She twisted to glare at him; if he’d conspired with her parents behind her back, especially with their marriage in its death throes, she would never forgive him. But he looked as shocked as she felt, and he shook his head. “I swear, Ellie…” he whispered. He didn’t have to say more. She knew he hadn’t been in on this.
Sucking in a breath, she cautiously entered the room. In the crowd she spotted her parents, a few neighbors and coworkers, her brothers and sisters-in-law, college friends and—God help her—her daughters. Katie and Jessie, in dresses and high heels and nylons, grinned gleefully and lifted goblets of wine in Ellie’s direction. Jessie was only twenty. Who had served her a glass of wine?
As if that mattered. As if anything mattered besides the fact that this room was filled with her loved ones and her husband stood at her back, and faking it would now force them to perform in front of a much larger audience than she’d ever expected.
CURT HATED SURPRISES. He wasn’t a big fan of birthday parties, either. When his fiftieth birthday had approached last year, Ellie had asked if he wanted any sort of celebration, and he’d told her he’d be satisfied with his dream car. Despite its steep sticker price, she’d told him to go ahead and buy it. Big parties weren’t exactly her thing, either, especially not in the past few years.
But there she was, clutching a champagne flute full of bubbly while her mother, some of Ellie’s friends from work and Anna, her college roommate, clustered around her, all yammering at once. Anna had dated Curt’s roommate Steve for a few years, long enough for Ellie and Curt to have found each other. By the time Curt and Steve had graduated, Steve and Anna were history. She’d gone on to marry a professor of film studies at some tiny college in New Hampshire—a pedantic bore, as far as Curt was concerned, but when the two couples got together he was a dutiful host and sat politely, nodding to indicate his fascination with the guy’s lectures on Hitchcock and Godard. He’d always been so grateful to Anna for having enabled him to meet Ellie, he’d never really minded the old windbag’s pontificating.
For some reason, he was still grateful. Even though their marriage was over, it had been wonderful for a whole lot of years. He had Anna to thank for those years.
He accepted a glass of Chivas neat from the bartender who’d set up shop in one corner of the room, and watched as Ellie was ushered over to a table draped in white linen and stacked high with gifts. Next to the table was a fireplace—not burning, thank God; with all the people in the room, a fire would have turned the space into a sauna. Above the ornately carved mantel hung a curving satin banner with Happy 50th Birthday, Ellie! printed on it. Her mother’s dress was a glittery gold number, and Anna’s cocktail dress was emerald green. In her gauzy black outfit, with her austere haircut and her large, soulful eyes, Ellie seemed out of place, even though she was the guest of honor.
Jessie sidled up to Curt, beaming like the sun in August. “So, what do you think, Dad? We pulled one over on you guys, huh?”
He managed a smile. In the past year, his younger daughter had turned into a woman, all curves and sophisticated airs. She looked even older with that wineglass in her hand, but he wasn’t going to get on her case about a few sips of Chardonnay. “You and Katie hatched this thing with Nana and Poppa?”
Her grin widening, she nodded. “Grandma and Grandpa were hoping to come, too, but with Grandpa’s knee surgery, the doctors said they couldn’t fly.” Curt’s parents had retired to Phoenix a few years ago, and joint by joint, his arthritic father was being transformed into the Six Million Dollar Man. “But they sent the coolest present.”
“What?”
“You’ll see,” she said cryptically. “Actually, I think maybe Katie’s and my present is even cooler.”
“Your mother isn’t going to open all those presents in front of everybody,” Curt warned, eyeing Ellie from across the room. She was smiling bashfully, shaking her head as her mother gesticulated at the gift-wrapped packages heaped on the table. “This isn’t like the birthday parties you used to have when you were kids, where everyone tears the paper and shrieks over each little Barbie outfit.”
“What? No tearing paper and shrieking?” Jessie feigned horror. “Katie and I figured we’d truck all the presents back to the house, and Mom can open them tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Why not later tonight?”
Jessie pressed her hand to her mouth, then giggled. “Oops. Well, act surprised when Mom opens her gift from Grandma and Grandpa. They reserved a room here at the inn for you two for tonight. Katie and I put together a bag full of toiletries for you, too, so you don’t have to go home to get stuff. You can just go upstairs after dinner and spend the night. The rooms here are supposed to be très romantic.”
Oh, Christ. Just what Curt and Ellie needed—a très romantic room at the old-ee inn for the night. How much had his parents splurged on that little goodie? Rooms at inns like this didn’t come cheap, especially during leaf season.
He eyed Ellie again, admiring her graceful posture, the way she held her head, her shoulders. She could have been a dancer, he thought. Her long legs and arms, her slim hips—especially now, the new, streamlined version of Ellie, as slender as she’d been in college—and her posture all gave her the lissome stance of a prima ballerina.
If the room at the inn was already paid for…what the heck. They weren’t divorced yet. They could make the best of it. Why let his parents’ generosity go to waste?
It had been so long since he’d made love with Ellie. So long. So much anger, so much penance, the months she’d been away…He’d made his peace with the idea of divorcing her. But he wasn’t sure he’d quite accepted the prospect of never having sex with her again.
Tonight, for old time’s sake, because at this time of year his parents must have gone through an enormous effort to reserve a très romantic room for them…he could give Ellie a birthday night to remember. A night to remember him by. A farewell…whatever.
“Since you’ve spilled the beans about Grandma and Grandpa’s present, how about yours and Katie’s?”
“You want to know?” Jessie’s eyes sparkled. They were hazel, like his, and her hair was a few shades lighter than his pale brown, but as straight as her mother’s. She was going to break hearts someday, he thought. She’d probably already broken a few.
“I want to know,” he confirmed.
“It’s a DVD. We videotaped people talking about Mom, grabbed a bunch of photos and home movies and made a little documentary about Mom’s life. Katie edited it at work. They let her use the editing room there.”
“God, you two are creative.”
“Yes, Dad,” Jessie deadpanned. “We’re beyond brilliant. I wonder whose genes we have to thank for that.”
“Your mother’s,” Curt said, not having to think about it. Ellie was the imaginative one, the parent with instant access to her emotions. She was the one who’d taught the girls to view the world in a variety of ways, to see it in all its squalor and splendor. He knew his business, knew how to make a lot of money, knew how to argue and negotiate and recite case law. But Ellie knew how to paint the world with color.
One long, special night with Ellie, he thought, watching as she circled the room, pausing to chat with her sister-in-law, with Bill and Marlene from across the street, with her aunt Louisa. One night in a très romantic room with her. Where was the harm in it?
They could get back to planning their divorce tomorrow.
SHE HADN’T REALIZED HOW hard faking it would be.
All these people, so happy for her, happy that she’d enjoyed fifty years of living, happy that she’d returned home after six months in Africa with a new sense of purpose, a new way of approaching the world. Happy that she was no longer flailing, no longer brooding and moping and staggering around, wallowing in so much grief people were afraid to approach her.
Everyone was so happy that she and Curt had emerged from the far side of hell and were still together.
“…And I was saying, my God, how can
she be fifty? She looks younger than me!”
“…Now, tell me, Katie, is Manhattan full of eligible bachelors?”
“…I always say, we shouldn’t just get together for sad occasions. When was the last time I saw you? Whose funeral? We need more parties….”
Voices churned around her in an atonal chorus. She sipped her champagne, remembering much too vividly that the funeral where she’d last seen her aunt Louisa had been Peter’s. One more sip and she realized she hated champagne. She realized, as well, that there was no tactful way for her to extricate herself from the group of well-wishers gathered around her. Finally, her smile causing her cheeks to cramp, she said, “I’ll be right back,” and made a break for the bar.
The bartender had three bottles of beer lined up on display, one premium, one regular and one light. She still missed the thick, sour beer she’d grown accustomed to in Kumasi. American beers tasted bland in comparison. She asked for a glass of red wine.
“For the lady of the hour,” the bartender said, then winked. He was a young fellow with a thick mustache and broad shoulders, and for a moment she wondered whether that wink meant he was flirting with her. She had her wedding ring on, and if he knew she was the birthday girl, he also undoubtedly knew she was here with her husband, her parents and her daughters. Besides which, she was fifty years old. Why would a buff stud like him be flirting with her?
She felt a hand on her shoulder, warm and familiar, almost possessive. “How are you doing?” she asked Curt, not meeting his eyes. “Holding up okay?”
“Yeah.” He squeezed her shoulder gently, then released her and gave the bartender a brisk nod, as if to say, Save your moves for someone else. She’s mine.
For tonight, for as long as this party lasted and they had to keep faking it, she was indeed his. If he felt the need to signal the bartender by putting his arm around Ellie, maybe she hadn’t been crazy to think the young man had been coming on to her.
“Have you checked out your presents?” Curt asked as he led her away from the bar. His glass held a golden liquid—Scotch, she assumed. She clasped the stem of her wine goblet and shook her head to dismiss a waiter approaching with a tray of canapés.
“My mother gave me a quick tour of the packages. What am I going to do with all that stuff?”
“Write a lot of thank-you notes,” he suggested. “I’ve got to give you a heads-up, Ellie. If you’re annoyed at your parents for organizing this bash with the girls, you’ll be even more annoyed at my parents for their gift.”
Curiosity twitched awake inside her. “What did they give me?”
Curt looked pained. “A night here at the inn, with me. In a room that, according to Jessie, is très romantic.”
She grimaced. She and Curt had learned to share their house without arguing, without sniping—basically without engaging each other any more than they had to. But there was nothing romantic about the Dutch Colonial they’d lived in for more than twenty years. Nostalgia dwelled within the walls, memories marked each room, but all the romance that had once electrified the place must have escaped through the cracks and screen windows, because not a hint of it remained inside the house.
“We can stay in the room a couple of hours and then sneak home,” she suggested.
“The girls are spending the night at the house. They’d know if we came home.”
“Then we could tell them we came home because we wanted to spend a little more time with them before they went back to college and New York.”
He scowled and shook his head. “The girls would be really pissed if we did that. They think my parents are the coolest people in the world for booking this room for us.”
“All right.” She sighed. “We’ll get through it.” After all, it was her birthday. Why shouldn’t she spend the night in a lovely room at a lovely inn with the man she was planning to divorce?
She’d survived worse. She could survive a night at a romantic inn with Curt.
TWO
THE ROOM WAS DEFINITELY romantic. Large and square, it featured peach-hued walls with white wainscoting, two enormous windows overlooking the field behind the inn, a rustic armoire with a pair of plush white bathrobes hanging inside it, a fireplace with split wood piled on the grate, requiring only the strike of a match to set it burning, an apparently antique cabinet that deftly concealed all the room’s twenty-first century items—television, DVD player, minibar—and a queen-size brass bed covered with a quilt and embroidered pillows that matched the drapes. The room smelled faintly of vanilla, and a decanter of port and two glasses stood on a slightly tarnished silver tray on the dresser.
Curt followed Ellie into the room. He shut the door, tossed the old-fashioned brass key on the dresser and tugged at the knot of his tie. He looked exhausted.
Ellie stepped out of her shoes, then removed her earrings and necklace and dropped them onto the dresser. She carried the tote full of toiletries the girls had given her into the bathroom. Returning to the bedroom, she crossed to one of the windows and peered out into the darkness. She saw nothing but her ghostly reflection in the glass. With a sigh, she released the swags on the drapes and let them fall shut.
“It’s a very nice room,” she said without facing Curt. She knew he must be feeling as uncomfortable as she was, and it broke her heart to think that after all these years they could feel so ill at ease with each other. It was one thing to be together in the house they’d shared for so long, but quite another to find themselves trapped in this unbearably romantic room when romantic was the last word to describe how they felt about each other.
“If you want,” he addressed her back, “we can stay here for a little while and then go home. Just because my parents got this crazy idea about what to give you for your birthday doesn’t mean you have to keep it. Presents can be returned.”
“We already discussed this,” she reminded him. “If we go home, the girls will be there.”
“And we’ll tell them what we’re doing. No law says we have to wait until Thanksgiving.”
But Thanks giving was whats he and Curt had planned on. It had been an arbitrary deadline for Ellie, a date that gave her time to figure out just how to break the news to Katie and Jessie. Tonight—the second weekend in October—she wasn’t ready yet.
Maybe Curt wanted to go home. Maybe the prospect of spending the night at the inn with her was so appalling he would rather face his daughters than share that beautiful brass bed with her for a night.
Fine, then. He could go home without her and she could have the room to herself. While he was home, he could break the news to the girls and spare Ellie the trauma. Now, that would be a birthday present she’d appreciate.
Turning, she scrutinized his face. She’d known him long enough to be able to read his thoughts in his eyes, in the curve of his mouth. No, he didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to face the girls any more than she did.
He confirmed her guess by moving to the armoire and arranging his jacket on an empty hanger. Then he rolled up his sleeves and twisted his head left and right to loosen the muscles in his neck. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s have some port.” His tone was so brusque he might as well have said, Let’s get this over with.
She used to love coming home from parties with Curt. Sometimes they’d have port, sometimes water, sometimes sloppy bowls of ice cream drizzled with chocolate syrup, and they’d share all the gossip they’d picked up that evening. She’d tell him that Lois had decided to go ahead with the cochlear implant surgery for her son, and he’d inform her that Tom had bragged about buying a boat, but Lorraine had said Tom was nuts and they could barely afford the Audi he’d just bought. Ellie and Curt would laugh and compare notes, click their tongues over the challenges confronting their friends and feel just a bit smug about their own contentment.
Curt filled the two crystal glasses with port and handed one to her. Then he settled into the wingback chair near the fireplace. Ellie’s choices for sitting were a wooden rocking chair and the bed. She op
ted for the bed, propping a few pillows up behind her shoulders and stretching out her legs.
To her surprise, Curt held his glass up in a toast. “To you, Ellie. Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.” As weary as he looked, his hazel eyes still radiated sparks of silver-and-gold light. He was a handsome man, she thought, as lean and fit as the day she’d met him. His tawny hair might be fading to gray, but it was thick and wavy. The lines framing his eyes had deepened, but his smile still dazzled.
If only they could turn back the clock, flip backward through the pages of the calendar, return to a time when everything was good between them. If only he hadn’t done what he’d done, if only she hadn’t done what she’d done. If only their family was still whole. If only…
“The girls sure clean up nicely,” he commented.
Ellie was grateful to him for dragging her mind away from painful if-onlys. “Where did Katie get that dress?” she wondered aloud. “I hope she doesn’t wear it on the streets of New York. She’ll get attacked.”
“It was a little skimpy,” Curt concurred. “Thank God we made her enroll in that self-defense course in high school. She’ll be able to fight off the creeps.”
“I hope so. A gorgeous young woman, all by herself in Manhattan…”
“She’s got two roommates,” Curt reminded her. “And she’s smart. I trust her to take care of herself.”
Ellie sipped her port to keep from retorting that trust came more easily to Curt than to her because no one had broken his trust the way he’d broken hers. She had her own sins to answer for, but she’d never betrayed him.
Discussing all that would make sharing this room for the night impossible, so she steered her thoughts back to their daughters. “Jessie looked amazing, too. I didn’t know she could walk in high heels. All she ever wears are those rubber flip-flops.”
Hope Street: Hope StreetThe Marriage Bed Page 2
