“Pemberley, this is absolutely amazing,” John says. “What are your ethnic origins, if I may be so bold?”
"You certainly may. There are no secrets here,” she says without irony. “I have a Jewish grandma. My Dad is Cuban on both sides and my Mom was half black, half Jewish with a Jewish mother. According to the Jews, I'm one of them. Judaism is passed through the mother. I like to remember my Mom with food." Remembering her mom,
John watches Pemberley thoughtfully. “I’m sorry about your mom Pem. Food is a good way to remember.”
“She died a long time ago. I can still feel her when the kitchen smells like soup though,” she says with a sad smile.
“Do you practice Judaism?” John asks.
“I'm not much for religion, but I am a lifelong student of culture,” Pemberley answers and Anna laughs.
"I know your Dad is thrilled with that," Anna says sarcastically.
"He is not thrilled with that at all, in fact. He says he doesn't care which religion I choose, but he thinks I should choose one. It is a little late for me now though.”
“Is it ever too late?” Anna asks.
“Yes, sometimes it is,” Pemberley says, cautious to keep her meaning to herself. “It is too late for me to change the essence of who I am and take on a structure of beliefs just because… Oh forget it. I’m too old and I just don’t give a shit.”
Pemberley forces a laugh and wonders if Anna and John notice.
"God I love your father," Anna says placing a hand over her heart.
"Yeah, yeah, he is unbelievable," Pemberley adds her own sarcasm now. "I just love my Cuban Daddy all alone in that big house in Connecticut of all places. Footsteps echoing in the hallways of his loneliness. In fucking Connecticut." She tries to laugh more naturally.
"What's he like?" John asks.
"He is perfect," Anna says and seems very willing to talk about someone else's family, just not her own. "He is kind and brilliant and he would literally do anything for anyone. I would adopt him as my father in a second."
And then there is silence. This is the part of conversation where they each share stories about their fathers, but they don’t.
"We Texans love a brisket too," John says dipping challah into gravy. He point to a large box in the living room. "Order some books?" he asks offhandedly.
Anna ignores the question. Pemberley answers. "I brought Anna's cameras."
Anna's unwillingness to delve deeper into this topic is obvious.
"Great kugel," he points out. Changing the subject is becoming habitual.
"Your first kugel?" Pemberley asks.
"No ma’am. I was an attorney in Chicago, a litigator. I went to a lot of high holiday dinners."
"Really?" Pemberley is fascinated. "You know they say soul food loosens the tongue. I am so happy to learn something about you besides you cook like a chef, and you are the hottest man on the beach, especially with a rod in your hand." She laughs at her own double entendre. "And you are a truly talented musician," she adds seriously.
John offers her a smug smile, sipping his wine. Anna keeps quiet, watching their exchange with wide eyes. In that one sentence, John skillfully reset the balance on the scale of their shared information. They are level again.
When Pemberley packs to leave, Anna cries. Pemberley second guesses her own decision to delay the conversations she needs to have with Anna. There is too much going on here. It is the right decision but a difficult one. Pemberley trusts John with Anna and wants to give them space to figure things out. Talk of breast cancer and birth mothers will shut all this down.
"I'll see you right mid-September then?" Pemberley asks and hugs Anna hard.
"Wild horses darling," Anna says through her tears. "And thank you for everything."
"Anna, are you sure there isn't more between you and John than summer lovin'?" Pemberley asks.
Anna wipes her eyes with the bottom of her shirt. "I'm not sure of anything anymore Pemberley."
"Keep your heart open Anna. Not just your legs. That is a very special man. Don’t miss an opportunity because you can’t let go of your past." Before she can answer, Pemberley gets into her car, starts the engine, blows a dozen kisses and drives off without looking back.
Anna watches as Pemberley makes her way down the road and sees John step out onto his porch. She walks over with sagging shoulders and joins John on his swing with a full blown sad puppy face. She lays her head on his shoulder. John continues fixing his fishing reel, offering no comfort. His phone buzzes in his pocket and he ignores it. He ignores the buzzing a lot.
"Everything all right?" she asks. She waits a long time before he answers.
"Looks like I'll have visitors too." He is obviously not happy about hosting guests.
"Oh. Can I do anything for you? I can obviously steer clear."
"No, you are still my kind of girlfriend," he doesn't say it with humor this time though. He doesn’t sound angry but almost.
"My brother, his wife and kids. Two weeks from Saturday."
She assumes they don't get along. "Well anything I can do to help... "
Over the next days, Anna can see John trying to hide his tension. He is bad at it. He runs miles and miles in the mornings. She watches him leave from her window as early as six o’clock. He returns hours later dragging and drained. By the afternoon he is ready to sit and try to relax on the beach. She thinks he is trying hard to appear fully engaged, but he is distracted and quiet. He leaves her earlier in the evenings, so she watches movies, drinks wine and tries to remember how to be alone.
One evening after midnight, she sits on her deck, enjoying a glass of Syrah in the dark. Anna hears John leave his deck and watches him take the walkway to the beach. He carries a bottle and doesn't see her. She is getting ready to go look for him when he returns nearly two hours later, no bottle, wet and stumbling. She closes her door quietly, giving him privacy.
The following Sunday John arrives at the Daniel’s Family Cemetery a few minutes before Lynn. Sitting in the early morning quiet, watching the sun stream through the tall swaying trees, John understands why Lynn feels peaceful here. After parking her car, she meets him at the bench and hands him a coffee.
“Thanks,” he says, grateful for more than the coffee. His face carries the tension he has been feeling all week.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
The question jars him. He intends to say fine without a thought. For a moment he has to remind himself that his situation with Anna is not typical. Lynn would want to know Brian is coming. She knows Brian, and people do have actual conversations about the people they care about.
“Brian is coming next week. All of them are coming.” John watches the osprey fly overhead. They are always caring for their young this time of year. Birdsong decorates the breeze.
“You haven’t seen him since?” Lynn asks. He knows she means since Sarah’s suicide.
“Yeah,” he says, then adds, “No.” It isn’t much of an answer.
She ignores it. “You and Brian were close as kids.”
“We were,” he remembers spending every day of his life looking up to his big brother.
“Is there bad blood between you?”
“No. Yes. I suck at this,” he says getting frustrated.
“Talking? Me too. As least you can get your words out.” She sips her coffee.
“You are doing just fine,” he says to give her encouragement.
“I do well here,” she says. “Everything here is as it should be. Now tell me something about you and Brian.”
He sips and tries to boil it down. “I left after Sarah. I went to Argentina and for the first six months I did nothing but drink and fight. I fought for money.”
“You were a boxer?” she asks.
“Not quite. It was a little more underground. Less rules. More blood.”
“Interesting,” she says without judgment.
“Brian came to find me there. I was less than welcoming. That was the last I
saw him.”
“Whatever you did, he forgives you,” she says with complete certainty.
“He did prompt me to find another line of work. He doesn’t know it, but he got me out of there,” John is grateful to Brian for that now, but Brian has no idea.
“Good. You’ll be glad to see him and you can tell him how he helped you,” Lynn sounds so sure.
“Will you visit us when Brian is here?” John asks.
“No, I don’t think so,” she says simply.
He doesn’t press but waits. He thinks she has more to say.
“I have made a life for myself here John, but this is all I can handle. I work. I talk to my cat. I take care of this place. These people are my family.” She reaches out her arms, as if embracing the dead.
But they are dead, he wants to say, but doesn’t.
“I know they are dead,” she answers his unspoken comment. “But this is what I can do. I should have gotten help after Gerry’s accident. My parents had no idea how to deal with me. They wanted me to put on a smile and move on, but I fell deeper and deeper into it. Depression became anxiety and anxiety became everything. Am I being too honest?” she asks. “I don’t know the rules of polite conversation.”
“The only rule is that we have no rules.” He appreciates her honesty and can’t help wishing this is how things were with Anna.
“John, I don’t do this. I don’t talk to people. But we do seem to have a kinship. A kinship of loss and heartbreak?” she says and then her face breaks into a very large smile.
“What? Tell me.” He wonders where she suddenly found such joy.
“This is a complete pity party.” She laughs hard and slaps her knee.
He likes her sense of humor. He thought he was reaching out to help her, but he was wrong. He thinks Lynn can smell the need on him and she is the one doing the reaching.
After their coffee is done, John repairs the shed roof. Lynn weeds flowerbeds and hands him a tool when he needs it. It is a morning well spent. He leaves feeling far easier than when he arrived.
The evening before the arrival of John’s visitors, Anna suggests dinner out in town, to keep the mood light. They choose a seafood spot with a good raw bar on the docks. John's food safety instincts have him confirming the shellfish was not locally harvested during these warm summer months. The waitress allays his fears with a full description of their commercial harvesting and importing sources used through the summer.
"I adore your understanding of food," Anna comments, adding hot sauce to an oyster.
"Nothing worse than a bad oyster."
"These are simply fantastic." Her eyes sparkle in the candlelight and her white scarf blows in the breeze. They hear a loud reggae band warming up down the dock. They put a reggae spin on popular songs. He sings her a few lines.
She is happy to see him enjoying himself. This week has been better. After he disappeared for half of the day on Sunday, he seemed to calm down. She nearly asked him where he had been off to; curiosity was getting to her. But she didn’t.
Maintaining her distance from John is getting more and more difficult. John is a wonderful man and she is on the verge of losing all reason. Sometimes she can’t remember why she is so bent on moving forward alone. Sometimes she forgets how desperately she failed at choosing her first husband. She can’t be trusted not to make the same mistakes again. She takes out her wedding ring every evening as a reminder of her marriage to Dylan and how that failure has destroyed her. She is not going down that road again.
When they finish their meal, dancers are gathering on the dock. John pulls her into his arms for a dance, much slower than the music requires. With his hands on her hips and her face against his chest, swaying slowly to the beat of the drums, Anna thinks how easily she could spend every moment of her life with him. She could just let herself go and forget everything else. After a few songs, the music becomes an old Jackson Five tune still popular with kids all these years later. The dock is flooded with small children. John releases her.
"Drink?" he asks suddenly.
They step into Dock of the Bay and find two open seats at the bar. He orders her usual Syrah and a bourbon for himself, without asking. He drinks it down, gesturing for another.
“Hitting it hard tonight?" she says. "I'm game."
She summons the bartender. "I'll have one of those too." Something has changed in the last few minutes and she doesn't know what.
"Are you ready for your visitors tomorrow?" she asks.
Instead of answering, he gestures for a third and then nods. "Are you drinking with me?"
She tosses it down with a shiver. "Hit me." He orders two more and they drink again.
Later, stumbling home they debate the lasting impact of Pat Benatar versus Deborah Harry on music since the 80s. "Wasn't Deborah Harry one of the first true popular female performance artists? Didn't her contributions lead to the phenomena of Madonna and Lady Gaga?" Anna demands, tripping over her own feet.
"I'd go with Grace Jones if we are talking performance art in popular music. But Pat Benatar was so rock and roll. That voice! That face! She was pissed and let you know it." He is adamant.
"John, seriously, how can you be from Texas and favor U2 and Pearl Jam and Pat Benatar? What about county music John," she asks laughing.
"Good question. I’m still thinking on that."
They sing 80s songs the rest of the way home.
At 517 they kiss in the doorway. "You have a big day tomorrow." Anna slurs a bit pushing him away.
"I'm having a big day today," he says putting her hand where he wants it.
They don't make it past the living room. Later, she wakes in her bed not sure how she got there. He is, of course, gone.
The white minivan parks at the end of the driveway. Blocking my escape? John wonders. Stephanie and Brian step out stretching in the sunshine as everyone seems to do here when they arrive. Immediately, the happy shrieks of three children fill the afternoon quiet. Two dark haired boys climb out wearing bathing suits, all ready for the beach.
"Uncle John!" they yell jumping into his arms for easy hugs. "Hey guys! You are huge. Just about ready for the NBA?" John jokes with his nephews. Mikey's eight years bring him to John's waist. Sammie is a head taller at ten. Stephanie and Brian stand back waiting for the chaos to clear. The boys want to go to the beach and agree to stick to the sand until Brian joins them. They know the rules here well.
Brian is taller than John, with the same shoulders. His dark hair is clipped shorter, but his beard matches John’s. No one would ever mistake them for anything but brothers.
Brian greets John with a "Hey Bro," and a long hug with lots of backslapping. When John starts to move away, Brian pulls him back in for more. "Not done yet."
John can't take his eyes off Stephanie. She hasn’t changed at all. Still the same look of a smile masking something underneath. She always makes you wonder what is going on under there. Her red hair shines long as she rocks the small child at her hip.
When Brian is finally done, Stephanie leans in for a quick kiss and hands him the almost two-year-old, dark haired beauty in her arms. She ignores John’s silent protest and walks toward the house.
"Tashie needs to go potty. That's what big girls do, right? They use the potty!" Stephanie says to the child. Brian insists he needs to go down to the beach to watch the boys.
John holds the little girl awkwardly before putting her down on the driveway, before realizing she is barefoot.
"Ouch!" she protests reaching both arms out to him, wiggling little fingers.
He picks her back up, holding her at a distance before placing her carefully on the thick soft grass. "Want to see the pretty flowers?" he offers. She agrees and picks some blooms. He watches her from a few feet away, until Stephanie comes out of the house.
"Hey baby! What pretty flowers you have!" She wraps an arm around John's waist. They watch the little girl, hair shining in the sun, grabbing blooms with pudgy fingers.
"
She's so big. I can’t believe it. She looks just like..." his voice trails off. Stephanie rubs his back. He lets her.
"Her birthday is tomorrow of course."
"I know," he says.
"Brian and I think we should celebrate all together. Maybe a beach party?"
John is silent. This is not what he wants, but he doesn’t want to argue with Stephanie in front of Clara.
"It's important John," she says in an artificially patient voice.
"I know Stephanie. I understand how important this is," he says in an equally artificial voice, appropriate for children.
"Who's ready for a fresh diaper and a little nap?" Stephanie asks Clara, picking her up in that easy way mothers do.
Clara protests, but her heart isn't in it, nuzzling against the woman who is like her mommy. “Tashie,” Clara says.
“Tashie?” John asks. “Where’d she get Tashie? Not Momma?
“No John, not Momma. She turned Aunt Stephanie into Tashie.”
“Why not Momma?” John asks, obviously displeased.
“Because I’m not, John. As much as I love this little girl, I’m not that.” Stephanie kisses Clara’s check. "I'll lay her down upstairs, and if it’s okay with you, I'll go join the boys on the beach for a while." She shakes auburn bangs out of her eyes.
All she gets is a nod, but doesn’t bother with words. He sits on the porch swing when she pops her head out the door to say she is going to the beach. "Can I get you anything? A beer?"
He shakes his head. "I'm good. Go have fun with the boys."
She hesitates like she is debating if she should say more. She seems to decide against it and smiles as a goodbye. He rocks gently, using his foot against the railing, listening to the summer cicadas. They are loud today. The sun is hot. He fights the familiar rage and panic that sometimes seeps in, filling him, threatening to take him over. He fights for calm.
A few minutes later, Clara peeks out the screen door at him. He reaches over to open it without moving from the swing. Silently, with a little help, she climbs onto his lap, nestles her face against his chest and reaches up, petting his beard with one tiny hand, popping a thumb into her mouth. She strokes his face until her breathing lengthens and her hand slides away, curling against her cheek. He continues rocking, holding her close.
Circling The Shadows (Sunshine and Moonlight Book 1) Page 9
