Those We Love Most

by Lee Woodruff

  Maura felt the sudden desire to call Art, to talk to him and feel that supercharged sense of connection, the secret history of lovers. What she missed more, she understood, what she really wanted, was to reach back to a time in her life before the accident, when she had felt a fertile sense of happiness and fullness as a mother. She would not think about the guilt associated with Art now. She wanted a stretch of time in which to feel only good things.

  The health food diner where she had occasionally met Art was two blocks away, and on impulse she turned the car into a fast-food parking lot and U-turned back in that direction. It would feel solid, maybe even uplifting, to be in a place she associated with past pleasure. That was where she had first commented on the bright blue cardboard coffee cups with the classical Greek-influenced logos. Coffee with a hint of cinnamon was one of the establishment’s trademarks, and she would order a latte and let some of the good memories unspool in the bustling anonymity of the diner.

  It was a place frequented by college students, with warm, pine paneling and butcher paper tablecloths with Ball jars of crayons. The iconic framed poster of Farah Fawcett in a red bathing suit with her wide smile and winged hair greeted patrons as they entered. The walls were covered with pictures of customers and old posters and signed photos from the 1970s and 1980s. The first dollar earned was proudly displayed above the cash register, and next to the menu was a chalkboard explaining the day’s specials.

  There was an overwhelming smell of onions crackling on the open grill, and behind the Plexiglas barrier to the kitchen area, two cooks chopped fresh ingredients. Maura ordered her coffee at the counter and brought the mug to a booth by the window so that she could also observe the activity on the sidewalk. She welcomed the distraction of people-watching. Two tables to her left a young couple sat, heads bent in conversation; fingers laced, their body language telegraphed intimacy.

  Not so long ago, that could have easily been her and Art. It seemed surreal to think of it now, but as she warmed her palms on the ceramic mug and observed the couple, she recalled the memories of their first meeting and subsequent visit to the diner.

  Art’s stomach had growled as he had bent to examine Rascal in his office and then again when he had taken a blood sample. He had looked up sheepishly and apologized. Learning that he had just moved to the area, she had half-jokingly suggested a bite to eat and had been surprised when he’d accepted. Although it had been the end of January, she recalled that the diner’s Christmas decorations were still in the windows and the loud colored lights hung from the rafters. Art had been entertained by the chirpy student waitress from Northwestern with piercings and magenta hair, and although Maura had found him attractive that day, her mind had not been turning in that direction in the vet’s office. She’d simply been focused on companionship and on introducing a newcomer to a decent restaurant not far from his apartment.

  “Organic free-range chicken breast with hummus and mung bean sprouts.” She had read the special out loud from the blackboard and laughed, looking over at Art, in line next to her at the counter.

  “Be careful,” he chuckled playfully, “those mung beans can get caught in your teeth.” She had noticed the way his smile consumed his eyes, and the slight gap between his two front teeth, not at all unpleasant. They each took their sandwiches, on mismatched china plates, to a table for two by the window.

  “How about a drink?” he urged and popped up again to grab two bottles of lemonade from the refrigerated cooler. What was she doing here? It was lunchtime. Rascal was in the car, no doubt sleeping off his anxiety from the visit. And she was sitting across from a handsome, divorced veterinarian. So what was this? Why was she here? Was it really a casual lunch or was she just pathetically lonely for attention, kindness, and for someone to focus solely on her for the moment? It felt recklessly good and flirtatious. It felt like adventure. Art slid back onto the chair and twisted the lid off the Snapple bottle.

  “So, tell me about Maura,” he had asked after some pleasant banter, and the question had confounded her for a minute.

  “Well, right now I guess my life is largely focused on being a mom. And that’s my choice. That’s a pretty big job most days.” She took a sip of her lemonade. “And there are times, I suppose, that it limits my world. But in the end it’s my decision. This … right now … being out to eat like this … is different for me. It’s very enjoyable actually.” She had said more about herself than she had intended and was suddenly uncomfortable with his scrutiny.

  “I hope that being here with me doesn’t make you feel guilty,” he probed, fixing her with his brown, almost pupilless eyes and holding her gaze. The exact nature of the question was unclear, yet he did not elaborate.

  “Guilty? Do I feel guilty? Mostly because I told my mother I’d be home in an hour. But I deserve this, right? I deserve to go out and have lunch and do something totally spontaneous sometimes.” And she had flashed him a smile, calculated to be full and radiant.

  Observing him between bites, Maura realized there was nothing studied about him. He seemed to exude no outward predatory skills, no seeping, sexual lust, no telegraphed sense that this was anything more than a friendly lunch. And that ambiguity intrigued Maura. It deepened the focal point of her interest. She felt the power of the throttle in her hands in that moment, the ability to take this exchange into the next gear or ease it back toward earth. The headiness of this realization, the breadth of her power as a woman and a sensual being, felt so filling, it was intoxicating.

  Uncomfortable for the moment with her assertiveness, Maura had set down the remains of her sandwich and stared out the window. A mother was pushing an umbrella stroller across the street, and the child looked to be about three, bundled up in a snowsuit and mittens. Dirty slush arced up behind the wheels, and Maura turned back to look at Art. She liked the directness of this person. She liked the fact that he asked her simple questions, faced things head on. His casualness seemed to have the effect of loosening her lips.

  “Hey, everyone deserves happiness, a little time out. Why shouldn’t you get a little bit? Mothers are the great unsung heroes of the world.” There was a small smudge of mayonnaise on the side of his mouth, and she fought the urge to wipe it away with her fingertip. Maura looked back out into the street. The mother and stroller were gone now, the sunlight filtered through a gathering bank of clouds, dulling the bright edge of the sky. A torn newspaper page blew past the plate glass window, catching and fluttering for a moment on the base of a lamppost.

  “So what about you? I feel like I’m doing all the talking.” Maura laughed and looked down at her sandwich. “Tell me about you, you said you came here after a divorce?”

  “Yup. Back in Madison. I’d say that after my divorce, well, I guess I was pretty bitter,” he began. “We didn’t have kids. Hadn’t been able to. And I suppose, in retrospect, that helped contribute to some of what happened.” He paused to take another bite of his sandwich, and she noticed a raised scar on his knuckle in the shape of a crescent.

  “So what did happen?” She was grateful for the chance to turn the attention to him. She thought briefly about what she would say, what her story would be, if someone she knew walked into the restaurant.

  “Nothing major. Not one big thing.” He looked down and leaned forward on his elbows. “Just a series of little things, I guess, one slow slide. There were the years of infertility treatments, they kind of wear you down, you know? Disappointment after disappointment. You get your heart set on something and you keep thinking that luck is going to run your way.” He was silent for a beat. “When it didn’t, a kind of quiet blame set in, I guess.” She nodded.

  “How long were you married?”

  “Ten years. Ten mostly good years, but somewhere in there we just began to grow apart. We stopped sharing, stopped finding things in each other that kept love growing. I guess you could say we stopped moving forward together. She wanted a clean break, and I didn’t really want to be in Madison anymore. I spent more
and more time at work to avoid all the bad stuff, the bucking her up, the her bucking me up. Hell, there wasn’t a lot of bucking me up.” He smiled sheepishly and shook his head, looking down at the remains of his sandwich.

  “Eventually she met someone at work. Someone who, apparently, was more empathetic or interesting or more perfect for her than I was.” Art lifted both hands onto the table and began absentmindedly rubbing the skin in between his thumb and forefinger.

  “It should have felt like a relief when it happened, but instead it stung. Pretty bad. We fought over the little bit we had—the house, the joint account.” He let out his breath in a long sigh.

  “That’s enough about me. Boring old sob story about some divorced guy.” His mouth instantly upticked from a straight line into a bright, guileless smile, and he ran one hand through his hair on the side his head.

  “Well, here I am, sitting in a diner when I should probably be home cleaning out closets or doing multiplication tables or something really exciting like that.” The good feeling sputtered for just a second, replaced by the chill of guilt, the judgment of her inner compass. For a moment Maura fought back a voice that told her to simply bolt out of the place, to grab her coat and run. The meal finished, she drained the last of her lemonade and set the bottle down on the tabletop, screwing on the metal cap.

  “So will Rascal be OK?” she asked. Art seemed grateful for the sure footing, the hairpin turn of the conversation away from the curve and back into familiar, navigable territory.

  “I think so. Disc issues are pretty common in these little dogs. It’s the long spine. Takes a lot of stress. Of course he isn’t getting any younger, like the rest of us. It’s never going to be perfect.”

  “James will be relieved.”

  “How old is he? Your son.”

  “Nine. And Rascal is really his dog. Or it was supposed to work that way anyway.” She smiled and reached backward to grab her coat off her chair. “I end up doing all the work. But I guess I knew what I was in for.”

  “That’s usually the way it happens. Mom is the pack leader.” Art looked directly into her eyes for a second before he began stacking his napkin and bottle on the plate, arranging it carefully like a tower.

  “I hope you don’t think I do this with all my patients,” he started, uncomfortable for the first time during their conversation. “It’s, uh, nice to have someone to talk to.” His voice fell off.

  “It’s nice for me too,” she offered readily. “Nice to be with someone who doesn’t know anything about me. I’ve lived around here my whole life, so there’s no escaping my past. But with you I can just make it all up and you have no choice but to believe me.”

  He laughed. “Maybe we can do this again.” He looked up, hopeful, as he tugged on his navy fleece. “I don’t really have much of a social circle outside the practice. There hasn’t really been time to work on that. I sometimes go out with my college buddy, and there are the guys I bike with on weekends, but most of them are married with kids.” And in that moment his vulnerability snagged on something inside her, something loosening and unwinding that she had been working to contain.

  It wasn’t until she was driving home that day, winding across Lakeshore Drive, purposely taking the longer way, grateful for the stop and start of the lights and intersections in the towns on the way to her own, that she let herself admit how completely comfortable and even a little bit thrilling it was to feel that kind of companionship. She’d felt herself magnetized by him.

  And in the months to come, it had been just that easy to continue the lunches, the harmless flirting, to pull the moments with Art up in her memory and review them like private flashcards while she sat folding laundry or unloading the dishwasher. She could reassure herself, honestly, that no physical lines had been crossed, that they hadn’t kissed or touched and that she was, in fact, allowed to have male friends.

  But in the good-girl part of her heart and mind—the smart voice that tried to interject from time to time and ask for clarification, point to the rule book—she had known that she and Art were hurtling toward something shapeless but with dangerous proportions. With each subsequent appointment for Rascal’s treatment, followed by a lunch at the diner or walk by the lake, sometimes with Sarah in the stroller, she knew that she was becoming enmeshed. And yet because the steps were so seemingly harmless, subtle, and infinitesimal, it had been easy to assure herself that she was totally and completely in control.

  22

  “You’re going to get coal,” Erin joked to Brad, swatting him dramatically as he opened the refrigerator and grabbed another beer.

  “And you’re going to get diamonds. Just wait until you see what’s under the tree tomorrow,” he answered, heading back into the den with the rest of the men.

  “Somebody hand me the hot pads,” barked Margaret, and the girls scrambled to oblige her. As she opened the oven, a blast of heat blew back her carefully coiffed hair, and she began to wrestle with the giant pan. The roast’s savory aroma intensified in the kitchen as the fat crackled and snapped in the bloody juices. Piles of carrots and fingerling potatoes were arranged like a moat around the meat.

  “Let me help you with that,” Roger offered, and she stepped back so that he could do the heavy lifting. He’d come into the kitchen to get more ice and was taking in the pleasing sight of his wife and children working in unison on one of their elaborate holiday family meals.

  “Eiiiiyaaaaaaaahhh.” Sam, Erin’s oldest child, burst into the kitchen giggling. He was chasing Stu and Jen’s daughter, Alice, and waving some kind of plastic light saber.

  Conversation, laughter, and noise from the living room swirled into the kitchen, and the house throbbed with the cacophony of extended family gathered in one place. It was glorious chaos, but underneath the patina of mirth for all of them was the undeniable undercurrent of James’s absence on this first Christmas. They would feel his loss at the heart of so many rituals tonight: the dinner prayer, the stockings, Roger’s fireside reading of the Christmas story with the grandchildren after dinner.

  Christmas eve. Here they were. They had made it through the last seven months without James, past Thanksgiving, when the cousins had been splintered at in-laws, and now they were at the doorstep of this next family milestone, and it looked like they were surviving it.

  “Will you carve up the roast now, dear?” Margaret asked Roger brusquely. She was using her hostess voice, and he knew better than to interfere. Her territory was ruled with an iron fist.

  Roger pulled the carving set out of its well-worn box on the counter. They’d gotten it as a wedding present, and he was pleased to remember that fact. Quite amazingly, Margaret could still reel off who had given them what. She had a cataloging knowledge of their possessions and exactly where things belonged.

  It was somewhat of a relief to have a job to do amid all the bustling of children and grandchildren in his home. Now Ryan, on all fours, pushed open the swinging dining room door into the kitchen, chasing Sarah, who was waving a juice box. She rammed into a stool, almost toppling it, and then screamed in delight, heading for the den.

  “Children, children,” Margaret called testily, clapping her hands like a schoolteacher, her mouth tight. “Stay out of the kitchen while we get the food on the table. We’re almost ready!” Erin, Jen, and Maura exchanged knowing glances. This was Margaret at full maternal tilt.

  As he slit the knife through the meat’s pink interior, Roger reflected that he felt largely back to his old self after that meeting with Kindler a few weeks before. For a time after that he’d been rattled, his confidence stooped and shaken. He should have stayed at the bar that night, driven around, anything but come home and worry Margaret by dumping his own personal crisis of faith in her lap. That had not been wise, yet the evening had ended wonderfully. They’d actually made love for the first time in a long time, and it had felt satisfying. More than satisfying. He had been surprised at Margaret’s ardor, the way she succumbed so easily to his touch.
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  In the den, Pete, Stu, and Brad were subdued on the dark green couch, legs splayed in front of the coffee table before them, beers in hand, studying the flat-screen TV above the fireplace. The deep burgundy walls lent the room a cavelike atmosphere as they chatted, commenting from time to time on the basketball game and waiting for the final call to the table. Even on Christmas eve sports could be found all over cable, Roger marveled. The house that was mostly too big for just the two of them seemed suddenly to press in, and he felt the urge to escape the competing swirls of chaos and staccato bursts of conversation for a brief period. Perhaps he’d take a stroll outside after dinner. He should call Julia and wish her a Merry Christmas.

  Roger’s knife hit bone, and a thick bloodied slab of the beef curled down onto the cutting board. He could hear the women in the dining room, adjusting chafing dishes and bowls on the sideboard, pouring ice water and arranging the remaining condiments with the delicate silver serving utensils. He had placed every leaf in the mahogany dining room table, and Margaret had selected a forest green and silver tablecloth that set off the cream china and crystal wineglasses. The silver settings sparkled, and Roger warmed to the familiarity and festivity in the room.

  “Do you want me to bring the roast out there?” Roger called. Above the bustle no one heard him, and he moved toward the swinging door of the dining room, opening it halfway with the serving fork pointed up in one hand. No answer. “Julia, do I bring in the meat?”