“What?”
“My wife died last year. Breast cancer.”
Joyce choked on the soup, then coughed into her napkin. “Oh...I’m so sorry...I didn’t know....”
“Look, I didn’t invite you here bore you with my trials and tribulations.” He smiled one-sidedly.
But clearly he needed to; it was obvious he wasn’t over his wife’s death. His eyes told the story, a story of anger and hurt that Joyce was all too familiar with—she’d seen it in her own eyes, in the mirror, after Henry died.
She asked softly, “Was it...a long illness?”
He looked up from his soup bowl at her. “Yes. Long and painful and, in the end, degrading....Fucking animals get treated better.”
Joyce sat back in her chair. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love,” she told him. “But thankfully he died instantly....I don’t know if I could have handled a prolonged illness....”
“You could have.”
“Do you think?”
“You would’ve had to.”
She leaned forward. “I think in the next twenty years, as our generation grows old, we’re going to see a lot of assisted suicides. What we need is a law that supports euthanasia.” She paused. “But with or without that law, we’re gonna leave the party when we’ve stopped having fun.”
He smirked but it wasn’t nasty. “We always were a defiant bunch of little assholes.”
“Yes, but more than that...we’re pragmatic. If death is inevitable, why expend the emotional and financial expense? Why put yourself and your loved ones through that?”
“Hope, I guess.” He shrugged. “Hope for a medical breakthrough...or miracle. But I can tell you this much, the method of euthanasia needs to be quick and painless for the public to accept it.”
“I’m sure there are plenty of ways....”
He started to say something, but evidently changed his mind. “Hey, I think we can come up with happier dinner conversation, if we try real hard.”
She laughed her agreement, and their conversation turned to movies and books for the remainder of the meal. Stephen King and Dean Koontz were mutual choices (and acceptable authors for her upcoming second life, as well) and they both loved screwball comedies.
“But I’d advise you saying your favorite movie is There’s Something About Mary,” he said, invoking one of the films they’d screened last week, “before bringing up Bringing Up Baby.”
After clearing the table and putting the dishes in the dishwasher, they moved into the living room, where the fire had died down.
“I’d offer you a glass of wine,” he said, throwing another log in the fireplace, sparks from the cinders flying upward, “but I don’t drink anymore.”
She was sitting back comfortably on the couch, feet stretched out; her socks were almost dry. “That’s all right, I’m off the sauce myself. It accelerates aging, you know.”
He joined her on the couch, legs out toward the fire, next to hers.
“Are you frightened about the surgery?” he asked.
She wiggled her toes, the warmth of the fire now crawling up her legs. “Frightened? No. Well, maybe a little. I don’t imagine it will be as pleasant as these past few weeks.”
He turned his head toward hers. “You’ll be fine. I know Dr. Carver. He’s a skilled plastic surgeon...the best in the business.”
“Dr. Carver?”
He laughed. “Yeah, it does sound like something out of Dickens. But it’s his name—not a description of the level of his skills.”
“That’s a relief.” She gazed at him. “How did you get involved with this program?”
He was silent for a moment before he turned more toward her, putting one arm on the back of the couch. “I don’t know if you were aware of it, but Simmons was in financial trouble a few years ago.”
“I wasn’t aware of that,” she lied. After all, she hadn’t sent them any money, back when she could well have afforded to.
“The situation was so dire,” he went on, “that the college board decided to close the school.”
That made her feel better: a few thousand dollars from her wouldn’t have helped, anyway.
“So, believe me,” he said, “I know all about being over fifty and out of a job.”
“What happened?”
“Well, out of the clear blue, this X-Gen company up and buys the college, pumps all kinds of dough into it....D’you ever make it inside the new Biology building?”
One day over her lunch period. “State of the art,” she replied.
He nodded. “And you’ve seen the Performing Arts Center, the new football stadium....It was a miracle—a whole new start. A second chance....”
“I believe I can identify.”
He grinned, the fire doing nice things to his well-chiseled features. “But best of all, they didn’t can the old faculty. Some new staff came in, sure, but heads did not roll. Jobs were saved.”
“That’s wonderful...but how was it they happened to ask you to head up these ‘special session’ classes?”
He leaned toward her. “That was the neat thing....”
She smiled at the word “neat.”
“None of this was a coincidence. These X-Gen guys, they were mostly alumni! The founders of the corporation? They were all former students of mine.”
“You must have been a good teacher, to inspire that kind of loyalty.”
He studied her with half-lidded eyes. “Don’t you think I’m a good teacher? Don’t I inspire your loyalty?”
His face was very close to hers; she could smell the musky scent of his cologne.
“Well,” she said, putting a hand on his bearded cheek, “there’s inspiration, and then there’s...inspiration.”
Then his lips were on hers, the kiss awkward, like they’d both been out of practice. But the next kiss was better...and the next even more so. She felt on fire, as if the warmth of the flames had continued up her legs, spreading to her whole body.
When they finally broke apart, he whispered, “This is the last time, you know.”
“Last time for what?”
“To make love with a man who knows your real age, and doesn’t give a damn.” He gave her a devilish grin.
She couldn’t help smiling back. “Ah-huh. That’s a line I’ve never heard before.”
He pulled Joyce up off the couch, and taking her hand, led her to the stairs and up them, the steps creaking as they went.
The back bedroom where he brought her was as cold as the living room had been warm, which made her want to dive under the bedcovers. Maybe that was his strategy....
Light from a street lamp poured in through the bedroom windows, and in the dark she could make out an antique dresser, a Queen Anne chair, a bedside table with lace cloth.
This must be a guest room, she thought. Maybe his own room wasn’t tidy...or perhaps he couldn’t quite bring himself to make love to her in the same bed he once shared with his wife.
No matter.
He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her to him, unbuttoning her madras blouse. She reached behind herself unfastening the bra, and both pieces of clothing slid to the floor. He kissed her breasts, cupping them tenderly, and she reached down to undo his trousers.
In another moment they were under the covers, between ice-cold sheets, and they cuddled, hands moving everywhere, at first mostly for warmth, then for other things.
Then he eased himself on top of her, and she spread her legs, arched her back, and he entered her like a red-hot poker, intense heat spreading up to her chest and face like a hot flash—only so much more pleasant.
Panting, moaning, they moved together in desperate desire, until Joyce climaxed, the orgasm exploding outward from ground zero to her fingertips. Then Don shuddered and collapsed into her, nuzzling her neck, nibbling her ear, then eased himself off her.
They lay draped in each other’s arms, neither speaking, their breathing subsiding, gradually drifting into sleep.
Sometime l
ater, Joyce awoke with a start; Don, next to her on his back, was trembling, talking incoherently in his sleep. She gently shook him, and his eyes flew open, wide and frightened.
She sat up on one elbow and leaned over him. “You were having a nightmare,” she said.
His hands covered his face, and he sighed deeply through them.
“Are you all right?” she asked, concerned.
He nodded, then leaned over and put his head on her chest, holding her tightly, and she reflexively put her arms around him.
“You want talk about it? What was it, Don?”
His shoulders heaved, and she felt wetness on her breast.
“Tell me.”
A moment passed before he spoke, his voice muffled. “I...I helped my wife kill herself.” And his shoulders heaved again.
Joyce tightened her grip, moving one hand to his head, as a mother draws a child comfortingly to her bosom, and whispered, “It’s all right....It’s all right.”
“Doctor Carver....”
“Shhh....You don’t have to tell me,” she whispered. You did the right thing. “You didn’t want her to suffer. It’s what anyone would do, should do....”
She kept reassuring him, until his crying subsided, replaced with rhythmic breathing, then gentle snoring.
She could make him forget the pain, she thought, as she lay holding him, listening to the wind outside, rattling the windows with icy fingers.
For the first time since she’d committed herself to this new path, she had doubts. Perhaps she shouldn’t be trying to start back down that same old road, in the same old profession; the notion of a professor’s wife on this quiet campus that had such meaning to her became a sudden, sharply focused alternative. Could she be happy living here, in this house, with this man, in this town?
Maybe she could. That would be a second chance, too, wouldn’t it? Another life? A new life? She could be happy here!
For a while, anyway.
She stroked his hair gently before easing from beneath him, slipping out of the warm bed, finding her discarded clothes on the floor, putting them on, and tiptoeing silently out of the room.
The fire in the living room had died, along with any post-coital thoughts about becoming the next Mrs. Hanson....A new future beckoned.
She was a professional, wasn’t she? Already under contract?
She got her leather jacket and put on the Weejuns, which were still wet, and slipped out the front door, closing it quietly.
The snow had stopped and the temperature dropped, the wind giving her face icy little slaps as she hurried along, as if helping bring her back to her senses; tramping along, she dug her hands deeper in her pockets. Christ on a crutch, it was cold!
Across the town square, a snowplow plodded, scraping the street, breaking the deathly still of the night. Joyce moved into the gutter, where there was less snow than on the sidewalks, which hadn’t been cleared, her toes tingling, breath nearly crystallizing in midair.
It stings the toes and bites the nose, as over the ground we go....
She was almost in a run by the time she reached the edge of the campus, cutting across the lawn, the Alice-in-Wonderland paths having disappeared beneath the powdered-sugar snow, when she abruptly halted, sucking in air so quickly that her lungs ached.
There was a light moving in the bell tower.
The phantom of the Old Chapel had returned!
Then someone was laughing, giddily, girlishly: her.
Feeling like Nancy Drew in The Ghost of Blackwood Hall, Joyce raced across the snow to the old red-brick Gothic building. She found the front doors locked, but the back was not, and she darted inside, shaking the snow from her shoes as she entered.
Consumed with an adventurous rush of adrenaline, she tiptoed down a long narrow hallway with a red-carpeted runner, eyes slowing growing accustomed to the dark. Then she stood silently in the center of the first floor, a bank of elevators to her right, the grand spiral staircase to her left.
From somewhere high above, she heard an ungodly sound, a moaning or groaning.
The fun drained out of her; the adventure, too. Something really was wrong here....
She leaned and peered up the hole in the staircase, which wound all the way to the tower, where a faint light still could be seen.
Wait just a damn minute, she said to herself. This place always had been the pinnacle of pranks on this campus. She smiled to herself. Was Sally in back of this? Performing a final farewell stunt? Or was it one of the returning students, who were due back from break in another day or two?
Like an apparition herself, she glided up the stairs, past the second floor, then third floor, where she stopped and listened. The sound had ceased.
The final steps leading to the bell tower narrowed, and Joyce knew they would creak with her every step, because they weren’t carpeted. So she bounded up them, landing on the fourth floor with both feet firmly planted.
“I’ve got you now!” she said loudly, ridiculously.
But just the howling wind gave her a frosty greeting.
She shivered; maybe that’s all it was.
Slowly she moved forward in the small tower room, skirting the center where the old bell used to hang—it had been removed long ago due to incessant pranks—toward a discarded flashlight on the floor, its cyclops eye shining away from her.
“Come on,” she chided loudly, “you’ll have to do better than this X-Files moment, to make it into Old Chapel folklore.”
She bent and retrieved the flashlight, stood, then retreated, knocking into something with the back of her head. She whirled and found herself tangled up in a pair of legs. Shrieking, she fell backward on her butt, the flashlight in one hand traveling up those legs to a torso.
A stocky middle-aged balding man in brown pants and white shirt was dangling by his neck, where a bell cable was wound so tight the visible flesh was a sickly purple, bloated tongue lolled out, blank eyes bulging, face a red-splotchy white, head at a hopelessly askew angle that made this anything but a prank.
Rick.
And her terrified scream resonated in the small tower, echoing off the walls—insuring Joyce her own place in Old Chapel folklore—and she stumbled out of the room and down the spiral staircase, losing her footing, the flashlight in her hand creating a wild laser show as she tumbled ass-over-teakettle the rest of the way down, landing rudely in a heap at the bottom.
Frightened and bruised, she picked herself up and hobbled down the hallway to an office door, but found it locked. Using the head of the flashlight, she broke its stenciled-glass panel to get inside, where she dialed 911 on a desk phone.
She sat on the floor with her back to the desk, her legs drawn to her chest, rocking back and forth, sobbing, waiting for the help that would soon come.
Knowing that it was too late to really help.
Chapter Six
“YOU MAKE ME FEEL BRAND NEW”
(The Stylistics, #2 Billboard, 1974)
Waiting at the curb for Joyce outside the tiny airport in Bemidji, Minnesota—where a chartered plane had brought her north from Minneapolis—was a white van that almost blended into the blinding white of a recent snowfall, but for the black letters on its side: Chestnut Mountain Resort.
The man in brown parka and tan corduroy pants who took her single small suitcase (she’d been instructed to bring only essentials) had an infectious smile in a well-grooved face, eyes as blue as the clear sky and as sparkling as the sun-reflecting snow, whose whiteness was shared by his full, rather shaggy head of hair. Joyce guessed his age to be in the late sixties.
He held up a little sign that said JOYCE JONES, which was amusing to her, considering this miniscule airport wasn’t exactly brimming with limo drivers.
“That’s me,” she said. She was wearing slacks and a Simmons College sweatshirt with the bomber jacket over it—generally, warm enough apparel, but not for Minnesota weather.
“Jerry Jensen,” he said, in a husky baritone, helping her into the
front passenger seat.
“How much of a drive do we have, Mr. Jensen?”
“Oh, bout an hour north, pretty near the Canadian border, missy.”
She found his Minnesota accent charming, and his manner comforting.
As the van pulled out of the airport and onto the highway, Joyce asked, “Are Paul Bunyan and Blue Ox still standing?” She was referring to Bemidji’s most famous attraction, massive statues of the hero of local folklore and his famous pet.
Mr. Jensen gave her a sideways glance. “Poor ol’ boy’s still waiting for his true love,” he said, referring to the statue of Lucette in the town of Hackensack.
When Joyce was eight, she had vacationed with her parents in Bemidji. They stayed on the lake in a cabin and had a wonderful time—or she thought so anyway. She now wondered why they had never returned. Perhaps it hadn’t been much of a vacation for her parents, sharing the bedroom with an eight-year-old.
Now and then, as Mr. Jensen skillfully maneuvered the van along the heavily snow-laden blacktop, the two made light conversation.
He told her he was retired from the real estate business, having sold lakefront property for forty-some years; and she told him she’d been in advertising for most of her life. But beyond that, she didn’t offer anything else about herself, and he didn’t ask.
As the landscape became more desolate and even the tiny towns disappeared, giving way to thick, luxuriously green pine forests, the flat land becoming more hilly, Joyce leaned her head back against the seat’s headrest.
She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew they were winding their way up a steep, narrow incline, where signs along the way warned of falling rocks and deep drop-offs.
She straightened up in her seat. “I hope I didn’t snore,” she said sheepishly.
“I didn’t hear anything, missy, ‘cept a few trees gettin’ sawed down.” He gave her another sideways glance, eyes twinkling. “Pretty common in these parts.”
She smiled back at him. “Pretty common anywhere I fall asleep—but thanks for the graceful out.”
“All part of the service, missy.”
Then the land flattened out—they must have reached the top of the mountain—and through the thick pine trees she could see the resort looming just ahead, man’s work rising over nature’s.
Regeneration Page 8
