Dear Emily (17 page)

Emily made a face at her reflection before she applied her lipstick and a little mascara to the tips of her eyelashes. She dabbed a little perfume, perfume she’d bought herself, which she liked, behind her ears, in the bends of her elbows.

Emily turned off the light, then walked to the front of the clinic to unlock the front door so Ben could just walk in. She walked back to the cool-down room and sat down on one of the futons. She watched Harry and Harriet as they cavorted in their tank.

“Emily!”

“Back here,” Emily called back. “I just have to get my coat and I’m ready. I can follow you, Ben; this way you won’t have to take me home.”

“Hey, when I pick up a date, I take her home. Or in this case, I’ll bring you back here to get your car.”

“Okay,” Emily said.

“It’s raining out. I parked at the far end of the lot. Do you have an umbrella? No, huh? Okay, I’ll drive around and pick you up in front.”

“No, it’s okay. I like walking in the rain, do you?”

“Hell yes, it’s one of my favorite pastimes. My son and I slosh around in the rain all summer long, to his mother’s horror. I’m forever buying him new sneakers.”

“Really! Then let’s walk. Wait a minute, I want to close all the blinds.”

Outside in the rain, Ben asked, “Don’t you worry about your hair?”

Emily laughed. “It just gets curlier. Oooh, look at that big puddle.” She let go of his arm and ran forward to stomp in the circle of water that covered her boots. She turned to see Ben stomp in it right alongside her. “Let’s find another one,” she suggested. “There’s one over there and there’s another one!
Ooohhh,
here comes a pickup.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth when the puddle splashed upward, drenching both of them.

The pickup stopped then backed up. “Hey, I’m sorry. Can I give you people a lift?”

“No way,” Emily said.

Ben grinned. “I’m with the lady.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.”

They received a second drenching when the pickup’s tires spewed water as it sped away.

“You know what, Emily Thorn, you look green and purple under these lights,” Ben guffawed as he pointed to the arced lights in the parking lot. “Listen, we can’t go to a restaurant looking like this. We can either go back into the clinic and dry our clothes or we can go to my place and I can whip us up some supper, or as a third choice, we can stop and take some Chinese home. Your call, Emily.”

“Can you cook?”

“Of course I can cook. Not well, but I can throw things together. My specialty is bacon and eggs. I have both.”

“I love bacon and eggs. I haven’t had them in a very long time. I like to dip my toast in the yolk and then dip it in coffee.”

“I do too. My mother used to tell me I couldn’t do that in a restaurant, and then when I was old enough to eat out on my own, I saw everyone do it. I like the yolks best in fried eggs, but I like the whites best on hard boiled eggs. I throw away the yolks.”

“I do too. Imagine that,” Emily said, climbing into Ben’s car. “Do you have a dryer at your place?”

“Sure do. My son gives it a workout every time he comes to visit. I tried to make my place an extension of his home with his mother. He has his own room, his own things, his own television. Divorce is hard on kids. Be glad you didn’t have that problem. I don’t mean…”

“I know what you mean,” Emily said. “Was it hard on you?”

“Yeah, it was, but you go on because that’s all that’s left for you to do. You don’t look back. I learned that the hard way. Things are better now. Now I look forward to getting up in the morning, I look forward to what the day will bring and talking with my son at night. It gets lonely sometimes, but those times are almost over. I have a life like you do now. The bottom line is you go on. Some people never learn that little fact. I have a friend who refuses to let go. His wife cleaned him out; she got everything. He spends so much time and energy on ways to harass her, he isn’t living, he’s existing. Just two weeks ago he slashed the tires on her car in the middle of the night. A month ago he hid in the bushes and threw rotten fruit and vegetables he’d been saving for weeks up against her front door. He gets caught and then she has to talk to him. She won’t press charges so he keeps doing it. Now, I ask you, what’s the point? She has a new boyfriend and is getting married in a few months. She’s going to move out of state to get away from him and he’s trying to fight it with the legal system.”

“What will happen to him if his wife moves away?”

“First of all, they’re divorced, so she isn’t his wife anymore. He’s going to get a dose of hard reality when she marries and moves away.”

“Be there for him, Ben. I didn’t have anyone for a long time. I know how he feels. Rejection is…it’s so demeaning. You want to hide in a dark closet.”

“Here we are,” Ben said, steering his car into his assigned parking space. “When I bought this place, I had a choice of a garage or a fireplace. I opted for the fireplace. My son is a Boy Scout and he loves to make fires. In the winter we build a fire and tell scary stories at night and toast marshmallows. I make a lot of popcorn. I have one of those poppers they make just for fireplaces. It’s great!”

She liked this man.
She almost said, Have you ever made love in front of a fireplace, but she bit her tongue instead. “I’m freezing.”

“That will teach you to walk in the rain and jump in puddles.” Ben laughed as he opened the front door and turned on the light. “Upstairs to your left is my son’s room. It has a bath. In the hall closet next to the bathroom you’ll find a robe. Bring your clothes down and I’ll dry them.”

“What about you?”

“I have some clothes in the laundry room. I want you to look now, I got spiffed up for this date,” he said, opening his jacket to reveal a pullover sweater over a neat white collar. His cords were sharply creased but drenched around the ankles. He dripped water on the beige carpet.

“Duly noted,” Emily said as she made her way up the stairs.

She didn’t take note of the boy’s room until she was dressed and warm in one of Ben’s robes. It smelled like him. It was a wonderful room filled with sports equipment and bright color. A parade of toy soldiers, worn and handled, marched along a white shelf next to a pile of teddy bears that were equally worn and handled. In the corner, a baseball bat, a glove, and a box of balls sat waiting. A lamp whose base was a real football stood next to the bed. It was an old football, probably one of Ben’s from his youth. She touched the leather, noted the frayed strings that had been sprayed with some kind of lacquer. Next to the closet door was a sled, a Flexible Flyer with the Y in flyer almost obliterated. It must have been Ben’s sled that he’d saved for his son. She knew he was a wonderful father. Three-shelf bookcases were under both windows, jammed with all kinds of boy’s books: the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Huck Finn. All of them were old ones, well thumbed, the pages yellow. New books, most of them adventures, were squeezed in between the old books. Puzzle books, books about sports, trains, and airplanes were jammed every which way on the bottom shelf next to a string bag of Leggos. A desk with a swivel chair was opposite the bed. Cups of pencils, all the erasers gone, stood sentinel on each end of the desk. Tablets of school paper and spiral notebooks sat in the middle of a doodled pad. She turned, tested the mattress of the single bed. Firm, but comfortable. She liked the baseball figures at bat that speckled the cotton spread. The drapes matched the spread perfectly.

“Is everything all right, Emily?”

She hadn’t heard him come up. “I bet your son loves this room,” she said quietly. “It’s wonderful. Did you do it yourself?”

“Ted and I did it together. When I first moved here, I was tapped out as far as money went. I pretty much lived out of cartons for a while, but the courts said I had to have a room for Ted with his own things so I got stuff out of storage, from my parents’ house. Stuff my wife didn’t want. I asked Ted and he loved the idea of having some of my old things so that’s the route we went. He likes coming here, looks forward to it. I think it’s a happy room, what do you think?”

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry I never…Ian had our house decorated…I didn’t even…that’s all in the past. So tell me, how’s our supper coming?”

Ben laughed. “I’ve been waiting for you to do the toast. I softened up the butter for you. I have jam, not jelly. What’s your feeling on that, Emily?”

“I adore jam, hate jelly sliding all over my toast.”

“Me too,” Ben said happily. “How about the bacon?”

“Extra crisp, snap in two. Four slices.”

“A lady after my own heart. How about the eggs?”

“Over easy, I want the yolks really runny. I think I’d like three.”

Ben threw his head back and laughed. “Emily Thorn, your taste in food is impeccable. As you can see, I have eight slices of bacon all laid out as well as six eggs. Three slices of toast each, right.”

“Uh-huh. Are we having dessert? I like something sweet after a meal like this. Usually I eat mandarin orange slices.”

“Jesus,” Ben said, opening the cabinet over the sink to reveal nine cans of mandarin orange slices. “I want my own can,” he said.

“I do too,” Emily said.

They stared at each other, their eyes wide with wonder. Emily was the first to look away, her neck warm.

They ate like starving truck drivers, finishing at exactly the same time. They ate their orange slices out of the cans and drank the juice the same way.

“We are not going to do the dishes. I have to get up early tomorrow to pick up Ted so I’ll do them then.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Ben Jackson,” Emily said, getting up and beelining for the living room. Ben followed her with a tray that held fresh coffee and a bottle of brandy. He set them down on the coffee table. “You pour and I’ll light the artificial log. One log or two?”

Emily giggled. “Two. I like big fires. Don’t you use wood?”

“I need to get some. Ted and I will probably pick some up tomorrow at the supermarket. Did you know you can buy bundles for three bucks each?”

“I didn’t know that. Anytime you want
free
wood, go by my house. I have a ton of it stacked up behind the garage.”

Ben sat down next to Emily and propped his feet on the circular table. Emily did the same. Outside, the rain pelted the windows. “Do you like rainstorms in the summer—you know, lots of thunder and lightning?” she asked.

“I do. There’s nothing like a storm to clear the air. I like watching it through the window. My parents used to have a screened-in back porch and I’d sit on the swing and watch until it was over. It made my mother nervous. Ted likes storms too. He’s a lot like me. How about you?”

“I watch through the window too. For some reason when a storm is over, I always feel better. These days I’m grateful for most anything that makes me feel good,” Emily murmured.

“You mean things like this?” Ben said, leaning over to kiss her lightly on the mouth.

Emily smiled. “Yes, things like that.”

“I can do it again if you like.”

“I like.” Her smile was wider this time.

“Maybe we should stop now before…”

“No. That was then, this is now. How about we agree now that it’s going to be whatever it’s going to be and neither one of us is committing to the other. I think I need to keep that clear in my head.”

“We could talk this to death if we keep it up, but okay.” He reached over to gather her in his arms.

Suddenly she was all over him, her hands feverish, her mouth crushing his. Breathless, he pulled away and said, “Whoa, Emily, what’s going on here?”

“Shhhh,”
she said. “This is what you want and I’m going to give it to you.”

“No!” It was a thunderbolt to her brain. She blinked, reared back, a look of stupefied amazement on her face. She shook her head to clear it. “No! Is that what you said?”

“That’s what I said. Listen, I…I might be off base here, but I have the feeling you think I’m somebody else…your husband maybe. I like rousing lovemaking as well as the next person and I like to give as good as I get, but you aren’t giving me a chance. I’m not your husband, Emily. I’m me. I want to make love to you. I don’t want to rape you and I don’t want you to rape me. Lovemaking takes two people. There’s one person too many in this room, and if he doesn’t leave, we don’t stand much of a chance.”

Mortified, her body flushed with shame, Emily gathered the robe about her, refusing to meet Ben’s gaze. “I…call me a taxi, please. I’m sure my clothes are dry.” Her tongue felt like it was triple in size. In her life she’d never been so shamed.

“Emily…”

There was no moistness at all in her mouth. She had to defend herself. How? How did she do that?

“Emily…”

Emily sprinted for the stairs before she realized her clothes were downstairs in the laundry room. She ran back down, tears streaming down her cheeks. She would not look at the man who’d just humiliated her. What had she done to make Ben react the way he had? Taken the lead? Weren’t women supposed to do that sometimes. All the slick magazines said a woman was supposed to tell her mate, her lover, what she wanted. Did they mean words instead of actions? Obviously, she’d missed the point in the article she’d read.

In the laundry room, with the door closed, Emily yanked at the robe and pulled on her clothes. Her breathing was ragged, her eyes full of misery as she pulled on her boots. God, where was her coat? Hanging over the back of a chair by the fireplace. Which meant she had to go back into the living room, pass Ben, look at him, talk to him. The stubborn streak in her surfaced as she noticed for the first time the door that led to a small outdoor patio. She knew she was being stupid when she opened the door. Rain splashed inside. Was she really prepared to walk five miles to the clinic, where she’d left her car? Deal with this, Emily, then you can move on. You’re past that other garbage. Open the door, call the taxi yourself, and then you can wait outside on the little porch.

Emily opened the door. How did one cover shame? With one’s head up in the air, eye contact, words? All of the above. Act like nothing happened, put on your coat, call the taxi. But something did happen. Something that was going to set her back emotionally. If she let it happen. Dignity. She needed it now. She marched over to the wall phone, dialed the number for the South Plainfield Taxi Company, gave the address, and was told a cab would be there in seven minutes.