Season of the Dragonflies (32 page)

“Really?” she said. “You must be difficult to live with.”

“I am,” he said. “But I'm good at other things that they didn't appreciate.”

“That's a worn-out excuse.” Willow finished her cup of tea.

“How about I show you and we can discuss this more later?” James moved his hand now to Willow's thigh, and this made her cough. She wiped some tea from her lips and said, “James?” her southern accent so suddenly prominent that even Willow noticed it.

“May we go to your room?” he said.

“But you haven't finished your tea.” Willow's heart felt like a drum tattooing in her chest.

“Willow,” he said flatly.

“What?” she said in a panicky voice.

“Show me your room.” James stood up with his hand outstretched for her to take.

The girls could walk in at any moment and hear them, and she'd be mortified, and then there was the issue of her not having had regular sex for the past ten years. All this caused Willow to hesitate. She felt palpitations like the kind leading to a heart attack. What if she forgot what to do? She wasn't flexible anymore. What if her thighs seized up with cramps and she cried out and had to stop? Or what if her vagina simply didn't work anymore? Too dry, maybe, and she hadn't planned this, so she didn't have any coconut oil to assist them. Didn't she worry about all of this that night in L.A., or was she so drunk that it never occurred to her? Why couldn't she remember?

When she didn't take his hand, he finally let it fall on her head; he stroked her hair and she leaned into his pant leg. “We can just nap,” he said. And the more he stroked her head, the deeper she moved against his body, and the smell of his skin and the bergamot and oakmoss and lingering neroli from his cologne made Willow's body warm to him. She breathed deeper and took him in and had no idea what was happening to her. This man she'd known for such a short amount of time felt so much like the man she was always meant to love. Immediate. Undisputed. Outrageous. And he seemed to feel the exact same way about her. She rolled her cheek against his leg and then looked up at him, and he cupped her chin in his hand and she said, “I'm not too tired.”

“You're not?” he said.

She said, “My room's got the best bed in the house.” She stood up and kissed him on the mouth, then said, “I'd like to show you.”

TUCKED TIGHTLY BENEATH THE COVERS
, Willow's body felt drugged and buoyant, like a leaf floating in a pond. She'd awoken to the sound of a tree branch tapping at her window. James slept beside her, snoring lightly and with a small dribble of drool on the pillow. She'd lived alone for so long that a sight like that would've been reason enough to make her turn away from anyone else but him. She kept her arms by her sides and rested there, motionless, afraid to move for fear of rousing him. She hoped he'd want to have sex again, because she couldn't believe what she'd been missing out on all these years. It's not like she hadn't had good sex before, but she'd forgotten, and not because her memory was bad. Too long without a good thing, even just a few days, apparently, makes anyone forget. She'd forgotten like she might a cholesterol pill—missed one and didn't even realize it.

James's deep breathing made one stray hair on his pronounced forehead fly up and then back down, and the longer she watched this the more convinced she became that she wanted to see this exact peaceful sight each day when she woke up for as long as she had good health. She reached over to move the hair away from his brow, and the moment her skin touched his, his eyes opened. “It's okay,” Willow said softly. “Go back to sleep.”

He said, “Can't,” and pulled her closer to him. She snuggled against his warm body and put her head on his soft patch of chest hair.

“That's what I needed,” he said, and played with her earlobe.

She kissed his rib. “Let's go.”

He said, “Just need a minute.”

Willow said, “I mean let's travel together. Retire and roam the world. Twice. Three times over.”

James swept Willow's hair to the side so he could look in her eyes and said, “Serious?”

“Very,” she said, and nothing had ever made her feel sixteen again quite like this. It was like she had another stretch of youth before her.

“Think about it, if you need time.”

“I have,” Willow said. “I've thought about it for years. I just needed you to come along.”

He squeezed her.

“Plus, I have so much money that I never spend,” Willow said. “It seems shameful, really. Some economy could use it.”

His stomach caved in when he laughed. “How much is so much?”

“You can't imagine how much,” Willow said. “That much.”

“So you'll be my sugar mama?”

“Guess so,” Willow said.

James tickled her hip.

“But there's one thing.” She needed to tell him. Had to tell him. It was only fair.

James readjusted the pillows behind him and sat up. “I'm joking. I've got my own funds, don't worry.”

“No,” Willow said, “nothing like that. It's just . . . Well—I think you should know that the only reason I'm retiring right now is a problem I'm having.”

“Come here.” James draped an arm around Willow's bare shoulders and pulled her closer. Her instinct was to be on the farthest side of the bed while she told him. “What's that mean?”

“Some days are okay,” she said. “When I've rested enough and don't have a lot of stress to deal with. I've had a good stretch recently since Lucia came home and agreed to take over the business, but for the past few years I've been forgetting things.”

“I forget things too.”

“But not like this,” Willow said. “I forget names all the time. I sometimes forget where I'm going when I'm driving, like to town or somewhere familiar with a set destination in mind, and suddenly a place I've seen my whole life looks totally foreign and it takes me a long time, hours sometimes, to figure out how to get home, and I panic and I weep. I hadn't told anyone until it happened at night after I went to see a movie in town and I couldn't remember how to get home. I had to pull over and sleep in the truck. A police officer who I've known since he was a boy found me. It was utterly humiliating. I've told my assistant.”

James held her tighter. “But not Mya?”

Willow shook her head. “Mya and Lucia are both suspicious. I haven't told them how bad it is yet. But I feel like you should know before you really decide to be with me.” James began to shake his head but Willow said, “I mean it, I don't know how long we'll have, and I could end up forgetting you altogether. Maybe soon, maybe not. I forgot the first time we met, and I'm so scared that'll happen again. That I'll forget everyone I love and it'll hurt.”

James didn't move and he didn't protest. “You've seen a doctor?”

Willow nodded. “Months ago. It's early-onset Alzheimer's.” She covered her mouth. “That's the first time I've said it.”

James leaned over to look Willow in the eyes. “Is it recommended you stay here where you can see your doctor regularly?”

“I haven't broached that topic yet,” she said. “But I want some freedom to enjoy my life without concern, even if it's just for six months. I know that's irresponsible, but I can't help it.”

James remained silent and Willow said, “You're having second thoughts; I understand that completely.”

Willow used to believe consciousness and the spirit existed after the body, but now, piece by piece, who she was died with every word forgotten, every malfunction of her brain. She'd changed her mind about all this in this last stretch to the finish of her life. The account doesn't function if there's no manager watching over it, and without awareness of a self, no self existed. She wanted to enjoy her body and be aware of her mind for as long as she had left.

James took her chin in his hand. “I support what you think's best. You want to go, that's your choice. A personal doctor can travel with us—whatever it takes. I fell in love with you the first time I met you and I never forgot it, so you won't either. What I want now is time with you, as soon as I can have it.” He kissed her gently, stroked her hair, and held her for a long time.

Willow had almost fallen asleep when he said, “Excuse me.” He rolled out of bed, his bare ass strong and high, his calf muscles defined. He entered her bathroom, and it was an odd sight, a man in there. He called, “Anywhere good to dine in Quartz Knot?”

“Quartz Hollow,” she said, and heard him say, “Oh yeah,” to himself.
He likes to talk while he's in the bathroom. Can you deal with that?
the single woman inside Willow asked, and the single woman decided she could, but that she also needed to keep a tally of his strange behaviors and check in with herself regularly to make sure she could accept them. No point in going it alone this long just to sacrifice her peace at the end. They would not marry, she was convinced of that, but still, cohabitation required commitment, and commitment required practice, and she'd been out of practice in that area too. She'd have to compromise.

Willow waited for the door to open and for him to reappear before she said, “There's a farm-to-table place I think you'll like.”

He climbed on top of her and put his full weight on her body before he kissed her, then rolled back to his side and buried himself under the covers.

“What about your girls?” he said.

“What about them?” Willow covered her breasts with the cotton sheet.

“Will they come?”

“Are you joking?”

“I wasn't, no.”

“That's about the last thing I think they'd want to do, especially Mya. She's not happy that I've asked Lucia to be president. And now Zoe,” Willow said. “I think we can plan on just the two of us.”

“And Mya?” James asked. “What will she do now?”

“That I don't know. Once Lucia left home I always expected Mya to take over. But you can't force what's not right—I learned that with their father, in fact.”

“You haven't mentioned him before.” James readjusted his back so he was sitting up against the leather headboard.

“Such a long time ago, really, it feels like an unrelated life.” Willow snuggled closer against James. His skin radiated so much heat that a blanket wasn't necessary. “Mya had the most time with him and looks the most like him, but Lucia never met him. He did have charm like her though. He was a jazz musician. I met him a few years after I'd graduated from high school, on a trip to San Francisco. I was supposed to take over the business for my mother soon after my trip. I went out there for fun and shopped for vintage couture. I stopped at a bar one night in the Haight and he was playing. I danced and he bought me a drink after, at least I think that's how it happened. Either way, that's where I met him. My sister had already moved away from home and I was the only one to be chosen. I liked the work, but I was scared and wasn't ready for that life of responsibility. A lot like Lucia and Mya, I guess, though I was much younger. I met a mysterious guy, and he was a sure way out. I stayed out there with him and spent my early twenties going to bars and watching him play, until I got pregnant with Mya. We lived together north of San Francisco, in a cabin in the redwoods. He skipped out when I was pregnant with Lucia.”

“What was his name?” James said.

“Michael.” Willow laughed. “I haven't said his name aloud in a very long time.”

“Do the girls ever see him?”

“No,” Willow said. “They never saw him again. And you can imagine how mad my mother was when I finally returned to take over and I was saddled with two small children.”

James held Willow's hand and she had nothing left to say. She rested her head on his bare stomach and he continued to stroke her hair. The perfume can't prevent a family death; that's what Willow had thought as her mother lay ill with pneumonia in this exact room. With her white curly hair spread across the pillow in the room with a window looking out on the hills, she had taken Willow's smooth hand (the wrinkles she had now were so distant then) and said, “Pass it on when you no longer love it.” A young and grieving twenty-nine-year-old Willow thought that could never happen. How could she ever fall out of love with the family business? For years now she'd imagined herself working until the day she dropped dead of a stroke, just like her own sister, but now she knew she'd likely die of something less immediate. She could live a very long life but die without a clue of her whereabouts or her own history.

If she didn't pass the business on to a Lenore woman, no one else could make the flowers grow. And God help her, she had two healthy daughters who seemed far less capable of what Willow's mother had asked of her when she was seven years younger than Mya and a mother of two young children. Willow often thought it had something to do with their father's genetic material. She didn't allow herself to think of Michael very often, though one glance at Mya and she couldn't help but remember him. She had his sly mouth and sandy blond hair. No one falls in love with a musician and doesn't know on some level that he might go. But love never guaranteed longevity. Neither did vows, which Lucia had now discovered.

Michael had left without leaving a note to tell her where he went or why. She suspected the stress of never securing steady work broke him, but she didn't know for certain. Had she been more mature, she might not have cursed him by taking their courthouse wedding photo and poking out his eyes with a rabbit's rib bone. She sealed the mouth, hands, and feet of his image with red wax, then placed the photo before a black candle that burned to the bottom of its wick, banishing him from their lives. She was protecting her girls from a man like that, someone so undependable.

She had loved Michael, the way his hands curved around the guitar, and she hated him for leaving, and that kind of passionate anger fills the body and invades everyone nearby until no one knows what's normal anymore. She couldn't deny, however, that Mya and Lucia were a part of him, and certainly some of their behavior could be attributed to Michael. Like Mya's not telling Willow that she planned to leave the house with Luke, despite her mother's warning. Though she had always been quick to dismiss it, Willow had wondered from time to time if their father's being absent might've hurt the girls more than she'd like to admit. Neither girl had managed to have a successful relationship, and Willow felt guilty about it all.