Moondance

by Judith Arnold

  “I didn’t come here to see Wendy,” he said.

  Swell. Talia didn’t want to deal with this. She didn’t want to deal with him. She definitely didn’t want to deal with him while she was wearing a Brogan’s Point Boosters T-shirt and flip-flops.

  She used one hand to pinch the lapels of her robe closer together and glanced down to see if her bare legs had sprouted a stubble since she’d shaved them on Saturday. As if she cared about making a good impression on Cory. Hell, he’d seen her looking a lot worse than this. He’d seen her with baby puke on her shoulder and her hair as matted as Wendy’s had been after a week without brushing. He’d seen her with chapped hands and chapped lips, with bloodshot eyes and her abdomen so huge from her pregnancy that her belly-button had smoothed out into a strange brown smudge.

  He’d seen her naked. He’d seen every square inch of her body. He’d kissed everything he’d seen.

  That was not a good thought. She clutched her robe even more tightly and debated whether she should invite him in. She’d been raised by strict parents and educated by nuns; she knew proper manners. But…he’d kissed her last night. And now he was standing on her front porch and saying he hadn’t come here to see Wendy.

  “Look, Cory, about last night—”

  He quickly cut her off. “That’s off the table, okay? I don’t want to talk about that now. Some stupid song…” He drifted off, his gaze wandering to the rhododendrons flanking her porch. A month ago, they’d been ablaze with bright pink blossoms, but the flowers had shriveled in the June heat. A wasp bounced from one desiccated flower to another. She wanted to close the door to keep it from flying inside, but that would be rude to Cory.

  In fact, making him stand on her front porch while the nasty bug hovered within striking range was pretty rude, too. She reminded herself that she’d kissed Cory as enthusiastically as he’d kissed her last night. The least she owed him was protection from the wasp.

  “Come in,” she said, edging the door wide enough for him to slip through and then slamming it shut.

  He eyed the closed door, then turned to her. She’d always considered the entry hall wide and welcoming, but right now it seemed much too tiny. Cory filled the space. The air vibrated with his presence.

  “There was a wasp out there,” she explained, gesturing toward the door. “I didn’t want it to fly inside.”

  “Oh.”

  What next? What did proper hostesses do when they invited their exasperatingly sexy ex-husbands into their homes?

  One thing they did was make sure they were dressed in something more than what they’d slept in the night before. But she couldn’t very well tell him she was going to slip into something less comfortable, and then abandon him while she hid in her bedroom. After last night, when she’d shown up in jeans and a Red Sox jersey, he must have figured out that she lacked the gene for appropriate attire.

  “Do you want a cup of coffee?” she asked.

  He stared at her for a moment longer, then shifted his gaze to the hall, the scratched mail table with the framed mirror above it, the doors to the coat closet and the powder room, the arched doorway into the living room, the stairs ascending to the second floor.

  She gave him enough time to utter a simple yes or no. He said nothing. “What?” she prodded him.

  “I’m just… This is where Wendy grew up.”

  She realized he was picturing their daughter here. Wendy as a little girl, scampering down the stairs or trudging up them when Talia alerted her that her bedtime had arrived. Wendy prancing around the kitchen, ostensibly helping Grammy bake cookies but mostly just getting in the way. Wendy positioned grimly in front of a music stand in the living room, sawing away at her violin. Wendy as a young teenager, inspecting her reflection in the mirror before she waltzed out the door to meet her friends.

  Talia had never seen Cory’s apartment. She had no idea what it looked like. Wendy had told her it was a one-bedroom unit, and when she visited, Cory slept on the futon couch in the living room, letting her have his bed. “It’s a big bed, Mommy. Big enough for three pillows across.”

  A king-size bed, Talia had surmised. Big enough for Cory to entertain women in it.

  “Well,” she said. “This is Wendy’s home. Coffee? I’m getting myself another cup.” She lifted her mug so he could see it, then flip-flopped down the hall to the kitchen. He could follow her if he wished. He could snoop around if he wanted to. The house held no secrets—and no king-size beds.

  Still, she was relieved that he followed her, rather than wandering around the house unescorted. The kitchen was old-fashioned, with white enamel appliances, Formica counters, and café curtains on the windows overlooking the back yard. Grammy had liked things the way they were—“I’m used to this stove,” she’d insisted—and Talia lacked the funds to renovate the room. Most of the pots and pans had been Grammy’s, and they still worked, so Talia hadn’t bothered to replace them. Nor had she done away with the graduated canisters holding sugar, flour, rice, and tea bags, and the porcelain cookie jar shaped like a fat bear. Grammy had accepted the coffee maker Talia had given her for Christmas eight years ago, but she’d adamantly opposed Talia’s suggestion that they get one of those single-serving coffee makers. “I’m used to this coffee maker,” she’d said. “Besides, who drinks only one cup?”

  There was plenty of hot coffee left in the decanter. Talia topped off her mug, then pulled another mug from a cabinet and filled it for Cory. He used to drink it black. If his tastes had changed, he’d have to tell her.

  He accepted the mug with a nod of thanks. She supposed she could ask him to sit, but she’d exhausted her supply of hospitality with the coffee. She leaned against the counter, holding her mug in both hands, letting the steam curl into the air.

  Not waiting for his coffee to cool, Cory took a sip. His gaze circled the room, taking it all in, and then returned to her. He stared for a moment at her feet in their cheap plastic slippers. Her toenails looked terrific, at least. She’d polished them a glossy burgundy on Saturday, after she’d shaved her legs.

  “You have such tiny feet,” he murmured. Just like him to say exactly what was on his mind, without preamble. “I remember when you were pregnant. I couldn’t believe you could balance on such small feet when you were…”

  “As big as the Goodyear Blimp?” she finished the thought.

  He grinned. “You weren’t that big. But your feet seemed out of proportion to the rest of you.”

  “It was the rest of me that was out of proportion,” she argued. “And it’s common for a pregnant woman’s feet to swell up.” She recalled having to wear socks and sandals to the hospital when she’d gone into labor, because she couldn’t cram her feet into her boots. Her insteps had puffed up like blowfish.

  He crossed to the window and nudged aside the curtain so he could peer out into the backyard. “Wendy was lucky to grow up in a place like this,” he said. “Not like you and me.”

  Their part of Providence hadn’t exactly been a concrete jungle. They’d grown up in houses like the DiMarco house, where they’d met—compact dwellings nestled close to the street, with shingled façades, small front porches, and larger back porches overlooking vest-pocket yards of scruffy grass. Talia’s mother had cultivated a vegetable garden that occupied most of her family’s backyard. Tina Malone had had the world’s loudest wind chime hanging on her back porch. The damned thing used to wake Talia up whenever a breeze fluttered by. She’d be exhausted, taking care of Wendy and working her crappy job at the convenience store, and she’d be so grateful when Wendy was finally down for the night and Talia could close her eyes—and then that damned wind chime would start gonging like a church bell, summoning sinners to worship.

  The Federal Hill neighborhood might not have been overly dense, but it had been urban. A few trees lined each street—nothing like the acres of lawns, forests and open space in Brogan’s Point. The Woonasquatucket River that wove through Providence couldn’t compare to an ocean with rolling
, foaming waves that crashed against pristine white beaches. If Talia and Wendy had remained in Providence, Talia would have wanted to send Wendy to private school—and like Talia’s parents, she wouldn’t have been able to afford the tuition, so she would have wound up sending her to Catholic school, instead, where the nuns would teach her that sex inside marriage was a duty and outside marriage was a sin. In Brogan’s Point, the public schools were excellent, even if seniors spent their final week of high school sailing on harbor cruises or riding on Ferris wheels instead of sitting at desks and learning things.

  After a long moment, Cory turned back from the window. The small kitchen table stood in the rectangle of morning light pouring in through the glass panes. He motioned with his head for Talia to join him at the table.

  It seemed odd that he should be inviting her to take a seat in her kitchen. Maybe he knew more about courtesy than she did. More likely, he was letting her know that his visit this morning was not going to end in a clinch—or something steamier. It was going to be about sitting at a table, drinking coffee and talking.

  In a belated burst of etiquette, she grabbed the bowl of clementines from the counter beside the sink and brought it along with her. She wasn’t going to offer him breakfast, but if he wanted a piece of fruit, he could help himself.

  He smiled and reached for a clementine, then plucked a napkin from the popsicle-stick dispenser on the table, a homemade Mother’s Day gift dating back to Wendy’s kindergarten year. He peeled the fruit methodically, and Talia found herself transfixed by the grace and competence of his hands as he stripped off the textured orange skin in a single piece.

  “This is a really nice house,” he said.

  She couldn’t disagree.

  “It was generous of your grandmother to leave it to you.”

  “It was our home,” Talia said. “She wrote her will so we wouldn’t wind up out on the street when she died.”

  “But the house had belonged to her husband,” he pointed out. “Sometimes in these situations, a guy’ll set up his will so his widow can live in the house until she dies, and then it reverts to his own kids.”

  “He left his kids most of his money,” Talia said. “My grandmother worked after my grandfather died. She got a job as the town clerk here in Brogan’s Point, and when she retired, she got a pension. She didn’t need money. But…this was her home. And then it became Wendy’s and my home.”

  “And it still is.” He broke the fruit into sections and extended one across the table to her. The gesture touched her. It was simple and sweet, just like the clementine itself. She bit into the wedge and her mouth flooded with the tangy juice and pulp. “I wish I’d known you grandmother,” he continued. “Wendy talked about her all the time. She thought her Grammy had hung the moon.”

  Interesting. Wendy rarely told Talia much about her visits with Cory. She might mention that they’d gone to a museum or Prospect Park, or to some silly super-hero movie with lots of explosions and cute actors in snug-fitting costumes. If Talia asked, Wendy would report on what they ate—“Dad tried to make stir-fry, and it came out awful,” or “We went to Coney Island and had corn dogs”—and she gushed about Cory’s sports car. Last fall, she’d let slip that Cory had introduced her to a woman he was dating, “But I didn’t like her that much. I mean, she’s really pretty, but she’s not good enough for him.”

  Mostly, Talia didn’t ask, and Wendy didn’t tell.

  Talia wondered if Cory pumped Wendy for information about her life in Brogan’s Point. How would they have gotten on the subject of Grammy? Perhaps Wendy had said, “Your stir-fry sucks, Dad. Grammy’s a much better cook.” Grammy’s prowess in the kitchen wasn’t quite the equivalent of hanging the moon, but to a young girl forced to eat her father’s botched attempt at stir-fry, it might come close.

  “I’m glad it all worked out for you,” Cory said, letting his gaze drift around the bright, cozy kitchen again before he returned his focus to the clementine. “I’m glad you were able to come here and let your grandmother help with Wendy. I was pissed off at the time, but I see how Wendy turned out, and I see this nice house, and this nice town, and, well…” He shrugged. “It’s a great place for a kid to grow up. A little quiet, though. I’m used to city noise. Last night, all I heard through my open window was the ocean.”

  “I should think that’s a lot more pleasant than honking cars and police sirens.”

  “I guess I could get used to it if I had to.” He grinned, obviously aware of how ridiculous it was to complain about the tranquility of the town. “The thing is, Tally…” He hesitated, devoured a wedge of fruit, and sighed. “You probably did the best thing for Wendy, moving her up here. Not the best thing for me, but for her, yeah. I know my mother is a whack job. Look at how I turned out.”

  She felt the urge to assure him that he had turned out just fine. But defending him didn’t come easily to her. She’d been diligent about never bad-mouthing him to Wendy. And in honesty, he’d been as good a father as a long-distance weekends-and-holidays dad could be. But she wasn’t about to sing his praises. She might be able to forgive him, but forgiving him wasn’t the same as absolving him of all his sins.

  “The thing with my mother is, her house is falling apart. Her neighborhood is falling apart. She isn’t quite falling apart, but she’s not as sharp as she used to be.”

  “Was she ever sharp?” Talia asked, then regretted the insult after Cory had said such nice things about Grammy.

  He refused to react. “She was sharper than she is now.”

  “She smoked a lot of pot,” Talia pointed out. “It adds up over time.”

  He nodded. “That and the stroke. She isn’t suffering from dementia or anything, but she’s kind of fragile. She needs the sort of part-time help your agency offers.”

  “Would she even want to move here? She’s used to an urban environment, too. Maybe she prefers police sirens to the sound of the ocean.”

  “She doesn’t want to move, but she knows she has to. I could probably move her somewhere else where I could hire a service like First Aides, but why trust some stranger to provide the help she needs? I know you. You know her. It makes sense to me.”

  The resentment Talia had felt yesterday when Cory had sprung his idea on her failed to materialize this morning. Maybe because he was sharing a clementine with her. Maybe because he was sweet-talking her—except that he really wasn’t. Cory didn’t do sweet talk. He simply said what he thought, and what he felt.

  “I’m not sure I’d be your mother’s aide,” she said. “I’m running the business. I’m handling hiring and bonding, insurance, marketing, scheduling… I still take care of a few clients now and then, but not on a regular basis.”

  They’d polished off the clementine. He washed down the last bite with a slug of coffee. “How do you keep one of your workers from going rogue? Say you’ve got an employee who’s working with a client, and they hit it off, and they negotiate their own arrangement and cut you out of it. And then you don’t get your—I don’t know, is it a fee? A commission?”

  “Niall—my lawyer—created a company contract for my staff that would make that difficult to do,” she explained. “Someone who signs on with me commits to a three-year term, and if she goes rogue before then, she’s in breach of contract. But it’s never happened. My aides like having me manage their assignments and take care of all the side issues—the insurance, the red tape, the bureaucratic stuff. They like having me manage the clients, too. Some of the clients can be pretty ornery. Sometimes their children hire us to help the parents, and the parents hate us for it—and hate their children, too. I’m good at calming the waters. I can reassure our clients that they aren’t ready for a nursing home. I promise them they don’t have to entertain their First Aides helpers, feed them lunch, or pay them a tip. My employees are happy to have me handle all that.”

  His gaze remained on her, steady and penetrating. “You’ve really done well, Tally.”

  “You sound surprised
.” She smiled, hoping he wouldn’t think she was being defensive or hostile. She supposed that having become a mother at nineteen, and a divorcee at twenty-two, and going to college while raising a daughter, and then establishing her own business, might sound impressive. But she knew it was all a matter of juggling, forgoing sleep, accepting good-enough instead of good, and depending on her grandmother.

  And stubbornness. Her parents had considered her a loser because she’d gotten knocked up. She’d been determined to prove them wrong.

  Yet here she was, a few years away from her fortieth birthday, her daughter in the process of flying away. Here she was, with a house and a business and years of solitude ahead of her. She wasn’t a loser. By most standards, she was a spectacular success. But still… There had to be something more.

  She returned Cory’s intense gaze. Her mind filled with a progression of buoyant minor cords, and then a bluesy male voice: a marvelous night for a moondance.

  Silly. It was the morning, not the night, marvelous or otherwise. She hadn’t even showered and dressed yet. She had a full day ahead of her. Wendy—and probably Anthony—would need to be fed dinner at some point. And meanwhile, here was Cory, seated at her breakfast table, staring at her.

  She needed more clothing.

  “Look,” she said, pushing back her chair. “I’ve got things to do.”

  “So do I.” He rose, as well. “I hope we can make everything work.”

  “You mean, moving your mother here?”

  “That, and…everything else.”

  What else was he talking about? What else had to work? She’d assign one of her aides to his mother, and leave it at that. The woman had had a stroke, and at least when Talia knew her, she’d been a pot-head. She’d been cheerful, at least—cheerfully stoned when Talia used to get home from work and find Wendy still awake at nine-thirty, her diaper wet and her hands and face sticky with honey or peanut butter while Tina sat in a happy stupor on the living room couch, eyes half-shut, smiling blissfully, and her damned wind chime clanging like a car crash, metal against metal.