Almost An Angel

by Judith Arnold

But all those thoughts evaporated into a heated mist in his mind when he spotted Eliza waiting for him in the department store’s entry, just beyond the glass doors. She had a thick scarf wrapped around her neck and tied in an intriguing knot, and her knee-high leather boots sparked all sorts of unwelcome erotic images in his mind. He sucked in a lungful of wintery air, dug his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and entered the store.

  “You can’t give Amy pajamas for Christmas,” Eliza said.

  For some reason, that greeting touched him more than any personal sentiment she might have expressed. “Why not?”

  “It’s too practical. Pajamas are what you give your child when she needs them. Not what you give her for Christmas.”

  “It makes for more packages under the tree. What’s wrong with that?”

  Eliza relented with a sigh. “All right. But pajamas better not be the only gift you give her.”

  Talk to me. Tell me what I did wrong Saturday night. “I don’t even know where the pajama department is in this store.”

  “You need children’s apparel,” Eliza said. “Let’s find a directory.”

  He should have turned to one of Amy’s friends’ mothers for help with this errand. Dennis Murphy’s wife. His housekeeper, Vera. Someone with children. Someone who would know where to find girl pajamas in the sprawling, multi-story department store.

  Still, meeting Eliza here was safer than meeting her anywhere else. They were decidedly not alone. The aisles swarmed with shoppers, the display cases were decorated with gold and silver balls and glittering garlands, and cloying Christmas music oozed through the air. Sales personnel wore red and white Santa caps and sprigs of holly pinned to their sweaters.

  At that moment, he hated Christmas. Hated the store. Hated that he was such an inept father he would consider giving his daughter jammies for Christmas. Hated that he was such a failure as a man that the radiant, soft-spoken woman at his side wanted nothing personal to do with him.

  “So what’s your brilliant brainstorm about making Christmas good for my daughter?” he asked.

  “Let’s get the pajamas first,” she said. “We’ll talk afterward.”

  Scowling, he followed her to the escalator and up.

  Fifteen minutes later, they’d picked out a pair of green plaid pajamas and a flowery flannel nightgown for Amy. The clerk packed them, a gift box and several sheets of tissue paper into a handled shopping bag for Conor, and he and Eliza rode back down the escalator to the first floor. Once they were standing in the vestibule where they’d met up, the automatic glass doors letting in a blast of icy air each time a pedestrian stepped close enough to activate them, Eliza halted and turned to face Conor. “A scrapbook,” she said.

  *

  THE IDEA had come to her while she’d been telling Amy about her own mother. She’d recalled the weeks she’d spent in Florida with her brother after their mother’s death. They’d divvied up their mother’s more valuable belongings, had an estate liquidator take the rest, and put the house up for sale, listing it with one of her mother’s associates at the real estate firm where she’d worked.

  Sorting her mother’s belongings had been easy enough. Eliza had claimed the few pieces of jewelry she’d always admired and let her brother take the rest for his wife. Neither of them had wanted their mother’s Cadillac, a big, heavy sedan suited for chauffeuring clients from one available property to another but not particularly sporty or fuel-efficient. Eliza had taken her mother’s box of recipes and her brother had taken her crystal wine glasses. They’d donated her piano to a local school and let the estate liquidator haul off the rest.

  Except for the photos. One evening, armed with a bottle of wine, they’d gone through the box of photographs together, laughing, crying, reminiscing. Pictures of their mother, barely out of her teens, hugging their long-absent father. Pictures of Eliza and her brother as babies, perched on their mother’s knee. Pictures of her with a few boyfriends they’d remembered, and some they’d never met. Pictures of her holding a pastel-hued drink and wearing a massive straw hat and chi-chi sunglasses on a Caribbean cruise. Pictures of her when she’d joined the Gold Medallion Club at her real estate office, after she’d sold a million dollars worth of real estate. Pictures of her on the beach. Pictures of her in the kitchen, baking cookies. Pictures of her beside her Christmas tree—a young version of her with her arms around her children, an older version of her hugging the grandchild Eliza’s brother had given her.

  There were enough photos to split equitably. Eliza didn’t know what her brother did with his half. She’d filled a scrapbook with her own share. In the first few months after her mother’s death, when Eliza had returned to Albany and discovered Matt’s betrayal, Eliza had clung to that album, leafed through its pages, closed her eyes and heard her mother’s comforting words. “I never liked Matt,” her mother said. “He’s an ass. You just dodged a bullet, baby. You’re better off alone than with a son of a bitch like him.”

  Somehow, seeing the pictures of her mother, imagining her saying all the things Eliza knew she would eventually come to believe, had comforted her the way nothing else could. She’d found another job, left Matt and her shattered engagement behind and started a new life in Arlington, Connecticut.

  Or at least tried to. She wasn’t sure how successful she’d been, but whenever she struggled, whenever she entertained doubts, she pulled out the scrapbook and pretended her feisty, independent mother was sitting with her, urging her to count her blessings.

  The previous Sunday, after she’d fled from Conor’s house, she’d opened the scrapbook and asked her mother what to do. “Trust your instincts,” she’d heard her mother’s voice emerge from the pages of artfully arranged photos. Eliza’s instincts had told her that Conor was rebounding, that he had to work out his own issues before he could open his heart, that if she let herself love him, she could wind up hurt. So she hadn’t accepted his calls when she’d seen his name on her cell phone screen.

  “Amy wants her mother for Christmas,” she explained to Conor in the vestibule of Adler’s now. “You can make a scrapbook about her mother. Photos, anecdotes about her, mementos. Whatever you have. It won’t be the same as finding her mother under the tree, but it could be the next best thing. At least the best thing that’s actually doable.”

  Conor opened his mouth and closed it. “I…” He paused again. He seemed thunderstruck.

  “Even if most of your photos of your wife are digital, you can print them up. I think Amy would appreciate something physical. Something she can hold in her hands.”

  Again he seemed on the verge of speaking, then hesitated. Then said, “My late wife.”

  She frowned, not quite sure what he was getting at. “Yes. Your late wife.”

  “She’s dead,” he said.

  Was he grieving? Or just reminding himself of his current situation? “I know that,” she said quietly.

  “I don’t have a wife,” he said, stressing each word, sounding almost angry. “I did. But now I don’t.”

  “I know, Conor—”

  “As for the scrapbook…” His voice mellowed. “That’s a brilliant idea.”

  “I don’t know if it’s brilliant,” she said modestly. “But…” How much did she want to tell him? They’d been intimate physically, but did she really want to share her bleak recent biography with someone when she had no idea what their relationship entailed?

  She decided she could tell him this much: “I lost my mother last March. It’s nothing like what Amy’s going through, but it was a shock, and very painful.” Her eyes stung. She blinked them quickly, refusing to cry. “I put together a scrapbook from the old pictures I found of her when my brother and I packed up her house. Looking at those photos comforts me.”

  “I’m sorry. About your mother, I mean.”

  “Thanks.” She blinked again.

  “Maybe that’s why you’re so good with Amy—because you’ve both lost your mothers. Or maybe it’s just that you’re a pro
fessional.”

  Eliza wanted to believe her ability to connect with Amy transcended her role as a psychologist. And then she decided she didn’t want to believe that at all. She was trying to extricate herself from the Malones, not make things more personal than they already were.

  “Why didn’t you talk to me on Sunday?” Apparently he was done being sympathetic. “I phoned. I left two messages. Why didn’t you call me back?”

  She sighed. If he wanted to know, she would tell him. “You’re still healing, Conor. There’s a limit to how many people I can help heal. I’ll help Amy if I can. But I’ve been through my own small hell, and I’m still healing, too. I can’t…” Another deep sigh, and she forced out the words. “I can’t be the woman who makes everything better for you. I just can’t do that.”

  His jaw twitched; he was clearly on the verge of saying something. But he remained silent for a moment, then nodded. “Right.” A glance at his watch. “I’ve got to go pick up Amy at the YMCA.”

  “You don’t want to be late for that.”

  “Yeah.” He stepped toward the automatic doors, which swung outward into the chilly evening. “Thanks for the help.”

  “She’ll like those pajamas.” A stupid thing to say, but Eliza couldn’t come up with anything better, anything that wouldn’t tap into the undercurrents pulsing between them. She knew that once Conor walked down Hauser Street and out of sight, she might never see him again.

  Perhaps she would talk to him when Amy had an issue at school—although it would be better if Rosalyn Hoffman could ease the little girl through her crises. But Eliza and Conor couldn’t be friends. She’d spoken the truth, and he hadn’t argued. He was looking for someone to fix his life, and she couldn’t be that person.

  She was a healer—of psyches, of emotions, of troubled minds. But she could not be a healer and a lover at the same time. Not until she herself had healed.

  *

  SHE WAS RIGHT, damn it.

  He stalked down the Hauser Street, not bothering to sidestep the puddles and piles of slush that dampened the pavement as he wove a path through the after-work browsers and shoppers crowding the sidewalks. The bag holding Amy’s new pajamas banged against his thigh with each step, but he didn’t care if the gift box got dented, the tissue paper wrinkled.

  Eliza was gorgeous. She was hot. She was honest, benevolent…and smart. Too smart. Her professional training enabled her to read him more accurately than he could read himself. Sure, he wanted her—wanted her the way a suffocating man wanted oxygen. Not just because making love with her had felt so amazingly good but because she was his route back to happiness, and pleasure, and normalcy. The land of the living. The land of the breathing. She was his oxygen, all right.

  It had never even occurred to him to learn anything about her. She’d lost her mother recently, and he hadn’t known that until just now. She’d been through her own small hell, she’d said. And he’d been so wrapped up in his wants and needs, and Amy’s, that he’d never bothered to ask Eliza about her needs, her wants.

  That ought to score him pretty high on the asshole scale.

  He reached his car, stashed his purchase in the trunk where Amy wouldn’t see it, climbed in behind the wheel and drove the few blocks to the Y. He found Amy in the after-school room, seated around a table with Erin and Sean Murphy and two other kids, engrossed in a game of Clue. Sean had the other children convulsed in giggles by speaking in a pompous phony-British accent: “Pro-fess-ah Plummm in the li-bree with the cahn-dlestick!”

  Conor inched back a step, away from the door and Amy’s view. Let her play for a few more minutes. He needed those few extra minutes to calm down, clear his brain and, if not forgive himself, at least find some sort of equilibrium that would allow him to get through the rest of the evening without sticking his fist through a wall.

  Amy’s session with Dr. Hoffman yesterday had gone well enough. Rosalyn Hoffman didn’t discuss her sessions in detail with outsiders—even if the outsider was the father of a nine-year-old client. She said she had to respect the confidentiality of the session. But because Amy was so young and Conor was her guardian, as well as the guy paying the doctor’s fee, Dr. Hoffman did inform him that Amy seemed stronger than she’d been the last time they’d had a session, back in June, and that while Amy was still in a great deal of pain, she was obviously improving.

  Conor wished Amy’s improvement was as obvious to him as it was to Dr. Hoffman.

  More than that, he wished Amy could still have Eliza in her life. But he’d doomed his daughter’s friendship with Eliza the instant he and Eliza had made love. After talking to her in the vestibule of Adler’s, he couldn’t imagine her coming to his house to bake with Amy, to admire the Christmas tree, to enjoy the warmth and peace of the holiday. He’d destroyed that connection with his own neediness.

  And yet, Eliza had come through for him. A scrapbook about Sheila. He’d told her the idea was brilliant. What an understatement.

  Within a few minutes, several other parents had joined him at the doorway. One of the teachers alerted the children that it was time to put the game away. They swung around in their seats, saw their parents and raced to the door, shouting greetings and announcements about their respective days: “I have a permission slip for a class trip!” “I got an A on my spelling test!” “Is it snowing out?”

  Amy charged at him, as happy and energetic as her friends. She didn’t think he was an asshole. Maybe he could hide that truth from her for a while longer. Once she hit adolescence, of course, she’d consider him a total loser, but he hoped for a few more good years before puberty kicked in.

  It wasn’t snowing, and Conor made the drive home in under ten minutes. Amy chattered about the school’s upcoming winter concert, Ms. Rodriguez’s new haircut and the odds that Arlington would experience a white Christmas this year. She and Conor had a peaceful dinner of Vera’s delicious beef stew. Amy drank two full glasses of milk, and Conor wondered if she would outgrow her new pajamas by New Year’s Day.

  After he tucked her into bed, kissed her forehead and wished her a good night, he retired to his den and turned on his computer. He knew nothing about scrapbooks. When he had to deal with a subject about which he knew nothing, scouring the internet was his default option.

  To his dismay, he discovered that scrapbooking—since when had the word become a verb?—was an elaborate craft, one well beyond his artistic capabilities. Give him some code and he could perform magic. Give him a software product and he could parlay it into a successful company. But the notion of creating a pretty book out of scissors, glue, ribbons and photographs left him reeling. Scrapbooks were apparently a lot more complicated than printing up some digital pictures and sliding them into the sleeves of a photo album.

  He could use help with this. Not to be sexist, but he could use female help. He was a guy, a computer geek, a businessman. What did he know about the esthetics of book design?

  He checked his watch. A little past nine—not too late to phone Erin and Sean’s stepmother. He tugged his cell phone from the pocket of his khakis and clicked on her icon.

  “Scrapbooking?” Gail laughed. “That’s a hobby for women who have free time. I’ve got a full-time job and a couple of ridiculously energetic twins. Also a husband who seems to want my attention every now and then. Free time and I are not acquainted.”

  “Do you think your sister might know something about scrapbooking?” Conor asked. Gail’s sister Molly ran the Daddy School, after all. Anyone smart enough to be able to teach men how to be better fathers could probably put together scrapbooks without breaking a sweat.

  “Molly does lots of arts and crafts projects with her kids at the preschool,” Gail said. “But she’s never gotten into scrapbooking. Honestly, when she gets home after a long day at the Children’s Garden, the last thing she wants to do is more arts and crafts. By the way, how’d you make out with your first Daddy School class?”

  “It was great. I want to go again this Saturd
ay—if I can line up a sitter for Amy.” No way could he ask Eliza to stay with Amy again.

  “Why don’t you drop Amy off here Saturday morning before class? We were planning to take the kids to that new Pixar movie after lunch. She can join us.”

  “You’re a life-saver,” Conor said. Maybe Gail couldn’t teach him how to make a scrapbook, but she was still worthy of sainthood.

  He thanked her, ended the call and considered whom to call next. Would his mother know anything about scrapbooking? His obligation to create a Sheila-related Christmas present for Amy was his mother’s fault, after all. But he’d never seen his mother engage in anything like what the scrapbooking websites had described. She worked for the state’s highway department, she gardened, she stayed fit by swimming laps at the local community pool and she met with her book club once a month. She did not make scrapbooks.

  He couldn’t imagine grilling Dr. Hoffman about scrapbooks. Or Amy’s teacher with her new haircut. The only woman in his circle of acquaintances who he knew for certain had created a scrapbook was Eliza.

  Damn.

  This wasn’t about him. It was about Amy. Yes, he needed Eliza’s help. Yes, he would once again be calling upon her to do something for him, to support him, to fix things for him. But really, she’d be doing it for Amy. She’d be doing it for a girl who, like her, had lost her mother much too young.

  If Eliza wound up hating him, so be it. She was the one who’d planted this idea in his head. She might as well teach him how to water and fertilize it so it would grow into something worth harvesting.

  Steeling himself, he thumbed in her link. He heard the phone ring a few times on her end, and then her voice: “Hello?”

  “Eliza? It’s Conor,” he said. “I need help.”

  Chapter Eleven

  HER HOME WAS nothing like what he’d expected.

  By the time he arrived at the condominium complex where she lived, at around noon on Saturday, he felt as if he’d already lived several days since he’d arisen that morning. He’d dropped Amy off at the Murphys’ house. Then he’d headed to the Children’s Garden Preschool for his Daddy School class, where the discussion had focused on such heavyweight topics as religion, faith, and steering children’s hopes and dreams in a healthy direction. After that, a trip to a crafts store to buy all the items on the shopping list Eliza had provided over the phone, and then a stop at a gourmet shop for eighty dollars worth of cheese, grapes, pears, a loaf of fresh-baked sourdough bread, two different patés, a jar of marinated mushrooms, a bottle of chardonnay and a box of Belgian chocolates.