Husband in Training Page 18

  She tried to say no, but the word wouldn't come out.

  He said, "I want to believe that love is going to be stronger than how scared you are. All those books and poems Polly made me read say it is. All those movies. All those songs. Were they all lying, is that it?"

  How could she answer that? How could she tell him—

  He lowered his mouth to hers, so gently. His lips settled on hers like a breath. Like a prayer. Her thoughts flew away.

  There was only Nick. Only Nick and his kiss, his body against hers, his big arms around her, holding her close.

  His tongue sought entry. She gave it. The kiss deepened. She sighed.

  And then the front door slammed.

  Nick raised his head. Jenny opened her eyes, bewildered, confused. He grasped her waist and moved back from her.

  They both turned to look toward the dining room as Polly came bounding in.

  She skidded to a stop at the sight of them. "Oh!" She looked from Jenny to Nick. "Well," she said. "Well. Uh, don't let me interrupt, okay? I'll just, you know, go on into my room." She backed toward the hall, then turned and ran off.

  Two seconds later, they heard her door slam.

  Nick let go of Jenny and took another step back. He ran both hands back over his hair. She wanted to cry as she watched him do that. Then he turned away from her. He went and stood at the glass door and looked out at her patio and the small lawn beyond it. "Polly knows, right—about Saturday night? About what I want from you?"

  Jenny didn't answer immediately. He sent her a dark look. She nodded. "Yes, Polly knows."

  He stared back out the window again. "She wants me to take her to a basketball game, when she's through being grounded. A playoff game. Can you believe that? Polly asking to go to a basketball game?"

  "She … doesn't want to lose you, Nick."

  "Yeah. I figured that out."

  "I hope she won't lose you."

  His big shoulders lifted, then fell with his sigh. "You women. You ask a damn lot." He turned around then, and looked at her for a long time. "It isn't just Andy, is it?"

  She said nothing.

  He knew the answer, anyway. "It was losing him, right?"

  She nodded. "Oh, Nick. I just, I couldn't stand to go through that again."

  "You wouldn't have to. I would never ask you to. I would stick by you, Jen. I know I've been a runaround. I know I made a damn fool of myself over Sasha, who never really meant a thing to me. But I can swear to you now, that I would—"

  She couldn't bear for him to finish. "Andrew swore, too, Nick. And I lost him. We can't know what will happen. Sometimes the truest promises get broken. And there are some people, like me, who just don't want to take the risk again."

  He gestured toward the hallway, where Polly had gone. "What about her?" He spoke low, for Jenny's ears alone. "What about Polly? I'm a rotten jerk for mentioning it, but you could lose her. It's not likely, but it's possible. You don't … send her out of your life for that. You don't penalize her because an accident might happen, because she could get sick and die."

  "It's not the same. You know it. With Polly, I don't have a choice. She's my child. I have to take the chance."

  "Hell, Jen." He took a step toward her, and then stopped himself. He stuck his hands into his pockets, as if to keep them from reaching for her. "You're gonna miss me, when I go. Maybe as bad as I'm gonna miss you."

  She wanted to deny that, but she just couldn't force out the lie.

  He went on, "You're gonna miss me because you love me. You do. I can see it in those blue eyes. I can feel it when you kiss me. You're gonna make us both suffer because of some remote possibility that you might lose me down the road. Is that logical? Does that make one damn bit of sense?"

  She answered in a tiny voice. "No, it doesn't. I know it doesn't. Not to you. Not to anyone who hasn't gone through what I went through."

  "Damn it, Jen." He turned back to the window.

  "No. No, listen." She dared to approach him, to stand beside him, to look out at the patio, the back lawn, the late-afternoon sun with him. "You want to know, then listen." She waited. He said nothing. She told him so quietly, "It's the little things that do it. The little things. The everyday things. The way you laugh. The way you put ketchup on your sandwiches. The way you run both hands back over your hair. It would be you, in the morning, at the table, eating breakfast, ready to look up and give me your smile. It would be us, in the same bed, every night. Because I would grow to need you there, to love you, there, in every part of my life. It would be that I would know, because it happened before, that some morning I could wake up and kiss you goodbye and you would leave, to get doughnuts, maybe, or just to go off to work. And you might … never come back."

  She couldn't stop herself. He was so close. She laid her head against his shoulder. He put his arm around her, though he didn't look at her. He remained, staring out at the backyard, just as she did. She leaned there, against him, against his warmth and his strength, wrapped in the special scent of him, though she shouldn't have. Oh, she shouldn't have.

  She said, "Oh, Nick. You don't know. It's as if, when you love someone, you have to make big spaces inside yourself, to hold them, to hold all the little things that you are together. And then, if they leave you, if they die or they just go, there are such horrible, giant-size holes. Big, ugly gaps. In yourself. In your life. It's a kind of death, for the one left behind. A death worse than dying. Because you have to go on, with those holes in yourself."

  He squeezed her shoulder. She felt his lips brush her hair. "It's too late, Jen," he whispered. "Don't you get it? Those big spaces you talk about. They're already made. Inside you. Inside me. You send me away now, we both lose. We both have those big, ugly holes anyway."

  She closed her eyes against those words. "It won't be as bad now as it would later on."

  He whispered in her ear, "It's bad enough." And he kissed her hair once more.

  Then he let go of her. He stepped back and took her hand, turned it over, so the palm was facing up. He reached behind him, into a back pocket, and pulled something out.

  An envelope. Folded in half. He laid it in her open hand.

  He said, "Remember that night you caught Polly writing that love letter to Sasha for me?"

  She bit her lip, made herself nod.

  "I told Polly I couldn't write it myself. That love letters just weren't my style."

  The envelope felt light, in her hand. Light as air. Light as a breath—as a quick, brushing touch. "Oh, Nick…"

  "Shh. Listen. I wrote that for you. It's not much. It's just … what I feel."

  "I can't—"

  "I know. You keep saying that. So I'm going. I am. But I want you to keep that."

  "Oh Nick, I—"

  "Wait. Listen. You keep that. I don't want you to read it today. Or tomorrow, or the day after that. Just keep it. Put it away somewhere safe. For the day you change your mind."

  "But I won't—"

  "Don't say that. You already said it. A hundred times. I swear to you, Jen, I heard you. I did. And all I'm asking is for you to keep it. Keep it and don't read it. Unless you change your mind."

  She started to speak again.

  But he spoke first. "Do that for me. That one little thing. You can do that, can't you?"

  She closed her eyes—as she closed her hand over the envelope. "All right."

  "Good. Now look at me. One more time. And kiss me. One more time. And then I'll take my cat and go."

  She opened her eyes. His dear face hovered above her own. And then his mouth came down, touched hers, so gently. So lightly. As light as the folded envelope in her hand.

  He lifted his head. "Bye, Jen."

  She could not say that word: goodbye, though she was the one sending him away.

  "Tell Polly I'll call her, about that playoff game."

  "Yes. I'll tell her."

  A smile formed on his lips, then vanished. "I love you, Jen."

  The kitten still wa
ited, underneath the table. He went up the steps, knelt. "Daisy," he said. The kitten went right to him. He scooped up the animal, tucked it under his arm.

  And then he left.

  Jenny closed her eyes, so she wouldn't have to watch him go. She opened them again as she heard the front door click shut. She was left alone, with the letter she would never read clutched in her hand.

  * * *

  Chapter 18

  « ^

  "Mom?" Polly peered around the corner from the hall.

  Jenny looked up, put on a smile—as she slid her hand behind her and eased the envelope into the back pocket of her old jeans.

  "He's gone," Polly said.

  "Yes, honey. He is."

  Polly stepped out, clear of the hallway. She came around the table and hovered at the top of the steps to the family room. "I saw him leave, with Daisy. I was standing in the hallway, Mom. I shouldn't have been. I have to stop doing that, I know. I have to stop sneaking around. But right now, I couldn't help myself. I snuck out of my room. And I stood in the hallway."

  Jenny thought of the hard things they'd said, things she really didn't want Polly to know. "You heard what we said to each other, is that what you're telling me?"

  "Well, no. You were talking so softly. I couldn't hear."

  Relieved, Jenny chided, "It was between Nick and me. You know that."

  "Yeah. I guess so. But won't you tell me—"

  "I'll tell you this. He said he'd call you. To make arrangements for that playoff game."

  Hope lightened Polly's sad expression just a little. "He did?" Jenny nodded. And Polly asked gingerly, "But what about … you and him?"

  Jenny didn't know how to answer. She gave a rueful shrug.

  A single tear slid down Polly's cheek. "Oh, Mom. You are making such a giant mistake. Just a huge, awful, giant mistake."

  Jenny shrugged again. It seemed all she could do. Lift her shoulders, let them drop.

  "Oh, Mom…" Polly came down the steps. "Mom."

  Jenny reached out. Polly came into her arms with a sigh. Jenny embraced her, resting her cheek on her shining brown hair.

  "This is hard," Polly said in a tight voice. "This is really, really hard."

  Jenny just held on.

  A little while later, Jenny and Polly went back outside together and finished spreading the soil into the tire tracks on the lawn. Then they came in and Jenny made dinner. For the most part, the meal was a silent one, though Jenny did tell her daughter that Daisy had turned out to be a boy.

  Polly choked on a bite of meat loaf at the news.

  When she was through coughing, she insisted, "But I checked. I was sure."

  "So was I. But the vet says otherwise."

  Polly shook her head. "Poor Daisy. Is Nick going to rename her—I mean, him."

  "I don't think so. He says Daisy already knows his name."

  Polly shook her head again, but said nothing more.

  After the cleaning up had been done, Polly went to her room and Jenny spent a couple of hours at her desk.

  Eventually bedtime came.

  The house seemed so quiet that night. So quiet, Jenny couldn't sleep.

  Morning took forever to come.

  But it did come. Jenny got up and made breakfast, saw her daughter off to school, then went to work herself. That afternoon, her mechanic had the car ready. She drove over there, turned in the car she'd been driving and got her own back. It was as good as new. No one would ever guess she'd been so careless as to back it into a mulberry tree.

  The weekend came. Saturday, Jenny worked in the yard again, planting a few annuals to brighten things up. Saturday night, she and Polly went over to Kirsten's for dinner. They stayed until about nine, then went home, watched a movie, went to bed.

  She was fine, Jenny told herself.

  Getting by just fine. Soon, in a month, or a year, she'd feel good again. About living. She'd sleep well again, at night. She'd lived through the loss of a husband, after all. She could live through this loss. This loss of her enemy who had then become her friend.

  And then finally, her lover, for one forbidden, impossible, beautiful night.

  Sunday, she and Polly went to church. They didn't go often enough, really. After Andrew died, Jenny couldn't bear to go. She'd felt so betrayed, by life—and by God. Slowly, in the past couple of years, she'd started going again, now and then. And it did soothe her, to sit in the pew, to sing the old hymns and listen to the minister talk about the light of the world.

  She dropped Polly off at Kirsten's after the service. Kirsten had a big school project she was putting together. Polly had said she would help with it. Kirsten would bring her back home about five and share dinner with them.

  At home alone, Jenny ate lunch. Then she carried the full laundry basket out to the garage, put in a load of jeans and dark shirts, poured in the detergent and started the cycle.

  From the kitchen, where she stood grating cheese for a taco casserole, she could hear the washer running, humming away. She'd grated about a cup and a half of cheddar when she suddenly remembered.

  Nick's letter to her.

  It was still in the back pocket of her old jeans. And her old jeans were—

  Jenny dropped the hunk of cheese and tossed down the grater. She flew out the garage door to the washer and flung open the lid.

  Suds and drenched denim confronted her. Moaning a little, she stuck her hand in there, hooked up one pair of jeans after another, until she found the pair she sought. She dragged them out, dripping suds everywhere and felt in the back pocket.

  It was there. Soaking wet, but there. Carefully she pulled it free.

  Wet through. It came apart in her hands as she tried to flatten it out.

  Her hands. They were shaking. And the tears. They were falling. On her hands. On the sodden, ruined envelope, making everything wetter still.

  Sobbing, she sank to her knees on the floor of the garage. With those hands that wouldn't stop shaking, she peeled the pieces of wet envelope open, revealing the drenched, torn paper inside.

  She tried to smooth the two pieces on her knee. But they came apart, into four pieces. The pieces had writing on them. But it had all run together. She couldn't make out a line of it. Not a word. Nothing.

  Running ink squiggles on wet paper. All she had left of Nick's message to her.

  Sitting there on the cold concrete floor of her garage, Jenny rocked back and forth, moaning, tears streaming, with the ruined love letter clutched to her breast.

  Forgotten. Or maybe not forgotten. Neglected. Purposely ignored. Not put away, as she had promised. Not saved, treasured, as it should have been. But stuck in the wash.

  Now she would never know. What he had written. What he had said to her, what he'd wanted to tell her, if she ever got up the courage to love again.

  She'd never know.

  Unless she asked him.

  Jenny reached up, put her hand on the washer, to give herself support. Carefully she levered herself to her feet. She set the soggy bits of paper on the dryer, put her jeans back in the washer and closed the lid.

  The cycle started in again. Humming away.

  Jenny gathered up the ruined bits of her letter and went back inside. She set the sodden pieces down on the counter pass-through to the living room, smoothing them out again, matching the torn edges. When it dried, she would tape it together—an exercise in futility, surely, since if she couldn't read it now, she wouldn't be able to read it when it was dry. But somehow, right then, it seemed that belated care was better than no care at all.

  When the letter was neatly spread, the torn ends set back together, Jenny went to the hall bathroom to blow her nose and rinse the tears from her face. Then she returned to the kitchen and continued grating the cheese.

  She'd run the hunk of cheese along the grater three times when she glanced up and saw a robin hopping across the lawn out in front, moving in and out of the shadows cast by the leaves of the mulberry tree, stopping now and then to peck t
he ground. As Jenny stared, the robin lifted its head and tipped it sideways, the way birds do. It seemed to Jenny that the bird was looking right at her through the kitchen window, studying her with one tiny dark eye.

  Jenny set the cheese down, and the grater beside it. She rinsed her hands, dried them, then turned to pick up the phone on the wall of the pass-through. She auto-dialed Nick's number, her heart pounding so hard she could barely hear the ringing on the other end—the ringing that ended with a click and Nick's recorded voice instructing her to leave a message.

  Jenny hung up the phone. "He's not there," she said to the tattered, wet bits of paper on the counter beside her. She gulped in a breath, let it out slowly, repeated, "He's not there."

  She would have to try again later.

  And she would. She would do it. She would keep calling until he answered in person, when she could demand, Tell me. What did you write to me? What did you say?

  She turned back to her work at the other counter. She picked up the grater. Strangely, out the window, the robin remained in exactly the same position, small head tipped, looking at her.

  It came to her.

  Right now, there was something else. Somewhere she had to go.

  Somewhere that couldn't wait another day, another hour.

  She set down the grater and left the kitchen. She needed her purse and the keys to the car.

  She saw the black Cadillac, gleaming in the sun a few spaces away when she pulled into the cemetery lot. She got out of her car and stood looking at Nick's car for a long moment, wondering why she wasn't surprised.

  She turned for the pebbled path, thinking of spring. Somehow, in the past few weeks, spring had crept up on her. The lawns looked so lush and green. And the trees had all their leaves. Overhead, the sky was a soft expanse of pale blue. The songs of mockers and the squawking of blue jays filled the air.

  Jenny walked along the pebbled path and across the cute little redwood bridge that spanned the small creek. She saw Nick before he saw her.

  At the sight of him, she stopped on the path, half in and half out of the shadow of an oak tree.