Wreathed

  I was sitting on the edge of my loveseat, as though Adam was pulling me towards him, slowly, imperceptibly, as inexorably as a glacier moving downhill.

  “We have something,” Adam said. “Something big. And no, I don’t want to throw it away, or give it away. But I don’t trust it, not yet.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “Believe me. But the main impediment all this time has been your uncle’s will, and now he’s alive. There’s no reason for either of us to distrust each other.”

  For the second time, I saw Adam’s face turn thoughtful, and saw that feral glow shine out of his eyes. “I want to try,” he said. “I think we owe it to each other to give ourselves a second chance. We might want to take it a little slower this time, though.”

  “If you say so.” I didn’t believe for a second that going slowly was what he wanted, but I was willing to go along with it if he was.

  “Having said that, I would come right over there and give you a big, wet kiss on the lips right now, if it wasn’t for one thing.”

  I looked at Adam for a long moment, waiting for him to grin, waiting for him to tease me, and then I realized he was being serious for once. “Because your Uncle Sheldon is standing out on the back porch eavesdropping on us,” I said.

  “No, I’m not,” Sheldon said.

  Chapter 30

  Adam insisted that we call Mother and let her know about Sheldon being alive before we drove up there. “Speaking as someone who had it happen to me just now,” he said, “I can’t recommend the experience to anyone else. It’s not a good kind of surprise, you understand?”

  “But it would be so much fun the other way,” I said.

  “I have no doubt that it would be an entertaining and edifying spectacle,” he said. “And I wouldn’t mind witnessing it from a safe distance, like you do with wrecks in car racing. But I think maybe everyone has had enough agita for one day.”

  So I gave him my phone and he called her and explained things to her. Adam made several quite interesting faces, including one that made him look like he had a baby moth trapped in his ear. “OK,” he finally said, after listening to the initial blast. “Here’s Wendy.” He handed me the phone without a word of explanation.

  “Coward,” I said.

  “Even the bravest man can only stand so much before he breaks.”

  I think Mother took the news that Sheldon was alive about as well as anyone who found out that they just lost a quarter of a million dollar inheritance would take that news, by which I mean, not well. On top of that, it took me quite some time to reassure her that we were not playing an elaborate practical joke on her. “We know he’s alive,” I said. “He’s sitting in Adam’s house, right across from me. I drove him up here from Cape May. He’s drinking a diet ginger ale and refusing to talk to you on the phone.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Gwendolyn Rose. You can’t possibly expect me to believe this nonsense.”

  I ignored her provocative use of my full name. “This is a special kind of Sheldon Berkman nonsense. It’s true, what Adam told you. I drove down to the house in Cape May, like we talked about, and Sheldon was there, fixing it up. He’d been waiting for you all this time. The funeral was a fake, designed to get you down there. It was supposed to be romantic.”

  “Am I to understand that the plan was for me to attend the funeral, to undergo the ordeal of thinking Sheldon was dead, and then to walk into that ugly house that we drove past, and then have him jump out of a closet and frighten me to death?”

  “He never intended to frighten you to death, no, but the rest of it is accurate. He nearly gave me a heart attack this afternoon, though, but that was because he thought I was you.”

  “He’s gone blind, then,” she said.

  “No, just cranky, annoying, and demanding. It seems to be common for people his age. Of course you wouldn’t know about that.”

  “I want to talk to this man,” Mother said. “In person would be best, if the coward has the nerve to face me. I want to explain to him how badly he has miscalculated.”

  “I am driving him up to see you so that he can apologize in person,” I explained. “I had planned to just dump him on your doorstep and watch the fireworks, but cooler heads prevailed.”

  “Just as well, I suppose. You’ll call me when you get close?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It shouldn’t take but an hour to drive up there.”

  “Neutral site,” Sheldon said.

  “Hold on a second, Mother,” I said. “Sheldon, what do you mean by ‘neutral site’?”

  “I want to see her, but I am not giving her home-field advantage,” Sheldon said. “I will meet her someplace out in public. Very public. So she doesn’t shoot me, the way you two keep threatening to do.”

  “That won’t help you if she claims temporary insanity,” Adam said. “We can stop and get you a bulletproof vest, I guess.”

  “He wants to meet somewhere public,” I explained to Mother.

  “Oh, how tiresome. Very well. I suppose the mall will do.”

  “Where do you want to meet in the mall?” I asked. “I can’t think of anywhere except the food court on the top floor, as long as you promise not to throw him over the railing.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think that has possibilities. I will meet you there in one hour.”

  We piled into Adam’s Jaguar and headed north on Route 9, headed for I-287 and the Bridgewater Commons Mall. We made good time, driving most of the way in silence. Sheldon was too traumatized (or excited, it was hard to tell) to say anything, and there wasn’t anything that Adam and I had to say to each other that we wanted to say in front of him. Adam had the satellite radio in his car set to the all-Springsteen station, so we listened to that until we got to the highway, at which point I got tired of listening to sad ballads about the decline of the Northeastern industrial corridor and flipped over to the ’80s station.

  “You know where we’re going, right?” Adam said.

  “You want to be over to your left and then take the exit for Route 22 and then follow the signs for the mall,” I said. “We’ll be there in a few minutes. Try to find a space in the top level of the parking garage.”

  “Doesn’t sound hard. Are you sure you are going to be OK driving back with me to Freehold tonight to pick up your car, and then going back home? That’s a lot of driving in one day.”

  “I think I can figure something out,” I said. If worst came to worst, I figured that I could always find a motel in Freehold somewhere and drive up to Morristown in the morning. I was certainly hoping that it wouldn’t come to that. I wondered if Adam had finished the renovation on his bedroom, or if it was six inches deep in sawdust.

  “I don’t think I’m going to feel like driving all the way to drop Uncle Sheldon back to Cape May,” Adam said.

  “You better not ditch me, kid,” Sheldon said. “You still have all my stuff in storage from when you cleaned out my apartment. I need to rent a truck tomorrow and drive it all back.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but if you are counting on me to help you load it back again and drive back to help you unload it, you are sadly mistaken.”

  “It’s not that difficult,” Sheldon said. “Once you decide to put your life back together, everything else you need to do after that is just putting in the work. Getting started is the hardest part.”

  Adam took his right hand off the steering wheel. He squeezed my knee, and I took his hand and held it. It felt warm and comfortable.

  “This is what I want to know,” Adam said. “You did this, all of this, in order to talk to this woman you hadn’t talked to in forty years, right?”

  “So?” Sheldon said.

  “So, why did you leave her in the first place?” Adam asked. “If she was your one true love and all.”

  “I told Wendy’s mother that it was another woman,” Sheldon said. “If memory serves.”

  “That’s what she told me,” I said.

  “So was that
why?” Adam asked. “Who was she?”

  “There wasn’t another woman,” Sheldon said. “I said that there was, but that wasn’t true. I knew she wouldn’t have believed the real reason.”

  “Which was?” I asked. “Assuming you think that we’d believe you.”

  “I fell in love with Alaska,” Sheldon said. “Oh, and the Air Force, too, but mostly Alaska. I’d never been anywhere outside of New Jersey before basic training. Alaska was big and wild in those days—still is, but not the way it was back then. I learned to hunt and fish and climb mountains. Every day that I worked was a challenge, and every day I had off was an adventure. And the only thing missing was Emily, and I knew she’d never want to join me there.”

  “So you just gave up?” I asked.

  “I made a mistake,” Sheldon said. “I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought I was doing the right thing by ending the marriage. We were different people who wanted different things out of life. She wanted to be a big wheel in politics. I wanted to work on airplanes and serve my country. And we both thought those things were important.”

  “The things you want are always important,” Adam said.

  “But sometimes, what the other person wants is more important,” Sheldon said. “Especially when that person is the most important person in the world for you. I forgot that. I let myself forget it. That’s what I wanted to tell her. That’s why I did what I did.”

  I looked at Adam, but his eyes were on the road. How important was I to him? How important was he to me? I didn’t know the answer to either question.

  “Here’s the exit,” I said. “We’re almost there.”

  We walked past the movie theater and the sporting goods store and the little cart that sells the bejeweled smartphone cases and headed towards the food court. I spotted Pacey standing in front of the Hollister store. Simon and Benjy were gnawing on soft pretzels the size of their heads and were not noticing another thing in this world.

  “Are you Mr. Berkman?” she asked Sheldon.

  “That’s me,” he said.

  “Good. I am Emily’s other daughter, Patricia. You can call me Pacey, everybody else does. These are my kids, Simon and Benjy. Say hello to the nice man, kids.”

  “Horseradish,” Benjy said.

  “Benjy. Stop that. Never mind him, he says that to everyone. You will find my mother sitting in front of the little Japanese place, over on the left. I will not be joining you, as I am afraid that words will be used that I don’t want my kids to hear.”

  “Horseradish,” Benjy repeated.

  “Quiet, dear. Adam and Wendy and I will wait here until Mother is done with you. Keep in mind that I have had to hear her opinions on you, nonstop, for the last hour, so I am not very pleased with you myself at the moment. My recommendation is that you start by groveling at her feet.”

  Sheldon’s lips quivered. He said something that was too quiet for me to hear but which might have been, “It’s not fair.”

  “Keep to your left. I would hurry, if I were you. Or you might want to savor your last moments on this planet. Up to you, really.”

  Sheldon slouched off to his doom and Pacey motioned us over to the right. We followed her to a wooden divider that was topped with plastic bushes. “We don’t want to get too close,” she said. “But this is a good vantage point.”

  “What are you doing here, Pacey?” I asked.

  “You know me. I never want to miss a good show,” she said. “And Mother said her car was on the fritz.”

  “You believed that?” I said.

  “No. Quiet. It’s starting.”

  Mother was sitting all alone at a table, with her arms folded. She looked as though she had swallowed all of the sour pickles in the world. In front of her was a large paper cup with words on it that I couldn’t quite make out. “What does she have in there?” I asked. “It’s not coffee, is it?”

  “Milkshake from Haagen-Dazs,” Pacey said.

  “I didn’t think she liked milkshakes,” I said.

  “She doesn’t. And you’ll notice there’s no lid.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not to change the subject,” Pacey said, “but are you Adam? I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself before.”

  I rolled my eyes. I hoped Pacey hadn’t made the trip just to check out Adam for herself, but that seemed like the best explanation.

  “That’s OK,” Adam said. “Good to meet you.”

  “I have heard a lot about you,” she said. “Good things. Mostly.”

  Adam just stood there looking uncomfortable, like someone had just put some tiny rocks in his shoes. Benjy and Simon were at his feet so you couldn’t rule that out, of course.

  “I think she’s going to let Sheldon sit down,” Pacey said. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to hear her from here.” She took a step back, where Adam couldn’t see her. “He’s cute,” she mouthed. “Nice bone structure.”

  “Stop it,” I whispered back.

  “She’s getting up,” Adam said. “She’s doing something.”

  “And here we go,” Pacey said, as Mother dumped the contents of her milkshake into Sheldon’s lap.

  “Thank God she didn’t get the coffee,” I said.

  “She wanted to,” Pacey said. “I talked her out of it. The risk of damages, you know.”

  Sheldon, to his credit, didn’t flinch. Years of military training and living in Alaska, I suppose. Mother started shouting at that point, and Pacey knelt and covered her sons’ ears. Then Mother slammed her fist down on the table and upended it, sending it clattering. This aroused the attention of a couple of mall security guards, who began edging their way over.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “I should have stopped and gotten cash out of the ATM for bail money, come to think of it.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Pacey said. “You might not know this, Adam, but my dear sweet mother has an arrest record as long as your arm. Protests, you know. Nuclear freeze. Stop the war in Iraq. Save the whales, that sort of thing. She knows how to handle herself around law enforcement.” And, indeed, Pacey was proved correct, as the mall cops helped turn the table back upright and walked away.

  Mother said a few more words to Sheldon, who was still sitting in his chair. I thought she was going to slap him, but something seemed to hold her back. She turned away, and then stalked off in our direction.

  “The nerve of the man,” she said. “Astonishing. He’s lucky I didn’t stab him through the liver.”

  “Nice seeing you too, Mom,” I said.

  “Hello, Wendy,” she said. “And hello again to you too, Adam. You may pick up your miscreant uncle whenever you like.”

  “I think I’ll get some napkins,” Adam said.

  “That would be a merciful act and more than he deserves. I take it you had no part in this charade?”

  “None whatsoever,” he said. “Thank you for returning him in one piece.”

  “I was tempted to break him in half,” she said. “I mean, the effrontery of it all. You will explain to him that I have no interest in inheriting that house, should he manage to expire on his own?”

  “Not a problem,” Adam said.

  “So, are you done then?” I asked. “Or should we expect another form of retaliation?”

  “He deserves much worse than a lap full of ice cream, but I don’t have the time and the energy to spend on him. And I have kept your sister here from the comfort of her home and hearth long enough. Thank you, Pacey dear, if I haven’t said so before.”

  “Not a problem,” Pacey said. “Get that napkin out of your mouth, Simon.”

  “Do you need a ride anywhere, Wendy?” Mother asked. “We might go get dinner somewhere, too, I suppose.”

  “I’m good,” I said.

  “Very well. I will leave you to scrape poor Sheldon out of his chair. Safe travels to you both.” She took Benjy’s hand, the one that wasn’t full of soft pretzel at the moment. “Come, dear. Grandmama is ready to go get dinner.”

  “Call me,”
Pacey whispered. I glowered at her but didn’t respond.

  Adam came back with a double handful of napkins. “I’m going to try to get Sheldon cleaned up,” Adam said. “Do you want to help your sister get her kids in the car or anything?”

  “I’m good,” I said. “If you let me know his size, I can run into the Gap and buy him a new pair of jeans.”

  “I don’t know, but we can go ask. It would be a good idea anyway. I don’t think he’s bought any new clothes since 1997. After that, maybe we can get a sack of burgers or something else to eat on the way home.”

  Sheldon was still sitting there when we made our way over to him, with the table hiding the stain on his pants. “She’s still beautiful,” he said. “Just as pretty as the day we met. But maybe a little more aggressive, come to think of it.”

  Chapter 31

  We filed out of the mall slowly, with me carrying Sheldon’s soaked jeans in a plastic bag from the Gap. We got back in Adam’s Jaguar for the long drive back down Route 9 towards Freehold. Nobody said much of anything. It was starting to get dark and Adam was concentrating on driving and I was borderline exhausted and Sheldon was still floating on his beatific vision of my mother. I was out within five minutes after I finished eating my burger. I slept the sleep of the just, untroubled by the resurrection of love-struck aviation mechanics or the state of my relationship with Adam, whatever that may have been at that point.

  When I woke up, the Jaguar had made its way down to a cluster of big-box stores in Manalapan. Sheldon was snoring in the back seat. I yawned, wide enough to nearly unhinge my jaw. Adam didn’t acknowledge that I was awake, so I fished my phone out of my purse and checked my e-mail. I had three different coupons in my in-box from three different shoe stores, which was probably something I didn’t need to share with anyone else. I deleted two of them but kept the third, just in case I ever had something to celebrate. I switched over to Facebook, which had the same banal stuff it always did. A friend from law school had posted some inane celebrity drivel from the Huffington Post. The girl who had beaten me out for valedictorian my senior year at high school was linking to a bunch of cat videos.