by Juliette Fay
He sat down next to her. “Hope you don’t think I’m some stray dog you can’t get rid of now because you took a thorn out of my paw.”
“Not at all,” she said. It was exactly what she was thinking.
“You’re a friendly face for a poor dad in a sea of mommitude.” He grinned. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you, by the way. Work’s been so crazy, and the week got away from me. I was hoping to make my case before someone else snapped you up.”
Good Lord, thought Dana, here it comes.
“You haven’t found a new position, have you?” Ben asked.
New POSITION? What in the world was he talking about?
Confusion must have shown on her face, because he added, “Last week you said you were about to be laid off ...”
“Oh! Yes, I was—am! Today was my first day off, in fact, and I thought it would be a relief, but I kind of missed it.”
“So you’re interested in finding something again? Because I was talking with my partner, and we think it’s time to get some help. Business is going well, but we both hate to answer the phone—got into a real tiff about it a couple of days ago ... Anyway, it’s a renewable-energy company, very start-up. The job is office-manager stuff. Ordering supplies, keeping track of things, dealing with clients when we’re out. We aren’t ready to take on someone full-time yet—maybe twenty, twenty-five hours a week.” He looked doubtful. “That’s not enough, is it?”
“Actually,” Dana said, “that’s plenty.”
She was feeling hopeful as she drove to the McPhersons’ a few hours later with the chili dinner tucked snugly in a shopping bag in the backseat. Ben had called his partner right there from the bleachers to set up a formal interview for Wednesday. There was a teasing affection in his voice that seemed to go beyond the bounds of business partnership or male friendship. Dana wondered if that had been the reason for his divorce.
As she drove, the sky was blue-black and the streetlights were already lit at five-thirty. The feel of Tony’s arms around her waist and his lips on her cheek came to her again, as it had all weekend. Despite the uncertainty between them, it had felt so ... good.
Maybe too good. Unlike the kiss on the rooftop, which had made her feel scared and disoriented, their embrace in the parking lot—the tenderness with which he’d adjusted her scarf and kissed her cheek—had felt utterly natural. It lacked the push and pull, the unspoken negotiation she was used to with Kenneth and other men. Had the embrace been brotherly? She tested this possibility in her mind, but it didn’t fit. Familiar, maybe, but not familial.
When Dana pulled up in front of the McPhersons’ house, there were two extra cars in the driveway. She wondered if the visitors were staying for dinner. She’d made extra, as usual, but it could be stretched only so far. A stranger answered the door.
“I’m Dana Stellgarten. I’m here with dinner.”
The woman squinted at Dana as if she didn’t understand English.
“Comfort Food?” Dana said. “Is Mary Ellen or Dermott here?”
“Oh, God,” the woman murmured. She glanced behind her, opened the door a little wider, and reached for the shopping bag. “Here, just give it to me.”
“Who’s that?” came a voice.
“Just a delivery person,” the woman called back.
“Wait!” Mary Ellen appeared in the doorway, her eyes red-rimmed, tendrils of hair loose from her ponytail. “Dana!” she said. “I knew it was you,” and she began to cry. Dana stepped toward her, and she reached for Dana, clutching at her and sobbing in seizurelike spasms. Dana looked to the woman behind them and made eye contact, silently begging for an explanation. The woman mouthed, Dermott died today.
They stood in the doorway with their arms wrapped around each other, crying for what could have been moments or hours. Dana felt as if her insides had turned liquid, and every concern she had, every wish for herself and her life, had gone seeping out through the bottom of her feet, pressed as she was in the frantic embrace of a newborn widow.
It had happened just an hour or so before. He had lain down for a nap earlier in the afternoon and died in his sleep. Mary Ellen went in to check on him and was able to scoot the kids over to a neighbor’s house before they figured it out. Minutes later the paramedics arrived.
“I told the dispatcher, ‘For godsake, don’t put the siren or lights on—it’s the only chance I have that they won’t notice,’” she told Dana later when they were sitting at the Magic Marker-stained kitchen table. Two other women were there, friends she’d called who lived nearby. One had Mary Ellen’s address book and was making phone calls; the other was tidying up the house in preparation for the tides of friends and relatives who would arrive shortly to cry and comfort her and cry some more.
“I just wish I’d been with him,” Mary Ellen said to Dana, her voice hoarse with emotion. “I could have lain down, too. I was tired. Why didn’t I lie down with him? Maybe he would’ve said something. But I just didn’t think ... I really believed he would make it!”
“You couldn’t have known,” Dana soothed. “And what could he have said that you don’t already know? That he loves you? That you’re a good wife? You know these things.”
Mary Ellen’s chin trembled. “When we went out on that date last week, he said it all ...” Tears began to spill down her cheeks. “Do you think he knows I’m sorry I wasn’t with him?”
“I think,” said Dana, biting the inside of her lip to keep from crying again, “I think he knows you would’ve done anything for him. Because you did everything—everything you could do. I need to tell you something now, before a million people show up. Something he asked me to tell you.” Her throat clenched, and it was hard to get the words out. “He wanted you to know he’s missing you. Right now. Just as you’re missing him, wherever he is, he’s missing you, too.”
Mary Ellen laid her head down on the table and sobbed. Dana rubbed her back, brushed her hair off her cheek as she would have done for Morgan or Alder or Connie. As she would’ve done for anyone who was so sad she couldn’t hold her head up anymore.
When Mary Ellen quieted a little, Dana put her own head down on the table to talk to her. “One more thing,” she whispered. “He said I should keep cooking for you.”
A sound burst out of Mary Ellen then, and it took Dana a second to recognize it as a laugh. “Demanding son of a gun, isn’t he?” she said, a smile breaking across the tearstained cheeks.
“I would have done it anyway,” Dana confided. “He just gave me an excuse.”
Relatives and close friends started arriving. Dana let herself out and walked to her car. She sat there in the front seat, mind awash with Mary Ellen’s sorrow and the image of Dermott’s face as he had gazed at his wife only a week before, when Dana had brought over the silk blouse. As sick and diminished as he was, he looked as if he felt lucky.
I am such an idiot, thought Dana. She called home and told Alder what had happened. “I’m going to go see a friend,” she said. “Can you hold down the fort?”
“Gotcha covered,” said Alder.
CHAPTER 48
TONY OPENED THE DOOR AND LET HER IN TO THE warm light of his house. “Is everything okay?”
“Remember that family I cook for sometimes?” she said. “Dermott McPherson—he’s a patient of yours.”
“Of course.” He helped her off with her coat and tossed it over the varnished wooden banister. “You gave his wife that blouse.”
“He died today. I went to bring them dinner, and he had just died.” She didn’t think it was possible to produce any more tears, but her eyes filled nevertheless. Then his arms were around her. “I thought I was all cried out,” she whispered.
“All right,” he soothed, his hand stroking her hair. “Okay.” She felt as if she’d arrived at someplace perfect, as if this were the only comfort that would do.
After a moment she pulled back. “Do you have a tissue?” she said, sniffling.
“Sure thing.” He stepped into a doorway behi
nd the stairs, a half bath, she guessed. When he came back with a box of tissues, he led her into the living room and they sat on a brown leather couch. Two hardwood lamps on either side spread their pools of light across the room.
She blew her nose, self-conscious because she knew he was waiting. “I didn’t come here to cry,” she said, stuffing the tissue into her pocket, “I came because ... I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
“Yes, but you know that. I mean, you know how you feel. Not that I’m making any presumptions ...”
“It’s not presumptuous,” he said. “Marie actually came right out and told me to knock it off.”
“Knock what off?”
“Being irritable because you weren’t there today. Kendra’s a good receptionist, but she’s got nothing on you for lunch conversation. Or anything else, for that matter.”
“How’s she feeling?”
“Fine,” he said, making it clear he had no intention of pursuing that tangent.
“Marie’s a Wiccan, by the way,” she told him.
“Great.”
“Did you already know?”
“No, but I’m not really interested in Marie right now.” He leaned back against the couch and crossed his arms.
She gazed at him for a moment and remembered her initial impression of him: a birdbath—short and squat, his essential goodness an open reservoir. She took a breath and released it. “Okay,” she said. “I’m a little freaked out.”
“Because ...”
“Because I’m not really sure how I feel. Part of me is so comfortable with you, it’s like I’ve known you my whole life. And I trust you. A lot.”
“Maybe too much,” he speculated.
“Yes! And that scares the hell out of me. You’re a terrific person, but you’re not perfect.”
“Well,” he said, “I’d like to think I’ve got a little more under the hood than the last guy you were with.”
A laugh burst out of her. “That’s a pretty safe bet.”
He uncrossed his arms and allowed himself a smile.
“The thing is,” she said, “sometimes less under the hood is easier to deal with. You don’t get so ... attached.”
“Which comes in handy if they leave you.”
“Wow,” she breathed, looking down at her hands, the truth of it hitting her like a rogue wave. “That’s really messed up.”
“We’ve all got our issues,” he said.
“Connie says the problem with me is I seem too normal. I should ‘embrace my psychosis.’” She made quote marks with her fingers.
“Sounds like Connie’s on to you.”
“She says you’re on to me.”
“I’m liking her better and better.”
“She still refers to you as Santa,” Dana admitted.
His eyes narrowed. “That part not so much.”
They sat there in silence for a moment, the brown-and-cranberry coziness of the room insulating them from the bitter cold. “This is a lovely house,” she said. “I can see why you didn’t move.”
He nodded agreement and thanks. “Dana,” he said. “Why are you here?”
I miss you, she thought, but she knew it wasn’t enough. “I’d like ... I’d like to try.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Not just because you saw something incredibly sad and needed a safe shoulder to cry on?”
“Well ... to be honest, I was already thinking about you all the time, and that sort of tipped the scales. Not the safe-shoulder part so much as not wanting to lose you.”
“What makes you think you’d lose me?”
“Tony,” she said, “you’re a very understanding guy and all, but you don’t put up with much. You wouldn’t go for the whole ‘let’s just be friends’ thing.”
A hint of a smile crossed his face. “Sounds like you’re on to me.”
“I hope I am ... I want to be.”
He slipped his arm under hers and clasped her hand. She slid over next to him, rested her head against the back of the couch and felt the muscles in her shoulders release their grip on her neck. He put his feet up on the oak coffee table, and she did the same. They talked or sat silent, listening to the gurgles and pops of the heat cycling on and off and the wind making the trees brush up against the house. At eleven-thirty she said, “I should probably get home.”
He walked her to the door, helped her on with her coat. Just as he reached for the doorknob, she slid her arms around him and kissed him. She had meant it to be more than a peck, but not much more—and yet it went on, an exploration, a confirmation, her heart rate rising, her arms tightening around him, pressing toward him, allowing him to pull her closer. When they began to separate, he kissed her cheek and her chin and her nose, then rested his forehead against hers.
“Oh,” she sighed.
“Mm,” he said.
Yes, she thought as she drove home. A little more under the hood than the last guy.
CHAPTER 49
POLLY RANG THE DOORBELL AT A QUARTER TO three, just before the kids were due home. She never rang the doorbell, not since the early days of their friendship. She’d yell, “It’s me!” and walk in.
When Dana opened the door, Polly said, “Should I wait out here?” It had a tone to it, but Dana suspected that Polly truly needed to know, and held the door open for her. They stood in the mudroom, not looking at each other until Polly blurted out, “I quit that book group. They’re a bunch of gossips, and I let myself sink to that level. Nora thinks she’s permanent prom queen or something, but she’s just a manipulative bitch.” She gave her head a hard, frustrated little shake. “I’m not making excuses—it’s all on me. But I just want you to know it’s not a mistake I’ll ever make again.”
Dana nodded. “Good,” she said.
“Also, Victor’s practically ready to divorce me over this.” An exaggeration, but Dana understood her point. “He keeps saying, ‘You threw Dana under the bus for what—that snotty Nora Kinnear? What’s the matter with you?’ And he’s right, but can you believe the nerve of him, after the crush he had on her? And then he says to me every day, ‘Don’t you go up there to the Stellgartens’. Don’t you hound her till she takes you back from sheer exhaustion. You let her come to you when she’s ready.’ Like he’s got a Ph.D. in human relationships or something. Let me tell you, he doesn’t.”
Dana looked her in the eye. “It’s not what you did to me, Polly, though that’s bad enough. It’s what you did to Morgan.”
Polly blanched. “God, I know,” she breathed. “I’m sick over it. I never thought—”
“No one ever thinks gossip will go very far. But it’s gossip, that’s what it does. She overheard Nora say you were the one who told her. She knows you did it.”
“I could kill myself.” Her pixielike stature seemed to diminish even further, and Dana thought of that line from Peter Pan. “Clap if you believe in fairies.”
“And now she feels bad because she thinks she ruined our friendship.”
“That’s crazy! She didn’t do a thing!”
“I wish you’d tell her that. Today, if possible. Don’t let on that you know she feels responsible. Just apologize and let her see she’s not to blame. Please.”
“It’s a done deal.”
“How’d it go?” Tony asked when he called that night around ten, just as Dana was getting into bed and wondering if it was too late to call him.
“Okay, I think.” She told him about her conversation with Polly.
“Did she do it?”
“I think she must have. Morgan seemed calmer tonight. But I didn’t want to ask her—then she’d know I set it up.”
“Good thinking,” he said. “You’re a heck of a mom.”
Dana groaned. “You know that saying, ‘It’s not rocket science’? It’s not—it’s harder.”
“Tell me about it.” Tony chuckled. “I talked to Lizzie tonight. She’s all happy because—wait for it—”
�
�She got back together with Zack!”
“No, Zack tried to get back together, and she told him to go jump in a lake. Actually, I’m sure the phrasing was much more current than that, but you get the gist.”
“Good girl!”
“Also, I told her about you.”
Dana’s breath caught in her chest for a second. She hadn’t told anyone yet. It seemed too fragile, still, to expose to public scrutiny. “And?”
“I believe that her exact words were, ‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ Something along those lines. I always sound ridiculous when I use their lingo. Which has been confirmed by them, of course.”
He asked about the funeral arrangements for Dermott. Dana had stopped by with a suit jacket for the oldest boy, remembering how the sleeves were too short on the one he owned. She had learned that there would be no wake or funeral. Dermott had requested that his ashes be spread over Nipmuc Pond, and since it was currently frozen, Mary Ellen had decided to do a memorial service in the spring.
They talked a while longer, and Tony gave her pointers for her job interview the following day. Finally he said, “Good night, sweetheart.”
Dana grinned. “You’re calling me sweetheart?”
“Your heart is very sweet,” he said. “I couldn’t help but mention it.”
Dana changed her clothes twice before the job interview. The first outfit was too boring, and she didn’t want to look like some sad sack who’d be so grateful for the job that she’d agree to low pay or put up with disrespect. The second outfit was too synthetic—a polyester print blouse and tan rayon slacks. It’s a renewable-energy company, she chided herself. You need to look green!
