Promises to Keep (24 page)

She does not sleep much these days, or not, at least, at night. Not in the way she used to. She can go to bed at midnight and still be wide awake and raring to go at four. She has always loved peaceful mornings, and often gets up, makes herself some tea and reads on the sun porch, lying on the wicker chaise longue with a blanket flung over her, where she always manages to doze off. Other times, she crawls back into bed at five, drifting off to sleep until mid-morning, rarely feeling truly well-rested.

It is coupledom she misses. Sharing. Companionship. Someone with whom to dissect an evening, someone to share an interesting article with, someone to . . . talk to. She misses the ease of walking into a party as half of a whole, of being introduced to other couples and being able to refer to “my husband.”

She misses fitting in.

Not that it matters much in her circle of friends, in the town in which she has lived for over forty years; but at those times when she ventures out of her comfort zone she finds herself wishing for a companion.

Those times she circles a play she wants to see, an opera she’d love to go to, a talk she’d find interesting. She’ll call around the other unattached or widowed friends she has, and sometimes, even if they are all busy, she will still go, taking just her bag and her smile for company.

She always talks to people, but people aren’t always so willing to talk to her, and she misses the car ride home, talking about why the play was so disturbing, or how much better this production was than last year’s.

But she has been lucky. She has had three great loves, far more than most people ever get. George, Callie and Steffi.

Losing George was numbing. Losing Callie . . . it is unthinkable. And Honor has been through this before, five years ago. She is still not entirely sure how she got through it.

You do not lose your children first. It should not, and cannot happen.

“Not to me,” Honor whispers, looking at herself in the mirror before she goes out to start making the children’s dinner. “Not again.”

“I
t’s my baby sister!” Callie is sitting cross-legged on the bed in her favorite brushed-flannel pajamas and a nurse is adjusting the bag on her IV stand when Steffi walks in.

“Steffi, this is Esther,” she introduces her to the nurse. “She is doing an amazing job of looking after me. I swear she’s the only person around here who I want giving me shots.”

A knock on the open door and a young man walks in with equipment. Steffi gives Callie a questioning look as Callie holds out her arm.

“They come in every hour to take my vitals.”

“Doesn’t that drive you mad?”

“A little.” Callie gives the male nurse a sly smile. “That’s why I requested they only send in men who are young and hot.”

Another knock and a woman walks in with a tray and places it on the table. “Chicken soup and meatloaf, right?” she asks with a bright smile.

“Thanks, Rose,” Callie says, while Steffi takes the steel dome off the plate to inspect the food.

“Do you know everyone’s name in here?”

“Only the people who come in this room.”

“You’re amazing. And you look amazing. From what Mom said I thought you’d be on death’s doorstep.”

Callie starts to laugh. “If you weren’t my sister you’d never get away with saying that.”

“If I weren’t your sister I’d never have dared say it. You can’t seriously eat this stuff, can you?” Steffi gestures to the graying meat, cold cooked carrots and stodgy mashed potato.

“The chicken soup is pretty good.”

“I guess it’s amazing that you want to eat, right? You haven’t eaten anything for days.”

Callie smiles. “I am feeling better, but now I realize it’s the drugs. I asked them not to wake me up last night for the pills, just to let me sleep, and I felt horrible this morning.”

“Sick?”

“Nauseated, and in a tremendous amount of pain. They said it can take a while to figure out the pain management and get it right.”

“But you’re good now?”

“Better.”

“So what is it? Do they have any idea yet?”

Callie shrugs. “More tests today, waiting for the cultures to form on the tests they did the other day. Someone on the team suggested it might be migraine . . .”

“Lila
said
it was migraine!”

“I know, so now they’re bringing in a neurologist.” She sighs, pulling the food closer to her.

“You can’t eat that.” Steffi pushes the tray away and reaches into her bag, bringing out a Thermos flask and some Tupperware containers.

“You cooked for me?” Callie is delighted.

“Of course. I don’t want you eating this crappy hospital food and, more to the point, I don’t want you eating meat. We’ve spoken about this before, and now you’re sick again, you cannot eat this stuff anymore, okay?”

Five years ago, when Callie was first diagnosed, Steffi went rushing over with stacks of books and Internet research, all suggesting that animal products were the primary cause of common diseases in the West, especially heart disease and cancer.

She implored Callie to give up meat, would sit next to her chair in the chemo ward and read her horrible statistics, and Callie always said she would try.

But then Steffi would walk into her kitchen and find Callie eating a BLT for lunch, or scrambled eggs for dinner, and she knew she wasn’t trying that hard.

It was the most frustrating thing in the world. Steffi was certain that cutting animal products out of her diet would make a difference. If Steffi was diagnosed with cancer, she knew she would do anything and everything that had been shown to help beat the disease, particularly if it was as easy as changing her diet.

Cancer loves sugar, she discovered. She highlighted passages in books, emailed reports, but Callie was never without her peanut M&M’s and her Butterfingers.

“I’m not giving up the sugar,” she would say with a sigh as Steffi moaned. “I’m having chemo, for God’s sake. You can’t take away the one thing in life I look forward to.”

Steffi unscrews the lid of the Thermos flask and Callie dips her head forward and smells.

“Mushroom, lentil and barley soup.”

“Mmm. What else?”

“Spinach quiche”

“No eggs or milk?”

“Of course not. But . . . I made this the other day and I figure a tiny bit of dairy won’t kill you, so I brought one for you—orange and almond cake.”

“Yum! How come this one is dairy?”

“I have a job. Kinda, sorta. Part-time cooking for a local store. The owner’s not so interested in the vegan stuff, though, so I’m cooking just about everything for them.”

“Oh my God!” Callie shrieks. “I am so selfish. I haven’t even asked about you! The house! The giant pony dog! Your new life! Tell me everything.”

Steffi grins. “Callie, I am so happy it’s almost ridiculous.”

If you had told Steffi, just a few months ago, that she would be waking up before six every morning, and not only that but she would be happy about it, she would have laughed in your face.

But that was in New York, when she was out every night, drinking with the rest of the gang from Joni’s, or with the band and their cronies, ending up at clubs, eventually crashing in the early hours.

She felt herself longing for a quieter life, but didn’t imagine she would fall in love with it quite as much as she has.

Susie instant-messaged her last night on her way out to a gig, to tell her that Rob has a new, twenty-two-year-old girlfriend. Steffi felt absolutely nothing, just happiness that he had moved on so quickly, and also relief that at the time Susie popped up on her computer screen, made-up, dressed up, great new high-heeled black boots she’d bought downtown, Steffi was curled up on the sofa with Fingal’s head on her lap, in a long white nightdress and with the fire slowly burning itself out.

She’d never owned a nightdress in her life. Steffi was the kind of girl who always slept in her boyfriend’s T-shirts and boxer shorts, but she went to check out the village on the first day, and she walked into one of the little mom-and-pop stores where they had a stack of old-fashioned Victorian nightdresses piled on a shelf.

“Those are the best things in the world,” the owner exclaimed. “I haven’t slept in anything else for years and they get softer and softer with every wash.”

“I’m not really a nightdress kind of girl.” Steffi smiled.

“You will be,” the woman said. “Are you the gal who’s living in Mason’s place?”

Steffi’s eyes widened. “Yes! How on earth did you know?”

“I’ve lived here my entire life. There’s very little that goes on around here I don’t know about. I heard there was a pretty young thing who was a chef, and I took a chance. Tell you what. Why don’t you take a nightdress home, sleep in it, and if you don’t like it I’ll give you your money back?”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“I insist. I promise you, it will change your life. I’m Mary, by the way.”

“Steffi.”

“I know. How about I pour you a cup of coffee and you can tell me all about yourself?”

By the time Steffi left, with the nightdress, a bottle of Soft Scrub, a pack of two sponges and a bag of oranges, she also had a list.

Mary had written down the numbers for Stanley the handyman, Mrs. Rothbottom who ran the church charity sale, Mick the caretaker, and the Van Peterson family, who lived in the big house on West Street and might be interested in having someone cook for them.

“You may as well ask,” Mary said. “She’s in here every day begging me to start selling healthy ready-made meals because the big supermarket doesn’t have much in the way of organic prepared food, but I’m worried there isn’t enough of a market for it. Anyway,” she sighed, “I bet if you telephoned her and said you would be interested in cooking for her, she’d jump at the chance. Three young children, a huge house and a husband who’s never there. Poor girl could use a friend as well. Amy is her name. You tell her I passed on her number.”

“That would be great,” Steffi said. “And you know, I could always make some healthy food for you and we could see if it sells. Maybe we could start with some delicious homemade vegetable and barley soups . . . maybe some maple and pumpkin muffins?”

“What if they don’t sell?”

“You wouldn’t have to buy them. I’d make them and you would just have to make space for them. I could do plates of muffins that you could just put there, next to the coffee. And the soup could go in canisters on that table over there where you have the leaflets. You wouldn’t have to pay for the food, maybe just take a percentage of what sells.”

“Oh I don’t need a percentage. I tell you what. You take the nightdress and I’ll take the soup and muffins, and we’ll both see if it works out. How does that sound?”

“Perfect.” Callie grinned, and they shook hands.

“Oh, and by the way, watch out for Mick the caretaker. He’s a bit of a ladies’ man, that one.” Mary raised an eyebrow. “Don’t let him charm you, because he’s broken a few hearts in his time.”

“Don’t you worry,” Steffi said with a laugh. “I’m taking a break from men for a very long time.”

That night, when Steffi pulled on the nightdress, she cracked up looking at herself in the mirror. Where was the hip downtown chick who went clubbing? She looked like she’d stepped out of the early nineteenth century, but she felt cozy, and feminine, and she immediately understood what Mary had been talking about.

Susie had gasped as Steffi walked the camera around the house, showing her each room on the video cam.

“It’s amazing!” she breathed in envy. “But don’t you miss New York a little bit?”

 

“I really don’t,” Steffi says again, to Callie this time, as Callie finishes every drop of the soup, then eagerly pulls the orange and almond cake toward her.