tangled weeds. Somewhere beneath it all was order. She had to believe in that, cling to that. There was a path there, but she had to clear away the debris first in order to find it.
And she had absolutely no idea if she could or if she was even up to it.
She had to be up to it. No ifs, ands, or buts.
To take her mind off the fact that the plane was swiftly approaching the airport, where hundreds of planes took off and landed every day and could very easily collide with the one she was on, Johanna glanced at Jocelyn. Her daughter was looking beyond her out of the window, a mixture of awe and apprehension on her face.
The same as me, Jocey, Johanna thought, the same as me. And not just about the landing. About our new life. Except that she couldn’t admit it, couldn’t afford to lean on anyone. Not anymore.
Johanna turned her face forward again. Her thoughts gathered around the immediate future. The unknown, unformed immediate future. She had to be up to facing it, tackling it and winning. She didn’t have the luxury of failing. She’d be failing for two and she owed Jocelyn much better than that. Silently, she linked her fingers with her daughter’s.
Jocelyn responded to the gentle pressure by squeezing back. Despite the arguing that had transpired, that was yet to transpire, they had a basically good relationship and could communicate with one another at times with just a touch. At bottom there was love.
Johanna saw the apprehension mount in Jocelyn’s eyes. She forgot about her own fears. “It’s going to be fine, Jocelyn.”
“No, it’s not. I wish we were going home,” Jocelyn pouted.
Jocey’d get used to it eventually. It would just take time, Johanna told herself, hoping she was right. “This’ll be home soon enough.”
Jocelyn thought of the friends she missed and her own room. “Where are we going to live?”
Johanna took a deep breath. The plane landed. Her stomach lurched. “I don’t know yet.”
“Terrific.”
“Think of it as an adventure, Jocelyn.”
“Yeah.” It was clear that she didn’t, that she wasn’t in the mood for adventures.
“Jocey.” Something in Johanna’s voice made Jocelyn look at her mother. “I need help here, okay?”
“You’re asking me for help?” Jocelyn asked incredulously.
Maybe the burden was too much for a twelve-year-old. And then again, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Jocelyn needed to feel more of a part of her life than Johanna had allowed her to be. Protecting her, sheltering her from things had set her apart, caused a schism to form. They had to be together, to pull together to make this work. “A little cheering section wouldn’t hurt, Jocey. I haven’t been on my own in a long, long time.”
The fact that her mother was unsure made Jocelyn nervous. “When Daddy gets out—“
Johanna hadn’t told Jocelyn that she was divorcing her father and now wasn’t the time to begin explaining. Not with a planeload of passengers as a backdrop. Johanna unbuckled her seatbelt, her body alert.
“Until then,” she said, quickly brushing Jocelyn’s words aside, “we’re on our own. Just the two of us.” All around them there was commotion, as people pulled out pieces of luggage from the overhead compartments and gathered their things together. Mother and daughter looked at one another. “I need you, Jocey.”
Confused, a little pleased, Jocelyn nodded her head. “Okay.”
It was a start.
The morning had been hectic. That in itself was unusual. As a rule, Tuesdays at the gallery were rather peaceful. It was as if the gods generously gave him a respite after the frantic pace that Mondays always seemed to demand. But today there was no respite. The gods might be sleeping, but clients weren’t. Patrons had come and gone all morning. And then there had been Bruce to deal with.
Bruce Cantrell, the artist whose show was going to open this week, who Joshua had managed to calm and soothe more than once without the aid of the man’s ever-present flask of alcoholic solace, was having an especially vicious attack of nerves. It wasn’t the first time. The show was scheduled for Thursday evening. Joshua doubted if Bruce Cantrell would live that long, not the way he was wearing himself out. The tall, rangy, long-faced artist vacillated between sheer contempt for his future audience and absolute terror that no one would come to see the fruit of his blood, sweat and agony. He paced around the gallery, conjuring up the image of the Ancient Mariner for Joshua. Right down to the mad, glittering eyes.
Running an art gallery had its moments, Joshua thought as he poured Bruce a thick cup of coffee, his third. This wasn’t one of them.
Joshua handed the mug to Bruce who curled his paint-splattered fingers around the mug, holding on as if this was a vital transfusion and he would die without it. Joshua pressed a firm hand to his shoulder and forced the man to sit down in the bright, royal blue canvas-back director’s chair that was off to the side. He wanted him out of the way of the patrons. People tended to be frightened off by wild-eyed artists.
Letting out a breath, Joshua looked around the spacious gallery. It was big and bright and most important, his. Who would have thought, fifteen year ago, as he held his degree in his hand, eager to take the world by storm, that he would wind up on the other side of the easel? Then he had wanted nothing more than to paint, to create. It was food, water, air, the very life itself to him.
Well, almost, he thought ruefully, his mind drifting over the rough cobblestone of memories. There had been something more, something that had been his inspiration, his driving force. But he had lost that. Lost her. And when that happened, he lost his need to express himself on canvas in wild, passionate colors that drew out bits and pieces of his soul for the world to see. There had been no more soul left to give.
Losing her had been, he thought, his own fault. But he hadn’t anything to fight with, nothing to offer, and so he had lost his inspiration. He had lost Johanna before he had ever had her.
He smiled to himself now. Across the room, his secretary caught his enigmatic smile and wondered at it. Since he had returned from his business trip abroad, she had noticed that her boss tended to drift off, daydreaming. She couldn’t help wondering what had happened in London
to bring about this change. Usually, he was a very sensible, straightforward type of man. Maybe, she mused, it involved a woman.
And Johanna never even knew, Joshua thought. Never even suspected. To her, they had been just friends, sharing everything, sharing dreams, feelings, hopes. All save one. He hadn’t told her. He hadn’t been able to tell her what he felt. And when he finally could, she was gone, married to that man who put stars in her eyes and promised her the world.
Because he felt she deserved it and that Harry could give it to her far better than he, Joshua had let her go without a word.
How odd that he should run into her in the Tate Gallery of all places after all these years. When he had heard her voice, when he had seen her again, the years seemed to have been stripped away from him. Fifteen years, gone in a flash.
And yet they weren’t gone. They had left their stamp in her eyes. The soft innocence he had always loved wasn’t there any more. She had a woman’s well-formed figure and a woman’s maturity in her eyes, a maturity that had brought pain and sorrow with it. She had smiled at him beneath that brilliant painting of Turner’s in the gallery and had talked animatedly of old times. But he had seen instantly that she wasn’t happy, even though she was in her element, in an art gallery.
He had wondered about the man she was with and who he was in her life. The lunch they shared hadn’t yielded enough information on that score. But for the most part, he had only thought of her. He had pressed his card into her hand, but he had little hopes that she would even keep it, much less seek him out someday. Her life, such as it was, was in Los Angeles. His was here now, nurturing frail artistic egos and immersing himself in the art community.
Joshua realized that Bruce had stopped his rambling, edgy monologue and was looking up at him with his huge, hangdog eyes. Now they made him think a little of Rasputin, the mad Russian monk who had brought down the Russian monarchy. Bruce was a little mad himself, but harmless. Except, perhaps, to himself.
“My advice to you,” Joshua began, not knowing what Bruce had just finished saying but guessing it had something to do with having to depend on ignorant yuppies standing around, eating cheese, drinking wine and making comments about his so-called visionary work, “is for you to go home and sleep until Thursday afternoon.” Joshua put a fatherly hand on the man’s shoulder. “Frankly, Bruce, you really look like hell.”
Bruce flinched, then shrugged off the hand. “Looks aren’t important.”
“Maybe not,” Joshua agreed amiably, “but smell is. Take a shower, okay?”
Bruce put down the mug on the black onyx top table with a thud. Coffee sloshed over the sides and onto the table. “Hey, I—“
Easily, Joshua covered the wet spot with a napkin and wiped it away, grateful that the spilled coffee was the only damage to the table. “Do it for me, okay?” Joshua urged as he took the reed-thin man by the arm and raised him to his feet.
Long legs clad in dirty brown cords unfolded. Beat-up moccasins made contact with the floor. Bruce ran a hand through hair that touched his shoulders and desperately needed to be shampooed. “Yeah, I guess I can do that.”
Joshua grinned easily as he patted Bruce’s back. Bones met his touch. The man needed to consume something more substantial than paint fumes, Joshua thought. “My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you and I thank you.”
“Huh?”
“An old line from a movie,” Joshua said, waving away both the line and the puzzled look on Bruce’s face. It had been from Yankee Doodle Dandy, a movie he had seen with Johanna. Next to art, she had loved old movies, most particularly nonsensical things where people sang their way into happily ever after.
He couldn’t seem to get her out of his mind. Since he had seen her in London two weeks ago, she seemed to haunt his thoughts every time he let his guard down. The scandal involving Harry hadn’t helped matters any either. He had read about it last week and had been tempted to call her and offer his help. Going with impulse, he had called, but his call hadn’t been put through. The lines to the hotel were jammed. She was fodder for reporters, the six o’clock news and rag mongers.
He wished he could help.
He knew that he couldn’t. She wasn’t part of his life anymore.
That didn’t keep him from wondering, though. And wishing.
“Mac?” He looked up and saw Kathy, a dark-haired woman who had a voice like a little girl, approaching him. She had already called his name twice without any acknowledgement from him. “Mrs. Regis called and wants to speak to you as soon as possible.”
“Ah, wonderful Mrs. Regis.” Joshua grinned. “God bless her generous heart.” He began to stride toward his office.
It was thanks to Alberta Regis and her club of bored ladies with money on their hands that his gallery had gotten its start to begin with. She liked to think of herself as a patron of the arts and it had been she who had decided that the Soho region could use one more art gallery—as long as it was good and as long as she had a say-so in it. Joshua had met her quite by fortunate accident. He had had his paintings spread out on the sidewalk just as she happened to be walking by. She stopped to admire them and him. A very fulfilling and very platonic relationship had begun. Alberta Regis was in her sixties, but had the heart of a thirty-year-old and flirted outrageously. They liked each other a lot.
Joshua stopped. First things first. He turned back to Bruce. Joshua took out his wallet and pressed a fifty dollar bill into Bruce’s hand. “Do me another favor, Bruce. Get yourself a decent shirt.”
“I told you—“
“Looks don’t mean anything, yes, I know, but I am getting kind of tired of that khaki tee-shirt of yours.” The shirt was peering out from beneath an equally filthy denim jacket.
Bruce looked at the fifty in his hand. “I could buy out the army surplus store with this.”
“Don’t. Just get a shirt. Preferably one that fits.”
Bruce left the gallery mumbling under his breath. On his way out, he nearly walked into a well-dressed woman entering the gallery.
“Hey, sorry, pretty lady.” The artist grinned broadly.
“No harm done,” the woman murmured, stepping around him. She was more concerned with the collision of butterflies in her stomach than with colliding with an unkempt man. That sort of thing was usual in New York. Everyone was always hurrying off in some direction, elbowing people out of the way if necessary.
Joshua turned, hearing Bruce’s mumbled words of apology. And then he stood very, very still, his breath trapped in his lungs.
Johanna stood in the doorway.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Because she had stayed at the Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park so often, Johanna was familiar with many of the staff there. When the cab driver at the airport had asked her “where to?” she heard herself saying, “Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street,” the hotel’s address.
Perhaps it was a need to see friendly, smiling faces before she set out completely on her own. Perhaps it was because she had always liked the hotel with its imposing European chateau ambience. She wasn’t certain why, but she felt a need to check into the hotel. However much she liked it there, the stay was meant to be only temporary. The Plaza cost money and there was no longer an endless supply. Actually, there never had been an endless supply, but Harry had spent money as if there was and his lavishness had been contagious. At least for a while. The joy of buying expensive things had long since worn off. For Johanna things could never take the place of feelings.
Now she was completely on her own and she had to figure out exactly what that meant. She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to paint, to go back and regain the ground she had lost so long ago. She had always wanted to be an artist, from the time she could clutch a crayon in her hand and scribble her impressions of the world around her down on any free surface. There was nothing else she wanted to do. Not ever.
Except, to be Harry’s wife.
But that was gone, over. That kind
of commitment, as far as she was concerned, was dead.
She wanted to go back to a world she understood, a world where she could feel and be without receiving pain as payment. She needed to stabilize, to rejuvenate both physically and emotionally for Jocelyn as well as for herself. She could do it here, in the world of the art community.
But she also had to eat. As did Jocelyn. Being an artist wouldn’t be something that could give her the resources she needed. Maybe someday, but bills were not paid with promises of “someday,” groceries weren’t bought, doctors weren’t obtained, needs weren’t met with the word “someday.” Harry, even if she had wanted to take revenge by sticking to the letter of California law and taking half of everything, had little money that hadn’t been eaten up by drugs. No doubt the house in Beverly Hills would go to cover Sid’s hefty legal fees. Added to that was the fact that Harry might still go to prison and once out, might never work again. No, there was nothing Harry could give her to ease this journey she was on.
She needed a job. And she needed it now. There was, of course, the jewelry. That she had kept. It had come from Harry and it no longer meant anything to her. But she could sell it and it would go a long way to keeping her and Jocelyn comfortable for a while. Until she could get herself together.
Johanna had found the card that Joshua had handed to her in London. She had forgotten all about it and him in the hurry of making her departure plans. The siege by the reporters had thrown it all out of her head. It had surfaced quite by accident when she had been rummaging through her purse, trying to find her claim ticket for her luggage at Kennedy. She had thrown it into her purse that day she had run into him in the Tate Gallery. He represented a part of her life when things had been fresh, hopeful and the world was sweet and tender. They had been, no, still were, friends. Maybe he could help her now. She wouldn’t feel uncomfortable approaching him. If nothing else, he could settle or at least reduce the anxiety that was beginning to grow within her.
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