by Webb, Peggy
Paul pressed his hands to his temples, trying to shut out the memories. Henry, resting comfortably between two medical texts, gave him a lopsided teddy bear grin from the bookshelves.
Slowly Paul rose from his desk chair. Jean would be waiting for him.
o0o
Although there were only the four of them, every Thanksgiving Maggie always baked a ham as well as a turkey. She'd also made dressing, six casseroles, and two different kinds of pie. With the meal spread on a white linen cloth and the good silver gleaming in the candlelight, she glanced around the table at her family.
Timmy had scrubbed his face till his freckles shone and had tried to slick down his cowlick, but to no avail. The wad of hair stood up from his forehead like the red flag on a mailbox. Beth Ann, as pencil-thin as a model, was dressed in a blue plaid dress that she insisted made her look fat. And Bill . . .
Maggie's gaze lingered over her husband. He'd come home early from work—for a change—and had surprised her in the kitchen. She'd just finished tasting the lemon icebox pie and had a dab of lemon on her mouth. He kissed it away, and they had ended up in the pantry, giggling like teenagers while they necked.
Bill smiled at her and winked. She licked her lips.
Beth Ann scraped her chair on the hardwood floor and bolted from the table without a word.
"Beth Ann," Maggie called after her. They could hear her footsteps on the stairs.
"What's gotten into her?" Bill looked to his wife for answers. "We haven't even finished dinner."
"She's already had three times more than me," Timmy volunteered.
"Do you suppose one of us ought to go up and see about her?"
"She's all right, honey," Maggie assured her husband. "You know how teenagers are."
o0o
Beth Ann stood in the hallway, listening to their voices carry up the stairs. Nobody cared if she lived or died. Especially Maggie and Bill.
She went into the bathroom and locked the door.
o0o
Jean had no reason to feel cheated. Paul was kind and considerate. He sat at the other end of the gleaming burled walnut table smiling.
It was then that she knew what was wrong. His smile wasn't warm or sentimental or sexy. It was polite. The smile of a stranger.
"How was your day?" she asked.
"Fine." He used to talk for hours about his work, sharing his frustrations as well as his triumphs. "And yours?"
"Two new people came into the gallery. They've recently moved down from Chicago."
"Did they purchase anything?"
"No, but they were interested in one of the last oil paintings I did."
"Good."
He didn't even ask which one. Sometimes he dropped by the gallery and stayed for a while to watch her paint, but he seemed more interested in whether she was going to take another overdose of Valium than in what she was working on.
She sighed. Maggie had told her to be patient. It was impossible to build back a marriage in one month.
They ate the rest of the meal in silence; then later, they sat in the den, still silent, Paul in the leather wing chair reading an account of some ancient war, and she on the love seat browsing through Vogue’s latest magazine.
At ten he turned on the news, and afterward they went up the long stairs to their bedroom. Paul held her elbow lightly. She undressed in the bathroom, and
when she came out he was already under the covers. She barely disturbed them as she lay down beside him.
Paul breathed evenly, pretending to be asleep. Jean turned her face to the wall, being careful so he wouldn't think she was restless; then as an afterthought she reached up and patted her hair in place.
o0o
"I see Paul's boat." Jeffy, who no longer needed a car seat, bounced up and down, trying to see out the window. "Look, Mommy, is that Paul's boat?"
"I don't know, darling." She couldn't bear to look. Facing ahead, she drove by the marina. She didn't want to see Paul's boat and maybe Jean standing on the deck with Paul's arms around her and his lips against her hair.
Once she and Paul had made love on the polished deck under the stars, and afterward she'd sat on his lap naked while he serenaded her with his saxophone. Did Jean sit on his lap naked?
"Is Paul taking care of sick people today?"
Oh, God. Not Paul again. "I guess."
"He said he did."
"He's a doctor, Jeffy."
"And I'm a big boy and getting strong. That's what he said."
Jeffy had told the story of his last meeting with Paul over and over, till Susan could scream. But she didn't. If her son who had so little and needed so much could find comfort from the telling and retelling of a story, she could find the patience to listen.
"And someday when I'm a real big boy, he'll come and we'll go in his boat and swim with the dolphins,” he said, winding up his story. “Can I swim with Fergie?"
"Yes, Jeffy."
"When I'm real big?"
"When you're real big."
She was glad when they finally got to her mother's house. Bessie and Jo Lisa were in the kitchen, cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
"Can you believe I'm stuffing a stupid turkey?" Jo Lisa whispered to her.
"Domesticity becomes you."
Jo Lisa studied her face. "Are you okay, Susan?"
"Not yet . . . but I'm going to be."
"Good girl." Jo Lisa did a quick juggling act with three oranges before going back to the turkey.
"Jo Lisa, I declare. You're going to bruise them and they won't be fit for the fruit salad." Bessie rolled her eyes, then turned to Susan. "Honey, will you go out back and get that pumpkin pie from the freezer?"
Susan glanced at the pumpkin pie sitting on the kitchen table. "Do we need two pies, Mother?"
"I've invited Lottie Burcham, and Lord knows you could put some meat on your bones. Since that doctor ..."
"Mother, don’t start."
Bessie threw up her hands. "I know ... I know. I'm only a mother."
Susan escaped the kitchen and leaned against the wall. The freezer was in a small room that was meant to be a back porch. Bessie had closed it in, then put a rocking chair and a reading table and a telephone in place and called it her sitting room.
Susan sank into the rocking chair and stared at the telephone. Was Paul home? Was he thinking of her? Missing her?
She lifted the receiver and caught the dial tone. She knew his home number, she'd looked it up. It was emblazoned on her heart.
She punched the first button, then stared into space, remembering, remembering.
"Susan?" her mother called from the kitchen. Clutching the receiver, she squeezed her eyes shut. "What about that pie?"
The phone hummed in her ear, then an electronic voice said, "We're sorry, your call did not go through. Will you please hang up and try again?"
The receiver clunked back into place. No, she wouldn't try again.
Paul's wife had won.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The day Susan had been dreading finally came. She ran into Paul in the music store. It was one of those bright December days that had no business being winter, the kind that reminded you of the last lazy days of summer when the terns called along the sunny beaches and the smell of freshly hauled shrimp hung heavy in the air.
He was browsing in the jazz section, wearing an open-necked shirt and a light cotton sweater. He looked good enough to eat.
Half-hidden behind the gospel music racks, she turned her back to him in case he saw her face and guessed her thoughts. How long would he stay? Could she sneak out without him seeing her?
She was being ridiculous. In a town the size of Biloxi, they were bound to run into each other. The first time would be the hardest. And then it would get better. She hoped.
She almost turned around to say hello, then she remembered Jean. Was she with him? She'd reconnoiter the store before she made any rash moves.
"Hello, Susan." Paul touched her elbow, then quickly let
go. "I thought I might find you here."
Did that mean he'd hoped he would?
"You look good, Paul." He did. Was Jean good for him?
"So do you. How have you been?"
Did he want to hear about the nights she'd cried herself to sleep and the times she'd gotten into the car and pounded her fists on the steering wheel after listening to Jeffy talk about going off in the boat of a man who was no longer a part of their lives? Did he want to hear how lonely she was and how empty she felt? How scared?
"I'm fine. How are you?"
"Fine."
Once they had been magnificent. Once they'd tumbled among fallen rose petals with bacchanalian abandon until the roses lay bruised under their heaving bodies.
"How's Jeffy?"
"He misses you."
"I miss him."
Do you miss me? Or is Jean enough? Do you tumble with her among the roses?
"Has he had his surgery yet?"
"Not yet. Soon, we hope. He's walking without his cane now."
"That's good news." He caressed the shiny jacket of a gospel album by the Cumberland Boys. Was he thinking up excuses to stay? "Do you still take him for therapy with Fergie?"
"No. We stopped soon after you left. I still take him down to the center every now and then to see the dolphins. Bill's very kind about letting us come."
"Bill's a good man."
Time was a water globe, and they stood trapped in its glass dome while their past swirled around them. Susan didn't know which would be harder, staying in the store with him making small talk or walking out and perhaps never seeing him again. Finally she chose to leave.
"It was good to see you, Paul."
"You too."
It was only when she got outside the store that she remembered why she had come in the first place—to get some sheet music for the choir. She hesitated on the sidewalk, torn. In the end she decided she didn't want to go back inside and give Paul a chance to see how he still drove her senseless.
o0o
Jean let the matter of the Cumberland Boys record slide for three days before she mentioned it. When she'd first seen it she'd been astonished. It was stuck back among the other albums, still in its wrapper. Then she remembered how Paul had looked when he'd come in from the music store and how quiet he'd been that evening.
She waited until after dinner. She didn't believe in creating a scene during mealtime.
They were sitting on separate sides of the den engaged in their separate evening pursuits. Jean left the sofa and got the Cumberland Boys record out of the cabinet. Without a word she handed it to Paul.
He took it without comment, then laid it aside.
"Aren't you going to tell me when your taste in music changed, Paul?"
"It's a record, Jean. Nothing more."
"You saw her, didn't you?"
"I fail to understand your leap in logic."
'You've never listened to gospel music. You went to that music store on your rare day off hoping to run into her, didn't you?"
"You're upsetting yourself over nothing, Jean." He took her arm and led her back to the sofa. Then he sat down and put his arm around her shoulders. The gesture felt brotherly. "Yes, Susan Riley was there. We talked. I asked about her son."
"Did you want to sleep with her, Paul?"
He went to the mantel and stood with his back to her. She could see the tension in his stiff stance.
"You don't sleep with me. Did you want to sleep with her?"
"Yes." Slowly he turned to face her. "Yes, Jean. I want Susan Riley." She stiffened as if she'd been slapped. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"
It wasn't. She pressed her hands over her ears to shut out the ugly truth. Paul came to her and gently pulled her into his arms.
'You and I were apart a long time, Jean."
"We still are."
"I'm trying. God knows, I'm trying."
"You never touch me, Paul, not in the way you used to." She was very close to tears and fighting hard not to show it.
"We can't go back, Jean. We can't pretend nothing happened and pick up where we left off."
"Can't we go forward?"
The future stretched out before them like an unfamiliar road, one full of potholes and rickety bridges and sudden, hairpin turns.
"We can try, Jean." Paul pressed his cheek against her hair. "We can try."
o0o
Over the next two weeks Paul put the pending lawsuit out of his mind and concentrated on his marriage, taking Jean to plays and symphonies, treating her to elegant dinners, sending her roses.
In mid-December he took her to The Nutcracker ballet. Tchaikovsky. Susan loved Tchaikovsky. She used to hum snatches from Pathetique while they did the dishes.
"Paul?"
"Hmmm?" He jerked his attention back to Jean. "Did you say something?"
"I asked you twice to take me home."
He didn't even ask why she wanted to go. He was ready to go himself. Listening to Susan's favorite music without her at his side was too painful.
Jean didn't speak to him all the way home, didn't even speak when they were in their bedroom and she was undressing. Finally they lay on their bed side by side like two pokers at opposite ends of a fireplace.
"You were thinking of her, weren't you?"
"For God's sake, Jean. Give it a rest."
"She's a singer. You go to the store and buy her kind of music now. You sit beside me in the ballet and moon for her."
He rolled out of bed and got a blanket out of the closet.
"Paul? Where are you going?"
"Downstairs. I'll sleep on the couch."
Jean didn't beg him to stay. He didn't know if he would have, even if she'd asked.
He sank onto the sofa and covered himself with the blue blanket. Was this God's punishment for staying with a wife he didn't love? Consignment to a lumpy couch?
He thought of Susan, humming those sexy little noises in her throat when they made love. Cursing, he rolled over and the blanket tangled around his legs and exposed his feet.
Dammit, he was giving Jean everything she wanted . . . except the thing she wanted most. Himself.
o0o
It was almost Christmas and Paul hadn't called. Had he fallen in love with his wife all over again?
Susan dragged boxes of ornaments out of the top of her closet and tried not to think about him. An old shoe box that she'd used for too many years split open and spilled its booty—a rocking horse ornament she'd painted silver so it would look like it belonged to the Lone Ranger, which was sometimes how she felt, and the Christmas angel Jeffy had given a red face and a black dress.
Black for Christmas. It seemed appropriate this year.
The tree was an old one she'd bought years ago right after she and Brett had married. Artificial. She didn't like to think of the real thing giving up its life for a celebration that was often more heartbreaking than heartwarming.
One of its branches had come loose, and when she tried to set it up, the aluminum tip scraped the top of her hand and made an angry scratch.
The last time she'd scratched herself, Paul bad kissed it and made it well.
She swabbed the cut with peroxide, and was struggling with the tree once more when the phone rang.
"Mother's got Jeffy so let's go Christmas shopping." It was Jo Lisa.
"I'm not in the mood."
"That's what I thought. I'll pick you up in ten minutes."
The phone was already dead before she could make an excuse. When Jo Lisa showed up she was wearing a hot pink jogging suit, orange hightop sneakers, and rhine stone earrings.
"you didn't have to dress for me," Susan said.
"Shut up and drive." Jo Lisa had arrived by taxi.
"Where do you want to go first?"
"I've got Neiman Marcus taste . . ."
'Yeah, I can tell . . ."
". . . and a Wal-Mart purse, smarty pants."
o0o
The discount store was crowded with s
hoppers. Susan went to the toy section and Jo Lisa went to cosmetics. She had a bottle of lotion in her hand when she saw her sister's recent lover . . . with his wife.
Susan would be devastated. Trapped between the need to warn her sister and curiosity, Jo Lisa gave in to curiosity. She got her mirrored sunglasses out of her shoulder bag and put them on. Disguised, she pushed her cart slowly down the aisles behind them. What in the hell were they doing in Wal-Mart? He looked like a Brooks Brothers ad and she looked like something out of Vogue. Dressed in white, for God's sake.
They stopped at the toiletries. She guessed even rich people had to bathe. Though they probably didn't get the water dirty.
Paul pushed his cart with one hand and kept the other on his wife's elbow. Every now and then Jean smiled at him, but it looked false to Jo Lisa. They weren't exactly the world's most loving couple. From what she could see, she guessed that they probably didn't even sleep with each other.
Once Paul turned her way, and Jo Lisa quickly ducked behind a display of boxed gift sets, cologne, perfume, and powder, all in a fragrance guaranteed to knock your lover's socks off ... if it didn't kill you first. The musky odor was overpowering.
"Ho, ho, ho." A fat man in a Santa suit came up behind Jo Lisa and pinched her on the butt.
"If you try that again, buster, I'll send you flying through the sky without Dancer and Prancer and the rest of that motley crew. Got it?"
"Well, excu . . . use meee." He huffed off, mumbling about her lack of Christmas spirit.
When she looked up, Paul and Jean had already disappeared. Shit. She'd lost them. Still wearing her sunglasses, she hurried through the aisles to warn her sister.
Jo Lisa got trapped in housewares, and stood tapping her heels and casting aspersions on Rudolph's red nose while her sister waited in toys, unaware.
o0o
Susan had discovered the perfect gift for Jeffy. Enchanted, she lifted the blue box and turned the crank. A shiny silver dolphin popped out.
"It's the perfect gift for Jeffy."
Paul! She hugged the box to her chest, hardly daring to turn around.
"Hello, Susan."
She turned slowly, still clutching the box. "Hello, Paul."
His eyes. Oh, God, he was making love to her with his eyes.
