Reunion (32 page)

She picked up the phone and called Erin, their techie, getting her voicemail. “Erin, it’s Blue. Would you stop by and let me know if it’s
safe to open an email? Thanks.” Paranoid as she sounded, the last thing she wanted to deal with now was another computer virus that would grind their system to a halt.

Now, for Melody. With phone in hand, she went to the window, opened it, and climbed out onto the fire escape.

Below, the street bustled with delivery trucks, cars, pedestrians with jackets unzipped to better appreciate the warming day. The sound of a man singing opera came from up the block. A woman on a rooftop to the east stood before an easel, painting something Blue couldn’t make out from here. The picture might be a roofscape, it might be the rusting bicycle leaning against the roof’s lip—or maybe something from the woman’s imagination. Suppose she yelled across,
What are you painting?
Would the woman be flattered by
Blue Reynolds’s
attention, or would her concentration, her creativity, be ruined?

And if the woman’s could be, might Mitch’s? Maybe she was wrong to have meddled in what he, and Julian, were so capable of doing on their own. Everyone wanted to do things
bigger
, make them
more—
she was guilty of succumbing, guilty of nodding yes, of signing off on the next new strategy to seduce more advertisers, grab more viewership. She had nothing against success; she just worried about what might be getting lost if in making
more
a person ended up with less.

Blue sat on the sun-warmed stair, drew in a deep breath, let it out and dialed her sister.

Four rings, then Jeff answered.

“Hi, Jeff, it’s Blue. How are you?”

“Hi, Blue. Not much new here. They got the beans in, but we’re short on rain so far this year. Mel’s still out,” he said before she had a chance to ask. That was Jeff, quick and to the point. “Girls’ lunch with the knitting crowd,” he explained. “You know how it is.”

Could he really think so? She said, “Oh, all right. When’s she due back?”

“Hard to say. They get to yakking, I sometimes have to make my own supper.”

“Well, you know how women are.”

“That I do. I’ll tell her you called.”

“Thanks.”

“No trouble.”

After hanging up, Blue stayed on the fire escape step a minute longer.
Girls’ lunch with the knitting crowd.
The closest she’d come to that kind of thing was a fund-raiser she’d attended for women in Nepal, to buy them sturdy fine-wool sheep from which they could sustain their own livelihoods.

Not quite the same.

Which was okay. She had plenty of worthwhile things filling her time. With a last look at the roofscapes around her, she climbed back inside her office.

Erin arrived a few minutes later. “Got your message. What’s up?”

Blue waved her over to her desk. “I got an email with an attachment, and I don’t know who it’s from.”

“Did you do the preview pane?”

Blue drew a blank. “The what?”

“Here.” Erin sat down at the desk and in a quick couple of keystrokes had the email program set up so that it displayed a bit of the message text without her having to actually open the message. “See? This way you peek in and, if you can tell it’s legit, open the message.” As Blue was about to peek in as suggested, Erin clicked open the security program and spent another minute tinkering. Then she got out of the chair. “Okay. You’re all updated.”

“Good, thanks.”

“Absolutely,” Erin said. Blue hardly heard her; her attention was already on the email and the bit of its message she could see

Julian. A funny prickle ran up the back of her neck. “I should mind,” she said, clicking the message open, “but I don’t.”

She trusted, too. When she talked to Mitch last night, he’d been warm and reflective, good-natured about David Letterman’s recent quip:
This Mitch Forrester’s a lucky guy, isn’t he? He does her show, she takes him dancing—I was going to call the guy and suggest he also buy a Powerball ticket, but this week’s jackpot is only a hundred eighty million.

She opened the first picture file to find a vibrant green bird filling the frame. Its blue cheek was the least of it; its black eye stripe is what stood out, a stripe like Zorro’s mask. She opened each of the four other photos. How clear they were, how detailed—he was so obviously gifted.

Less obvious was why he’d decided to email her. Presumably it was a straightforward friendly gesture: he knew she liked colorful birds, he’d seen and photographed one, he’d shared the images.

If the gesture was so straightforward, why was she clutching the mouse so tightly? Why did it make her stomach fluttery, a little nauseated maybe? Why, at the same time, did it make her smile?

That she was smiling made her frown.

“I’m too old for this.”

Whatever
this
was.

She closed the images with five quick clicks, then closed the message with one more.

Then she opened it again. She couldn’t
not
reply; he’d be sure to interpret that as disinterest or disdain or some other
dis
, and that would perpetuate their rough start, which would only mean more tension for Mitch.

Reading through the message once more, she tried to gauge his tone for a clue about how best to respond. His salutation,
Hey–
was so casual.
But casual was good, it was fine. And there was no sign-off at all, not even the generic
Best
or
Thanks.
Was he saying he’d taken the photos
because
he thought she’d appreciate the bird? Or was it that he appreciated the bird and, incidentally, thought she would too?

She clicked
REPLY.
“Does it matter?” she said as she began to type, denying the possibility that it did.

hen Blue arrived at her mother’s apartment building Saturday afternoon, Melody opened the door and said, “Yellow.”

“Call me Blue.”

“Hi, Harmony Blue,” Mel said. They hugged, a quick and dutiful embrace. “The dress—I’ll wear the yellow dress.”

“Why didn’t you call me back?”

Mel shrugged and led the way to the rooftop-access door. “She looks wonderful. Calvin gave her the ring last night, she can hardly wait to show you.” She paused at the doorway and turned around. “Isn’t this something, her getting married?”

“I guess it’s time.”

“I guess we’ll be showering you next, eh?”

“Have I told you how good you look?” Blue said, reaching past Mel to open the door.

“What, aren’t you excited about finding Mitch again?”

Mel’s perceptiveness caught Blue short, warned her that her defenses were down. She remedied that, standing straighter and smiling at Mel. She said, “I am. No need to rush things, though.”

“How long since you’ve been in a serious relationship?”

“Long,” Blue said. “I don’t have time to get serious.”

“So it’s all just weekends on yachts and, like, trips to Jamaica with—who was that last guy?”

“His name is Lou Patterson,” a financier she’d met at a Cubs game
two years before, “and yes, that kind of dating works best.” Until she got bored with jet-setting, as she inevitably did, and bowed out.

“Works best for what? Sex?”

Blue said, “I don’t want to get into it. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I expect you’re right about that.”

They went up the stairs to the rooftop, where caterers had transformed the garden space into a lattice-covered wonderland of ivy and violets and lace. Mel said, “Mom told me this is all on you. It’s beautiful. You really do right by her.” Her tone was almost grudge-free.

“She worked so hard for us,” Blue said. “I’ll just go say hi.”

She found her mother directing three women in violet aprons in the just-so arrangement of finger sandwiches. When the caterer had suggested doing the shower like a themed afternoon tea, Blue liked the idea but had expected her mother to pass. Instead, she’d taken to it wholeheartedly
(like a duck to bugs)
and in her invitations directed the guests to dress accordingly. Her mother’s own interpretation was a lavender chiffon dress printed with tiny green vines, a green cashmere cardigan, and lavender tights that ended at the ankle above lavender satin ballerina shoes.

Blue kissed her cheek. “Hi, Mom—you look marvelous, like you just stepped off the runway.” Her hair was back in a loose French braid and her usual peace-sign earrings had been replaced with small dangling strings of silver and green beads.

“You’re not exactly chopped liver,” her mother said, holding her by the shoulders and looking her over. Blue’s dress was a belted peony print, Carolina Herrera, meant for Monday’s show. “You either,” her mother said to Mel, who’d come up behind Blue. Mel’s dress flattered her, a red, white, and brown abstract print with an A-line skirt. Not cheap, and not matronly, suggesting Mel had put serious thought into her choice.

Mel said, “Show her the ring.”

The ring was platinum, with a large, round yellow diamond flanked by a pair of smaller white ones. “Calvin says the middle one is me, I’m the sun; the others are you two, the stars.”

“He said that?” Blue asked. “I like him better and better.” She liked, too, that his history had checked out. Not only was he who he said he was, his record was clean in every way.

“She’s
the star,” Mel said. “I’m the … I’m the rhinestone.”

Blue nudged her. “Not. You are definitely stellar.”

“That’s right. You’re both stars in my universe,” their mother said. “I told Calvin
he
is the middle one, the sun. We had a lively debate and had to settle it in bed.”

Mel covered her ears. “I’m not listening. La la la la.”

Their mothers’ friends began arriving, women from the bookstore, women from the co-op, the gardening club, the arts center—they were all ages, all sizes, colorful and eclectic in some cases, simple and quiet in others. All of them shared an affection for their generous, forthright Nancy, and all of them were eager to say so.

Seated at round tables of six apiece, each woman told her story of how she’d met Nancy, what she’d thought of her. Blue’s mother always made a strong impression, as did the bit of her bio she was quick to share. “I don’t think I’d known her ten minutes,” said Jill, Calvin’s bookstore manager, “when she revealed she was Blue Reynolds’s mom. Now of course I was startled—Blue, dear, nothing against you, but it wasn’t clear you ever had a mother. You seemed to have appeared from the ethers in whole cloth.”

Blue had no idea what to make of this, so she laughed along with the others.

Her mother said, “I always say I have
two
girls, I always name them, and then it’s
out there
and we can get on to the important matters, like—”

“Like rutabaga,” called a woman from the co-op.

“Like men,” her mother said. “Men who like rutabaga.”

They ate finger sandwiches of chicken and tuna salad, drank tea or wine or cocktails, and the conversation grew even more relaxed. Blue listened to the women at her table discussing teenagers, grandchildren, organic baby food, hemorrhoids, Viagra, marveling at the openness among these women who had not, in most cases, known one another before today. The inclusiveness she felt in simply being among them was a joy.

All of her tablemates were either married or in a long-term relationship, and four of the five were content that way. The fifth was considering a trial separation from her husband of eighteen years. She said, “Blue, what do you think? Should I leave him?”

You’re asking me?
was Blue’s first thought. “Well, that depends,” is what she said. “Tell me more about your relationship.”

Jill said, “Tell us more about yours!”

“There isn’t much to tell.” This was true. While the media was abuzz with speculation about an engagement and tangential chatter about Mitch’s being on
TBRS
and nepotism, practically nothing was going on between her and Mitch in real life. She was busy, he was busy, they’d spoken only once this past week.

She said, “I knew his family and him a long time ago, then I ran into them again in Key West. It was a nice coincidence.”

The woman across from her said, “It was fate!”

Another added, “My aunt had something like that happen to her, only it was when my uncle died, and she went to her class reunion and her high school boyfriend was there, and he was widowed. Widowered? Whatever. Anyway, they got back together and have been married now for eight years.”

The others were nodding and adding their recollections of similar events. They commended her, teased her, made all her business their business—they made her one of them. The picture they painted of her happily-ever-after was so vivid and enthused that she could almost step right into it and be that princess she, too, had imagined, once.