Always Florence

by Muriel Jensen

Nate and her father pushed her to her feet. There was loud applause and Clarissa asked her to come forward and explain the subject.

  She groaned again, but Nate nudged her toward the microphone.

  He watched her take the mic and suddenly become relaxed. She talked about having come to Astoria to complete a commission, and becoming involved in the community because of Sandy’s bullying. Everyone who knew Sandy laughed, and her friend shook a playful fist at her.

  “I had so much fun teaching the art class,” Bobbie said, her smile verifying that fact, “and enjoyed working with this committee to put on this beautiful evening....” More applause. “So when Sandy suggested a painting reflecting the Old Astoria theme, I was happy to do it. I was already in love with the place, and seeing the old photographs made me love it even more.

  “I had a built-in model for the sea captain because, many of you probably know, Nate Raleigh is my neighbor.” There were now hoots and applause. “He owed me big because Arnold... Do you all know Arnold?” Impressed oohs. “He chased my cat through my studio, leaped at a shelf that held a lot of my supplies, tipped them all into my bucket of papermaking material and pretty much destroyed it.” This revelation brought on teasing, boos and hisses. “So Nate was forced to pose for the project to try to make it up to me. And that’s why the ship’s captain might look familiar to you.

  “Anyway, thank you for being such a caring, supportive community. I’ve loved being here so much that I’ve decided to stay.” That news was met with applause and cheers.

  Sandy gave her a hug and Bobbie came back to the table, her cheeks pink. She took her chair next to Nate and leaned in as he draped his arm around her. He loved knowing she was his, though he didn’t dare say that aloud, either.

  The room was silent when Sandy drew for the painting. The band did a drumroll as she handed the entry to Clarissa.

  “Mike Wallis!” Clarissa exclaimed. The room erupted in applause again. It was well known that Mike had purchased several hundred dollars worth of tickets

  Mike accepted the painting from Jerry and announced that it would hang in a prominent place in The Cellar.

  The band played for another hour, guests moving in weary circles on the dance floor as the evening began to wind down. On their way out, everyone stopped to congratulate Sandy and Clarissa on a job well done.

  “I have to run to the ladies’ room before we leave,” Bobbie said to Nate, seeing Sandy head off in that direction. “Do you mind waiting a minute?”

  “Not at all. Take your time. I’ll carry the basket out to the car and come back for you.”

  “Perfect.”

  Bobbie found Sandy staring at her reflection in the mirror. When she spotted Bobbie, she smiled thinly and said, “I can’t believe it went so well. It was fun, but I’m so happy it’s over. I think we made a bundle. We’re turning everything over to Nate and we’ll know on Monday how much we made.”

  “You did a superb job, Sandy. It was a wonderful evening. But how are you?”

  “I’m fine. Anxious to get home and off my feet.”

  “Did you try to talk to Hunter?”

  “No. I don’t know what to say.”

  “How about ‘I’ll be happy to wait while we work together to figure this out.’”

  Sandy shrugged and turned away from the mirror. “I have a ton of things to do before I go home. I’ve got to—”

  Bobbie’s cell phone rang just then, but she caught Sandy’s arm before she could disappear. It was Laura’s husband’s name on her caller ID and Bobbie answered quickly, “Hi, Sean!” She smiled as she spoke, so happy to have finally connected with him.

  There was a moment’s silence before he said, “Hi, Bobbie.” His voice was dark, clouded.

  She knew instantly that something was wrong. Sandy had stopped trying to pull away and now took hold of Bobbie’s arm. “What?” she mouthed.

  “What’s wrong?” Bobbie made herself ask.

  There was a small gasp on the other end of the line, a swallow, a breath. “Laura’s gone, Bobbie.”

  Cymbals crashed in her head. Everything shook. The moment stretched, then snapped back with a vicious sting. She had no voice, but she somehow whispered, “What?”

  “She died. Arrhythmia, they said. Sometimes caused by chemo drugs.” He drew a ragged breath. “She was tired and we were lying on the bed, talking baby names, and she...she suddenly couldn’t breathe. I helped her sit up, and when that didn’t help, I called 911. She died in the ambulance.”

  Bobbie shut off her own shock and pain. “Oh, Sean,” she said, groping for words of comfort and coming up empty. “When did this happen?”

  “Ah...ten days ago, I think. I’m not sure. I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I sort of forgot everything. I ignored my own phone for days, and it wasn’t until I got her stuff from the hospital, and took her phone out of her purse and heard all your messages, that I remembered. Her parents and mine thought it would be best to...to have a memorial service after the holidays. She didn’t want a funeral. We had talked about it in the very beginning, when we weren’t sure she was going to survive.” He was quiet a moment, then said, “She loved you, Bobbie. If we got pregnant and had a girl, she wanted to call her Roberta.”

  Bobbie’s throat closed and she felt as though there was gravel from her tonsils to her chest. She was vaguely aware of crushing Sandy’s hand. “I would have loved that,” she said around a sob.

  Someone in the background called Sean’s name.

  “My mom’s here, staying with me,” he said. “I’ve had trouble eating and she’s fixing something....”

  “Of course. Sean, I’m so sorry. If I can do anything, please call me.”

  “I will. Bye, Bobbie.”

  “Bye.” She closed her phone and turned to Sandy, grief shutting off her air. She had to drag in a breath. “Laura died, Sean said. Of arrhythmia caused by the chemo drugs.”

  “Oh, Bobbie!”

  “Ten days ago. She’s been gone for...ten days.”

  Bobbie thought about all the wonderful things that had happened to her in the past ten days. She’d realized she was in love, she and Nate had proposed to each other, they’d had this wonderful evening. And all that time, Laura had been gone.

  She felt her own life, at least her enthusiasm for it, drain out of her. Laura had fought so hard. She’d put off having the baby she wanted because of the restraints of student poverty, then when cancer had threatened her, she’d fought to live the life she wanted, to have that baby. Roberta.

  And for what? Not only to have the dream die, but the dreamer, too?

  “Bobbie, let me get Nate.” Sandy tried to push her into a tufted love seat in the lounge outside the restroom.

  “No,” she said firmly. She felt as though she had that disease where everything in the body became like rock. She had no blood, no breath.

  The door pushed open and Stella appeared, a brush in her hand, a smile on her lips—until she saw the two of them.

  “Get Nate, please,” Sandy ordered urgently.

  Stella turned instantly to do as she was told.

  “I’m going to be okay,” Bobbie insisted, heading for the door.

  Sandy stayed with her. “Bobbie, please sit down for a minute. Let me get you a brandy.”

  Nate flung open the door, worry etched on his face, his eyes narrowing as he saw her pain.

  “Her friend Laura died,” Sandy explained quickly. “Some complication from the chemo drugs. She just got a call from Laura’s husband.”

  * * *

  NATE HAD NEVER seen that desperation on Bobbie’s face before, a terrible grief in her eyes accompanied by an underlying fear. He didn’t know what had happened or what to do for her, so he simply opened his arms. At first she resisted, then she seemed to crumple. He took a step toward her
and she fell into his embrace, weeping against him as Sandy explained to their friends and family, women and men, gathered in the ladies’ room what had happened.

  “They went through chemo together,” Sandy said, tears streaming down her face. “They championed each other’s causes. I think they shared something that’s hard for the rest of us to understand.”

  Nate crushed Bobbie to him. He remembered the text she’d received on Thanksgiving. He knew this wasn’t about him, but he didn’t want this loss to drive a wedge between him and Bobbie when she now finally, finally, wanted to be in his life. He admitted that selfish thought, then focused on what he could do for her.

  He turned to Hunter. “I’m parked in the old Safeway lot.” He reached into his pants pocket and handed Hunter his keys. “Would you mind bringing my car to the front?”

  His friend was off in an instant.

  “I’ll get her coat.” Stella hurried through the swinging doors. Sandy handed her Bobbie’s purse.

  Dennis shook his head, his eyes sad and concerned. He put a hand to his daughter’s back, but didn’t seem to know what to say, either.

  They were in the car and on their way home in five minutes. Bobbie had stopped crying and sat in eerie stillness, staring through the windshield, her coat pulled around her. Nate glanced at her and saw the tightness in her delicate profile, the set to her mouth that he remembered from the day the boys and Arnold had destroyed her studio.

  “I’ll make you a cup of mulled wine,” he said, putting a hand out to touch her. “Your father showed me how.”

  She covered it with her own, then said with a sigh, “I’d like to go home, Nate.”

  He glanced at her again and saw that she was looking at him. And he knew in that instant that everything was changing. He wasn’t sure how or why, but the woman who’d proposed to him was gone, replaced by one who still loved him, but could live without him.

  “Bobbie...”

  She squeezed his hand to stop what he was about to say.

  “Okay.” He steered into her driveway rather than his and saw her father already waiting at the open door. Nate helped Bobbie out and walked her up the steps. At the top, she turned to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. He was a step below her so they were eye to eye. He didn’t like what he saw in the dark depths of her gaze—that old disconnection that had so frustrated him. But now was not the time.

  He hugged her tightly. “Try to sleep,” he said gently. “I’m just a shout away.”

  She seemed grateful for that. For just an instant he caught a glimpse of the woman who’d kidnapped him to show him her favorite place. She put a hand to his cheek and her lips to his, and kissed him with the easy affection that had grown between them. When she raised her head, he swore he saw goodbye in her eyes before that terrible sadness swamped it. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said, her voice raspy and thick.

  He watched her disappear into her father’s arms, and got back into his car.

  Stella waited at the open door when he climbed the steps. She greeted him with a hug. “How awful for her,” she said. “Is she okay?”

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But her dad’s helped her deal with life and death before.”

  “Good.” Stella hugged him again. “I paid the babysitter and let her go. You owe me big. I’ll see you Monday. Try not to worry about...anything. She loves you.”

  The woman was reading his mind. “Right.”

  He paced the living room in the dark, sipping at a cup of coffee. He’d had enough to drink at the party, and whatever else happened in his life, he still had two little boys asleep upstairs. He had to stay functional.

  On one of his trips from the front door to the kitchen, he saw the lights go out at Bobbie’s. It was just before 1:00 a.m. His cell phone rang. It was Dennis.

  “How’s she doing?” Nate asked.

  “She’s in her room, trying to rest. I know you’re worried about her, but I’ll take good care of her. You should get some rest, too.” Dennis cleared his throat, as though not certain he had the right to say what he was about to. “I can imagine how worried you are. But I’m praying she’s going to wake up in the morning and realize that what happened to her friend was one of those awful, unpredictable things, and she still has a whole life ahead of her. And that she wants to spend it with you.”

  Nate fell into his chair. “All right. But if she wakes up thinking anything else, I’m going to lose faith in you as a father-in-law.”

  Dennis uttered a mirthless laugh. “Good night, Nate.”

  “Good night, Dennis.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  RAIN BATTERED THE roof and the windows when Bobbie awoke on Sunday. It was after eleven and she could smell coffee and something mapley. Her father’s French toast, she guessed. Monet was wrapped in a tight ball against her side and she had one moment of cozy happiness until her new reality came down on her like a sledgehammer.

  Laura was gone, a victim of the drugs intended to save her. One of life’s dirty tricks. After all they’d been through together, Bobbie felt as if she’d lost part of herself, as if the progress she’d made back to life had been ripped away.

  Nate. She groaned from the ache she felt at the thought of him, so caring and comforting last night, so ready to argue with her always. She closed her eyes to hold back tears, but they fell anyway. She had to go talk to him. Today.

  She pulled on jeans and a black turtleneck she’d bought for her Astoria walks, and brushed her hair. It still amazed her how normal she looked now, how much like her old self. Then she accepted with grinding pain in that spot where love had been just yesterday that she would never be her old self again. She would always be a woman who’d had cancer and refused to let it hurt anyone else in her life. And the only way to do that was to bar anyone else from admittance.

  She left the house through her studio, to avoid a conversation with her father that might divert her from her plan. She’d decided in the middle of the night that this was how it had to be.

  Sheamus answered the back door and smiled brightly at her. “Hi, Bobbie!” He stepped aside to let her in. “We’re wrapping presents! And we have something for you!”

  The gravel she’d had in her throat last night seemed to have collected into one giant lump. She couldn’t swallow past it. “Well...” she said faintly. “I’d better stay in here, then. Is your uncle...?”

  “Right here.” Nate appeared in the doorway from the living room, looking like the ship’s captain after a night at the Astoria waterfront taverns. He was tousled and seemed vulnerable, for all the toughness in his eyes. She was sure he knew why she was here. But he offered politely, “Cocoa? Tea?”

  She didn’t want to prolong this, but did want to spend time with him, as difficult as it would be. “Tea would be nice,” she replied.

  “Water just boiled.” He went to the cupboard for two Christmas cups and a box of Christmas spice tea he’d bought when they’d gone to the bake sale at St. Mary’s. He poured boiling water over the two tea bags and carried the cups to the table.

  He sat opposite her and crossed his forearms on the place mat. “Go ahead,” he said. He seemed sort of disengaged despite the flash in his eyes and the hard line of his jaw.

  She dragged her tea bag through the water in her cup and met his gaze. “Go ahead?” she asked.

  “You’re here to tell me you’re leaving,” he said in an even, unimpassioned voice. “Go ahead.”

  The direct approach as a tactic to take the wind out of her sails worked very well. She stammered a moment, took a sip of tea, then said with as much dignity as she could muster, “I’ve thought about it carefully, and I think it’s the best thing for all of us.”

  “In what universe,” he asked calmly, “would that be better for all of us?” When she took too long to answer, he did. “I�
��ll tell you. In the universe where only what you want matters. You can go your own way and not worry about whether the boys and I are tough enough to deal with whatever happens to you. You can put everything into your art, because it doesn’t ask anything of you but your commitment to your talent. If you die, your art only becomes more valuable.”

  She looked at him in hurt surprise. “I explained—”

  “I know,” he interrupted. “Art requires your undivided attention, your complete dedication to what’s in your gut, yada, yada. And that doesn’t fit with family, because love requires that you be there to give it, and get it back, and all those tyrannical little details incomprehensible to the free spirit.”

  She was too stunned to be angry. He’d argued with her before, but he’d never been cruel. “Nate,” she whispered, her eyes brimming.

  “Look,” he said, his voice rising slightly, the flame in his eyes sparking, “if you don’t love me and the boys, that’s one thing. But don’t give me this tragic tale of the Lone Wolf Lady going off on her own because her life is just too grim to share.” He jabbed two fingertips at his chest. “We’ve dealt with grim, believe me. We can do it.”

  “Nate,” she pleaded quietly, “the boys have already lost both parents, and you carried them through the horror of that and got them to a place where their lives make sense again. What if what happened to Laura happens to me? Or what if the cancer comes back?” He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off. “I know. You’re very heroic. You’ve proved that on several levels. But Dylan and Sheamus are two little boys who shouldn’t be asked to go through that again.”

  “We don’t know that anything will happen to you. Your prognosis at this point is good.”

  “And that’s the way I’d been thinking. I love you and them so much that I forgot what it’s like to have that malignancy inside you, and feel it trying to kill you. It makes you balance on the balls of your feet, ready to go either way, to live or to die, because the disease makes the decision, you don’t. And Laura’s death reminded me of that.”

  Bobbie reached across the table to cover his hand with hers. He didn’t move, but she saw something soften in his eyes. “If it was just you and me, I’d stay. But it isn’t. It’s them, too. And I won’t put them at risk like that.”