Magic Sometimes Happens

by Margaret James

  ‘All right, all right.’

  I did get through the days okay. Tess helped enormously. She was both inspired and inspiring. She was full of energy and she was determined to make Tess and Rosie Sort Your Life a big success. She decided she would be a self-made millionaire. After all, if somebody like Ben could do it, she announced, she was going to do it, too.

  So on the whole the days were fine.

  But at night I cried into my pillow. I sobbed my heart out for a faithless, fickle, cruel man. I acted like the sort of idiot woman I despised.

  PATRICK

  ‘I’m sorry, Pat,’ said Lexie, when I called her in a white-hot rage which frightened even me and told her to get round to the apartment now, this very minute.

  No, she couldn’t bring the children.

  They could stay with Angie.

  ‘But there was no other way to do it,’ she began.

  ‘What do you mean, no other way to do it? Lexie, don’t just stand there, come inside, don’t give the neighbours a free show.’ So she came into the living room. I closed the door. ‘Okay, now tell me – no other way to do precisely what?’

  ‘I want to try again.’

  Then Lexie looked at me with big round eyes, and I saw the cute preteen – the pretty, sexy co-ed – the girl in bridal white – the radiant, happy mother in the downtown birthing centre with first Joe then Polly in her arms – the wife I’d thought was mine until we both sat dribbling in our wheelchairs on some balcony in Florida.

  The woman I once loved. But, if Ben Fairfax wasn’t lying – and this now seemed more than likely – I’d been a fool to love. The evidence had been in front of me for years and years and I had been too dumb to see it. I’d thought nothing of it when Lexie headed out to basket-weaving, quilting or whatever classes, all dressed up and smelling like a lily. When she took a ton of whispered calls from a new girlfriend, a teacher at Joe’s kindergarten, some guy selling cabins in the woods …

  ‘When you sent that message, what would you have done if Rosie had replied to me while we were in the coffee shop – if I’d read an email from her there?’

  ‘I hoped she would. I hoped you would. I figured she would write you straight away and tell you to get lost. Or say please don’t do this to me, I love you, we can work it out – a bunch of stuff like that. Whatever, it would draw the battle lines.’

  ‘So why did you delete the message?’

  ‘Pat, I wasn’t thinking straight! When you went to stand in line, I saw my chance and grabbed it. But afterward I realised I’d been stupid. So that’s why I deleted what I sent.’

  ‘I think you lost it big time.’

  ‘No, I was confused. I knew whatever happened next you would be mad at me. But I also knew you wouldn’t kill me in a coffee shop.’

  ‘Huh – I might have done.’

  ‘When you called me up, you were so angry. But now you’re so calm again. I wish you’d yell at me.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘I recall when you first told me about Mr Wonderful, you left the kids with Angie so they wouldn’t hear me yell at you.’

  ‘I thought you’d yell. I thought that leaving you would wake you up, would make you think about the two of us.’

  ‘So you were testing me, like Jesus being tested in the wilderness? Let me tell you something, Lex – you’re crazy. I was crazy too, to love you like I did, when you cheated on me all the time from when we were in school.’

  She gaped at me.

  ‘You knew?’ she whispered, looking stunned.

  What could I do but shrug?

  ‘You knew, but you did nothing?’

  What could I do but shrug again?

  ‘I’m so sorry, Patrick. I wish it hadn’t been like that. If I could turn the clock back—’

  ‘But you can’t.’ I grabbed my carry-on. ‘Okay, so now we understand each other and I have to leave.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Lexie blocked my exit by standing with her back against the door. ‘Oh, to that conference – I forgot you have a conference. But you could change your flight. Listen, Patrick, we must talk. Go somewhere on our own for a few days, just you and me. Angie won’t mind watching Joe and Polly. Pat, you don’t have to go to Colorado.’

  ‘I’m not going to Colorado.’

  ‘But I thought your conference—’

  ‘I’m not going to the conference.’

  ‘What? I never knew you miss a conference, and this is an important one, you said so, it’s all about your work. I know how much you love your work. You’ve always been so focused on—’

  ‘Lexie, if we didn’t have two kids who need some sort of mom, however useless, I’d seriously consider strangling you. So don’t push it, baby. Get out of my way.’

  ‘I love it when you’re masterful.’ Lexie trailed one finger down my chest and gazed at me with big cute-kitten eyes. ‘Listen, honey, we could start again. Okay, we had a falling-out. When we were first married we were kids. We hadn’t been around. But now we’re stronger, wiser. Pat, you can’t run out on me. It was starting to work out between us, you know that. When I said I was glad about it, you said you were, too.’

  ‘I meant I was glad we sorted out the maintenance, agreed that we both wanted what was best for Joe and Polly.’

  ‘You don’t want me back?’

  I dropped my carry-on. I took her by the shoulders. I moved her to one side and then I grabbed my case again. I walked right out the door and pressed the button to call the elevator.

  ‘You leave, you’ll never see your kids again!’ she hollered after me. ‘I’ll tell the judge you and that woman did some stuff to them. You hurt them, traumatised them. You—’

  Then the elevator came and I got into it.

  I caught the evening flight to London out of Minneapolis-Saint Paul and landed at Heathrow the following lunch time. There were no taxis, so I rode the subway – big mistake, the train broke down.

  I could not find Rosie anyplace. I went to her apartment. She was not at home. I went to her office. She was not at her office. It was all closed up. I tried to call. She would not take my calls. So I went back to where she lived. I sat down on the step and then I waited – and I waited – and I waited.

  Passers-by most probably figured I must be a beggar. Travel-stained, dishevelled and unshaven, I guess I looked the part, and all I needed was a dog.

  ‘I can’t believe you have the nerve,’ she said, when she found me slumped down on the step at ten o’clock that evening.

  I was starving, having eaten nothing since the usual plastic airline breakfast. I was dying for a drink of water. I’d wanted to lie down under a tree in one of London’s parks and go to sleep. But I’d been too scared to move in case I missed her coming home and so I’d sat it out in the hot, dusty London sunshine.

  Consequently I was dry as London dust myself.

  She glared at me. She has the most amazing eyes. Slate-grey, black-fringed, they’re deep as forest pools. Their gaze can be as hard as granite or as soft as gossamer, can chill, can warm, can burn.

  Now, her gaze was burning into me.

  ‘May I come in a while?’ I asked, standing up then almost falling over because I was so hungry, jet-lagged, dehydrated and my feet had gone to sleep.

  ‘No, you may not,’ she snapped. ‘If you don’t go away right now – I mean this very minute – I’m ringing the police.’

  ‘Rosie, I flew all the way from Minnesota.’

  ‘So fly back again.’

  ‘Okay, but will you come and get a coffee, talk to me? There has to be a shop along the road, so we—’

  ‘Patrick, I don’t want a stupid coffee! I have no desire to talk to you! I’ve just driven home from Birmingham. The traffic was horrendous. I want to go to bed.’ She found her cell. ‘What part of go away right now do you not understand?’

  ‘I do understand you, but please don’t call the cops.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

 
‘You need listen to me – please?’

  ROSIE

  You need to listen to me – please?

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘So I can explain what happened.’

  ‘I don’t wish to hear your explanation. It doesn’t interest me.’

  ‘Rosie, may I have a drink of water?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ I unlocked the door. ‘But stay here on the step. I’ll fetch you one and bring it out. Then you must go.’

  As I filled a glass, my heart was racing. It had been so easy – well, comparatively easy – to hate him while he wasn’t here in London.

  But when I saw him standing right in front of me, tired and dirty and unshaven, obviously exhausted, looking like he’d hitch-hiked from Heathrow, which I suppose he might have done, I wanted to invite him in and feed him and do – other things. Okay, okay, okay. I never thought that it would be as difficult as this to tell a man to go to hell.

  PATRICK

  ‘Rosie, it was all a big mistake.’

  ‘But I think you were right to finish it. After all, it wasn’t working out. Long-distance friendships seldom do.’

  ‘You know you don’t mean that.’

  ‘I don’t mean what?’

  ‘You and I, we have a way to go before we’re finished. We have our whole lives.’ As I gave the glass back, I decided I would risk it. So she called the cops? So I got arrested and then I was deported? So I lost my job at JQA? I took her by the shoulders. ‘Rosie, I’m so sorry—’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She turned her head aside and wouldn’t look at me. ‘You didn’t mean those things you said. You’ve changed your mind. You want to try again. I’ve heard all that before from other men. You’re such a bunch of bastards, cowards, opportunists, shits. You men say women cheat, lie and deceive, but you—’

  ‘I didn’t send that email.’

  ‘What?’ She clearly hadn’t been expecting this. She jerked her head up, met my fuddled gaze, her own eyes blazing. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘I did not send that email!’

  ‘But it came from your account! Of course you sent it! Do you think I’m stupid?’

  ‘I didn’t write it and I didn’t send it.’

  ‘Then who did?’

  ‘Rosie, give me five? Just five little minutes, please?’

  ‘All right – five minutes. You’d better come inside.’ She sounded like her mother, the Justice of the Peace. She checked her watch. ‘I’m timing you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’

  ‘Yeah, that would be absolutely great, but may I use the bathroom first?’

  ‘I suppose so. Get yourself a towel and have a shower. You damn well need one.’

  ‘I’ll take more than five minutes to get myself a shower.’

  ‘You won’t, because I’ll turn the water off.’

  It took some persuading, but finally she started to believe me.

  ‘You mean you didn’t log out of your account?’

  ‘I didn’t log out of my account.’

  ‘Patrick, you’re – I don’t know what to say.’ She shook her head at me and sighed, all what-are-men-like, as women love to do. ‘After that big lecture you gave me about security and stuff? You left your own door open with a message Scotch-taped to the bell-push, saying come right in?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You’re such a fool.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’re the biggest wanker in the world.’

  ‘I know that, too.’ I leaned across the kitchen table and kissed her on the mouth. ‘Now you slap my face, like in the movies.’

  ‘Oh, Pat, you’re such an idiot!’ She shook her head again. But she was smiling now and it was like the sun came out after a storm. ‘I don’t want to slap you anywhere.’

  She let me kiss her and finally she kissed me back and we got up and walked into the living room and sat down on the couch and kissed some more.

  I stayed the night.

  ‘When’s that conference in Colorado?’ she asked the following morning. ‘I suppose it must be fairly soon?’

  ‘Yeah, it must be tomorrow,’ I replied. ‘Come on – lie down again for half an hour? It’s only twenty after seven. You don’t need to get up yet.’

  ‘What precisely do you mean, Pat, it must be tomorrow?’

  ‘Today, tomorrow, yesterday – I lost all track of time.’

  ‘But you’re going, aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You must!’ She stared at me. ‘You’re doing presentations, chairing meetings. People will have come from anywhere and everywhere to hear you.’

  ‘Rosie, I messed up with Lex. She said I always put my work before my family and she was right. I want you to understand that you come first with me.’

  ‘It’s not a question of coming first, you halfwit.’ She grabbed my shoulder, shook me, glared at me. ‘You can’t let all those people down! This is your career, your work, your destiny, it’s why you’re on this earth. You have to go!’

  ‘I can’t be there in time. My first presentation is tomorrow morning, ten o’clock.’

  ‘So you can get a flight today. How long does it take, nine hours or so? You’ll be in Colorado around teatime. Or by late this evening, anyway, even if it isn’t possible to fly direct. See, Patrick, how the planet spins to fall in with your schedule? Go and pack your stuff, get dressed. I’ll drive you to Heathrow. You can get a stand-by ticket.’

  She was out of bed and pulling on her own clothes now. ‘Come on, Pat – get up!’ she cried. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  ‘I’m not going, Rosie.’

  ‘If you don’t, you stupid man, I shall never speak to you again!’

  ‘But you’re much more important than a conference. Don’t you get that? Don’t you understand?’

  ‘I’m flattered, obviously.’ She looked at me as if she thought she never saw someone so dumb. ‘But you have work to do, important work. So go and do it and then come back to me.’

  I could see she meant it. So I got out of bed, pulled on my jeans, reached for my shirt. ‘I love you, Rosie Denham.’ I collected papers, pulled on socks and fastened buttons, pushed my laptop in my carry-on. ‘You’re fantastic, fabulous, amazing—’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. I’m everything that’s wonderful. You’ve got your passport, have you?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so. Rosie, some day we must have a baby. What does Shakespeare say? You would be the cruellest she alive if you went to your grave and left the world no copies of yourself – something like that?’

  ‘This baby might take after you, not me – have you considered that small point?’ She grimaced, grabbed her keys. ‘Okay, Pat, you’ve got your stuff? Let’s go.’

  She pushed me out the door.

  I got on a plane.

  I came to Denver.

  I don’t remember anything about the presentations or the meetings. My papers seemed to go down fairly well, as far as I could judge. But I was in a kind of daze throughout, and one day later I was on a flight back to Heathrow.

  ROSIE

  While he was away, I did some thinking, told myself I wasn’t playing fair.

  When he returned, he must have realised I’d been making some decisions about us. ‘Rosie, what’s the matter?’ he began. ‘What did I do now?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have come back to the UK.’

  ‘Why not – you got somebody new?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t got somebody new.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’ He took me in his arms and hugged me tight. ‘Okay, I have a schedule. I’m getting a divorce. I want to marry you. We’ll get a place in the US or the UK or both. We’ll have some kids. What do you say?’

  ‘I can’t,’ I told him.

  ‘Marry me?’

  ‘Marry you, have children. I can’t do it, Pat.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  He tried to look as if he wasn’t bothered one way or the other. Bu
t I could see I’d hurt him by being so abrupt. ‘Patrick,’ I continued urgently, ‘please don’t think it’s you, that it’s—’

  ‘You mean it’s like you said. You don’t want children. I know some women don’t – a woman’s right to choose and stuff.’

  ‘I’d love to have some children! Your children, Pat, they’re gorgeous. I’d love to have a little Joe or Polly of my own.’

  ‘So there is some reason—’

  ‘Yes.’

  But I didn’t want to talk about it. I hadn’t told my female friends. I’d never told a man that as a woman I was a big disaster both mentally and physically, totally messed up.

  ‘Rosie,’ Pat said gently, ‘these days there are treatments, therapies. If money is the problem, then I will find the money. I’ll leave JQA tomorrow. I’ll go work in industry, in research and development. As I believe I told you, I get offers all the time.’

  ‘Money won’t solve anything.’

  ‘You’re sure it won’t? I know it can’t work miracles. But lots of it can solve a bunch of stuff.’

  ‘It can’t solve this.’

  ‘So will you tell me, Rosie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think you ought to tell me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I love you very much. I want to help you. So please share this with me?’ He looked at me, his dark eyes loving, kind. I realised I owed him. I couldn’t let him think I didn’t want him, when I did so very much, more than my life itself.

  ‘When it gets dark, I’ll tell you,’ I replied. ‘It will be easier, talking in the dark.’

  The darkness came too soon, but I had promised.

  ‘When I was fourteen … I’m sorry, Pat, it’s difficult for me.’

  ‘Just take your time, okay? Did someone hurt you?’

  ‘Yes, you could say that.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Dad and I were driving home one January night. He’d picked me up from meeting friends in Dorchester. It was sleeting and the road was like a skating rink. We hit a van coming the other way. Or so they told us later. I don’t remember even seeing the van. Dad was cushioned by the airbag, but he still broke half his ribs, his collarbone and both his legs.’

  ‘Your own airbag, Rosie – it must have saved your life?’