Heartwood (18 page)

“And now people like Lil ask for me to work with them.” He looked a little embarrassed and his face got red. “In fact, they compete to get me. I’m in demand. And I love that too.” He folded the dish towel he’d been using. “My father would say I’m wasting my time.”

She forgot her earlier restraint and reached out to touch his hand. “No, you’re not.” His hand was warm, and his fingers were long and strong. She pulled her hand back. His green-blue eyes blinked. “I love what I do too,” she said.

“I know that.”

He was staring at her and she was staring at him, and the silence in the kitchen was roaring around them. He was from a scarily sophisticated world she didn’t know. And she was married.

“I should get back to work. My daughter will be home in a couple of hours,” she said.

Saying that Katie would be coming home broke whatever spell had been going on. As she had meant it to. But she’d wished it hadn’t.

“And I need to finish setting up the lights,” he said. He left the kitchen.

The next time he came to the house, he didn’t have lunch with her. After that one time, he went out to eat with Jeff and Diana.

–—

But something had happened to Laura during the brief moment they’d shared in her kitchen. After that day, she found it harder and harder to keep from criticizing Robby. It seemed to her that he complained all the time about everything. Sometimes when she was listening to him, an image of Nick, laughing at something she’d said, would flash through her mind. She would banish the thought fast. She could not, would not, compare the two men. It wasn’t Robby’s fault that she’d had peanut butter sandwiches with a man who smiled at her and laughed at her jokes. She was the one who had changed, not him. So when she went to sleep at night she was not going to let herself think of green-blue eyes.

Instead, she dreamed of her mother’s huge, disapproving, dark ones. And then the eyes in her mother’s face became the eyes in the portrait she and Katie had seen in the shop on Madison Avenue.

K
atie was going to be a junior bridesmaid in Steven’s wedding, so Iris and Theo had driven out to Laura’s house to see the child model her gown. They were in the kitchen, eating the salad Laura had prepared for lunch and chatting while they waited for Katie to emerge from her bedroom.

“How does Robby feel about having all those people in his house, photographing everything?” Iris asked. “It seems like they’ve been here forever.”

Laura looked at her mother taking a forkful of avocado and had to block an image of herself sitting at this same table with Nick. “It’s only been three months,” she said. “And the photographer has finished for the moment. He won’t be back again until the day of the wedding, to take the final shots for the book. Then that will be the end of it.”

And I won’t see Nick again
.

“I have to say, I’m glad. It must be hard to have your privacy
invaded. Maybe you should think again about hiring out your home for parties—”

“Wasn’t that the reason why Laura and Robby bought this house?” Theo broke in. “I thought it was understood that Laura would use it for her business.”

“We always planned to live over the shop, Mom.”

Iris looked through the kitchen door to the ornate dining room beyond it. It would never have been her taste, Laura knew. Her mother liked things sleek and modern. It was Anna who’d had a beautiful old Victorian house. “You may have planned that, but people are allowed to change their minds,” Iris said. “Maybe living over the shop isn’t as easy for Robby as he thought it would be.”

“I’m sure if Robby feels that way, he’ll tell Laura about it. A man doesn’t need his mother-in-law to fight his battles for him,” Theo said. And from the distaste in his voice Laura was sure he’d overheard Robby complaining to Iris.

Why not?
Laura thought wearily.
Robby complains to his own mother every night on the phone
.

“Well, here I am,” a little voice behind them said. Katie walked into the room.

–—

Theo watched his granddaughter make her way toward them. She was walking a little self-consciously, a little girl on the verge of becoming a young lady, wearing her very first party dress. There was a picture of Iris at her age and as everyone always said, Katie looked just like her. But, oh, what a difference there was between them! Iris had been afraid even at that young age that she wasn’t pretty. It was clear that Katie wasn’t troubled by
such thoughts. Her head was high as she walked toward them, and her eyes were shining.

“Katie, you’re as pretty as a picture,” Iris said.

And she did look like a picture; a slightly quaint and sweet illustration from a child’s fairy tale. There were no ruffles on the dress, no lace or bows to overwhelm Katie’s small frame. Two fabrics had been used, one was silky, and over it, the second was light as gossamer. The long skirt floated down to Katie’s feet, adding to her fairy-tale appearance. And although the dress was yellow and Theo would have thought that would not be a good color for a little girl whose complexion tended to be sallow, this was such a light creamy shade that it was flattering. More important, somehow the charming little dress captured everything that was unique and special about Katie. Clever Laura, for of course it was she who had chosen the pattern and had it made for her daughter. She’d done well. But then, Laura always did do well.

He looked at her now, and he frowned slightly. She wasn’t happy these days. She pretended to be her usual cheerful self, but he could tell. And he was certain he knew why. Something had changed inside her, and she had realized that she was no longer in love with her husband. Now she was trapped because she was a good woman and she would not walk away. He’d known many such women over the years—he had comforted a few in ways that a married man should not have, if truth be told—and he’d always thought it was a small tragedy. Particularly if the husband was the kind of self-serving, self-pitying man his son-in-law had become.

Theo turned to look at his wife, who was praising Katie in her party dress. Iris still thought of Robby McAllister as the
bright young man who had had so much promise when he married Laura. Well, not everyone fulfilled their promise, that was just a sad fact of life. And sometimes a person like Laura exceeded all expectations—that was a fact of life too. But Robby was jealous of her because of it. And Theo had seen her try to make him feel better by playing down her own accomplishments. Should she have to do that to save her husband’s fragile ego? Shouldn’t she be proud of herself and say so?

But what about the marriage, he could hear Iris cry. What will happen to it if Laura continues to be more successful than Robby is? And it was true that when Theo was Robby’s age he couldn’t have stood that. But that was another time. And damn it, this was his daughter!

His tricky heart fluttered unpleasantly in his chest, reminding him that he wasn’t supposed to get agitated. Well, he couldn’t help that any more than he could help eating the occasional forbidden piece of pastry or sneaking a bit of salt onto his food. A man had to have his pleasures, no matter how much his loved ones tried to protect him from them.

But now he was exhausted. That had been happening more often lately. The truth was, he probably didn’t have a lot of time left. He still couldn’t talk to Iris about it; she was determined to keep him alive forever. But the doctor in him knew it to be a fact. Since his heart attack, he’d had two minor incidents, and then a few weeks ago, there had been a more serious one. He and Iris had agreed not to tell the children about that one because there was no point in scaring everyone at such a happy time, but when a day like today could tire him so badly, it was not a good sign.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that; obviously he didn’t want to die, no one did. But he had already cheated death twice:
once when he’d had his heart attack, and another time, so much earlier, when he alone of his entire family had survived the slaughterhouse that was Europe during the thirties and forties.

He had had the chance to establish a second family. A beautiful strong family of Americans who had a birthright to be as happy as it was in their nature to be. All of them, it seemed, except his Laura. Anna always said she was the one in his family that no one would ever have to worry about, but Anna had been wrong. The boys would take care of themselves. With the typical male instinct for self-preservation, they would see to it that they had what they needed. But Laura, his lovely smiling girl, would break her heart trying to please everyone else. And that was wrong. Someday he would have to tell her that. Someday soon. Before it was too late. The fluttering in his chest had turned into tightness. He took a pill out of his coat pocket. Instantly Iris saw it.

“Theo? Are you all right?” she demanded as she leapt to her feet to get him a glass of water. “It’s all my fault, I shouldn’t have let you stay out so long.”

“I’m a grown man,” he protested. But he took the glass of water, and allowed himself to be clucked over. His wife ended the visit and he was grateful for it. As he walked with Laura—slowly, and carefully—out to the car, which Iris would drive home, he said, “Your mother and I are proud of you.” It was the best he could do.

–—

After her parents had driven off Laura walked back to the house slowly. As she’d told her mother, Nick’s part of their project was all but done. He had photographed the preparations as they went forward, step-by-step; now all he had to do was come
back on the wedding day to finish up his shoot. One day. Twelve hours.

It wasn’t as if they’d been able to spend that much time together. They hadn’t talked seriously again—not after that one lunch. But they didn’t seem to need to do that; it was as if a connection had been established between them and all they had to do was be in the same room to feel it. Laura couldn’t explain it, she didn’t even want to try, she just knew that the feeling had gotten to be as necessary to her as eating or drinking. She found herself looking forward to the little moments during the day when he would take a break in his work and so would she. They’d have a glass of water or iced tea and they’d chat about everyday things. Things that would be much more important later when she looked back and remembered who had said what—or when she replayed in her imagination the way Nick had brushed the hair out of his eyes. Or the way his fingers had curled around his glass. She and Nick laughed a lot during those short breaks; she would remember that too—although she couldn’t always remember what they had laughed about. Maybe it was just that the world seemed like a happier place when they were standing side by side, drinking iced tea. The strange part was, she never doubted that he was feeling everything she was feeling.

She liked to watch him work. He’d set up a shot patiently and meticulously, and then he’d beam with pleasure when he’d gotten exactly the effect he wanted. She enjoyed the way he made her feel when he was taking pictures of her, the care he took with angles and lighting as if she were some rare and beautiful creature. Once, when Diana and Jeff were off in another part of the house, he made her sit at her kitchen table and talk about her childhood. She chattered on about her family, and
Nana’s house, and pets cherished and long gone, while he took shot after shot of her with his handheld camera.

“Those pictures will be terrible,” she told him when he finally said they were finished. “I didn’t even put on fresh lipstick.”

“They’re what I wanted. They’re pictures of you talking about things you’ve loved.”

The way he said it stirred something inside her that was frightening. “How will you use them in the book?” she whispered.

“They’re not for the book, they’re for me.”

After that, there were times when she’d look up from whatever she was doing, to catch Nick staring at her. The air between them would crackle with tension, and she would want to run. But then Nick would crack a joke and she would laugh and the tension would melt away. Until the next time.

So three months had flown by without Laura noticing it. And then one afternoon—was it only a few weeks ago? because it seemed so much longer—as he was standing in her doorway, ready to leave, Nick had said, “Tomorrow I’ll be done, Laura. Except for the shots on the wedding day.” And his voice, which was always so alive, was flat.

For a moment she hadn’t understood him, it was like he was speaking a foreign language. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve finished my work. After tomorrow, I won’t be coming back anymore. Until the wedding. For one day.” They had stared at each other then, and she had felt like something inside her was ripping apart. But before she could say anything he had turned and walked out the door.

The next day he’d worked quickly and quietly—they both had. There had been no iced tea, no joking, no little moments of
chat. He’d taken his final shots, then he’d told Diana and Jeff to pack up the gear and meet him back at the studio. He’d barely said good-bye to Laura, and he’d driven away without a backward glance.

Now Laura looked around her. The sun was shining; people had been saying what a lovely summer it was. She knew in her mind that it was, but she couldn’t make herself see it. Ever since the taillights of Nick’s car had disappeared at the end of her driveway it was as if a gray fog had descended around her, blocking out everything else.