I help Claire to unstick her mittens; she looks worried that they might stick there for good. She has taken to wearing red lip-gloss, like her Aunt Haley. She nagged her mother incessantly over it until Colleen, in exasperation, blotted some onto her little lips. We wear nearly matching outfits, red tights and black skating skirts and white sweaters. Isabel, ever the tomboy but clearly Dylan’s daughter, is dressed in denim leggings and a sweater emblazoned with the American flag.
Brandon shows up.
“Dude,” he says, giving Dylan a playful karate kick in the butt. This is Isabel’s signature move. Colleen and I tried to interest Isabel in ballet class, but she prefers martial arts and often practices her moves by ambushing the unsuspecting Dylan.
“Happy Birthday.” Brandon plants a kiss on my flushed cheek. "Remember, coffee and a kiss on the cheek? ” he teases. When I inhale his steaming Styrofoam mug of coffee with longing, he surrenders it to me. He looks unusually animated, as if he is up to something. I can only assume he has a new female conquest on his ever-changing registry.
“I see you have your requisite winter tan, courtesy of---what letter are we up to?” Brandon likes to brag that he is doing all the Caribbean islands in alphabetical order.
"Martinique," he says, flashing teeth that look professionally whitened, or perhaps the tan is making them appear more blinding than usual.
“Soho’s answer to George Hamilton,” the always-tactless Dylan replies, shielding his eyes from the toothy glare.
"How would you kiddies like to do some shopping with Uncle Brandon?" Brandon offers, fanning his wallet lined with a rainbow of credit cards. The girls’ eyes widen, but their good manners keep them from answering until Dylan gives the okay. Dylan and I go on ahead to the rink. We sit in the open air, the international flags snapping in the distance, as we lace our skates.
“The girls love spending time with you,” he says, in an uncharacteristically tender moment.
“And vice versa,” I reply. I’m suddenly not feeling up to conversation. The ghosts of long ago are appearing in my mind’s eye. I can see Sinclair in his red Baron cashmere scarf and impenetrable mittens skating away so as to allow Evan to join me. And there I am, a younger version of myself, convinced that I was at the mercy of outside forces whereas, now, from the vantage point of wealth, I feel more a sense of mastery over life.
“Do you ever think about having any of your own?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know,” I say dreamily. “Maybe I’ll adopt.”
“Evan has a daughter. I think she’s close to Isabel’s age, maybe a year or so older.”
“Well, bully for him,” I snap, suddenly angry at what seems the unfairness of life.
“Evan’s been widowed for about a year now, I think. His wife died in some kind of small plane accident.”
I feel an avalanche of happiness at the thought of Evan being free, and then remorse that his freedom should come at such a price. “That’s sad,” I say, softly, although I feel a mixture of hope, and then anger, that this information was kept from me.
“Would you ever consider it, Haley? Trying to find him? Going to Texas like you were supposed to do all those years ago?”
I am shocked; as this is the first time that Dylan has acknowledged, in words, the sacrifice I made all those years ago.
For a long while I can’t answer. “No, it’s too late for that. Who knows what kind of person he’s become? He may not be the same. I may not feel the same.”
And then Sinclair’s words come back to me, as if he himself were speaking to me from some illuminated inner chamber deep within myself where memories live: You’ll wonder what he’s doing, what he looks like, if the years have aged him. Somehow you know, that no matter how he looks today, he will always look to you as he did the last time you saw him, forever young, bright with potential. You’ll obsess, does he still have the same essence of personality, or is he changed? Is he more lighthearted, or has he grown heavy with the weight of experience? Has suffering softened him or hardened him? You will see a man on the street, loading groceries into his car, and you will think, ‘That could be him. He might look like that now.’
“He was always a good guy. People don’t change,” Dylan encourages gently.
“You didn’t think so back then!” I wrap this accusation in ironic laughter.
Dylan hangs his head, and then looks up at the blue sky.
“My life is here now. Maybe ten years ago uprooting and going somewhere totally new would have been exciting. It is easier to adjust to new surroundings when you’re younger. Now it would just be wrenching to leave everything. Besides, my life is here with you and the girls. Mom is well into her seventies; I’m not going to leave her now.”
“Mom is as spry as someone half her age. She’ll be around for a long time yet.”
“Well, maybe I need her more than she needs me,” I say. “Besides, I want to see my nieces grow up.”
Dylan watches me as if he were trying to gain the courage to say more, and then he watches the skating crowds, as if searching for something. “Okay,” he says, agreeably. “You go ahead. I’m just going to sit for another moment.”
“You’re going to sneak off to that hot dog stand,” I taunt, because Colleen has been making him watch his cholesterol. She’s gotten the girls on board, and they have proven to be rather reliable tattle-tales, especially since they discovered, to their horror, that hot dogs are made from cute little pigs.
Dylan grins. “No, I’m not. And if I did, I would hope I could count on your collusion. We’ve always been a team, Sis. You go ahead. I’ve got a business call to make on my cell. I'll meet you out on the ice.”
I groan. "No business calls on my birthday!"
He grins the sarcastic Dylan grin. "This could be the best call I ever make, or the worst," he adds in afterthought.
I roll my eyes, lacing the last of my white skate. "I'm not five years old anymore," I whine when he gestures impatiently for me to run along ahead of him.
"If only you were, we could do it all over differently."
This stops me in my tracks. I've never in all my life heard Dylan express regret, but Dylan is adamant in shooing me along, as if I was a stray dog.
I bend my head into the wind, wading through the crowds and onto the rink where I lean against the railing and kick the blades into the ice to adjust the skates. When I look up, it’s into the face of Evan.
“I think this belongs to you.” He hands me a small shopping bag. Inside is the Technicolor Dreamcoat in all its original glory. The years have been kind to the coat, kept well in Evan’s care. Its plush velvet is still richly black as a night sky, and sewn with its colorful quarks of stars. I can almost see Sinclair at his sidewalk table at Coopers, spearing his melon salad while revealing his royal origins, on that warm and windy end-of-summer day when he first presented me with the magical cloak.
“Just in time; I was starting to get cold,” I say, my words almost prophetic, and Evan helps me into the coat. We skate in silence around the rink, taking turns glancing at one another when the other isn’t looking, as if to privately assess the changes the years have wrought.
“I heard about Sinclair. I’m really sorry,” he says. “How’s Joe doing?”
“Surely, you mean Joseph.” I cast a whimsical glance, for The Joseph’s pomposity level has only increased with age and increased affluence, although it’s become an indelible part of his charm.
“He took it very hard.” I tell Evan how my mother and I went over to Scotland for the funeral. We ended up staying for a month because my mother’s presence had a stabilizing effect on Joseph like no one else; perhaps a substitute for the maternal bond he’d missed out on with his own mother. I tell him how Aubergine Castle is keeping Joseph busy around the clock with its full roster of guests; how its demands are a blessing in disguise, affording him copious interactions with people so there’s little time to slip into isolation or slide too deeply into grief. It’s be
en years since its first renovations, so he’s immersed himself in ideas for new changes. “My mother and I try to get over there for a few weeks every year. We’re hoping that, in time, he’ll make a new life with someone.”
Evan nods, looking down at his black skates with the white laces as we circle about and head in the opposite direction. He wears black jeans and a striking pale blue peacoat. I glance at his hands, the once beautiful hands, now calloused and suntanned, but more sensual than ever.
“I’m sorry about your wife,” I say, and it takes every effort on my part to squeeze out the words your wife.
He nods. Evan always preferred to talk about emotionally charged things in his own time and his own way, and so I leave it at that.
“I heard you got married, too. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Are you sorry? How disappointing. I was hoping you’d be delighted.”
Evan’s smile always starts like a sunshower, lots of subtle warning and then a downpour. He laughs suddenly aloud, full-bodied, as if releasing some pressure previously bearing down on him. “You’re still the same, Sylvia. Thank God!”
And at that moment the years seem to melt away, as if my harmless little comment was a sleeve wiping away vapor on a windowpane and allowing in the light.
“What happened there?” he asks. “What sort of fool gives you up? Or maybe I should be asking myself that,” he says, his voice trailing off. “I heard bits and pieces about your divorce from Brandon,” he falters.
“Let’s not speak of that. That was not happy.’” I quote Sinclair quoting Ralph. “That’s what Ralph Touchett says to Isabel at the end of the book when he’s dying.”
“Neither of us is dying, are we?” he asks, with that mixture of earnestness and mockery that is his trademark.
“I’m healthy as a horse.” I offer a wimpy neigh for effect, in a goofy reference to his horse ranch.
Again, he laughs. “Oh, we’ve got to work on your equine impressions,” and then, “You know, I finally read that novel that you love so much. It took me ten years to slog through it,” he reports with the lopsided smile. “I have to say, I just don’t get what the big deal is all about.”
“What do you think of the ominous ending? Do you think Isabel and Casper finally get together?”
“I think so,” he says, with a knowing nod, looking into the crisp city air at the distant avenue filled with harried shoppers. “I think stories should have definite endings; it’s not fair to leave the readers hanging. Wow, that night at Delta seems so long ago. Is Delta still there?”
“I have no idea, to be honest. I don’t get into the city much, not since we moved to the vineyard, and when I do come to the city I try to avoid passing the old places. So many of them are gone. Coopers Café isn’t there anymore, and I’m not sure what replaced it, and I don’t think I want to know. I can’t bring myself to go up to 83 and Columbus, not since Sinclair died.”
“I heard it was an aneurysm?” Evan asks gently.
“Yes, suddenly and with no warning.”
“If you have to go, that’s the way,” he says softly. “No pain, no sorrow, a quick transition.”
“Yes, I’m thankful for that.” I hug the Dreamcoat about me as we skate, as if engulfing myself in Sinclair’s irrepressible essence. “I’m so happy to have this coat back.” I sniff the collar, somehow hoping it will smell of Sinclair’s cheap foreign cologne, but it seems to have no smell at all but that of the promise of snow that hangs in the bracing air.
“It’s comforting to know that some things will never change, that there are places you can count on to always stay the same. There will always be Rockefellar Center, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” he says, glancing over at the ethereal blue shadows of the church as we round the rink. "I’m glad we have memories here. I once made fun of you for liking this tourist trap, but, if you hadn’t, we might not have a place to come back to, to remember, now that all the other places may be gone. We should go together to see the old places, to see if they are still there, or to see what replaced them. It’s good to remember.” He sighs in that deeply soulful way of his. The beauty of his face is arresting, those perfectly carved features that seem to have barely aged.
“Phantom is still playing on Broadway,” I say.
“Wow, that’s a long run. Whew, at least something is the same! You used to sing that song.”
“No, the fabulous Carol, aka The Gum Goddess sang that song, Think of Me,” I say with sarcasm.
He laughs. “Oh yeah, I did that chewing gum commercial with her. Well I haven’t thought of her in a long time,” he quips. “Wasn’t that our song? No wait, didn’t Sinclair sing that at the party?” he struggles to recall.
My delight is unbounded that he has completely forgotten Carol’s operatic rendition. “Yeah, Sinclair sang it,” I fib, not wanting to jar his memory of Carol’s perfect pitch. I hum a few verses and find myself suddenly in the grip of emotion.
“I was wrong to cut off contact with you all those years ago,” I blurt out. There is something in the mournful way he gazes up at the sky and over at the snapping flags that tears at my heart.
“I’m just as much at fault. I should have done something to fix it,” he says, looking directly at me. “I should have come back here for you. I should have been stronger,” and then, “I’ve read all your children’s books. I bought every one of them. But you never wrote about us.”
“All my books are about us! You are the blue rose, the wish, the enchanted city,” I confess, under the magnetism of his gaze.
“Hmm,” he says, in sudden realization, as if now seeing what was there before him all along. “I never was good at literary interpretation. You’ve always overestimated me. I’m not so bright sometimes.” He jabs at his temples, as if to mime an empty head.
“You’ve always been the brightest object in the universe.”
He grins, blushing. So, I can still make Evan blush. And laugh. I am still able to wield some power over him. “You never finished that novel about us?”
“I couldn’t think of a good ending.” I hold my hair back with my pink mittens, as the wind is blowing with us.
“I could help you with that.” I feel my senses sharpen as I try to read between the lines of conversation. It’s still there, my desire to leap into his pockets, like warm pennies, and live there.
“You look exactly the way I remember you.” The heat of his gaze pours over my long curls, my face, and my figure now enveloped in the Dreamcoat. “Brandon was right, you are caught in a time warp; you don’t look a day older. It could easily be 1988 all over again. It could easily be that day on your birthday, at the rink, all those years ago. I think you were even wearing what you're wearing today,” he says, incredulous.
“Feel free to continue this line of conversation,” I joke. Now it’s my turn to blush. His eyes float over every feature of mine. I soak up the praise, and make a mental note to buy Brandon something divine for Christmas.
“I heard you have a slew of boyfriends banging down your door. Brandon says some of them are younger than I was when we first met, little horn dogs in their early twenties?”
“Yes, that’s true,” I say with a sigh, as if it were a burden to be borne. I bask a moment in my growing power. Maybe I’ll just buy Brandon that new set of skis he’s wanted for so long.
“They aren’t all boyfriends, more admirers, or suitors, as Sinclair would say,” I remark offhandedly, as if it were a bore to be besieged by handsome young studs.
“Oh, that’s right, coffee and a kiss on the cheek.” He throws his head back and laughs, delighted with the memory.
“These days it’s mocha latte,” I pun.
“Yeah, at five bucks a cup,” he joins in.
“Remember when we could get a cup of coffee and some kick-ass cookies for a quarter at Brandon’s poetry readings?”
“Oh, those tortuous readings!” he says, his face full of fondness for the memory of them.
We reminisce
about The Basement, with its ceiling lined with newspaper comic strips and the empty cat food cans that served as holders for the lumpy candles.
And because I was never good at leaving Evan dangling in the wind for long I confess, “Sinclair used to say that I was trying to recreate you, that all my suitors seem to strangely resemble you when we met.”
“That would be just my bum luck. What a punishment that would be, to lose you to a younger version of myself."
“Punishment?” I say, “That’s a strange choice of word.”
"It would be what I deserve," he says, glancing skyward, as if some saint may descend from on high, dispensing his absolution.
“I’ve gotten older,” he ventures, as if hoping for a rebuke.
“You were a boy then, and now you’re a man. A man is always infinitely more interesting than a boy,” I say, in the sultry tone that he used to refer to as The Voice. The truth is that he’s gorgeous, but I’m not letting him know it just yet. Mom always says it’s best to withhold compliments from a man; never let a man get too confident, always let him believe that he is the main one benefiting from the relationship.
“A man with a few gray hairs.”
“I've perfect vision and I don’t see one,” I protest, which is true. The modest Evan is as flawless as ever. “Those are blonde,” I scold, in response to the alleged gray hairs he points to on his silky head, “probably from spending all your days out in the sun roping steers.”
“Well, that’s not exactly what I do on the ranch, but I’ll take the compliment,” he shakes his head, smiling. “Yeah, well, they won’t be scrambling to put this face on any billboards today,” he says, although his mood is lightened as if he’s hoping for more reassurance from me.
“You’ll always be the guy on the billboards,” I say with a playful smirk.
“You say beautiful things, Sylvia,” he recites, as if this were an old routine with us.
“And I like the goatee,” I add.
“Do you?” He lightly rubs the neat stubble that gives him a certain prince-in-exile aura.
“It makes you look… a little dangerous.”
Blue Rose In Chelsea Page 24
