Sweet Love (21 page)

“Soft spot? That’s all I get? Rotten apples have soft spots.”

“Babies, too, and they’re adorable just like you.”

With a gentle grab of his forearm I enlighten him that no woman over the age of six wants to be referred to as adorable. “Try intriguing,”

He runs his large hand over mine. “Okay, intriguing. Now‚ what’s the caveat?”

“The caveat,” I say, summoning strength, “is why are you flirting with me when you’re going out with a beautiful woman who thinks you walk on water?”

“Ah.” He pulls away and studies the label on his beer. “You’re referring to Carol.”

That stuff I mentioned about him not being so egotistical? Scratch that. “There’s more than one beautiful woman who adores you?”

Michael thinks about this, stripping off the beer label and then stripping that into strips. “You may have a misimpression about our relationship.”

“She doe-eyes you all through dessert class. What’s to misimpress?”

“Carol’s a complicated situation. What she needs, I can’t give. Unfortunately. ”

That old line. I could write the script blindfolded—marriage, commitment, a lifelong partnership. “You mean an engagement ring.”

“No.” He strips off another part of the label. “Nothing like that.”

“Then what? Monogamy?”

“Well, for starters,” he says slowly, as if selecting each word. “Love. I don’t love her.”

“But you don’t mind sleeping with her.”

“Who said I was sleeping with her?”

I give him a look. “Be real.”

“Okay, let’s say I were. Just for the sake of argument, for figuring out how Julie Mueller operates, tell me—do you have to be in love to sleep with someone? I mean, we’re adults, right? We’re not innocents. We’ve both been married. You to a guy who left you with a nine-month-old baby, me to a woman who found my disdain for parties and country clubs got in the way of her personal and social fulfillment.”

So that’s why he and Cassie split, over such a trivial matter. And from what Mom tells me it was a huge wedding with all the bells and whistles. I would have gone except I was out to there with Em. Or, at least, that’s what I told myself.

“What are you saying, Michael? Are you saying because we failed at marriage we are doomed to a future of loveless sex? Because I don’t buy that.”

“What I’m saying is that there’s love and then there’s sex and that sex without love, though not as ideal, does have its merits.”

This is what he wants. That’s why he’s flirting with me. He’s just looking to get me into bed, nothing more. Curse him.

Unable to sit across from him one more minute, I jump up and promptly tip over the bowl of lobster shells. Super. Lobster water’s all over my hands, turning them sticky and the table now smells like low tide.

“What’s wrong?” he says, mopping up the water with the newspapers. “You act like I’ve insulted you.”

“Because you have.” I crumble the newspapers into a big ball.
You don’t give good, noble, loving women like me a chance.
“It all goes back to how you’re such an idealist. You’re waiting for a perfect woman out there who might look like Cassie and act like Cassie without the flaws. When there is no such thing. Don’t you get that, even at your age? There are no perfect women!”

He takes the newspaper out of my hands and comes around to my side of the table. He’s so close, I can smell the faint trace of sweat and a mild, vinegary scent of beer. It’s been a long time since I was so close to a man I liked. Ages since I was so close to one I once loved.

“You underestimate me, Julie.”

“Do I?” Heart beating hard. Must will it to behave.

“It’s not perfection I’m after. It’s something else, something stupidly romantic.” Bowing his head, he says, “I’m more, as you would say, old-fashioned. I actually do believe in true love.”

“Oh, please,” I scoff and turn to get the rest of the dishes, though deep down I’m incredibly touched by his sentiment. Provided he’s sincere, of course.

Something happens and his hand’s on mine and he’s pulling me toward him, making me understand. “That’s where I went wrong with Cassie. Cassie was beautiful and fun and, yes, sexy. Most important, she liked me. Back then, I figured if a girl really liked me, then I should like her. It’s hard to describe, really.”

“But marriage? That’s more than just agreeing to take her to the movies, Michael.”

“At the time, I’d reached what I thought was a mature conclusion by deciding there was no point in waiting for this idealistic construct of true love. Cassie loved me. I loved her, in a way. She wanted to get married and so I proposed. She was persistent, but she was not my true love. That hasn’t happened. Yet.”

An ominous silence punctuated by the occasional cricket chirp and passing car comes over us. What I should do is drop the issue and finish cleaning the table. But this feels like a one-in-a-million moment. Maybe it’s the full moon or the sultry night air or the lobster and wine on top of body-aching exhaustion. Whatever the reason, I can’t stop myself.

“You didn’t need to wait, Michael.” I can barely get out the words. “You met your true love when you were about ten. You just never realized it.”

A phone rings in his pocket, though he doesn’t answer it right away because he seems to be frozen. Finally, he frees my hand and takes the call, strolling to the end of the yard for privacy. Meanwhile, I gather up the plates and bowl and find as I climb the back stairs that my knees are wobbling in the strangest way.

What have I done?
I have basically admitted that I’ve loved him all along. Still. Hurriedly, I set to washing the dishes and dreading his foot-steps up the back stairs.

“That was Carol,” he says, coming inside with the rest of the newspaper and stuffing it into my garbage can. “She’s alone this weekend and doesn’t have the kids. Thinks she may have seen a burglar or Peeping Tom or someone lurking on her lawn.”

That woman must be a witch to have picked up on our vibes all the way from Newton.

“I told her I’d stop by and make sure she’s okay.”

“Uh-huh. Well, thanks for the lobster and the air conditioners and picking me up.” Squeezing out the Palmolive, I invest myself in washing these plates right away.

“Julie.” His arm is around my waist and it is all I can do to keep scrubbing and rinsing as Betty Mueller taught me. Clean, clean and your troubles will disappear. “You’ve given me a lot to think about tonight. Thank you.”

I stop scrubbing. The water’s still flowing, but I don’t dare turn it off. I’m too afraid to move.

With barely a brush of a kiss on my cheek, his arm slips away and the front door slams.

Gone at last. Flicking off the water, I have to lean against the sink, I’m shaking so hard.
Why did I say that?
No wonder he flew out of here. I scared him off, is what I did, sent him running for the hills. Well, at least I won’t have to ever see him again.

And then I remember: my last dessert class. Damn.

At the thought of having to face him next Friday, my heart revs up again, beating so hard with anxiety that I have to sit down and place my hand over it as if I could keep it from flying out of my chest. Only, when I do, I feel the strangest thing.

Hard and too large for comfort. In the upper-left-hand quadrant of my left breast. The same quadrant in which my mother and my aunt and their mother and her mother found theirs, too.

A lump.

Chapter Sixteen

“It’s nothing. You know it’s nothing. Ninety percent of lumps turn out to be benign,” Liza says when I call her, almost in a panic, the next morning.

“Easy for you to say, Liza. You’re thousands of miles away in Romania dining on crap.”

“Crap is the Romanian word for carp and I’m back in civilization. I’m in Venice eating
pesci del traitor,
thank you very much.”

“Fish of the traitor?”

“I don’t know. I don’t speak Italian.”

But as a cookbook author she should at least know . . . oh, forget it.

“Clearly everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket in my absence,” she says, “what with you losing the national election team spot and finding a lump and saying good night to your lifelong crush with a peck on the cheek.”

I haven’t told her or anyone about my soul-baring comment because I’m trying very hard to put it out of my mind. “He’s not my lifelong crush,” I state, “and if he were, he’s already involved with someone else. Besides, Liza, my days as a wanton sexual woman are over. I was too busy raising Em and slaving at WBOS to notice when they were here and now that I’ve come up for air, it’s too late.”

Liza has no truck with this. “Listen to you. You sound like some bad country-western song crooning about your baby and the bills. When did you turn frigid all of a sudden? And to think I left you in charge of seducing D’Ours for me. I’d have been better off calling Mother Teresa.”

“She’s dead.”

“Exactly.”

Carefully, I apply a translucent strip of Pink Buff to my newly manicured thumbnail and weigh the pros and cons of suggesting she give up on D’Ours. It was fairly freaky the way he cornered me after class, oozing Frenchness and acting terribly interested in my career as a lowly local TV reporter. Thank goodness Michael was there to keep him in check.

I’ve been relatively frosty with D’Ours compared to the woman I refer to as Lilly Pulitzer, who managed to undo one more button at the top of her hot-pink Lacoste shirt somewhere between the pear flan and almond biscotti tiramisu. Then she breathlessly begged him to instruct her in the right mixing technique. Who knew it required the exact same gyrations as your average pole dancer?

The thing is, Liza’s very unpredictable. And kinky. In her twisted mind a chef who bumps and grinds his way through a cherry crumble could be a total turn-on.

No. There’s no easy solution here. The best course of action is to change the subject.

“I just want to know why stuff like this has to happen smack in the middle of a weekend,” I say, moving on to another nail. “You always come across a lump or weird bleeding or a suspicious spot when you’re on vacation overseas or during a Christmas holiday. Why don’t these things pop up at ten a.m. on Wednesdays when the doctor’s in?”

“Why do you switch lines at the grocery store only to find the one you left is faster? How come the one time you download tickets to a movie, you get held up and miss the show? Why does the call you’ve been waiting for happen when you’re in the shower or out to get the mail? That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

“There’s an expression I haven’t heard since my fifth-grade teacher, ‘cookie crumbles.’ ”

“When you’re in the culinary lines, every metaphor is food related. What I want to know is whether you’re going to tell Michael.”

This question is so odd that I miss my nail and drop a tiny blob of pink buff acrylic on my desk. “Why should I?”

“
Exactly
. Because you know how men are. . . .”

“I’m beginning to think I don’t.”

“Men can’t deal with disease.” Liza pauses and then says cautiously, “Like your dad, remember? To him, your mom’s breast cancer was his fault for not protecting her better, as if he’d let the team down.”

“That’s my mother’s theory.” I finish my fingers and blow on them, wondering just how many carcinogens are in a bottle of polish, anyway. “I’ve never been convinced.”

“Still,” she says, “I wouldn’t go blabbing to him.”

This is advice I don’t need. Not only am I not going to tell Michael, I’m not going to tell anyone at work. This could be the kiss of death to any remaining hope of Kirk Bledsoe changing his mind. I can’t even let myself think of it being the kiss of death in any other way.

Not to mention the effect of this on Mom and Em, both of whom will worry way too much about me. Mom has her own health issues and Em should be enjoying her last year of school, applying to colleges and skipping classes with her friends, not checking my temperature and making tea.

“You’re not saying anything,” Liza says. “Does this mean I overstepped my bounds again?”

“Forget it.” Capping the bottle, I say, “You probably have to go, anyway. This call must be costing you a fortune.”

“Quick. Ask me the ingredients of a
riso e bisi con pancietta
I sampled on Saturday.”

“What are the ingredients of the
riso e bisi con pancietta
you sampled on Saturday?”

“Arborio rice, pancetta, peas, the best Parmesan possible, and other junk. There. This call is now a business expense.”

“I’m so glad I could do you the favor.”

“In return, I want you to do yourself a favor. At one-thirty today go to the Renew Day Spa and check in for a massage, facial, and pedicure. If you can’t make it, call them and reschedule, but do it soon. It’s imperative for your mental health.”

I’m having trouble comprehending what she’s suggesting. “You mean you, in Italy, made an appointment for me at a spa down the street?”

“It’s a gift, not an appointment. I’m not that crass. Now will you do it?” This is vintage Liza. Always with a trick up her sleeve, an unexpected delivery of flowers, a kitten in a box, and a Candygram at work.

“Are you kidding? I’m not going to blow off a spa trip you paid for. It’s been too long since you showered me with an expensive gift.”

“That’s what I love about you, Julie. You’re cheap and greedy.”

“And you’re generous and extravagant. We have the perfect friendship.”

But when I hang up, I resolve to pay back Liza in spades. The question is, should I set her up with D’Ours? Or should I do what she does for me: surprise her with a gift she doesn’t realize she desperately needs?

The next morning, I wake up in my cool air-conditioned room, shower, make coffee, and sit by the phone, my doctor’s number programmed into redial so I am the first in line when the office opens at eight.