Liz waved and sighed and then said to her mother one last time, "You can't afford this, Mom. Let me at least—"
"Don't be dumb, Lizzie. We took the other grandchildren at her age; why wouldn't we take Susy?"
"Because I already owe you a million dollars in babysitting fees!"
"Stop. She's our only home-grown seedling. You know how special she is to us."
It was true; everyone knew that Susy was the favorite. Liz thought it was at least partly because Patricia Pinhel had never quite forgiven her two sons for taking jobs in other parts of New England. She'd never allowed herself to get her hopes up that they'd stay local — but when the boys did move on, she was twice as disappointed.
Mother and daughter shared a quick hug, and then Liz was alone in cozy T. F. Green Airport, a place as alien to her as the inside of a space shuttle. Almost the only time she ever went to Green was to pick someone up or drop someone off. Someday all that would change; someday she and Susy would take quick little trips here and there and everywhere.
But not today.
****
That night Liz felt alone and depressed. Hearing Susy's voice on the phone (and learning that earlier she'd burst into tears when it finally dawned on her that Mommy wouldn't be on the plane) had proved little consolation. Liz had to wonder why.
Her depression had nothing, nothing, nothing to do with Jack Eastman, she insisted to herself. The other night at East Gate he'd told her exactly what he thought. That was his prerogative. Liz had then stomped out of his house. That was her prerogative.
Yes, for a while she had waited breathlessly to see whether he'd phone, or come by, or — heck, he'd done it before — climb over the fence. But she wasn't Julia Roberts, and her life was not a movie.
Liz didn't even have the luxury of convincing herself that Jack was out of town: she'd seen him yesterday on the grounds of East Gate, hauling a broken limb that had fallen not twenty feet from the chain link fence. In her kitchen, making supper, she was close enough to see the muscles bulging in his arms as he dragged away the heavy bough. But he never looked in her direction, and it made Liz wish, suddenly, that the chain link fence was a wall of bricks.
After that, she decided that her mother was right after all:
it was dumb ever to get your hopes up. Liz reminded herself, for the thousandth time, that a hundred years ago Christopher Eastman had seduced and then abandoned her great-great-grandmother. She asked herself, for the thousandth time, why she wanted to see history repeat itself. But it was no use: her hopes kept bubbling up, like oxygen from the bottom of a deep, deep lake.
By ten o'clock, when Jack didn't appear, Liz turned — for comfort? for answers? — to the shoeboxes. Somewhere there had to be an explanation for the failed love between Christopher and Ophelia. He loved her, and she loved him: it should have been enough. Liz wanted desperately for it to be enough.
She picked up one of the miscellaneous boxes that were stuffed with scraps of undated writing and began to read. Three hours later, she found what she was looking for. An incomplete page, one that began with a recipe for an herbal compress to relieve headache, was followed by a critical piece of gossip:
And that younger brother of whom you were so enamored? My temperamental artist, your mystery man in black? My dear Mercy, you never will guess: he has come back to the fold!
It came about in the most unexpected way. His older brother was killed in a riding accident not two days after the dinner party — the fête with the sand buckets of which I wrote. It was a most devastating loss to the parents. Much as I hate to do it, I am forced to give our young man his due. He has put his infatuation aside, closed up his studio, and assumed the family mantle of responsibility. Some say he shuts himself up every evening to brood and to grieve. Others whisper that an engagement to an heiress is imminent. All, seemingly, overnight!
I must confess to feeling as if I have shared no small part of this man's destiny. Had I not switched the gemstone for the pin before that dinner party, who knows what might have happened? Our impulsive young artist might, for example, have had a falling-out with his parents and fled with Ophelia to Europe. Perhaps I foresaw the tragic accident that was about to occur to his brother and acted on that knowledge. Yes, that must have been my motive, I think. It explains
And that was all.
The writing was crabbed and ink-blotted. There were no margins. The paper was inferior. Maybe Victoria St. Onge was working on her last two sheets of stationery; maybe she was just in one of her moods. Whatever the case, Liz now had all the pieces to her historical mystery except one: why was the ghost of Christopher Eastman choosing to appear to her?
There was only one way to find out, she decided, and that was simply to ask him.
He'd shown himself twice without the benefit of a go- between, so apparently Liz didn't need a medium or spirit guide or whoever people used to communicate with the beyond. On the other hand, she didn't have a clue how to initiate the process herself. Could she make contact?
****
Half an hour later, Liz had set her trap with herself as the cheese. She didn't have a crystal ball, and she didn't have a Ouija board. She didn't have a talisman, fairy ring, amulet, dowsing rod, tarot cards, trumpet, or pendulum. She had no mentor, training, or experience. All she had was a bedrock belief, deep inside her soul, that she shared a profound connection with the spirit of Christopher Eastman.
She'd chosen her bedroom, the most private of the four rooms in her house, for the rendezvous. After closing the windows and hooking the shutters, she'd gone through the house and turned off all the lights. After that she'd put on a CD of New Age music — in part, to drown out the moans of the foghorns, which tonight sounded to her like grieving lovers. The dozen white votive candles that she'd placed around the bedroom floor and furnishings were flickering softly in their cut-glass holders, throwing fitful shadows over the muted yellow walls.
Ready.
She sat in the middle of her bed with her legs tucked under her and a paisley shawl of red and gold wrapped around her shoulders. Under the shawl she was wearing a waltz-length nightgown of white cotton — and a new pair of underpants, because if something happened and she died of fright, she wanted to be found properly, modestly dressed.
Smiling at the bizarreness of her priorities, she let herself drift off into a state that was at once unfocused and alert. Solemn thoughts floated before her like big, wobbly soap bubbles, and then burst, to be followed by other, sometimes smaller bubbles.
Bit by bit, step by step ... I am descending into an abyss. A year ago ... a month ago ... I would have been scandalized by this ... and now ... will Susy find a Mickey Mouse hat, I wonder? She'll feel she's let me down if she doesn't ... she's so responsible ... if she had brothers and sisters, would she be different? A brat? Like Caroline? Is a mother more critical to a daughter than a father? Caroline ... does she suffer from the curse of illegitimacy? And what about me? Am I descended from Ophelia Ryan, or Ophelia Pinhel ... impossible to know ... yes ... the curse of illegitimacy ... the curse of lowered expectations. And yet ... here I go, getting my hopes up ... that he will show ... before the candles burn out.
There was a sound, a ringing sound, from a great, great distance. Liz considered answering the summons, but it was so far away ... she was so far away ... lost in a trance ... lost, and hopeful, and somehow, despite everything, serene. If only it could always be this way ... this freedom from want ... from disappointment and yearning ... this simple, satisfying tranquillity.
The ringing faded away, replaced by the more heavenly sound of a chimelike note filling the air around her. It was a sound that by now Liz knew well, the sound an angel must make when his wings bump against a cloud. The notion filled Liz with a piercing sense of happiness, more satisfying than anything she'd known since the birth of her child. A tear rolled out from under her closed eyelids, and her mouth curved in a smile of realized bliss.
When she opened her eyes, he was there, as
she knew he would be. He was wearing his painter's smock, paint-dabbed and worn; the smile on his face was a smile of pure love. She wondered how she could ever have felt threatened by his presence; how she could ever have been puzzled by his mission. He was there, he must be there, to make her understand, once and for all, about love.
It seemed to her that he wanted to speak to her. Despite the serene smile, he had an expression of fierce concentration on his face, as if life and death depended on his getting it right. He might have been painting her portrait. But it was more than that: he was coaxing a bit of her soul from her body, drawing it closer to heaven in a dance of sheer ecstasy.
In the blink of an eye, after a lifetime in the dark, Liz suddenly understood the transforming power of love. It was what made a painting immortal; a union, sublime. Time could not diminish it, and fate could not subdue it. Ultimately — eventually — love triumphed ... love triumphed ... love triumphed.
****
When Liz awoke, she was amazed to see afternoon sun shining through the shutters and even more amazed to realize that she had a pounding headache: ecstasy wasn't supposed to feel that way. She dragged herself into a sitting position, still wrapped in her shawl, and surveyed the burned-out candleholders.
My God, she thought. I could've burned the house down.
Was it all a dream? She couldn't have imagined it. She had seen him — he was there, as vivid, as real as the oak chest of drawers — and he had imparted to her some special wisdom, only she wasn't sure what. It had something to do with ecstasy.
Whatever had happened, it had taken its toll. Numb with pain, Liz headed straight for the aspirin. She had her hand on the mirrored door when she remembered that at four o'clock she was due at the local shelter for battered women; today was the day she donated her time to entertain the children there with her puppet show. She ran back to her bedroom and snatched up the small ticking clock. Four o'clock was. . . precisely twenty-six minutes away.
"Aaaghh!"
She was out of the house in less than five minutes, and the funny thing was, the headache left in a hurry, too. It didn't seem possible that two aspirin could make such a crushing hangover disappear so fast; Liz was forced to believe that higher forces were involved.
Did spirits relieve migraines, too?
****
The shelter, a rambling Victorian house called Anne's Place, held special significance for Liz. Her best friend in high school had married a man who beat her regularly; Liz had talked Marcia into fleeing to the shelter, where she'd gotten much needed support and counseling. Eventually Marcia started over in Phoenix, where she and her son were now thriving. Like Liz, Marcia had become leery of relationships. Unlike Liz, she was perfectly happy to live without one.
In any case, the warm feelings that Liz had for Anne's Place remained, and every so often she showed her appreciation by putting on a little show for the kids of the women in residence. It was the least she could do.
She was two acts into a light-hearted skit featuring Kris and Misha when she spied, through the peephole, someone who'd seen the play before — most of it, anyway. With a quirky, endearing smile, Jack waved from the doorway and then withdrew, leaving the children to enjoy their show in peace.
Seeing him was a staggering blow to Liz's presence of mind. After the other night ... after last night — well, she needed time to sort it all out. Her emotions were a mess. She needed time!
The final act was an embarrassment of missed cues and dropped lines, but Liz's audience was too starved for joy to care. How glad they were to be able to laugh and feel safe — all of them, from the two-year-old who kept making mad dashes at the puppets to the little boy who sat in his mother's lap and kept his thumb in his mouth the whole time, even when he smiled.
After the puppets made their final bows, the children were shepherded away, and Liz began to break down the theater. She was interested to see that her hands were shaking as she did it. It wasn't surprising — she hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours — but she knew that low blood sugar wasn't the real problem.
One of us has to be sorry, she realized. Why does it have to be me?
Nonetheless, when Jack walked into the room, her first impulse had been to throw herself at him and beg for his forgiveness. She wanted him to take her back. She wanted to be in his arms again, before the anger, before the hurt.
Was she really so different from the women at Anne's Place?
"Hello," she said. She sounded cool and distant, which was the opposite of how she felt.
"Hi," said Jack in a surprisingly low-key greeting. It was as if some of the sadness of the shelter had worn off on both of them.
"How ... did you know I was here?" Liz asked in a faltering voice.
"The note on your door to Victoria."
"Oh. Well, her answering machine's on the fritz. She was supposed to come by—"
"She did come by," Jack said, "at lunch. She called me afterward, looking for you. Your car was there, but I guess you'd gone off somewhere on foot."
"Oh, but I was—" Obviously Liz had spent the time in a brief but thorough coma. "Yes. I was out," she said, and then she changed the subject. "How were you able to get past the front desk?"
Jack grimaced and said, "I showed her my shipyard ID, and it turns out her second cousin is a welder there. I had no idea the security was so—"
"—necessary? It is. I have a friend with the mended bones to prove it."
He nodded thoughtfully. "I passed a woman. Her face ... it was black and blue — and cut." A look of pain came over him as he said, "You see it on TV, and it makes you want to turn away. But even then it's not the same as seeing it close. She was so ... battered."
"They don't use the word loosely around here," Liz said.
"I heard her talking to another woman about life in the projects. Too much unemployment, too much stress — it's got to be hard."
Liz wanted to say, "You think rich men don't slap their wives around, too?" But it seemed gratuitous, so she settled for saying, "The shelter is a lifeline for women like her."
He said with a mixture of candor and bitterness, "My mother, on the other hand, can escape to Capri."
"You see a similarity?" Liz said, surprised that he could be that perceptive.
He groped for an explanation. "I don't know. I guess I see a connection between physical abuse and emotional abuse. Granted, my father never laid a hand on my mother or even raised his voice to her," he said musingly. "But his constant philandering showed such contempt, caused her such pain. It's a form of abuse, isn't it? Only without the marks?"
"I see what you mean," Liz said softly. "Well, since Capri is not an option for these women, I'm glad there's Anne's Place. It does so much with so little."
Jack seemed to mull over what Liz said as she packed away the puppets. "How does the shelter get by?" he said at last, coloring. It was obvious that he thought he should know.
Liz shrugged and said, "With a lick and a prayer: donations, mostly. From fund-raisers, gifts, mailings—"
''I see.''
He was silent another long moment. "All right," he said matter-of-factly. "Then that's what we'll do."
Liz looked up from her carryall. "Excuse me? Do what?"
"Whatever will bring in the most cash. You're the events coordinator, not me. What do you think? An auction? A food festival? Maybe a raffle? Dessert-and-dance? A direct-mailing appeal sounds pretty ho-hum to me, but—"
"Hold it, hold it!" she said. His naïveté was mind-boggling. "Number one, I'm not a fund-raising consultant. And number two — minor detail — the shelter hasn't asked us."
Jack seemed genuinely surprised by both objections. "The shipyard will underwrite a chunk of it," he said, lifting the folded puppet-theater from its table. "What's not to like? So. Will you do it?"
"Oh. Well. In that case. Of course I will," Liz said. She followed him out of the room, still shaking her head over him. "But! I don't get it. This shelter has been here for years. Why you?
Why now?"
"I've never been here before," he said simply. "Come on. We've got work to do."
****
They settled on an impromptu working supper at Liz's house. The proper place for such discussions obviously was her office. But Jack was going to be tied up in meetings with a couple of investors the next day, and Liz had no free time the day after that. Since Jack was determined to stage the event before the annual flight of Newport's summer colonists to Palm Beach, speed was critical.
They called ahead from the shelter for Chinese takeout, and Jack went to pick it up before continuing on to meet Liz. In the meantime, Liz drove like a madwoman, short-cutting through Newport's maze of one-way streets so that she could beat him to the mess she'd left behind.
Letters! Clothes! Dishes! Everything on the damned floor again ... I haven't showered—oh, God, candles all over the bedroom ... did I ever turn off that mindless New Age tape?
Why on earth hadn't they gone to his place? Plenty of room, plenty of food ....
And plenty of people. Neither one of them had alluded to the fact that at Liz's place they'd be alone, but it was on both their minds as Liz murmured something about a little peace and quiet and Jack said how nice it would be to be able to hear themselves think.
Liars! thought Liz with brutal honesty. They could brainstorm anywhere — under a tree, in a coffee shop, at Netta's kitchen table — but they couldn't take off all their clothes and make wild abandoned love in any of those places. The carriage house apartment might do, but after the other night — well, the carriage house had sexual connotations that her own innocent house did not. Yet.
"So we're backing into this affair accidentally on purpose," Liz murmured, suddenly weary from the agony of thinking about it.
It was no use resisting; making love with Jack Eastman was absolutely inevitable. If there was a lesson to be learned from Ophelia's example, Liz hadn't learned it. Even after last night — maybe because of last night — Liz wanted desperately to be in Jack's arms. Victoria was right: Liz had gone way, way too long without making love.
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