Time After Time

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

Liz stood up, too, or maybe she just floated into a vertical alignment. "Yes," she said simply.

  Someone pulled her chair back, and she walked around to the side of the table where Jack, abandoning his post as party leader, met her. He cradled her face between his hands. "I don't know what took us so long," he said in a voice of sheer wonder.

  He lowered his mouth to hers in a kiss that sealed the past and told the future, and then they walked, hand in hand, out of the ballroom, leaving the exclusive little group to fend for itself.

  *****

  The tent was overflowing with oddly dressed humanity. Liz had told everyone, "Anything goes," and sure enough, anything went. From the modestly costumed upstairs maid to the fella who'd wrapped himself up in exactly one thousand twinkle lights and said he was the millennium, it was an eclectic group. Gilded Age costumes were as popular as New Age: ostrich feathers, rhinestones, and miles of fake pearls held their own against guardian angels, benign witches, and other cosmic creations.

  Meredith Kinney and virtually all of the dinner guests wandered through the tent on their way to other Bellevue Avenue parties, adding their glitz and glamour to the funky scene. Every well-dressed one of them wanted to know who this Liz was who'd stolen their Jack out from under their noses.

  Liz was introduced by Jack to all of his socialite friends — some of them catty, some of them nice. Even the lady who'd stamped her foot had somehow managed to be there; Liz hadn't noticed her in the ballroom, and she hardly noticed her now.

  There was too much to do, too much to oversee, too much to just plain enjoy. It was a wonderful event, filled with good humor and charm and fun. People were dancing. People were making wishes and throwing two-dollar sun-disks into the polymer fountain. People were begging the millennium man to plug himself into the battery pack he was storing behind the cappuccino table. He'd light up the lights, and then his audience would light up with glee. If there was an apt symbol for the night, it was the millennium man.

  Both the palmist and the phrenologist were doing gangbuster business. Why not? One was professional and the other was free. Victoria, who was walking around in a dreamy delirium and hugging everyone she could, had her palm read, while Dr. Ben gave the phrenologist a try.

  Afterward, Ben said to Liz and Jack, "Professor Thacker said I oughta have my head examined if I really believe he can tell me anything based on the shape of my head. I told him I was having my head examined. He said I was the fourth one to crack that joke. I guess I'm not so brilliant after all."

  "I told Ben to see the palmist, but he won't go," said Tori, her arm locked tightly around Ben's. Her voice was high with excitement as she said, "She told me that I'm going to have a big surprise tonight." She gave Liz a wildly meaningful look.

  Victoria was sure, from things Ben had hinted, that he was going to pop the question tonight. "It's in the air," she'd told Liz during a congratulatory hug.

  Ben and Victoria moved on, and Liz dipped a fat red strawberry into the fondue of melted chocolate, then held it over a napkin and aimed it at Jack's waiting mouth. He took it in one bite, savoring it.

  Liz murmured with a wicked smile, "Do you think anyone noticed that for a while we weren't at the dinner or under the tent?"

  "Hmmm, that was great. You I mean, not the fruit," said Jack, kissing her with chocolate breath. "Of course they noticed. Do you think they're fools? And who cares anyway? Have I told you I love you?"

  "In the last five minutes? I don't think so." She pursed her lips in a thoughtful frown. "No, I'm sure I would've remembered."

  "I love you, darling. I love you."

  No time for any more banter than that; Liz was grabbed and dragged over to the small wooden platform that served as a dance floor; one of the boards had collapsed. And so it went, with Jack cornering her for words of love and quick, stolen kisses, and others hauling her off to some other new crisis that thankfully wasn't a crisis at all.

  When the gathering had reached its peak — in noise, in attendance, in gaiety — pretty Irish black-haired Deirdre, who'd dressed as a Victorian nanny, came rushing up to Liz and Jack. "You won't believe who's here, mum," she said. All night she'd been doing that — calling everyone mum.

  Liz took a wild guess. "Princess Diana."

  "How did y'know, then?" asked Deirdre, thunderstruck. 'Twas all planned, was it? You might have tole me," she added, hurt.

  "Deirdre, I was kidding just now," said Liz, laughing.

  "But I'm not!" Deirdre said. "Come with me, and see for yourself, mum."

  "She sounds convinced, m'dear," said Jack with a wink. Something about that wink made Liz decide to follow Deirdre as she wound her way through the crowd. She wouldn't put it past Jack....

  "Over there," said Deirdre, fluttering her hands excitedly. "Behind Glinda the Good Witch — see her? Not talking, just listening? Could it be, do y'think?"

  In profile, Liz had to admit, there was a resemblance. Something about the incredibly elegant line of the woman's neck and back as she inclined her head attentively made Liz pause and consider. The woman was dressed in a generic outfit, neither Gilded Age nor New. The point of the dress, a plain black gown with long, open sleeves, seemed to be to not attract attention. The three-quarter silver mask she wore was striking, but only because all else was so severe.

  "If only we could see more than her chin," Deirdre murmured. "But the chin is right."

  "Or her hair," Liz said, caught up in the fantasy. "Too bad about that turban thing."

  They stood there for a moment, trying to be as discreet as they could. Liz said, "She wouldn't still be around. Would she?"

  "Where can she go?" asked Deirdre. "It's always the same. Better here than in England. Their press is even worse than yours."

  Jack came up behind Liz just then and wrapped his arms around her waist. Resting his chin playfully on her shoulder, he looked off where she was looking. "Well? Have you made a positive ID?"

  It was still so new, this wonderful, spontaneous public display of his love for her. Liz let the sensation sink in, right down to her toes, before she said, "You know if she's here or not. Admit it."

  "Me?" he said, kissing her cheek. "How would I know?"

  "Lizzie, Lizzie!" came Victoria's hiss behind them. She was with Ben, as manic as ever, to the point where Liz was beginning to worry. By now Tori — having accomplished her pin-mission in spades — should be settling down. But her green eyes were bright with leftover intrigue as she whispered, "Someone said she's definitely here. It's definite. Silver dress, black mask. Have you seen—?"

  "Well for God's sake!" boomed a voice directly in front of their group. A big man with a loud mouth was approaching them in the first stages of a bear hug. "Bony Maroney, bless my soul! I haven't seen you in years! You haven't put on a pound or shrunk an inch!"

  Victoria stared at him, frozen in place.

  The man, dressed as either Dracula or the Count of Monte Cristo, wrapped his arms around her in a death-grip and rocked her back and forth. "Judy Maroney, how are you? Good lord, and Paul? Still working on the Space Shuttle? Those two kids of yours — they must be scaring the bejesus out of you by now!"

  Liz watched with a mounting sense of horror as Victoria's eyes seemed to lose focus, then shut tight in pain. Before anybody could do anything, Victoria let out a shattering scream, then collapsed in the arms of her well-wisher.

  The man held her, limp in his arms, and said in a shocked voice, "My god — what did I do?"

  Ben and Jack rushed to take her from him, and then Ben, smaller than Jack but with a will of steel, lifted the prostrate woman into his arms and began elbowing his way through the merriment. Liz was aware of a buzz of concern as Ben took the most direct route to the house, with Jack and her following close behind. Inside the house, Netta, already out of costume, ran to pull back the bedding in a bedroom upstairs.

  Liz, shaking from the experience, was thinking, Is it possible? Is her insane theory possible? Had Judy Maroney tried to reclaim her self? Who
screamed, in that case? And who is being carried up these stairs?

  Ben laid the unconscious woman on a mahogany four-poster bed in a well-appointed, feminine room that was in fact Mrs. Eastman's. "It's the only one that's made up," Netta explained hurriedly.

  They gathered around the bed as Ben checked Victoria's — Judy's? — vital signs. "She should be okay. She's had an unbelievable shock."

  But he didn't sound nearly as certain of himself as Liz thought he should, and so she waited, with Ben, with Jack, with Netta, for whoever it was to regain consciousness.

  They waited an unbearably long time. It seemed to Liz, and apparently to Ben, that the woman who lay there should have come around by now. Liz began to have the morbid sensation that they were gathered around a deathbed. She shuddered, and Jack put his arm around her.

  They waited.

  At last, the slender woman in the silver gown and star-threaded hair began to recover. Her eyes fluttered open; she sighed heavily. Fully awake now, she saw Ben before she saw the others. "Ben ...," she said softly. He sat down on the bed beside her.

  Ah — still Tori, thought Liz with mixed emotions.

  She watched, holding her breath, as Tori sat up in bed and said, "Oh ... Ben," and broke down into an agonizing series of sobs, slipping headlong into the morass of pain she'd tried so hard to avoid for the last five years.

  And then Liz knew, and everyone knew, that neither Judy nor Tori would ever be the same again.

  There was nothing Jack or Liz could do now, so they left her in the arms of Ben, the best possible therapy for her pain, and slipped out of the room. Netta, blowing her nose in a huge white handkerchief, went off to make tea for them. Jack and Liz, reluctant to go far, sat down on the top stair of the vast and elegant second-floor landing.

  "The healing will start now, I think," said Jack, taking Liz's hand in his. "It's not going to be fast or easy."

  "But Ben will be there for her. So will we." They sat silently for a moment, and then Liz added, "Thank God Caroline's over at my place. She certainly didn't need to see or hear this."

  Jack smiled reflectively. "Caroline told me it was her first sleepover, ever. She was so excited. I have to say, the kid's a lot less of a monster nowadays."

  "A lot less," Liz agreed.

  "I wonder what's happened to change all that," Jack said, bemused.

  "You've happened. She adores you. I can tell by the way she talks about you to Susy. 'Jack this. Jack that.' Susy's become a little jealous, I think."

  Jack lifted Liz's hand to his lips and kissed it. "That won't be a problem soon." He laughed softly and said, "We're going to have one hell of a mish-mash family."

  Which brought the subject, inevitably, to Caroline's little brother. "Any luck tracking down Bradley's father?" Liz asked Jack.

  Jack shook his head. "I have someone checking down leads, but Stacey dated a lot of men," he said a little grimly.

  "You sound as if you're not all that anxious to find the guy."

  Jack tapped her hand, still in his, against his thigh absently as he thought about her remark. "You're right," he said at last. "I guess I'm not. I seem to be developing a taste for finishing someone else's half-chewed vegetables."

  Or maybe you just want a son. The thought welled up, as she knew it must, and then receded, like a wave from a beach.

  They had talked about her condition, briefly, when they lay in each other's arms a couple of hours earlier. Jack had been abject in his apologies, ardent in his reassurances.

  "Babies or no babies — how could I live without you?" he'd said to her then. "Just the thought of it has been making me sick these last weeks. When I saw you with the pin, I swear: I felt my heart stop. You were so... beautiful — glowing, almost. That's when I knew I couldn't make the same mistake that Christopher Eastman had made with Ophelia."

  Liz then told Jack what she hadn't told him so far: that it was Christopher Eastman who'd gotten Ophelia pregnant.

  And Jack surprised her by saying, "I know. I went to see Ophelia's grave. I saw the end-dates on the grave of her son and put two and two together."

  So the air had been cleared, once and for all. But Liz knew to expect an occasional wave to roll in, and then out, if ever the talk came back to babies again.

  She sighed and said, "I have to go check on things. They'll be setting up the costume contest now. I wish I felt more like celebrating," she added, standing up.

  Jack got up, too, and slipped his arms around her and kissed her. "Tori will be fine," he said again. "I'll check with them and then go out and join you. Isn't this about the time they form a line to do the bunny hop?"

  On that silly note she left him, then walked down the elaborately carved walnut staircase, open to all the grandeur that was East Gate. She had absolutely no idea where they'd live after they were married, only that they'd have plenty of family to fill the bedrooms, wherever it was.

  She took a shortcut through the kitchen on her way to the tent, and there she found Netta sharing tea with a sixtyish, well-dressed woman. A carry-on bag sat on the floor near them. The woman looked up at Liz with an air of surprise and expectation.

  Without a doubt, she was Jack Eastman's mother.

  Netta, who'd been so deep in conversation that she'd scarcely registered that Liz had walked in on it, said, "Ah, and here she is now. Elizabeth Coppersmith, this is Jack's mother, Barbara Eastman."

  Barbara Eastman stood up to shake Liz's hand. She was an attractive woman with a firm handshake who looked her age, neither more nor less, and didn't seem overly bothered by the fact that she was holed up in the kitchen with an old servant rather than gliding up the grand staircase to her rooms, like the mistress of the manor she so clearly was.

  "Netta has told me some — probably not a fraction of — the news," she explained with a wry look that reminded Liz of Jack.

  It was obvious that she knew of Liz's status. Just as clearly, she seemed to be sizing up the idea of having a daughter-in-law after all these years. Liz felt her cheeks betray a certain amount of insecurity, and she was suddenly glad that she was dressed to kill.

  "It's been a busy summer," said Liz with her usual understatement.

  "Even for Newport," her future mother-in-law agreed. She added, "I'm sure we have lots to talk about," and then turned to Netta. "Jack will be surprised that I'm here. I really should see him before—"

  Here some of the superb self-confidence seemed to drain away, because it was clear to all of them that after Barbara Eastman talked to her son, she didn't know what she'd do. Liz felt a surge of sympathy for the woman: during her absence, an army of invaders had overrun all that she thought was hers — even her bed.

  "Well, if you'll excuse me," said Liz quickly. "I'm pleased to have met you," she added.

  Barbara Eastman smiled in noncommittal agreement and said softly, "I must find Jack."

  Liz went out to the tent and found that the costume parade and contest were already in progress; Katherine, the executive director of Anne's Place, had stepped into the breach and kept things — literally — marching along. Liz, not daring to return to the house, was able to preside over the whole thing and watch with a certain amount of pleasure as Katherine awarded the grand prize to the obvious choice and everyone's favorite, the millennium man. He plugged himself in for the occasion and stayed plugged in, despite the heat, for almost ten minutes.

  After that, the guests began drifting off in small clusters until there was no one left besides Liz and the help; and then they, too, finally packed up and left. Liz hadn't seen Jack since they'd sat together on the landing stair, which was hardly surprising. Alone under the empty tent, she sat down on a chair near the fake-marble fountain and closed her eyes, listening to the sound of the trickling water, letting herself be comforted by it.

  She should go home. Her parents must be wondering. She should at least turn off the little white lights. But she felt suddenly alone without Jack, and afraid of the dark.

  Is this what it wil
l be like, now that we've committed to each other? She decided that it would, and that it wasn't all bad.

  "Can anyone make a wish?"

  Liz opened her eyes and saw Jack's mother standing next to the fountain. Her carry-on bag was at her side.

  "Sure," Liz said with a steady look. "Wish away."

  Barbara Eastman took a change purse from her Coach bag, then took out a silver coin from it. She tossed it in with what had to be the saddest smile that Liz ever saw. Then she turned to Liz.

  "Good night," she said. "It looks like you did a wonderful job."

  "Thank you. Good night."

  Liz watched as Jack's mother picked up the bag and, with her head held high, walked in the direction of the carriage house.

  Jack came out almost immediately afterward. He'd gotten rid of his tuxedo jacket, his waistcoat, and his tie. His shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow. His hair looked more uncombed than ever. But the smile on his face when he saw Liz was worth all the white lights in the world.

  He took her in his arms, as if he'd been away at sea, and they kissed long and deep.

  "Ben sent out for something for Tori," he said. "She's sleeping soundly now. He'll stay with her, of course."

  "And your mother?"

  Jack glanced in the direction of the carriage house and sighed. "She feels a debt. I don't know if she feels love."

  Liz fingered the small pin that lay over her heart. "I wish she did," she said quietly, pressing her cheek to Jack's chest. She wanted to reassure herself that his own heart was still beating. "I wish she felt what I do."

  "Some things are meant to be," Jack murmured in a faraway voice. "And some things ... aren't."

  "And we—?"

  "—are fated. It's so clear to me now."

  Epilogue

  Susy Eastman! Will you explain to me why you're inside watching television on a beautiful day like this?"

  Susy looked up at her mother and said, "It's Sesame Street, Mommy," as if that explained everything.

  "Makes no difference," Liz said, heading for the remote control. "I don't want you turning into a couch potato."