by Bryce, Megan
Delia looked over her shoulder. Looked at the expression of innocence and youth on her face, the glimmer of knowledge in her eyes. Her black hair blending into blond. Her mouth was beginning to smile, and while Delia was no Leonardo, she hoped you could see something in that smile. Hoped you could see hope and happiness. Could see past, present, and future in her expression.
Delia had hidden parts of Augusta and Gus in the painting. In locks of her hair. In the reflection of her eyes. Summer was parts of all three and maybe she’d be able to see that in years to come. That she didn’t have to leave everything behind to become a new her.
Delia had signed it “Wildfire”.
Jack took the painting, running his thumb lightly over her signature.
Summer hugged Delia tight, whispering, “Thank you.” She pulled back. “And I really want to see Jack’s.”
Delia shook her head. “No, you don’t. He’s not wearing any pants.”
“Eww!”
“Kidding.” At Jack’s look, she said again, “I’m kidding.”
The painted one had pants. She had a few sketches of him where he wasn’t.
The movers finally loaded the last box, the painting packed carefully inside a box inside a box inside a box.
Summer checked every room, every cupboard. She sat down on the floor in her empty bedroom, saying goodbye to her first apartment.
Jack leaned in the doorway watching her. “I’ll call you every week.”
Summer shook her head. “Not like Mother. We’ll call when we have something to share. We’ll call when we think of each other.”
He smiled. “I’ll try to limit it to once a week.”
Summer stood, hugging him. “I’ll come home for spring break.”
“You’ll be in Cancún or Puerto Vallarta. I’m waiting for the bill.”
“I’ll come home for summer then.”
Delia said from the other room, “I’ve never been to Cancún. Or Puerto Vallarta.”
Summer whispered, “You should take her.”
“I’m still trying to get her to Maine.”
Summer laughed, then slowly stopped smiling. “I thought Mother would come say goodbye.”
“Mother doesn’t like change. She’ll come around.”
Summer nodded, pulling away from him. “It’s okay, Jack. I’ve always had you when Mother couldn’t accept that things had changed.” She pushed him toward Delia. “And now that I’m grown, you can get on with your own life.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing, Summer.”
They drove her to the airport, parking and walking in with her despite her protests. Jack would have waited with her at the gate if he could have but settled for finding a vantage of the security line to watch her go through.
Catherine was waiting for them, clutching a small overnight bag and waving other travelers into the line.
Summer stopped when she saw her mother. “You came to say goodbye.”
Catherine adjusted her bag. “No. I’m taking my daughter to college.” She glanced at Jack and Delia. “I’m taking Summer to Oklahoma. I need to see where you’re going to be living for the next few years. And I thought getting out of Boston would be good for me as well. At least for a little while.”
Summer hadn’t let Jack come. She’d wanted to do it herself. But she smiled at her mother.
Jack said, “You haven’t flown in a few years. Things are different now.”
Catherine looked at the line snaking toward the metal detectors. “I can see that. Let’s get in line before it gets any longer.”
Jack said, “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. I’ll see when I get there.”
Jack nodded. “Let me know.”
Catherine got in line and Summer gave Jack one more hug. She grinned at him, then hopped back to her mother.
Delia took Jack’s hand and said, “We’re still going to wait here until she gets through security, aren’t we?”
Jack nodded, only slightly consoled that Mother was going with Summer. He said, “Is she going to be okay?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t know that.”
Delia nodded. “Yes, I do. She’ll be okay as any of us. And she’ll come back if she’s not.”
Jack’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID, then answered. “Did you forget something?”
He listened, then handed Delia the phone. He said grumpily, “It’s for you.”
Delia put the phone to her ear and Summer said, “He’s making airport security nervous. Take him away and distract him for a few hours.”
Delia smiled at Jack. “Can do. Text him when you’re settled so I know I can stop.”
“Don’t ever stop, Delia. He’s better with your distractions. He’s happier with you.”
Delia hung up and tugged on his hand, pulling him away from Summer. Pulling him away from nervous airport security.
She said, “Time to go. But don’t worry, I’ve got a few ideas on how we can keep busy. And they are all wrong. Very, very wrong.”
He let her pull him out of the airport, toward the car. “You can show me my painting.”
“Okay.”
“You can show me all my paintings,” he said and she laughed.
“You’ll have to torture them out of me.”
He smiled and said, “You’re right. That does sound very, very wrong.”
Fifteen
Delia had gone to console Rick, the English major barista, but he’d simply handed her a three-dollar coffee and said, “Oklahoma?”
Tomorrow, she’d get a one-dollar coffee.
Or maybe she could talk Jack into requisitioning a Keurig.
She blew a raspberry at herself when she realized he’d never go for it.
She sat and sipped, glancing at the clock a few times, waiting until she could go up and say good morning to Jack, dressed this time, and think about finishing his ceiling.
Maybe see how he felt about Delia doing the dining room ceiling while Catherine was in Oklahoma.
Delia blinked when a beautiful, poised bitch slid into the seat across from her.
Delia said, “I’m sorry, I can’t remember your name.”
The smile on the woman’s face didn’t budge. “Diane. And you’re Delia?”
Delia nodded.
Diane said, “I’ve heard a lot about you from Catherine Bradlee.”
Delia smiled. “I bet.”
“You know Jack’s mother?”
“I’ve met her.”
“A wonderful woman. She’s had her share of tragedy.” Diane looked around the busy shop and said, “She doesn’t deserve any more.”
“Losing two husbands is enough for anyone.”
Diane looked back at her. “You don’t even know who Jack is, do you? He’s a Cabot. His mother is a Lowell. And that’s not even taking into account who she’s rumored to be. Who her father really was.”
Delia cocked her head, interested despite herself at some hint of a scandal. A scandal involving Catherine Lowell Cabot Bradlee? She couldn’t believe it.
“Who? Oh, never mind. I wouldn’t recognize the name anyway. I don’t know who the Lowells and Cabots and Bradlees are.”
“Exactly. You don’t know anything. You don’t know anybody. Jack can play with you all he wants but he knows he can’t have you. Jack always does what’s right.”
Delia’s heart froze. Jack always did what was good and right. No matter the personal cost. Delia knew that.
Diane said, “He’ll go into politics. Once he has enough money, enough contacts, he’ll move onto the board and then run for governor. Or the Senate. The presidency. It’s in his blood. It would be a tragedy if he lost all that because of you.”
The president? Of the United States?
And Delia could see it. Absolutely. Who wouldn’t vote for Jack? She hated everything about him– his money, his breeding, his beauty. Hated it and loved it, and she would vote for him. He’d always do what was right. He’d d
o what was hard and right.
Diane said, “He won’t be able to keep you. He can’t marry you; this engagement is bad enough. He needs a wife with money and connections herself to make it all the way. And as a mistress?” She shook her head. “Too much scandal for a perfect man.”
Delia had always known Jack wasn’t for keeping. She’d been seduced by the fire and it didn’t matter if they turned into ash or into steel when they emerged from the other side.
She couldn’t keep him. She hadn’t known that’s what she would want until some bitch told her she couldn’t have it.
Delia said, “I don’t know anything about Jack being president. I’ll have to ask him about it sometime. I don’t know anything about you, Diane. Except that you’re a bitch and we hate you. I’ll let Jack know you stopped by.”
Diane’s smile never changed. She stood and said, “Goodbye, Delia,” as if all she wanted was someone to remind Jack about his future.
Delia watched her walk away, watched heads turn in her direction, even Rick’s.
Delia waited until Diane was good and gone, and then made her way slowly to Jack’s office. Thinking about who he was, who she was.
Thinking about who he could be. Thinking about who she would never be.
When she got to the office, he wasn’t there. In a meeting, of course, since she hadn’t seen him getting coffee.
She walked to his desk and stared at nothing, since there was nothing to look at. His kitchen at home was the same. Nothing on the counters, everything put away and in its place.
She turned, resting against his desk and looking at her painting of him.
He’d hung it across from his desk, away from the windows, away from sunlight. She’d made fun of him for it because who wants to stare at themself all day long.
But he’d said, “I don’t see me when I look at it. I see you looking at me.”
It was him in this chair, leaning back and looking up. Her view of him these last few months and she wished she was thoroughly sick of it because no one should look like that.
She wasn’t sick of it, though. Not even close. Just the painting of him made her burn, made her want to track him down and finally try out that shower of his.
Delia looked at her Jack and knew Diane hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. Delia couldn’t keep him. She wanted to.
She’d thought that the fire was the enemy. That it was what they had to conquer.
She hadn’t realized that even if they’d made it through that trial there would be something else.
Her and Jack together? They didn’t make sense. They didn’t want the same things, come from the same place, weren’t even headed the same direction.
The president of the United States?
She laughed hopelessly, closing her eyes to the truth of him, the truth of her. Closed her eyes to what she saw in that painting.
She’d thought she’d painted the Master of the Universe. But it was a lock of her hair twined around his finger. Her reflection in his eyes.
No wonder Jack didn’t mind looking at himself. He was looking at love.
Not just fire, but love.
Reluctant adoration.
She should have called it Master of her Universe.
He was the sun her tiny moon yearned to orbit, knowing all the while that she just wasn’t enough.
He was Important. Goddammit, he was perfect.
She would never be enough.
She loved him. And it didn’t change anything.
You didn’t marry the help. Although the help wasn’t all that interested in marriage.
You didn’t commit to the help. You didn’t share your life with the help. You didn’t wake up next to the help every morning and give her your children.
You kept the help on the side and married someone like Diane Evans.
And that just made her feel bad for Jack.
If that had been the future staring her in the face, she would have grabbed the first redhead she came to as well. Would have bought a little red convertible and hid in Maine until the world forgot all about her.
That’s what Jack had tried to do.
If only they’d gone to Maine.
But she knew that one day Jack would remember what he had to do. And then he’d do it. And she would be left spinning out in the dark void. Not ash this time. Steel.
One half of steel. Cold, lonely steel with not even the comfort of nothingness to help heal her. It wouldn’t be like with Pierre. Nothing but a tattoo to remind her.
This time all there would be was loneliness.
Delia Woodson got rip-roaring drunk. The rip-roaringest drunk she’d ever been.
She didn’t go to the bar. This wasn’t a social drink. This was medicinal. This was self-medicating.
She got a case of beer and locked herself in her empty apartment.
And it wasn’t light beer, either.
Because drunk was what you got when you’d found the one. When your half finally became whole.
Drunk was what you got when you couldn’t keep him.
Four hours later, Jack banged on the door.
“Delia? Are you in there?”
She shouted, “No.”
She pushed herself off the living room floor and plastered herself against the door. She said, “Oh, Jack. I had a good plan. And then you came along and you just wouldn’t leave me alone, and now I want you. I want more of you than I can ever have. I won’t ever have enough of you.”
His voice was strong and clear, as if he was pressed up on the other side of the door. “You already have me, Delia. You can have as much as you want.”
“I can’t keep you.” Her heart squeezed tight because that was what she wanted. “You’ll want to go into politics. It’s what men like you do.”
“Men like me?”
“It’s in your blood.”
There was a long pause. “My blood?”
“You’re a Lowell and a Cabot, and okay, I don’t really know who those people are, but I know they don’t get involved with women who grew up in communes. Everyone knows that, Jack.”
“Then everyone’s wrong. I’m right; about us, I’m right.”
“You’re always right, Jack. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He’d always do what was right. And he would eventually have to settle down with someone proper.
Delia had never been described as proper. She wasn’t even sure she would recognize it when she saw it.
“Delia, we’re right. So wrong it’s right. Open the door.”
She shook her head even though he couldn’t see it. “I ran into Diane Evans this morning.”
His voice went flat. “You’re kidding me. She’s what this is about? Open this door, Delia. Right now.”
Delia turned the lock, stepping back when he pushed the door in. His hair was standing straight up, his tie crooked.
She said, “What happened to you?”
“What happened to me? I’ve been searching for you for hours. When you didn’t show up at work at your usual late hour, I called home. I checked the coffee shop. I drove home just in case you’d slipped in the shower and couldn’t get to the phone. Ms. Charles is right now calling around to hospitals trying to find your broken, lifeless body.” He cursed, pulling out his phone and sending a quick text.
Delia stared at his hair, distracted by the proof of his agitation.
He ran his eyes down her body, checking that it was indeed unbroken, then glanced at the beer cans littering the floor. He said, “And you were here. Getting drunk.”
“I had a rough morning.”
“You had a rough morning?”
“I was a couple hours late, Jack. You think maybe you overreacted?”
He folded his arms, glowering down at her, and her heart pitter-pattered. She stopped herself from wrapping herself around him, from apologizing, from dragging him down to the floor and pretending he was everything she needed in this world.
And then she wrapped her arms around him
as best she could with his arms still folded and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I was worried.”
“What if I’d just gone shopping?”
“Without me?”
She smiled, shaking her head. “You’re right. How silly of me. I should have called.”
He unfolded his arms and pulled her tight against him. And she’d been right, she didn’t need anything else. Didn’t need air to breathe when she was with him.
Jack said, “Diane Evans is a viper. A slick-tongued snake and you shouldn’t listen to anything she says.”
“But she didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
“Nothing she said was true.”
“You’re not a Cabot? You’re not going to go into politics?”
“I’m Jack, that’s all I am. And I have no interest, plans, or desire to go into politics.”
“You don’t want to be president?”
He laughed. “Is that what she said?”
Delia pulled back to look in his face, and to get a good deep breath. She might need a little air after all. “I’d vote for you.”
“Thank you, Delia. But I don’t want to be president.”
“You don’t need to run the world, your corner of it is enough?”
“Yes.”
“But what if you decide you do want that?”
He took a deep breath, closing the front door with his foot. “I don’t. I won’t. And even if I did, what does that have to do with us?”
“You can’t be president with a woman like me. You’d need someone with connections, with money.”
“Do me a favor, Delia. Don’t quote Diane Evans at me. It makes my skin crawl.”
“Tell me what she said wasn’t true.”
“We’ve had a first lady who held séances and another who was an actress. The country would survive a hippie artist who didn’t care who anyone’s parents were.”
“And you think you could even get close to the presidency with a hippie girlfriend? I’ve been married once before. I’m not sure I’d want to do it again.”
“You weren’t sure you wanted the fire to burn you up again and you were wrong.”
She didn’t know if she’d been wrong. She was still waiting for it to burn out.
Jack didn’t wait for her to agree with him, he already knew he was right. “And, again, I don’t want to be president. You can take it as truth that anything Diane Evans says is a lie and meant to get her something she wants.”
