Bread Alone (42 page)

“This is where you make speeches from.” He leans on the railing and jumps back smartly as it bows out.

I laugh. “And that’s what happens when the speeches go on for too long.”

“No one builds landings like this anymore,” he says.

“Why is that?”

“Wasted space.”

“It’s not wasted. Where else are you supposed to stand and let everyone admire your gown?”

The doors leading off the upper hall are closed, except for one. I wander in and he follows. No furniture, just moving cartons sealed with tape and labeled optimistically “Master Suite.”

“Look.” He points to a box under the bay window. Sitting on top is a pair of fuzzy bunny-rabbit slippers. More endearing than flowers or jewelry, intimate beyond lingerie. Not something you’d buy for yourself. Maybe a birthday present. To say I’m sorry. Or I love you.

I can’t breathe in here. I turn abruptly, go back down the stairs, through the living room, dining room, kitchen, mudroom, and out the side door, as fast as I can without my incision protesting. Gary’s right behind me, securing the door.

How could you leave someone who gave you bunny slippers?

“You want some more wine?”

“No, thanks.” He sits down in the club chair while I rinse the glasses out in the sink. “You still haven’t told me what you want to do tonight.”

“Well …” I reach for the blackout shade on the kitchen window. Then I walk over to the other window and pull the shade. I lock the door.

“I promise I won’t run away.” From his silly little grin, I’d say he’s picking up the signals okay.

He reaches for my hand. “Are you going to be all right with this?”

“We’ll just do what we can.”

“I like the sound of that.”

When I straddle him, I can feel his erection under me. “Are you ready already?”

“It’s getting embarrassing,” he says against my throat. “All I have to do is look at you and I’m ready.”

I’m dissolving against him, sediment falling through still water. Tears stream out of my eyes, and when he feels them on his face, he looks up at me. “Do you hurt?”

“Not physically. It’s just been kind of a shitty day.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“No.”

His thumbs gently push the tears off my face. “What can I do?”

I lean over to kiss his mouth. “This will be just fine.” I stand up and pull the sweatshirt over my head. The rest of the clothes are laid aside and we settle in carefully. I wonder if this chair has a history. Crazy, but it beats thinking about CM. Or Mac. Or the shadow I was trying to name. It was nearly in my grasp when CM showed up. I push it all away. The only thing I need to be grasping right now is directly under me, seeking an entrance. I’m surprised to discover that I’m as ready as he is. His hands cradle my hips and I lower myself, letting him fill me.

“Are you okay?” he whispers.

I smile. “Better than that.”

He begins to move inside me and I fall thankfully into darkness.

Sunday night. My attempts to function on impulse, without a lot of review or analysis, have always met with limited success. Gary is snoring—but softly and considerately—sleeping the sleep of the righteous, while I lie on my back, eyes glued open, brain turning over like an old car suffering from post-ignition run-on.

The whole week has been about him taking care of me, pleasing me, helping me, making me feel good—whether I wanted to or not. It reminds me of being in a mink-padded cell. And just when I get annoyed, just when I feel like I have to get away, at the very instant I think I’ll explode if he doesn’t go get a hotel room, his breath on the back of my
neck turns my knees to water and we end up sprawled on the futon.

He always says my name when he comes. It’s comforting to know that the person with whom you are having sex is focused on you alone. I myself have visions of calling out the wrong name, not the sort of thing that’s easily explained. If words have the power to wound, the wrong name uttered at the wrong time could be lethal.

When I open my eyes Monday morning, he’s lying there propped up on one elbow, smiling at me. Awareness of his imminent departure produces a twinge of something almost like regret. It wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was nice. He pulls me closer and I snuggle up against his warm, clean T-shirt smell.

The kids only called three times and Erica not at all. He gave me back rubs and foot massages and touched me in all the best places, fixed dinner and did the dishes. He even tried to brush my hair one night, although it turned into a contest of wills ending in a draw. When you get old, half blind, mostly deaf, and you can no longer tell which stuff in your fridge is edible and which is riddled with botulism, then you want someone like Gary around. He may not be in any better shape than you are, but he’ll damn sure be trying to take care of you.

“Wyn.”

“Hmm?” I rub my cheek drowsily against his chest.

“I want you to come down to San Francisco for a weekend.”

I raise myself too quickly, grimacing at the pain. I sit cross-legged, holding my head between my hands, combing the hair back with my fingers, waiting for the brain to clear. “Why?” I finally manage.

He smiles, unperturbed. “I want you to meet Andrew and Katie.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that long enough for you to come to your senses.”

“I think it’s time for the three people I care most about to meet each other.” He clasps his hands behind his head.

“I cannot possibly be one of those people. You don’t even know me.”

“I know what I need to, Wyn. And I know myself. I want you in my life.”

“Gary, for Chrissake, it’s just sex.”

“That’s not what it is to me.” The way he says it, slow and steady and very sincere, makes me ashamed of myself “I don’t think that’s all it means to you either, but you’re scared. I can understand that. You think if you can diminish it by calling it ‘just sex,’ you can avoid getting hurt again.”

There’s just enough truth in what he says to make me hesitate. “My divorce isn’t even final. It’s probably not going to be for a long time. I can’t think about … stuff like this.”

He sits up, too, facing me. “I’m not asking you to think about anything. I’m asking you to come to my house, meet my kids, have a fun weekend. If we lived in the same town, it probably would have already happened.”

“But we don’t live in the same town.” How do I say I’m glad we don’t? That I don’t feel up to making this decision right now?

He looks at me with those sleepy eyes while he traces the outer curve of my ear with one finger. Even that’s enough to race my motor, and he knows it.

“As Mick Jagger said, ‘Time is on my side.’ “ He leans over to kiss my neck, right at the jawline.

“Irma Tho—mas said it first,” I say weakly.

“God, I love that little catch in your voice.” He leaves a trail of feathery kisses on his way down my neck.

“Gary, I’m not comfortable with—this.”

“Why not?” Around the front, to my collarbone. “You know how I feel. I know how you feel. Everything’s”—he touches my throat with just the tip of his tongue and my body responds without consulting my brain—”up front and out in the open.” When his thumbs graze my nipples through my T-shirt, they stand up and salute.

He knows he’s won this skirmish.

It seems like a good time to divest myself of some of the accoutrements of my former life. Like my clothes. It’s only partly a symbolic gesture. The truth is, I need some money to pay my last bill from Elizabeth. Apparently, stalling is pretty expensive.

Mac comes by Saturday afternoon, loads the two boxes into the
back of the truck, and drives me down to Rags to Riches. When I climb out and reach for one of the boxes, he slaps my hand away.

“You’re not supposed to be lifting anything yet. Go open the door.”

The bell over the entrance jingles when we walk in, and the petite blonde behind the counter smiles at us.

“Hi. I’m Wyn Morrison. I called about the clothes.”

“Great, just put them over here and let’s have a look.” Mac goes out and returns with the other box. He sets it down and leans over the counter, watching us. She’s pulling things out, exclaiming over them, dividing them into piles. Donna Karan, Ellen Tracy, Diane Freis, Anne Klein, Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani. Sand-washed silk, linen, rayon, chenille.

She says, “These are gorgeous. Are you sure you want to get rid of them all?”

“Positive.”

“Well, our split is sixty-forty and … oh my God, a Judith Leiber bag? We shouldn’t have any problem selling them for you. They’re like new.” She and I inventory the tights, skirts, slacks, tops, dresses, lingerie, shoes, purses. “These dresses are exquisite. I have one or two people in mind to call about them.”

Mac’s uncharacteristically quiet on the way home. He’s been sort of preoccupied lately, and I tend to blame his close encounter with Laura at the party on Capitol Hill. Or else he’s suffering from writer’s block, which, like most writers, he takes out on everyone around him.

When he pulls up in front of the Victorian, I ask him if he wants to come in.

“I’ve got some things to do before work,” he says.

I look over. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’ve just been kind of tired lately.”

“How’s the book going?”

“Fine.” But he’s looking out the window.

“Mac, is it Laura?”

“What?” He tries laughing, but he sounds pissed off that I mentioned it.

“Maybe it’s none of my business. I just thought you seemed a little depressed ever since you ran into her at—”

He looks at me sharply. “Do me a favor. Don’t try to analyze me with your California pop psychology.”

“I was only trying to help—”

“Well, don’t, okay?”

“Fine. I won’t.” I open the door and get out, but before I make it to the curb, he calls after me.

“Wyn, wait a second.” I stare into the truck. “I’m sorry. I’m just in a shitty mood. I’m going home and get some sleep. I’ll see you tonight?”

I shrug. “Probably.”

My shoes roll as I start up the drive; I realize there’s easily two inches of new pea gravel on top of the old.

Sunday night is clear. Clear like I’ve never seen in L.A. The debris of the day must be halfway to Japan, and the stars look like this jacket my mother used to have, rhinestones set in black velvet. There is no moon. Mac wants to be on the water tonight.

Dark silhouettes of gulls float against the jeweled towers of the city, and metal clanks against metal on the car deck below us. In the lee of the passenger decks, the fierce wind drops to a ripple.

We hang over the rail, side by side. I’m aware of him so acutely that my fingers ache. The smell of pine bark that clings to his jacket, smoke from the fireplace at Bailey’s. Something grassy, maybe shampoo.

He’s staring up into the black dome of night sky.

“What is it?” he says.

“I was just—Is that the Big Dipper?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the only constellation I know.”

“If you know that one, you actually know two. The Dipper’s the tail of Ursa Major, the big bear.” I try to follow his finger, tracing the outline of a long-tailed bear.

“So where’s the Little Dipper?”

He looks behind us. “You can’t see it from here because of the boat, but if you followed a straight line from those two stars on the cup of the dipper, you’d see Polaris, the North Star, which is the end of the Little Dipper’s handle.”

“What’s the really bright star, just down that line from the Big Dipper?”

“That’s Arcturus. It’s sort of at the knee of Boötes, the herdsman. And then if you keep looking down that same curve of stars, you can see part of Virgo.”

I look past him. “Who knew that the psycho-killer handyman would know so much about stars.”

“You can’t see that many here,” he says. “Too much light. This would be a great night to be up in the San Juans.”

Something about the way he says it. I feel hot and cold at the same time, and I know it’s too early for menopause.

“I’m probably going up there.”

“Probably?” My voice is faint.

He studies something down on the car deck. “No. Not probably. I’m going. Next week.” Fortunately, he keeps talking, because I know I can’t make any sounds. “That’s why I’ve been sort of distracted lately. I’ve been in Seattle longer than I’ve been anywhere else since I left New York. It was a hard decision. Sorry if I’ve been moody or—”

“What will you do there?” That voice isn’t mine. It belongs to one hell of a ventriloquist.