She waited until dessert – cheese and fruit, which Charley didn’t think was dessert but after the multiple courses they’d just had was all either one of them could manage. The café au lait more than made up for any lack.
‘I probably gained five pounds here.’ Hannah pushed away what was left of the platter and sat back.
‘Best way to gain them.’ Charley finished his coffee.
‘I can think of a better way.’
His brow creased. ‘A better way to gain weight than Paris? You lost me.’
She hoped she didn’t. ‘I want to go off the pill.’
Charley had been taking a sip of water. He sprayed it all over the table. The Parisian couple next to them tsked.
‘Did the doctor say you should?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sure we can find something else to use.’
‘Not if we try to get pregnant.’
This time Charley choked without the benefit of water.
By the time he was done, the Parisian couple had left. They were virtually alone in the restaurant, except for their waiter who took one glance at Hannah’s face and fled back to the kitchen.
‘Hannah, I …’ His voice trailed off, as did his gaze.
‘Just one,’ she said quickly. ‘Maybe two.’
He winced and she hurried on. ‘Twins run in families. We might get two for the price of one.’
She waited for him to tell her no. Then it would be no. Charley was all she cared about. Certainly she wanted a child. She wanted more than one, but she’d settle for whatever he could give her.
He sat there thinking for a very long time. Then he sipped some water, swallowed without choking, closed his eyes.
And then he nodded.
Charley
Washington DC. New Year’s Eve, 1999
The beat of Prince’s ‘1999’ seemed to be the only song anyone was playing today. Charley had heard it in the airport, in the cab and, when he opened the door to their apartment … there it was again.
He crossed to the sound system and switched it off.
Hannah immediately popped out of the bedroom, head tilted as she fastened a sparkly, dangly earring into her ear. She was already dressed for the New Year’s Eve party at You in a knee-length ice-blue dress that seemed to be made of sequins.
‘You’re here,’ she said the same way she always did – as if his arrival were the best surprise in a lifetime of them.
He had to admit that their life so far had been a surprise. He was happy, or at least as happy as he’d ever be, and it was because of Hannah.
To Hannah he was everything. The only time he was able to stop hating himself for even an instant was when he saw his reflection in her eyes. She looked at him like he was precious, because to her he was.
He’d never killed her child. And he never would.
She finished with her earring and crossed the room to welcome him home with a kiss, a hug and then the snuggle against his chest that still made him feel cherished.
‘How was Panama?’
‘Hot.’ He hadn’t realized how hot until he’d gotten off the plane here and been cold for the first time in a week. The chill on his skin had been bliss.
‘Everything go OK?’
He shrugged, nodded. ‘We can talk about it later.’
The returning of the Panama Canal to Panama had officially taken place at noon that day. There had been pomp and ceremony for a week but mostly it had been a big show.
A big, boring show if you were a photographer. He couldn’t wait for some small corner of the world to erupt.
But tonight was Hannah’s. He’d promised to go to her Millennium Party. He was certain that something would go boom by tomorrow. It always did. And considering a portion of the world thought tonight was the end of the world … he’d place a bet on the certainty of disruption.
Charley headed for the bedroom, where Hannah had laid out his tux and a tie that matched her dress. ‘You got all your computers ready for tomorrow?’
It amazed him that the biggest concern was Y2K, what everyone was calling the computer bug that might send the world back to the Stone Age. How could someone smart enough to invent computers and their programs not be smart enough to make a provision for the year 2000? Supposedly they’d caught the problem in time, but there were still people who’d spent the last several months provisioning a bunker for the Apocalypse.
Morons. When the Apocalypse came, a bunker with bottled water and canned goods wasn’t going to help. He’d learned years ago that when an apocalypse happened, nothing in the world could help.
‘Everything’s set.’ Hannah leaned close to the mirror and applied lipstick.
For a minute Charley saw the girl she’d been, the one that hadn’t known how to apply make-up, do her hair, or choose her clothes without help from Heath. Now the sophisticated outer trappings of the woman she’d become reflected the inner changes. She’d gone from being shy and timid to this take-charge, outgoing leader. Hannah did not quit. Ever. He admired her more now than he had then. He admired her more every day.
‘Or at least that’s what the computer techs tell me. If the clock strikes midnight and everything shuts down, then I’ll know they lied. And someone’s in for the ass-chewing of all time.’
She laughed a little and he marveled again at her attitude. He doubted Y2K would amount to anything, but if it did … Hannah would handle it. Handling it was what Hannah did best.
He’d seen some indication of who she might become when Heath was dying. The way she’d dealt with the doctors and the insurance companies and anyone who looked at Heath crosswise had been a marvel. When she’d fallen apart after her brother’s death, Charley hadn’t been sure she would ever recover that new and amazing part of herself. But she had. Again, she had not quit.
He still tried to get her to leave You every now and again, but she stubbornly refused to do so until the magazine was number one. He was starting to think that would never happen. There were too many similar magazines that had been around for a lot longer and had more recognizable names. Glamour, Cosmo, Vogue.
People were sheep. They did what they’d always done or what the guy or gal next to them had done. You suffered for it. Hannah suffered for it, though she would never say so. She’d made a vow; she’d keep that vow, no matter how long it took.
Another reason to admire her.
‘You know where my black dress shoes are?’ Charley stared into their closet, where there were a helluva lot of shoes, but none of them seemed to be his.
‘Sorry, I put yours in the spare room.’ She appeared sheepish. ‘Mine are a little out of hand.’
He never would have imagined Hannah would become a woman with too many shoes. But there were a lot of things about his wife that he never would have imagined. If Heath could see her now he’d be as proud of her as Charley.
Charley missed Heath. Charley missed a lot of people.
‘You OK?’ Hannah’s expression was concerned. ‘You keep sighing.’
He did? Sometimes, lately, he didn’t remember doing or saying things that people remarked on later. He hadn’t let it worry him; he was always in a rush, always late for something because he wasn’t finished doing something else. That kind of life made a man ditzy.
‘Just tired. I’ll be fine.’
‘We don’t have to …’ she began.
He stood. ‘You do. It’s your party.’
‘You don’t. It’s OK.’
‘It isn’t. I promised and I’ve been dreaming of dancing with you at midnight.’
Her eyes lit up and he resolved to make tonight wonderful for her. He would keep this promise; there were so many others that he’d broken.
‘If I’m going to dance, I’ll need those shoes.’ Charley headed down the hall toward the spare room that no one ever used. They probably should have gotten a one-bedroom apartment.
He almost walked past the bed without glancing at it, intent on the closet. Then he stopped so fast
his knees protested. He’d been sitting in a plane too damn long.
Several photographs of Lisa lay on the bed – Lisa on Frankie’s stomach at birth; Lisa with her face pressed to the glass at the zoo, the nose of a male lion pressed to the other side; Lisa, asleep with Black Kitty.
Suddenly he was having trouble breathing.
‘You find those shoes, Ch—’ Hannah froze just inside the door. ‘Shit.’
‘Why?’ was all Charley could manage.
‘I …’ Hannah quickly gathered the photographs and put them back in the box sitting on the end table. ‘I’m sorry. I just …’
Charley hadn’t looked at those photos since he’d put his daughter in that urn. He didn’t deserve to. He probably should have given them to Frankie when she’d asked. Instead he’d told her he’d burned them. The idea of Frankie spending hours, days, weeks staring at the photographs of her dead daughter had made him so crazy he nearly had burned them. Instead he’d hidden them, though apparently not well enough.
How did one hide anything in an apartment anyway?
‘I’m not pregnant.’ Hannah sat heavily on the bed.
Charley swallowed.
‘Again. I …’ Her voice broke.
‘I’m sorry,’ he managed, his gaze flicking to that damn box of pictures again.
‘I don’t know why I wanted to see Lisa. Probably to poke at the pain, like your tongue on the sore tooth, you know?’
He knew.
‘It has to be me that’s the problem. You have a daughter.’ She waved her hand at the box.
‘Had.’
She hung her head. ‘I made an appointment to get tested. Then we’ll find out what to do next.’
‘Next,’ he repeated.
‘IVF. Adoption. We’ll talk. But not tonight. Tonight we party.’
Hell. They should probably talk tonight, before this really got out of control. Not that it already wasn’t.
He should have told her long ago. But if he lived his life on should haves, he’d start with ‘should have watched Lisa better’ and that’s where all this had started.
‘You don’t need to get tested.’
‘Of course I do. Don’t worry about it. The testing isn’t dangerous or anything.’
He sat on the bed at her side, took her hand. ‘Hannah.’
Her gaze was so open, honest, curious and trusting. God, he was such an ass.
‘I had a vasectomy.’
‘You … what?’
‘It isn’t you that’s the problem, it’s me.’ Always me.
‘You can’t have. You had …’ She looked at the box of photos again.
‘I had the vasectomy after.’
Slowly she turned her head. ‘After Lisa?’
He could say yes. He should say yes. It was true. Obviously.
‘You told me in Paris that you wanted children,’ she said.
He hadn’t; he’d just let her believe that he had. In Paris, he’d made a decision. One he did not regret. His only regret was that he’d shared everything with her but this.
‘I had the vasectomy after Paris.’
She blinked. ‘You …’ Her voice stopped. Her lips moved but no sound came out.
‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t … I can’t …’
He couldn’t bear it. Not again.
Silence descended. He continued to hold her hand, knowing that soon she would withdraw it from his, then she would leave. He would lose her. Which was why he hadn’t told her. He’d lost enough.
He was selfish; he knew it. Cowardly. He admitted it. He couldn’t change it.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I understand, but …’ She bit her lip. ‘You could have told me.’
‘Could I?’ He tightened his fingers around hers. ‘Wouldn’t you have left me?’
She didn’t answer, seemed to be thinking.
‘You’ll leave me now.’
It wasn’t a question because he knew the answer. He began to withdraw his hand from hers.
‘No.’ She snatched it back, tightened her fingers around his, harder and harder until he met her gaze.
Everything seemed to narrow to this room, this moment, this woman.
‘There is nothing you can do that would ever make me leave you, Charley. Nothing.’
He doubted that was true. There was always something. He’d learned that the hard way.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘I know.’
They sat there for a long time, just holding hands. She’d come through again. Hannah didn’t quit – not her job, not her life, not their marriage.
Charley could depend on Hannah.
Hannah
Fish Creek. Late summer, 2016
It took Hannah a good portion of Saturday to get from Washington DC to the cabin on the bay. The only direct flight to Wisconsin was to Milwaukee, of course, where she’d had the choice of taking a puddle jumper to Green Bay, then renting a car and driving another hour north, or renting the car in Milwaukee and driving three hours north. As she rarely drove any more, she’d settled on the former.
Luckily, once she was out of Green Bay, the freeway was clear sailing. She suspected the previous evening would have been another story. It was peak tourist season in Door County, and if she hadn’t been staying at the cabin, she wouldn’t have been able to find a room to rent anywhere within a hundred miles.
Though she was anxious about seeing Charley, worried about what he’d say, do, feel, think, she was also intrigued by all she’d heard of the Wisconsin vacation Mecca. According to several websites she’d surfed, Door County was the Berkshires of the Midwest.
Hannah loved the Berkshires. She and Charley had gone there on their honeymoon. It had been blissful. She’d felt like he loved her.
Then.
When had she started to suspect that though he did love her, he wasn’t in love with her and he never would be? He couldn’t be. The only woman he could ever be in love with was Frankie.
She’d never said anything, was afraid to rock the boat. But as time went on, she’d changed. Become less sweet and agreeable, more disappointed with her life and cranky about it. She had to admit that her new self did a better job at You, though she hadn’t been able to save the magazine in twenty-four years of trying. She was still trying, but soon she was going to have to admit defeat.
She’d become bitter over that, as well as the realization that her long-ago dreams would never be realized. It wasn’t a good look for her.
As Hannah drove slowly through first Egg Harbor and then Fish Creek – slowly not only because the sidewalks were so packed with people they often spilled into the street, but because the number of cars on the narrow roads winding through the quaint little towns made all progress snail-like – Hannah picked out areas that would make good locations for a fashion photo shoot by force of habit.
Beach. Lighthouse. Lodge. Sailboats. Barns with quilts painted on the sides. Antique stores with their wares spilling on to the lawn. Cherry trees. Apple trees. Pine trees.
When had she realized that she was never going to return to National Geographic, that she would always be at You?
Maybe after Carol died.
It had been ten years since her aunt had keeled over with a fatal heart attack in the office. Carol had been alone, slaving into the night as she always had over her baby. Hannah had found her the next morning when she arrived bright and early to begin her daylight slaving away over a baby that could never be hers.
No baby would ever be hers.
Spilled milk. Troubled water under their marital bridge.
They hadn’t even fought about the secret vasectomy. She’d been hurt, yes, but she’d understood why having another child would be unbearable to him. Right now, she wished she’d shouted and thrown a few things. In retrospect, there had been several times in her life with Charley where she wished she’d thrown a few things.
As Hannah drove along the two-lane highway, she caught glimpses of dark blue water between the evergreen trees.
The colors were exquisite. Even the sky seemed bluer here. Ridiculous, but her eyes kept insisting that it was.
‘Turn left,’ her GPS said in an annoyingly calm, modulated voice.
Hannah caught a flash of a sign tangled in the weeds.
‘Make a legal U-turn.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Hannah said in that same calm, modulated voice. She even sounded a little robotic.
Something Charley had accused her of the last time he’d been in DC. Make that the last time he’d been in DC when he remembered who she was.
They’d had a big fight. She wanted him to slow down. He was sixty-three for Christ’s sake. Did he want to have a stroke in a country with shitty healthcare?
It was an old argument. One they’d been having for a few years, but this time Charley had told her to stay out of his business. She’d wondered if pretty soon she wouldn’t be his wife any more, and …
‘Voila, I’m not.’ Hannah made the legal U-turn, although she wasn’t sure it was actually legal on a remote two-lane road.
She braked the car enough so that she could actually turn right when the robot said turn right, then bounced over the dirt path of a driveway until she reached the cabin.
She was still Charley’s wife, no matter what he thought, no matter that it felt like she wasn’t every time he murmured Fancy.
Hannah stalked across the dry, yellowed grass to the door, her ivory slingbacks kicking up enough dust to coat the cuffs of her ivory trousers. She’d be shaking it out of her clothes for a week. She should have changed into jeans but she’d gone directly to the airport after stopping at the office one last time.
The door opened as she lifted her hand to knock, revealing Frankie on the other side of the screen. Her long, graying hair was as much of a shock now as it had been before. Would Hannah ever stop thinking of her as a flower-child beauty with hair every shade of brown and red? Why bother when Charley still saw her that way?
‘You made it.’ Frankie pushed open the screen door and inched back so Hannah could slip in. ‘I was thinking you’d hopped a plane to Zanzibar.’
Frankie did wear jeans – a little tight in the hips, but flared at the calves and worn powder blue by repeated washing and wearing. Vintage, or pretend vintage. Her blouse recalled 1968 as well – white, loose and flowing. Her feet were bare.
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