“I guess I could do that if I took enough Laudanum,” I muttered.
“So what will you do, Alice?” the Proprietress demanded.
“I’ll have to think about that.”
“Hmmm, so did Quinn.”
“What?”
I went to her, unsure of what I heard. The Proprietress was taking stacks of books out of cartons and one by one, opened the cover and made a mark on the first end paper with her pen that had the disco ball dangling from it. She looked up, a smirk riding her lips from cheek to cheek.
“I said, that Quinn Radcliffe made the very same comment – when it was his time and when he was in the same circumstance as you. He managed to figure things out quicker, though. I suppose being a musician gives one a logical edge over those who read history – and romances.”
Again, the smirk.
“That’s not fair: there’s nothing wrong with reading history or romances!” I protested. “And are we forgetting the diva musician, the temperamental artiste model?”
“The heartsick and lonely young man with prodigious talent? I haven’t.”
“As far as I know, he wasn’t conflicted about his love, not like I was – am! Will be! Oh, hell.”
“You don’t know that for certain.”
I was about to finish a thought and decided it was better left alone. The Proprietress was waiting, however, and I said, “If all this is what I think it is, then why should I have to relive those painful moments? You said I can’t change everything, only certain things – and I know what will happen next, and frankly, I don’t want to live through that again!”
“Do you think you’re the only person who’s gone through this? Agonizing over what to do or say? Wanting to put things to rights?”
“I never said I was.”
“I think it’s time you went back and dealt with it,” the Proprietress sighed. “On your way, Alice!” As I had my hand on the door, Sigmund Freud entered, muttering something about motherhood. “Oh, and Alice?” she called after me. “A word of advice: being silent and complaisant is never good in an argument, and it certainly doesn't heal wounds. Remember that, and what happened before. On your way.”
Pushing past Sigmund, I hurried out into the village lane and took my time getting to the railway station. The conductor tipped his hat as I boarded the car and slammed the door shut on my compartment, throwing myself on the seat.
And then something different happened. The train went at a supersonic speed so that the scenery from my life was like the colored gels and dishes of food coloring and paint that Quinn had used for his light-shows. It sped faster and faster like an amusement park ride, so fast that I started to scream.
The scream woke me up. My heart was pounding and I was drenched in sweat, trembling and frightened as I lay in our bed in the brownstone in Providence. The grandfather clock in the hall struck noon.
Another day of staying in bed until noon, another day of life gone by, wasted, without purpose.
Looking over, I noticed Donovan’s side hadn’t been touched. He had probably slept at his office or downstairs, as had been his habit for the last week.
My entertainment during the past seven days had been staring out the window. Yesterday, the sky had been a brilliant, silvery-blue; today the skies were leaden and snow was falling. I hated snow. I hated Christmas in Providence and longed for the brisk, biting cold but tolerable, snowless winters of Berkeley.
I tried to sit up but the pain was excruciating. I gasped and held my mid-section, grabbing a pillow to press against my abdomen as I sat up and was like this for what seemed like hours until I heard the doorbell. It took a lot of effort to scuff into my slippers and stand, and while I was trying to put on a robe, the doorbell ring became a pounding. Many painful minutes later, I opened the door to my mother-in-law.
“Sweetheart!” Arielle gasped. “What are you doing out of bed? Where’s the nurse?”
“I don’t know. I need to sit down – would you…?”
Arielle shooed the ever-present Phillip away and put an arm around my waist, leading me to the appropriately named fainting couch in the living room. She made sure I was comfortable and grabbed one of the afghans stacked in a corner of the sofa and tucked it around me. I put my head back and closed my eyes, tears smarting the lids and another lump clogging my throat.
“Where is he?” she asked, sitting beside me. “He” was spat.
“I don’t know. At work, I suppose. What day is it?”
“Thursday, darling. You are so very pale – and you’ve lost more weight! Darling, darling, can you eat yet?”
“Don’t want to, honestly.”
“Honestly! Must I call Harry to come out here and look after you?” Arielle threatened but in a gentle and teasing manner.
“Please, don’t! He doesn’t know – I never told him, and the anniversary of Dennis’ death is coming up. He doesn’t need to worry about me. It’s been an awful year…”
“Awful? The year in which you move to Providence, marry, land a job at a prestigious university, a husband who receives acclaim for his work and has a building named after him?”
“I suppose we won’t mention my brother’s death, the accident, the stories in the paper, the pending lawsuit.”
“Well aren’t you one for looking at a glass half full?”
“I appreciate your coming by, but you’re not helping.”
“I still think you should tell Harry. He’ll be furious if you don’t tell him what happened.”
“He’ll kill Donovan, that’s for sure…”
“Wouldn’t we all like to?” Arielle muttered under her breath.
She now fussed with the bandage on my neck, clucked her tongue at the stitches on my arm, and glanced at the pillow I still held to my abdomen, then looked at me and looked away just as quickly.
“Do I look that bad? Are the black eyes gone?” I tried to jest.
“Actually, you look remarkable, all things considered,” Arielle said gently. “What did the doctors say? Yesterday was the appointment?”
“I’ll mend – I can still have children.”
“Well, that’s some consolation, I suppose – oh darling Alice! I’m sorry! Don’t cry, please. That was thoughtless.” Arielle leaned closer to hear what I was muttering in between sobs. “New York? What did New York have to do with the accident?”
“If we hadn’t gone to New York; the concert, the anniversary weekend you know…”
“I really don’t, but I suppose I can guess.”
She patted my knee and smiled, offered a kiss on the cheek. “Why don’t I find some soup for you; chicken noodle soup cures almost everything, I think!”
“If it can put a car and a life back together and rewind the last three weeks, bring it!”
I heard her gasp and the fast clip of her heels on the parquetry floor as she crossed the living room to the hallway and down to the kitchen.
New York was where it all started going badly and yet coming together, where a trip for our anniversary became a battle and I became pregnant again…
Two weeks later I was able to move with more ease, thanks to pain pills, and I was getting food to stay down. Again, Donovan’s side of the bed was untouched and it seemed that he came and went like a ghost, for I seldom saw him now.
The nurse he employed was a gentle woman in her sixties called Gale and she was there from the moment I woke until I closed my eyes at night, the scent of her clean uniform and Chanel Number 5 as soothing as the medication given to me to help me sleep, help me heal, help me forget.
But I couldn’t and I wouldn’t forget.
I would get past it, somehow, and my life would be restored to something different, but something I wanted.
How it would come about occurred to me as I walked by the room that used to be Donovan’s office. At that moment it was still a nursery. I went in and looked around. Decorating had been interrupted. Teddy bears paraded around the walls with balloons in paw and stopped in mid-marc
h, the wall paper borders hanging like ribbons above the floorboards. The crib was left in stages of unpacking, with instruction booklet and tools lying where they were dropped; shopping bags of unopened bumpers, quilts and blankets, an infant’s layette, were dumped on the rocking chair that still dangled a price tag. Seated on the rocking chair was an overstuffed teddy bear I’d made months earlier.
“I was wondering if you want to celebrate Christmas.”
Donovan was standing in the doorway, a coffee mug in his hand.
My expression must have been of one part anger and one part contempt, for he took a step back and drank from the mug.
“Why would you think that?” I wanted to know.
“Christmas was two weeks ago, maybe get our minds off things, talk about what’s next.”
When I reached for the teddy bear, Donovan took it out of my hands.
“It won’t do any good, Alice,” he was saying. He still had the bandage on his forehead, the black eye and the stitches on his right cheek.
“Putting it all at the back of my mind won’t change what happened, or how I feel,” I said moving stiffly past him to the kitchen where I had started a chicken pot pie for dinner.
“Eventually we have to move on.”
He tried to take my hand and I gently moved out of his reach, saying over my shoulder, “Did you call the support group people like you were supposed to?”
“Got caught in a meeting with the department head. He wants to know how you’re doing, by the way. Sends his sympathies, love.”
“Peachy, fine and dandy,” I said as I slammed the oven door.
Donovan took a shot glass down from the shelf and opened a cupboard for the bottle of scotch – that wasn’t there. “You didn’t have to get rid of it!” he grumbled, reaching for the bottle of tonic water.
“I had a choice – you or the scotch. I decided the scotch should go – for now.”
Picking up a knife I started chopping carrots and celery, and the movement soon became the placing of tarot cards on a table, my table in the Shop. The cards were turned over and set carefully, each figure of the arcana different and seemingly real, vibrant and alive, the colors bright as if they were painted on parchment only that morning. Anne Boleyn now rested her chin in her hands and studied the pattern, a Celtic cross.
“Things are looking up for you, Alice!” she declared, tapping a card – the figure of Death.
I picked up the card and looked at it, asking, “How is Death good news?”
“The cards are the opposite of what they seem – just like your life,” she sighed, ruminating over the pattern. “Aha! I thought as much. Yes, things are getting better by every moment.”
Now I took a carrot stick from the plate Dennis offered and raised my brows, waiting. “I know you have something to say.”
“He was lucky it wasn’t his head on that butcher’s block and I wasn’t around to make him answer for what he did to you and the baby!” Dennis growled, and then turned to pour two cups of coffee – one for himself and one for Richard the Third. “Alice, are you alright?”
I had slumped into the chair and began to tremble violently, my throat constricting as I tried my best not to cry. Everyone in the Shop turned to stare – and no one was sympathetic, except my brother.
Dennis turned to the Proprietress. “Enough is enough!” he hissed. “Can’t we end this now? We should send her back.”
“No. There’s only a short amount of time left, and there’s still much to be done, much to relive, much to change,” the Proprietress responded as she took books from cases and stamped a page in each of them with a date-stamp like those used in libraries before the advent of computers and scanners. “Give her something. You know what to do.”
From out of his pocket, Dennis took what looked like a medicine bottle with a dropper. He opened it and held it under my nose. I inhaled a lovely scent of roses and freesias, of fresh air on a warm spring morning, the sea with a tang of salt. I sat up, and looked around, surprised that I wasn’t somewhere else.
“This has got to end sometime!” I muttered.
“Come here, Alice.”
The Proprietress beckoned and from the look in her eyes, there was no choice but to obey. She took down one of the casks and opened it so that I could see three incredibly beautiful gems, large stones of unearthly quality and beauty that lay in the box. They weren’t glowing or full of fluid in motion as were the others I’d seen. Their lights were faint and the colors dull. Now she looked at me squarely, saying quietly, “Do you think, Alice Martin, that you are the only person who ever suffered? Do you think you’re the only woman to have her heart broken more times than was ever possible, and to struggle to put all those pieces back together?” She picked up the gems and placed them one at a time in my hands. I shrank at their touch – cold yet burning, smooth yet rough. She took them back and placed them in the cask. “Find the pieces, my girl! Two wrongs make a right.”
I stopped swallowing tears and looked at her first, then my brother Dennis, and then Joan.
I understood. I knew what they meant.
Chapter 13
“That’s not what I meant,” Dennis said as he heaved himself off my sofa as best he could, reaching for the pole lamp to support him. His color was suddenly gray and he swayed a bit, as if dizzy. I took a step but he waved me off and walked slowly towards the kitchen.
It was April 23, 1978, and around us were the remnants of my birthday dinner and party: foil wrapping paper was scattered on the coffee table, and plates smeared with the crumbs and streaks of frosting from a three-tiered angel food cake were stacked precariously on end tables, sharing space with half-empty bottles of sparkling wine and champagne flutes. I scooped up the plates and a few of the bottles and followed Dennis.
“I’m twenty-five, Denny. If not now, when?” I responded to his comment.
“Why at all? This isn’t Mom and Dad’s generation – who says you need to get married? If you love this guy, wait a bit longer, just to see.”
He bent down to open the dishwasher and even that movement was excruciating and difficult.
I put an arm around him and felt his bones under the heavy sweater he wore. “It’s only a matter of time,” I whispered to myself and the light in the kitchen started to flicker and fade and I remembered what I knew I could not share; the Proprietress warned me and the pressure in my chest told me I’d taken a false step. But I knew what was to come. I knew I couldn’t tell him; my life I could change. His, I could not.
“Only a matter of time before what?” Dennis groused, pushing me off. “Hopefully before you come to your senses?”
“Something like that. Denny, I’m worried about you. You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine – I said I’m fine! Let’s worry about you.”
“I think you should see a doctor.”
“You should – for wanting to marry Donovan Trist. Again I ask, is that a real name?”
“Would we be having this conversation if the bridegroom in question was Tarquin Radcliffe?”
“Probably not, Faery Princess, but I would beg the question why it took you two so long…”
“A stage father and overprotective mother, priorities, Bach, Schubert and Beethoven,” I muttered as Dennis reluctantly allowed me to seat him at the kitchen table and I started to clean up the aftermath of Harry’s cooking. To placate Dennis, I put a slice of the crostata I’d baked before him.
“Mmmmm! Stella or Victoria Bakery?” he wanted to know.
“I beg your pardon, I made that!” I laughed.
“When did you learn to cook, Faery Princess?”
“Italy.”
“Ah, so it wasn’t all history and archeologists!”
“Funny.”
“That’s about all the humor there is in this discussion, Alice.” Dennis said, digging into the pie. “Mom didn’t raise you to make stupid mistakes you’ll regret and God knows times over that I’ve tried to keep you off that path ever since the
White Rabbit incident. This marriage you’re planning has all the earmarks of disaster from what I know and what you’ve told me.”
“I do have affection for Donovan, Dennis. I fell in love with him in Florence, and then, well, it isn’t the grand passion of first love. Who knows? I think there’s more than a chance that passion will be rekindled.”
“And in the meantime you grow old wondering when it will happen, because men like Donovan rarely change, and suddenly you’re almost sixty and it’s too late. Another slice, please?” Dennis looked all of twelve as he dug into the new slice offered; his face seemed to regain its rosy, healthy, complexion.
“I think you’ll love Providence, and there’s a little cottage on his mother’s estate in Newport – I think you’d like that, too. Now that it’s ours, Donovan says I can decorate however I want and you’re the best designer I know.”
“Harry and I can’t move to the East Coast, so you can stop trying to entice me, Alice. Why can’t Mister Money Bags move out here and get a job at Cal or something?”
“Because,” I sighed, “I accepted the job at Brown University.”
“What?” Harry exclaimed, coming into the kitchen and the end of that conversation.
“When were you going to tell us, Alice? The afternoon of your wedding?” Dennis demanded.
“I was getting around to it.”
The subject of my life was ignored when Harry and I moved as one to grab Dennis as he rose from the kitchen table and suddenly collapsed. As I knelt to help him off the floor, I was bending over him at the Iceland skating rink on a Saturday afternoon in the winter of 1969. We were both laughing to the point of tears.
“Maybe we should get you a helmet,” I giggled as I pushed Dennis to his feet and dragged him to the edge of the rink where he could hang on to the wall.
“Never mind the helmet,” Dennis panted. “Get me something for my ass – like an ice pack!”
“Can you make it to the stands?”
“As much as my pride will allow. Stop laughing and get me something! This was the worst of ideas! Go on, Princess!”
Tallis' Third Tune Page 24
