“He talked with my brother Tom,” Angel explained. “Sally wanted to have a fourth kid because theirs are getting older, and Tom was frantic to find a way to dissuade her. Cliff suggested that they could become our daycare and partial parents to Roger, and maybe another one when it comes along, instead of having any more of their own. They loved the idea, both financially and personally, so we now have a built-in daycare system."
“We probably wouldn't have arrived at this point without your interference,” Cliff pointed out, a mischievous light in his eyes. “At least not yet. So maybe you shouldn't give up your penchant so quickly, Amanda."
“I don't actually do it in England,” I said.
“Oh, sure,” Jack said.
“I don't!"
“You couldn't resist,” he taunted. “There's probably always some lovelorn resident in your department who..."
“Well, if you're going to count residents,” I huffed. “And we call them registrars."
“And the woman at the local greengrocer's and the guy who shines shoes at the underground,” Jack pressed.
“Never. I've never given advice to a greengrocer, except for maybe Jocelyn, and she asked me if..."
Cliff turned helplessly to Angel and asked, “Are they ... ?"
“Yes,” she said, “and it's all your fault."
“Mine!"
“You sent them off to Oconomowoc together."
“Ah, so I did. How very clever of me."
Jack humphed. “Little you knew. I probably never mentioned that the first time I met her she suggested I see a psychiatrist."
“And it's done you a world of good,” I said, touching his hand where it lay on my thigh under the table. “I should be so successful with everyone."
“But now you're going back to England,” Angel reminded me sadly.
“Well, that's always been true."
“Not so soon, though,” Cliff said, and frowned. “And aren't you married, Amanda?"
Jack and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Sort of,” I said. “My husband and I are separated. We suffer from irreconcilable differences."
At that Jack hooted. Little Roger vigorously shook a rattle to add his measure of noise to the gathering. Angel and Cliff looked mystified but content to let us have our joke. When the hubbub had settled down a little, Angel said, “But you'll see each other in London then, won't you?"
I said, “No"; Jack said, “Yes.” Our eyes met in surprise.
“It's something we haven't really discussed,” I admitted, “but it's not likely Jack will get to London any time soon. I certainly won't get back here."
The lightness of our teasing had instantly disappeared and an obvious tension replaced it. Angel said, “Cliff and I will get dessert,” and the two of them disappeared into the kitchen, hauling their protesting son with them.
“I can get to London,” Jack said. “It's not that far."
“Don't be silly. It's not only far, it's a world away, Jack. You're going to have to carve yourself out a new life here. You aren't going to want any leftover strings. Face it, you're feeling yourself again, you're ready for life to go on. When I leave, it will all be like a fresh start for you."
He shifted restlessly on the chrome and leather chair. “Mandy, you keep talking like this is some game we're playing, like it had a starting point and it has a predefined end. Like when you step on that plane, the game's over. That's not how people are."
“Well, no, but everything that's happened has been shaped by my coming here, and by your being depressed. Now that I'm leaving, and now that you're not depressed anymore, everything is going to change.” That sounded a little harsher than I'd meant it to, and I added, “I don't mean that we won't call each other once we're apart, or write notes or something. That would be only normal."
“And at what point do you see that stopping?” he asked, barely containing his obvious urge to jump up and pace around the room. “After a week, after a month?"
“Maybe we should have this conversation when we're alone,” I suggested. “You know me and my dessert."
He scowled at me. “This isn't a laughing matter, Mandy. I don't understand how you got to this point in your thinking."
“Shall I be blunt?"
“Please."
I bit my lip, hard, before taking the plunge. “There is no future for us, Jack. You should be able to see that. You live here; I live in London. If we keep up contact for very long it will only interfere with each of us trying to get on with our lives. And don't fool yourself that down the road we'd meet and continue this idyll. You can't do that. Things change. If it happened that we both were at the right place sometime and wanted to have a fling for old time's sake, there wouldn't be any harm in it."
“Old time's sake!” he exclaimed. “Mandy, we're in the middle of this and you're already looking down the road to a place where we've forgotten each other."
“That time will come, Jack."
“How can you possibly know that? Can't you just let things go where they want to go?"
“Want me to be blunter?"
He frowned at me. “You're being plenty blunt enough, I would have thought."
“I can be more so. I've met your kids, remember. Say you decided you and I had some future and you told that beautiful daughter of yours that you were going to live with me. Do you have some idea of what she'd say?"
Jack flushed. “So what? It's not her concern."
“And your son. I can picture him asking you, oh, very politely, if maybe you could not, you know, bring me to his baseball games, because, well, the other kids would think you were, um, interested in me."
“They're teenagers, for God's sake, Mandy. What do they know?"
“But that's precisely the point, Jack. They are teenagers, and they're very vulnerable to appearances. It's not going to be easy for them if their distinguished, athletic father starts appearing around town with an English butterball."
“You are absolutely obsessed with this weight thing, aren't you? No one cares, Mandy! Didn't you just learn that with your husband? All these years you thought he didn't sleep with you because of your weight, didn't you?"
When I didn't answer, he finally gave in to his urge to move and rose from his chair. Looking down at me, steely-eyed like an annoyed neurosurgeon, he asked, “Didn't you? That was the only scenario that went through your mind all those years. And it kept you from seeing the truth, that the man is gay and isn't interested in sleeping with women, even a sexy, attractive woman like you."
“But,” I said, glaring with my self-righteous OB/GYN glare, “he chose me originally because he thought no one else would want a fat woman."
“No, he didn't. He chose you because you were the only woman who made him feel interested enough to think he might bring it off."
“That's nonsense. You don't know why he chose me."
“Well, neither do you!"
At this impasse, Angel stuck her head into the room and asked, “Anyone interested in fruit tart for dessert?"
Embarrassed, both Jack and I said, “Yes,” and apologized for our uncouth behavior. Cliff returned grinning broadly, with Roger wide-eyed at his side. “Gee, even we don't have fights at other people's houses,” he said smugly as he placed dessert plates on the table.
“We weren't having a fight,” Jack assured him, “just a discussion."
Angel bore in a glazed tart with kiwi, apricots, grapes and pears that looked sensational. “Cliff is exaggerating. Back in San Francisco, when we were trying to figure out what was happening with us, we managed to argue all over the hospital. He proposed to me in the middle of an operation I was doing."
“Really?” I regarded Cliff with renewed respect. “Taking advantage of her even then, were you?"
He turned pathetic eyes on his wife. “I knew she'd manage to turn it around on me. They were the ones who were arguing."
Angel shook her head in mock hopelessness. “Having two children already, it's hard to cons
ider acquiring a third,” she murmured as she started to slice the tart.
“How unfair,” her husband protested, “when I whipped the cream for the tart, which made it impossible to overhear what the two of them were saying."
Jack threw up his hands in despair. “You're all nuts. No wonder Man ... Amanda so easily slid into your lives."
“And that's another thing,” Cliff said. “We seem to be calling her by the wrong name."
* * * *
Our drive home was naturally the first opportunity we had to continue our personal disagreement. The Lenzinis lived almost an hour's commute from the University hospital, so we were not without time to thrash out the entire subject, but Jack immediately attempted to change the rules.
“You're not telling the truth about all this,” he said, even before we'd pulled out of the driveway.
“I'm trying to be as logical, as practical as possible."
“Maybe so, but you're not coming close to being open."
“In what way?"
He turned briefly to look at me before returning his attention to his driving. “You're purposely leaving out any discussion of how you feel."
“What did you want me to say about how I feel?"
“I'd like to know how you feel about me, how you feel about leaving."
“I feel like hell about leaving. I expected to have longer here to do my work, and to enjoy being in America. Mostly, now, I'm bitterly unhappy that I won't get to spend more time with you.” I squeezed my hands together, tight, and added in a voice only slightly above a whisper, “I'm excessively fond of you, Jack. In fact, I'm infatuated with you. Is that what you wanted to know?"
Jack pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. In one efficient movement he released his seatbelt and mine, taking me into his arms to hug me breathstoppingly against his chest. “Good,” he murmured against my hair, very close to my ear. “Yes, that's what I wanted to know. Because that's how I feel about you. I feel enchanted, Mandy, like I've been caught up in a fairy tale."
I kissed the hollow of his neck where a pulse throbbed, and sighed. “But that's the problem, Jack, as well as the joy. We're in a special set of circumstances, like a summer holiday romance. We don't have to deal with the realities, because in a matter of weeks I'll be gone. You've come out of your depression, which in itself should feel like a blessing. Everything is golden right now. And our emotions...”
I shook my head, trying to clear it. My head hadn't felt entirely clear for weeks. “Jack, we needed each other. You've been distraught because of your divorce, and because of the drain of some patients not doing well. I've been feeling neglected by my husband and displaced in my work. So we've stolen these very special weeks to escape from those harsh realities. I think that's fair. There's nothing wrong with living out a fantasy when it doesn't impinge on anyone else. But fantasies are naturally limited."
“You see, that's where I think you're not being honest,” Jack said, releasing me. “It may be easier for you to believe that than accept the truth. But you and I have endured a fair amount of reality these last few weeks."
I regarded him with a certain amount of wariness. “What do you think the truth is, Jack?"
“That we're falling in love with each other. For real. That it's not some fairy dust that will blow away as easily as it's settled on us. Maybe you're afraid of that."
“Why would I be afraid of it?"
He grimaced. “Because you're not at all sure someone could love you. And because, if someone loved you, you might be forced to make a lot of changes in your life, some of them very difficult. And I'm not talking about your weight. Worse, you might find yourself vulnerable to being hurt. What if you ended up loving me, and I didn't end up loving you?"
“Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat. “What if that happened?"
“You'd be able to handle it,” he said, rubbing his thumb tenderly along my cheek. “But instead of being willing to face that possibility, you've created a scenario where we're both just caught in a kind of temporary insanity that will have a natural end. You're not willing to risk much to see if this is for real."
My fear exhibited itself as stubbornness. “I've told you there's nothing I can do."
“Hmm. I think that's a cop-out.” He leaned back against the driver's seat and regarded me with pursed lips. “Though you don't like how short the deadline has become, you're not at all dissatisfied with having a deadline. August, November, really it doesn't matter. You feel sure sometime between now and then we'd naturally drift apart anyhow, so why make a fool of yourself trying to delay the inevitable?"
“And what are you doing that's so brave?” I demanded.
“According to you, just having a romance with an ‘English butterball’ is brave,” he said. “Although I prefer to think of you as my English muffin."
I couldn't help laughing, but it was half a sob. “Oh, Jack. You're such a dear."
“Only in this fantasy. In real life I must be entirely different or you'd be considering my potential for the long term."
Even in the darkness of the car I could see his face well enough to know that he was very serious about all this. And he was right, of course, that I had lacked the courage to fight for what I wanted—whether it was my right to another three months here, or for a future with Jack. Why was that?
A mild breeze drifted through the open windows of the car, ruffling Jack's hair. I wanted to run my hands through that wiry brown crop, to sink my face into his chest and hide there. Instead I said, “I need time to think, Jack. Further discussion is going to be pointless until I do some soul-searching. Trust me?"
He lifted each of my hands in turn and kissed them. “I trust you, Mandy. More than you trust yourself."
Chapter Twenty-Two
At Mayfield House we parted for our own rooms by silent mutual consent. There was too much unsettled between us for me to simply sink into an erotic interlude with Jack. Well, that wasn't precisely true, but Jack probably thought it was. And I did need the space and time to think.
Being with him confused me. So did being alone. But now was the time to sort all this out. I kicked off my shoes and rubbed my feet on the Indian rug, thinking that maybe I'd get one for the Netherhall Gardens house before I left Madison, because, like many things, it would remind me of my stay here.
I made little plans like that all the time, to reassure myself that my life would continue in pleasant ways when I was back in London. Sometimes I'd remember a favorite book, and I'd remind myself that when I got back I'd take the time to read it again. All I was really doing was proving to myself that I expected there to be a huge empty space in my life that I would need to fill when I was no longer with Jack.
So maybe I wasn't being completely honest with myself about him, but how could I possibly admit how I felt? From the beginning I'd assured Jack that I knew what I was doing—that I just wanted a sexual interlude with him. People did it all the time, didn't they? And I had good reason to allow myself room for dalliance. I was a zillion miles away from Nigel, and we hadn't had sex for a zillion years. A brief, adult affair made all the sense in the world.
Honestly, I still believed that. The problem was that that wasn't how it had worked out. Maybe because of those weeks we'd just been buddies, or maybe because I was so sexually needy, but probably because Jack was such a wonderful guy, whatever the reason, I had completely fallen for him.
Nevertheless, I felt almost obligated to pretend that I hadn't. It seemed to me that was the proper position to take. Miss Manners would have approved of that, wouldn't she? If I told Jack it would just be a fling, then I should keep my word and make it just a fling, shouldn't I?
So why was he making such a big deal out of insisting that I admit to the truth? We both knew that under our surface fantasy I was feeling something deeper than sexual attraction. Jack seemed to be saying that perhaps he was, too. But what difference did it make, really? We had totally separate lives, lives that would not mesh.
You don't just walk away from one of the jobs either of us had. There was no more chance of Jack moving to London than there was of me being offered a place in Lavinia's department. We weren't kids. We had families located where we lived. You don't move thousands of miles away from teenagers you're trying to have some influence on. You don't leave your own country just because one summer you fell in love with some guy who maybe loved you, too.
Do you?
What had he said? That I was afraid because I'd have to make a lot of changes in my life. Well, who wouldn't be? I had a daughter in England, to say nothing of a husband. I had a house and a job and friends. Jack wasn't offering to throw over his whole way of life, I noticed. Of course, I didn't know any American doctors who'd ever come to practice in England; the brain drain was always in the opposite direction. And his kids were younger than mine, not out of the nest yet. And you couldn't practice pediatric neurosurgery just anywhere the way you could obstetrics and gynecology.
If I believed that he loved me, all of this might be moot. But how could I believe he loved me? Oh, I didn't doubt he was sexually attracted to me. That was plain enough. It was the proximity, no doubt, and my own raging desire that prompted his interest. And his personal situation, being divorced and in low spirits about his work. Probably having someone lusting after his body had perked him up along with the Prozac.
But forever? I don't think so. Even the sexual attraction would fade, given time. There were too many beautiful, sexy women in the world. Why would Jack be satisfied with me and my oversized body? If he thought he was now, it was just an aberration which would pass in time. And where would I be left then, if I believed him? Flat on my ass, that's where.
By the time I reached this point in my reasoning, I was completely disrobed and thoroughly convinced. It was the merest chance that I happened to catch sight of myself in the mirror above the dresser as I reached into the drawer for my nightshirt. What I saw surprised me. I've seen thousands of women's bodies. They come in all sizes and shapes, all colors and conditions. The one reflected back to me was nothing so out of the ordinary.
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