Once Upon a Time, There Was You (31 page)

“What do you understand?”

“Well, John, I understand you’re still in love with Irene. I knew it when you called her ‘wife’ and not ‘ex-wife’ when you were packing to go to San Francisco.”

John stops walking, and the person behind him bangs into him with his bag. “Sorry!” the man says, and John waves his hand,
It’s okay
. He moves to the side of the terminal, next to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, to continue talking.

“I said that? I called her ‘my wife’?”

“Yes, uh-huh, you did, you called her ‘my wife.’ So I kind of knew then. I tried to tell myself that, when you came back, we would pick up where we left off, but—”

“That’s what I want to do. Amy. That’s what I want to do. I’m not still in love with Irene. I love her, it’s true, but as a friend. Honestly.”

Silence.

“Honestly!”

“Where are you?” she says.

“I’m standing in the airport next to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.”

“Well, okay. Come over. And bring me a caramel apple.”

“They’re closed. But if you want, I can break the glass.”

She laughs, and he thinks, if she can laugh, she isn’t going to tell him anything bad.

When he pulls up in front of her place, she comes out to the curb and then walks up to the porch with him. “Do you mind if we sit out here?” she asks.

Uh-oh
, he thinks.

He sits on the rattan sofa; she sits on a chair opposite, and again, he thinks,
Uh-oh
.

She smiles at him, her hands clasped together on her knees. “So I’ll just tell you what I need to say, and then I’ll listen to whatever you want to say. Okay?”

From inside her house, he hears her phone ringing. She looks toward the sound, then back at him. “I have no idea who could be calling me so late,” she says.

Here we go
.

“Amy,” he says.

She holds up her hand. “I get to go first, remember?”

“Right. Okay. Go ahead.”

“Well, when you were in San Francisco, almost right away I could hear a change in your voice. And not just your voice, but your feelings. I could feel you moving away from me. And I kept trying to deny it, but I noticed it more and more every time we spoke.”

She clears her throat, repositions herself. “I thought about how you were there with Irene, bound together in the way that crisis makes you be, and I knew that it would make you close. And then … Well, then you would rediscover feelings about each other, and that would lead to your wanting to be together again. Which is completely natural. I understand that. If I could be back with my husband, I would be, too.”

John has been leaning forward, listening to her intently. With this last, though, he pulls back, stares at his hands. “I know you would be with your husband if you could, Amy. I think you had a great marriage.”

“We did.” Her voice is full of such simple sorrow.

“But love at this age is bound to be complicated. Don’t you think? What I want with you is all we can make it be. I know you
still love your husband. I know you always will. But you have the rest of your life to live.”

Her phone rings again, and this time she stands to go in. “I’m sorry. I’d better see who this is.”

She goes to the phone, has a brief conversation, and comes back smiling. He waits for her to tell him what it was about, but she doesn’t, and he understands that he has no right to ask, really. Apparently, she’s moved on.

Well, fine. He’s tired. He’ll spare her having to tell him.

He walks over to kiss her forehead.

“Are you leaving?” she asks.

“Yeah, it’s late.”

“But—”

“It’s okay,” he says. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

She looks sad now; she pulls her sweater more tightly about her; the night air is cool.

He starts down the steps.

“John?” she says.

He pretends not to hear her, and heads for his car. He hears her door closing. He gets into the car, drives a block, then turns around and comes back to Amy’s house, goes up to the door and knocks loudly.

When she opens it, she says, “Oh, good. Get in here.”

He doesn’t move. “Are we done?”

“I hope not.”

“That wasn’t some other guy calling?”

“No!”

“Why did you get that dog without me?”

“Because I thought I was losing you and I might as well at least have him.”

“Well, I wish you hadn’t named him already.”

“We can change it. He doesn’t come to it, anyway. I don’t think he likes it. We can call him whatever we want, John. Come in. Please?”

He comes in and kisses her for so long it makes him dizzy. Then he goes to sit at her kitchen table and drink a glass of wine with her and listen to her talk. There is one story she tells in a long stretch of her usual meandering monologue that he intends to hold in his memory forever:

I was in my car yesterday at a red light, and I was singing along to Johnny Mathis, they were playing “Chances Are” on the radio and, oh, I just love that song, and as for Johnny Mathis, well. He was on the Phil Donahue show once—remember the Phil Donahue show? It was the first time women were given that kind of respect. I remember the first time I watched it, I thought
, Oh, my God, he’s giving a normal woman a microphone and just letting her talk!
I mean, I thought it was a mistake, I just couldn’t believe that he would give such respect to ordinary women! Who are so worthy of respect, but he was the very first one to show that on television. Oh, I loved Phil Donahue, I got my favorite piecrust recipe from the Phil Donahue show. But anyway, Johnny Mathis was on Phil’s show and this one woman raised her hand and Phil went running over, that man used to get such a workout every time he did a show, he’d go running around to all the women who wanted to say something and his suit jacket would be flapping in the breeze. But this one woman in the audience said to Johnny Mathis, “I don’t know if this is much of a compliment to you, Johnny, but you sure make cleaning the toilets easier.” And everybody laughed, but everybody knew exactly what she meant, and you know what, that remark has stayed with me all these years. But wait, the point is, I was in my car at the red light singing along with Johnny Mathis and I all of a sudden felt someone watching me, and I looked over and there was my neighbor Jenny, in her car, and she was just grinning like the cat that ate the canary. I rolled down my window and
said, “I’m singing along with the radio.” “I know,” she said. “It’s Johnny Mathis,” I said, and she said, “Oh, God, Johnny
Mathis!”
“ ‘Chances Are,’ ” I told her and she put her hand over her heart. And then the light changed and she said, “I’m going to call you!” And it was such a joyful moment. It was just one of those accidental moments of joy, singing in the car, someone you like seeing you do such a silly thing and knowing exactly why and sharing it with you. And I just think that we need to collect these joy berries wherever we find them and put them in our big yellow buckets. And you know who that was calling when you were here? That was Jenny, I’d left her a message after you called me and were coming over and I wasn’t sure what to do. She called back to say that I’d better open up and admit my feelings to you and not let you go. So, you know. Stay.”

35

O
n the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Irene answers the phone on the first ring. “Henry?” she says. She’s expecting his call. After Henry and James’s first counseling session aimed at reconciliation, James told Henry it was a “nonnegotiable need” that Henry stop working so much, so that they could have more time together. So Henry told Irene he was going to sell his business and he’d like to work for her. They’re due to open tomorrow.

“Now, you know what kind of food I’m going to have,” Irene had warned, before she agreed to hire Henry. “I’m talking green bean bake here.”

And he sighed and said, “What can I say? It will require
nothing
of me.”

But it is not Henry on the phone. It’s John.

“Hi!” Irene says, so pleased to hear his voice. “How are you?”

“Are you sitting down?”

“Actually, I’m lying down.”

“Even better.”

Oh
, she thinks.

She takes in a breath, then says, brightly, “You’re getting married. Are you getting married?”

“I am. I guess it’s
kind
of sudden, but I’m not getting any younger. And anyway, it runs in the family these days, right?”

“Well. Congratulations.” Very quietly, she clears her throat.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“You mean about your getting married? Of course I am. I’m happy for you.”

She thinks she knows exactly what he looks like, right now. Like a little kid wondering if he’s in trouble. His eyebrows furrowed, his cowlick standing at attention.

“Really, I am,” she says.

“Things good with you and Jeffrey?”

“Uh-huh.” No. After a month with him, she’s back to being a computer jockey. But no need to spoil this moment for John. She hesitates, then says, “I had a dream about you last night.”

“Tell me, but don’t expect me to interpret it.”

“It was really strange. I was moving all over the country, and everywhere I went, I kept seeing you. Once I was driving down a road somewhere in the mountains; they were very high mountains and a truck passed me on the other side of the road. It was a flatbed, really long, carrying lumber, and you were sitting at the end of the flatbed, next to a red caution flag. Although you weren’t being very cautious, sitting there that way, your legs dangling down. And you were so young, you were young again, you had black hair and that mustache you used to have. And I was struck by how young you were and I looked in the mirror to see if I was young, too, but I wasn’t. I was even older than I am now. I had all these wrinkles, like a really old lady.”

John is quiet, and then he says, “You’re not so old, yet. And it’s
time
to throw caution to the wind.”

“You’re interpreting after all.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Did you tell Sadie, yet, about getting married?”

“No, I wanted to tell you first. She’ll be a little sad, I think. You know how kids always kind of fantasize that their parents will get back together.”

“Yes. They do.”

“
I’m
a little sad, too.”

Irene laughs. “I know. But mostly you’re happy. And mostly I am, too. And Sadie will be.”

“She’ll need a little time.”

“Probably so.”

“But you’ll be there to help her.”

“You will be, too, John. As you always have been.”

“Is she as happy as she sounds?”

“She seems to be. She really does. She loves college, she loves being married. I had them over for dinner last night, Huguette, too. We tested a bunch of new recipes: Tater Tot meat loaf got an A, all around. An A
-plus
from Ron, actually.”

“Irene? I want to ask you something. Amy and I are getting married in three weeks. I want Sadie to come.”

“Of course!”

“Okay. Well, I guess …” He falls silent, and she tightens her grip on the phone, holding back the feeling she knows is imminent for her, too.

“I’m going to hang up, now,” he says.

“I know.” Here it comes. Her throat begins to ache.

“You knew I was going to hang up?”

“I know it’s hard for you to tell me this. But I really am happy for you, John.”

“Thank you … Irene.”

His voice is so soft now, overly familiar in a way that tears at her. She hangs up and sits still for a moment, then goes to her closet and takes down her wedding album. She looks through it
again, and then she wraps it up tighter in the little blanket she used for Sadie when she was a newborn, and puts it back on the high shelf.

She turns the computer on, waits for it to boot up. On her desk, she has framed a picture of a cowgirl that Valerie affixed to a birthday present she gave her many years ago, knowing that Irene loved cowgirls, that she used to want to be one. The woman is rosy-cheeked, clear-eyed, and curly-haired, whirling a lasso over her head in order to catch whatever it is she’s after. Irene studies the way the woman stands up in her stirrups, leaning into the wind. Then she gently takes the frame apart, careful not to tear the thin paper of the picture. She lays it on her bed, goes to the closet, gets down her wedding album, and brings it to the bed. Stuck between the last two pages is the picture of the little wooden house she’d told John about, isolated, buried in snowdrifts. She meant to ball that picture up and throw it away. But now she finds she cannot do it. There is a truth in it, a history of her and John that she regrets but wants nonetheless to honor. So she puts the picture of the little house back in the album, beneath a sheet of plastic, so it won’t fall out again. But she also positions the picture of the cowgirl next to the house as though she’s riding purposefully away from it.

She stares at the image, the cowgirl in her brown boots and blue skirt, her red blouse with the sleeves rolled up, her black hat tipped back far on her head, her intention fierce in her eyes.

Irene shuts her computer off. She moves to the chair in the corner of her bedroom. She puts her hands on her knees and closes her eyes and tries to empty her mind. Valerie told her recently that she does this every day: sits in silence, her mind empty, waiting for the spirit to come. “Sometimes it happens; sometimes it doesn’t,” she told Irene. “But it’s always good for me to think of nothing, that way.”

Irene waits. She does not think of nothing. She thinks of how her catering company will have the best mashed potatoes on earth. She thinks of how she needs coffee. She thinks of the blouses she needs to pick up at the cleaners, the bills she needs to pay. She thinks of how she will fly Ron out to Minnesota to John’s wedding, if he’d like to go. It might be nice for him to see the place where Sadie was born. And then she remembers a conversation she and Valerie had after one of Irene’s many breakups. Valerie had said that maybe Irene should take a little breather from trying to find someone, maybe she needed to do something else. “Like what?” Irene had said. “Love is the answer. Didn’t you pay attention in hippie school?”