Tender Grace (18 page)

Tonight I wore the black dress I wore to see
South Pacific
in Dallas. It was my only choice, because Willa and I did not shop. After relaxing at the spa, I didn’t want to spend any part of what was left of my afternoon pulling clothes over my head in dressing rooms. Besides, I doubt I could have found anything that does any more for me than that dress.

There was no doubt that Andrew approved. “I know,” I said when he started to open his mouth, “I look beautiful.”

“I was going to say
stunning
.”

“You look stunning too.” Though I like casual dress as much as the rest of the world, I still appreciate seeing a man dressed in a nice suit and tie when an occasion calls for it.

He opened the car door for me, and I sank into leather significantly more luxurious than the leather covering the seats in my car. “Nice,” I said when he was settled in the driver’s seat. “I’m guessing you enjoy cars.”

“One of my passions,” he said, tapping the steering wheel. “But look,” he said, opening his hand, “this is my oldest and most prized possession.”

In the palm of his hand, I saw keys attached to a pewter disk with an
A
on it.

“
A
for Andrew,” I said.

“The women in my life have thought it was
A
for Ackerman. But what it has been all these years is
A
for Audrey.”

I looked into his eyes and saw nothing but sincerity and more emotional honesty than I would have thought him capable of.

No response seemed appropriate.

He put the keys in the ignition, started the car, and backed out of the driveway. “We don’t want to be late, now, do we?”

he said.

“Goodness, no,” I said, smiling at the absurd.

The Masked Ball
was breathtakingly moving. I felt accommodating when we walked to the car after the performance and Andrew asked if I would let him show me his house before taking me back to Willa’s. He seemed so eager to show me I could hardly refuse. We talked about the opera most of the way to Scottsdale.

“The tragedy had a happy ending, don’t you think?” Andrew asked.

“Not for Riccardo. Amelia’s aria was amazing, though, and it is no wonder her husband relented and let her live.”

“A tale of forgiveness,” Andrew said, looking from the road to me. “No theme is more satisfying, is it?”

“Probably not.”

Andrew turned into his drive, and I caught my first glimpse of a home that came right out of the Arizona architecture magazines lying on Willa’s sofa table. He parked in the circle drive and took me into the house through an enormous glass-paned front door. He said the house itself wasn’t huge, just over thirty-six hundred square feet, but I gasped when I stood in the foyer and looked into a living area with windows covering the back wall. This mass of glass provided, with the help of landscape lighting, a view of an infinity pool, surrounded by huge decorative tiles; luscious grass; an iron fence, boundary for a desert filled with a wild variety of cactuses; and finally, hills. Wondrous hills. Ultimate privacy.

“Oh my, Andrew, this really is spectacular!”

The furniture in his home was both massive and tasteful. He said he had employed a decorator but that he had personally approved everything, from the artwork to fabrics.

I couldn’t imagine how he could have had time to oversee so many details. “You have a good eye. I probably should have known that.”

We confiscated a box of pictures from his closet during the tour of his house and sipped raspberry tea on his patio, looking at pictures of Allie from birth to the present. The pictures were back in the box, glasses were refilled, and the moon was shining on the perfectly still water of the pool when he began talking about his marriages. He said Susan had been a bad choice, but he thought for a long time that he and Marlene would make it.

“So why didn’t you?”

“In the end, she wanted something else, I guess. Something I couldn’t give her.”

I looked around, incredulous. “And what is it you couldn’t give her?”

“Myself, according to her. She said she needed
all
of me.”

“
All
is a lot for one person to ask of another, isn’t it?”

“
All
has a stipulative definition. What Marlene meant was she wanted someone who loved
only
her.”

“She thought you loved someone else?”

“Someone else
too.
She knew I loved her, but she didn’t believe she had my undivided attention, and she wasn’t going to settle for that anymore. She is the mother of my child. We had a good life. I tried to talk her out of it for two years, but when Allie left for college, Marlene had divorce papers ready for me to sign.”

“Do you keep in touch?”

“We have Allie. We have to keep in touch.”

“Can’t you get back together? For the sake of Allie. And twenty years of history. The years of history that long marriages accrue are underrated. It’s one of the aspects of Tom’s death I mourn the most.”

“Marlene has been dating someone for quite some time now. She says she’ll probably marry him.”

“
Probably
sounds like a loaded word. Maybe she wants you to stop her.”

“I told her marrying him would be pretty ironic. He’ll never have all of her, because while she may love him, she’ll always love me too. We both know that. She acknowledges the irony, but I doubt it will stop her.”

“Maybe, but the irony could work in your favor.”

“You think so?”

“I do.” I looked at my watch, aghast that it was well after midnight. “I also think it’s late. You’d better get me home.”

“I can’t believe you’re here, sitting on my patio, and I
really
don’t want to take you home.”

I wanted to say,
Focus, Andrew, focus.

Instead I pushed my chair back and said, “But you must. Let’s go.”

When we pulled into Willa’s driveway, we sat in the car with the windows down, enjoying the night air that makes Phoenix a delight in the fall.

“You know,” he said, “Marlene emotionally frisked me when we were dating, since I was divorced and high risk as far as she was concerned. And it was you that troubled her, not Susan. I never understood that completely, because the night I saw you at our tenth reunion, I realized you were lost to me forever. And while that understanding didn’t help me go on with Susan, it did help me go on. Marlene and I were happy. Happy enough, I thought. On the other hand, I never did stop thinking of you, not altogether. I looked for you at our twentieth reunion, and our twenty-fifth. I never went to the mall when I was home that I didn’t hope to run into you. And on a rare night when I was home alone, sitting on the patio, I wondered where you were and what you were doing. Marlene sensed what I finally acknowledged, at least to myself—I have always loved you.”

He looked at me and rolled his eyes. “I know. That’s pretty pathetic. But I do think we would have been happy together.”

I smiled. “To quote Hemingway, ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’ ”

I’ve been into reality for a very long time now. I’ve seen fantasy destroy perfectly satisfactory realities. Surely Andrew has learned that.

“Early on I thought about you too,” I said. “Unlike you, though, I resented that very much, which is why I’ve made some of the choices I’ve made. But you know what? I’m glad I’m here now. Perhaps it will enable you to banish any idealized memories of us so you can convince Marlene she has all of your heart.”

“How could I do that?”

He leaned over to kiss me, and for a moment sitting with him in the comfortable space of that car, the idea of kissing him seemed both familiar and desirable. But I turned my head so that he kissed my cheek instead of my mouth. He leaned his head against mine then, and I closed my eyes and said a prayer for this man who had remained so dear to me after all.

“You should try, Andrew. Try to convince her she has the part that matters most.”

I opened the car door and moved away from him. “Don’t get out. I’m two steps from my door. Thank you so much for the opera and the tour of your home. I’ll like thinking of you there.”

He grabbed my hand and held it until I pulled it away and stepped into the night without looking back.

I wonder if Andrew could guess why I didn’t let him kiss me. I might tell him someday, but tonight ambiguity seemed better than trying to explain that my turning away had very little to do with him and everything to do with Tom. I cannot keep Tom’s kiss from becoming a memory someday, but for now, I can still close my eyes and feel it. I will hold on to that for as long as possible.

eighteen

September 12

Willa and I were on the road to Prescott by ten. Ed offered to drive us, but Willa wanted the wheel and told him so. “Play golf with your buddies,” she said as we each finished a bowl of cereal, “and we’ll be back before you’ve played eighteen holes and cleaned up.” She leaned over and kissed him. “And cooked dinner. Tom wasn’t the only one who can cook, right, sweetie?”

Willa collected bowls, rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher, and rushed us out the door. “He just might do it,” she said as we clicked ourselves into seatbelts a minute later. “Now, sit back and watch the road from the passenger seat for a change.”

When we pulled onto the freeway, she admitted that she half envied my journey. “Though I certainly don’t envy what necessitated it,” she said, reaching for my hand and squeezing it.

When we arrived at our destination without any problems, Willa whipped out her phone and reported her expertise to Ed, who had started his backswing when his phone rang.

“Oops,” I said as she snapped the phone shut and grimaced. “Oh well,” she said, heading me toward a shop that looked promising. We ambled through it and every other shop we saw (she was in a shopping mood) and had items held for her in four of them before we took a lunch break.

“Okay,” Willa said when we placed our order. “Help me decide what I need most. I can’t haul four things into that house.”

“Oh, you can too. The worst Ed will do is shake his head, trying to act exasperated.”

“I know it. But even
I
think I’ve gone overboard. Really, help me decide.”

“It’s your decision to make, Willa.”

“Do you like the buffalo painting?”

“Yes, and it will be perfect on your entry wall. But why in this world you don’t want the two friendly buffalo calmly eating grass side by side on the hillside instead of the
fighting
buffalo, I cannot fathom. They’re head to head, Willa, poised for battle!”

“The colors are better in that one, more dramatic.”

“The image is disturbing.”

“Oh, what’s a little fight?”

“Perpetual discord will hang on your wall, for goodness’ sake! But hey, you’re right, the colors are good.”

“You’re too darn holistic sometimes.”

“Get the warring buffalo, what do I care? I’m out of here tomorrow.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“I’ve stayed longer than you ever thought I would. Admit it.”

“I guess. But not long enough. Why do you have to leave?”

“I have an agenda of sorts. I plan to be in Yuma tomorrow night. I need to get on with my journey. Don’t you think it’s sort of neat?”

“Tell me you didn’t just say
neat
.”

“Did I say that? I meant neat-o.”

“To tell you the truth, I think it’s weird. What difference does it make if you stay a day or two longer and get to Yuma on Friday? Or Saturday?”

“I’m sure I don’t have an answer that will satisfy you. I have loved being here, and I love you, and I’ll be back, but I’m going to finish this journey first.”

“So, you think the happy buffalo picture is the way to go?”

“I can see it cheering you up every morning when you come out of your bedroom looking for the coffeepot.”

In the end, Willa decided to think about three of the potential purchases and bring Ed back for his opinion, but we returned to get the picture, had it wrapped, and with one last look at the feuding buffalo, maneuvered the happy buffalo out of the shop and into the back of Willa’s Escalade.

On the trip home, Willa asked if I was going to keep in touch with Andrew. She had asked about my evening with him on the way up to Prescott, fast-forwarding opera details and rewinding details about his house and wives.

“So, did he make a move on you?” she asked after we had covered most of the evening in more detail than I’d ever wanted to provide.

I laughed—Willa has that effect on me. “Some people think
I’m
direct,” I said.

“I’ll bet he did. Give me the scoop.”

“No, he didn’t make a move on me.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing to speak of.”

“Fine.”

“Don’t sulk. He tried to kiss me, okay?”

“But you didn’t let him?”

“No.”

“You feel nothing for Andrew?”

“I don’t know what I feel for Andrew.”

We rode in silence for a minute.

“Actually, that’s not true. I’m feeling great affection for Andrew, and I very much want the years ahead to be the best he’s ever had.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes, I think it is.”