15 Tales of Love (5 page)

“I agreed to do the horses,” he said firmly. “I’m going. No matter what she says.”

Andrea regarded the tangled curls hiding his face. An odd thought occurred to her
. Dennis is moving into a dark shadow and he can’t see where he is going or what will happen. What kind of sunlight will he find when he comes out on the other side, after this weekend of defiance? Will he suffer as I am, thinking about what he should have done? Will his mother totally withdraw, and how will that affect him? Will he drive knowingly into it?

She said, “Whatever you choose to do, I’m here with you.”

He looked up at her and smiled, but the distress was still in his eyes.

“I know that,” he said, “and I’m grateful.”

Andrea was not prepared for Dennis’s mother’s violent reaction. They had gone together to tell her that Dennis had accepted the up-country horseshoeing job, and that Dennis felt he had to accept it in order to keep some good clients.

“You can’t do this to me!” Elizabeth screamed at him and closed her hand around Dennis’s arm, shaking him. “I need you here to help me through the day and all the memories that come back. Her face was contorted with fury. “Don’t you have any thoughts of your father at all? Don’t you care?”

“I care and I have many good memories,” Dennis said, his voice trembling a little. carefully controlling the trembling in his voice He disengaged her fingers from his arm. “Dad wouldn’t want me to back out on a promised job. You know he always said one should keep his commitments. He was always one to keep his commitments. Besides, Celia and Ray and the kids will be here with you.”

“I need
you
.” She changed to petulance and wheedling, wringing her hands.

Dennis sighed. “I have needs, too. Andrea is going with me.” He left that thought unfinished with all of its implications.

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “You can’t. You’re not married.”

“Yet,” Dennis said and straightened up.

Was that a proposal?
If so, it’s a rather a left-handed one
.
But how will his mother react?

Elizabeth stared at him, her mouth slightly open, but said nothing.

“We’re going, Mom,” he said. “It’s time you moved on. Like I am.”

Elizabeth put one hand on her forehead. “I’m getting a headache,” she said.

And now for a little melodrama.

“Make some tea,” Dennis said shortly. “That usually helps.”

“You are so unfeeling, so uncaring.” Elizabeth sounded close to tears. “How can you do this to me?”

“Believe me, there is nothing else I can do. I have to take this job if I want to keep these clients.”

“You don’t. You could explain to them. You are deserting me.” She was almost wailing.

Andrea heard the unsaid
,
“Leaving me for her. How can you?”

Dennis turned away without answering.

It was a long week. Andrea had enough work for the newspaper to keep her busy, and she talked to Dennis most evenings. She sensed that his mother’s constant pleadings were getting to him, or maybe he was just getting tired and would give in as he always had rather than keep resisting. She was, therefore, happily surprised when he told her on Thursday, “I’ll pick you up around five tomorrow. It takes about an hour and a half to drive up there. We’ll have dinner somewhere along the way. I know a couple of nice places.”

Relieved, she said, “Wonderful. I’ll be ready.”

“I don’t know how this will work out,” he said sadly. “I can’t see an end to it. Mom isn’t about to change. At least not for me.”

That shadow again,
Andrea thought.
I’m fighting mine and how much worse his must be, so much longer and deeper.
She said, “It should be a nice weekend.”

“The weather is supposed to be great.”

That wasn’t what she had meant.

The bed-and-breakfast was a charming, nicely restored old farmhouse on the edge of a pretty village, and their room was comfortably old-fashioned with a big four-poster bed. Their hosts, a genial older couple who remembered Dennis from his previous stay, welcomed them both with fresh coffee and warm molasses cookies. Andrea looked forward to a quiet, and hopefully productive, stay.

Breakfast was a glorious meal of fresh fruit compote, light-as-air pancakes, homegrown bacon, cranberry muffins and some of the best coffee Andrea had ever tasted. She drove Dennis to his job, met the stable owners, admired their horses, and then returned to the comfortable sitting room to write. She had brought her notebook of poetry, but was still dissatisfied with the sunshine into shadows effort. It needed something more, some way to end it, a conclusion, a solution to the problem. She saw no way to solve it. She took out the short story to work on. That didn’t work well, either.

Andrea had lunch at a little café in the village, admired the well-kept common with its old maple trees and Civil War monument, her ideal New England postcard village. She wandered through a gift shop and an antique store without buying anything, and then took a long walk along a pretty brook. It was all very relaxing and should have been calming, but she worried about Dennis. In the evening when they went to the excellent restaurant recommended by their hostess, he was tired and on edge.

“Oh, the job is fine,” he told her. “I’ve worked with these horses before and they know me, and when I’m working I can forget all about Mom and her hysterics. But then it all comes flooding in and I wonder, what will she do when we get back?”

“When will you be finished?”

“Late afternoon tomorrow, if I get started early. We can have dinner on the way back.” He sighed deeply. “We do have to get back to our real life, and everything we left behind.”

“We do.” She felt his unhappiness but was unable to find comfort for him since she had none for herself. “But we shouldn’t have all of that turmoil waiting for us. Her bad day will have passed.”

He looked up at her. “Not for her. She will just add it to everything else she throws at me.”

She could see and feel his distress and his indecision, and didn’t say any more. It was for him to decide and, not for the first time, she wondered if she could continue to cope with it.
Was all of this just more dark shadows to contend with?
Their life together, if they had one, should be much more like this weekend with its warmth and closeness, no tension between them
. Isn’t it time he made the decision, her or me?

She knew it was a hard choice and one that she wished he didn’t have to make, yet it was up to him to draw lines.
But can I continue to live with it, after this weekend, knowing how it will be? And also how it should be, how it could be?

In the morning, Dennis left after breakfast, this time driving himself. Andrea enjoyed a leisurely second cup of coffee with their hosts, packed their bags and went back to her writing. She explored several thoughts concerning the poem. None of it really pleased her.
Was it time to share it with Dennis? What would he think of it? Now that he appeared to have proposed, was it time for her to talk to him about their life together?

She didn’t get very far with the story, either. She was too tense. By the time Dennis came back for her after four o’clock, she had given up all pretense of writing. But when they stopped at a recommended restaurant on the way home, she took her notebook in with her.

Smiling at her, Dennis asked, “Bringing your work with you? I thought you left that behind when you went out for the evening.”

“I have something to show you,” she said, mentally crossing her fingers.

Over their pre-dinner glass of wine, she told him about the man and the dog in the shadows and how it had affected her, how she couldn’t forget what might have happened. She showed him the second poem she had written about shadows.

He read it slowly. “That’s lovely,” he said. “I’ve had that happen to me but I never thought much about it afterward, seeing nothing happened.”

She took another paper from her notebook. “I wrote this one this morning for you. To sort of end it, the driving into shadows.” She didn’t add,
your shadows, your inability to see what is happening to you and to us. If we are to go on together, I need you free of them, of your past. At least for you to recognize them.

She read it aloud, suddenly afraid that Dennis wouldn’t understand, that he would take it wrong. And they had had such a nice weekend, a taste of what could be.

Moving from sunlight into shadow

Clouds the vision for a moment,

Hides the brightness

Of the world around you.

The sudden darkness brings a sadness,

Obscuring the joys of the world.

But moving from the shadow

Back into the sunlight

The day becomes brighter.

Memories of the shadow enhance the brightness,

Clear the vision and calm the soul,

And we can move on,

Better prepared for the shadows

That we will surely find again.

She did not look up at him when she had finished, just waited, wondering what he would say.

Dennis reached across the table and closed his fingers around hers and said slowly and softly, “I think it’s time we faced all those shadows together, yours and mine. Mom’s hysterics are a pretty big shadow to face alone, and I need your help.”

She looked up then and met his eyes. There was both sadness there and a hint of determination in his voice. “We had such a nice weekend. We could have more of them.”

“We shall,” he said. “If we stick together.”

She returned the pressure of his fingers. The shadows weren’t gone, but she could see sunlight, even if it was still dappled by the trees. She asked, “But how do I plan our wedding? I really want it my way, not hers.”

“Just do it your way as much as possible,” he said, “and keep our honeymoon in mind. The future, not the bad right now.”

And it would be bad. But maybe she could cope.
We can cope.

IF IT’S DRY

There were days when Jasmyn Jameson couldn’t stand her Uncle Horace. Sometimes his continual ability to find an adage, a proverb, or some old saw for every occasion was too much for her to take. Some situations can’t be explained away with an old saying or a proverb; some problems are too complex, too personal, and sometimes too hurtful, for platitudes.

She knew Uncle Horace meant well and that he loved her, but what she needed right now was an understanding of her problems. What was she to do about Matt Colby? Could, or should, she continue to wait for him to “find himself,” as he called it? He was going to go back to school for still another degree, one she could see no real need for, and putting everything else, including her and their engagement, on hold–for the third time.

He was still learning, he said, still studying all the various aspects of social interactions, material he needed for the books he intended to write, the courses he planned to teach.

“Ambition is fine,” she told him. “I admire your drive, your determination to reach the top, but can’t I go there with you, like we planned?”

“Of course, Jasmyn, as soon as I reach the point where I can move from studying to writing.”

She was supposed to be satisfied with that, but she wasn’t.

She and Matt had known each other since fifth grade and had been a couple since their last year of high school, in spite of their differences in outlook. The class prophecy had linked them in its predictions, suggesting they had married and Matt had reached the top of the academic ladder at whatever college he was dean of. The writers had not quite said Harvard. Matt was their class valedictorian, the member voted most likely to succeed at whatever he chose to do. Jasmyn was merely a member of the Honor Society. Matt played no sports, and usually refused to even watch. He had joined the high school chess club and the math team mostly because involvement in school activities was required and looked good on his transcript. Jasmyn had played volleyball and was part of the team for two years, and was involved in student government.

They had attended different colleges, chosen totally different career paths, his in social sciences and hers in business, but both schools were near home and they stayed in touch, getting together during summers and again after graduation. They talked of marriage and she had never before doubted that they would continue onward together. It was a comfortable relationship and she had been sure that it was what was meant to be.

But when did he move onto a different course? Is he taking me for granted, always there when he wants me? What was it Uncle Horace once said, ‘some folks are like the weather, you can’t predict what they’re going to do’? Had Matt encountered something somewhere that had changed his outlook? Or was it someone else who was interested in all these degrees in various social studies? Had he moved totally away from her?

He never mentioned anyone and she didn’t want to think it now, but he had seemed particularly anxious to leave this time.
And he doesn’t talk a lot about the people he works with. I wonder why that is.

And now there was Rory McAlpine, devastatingly handsome and wickedly charming, but a total social misfit who had no ambitions at all, and who was suddenly paying unwanted attentions to her. He had tried in the past, but she had discouraged him. He was not at all her type.

She didn’t want to like him. He was an infuriating man, although she had frequently found him amusing. He was a couple of years older than Jasmyn, but she had known him in high school as the class clown, the one who was always in the drama club productions. He played drums in the band flamboyantly, and had charmed all the prettiest cheerleaders with his handsome blondness, athletic build, easy grace, and his prowess in the baseball outfield. She knew that in his attentions to her he was just amusing himself. He had no ambitions, did not go on to college, worked at whatever caught his eye for the moment. Most of her girlfriends had dated him once or twice and written him off as hopeless. No one could see a future for him or with him.

Rory might be diverting, but she was engaged to Matt and that was where her thoughts should be.
I should be in Boston with him. Why doesn’t he want me there, too?

Uncle Horace’s advice “to take the weather as it comes along and see what falls out” was of no use at all. She needed a plan, some way to cope with Matt’s apparent reluctance to settle down, which she very much wanted to do.

Can’t Uncle Horace see I need to think about my future,
and if he can’t help
just shut up?

That thought was unkind. Uncle Horace cared about her. He was her father’s much older half-brother. He was, when all was considered, of an older generation, and had little in common with his younger brother. After the untimely death of his mother, he had been raised by his grandparents, ancestors Jasmyn had never met.

Uncle Horace thinks just like them. He’s stuck back there in the thirties with no concept of how we do things. Why can’t he adapt to how things are now, or just leave it alone? That stuff just doesn’t work anymore. If it ever did.

Her father, Bryan Jameson, was only partly sympathetic. “My grandparents were very upright, pious people. Taking in a three-year-old isn’t easy when you’re in your fifties, but they raised Horace as they believed was right. I knew them, of course, but I never lived with them. By the time my father married my mother, Horace was grown and never came to live with us. They say my father was so grief stricken by the loss of his young wife, Horace’s mother, it was fifteen years before he found my mother.”

But Uncle Horace, now long widowed and with his children moved away, had a fondness for his younger brother. And, unfortunately Jasmyn thought, he lived down the road with time on his hands and spent a lot of it at her parents’ home. Granted, he did save her father a lot of handyman kind of chores and kept the lawns mowed.

Right now, she and Uncle Horace were stacking the firewood for the kitchen stove they used when the power was out, as it frequently was in the winter. It was one of the things he did precisely. Very precisely. His neat square wood pile had no spaces between tiers and would not, under any circumstances, dare to fall down. Jasmyn was much less picky, causing Horace to quietly and efficiently straighten out Jasmyn’s contributions to the pile when he thought she wasn’t looking. But the wood had gotten wet in last night’s rain, covering her with dirt and damp sawdust, which did not improve her mood.

“But it doesn’t matter if the wood gets a little wet,” Horace said cheerfully, “as long as it’s dry.”

Jasmyn knew he was referring to the wood being properly seasoned, that is ‘dry’ as opposed to ‘green,’ but the comment irritated her more than usual. It was just so trite. She knew she shouldn’t respond, but she asked, “How can you have ‘wet dry’ wood?”

He chuckled. “Because it doesn’t matter about the outside as long as the inside is good. Like people sometimes.” He was tall and lanky, his still abundant hair steel gray, his youthful strength barely reduced in spite of his more than 75 years. He had lived a hard life by most standards, but not his.

She humphed and didn’t continue the conversation. She wanted to get the wood into the shed as quickly as possible; she had other things to do before it got too hot. August afternoons could be uncomfortable. She needed a quick trip to the lake for a swim, but had decided to help Horace first.

A car pulled into the driveway behind them. She straightened and turned to see who had arrived. Stretching her back with her hands on her hips, she watched Matt Colby climb out of his dark blue Acura with decidedly mixed feelings. She was glad to see him but was also exasperated.
We should be planning a wedding, not for him to go back to college for another degree he doesn’t need for anything. And what on earth are ‘American Studies,’ anyway?

He was, she thought as she walked toward him, a very good looking man, although a little on the stocky side with light brown severely trimmed hair. He was, as always, conservatively and tastefully dressed in tan slacks and a blue polo.

“Hi, Matt. I thought you were going into Boston today.”

He held out his arms, hugged her quickly and sketched a quick air kiss on her cheek. “My interview with the department head got postponed. But, I got the position at the research library.”

She asked, trying to hide her resignation, “So you’ll be moving down there again?” She was genuinely happy for him. It was a position he wanted and had been agonizing over during the wait for confirmation.

“Yes, of course. I don’t want to commute if I don’t have to. All that traffic and the cost of gas.”

Of course not. You’ll just move in with your cousin Barry again and I can twiddle my thumbs for months while you indulge yourself. Don’t you think I’d like to come along and share that?
She said, “That’s great,” and almost meant it.

Matt looked beyond her. “Hello, Uncle Horace. Busy as usual, I see.”

“If it needs doin’, do it. Nothin’ does itself.” Then he added, squinting a little in the sunshine. “Nice day for doin’ things.”

“Well, yes, and I have a lot of things to do.” He looked back at Jasmyn. “I stopped by to see if you could do an early dinner. Then I’ll drive down to Barry’s.”

“Of course, but Uncle Horace might need my help . . .” She glanced in his direction.

“Run along, honey, and have a good time sayin’ good-bye.”

Matt almost sputtered. “I’m not leaving, just going to Boston for a while to take some classes.”

“Yup,” Horace said, turning back to the wood pile. “I can finish the wood, Jaz. Have a good meal.”

Horace’s comment put a damper on what should have been a pleasant dinner.

“Why does he always have to do that?” Matt asked over coffee while contemplating the menu in the small restaurant. “I don’t think he likes me.”

“That’s his way,” Jasmyn said, knowing full well that Horace didn’t like him since he had commented several times that he thought Matt was too prissy. She thought Matt sounded a little peevish, like a child. “I think I’ll have the chef’s salad. They make a good one here.”

Matt was not distracted from his line of thought. “Uncle Horace has no appreciation for higher education. He lives in the past.”

Jasmyn found Matt’s condescending tone irritating, even while she partly agreed with him. “So he comes from a different era. College was a luxury his family couldn’t afford when he was young. He had to go to work.”

Matt snorted. His family had had no such restrictions.

“He worked hard all his life and made Aunt Betty and the boys a good home.” She put her menu down. “And now he has nobody but my family to care for. Or to care for him. Except his old dog, Jake, and he doesn’t count.”

Jake was a mid-sized mixed spaniel and one of Jasmyn’s favorite dogs, but Matt was not a dog person, preferring cats and guinea pigs. Especially guinea pigs.

Matt started to answer but she cut him off. “So tell me about the new position and what classes you’ll be taking.”

Matt was happy to oblige, but Jasmyn paid only half attention to his descriptions of research into American colonial writers and his idea for his thesis on early New England newspapers. It was interesting, but not what she wanted. His attention was all away from her.
As if I don’t even exist. And why doesn’t he suggest I come along and look for a job down there?

“So,” she said, “we’ll postpone all of our plans another six months at least?”

“Now, Jasmyn,” he was sounding peevish again. “We’re only twenty-seven. We have our whole lives ahead of us.”

“So we do, but I’d like to set a date. There is so much planning to do.”

“Maybe you should take a course or two in the meantime.”

“In what? I have the degree I need and the job I want.” She enjoyed accounting, the law firm she worked for was well regarded and she liked her employers. Her artistic pursuits were in the crafts area, not requiring anything but trial and error to perfect her techniques. “What would I take a course in?”

He shrugged, not looking at her. “Maybe just something to better yourself.”

Irritated by his tone, she said more sharply than she intended, “That sounds as if maybe I’m not good enough.”

He was visibly surprised by that idea. “I didn’t mean it that way, really, Jasmyn. I just thought . . .”

“That’s how it sounded. And here is dinner.”

Obviously relieved by the interruption, he said, “I’m sorry, let’s talk about something else.”

She reached for one of the warm crescent rolls. “I was thinking of going out to the lake. It will be a nice evening for swimming. Do you want to come?”

“I’d like to, but I have to get going. Got some things to pack. I want to be at the library when it opens tomorrow.”

She sighed inwardly, having known that he wouldn’t go with her. There were not a lot of outside things that he liked to do. “I think I need the swim.” 

“Enjoy,” he said, and concentrated on his steak.

She drove to the state park, recalling the conversations with both Uncle Horace and Matt.
What did Horace mean by saying goodbye? Did, does, he see that Matt won’t be back, that he isn’t just leaving to take this position, this course?

And does Matt really think I need improving? Improve how? Just who has he been associating with down there? Somebody else with all these degrees?

Jasmyn pulled into a parking space under a clump of birch trees and sat a moment, looking over the expanse of Crystal Lake, one of her favorite places. The sun was poised at the top of the trees on the western side and was spreading a golden light across the blue water. A sailboat drifted along the far shore, its sail barely filled by the light wind.