“Burn it,” Monica said. Her tone could have lit the match.
“Wait,” Max said. “It wouldn’t hurt to take a look. There might be something there, some kind of memory. I know what it’s like to have nothing left from childhood. Everything from my life did burn.”
“I’m sorry,” Monica said, chagrined. “That was a thoughtless thing for me to say.”
Max waved her off. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is, you have a chance, however slim it might be, to find something. Have something.”
“The two of you could be on a train within the hour and back in time for dinner.”
“You’ll go with me?” Monica said.
Of course he would. And he said as much.
Monica turned to Bentworth. “Do I need anything? A key or something?”
“I’ll make a phone call and tell the company you’re on your way. I’ll instruct them to leave the door unlocked rather than have someone meet you there, so you can have your privacy.”
There was something about Bentworth’s assumptions, lumping them together as one, each an equal part in the sharing of privacy, that loosened a stony resolve within Max. Never had he been so intimately connected with another person, let alone a woman. He found his hand reaching for hers in clear disobedience of his sleepless promises not to touch her again. But here, within the formality of a banker’s office, surely he could bridge the distance between them. She closed her fingers over his, anchoring him in every way.
Bentworth opened his top desk drawer, producing a long, narrow box, which he unlocked with a little key.
“We’ll call this official bank business,” he said, producing a few crisp bills. “To cover your train fare.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Max said, standing. “I’ll cover it.”
“I love a train,” Monica said as they were clearing the station. “The idea that you’re going somewhere—anywhere. Think about it. For a few dollars, a train can take you to a whole new life.”
“Indeed,” Max said. “As one has for me numerous times.”
She sighed. “I guess it’s not as exciting for you, then. Not that this is exciting. Just Baltimore. A person can go to Baltimore any old day.”
“You can go anywhere you want. You’re young, healthy, fabulously wealthy. Pick someplace.”
She played along. “Colorado.”
They were sitting across from each other, and he leaned back as if to get a better look. “I don’t know; you don’t seem the cowgirl type.”
“You’re probably right. St. Louis?”
He laughed. “You can go anywhere in the country and you’d choose St. Louis? Obviously you’ve never been to St. Louis.”
“All right, Mr. American Traveler, what do you recommend?”
He thought for a moment. “I like it here.”
“Here, DC?”
“Yep. There’s history, culture. It’s interesting.”
“I suppose.” She sounded less convinced. “Sometimes you seem more like the small town, picket fence kind of guy. Run an eight-page shopper with headlines about pigs and corn prices.”
It wasn’t a flattering portrait. “Too hard to start over in a place like that. Those people have families going back generations. I’ve just got me. City’s easier for blending in.”
“Like, disappearing?”
“Not at all. Unless you want to, I suppose. More like finding other people, people who are just as alone as you are, and just fitting in.”
“So, like a puzzle.”
“Somewhat.” He liked the metaphor, the completed picture. Less entangling than finding a family.
For a while there was nothing more than the rhythmic clack of the train until he asked if she remembered how to get to the house from the station.
Her brow furrowed. “It’s been so long. Maybe we could take a cab?”
“Why not? We’ve shared a streetcar, a bus, a train. Cab makes sense.”
“Looks like you’ll have to buy a car.”
“Or a tandem bicycle.”
She smiled enticingly and clucked her tongue. “Henry, Henry—” Then broke into song: “‘I won’t be jammed, I won’t be crammed on a bicycle built for two.’”
It was good to see her smile, knowing he’d been able to distract her from her worries. He was about to respond in kind, something about how sweet she’d look on the seat, but in the spirit of Anti-Flirting Week, he stopped himself. Any talk about her seat could only lead to trouble. Instead, he absently hummed the tune as he kept his eyes on the window. After a measure or two, she was humming along with him, and the sound of it was sweeter than any conversation he could remember. No words to stumble over, no chance of saying the wrong thing. No possibility of misunderstanding, and no expectation of a perfect note. No harmony, but an imperfect unison. After a repeated chorus, in a moment of unspoken agreement they drifted into silence, and that was somehow sweeter than the song.
The moment the train came to its final stop, Max assumed the responsibility of leading this expedition of sorts. He handed Monica down the steep steps, hailed a cab, and read the address from the Capitol Bank and Loan stationery. Monica didn’t look at him once. She absorbed the unfolding city as though she’d never seen it before, like she was searching for some sort of clue to its place in her life.
Max watched her in the same way.
The cab came to a stop in front of a modest home on a street lined with other modest homes. Two-storied and narrow, it had a closed-in front porch and an exterior badly in need of paint. Upon closer inspection, modest may have been too kind a word. It was just shy of dilapidated, suffering from years of indifference and neglect. A curious neighbor pressed her nose up against the front window in the house next door, and on the other side of the street, a woman strolled a tired-looking pram. Scattered dog barks came from behind tall wooden fences.
Monica clutched her coat’s collar to her throat as if protecting herself. Max handed the cabbie’s fare through the window and stood with her as the car drove away.
“Are you ready?” he asked, placing a tentative touch to the small of her back.
She took a breath deep enough to feel through his fingers. “As I’ll ever be.”
He let her take the first stride, following right behind until they got to the steps. Fearing they and the porch boards might be weak, he went ahead, grimacing as the wood creaked beneath his weight. As promised, the screened door was open, as was the front door to the house. Here Max took the lead again, grasping the knob and pushing the door. That done, he held back, watching Monica take another series of deep breaths before stepping over the threshold.
With shades drawn against the afternoon sun, the house was dark, and it was a few minutes before their eyes could adjust. Once they did, Max saw nothing more than a small, simple home—a front room with generations of peeling wallpaper, a cold, black fireplace, and empty light fixtures.
“‘Be it ever so humble,’” Monica said, strolling the circumference, her finger tracing the wainscoting.
“Do you remember it?”
“I remember it different. It always used to smell like coffee and bacon, except on Tuesdays when Mom would scrub it top to bottom. Then it smelled like lemon oil.”
“Those are nice memories to have.”
She shrugged. “If you say so.”
“I say so.”
She turned and looked behind him. “Those must be the personal effects.”
He looked over his shoulder and saw two slat-back chairs and another, which, even in this light, looked like it had been upholstered sometime before the Civil War. Heaped on and around the chairs was a series of open cardboard boxes, their contents haphazardly piled within.
“That was my father’s chair,” Monica said. “Mom hated it and wouldn’t take it to the new house. I guess whoever was living here had the same taste.”
“It’s not so bad.” Max snapped up a blind, filling the room with dust-dancing gray light. Closer inspection tempted hi
m to recant his statement. It was an odd, mossy green, upholstered in a fabric that called to mind images of ancient Egypt—palm trees and fronds going every which direction. The fabric was nearly worn away on the arms, a testament perhaps to its comfort and use, if not its charm.
“You should take it,” Max said, responding to the sentimentality in her gaze. “For your apartment.”
“I don’t have an apartment. I have a room. It won’t fit, and if I tried to slip it into the parlor, I’d probably be thrown out on the street.”
“Then I’ll take it.”
“You’re nuts.”
“You’ve seen my house. I need another chair. If nothing else, for Paolo.”
“He might shred it.” She touched the place where her father’s head must have lolled in sleep.
“I won’t let him. What else do we have?”
It turned out not to be much. A teakettle, a few chipped dishes, a water-swollen ledger book, its figures lost in a smear of ink. One smaller box was crammed with sales slips dating back to 1915, and another held magazines of the same antiquity.
“Do you realize,” Max said, scooting a box across the floor with his toe, “I was able to fit everything I own in less than this? I’m having my entire life shipped from Los Angeles.”
“My mother let me take two suitcases when she threw me out of the Georgetown house. When we left this place? I just came home from school one day and a bunch of strangers were loading everything onto a lorry. Everything in my—”
She stopped and clapped a hand to her mouth, her eyes darting toward the stairs. And then she was gone.
Her feet pounded up the stairs as he imagined they’d done thousands of times. He intended to afford her privacy, until the sounds of pounding and scraping appealed to his protective nature. Three at a time, he followed her upstairs, peeking into one cold, gray room after another before finding her in a small, slope-ceilinged space. A faded carpet covered most of the floor, save for an area where she’d pulled a corner back. She was on her knees, struggling with something on the floor.
“Help me?” she said, looking over her shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s a loose floorboard here, but it’s warped or something. I can’t—get—it—open.”
She spoke with effort, and he went to his knees beside her. Her only tool was a thin finger wedged between the boards.
“Wait here.”
He went back downstairs, rummaged through the boxes, and found a dull but not rusty knife, sturdy enough to provide the needed leverage. Up the stairs again, where Monica sat, studying her finger.
“Splinter?” Max asked.
“No. Just sore,” she said, shaking it.
Max went to his knees and took over the operations, prying the board up with relative ease. What lay in the shallow space beneath he couldn’t tell right away, as Monica leapt into his field of vision, dove in, and whispered, “I can’t believe it,” as she emerged clutching a book and an unkempt bundle of papers to her heart.
“Treasure?”
“Something like that.” She let the papers drop to her lap while she held the book with near reverence. “Pride and Prejudice. The first novel I ever read—the first real novel. Mom never liked to see me with a big, thick book. Said I would ruin my eyes and get a stoop in my shoulder, not to mention that men didn’t like bookish girls.”
Max wanted to say that her mother had been wrong—about everything. Instead, he asked, “May I?” and took the book from her, thumbing through the gold-edged pages to study the exquisite, detailed illustrations.
“I devoured it,” she said. “I bought a new copy, but it’s not the same.”
“I’ve never read it.”
She reached over and pressed the book to his chest. “Then you must. Keep this; add it to your collection.”
She turned to the scattered papers, ignoring the fact that he wasn’t taking his eyes off her. Never had he seen her this unguarded—no coy flapper flirtations, no ruse of respectability. Just the girl in her childhood room. He longed to know what was scribbled on those pages, but respect kept him from asking outright. Besides, it was almost a luxurious thing to take his fill of her this way, watching the tiniest changes in her expression. A parting of her lips, a narrowing of eyes, a nose wrinkled in reaction to a piece of long-forgotten prose.
“It’s my writing.” The room echoed with her awe.
“I figured as much.”
“Stories. I was a regular little Jo March.” She clarified, “Little Women.”
“You hid those, too?”
She shuffled them. “No real reason. It just didn’t seem like anybody would care.”
He cared.
“And now—” she clutched them to her chest—“I’d rather die than let anyone see them.”
He knew better than to grab for them but said, “Are you sure? After all, I am an editor.”
“Oh no . . .”
Like a sprite she leapt to her feet, and before he could unfold himself, she’d bolted through the door. He found her downstairs, having emptied the small box of old sales receipts and stuffed her pages within.
“A quick perusal?” he said, making a mock attempt at stealing the box.
“Nope.” She held the box above her head, a useless move given the difference in their heights. As he was about to prove it such, she took a quick step and jumped up onto her father’s chair, contorting her body to find balance on the uneven cushion.
“Careful,” Max said, offering his shoulder to steady her.
Continuing the game, she held the box high, still not out of his reach, and they laughed when he easily plucked it from her grip.
“What now?” she said, breathless. He was breathless too, though neither had run very far or very hard. “You have my favorite book and my only stories. You’ve got my whole life, the only things I’ve ever really loved, right there in your hands.”
Standing as she was, on her father’s chair, her face was perfectly aligned to his. Her lips perfectly aligned to his. Here was a moment when the innocence of the child she’d been wrapped clear around the woman she’d become. He leaned forward, bent slightly, to deposit the book and the box on the cushion of the chair, bringing his face dangerously close to the warm nape of her pale neck as he did so. That done, his hands empty, there was nothing to do but to slide them beneath her coat, around her thin waist, with every intention of lifting her down to safety, but then her hand was cool upon his cheek, and there seemed nowhere else to go but toward her. Nothing else to do but kiss her. And when he did, when his lips first touched, then consumed hers, he felt the fervent stirrings of a man who had finally found his home.
Without losing each other’s touch, Monica knocked back his hat brim, took his glasses from his face and put them—somewhere; he didn’t know or care. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, their bodies the sole source of heat in the cold room.
Max had kissed women before, but never like this, never as an act of such cumulative longing. Never as a fulfillment of a million imagined embraces, both this and all that could follow. Never with a woman who had so been kissed before. And more. Because he knew—she’d so much as told him—that Monica was far more versed in all things carnal. But here, for a while, for one more minute, he could pretend she was the girl from this house. Innocent. Dreamy. Quiet and bookish and—
“Oh, Max . . .”
She moved, drawing him closer. Making her body shimmy against his, and the heat coming through her dress tossed out all thoughts of the girl tucked up in the attic with her novel. A sound came from her throat the likes of which he’d never heard before, and he wanted nothing more than to hear it again.
Then, “Max . . .” and another sound, more graveled, like a cough, and she pulled away.
“Max.” Now she hissed his name, tapped his shoulder, and pointed to an old, stooped gentleman wearing a cable-knit sweater under a pair of loose-fitting overalls.
“You the
owners?” He spoke through a bushy moustache. He brought a gnarled hand up to his mouth, indicating that Max may have some substance obscuring his as well.
“N-no,” Max stammered, reaching for his handkerchief after helping Monica safely to the floor. “Not currently.”
“Formerly?” the man said.
“Somewhat,” Monica said. She ran her fingers through her hair before good-naturedly helping Max wipe away the remnants of her lipstick. “From a way back.”
“So any of this junk yours?”
“Watch it,” Max said, accepting his glasses from Monica. “You know what they say about one man’s rubbish.”
“It’s another man’s job to haul away,” the hauler said. “Just tell me what you’re takin’ and what I’m takin’.”
Max looked to Monica, who had gathered her book and her box of stories. “Do you think there’s anything else?”
She gave the piles a mere passing glance. “No.”
“Well, then.” Max reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a small white calling card, one left over from his time in Los Angeles. He turned it over, asked the mover if he could borrow the pencil above his ear, and carefully printed Uncle Edward’s—his—address on the back. “If you would, have the chair delivered to this address.”
The mover looked at the card, then at Max. His jaw went slack. “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me. That’s at least—”
“Worth your while,” Max said, handing over three dollars. “And I’ll pay you twice that when it’s delivered.”
The mover remained incredulous. “Nine bucks?”
“Max, that’s ridiculous. It’s just an old chair.”
“Are you kidding? Nothing’s too good for Paolo.”
Her eyes glistened with gratitude. He would have paid tenfold to have her look at him like that. He loved her. If they’d never kissed or never would again, that fact wouldn’t change. He wanted to tell her, right there with the moustachioed mover as a witness, but on the reasonable chance that she did not return his feelings equally, he stopped short of declaration. Instead, he took her childhood belongings, tucked them under one arm, and offered her the other to escort her from the home in grand style. Before they crossed the threshold into the winter’s afternoon, she stopped and turned them to look one last time upon the dreary, gray room.
All for a Story Page 25
