by Lilian Darcy
'Why are we here, Rip?' She couldn't get her voice above a harsh whisper.
He swung the wheel and bumped into the slushy parking lot in front of the ski-rental place, coming to a crooked halt in a space that had just opened up right in front of the wooden building. People came and went in baggy, colourful gear, lugging skis and snowboards, the lenses of their sunglasses reflecting the bright day. Rip switched off the engine and turned to her, Ms face tight and his eyes blazing.
'Because I want to be with you,' he said. 'You're the one I want to be with. Today. This moment. You're the one who makes my heart do weird things, and the one I think about in bed at night, and the one who makes me smile because of funny lines of yours that keep coming back into my head.'
'I'm supposed to think those are good things. They are. But I'm hearing a great big "but" coming up like thunder behind the mountains, Rip. If you want to be with me, if there's something real and solid to what we've been feeling, then why is Tara even still in Harriet?'
He closed his eyes, and the urgency drained out of his voice to leave it hollow. 'Yes, there's a but. She's...'
Pregnant. I know. She came to see me about it on Wednesday.
Thank the lord Jo didn't say it!
'The one I had so much invested in,' he said. 'The one who must have made my heart do weird things, too, a long time ago, although I'm having trouble remembering how it felt, because this whole situation is so impossible.'
'It is, isn't it?' she agreed.
He barely heard her. 'No, I do remember being giddy with love, living on air, thinking I was insanely lucky, thinking I'd discovered the secrets of the universe. I was twenty-four when we met.' He shook his head. 'And then you get over that, and you learn each other's faults, and you anticipate each other's moods, and you forgive a lot, and that's part of it, part of what makes marriage great.'
'Is it?'
'Yes, the fact that it's the whole...oh...the whole carton of milk, not just the cream on top.'
'Well, I like the image...'
'If marriage was easy, Jo, what would be the point?' He spoke with a level of urgency and emotion that meant she couldn't doubt his sincerity, or the extent to which he was questing for the right answers. 'Nobody's perfect.'
'Of course not.'
'It happens in every marriage. You have to love the other person with their faults, because of their faults. A happy marriage isn't about some fairy-tale ideal of blind bliss. I really believe that. I've always believed it.'
'Your parents' marriages...' she began, and realised all over again just how well she did know him.
She'd always thought they'd had little to do with each other's personal lives, but in fact far more had filtered through over the years than she'd consciously known. Little snippets here and there. A frown when he made some passing reference. A phone call that had him looking thoughtful, or angry. In five years, it added up.
She knew a lot about his feelings towards his parents, for example.
'Yes, they've been a big influence,' he said.
'Tell me, because you don't talk about it much.'
'After their divorce—'
'You were how old?'
'Only three.'
'And you went with your mom, I know.'
'At first, but later, when I got older—around nine—I wanted to live with Dad, and to her credit Mom let me go, although I know that wasn't easy for her.'
'So your dad, after the divorce...' Jo prompted.
'Dad found Julia a couple of . years later, and they've been together ever since. Thirty years now. They've had problems. My stepbrother—he's six years older than me— has given them a lot of heartache, taking so long to decide what he wanted from life, but Dad has been with Julia every step of the way. Whereas my mother's on her fourth marriage now.'
'Fourth? I thought it was only three.'
He shrugged and turned his mouth upside down. It wasn't really a smile.
'I didn't announce the latest,' he said. 'It was six months ago. She only' told me after the event, so I couldn't have gone, but I met him over Christmas. Anyhow, there's no reason to think this one will last any longer than the others. She'll bail out, if not at the first hurdle then definitely by the second or third. She's not good at confrontation, and she's not good at compromise. I don't want to look back on my life and realise I've ended up doing the same thing.'
'So what are you saying, Rip?'
'I think there may be some new place we could get to, Tara and I, if we tried. She believes there is. She's being very un-Tara-like at the moment, actually. She's not pushing. She's just asking for a chance. And the decision I have to make is whether I want to try and get to that place she believes in. The place I believe in, too, when I think about Mom and Dad.'
Jo swallowed a great, painful lump of complex emotions. 'So the skiing is for comparison purposes? Do you ski with Tara tomorrow?'
Another tense silence.
She blurted out, 'Oh, lord, I'm sorry, Rip, but I can't—'
'I shouldn't have called you last night,' he cut in.
Neither of them had made a move to leave the car.
'Not for comparison purposes,' he said, his tone forceful. 'It didn't feel like that when I suggested it. It doesn't feel like that now.'
'Then how does it feel?'
He shook his head. 'This is going to sound— But I'm going to say it anyhow. It feels like I've been let out of school, and I can't believe my luck.'
'Married men feel like that all the time when they're having an affair, I imagine.'
'I imagine so, too. Jo, we've known each other long enough that I can't pretend my motives are more honourable than they really are, or that I'm more in control of my own feelings than I really am. I'm groping around in the dark.'
'You do have a good sense of honour, Rip. I'm being honest with you, too. This is horrible. All of this. I'm thinking that if you hadn't given up smoking ten days ago, you wouldn't have come round that night to apologise, we wouldn't have spent that nice evening, our feelings might never have shifted.'
She couldn't even imagine it. Surely she'd felt like this about Rip since the dawn of time?
'Jo—'
'Tara would have come back,' she went on. 'You would have forgiven her. This would be easy for all of us. Happy endings wall to wall.'
Really, though? Even with Tara's pregnancy?
Jo wondered...
She hated being in possession of this crucial piece of knowledge that Rip clearly didn't yet have. It burned in her, splitting her in two. There was no decision to be made. She couldn't tell him. It was an issue of patient confidentiality that was enshrined in law. But she wasn't only a doctor, she was a woman in love, and Tara was conning Rip, tricking him, she was sure of it.
Will she get a commitment from him, and only then tell him about the baby?
Or was Jo being a witch with a poisoned apple again? Was Tara just lost and scared and stumbling through all of this, Snow White in the forest—she looked like Snow White, for goodness' sake!—unaware that she was handling it all wrong?
'Shall we go home?' Rip asked in a voice as wooden as the pine walls of the ski rental. 'Is this going to be impossible?'
Sometimes you just have to be brave when you're in love.
You have to trust, not run.
Rip's mother had always run, and Rip had hated that.
'No,' Jo answered firmly. 'It's not going to be impossible. It's going to be great. The sun is shining, the snow's still deep and dry, high up. We're not setting ourselves some huge goal here. We're just going to have a good day.'
She opened the car door and headed into the ski-rental place, certain that in this, at least, she was doing the right thing.
They skied until the snow became blue with lengthening shadow and the lifts began to close. Jo was rusty at first, but then it all came back and she could match Rip for speed if not for style on the harder slopes.
When he went ahead of her, he waited at the next ridge
or chute, and sometimes she made him wait longer than necessary because she didn't start off down the run directly after him but watched him for a while, reading his exhilaration in the way he moved, loving the evidence of how fit and capable his body was, how much he valued the pleasure of using it like this.
Sometimes they matched each other's pace and skidded into the lift line within a few seconds of each other, breathless and grinning, with sun-warmed cheeks and cold lungs. Once, going incredibly fast, he caught an edge and took a fall, tumbling and sliding, with one ski detached and left behind him in the snow. Jo sideslipped until she reached it then carried it down to him, saw that he'd come up smiling though covered in snow, and laughed at him.
They stopped for lunch at one o'clock—hot dogs with ketchup and mustard, and hot chocolate with marshmallows drowning in the sweet foam on top. Even while they ate and drank, they didn't talk about anything personal, only about the morning's skiing and which runs they'd try in the afternoon.
Jo's hair got messy and even her factor 45 sunscreen couldn't quite keep the windburn at bay. Her legs ached, and that little twinge in her left shoulder would probably turn out to be a strained muscle tomorrow, but she didn't care. Nothing was going to stop this day from being perfect.
By the time they'd returned the rental equipment and driven back to Harriet, with Rip's skis still dripping melted snow in the ski rack on the roof of the SUV, it was almost dark. Near the end of the drive, Jo spent several minutes wondering if Rip would suggest dinner together, followed by several more during which she waited for him to break the news that he had the usual obligation to Tara.
Finally, she decided to be generous and said to him, 'Are you meeting Tara at a particular time tonight?'
She didn't miss the slightly startled look he shot in her direction. Startled and appreciative? 'No, but I did tell her we'd see each other for dinner,' he said.
'It's not that late.'
'No, she'll be fine about it.'
'What did you tell her about today?'
'Just that I was busy. Part of the agreement. She can't ask for more detail than I want to give.'
'So she doesn't know that you and I were...' Jo stopped. 'It does feel like an affair, Rip. I've never imagined myself in a situation like this. Sneaking around, talking about this significant other she.''
'I know. And I know you don't like it, and I don't either. If you want us to stop seeing each other, you and me, even in the limited way that we've seen each other these past few days, I have no right to ask for anything else.'
Crunch time.
Jo picked her way carefully through her answer, like picking her way through a prickly patch of grass in bare feet.
'I loved today,' she said. 'Because it was simple. I'm not sure what other ways we can find right now that would be as simple. I don't want...oh...cosy evenings at my place, or expensive dinners for two. Dangerous, don't you think?'
He whooshed out a breath. 'Oh, yeah!'
She took a slightly shuddery breath, thinking about the other-night and how good it had been, how right their bodies had felt together. 'So I'm wondering if it is best to stop. Now, while we're ahead. Before we make a mistake we'll regret.'
'Sleeping together again?'
'That would be a mistake—' a heavenly, hellish mistake, '—if you and Tara do end up...'
'Yes.' He closed his eyes. 'Yes, it would. But if we could think of something else like what we did today, something public and fun and ...simple, you said, that was a good word, then we could spend a bit of time together.'
She managed a laugh. 'I'll await your suggestions.'
He didn't take long to think about it. 'How long since you've toured the ice-cream factory?'
'Wha-a-at?'
'Seriously, have you ever?'
'I took Mamie there, just after I first moved to Harriet.
We had a ball. I always meant to take her again, but we somehow never managed it.'
'Busy tomorrow afternoon? I'll pick you up and we'll go for ice cream. Simple. Just the tour and the ice cream and home. Tara is doing the antique fair with a friend.'
'This is crazy!'
'It is. Make it the last thing? Last time we spend together? I can't let go of this yet, Jo. Let's spend a bit more time together. Even just for the sake of making things easier in the practice later on. Even just as friends. I'm not going to let our relationship go sour, even if that means the ultimate sacrifice of eating ice cream.'
He knew how much she liked the stuff.
'Mamie's last meal was ice cream,' Jo said. 'Strawberry. I fed it to her when she couldn't hold a spoon or take solid food. She had her eyes closed, and she couldn't speak any more, but she opened her mouth ready for the next spoonful, until it was all gone. I'll always hold onto that memory and feel glad about it, that she had such a sweet, satisfying treat right at the end. She had another stroke during the night, and— You know all of that. I've probably told you the ice-cream story before, too.'
.'That's OK. It's a good story. I can't imagine a better last meal than strawberry ice cream, either.'
He was looking at her, with those eyes like glasses of brandy, drunk neat with no ice. Even in the dark, they were such warm eyes, with little creases in the lids above them that she'd been wanting to kiss lately every time she saw them.
Could she kiss them now? Could she kiss his mouth, with its firm, smooth lips? Or even just his forehead? Kiss the frown away? Taste his skin there, because it tasted just as much like him as any other more intimate spot...
No.
His face wasn't quite saying no, yet, even though it should be. She saw him look at her mouth, the way she'd just looked at his. The connection and instinct and understanding between them was something that must have existed between a man and a woman since before language was invented. Their bodies were like magnets, like puzzle pieces cut to a precise fit.
'Don't,' she told him. 'Not after everything we've talked about. Just tell me what time you're going to pick me up for ice cream.'
'Two o'clock? I'm picking it out of the air. Any time.'
'Two will be fine.'
She would spend the morning getting to work on her stained glass, hunting up her equipment and her book and her notes from Sandy's course, working out what she needed to buy. She would make it seem important by sheer force of will.
Just the way, by sheer force of will, they weren't going to kiss each other here in the dark interior of the SUV.
Rip had lost that hungry look now, lost the softness from around his mouth and the heat from his eyes. He was back in control. 'I'll see you then.'
She only nodded, because she couldn't find any words, and climbed quickly out of the vehicle.
The ice cream was just as good as the skiing.
'We obviously have a similar degree of enthusiasm when it comes to cold things,' Rip said as they sat at the picnic tables in the grounds of the factory, eating from cardboard cups piled high with three different flavours.
'Handy, since we live in Vermont,' Jo said, getting ready to spoon into her mouth a sample of all three of her chosen flavours at once. Cappuccino, strawberry, in honour of Mamie, and Swiss chocolate almond. 'Vermont has very good cold things.'
Rip had picked coconut, cherry and something that appeared to offer at least three different forms of chocolate in the one flavour. 'Since I'm guessing there might be a shortage of the stuff after that production-line glitch we saw.'
One of the freshly filled cartons of double chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream had got caught in the machinery, causing a major ice-cream pile-up, and mass chocolate-flavoured casualties squishing against rollers, toppling over the side and melting on the floor. The spill had reached dire proportions before the production-line staff had noticed, despite the tour group frantically attempting to get their attention by banging on the glass of the viewing gallery above.
'Glitch?' Jo said. 'It was practically a national emergency. Did you see that little boy in tears?'
&
nbsp; 'He won those bumper stickers later, and I think the free cone cheered him up, too.'
'You know I think it does taste better here on the spot.'
'The tour was pretty inspirational, I admit.'
'Mmm, and the sun's so good on my back.'
'But you have a coffee-flavoured drip on your chin.' Rip leaned across and wiped it off with the corner of a paper napkin, and all the stuff from last night in his car was back in the air again. The pull. The understanding. The heat. The impossible timing.
He seemed to feel it, too.
He sat back as soon as he'd dealt with the drip of ice cream, and when both their cups were empty, he stood up right away.
'Do you need to get back?' Jo asked him stupidly, thinking of Tara and a possible rendezvous.
'I need to be on my own, I think. Just being in your company is...even casually like this, the way we might have done if we were still just colleagues... It's not fair. To anyone. Least of all to you.'
'I've enjoyed it, Rip. And I enjoyed yesterday.'
'That's not the point.' He seemed angry suddenly—edgy and impatient.
With himself, Jo suspected.
And for once she wasn't going to blame his quest to give up smoking, even though he was now up to a record twelve days. She knew how much he hated to make a mess of things. He was a perfectionist in certain areas, and nothing much in his personal life was perfect at the moment.
'Are you seeing Tara tonight?' she asked.
'I'm supposed to. I'm going to cancel. You were right yesterday, when you talked about making comparisons. That's not what I thought I was doing. It's not what I'm doing. I just need some time on my own to think.'
She nodded. 'Of course you do. Take me home, and I'll see you at the practice in the morning.'
Rip dropped Jo at the front of her house. He didn't even turn off the engine, and was deeply grateful, as usual, for how much she understood. She didn't invite him in or prolong their goodbye in any way.
He drove out of Harriet along the Interstate a few miles and then off at the next exit, which led to the resort town where Tara had chosen her hotel. Cruising through the parking lot, he couldn't see her car. She must still be at the antiques fair with her friend Bree.