Moondance

by Judith Arnold

  “If you had to choose tomorrow,” the head of marketing asked, “would you go with the space you saw today or the space you saw yesterday in, where was it, Somerville?”

  “I’d go with Somerville,” Cory admitted, “but I’d choose that for selfish reasons. It’s closer to where my daughter—” my fantabulous daughter “—is going to college. I don’t think that reason would be a top priority for the rest of you, though.”

  On his laptop screen, he saw the New York crew laugh.

  After ending the Skype call, he browsed real estate listings in Brogan’s Point, looking not for work space for Tek-Palette but housing suitable for his mother, with her physical limitations. The town included several fifty-five-and-over communities. She would hate living in one of them. She’d protest that they were for old people and she wasn’t old, although she’d waved her fifty-fifth birthday farewell years ago. The advantage of those communities was that the residences were designed for people who couldn’t cope with stairs and who needed walk-in showers with grip bars. Condos were low-maintenance, too. She could live comfortably in one, without wobbling up and down stairs, and have one of Talia’s workers come in a couple of times a week to tidy the place and stock the refrigerator. It seemed like a good idea.

  She’d hate it.

  He widened his search to neighboring towns and found similar senior communities. He checked out a few assisted-living complexes, too. His mother wasn’t ready for those. She didn’t need that much care. But he had to get her out of her house, with all those stairs, the narrow hallways, the garden which had turned into a jungle now that she lacked the energy to maintain it.

  He’d discussed the move with his mother several times. She didn’t seem too terribly opposed to it. She actually seemed to like the idea of living near Talia. She’d been to Brogan’s Point a few times to pick up Wendy and bring her back to Providence for visits with him. He hadn’t come to get Wendy himself because he didn’t own a car in those days, and because it was enough of a trek getting to Providence on the train without having to travel the extra hour and a half to get Wendy, and because…

  Because he hadn’t wanted to see Talia. He hadn’t wanted to find himself in the same zip code as the woman who’d walked out on him, given up on him, ended their marriage. Broken his heart.

  “It’s a pretty town she moved to,” his mother would tell him. “Beautiful beaches. Fresh air. A nice place to raise a little girl.” Nicer than the crowded part of Providence where he’d grown up, he supposed. Nicer than the even more crowded Brooklyn neighborhood where he currently lived. Not that he’d ever have contested Talia for custody of Wendy. Talia was the better parent. He’d always known that.

  A sea-scented breeze wafted into his room through the open window. It wasn’t exactly cool, but he preferred fresh air to the chilled, filtered stuff the air conditioner pumped. Even at Brooklyn’s beaches, the air didn’t smell this good.

  Cory wondered what the commute between Brogan’s Point and Boston was like on a typical workday. Brutal, probably. He’d be insane to even contemplate living in a town like this once the Boston office was up and running. Besides, he was a city kid. Brogan’s Point was the kind of town that would have put him behind bars as a teenager if they’d ever caught him tagging a building’s edifice. Even if the edifice was hidden down an alley. Even if his artwork was witty and well crafted.

  His mother would like it here, though. And she’d like having someone come in every few days to run a vacuum, fold the laundry, and help her balance her checkbook. This ought to work out well, if he could convince his mother to move to one of those older-adult communities.

  At quarter after six, he descended to the first floor. The inn had an elevator, but he liked the broad, carpeted stairs descending to the lobby, with its staid colonial décor and its double doors leading out to a porch that spanned the front of the building. Adirondack chairs and rockers lined the porch, which abutted the guest parking lot. The building stood on a bluff overlooking the ocean, just as the inn’s name promised. The warm, salty breezes that had seeped into his room through the open windows rolled up the bluff and unfurled across the porch. He settled into one of the Adirondack chairs, leaned back against the varnished wood slats, and sighed contentedly.

  His daughter was a champ. His partners liked the venues he had found. Tomorrow he’d scout out some feasible residences for his mother. Tonight he’d have dinner with his ex-wife.

  At exactly six-thirty, a minivan lumbered up the inn’s winding driveway to the parking lot. Despite the glare of the sun across the windshield, he recognized Talia behind the wheel. He hoisted himself to his feet as she climbed out of the van. She had changed into a different dress, this one fancier than the flowery cotton thing she’d had on that afternoon at the assembly. This dress was white, with a scooped neck trimmed in lace and a hem that fell below her knees, also trimmed in lace.

  She and Cory had gotten married in a dingy office at City Hall, signing papers and nodding at the clerk who’d recited the minimum number of words necessary to make their union legal. He recalled that Talia had worn a loose dress that day because, she’d claimed, she’d been feeling fat. Immediately after the clerk had declared them husband and wife, she’d bolted for the nearest bathroom to vomit.

  Gazing at her in her pretty white dress now, he found himself wondering what she would have looked like as a real bride, all done up in white, with a veil drifting gauzily around her heart-shaped face. She’d be carrying a bouquet of tulips. Her big Bambi eyes would be bright with excitement. She wouldn’t be nauseous. She’d amble down the aisle in a pretty chapel decorated with more tulips, her face beaming with excitement as she approached the groom waiting for her at the altar.

  No more memories, he ordered himself. If he thought about what hadn’t been, he’d think about what had been: the fights. The sleepless nights. The demands he couldn’t meet, demands he knew he’d be able to meet if she only gave him a few years to get his act together. A few years she’d refused to give him.

  That was the past, though. Tonight was about the present. About Wendy. About possibilities.

  He and Talia reached the foot of the porch steps at the same time, and she gave him a shy smile as he offered his arm. “I’ve never eaten here before,” she admitted as he ushered her up the steps and to the front door. “It’s a landmark here in town, but…a bit out of my price range.”

  If he mentioned that it wasn’t out of his price range, she might think he was rubbing her nose in the fact that he made more money than she did. Instead, he said, “It’s about time we went on our very first dinner date.”

  It was true. They’d never gone on a dinner date. They used to meet and roam the city, but they’d had no money for anything more than a snack or a few gallons of gasoline for the car. He’d never called for her at her house because she was afraid her parents would prohibit her from dating him. They’d sneaked beers from his mother’s refrigerator. They’d watched videos on the TV in his mother’s den rather than going to the movies, because the video rentals were cheaper. He’d earned some money doing odd jobs—mowing his neighbors’ lawns in the summer, shoveling their driveways in the winter—but whatever he earned he set aside for college.

  So, this would be their first dinner date. A whole new experience for them.

  A hostess greeted them at the entrance to the dining room, made note of Cory’s reservation, and led them to a table near one of the windows overlooking the ocean. Fewer than half the tables were occupied. Tuesday night wasn’t exactly a busy night for dining out, he supposed.

  “This is lovely,” Talia said in a hushed tone.

  “A little more atmospheric than—what was that place we ate at Sunday? The Indian restaurant.”

  “Punjab Palace. It’s a good restaurant. Just not quite so fancy.” Talia gazed around the room, taking in the high ceilings, the ambient lighting, the heavy linen tablecloths and napkins, the crystal stemware, and the view through the broad, towering windows.
Beyond the glass, they could see the pastel-hued evening sky and the ocean, meeting in a straight line at the horizon.

  The view would be even better from the deck of a boat cruising around Boston Harbor. He hoped Wendy and her classmates were properly appreciative, but he supposed that as a teenager—even a teenager who paid attention to the visuals around him—he’d probably be more interested in flirting with the girls in his class than admiring the sunset on a harbor cruise.

  Thank God he was older now. He knew what was worth appreciating: beautiful sunsets. His daughter’s accomplishments. The woman who’d raised that daughter.

  A waiter appeared carrying two leather-bound menus and a wine list. Cory’s expertise about wines amounted to liking good wines and disliking bad wines, but he faked it and ordered a bottle of a French red that wasn’t too cheap. Talia pored over the menu for a few minutes, shook her head and smiled. “We could have gone to the Lobster Shack,” she murmured. “No atmosphere, but the lobsters there cost half what they cost here. And you get little plastic bibs and wet towelettes, too.”

  He laughed. “Order whatever you like,” he said. “We’re celebrating.”

  She wound up ordering a chicken dish which, he noted, was one of the least expensive entrees. Just like Talia to be frugal that way. He requested a steak and a salad.

  Neither of them spoke while they waited for the wine to arrive. Talia gazed out the window, and Cory gazed at her. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, her eyes wide and bright. She looked like a little girl catching her first glimpse of a Christmas tree.

  The waiter returned with their wine, removed the cork and poured a taste for Cory. Fortunately, this wine qualified as good. He nodded, and the waiter filled both glasses.

  “To Wendy,” Talia said, lifting her glass.

  “To Wendy.” He tapped his glass to hers, and they drank.

  “Why do I feel like a kid playing grown-up?” Talia asked as she lowered her glass.

  He smiled. “Beats me.” But he could guess. In their minds they were still high school kids, attracted to each other but practically strangers. They were kids in love with the idea of love, in lust with the idea of lust. They might have gotten married and had a daughter, but they’d never really gotten past that adolescent infatuation. They’d done all their growing up apart from each other.

  “Actually, Cory, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about,” Talia said, her expression losing its awestruck glow and her gaze intensifying.

  He braced himself, then said, “Shoot.”

  She turned to smile at the waiter, who reappeared carrying a linen-lined basket of rolls and a tub of butter. Once he was gone, Talia zeroed in on Cory again. “I’m thinking about expanding First Aides to include a home health aide service.”

  That hadn’t been what he was expecting. Her sudden earnestness had led him to expect bad news. He’d thought she might announce that she couldn’t pay her share of Wendy’s college costs, or she’d decided to close up shop and leave Brogan’s Point, just as he was preparing to move his mother here, or she’d met someone and was planning to get married again, and last night had been a foolish mistake.

  The mere thought that she might have fallen in love with someone else punctured him like a stiletto. Why, he couldn’t say. He’d been involved with other women over the past fifteen years. He assumed she’d been involved with other men. They were divorced. They were free. Their marriage was dead.

  But…Christ. She still turned him on.

  And the realization that she wanted to discuss her business with him, that she wanted to share that part of her life with him, and get his input, and—halleluiah!—that she wasn’t getting married or moving away—turned him on even more.

  She pulled a roll from the basket and tore it open. He saw a puff of vapor rise from it and caught the yeasty aroma. He took a roll for himself and watched as she systematically buttered her roll and talked at the same time. “This friend of mine works with the Visiting Nurses, but there are budget issues, and she thought she could leave that organization and join forces with me. She’s wonderful, and she knows the ins and outs of home health care, which is what the Visiting Nurses do. She’d bring a lot to the table. But she’s my friend, and what if things don’t work out? Can you be business partners with a friend? I don’t even know if I want her to be a full partner, because it’s my business. But she’s about fifteen years older than me, and it would be kind of weird for me to be her boss. I don’t know, Cory. The idea excites me, but the risks…” She bit into her roll and sighed. “I don’t know.”

  She wanted his advice. That turned him on even more.

  “Has she said anything about wanting to be an equal partner?” he asked.

  “No. We just started talking about this today.”

  “Well, like you said, it’s your business. You get to decide what role she’d have in it.”

  Talia nodded thoughtfully.

  “As far as the risks, well, hell. If you don’t take risks, you stagnate.”

  “Stagnation can be comfortable,” she admitted with a smile. “I made an appointment this afternoon to talk to Niall Mullen. He’s a lawyer here in town. He can help me figure out how I can structure an expansion.”

  “So you’ve already decided to take the risk,” Cory said, pleased that his ex-wife still had a few threads of daring woven into her soul.

  “I haven’t made a decision,” she corrected him. “I’ve made an appointment.” The waiter arrived at the table with their salads, and Talia once again waited until they were alone before continuing. “I’m leaning toward yes, but…I wanted to sound you out about it, too.”

  He was flattered beyond measure. “It’s your life, Tally. It’s your business.”

  “But I respect your opinion.” She lowered her gaze to her salad, as if embarrassed to be complimenting him so much. “When you joined Tek-Palette, it was someone else’s business. Someone else’s dream. I sort of see that as where my friend Rhonda would be if she joined First Aides.”

  “They brought me in as a partner,” he told her.

  “They did?”

  “I came in as an equal. And we’re growing, too.” Now, at last, was his chance to tell her. “We’re going to be opening an office in the Boston area to expand our New England business. I’ll be running the new office.”

  “Really?” Her eyes widened. “Here? In Boston?”

  “The Boston area. I’ve been looking at rental space for the business while I’ve been here. That’s why I came for the week.”

  Still staring at him, she lowered her fork. “You’re moving up here? When were you planning to tell me about this?”

  “Sunday night. When we went to that bar after dinner, and got some drinks. I was going to tell you then.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Because that song started playing. ‘Moondance.’”

  She opened her mouth and then shut it. Perhaps she understood why he couldn’t have told her once “Moondance” had blasted out of the jukebox and into his mind, and hers. He hoped she did understand, because he sure as hell couldn’t explain it. The bartender had told him the jukebox was magic, and that was a ridiculous explanation. But he didn’t have a better one.

  “So you’re moving here?”

  “Not to Brogan’s Point,” he hastened to assure her, although a voice inside him argued, why not Brogan’s Point? It was a pretty town. Its beaches reminded him of the Rhode Island beaches he’d haunted as a kid—Scarborough Beach down in Narragansett, Watch Hill Beach in Westerly, the beaches in Newport and Little Compton. Brogan’s Point’s downtown area had a lot of cute shops, and Route One heading south was lined with all the big-box stores. He hadn’t bothered to look at homes for himself in town, but the senior residences he’d checked out for his mother didn’t seem staggeringly expensive, certainly not compared to housing costs in New York City or Boston.

  “Where, then?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t even decided on office
space yet. This is all preliminary.” He drank some wine, then thought, screw it. He’d always been frank with Talia. No reason to stop now. “All these years I’ve lived in New York, I’ve always felt like an immigrant. A Red Sox fan in Yankees territory.” He gave her a hapless grin. “We have a number of clients in the New England area, but it’s hard handling everything long-distance. Sometimes you put together a project, and you just want to get everyone in the room to view it and discuss whether it’s working. We can do video-conferencing, or we’ll bring the client in, or I’ll travel to the client. But we could really extend our reach by opening a studio in the Boston area. And it made sense that I, as the New England native, should do it. It’s a risk. But risks never scared me. The worst that can happen is that they don’t work out.”

  “That’s a pretty big ‘worst,’ if you’ve got a lot of money and time invested in the risk.”

  Or a lot of emotion, he thought. Marrying Talia had been the riskiest thing he’d ever done. He’d married her out of obligation—an awfully risky reason to marry a person—but he’d gone ahead and done it, fervently hoping it would work out.

  It didn’t. The worst had happened. But he’d survived. He and Talia both had. So had Wendy.

  If a New England branch of Tek-Palette failed, he could survive that, too.

  And Talia could survive if a First Aides expansion failed.

  “We’re survivors, Tally,” he said.

  Something softened in her expression. She wasn’t exactly smiling, but he knew that look. It was the way she’d looked when, shaking with sobs, she’d told him she was pregnant. “I won’t get an abortion,” she’d told him. “I’m sorry. I’m pro-choice and all that, Cory, but I just can’t do it.”