My Very Best Friend (14 page)

I was gutting and designing the house for me and I was leaving.

It was like throwing dollar bills into the ocean.

I should have bulldozed it, but I couldn’t do it. I absolutely could not do it.

When it was done, it would be restored, a family home fit for a Scottish family, who liked huge fireplaces, a small library lined with shelves, an armoire for a pantry, a long wood table in the kitchen with my and Bridget’s name in a heart, and dormer windows with views of the ocean.

That thought had me wiping my nose again with my skirt. My clip popped, my hair fell down, a tear rolled into my mouth. It tasted like the sea.

6

“I like the swans,” Toran mused, holding up a red napkin that I’d folded for dinner.

“Thank you. I can show you how to make them.”

I had set the table while Toran cooked Scottish stew with beef stock, onion, and carrots. And wine. Brings out the taste.

My mother taught me to appreciate pretty table settings. “Candles and flowers, Charlotte. Always. A feminist indulges her feminine side.”

I had pulled daffodils from Bridget’s garden, put them in blue vases I’d found under the sink, then started folding the swans. I learned origami from Russ, one of my neighbors on Whale Island, who is obsessive compulsive and must always be doing something with his hands. Three whole tables were filled with his origami creations.

Napkin folding was also one of his obsessive compulsive activities. He liked cloth. I now know how to make swans, turkeys, bunnies, roses, and a monster out of cloth napkins.

Toran laughed. “If I made napkins into swans I would not be able to consider myself a manly man Scotsman anymore.”

“I won’t tell anyone and we’ll pull the drapes.”

“I don’t think I can risk it. What if one of my friends came over? What if Pherson returned early from his time on the oil rig? No. I’d never hear the end of it. He would ask me each time he saw me how my origami was going.”

“Then I will have to be the reigning queen of napkin swans here.”

“The reign is yours.” We clinked our wineglasses together, over two candles I’d lit. “I’ve read your books.”

“You have?” My spoon clattered onto my plate. That was a problem.

I fiddled with my glasses, on the taped part. Did he recognize himself? The love of McKenzie Rae Dean’s life, the one she longs to get back to, who looks exactly like him, based on the photos Bridget had sent to me years ago? I was remarkably close in my description. Brown soft curls, blue eyes, hard jaw but a seductive smile. Huge hands, tall, a faint scar on his left temple. Oh no oh no oh no. I felt myself grow hot.

“Yes. All of them.”

I could only nod. I was stricken. Speechless. Stunned. And now I was thinking in alliteration.

“I loved them. Gripping. I could hardly put them down to work on the farm.”

“Really?” My voice squeaked. And were you impressed with how you made love to McKenzie Rae Dean in the first book? What about the time in the ocean, near the cliffs, her breasts in your mouth? What about the time in the barn, McKenzie Rae up against the wall, her naked butt in your hands? And the time in the ruins of the castle, at night, when you kissed . . . low? I flushed, dabbed my head with a red swan.

“But tell me, Charlotte. Who is McKenzie Rae Dean in your mind? Where did she come from?” He leaned forward, those eyes diving right into mine.

I started off slow, tentatively. I am not used to talking about my writing, as I am an odd duck who does not even admit to people that she’s a writer.

“What I’ve noted,” Toran said later, “is that no man has ever truly taken the place of her first love.”

That’s because no one has ever taken your place, Toran.

“She has lovers, husbands . . .” I shrugged my shoulders, up and down. Then up and down again. One more time.
Stop, Charlotte,
I told myself.

“Yes, a number of them.”

“She’s discerning.”

“She is. They all sound like honorable chaps to me. Strong. Honest. They protect their woman. Madly in love with her.”

“Every time.”

“I think of the poor men who have fallen in love with her who she leaves in the end.”

“They’ll live. Sometimes she’s there for a lifetime.”

“Said so lightly.” He placed a hand mockingly on his heart. “Men get hurt, too. We just head to the pub, have a few beers, and try to forget about it.”

“Does beer cure heartache?”

“No, it doesn’t. Puts it off a bit. How did you create her?”

“She’s my alter ego. She’s who I would like to be.”

“What? Why?” His eyes widened. “I like you better than McKenzie Rae.”

“You do?” I fiddled with the top button on my blouse. Buttoned to the neck. I shrugged my shoulders again. Up. Down. Up.
Please stop,
I told myself.
Please
.

“Yes. You’re different than any other woman I’ve ever met. Always thinking. You see everything. You understand. You’re funny.”

“I have to come here more often to get my ego boosted up.”

“There are a few things I don’t like about McKenzie Rae.”

I bristled. Couldn’t help it. “Like what?”

“She doesn’t talk about physics or biology, water, the United Nations, farming, weather, international law, that type of thing, as we do.”

I relaxed. My shoulders stopped shrugging. I was pleased. I loved McKenzie Rae, but it was relieving and complimentary that he saw the distinction between her and me. “She’s busy. She’s time traveling, solving problems, saving others.”

“But she needs to be more like you, Charlotte.”

I sniffled and teared up, and I busied myself with my glasses again. “Thank you, Toran.” He was probably the only man on the planet who would think that. The only one.

“You’re welcome, Queen Charlotte.” He picked up my hand and kissed it.

I wanted to launch myself at him, ripping buttons off my shirt as I flew through the air.

He turned my hand so our palms were together. “Magic powers shield us now,” we both said, laughing.

I could not help but think: I will give up Dan The Vibrator for you any second, of any day, Toran.

I talked that night, because Toran listened.

He had more questions. How do you write your books . . . How do you get your ideas . . . How many times do you edit your books . . . What’s the best part about being a writer . . . Is there anything you don’t like about being a writer?

The sun went down. The candles melted. The bowls were pushed aside. Toran brought Caleb’s Kilt coconut chocolate sticks to the table, and we kept talking. I had never, except for my parents, had anyone so interested in me, my brain, what I thought.

“If you were going to time travel, Charlotte, where would you go?”

That started another discussion, as I asked him the same question.

At one point we stopped and stared at each other. I wanted to leap on him and yank open his shirt, buttons flying everywhere. Nervous, I hummed a few notes of a Scottish song about love and heartbreak my father had sung to me at bedtime. I abruptly stopped humming, so embarrassed. But then, joking with me, Toran hummed the next few notes.

Then we hummed the song together.

He held up his hand, palm facing me.

I put my palm against his, then we twisted them and laced fingers. “Clan TorBridgePherLotte powers, activate! Speed ahead and fight bravely,” we chanted. We tapped fingertips three times, then pulled them apart, as if they were held together magnetically.

“Victory!” we both shouted, then bounced our closed fists together.

We are a strange twosome.

That night in bed, flannel nightgown on, I said to myself, I have to get back home. I have to wrestle with my writer’s block and kill it.

But when I returned to the island I would be alone.

All alone.

By myself.

Solo.

Lonely.

Except for four cats who ride in a specially made stroller.

I did miss Teddy J, Daffodil, Dr. Jekyll, despite the concerning mood disorder, and Princess Marie.

I thought of Toran. The cats could always come here....

I dressed in my denim skirt and a T-shirt that said E
INSTEIN
R
ULES
and drove into the village a few days later for groceries.

St. Ambrose is small and charming, nestled on the ocean. The sky feels closer, as if it were lowered to bring us a clearer shade of blue. This is atmospherically impossible, but it’s how it feels to me. The wind smells like the sea and highland dreams. The moon is brighter, only a few yards away, surely, and if you could jump high enough off the top of the cathedral you could catch it with your hands. It’s a village that makes a science nerd like me almost poetic.

The six-hundred-year-old university sprawls all over the village, the ancient buildings practically speaking with all the voices who have studied there before.

I am sure I would have attended this university had I stayed here.

Bridget and I grew up watching the students covering themselves in shaving cream one day in October every year. We watched them in suits and fancy dresses traipse through town on their way to parties. We saw how the girls dressed, always in high style. Bridget would tell me, “One day I’m going to dress like them, Charlotte, you watch me!”

We would have my mother drive us to the ocean every year in May so we could giggle as the students jumped into the frigid North Sea and came out laughing and shaking. We would see them carrying books and bags, looking serious, as they headed to class.

Bridget and I would go to college at St. Ambrose and be roommates and we would buy tea and biscuits together every day.

How we plan our lives and how our lives turn out . . .

I heard the blaring notes of bagpipes and I stopped, unprepared for getting slugged in the chest with such raw emotions. I sat on a bench, the ruins of the cathedral behind me, and listened.

I could smell the sea, a dash of salt, a hint of mint tea. Croissants, coffee, and Indian food, maybe Gitanjali’s spices, wafted by. The bells of a church rang out, the waves crashed.

This used to be my village, the village of my ancestors.

It hadn’t been mine for twenty years, but I had never forgotten it.

It had followed me to my own island, in the middle of another ocean, where I watched the whales play and my flowers bloom, but St. Ambrose, the history and mystery, the kilts and the legends, my mother and father, my grandma and granddad, had stayed inside my heart.

As had Toran and Bridget.

I was back again.

I breathed in deeply. I was glad to be here.

The next morning I took a shower, then put on my light brown skirt with the ruffle, a blue T-shirt with a whale and S
AVE
THE
W
HALES
written across it, and my pink fuzzy socks. I couldn’t believe I was calling a bedroom in Toran’s home “my bedroom.”

I had an image of me crooking my finger at Toran and whipping off my whale T-shirt. I would swing my bra around over my head, wiggle my chest, then toss it at him over my back. I would throw up a jaunty heel, then pose seductively in bed while he eagerly followed me in. I would keep my pink fuzzy socks on for warmth.

Yum.

I pulled out the brown box where Bridget had saved my letters—and hers, the ones she wrote and didn’t send.

She had filled her letters as a teenager, the ones she sent to me, with tales of fun and adventures with the girls at St. Cecilia’s. She wrote about Pherson and Toran. As we got older, we talked about gardening and the farm, the village and the people we both knew, Toran and Pherson, music and science, and the miniature drawings she sent me.

We would plant the same flowers, the same trees. We would read the same books and tell each other what we thought of them. Some were classics, others romances, and everything in between.

We talked about everything. Boys, when we were young; my husband, who became my ex-husband; my work as a researcher then writer; her work as an assistant to an executive; her travels.

I read two of my letters to her.

July 3, 1987

Bridget,

I did love your miniature drawing of the Garden of Eden. Very clever. Thank you for making Eve plump and for dressing her in a rock T-shirt and red heels. I do so hate those skinny models. Feed them a carrot, I say, before they pass out. I appreciated Adam, too. His top hat and jungle pants were particularly fetching.

You should be selling your drawings. I am telling you that for the hundredth time.

How did your date go that you mentioned? Ready to pop him up on your white horse and steal him away to the castle you own like a true feminist? Take charge, be the woman, slay the dragon on your own because who needs a man’s help, etc.?

I’ve planted a full border of begonias, and I’ve had Charles come and build an arbor for an Oregon grape I bought. I put a table and two chairs under the arbor. Should be a nice reading corner when it’s done. I will probably hang a picture of an anatomically correct skeleton out there next to a photo of the galaxy.

What did you decide to do with the east plot of land? You mentioned a patio and fountain with a circular surround. When did you get back from Paris?

Love,

Charlotte

February 1, 1988

Bridget,

Thank you for your recent advice on how I can get a date. No, wearing a sign that says, “Haven’t had a date in years. Call if you’re interested,” during the Whale Island Annual Parade is not an option. Nor is taking out a personal ad. What would I say? Strange woman with a multitude of cats needs a date? If you don’t understand quantum physics, or if you believe the earth was created in seven days, don’t bother applying?