Reunion

by Therese Fowler

  Julian looked tired, or just moody, maybe, standing there picking at a callous on his palm. “She’s mortal like the rest of us, you know.”

  “It’s not that. Well—it is that, a little, but it’s more about how we haven’t spent any real time together in twenty-plus years. I feel like I know her, and yet I also feel like I don’t.” They’d each led very full, very different lives after all. “And,” he laughed, “it’s been forever since I’ve attended any kind of a dance.”

  Julian went into the kitchen, saying, “Did you remember to buy her a corsage?”

  “Oh, damn, am I supposed to?” He had no idea what the social protocols were these days. Literary gatherings, or the ones he attended at any rate, demanded little more than a sports jacket, a bottle of red wine, and familiarity with the most current issue of Southern Literary Journal.

  “Dad,” Julian said from the kitchen doorway, “that was a joke. I highly doubt this is a corsage-type event.”

  “No, you’re probably right. Still, flowers would be good, don’t you think?”

  His son shrugged and turned back to his task. “I’ve got some Chivas. Want a shot?”

  Mitch shook his head. “But I’d be eternally grateful if you’d hunt down a little bouquet while I get ready.”

  Julian poured whisky into a tumbler and took a sip before answering. “There’s no place to buy flowers around here, sorry.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, you’ve been gone awhile. Maybe there’s—”

  “Nope.”

  “Not even a grocery store? All my local stores have floral departments.”

  “We’re in urban South Chicago.”

  “Well, even so, there must be a florist near here.”

  Julian shook his head.

  “You’re certain? What about, I don’t know, one of those little sidewalk vendors?”

  Julian’s expression was unreadable. His tone, when he spoke, was careful and cool. “Why are you so desperate to bring her flowers? Not only do you already have a great girlfriend, you’re here getting all worked up about trying to impress a woman who has seen it all. Who has it all. You could give her flowers every hour all day long for a year and she’d only find it quaint. You’re an English professor, you earn eighty thousand a year. Nothing you can bring her, nothing you can do for her, is going to make any serious impression.”

  “You don’t know her—”

  “You don’t know her, you just said so yourself. You knew her, for a little while, twenty-three years ago. You knew Harmony Blue Kucharski—and then between you and Mom, you pretty much screwed her over.”

  It was as if the barometric pressure had plummeted, pulling all the air out of the room.

  “What exactly did your mother tell you?” And why had she told him anything about Blue? When had she made that connection?

  “She told me everything, the whole ugly mess. That she bullied you into dumping Blue, and that instead of fighting back with the truth, you let her win. You broke a girl’s heart—a girl who must have really admired you, really loved you, or why would she be doing so much for you now?—broke her heart because you were a goddamn coward.”

  “You don’t understand what was at stake,” Mitch said, trying to keep calm. “Your mother didn’t care about the truth. She wouldn’t listen—”

  “Then maybe you should have told someone else! A lawyer. A judge.”

  “I already had so much to deal with. When you’re a junior professor, it’s all you can do to keep up with your teaching load, your research, meetings—I really did care about Harmony Blue—about Blue—and that’s why it seemed kinder to cut her loose, rather than subject her to all that. I honestly thought that would put an end to all the trouble.”

  “It was a Band-Aid, for Christ’s sake. Could you not see the bigger picture?” Julian’s voice was tighter now, thicker. “Could you not see that the only person who would benefit from your ‘kindness’ was you?”

  “That’s not fair,” Mitch said, clenching his hands together. “I thought I could placate your mother—”

  “Who you should have known by then was implacable! But no. Instead, you dumped Blue, and when that didn’t work …” Julian’s voice caught, then broke as he finished, “you dumped me.”

  What could he say? Julian was right.

  Julian had been staring at him, but now he looked away—not so quickly that Mitch couldn’t see the angry tears.

  “J, listen,” Mitch began, wiping the tears that welled in his own eyes. This was hard, harder than he’d imagined it would be if—when—he and Julian finally had it out. Who said time healed all wounds? Time hid them is what it did. It lulled you into believing that none of what happened in your past mattered as long as today was good. It made you think that the past was too slow to possibly catch up to now. Rest easy, it lied.

  He lowered his head and breathed deeply. “I—I’m sorry.”

  Silence.

  “I’m so sorry. You’re right. It’s true. I should have fought back. I was scared that she’d make things even worse—not for me, for you. I’m not… I’m not good at confrontation. She was the mother, she had everything on her side. It was a really difficult time …”

  He’d known so little about how to do life then—his, or any. How to be a husband, how to be a father, how to be more than a guy who had hamstrung himself and a girl by getting her pregnant in high school. His parents had said it didn’t have to ruin his dreams, and they were right, it didn’t have to: if he had taken the energy he’d been using to create Professor Mitch Forrester and put it into a custody fight, a righteousness battle, he might have become something truly impressive indeed.

  He sat up and looked at Julian, who stood backed against the door-jamb, hands in pockets, head down. “I ended up losing everything I cared about. And as for Blue …”

  Julian looked up expectantly.

  “I hated hurting her. She had a tough life as it was. Never knew her father, practically had to raise her sister while their mother worked eighteen-hour days … I don’t know, I still think she was better off without me.”

  “But not anymore.”

  Mitch nodded. “I have to think we got reconnected for a reason. Maybe all this—Lions, you, this date—maybe it’s my chance to redeem myself with both of you.”

  He got up and went to Julian, his hand held out. Julian took it, and let Mitch pull him into a hug. “Forgive me,” Mitch said, holding Julian tightly.

  “It’s done,” Julian said, his voice gruff but soft. He wiped his eyes, then stepped back and pulled the hem of his T-shirt down, pointing at the front. “Everything Good.”

  Mitch nodded.

  “Right. Okay. So … I guess you better get in the shower,” Julian said. “Blue …” He stopped, coughed, then nodded as if coming to a conclusion. “Blue’s not gonna want a guy who smells like that sofa.”

  It took a while for the water to get hot, so Mitch took his tux shirt out of its packaging. He didn’t know what he’d have done if the tux shop hadn’t opened at ten, if they’d had nothing on hand. Maybe he wouldn’t have come to Chicago at all. Opportunity would have passsed him by, leaving him as distant from his son as ever. As far from Blue as ever, too. But the shop was open, and they did have what he needed, and now here he was, standing at the threshold of a new start—which just went to show that things worked out pretty much the way they were supposed to.

  In the shower, he stood and let the water beat against his neck and shoulders before using Julian’s soap and shampoo. The soap was travel-size, the shampoo bottle miniature as if to highlight that his son had lived his whole life in transition.

  He hummed, a nervous, tuneless sound as he went quickly from the bathroom back to the guest bedroom. The room had an old double bed, and the same chenille bedspread that had been on it when he and Renee had bunked there a few times instead of trekking back to their apartment in Evanston. She’d been hugely pregnant then, and he’d been mostly terrified and reluctant, too far in to back out.r />
  A very long time ago, that was.

  The tux fit well enough, for which he was thankful. He might not stand out among the crowd, but he felt sure he would at least fit in. God knew who else would be at this gala, being held in the “ridiculously enormous” home of one of Chicago’s billionaires. One. Of their billionaires. Blue had sounded so casual about it all—which only made him more aware of how different their worlds were. Julian was right: he didn’t know her very well, not this version. She was still Harmony Blue, but in the same way a butterfly was still a caterpillar.

  She’d said, “The house is so overdone you won’t even believe it. Italianate to the hilt. Statuary, toilets, everything.”

  “You’ve been there?” he’d asked.

  “A few times.”

  “With a date?”

  She’d laughed. “A time or two. Why?”

  “I want to make sure I measure up.”

  “Then don’t eat with your fingers. Oh, and speak optimistically about the Cubs.”

  A last look in the old silvered mirror and he was satisfied that he’d done his best. “Julian,” he called, leaving the bedroom.

  He got no reply. The kitchen was empty, and the living room, too. On the dining table was a key and a note—See you tomorrow … J.—and a vivid, fragrant flower bouquet.

  ust before the chauffeured Lincoln was scheduled to pick him up, Mitch rode the elevator down to the building’s lobby. The flowers (he recognized tiny roses and lilies but not the purple or white blooms) were clutched tightly in both hands. His heart ached, yet, over Julian and was racing, now, for Blue.

  Since the moment he’d seen Blue on Front Street, he’d felt unmoored. He had never imagined he’d meet up with her again, and couldn’t have foreseen her interest in his project, her willingness to help—and to let him accompany her tonight. What should he expect to come of their date? What was she expecting of him? Good conversation, certainly. A sociable, amiable, companionable partner who wouldn’t embarrass her, no doubt. Those things alone made him anxious enough; they were nothing, however, compared to his questions about afterward.

  The way he felt tonight was not so different from the way he’d felt way back on the night of their first real date, a few days after that New Year’s Eve party. If their romance was real, was it sustainable? Did he look his best? Would they end up in bed? He’d wanted to, yes; he just hadn’t known how ready he was to deal with everything that went along with it at the time. The same was true now, if it came to that.

  There was no way it could come to that.

  But supposing it did?

  “We’re grown-ups,” he said as the elevator bumped to a stop. Grown-ups could figure these things out. If the rumors that she’d slept with George Clooney were true, Mitch didn’t want to know.

  The limo waited at the curb, as did the driver.

  “Good evening. Nice tonight, isn’t it?”

  Mitch nodded. “Lovely.” It was cold for April, but the sky was clear, a deep sapphire fading to black. He could see the first stars.

  The car was immaculate. Quite a change from his own car: a basic Toyota cluttered with folders and notebooks.

  If his life were like Blue’s, instead of driving himself to Southpoint Mall when he needed new shoes, he’d be driven to Michigan Avenue. There would be no squeaky desk chair, and he’d have no concerns over fully funding his retirement.

  Not that he had it so hard. He’d never struggled, not really. His parents had money; all his life Mitch had lived comfortably, never hungry, never needy. They’d paid his tuition to Northwestern, paid for the Evanston apartment, freeing him and Renee to try to make a marriage and a home. Money had never meant much more to him than a means for funding his passions—for education, for a literary life. It was all he’d ever wanted. Hand-stitched Italian loafers, nice as they might be, would not make reading Tolstoy a more pleasurable experience.

  22

  he Balenciaga dress did make Blue look sexy. It fit like the body glove it was, showing off her legs, accentuating her waist, making her breasts full but not fleshy. Her hair fell onto her back in glossy waves that only a $450 stylist could craft. She would appear to be exactly the celebrity the public believed she was.

  Usually, attending these kinds of events required little effort beyond superficial preparations: hair, nails, leg wax, makeup (done concurrently with the manicure, a time-saver). A wonderful couture dress. A teardrop sapphire against her breastbone, suspended from a fine silver chain. The resulting effect let her be in public—let her be public— thoughtlessly, in the most literal sense of the word. It took no thought, inspired no fear, and preserved her persona. Tonight was not so different. The extra effort was all mental, was all about Mitch.

  She carried her shoes into the living room and sat down facing the windows, next to Peep. He stretched and rolled over onto his back, inviting her to scratch his belly. She obliged. Did Mitch like cats? She couldn’t recall. Lynn and Daniel clearly did, so perhaps Mitch did too. “No worries, Peepster,” she said. “Love me, love my cat. Tough chick, aren’t I?” Peep’s response was a deep, growly purr.

  How different her life might be if she’d been tougher sooner. Tough enough to stick out Mitch’s rejection, to keep getting up and going in to Lynn’s office even after she lost hope that Lynn would ever be more than her boss. Why hadn’t she been able to face the world, chin out, the way she made herself do later? Where was all her steadfast determination then?

  When she first moved in with Marcy, she’d packed a few boxes and left a note. Dear Mom: I’m moving in with a friend, don’t ask where, as I’d prefer not to say right now. I just need to get away for a while. She’d believed at the time that she was making a statement.

  “Yeah,” she told Peep, “a statement of stupidity.”

  Lake Michigan was the darkest blue today, the sky above it the color that Mitch said North Carolinians called “Carolina Blue.” If he had taken her with him to North Carolina, she might now be Carolina Blue. Remade in a way that might not have allowed her to sit here looking out over a city that celebrated her as one of its greatest assets, but which might have given her something resembling a normal life.

  And while it was true that a young man who was at this very moment living, breathing, perhaps studying or working or laughing as he tossed a Frisbee or kissed a girl, existed only because she had run from the pain of disappointed dreams, it was hard not to feel sorry for herself, for what she’d lost or, more accurately, never had.

  A little more faith in herself might have made all the difference. Where would that faith have come from, though? The one thing upon which her entire worth was based—that Mitch had fallen in love with her in spite of her frizzy hair, her unsightly mole, her fatherless history—had been blasted apart by his rejection.

  In the first week after, she had hardly been able to get out of bed. Melody would get up after hitting the snooze alarm three times, saying groggily, “You going to shower first?”

  And Blue would roll over, putting her back to Mel.

  Mel would leave the room, then, a little later, come back to see if Blue was going to get up. “Aren’t you going to work?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  Hours would pass, Blue sleeping away some of them, then waking to feel crushed again. Mitch did not love her enough. Daniel would not be her father, the grandfather of her children. She would never be a Forrester, never tell her children and grandchildren the story of that New Year’s Eve.

  The travesty was that she’d done everything so deliberately right. She’d kept her sister out of jail, kept food in the refrigerator, made it through high school with decent grades. She’d found a good job, she worked hard, never called in sick when she wasn’t. She’d avoided pointless relationships with immature guys, she’d held out even as Melody, pre-Jeff, was giving in with a different guy every week. She intended to earn some good fortune because, damn it, she wanted out of that dead-end life.

  It had seemed to work. She�
��d fallen in love with a man who had all the decent qualities a girl could ask for: He was educated, he earned a decent living, he was from a good family with parents who treated her like a woman who was worthy of their son.

  She had believed, for a couple fairy tale months, that the high road would lead her to the kingdom. Love, it had seemed, really could conquer all.

  “Not,” she said. Peep looked up at her and blinked.

  Running away had been the worst possible choice, that was more obvious now than ever. At the time? At the time, she’d decided it was the solution to all her problems.

  She’d had a very different solution in mind the day she dragged herself out of the house and out to the 7-Eleven store for a newspaper. There, however, she’d run into Marcy Marcy, in all black, with her punk haircut, an Adam Ant T-shirt hanging off one shoulder.

  “Hey, Harmony Blue! Long time no see.” Not since the two of them had worked together at the pet store. “How’s the new job? Or should I even ask—you look like hell.”

  “I’m—I was sick.”

  “Nothing contagious, I hope,” Marcy said, stepping back.

  “No.” And thank God; she wouldn’t wish her misery on anyone.

  Making a little more effort to seem less hellish, she’d said, “So, what are you up to?”

  “Just stopped back home to borrow money from my old man. I needed a snack before I head back to my place.” She held up an open bag of Cheetos. “You?”

  “I’m enlisting.”

  “Come again?”

  “In the Army. They need a few good men.”

  Marcy said, “You’re female.”

  She shrugged.

  Making an obvious show of looking around the store, Marcy said, “No recruiters here.” She popped a cheese puff in her mouth. “Hey,” she said, chewing thoughtfully, “Why don’t you come hang out with me today? It’s not that far—a little place off the Dixie Highway in Harvey.”