Happy Any Day Now

by Toby Devens

  I got a whiff of Charlie’s scotch-smoky breath as he leaned over to whisper, “Okay, I’ve had it. I’ll wait for you outside.”

  • • •

  It’s discourteous and unprofessional for one musician to walk out on another’s performance and I would never walk out on Geoff. Musically, that is. I stayed until his final mellow note.

  “Leaving. Bye for us both,” I said sotto voce to the silhouette of Marti and Nora, which had become a single shadow, and threaded my way through tables and out to the street.

  Charlie was propped against the Bard’s Tudor facade, turning his idle BlackBerry over and over in his palm, his version of worry beads. His eyes, when he looked up, were fuming red in the neon glow.

  “‘My One and Only Love.’ I had the Sinatra version. That was your song, right? Yours and Geoff’s?”

  Do people in their forties come up with “our” songs? Only if they write them, I thought.

  “Actually, we didn’t have one.”

  He fumbled with his BlackBerry. “I apologize for walking out on you, Judith, but honestly, I couldn’t take one more moment. That guy was playing just for you.”

  “You were rude,” I replied. “Not just to Geoff, who didn’t know. To Marti and Nora, who did.”

  “I doubt they noticed,” he said. “They were otherwise occupied.”

  “Oh, Charlie,” I said, sadly. “You were right. Your message with the flowers about needing to talk? We do.”

  He nodded, nostrils at full flare. He took in my face, which was not pretty. It seemed to inspire second thoughts. “Look, Judith.” His nostrils relaxed. “I’m exhausted. My sense is we’d both be better served by a postponement. Let’s sleep on it, shall we?”

  We did that. And nothing more. Charlie was in the next room Skyping a colleague in Japan for I didn’t know how long. By the time he slid in next to me, I was socked into sleep.

  • • •

  When I awoke Saturday he was off on his run, so the first time I laid eyes on him was when he walked onto the patio, where I’d laid out breakfast.

  Out earlier to set the table, I’d noticed the blinds were still drawn over at Marti’s. Two cars in her driveway meant a sleepover for Nora, I supposed. Good for them. I was glad somebody in the vicinity had gotten laid.

  I poured my houseguest a cup of coffee and then a cup for myself. He took a fortifying slug and said into the mug, “I’m sorry if I was a jerk at the jazz club.”

  Not I’m sorry I was a jerk at the jazz club. If marked the spot. It was a debater’s ploy, a lawyer’s sleight of words. Theodora Gottlieb, MD, would have pointed out how it revealed resistance to assuming personal responsibility for one’s own actions.

  “Well, you were kind of a jerk.” I dialed down to just above a whisper, which had always worked better with Charlie. “Yes, the suite was written for me. Geoff started it several years ago, ran into some snags, and I thought he’d abandoned the project. But obviously—” I stalled to a halt, stricken by the idea that he hadn’t. Abandoned it. We were over, but the melody lingered on.

  “I had no idea,” I resumed, “that he was going—”

  The BlackBerry gonged.

  I wanted to take the Zen monk trapped inside that freakin’ BlackBerry and wring his gonging neck.

  Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out the device that worked best for him. “E-mail.” He checked. “My law clerk. A moment.” He pushed a few keys and placed the crackberry on the table, screen up. Back to me. “You were saying . . .”

  “When I was so rudely interrupted.” I glared. “I was saying I had no idea he was going to play ‘Suite for My Seoulmate’ last night. I was surprised he’d even finished it. Marti set it up so Geoff wouldn’t know I was there and she sure as hell didn’t know you were coming. But I’m glad I went. It was beautiful. As far as ‘My One and Only Love,’ it’s a standard. Purely generic.”

  Charlie gave that notion a going-over while picking apart a honey bun with his fingers. Kiki would have been appalled. He said finally, “Yes, right.” He laid his sticky hand over mine. “I am sorry, Ju-ju. I’ll apologize to Marti next time I see her so she doesn’t think it was personal, my walking out. You know, misinterpret it as an insult to her sexual orientation. I don’t have a problem with individual homosexuals even if I don’t subscribe to the gay rights agenda promoted by the radical fringe.”

  “Of course you don’t. You subscribe to the Wall Street Journal.” I cracked a smile. “Look, you and I have always had political differences, but we’ve always respected each other’s point of view. Still, that was college and this is all grown-up and I suppose we should try to figure out where we both stand before you take over the Washington office and unleash me on your new Capitol Hill colleagues. I really don’t want to give the D.C. branch of Pruitt, Bryce and Summerville a collective heart attack.”

  He seemed to be considering his reply when his BlackBerry launched into a clickety-clack shimmy on my tempered-glass table. A nearby squirrel, spooked, made a mad dash for cover. “I turned it to vibrate only, but this is a call coming in.” He snatched the damned thing up and read. “Ah, one I must take. It’s a situation. Excuse me.”

  I nodded, quickly loaded up my tea tray with breakfast dishes, and headed into the house.

  • • •

  I was in the music room, taking pleasure from just looking at the Goffriller cello, when I heard him come up behind me.

  I turned. He was wearing his somber face. “Sorry about that. There seems to be an issue regarding jurisdiction . . . There’s an important distinction between—” He flicked off the thought as if I wouldn’t have grasped the legal fine points anyway. Or maybe I was shortchanging him, because he reached around to pull me close and whisper, “But not as important as we are.”

  After freeing me, he took a seat on my sofa and patted the space next to him. Obediently, I planted myself, but not so close that our thighs were touching.

  He cleared his throat. “You mentioned the Washington office, my potential colleagues there.” I nodded. He coughed a second clearing. “It seems there’s been a change of plans. After considerable thought, I’ve decided not to take the reins at K Street after all.”

  It took me a minute of staring at his profile, which could have been stamped on the nickel with those classic features, except Jefferson wasn’t nervously biting his lower lip. And then I put it all together.

  “You’re not moving to D.C.” He wouldn’t turn his head, didn’t dare meet my eyes. “But you were shopping for houses in Georgetown.” For us, I refrained from adding. Not that I’d had any immediate plans to move in. Not when I wasn’t in panic mode anyway. It was more symbolic, the move closer to me. Geographically equals emotionally. So I must have scowled.

  He sighed. “I can’t expect you to entirely understand, Judith. It was a complex decision driven by multiple factors. Professional ones. First, I love my work. A judgeship had always been my ultimate objective, and to give it up now?” He shook his head.

  “As I gave it more thought, it became clear to me that, in spite of my grousing about the workload, I wanted a few more years on the bench. Also, I haven’t been a practicing attorney for thirteen years. How fair would it be to the team to have someone as rusty as I am in a leadership position, especially in the nation’s capital?” He searched my eyes for understanding. I blinked a few times and he continued. “And speaking of fairness, I’d be bumping the fellow who rightfully earned the job and that sends a bad message about nepotism in a family-founded firm.”

  I stopped blinking and narrowed my eyes. “But you knew this before you’d opted for the move.”

  He leapfrogged that statement. “And then some personal considerations have arisen.”

  Ah-ha.

  “Chloe has decided against the colleges in D.C. She’s zeroed in on Columbia.”

  “Colu
mbia University. In Manhattan.”

  “Umm. She thinks Columbia’s program is more suitable for where she wants to go in her life.”

  Or where she wants you to go in yours. The light, which tended to dim when I was in Charlie’s presence, was beginning to dawn.

  I said, “And one of your motives for moving to Washington was to be nearer to your daughter.” Why hadn’t I thought of that before? What a schmendrick I was.

  “Yes.” There was a pause. “And to you, of course.”

  “Maybe, but I’m an afterthought. Again.” Whiny, but true.

  “Not true, Judith.” I was Judith now. We were out of Ju-ju territory. “I’m not sure you can empathize, not having children.” Ouch. “After a divorce, you feel you’re losing them, and now here she is telling me that with both of us in Manhattan we’d have an opportunity to grow our relationship.”

  That turned me into the Incredulous Shrinking Woman. All I could do was shake my head in awe of the power of Pruitt females. At the same time, although I didn’t have kids, I’d been one, and I understood firsthand—thank you, Uhm-mah—that they came first. Should come first. Even the likes of Chloe, who’d probably emerge from her ugly pupa stage to become a halfway decent butterfly, especially if her father hung in through the metamorphosis.

  But there was more.

  “And then there’s the matter of my mother. Kiki is failing. Precipitously.”

  For that I found voice. “According to Chloe, it’s an act. She thinks Kiki’s sharp as ever.”

  “My mother compensates, and that’s what Chloe sees. But I see major changes. Kathryn Van Tiller Pruitt never pleads. When I told her about the Washington move, she pleaded with me to stay. She told me she needed me. She didn’t know how she could make it without me close by. She wept. She didn’t weep at my father’s funeral, for God’s sakes.”

  “Is that right?” Since showing any kind of emotion stronger than a condescending sniff was just not done in Kiki’s set, she must have been terminally desperate to get him out of the clutches of the Oriyenta yet a second time. And Charlie caved. Again. Mazel tov, Kiki, I thought. Marti was right. You’re two for two.

  Now that he’d unloaded his ammo into my gut, Charlie relaxed. “This doesn’t have to put a major crimp in our relationship,” he said. “Under three hours on the Acela train, New York to Baltimore. And Amtrak runs both ways. You’ll come up to visit.”

  “Long-distance romances rarely work, Charlie.”

  The Harvard lawyer who’d made a seven-figure living by persuading and negotiating went full throttle. “Sweetheart, it’s only for a short time. College whizzes by. Mother is in her nineties. For the time being, we can make it work. We can pull this off if we try hard enough.”

  Maybe, but I was almost fifty and, dear God, I was tired of trying so hard with things that should be easy.

  When he registered my skepticism, he fixed me with those magical blue eyes that could be ice, fire, or, as they were now, simmering warmth. He pulled me against him, stroked my cheek, nuzzled my neck, traced the outline of my lips with his pinkie, and kissed me. Not a three-button-with-vest kind of kiss either. My heart went haywire. It was an idiotic organ.

  “Damn you,” I murmured, which was his cue to unbutton my shirt and tug at the zipper of my jeans. Cursing, fumbling, he finally unhooked my bra and pitched it across the room, toppling an empty music stand. Undistracted, he focused on what had always been hot buttons for both of us. Charlie was a breast man—that hadn’t changed—and now I saw his eyes widen, heard him groan. “So beautiful.” He kissed, he licked, his tongue drew rough circles and I was on fully automatic, spiraling from purring idle to roaring ready in twenty seconds. Then, in a flash of lucidity, I realized he was actually planning to make love on the sofa, really more of a love seat, which, though it sounded appropriate, was too short and too structured for comfort. Also I thought—back to crazy—Not in front of the Goffriller.

  “Upstairs,” I whispered, taking off, trying to outpace the doubts, screw them out of my head the way sex and only sex could do. Charlie was still sweaty from his run and wanted to shower. I allowed him a pee. Then we made love. At the beginning, the action was frenzied, but the pace slowed due to a wilting problem on his part—in his part—and we probably had what was the longest foreplay in the history of arousal. In the end, though, it was as good as the best we’d had back in Cambridge.

  • • •

  I had a pops concert that night. “An Evening with Rodgers and Hammerstein.”

  “You don’t mind if I skip that, do you, Ju-ju?” Charlie asked.

  Mind? I was relieved. Who needed Geoff scanning the audience to find Charlie, possibly smirking at his victory?

  The night before, as Geoff had played the “Suite for My Seoulmate,” I’d felt a deep stirring. But it was only nostalgia, I’d told myself. Only Judith doing her romantic dithering routine. More work for Theodora . . . eventually.

  The cello didn’t have a solo in this performance, but the trumpet did. Geoff played “If I Loved You” without his usual passion. Or maybe it was me, my passion that was off.

  When I arrived home near midnight, Charlie was sprawled on my bed, his laptop beside him. His head lolled against the pillow and he was in full snore and dribble. What my husband might have looked like after two and a half decades, I thought. And felt old.

  In the bathroom, brushing my teeth, I saw his pills lined up like toy soldiers in the battle against the fifties. Something for high cholesterol, something for high blood pressure, something for stress-induced asthma, and one more, not in the lineup but half buried in his toiletry kit, its white plastic cap calling to me to step over yet another boundary as I took a peek: Viagra. Which, I supposed, I should be thanking for the afternoon’s revival meeting. I felt really old.

  All my qualms came flooding back in with the morning sunlight. Charlie took three calls during breakfast, including one from Kiki, who must have been going deaf, because I could clearly hear her fortissimo fury about her latest nurse, someone named Rosalita who was a simpleton and was, Kiki was adamant, stealing money from her purse. The other calls were business related and long.

  The last one halted Charlie’s fork midair. Lots of legalese, and when it was over he stared into his coffee, then at me, his forehead wrinkled. It seemed that the “jurisdictional problem” was rearing its ugly head again. He apologized for having to cut out earlier than planned, but he really needed to address this in person.

  Ten minutes later he was at my front door, juggling his suitcase, briefcase, and laptop case. He read my face. “Oh jeez. You’re pissed again, right? Repissed?”

  Repissed, depressed, angry at him, angry at myself, and freakin’ confused. “I don’t know about us, Charlie.”

  His sigh was tinged with impatience. “Well, then hang around and find out. And don’t make any hasty decisions. I know you, Ju-ju. You’re prone to overreact in the moment. Remember back in school when you were ready to sign that communist petition until I read you the fine print?”

  “Dammit, that is the most patronizing—”

  He overrode me. “All I’m asking is you give this—us—your studied consideration.”

  Studied consideration. Not I love you madly. Don’t break my heart, my darling. Okay, over the top. But studied consideration? Dry as a mother superior’s snatch, as Marti would have said.

  He checked his precious Patek Philippe watch. “Sorry. Have to go. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  “It’s going to be a jammed week,” I responded frostily. “I have the audition for principal on Tuesday.”

  He treated me to a blank stare. He’d forgotten already. But he was quick to recover.

  “No heavy discussion. Just to wish you success with the audition. To tell you I’m cheering for you.”

  He kissed my cheek. His breath was sour cherries from the breakfast Danish,
but his voice was syrup. And the words? The Barrister aka His Honor surprised me once again. “Don’t give up on us yet, please. Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to lose you again.”

  Not bad for an exit line.

  Chapter 36

  My mother and Irwin, the gypsy gamblers, weren’t supposed to be back at Blumen House until early Monday evening, but I’d picked up a ready-made lasagna at Whole Foods to drop off for their dinner. A welcome-home gift so Gracie wouldn’t have to cook.

  In the lobby, I got tackled by my least favorite resident.

  “Not in service. Only one elevator is working, thanks to your mother.” Miriam Botansky, as in buttinsky, seized my wrist as I pushed the “up” button. “Very inconvenient and I told her so.”

  It took me a moment to process before I said, voice spiraling, “Told her? What, my mother is home? They’re back this morning? Is she all right?”

  “Depends on your definition of ‘all right.’”

  I didn’t have time to debate semantics with Mrs. Botansky. Swept by a wave of panic—the ambulance crew had frozen the elevator in the Pikesville building when Grace fell in the bathroom there—I shook her off and raced up four floors and down the hall to 4C. The door was ominously open. Wide. I skidded to a halt at the threshold, surveyed the interior, and muttered, “Dear God.”

  The living room was empty. No furniture. No knickknacks. I walked through to the kitchen, which had been cleaned out except for two cartons stacked near the refrigerator. The bedroom—stripped.

  As I stood considering the implications, I heard the sound of a toilet flushing and a shaky baritone launch into “Strangers in the Night,” the Sinatra version with the scooby-dooby-dos.