by Ciji Ware
Jack made no reply as he turned off the engine and shifted in the driver’s seat to face her.
“We have to talk.”
Lauren returned his gaze with a measured look, as if she’d half expected him to suggest they remain in the car and hash out their rocky time together over the holidays. Since this was nothing new in their relationship, her tone became that of a doctor dealing with a difficult patient in the ER.
“But I thought we’d do this on Julia Street, Jack... and a few other things as well,” she added, her annoyed expression morphing into a come-hither countenance that he imagined wouldn’t last long when he told her what was on his mind.
Jack paused, gathering his thoughts around the words he’d been planning from the second he’d received word Lauren was coming to New Orleans for the weekend. Before he could begin, however, her eyes narrowed. Her flirtatious manner a forgotten memory, she pounded the dashboard on the passenger side.
“Don’t you dare!” she cried with shrill emphasis. “I can see it in your face. Don’t you dare tell me you’re breaking up with me! Not now! Not after all I did to nail a job in New Orleans, and everything, and—”
“Look, Lauren,” Jack interrupted, his hands gripping the steering wheel.
This was going to be a scene, just like New Year’s Eve. Just like all the other times they’d had disagreements. Lauren would first get angry; then start to cry, and—he’d give in, just to keep the peace.
Not this time, little lady...
He took a deep breath and plunged ahead.
“I’m really happy for you about getting a position at Ochsner, and I have enormous respect for what you’ve done as a med student.”
“Well, now,” she almost purred, a look of stark relief smoothing her brow, “that’s much better.”
Doggedly, Jack continued, “Getting a spot at Ochsner is an incredible achievement, Lauren, and I think you’ll be a great fit there. But, you and I aren’t a good fit anymore. Look at how it ended with us last month. How it’s been for six months—a year, or more, actually—since we’ve had a single, happy moment together. If you honestly think back, we haven’t had very many in the last few years, not really.”
Lauren took a few moments to absorb his last words. Then, she inhaled a deep breath and appeared to take a tactic other than exploding with anger, followed by tears, which this time he couldn’t really blame her for. Surprising him, she gave a small shrug and flashed her dimpled smile once again.
“Every couple has its ups and downs. Ever since the storm, you hold on to things too much, Jack. You’ve got to put Katrina behind you. Sure, you and I have had some bumps. We’ve been living in two different cities for ages, so what could we expect? But, now we’ve made it through all the bad stuff. You’re still a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, and I’m now a full-fledged doctor. What’s past is past. We have our whole future ahead of us, now that I landed a job here in town.”
Jack shook his head.
“We’ve been in this relationship for a decade and there’s plenty of evidence it just isn’t going to work, long term. At least not for me. I’m sorry that I didn’t face it sooner and tell you what I’ve been feeling for quite some time, now. Letting things slide as I have wasn’t an honorable way to behave and I truly apologize for my part in this.”
Lauren’s response to these words didn’t appear to be affected in the slightest by his heartfelt regret for not admitting the truth for longer than he cared to acknowledge.
“And you think this is honorable?” she demanded, making no attempt to disguise her fury. “You think that you haven’t, until this very moment, led me to believe—”
“Oh, hell... cut it out, Lauren!” he exclaimed, banging the steering wheel with a fist. “I did not propose marriage to you at Christmas, remember?” he demanded. “Nor the Christmas before that! Stop making up this... this... fantasy of yours that we’ve always gotten along well, except for a few, minor bumps in the road. You know as well as I do we haven’t felt comfortable in each other’s company or wanted... no, pined to be together during these long absences with you in Houston. The unhappy truth is we never really pined for each other in the slightest degree, even when you were living in New Orleans before the storm!”
“That’s not true!” Lauren protested and assumed a familiar, wounded look as if she were about to burst into tears. “Everyone thought we were a great match! My whole family expected you to give me a ring by New Year’s. So did I! But typical you... you said nothing about our future and did even less!”
What a steel magnolia this woman is. Now it’s all my fault. Well, for once I’m not giving in to her manipulation, just to act like a so-called gentleman.
“The fact that I wasn’t prompted to propose by this time should have told you something,” he replied evenly. “It sure did me.” He deliberately held her gaze. “I think we were a convenience for each other, I’m ashamed to say. We spent just enough time in each other’s company during our busy lives that it kinda, sorta worked for us for a while. It just doesn’t work for me anymore. I want more. You can’t build a lifetime together acting and reacting, as we do whenever we’re around each other for more than a couple of days. Surely you’ve felt it, too?”
Lauren’s brow smoothed and she looked at him with laser-like perception.
“You want more, do you? Does that mean you’ve found more?”
Jack was startled into silence by her powers of lightning speed deduction.
“There’s someone else,” she stated flatly, no hint of tears. “You’ve been cheating on me. When did it happen?” she demanded. “Before Christmas? Thanksgiving?”
Before he could offer an answer, her voice went up a few decibels.
“Venice?” she shouted. “Did you take someone with you to Venice? Is that it, you bastard? You never even told me you were going again to that stupid conference! Am I going to run into this creature all over New Orleans, now that I’m moving back?”
“I didn’t take anyone to Venice, but there is someone else—not that it relates to you and me in the slightest.”
Should he tell her the full story—that he met Serena for the first time at the airport and that they’d spent time together in Venice?
Lauren’s bitter, high-pitched laugh cut short his thoughts.
“I don’t believe you!” she yelled. “I think you’ve been sneaking around behind my back for a long time. Who is she?”
Jack inhaled a long breath and disclosed, “You guessed correctly,” he acknowledged. “I got to know her in Venice.”
“Oh, that’s rich! Now that I’m moving back to New Orleans, you decided to find yourself a girlfriend who lives even farther away from where you live! How perfect for you.” She snorted with disgust. “You are a head case, Jack Durand! A genuine, diagnosable commitment-phobe!”
“So you’ve said before,” he noted, his jaw clenched, “but, look, Lauren,” he continued, deciding in the next instant to extend the olive branch. “I totally understand how my being the one to raise the subject of the proverbial elephant-in-the-living-room we’ve had going here for quite a while is infuriating. And my not asking you to marry me over the holidays—when everyone we know expected me to—was disappointing for you, I know. But just so you know, the woman I met is still in Venice and I’m here, and we left it like that.”
“Really?” Lauren snapped. “How sad for you.”
Ignoring her sarcasm, he continued, “But meeting her and... enjoying her company made me face the fact that you and I were living a lie and I wanted to straighten it out. I wanted to face the truth that... I wasn’t ever going to ask you to marry me.”
Jack realized his words cut Lauren to the core, but they had to be said.
“What I don’t get,” Lauren retorted, her lips puckering in the pout he knew so well, “is what you expect from the person you’re with, whether it’s me or some Italian bombshell!”
“She’s hardly an ‘Italian bombshell’ and—”
But Lauren wasn’t listening.
“You’re always busy chasing a story around here, or on the road. And there I was, studying for a medical degree in another state. How could you expect me to give you any more than I gave? I had to listen to you always moaning about how much mud is silting up the mouth of the Mississippi and what dolts the politicians were, and about how Katrina was the greatest American catastrophe, ever! You were a boring, broken record and I didn’t want to hear about it anymore! How much attention did you lavish on our relationship?”
“Not nearly enough,” Jack admitted, shocked by her assessment that he knew contained some grains of truth. He took a deep breath to steady himself, determined to finish what he’d started. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Lauren. I take responsibility for my part in screwing us up.”
Her mood shifting once again, Lauren seized his hand off the steering wheel and held it in a death grip.
“So maybe we can fix this,” she said in a tone that sounded more desperate than conciliatory. “Now that you know what you did to mess us up.”
It’s as if she played no part in this. God, I want this to be over!
“No, Lauren,” Jack replied more determined than ever he was speaking his own truth. He detached her hand from his, gently laying it in her lap. “I’m afraid I am, in fact, officially ending things between us. You know and I know our relationship was already broken beyond repair.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said in a low voice, clasping her hands and staring down at them.
Jack wasn’t sure if she was now crying crocodile tears, or was genuinely struck by the finality of his words—and perhaps truly saddened by them. He leaned forward, hoping they could close the book gently, for once.
“I want to thank you for the world we shared for a while... especially Katrina and its direct aftermath. And you know what I think? You’ll make a great doctor.”
“Plastic surgeon,” she replied, her lips settling into a thin line with no trace of tears. “I’m going to be working with the best guy in the South.” She cast a steely gaze across the space separating them in the front seat. “So, are you going to go back to Italy and marry this girl?” she demanded.
Jack paused and then gave a small shake of his head. There was no need to hurt Lauren’s feelings any more than he already had.
“Who knows if I’ll ever marry anyone at the rate I’m going.” He cast her a lopsided grin, hoping to lighten the atmosphere. “I do know though, that you want to get married and have kids, so I’m probably doing you a big favor telling you before it’s too late that I’m not your guy.”
“Better late than never,” she retorted acidly. Lauren reached for the handle to open the door, looking back over her should. “And by the way,” she said, her voice laden with a venom she must have been saving for one of her famous exit lines, “don’t flatter yourself that I’ll be pining over you, because I won’t!”
“Good for you,” he complimented her with a sincerity that surprised him, and then felt a pang of remorse when he remembered Serena had said to him at the Danieli Hotel restaurant that she wanted the man in her life to long for her as much as she longed for him. He and Lauren had, indeed, made a holy mess of their relationship. Could he be any different with someone else? With Serena?
“Let me help you with your luggage,” he said to Lauren’s back. He was suddenly overcome by a weariness laced with impending relief that his former girlfriend would soon flounce up the path to her family’s front door and storm, one last time, out of his life. Why in the world had he been with her such a long time, he wondered? It was a question he needed to answer before he involved himself any more deeply with someone else. Even the beautiful Ms. Antonelli.
Jack still had Lauren’s two suitcases in hand when her mother flung open the front door, all smiles, only to see her daughter dash past without a word of greeting and sprint up the elegant, curving front staircase.
Avoiding Adele Hilbert’s bewildered gaze, he deposited his burdens just inside the black and white tiled foyer and returned to the front porch.
“Well, hello there, Jack,” Mrs. Hilbert said, her puzzled expression deepening. She turned in time to see Lauren disappear on the landing above. “It’s so nice to see you after this long while. Is anything wrong? I have some sweet tea cooling in the refrigerator. Are you hungry? Can I make you something more substantial? That was so kind of you to collect Lauren at the airport. I must have misunderstood. I thought she was arriving Saturday.”
“No, she came today. And thank you, Mrs. Hilbert, for your hospitality, but I’m on deadline for the paper, so I can’t stay.”
For a brief moment, the pair exchanged glances in silence while Jack struggled to invent his own exit line.
Finally he said, “I’m sure Lauren will tell you why she’s upset. Please let her know I wish her all the best.”
And before Lauren’s mother could reply or grill him for further explanation, Jack walked swiftly down the manicured path to his car and sped away.
Retracing his route to the I-10 in the direction of downtown New Orleans, Jack expected to feel like a heel about what had just transpired. Instead, the weight of the world had strangely and miraculously been lifted from his shoulders—that was, until he thought about his next onerous assignment: interviewing his two, aging uncles about their pasts.
CHAPTER 13
If Jack were a betting man, he figured that the answers from at least one of his uncles probably doomed him to a life he’d described to Lauren during their unhappy conversation in his car.
Everlasting bachelorhood.
Upon several days’ reflection, one thing he knew for sure. If he eventually concluded he wasn’t fit to marry Serena Antonelli, he wouldn’t marry anyone. He was no monk or martyr, he thought, turning down Julia Street and hoping for a lucky parking place near his brick-fronted building. The block-long collection of row houses was another landmarked structure, thanks to the efforts of King Duvallon and his New Orleans Preservation Alliance. Scoring a spot near his front door, he mused that, as his future life rolled on, he was sure to encounter other women who could offer some amusement or temporary distraction, but he had come to realize with dreaded certainty, there would never be anyone for him except La Contessa.
At his desk in his home office, he dialed Jacques Durand’s number, allowing it to ring into the double digits until voice mail picked up. His efforts to reach his other uncle produced the same result.
It was nearly four o’clock, and not worth heading back to the office.
He answered pages of email, made himself a drink, and sat numbly in front of his TV set watching Game 3 of the NCAA’s March Madness contest.
March Madness just about describes my life perfectly, he thought morosely and took a deep sip of his bourbon and water.
Serena’s cough began to tickle the back of her throat again, despite the muffler wrapped tightly around her neck. She wore the scarf to ward off drafts penetrating the antique glass windows not far from the large cutting table in the middle of the low-ceilinged room at the atelier in San Tomà.
Unable to suppress it any longer, a hacking cough took hold of her again as it had been doing for the past week. Rosa, her friend and stalwart head seamstress, swiftly handed Serena a cup of steaming tea that she’d kept steadily brewing in the back of the workshop for the staff this dank, chilly day. It had been one that had followed many others in monotonous succession for weeks.
“Mille grazie,” Serena gasped, and then nodded in the direction of the paper pattern pieces sprinkled with notations to guide her as she cut the muslin and prepared to pin and drape pieces of an eighteenth century-style skirt over the bamboo panniers that extended a foot-and-a-half from either side of the nearby mannequin’s waist. “Do you think these are okay?” she rasped.
Rosa studied Serena’s interpretation of Allegra’s latest creation for a wealthy female CEO coming for Carnevale from Silicon Valley in California, and nodded.
“Perfetto, cara. Let me sew them up for you. You rest for a bit.”
Serena stared out through the window at the snow-laced mist clinging to the tile rooftops nearby. She had to chuckle at the memory of Stefano Fabrini’s obvious attempts to use her pesky cold as an excuse to awake her from the couch where she’d fallen asleep the previous day and lead her directly to his bed. When she had demurred to make the trip, he had not been in the least threatening, but rather sweet and almost childlike in the way he used every wile to attempt to persuade her to let him make “wonderful love to you that will cure all your ails!”
“You mean ‘ills?’” she’d teased him.
Then she’d pointed to her throat, which actually had begun to throb with pain, and protested he might become as sick as she was. She’d asked if could she please just fall back to sleep on his comfortable silk couch which was barely long enough for her to stretch to her full length.
Virtually unable to sit upright, she’d spent the night on Stefano’s sofa and reluctantly called in sick the next day, promising to return to the workshop as soon as she could crawl out of her own bed, which she had twenty-four hours after that, still with her hacking cough a constant companion.
However, in her feverish dreams the night she’d remained at Stefano’s flat, she found herself on the embankment between a building and a bridge that arched over a small canal. Jack stood in the shadows while Stefano was offering her a hand to mount the mist-swathed bridge. Serena longed to disappear into the darkness with Jack, but woke up with a start just as she reached for his hand, only for him to fade into nothingness. Swimming to consciousness, she was assailed by a piercing emptiness when she realized it was morning and Jack Durand had become, indeed, only a figment of her imagination. The next thing that swam before her bloodshot eyes was the view of her host rising from his bed in his very brief underwear.