Tied to the Tracks

by Rosina Lippi

  “It’s going to be an interesting discussion,” Tony said. “But it will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m hungry. Anybody want to go out while we can still get dinner someplace?”

  “Thomasina’s,” said Angie, bolting up from her chair.

  “Thomasina’s stops serving at ten,” Tony said, looking at her with some alarm. “It’s quarter after.”

  Angie closed her eyes. “Tony, this is going to sound so rude, but could you go away? I need to talk to Rivera. Right now.”

  “ ’S okay,” he said, pushing back from the table. “I’ll head on down to the Hound Dog and dine on Vienna Sausages.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Too late,” Angie said. And to Rivera: “I’m really sorry, I wanted to tell you about this before. Caroline is back.”

  Rivera’s face lit up, with excitement and with hope.

  Tony looked at her with a new understanding. He said, “Oh.”

  The doorbell rang again, and Angie went to get it.

  The first thing to be thankful for, John realized when he got to Thomasina’s just before six, was the fact that the private room they had reserved for the rehearsal dinner really was private, isolated on the second floor, above the main dining room. The second good thing was the fact that Rob and Kai were right behind him, because otherwise he might have bolted when he saw Lucy Ogilvie already established at a table, deep in conversation with Harriet Darling.

  John took a deep breath and raised his voice in what he hoped was friendly greeting. “Mama, don’t you look pretty this evening.”

  She got up and came toward her sons, both hands outstretched so that the jewels on them caught light and shot it out again. “Now, boys,” she said, “how could I stay away, with Caroline going to all that trouble to make sure I was invited?” She went up on tiptoe to kiss John on the cheek, and whispered in his ear.

  “Just say the word, sugar, and I’ll go, if you really want me to. But I do hope you’ll let me stay for all the fun.”

  This was pure Lucy, endearing and infuriating all at once, and John laughed. He said, “Of course you have to stay, Mama. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Liar.” She winked at him and hooked arms with Rob and Kai. “Come on, children, let’s you and me go find a drink. Here come the rest of the Rose girls, and we don’t want to be in the way, do we?”

  John took a deep, steadying breath and turned just in time to greet the four elder Rose girls as they came up the stairs, all of them looking slightly frazzled. Eunice took his hands and kissed his cheek and said, “I hope you don’t mind, John, but our husbands are all over at the hospital playing poker with Tab.”

  “What Eunice is trying not to say,” Connie added, throwing her sister a fierce look, “is that we have an uprising on our hands. The husbands smell trouble and they have closed ranks because they don’t want any part of it.”

  John tried to look surprised, but knew he had failed, because Pearl was scowling at him. “Oh, sure. Go ahead and laugh, but I warn you, worse is to come. Everybody is going crazy, your fiancée included.”

  She marched off with Eunice trailing after her; Connie headed toward Kai, which might be a disaster in the making but there was nothing John could do about it just now, because Caroline was coming up the stairs with her mother on one side and Father Bruce on the other.

  She looked up and caught John’s eye and smiled, a little tentatively, a little slowly, but what that might mean, he had no idea. What he did know with complete surety was that he didn’t want to be here, and that she didn’t, either. John went forward and kissed Caroline on the cheek without saying anything at all, and then he took Miss Junie by the hands and kissed her, too.

  She regarded him for a moment with her solemn, gray-blue gaze and then put her hands on his face, gently, as though he were one of her grandsons and in need of comfort. “My poor baby,” she crooned. “You poor, poor man. I am so sorry, I truly am. Lucy, darling, come on over here and give me a kiss. I want you to sit right next to me, will you? I’ll need your support through this.”

  It was Harriet who started it, by simple virtue of the fact that she was always the sister to say out loud what the others were thinking. No sooner had the ten of them sat down at the elaborately set table than Harriet popped up again. “I don’t care,” she said to Pearl in a harsh whisper. And then, tugging at the jacket of her suit, she cleared her throat. “We all know why we’re here. I say forget the food and let’s get the talk over with. Caroline, John, tell us what’s going on before I lose my mind and start throwing things. Mama, don’t look at me that way. I know it’s not ladylike, but really.” And Harriet sat down again, picked up her wineglass, and put it down hastily when she realized it was still empty.

  Caroline caught John’s gaze and shook her head slightly. Her eyes were bright and her color high, and John was struck by how pretty she looked.

  “Go ahead, Caroline Mae,” said Father Bruce, touching her elbow. “It’s best to be direct in matters like these.”

  “Yes, dear,” said Miss Junie. “Go ahead.”

  “Thank you,” Caroline said, floating along on a cushion of flawless manners. John wondered if she realized that there was a muscle twitching in her cheek. She said: “I want you all to know that I am sorry for my behavior this past week. I realize I have caused you considerable worry and trouble.”

  She paused, looked at John, and smiled a little. “John, I don’t know if I can ever explain to you how much your patience and understanding has helped me through this difficult decision.” Then she took a very deep breath and said, “I have spoken to Mama and Father Bruce about this, and John knows some of it. Now I want y’all to know that none of this has anything to do with him. He’s not at fault, in any way. I want y’all to accept that, and I expect you to make other people accept it, too. Do you understand me, Harriet?”

  “Well, of course I do,” Harriet said peevishly. “Go on, would you, sugar?”

  Caroline nodded. “What I have to tell you is this: I am resigning my position at the university effective immediately. I don’t like being a professor. I never did. I haven’t had any real interest in the research I do for a long time, and I’m only a mediocre teacher.”

  “Why, that’s not—” Connie began, and stopped dead because her mother was sending her a disapproving look. John assumed his own expression was a lot like the ones he was seeing around the table, disbelief and shock and confusion. Kai was the only person who seemed unfazed, and she had tilted her head to one side in a way that meant she was waiting for more data to process.

  The things that ran through John’s mind were disjointed, disturbing, but unstoppable: That’s the last thing I expected; and This will make a mess of the fall schedule; and Patty-Cake will implode; and finally, the realization that he would miss Caroline, who had been a friend first, and someone he liked working with.

  “Why, baby,” Eunice said very slowly, as she might speak to someone who has had a blow to the head. “That’s your business. Nobody’s going to think any less of you if you decide you don’t want to work. John can support you.” She sent him a questioning glance, which he studiously overlooked.

  “I’m not finished,” Caroline said sharply. Connie and Pearl were just across from John, and he saw the alarm in their faces. His own mother was all glittering eyes. Caroline said, “I am going to be moving away from Ogilvie, and I won’t be coming back—”

  “Oh, Lord,” said Connie, closing her eyes. “You’re going into the convent, aren’t you. I knew it.”

  “—except for visits now and then,” Caroline finished, shooting Connie an exasperated look. “No, I am not going into the convent. I wouldn’t make a very good nun, Father Bruce and I are agreed on that, aren’t we?”

  She turned to her uncle and he bobbed his head. “No convent for our Caroline,” he said.

  “Well, color me confused,” Harriet said, throwing up her hands. “You don’t want to be a professor, you don’t want to go into the c
onvent, you don’t want to live in Ogilvie—” She broke off and turned toward John.

  “John won’t be going with me,” Caroline said, before Harriet could ask the question.

  “Are we talking about a long-distance marriage?” Connie asked, her color rising along with her voice.

  “No,” Caroline said. She turned to her mother as if to ask for help, but Harriet was on her feet.

  “So the wedding is off! I knew it. How could you lie to us, Caroline? Now we’ll have to face all those people tomorrow and we’ll never live it down—”

  “Now, Harriet, hush.” Miss Junie’s voice, sharp and sure, cut Harriet off as neatly as a chainsaw. “You have to let your sister finish.”

  “I don’t think I care to hear any more,” Harriet said with all the defiance she could muster. Then she crossed her arms and sat down again.

  Caroline said, “I’m hoping we can turn the wedding into a going-away party, but there’s something else I’ve got to say before we talk about that. And, please, if you love me, don’t interrupt.

  “I’ve been pretending for all these years that I’m something that I’m not. I’m not like y’all. I wouldn’t be happy doing what y’all do, career and kids and softball on Friday nights, Junior League, the Jubilee committee. If I try to make myself fit into that mold, I’ll be miserable, and I’ll make John miserable.”

  “But John loves you!” Pearl wailed, and burst into noisy tears. Caroline’s own face was bright red and her eyes were swimming, but she was resolute and sure and she didn’t flinch, answering questions that came flying at her with tremendous calm until her mother got the upper hand by raising her voice.

  “Girls!” Miss Junie said sharply. “Where are your manners?”

  Caroline leaned down and pressed a kiss to her mother’s forehead. Then she straightened and smiled. She said, “I’m very happy to tell y’all that I’ve enrolled in the two-year program at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, New York, and I’ll be moving up there as soon as I can pack my things. I am going to be a chef.”

  When the doorbell rang, Angie went to let John in.

  “You look like you just ran a marathon,” she said, and then he pulled her up against him and kissed her, hard and quick, and let her go so suddenly that she nearly lost her balance.

  “That’s just about how I feel,” he agreed.

  From the kitchen Tony called, “Anybody know where the van keys went?”

  John took Angie by the wrist and pulled her toward the door. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  They circled the house and headed down toward the river, Angie asking questions and John ignoring them until they were almost to the bank. John flung himself down on the grass, and she followed him, ill at ease, reluctant. She looked toward the house. There was a light burning in Rivera’s window.

  “You won’t believe it,” John said. “I still don’t believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  He was staring into the sky, bright with stars and a moon that was close to full. “The main points: Caroline called off the wedding. She’s resigning her faculty position and she’s leaving Ogilvie for good. All because she realized, at the age of thirty-five, that what she really wants is to be a chef.”

  Angie sat very still, trying to string the words he had produced into something recognizable. “A chef?”

  “She’s going to cooking school.”

  “Oh.”

  “My reaction pretty much exactly,” John said.

  “So,” Angie said, “as far as anybody knows, this is all her decision and you’re—what? Deserted and heartbroken?”

  He frowned. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, but yeah, I suppose that’s the way this will play.”

  Angie didn’t need to ask how that sat with him, because it was clear he didn’t know himself. She could see him running the scenario through in his head. Would he mind, if all of Ogilvie thought Caroline Rose had dumped him? The answer to that, she was pretty sure, had to do with Caroline’s reasons. Or at least what people believed about her reasons.

  John said. “You should have seen the look on Harriet’s face. If Caroline had announced she was a closet Hare Krishna and was moving to a commune in Siberia, I don’t think she could have been more shocked. I just came from a three-hour Rose family discussion that had to be heard to be believed.” He turned his head toward her abruptly.

  “You spent a lot of time with Caroline in the last weeks. Did you have any inkling of this?”

  “That Caroline wanted to give up everything to go to cooking school?” Angie shook her head. “Not the first clue. Did they try to talk her out of it?”

  “Oh, yeah. Harriet and Pearl leading the charge, Eunice hanging back like the voice of reason she has always been, Caroline trying to make everybody happy and doing just the opposite.”

  “And Miss Junie?”

  He shrugged. “Miss Junie did what she always does. To anybody who doesn’t know how she works, it looks like she’s staying neutral. But believe me, if she wanted to put a stop to the discussion, she could do it. Harriet and Pearl will do her fighting for her, and the sad thing is, none of them really see that for what it is.”

  “But the wedding is off?”

  He nodded. Angie watched his eyes as he talked about what was going to happen. Caroline had wanted to call all the wedding guests and tell them that what they’d be attending tomorrow would be a going-away party instead of a marriage ceremony; Harriet, Connie, and Pearl had lobbied for a tactical delay. If she spent one more night thinking through the long-term repercussions of her choices, they would surrender their worries and doubts and support her decision. What they were hoping, John said, was that she would come to her senses overnight and wake up eager to get into her wedding dress.

  “And they all just assumed you’d go along with whatever she decided, one way or the other?”

  His mouth jerked at the corner. “Kai pointed that out, but nobody listened. Later Caroline took me aside and said I didn’t need to worry, there would be no more changes to her plans, no matter what her sisters were hoping for.”

  John put back his head and laughed up into the sky. “I am such an idiot,” he said. He sounded relieved and bitter and confused; he sounded angry. He was blaming himself, but for what? How badly he had misread Caroline? Or maybe he realized, on some level, that she hadn’t been telling the whole truth.

  “You’re not the idiot,” Angie said. “Caroline lied to you.”

  He was looking at her, silent, appraising. “It takes two to lie, Marge. One to lie, and one to listen.”

  “If you’re going to start quoting Homer Simpson, I’ll concede right now.” Angie’s voice came sharp and unpleasant, and she got up to move away but he caught her by the shirttail.

  “Hey,” John said softly. “Hey. Settle down.”

  She made herself do just that. She lay down next to him on the cool grass and took stock. His arms were solid and strong around her, his breathing was even. Her choices were to stay like this and let him come to a peaceful place with the situation Caroline had handed him, or she could go find Rivera and get the rest of the story. Because she had come to the end of her own patience.

  He was saying, “So here’s the deal. I have to show up tomorrow at Old Roses at ten o’clock. Caroline asked me to stand there with her and her family when she makes her announcement.”

  “Where is she now?” Angie asked.

  He turned his head to her. “She went back to Old Roses. Where else would she be?”

  Angie sat up and looked toward Ivy House. The screened porch was dark, but the door to the kitchen was open, a perfect rectangle of blinding white light, and framed in its middle was Caroline.

  John said, “Or maybe not. What is she doing here?”

  It wasn’t really a question, and Angie said nothing at all. They watched two tall, slender figures moving past the rectangle of light, forward and back, like uncertain dancers; like lovers circling each other. They never
touched, and that somehow made it all the more clear that they meant to, but could not quite.

  The whole world seemed to have gone very still. Beside her, Angie could almost feel John’s heart beating. He said, “Angie. Why is she here?”

  “You should ask her that,” Angie said, and felt his hand on her arm, his grip strong and unrelenting.

  “Angie.”

  “She didn’t tell you the whole truth, John. All that stuff about wanting to quit academics and leave Ogilvie and become a chef, I don’t doubt that’s all true, but she left out the part where she fell in love with somebody else.”