The Keeper of Happy Endings

by Davis, Barbara

  He runs a hand over his face, wiping the rain out of his eyes. “I need to come in. It won’t take long.”

  I back away, leaving him to follow me into the foyer. When I hear the door close, I turn quickly, afraid he’s left instead, but he’s still there, standing with his arms stiff at his sides. His jacket and shirt are sopping, his hair slick with rain.

  I remember my bare hands suddenly and shove them into my pockets, painfully aware of my robe and bare feet. The seconds tick by as we stand looking at each other, and I find myself wondering what he sees. Forty years is a long time, but it’s an especially long time for a woman. Does he still see the girl he met in the halls of the American Hospital, or have the years made me a stranger? It shouldn’t matter, but it does.

  “I’ll get you a towel,” I say thickly.

  When I return, I’m wearing white cotton gloves. He’s hovering at the edge of the foyer, just off the carpet. I hold out the towel and back away.

  He blots futilely at his shirt, then scrubs it over his hair before giving up. When he tries to hand it back, I keep my hands in my pockets. “Just leave it on the chair.”

  “You’ve lost some of your accent,” he says without expression.

  “I’ve lost a lot of things.” It hurts to see the blankness in his eyes, but I force myself to meet his gaze. Has he come to apologize? To explain? No. I can see that it’s neither of those. Whatever he’s come to say, I need him to say it and leave. “What is it you want?”

  “To end this.”

  “I don’t understand. What is there to end?”

  “Don’t play a scene with me. You’re not twenty anymore. Whatever this farce is that you’ve been playing—it ends now.”

  His voice is just as I remember, the same husky timbre that set my nerves jangling the first time we met, but it’s tinged with contempt now. For me. “Whatever there was between us ended forty years ago, Anson. In Paris.”

  “Did it?”

  I can’t answer. I can’t even breathe. I focus on the small scar above his right eye. It wasn’t there before. There’s another just below his jaw, on the left side. Also new. And still one more near his hairline. I’m memorizing his face, I realize. Making a new memory to superimpose over the one I’ve been carrying around—for when he’s gone again. Only I don’t want to remember this Anson.

  “Rory said she flew to San Francisco to see you, and that she told you . . . everything.”

  “She did. I must say, it was quite a surprise. It isn’t every day a man becomes a father and a grandfather all at once.”

  “You didn’t just become a father, Anson. You’ve been a father for forty years. And I had nothing to do with her visit. I didn’t even know—” I stop abruptly, angry that I’m explaining myself to him. I feel the beginnings of a sob and swallow it down. I will not cry in front of him. “I left your father’s house thinking you were dead, that the boche killed you and buried your body in the woods. And then last night, I see you standing at the foot of the stairs. Can you imagine what that felt like? And you just stood there, glaring up at me. At me! Like I did something wrong. Did it never occur to you that I’d want to know you were alive? That even if you didn’t want me, you owed me at least that?”

  “It never occurred to me that you’d be interested.”

  His reply stuns me. “We were going to be married.”

  He flicks cold eyes over me and shrugs. “And what would you have done? Dropped everything, I suppose, and run back to Newport to play nurse to a man facing the possibility of life in a wheelchair?”

  Yes! I want to scream at him. Yes, that’s exactly what I would have done. I would have done anything to have you back. But it’s too late for such melodrama. I turn away, moving to the small bar in the corner to pour myself a cognac. Liquid bravado, Maddy used to call it. I’m in need of some bravado just now.

  My back is still to him as I fumble with the decanter. I feel his eyes between my shoulders as I empty the glass in two quick gulps. The heat tongues its way down my throat and into my belly. I reach for the decanter and pour another.

  “I used to think I could hear you calling me,” I say, with my back still to him. “Your voice on the breeze. In the rain. In my sleep. Just my name, over and over again, as if you were reaching out to me from wherever you were. Silly, isn’t it?” I wait a beat, until the silence grows awkward. “Can I offer you something? A cognac? Something stronger, perhaps?”

  “I don’t drink anymore.”

  The hesitation before the word anymore is almost imperceptible, but it’s enough to make me abandon my drink and turn to face him. Once again, I’m struck by the change in him. Not in his looks—he’s still a handsome man—but in his manner and the way he carries himself. Time mellows most of us, wearing down our sharp edges. But it’s done the opposite to Anson. It’s made him callous and eerily emotionless, reminding me again that this is not the man I loved.

  I think about the time he got tipsy at dinner on a single glass of wine. It was one of the few times I ever saw him drink. “I don’t recall you ever being much of a drinker,” I say to fill the silence, then immediately wish I hadn’t. I don’t want to talk about how he used to be.

  “I got better at it,” he replies flatly. “A lot better, in fact. Medicinal purposes. Or so I told myself. Good for the pain. And remarkably effective if you start early enough in the day. Until you start losing whole days at a time. Then it gets tricky.”

  “The pain . . . It was from your wounds?”

  He looks at me for a long time. So long, I think he won’t answer at all. “Sure,” he says finally. “Let’s go with that.”

  There’s no mistaking his meaning. I’m to blame. Not his father. Me. Because of the lies his father told him. Lies he chose to believe. Still, the rawness of his response finds a chink in my defenses. “Will you tell me what happened to you?”

  He eyes me coldly. “Why?”

  I lift my shoulders, feigning indifference. “I thought it was part of what we’re supposed to be doing—like an autopsy to determine the cause of death.” I sound like Anson as I throw the words at him, flat and unfeeling, and I’m not sorry. “We both know how it started; we were there. Then we went our separate ways, and things get a little fuzzy. After forty years, don’t I deserve the rest of the story?”

  He drops down onto the arm of the nearest chair, right leg extended stiffly, and I’m briefly reminded of Owen. “I was on the way back from a drop one night. It happened so fast, I never saw it coming. I caught one in the side, another one in the shoulder. They dragged me out of the truck and into the woods. I figured they’d kill me. Instead, they shot me through both legs and left me there. I don’t know how long it took for me to drag myself back to the road, but it finished me. I closed my eyes and made my peace. When I came to, there was a Nazi in rubber gloves digging around in my shoulder. Apparently, Red Cross workers made excellent bargaining chips, though I never did find out who they traded me for.”

  He looks away then, eyes clouding. “It’s a pretty shitty way to get out when you figure how many guys don’t. You’re on your way home and they’re still just a number on a list, part of the daily tally—because their fathers don’t have the right last name.”

  I suppress a shudder, remembering talk of the stalags: starvation, forced labor, grueling interrogations, and electrified fences. I’ll never forgive Owen Purcell for the harm he has caused—to me, to my daughter, to Anson—but I can’t fault him for pulling every lever in his power to bring his son home.

  “How long were you held?”

  “Six weeks in the hospital before being transferred to the camp at Moosburg for three and a half months. I was kriegie number 7877.”

  “You were . . . what?”

  “A kriegie. It’s the shortened version of the German word for POW. We all had numbers. Mine was 7877.”

  There’s an ache at the center of my chest, the stirrings of an old wound. I’ve been living with his death for so long, but somehow this is
worse, knowing what he endured, and that he feels guilty for having survived it.

  “Your father . . .” I stop, pull in a breath, then start again. “There was a telegram saying you’d gone missing. Your father called everyone he could think of, but no one knew where you were. They said you’d been ambushed and that you were likely dead. And then your father sent me away—knowing I was carrying your child. He never told me you were . . .” I close my eyes, fighting tears. “I didn’t know, Anson. If I had, nothing would have kept me away.”

  “Not even Myles Madison?”

  Maddy’s name brings me up short. And there’s a new edge to his voice, harder and colder, as if he’s caught me at something. “What does Maddy have to do with us?”

  “Not us—you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do.”

  He’s staring at me, reproaching me for something, but I don’t know what. “Please tell me what you’re talking about.”

  He folds his arms again, his smile so cold it raises the hair on my arms. “What if I told you I did look for you? That when my father claimed not to know where you were, I paid an investigator—a Mr. Henry Vale—to find you? And he did.”

  All the air seems to go out of the room. It can’t be true. It mustn’t be. If he’s known where to find me all this time . . . I take a step back, then another, until I’m backed against the bar. “You knew I was here? The whole time? And you stayed away?”

  He shrugs. “Three’s a crowd. The pictures were nice, though. I thought you made a lovely couple. A bit old, but maybe you prefer them distinguished. Some women do. Where is he now?”

  I shake my head, confused. “Are we talking about Maddy?”

  “Was there more than one?”

  My nerves are taut, like an over-tuned violin string. He’s not making sense. “More than one what, Anson? What pictures?”

  “The ones Mr. Vale took.”

  I go still. “Of me?”

  “Of both of you, actually. One of you in the kitchen, making breakfast together in your robes. Very domestic. Another of him feeding you some sort of pastry at a café. You were practically in his lap in that one. But I think the two of you dancing was my favorite. His arms draped all over you, your cheek against his. I certainly got my money’s worth. I’m guessing he did too.”

  I’m so stunned, and so furious, that I don’t know what to respond to first. “You paid someone to find me? To spy on me? With a camera?”

  “It’s not like finding you was hard. Took less than a week, as I recall. But when he told me you were in Boston, shacked up with a man old enough to be your father, I told him he’d made a mistake. The woman I was looking for was in love with me. So he brought me proof.”

  I throw back my head and laugh. The events of the day have made me a little hysterical, I think, or perhaps it’s the cognac, but suddenly I find the whole thing very funny. “You think I was shacked up . . . with Maddy? That he and I . . .” Another snort of laughter. “So much for your proof!”

  His face darkens. He’s angry that I’m amused. “I’m not blind, Soline.”

  “I’m afraid you are, Anson. Quite blind. Myles Madison was my boss and my friend. He was also gay. He gave me a job when . . . after Assia was born. And a place to live. I was at the end of my tether, as they say, and he came to my rescue. We fought like cats and dogs and we loved each other madly. But we were never lovers. And even if he had been straight, there could never have been anything between us. I was still in love with you.”

  “Except, as far as you knew, I was dead.”

  I stare at him, stung by the absurdity of his remark. “Do you think that’s all it takes? Dying? There was only ever one man in my life, Anson. The fact that you don’t know that stuns me. But the fact that you would take your father’s word against mine, that you were so quick to think the worst of me, stuns me more. He took my daughter—my baby girl—and let me believe she was dead. When I had already lost you, he took her from me, and paid someone to give her to strangers. He took her from you, too, Anson. But instead of asking about her, you’ve come to throw Maddy in my face. And you sounded just like your father when you did it.”

  I go quiet, waiting for him to say something, but he just stands there staring with his hands fisted at his sides. His silence makes my throat ache. “Back then, it seemed impossible that you could be his son. Now I see that there’s more of him in you than I realized.” I swallow my tears, determined to keep my voice even. “Perhaps fate did us both a favor.”

  I see his shoulders tighten and realize I’ve struck a nerve. I’m glad. We eye each other silently, the quiet brittle. It seems there’s nothing left for either of us to say.

  He pushes to his feet slowly, as if his legs have stiffened. “I’ll go.”

  I nod, not trusting my voice. I want him gone so very badly, and yet the thought of him walking back out of my life fills me with a grief I’m not sure I can bear.

  He moves toward the door, then turns back. “I nearly forgot,” he says, reaching into his pocket. “The reason I came.”

  After a moment of fumbling, he holds out his fist and pulls my hand from my pocket. I resist briefly, then look down at the puddle of garnet beads he’s left in my gloved palm—Maman’s rosary.

  A sound catches in my throat, the beginnings of a sob, as I remember the moment I gave it to him. A pledge made the night our daughter was conceived. I look up, searching his face. “You kept them?”

  “I promised I would bring them back. Now I have. The end.”

  The finality of his words hits me like a dousing of cold water, and I suddenly understand what he meant when he said he’d come to end this thing. He meant he’d come to fulfill his part of our bargain. Before I can stop myself, I’m weeping. It’s as if he’s spent forty years planning the best way to cut out my heart. On this day of all days, when I’ve just learned our daughter is alive, he’s come to reopen a different wound. So be it.

  “Wait here,” I say thickly. “I have something for you too.”

  He’s standing near the sofa when I return, flipping through the photo album Rory made for me. I jerk it out of his hands. “I’d rather you not touch that.”

  “They both look so much like Thia.”

  For an instant, there’s a tenderness in his face that belongs to the Anson I used to know. “They look like you,” I say softly. “Especially Rory.”

  His lips curl briefly, an uncomfortable smile that fades almost immediately. “I always imagined our daughter would look like you. I guess nothing worked out the way I thought it would.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “Nothing did.” I put down the album and hand him his shaving kit. “This belongs to you.”

  He takes it, turning it slowly in his hands. Finally, his eyes lift to mine. “You’ve had this . . . for forty years?”

  “You know exactly how long I’ve had it,” I tell him flatly. “I would have returned it sooner, but you were dead.”

  “Soline . . .”

  I turn my back, weary of sparring, but he catches me by the wrist, pulling me around to face him. For the first time, he seems to register the fact that my hands are not bare. He goes still, his face unreadable. “Why are you wearing gloves? What’s wrong with your hands?”

  “There was a fire,” I say, forcing myself to hold his gaze. “Four years ago now. I was trying to save a dress, and my sweater caught fire.”

  “You were . . .”

  “Burned. Yes.”

  The lines around his eyes soften and I feel his grip relax. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  The warmth of his fingers is bleeding through my glove, making it hard to think. I pull my hand free. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

  “Soline . . .”

  “Oh, please, won’t you go?” It comes out like a sob, desperate, broken. “You’ve said what you came to say and done what you came to do. What else do you want?”

  “I want to know why you kept my shaving
kit.”

  “We had an agreement. Remember?” My throat is full of broken glass as I force myself to meet his eyes. “You came here tonight to hold up your end, and now I’ve held up mine. C’est fini. Finished.”

  “Is it?” he asks softly. “Is it finished for you? Because it isn’t for me. I wanted it to be. When I came home and found you gone, when I saw the pictures of you with another man and thought . . . I would have given anything for it to be done.” His breath comes hoarsely, and a tiny pulse has begun to beat at the hollow of his throat. “I tried to drink you away, but that just made it worse. You were like a poison, your face, your voice, running in my veins. Even now . . .” He breaks off, raking a hand through his still-damp hair. “There hasn’t been a day in the last forty years that I haven’t thought of you, Soline. Haven’t wondered if there wasn’t a way—”

  His voice breaks then, and he closes his eyes, as if taken unaware by a sudden sharp pain. When they open again, they’re red-rimmed and dull. “Before, when you asked what happened to me, I told you about lying in the road, waiting to die. I said I made my peace, but I didn’t say how.”

  My throat tightens. I don’t want to hear any more, don’t want to imagine him bleeding and broken—afraid. “Please, Anson . . .”

  “I pulled the rosary out of my pocket and said your name over and over, out loud, like a prayer, until I could see your face. Because I wanted it to be the last thing I saw. If I could just see you, it would be okay. I could . . . let go. When I came to in the hospital, the rosary was lying next to me. And it felt like you were too. That’s why I kept it all these years. Because as long as I had it, I felt like I was still connected to you, that what we had in Paris never really ended. When you handed me this . . .” He looks down at the shaving kit and shrugs. “I thought maybe you’d kept it for the same reason.”

  My eyes are dry in the wake of his declaration. I want to believe him, to trust him. But the pain of forty years remains lodged in my chest. “Why did you never come to me, Anson? I was here. All that time, I was right here, learning to make a life without you. You say you wanted to see my face, but you never saw my heart if you believe I could betray your memory with another man. There was never anyone but you. Not then, not now, not anywhere in between. We could have been together, but you let your father win. He wanted you to hate me, and you did.”