Mountain Song (9 page)

Claudia slowly set the
fork down and turned off the water, then leaned against the sink with her back
to the table where Andy sat, patiently tearing holes in her heart.

“You sound
so...clinical.”

“Well, I am a
physician, Claudia. I’m trained to diagnose, to look at things critically—”

“But we’re talking
about Bea here! About my grandmother. Do you have any idea—”

She bit her lip rather
than let the catch in her voice turn into tears. “When I was four,” she said at
last, “Bea sent me a bug collecting kit. There was a glass jar and these
special tweezers and a magnifying glass and a net. Everyone else bought me
dolls and fancy dresses and ballet slippers.

“I loved that net,”
she added. “I brought it out here when I came to stay with her and Grandpa Bud
for a few weeks in the summer. Every night we filled that jar up with
fireflies. They let me stay up as late as I wanted, and we’d sit out there
thinking up names for every one of those bugs. And then we always let them go.”

Andy was silent. She
hadn’t talked about these memories, even thought of them, for years. Life had
gotten so complicated; it was all she could do to get through each day. Today,
though, after seeing Bea, the memories were jogged loose in her mind, and now,
even with Andy sitting a few feet away, she suddenly wanted—needed—to
talk about them.

“And I remember when
Daddy and I had a big fight about whether I could get my ears pierced. I think
I was thirteen and I thought I would just die if he didn’t let me. Bea got on
the phone and called him up and wore him down until he agreed, and then she
sent me my first pair of earrings, silver with turquoise beads. I still have
them.”

“Have you always
called her Bea?” Andy asked after a moment.

Claudia managed a
small smile. “Yeah. She never liked the ‘Grandma’ bit. Said it reminded her of
old ladies who wore plastic rain bonnets and played bridge. Who sat around all
day letting life pass them by. She was never one to sit still.”

Until now. Not only
was she confined to one place, she had barely been able to find the strength to
sit up today in her hospital bed. Claudia had been unable to interest her in
the cookies that the volunteer brought, or even a cup of tea or glass of water.

Resolving to change
the subject, Claudia swiped at her damp eyelashes and then swung around,
leaning on the counter and surveying Andy.

“What about you?” she
asked. “What did you call your grandparents?”

Andy frowned slightly,
then dropped his glance to the table. “I never knew them. Dad and Mom were in
their forties when they had me and...”

And all his other
relatives were dead, or else just so far away as to be nameless, faceless
mysteries to him. His father never finished school, could barely read. He had
come West with his wife looking for work in the once-active mines, work that
slowly petered out, leaving him no choice other than taking any job he could
get. He bused tables and washed dishes in the winter, and took on the most
back-breaking work outdoors in he summer while his wife cleaned houses. When
their miracle child came, the one doctors told them they would never have,
Henry Woods worked all the harder to make sure his son would have the
advantages he never had.

No, there’d been no
grandparents. No aunts, uncles, or cousins, either. Andy had a dim, soft,
heart-tugging image of his mother, but she’d been taken before his fifth
birthday.

“I’m so sorry,”
Claudia said quickly, clapping her hand over her mouth. “I wasn’t thinking. My
mind was on Bea and—please, just ignore me.”

“Forget it.” A little
too quick, his voice a little too hard. So he had no relatives—what of
it? Lots of people never saw their families. Others couldn’t stand them, and
wouldn’t that be worse?

It was just like
Claudia, though, to be so wrapped up in her own life that she forgot all about
those around her. He’d told her about his parents and his upbringing—he
didn’t talk about it often, of course. But that made her lapse all the more
egregious. It wasn’t something that came easily, and when he’d trusted her
enough to share his history with her, so long ago, he’d counted on her to
understand. Losing their mothers early was something they had in common, a
shared pain that brought them together despite all their differences.

But she’d forgotten,
tossed his secrets aside like she discarded everything else. He had to face it:
very little mattered to Claudia besides her own immediate concerns.

Still, he had to
admit, it wasn’t the Claudia he thought he knew who’d worn herself out cleaning
the house today. He was surprised that she even knew what to do with a rag or a
mop, that she was willing to scrub toilets and floors and windows. But she had,
and without a word of complaint.

“Look,” he said. “You’ve
done a lot today. It was probably inconsiderate of me to bring all of this over
tonight. Why don’t I just leave all this and you can read over it when you have
a chance.”

Claudia shrugged, a
distant look in her eyes, and Andy wondered if his words had registered.

“You think we should
put Bea in a nursing home,” she said finally.”

“That’s not what I
said. I’m trying to bring your attention to her condition so you and your
father and the rest of your family can start to think about alternatives—”

“Which is another way
of saying she belongs in a home. Do me a favor,” she added, walking past him
into the living room, where she wearily settled into the couch, pulling a
neatly folded afghan off the back and settling against it like a pillow. “Don’t
patronize me.”

“I’m not.” Impatience
rose in Andy’s gut. Damn it, she wasn’t paying attention. “If you’d just read
through this, we could have a conversation—an
informed
conversation—about the alternatives here. A nursing
home is just one of several solutions.”

“Read,” Claudia
murmured. “Study. That’s the way you always operate, isn’t it? If it’s on
paper, great. If it has facts and figures, so much the better. Did you ever
once in your life rely on your intuition, Andy? Ever make a decision using your
heart rather than your mind?”

Andy stood and
followed her into the other room. “I can’t believe you said that. Don’t
Canfields calculate every decision? Don’t forget, you’re the one who taught me
that there’s a bottom line for every choice.”

Claudia’s sleepy eyes
flew open and regarded him with the sparks of anger.

“What’s that supposed
to mean?”

“Come on, Claudia. I’ve
been on the losing end of one of your comparison shopping expeditions,
remember? When things got a little problematic for the two of us, what tipped
the scales? Tell me that. What lured you home? Tired of picking up the tab
every time we went out? My mattress too uncomfortable? My clothes too shabby to
be seen with me? Don’t tell
me
about
letting your heart guide you, sweetheart. I don’t for a minute think it had any
place in your decision to leave me.”

Claudia sat up
straight and her skin drained of color. “How...” she began, then shut her mouth
and stared at him with something that looked a lot like disbelief.

Too far. He’d gone too
far, again. What was it about her that took away any sense of discretion, of
common sense? In the twenty four hours since he’d seen her again, he’d managed
to anger her, hurt her, and keep coming back for more.

“I’m sorry, again,” he
sighed. “You know, I think I’d better say good night before I say anything else
that I’m going to regret. I’ll have the social worker give you a call.”

He was about to
retrieve his briefcase, lighter now since he’d unburdened it of its stacks of
literature, when her soft voice stopped him.

“I know you called,”
she said, so quietly he had to turn and look for proof that he’d heard right. He
let the leather handle of the briefcase slip from his fingers, and against his
better judgment returned to the living room. Remembering the broken springs in
the lumpy chair he’d chosen earlier in the day, Andy lowered himself onto the
couch, leaving some distance between himself and Claudia.

“I know you called me,
after I...left,” she repeated. “Daddy didn’t want me to know, but my sister
Tina told me. Everyone was treating me like a child, letting me stay in bed
half the day and bringing up food to my room. Tina finally told me you were
calling me every day, but Daddy was yelling at you.”

Andy would have liked
to forget those calls. The represented a risk to his heart that he could ill
afford, especially when each call met with the same response: “She has no interest
in talking to you, young man.”

“You could have told
me yourself.” Andy shook his head, trying to adjust to this new information. He’d
always thought Claudia had returned to a life that barely registered the
interruption, resuming her tennis and shopping and whatever else she did. Staying
in bed—grieving—were not part of the picture in his mind.

“I should have talked
to you,” Claudia said slowly, her voice careful. “I think I owe you an apology
for that. It was—a rough time for me. A very difficult time.”

“Go on.”

She sighed heavily. “You
keep saying that I left you, as though it were a—a whim, or a caprice. But
you seem to forget the talk we had the night before.”

“I’ve forgotten
nothing.”

“Really? Well, maybe
there was something the matter with my hearing because...” She paused and
chewed her lower lip, staring into the middle distance.

“You dangled a
proposition in front of me,” Andy said. If she wouldn’t finish, he’d do it for
her—anything would be better than sitting here mutely, avoiding the real
issue. “You spoke of marriage, of family, as though you ever for a minute
planned to have those things with me.”

“I did.” Sudden fury
flashed in her eyes. “I did. Do you know how hard it was for me to bring those
things up?”

“You were a child,” he
said shortly. “Twenty-one. On your way back to a life you hadn’t even begun. A
child with very particular tastes, schooled in your Daddy’s mansion. A child
accustomed to having every fancy fulfilled.”

“It wasn’t a fancy,”
she choked. “And I wasn’t a child. I was a woman by the time our affair was
over. You can claim at least part of the responsibility for that.”

“Oh, you were a woman
in my bed,” Andy said sharply. “Your skill there showed a wisdom well beyond
your years. But you had never earned your own living, never balanced a
checkbook, never held a job or helped others. And then you talked about a
future. How could I believe you when you hadn’t yet even lived?”

“Because I
told
you,” Claudia said. “You should
have believed me because I told you what I wanted.”

“Oh, come off it. You
and I both know that you would have never lasted with me. The first time you
saw some trinket that wasn’t in our budget, it would have all been over.”

“I told you I would
pay my way. I offered to rent a place for us. I begged you to give up your job
so you could concentrate on your studies—”

“—and return to
you at night, your paid gigolo, right?” Andy saw the tears streaking down her
cheeks but couldn’t stop. “No! I would not have you live with me unless I could
afford to support us. At the very least to pay my half. You never understood
that. Your money was an insult and every time you waved it at me you cut me
deep. I knew that the minute things were on the line you’d bolt—and you
proved me right, didn’t you?”

Claudia dug her fists into
the soft fabric of the afghan, pressing her knuckles against her thighs, hard. His
words were like icy rain. She hadn’t been able to convince him then—why
should she think she could now? And why bother?

Besides, maybe there
was some truth to what he said. Not much, but a little. Yes, she’d wanted to be
with him, wanted something permanent after she’d shared a level of intimacy she’d
never imagined possible. But it was true that at 21 her idea of a life together
was naive, to say the least.

She’d imagined
building a love nest for him, following him back to school, spending her days
decorating the apartment and making wonderful meals for him. Marrying him, of
course. It seemed as though there was enough money in her trust fund to last
forever, if they were careful, and since she’d reached legal majority it was
all hers if she wanted it.

That’s as far as she’d
thought. There was nothing in her picture of her own dreams, her own plans. She
had no goals of her own. Being his wife would be enough.

But he’d been wise
enough to see that she was fooling herself. It never would have—never
could
have worked the way she had
planned. He would have bridled at having his way paid—even she should
have understood his stubborn pride enough to comprehend that.

And as for
Claudia...well, that young girl quickly grew up and learned that she wanted to
make something of herself as well, to have a career and keep learning and make
her own way in the world.

And then there was
Paul.

“I’m sorry,” Claudia
said. “It’s all so long ago. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself. I know
I didn’t handle things right. But you have to believe that—however wrong
I might have been, I was acting out of love. I didn’t want to drive you away. In
my own way I was trying to—I don’t know, tie you to me in some way. I saw
how you worked. I saw the way you committed yourself to your future as if—sometimes
it seemed like nothing else mattered to you. It scared me to think that there
might not be room for me in your picture.”