“No!” I shouted, approaching the counter. Everyone turned and gaped. “I make an end of it here and now! Dennis said I could have ‘do-overs,’ to change little things so that eventually they change the whole, because people change. But not Donovan! He wouldn’t change then. Why would you think he’d change now?”
“But you did,” the Proprietress answered not unkindly.
“Alice,” Joan said softly as she came to my side, “what you’re doing is changing history as a whole – you aren’t allowed to do that. Not all of it. Moments and seconds, yes, but not all of it. If you leave now, all that comes after won’t happen!”
“I said, no!”
I went to my table and waited for my laptop and bag to appear, for Dennis to come in and explain matters. All I received were inquisitive glances, if that at all. Everyone seemed to avoid me, everyone but Joan.
“Surely you have some sort of power,” I pleaded with her and then gestured toward the Proprietress. “What about her? Doesn’t she have any pull? Can’t you just let me go home and leave things exactly as they are now?”
“Where would the good be in that?” Athena queried. Her snowy owl hopped from the gloved hand upon which it had been perched and lighted into my lap where it immediately fell asleep. “He’s never done that before,” the goddess commented, smiling.
“I won’t have to live through it again, that’s the good of it!” I sniped.
“What about everyone else?” asked Joan. “All that comes after, Alice, will not be.”
I sighed and stroked the owl’s soft and silken back so that it actually made cooing sounds.
“And it must,” I said quietly, picking up the bird and handing it off to Athena.
Joan tried to embrace me, but I shook my head and whispered “no,” and went out into the village, walking across the street to the bookshop where there was a bench outside the door. I sat down and began to weep and continued until I looked up and saw Quinn.
He was where I always saw him in the village: down the street near the church, always too far to reach. Now he smiled sadly and stood there for the longest time until he raised a hand in a tentative farewell before going up the street to the church.
It was enough to send me back to the Shop. No sooner had I entered than Hildegard von Bingen offered a bouquet and when I glanced up after inhaling the lovely fragrance and started to offer thanks, I was staring at Donovan, who was waiting on my doorstep.
“Keep this up and I’m going to hate white flowers,” I groused at him.
“We can’t end it this way, Alice,” Donovan said.
“I already did and you’ll have to live with it.”
“Then shut the door.”
“What?”
“I said, shut the door – if you’re ready to end what could have been the best thing in our lives.” Donovan said. “If you really believe you did, you would have slammed the door in my face.”
I slammed the door in his face.
The cacophony of doorbell frantically ringing, the tea kettle shrieking in the kitchen and Donovan’s rapping brought on a sudden headache.
I never had headaches!
Something was wrong.
With hands over my ears, I ran to the bedroom and dived under the mountain of quilts, blankets, and the comforter and burrowed deep into the pillows, breathing slowly and deeply as my mother had taught when I was a little girl and frightened of thunderstorms. Soon I began to relax and behind my eyelids I saw bright wavering lights, soft soothing colors in Easter-egg pastels, paisley patterns that danced with my heartbeat.
Oh no, I thought, this is the end time for me. This is now. There would be no visit to the Curiosity Shop, no train journey…
As I felt the panic rise in my chest, I also felt weary – bone-weary, to be precise. I wanted to stay awake until the last moment, but my eyelids were made of lead, and I closed them and waited…
I felt a gentle kiss and opening my eyes, I found myself in Quinn’s house, and in his bed on Christmas Day of 1971. Quinn was pulling on the sweater I’d given him, raking his hands through his hair.
“Oh geez, for a moment I thought…” I caught myself and ended the sentence by asking, “What time is it?”
“Past four – and my parents are finally home. Better get dressed, Faery Princess. It’s our big moment!”
“Do you want me to come with you when you tell them?” I asked, coming out of the bathroom dressed and brushing my hair. Quinn was making up the bed and I smiled when I saw that Frodo was placed on what we considered my pillow.
“I’ll bring you in triumphantly after I break the news,” Quinn said, taking my hand as we skipped down the stairs one floor to the professor and Mrs. Radcliffe’s private rooms. “Why don’t you wait in there,” Quinn gestured with his chin to the little family room next to the professor’s study. He kissed my hand and smoothing back his hair, fixing his collar as if he were going to a job interview, knocked on the study door. I waited until he was inside before throwing myself into the Barcalounger with a copy of an old Life magazine.
I knew what was going to happen next, yet I was still as unprepared as I had been all those years ago. Quinn’s shout startled me first.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t believe you’re ready to give up a promising career as a concert cellist – she’s your first girlfriend, Tarquin!” the professor shouted back. “Are you willing to saddle yourself to a girl so young herself? What happens when the children start coming – oh, Lord! She’s pregnant!”
“No! I respect her too much – I love her too much to let something like that happen! Don’t you care that I love her? We’re a perfect fit! I can’t imagine my life without her.”
“Infatuation does this, Quinn – we all have first loves,” Mrs. Radcliffe interjected in her low, Claire Bloom-like voice. “You say this now, feel this way now, but what happens when you return to Oxford? She’s going back to New York. Do you really think both of you can wait, especially when the separations get longer – there’s graduate school, and if you get that position with the orchestra, there’s the touring. Separation is lonely and you can’t expect someone to sit at home every Saturday night, especially someone as pretty and vivacious as Alice. And does she expect you to do the same? I see how girls look at you and you at them. You should take time; consider all the possibilities, weigh all the pluses and minuses. Maybe you need someone closer to your interests, your social status – it would help your career.”
“And have a loveless marriage like you and Father?” Quinn snapped at her. “I guess going to bed with a fifth of vodka and copies of The New Yorker and Psychology Today is more pleasant than giving it up to your husband at least once a month!”
“That was cruel,” his mother said.
“So is this reaction. I thought you’d be happy; I know you like Alice.”
“Why limit yourself to one girl, Quinn?” the professor demanded. “Doctor Barton on the music department faculty has a lovely daughter near your age – she’s also going to England for school, and she’ll be auditioning for the Philharmonic. I think you’d have more in common with the Barton family.”
“Than with an orphan girl?”
“Really, Quinn! Is that fair?” Mrs. Radcliffe was asking.
“C’mon! Don’t deny you’ve always wanted to know what happened to her father. Was he really an architectural engineer or did he disappear into East Germany or a gulag while working undercover for the CIA? And did her mother die of cancer or did she drink herself to death?” Quinn snapped. “No matter which story floating around the Co-Op and the Berkeley Women’s Club you want to believe, guess either doesn’t look good on the society page of the Times!”
There was a pause and then I heard the words that nailed the coffin shut.
“I’m nineteen; I’ll be twenty in a few months. I’m old enough to be drafted – I’m old enough to make up my mind about what I want and who I want!”
“True, but how will you live?”
the professor asked.
“I’ve got my savings, and there’s the trust – I can get a job. Music isn’t the only thing I can do.”
“No savings, no trust – you don’t get to touch that money until you’re twenty-five.”
“Wait! Grandpa Salimbieni made no condition on when I got the money! Mother, that’s your money, too! You’re not going to let him do this!”
“Darling, we had to secure your future,” Mrs. Radcliffe purred.
“I had our lawyer make the provision; it was advised,” the professor replied.
“You bastard!”
“Watch your mouth, young man.”
“I don’t need the money. I can get a job.”
“How do you pay for school? You’d leave Oxford with two years left? Not a smart move, Tarquin.”
“Fuck Oxford, and fuck you!”
“Get back here!”
“Quinn, please,” Mrs. Radcliffe implored. “We know how you’re feeling.”
“That would be impossible, given that you haven’t got souls!”
“I can make things more difficult by placing some calls,” the professor sniped.
“You’d do that to your own son?” Quinn shouted. “The Royal Philharmonic is one orchestra – I can audition for others.”
“Like I said, Tarquin, I can make a few calls. I’m telling you now to reconsider. Wait a while. This passion for the girl may be a fleeting thing.”
“The girl? She is Alice!”
“She wouldn’t mean a thing to you if she hadn’t given it up, as you say!” the professor was shouting now. “You sound desperate, Tarquin. Has she given you an ultimatum? Told you she won’t put out or leave if you don’t marry her?”
That was all I could stand. I was running down the stairs and almost to the front door when I heard Quinn’s shouts.
“Alice? Alice! Where’d you go? Alice!”
“Here, Quinn!”
My hand was on the doorknob when he appeared on the landing.
“Hey! Where are you going?”
I wiped the tears off my face and turned, smiling. “Your father can really shout, can’t he?”
“Stay for a bit. We’ve got to talk. C’mon.”
Swallowing more tears and the lump in my throat, I agreed, for why delay the inevitable, I thought? Yet we didn’t utter a word once upstairs in his study. He threw himself into the overstuffed chair not saying a word. I pretended to be interested in one of his musical compositions – it was actually a transcript of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis that he had written out in his precise, almost perfect hand, for I recognized the notes and willed them from memory to hear the lush, romantic music in my head when the painful, uncomfortable silence between us was too much to bear. After a while when it became too much, I started up. “I should be getting home – Christmas dinner is always at seven and it’s probably waiting.”
As I walked passed him to get my purse and coat Quinn pulled me onto his lap and held me tight, so that I could barely breathe. I let him hold me while he silently wept. His tears fell on my breast and that made me hold him even tighter.
“Do you want to come to the house? Dennis and Harry would be thrilled.”
“Yeah, let’s go,” he whispered.
We walked back to my house in silence and holding hands. Harry’s parents had arrived and were opening up their gifts when we slipped in through my sanctuary door into the kitchen. Dennis noticed us right away and from the look on his face knew what had happened.
Upstairs in my bedroom, we sat on the bed, still in bone-numbing silence.
“You probably think I’m a sissy, or something,” Quinn finally spoke up.
“No! Why would you even say that?”
“I could have stood up to my father, Alice!”
“I think you did, or as best you could given the circumstance. He’s a hard man, Quinn – and a bastard, and a bully. Sorry, but it had to be said.”
The lightness overwhelmed me, though I felt as if someone was punching my chest and I wanted to run as far as I could away from him.
He looked at me and smiled. “No, you’re right,” he said and took my hands. “Alice…”
“Yeah?”
“This may sound crazy – but, what if we went away together?”
“You mean, like eloped?”
“Yes. I’ve got enough money that you could come with me to England. There’s a music school I do volunteer work at in Oxford, maybe they would hire me as a teacher.”
“Are you coming down for dinner?” Harry had popped his head around the door and we both jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Sure, we’ll be down in a minute.”
“Great! My mother wants to meet this tall, dark and handsome feller,” Harry teased and winked before he slipped away.
Dennis had cleaned up the dining room and turned it back into the room for which it was meant. The lace tablecloth from Sweden was brought out of storage, as was the Royal Doulton china and Waterford crystal. Quinn and I both raised our brows at the Norman Rockwell scene before us and sat down at the only empty spaces at the table. Dennis knew that Quinn would be returning with me, and had broken his own etiquette and allowed us to sit together. Harry’s mom watched as I sat down and glanced around at the others – Harry’s dad, Dennis and Harry, Quinn.
“Well, Alice Rose,” Harry’s mom cooed, “I always thought you were pretty, but love certainly has added to that beauty!”
“Thanks,” I said, glancing nervously at Quinn who winked.
“Yeah, we haven’t had to worry about bikers and stoners since Quinn stole her heart,” Dennis quipped. “Mashed potatoes, Faery Princess?”
“Pile ‘em on!” I muttered. Dennis knew that mashed potatoes were my comfort food.
“Harry says you’re at Cornell now?” Harry’s dad asked pleasantly, passing the dish of green beans with olive oil and pine nuts.
“Just finished the fall and winter.”
“Music, like your young man here?”
“I’ve got some composition courses, choir, but my major right now is History with a minor in Performing Arts – theater,” I answered with all the enthusiasm of a robot and smiled on cue.
“That’s right!” Harry’s mom interjected. “You did the costumes for the Live Oak Shakespeare Festival!”
“Only one of the plays – I was supervised by a union person. Don’t have enough credits for union membership but I’m getting there.”
“And you!” Harry’s mom batted her eyelashes at Quinn. “Oxford? And you’re an intern at the Royal Philharmonic?”
“Guilty of both, Missus Davidson,” Quinn answered.
Under the table, we held hands for fear we might lose the other if we let go.
Around midnight Dennis offered to give Quinn a ride home.
“Think about what I said,” Quinn whispered as we kissed goodbye. “I go back the day after tomorrow – come with me.”
I avoided Dennis’ suspicious glance and said nothing while I stood on the porch and watched as the car drove off – Quinn turning around to wave goodbye. When I woke the next day, Harry delivered a letter that had been slipped into the mailbox.
Library downtown tomorrow – newspaper room at 1:00. It’s all arranged. I LOVE YOU!
Neither Dennis nor Harry paid any attention to the school bag I carried out of the house as it would have been unusual if I had carried around something smaller. My stomach was in knots and I felt like crying. Of course I’d come back! I wasn’t running away from my family; I was running to the man I loved beyond all else and I was helping him. I was his knight in shining armor.
The newspaper room was quiet and I settled into one of the overstuffed chairs that stank of old men and ink, taking an old edition of The New York Times from the stack to read.
But I couldn’t read.
My heart was pounding and every clip of a heel on the linoleum floor and the scuff across the worn carpet set my nerves on edge. I waited for the scent of his cologne,
to hear his cheerful ‘hello.’
I waited for two, and then three hours.
Back at home no one thought anything was amiss, nothing was different. Dennis did notice how quiet I was as we made dinner and I set the table.
“Did Quinn go back to Oxford this morning?” Dennis queried.
“Yeah – I hate it when he leaves.”
“I bet he’s glad to get away,” Harry added and then shot a glance at me when Dennis glared at him. “From his parents, Alice! From his parents, not you. I mean, what kind of parents leave their son alone on Christmas Day to do God knows what when he comes home all the way from England?”
“It was their gift to Quinn,” I said. “Mashed potatoes, please?”
I was surprised then, and now, by how calmly I had taken it.
Perhaps it came from a deeply repressed understanding that it just wasn’t meant to be…
Chapter 11
“But it was!” Eleanor of Aquitaine sighed.
The women in the Shop flocked to my table, watched with sympathetic eyes as I sat down and reached for the coffee mug. Athena’s snowy owl hooted and billowed, landed in my lap and tucked itself in for a nap. Joan of Arc made her way through the little group and claimed the chair beside me, as Marie Antoinette tried but was shooed away by Queen Eleanor. A newcomer to the group, Mary Magdalene, glared at Richard the Third when he sympathetically tendered a slice of angel food cake with strawberries and sent him sulking to another corner.
“What was it about Quinn?” Mary asked gently.
“Everything,” the women sighed in unison.
“You don’t seem to be heartbroken.”
All eyes were on Athena, who claimed the owl and placed it on her shoulder.
“Well, I knew it was going to happen,” I said, trying to ignore the icy stare she was throwing my way.
“Then, not now!” exclaimed Athena.
“Yes, even then.”
“Every woman knows that,” Eleanor interjected. “Things are said and habits change.”
“Every woman knows that she would be a fool to not try and stop him!” Athena snapped.
“What could she have done? She had no money, no position, no room or board!” Eleanor argued. “She was left at his mercy!”
Tallis' Third Tune Page 18
