“Yes.” I swallowed. “I’m not quite as I seem—”
His phone beeped. He pulled it out again. “Wait a minute.” He opened it. “Great. Here’s the picture. Look at that. What a sweetie.” He held his phone out to me across the table. The picture on the small screen showed a little boy, about three, sitting on the knee of a young-looking Santa Claus, whose belly pillow had slipped a bit to one side.
“He’s cute,” I said politely. “Looks sort of like you.”
“My nephew. He’s the first grandkid in the family, even though my sister’s younger than I am. We’re all so proud of him. Chris is his name.” He turned the screen back to look at it again, sighed, closed the phone, and put it away. “I want to have kids someday. How about you?”
It was an opening.
“I don’t know quite how to tell you this, but I’m not as I seem—”
“Don’t tell me.” I had his attention now. “You’re lesbian.”
“No. I have to tell you that—”
“You’re married?”
“No. What you need to know is… the Elirians found me on my eightieth birthday.”
“What? Eighteenth?”
“No, eightieth. I’m really an old woman, Zachary. The Elirians gave me a young body when they saved my life, but I’m really eighty years old.”
“No way!” He laughed. “Clara, you’re teasing me. What an idea! Don’t look so serious.”
I was sweating, my stomach clenched. “I’m not teasing. I’m an old woman. I already have three kids. The oldest two are fifty-five and fifty-six. I have five grandchildren, and the oldest of them is already twenty.”
“Clara, what are you talking about?” His brow was furrowed.
“I’m telling you who I am. I thought you should know before we get any more involved.”
“What a wild idea. You couldn’t be eighty, you’re so luscious.”
“I am. Eighty, I mean. One reason I’m so sure the Elirians are real, not a dream, is because they completely transformed my life. They didn’t know. They didn’t understand aging. So when they found me, an old woman with all kinds of failings even before I was hit by lightning, they just healed everything, like they did your back, everything, including my white hair and wrinkles and unsteady heart.”
I stopped, holding my breath. I could feel tears coming into my eyes. He stared at me. “I don’t believe it.”
“Please. It’s true. I’m old enough to be your grandma.”
“No way.” He shook his head. “No way. They couldn’t do that.”
“They healed your back. They brought you back to life when you should have died. They’ve done that for lots of other people. They told me about it. They’re miraculous healers from another planet, so different from ours we can’t have any concept of what they can do.”
A waitress appeared beside our table. “Are you ready to order?”
“Not yet, thank you,” Zachary said.
Even in my tumult, I noticed how courteously he spoke to her. She moved away.
Zachary turned back to me. He reached across the table and brushed a tear off my cheek. “Clara, don’t cry. It’s okay. I don’t understand yet, but we’ll get it straight. Maybe the lightning…”
I pressed my lips together so as not to cry anymore. I was undone by the way he touched my cheek to brush away my tear, the way he sought to comfort me. I should have known from dancing with him that he would be sensitive and caring. Why else would I have surrendered so completely to his embrace?
“Look,” he said. “Let’s order. I’m starved and you probably are, too. We can talk more about this when our blood sugar is restored.”
I nodded and focused again on my menu, but I couldn’t see anything, my eyes blurred with tears. We were silent, he perusing the menu, I struggling to control myself. After a bit, he said, “I eat here often. Their curried shrimp is quite good. Would you like to try that?”
I looked up gratefully and sniffed back my tears. “That sounds great.”
While he beckoned to the waitress and placed our order, I found a tissue in my pocket and blew my nose. He took another sip of wine. “This is a very nice wine. Try it.”
I hadn’t touched mine since we clinked glasses. I took a sip. It was smooth and slightly sweet, warm in my throat.
“Do you go to tango festivals?” he asked.
“Only the ones in Denver. I hear they have a good one in Seattle once a year.”
“They do. I also like to get to the ones in Portland and Tucson and San Diego.”
“That’s a lot of festivals.”
“What can I say?” He smiled, his mustache curling. “I live to tango.”
I took another sip of wine, seeking to compose myself. “How long have you been dancing?”
“Ten years.” He went on to tell me how he began, who his favorite teachers were. I had studied with some of them when they came as guests to our Denver festivals. We compared notes on their teaching styles.
Then we spoke of our families of origin. I said nothing more about my children or grandchildren.
Zachary buttered bread for me and I ate, sipped more wine, and got a little tipsy. Our dinner came.
I asked him if he had a spiritual path.
“Not really. I’ve just been too busy with life. I’m not opposed to spirituality or anything. I guess nature is my temple. When I’m out in the mountains or by the ocean, that’s when I feel most connected to… God, something beyond myself. How about you?”
“Nature is sacred for me, too. But I’ve tried a lot of things—Christianity, yoga, Sufism, shamanism. Most recently I’ve been influenced by Buddhism, but they all flow together into one path for me.” I didn’t enumerate all the years I’d spent with each tributary to my path.
He looked at me searchingly, frowning again. “That’s a lot of exploration.” He took another sip of wine. “Tell me how you got into massage.”
We ate and talked. I felt as if I were holding down a volcano inside of me. At the same time I was enjoying our conversation, delighting in his elegance and grace.
At one point his phone rang again. He excused himself, and talked to someone, apparently from work. Much of the conversation on his end was a jumble of letters and formulas that made no sense to me. It could have been a foreign language, except for the occasional English word. While he talked, I incubated a plan.
Dessert came, chocolate mousse.
“You said you have kids?” he asked.
“Yes. Three. A daughter and two sons.”
“You’ve been married?”
“Twice, but I’ve been single for almost thirty years now.”
“That’s about how old I figured you were. Thirty.”
“Add fifty and you’ll be right on.”
“Clara, there’s no way I can believe that story.”
“I know. When you take me home, how about coming in for some tea? I’d like to show you some pictures.”
He looked around my living room as I hung up his coat. “You’ve got a sweet little place here. Cozy.”
“It’s home. Come on in the kitchen and tell me what kind of tea you’d like.”
He picked out his tea and a green mug from the ones hanging on the wall above the counter. As we waited for the water to boil, he stood behind me and wrapped his arms around me. I leaned my head back against his shoulder and we blended together as we had when we danced.
“Ah, Clara,” he murmured. He kissed my hair, my cheeks, my neck, sending electricity streaking through me. The teakettle whistled.
I drew myself out of his arms. We took our tea to the dining room table and I pulled a pile of photo albums out of the cupboard under the bookshelves.
For the next hour I showed him pictures. Me as a child with my bicycle, my stuffed panda, a kerchief tied over my hair and under my c
hin as we did in the forties. My high school graduation picture—fifties hair style. Wedding pictures of me and Dan. The portrait taken of me at age twenty-two when I started teaching elementary school. He stopped my hand from turning the page and looked closely at the portrait, then at me.
“You look almost the same, but you’re more beautiful now. I don’t quite get what it is.”
“At that time in my life I was uncomfortable with myself. That’s what you’re seeing. Years of spiritual practice have changed that. There are some gifts to aging.”
“Getting more comfortable with yourself. I could use that.”
I showed him pictures of me holding baby Lisa.
“You look kind of tense,” he commented.
“I was. I loved her so much I wanted to be a perfect mother. And perfect is not a word you can apply to parenting.”
Pictures of Lisa and Greg growing up. Pictures of me and Jon and our wedding in the forest, all of us dressed in beautiful, flowing, hippie-style clothes. Pictures of me holding newborn Robin, my hair already showing its first streaks of gray. Pictures of my children’s weddings. Pictures of my grandchildren.
I took him to my computer to show him more recent pictures, ones I’d used for online dating in my late sixties and early seventies, my hair still curly, but white, my face creased in wrinkles, my smile the same. Last I showed him a family portrait taken at my eightieth birthday family reunion last July—before my birthday, but the only time I could get everyone together. They were all there, Lisa and Phil and Jocelyn, Greg and his wife and children, Robin and Alice, Katie and Colin, and I at the center, my wrinkled face beaming, my hair unruly as usual.
He looked a long time at that picture, then turned away from the computer. On my desk was a picture of me and Robin, sitting on the couch together, taken last summer before my transformation.
Zachary touched it. “You’re wearing the same blouse you have on tonight.”
“Yes. One good thing was that I didn’t change size much when they healed me, so my clothes still fit.”
He leaned his elbow on the desk and dropped his head into his hand. I saw that final detail had clinched it for him.
“I get it.” His voice was choked. “It’s totally weird, but I get it.”
I got up from the computer and went to kneel by his chair, looking up into his face. I laid my hand on his knee. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have told you sooner, but I was enchanted. I never danced with anyone who matched me so perfectly, invited me to dance all I knew of tango, and taught me more. Maybe we can still dance together. I hope so. But we shouldn’t fall in love or anything like that.”
He lifted his head and looked long into my eyes, touched my cheek, my hair. “Too late,” he said.
He got up. “I have to go. I need to think about all this. I’ll call. I promise.”
We walked in silence to the front door. I helped him on with his coat. He took me in his arms and held me tight. Then he left, his feet swift on the porch steps.
I gathered up the albums and put them away. Now you’ve done it, I told myself. He’ll never call. He shouldn’t. But I couldn’t have done anything else. Exhausted by emotion, I went to bed and slept.
Two hours later I woke, every inch of my skin crying out with touch-longing. All the desires I had painstakingly folded away for the last five years came crashing back like an ocean storm breaching the levees.
Zachary was right. It was too late.
Chapter 8
For the next three days, I jumped whenever the phone rang, told myself he wouldn’t call, maybe he would, he shouldn’t, asked myself what I would do if he did. On and on.
Inner old woman laughed at me. Remember Jon? she began.
Hush, I told her. The memory of Jon was still a knife under the heart. I had loved him without reserve. We had told each other we were soul mates. Then, when Robin was only ten, Jon became restless, unilaterally decided we should have an open marriage, and neglected me for one young woman after another. When I finally couldn’t bear it anymore and insisted on monogamy, he was gone in a month and we never heard from him again. Robin still carried the pain of that abandonment, and I struggled with it for years, unbelieving.
Inner old woman persisted. About this Zachary. Let it go, she advised me. Just let it go. It won’t work. Easier to let it go sooner than later.
I knew she was right. But my body was young and full of desire. Never had I felt more incongruent.
On Friday afternoon, at 3:30, when the phone rang, it was Zachary. “Let’s take a walk,” he said without preamble.
“Okay.”
“I’ll be right over.”
Before I had time to do more than run a comb through my hair, he was at the front door. He came in and hugged me tight. “Let’s go.” I searched his face. He was holding in emotion, but I couldn’t tell what kind. I put on my boots and cloak and followed him out the door.
It was cold at the lake, the sun already low over the hills, the fields hushed under their blanket of snow. We walked without speaking, but our hands found each other. Even through our gloves, I felt the warmth and comfort of his touch. We circled the lake and headed up the ridge. Without planning to, I found I was leading him to the place I often sat to muse, the place where the Elirians had come to me only two weeks before. I wondered where they were now. They had spoken of going north. I imagined them rescuing an Eskimo from sea ice or the jaws of a polar bear.
There was some bare earth scattered with pine needles on the south side of the lone pine. We sat cross-legged facing each other. He held both my hands in his warm clasp, and began to speak, his words tumbling over each other.
“I’ve been thinking about you nonstop for the last three days. It’s the weirdest… I never thought I could believe such a thing, but you convinced me with your pictures. You’re right. They’re so different from us anything’s possible. Also I’m realizing my back is super. I was just taking it for granted, not noticing, but it doesn’t hurt any more at all. The docs said, after that fall I had ski jumping, that I’d probably always have some pain, and maybe need surgery later. I know now I won’t, unless I do something stupid.” He grinned and shrugged. “Like skiing into a tree.”
He stopped speaking. He was looking into my eyes, his eyes both soft and intense. I was quiet, waiting, but my heart pounded and ached almost the way it had before Kiria laid her hand on it.
“Here’s what I think,” Zachary went on. “I think it’s destiny or something like that, that we were both found by the Elirians, that we both dance tango and recognized each other’s Elirian eyes, and that you are young again so we can be together. It’s too much to be just chance. And I’ve never met anyone who fits me like you do. You said that, too. So I want to go on with you. I want to see you lots, dance with you, share life with you. Maybe we can go to Buenos Aires together. What do you think?”
“I… I don’t know.” I felt as flustered as a teenager. I closed my eyes so as not to be distracted by his. Maybe he’s right, I thought. Maybe this is the opportunity I used to say I wanted before I died, another chance at a relationship, now that I am wiser and could maybe make it work. Only I had imagined an older man, about my age, retired. I remembered a night, only last summer, when I looked in the mirror as I pinned up my straggly white hair before my bath and said to myself, “That face will never be the face of anyone’s beloved, the face that makes a man light up when he sees it.” I’d persuaded myself I had let go of such desires, but in that moment the thought hit me like a cold blow and I lay in my bath and grieved. Now—I could be someone’s beloved. Oh, to be loved like that! To be “the one” for someone. And someone so sensitive and fine as the man sitting opposite me holding my hands.
I opened my eyes again. His face was anxious and tender. Red flags waved in the back of my mind, but I saw only the love in his eyes. “Maybe we should check it out,” I said.
>
“Yes!” He pulled me to him, rolled me over into the soft pine needles, and kissed me.
I fixed him dinner that evening in my little house.
“Sweet,” he said. “Look at you in that long apron. You’re so old-fashioned.”
“I guess I am, nowadays. Long ago, all us wives stayed home and kept house and wore aprons. Back when I was young—”
“You’re young now.”
“The first time I was young. Back in the forties all the girls were required to take sewing in seventh grade and cooking in eighth grade, home economics they called it. Of course I’ve learned a lot more since then, keeping house and raising children over the years. So I made this apron, and I can fix you dinner.”
“I love it. I guess they don’t do that home economics thing anymore. I know a lot of women who can’t cook worth a darn.”
I served up our plates with steamed rice, chicken thighs sautéed in coconut oil, lemon juice, and herbs from my garden, a big helping of green salad. He sniffed appreciatively. “That looks yummy.”
“Have you ever been in a long-term relationship?” I asked as we started to eat.
“Yeah. Once. A girl named Suzy. We went together for about five years. She runs a dance studio in Seattle. You know, ballet and tap and acrobatic for kids. Ballroom for junior high and up. Adult classes, too. I used to help her teach tango. She was just starting up when we were dating and at first it was okay. Then she got so busy she didn’t have any time to hang out with me. It got to be a strain. It was like she was married to her studio. So I started dating some other women and she got mad and it ended.”
Another warning signal flared in the back of my brain, but I brushed it aside. I loved having company for dinner, and was still vibrating from his kisses and the warm length of his body against mine as we lay under the pine tree.
Still I asked, “Since then?”
Never Again Page 12