Lady in Waiting: A Novel (36 page)

A
New York City subway train is one of the few places where you can be hemmed in on all sides by a press of people and still feel like you’re alone.

As the train ambled across the river into Brooklyn, I felt elbows, pant legs, and thighs of fellow passengers who seemed oblivious to this strange phenomenon. They jostled against me and the other people around them, but their attention was on their newspapers, laptops, cell phones, or the rushing nothingness outside the window. Each of us was holed up in our own private laboratory of thought and speculation.

My mother was grateful that I offered to bring the saucer to her, though she intimated indirectly that it was my fault she’d forgotten it in the first place. Our argument had distracted her. And wounded her a little bit. She sounded hurt when I called to tell her I was coming with the saucer and needed the address.

The condo my mother was decorating was located in what locals call Dumbo—Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. A century earlier, before the Brooklyn Bridge was built, the Dumbo blocks were known as Fulton Landing. When the ferry was discontinued, the district became the kind of windowless warehouse district that made you want to run for cover when the sun went down. Like so many warehouse districts that won the hearts of the artistic community, the old Fulton Landing neighborhood was lovingly adopted in the late seventies by creative souls. It
was now home to art galleries, loft apartments, ethnic restaurants, and a chocolate factory. Something beautiful had been forged out of something forgotten. As we neared the Dumbo landscape, I thought of the clock that now kept time back at the store, rhythmically celebrating its second life.

Wilson was right. It was still the same clock. The past hadn’t been erased just because a new future had been handed it. If anyone should understand that, it should be an antiques dealer like me. I shook my head, annoyed with myself. The woman sitting across from me arched an eyebrow and then looked away.

I got out at the York Street station and walked five minutes to the complex on Gold Street, and my mother buzzed me inside to the fourth floor. She was waiting by the elevator when the doors opened.

“You didn’t have to bring the saucer down here, Jane. But I’m glad you did. The table looks ridiculous without it.” She took the saucer from me, and I followed her inside the sparsely furnished condo.

“Actually, Mom, I wanted to apologize.”

The condo was painted a pristine and saintly white. Every surface—floor, wall, ceiling, light fixture, and curtain—was a brilliant white. Blue was the only accent color. The brocade pillows on the white leather couch were blue, as were the cushions on the dining room table chairs, and the area rug. And, of course, the Blue Willow dishes were blue. It was an odd blend of contemporary and classic.

Mom placed the saucer on the table and set the coffee cup on top.

“I don’t know why you got so upset with me, Jane. You, being a mother, should know exactly what I mean about wanting your child to be happy.”

“I do. I do know what it’s like to want your child to be happy.”

“Well, then.” She fluffed a bunch of silk delphinium blossoms in a bone china vase in the center of the table.

“What I meant to say was, I’m finally beginning to understand it’s up to me to be happy with the choices I’ve made. And to realize that I am the one who made them. It’s always been up to me.”

My mother’s forehead was crinkly in lukewarm consternation. “What on earth are you talking about?” She gave the flowers another fluffing.

“I’ve always thought you and Dad pushed me into marrying Brad. Like I didn’t have a choice.” I fingered Jane’s ring on my hand. “But I did have a choice. I could have said no when he proposed.”

“Which would have been a mistake. Despite his flaws, he’s still been a good husband to you and a good father to Connor.”

Brad had dropped but a few percentage points in her eyes. “Mom. What if I told you Brad doesn’t know if he loves me anymore?”

Her hands fell away from the flowers, and she simply stared at them.

“Love isn’t something you know or don’t know. You decide it. If he’s not happy being married to you, you need to find out why not.”

“He told me he doesn’t know what is keeping us together other than Connor. He told me that!”

“Well. There’s your problem.” She shrugged her shoulders and walked past me into the living room. “A child isn’t marriage glue.”

“Marriage glue?”

She turned to face me. “Yes. If you both really think what keeps a couple together is a child or even a feeling, then no wonder you two are floundering. What keeps a couple together is determination.”

It just wasn’t that simple. “But I can’t
make
Brad happy.”

“But that doesn’t mean if he’s unhappy, you just sit around and do nothing. If you love Brad, you don’t give up on him. You stand by him.”

“Even when he walks away?”

“Especially then.”

“He was practically unfaithful to me!”

“Well, it doesn’t sound like he wishes he had been.”

A tear was beginning to slide down my face. I brushed it away. “You make it sound so incredibly easy.”

“Who said it was easy?” she exclaimed. “Really, Jane! Open your eyes. It’s hard work. You have to want it more than anything. And be ready to give up everything for it.”

She turned from me, like she was deeply disappointed in me. But I saw her reaching up to her face. And flicking something away. She hurt for me. Ached for me to be happy, like all mothers do. It was a side of her I’d never seen or perhaps looked past. And I couldn’t help wondering if in her fifty-one years of marriage, there weren’t times she wanted to walk away but chose not to. Not because it was the easy thing to do, but the right thing.

“You don’t give up on someone just because that person is unhappy,” she said, her back to me. “And you don’t let them give up on you.”

I stood there, staring at her back and pondering those words; words that came from some deep, private place in my mother’s soul, but yet also seemed to have rushed up from within me too, from a hideaway inside my own spirit.

Brad told me we had to find out if there was anything strong enough to keep us together. Something as strong as attraction. Stronger. I finally knew what that was. It was us. He and I had to be the strong ones. We had to start counting the little reasons. And he and I had to fix what was broken.

I walked to my mother and put my arms around her from behind. She stiffened at first and then slowly relaxed.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” she said, her tone unconvincingly indifferent.

“For fixing the clock.”

“You’re wrinkling my suit.”

A smile broke across my face.

“I need to head back.” I gave her shoulders a squeeze.

She nodded, not quite ready to turn around.

I took a few steps toward the front door, and she called my name.

I turned around. “Yes?”

“Your business cards?” she said impatiently, waving toward the Blue Willow dishes.

I sat across from Dr. Kirtland with the lists in front of me. In between us, yogurt-covered raisins sent up tendrils of unseen sugared air from the wooden bowl. The aroma was too sweet for me. I had just told him about my weekend with Brad. And what I’d realized while arguing with my mother as we wrapped Blue Willow dishes in scraps of tablecloth. Dr. Kirtland had sat quietly and listened.

I hadn’t added anything to either list since my return from New Hampshire.

Dr. Kirtland pointed to Brad’s list. “So, knowing what you now know, not just about you, but about Brad too, are these still things you appreciate about him?”

I looked at the qualities I had written before I knew Brad had clawed his way out of New York to get away from another woman.

I traced the word
Gentle
at the top of the list with my eyes. And then
Strong
. “I don’t want to give up on him. On us. Even now. I know he’s not perfect. I know I’m not perfect. And maybe we didn’t marry for the right reasons, but I’m thinking it’s possible to stay married for the right reasons. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

Dr. Kirtland folded his hands in his lap. “This is one of the reasons I had you make this list, Jane. You may have married Brad for convenience—even as a way to please your parents—but your marriage most likely has produced the feelings of deep affection and attraction that may have been missing when you married Brad. And that’s why you are so troubled that he has left you, and why you are not willing to walk away from it, even though he has hurt you. So, yes, I think it’s possible.”

“But I’m not responsible for Brad’s happiness.”

“No.”

“So what am I supposed to do? I know I can’t make him happy by wanting him to be happy, right?”

“Brad is the only one who can make Brad happy.”

“So I just wait?”

He pointed to the other piece of paper on the table. “You only have one thing on that list.”

“I didn’t know what else to write. I really don’t know what I’d like to do or try.”

Dr. Kirtland smiled. “Then don’t you think it’s time you found out?”

I looked at the sheet of paper with just the bit about the ring at the top. A couple of moments of silence hovered. He waited.

A tiny stream of possibilities began to bubble up inside me, from a faraway place. “I’d like to go back to school and get my master’s. I’d like to not be afraid of deep water anymore. I’d like to see Nova Scotia.” I stopped.

Dr. Kirtland reached into his shirt pocket and handed me his pen.

I
left Dr. Kirtland’s, arriving at the Eighty-sixth Street station a little after three. I emerged onto the street, and I stood like a lost tourist for several long seconds, pondering the busyness and the weight of the new list in my jacket pocket. I should’ve headed back to the store, but I saw a snippet of the awning of my favorite bookstore a block away. A few minutes later, I was walking toward it.

The smell of new paper and coffee and leather journals filled my nostrils the moment I stepped across the threshold. From behind the sales counter, a thin twenty-something with his hair gelled to stony peaks asked if he could help me find something.

I asked him to show me everything he had on Lady Jane Grey.

And canoeing.

And Nova Scotia.

Wilson was eating a hot dog from the vendor who often parked his mobile business by our street corner when I finally returned to the store.

“Don’t tell my cardiologist,” he said, as he wiped a bit of mustard off his chin.

“It’s just one hot dog, Wilson.”

“It’s actually two hot dogs. This was my second.”

I smiled at him. “You only live once, right?”

He smiled back. “It might even be three.”

I set the bag of books on the acquisitions table where he was seated. Stacy watched me from her post in the front where she was ringing up a sale. She mouthed something to me. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but her expression was animated. She obviously couldn’t wait to be done with the customer so that she could talk to me.