Reunion

by Therese Fowler

  On the door of the Hot Tin Roof restaurant was a subtle placard, Dining Room Closed for Private Party. Inside, she was greeted by a handsome Latino man who bowed and extended his arm toward the warmly lit room, where calypso music and the breeze coming in off the ocean set the mood just so.

  Mel saw her first. “Harmony Blue … What a week—it’s good to see you in the flesh.” Mel hugged her, then stood back to study her. “Eh, not too much worse for the wear.”

  “So you won’t disown me, then?” Blue tried to sound light-hearted.

  “Is that an option?” Mel joked, then grew serious, saying, “At first I kept thinking, Why didn’t she ever tell me? I wasn’t exactly there for you, though, I know that.”

  “It’s done,” Blue said.

  “Guess what?” Mel said, brightening. “Jeff did it—he flew. He’s over there—” she pointed. “He said your courage shamed him into doing it.”

  Quitting had not been so courageous. She’d done it only after she was in free fall anyway. She’d done it knowing that the rest of her life was so well-funded that, even if she never earned another dime in salary, she could live lavishly every day. Every day. And even then she would have spent only a fraction of what was there.

  The thing she was most afraid of doing was so much riskier than quitting her job and so much harder to accomplish. Unlike Jeff with his flight to Key West, she couldn’t buy a ticket to Julian.

  Her mother saw her with Melody and came over, pulling Calvin with her. “My girls.” She kissed Blue and took both daughters’ hands in hers. “How wonderful is this?”

  “Quite wonderful,” Blue said. Everyone looked beautiful, the room was beautiful—polished wood, palm-shaped light fixtures, lush palm murals on the ceiling; everything was so perfect-seeming that Blue tried to dismiss the odd feeling of being in the wrong place.

  For more than an hour she mingled with the other guests, fielding questions and working, always, to steer the conversation back to the occasion if it got too far off-track. “Tell me how you and Calvin got acquainted,” she’d say, or, “I did a show, once, on tattoos, but I’ve never seen anything as elaborate as yours. Did it hurt?” “The dress my mother’s wearing tomorrow is vintage—you should ask her about it.”

  She’d thought she would tell her mother her snorkel story during dinner. She waited until they were seated together at a white-clothed table. The story would be an entertaining tale to anyone listening in, and at the same time a way of telling her mother, I did it, Mom, I got out, I took a risk, I lived. Since talking with Mel earlier, however, the message felt like a false one. Here were Calvin and her mother, bold in their love and sure in their belief that when it was real, you didn’t wait. Seeing them sitting at this table, radiant, assured, delighted, she understood that love was always the riskiest proposition—and promised the biggest payoff.

  As the salads were being served, she leaned close to her mother and said, “There’s something I have to do.”

  “What is it, what’s wrong?”

  “I’ll explain later.” She left the table, left the restaurant, took the elevator downstairs, walked back through the lobby and out into the busy plaza, and stopped to get her bearings.

  Duval was packed with weekend revelers, so she took Front, intending to weave her way up to the Forresters’ house in the hope of finding Julian still there.

  She took her shoes off at the corner of Simonton. Ahead on the right was the little shop she’d visited on her first day here, the bird shop. She should see if there was something small she could bring him, a gesture, her grandmother had called such gifts. Gestures would, she’d told Blue and Mel, help them make new friends.

  Blue recalled being at a tiny IGA grocery store once, where the selection of inexpensive children’s gifts was slim, and boring. She’d wanted to skip it and leave, but her grandmother urged her on.

  Gestures show that you have the person in your thoughts, that you like them.

  Don’t they know that, if I’m there?

  If you never presume, you won’t ever be mistaken.

  Tonight she wanted very much to be clear.

  The shop was open, the wind chimes ringing on the softly lit porch. A group of women was leaving as she was coming in. They paused, but she continued inside. If she waited on every person who waffled, deciding whether or not to speak to her, she’d spend a great deal of time waiting—and she’d done too much of that already.

  A Blue-cheeked Bee-eater would be the perfect gift for Julian, connecting them in a way that would always please her, regardless of what did, or didn’t, come afterward. She scanned the first display cases and, not seeing one, went around a tall shelf toward the back corner of the shop, to find the artist or a clerk.

  She found two people, one who looked as startled as she was.

  “Julian. You’re … here.”

  “You’re here,” he said.

  They stared at each other until the shop owner, the artist, said, “I thought you’d be back.”

  She looked at the artist. “Because you said my Bunting needed …” She stopped, suddenly spooked. A partner. “Julian, do you have a few minutes to talk?”

  He followed her outside and said, “Are you okay? I saw the Time article. That was nicely done.” He looked worried but also pleased, which made it easier for her to answer.

  “I came here to find you a gift, an apology.”

  “None needed,” he said. “I came here to find you a housewarming gift.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  He shook his head. “I thought you might be staying awhile.”

  The moon was full and rising, white and clear against the blackest star-filled sky. “It really is glitter-strewn,” Blue said, staring upward. She made a quick wish for fortitude. “I read that, glitter-strewn sky, in a guidebook.” Looking at him again, she thought he was the more compelling sight. She said, “Do you want to walk? Let’s walk.”

  They walked along Simonton in silence. On any other night with any other man, she would have waited for some overt sign that what she wanted to say was going to be well-received. Tonight, with him, she felt impatient and powerless at the same time, pulled again to the edge of the abyss. The idea was not so frightening, though, as it had once been. She recalled the wish she’d made from the balcony of her hotel suite not so long before: Ease.

  She stopped walking. “So be it,” she said. “I’ll do it right here.”

  Julian stopped too. “You really don’t need to apologize. It must have been hellish for you, but I think you’re handling it—”

  “That’s not it,” she said, looking up at him.

  “No? Then what—”

  “I never imagined I’d be standing here, holding my shoes, saying … I mean, my plan originally was, you know, to get you a gesture, a bird—a Bee-eater. And if you were there at Daniel and Lynn’s house, I was going to give it to you and say, ‘I’m really sorry you got pulled into the mud with me.’ And then, before I lost my nerve—because I’m not good at this kind of thing at all—I was going to tell you—even if your grandparents could hear me—I was going to say something that probably would have come out all hokey, like, ‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ or, ‘I wish there was some way you could feel like I do.’” Hearing herself, she stopped abruptly. There were limits to how ridiculous she would let herself be.

  Silence.

  She ventured a look at his face. He was staring at her. He said, “Like you do?”

  She could only nod.

  He held onto the fence beside them for balance and took off one shoe, then the other. This was so unexpected that she had to laugh. “What are you doing?”

  With his shoes in his hand, he said, “It’s been a long week, hasn’t it?” His expression was thoughtful. Sympathetic. A man like him would have a lot of experience in putting off love-struck women.

  “The longest,” she said, her voice thick with emotion she wanted so much to suppress.

  He said, “Blue? That em
ail I sent you, from Iraq, that was more than an apology. It was me saying—or trying to say, ‘She’ll know the truth so that, if I die tonight, at least I’ll have said what needs saying.’ Which is my still not very clear way of saying, well, of saying … I don’t, I can’t, think of anyone but you.”

  “You don’t?”

  He shook his head. “And I’m pretty sure I feel like you do.”

  “You do?”

  He dropped his shoes, then took hers and dropped them as well.

  She said, “Are you going to kiss me? Because if you feel like I feel, you’d kiss me, quick.”

  He did; a tender, testing kiss that encouraged a soft, deep one, and then he folded her into his arms.

  n any other night, with any other man, she would have invited the man to her place for only drinks and conversation. She would do the balance-sheet calculations, pluses and minuses, and consider the possibility of getting together again, when her schedule was clear, maybe. She might call her mother—as she had just done—to say all was well and they’d speak soon.

  She would not do what she was doing with Julian: walk past the lone remaining photographer with her arm wrapped around Julian’s waist; leave the lights off after they’d come inside; push him against the wall and kiss him until she was breathless and he was, and then kiss him like that again.

  It was not her style to pull a man into her bedroom and take his clothes off him as if unwrapping a fragile gift. There was nothing fragile about him. He was the vision from her dream, made real, made warm, made panting softly when she slid her hands over his bare chest, his waist, the expanse of his back. He was a man who, when she found his appendectomy scar and traced it with her tongue, found every way to return the favor.

  She would not have made love with naked passion and abandon, but she did now.

  And she would, she hoped, again; maybe before the night was through.

  hoever had built her house must have been an early riser, a person who didn’t want to waste one moment of the day; the sun, now higher than the garden walls but lower than the trees, poured through the eastern windows and set the bedroom ablaze with color. With Julian still sleeping beside her, Blue sat in the light with her eyes closed, absorbing it, until it was swallowed up by the trees.

  “Good morning,” Julian said. He tugged her down onto him. “In case you’re wondering, my shoes are still off.”

  “In case you’re wondering,” she kissed him, then rolled off him, “there will be caterers here in about fifteen minutes.”

  “In case you’re wondering,” he sighed, sitting up, “I’ll be making the coffee and waiting for my turn in the shower.”

  “Just Lucky Charms for me,” she said.

  He grabbed her hand before she climbed out of bed. “I need you to know something. This, us, it’s real. For me. I’m done roaming, in every sense.”

  She said, “I’m older than you, you know.” As if that were the most of it.

  “Do you have a point?”

  “If…” She could hardly find words for the feeling that made her throat tighten. She cleared it, and tried again. “If this is real, I’m done too.” She had wishes for her future, wishes she’d never been brave enough to make, before. “There are so many things we can do together. I’d like … I’d like to make a difference in the world. We could, you know.”

  He nodded. “Kids?” he said.

  She tilted her head and smiled at him. “I think so.”

  After her shower, she sat on the porch steps feeling purely happy to be looking out into the garden, the sun dappling her legs and the ground in front of her as though she was any old girl on any old porch on any old tropical morning. If you took away the ribbons and the light strings and the vine-and-flower-covered arbor where her mother’s wedding vows would be said, there was nothing at all exceptional here. A woman in love was as common and unremarkable as the green of a lemon tree’s leaves—until it was your lemon tree, and you.

  She heard a car stop at the gate, and Calvin’s voice thanking the driver in his I’m-sure-from-the-Upper-Midwest way. Her mother came through the gate trailing a garment bag and suitcase, as did Calvin. They were halfway up the path before her mother saw her, time enough for Blue to see more clearly than ever the difference Calvin made on her mother’s posture, the composition of her features. It was as though there was less gravity at work on the pair of them. Blue felt a bit like that herself.

  “Harmony Blue! Good morning.” Her mother pulled her into a hug. “I’ve got your dress right here with mine.”

  “Happy Wedding Day,” Blue said.

  “It certainly is. I see we beat the caterers; are any guests here yet?”

  “Only one,” she said. “Julian Forrester.”

  Her mother’s raised eyebrows and wide smile said everything.

  They greeted Julian as if it was routine to see a damp, half-naked man in her kitchen picking the marshmallows out of cereal he’d just poured. “I’m counting my lucky stars,” he joked. “And then I’ll get out of everyone’s way.”

  “Why?” her mother asked. “Stay. Better yet: go, and bring your grandparents back with you. We’ll have a buffet available to anyone who was able to wait to restore their energies—and we’d love to meet them.”

  “They’ll be delighted,” Julian said, and Blue believed him.

  Watching Calvin and her mother at the altar two hours later, Blue imagined how their wedding announcement might read:

  The bride wore a white silk tea-length sheath, her silver hair piled on her head and held by seed-pearl combs. Matching heart-and-vine tattoos were visible on the bride’s and the groom’s left forearms. The groom wore blue linen trousers and a white silk guayabera shirt. None of the wedding party wore shoes.

  She held Julian’s hand as she stood behind her mother, white lights twinkling all around them in the shady garden, and listened to the judge, who happened to also be the mayor, intone the words that would bind her mother and Calvin for as long as they chose. Melody stood on her other side, wiping at tears just as she was, as this well-deserved moment in their mother’s life unfolded.

  “Above you is the sun and below you is the earth. Like the sun, your love should be a constant source of light, and like the earth, a firm foundation from which to grow.”

  It was a good start.

  Epilogue

  ith the house filled to bursting with his brother, his sisters, their friends, his friends, and relatives from both sides of the family, the young man had to wait until after two AM to pull his baby book from the library shelf and sneak it up to his room.

  The book was a long shot. He’d already scanned all the photographs displayed throughout the three-story house. Every tabletop, every wall display, the mantles in the den, living room, and family room, even his parents’ bedside tables and bureaus. Hundreds of photos of him and his siblings, but none that matched the one he’d seen online—and in line, in the grocery and convenience stores’ magazine racks. A scrunchy-faced infant in a blue knit cap and a mint-green shirt, with a little bit of striped pastel blanket showing.

  Generic baby.

  He didn’t know why he was so intent on confirming that he was not one and the same as the scandal-child. The smarter thing would be to get some sleep before tomorrow, when he was graduating from the University of Chicago. It was a temporary ending; he’d be back in the fall to turn his anthropology BA into an art history PhD. His mother didn’t mind a bit that her youngest wanted to stay close to home for a little while longer—though she was not as thrilled about his summer plans: ten weeks biking across Europe with his pals Collin and Beck. The party tomorrow night was a celebration and a bon voyage, and was certain to last pretty much all night.

  Still. Knowing that his birth date was the same as Blue Reynolds’s son’s was a coincidence he needed to investigate so that he could put it out of his mind. The baby book was the last record he could check without alerting anyone to what he was doing. If there was no matching photo there, he
would put the issue behind him.

  With the book under his arm, he used the back stairs to get to his room, creeping as quietly as he could manage and listening to make sure he wouldn’t run into anyone in the hall. If his brother caught him with his baby book, he’d never live it down. Pat would never admit that, in his position, he’d be pulling out his own book to see if he was the one with celebrity blood in his adopted veins. And his sisters—well, more likely either of them would turn flips at the prospect of being Blue’s child. What could be more glamorous? Jill would probably sell out completely if she thought their parents wouldn’t mind.

  The thing was, their parents would mind. They’d arranged four private, closed adoptions, with deliberate emphasis on private and closed. It was their belief—-a belief he’d shared until he saw the Blue Reynolds mess—that the only family that mattered was the one that chose the child. They weren’t callous people, just practical, and protective.

  At the top of the stairs, he stopped and turned around to go put the book back, hesitating on the step. If he never looked, he’d never have to deal with the question of what to do if he was the kid. The grandfather clock at the opposite end of the hall ticked, slower than the thumping of his heart. Look. Don’t look. Look. Don’t look.

  Suppose she was his birth mother. He didn’t need anything from her. He didn’t even want anything from her. He wouldn’t have to tell anyone; it might be enough to just know.

  He took the book to his bedroom.

  Before opening it, he logged in to his computer and went to the website that had published the photos first. The way this whole thing had come down really pissed him off. His family was Christian, and these extremist people offended him way more than anything Blue Reynolds had done, ever. If she thought she couldn’t take care of a kid, then she couldn’t. If she thought kids should be educated about sex, well, if he hadn’t been, he might have been a father at seventeen. Studying anthropology had taught him a lot of things, but nothing bigger than the importance of being open-minded.