Kindred Spirits

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  So much for their brief sisterly rapprochement.

  They turned a corner and found Elsie idling outside the waiting room, a crumpled ball of tissues in one hand, a half-empty Styrofoam cup of water in the other. She was surprisingly composed.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” Elsie put down her cup and tissue and took both of Beth’s hands in hers, beaming kindness. She looked old, but capable. “Don’t worry, honey. Your father’s going to be fine. He’s still got a lot of that Brewster strength in him.”

  “And what he doesn’t have in strength,” Beth said, hoping to comfort her mother, too, “he has in spirit.”

  “That’s the attitude.” Elsie winked. “I’ll pass that on to Madeleine the next time she calls, which should be in”—she checked her watch—“five minutes. She’s so concerned.”

  “Is she angry about us not taking him to New York?”

  “No, no. Of course not. She understands time was of the essence. We can thank our lucky stars Grace was only five minutes away.”

  “I mean . . . earlier. If we’d taken Maddy’s advice about the tests.”

  “Oh, sweetie. Your father and I are touched by how much you and Maddy look after us. Most men should be so fortunate to have two grown daughters bickering over which hospital is the best for their father. But we’re not incapacitated, you know. Dad chose Grace because that’s what he wanted.”

  Elsie brushed a strand of hair off Beth’s forehead. “Don’t look so hurt. He took your opinion into consideration. Maddy’s, too. Then he stayed here.”

  Beth wished Maddy were there to see how strong their mother was. “You’re amazing, Mom.”

  “I’ll go get us some coffee,” Marc said, wisely sensing that this was a moment for the Brewster women to be alone.

  The mother and daughter watched him stroll toward the cafeteria. “You made an excellent choice with that one,” Elsie said. “If it hadn’t been for him, your father would be . . .” Elsie’s gaze wandered. “Gone.”

  “Gone? As in . . . dead?”

  “Marc stopped by this afternoon with some mail from the office and a James Bond video to keep your father entertained while he was recovering from the tests. Took one look at him and told me to call 911 immediately.”

  How had he known?

  Marc returned, balancing two cups of coffee, some yogurt, and a banana. “There’s not much there that’s edible. But this should keep you going.” Elsie only wanted the coffee and to stay out of the waiting room, which she found depressing and noisy, what with the TV on full blast.

  So Marc got her a chair and a People magazine. Then he sat beside her and took her hand in his, the two of them talking and not talking. Beth found a chair at the end of the hall and dragged it over so she was on her mother’s other side.

  Hours later, that’s how the heart surgeon found them, quietly holding one another’s hands, when he came down the hall, pulled off his mask, and delivered the news.

  Carol removed a pair of soft, worn jeans from her weekend bag, along with her familiar dark green Middlebury sweatshirt. In the downstairs powder room that she had redone herself in a French Country motif with tea-stained walls and blue accent tiles, she pulled her hair into a ponytail and washed her face. It was only five o’clock. Jeff normally didn’t make it home until seven, maybe seven thirty, so she had plenty of time to snoop.

  Girlfriends left clues to mark their presence the way dogs piddle on fire hydrants. First, Carol checked the powder room medicine cabinet, searching for the stray tampon or bottle of sandalwood perfume. Nothing but the usual. A spare unopened toothbrush for guests. Advil. Band-Aids. An old prescription for skin rashes left over from when Jonathan got shingles. She stepped on the lever to open the wastepaper basket and dumped it. As a doctor, Jeff should know better than to keep expired medicine.

  After the downstairs bathroom revealed no treasures, she couldn’t help tiptoeing upstairs to see what evidence might be hidden in the master bath. At the top of the stairs, Amanda’s room was to the left. Carol flipped on the light and gripped the doorjamb, remembering happier days when she and Jeff took Amanda at age twelve down to the local hardware store so she could pick out her own paint colors. Orchid and lime green on alternating walls.

  Somehow they managed to keep straight faces as Amanda had chosen the paints in not pearl or eggshell, but high gloss. She’d seen it in Seventeen magazine and as soon as she was out of earshot, Carol and Jeff had collapsed in laughter, though the joke was on them. They were the ones who had to spend a weekend prepping and painting orchid and lime-green walls.

  It was all worth it, though, because Amanda was delighted when Jeff led her into the room, his hands over her eyes. She squealed and threw herself on her new full-size bed, bouncing up and down, gushing about the pillows Carol had sewn, the polka-dotted lampshade and complementary throw rug, the mosquito netting Jeff had hung from the ceiling and the tiny little fairy lights outlining her windows. “I’m never leaving. I love, love, love it!” she declared, hugging both of them at once.

  Jeff had put another arm around Carol and kissed her on the cheek and she noticed the splatter of bright green paint in his hair, right above his ear. She’d been so proud that the man she’d chosen for a husband had also turned out to be a patient, kind, and tolerant father.

  But the walls of orchid and green were no more, having been covered in a light, muted taupe—and recently, too, if the acrid smell of fresh paint was any indication. Also gone was the polka-dotted throw rug. In its place, tasteful sisal. White linen curtains hung at the windows and matched the white spread on the bed. Every trace of teenage Amanda had been erased. Carol silently closed the door and went to Jonathan’s room. Maybe that had been spared.

  No. The red carpet, the blue walls dotted with posters of various lacrosse and soccer teams, the cheap plastic trophies won for Best Improved Player and Most Loyal Team Member, too, had been removed. Cream walls and that sisal again. A nightstand held art books and a wheat sheaf wrapped in maple leaves. Honestly? Had this decorator ever met a healthy, red-blooded American male in his late teens? What a crock.

  Finally, she went around the corner to their master suite that, much to her relief, had been left intact. There was their old kingsize bed that they bought when Carol started commuting to New York and would come home so stressed that she’d toss and turn and kick Jeff awake. The quilt Lynne had made them for their twentieth wedding anniversary was still folded over the footboard, but that was the only personal touch. Everything else was missing, even the photos of their family that had taken up one whole wall. What she saw there, instead, was herself in a square mirror looking worn and sad, big bags under her eyes.

  He’s serious, she realized. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d been half hoping that this was a ploy to win her back, but no. This was no trick. There’d be no one leaping from behind the curtains to shout, “Surprise!”

  She had left him and now, at last, he was finally leaving her.

  And that was that.

  She went out of the bedroom and headed downstairs to deal with the pile of knickknacks.

  Afterward, she found an old bottle of rye in the liquor cabinet and one of sweet vermouth. There was an unopened jar of Maraschino cherries in the pantry and even a couple of lemons in the sparse refrigerator. Some bitters, too, so she had everything needed for Manhattan martinis. She poured them over the cherries, took a healthy slug, and called Scott.

  “I wondered when I’d hear from you.” He wasn’t mad, exactly. More like distressed. “I assume you’re on the train now. Just tell me when you’ll get in and I’ll send the car to pick you up.”

  She bit her lip. “Actually, I’m not on the train.”

  “You’re kidding. When do you think you’ll be back?”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll see you at the office. There’s so much work I need to catch up on, so I expect I’ll be burning the night oil. I don’t know when we’ll be able to get together.”

  Scott went silent. �
�What’s going on, Carol?”

  “Nothing’s going on. I just . . .” Be honest. For once in your life say what you want and want what you say. She put the glass down on the counter. “I don’t think it’s going to happen for us . . . romantically.”

  “Ah.”

  She flexed her fingers, thinking of how he’d dangled the possibility that returning home would change how she felt about him, how she felt about Jeff.

  “Is it . . .?”

  “No. Jeff’s moving on, selling the house as planned. It’s me. You were right about me hiding in New York. Being back in Marshfield and among my old friends has stirred up a lot of unresolved issues.” She took a breath because this was going to be the hardest thing to admit. “You were very kind to find a position for me at the firm, Scott, and be so consoling after I left Jeff. I don’t know how I would have kept body and soul together if you hadn’t been there for me.”

  “But . . .”

  “I may have made a mistake. Not in rejoining the firm,” she added hastily, since losing her job would be devastating. “But in running away.”

  “Is that what you think you did, ran away?”

  Ever the armchair therapist, she thought, smiling. “If I recall, those were someone else’s words. Someone much wiser and more mature than I deserve.”

  “I don’t know about that. However,” he said, bucking up, “it’s good to know you’re asking the tough questions.”

  “Better late than never.”

  “I have to admit that I wish it were otherwise. We could have had a lot of fun, you and I.”

  “I know.” This was harder than she’d anticipated. He was so nice, so decent.

  “I hope you realize my door is open for whenever you need to talk.”

  “Thanks, Scott,” she whispered. “That means so much.”

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow it is.”

  “Take care, Carol.”

  “I will, Scott. You too.”

  She hung up and took another sip of her drink. Breaking up in your forties was no easier than breaking up in your twenties, she thought, heading to the living room to make a fire. In fact, in some ways it was harder.

  She opened the flue and rolled up the front page of Sunday’s New Haven Register, setting it on the grate in the fireplace. On top of that, she sprinkled kindling Jeff kept in a corner near the tongs, lit a match, and got a blaze going.

  A half hour later, the fire roaring, the front door opened and closed. Footsteps echoed across the pine floorboards and Carol heard the unmistakable thump of Jeff’s laptop case on the hall table as he made his way to the living room.

  “Hey,” he said, unbuttoning his black wool coat. “You’re still here. And . . . you made a fire.”

  “It was a little chilly.” She held up her half-empty glass. “I’m drinking Manhattan martinis. Want one?”

  He tossed his coat over the couch, and she got up to make him a martini in the kitchen.

  “What did you do with all that junk I left in the foyer?” he called over. “When I came in and saw it was cleared out, I assumed you’d packed it up and left.”

  She brought a new drink and a refreshed one. “I took care of it. Come on. Let’s sit by the fire before I head home. It’s been a long day.”

  Jeff went to sit on the couch, but she sat on her spot on the floor, patting the space next to her. “Come on. We don’t have to be two old fuddy-duddies on the couch.”

  “So, what did you do with the china?” he said, joining her, crossing his legs Indian-style. “There’s no way you can carry that on the train. There’s too much.” Absently, he took the martini from her outstretched hand.

  She clinked her glass against his and took a sip.

  Decorum required he follow suit. “Hmm.” He admired the drink, taking a second gander to make sure he was right. “That is good.”

  “Isn’t it? It’s an old recipe of DeeDee Patterson’s.”

  “The assemblyman’s wife? She’s dead now, right?” He took another sip.

  “Long gone. I got it from her cookbook.” She thought of DeeDee’s note: Makes a man feel like a man.

  He leaned his back against the bottom of the couch, grinning that Vince Van Patten grin. Amid the crow’s-feet and occasional gray hairs, the handsome young stud who’d bounded off the courts of the New York Racquet Club and into her heart remained. “How’d the trip go?”

  “Exhausting. And illuminating. I’ll tell you about it someday.”

  He took another sip and looked around the room, confused. “Carol?” He put down his drink. “Why are our family photos on the mantelpiece?”

  “Because that’s where they belong.” She picked out the cherry and popped it in her mouth.

  “But . . .” He stared at the china back in the cabinet. “They were part of the pile I left in the foyer. You were supposed to take them home.”

  “I am home.”

  “What are you saying? Your home is in New York.”

  “My current place of residence, yes.” She wasn’t sure how he was going to take what she had to say next. “My heart, however, is here.”

  Jeff shook his head. “Come again?”

  “Look, when I left you two years ago, I was not in my right mind. I was stressed and frustrated and I had this feeling that if I didn’t take action, if I didn’t follow my dream and become a hotshot lawyer, soon it would be too late.” She winced. “I guess you could call it a midlife crisis.”

  “And Lynne’s cancer had nothing to do with your sudden breakdown?”

  “It probably had a lot to do with it, more than I’d like to admit. Seems awfully selfish to turn someone else’s tragedy into your own, though.”

  “We’re only human, Carol. Lynne was sick for eight years and there were plenty of times when it looked like she might not make it.”

  “But she always did.”

  They sat for a while, poking at the fire and thinking about Lynne.

  Carol got up and hung the poker on its hook. “The thing was, I had it all backwards. I took Lynne’s terminal illness as a cue that I needed to go out and live my own life when it was the opposite. After this trip, it dawned on me that Lynne’s death meant I had to value my life. Our life. Our children. Our home. Our family. And, yes, my career. Because you never know when it’s going to end.”

  Jeff frowned and nodded. “That is the lesson, isn’t it?”

  “Love is all that matters. Lynne said it over and over, and she was right.”

  He studied the fire. “So where does that leave us?”

  “That leaves me asking for a second chance.”

  Jeff opened his mouth to say something, but Carol jumped in before he could object. “I’m not talking about you changing your plans or welcoming me back with open arms. I know you have goals too, Jeff, and you should go for them. Geesh, I fled to a boutique Fifth Avenue firm. You’re going to Haiti to save lives. There’s no comparison.”

  He smiled.

  “What I am asking is that you let me stay here while you’re gone. Let me rebuild my home and my relationship with Amanda. And if you’re open to the possibility, my relationship with you. Because, that’s the other thing I learned on this trip.” She gripped the mantel. “I’m still in love with you.”

  Jeff didn’t say anything for an excruciatingly long time. Carol stood by the fireplace, trying to gauge his thoughts. Had she gone too far? Insulted him? Put him in a tough spot?

  At last, he downed the rest of his drink and held out his hand. “Come here.” He sat next to her on the couch and tucked her hair behind her ears. “You know, I busted my butt painting those rooms this weekend.”

  “To get the house ready to show this week. I know. I’m sorry.”

  “No, you don’t understand.” He grinned. “I knew that if you saw the house stripped bare you’d freak out—at least if you had any feelings left for our home. For me.”

  She was taken aback. “You mean, you knew all along?”

/>   “Not exactly. But I had to find out, Carol, what you really wanted. You left so abruptly, in the middle of a conversation as a matter of fact. One day you were here, my wife. The next day you were gone, my ex. My head was spinning.”

  “I would never do that now.” She couldn’t quite pinpoint what had changed exactly. All she knew was that she wasn’t the same person. “You might say I’ve grown up.”

  “I’m glad.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “And for the record, I never stopped loving you, too.”

  She flung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek several times over. “That’s the best.”

  He hugged her gently and also with caution. “However, I think we need to take it slowly,” he said, letting her go. “Step by step, day by day. We’ve got to get to the bottom of why we were fighting to begin with and work up from there. It won’t be easy.”

  “Few meaningful adventures in life are.”

  “But it’ll be worth it, and if we’re honest with one another for a change, I’m pretty sure we’ll get there. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” And they shook hands.

  It was the best possible deal she could hope for.

  Drake’s car was in the driveway when Mary Kay returned from the grocery store, her arms loaded down with brown shopping bags. Setting the bags on the counter, she removed the black velvet box and placed it on the kitchen table next to the sugar bowl and salt and pepper shakers, as if it were an ordinary, yet essential, spice of life.

  She resisted the temptation to slip the ring on her finger and continue the merry charade. They could pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate tonight, call their friends and spread the news. The nurses on her floor would ooh and ahh and declare themselves green with envy since Drake was the last of the stand-up guys.

  There’d be a whirl of engagement parties and extravagant planning, a fabulous wedding filled with kisses and good cheers, followed by a romantic honeymoon, just Drake and her on a beach. It had taken years to accept that she would always be the bridesmaid, never the bride.

  Yet, by some fluke of providence, she’d been handed all that had been missing in her life and now, due to her own insecurities, she was throwing it away.