Brass Ring

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Does he know what you’re going through?”

  “A little. Jon wants to help me, but he just isn’t capable of it. Maybe if I begged him to listen to me, he would, but the truth is, I only feel able to really get into the details with you.”

  She drew in a breath. Her heartbeat had finally slowed down. The trembling had stopped, and she didn’t think she could conjure up the sound of sirens or hammering or music if she tried. “I’m better now,” she said. “I should go. Jon will be up soon.”

  Randy didn’t speak right away. “I don’t want to let you off the phone,” he said finally.

  And she didn’t want him to. “If I can come up with a way to see you, would you be willing?”

  “Of course. But not if it involves a lie.”

  “No, I won’t lie anymore.” She thought she heard a sound in the hallway. “I have to go.”

  “All right, Claire. Please take care of yourself.”

  She hung up the phone but stayed on the sofa, wrapped in the afghan, clinging to the small sense of calm Randy had given her, wondering how she could hold on to it for the rest of the day.

  JON HAD AWAKENED ABRUPTLY as Claire fled from the bedroom. She hadn’t taken the time to pull on a robe, and the gray morning light washed over her bare skin as she ran. She was crying, gasping for breath, as if something were chasing her. He’d called her name, but she didn’t seem to hear him, and he’d gotten out of bed and into his chair to follow her.

  From the hall, he’d heard her on the phone and knew immediately whom she had called. He’d sat and listened, eavesdropping shamelessly. The sound of her crying cut through him. He had never heard such desperation in her voice before. Such panic. The fear she had allowed him to see these past couple of months was nothing compared to the real terror churning inside her. She was pouring it out to Randy Donovan, though. Talking to Randy, her guard was down; she held nothing back. Jon wants to help me, but he isn’t capable of it.

  She was right. He sat quietly in the hallway, waiting for her to hang up. He was steeling himself, trying to find a sort of courage he’d never needed before. He was going to help Claire the only way he could.

  She hung up the phone, and Jon wheeled into the family room. Claire was wrapped in the afghan, her legs folded beneath her on the couch, one shoulder bare. Her face was pale and pinched with the guilty look of a child caught in some forbidden act. He felt a painful rush of love for her, and although he wanted to pull his chair close, he stayed in the doorway. It would be easier that way.

  He could almost see her mind racing as she tried to create an explanation for why she was up so early, wrapped in a blanket on the sofa.

  “I had a terrible dream,” she said. “I panicked and called Randy before I stopped to think about it. I’m sorry.” She had obviously meant what she’d said about not lying anymore.

  “I heard the call,” he said.

  “You did?” Alarm sharpened her features.

  “Yes. All of it.”

  Her tears started again, and she pressed a fist to her mouth. Still, he made no move toward her.

  “Claire,” he said, his voice strong, “I want you to leave.”

  “Leave? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I want you to leave the house. Leave me.”

  “What?”

  “Then you can see Randy as often as you like without—”

  “No!” She put her bare feet on the floor and leaned forward. “That’s not what I want.”

  “Apparently that’s what you need, though. You just said that. I heard you.”

  “Jon—”

  “You’re right. I haven’t been able to help you with this. I’m very sorry…” He felt the threat of tears and struggled to hold them back. “I’m too close to it to help you.”

  “You’ve helped me, Jon. You’ve—”

  “I want you out.” He cut her off, suddenly sick of the way she always changed reality to make problems disappear.

  Claire sat back. She licked her lips. The crease between her eyebrows was deep. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Yes, I am. You cannot stay here.” His hands were tight on the wheels of his chair. “I don’t want you here.”

  “But you…how would you manage?”

  He drew in a sharp breath. Her words made him angry, and the anger felt good. “I’m not a child!” he said. “I need a wife, not a fucking caretaker!”

  “Don’t yell!” She lifted one hand from the afghan to tug anxiously at her hair. “Please don’t be angry. I didn’t mean anything. I just…I can’t leave you. It doesn’t make any sense for me to—”

  “It makes more sense than going on the way we have been, with you wanting to be with someone else.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off again.

  “Don’t deny it, Claire. You want him; I’m giving you permission to have him.”

  “It’s not like that,” she snapped. “It’s not what you think. It’s never been what you think.” Her anger was raw and unfamiliar. “I had the first real male friend in my adult life and you took him away from me.”

  “So, now I’m giving him back to you.” He started to turn his chair around. “And I’m getting dressed for work. You’ve got all day to pack up and get out, but please be gone by the time I get home.”

  “What do you mean, I’ve got all day? I have to work, too.”

  “Forget work. You haven’t been doing any anyhow. I’ve done ninety-five percent of the work on the retreat.”

  She looked down at the floor. He knew she couldn’t argue with him on that.

  “I know I haven’t been able to concentrate very well at the office,” she said, “but I still want to come in and—”

  “No, Claire,” he said, unnerved by the thought of her there. “I don’t want to see you, all right? Get it? I don’t want to have to look at you in the morning after you’ve been sleeping with Randy all night.” His voice broke then, and the tears he’d been fighting spilled over his cheeks.

  Claire was instantly on her feet. “Jon, please!” She grabbed his arm, but he pushed her away. His fingers caught in the weave of the afghan, accidentally pulling it from her breasts, and he let go quickly. He pressed his palms hard on his thighs.

  She sat back on her heels, clutching the afghan across her chest. “Sleeping with Randy is not what I want.” Her voice was tiny, defeated. He could barely hear her. “I only want to feel better. I want to feel happy, like I used to.”

  He wished she would yell at him again. Her sadness made this harder, and he had to force himself to turn his chair around and wheel back into the bedroom.

  Once in the bedroom, he stared at the closed door for several minutes before starting to get dressed. The useless muscles in his thighs began to spasm as he pulled on his pants, and once or twice he had to blink to clear his vision. He thought of Claire in the family room. Maybe she was calling Randy. Or maybe she was crying, still struggling to make some sense of his order to leave. That had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. Hard and painful and filled with risk. But as he brushed his teeth and combed his hair and studied the lines around his eyes in the mirror, he felt a growing certainty that he’d been right to do it.

  29

  MCLEAN

  IT WAS RAINING, A cold rain that matched the chill in her heart. She drove through the dark streets of McLean toward Randy’s town house, her suitcase in the backseat. What were you supposed to pack when you had no idea where you were going? She’d taken only enough for a few days, enough to keep her afloat until she had a clearer sense of what she would do next.

  She figured she could stay at Randy’s for a night or two, then she would have to find a place of her own. What that meant, she couldn’t say. She couldn’t think beyond the moment.

  Randy had sounded stunned when she’d called him late that morning to tell him Jon had asked her to leave. She heard him trying to contain his pleasure, worried he might be gaining something at the expense of someone else.
He asked concerned and sincere questions about Jon. Had he been thinking clearly or simply acting on the emotion of the moment? Did he seem terribly distraught? Would he be all right without her?

  She shared his concern and even called Jon around noon to ask him if he had reconsidered.

  “Absolutely not,” Jon had said. “I want you out. And please don’t call me again today.”

  She’d hung up the phone with a sense of freedom edged with fear, and with tearful gratitude toward her husband. This was a gift he was giving her. She knew it, and she was certain he knew it as well.

  Still, she worried about leaving him alone. She bought groceries, stocking the pantry and refrigerator. She made and froze two casseroles and a huge pan of lasagna. A long note was waiting for him on the kitchen table, reminding him to take his medication, telling him where she kept the emergency numbers, the spare keys. She vacuumed the entire house and changed the sheets on the bed.

  The flashbacks had been constant while she worked in the house, but she blocked them, shutting the cupboard door on them over and over again. Soon. Soon she would be with Randy and could let those images take her wherever they pleased.

  “I’ll have to find a place to stay,” she’d said to Randy on the phone. She’d thought of saying “a place to live,” but that sounded too permanent. Too final.

  “You can stay here tonight,” Randy offered. “I have a guest room. I’ll help you think about what to do after that.”

  Her car skidded as she turned into the parking lot of his town house. Not thinking, she pressed the brake, and the rear of the car fishtailed behind her. She lifted her hands from the wheel, abdicating control, and was almost surprised when the car came to rest safely in the center of the lot. She took a deep breath and resumed driving, parking close to 167.

  The rain had stopped. It was after seven, and the parking lot light illuminated the white brick as it had on her last visit to the town house. She took her suitcase from the seat and marched toward the house and up the front steps, where she lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall.

  After a moment, Randy opened the door. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and khaki pants. His smile was tentative.

  “Well,” she said. “I’m here.”

  He hesitated a moment before wordlessly pulling the door open, and she stepped inside to feel the dark warmth of the room embrace her. Randy set her bag on the floor next to the staircase, then, without saying a word, moved forward to hold her. She closed her eyes, wrapping her arms around him, breathing in his scent. His heart beat against her breast. It was a strong, solid beat, and she could almost feel it pick up speed as he pressed his hands to her back, his touch a little fevered. She pulled away gently, and his hands fell to his sides.

  “I’ve made dinner,” he said. His cheeks were flushed. “You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

  “No, though I’m not sure I can.” Other than the scraps she’d nibbled as she put together the casseroles, she hadn’t eaten all day.

  His kitchen surprised her with its bright white cabinets, but in all other ways it reflected Randy’s taste. Gleaming copper pots and utensils hung suspended from the ceiling; the spice racks ran the length of one counter, and the spices were arranged alphabetically. The floor was hardwood—dark oak—and a massive butcher block island rested in the exact center of the room. Everything was in order. Not a crumb on the counter.

  The copper glow of the pots and pans filled the room with a soft light. Randy had made chicken in wine sauce. She surprised herself by having two servings, and she smiled at him across the table as she ate, aware of the comfort she felt with him, comfort that had been missing in her life during the two weeks she’d cut herself off from him.

  “I made the bed in the guest room,” he said when they were nearly finished eating. “I’d much prefer that you spent the night with me, but I seem to recall a comment about me being your long-lost brother, or whatever.” He gave her a rueful smile. “I don’t think sleeping with me is what you’re after, unfortunately.”

  “The guest room will be perfect,” she said.

  Climbing the stairs to the second floor, she felt a wave of homesickness, which she quickly swept from her mind. She got a glimpse of Randy’s bedroom as she walked through the upstairs hall toward the guest room. His room was dimly lit from some unseen source. A sleigh bed, unmade but not disheveled, curved gracefully along the far wall. The sheets and comforter were a green paisley print that seemed to fit both the room and Randy. Dark. So dark she could barely see the pattern in the fabric from the distance of the hallway.

  The guest room was also bathed in pale light from the yellow-shaded lamp on the night table. The bed here was brass; the spread, a patchwork of creams and peaches. She set her suitcase on a trunk in the corner.

  “Do you need anything?” Randy asked from the doorway.

  “No,” she said. “This is great.”

  She felt sleepy as she climbed into the high bed, but the moment her head touched the pillow, the sirens and hammering and screaming filled her ears again. She sat up, startled, and the sounds began to fade. Drawing back the gauzy curtain at the window next to the bed, she stared out at the parking lot. The wet macadam was shiny with moonlight.

  Once her breathing had returned to normal, she lowered herself beneath the covers again. Thoughts of Jon tried to slip into her consciousness, but she fought them off by naming the states in alphabetical order, then the capitals. She had nearly bored herself to sleep when the sound of hammering struck again. The bloody towel blew across her vision like the sail of an ill-fated ship. This time, she jumped out of bed, the strange room twirling around her as she pulled on her robe, and she shivered as she slipped down the hall to Randy’s room.

  His door was open, his room lit now by moonlight. She knocked on the open door, feeling foolish.

  Randy rolled onto his back. “Claire?” he asked.

  She hugged her arms across her chest. “Who else would bug you in the middle of the night because she’s seeing things that aren’t there. And hearing things. The sirens and—”

  Randy threw back the comforter. He got out of bed, reaching for the robe draped over the footboard. He had nothing on, and the moonlight captured the lines of his body in sharp detail. Claire turned her head away.

  He was wearing a blue robe as he walked from the room. “Come on.” He nodded toward the end of the hall, and she followed him into a small dark room where she could just make out a sofa and some large piece of exercise equipment.

  They sat down on the sofa together, and he put his arm around

  her.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She raised her feet to the sofa, covered them with her robe. “I keep hearing those sounds from that dream this morning,” she said. “And seeing this bloody towel.”

  “What bloody towel?”

  “I don’t know. It’s white. It’s hanging on a towel rack and it’s…” For some reason, the towel made her think of Italy. “You know, I don’t think this fits into the other flashbacks. I think maybe this is something I saw when I was in Italy one time. I have no memory of ever seeing it there, but I don’t have a memory of anything else either, so why should that be any different?”

  “What makes you think you saw it in Italy?”

  “I don’t know. Just a feeling.”

  “Maybe it’s tomato sauce and not blood.”

  That made her laugh; it was such a wondrously hopeful thought. Perhaps all her fragments of memory were no more than the distorted creations of a mind that had suffered too much excitement on the Harpers Ferry bridge.

  “I’m still curious about the hammering,” he said. “Who’s doing it? And how do you know it’s a crate they’re hammering?” He questioned her for a while, and she tried to let the sounds slip into her mind again, but they were subtle, barely there, as if they had run their course for the night. They offered her little in the way of answers.

  “I’m not hiding from the sounds,” she
said, more to herself than to Randy. “But I don’t think I can force them.”

  She closed her eyes as silence filled the room. The scent of pipe tobacco was mixed with something else in here, something pleasing. A scented candle, perhaps. Or potpourri.

  “Claire.” Randy spoke quietly, and she turned her head so she could see him.

  “Yes?”

  He ran his hand slowly across her face, then lifted her chin with his fingers as he kissed her. The kiss was slow. Dizzyingly slow, and it stopped only to start again. Claire barely felt it, though. Her mind burned with confusion. Should she allow this or not? She didn’t want it, but he did. So badly. Yet she couldn’t lead him to think that she shared that need.

  “Randy.” She lifted her fingers to his lips, shifted her head away from his.

  He nodded. “Right. Sorry.”

  “I know I’m asking a lot of you,” she said. “I like it when you hold me and comfort me. I seem to need that. But I don’t want more than that, and I know I’m being unfair to—”

  “I’m a big boy, Claire,” he said. “Let it be my problem.”

  “All right.” She lowered her feet to the floor and stood up slowly. Bending over, she hugged him lightly. “Thank you.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he said as she left the room, and she turned to smile at him.

  “So am I,” she said.

  It was cold in the guest room. She hadn’t noticed the temperature before, but now the chill made her pull the blanket and spread up to her chin.

  Jon.

  Alone with her thoughts, defenses down, he was there. She squeezed her eyes closed, thinking back to that morning when he’d told her to leave, his voice firm, absolute. Would he be able to sleep tonight, alone in the bed they’d shared for so long? Was he thinking about her, here with Randy? He probably thought she was sleeping with Randy. She touched her lips where Randy had kissed her, and her eyes filled.