ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME

by McQuestion, Rosary

  “Of course not,” I said.

  Together, we set the coffee table with salads of romaine lettuce, a basket of warm Italian bread, freshly grated parmesan cheese, two steaming plates of lasagna, and a bottle of merlot. Gavin ditched the dippy looking apron and lit the candles. Harry Connick coolly crooned over the stereo sound system at a volume that was conducive to seductive conversation. Gavin had a seemingly effortless way of setting a romantic scene.

  “Please sit,” he said as he set two oversized throw pillows down on the tapestry rug for us to sit on.

  I casually studied his profile, as he sat down cross-legged next to me. He had a rugged sexy look, handsome, but not flawless like I first thought. His nose had a sight hump at the bridge, and his wavy black hair receded at the temples, but his eyes were perfect--a beautiful cosmic blue.

  “I’d like to make a toast,” he declared, as he raised his glass of wine. “To Mr. Davis.”

  “Mr. Davis?”

  “Yeah, if it wasn’t for him, we might never have met,” he said, with a wink.

  “Well, then by all means,” I said, as my glass clinked with his.

  Candles, wine, soft music, his leg brushing up against mine, the room was ultra primed for romance. I was so hypnotized I could barely speak. As we raised our glasses to our lips to take a sip of wine, mine accidentally dribbled down the front of my chin, making me feel a little like the Grinch who stole romanticism. I quickly grabbed my napkin and wished I could crawl between the layers of my lasagna to hide.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t do well at walking and chewing gum at the same time either.”

  Gavin laughed. “Don’t worry about it. What’s a little spilled wine between friends? Let’s eat!”

  Gavin put a forkful of lasagna in his mouth, which brought to mind a feature article from the latest issue of Cosmo, “Sensual Foods to Sex up Your Evening.” Like lobster dripping with butter sauce or whipped cream and big red, juicy strawberries. I entertained the thought of trying a little tongue action with the gooey, stretchy cheese, but an attempt to be sexy with food was uncharted territory for me.

  “Wow, this is great.” I was pleasantly surprised considering the burnt sauce I’d seen sitting in the pan on the stove.

  “Glad you like it. It’s my mom’s recipe, but I have to apologize for us having Italian twice in a row. First, I take you to an Italian restaurant and now this. I didn’t think about it until the lasagna was already baking in the oven.”

  “Oh, please don’t apologize, I love Italian food. I learned to appreciate it at a very young age. I was the skinniest kid at St. Michael’s, and half the kids there were Italian. I couldn’t walk into any of my friends’ houses without their mothers trying to feed me. I think a skinny kid in the eyes of an Italian mother is viewed as a sacrilege.”

  A chuckle came from Gavin as he dipped a piece of crusty Italian bread into the sauce on his plate. “So, are you Catholic?”

  “I don’t know if I’m any one religion. My parents were brought up Catholic, but they wanted to broaden my religious views and have me experience different cultural aspects of life. I spent some years in Catholic schools attending daily Mass, as well as a few years at an Episcopalian school and most years, public schools. My parents even had a Jewish friend bring me to Synagogue to explain the Torah scrolls they read. It all boils down to the same thing. Having belief in God or like my parents say, belief in a Higher Power.”

  Gavin looked deep in thought as he nodded. “Although I only met your parents briefly, I’ll bet they’re very wise people. They raised a beautiful and very successful daughter.”

  I felt the heat in my face. Blushing wasn’t something I’d experienced in many years. But Gavin had an innate way of stirring emotions I’d kept buried, and that evening I began to feel a distinct turning point in my life. I must have had the same influence on him because during our forty-minute dinner he fully opened up about his parents.

  I learned all the details of his boyhood and that fatherhood for Jeb was merely a fleeting moment in time like Dorothy visiting Oz. His mother was like the northern star that kept him on track, and guided him through difficult times. Gavin told me he had forgiven his father long ago for abandoning him. And that he was happy he had come back to Providence.

  I finally changed the subject to something a little lighter.

  “So, I see you like antiques.”

  “Antiques are relics of a time lost and to me anything old is very fascinating.”

  That certainly answered the burning question of why he liked me.

  “I’m intrigued by things that are real old,” he said earnestly. “Like sitting in a chair from another century and trying to imagine who sat in it, and how they were dressed, what the house looked like, was the chair part of a family with kids? It’s like trying to uncover a mystery.”

  “That’s a very interesting perspective.” I glanced toward the hutch. “I noticed you have a few books on reincarnation. Do you believe in it?”

  Gavin paused and looked down at his glass of wine, as if the answer was floating somewhere at the bottom. “I usually don’t discuss that subject with anyone. I think it bothers some people and others, well, they might find it kind of odd.”

  “I don’t think it’s odd. I find it very interesting,” I said, adventurously

  He pulled his eyes away from the glass to look at me. I saw a tinge of eagerness in his expression.

  “Take for instance someone who had never had a lesson on a piano, but can play like a concert pianist,” I said. “And others who were never taught to paint could pick up a brush and create a masterpiece. Some philosophers claim these people are the reincarnation of great people like van Gogh and Bach. I can’t say I believe in reincarnation, but it’s an interesting theory.”

  “It is,” Gavin said eagerly. “Theorizing about the possibility of the soul living on is fascinating, and in ways it makes perfect sense. For example, the Laws of Physics state that energy can’t be destroyed. It also states that thought is energy, and that the individual energy pockets of thought, feeling, and experience that comprise our individuality, or our souls can’t be destroyed. However, they can be transformed from one state to another. Therefore, if that theory is correct, our souls are eternal, and they must still exist after death.”

  Transformed…exist after death?

  I felt as if I had entered some kind of time warp, causing my mind to instantly rewind. The more Gavin talked the more he reminded me of Matt. Gavin’s beliefs and views on the subject of reincarnation was everything Matt used to hypothesize, not to mention the other strange similarities between Matt and Gavin.

  I took big gulps of wine, while trying to digest what Gavin was saying. Like chemical energy can become kinetic energy and mathematics is infallible and energy is definable. After forty-five minutes, I was left with an overwhelming sense of intergalactic spirituality. Mother would have been so proud of me.

  Our conversation tapered down to our own lives in the real world, our insecurities, and leftover baggage from childhood and failed relationships. Perhaps the wine loosened my lips, but I felt there wasn’t anything I couldn’t tell Gavin. My soul felt more cleansed that evening than all the times I’d talked to Father Martino in the confessional booth.

  As the sun went down, reflections from the flickering candles on the coffee table did a gentle tango across the wall. Gavin’s eyelids were like half-closed Roman shades, as he gently took my hand in his. Before I knew it, his sweet merlot soaked lips were on mine. His warm, sensual kiss made my stomach flutter.

  My insecurities flared, as I excused myself and asked to use the restroom. I felt the need to reapply lip-gloss and make sure my eyeliner hadn’t smeared to give me the Uncle Fester look.

  Gavin turned on the single light bulb hanging in the center of the twelve-foot high ceiling in the foyer. I studied the old oak stair rail missing some of its balusters.

  “So, maybe I shouldn’t hang on to the rail on the way up,” I said teasi
ngly.

  He smiled. “I’ll go cleanup the coffee table.”

  The wooden stairs creaked while climbing them, which reminded me of what Gavin had said about antiques and how different the world was when they were brand new. I couldn’t help wonder about the family who first climbed those very stairs more than a century ago.

  I reached the top of the staircase and passed Gavin’s bedroom. Like a gleaming trophy to proven manhood, I’d found his “man cave.” In the corner was a monstrous leather recliner large enough to hold an arsenal of TV and stereo controls, snacks, a six-pack of beer, small car...you get the picture. Clothes hung from the dresser drawers and four-poster bed like overripe fruit on a tree. Down the hall dust-bunnies gathered to mate in the corner on the worn hardwood floor. In the bathroom, the half-peeled dilapidated wallpaper was a project Gavin told me he had started months ago. A neat freak he wasn’t, a procrastinator, maybe.

  When I returned downstairs and walked back into the living room, Gavin was nowhere in sight. However, the French doors on either side of the fireplace in the living room were open. A reading lamp close to the doors cast a soft halo onto a limestone patio outside where I joined Gavin as he stood under a starry sky.

  “Hey you,” I said as I walked up to him.

  He coiled one strong arm around my waist and brought me close to him, then raised his hand to trace the side of my face with his finger.

  “Why are you smiling at me so mysterious like?” I asked.

  “It’s a secret,” he said, as his lips covered mine.

  Nineteen

  It was countdown time for Camp Big Foot--twenty-four hours left to go. As Nicholas stacked a pile of clothing on his bed to pack, Buster contently kneaded his paws into a soft pile of freshly laundered T-shirts. I sat cross-legged on the floor in his bedroom sewing annoying little nametags inside every piece of clothing, while I daydreamed about the three glorious weeks that Gavin and I had been dating.

  “Mom, what’s this candy for?” Nicholas poked his nose into a small paper sack I had packed in his duffle bag. One thing I recalled from my Girl Scout days was that having candy at camp was like cigarettes in prison.

  “I wanted you to be prepared. I’ll brief you later on the power of a Pixy Stix at camp,” I answered, while studying the curious expression on his face.

  I was totally unprepared for the relationship Nicholas had developed with Gavin. He’d never before grown attached to anyone I’d dated. Shame on me, I thought for breaking my own cardinal rule. Unless I knew my date’s shoe size, what he had for lunch the day before, and had memorized the list of stock options in his retirement portfolio, I never allowed that person to have any kind of meaningful relationship with my son. It was difficult risking Nicholas could be hurt.

  Laura said it was good for Nicholas to see me in a normal, healthy relationship and that it was fun for him, too, because Gavin and I included him in everything we did. Then there was Mother, the single most desperate person wanting me to find Mr. Right.

  She pushed me into having a barbecue so she and my father could get acquainted with Gavin and his father, Jeb. We invited Mr. Davis as well. Gavin, who imagined himself another Wolfgang Puck, had made his secret homemade Cajun barbecue sauce. While the chicken and ribs were smoking on the grill, Mother told the story of how she and my father had met at Woodstock and that instantly they were starry-eyed with one another.

  However, who wasn’t starry-eyed at Woodstock?

  “Only two weeks! Two weeks!” she stressed. “That’s all it took to know we were meant for each other and got married. We didn’t see the need to wait.”

  I decided to ignore her less than subtle way of dropping a hint about marriage, when a whispery voice filled my head. The disjointed words came through like a cell phone making an intermittent connection with a tower. “Tell the truth…” “Dishonest…” was all I could make out.

  As I tried to detect whose thought it was, my parents began yapping about the new health food business they planned on opening. Then Mr. Davis piped up wanting to know more about Woodstock, which had my parents telling hair-raising stories. One I believe included interplanetary aliens. Knowing my parents last went down the yellow brick road long before I was born didn’t ward off my panic attack when I thought they were going to expound on the mind-expanding benefits of LSD.

  My concentration was totally blown, but I did recall the evening at Gavin’s house as we stood outside on his deck. As soon as I asked why he was looking at me so mysteriously, he told me it was a secret and quickly kissed me.

  “Mom, Gavin’s coming over tonight to fix the wheel on my bike, right?”

  “Hmm, yes, he did he say he was going to do that.”

  Gavin liked doing the unexpected, like bringing his chess set over to teach Nicholas how to play, or showing up unexpectedly to make us dinner. The little unexpected things about Gavin were what made him so special.

  “Mom, is Gavin your boyfriend?” Nicholas asked indifferently, as he neatly folded a pair of shorts and added it to the pile of clothing.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Would you like him to be?”

  “It’s pretty cool that he taught me how to use a skate board. I like him a lot!” Nicholas beamed.

  “So, I guess it would be okay if he were my boyfriend?”

  “That’s an affirmative Mom,” Nicholas said, showing two thumbs up. “You know what? I think Dad would like him, too.”

  I smiled pensively and ruffled his hair. “You know Partner, I believe he would.”

  * * * *

  The sun was barely up over the parking lot at Hope Elementary School, but the August heat was already stifling. While parents mingled with each other, the boys were like concentrated bundles of exploding energy. They whooped and hollered as the large yellow bus that would take them to Camp Big Foot, pulled into the parking lot.

  Tucked under my arm was a rolled up sleeping bag, while a twenty-pound denim duffle bag hung over my shoulder. Nicholas’s fishing pole was poking into my side, the reel caught on the pocket of my shorts. Huge aviator sunglasses hid my makeup-free face, as I schlepped across the parking lot while my body craved caffeine.

  My foot accidentally slipped out of my white flip-flops. I almost tripped, which caused the fishing line to swing like a pendulum in front of my face. The fishing lure grazed the sleeve of my T-shirt and hooked onto my hair.

  “Nicholas, wait up!” The duffle bag loaded with clothes, towels, hiking boots, flashlight, batteries, insect repellent, and other miscellaneous items, slipped off my shoulder and hit the ground with a thud.

  “It would have been easier to move his entire bedroom,” I grumbled, as I tried to untangle the hook from my hair. A whole ten seconds passed before I gave up and yanked it out, a fuzz ball of humidity-struck hair still stuck in the jagged teeth. My exaggerated sigh drew the attention of the other mothers.

  I tucked the sleeping bag back under my arm, grabbed the strap on the duffle bag, and hoisted it over my shoulder to let it ride on my back. Crouched over from the weight, while the fishing pole jabbed at my ribs, I told myself I could make it to the bus…just ten more feet…five more feet... I did my best to shuffle along, while feeling a bit like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  As I reached the bus, I brought the bag forward and released it to the ground. It dropped like a two hundred pound set of barbells right in front of the bus driver. He paid no attention, as he threw luggage into a built-in side compartment on the bus, looking as if he were bowling for dollars.

  “Aubrey, over here!” called a very cheerful looking Katelyn, who stood with the other mothers next to a folding table of what looked like breakfast goodies and coffee!

  As Nicholas ran around the bus with Jimmy and a dozen other boys making whooping sounds like Indians circling a covered wagon, I headed over to the goody table. I was looking forward to having my morning jolt of coffee and a fluffy blueberry muffin. However, just as I approached the table Katelyn rushed toward me. Her face that just mo
ments before had been lit up like a Christmas tree, was in an angry lock and load position. Her exaggerated leaping steps toward me, gave the impression that something was nipping at her ass.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, as she reached and grabbed hold of my arm, to wheel me away from the other mothers.

  “I need to ask ya”ll something,” she said firmly in her southern twang.

  “But I need a muffin and coffee first,” I said, putting my body weight into trying to pull in the opposite direction.”

  “Noooo,” she said, as her brow furrowed and her grip tightened.

  I turned and looked longingly at the goodies table, while her tiny one hundred and two pound body anchored me from moving.

  “Katelyn, for heaven’s sake, what is it?”

  She released her Schwarzenegger-like grip on my arm and placed her hands squarely on her tiny hips. “How could you not tell me about this new guy you’re dating?”

  I swear, with all the people interested in my dating, I thought for sure the paparazzi couldn’t be far behind. “Katelyn, it’s only been a few weeks and the only one who knows is Laura, and only because she found out on her own. If it were up to me, no one would know. I’m afraid of jinxing it, but I was going to tell you at Cacey’s luncheon this afternoon.”

  “Right!” she said, as she folded her arms and knotted her lips.

  “I’m not kidding. I really was going to tell you. And besides, how did you find out?”

  “Well, how in H-E double toothpicks do you think I’d know?” she bristled.

  Katelyn never swore in front of Jimmy. She spelled out all her swear words, but it was beginning to become a habit even when Jimmy wasn’t around.

  “Ah, Nicholas told Jimmy about my new guy?”

  “Of course, I even know his name is Gavin and I’ll tell you what,” she said, her voice softening. “Nicholas just loves your new guy. He told Jimmy he hopes Gavin can be his daddy. He’s never said that about any of the guys you’ve dated. And I’m only counting the guys you dated more than four times. And the ones you had real relationships with like Rick. Who come to think of it was the only relationship you had. Who, by the way was the only guy that everyone betted on not lasting more than a month, and --”