She walked into the bathroom and held out his jacket.
“Is this the one?”
“No, but it’ll do,” Mark grumbled irritably. “I’m surprised you could even find it with all the clothes you keep on my side of the closet.”
Ignoring that remark, she calmed herself with daydreams of diamonds.
On impulse, she grabbed her husband around the neck and pulled him in close for a kiss.
“What was that for?” he asked, untangling himself and tightening his tie like a noose around his neck.
“Nothing. Just for being you.”
A weird, strangled look crossed his face.
She dismissed it.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, looking at her like she had two heads.
“Nope. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just happy, that’s all.”
“I’ve got to go or I’ll be late.”
“Have a nice day, then,” she practically sang.
Mark just looked shocked, more like shell-shocked. Then he shook his head. Well, she’d explain it to him this weekend.
And this weekend they were going to have sex. Birthday sex. Like her library books, it was long overdue.
Chapter Four
The Bald Cypress
An early morning streak of light streamed directly across the Newborns’ treasured bald cypress, which had gone into the ground years ago on Earth Day. The tree shimmered and glowed in all its ornamental beauty, throwing the rest of the lawn into shadow.
Thriving, its trunk swelled as the cypress soaked up the moisture in its special place by the lagoon, promising to put on a show when the rich-green needles turned a coppery orange and then brown before they dropped in the fall. The sapling cypress was sturdy. It would outlast Alex and provide quick shade for the family who moved into the house long after the Newborns were gone.
For now, Alex was content to enjoy the sweet sanctuary of painting outdoors in natural light, and the pleasant memory of measuring the growth of her daughters as they posed, arms linked, beneath the moss-draped canopy of the cypress in her backyard.
A cypress that Mark had planted but never nurtured. The low-maintenance cypress only required pruning to remove any dead or damaged branches and frequent deep watering when it was first planted. But the tree turned out to be very resilient, as it was tolerant of both the wind and Mark’s neglect, more tolerant than she was.
The cypress was the focal point of Alex’s current painting. She had decided to do a study of that scene, much like Monet’s Water Lilies series, to capture the way the light affected the cypress at various times of the day. This painting was for her higher self. It was the most intimate form of expression because it was true fine art versus painting for decorative purposes.
Patches of light and shadow from the surrounding trees dappled the well-manicured lawn only to be broken by the mesmerizing movement of the lawn man buzzing from right to left across the landscape and back again on his yellow riding mower, like Apollo traversing the sky in his golden chariot. And he resembled a god. Alex had been naughtily obsessing about the man’s body ever since she’d caught him lurking in her bushes.
He executed a perfect linear pattern across the lawn except when he made a slow circuit around the crepe myrtles, palmettos, and camellia shrubs. She liked the way the shadows crawled across his white T-shirt and his bulging muscles as he moved in and out of the light, and the steady whine and hum of the mower that sounded like a jet engine in the distance, growing and receding until it became nothing more than white noise. It felt a lot like foreplay.
Neither one looked at the other. Not after that embarrassing scene in front of her house. Although he was not in her painting, he was somehow an integral part of it.
How could she be both aroused by and terrified of Nick? What did she know about him really? A lot could happen to a man in twenty years. He had obviously fallen on desperate times. He could be a thief, or a rapist, or worse. And here they were, alone in her very private backyard. She tried to recall some trivia tidbits from her old art history textbooks, anything to keep her mind and her eyes off Nick Anselmo.
Okay, what about that Flemish painter, Jan Van Eyck, who was credited for discovering the idea of binding pigment with oil? Now there was a great idea. Alex looked up to the sky and silently thanked the fifteenth-century Northern European painter. And, while she was at it, she expressed her gratitude for whoever in modern times had made life easier for all artists by mixing up batches of ready-made oil paint in lovely colors and putting them into convenient little tubes.
Alex carefully added more paint and loosened her brush strokes. She even experimented by using her fingers, a leaf, and a small twig to apply the paint for a new effect. The light was cooperating, and the paints were gleaming in the sunlight and displaying the most vivid spectacle of colors possible. She was sure Van Eyck’s spirit had somehow worked its magic.
The lawn man selected another tool, a power edger with a cast steel blade for a more finished appearance. As she turned slightly, she caught the glint of light flashing off the tip of the blade. She picked up a large flat brush for better precision.
He started edging between the paved asphalt path out to the gazebo and the stretch of grass and mulch in between. In a fluid motion, he created boundaries, curves, lines, and order. He no longer created on the canvas, she realized. This was the professore’s new form of art.
What should she call him now? Professore Anselmo sounded too pretentious for a lawn man. What about “The Edger?” The Edger was a fitting name. He seemed obsessively attached to his power tool, and he lived on the fringes of society. But he was defined by more than his work. Dominick was too formal, Nick a little too personal, but they had been close once. She was an adult; surely they could be on a first-name basis. Would she be comfortable calling him Nick? She tried it out and found it familiar and pleasing.
On her canvas, Alex drew her own boundaries. The lawn, colored in sap green and Naples yellow, ran up to the edge of the brackish water of the lagoon, which was colored by raw umber and Indian red. The lagoon stopped at the start of the island which encompassed the background with its thick stand of long leaf and loblolly pines and sable palms and a spray of snapdragons.
Nick, neat and careful as he worked, moved his tool around the yard with grace and freedom. Alex strived to create the same effect with her art. With the sky clear and blue and the air filled with the scent of fresh-cut grass, she was glad she had chosen to work outside today, happiest painting outside because it brought her closer to nature, closer to her subject. From the deep tan of his body, she could tell Nick had chosen never to work inside.
As Alex moved toward the foreground of her canvas to paint the azaleas and palmetto palms, she was aware Nick was moving closer to her. He probably just wanted to see what she was painting without disturbing her, but having him so near was a distraction. She realized she had been anxiously waiting to see him again since their last encounter.
The lawn man turned off the edger, and the constant drone that helped keep them worlds apart was silent. Picking up a sharp-looking pair of shears, he crept toward the easel to clip the hedges right behind her, at throat level. Each clip of the metal-to-metal sound sent a jolt through her body. Was she going to get sliced like an onion under a sharp stainless-steel blade, or was he merely going to cut her canvas to shreds? Clip, clip, clip.
She had no idea when he had turned from sensitive artist to sadist in her mind. Forcefully, he threw the tip of his clipper blades point down into the grass and the tool stood, handles up. Startled, she turned her body protectively, almost hugging the canvas. Nick knocked her completely off balance emotionally, and she dropped her paintbrush. He quickly grabbed the palette knife out of her paint box. She stiffened for the attack.
“Take this,” Nick ordered, “and put a lot of paint on it. Spread it onto your canvas like butter. It gives a nice thick texture to the trees. Sometimes a brush just doesn’t do it. Use the right tools for the job, Ale
xandra. Apply the paint heavily so your brush work or knife work is visible.”
“Th-thanks,” Alex answered, wiping the beads of sweat from her forehead.
“That’s a great start on a beautiful landscape,” said Nick. He had not lost his Italian accent. It was still a turn-on.
“It’s nothing,” replied Alex, attempting to cover up her canvas.
“Don’t be modest,” he admonished. “Do you mind if I take a closer look?”
“I don’t think it’s ready for anyone to see yet.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that.”
Alex stepped aside.
Nick examined the canvas carefully and with much interest, as if he were studying every blade of grass. After a long pause, he said, “I started drawing when I was a little boy. My mother encouraged me until she died. Then my father took my paints and pencils and drawing pads and threw them away. He thought it was not a very masculine thing for a boy to be doing. He wanted me to be a banker like him.”
Alex could imagine Nick Anselmo as a lot of things, but a banker was not one of them.
“What did you like to draw?” Alex asked softly in an encouraging tone just to hear him talk. As she listened, the years fell away, and she fell back under his spell.
“I drew whatever I saw. Everything around me.”
“I asked you last week if you still painted. You didn’t really answer.”
Nick rubbed his jaw as if he were taking it out for a test drive to see if the engine would still start, to make sure his voice hadn’t rotted from disuse. He hesitated, but finally the words began to flow.
“Samantha was pregnant when I married her.”
So the rumors had been true. Maybe that’s why he’d married her. Because he’d had to, to do the right thing. That would explain a lot.
“We went to live for a while in Italy to get away from her parents and all the talk,” he continued. “We were happy for a time. We traveled and painted, but then she lost the baby. She needed to recuperate. So I went to work at my father’s bank. I was no longer painting, no longer on the road. It was not a very happy time for me. For Samantha, it wasn’t enough. She desperately wanted another child. We tried, year after year, and three years ago, she announced she was pregnant. She wanted to move back to America. She missed her parents and her home. So I quit my job and we moved to Florida.”
After that first astonishing burst of revelations, Alex expected Nick to put on the brakes and get back to work.
“Do you want me to go on? It’s not a very pretty story.”
Alex nodded, prompting him to continue, not wanting to disrupt his rhythm or stanch the flow of his words, feeling his need to release the floodgates of grief that seemed to pour out of him at the mention of his wife’s name.
“It was then we discovered the mistake,” Nick said. “Samantha wasn’t pregnant at all. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the worst kind. She was very sick. I didn’t have insurance. Why should I? I was invincible. I thought nothing could happen to us. Not only were her treatments very expensive, but they wrung the life out of her. We were in and out of doctor’s offices, hospitals, desperate to go anywhere that promised a solution. At the end, she was going to Texas for treatments.
“For a while she was in remission,” he continued, “but the cancer came back with a vengeance, like a vulture picking on carrion, swooping back for that one last scrap it had missed.
“We tried everything we could, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Then she was gone. And it was my fault.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I ran through my savings, every last penny I had, but I was too stubborn to take money from my father, even though he had all the money in the world to spare. I even sold all my old paintings to whatever gallery would take them. To the highest bidder. And when my supply ran out, I began painting again. I painted until my fingers bled. It wasn’t my best work.”
“Well, then you did everything you could,” Alex reasoned.
“But still, it wasn’t enough,” Nick stated quietly. “Sam was all I had left in life. I’d have given every ounce of my talent, cut off both my hands, for one more day with her. To hold her one more time. To make sure she knew how much I loved her. I’m not sure she knew that, in the end.”
Alex listened intently, her hands folded, silent tears leaking down her face.
“I made a bargain with God,” Nick stated simply. “He didn’t keep his part. After that, I didn’t really want to paint anymore. None of it was any good without Sam. I wasn’t any good without Sam. The only pictures I’d want to paint would be of Sam, and now I can barely remember her face. What kind of husband does that make me?”
Alex wanted to offer sympathy, but Nick didn’t look like he would appreciate it. She doubted very much that the independent streak in the man had changed. She was surprised he had shared so much personal information with her. He must be terribly lonely. Perhaps he had no one else to talk to, no way to unburden himself.
Hearing his voice was a bonus. In the space of five minutes he had revealed more to her about his feelings than Mark had in five months.
Jagged tears of grief were streaming down Nick’s face as he told his story. Tears he didn’t seem to realize he’d been shedding. Alex looked away for a minute to give the man some privacy.
“I’m really sorry to hear about your loss,” Alex said sincerely, regretting all the hurtful thoughts she’d had about Samantha Bennett. Correction, Samantha Bennett-Anselmo. Sorry for her own contribution to the sordid speculation, the cruel rumors and gutter gossip she’d so cavalierly bandied about with her fellow students all those years ago. God, she’d been callous. She specifically had been motivated by jealousy. It didn’t paint a very flattering picture. And now, in light of all Nick had just revealed, she was just plain ashamed of herself.
They’d all wondered what Professor Anselmo had seen in Samantha Bennett. As far as talent, she wasn’t the most gifted artist, and she certainly wasn’t the most beautiful girl. She must have had something else to offer to hold his interest, they’d snickered.
They had made light of what they thought was a wicked romp between a sexy grad student and her even sexier professor, but it was obvious after hearing his story that Nick Anselmo had genuine feelings for his wife. He’d given up everything for her and hadn’t regretted it. And he’d spent a great deal of time grieving for her.
“I’ll let you get back to your work,” said Nick, starting to turn away. “I love your painting, by the way. You were always one of my most promising students. But the snapdragon never flowers in lavender, only yellow. And you look great in that dress. The color suits you.”
Alex didn’t know whether to be grateful for the information about the snapdragon or insulted, but he was the plant expert. And the art expert. And a definite expert on women. She was infinitely grateful for the compliment about her new sundress. Despite Mark’s comments, she hadn’t taken it back to the store. And now she might never take it off again.
As Nick gathered up his equipment and walked away, Alex stared after him. She had lost the morning light just like she had once lost her chance at happiness with Nick Anselmo.
Chapter Five
The Elephant in the Laundry Room
Mark’s large cross trainer treadmill was the elephant in the laundry room, invading Alex’s tight personal space. Which is why Alex preferred to exercise at the YMCA rather than tangle with Mark over who got temporary custody of the treadmill. Her gym was her haven, her home away from home. It was her time to spend with her best friend Vicky, a chance to unwind with no one making any demands.
“Damn, I’m late for the gym,” Alex exclaimed to no one in particular as she looked at her watch.
She threw on her baggy calf-length black gym pants and long wrinkled black T-shirt. Yes, it was almost summer, but black was slimming, right? She swore that if she could only lose five or ten pounds and shape up, she could wear that body-hugging workout outfit she�
�d purchased at the mall last year. Mark would balk if she bought another new outfit. The old one had probably already gone out of style and she hadn’t even taken it out of the bag. It would have to do, if she could squeeze her body into it.
It didn’t matter to anyone at the gym that it had been six days since she’d shaved her legs. No one was looking at them anyway, not even Mark, especially not Mark.
Vicky was saving the elliptical machine next to her, and they started their usual forty-five-minute cardio workout, followed by twelve minutes on what they called the “dreadmill.”
Their workout used to be ten minutes, until Vicky tried to convince her exterminator to stop smoking. She’d promised him she would run an extra minute for every cigarette he gave up in a day. And that meant Alex had to run as well. After all, what are friends for?
The exterminator was a big talker. He talked about the bug population explosion, house centipedes and outdoor millipedes, sugar ants, and other unappetizing topics. The problem was she couldn’t get him to stop talking and start spraying. Alex’s exterminator was the same way. Maybe it was something they learned in exterminator school.
“He’ll never know if we actually ran,” Vicky admitted.
“And we’ll never know if he actually gave up those cigarettes.”
“I guess it’s the honor system. I don’t want to be jinxed and end up with a house full of roaches.”
“Yecch!”
“Talk about vermin, how’s Mark?”
Alex laughed, but she was excited she had something to report. “Guess what fell out of Mark’s jacket pocket a few days ago?” Alex asked, wiping her brow with a sweat towel.
“A condom?”
“No,” Alex said. “He doesn’t have much use for those anymore.”
Vicky snickered. Alex couldn’t believe she confided in Vicky about her sex life, or lack of one, but she talked to her best friend about almost everything. There was little withheld information between them.
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