Fine things (29 page)

“Why don't you do something like that? We have absolutely nowhere to shop, except a few miserable stores that aren't worth bothering with. And there's a lot of money up here, especially in the summer months, and with the wineries there's actually money here all year round now.”

He narrowed his eyes, and then shook his head. He had afterthoughts of it, but to no avail. “I don't know where I'd find the time. And I'll be going back pretty soon. But it's fun to dream.” He hadn't dreamt in a long, long time. Of anything. Or anyone. And she could sense that. She enjoyed chatting with him, and she liked his idea. But more than that, she liked him. He was an unusual man. Warm and strong and decent. And he had the gentleness of the very strong, and she liked that.

He noticed her beeper then hooked to the back of her belt and he asked her about it. Talking about the store seemed frivolous to him although it interested her more than he realized. “I'm on duty four nights a week, and have office hours six days a week. That keeps me on my toes, when I'm not yawning in someone's face from lack of sleep.” They both laughed and he was impressed. It seemed conscientious of her to work that hard, and even have the beeper with her at a party. And he noticed that she had refused the wine after one glass. “We're short of doctors up here too, not just stores.” She smiled. “My partner and I are the only pediatricians within twenty miles, which may not sound like much, but it gets awfully busy sometimes, like the night I saw you at the hospital. You were my third earache that night. I saw the first one at home, and the other one left the hospital just before you arrived. It doesn't make for a quiet home life.” But she didn't seem unhappy about it. She looked content and satisfied and it was obvious that she enjoyed her work a great deal. She looked excited when she talked about it. And he had liked her style with Alexander.

“What made you go into medicine?” She had to be so dedicated, he had always been impressed by, but never attracted to, that life. And he had known since he was a child that he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps.

“My father is a doctor,” she explained. “He's in obstetrics and gynecology, which didn't appeal to me. But pediatrics did. And my brother is a psychiatrist. My mother wanted to be a nurse during the war, but she only made it as far as the Red Cross volunteers. I guess we all have the medical bug. Congenital,” she pronounced and they both laughed. They had all gone to Harvard as well, which she didn't mention to him. She seldom did. She had gone to Radcliffe, and then Stanford Med School, and had graduated second in her class, a fact that mattered very little now. She was busy doing what she did, healing hot ears, and giving shots and setting bones, and curing coughs, and being there for the children she loved and took care of.

“My father is a doctor.” Bernie looked pleased that they had something in common. “Ear, nose, and throat. Somehow it never seemed very exciting to me. Actually, I wanted to teach literature in a prep school in New England.” It sounded silly now. The era of his passion for Russian literature seemed a thousand years ago and he laughed thinking of it. “I often suspect that Wolffs has saved me from a fate worse than death. I wanted to work for a small school in a sleepy town, as I thought of it, and thank God none of them wanted me, or I might have become an alcoholic by now.” They both laughed at the thought. “Or hanged myself. It's a hell of a lot better selling shoes and fur coats and French bread than living in a place like that.”

She laughed at the description he offered of Wolffs. “Is that how you see yourself?”

“More or less.” Their eyes met and they felt a sudden inexplicable bond.

They were chatting easily about the store when her buzzer went off after that. She excused herself and went to the phone and came back to report that she had to meet someone at the hospital.

“Nothing terrible, I hope.” Bernie looked worried, and she smiled. She was used to this. In fact, it was obvious that she loved it.

“Just a bump on the head, but I want to take a look at him, just in case.” She was cautious, reasonable, and as good a doctor as he had suspected. “It was nice to see you again, Bernard.” She held out a hand, and it was cool and firm in his own, and for the first time he noticed the perfume she wore as she stepped closer to him. It was sexy and feminine in the same way she was, yet not overpowering.

“Come and see me at the store next time you come in. I'll sell you some French bread myself to prove that I know where it is.”

She laughed. “I still think you ought to open the store of your dreams here in Napa.”

“I'd love that.” But it was only a dream. And his time in California was almost over. Their eyes met then, and she left him regretfully, thanked their host, and was gone. He heard the Austin Healy roaring away, and saw her hair flying out behind a moment later. He left the party and went home, a short time afterwards, thinking of Megan, wondering if he'd see her again, and surprised by how much he liked her and how pretty she had looked in the gypsy blouse with the bare shoulders.

Chapter 36

A month later, on a rainy Saturday, Bernie was in Saint Helena doing some errands for Nanny, when he walked out of the hardware store and bumped into Megan again. She was wearing a long yellow slicker and red rubber boots, with a bright red scarf over her dark hair. And she looked startled as they collided, their arms full of packages, and she gave him a friendly smile. She had thought of him a number of times since they'd last met and she was obviously happy to see him.

“Well, hello again. How've you been?” Her eyes lit up like blue sapphires and he looked at her with pleasure as they stood there.

“Busy …fine …the usual …how are you?”

“Working too hard.” But she looked happy. “How're your kids?” It was a question she asked everyone, but she actually gave a damn and it showed.

“They're fine.” He smiled at her, feeling like a kid again himself and enjoying the feeling.

They were standing in the pouring rain, and he was wearing an old tweed hat and an English raincoat that had seen better days over his jeans and he suddenly squinted at her in the rain. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee or are you dashing off somewhere?” He remembered the beeper, and the bumped head she had run off to check on Labor Day when she left the party.

“Actually I'm through for the day, and I'd love it.” She pointed to a coffee shop just down the street and he hurried after her, wondering why he had invited her. He always liked her when they met, and then was annoyed at himself because he was attracted to her, and that didn't seem right to him. He had no business being attracted to her. There was the usual awkwardness as they found a table and sat down. She ordered a hot chocolate, and he a cappuccino and then he sat back and looked at her. It was extraordinary, as unadorned as she was, she was beautiful. She was one of those women who look plain at first, and then slowly one realizes that there's a great deal more to them, their features are beautiful, their eyes remarkable, their skin exceptional, and all put together it makes someone very special. But it is not all hung with bright lights that catch one's eye at first. “What are you looking at?” She saw him staring at her and was sure she looked terrible, but he smiled and cocked his head to one side, smiling at her.

“I was thinking how pretty you look in your slicker and boots and red scarf on your black hair.” He looked genuinely enraptured and she blushed furiously at the compliment and laughed at him.

“You must be blind, or drunk. I was probably the tallest girl in my class from kindergarten on. My brother said I had legs like lampposts and teeth like piano keys.” And hair like silk …and eyes like pale sapphires and …Bernie forced the thoughts from his mind and forced himself to say something ordinary to her.

“I think brothers always say things like that, don't they? I'm not sure, having been an only child, but it seems to me that their appointed role in life is to torment their sisters as best they can.”

She laughed at the memories he evoked. “Mine was good at it. Actually, I'm crazy about him. He's got six kids.” She smiled thoughtfully. And Bernie laughed. Another Catholic. His mother would be thrilled at the news. And suddenly the thought amused him. This was definitely not Mrs. Rosenthal's daughter, the model from Ohrbach's. But she was a doctor. His mother would have liked that, and so would his father. If that mattered. And then he reminded himself that this was only hot chocolate and coffee on a rainy afternoon in Napa.

“Is your brother Catholic?” Irish Catholics would explain her black hair, but she shook her head and laughed at the question.

“No. He's Episcopalian. He just loves kids. His wife says she wants twelve.” And Megan looked as though she envied them, and so did Bernie.

“I've always thought big families were wonderful,” he said as their hot drinks arrived. Hers covered with whipped cream and his coffee with steamed milk and nutmeg. He took a sip and glanced up at her, wondering who she was, where she had been, and if she had children of her own. He realized how little he knew of her. “You're not married, are you, Megan?” He didn't think she was anyway, but realized he didn't even know that for certain.

“Not much room for it, I'm afraid, with late night calls and eighteen-hour days.” Her work was what she loved best of all and it didn't really explain her single state. And suddenly she decided to be honest with him. Like Liz long before, she saw a man in him that she could be open and honest with, and talk straight to.

“I was engaged to someone a long time ago. He was a doctor too.” She smiled at Bernard and the openness he saw there caught him off guard like a physical blow. “After his residency, he was sent to Vietnam and killed just before I started my residency at UC.”

“How awful for you.” And he meant every word of it. He knew better than anyone the pain she must have gone through. But for her it had been a long time ago. She still missed Mark, but it wasn't the same anymore. It wasn't the same sharp pain Bernie was living with, barely more than a year after Liz had died. But he felt as though she understood him better now, and he felt a special kinship for her, which hadn't been there before.

“It was pretty rough. We'd already been engaged for four years, and he'd been waiting for me to graduate. He was at Harvard Med School when I was premed there. Anyway”— she averted her eyes and then looked back at him—“it was quite a blow, to say the least. I was going to take a year off and postpone my residency, but my parents talked me out of it. I even thought of giving up medicine completely, or going into research. I was pretty mixed up for a while. But my residency got me back on track again and then I came up here afterwards.” She smiled quietly at him, as though to tell him that one could survive a loss, however painful. “It's hard to believe it but it's been ten years since he died. I suppose I really haven't had time for anyone in my life since then.” She blushed and then laughed. “That's not to say I haven't gone out with anyone. But I've never gotten that serious with anyone again. Amazing, isn't it?” The fact that it had been ten years seemed remarkable to her. It seemed only yesterday since they'd left Boston together. She had gone to Stanford because of him, and she stayed out west afterwards because it was a way of staying closer to him. And now she couldn't imagine living in Boston again. “Sometimes I regret not getting married and having kids.” She smiled and took a sip of her hot chocolate as Bernie looked at her admiringly. “It's almost too late now, but I have my patients to fulfill those needs. All that nurturing and mothering they need.” She smiled but Bernie wasn't convinced that was enough for her.

“That can't be quite the same thing.” He spoke quietly, watching her, intrigued by all that he saw in her.

“No, it's not the same thing, but it's very satisfying in its own way. And the right man has never come along again. Most men can't handle a woman with a serious career. There's no point in crying over what can't be. You have to make the best of it.” He nodded. He was trying to, without Liz, but it was still so damn difficult for him, and he had finally found someone he could say that to, and who understood it.

“I feel that way about Liz …my wife … as though there will never again be anyone like her.” His eyes were so sincere that it made her ache for him.

“There probably won't be. But there could be someone else if you're open to it.”

He shook his head, feeling he had found a friend. “I'm not.” She was the first person he had been able to say that to, and it was a relief to him to say it.

“Neither was I. But eventually you feel better about things.”

“Then why didn't you marry someone else?” His words hit her like a fist and she looked at him seriously.

“I don't think I ever wanted to.” She was totally honest with him. “I thought we were a perfect match. And I never found that again. But you know what? I think I may have been wrong.” She had never admitted that to anyone, certainly not to her family. “I wanted someone who was just like him. And maybe someone different would have been just as good for me, if not better. Maybe the Right Man didn't have to be another pediatrician, just like me, who wanted a rural practice just like me. Maybe I could have married a lawyer or a carpenter or a schoolteacher and been just as happy and had six kids by now.” She looked at Bernie questioningly, and his voice was deep and gentle when he answered her.

“It's not too late, you know.”

She smiled and sat back in her chair again, feeling less intense, more relaxed, and happy to be talking to him. “I'm too set in my ways by now. An old maid to the core.”

“And proud of it,” he laughed, not believing her for a moment. “You know, what you said helps me. People have started pressuring me about going out, and I'm just not ready to do that.” It was a way of excusing himself to her for what he wanted and didn't want, all at once, and mostly didn't understand as he looked at her and felt things that stirred old memories for him, memories that confused him as he watched her.

“Don't let anyone else tell you what to do, Bernard. You'll know when it's the right time. And it'll be easier for the kids, if you know what you want. How long has it been?” She meant since Liz had died, but he could handle the question now.

“A little over a year.”

“Give yourself time.”

Their eyes met, and he looked at her searchingly. “And then what? What happens after that, when you never find the same thing again?”

“You grow to love someone else.” She reached out and touched his hand. She was the most giving woman he had met in a long, long time. “You have a right to that.”

“And you? Why didn't you have a right to that too?”

“Maybe I didn't want it …maybe I wasn't brave enough to find it again.” They were wise words, and they talked of other things then. Boston, New York, the house he was renting, the pediatrician she shared her practice with. He even told her about Nanny Pippin, and they chuckled over some of the adventures she'd had. It was a delightful afternoon and he was sorry when she said she had to go. She was driving to Calistoga to visit a friend for dinner that night and he was suddenly curious who it was, woman or man, friendship or romance. It reminded him of the things she'd said as he watched her drive off through the rain with a last wave at him …“Maybe I wasn't brave enough to find it again.” …He wondered if he ever would be himself as he started his car, and drove back to the house where Nanny and the children were waiting for him.