Second Acts

by Teri Emory

“No, you’re very pretty,” said Lilly, as if she were expressing a simple statement of fact. “And you look so young for your age. Oops, I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”

  I laughed. “I’ll take it as a compliment. I was fortunate to be born into a family where no one gets gray hair. And my mother had lovely skin. This stuff is all in the genes, don’t you think?”

  “Mostly, yes. I look very much like my mother. How about personality? Likes, dislikes, talents, that sort of thing? Do you suppose that’s all inherited, too?”

  “I’m not sure. My daughter is quite different from me. She’s good at things I could never do—math, for example. She has a lovely singing voice; I can barely carry a tune. And look at Kevin and Brendan! They look nothing alike, and they couldn’t be more different—in temperament, I mean. Kevin is so outgoing, Brendan is so quiet . . . “

  Lilly interrupted me, looking puzzled. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “About Kevin and Brendan. I mean, being adopted and all, Brendan wouldn’t necessarily . . .”

  Lilly locked her gaze on my stunned face.

  “You didn’t know, Sarah, did you?” she said quietly. I shook my head. “Oh, my God. I don’t know what to say. Brendan told me years ago. Betsy, his mother, became pregnant with Brendan when she was in college, but the father didn’t want to marry her. She’s Catholic, you know, so she’d never consider an abortion. Were they even legal then? Anyway, Kevin was at college with Betsy, and he wound up marrying her shortly after Brendan was born. Kevin is the only father Brendan knows or wants to know.”

  I said, “And Kevin considers himself Brendan’s father. Maybe that’s all that matters.” I tried to sound convincing about this.

  Lilly was speaking very quickly. “This all came up when one of our friends in Boston went on a mission to find her biological parents. Brendan said he had no interest in contacting his own biological father, didn’t want to make Kevin feel bad. And then, the week before Brandon graduated from his master’s program at MIT, his mother decided to tell him who his real father was. She sent Brendan a letter, with pictures of the guy from thirty years ago and a current phone number for him somewhere in the Midwest. The letter said that she had been in touch with the man all these years and that Kevin was aware of all of this. Brendan just went crazy. I mean, her timing was bizarre—right before graduation and everything. Brendan says he had always told her that he didn’t want to know anything about the man, but she sort of forced him to deal with all of this. Brendan was so open with me, and we don’t even know each other very well. I just assumed you’d know.”

  Yes, you would assume, as any normal person would, that Kevin would have thought to mention to the woman he’s lived with for four years that his son was adopted. Especially since his son shares the information even with mere acquaintances.

  “Lilly, stop apologizing. Let’s just forget it happened. And do me a favor, will you? Don’t mention to Kevin or Brendan that you and I have talked about this. No need to make it a bigger deal than it is.” Lilly looked relieved.

  I, too, was relieved. A woman I had known for thirty minutes had just helped me see a truth about Kevin that had eluded me for years. The information was strangely liberating, as if I’d suddenly lifted a translucent shield from in front of my face—a filmy barrier that had permitted light to enter my eyes but which kept my brain from identifying the real shape and color of things.

  “Scratch a lover,” said Dorothy Parker, “and find a foe.”

  Miriam:

  Touch and Go

  “And her heart is full and hollow

  Like a cactus tree”

  —Joni Mitchell

  I stayed in touch with Miss Emma for a few years after I left Savannah. From time to time, she sent cheery missives on her pale blue monogrammed stationery: I hope you are happy, dear, and that we’ll see each other again soon.

  I replied on picture postcards with seasonal bulletins from New York. My school has been closed for three days because of a snowstorm. The tulips are already blooming in Central Park. They say we’re in for a hot summer.

  Now and then, Winnie and I exchanged letters, too. I’m cashing in on the local tour business, she wrote. That scandalous book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, has made Savannah THE place! Everyone wants to come here, to see Johnny Mercer’s house and meet Miss Chablis. I’m bringing in tourists by the bus and plane load, filling up hotel rooms, even giving walking tours myself. Looks like the Good Lord never intended for me to retire after all!

  I often wondered how and when I’d manage to see Miss Emma and Winnie again. Then, after a long spell of silence, a letter from Winnie:

  Dear Miriam,

  I am sorry to be the one to tell you this. I wasn’t even sure I should write, but I thought you would want to know.

  Miss Emma died last Monday. She had a bad fall a while back. It was downhill after that, you know how things go with older people. Anyway, she was not herself. She moved in with Peter, and she was at home with him when she passed. It was a beautiful funeral. All her church friends were there. Miss Emma was 88 years old. She had a good life.

  I hope all is fine with you. Again, I am so sorry to write with sad news.

  Love, Winnie

  I wanted permission to call Peter.

  I tried to convince myself that it was simply a matter of good manners to call an old friend who had just lost his mother.

  Winnie would probably let Peter know that she had written to me about his mother. He would, naturally, wonder why I didn’t call. After all, I’d been so fond of Miss Emma.

  I could keep the conversation brief, chatty, superficial. Yes, I’m still teaching at the same school, still living in the same place.

  I’d resist the temptation to ask what I really wanted to know. Have you fallen in love with someone else? Have you taken her to Elizabeth’s? Where do you keep the picture of me in my green dress? Do you look the same? Do you still sail? Does it clutch at your heart to think of me?

  But I didn’t call. Instead, I sent a donation to have a tree planted in Miss Emma’s memory in an Israeli forest close to Bethlehem. Jewish people do this all the time when someone dies, but I didn’t think anyone at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Savannah would honor Miss Emma quite the same way. I knew she would have loved the idea. I gave Peter’s address as the place where the certificate documenting the location of her tree was to be sent.

  A thank-you arrived weeks later, a folded white card—the kind you order right from the funeral home—with a line drawing of prayerful hands, and pre-printed sentiment in raised black letters: The family of Emma Robinette is grateful for your kind expression of sympathy at her passing. Below this, handwritten in deep blue ink: How nice of you to plant the tree for Mom. I hope you are well. Peter.

  __________

  I met Cameron Murphy, my date for the Gillians’ party, years ago, when he sold me the co-op apartment I still live in. My down payment came from money Dad left me when he died. Mom objected to the idea—buying my own home instead of waiting for a husband to provide one further deflated her dwindling hopes for me.

  After the closing on my place, I didn’t see or hear from Cameron again until we ran into each other one morning years later, while shopping on the Lower East Side. I noticed him eyeing me as we perused the selection at A. Altman Luggage on Orchard Street.

  “Miriam, isn’t it? Miriam Kaplan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Cameron Murphy. I sold you a co-op uptown many years ago.”

  “Cameron. Of course. You know, I’m still at the same place.”

  “I assume you got rid of the bathroom wallpaper.”

  “I can’t believe you remember that. Awful, wasn’t it?”

  “And hard to forget. Black background, hundreds of lime green peace symbols that actually glowed in the dark
.”

  Cameron had aged well. The gray at his temples and the soft wrinkles around his eyes added interest to what had once been a rather undistinguished youthful face.

  “I ripped down that paper right after the closing,” I laughed. “I actually saved a scrap of it, in case I ever had to prove I once had the most bizarre bathroom walls in Manhattan.”

  The little I once knew about Cameron Murphy was slowly coming back to me. Murphy Realty was a family business. He worked with his father and a sister. He had been married when I knew him years earlier, but I saw no wedding ring now. Wife had some political job, maybe? They had kids, twin boys.

  “Do you still teach?” he was asking.

  “Still at it. I’m flattered that you remember.”

  “I remember you, all right. You’re quite—um—memorable. And you still look the same.”

  He’s flirting. Need to find out about the wife.

  “Why, thank you. I seem to recall you had twin boys. They must be—what?—close to thirty now?”

  “Now I’m flattered! My boys are thirty-two, both married. The older one works in the business with me. He and his wife have given me a granddaughter. The brightest, prettiest, most willful four-year-old alive. Has me wrapped around her finger.”

  “And your wife? Didn’t she have some sort of community service job—in the mayor’s office, maybe?”

  “Right again. She worked in the mayor’s cultural affairs office.”

  “Not any longer?”

  He took a breath. “She passed away five years ago.”

  “Cameron, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “I don’t mind talking about it. Charlotte had cancer. She was in and out of Sloan-Kettering for years before she went. It was a tough time for us all, but well, you know what they say, life goes on.”

  “Are you buying luggage for a trip to someplace exciting?” I asked, eager to veer from the topic at hand.

  “This set is for the kids—the whole family’s going on a Disney cruise. And you?”

  “The school year just started, so I don’t have plans to travel any time soon. But I wanted to treat myself to some new luggage.” I tapped the retractable handle of a bright red suitcase.

  “Are you planning on taking that with you?”

  “I was just going to wheel it to the subway.”

  “Before you do, can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  Over onion rolls and a platter of smoked white fish at Ratner’s, Cameron showed me pictures of his children and his perfect granddaughter, and, though I didn’t ask, offered up painstaking details about the late Charlotte’s hard-to-diagnose disease, the suffering she endured, the treatment she tolerated, the bravery she exhibited, the void she left in his life.

  He asked what just about everyone asks me, or wants to: How come you never got married? And I gave the answer I always give: Just lucky, I guess, (smile), no really, I came close a few times, but things just didn’t work out. I don’t discuss the Savannah episode; I don’t go into details at all. I haven’t met a man in ages who has thought to ask for further information on the subject.

  Which explains, to a certain degree, why Cameron and I are now several years into a relationship that’s no deeper or more complex than it was when we had that breakfast together at Ratner’s. We’ve been to bed a few times, though not very recently, and the experience was pleasant, but not the stuff that gives rise to lingering desire. We have enough in common so that we can thoroughly enjoy an occasional evening out without yearning for even one extra minute together. He’ll never appreciate my addiction to movies, and I’ll never understand his devotion to golf, but none of it matters since nothing between us . . . matters. As my students say these days, it is what it is.

  __________

  Violet and Grant, up from Florida for the Gillians’ bash, stayed at my place for the weekend. Cameron came by early Saturday afternoon to watch a football game with Grant before we left for Connecticut. It was an Indian summer day, perfect weather for the party.

  Violet had brought me a gift of Goldfinger on DVD.

  “I understand this movie has special meaning for you,” Violet said. “I must have seen it years ago, but I don’t remember for sure. All the Bond movies kind of blend in my mind.”

  “Oh, but this one is unforgettable,” I said. “Especially the first few minutes. Sean Connery emerges from murky waters onto the shore of some banana republic, probably meant to be Cuba—the movie was made during that era when we worried every minute about the Russians attacking us from Havana. Anyway, he sneaks from the water into a fortress and sets a timer on a bomb. Then he unzips his wetsuit, sticks a red flower in the lapel of the white dinner jacket he’s been wearing all along, and strolls into a nearby cantina, where he cavalierly lights a cigarette and listens as the bomb goes off in the distance.”

  “How can you possibly remember all those details?” Violet laughed.

  “Because this is the movie that catapulted me into adolescence. I’ve never been the same since the first time I saw it. I fantasized endlessly about meeting a man like Connery. It was one of the first videos I ever bought, and I’ve run it so often that the sound is scratchy.”

  “It’s hard for me to understand how you can stand to see movies over and over,” Cameron said. “I don’t have the patience to sit through most of them even once.”

  “Everyone has patience for something, Cameron. You just save yours for the golf course.”

  It’s a good thing that now and then Cameron and I gently call attention to the differences between us. Just in case, in a moment of temporary insanity, we ever considered taking each other seriously.

  __________

  The Gillians’ house is a marvel of space and light, and remarkably cozy, considering the size of the place. It’s also a testament to how successfully Beth and Jim have blended their different notions of how the house should look. Beth’s art collection—mostly nudes sketched in sepia or charcoal—is neighbor to an eclectic assortment of international pop culture posters that Jim has amassed on his business travels. In their entry foyer, a delicate sketch of a reclining female from eighteenth-century Provence shares wall space with a poster, in Hebrew, for the movie Fargo. On the dining room wall, an etching of two playful Italian Renaissance cherubs hangs next to a colorful, Mondrian-like street map of downtown Tokyo.

  The four of us—Violet and Grant, Cameron and I—were barely in the front door when I heard someone call my name, then Violet’s. It was Sarah, maneuvering her way through the crowded living room, with Kevin in tow. She was wearing a midnight blue, tuxedo-style pantsuit, the kind of outfit only willowy women like Sarah can carry off.

  “Wow!” I said. “Very Diane Keaton.”

  “Diane Keaton should be so lucky,” Kevin said.

  As if Kevin weren’t there, Sarah threw her arms around Violet and Grant and led them towards the bar that was set up near the kitchen. My attention went to Kevin, who was shaking hands to greet Cameron but following Sarah with his eyes.

  “Haven’t seen you for a while. How are things in the world of real estate?” Kevin asked Cameron. “And you, darling Miriam, you look spectacular, as always. Great dress.”

  I’d found the dress in a vintage clothing store in the Village. It was 1930s-style cream-colored satin, ankle length, cut low in the back.

  “Thanks, Kev. You look pretty spectacular yourself. Where’s your son? I heard he was coming.”

  “Brendan and his friend Lilly are on a tour of the house with Jim. Have you seen the new Jacuzzi in the master bedroom? Twelve people could fit in it.”

  “What does the sign outside mean, Château Crummy Acres?” Cameron said.

  “It’s an old joke,” I said. “From Beth and Jim’s impoverished student days in Ithaca. Their landlord was a pompous twit who taught in the philosophy department at Cornell. He bought a vi
neyard on one of the Finger Lakes, gave it a snooty French-sounding name—Maison du Lac, I think—and proceeded to bottle wines under his own pretentious label. Beth and Jim swore that if they ever had the chance to christen a piece of property, they would choose the most incongruous, ridiculous name they could. Hence, Château Crummy Acres.”

  Kevin and Cameron laughed. “I love the whole idea,” said Kevin. “Aren’t Beth and Jim the least ostentatious rich people you’ve ever met?”

  “Yes, and to think I knew them before they lived like this,” I said. “I assume we’ll all be sitting together tonight. Where did Beth put us?”

  Kevin nodded. “We’re out back, on the glassed-in patio. Sarah and I checked out the place cards. Except for someone named Gabe something, it’s the usual crowd at our table, plus Beth’s brother Bruce and his new wife—what’s her name?”

  “We just call her Number Four,” I said. “I think her name is Kimberlee, spelled l-e-e, which distinguishes her from Number Three, spelled l-y. The current Mrs. Jacobs is twenty-four, an aerobics instructor. The original Mrs.—Number One—was a chemist around Bruce’s age. He seems to lower the age requirement and occupational standards with each succeeding wife.”

  Kevin laughed. “I’ll try to forget you said that when I meet Number Four. See you two later. I’m going to catch up with Sarah.”

  Cameron and I moved toward the bar, passing the tuxedoed young man with Beethoven hair who was playing an ornamental rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings” on the grand piano.

  “Beaches,” I said automatically.

  “Excuse me?” Cameron asked.

  “The movie this song is from. Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey. The ultimate chick flick.”

  “Another one I haven’t seen, and probably never will,” he said, handing me a glass of Cabernet. The pianist had moved on to the theme from Out of Africa.

  “How about this one?” I tried. “Gorgeous scenery, Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.”