What You Wish For

by Janet Dawson

  “Then why? I love you. Two people who love each other should be together.”

  “I have to be myself first,” she said. “Before I can be part of a couple.”

  “I don’t understand. You are who you are. Being married doesn’t change that.”

  “Doesn’t it? We’re changed every time we interact with someone, whether it’s a moment or a lifetime.” She stared into her coffee. “My parents didn’t have much of a marriage.”

  “Marriage is what you make of it,” he said. “It’s hard work. I know that. My parents have been together forty years. They’ve had ups and downs, but they’ve stayed together, raised a family, built a life together. We love each other. That should be all that matters.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready for that commitment,” she said. “The only thing I’m certain of is that I have to be Annabel first.”

  Whatever happened to love conquers all? He was losing her. He felt pain, sharp as a knife in his breast. Could it be over, as quickly as it began? Could it be something as simple and prosaic as skewed timing? Could it be, the same question posed a month or a year from now would garner a different response?

  Beginnings and endings, he thought again. A car sped by outside, splashing water from an overflowing gutter onto the sidewalk. Events in the larger world shaped the destinies of mere individuals. His job began in February when a woman was kidnapped from an apartment in Berkeley. It ended in May, when a group of people burned to death in a house in Los Angeles. Patty Hearst was still missing, claiming the name of Tania, professing solidarity with her Symbionese Liberation Army captors, most of whom had died in the shoot-out and fire that followed. Rod hadn’t seen the television coverage of the fire but he’d seen the memorial service for the dead SLA members held in Berkeley, just a few blocks from the apartment on Benvenue where the kidnapping took place, another bizarre chapter in the strange story.

  At the time, he didn’t realize these events also signaled the end of a chapter in his own life. A few days after the Los Angeles incident, he was summoned to headquarters. Max Brinker was phasing out security at the Hillegass Street house.

  “Those SLA thugs died in in Los Angeles. Good riddance,” Max said. “The danger has passed. Annabel and Claire graduate at the end of the month and start grad school in the fall. They don’t want security guards now. Tom’s found another job. He gave notice yesterday. Mike will work security at the coffee roasting facility south of Market, and Carl will join us here at headquarters.”

  Rod didn’t know whether he was relieved or anxious. Maybe he could come out in the open with his relationship with Annabel. He didn’t like hiding, not being able to talk about the woman he loved. Who was he, an upstart, an employee, to be squiring the boss’s daughter?

  “Am I out of a job, then?” Rod asked.

  “No,” Max said. “I’ve had my eye on you. You’re smart, efficient, loyal. You have potential. You can join my staff here at headquarters, if you want to stay in security work. If you’re game to try something different, you can take a position that’s opening up, out in the field. Learning the business from the ground up. I’d like to send you to Houston. The man in charge there is an old hand. If you’re interested in learning, he’s a great teacher.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Emotions warred within Rod, thoughts of Annabel mixed with gratitude toward Max.

  “Either job, security or Houston, gives you the opportunity to move up the ranks in this company, if a career with the Dunlin Corporation is what you have in mind.” Max smiled. “Much as I’d like to have you with me here at headquarters, I’ll be honest—the field job offers more potential for advancement. I think you’d be good at it. It means long hours, lots of travel. You should take that into consideration as you make your decision. Sleep on it. Take a couple of days, and then let me know.”

  Rod left Max’s office. If circumstances were different, he’d be interested in the field job, with the opportunity to travel, to learn something new. But he wanted to be near Annabel. If he stayed here and worked at headquarters, he could be. On weekends, the way it was now. But that wasn’t really what he wanted. He wanted her with him all the time.

  He pushed through the lobby door to the street, taking stock of himself, making his decision. I’ve saved some money. I have a good job with a future. I’ve found the woman I love. Annabel and I will get married. After she finishes grad school, she can teach for a while. Then we’ll have children.

  He pictured the two of them living in a sunny little house, with Annabel’s wind chimes hanging from the front porch, roses and children in the back garden. He would propose, and the dream would become reality.

  Instead it washed away with the rain. He pleaded with her to reconsider. But she shook her head and left the coffeehouse, walking across Washington Square.

  He waited a few days. On Sunday he went to Berkeley. Claire sat on the porch, painting her toenails bright red. Her eyes glittered with barely concealed amusement as Rod asked if Annabel was home.

  “She went away for the weekend, down to Carmel. With Hal.” With a sly smile, Claire added, “Any message?”

  Stunned, Rod left. He had his answer, a harsh one. He saw Max the next morning. “I’ll take the job in Houston. I can leave in a couple of days. The sooner the better.”

  Rod walked back to North Beach and told the DeLuccis his company was transferring him to another location. An APARTMENT FOR RENT sign went up in the deli window that afternoon. It didn’t take him long to erase the evidence of his brief occupancy. He gave away most of his things. He was as naked of possessions as he had been when he’d arrived in San Francisco the previous September.

  Travel light, he thought. That way it’s easier to leave.

  He picked up his suitcase and went downstairs to the deli, handing over the key. Mrs. DeLucci insisted he take some cannoli.

  Outside, he raised his hand and a cab screeched to a halt. He got in and shut the door. “The airport,” he said. The cab sped off down Columbus Avenue.

  Rod looked at the pink bakery box tied with string, thinking of Annabel, that night they’d shared cannoli in his apartment, that first night they’d spent together in his bed. Could he ever push that memory from his mind?

  The driver was on the freeway now, flying south, radio blasting Steppenwolf. The magic carpet ride was over. When they reached the airport he left the box of cannoli on the backseat.

  34

  “I took the job, and never looked back,” Rod said. “It’s ancient history, over and done.”

  “She kept the book you gave her,” Lindsey said.

  “Sometimes we hang onto memories and mementos, things from the past. They’re like ropes dragging us down.” He sighed. “You’ll have to ask Annabel why she kept the book.”

  “I know why. This book isn’t the only thing she has to remember you by. Rod, you have a daughter. Tess, Annabel’s oldest child.”

  He stared at her, stunned. “Annabel married in June of ’seventy-four,” Lindsey said. “A month after you left. She had a baby early in ’seventy-five.”

  He struggled to form words. “I was hurt and angry. She’d turned me down. A month later she married Hal. After all she’d said to me about not wanting to get married. So I pushed her out of my mind.”

  “Did you?” Lindsey asked.

  Rod pushed his chair away from the table. “Let’s get out of here. I need some air.”

  Outside they walked toward California Street. “Annabel wanted to be herself first,” he said, “instead of part of a couple, someone’s wife and mother. All those things she wanted to do. She never got a chance to do them. The trip to Europe, grad school, teaching. Instead she got married. But not to me.” He clenched his fists. “I would have married her. If only I’d known, I’d have come back for her. Instead I got angry and wondered why Hal, and not me?”

  “She must have found out she was pregnant after you left,” Lindsey said. “Hal was here, convenient. Annabel called him the ­design
ated suitor. We all did.”

  They walked toward the corner, reaching it as the light changed from red to green. But Rod stood unmoving at the curb. People eddied around them, out into the crosswalk. He gazed down the hill at the Dunlin Building, on the opposite side of the street.

  “I want to meet her,” Rod said. “Tess. My daughter. Can you ­arrange it? She doesn’t have to know that I’m her father. Does she have any idea?”

  “She knows Hal isn’t her father,” Lindsey said. “She figured it out, because of the blood-type discrepancy. In fact, that’s why I’m involved. She asked for my help. Yes, I can arrange it.”

  “I would like that very much. A daughter. I’m trying it on to see how it fits. I’d resigned myself to being alone. Call her now, please. I want to meet her.”

  “She works downtown.” Lindsey took her cell phone from her purse and punched the keys. Tess’s office line rang, then cycled into voicemail. She left a message asking Tess to return her call. “She must be on the phone, or with a client.” Lindsey looked at her watch. “Tess and Nina went to lunch, just before you and I left.” Lindsey called Tess’s cell phone. Voicemail again. She left another message.

  “What’s she like?” Rod asked. “My daughter?”

  Lindsey tucked her cell phone into her purse. “Tess looks a lot like Annabel. She’s serious and quiet. The kind of person who keeps you at arm’s length.”

  “Like Annabel,” he said. “Thanks for doing this. I know it must be difficult for you.”

  Lindsey shrugged. “A favor for Tess.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Rod said. “The other question that went through my mind when I heard Annabel and Hal got married was, why her, and not you?”

  Somehow Lindsey wasn’t surprised. “You knew that, too?”

  “Of course I did. My job was to watch the house and everyone in it. I knew everything that went on that spring. Claire’s fling with Carl, my fellow bodyguard. Gretchen’s break-up with Doug, how suspicious she was, accusing you of wanting him. Which was ridiculous, because you were involved with Hal. You were in love with him. I thought he loved you.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Lindsey looked at a store window and saw the imperfect reflection of a woman with gray hair and wrinkles. Years had gone by, but the emotions were still there. It had been a long time since she’d admitted those feelings, much less spoken them aloud.

  “I still love him. As a friend. At least that’s what I tell myself,” she said. “He did care about me, but he didn’t love me. He loves Anna­bel, and he always has. I’ve accepted that.”

  “How did we get to this point?” Rod asked.

  “Bad timing.” Lindsey pushed back memories. “My daughter Nina is the same age as Tess.”

  “Does Hal know he’s her father?”

  “He might. I’ve never told him. I think Annabel knows. It’s a delicate dance we do, the three of us, waltzing around the truth and never singing the lyrics.”

  35

  Berkeley, California, Spring 1974

  Lindsey put the LP on the hi-fi and sang along with Dusty Springfield’s how-to guide on getting the man of her dreams. The man in question hadn’t figured out how she felt about him. He couldn’t see a damn thing even when it was staring him in the face.

  I don’t need a man, she argued. I don’t have to be part of a couple. But it would be nice to snuggle in bed with something besides that teddy bear. Maybe I’ll get a cat.

  She stirred the chili in the cast-iron pot, tasted it, and added more chili powder. Then she mixed the ingredients for a batch of cornbread and put the pan in the oven to bake. Another lively Friday night in Berkeley. It was spring break. She’d been working on her dissertation research all week, her desk piled with books and papers.

  It had been an unsettling day, though it hadn’t started out that way. The spring weather was inviting, blue skies and balmy temperature. After breakfast Lindsey carried her coffee to the front porch to read the morning newspaper in comfortable solitude. She looked up as Annabel came outside, dressed in denim. “Where are you off to? You’ve been gone every day this week.”

  “San Francisco,” Annabel said. “Rambling around, exploring the city.”

  “You grew up there. I should think you’d know the city pretty well.”

  Annabel smiled. “But I’ve never really seen it, not the way I’m seeing it now. Twin Peaks, the Mission District, Chinatown. Today it’s Fisherman’s Wharf, then North Beach and Coit Tower. I’ve lived in San Francisco all my life and I’ve never been to Coit Tower.”

  “You can have the wharf,” Lindsey said. “Tourists and tacky ­souvenir shops.”

  Was Annabel exploring the city with Hal? Lindsey wondered, with a stab of unjustified jealousy. On a weekday? Surely not. Hal would be in his office, unless he’d taken some time off. Did Annabel ramble alone? Well, of course not. Annabel and Claire were never really alone these days. The bodyguards were always there, by now so woven into the fabric of their lives that often Lindsey didn’t notice them. This morning Rod, the tall one with dark hair and blue eyes, waited at the curb. He opened the passenger side door of his Chevy. Annabel slid into the seat and he got behind the wheel.

  Lindsey finished her coffee and newspaper, then went inside and gathered up her laundry. When the wash cycle finished, she took the clothes out to the backyard clothesline. Might as well take advantage of the sunny day. A moment later, she heard a woman’s voice cry out. She looked up. Framed in the second-floor window of the rooming house next door, the one occupied by the bodyguards, she saw Claire, her arms around a man’s bare torso, her face visible above his shoulder. The man turned, revealing Claire’s body. She was naked, her legs wrapped around the man’s hips. The man clasped Claire to him, hands splayed across her buttocks, mouth devouring hers. The two figures moved together in the obvious rhythm of sex. Claire cried out again. The man drew back his head and laughed. He had a dark handlebar moustache. Then the couple in the window moved out of view.

  Lindsey recognized the man with Claire—Carl, the bodyguard with the luxuriant moustache. It was just like Claire to get involved with one of the bodyguards. It’s none of my business, Lindsey thought. She went back to the house. As she unlocked her door, Gretchen came down the stairs, her face red and blotchy. She leaned over Lindsey, fury in her eyes. “Bitch! You’re after Doug.”

  Lindsey stared. “What?”

  “You were with him at a café on Telegraph,” Gretchen said. “Claire saw you. Why would she tell me that if it wasn’t true?”

  To get a rise out of you, Lindsey thought. Which she has. “It didn’t happen that way.”

  “You admit you were with him.”

  “I’m not admitting anything,” Lindsey said. “I was having coffee. Doug sat at my table. He wanted to talk. He loves you. But he’s not ready to get married. If you keep pressuring him, you’ll lose him.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Gretchen snapped.

  “Why believe Claire, and not me? I am not interested in Doug. I never have been. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  Lindsey went into her apartment and shut the door, feeling as wrung out as the clothes on the line. Instead of working on her dissertation, she took refuge in housework, mindless labor, listening to records as she scoured sinks, swept and mopped floors, and dusted furniture. After retrieving the clothes from the line and putting them away, she walked to the grocery store. She’d make comfort food—spicy chili, homemade cornbread, and a batch of brownies.

  Now, as her unsettling day gave way to twilight, the needle reached the end of the Dusty Springfield album and clicked rhythmically against the grooves. Lindsey stuck the album back in its sleeve. She flipped through the LPs she stored in a wooden crate, finally settling on Carole King, who sang about the earth moving, and the sky tumbling down. Then someone rang the front door bell.

  Lindsey left her apartment and opened the outer door. With a jolt that felt like an earthquake, she saw Hal Norwood. Her heart lif
ted, though her head told it to stop that nonsense. He wore a dark blue suit. So he had been at the office today. “Hi. Is Annabel here?”

  “She went out this morning and she’s not back. Was she expecting you?”

  “Not really,” Hal said. “I’ve called several times this week. But there’s been no answer. I guess she’s busy.”

  Lindsey shivered in the chill evening air. “It’s cold out here. Come inside.” Hal hesitated. Then he followed her into her warm living room. “Did you and Annabel have a date?”

  Hal shrugged. “Not really. I stopped by to see if she was free for dinner. And to talk about a winetasting tomorrow, in Napa. I invited Annabel to go with me. She didn’t say no, but she didn’t say yes, ­either.” He smiled. “I assumed we had a date. You know what they say about people who assume things.”

  I assumed Annabel was with you, Lindsey thought. We were both wrong. She’s with someone else. I don’t know who, but I don’t care. The field is clear.

  “I guess Annabel’s not interested in me,” Hal said. “No matter how I try. Perhaps it’s time to move on.”

  She hoped he meant that. If Annabel didn’t want him, she did.

  The timer dinged. Hal followed Lindsey to the kitchen. “Whatever you’re cooking smells wonderful,” he said.

  “It’s just chili and cornbread. Stay for dinner. There’s plenty.” He said yes, and removed his jacket and tie, hanging them on the back of a chair. Lindsey took two beers from the refrigerator and pried off the caps. She handed one bottle to him.

  “Here’s to chili, cornbread and beer,” he said, clinking his bottle to hers.

  The Carole King album had finished playing. Hal walked over to the hi-fi and looked through the albums. A moment later she heard the familiar opening bars of the Beatles’s Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

  Lindsey set the table and made a salad. As she carried bowls of chili to the table, the Beatles pleaded with lovely Rita, meter maid. Give us a wink, she thought. Give me a sign. Give me anything. “It’s ready, such as it is.”