A Seahorse in the Thames (3 page)

But it’s been seven years and here I am still waiting for my life to move on to the next phase. Nothing ever seems to change for the better. I don’t want to win the lottery or move to France or sail around the world. I just want what millions of other women have and probably find unremarkable: a husband, children and a home to love them in.

I just don’t seem to run across many suitable men to date. I long ago decided not to get mixed up with another Rick. Ever. Trouble is, I didn’t know what Rick was like until I had been with him for many months.

Rose’s son, Patrick, who lives in the last third of the triplex—on the other side of Serafina and Jorge—made an attempt to woo me early on, but it was clear from the beginning that he only wanted my company if it included sex. It was obvious to me, and still is, that Patrick dates beautiful women for show, average women for sex, and rich women—for what else?—money. This is why Patrick is still chasing women at a frenzied pace, because eventually, they all figure him out. This is also why I refuse to even go with him to a movie. I barely tolerate him as a neighbor.

There are some nice, single men at the hospital where I work, but no one that has ever taken my breath away. Not like Rick did. Not like Stephen does.

The thing is, there is something about Stephen that is unlike Rick in every way. I have seen it in everything he has done in the short time I’ve known him. It is a quality I find hard to define. I’ve seen it in his every conversation with me, with little Rafael, with the mailman. He is… genuine.

Yesterday afternoon, he came to my back door and grudgingly asked for some Tylenol because he had a headache; grudgingly because he said he usually kept a bottle in his truck but it was empty. I didn’t mind, of course. I gave it to him and told him he should rest a few minutes before continuing in the hot sun. He agreed and I invited him into my kitchen and gave him a glass of lemonade.

We started to chat about little, trivial things, and then for some reason I can’t recall—even though it happened just yesterday—we got on the subject of church. He asked if I went to one and I said sometimes I go with Serafina and Jorge. He asked why just sometimes. I shrugged and said I just go when I feel like I have missed it.

“Alexa, can I ask you something? Do you have a relationship with God?” His question unnerved me a little, but I answered him.

“Doesn’t everybody?” I didn’t mean to sound glib. I just don’t see who
doesn’t
have a relationship with God.

He laughed. I felt the need to explain.

“I mean, that’s like asking me if I have a relationship with air,” I said. “Of course I do. Even the atheist has a relationship with God. He denies God exists. That’s his relationship. One of denial.”

“Okay, fair enough.” He grinned.

“Why do you ask?”

I thought this was an odd question to ask. A private question. A question I was not prepared to answer. I already liked Stephen too much to be offended, but I wondered why he asked it.

“Why do you ask?” I said.

His answer moved me. “Because you seem like you have been carrying around a lot of pain, a lot of bad memories, a lot of sorrows,” he said, never taking his eyes off me. “I can see that you miss your family, the one you lost when your sister had her accident. I can see that you are still hurting over what you lost. But I can see that you still have hope. You’re not bitter. That’s usually the evidence of the grace of God in someone’s life.”

I could only look at him in speechless confusion.

He downed the rest of the lemonade and rose from the table. “I didn’t mean to pry. Thanks for the drink and the Tylenol,” he said. “I am feeling better already.”

He went out the back door and I watched him go, utterly silent, in my chair.

Thinking of it again now makes me tremble.

This, then, is that quality in Stephen that beckons me, this quality he has that no other man I have known has had.

Stephen cares for my very soul.

The one thing I have not given away.

I
awaken on Friday morning to the sound of the morning commute and the cry of sea gulls looking for breakfast. There is no pounding of hammers or screech of saws this morning. Stephen is not outside beginning his fifth day of repair work to the triplex. I rise from my bed and stretch carefully, mindful of my incision. My doctor wants to check it this morning since it has been a full week since the tumor was removed. This will technically be my last day of sick leave. I am scheduled to return to work on Monday and I am suddenly wishing I had asked for two weeks off instead of one.

I bathe, wary of getting the bandage under my arm wet and I wash my hair in the crazy way I concocted on Sunday, the day after I got home from what was supposed to have been same-day surgery; the anesthesia made me so nauseous I had to stay overnight. I tip my head back, off to the left, and dump a mega-Slurpee cup full of water over my head. Half the water seems to pool in my right ear. Washing my hair with one hand also has its limitations but I get through it.

I dry off, towel dry my hair and slip on a cotton sundress with a button-up front, figuring I won’t have to completely undress if I can slip out of the bodice when my doctor checks the incision. My stroll outside to get the paper seems uneventful. For the past four mornings, Stephen had been there to greet me.

Four days ago, when my incision was just three days’ old, I tentatively made the same short trek outside in just my robe. I’d forgotten Rose had hired someone to fix the sagging porch on my side of the triplex as well as replace the roof along the entire length. I was also dizzy with pain and I am sure I made quite a few ugly faces as I tottered out to fetch the
San Diego Union Tribune
.

That’s how I looked when Stephen first saw me.

“Need some help?” a voice said.

The voice startled me, I flinched, and a throbbing jet of pain coursed through my upper body. I made a noise. The kind of noise someone makes when they’ve been stung by a couple of angry wasps.

Stephen was at my side in an instant.

And that’s how I first saw him.

Tall, muscular, tanned and he smelled nice. When he ran to me, his tool belt made all kinds of deep, manly noises.

“Are you okay?” he asked, genuinely concerned.

I had stopped mid-stride, intent on not screaming out a word unfit to be heard on a sun-drenched residential street. I looked down at my feet.

“Y-yes,” I mumbled, wanting to look up at him, but knowing I must look like a hag. I hadn’t even run a brush through my hair.

He started to reach for my right arm, to support me I guess, and I turned away, releasing another arrow of pain through my torso. I bit my lip and swallowed the yelp that begged to jump out of my mouth.

“I had some minor surgery on Friday,” I mumbled. “Under my arm. Haven’t taken my pain medication this morning.” Which was true, I hadn’t. The following morning I
did
take it before going out to get the paper, then promptly fainted. “Just want to get my paper.”

That was when I looked up. I couldn’t believe what I had just told Mr. Handsome Tool-belt. I didn’t even know his name yet.

“Oh,” he said, letting his arm fall back. He reached down for the paper that was laying a few inches off my front path and handed it to me. “Here you go.”

I reached for it with the arm that wasn’t in spasms of pain. “Thanks,” I said, looking at the paper, not at him.

“I’m afraid I am going to be making lots of noise today. I apologize.”

Surprise made me look up into his face. “What?”

“Your landlady hired me to make a lot of noise today. I’m really sorry. You were probably hoping to get some rest.”

I remembered then. I remembered Rose calling me and Serafina and Jorge last week telling us this would be happening. Patrick was supposed to tell us earlier but he had not.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”

“Can I help you get inside?”

It had been a long time since I had been in the company of a man as chivalrous as Stephen was. I realized I see way too much of Patrick, even though I try not to pay any attention to him.

“No, thanks,” I said, and I think my voice and eyes betrayed how touched I was by his thoughtfulness.

He smiled at me. “I am Stephen Moran,” he said, thrusting out his hand. “Stephen Moran the Handyman.” And he laughed.

I took the outstretched hand with my left and he squeezed it.

“Alexa. Alexa Poole,” I replied.

“Nice to meet you, Alexa.” He started to turn away and then turned back. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

I nodded.” Nothing that a little orange juice and codeine can’t fix.” I said it to be casual and funny but it sounded like I was condoning substance abuse.

He smiled, but I know he watched me make my way slowly back up to my apartment. When I got inside I threw the unopened paper on the couch, filled a glass of orange juice and popped two pain pills into my mouth. I lay back down and slept away the rest of the morning, despite the loud noises outside.

I never did open that paper to read it.

Later that afternoon, I felt well enough to sit outside on my porch. I took a book with me and a glass of lemonade. I’d just sat down on my wicker chair when Stephen came around the corner with a crowbar and some other wicked-looking tool.

“Alexa. Hello.” He seemed startled to see me. He stopped at the railing to the porch.

“Hello,” I said.

He looked at my book and my glass of lemonade.

“Feeling okay?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

He paused.

“Going to read for a while?”

Well, it seemed kind of obvious to me I was planning on reading. “Yeah, thought I would.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t move away from the railing. “Is something the matter?” I said.

“Oh. I just… I just told Mrs. Marvelle I would start on the porch this afternoon.”

Of course. The porch. I felt very stupid.

“Oh, I am sorry. I’m in your way,” I started to get up, wincing a little as I rose.

“No, please, don’t get up!” He took a step toward me. “It can wait.”

“Don’t be silly. This is why you’re here.”

“You’re not in my way, actually. Not yet, anyway.” He stepped onto the porch itself.” It’s these boards between your place and the place next door that need to be replaced. You don’t have to move, but it might be distracting if you are trying to read.”

He looked at me in a kind way, so ready to accommodate me. It was already starting to grow on me, this way he had of dealing with people. Of dealing with me.

I stayed.

I didn’t read.

Instead Stephen asked me about my job, where I am from, if I had family here. That first day I told him the short version: I told him where I worked, that I had been born right here in San Diego, that my parents were divorced and that I had two sisters; one of them my twin. Then I asked him about his family, his life. And that’s when he told me he was born in Santa Cruz, that he is thirty-two, that he loves to surf, that his mother lives in Riverside now and that he is an only child.

I asked him if he is married and he paused and said, “I used to be.”

I waited to see if he would say anything else. He didn’t say a lot about his marriage; just that it had been a long time ago. And that the way it ended was not something he was proud of.

And that he had been a different kind of man back then.

I went back inside when my pain medication had fully worn off. I took two more pills, laid down, and when I awoke it was late afternoon. I heard voices outside my bedroom window. I sat up slowly and stood, pulling away the curtain from the window by my dresser. Stephen was measuring boards on a sawhorse and little Rafael was standing nearby, asking Stephen a million questions. Stephen was attentive to his work, but he was smiling at Rafael and answering every one of them.

The day stretches before me with a full agenda of things I want to do. My appointment with my doctor is at nine-thirty, and then I had made plans to have an early lunch with Mom. I also told Rebecca I would be able to see her later this afternoon in addition to our usual Sunday afternoon get-together because I had the week off from work. I didn’t tell Rebecca in advance why I was off. I am not entirely sure she would’ve comprehended what having a tumor, even a benign one, means, nor what my surgery would entail. Besides, it was fairly probable she would have forgotten anyway. It’s just better to tell Rebecca something at the moment she needs to know it. If it isn’t important to her, she tends to forget.

Then of course, I want to see Stephen.

While I eat my breakfast and ponder my reasons for wanting to see him, I mentally somersault back and forth between how to make my visit seem natural.

If I go, will he be glad I came? Surprised? Concerned? Will he think I’m just a compassionate person concerned for the construction worker who fell from her roof? Or will he be able to see right through me? Will he be able to pick up on my growing attraction to him? Perhaps he has already! Perhaps he is flattered by it. Perhaps he is bothered by it. Perhaps he is humored by it.

I feel like a timid, unpopular high schooler with a crush on the star quarterback.

I want to have a bona fide motive for seeing Stephen that he won’t be able spend time guessing about. The motive comes to me as I scrape my cereal bowl into the sink.

I still have his cell phone and wallet in my purse.

My doctor’s appointment is routine. Dr. Chou is happy with the way the incision is healing and is fairly certain I won’t need even a small amount of reconstructive surgery. The tumor, though walnut-sized, was removed with a fair amount of surrounding fatty tissue. If I walk around the rest of my life with my right arm raised, people will see a divot and a scar, but since I am not a nude model or a trapeze artist, this does not concern Dr. Chou or me. He tells me to make an appointment to have the stitches removed on Wednesday.

With a fresh and smaller bandage snuggled under my arm, I head out into the late June sunshine and to my mother’s new world on Coronado. I actually love the drive to my mother’s island home. I love making the heady, short journey across the Coronado Bridge, whose arc over the sparkling bay is like a white and blue rainbow. I love her little house, too, even though it’s less than a twelve hundred square feet and yet cost her nearly a million dollars. I am learning to like her dogs, Humphrey and Margot, though this has taken considerable time and effort on my part. Her pugs are cute little things, but the way she fawns over them is nauseating. Humphrey and Margot have produced three litters so far, tiny suede bundles of canine cuteness which Mom has been able to sell for substantial amounts of money considering, they are, after all, just little dogs. Everything now revolves around the dogs, especially when there are puppies expected or puppies in the house. I’m fortunate that Humphrey and Margot are “in-between jobs” today or I doubt my mother would leave the house to have lunch with me.

She is watering baskets of lobelia on her porch when I arrive. My mother—Mom to me and Eileen to her dogs and friends—is quite attractive, I think. She wears her graying hair short and stylish and usually sports long, dangling earrings. Mom exercises to a DVD every morning, drinks water all day long and never eats anything fried, unless it’s tempura. She loves the opera, the color lavender and falling rain. She has her flaws, though, just like all of us do. My mom can’t move past what happened to her first two children. She can’t forgive Dad for being in Tokyo when Rebecca was nearly killed, though it certainly wasn’t his fault. She can’t find a way to reconcile her relationship with Priscilla, which I think is sad. Mom has the money and the time to go to London and force Priscilla to visit with her, but she doesn’t do it. The dogs. Can’t leave the dogs, you know. She can’t think a nice thought about my Dad, even though they have been divorced since my sophomore year in high school, twelve years ago. And I think her worst weakness is her inability to just love the Rebecca that I love. The one God left with us with, if I can be so bold as to say that. I get the feeling Mom thinks Rebecca is terribly unhappy with her second life, but I just don’t see it that way.

She waves as I drive up and sets the little metal watering can on the porch floor. She puts her hands on her hips as she watches me get out of my car and walk up her little curving path to her front door.