Reunion

by Therese Fowler

Blue sat on the sun-warmed stair, drew in a deep breath, let it out and dialed her sister.

  Four rings, then Jeff answered.

  “Hi, Jeff, it’s Blue. How are you?”

  “Hi, Blue. Not much new here. They got the beans in, but we’re short on rain so far this year. Mel’s still out,” he said before she had a chance to ask. That was Jeff, quick and to the point. “Girls’ lunch with the knitting crowd,” he explained. “You know how it is.”

  Could he really think so? She said, “Oh, all right. When’s she due back?”

  “Hard to say. They get to yakking, I sometimes have to make my own supper.”

  “Well, you know how women are.”

  “That I do. I’ll tell her you called.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No trouble.”

  After hanging up, Blue stayed on the fire escape step a minute longer. Girls’ lunch with the knitting crowd. The closest she’d come to that kind of thing was a fund-raiser she’d attended for women in Nepal, to buy them sturdy fine-wool sheep from which they could sustain their own livelihoods.

  Not quite the same.

  Which was okay. She had plenty of worthwhile things filling her time. With a last look at the roofscapes around her, she climbed back inside her office.

  Erin arrived a few minutes later. “Got your message. What’s up?”

  Blue waved her over to her desk. “I got an email with an attachment, and I don’t know who it’s from.”

  “Did you do the preview pane?”

  Blue drew a blank. “The what?”

  “Here.” Erin sat down at the desk and in a quick couple of keystrokes had the email program set up so that it displayed a bit of the message text without her having to actually open the message. “See? This way you peek in and, if you can tell it’s legit, open the message.” As Blue was about to peek in as suggested, Erin clicked open the security program and spent another minute tinkering. Then she got out of the chair. “Okay. You’re all updated.”

  “Good, thanks.”

  “Absolutely,” Erin said. Blue hardly heard her; her attention was already on the email and the bit of its message she could see

  Hey-

  Dad gave me your email address for Lions business.

  Hope you don’t mind my using it for something unrelated.

  Julian. A funny prickle ran up the back of her neck. “I should mind,” she said, clicking the message open, “but I don’t.”

  The attached files are pictures of a bird I thought you would appreciate. I took them right after arriving here in Iraq. (Sorry, can’t be more specific on where.) It’s a Blue-cheeked Bee-eater, a really useful bird.

  I trust everything is going well with Dad.

  -Julian

  She trusted, too. When she talked to Mitch last night, he’d been warm and reflective, good-natured about David Letterman’s recent quip: This Mitch Forrester’s a lucky guy, isn’t he? He does her show, she takes him dancing—I was going to call the guy and suggest he also buy a Powerball ticket, but this week’s jackpot is only a hundred eighty million.

  She opened the first picture file to find a vibrant green bird filling the frame. Its blue cheek was the least of it; its black eye stripe is what stood out, a stripe like Zorro’s mask. She opened each of the four other photos. How clear they were, how detailed—he was so obviously gifted.

  Less obvious was why he’d decided to email her. Presumably it was a straightforward friendly gesture: he knew she liked colorful birds, he’d seen and photographed one, he’d shared the images.

  If the gesture was so straightforward, why was she clutching the mouse so tightly? Why did it make her stomach fluttery, a little nauseated maybe? Why, at the same time, did it make her smile?

  That she was smiling made her frown.

  “I’m too old for this.”

  Whatever this was.

  She closed the images with five quick clicks, then closed the message with one more.

  Then she opened it again. She couldn’t not reply; he’d be sure to interpret that as disinterest or disdain or some other dis, and that would perpetuate their rough start, which would only mean more tension for Mitch.

  Reading through the message once more, she tried to gauge his tone for a clue about how best to respond. His salutation, Hey– was so casual. But casual was good, it was fine. And there was no sign-off at all, not even the generic Best or Thanks. Was he saying he’d taken the photos because he thought she’d appreciate the bird? Or was it that he appreciated the bird and, incidentally, thought she would too?

  She clicked REPLY. “Does it matter?” she said as she began to type, denying the possibility that it did.

  25

  hen Blue arrived at her mother’s apartment building Saturday afternoon, Melody opened the door and said, “Yellow.”

  “Call me Blue.”

  “Hi, Harmony Blue,” Mel said. They hugged, a quick and dutiful embrace. “The dress—I’ll wear the yellow dress.”

  “Why didn’t you call me back?”

  Mel shrugged and led the way to the rooftop-access door. “She looks wonderful. Calvin gave her the ring last night, she can hardly wait to show you.” She paused at the doorway and turned around. “Isn’t this something, her getting married?”

  “I guess it’s time.”

  “I guess we’ll be showering you next, eh?”

  “Have I told you how good you look?” Blue said, reaching past Mel to open the door.

  “What, aren’t you excited about finding Mitch again?”

  Mel’s perceptiveness caught Blue short, warned her that her defenses were down. She remedied that, standing straighter and smiling at Mel. She said, “I am. No need to rush things, though.”

  “How long since you’ve been in a serious relationship?”

  “Long,” Blue said. “I don’t have time to get serious.”

  “So it’s all just weekends on yachts and, like, trips to Jamaica with—who was that last guy?”

  “His name is Lou Patterson,” a financier she’d met at a Cubs game two years before, “and yes, that kind of dating works best.” Until she got bored with jet-setting, as she inevitably did, and bowed out.

  “Works best for what? Sex?”

  Blue said, “I don’t want to get into it. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I expect you’re right about that.”

  They went up the stairs to the rooftop, where caterers had transformed the garden space into a lattice-covered wonderland of ivy and violets and lace. Mel said, “Mom told me this is all on you. It’s beautiful. You really do right by her.” Her tone was almost grudge-free.

  “She worked so hard for us,” Blue said. “I’ll just go say hi.”

  She found her mother directing three women in violet aprons in the just-so arrangement of finger sandwiches. When the caterer had suggested doing the shower like a themed afternoon tea, Blue liked the idea but had expected her mother to pass. Instead, she’d taken to it wholeheartedly (like a duck to bugs) and in her invitations directed the guests to dress accordingly. Her mother’s own interpretation was a lavender chiffon dress printed with tiny green vines, a green cashmere cardigan, and lavender tights that ended at the ankle above lavender satin ballerina shoes.

  Blue kissed her cheek. “Hi, Mom—you look marvelous, like you just stepped off the runway.” Her hair was back in a loose French braid and her usual peace-sign earrings had been replaced with small dangling strings of silver and green beads.

  “You’re not exactly chopped liver,” her mother said, holding her by the shoulders and looking her over. Blue’s dress was a belted peony print, Carolina Herrera, meant for Monday’s show. “You either,” her mother said to Mel, who’d come up behind Blue. Mel’s dress flattered her, a red, white, and brown abstract print with an A-line skirt. Not cheap, and not matronly, suggesting Mel had put serious thought into her choice.

  Mel said, “Show her the ring.”

  The ring was platinum, with a large, round yellow diamo
nd flanked by a pair of smaller white ones. “Calvin says the middle one is me, I’m the sun; the others are you two, the stars.”

  “He said that?” Blue asked. “I like him better and better.” She liked, too, that his history had checked out. Not only was he who he said he was, his record was clean in every way.

  “She’s the star,” Mel said. “I’m the … I’m the rhinestone.”

  Blue nudged her. “Not. You are definitely stellar.”

  “That’s right. You’re both stars in my universe,” their mother said. “I told Calvin he is the middle one, the sun. We had a lively debate and had to settle it in bed.”

  Mel covered her ears. “I’m not listening. La la la la.”

  Their mothers’ friends began arriving, women from the bookstore, women from the co-op, the gardening club, the arts center—they were all ages, all sizes, colorful and eclectic in some cases, simple and quiet in others. All of them shared an affection for their generous, forthright Nancy, and all of them were eager to say so.

  Seated at round tables of six apiece, each woman told her story of how she’d met Nancy, what she’d thought of her. Blue’s mother always made a strong impression, as did the bit of her bio she was quick to share. “I don’t think I’d known her ten minutes,” said Jill, Calvin’s bookstore manager, “when she revealed she was Blue Reynolds’s mom. Now of course I was startled—Blue, dear, nothing against you, but it wasn’t clear you ever had a mother. You seemed to have appeared from the ethers in whole cloth.”

  Blue had no idea what to make of this, so she laughed along with the others.

  Her mother said, “I always say I have two girls, I always name them, and then it’s out there and we can get on to the important matters, like—”

  “Like rutabaga,” called a woman from the co-op.

  “Like men,” her mother said. “Men who like rutabaga.”

  They ate finger sandwiches of chicken and tuna salad, drank tea or wine or cocktails, and the conversation grew even more relaxed. Blue listened to the women at her table discussing teenagers, grandchildren, organic baby food, hemorrhoids, Viagra, marveling at the openness among these women who had not, in most cases, known one another before today. The inclusiveness she felt in simply being among them was a joy.

  All of her tablemates were either married or in a long-term relationship, and four of the five were content that way. The fifth was considering a trial separation from her husband of eighteen years. She said, “Blue, what do you think? Should I leave him?”

  You’re asking me? was Blue’s first thought. “Well, that depends,” is what she said. “Tell me more about your relationship.”

  Jill said, “Tell us more about yours!”

  “There isn’t much to tell.” This was true. While the media was abuzz with speculation about an engagement and tangential chatter about Mitch’s being on TBRS and nepotism, practically nothing was going on between her and Mitch in real life. She was busy, he was busy, they’d spoken only once this past week.

  She said, “I knew his family and him a long time ago, then I ran into them again in Key West. It was a nice coincidence.”

  The woman across from her said, “It was fate!”

  Another added, “My aunt had something like that happen to her, only it was when my uncle died, and she went to her class reunion and her high school boyfriend was there, and he was widowed. Widowered? Whatever. Anyway, they got back together and have been married now for eight years.”

  The others were nodding and adding their recollections of similar events. They commended her, teased her, made all her business their business—they made her one of them. The picture they painted of her happily-ever-after was so vivid and enthused that she could almost step right into it and be that princess she, too, had imagined, once.

  Almost.

  et’s order Chinese,” Mel said as they stood on the front stoop waving goodbye to the final guest. “My treat.”

  Blue was about to protest Mel’s paying when she saw her mother’s pointed look. “That sounds great. Mom, what do you think? Chinese tonight?”

  “Excellent plan.”

  They turned back to the building, a three-story Lincoln Park walk-up from the late 1800s. Blue loved the stone and brick, the character of the arched doorway and bay windows. She’d bought it for her mother—the entire building of three restored units, two of which were rented out—that first syndication-salary year. Bought this place, the New York loft, the Montana spread, and still had so much money left that, in a fit of guilt, she gave three million dollars away piecemeal, writing out checks to more than a hundred different charities in one afternoon. She remembered her hand shaking, the urgency. There was no reason she should have so much money. She hadn’t earned it, didn’t deserve it, found the whole nature of the business she’d gotten into improbable and unreal.

  In those first few months, she often woke in the middle of the night and called Marcy, her touchstone. “How did I do this?” she’d ask. “How did I get here?” And Marcy would say things like, “I bet Neil Armstrong said the same thing when he walked on the moon. All I did was climb into the rocket.’ Except, yeah, he was a great pilot and all that other stuff first.” And Blue would wonder if Armstrong had looked back at the Earth with a sense of no longer belonging there.

  “So, Mom,” Mel was saying, “what do you think your most entertaining gift was? My vote is the pink feather-wrapped handcuffs.”

  Blue said, “I thought you didn’t like thinking about Mom and sex.”

  “I don’t. I’m hoping she’ll re-gift them to me.”

  “Let’s go inside,” their mother said, “so we don’t embarrass the neighbors.”

  When they were upstairs again, Blue said to her mother, “About my present…”

  “I love the idea,” which was to have the wedding and the reception in Key West, travel and accommodations for all the guests paid for by Blue. “Your yard sounds like an ideal setting for the ceremony.”

  “Jeff won’t go,” Mel said, searching a kitchen drawer for the take-out menu. “If it was here, we were going to drive down, like always.”

  “Come on,” Blue said. “He’ll get on a plane for this.”

  Mel shook her head. “He won’t.”

  “That’s crazy—he’s missing out on so much.” Mel looked at her. “Huh. He says the same thing about you.” Blue was stung. “My life is jam-packed. What the hell does he know?”

  Mel found the menu and shut the drawer. “He knows that his wife and his sons are the best things in his life. Don’t you want kids?”

  “Girls,” their mother said. “Let’s order, and then let’s talk about how we can organize a plan that will work for everybody.”

  “I’m not trying to be argumentative, Mom, I just want to know.” And Blue wanted to tell her. She looked at her sister, the person who, of all the billions of humans on the planet, was most similar to her by genetics, by history, and wanted to spill it all. She wanted to tell them both, I screwed up, wanted to say she’d been wrong, yet not wrong, and have them understand. She wanted them to know her, yet feared it as surely as Jeff feared his inaugural flight spiraling nose-first into the ground.

  She said, “I think I’ll have the mu shu pork.”

  ater, when all the lights were off and Peep had climbed into his usual nighttime spot on the chair across from her bed, Blue slid beneath her covers and closed her eyes; maybe the future would appear there and put her mind at ease.

  But no, it was the past. That cold day when she’d gone to meet Mitch at the Shedd Aquarium, anxious hope sitting like a stone in her stomach. She’d taken the Metra into the city from Homewood. She should have known he would not have chosen the public setting if what he wanted was what she’d wished for. She should have known there would be no proposal, no ring that sparkled with the brilliance of the sun off the lake’s surface. She knew enough to be nervous, but was determined not to let her fear keep her from what might well be the greatest surprise of her life—who
could say that wasn’t what her sixth sense was telling her? And so she’d taken the train to Roosevelt, emerged from the station and zipped her coat against the wind. Put on ChapStick. Snugged her hat over her ears and walked the quarter-mile with eyes watering. Watched him watching her from the steps, arms wrapped around himself as much because of what he was about to say, she would soon discover, as to keep out the cold. The lake was unbearably blue behind him.

  If she’d been wearing her fictitious hindsight glasses that day, she would have spared herself the embarrassment of stubborn hope, not to mention train fare and frozen earlobes. She’d have let him break up by phone—or would have broken up with him—or, if she’d put the glasses on sooner, would never have pinned her stubborn hope on him to begin with.

  If she had a pair now, what might she see, and save?

  She fell asleep wondering.

  Late in the night, she had a dream. She was in the house in Harvey, where she and Marcy had lived with Marcy’s boyfriend and his friend, only here the friend was Mitch, and she was waiting for him in her tiny bedroom. Hardly room in there for the old mattress; the walls felt close and the room was shadowy, the sky outside darkened as if preparing to storm. She held a book open in her lap and tried to decipher its words, but each time she started, they changed, became nonsense. Frustrated, she stood up and looked out the window. The view was of a tropical garden, dense with trees and vines; a naked man stood with his back to her, solid, broad shoulders tapering to his waist. Who knew he looked this good? Why didn’t he come in? She rapped on the glass and he turned and she saw … Julian. For long moments she felt locked in his gaze, felt as if he could truly see her. Then she held up her hand in greeting, putting her fingertips to the glass, looking at the spots where each finger made contact. When she looked outside again, he was gone.

  She woke in the morning with the dream as vivid in her memory as if she’d taken a literal journey during the night. It was a journey—to the truth of what she wanted, who she wanted, a truth she’d been ignoring. “Oh. My. God.” Her face felt hot, betraying the arousal she would much prefer to still deny. She jumped out of bed, as if leaving the scene of a crime.