by Jean Stone
“You slept through the Crab Creole,” he said.
Elaine nodded. “Another time,” she repeated. Then she reached up and touched her father’s cheek. “I love you, Dad,” she said, and wondered how many years it had been since she’d spoken those words.
26
They loaded the minivan with cartons from the attic, said awkward good-byes, then hit the road. Gratefully, Elaine didn’t hesitate when Andrew asked to drive. It wasn’t long, however, before he pulled off Route 87 and stopped for pizza. (He supposed that he and Cassie ate too much pizza, but he’d deal with that another day.) He’d decided that if he were going to tell Elaine the truth, he’d rather do it across a table, eye-to-eye. Cassie sat next to Elaine on one side of the booth, so he faced them both.
“What a day,” Elaine said after they’d ordered a large cheese pizza, half with broccoli and mushrooms for his daughter, who continued her seeming quest to become a vegetarian since she’d met Sarah’s son. He’d deal with that later, too, he supposed.
“The Mrs. Tuttle experience was rather unexpected,” Elaine continued. “I’m sorry if that was uncomfortable for you.”
“For us?” Andrew asked. “No problem here. You didn’t know about his . . . about the woman?”
“Who would think a seventy-five-year-old man would suddenly start living with someone?”
“I hope when I’m seventy-five, a woman out there will want me.” It wasn’t until he’d said it that Andrew realized he had opened the door. “Of course,” he added, “I can’t even get one to want me now.”
Elaine said nothing for a second, as if she were trying to determine whether or not Andrew’s comment should be taken at face value.
“He’s trying to tell you something,” Cassie said.
The waitress came and set down their sodas and their napkins. When she had left, Elaine asked, “He’s trying to tell me what?”
Andrew would have answered for himself, but he’d just sipped his soda when Cassie piped up with, “He isn’t gay, you know. Or, wait, I guess you didn’t.” She giggled.
He could have refuted his daughter, called her a little wishful-thinker, and Andrew knew Cassie would have gone along with it. But there it was, laid out on the small Formica table with the chrome strip around the edge and white paper placemats printed with a map of Italy in red.
“She’s right,” he said. “Someone other than your father leads a secret life.”
Elaine cocked her head to the right, as if trying to hear something that was just out of range. “What on earth do you mean?”
And so he told her. While they waited for the pizza, while they ate the pizza, while they lingered over what remained of their sodas, Andrew told Elaine the truth. Everything. From the day John Benson had called him to New York to suggest that Andrew write the column, to when he applied for the job at Second Chances and pretended to be gay so they wouldn’t be afraid to share their secrets and their thoughts, especially about their relationships with men. He even told her that he’d been married and about how Cassie was his daughter and that he had a crush on Jo. “A wicked crush,” Cassie interjected, and he didn’t refute that, either.
When he was done, Elaine stared with eyes that rivaled deer-in-the-headlights as the all-time look of shock. “Well,” she said.
“Well,” Andrew replied.
“Well,” Cassie asked, “can we get dessert?”
The fact that Andrew had confided in her was almost as confusing as his story. But when they were back in Elaine’s van (that time, she said she’d drive), she glanced at him every so often, and decided that, yes, he indeed resembled the young Andrew David she had seen on TV.
“This is Andrew David in Jerusalem.”
“This is Andrew David in London.”
“This is Andrew David on the road with the presidential campaign in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.”
Yes, Elaine supposed it was him. His hair was longer now, his demeanor more casual. And he was older by a few years, five, almost six, he’d said. She wondered what Lloyd would think if he knew she’d become such good friends with a celebrity. It would surely be a tidbit that might afford an edge of intrigue to her profile on mates.com.
As for Jo, it was no surprise that Andrew was in love with her. What man wouldn’t be?
She turned her eyes back to the road. “I don’t know how I can help you.”
“First, you must promise you won’t breathe a word of this to the others. Or to anyone. It will only hurt everyone. It will only hurt the business.” He’d beseeched her about this already, when he’d first begun his tale. Now that Elaine knew the facts, she knew it was important that she agree.
“I promise, Andrew.” She supposed she’d be good at keeping a promise. She wasn’t sure anyone had ever asked her to.
“Wait. Better than that . . . you must promise Cassie you won’t tell a soul.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Andrew, I won’t. I promise.” So much for building up her intrigue on mates.com. She turned to Cassie in the backseat. “And I promise you, Cassie, that I won’t tell anyone your father’s secrets.”
“Good,” Cassie replied, “because someone might hurt him. And I really need my dad.”
Elaine turned back to Andrew. “What are we going to do? How are we going to keep you out of the Benson wedding?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “But I’m hoping you will cover for me.”
She smiled. “We can always send you to Shavonne. You can have a makeover like I did.”
“No, thanks. It’s bad enough Cassie has spent the last few months scanning magazines looking for clothes that she hopes will help me look gay.”
Elaine laughed, because laughing was easier than trying to absorb all this.
She supposed his intentions had been harmless: a former journalist trying to earn extra money by getting close to women, to earn their emotional trust.
It had been harmless, depending on the things he’d said about them.
She fiddled with the seat belt; she moved her hands from ten-to-two to twenty-after-eight on the steering wheel. Before she passed judgment—good or bad—she knew she’d have to find the back issues of Buzz.
Had he made fun of Lily, Sarah, and Jo?
Had he made fun of her?
She was reminded that people really didn’t know one another, not friends, not family, not anyone.
She fastened her eyes on to the road and laughed again and said, “Well, this day has surely been full of surprises.”
She couldn’t breathe.
Jo sat in her mother’s living room, in the old rocker by the fireplace, a glass of wine in one hand, a copy of Buzz in the other.
The magazine was open on her lap. The masthead at the top of the right-facing page read “Real Women.”
She tried to tell herself she was imagining things.
But her brain said otherwise.
Olivia.
Eileen.
Sadie.
Jacquelin.
How could they have been so stupid?
How could they have been so . . . used?
“I lived with you nearly twenty years. I thought I knew you.”
It was a fine welcome home from Saratoga when Elaine walked through her front door and into her family room and there was Lloyd sitting on the sofa that he had paid for the year Kandie graduated from high school and they had planned a party for which Elaine had wanted the house to look its best.
He must have parked on the next street and walked over. He would have known better than to park his minivan—the twin to hers—in plain sight on Cornflower Drive.
She closed her eyes a moment, thinking this was so unfair. Her mind still spun with images of Mrs. Tuttle and her father and Andrew as a straight man. She opened her eyes again. Lloyd was still there.
“Who let you in?” she asked. It was, of course, a stupid question, because Karen would have done that. Elaine might have changed the locks after Lloyd had moved out to be with Beatrix, but there was no l
aw against one of his children opening the door to him, and Elaine had never threatened a restraining order.
He’d reminded her of those facts more than once: It had been her luck that she’d married an attorney.
“What happened to your hair?” He answered her question with a question, because he was good at that.
“You’d better leave, Lloyd. It’s late, and I’ve had a long day.” She dropped her bag in the doorway. She stared at her former husband: He seemed somber, almost lifeless. His hair seemed thinner, grayer; his long-sleeved oxford shirt (blue, he always wore blue shirts) seemed more wrinkled, like his face.
She thought about the cartons from Saratoga that sat out in the van. She could ask Lloyd to make himself useful, but he might misconstrue it as an invitation to stick around.
She pushed a shock of hair behind one ear. “Lloyd,” she said, “please. I’m not in the mood for games.” What she’d been in the mood for was going on the Internet to find copies of Buzz. And to check her e-mail, of course.
“You weren’t so difficult when you were a brunette.”
She sighed. “I was, however, ‘tedious.’ ” That had been his word, not hers. The word he’d used when trying to define his reason for taking up with Beatrix, the judge, who, he’d said, was far more interesting, energetic, “more alive, for godssake” than Elaine.
He ignored her reference. “Karen is worried about you.” He stood up and walked too close to where she stood. She stepped back two steps.
“Karen has had a lot of changes in the last few years. She’ll adapt.”
“She’s afraid of what you might do next.”
His words floated on a scent of gin, evidence of one or two martinis, the courage to have come. He’d often done that before a trial, though no one but Elaine had known.
She turned from him and crossed to the fireplace. “I had my hair highlighted. I bought a few new clothes. I have a job. I haven’t exactly gone from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.”
“She’s more concerned about the men.”
Elaine turned on her heel. “Men?” She asked with a laugh. “What men?”
“The men you’ll be attracting on mates.com.”
She stared at him. She hardened her eyes into slits. “Get out,” she said.
He stared back a moment, then stood up and stomped toward the door.
“And stop wasting your money on those goddamn roses,” she shouted after him.
His gnarly face whipped back at her. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Stop sending roses every Sunday. They won’t get you anywhere.”
Frown lines trenched across his forehead. “What the hell are you talking about?”
She decided she hated him, the man she’d once loved, the man she had slept with and had kids with and all that other crap. She stepped in front of him and opened up the door. “Call West Hope Florist,” she said. “Cancel the order. We’re through, Lloyd. Finished. Kaput.” She shoved him out. She closed the door, then snapped on the dead bolt.
From the other side his stupid voice resounded, “I haven’t sent you any goddamn flowers, Elaine. I wouldn’t waste my time, let alone my money.”
27
The half moon spilled a dim, foreboding light into Jo’s mother’s living room. The embers in the fireplace had lost their glow, the wine was finished long ago. Yet Jo remained seated, motionless, not turning on a lamp, not wanting anything but for this day to not have happened.
It was over, she supposed. Their new business, her new life, the safety net of friends.
It was over unless she could come up with a solution. A perfect, foolproof way to make the bastard, Andrew, pay.
Andrew thought he’d done fine with Elaine.
When he climbed into bed (an old-fashioned double bed that had come with the cottage because the queen size that he’d wanted wouldn’t have fit up the narrow, low-ceilinged staircase—not that it mattered, because the bed was just for him), Andrew felt relieved. With his confession had gone the weight of the world as Andrew David Kennedy had known it, evaporated like the morning mist off his meager pumpkin patch.
The room glowed from the half moon that splayed its light through the window that Andrew had never covered, not with a curtain or a shade or one of those fancy blinds. After too many years choking in the city, he’d wanted to grab as much real fresh air and light and even darkness as possible.
He stared at the shadows of the branches of the trees as they lightly danced upon the slanted ceiling.
How long had it been since he’d enjoyed their nightly recital? Since he’d said his first lie, no doubt. Since he’d been encumbered by trying to be two people living in the same skin.
He’d never known that lies could feel so heavy.
A large limb with many twigs shuddered a little, then went still. He wondered if Patty had ever felt this kind of heavy, and if she’d figured out that all the bulimic behavior in the world could not have unclogged her soul, could not have compensated for a heart weighted by lies.
You’re the only man I’ll ever love.
We will grow old together.
Trust me.
He turned onto his side and tried to listen in the darkness for the sound of Cassie’s breathing in her room across the hall. But Cassie slept with her door closed now: some time in the last year she’d lost her fear of darkness.
He supposed that fear could burden a heart the same way as a lie.
He settled his head against one pillow and pulled the other close beside him as if it were a woman, then smiled with the thought that he and Cassie both, at last, were free.
Elaine wasn’t going to let him wreck her life, not when she had come this far in changing it. She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her about meeting someone new just because he was embarrassed about sending all those roses, now that he learned she didn’t want him anymore.
She’d show him who was in charge of her life, and that it wasn’t him.
Angry, determined, no longer exhausted, Elaine plopped in front of the computer in Kory’s room. Sure enough, Karen had left the page open to mates.com. Apparently her daughter was smart enough to figure out Elaine’s password was “makeover.”
There were two (two!) e-mails for her.
“Okay, my lovely daughter and my most annoying ex-husband,” she said. “Let’s see the kind of men I’ve snagged.”
The first was from someone whose screen name was GrnHnt62.
Dear Pretty Lady, he wrote. I am 47, 5'8. I have brown hair and brown eyes. I love reading, antiquing, and traveling. I work in a bank in Pittsfield. I am divorced, with two kids who live down near Boston, so they wouldn’t get in the way of a relationship. Shall we get together?
The picture he attached was a little small, but his looks were okay. His letter was certainly brief and unimaginative, but Elaine smiled when she reread “Dear Pretty Lady.” That was nice.
She checked the other response.
And then her heart stopped. It was from Gerard. The thirty-six-year-old who, God help him—and her—preferred older women.
He must be a gigolo.
Dear Elaine, he wrote. Her heart, which had stopped, now started to race. Before you get the wrong idea, I am not a gigolo.
She sat up straight in her son’s desk chair.
I’ve always been mature for my age. And when I say I prefer older women, I don’t mean women twice my age. But I do find it exciting to be with a woman who has experienced things that she can teach me.
She smiled.
She read on.
I’d like to meet you. I live in Brattleboro, but I’ll be in Pittsfield soon. Call me anytime. Then he left his number.
Of course she wouldn’t call him. What would Lloyd and Karen say? She really wouldn’t be so daring . . . would she?
It took about thirty seconds for her to pick up the telephone. She reached his voice mail.
“Hi, this is Gerard. I’m not available right now. Leave your name. And number. Thanks.”
Of course she wouldn’t leave a message.
Quickly, Elaine hung up.
She stared at the phone. She decided that hadn’t been much fun; that had been the old Elaine.
Taking a deep breath, she redialed. This time she said, “Hello, this is Elaine. Call me when you have a chance. I’d love to get to know you.” Then she hung up, surprised she didn’t even tremble like she might have thought she would.
Just for good, I’ll-show-you-Lloyd measure, she went back to the computer, and replied to GrnHnt62.
28
Elaine’s phone rang Sunday morning.
She squinted at the alarm clock. It might have said six-thirty.
Between rings two and three, she felt a sudden rush.
Gerard?
She fumbled for the receiver.
It was not Gerard, but Jo.
“We have a crisis,” Jo shouted. “Be at the shop in twenty minutes.”
“The bastard lied to us,” Jo said.
Sarah sneered. “And we thought he was a journalism professor. Do you think the theme of his dissertation is ‘gullible women’?”
“Oh, it’s not to be believed,” Lily wailed, though it was hard to take her seriously when she was dressed in pink marabou pajamas sprayed with silver sparkles.
Elaine made no comment. How could she?
“We need to decide what to do,” Jo continued. “Obviously the Benson wedding has been a setup, though I can’t imagine why.”
“My guess is the Benson wedding is why we’re in business,” Sarah speculated. “Otherwise, where would Andrew get material for his precious column?”
In the silence that followed, Elaine could have sworn she heard anger churning, like smoothies in a blender on a hot summer day.
“We’ll have to fire him, of course,” Lily said. “We can’t have the hired help spying on the employers, no matter how much we adore him and the little girl.”