by Kyra Davis
I shook my head. “I don’t know about this.”
“So—” Paul stepped up from his place in back “—are you saying that this building is a copy of a copy?”
And that’s all it took. I went into a full spiel about neoclassicism and the inspiration for the Legion of Honor, and then I promptly took them into the courtyard and showed them Rodin’s Thinker. We stepped inside, and to my surprise the guys paid their own way and mine and I continued the tour in the Ancient Art room. I even looked a little like a tour guide since I was the only one in the group not wearing jeans. As we approached each new piece of art I got a little more enthusiastic and the guys turned out to be a great audience. It was obvious that they knew nothing about art, but they knew what they liked and they were clearly caught up in my explanations about the history of the works as well as the tidbits I gave them about the artists themselves. By the time we got to the European paintings of Wateau and Matisse, we had picked up a few stray visitors who wanted to join the party. And by the time we reached the room holding the more modern works, our group had grown from five to eleven.
And I was happy. Really, really happy, like I hadn’t been since I had sat in my college art classes learning the information I was now teaching. The earlier events of the day faded into oblivion. Who cared about my unresolved childhood issues? Who cared about my husband’s felonious acts? We had the works of Rodin to admire! What more could anyone need?
Eventually I called an end to the tour and the guys and I stepped outside where we were greeted by a rose-tinted sky filled with fluffy pink clouds. I beamed at Jeremiah. “Thank you, thank you for helping me find my sanity.”
Jeremiah just looked at me for a moment, then turned to the rest of the group. “You guys go ahead. I’ll catch up with you later.”
Paul, Dallas and Gary made a few hasty goodbyes and then left Jeremiah and me standing alone in front of the courtyard.
“You took separate cars?” I asked.
“Yeah, for some reason no one ever wants to ride in my Suzuki.”
I laughed and pulled my hair away from my face. “I was serious about what I said. You really saved me today.”
“Nah.” Jeremiah’s lips moved into a Mona Lisa-type smile. “You saved yourself. That’s the only way to do it, you know.”
I couldn’t think of a response to that so I smiled stupidly at the ground.
Jeremiah nodded, as if reacting to something that I had not said. “I’ll let you have some alone time so you can sort out your thoughts. You call me if you need me, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Day or night, don’t matter what time it is,” Jeremiah continued as he walked backward away from me. “Just think of my number as a twenty-four-hour hotline.”
“Let me guess,” I called after him. “No matter what time I call you’ll still be hot.”
Jeremiah pointed to me and then his nose to confirm my assessment of the situation. Then he turned around and went off to his car in the parking lot.
As I watched Jeremiah’s car drive off into the distance I had a sudden urge to wave him down and ask him to run away with me. The problem was that I wasn’t sure what I was attracted to, Jeremiah or just the idea of running away.
My eyes traveled to a clump of bushes about twenty feet from the Legion’s entrance. I was all too familiar with what lay behind those bushes and I desperately wanted to avoid it. But as usual, I had to look. I walked over to the area and went down the somewhat concealed curving stone staircase. There it was—San Francisco’s Holocaust Memorial.
A pile of colorless stone bodies lay on top of one another. I swallowed and allowed myself to look at the only standing statue with his back to the carnage. He was staring blankly out a barbed-wire fence. The sculptor had not used any color; the engraved quotes about a brighter future were up the stairs and out of sight. This was simply the depiction of despair in its rawest form.
The lights that surrounded the memorial had already been turned on in preparation for nightfall. It gave the whole thing an eerie glow that made the muscles in my neck tense. It was as if the bodies lying before me really had once contained life and the figure standing with his back to them really had forgotten what it was to hope.
How had Bobe survived it? How did you go on after such persecution? I unwillingly imagined what it would have been like. I visualized being forced to stand by while my mother and Bobe were humiliated, tortured and murdered. And Tad, how would I have dealt with the loss of him?
Of course, Tad wasn’t Jewish. He might have been able to dissociate himself from me and live a rich life among the other Aryans, but in my heart I knew he wouldn’t have. Tad would have done whatever he possibly could to protect me, even if it meant putting himself in mortal danger. The last few months had forced me to appreciate the fact that there were a lot of things about Tad that I didn’t know, but I knew that, and that was the important part.
I looked at the bodies again. I didn’t have problems. Hell, compared to the people who’d had to go through this, I was living a utopian existence. He lied to me about a credit card and the amount of our rent, so what? He had been there for me when I miscarried our baby even after I had confessed to the horrible feelings I had been concealing from him. And when my mother refused to come to our wedding, who had been there for me? Tad. There were a lot of women out there who would give their left arm to be with a man like that. A man who wanted to take care of them and hold them close at night. A man who would love them.
And who had been the one to storm out of the therapy session when things got tough? That would be me, the worst wife in the world. My God, a few minutes ago I had actually been tempted to run off with Jeremiah. Was I one of those grass-is-always-greener girls?
I turned around and walked back up the stairs, determined to be satisfied with what I had. I would start by making up with Tad. As for Dawson’s, I knew that the last few years of working on the sales floor had drained me of the ability to be an upbeat or even a fully effective manager, but I had an easy out: approach Blakely and push for the promotion she had once dangled in front of me. The buying office would be new enough to keep me as close to satisfied as I needed to be. And last, but certainly not least, I would cross Jeremiah out of my address book. After all, the best way to resist temptation was to avoid it.
I turned around and took one last look at the Legion of Honor. It was also lit up, but unlike the Holocaust Memorial, the museum looked glorious and beckoning. For a brief instant I felt overwhelmed with a sense of longing for what might have been, but then I quickly turned my thoughts to Bobe. She had been through so much and now all she wanted was for me to be happy, and I was needlessly failing her. I had the ingredients for happiness. All I had to do was make something out of them.
When I returned home I was disappointed to see that Tad wasn’t there. He had probably gone back to work. Or maybe he just didn’t want to face me. Couldn’t blame him for that—I didn’t want to face me, either.
Finally, at a quarter after twelve, he showed up. I was sprawled out on the sofa when he walked into the living room. We studied each other silently for a minute or so before I finally found the nerve to say something.
“I’m sorry.” I was surprised how steady my voice was when I said it. Perhaps all those hours of practicing had been helpful. “I’m sorry I acted like such a bitch.”
I stood up and Tad crossed the room to me. He smoothed my hair with his hand. “I was worried about you,” he said. “I know how painful it is for you to talk about your mother. You shouldn’t have to do that in front of a stranger.”
Well, then maybe he shouldn’t have brought it up. But I suppressed the urge to say so and continued with my apology. “I shouldn’t have stormed out like that. It was childish, to say the least. I know that I make it hard sometimes.”
Tad’s fingers were now gently caressing my neck. “I don’t mind fighting for you occasionally, even if you’re the one I’m fighting with. After all—” he swept me off my fee
t and held me princess style in his arms “—if we don’t fight, we can’t make up.”
“Tad, I’m not finished with my apology,” I protested as he carried me to the bedroom.
“Let me make it easy for you. You are now officially forgiven.” He laid me down on the bed and pressed his body on top of mine. His lips nibbled at my earlobe. “My God, I love the way you taste.”
And I loved being tasted. But I had more to say, and I wasn’t going to let him distract me. “Tad, you’re not blameless, either. You lied to me and you betrayed me.”
He stopped nibbling and rolled over to the side so that he was next to me. “I never betrayed you.” There was an icy tone to his voice that caused me to scoot a little farther away from him.
“Forging my name on a credit card and hiding our lease agreement from me was a betrayal, Tad.”
He seemed to relax again and lifted my shirt enough so that his fingers could play over the waistline of my shorts. “I would consider those acts more like omissions of the truth. But just because two people pronounce the word tomato differently doesn’t mean we should call the whole thing off. Besides, I’m never going to keep anything from you again.”
I put my hand on top of his to keep him from pulling down my shorts. “I want to believe you. I can’t tell you how much I want that.”
“It’s not hard, April. All you have to do is let go and have some faith in us.”
It sounded so simple. Could it be? I studied his face and he looked so sincere and so incredibly trustworthy. “Don’t let me down, Tad.”
“Never.” His hand freed itself from mine and in one smooth movement he removed my shorts.
Cuddled into the crook of Tad’s arm, I had to admit to myself that making up had some major advantages over holding a grudge. I toyed with the hairs on his chest and his arm tightened around me. “You know,” I said quietly, “that therapy session was beneficial in some ways.”
“I’m not sure you can call fifteen minutes of arguing in some guy’s office a session.”
I cringed with embarrassment. “God, I was so awful.”
“No, you—”
“Yes, I was, and I learned from that. I know now that I have some issues of my own that I have to work out.”
“Just because you became defensive when asked to talk about your life in front of a stranger…”
“I didn’t just become defensive. I paid some poor guy eighty dollars so that I could sit in his office and tell him to go fuck himself. Now, if that isn’t evidence of some deep-seated issues, I don’t know what is.”
“Where are you going with this?” Tad’s fingers were beginning to dig into my arm and I winced and pulled away.
“For one thing I’m going to start being happy with my life. I spend more time developing my fantasies about being a curator than I do developing my real career at Dawson’s. Well, that stops now.”
Tad propped himself up on his elbow and looked at me quizzically. “I know I told you that there were some problems at SMB but they’re working themselves out. We’re going to be a huge success soon, so if you’re still harboring a desire to pursue some kind of art administration job then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go back to school and do it. You don’t need to work.”
I felt my heart do a little flip-flop. Just hearing Tad tell me that my dreams were obtainable made me feel dizzy. I searched his face; he meant what he said. He was willing to support me both financially and emotionally while I went for a Ph.D. For a split second I had a vision of myself back at Berkeley, sitting in the middle of a classroom the size of a small theater, my pen scribbling shorthand with a textbook open to one of Manet’s paintings. Then the reality of my situation came crashing around me. I could learn to overlook Tad’s faults, but trusting him to support us was a whole different thing. We were over eleven thousand dollars in debt, we had a rent that was just a little less than my current monthly income and there was a big difference between “going to be huge” and actually being huge.
I tried to keep the disappointment from showing on my face. I couldn’t tell Tad why taking him up on his offer was an impossibility. He would see it as an expression of my lack of faith in his abilities. I would have to find a way of declining while maintaining the delicate reconciliation that we had just established.
You’re playing politics, my little voice said, just like you do at work. But I buried the thought. I wasn’t doing anything that millions of wives hadn’t done for centuries before me. I ran my hand across his collarbone in order to give myself an excuse for focusing my gaze on something other than his eyes. “I think it would be better if I worked in the buying office for a while before completely giving up on Dawson’s. Who knows? Maybe I’ll love it. I’m going to give Blakely another month. If she hasn’t handed me the promotion by then, I’ll approach her. If Blakely really is going to let Cherise go, I’m going to make sure that I’m the one to take her place.”
Tad traced my jawline with his index finger. “Beautiful, ambitious and smart—I knew there was a reason why I married you.”
“I’m also going to forgive my mother.”
Tad immediately withdrew his finger. “We talked about this.”
“What if you were right? What if my issues with my mother are keeping me from being happy in all the other areas of my life?”
“You don’t need her, April. You never did.”
“You’re wrong, but this isn’t about needing her anyway. It’s about needing to be emotionally stable. I think what I need to do is let her back into my life without taking on all her excess baggage.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that I’ve got to let her back into my life and at the same time accept that fact that she is deeply flawed and stop taking everything so personally. You were right when you said that my mother’s absence at our wedding had nothing to do with me. It really was about her, and I need to accept that and let it go.”
He looked less than convinced, so I pulled out the heavy artillery. “Tad, I had to do the same thing in order to work things out with you.” He winced and I quickly qualified the statement. “Not that you’re deeply flawed, but you did mess up and I had to let go of my anger in order to move forward with you, just like you did for me. Now it’s Mom’s turn to be forgiven.”
Tad eyed me warily. “The two situations are completely different.” He slid back down and wrapped a lock of my hair around his finger. “Just think about it for a while before you call her.”
“I haven’t spoken to her for over four months now. How much longer do you want me to think about it?”
“Give it another month,” he said, and let his foot rub up and down my calf. “What difference will four more weeks make? You have other things that you should be focusing on now, like getting your career back on track. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all your ducks in a row before tackling the more difficult problems?”
“True,” I said reluctantly.
“Between dealing with Blakely and making time for all you need to handle at home…”
“What do I need to handle at home?”
Tad grinned wickedly as he took my hand and pulled it down beneath the sheets.
“Oh, that.” I giggled. “That is a lot to handle…I better get on it right away.”
TWENTY
“God, I wish this place served hard liquor.”
I looked up and smiled at Allie as she dropped into the seat I had been saving for her at Boudin. Almost a month had passed since that fateful therapy session and I had been working overtime trying to be satisfied with what I had. Apparently I wasn’t the only one failing in that area.
I took the chicken Caesar I had purchased for her off the tray and pushed it toward her. “Problem customer?”
She scoffed and violently rammed her fork into a crouton. “I caught two people having sex in one of my dressing rooms.”
“Again?” I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “Why do they always pick your department?”
“W
ho the fuck knows? Maybe they think that any lingerie department that charges twenty dollars for a thong must really be a front for a low-priced brothel.” She pressed her fingers into her temples.
I sighed. It really was amazing that I had lasted as long as I had at Dawson’s. But things would be better when I got into the buying office. They had to be. “Why do you do it, Allie?” I asked, rotating my plastic spoon in my soup. “You’re educated, smart and all that good stuff. Why do you work at that freak show we call Dawson’s?”
“Three words—thirty-three percent discount. Although after what I put up with today they should be upping mine to forty.” She took a long sip of her 7-Up. “Hey, thanks for buying lunch. I know I’ve been a little removed lately, but I’ve had a lot on my plate.”
She’d been removed? I had barely made time to talk to either her or Caleb since Tad and I reconciled. I had avoided Caleb because he knew too much. He always had questions about Tad, and whenever I told him things were fine he gave me what Allie and I called the “I-don’t-think-so-girlfriend” look. I had avoided Allie because I was afraid that if she spent any time with me she would be able to see that under my practiced smile I was really falling apart. But perhaps I’d been so busy avoiding Allie that I hadn’t noticed that she was also avoiding me for her own reasons. It’s always humbling to know that you’re not the center of the universe. “Is everything okay?” I asked before tearing at the edge of my bread bowl.
“Oh, you know, same old same old. My sister just had her fifth anniversary, although judging from the party she threw, you would have thought it was her fiftieth. And you know my family, every time we get together the interrogation begins. ‘So, Allie, any new marital prospects? Are you dating anyone?’ My brothers’ wives are always trying to set me up, and then my bothers find out and go ballistic because in their minds no one is good enough for their little sister. And then there’s my mother who wants to make sure that I’m not out there giving away the milk for free. I’m twenty-seven, April. If I hadn’t given the milk away by now it would have gone sour.”