The Last Time I Saw Paris (3 page)

“Lar, that's not true,” Vannie said quickly. “Bill would never do that to you.”

But Susie's shrewd eyes met hers across the table. “So why didn't you tell us about this earlier? I thought we always told each other everything. Wasn't that the pact?”

Their childhood vow had been sealed in blood scratched from their wrists with a tiny gold safety pin. Lara could remember Susie howling with the pain.
Now Susie's eyes were filled with a different pain for her friend.

“Why didn't I say something?” She shrugged again, defeated. “I was ashamed, I guess.”

“Ashamed?
Is
that
what women are supposed to feel when our husbands run around on us? We should be
ashamed!”
Delia was outraged. “You should know better, Lara.”

“Oh, God, it's so hard, it's just so hard.” Lara hung her head, letting her hair shield her tears from them.

The Girlfriends looked at one another, stunned. For once no one knew what to say. Lara was the most unselfish woman they knew. She gave one hundred percent of herself. Everything she had would be yours if you were in need. She had always been there for her children,
and
for that selfish bastard Bill, who had taken advantage of her goodness, her niceness. She wasn't a saint, just good-hearted. Now, they felt for her. Of all the women to be dumped, Lara was the most defenseless.

“I woke up this morning,” Lara whispered. “I was suddenly forty-five years old. And somewhere along the road of life I knew I had lost myself. I felt like nobody. Nothing.”

“You are who you always were.” Vannie flung a loving arm around her. “You're no different. It's …” She stopped, afraid to voice what she was thinking: that it was Bill Lewis who was different now. Success and dedication to his work had changed him. While Lara had brought up the children, kept the home fires burning, Bill had been forging ahead in his career. “What you need, honey, is a marriage counselor,” she decided firmly. “Bring Bill to his senses.”

“Or else a shrink,” Susie suggested.

“The hell with it. What you need is a good day's
shopping.” Delia slammed her fist angrily on the table, sending glasses crashing. “Screw Bill. Go out and spend all his money. If he's really in Beijing with Melissa Kenney, he deserves it. Go. Buy Gucci and Armani. Buy shoes and sexy lingerie. Make the bastard feel the pain in his pocket. I'll bet when he sees you decked out in Italy's best black labels and with the
La Perla
underneath, that bitch Melissa won't stand a chance.”

Despite her pain, Lara was laughing. But shopping was not her game. She just wasn't a dress-up kind of woman. She shook her head, her tearful brown eyes warm with affection. “Whatever would I do without you,” she said.

It was a statement, not a question, and instinctively each woman reached out her left hand to the center of the table, clasping the others' tightly. “All for one and one for All,” they intoned, using the words they had snitched from Alexander Dumas's
The Three Musketeers
when they were just seven years old and had sealed their pact in blood.

Lara signaled the waiter and ordered four more margaritas, adding guiltily, “I'd like straight tequila but I thought it might look bad.”

She was so serious that they laughed. “Oh, Lara, what do we care how things look anymore?” Delia asked. “I thought we had finally reached the age where we could just be ourselves.”

And so did I, Lara thought sadly, as she sipped the frosty margarita. Oh, Bill, so did I.

 

Driving back to her empty house in smart Pacific Heights, Lara spotted the red bathing suit in a store window. High-cut legs, low-cut top, slinky. Sexy. Impulsively,
she raced into the store, snatched it from the rack, and marched into the dressing room. She sighed as she looked at her reflection. She was too curvy for it, too plump. Maybe too old. But it was exactly right for a forty-five-year-old who needed some encouragement. Recklessly, she bought it—a present for herself.

Cheered, she drove back home. Dexter, the old golden retriever, met her at the door with his blue baby blanket. He had carried it everywhere with him since he was a pup, and nothing she could do could break him of the habit. He offered it to her now, and she patted him, ruffling his soft fur, making a fuss over him.

“You're a good old boy, Dex, aren't you?” At least with Dex there, the house didn't have that awful echoing emptiness.

The dog followed her into the kitchen, where she filled his bowl with Alpo, then fixed some coffee. She leaned against the cold granite counter, arms crossed over her chest, waiting for it to brew. Ten empty days stretched ahead of her. She had her volunteer work two mornings a week at the local seniors' home, where she organized entertainment and lunches and get-togethers for the mostly over-eighty residents. Then she had the fund-raising committee on Wednesday afternoons, and her tennis games with Susie at the club. And that was it.

The phone shrilled suddenly. It was her son. Josh was twenty-three and at medical school in Boston. He was an exact replica of Bill when she had first met him, with the same idealistic approach to his chosen profession. Josh wanted to be a healer like his father and she had no doubt he would succeed.

“Just wanted to say happy birthday, Mom,” he said,
and she thanked him for his card and his gift, a pretty scarf that she guessed a girlfriend had helped him pick out.

They chatted for a while about how busy he was, how tough the courses were, how rotten the Boston weather, and then he asked what she was going to do that evening.

Lara's heart sank as she thought about it stretching in front of her, an empty series of long, lonely hours. “I know what, I'll take Dex and go out to the beach house,” she decided. “I always feel better there.”
Less lonely
was what she really meant.

“Have fun. I miss you, Mom. Love you. Talk to you soon,” Josh said. And then he was gone.

Minnie's call came two minutes later and Lara wondered if Josh had called to remind his sister that it was her birthday. Minnie was just twenty-one, pretty and bubbly, living in L.A. and hoping to become a movie star.

“Happy birthday, dear Mommy,” she caroled over the phone. “I'm not going to ask how old you are because I know it's rude when a woman reaches ‘a certain age.' I guess by now you would rather people forgot, anyway.”

She was laughing as she said it and Lara smiled. “You know perfectly well how old I am, because I was twenty-four when I had you.”

“Sorry I forgot the card and present, Mommy,” Minnie said repentently. “I'm dashing out this very second to buy you something gorgeous and sexy.”

Lara thought that was the second time today someone had suggested she needed something sexy.

“What did Dad get you?”

Lara told her about the diamond necklace, holding
the phone away from her ear as Minnie's astonished whistle shrieked down the line.

“Wow, Mom, I'm impressed. Usually it's a bunch of roses and the latest novel. What's he got, a guilty conscience or something?”

Lara's heart skipped a beat, then she heard her daughter laughing. Of course Minnie didn't know. How could she …?

“When are you coming home for a visit?” she asked, wishing she didn't sound so wistful.

“Soon as I can shake free, Mom. I'll try, I promise.”

They said good-bye and Lara put down the phone. She switched off the coffee machine and poured out the coffee, which she no longer fancied. She stared out the kitchen window at the surprisingly blue San Francisco afternoon. Of course Minnie wouldn't be coming home any time soon. Both her children were out of the nest. Josh was inundated with work and Minnie was wallowing in sunshine and glamour. She wished the best for both of them.

Dexter nudged her hand and she glanced down at him. Unconditional love shone in his golden eyes and she bent and kissed his soft head. “You know what we'll do, you and I, Dex?” she said. “We'll go to the beach house. I'll take you for long walks every day and in the evenings we'll just snooze by the fire and listen to the ocean.” He gave a couple of excited barks and she laughed. There was no doubt
beach
and
walk
were in Dexter's vocabulary.

She raced up the stairs with the dog at her heels, flung a few things into a bag, grabbed some supplies from the refrigerator and put them in a box in the trunk of her white convertible. Dexter was already in the passenger seat and she climbed in beside him,
ramming a Forty-Niners cap on her head.

Her heart seemed to lighten as they drove south out of the city toward Carmel and Big Sur with the radio blasting old Beach Boys and the wind blowing her hair. She would feel better out at the beach. She always did.

T
he house stood on a rocky promontory overlooking the Pacific and was their private haven. They had seen it, a cheap tumbling wreck of a place, fallen in love with it, and bought it in the space of a weekend twenty years ago when they certainly could not afford it. Over the years they had fixed it up and now they liked to think it had been the biggest bargain of their lives. It had given their children long summers of pleasure, been Bill's escape from his all-consuming work, and had been Lara's refuge in times of trouble and loneliness. Like now.

It was a small gray-shingle Cape Cod with white shutters, a rough little garden, and a large wooden deck with steps leading down to the beach. Everything about it was simple and easy. “Beach style,” Lara called it, meaning “low maintenance.” Squishy old sofas with cream linen slipcovers; big cushions in shades of blue; seagrass rugs on the pale wood floors; a generous fireplace with a bleached-pine antique mantel taken from a genuine Nantucket sea captain's house, and wooden plantation shutters instead of curtains. The kitchen was airy and spacious and up-to-date, and the master bedroom had sloping ceilings, a fireplace, and a balcony overlooking the rocky ocean. The bed was covered in a simple white matelassé spread, and a comfortable old chaise was placed near the window. It was easy and comforting and fitted
Lara like an old glove. She was more at home here than at the big house in Pacific Heights.

And so was Dex. He was out of the car and over the gate at the side of the house, racing across the deck and down the steps to the beach before Lara had even opened the car door. She was laughing as she carried the bags into the house.

The sun was just going down. She opened a bottle of Duboeuf Morgon and put it on a tray along with a glass and the French Vignotte cheese and crusty baguette she had bought in Carmel, then carried the tray out onto the deck. Dex came bounding back up the steps, shaking seawater all over her from his dip in the ocean. He sat, panting, beside her as she sipped the red wine and ate her bread and cheese watching the sunset. It reminded her of picnics with Bill, driving through the French countryside on their honeymoon—twenty-five years ago, when she was just a girl. How happy they had been then, and how wonderful every day had seemed in France, that magical country …

Sighing, she carried the tray back into the kitchen, stoppered the wine, rinsed out the glass, and put the plate in the dishwasher. A cold wind gusted in at the windows, so she closed them, then crumpled newspapers in the grate, piled on some kindling and a couple of logs, and put a match to them. She kneeled, warming her hands in front of the blaze, listening to the logs crackling and the booming of the surf along the shoreline. Dexter finished his dinner and trotted in from the kitchen. He dropped his blankie on the rug, kneaded it carefully with his big paws until he reached some obscure point of doggy satisfaction, then slid lazily down and closed his eyes.

Lara curled up on the sofa, her legs tucked underneath
her. She wrapped the soft blue chenille throw around her shoulders and lay back against the cushions. Silence settled around her and in minutes she too was asleep.

When she awoke, the fire had burned out and the house felt cold. She had no idea how long she had slept and was astonished when she checked her watch and found it was 2:30
A.M. NOW
she was wide awake but there was nothing to do but go to bed. She would get up early, do some chores. There were always things to be taken care of in a beach house: fresh paint, minor repairs, leaking faucets, stuff like that.

She let Dexter out for a quick prowl, waited for him to come in, then trailed wearily up the narrow cottage stairs with him at her heels.

Peeling off her clothes, she took a quick shower to warm herself up, then put on sweat socks and an old gray T-shirt and climbed into the canopied four-poster that, because the stairs were too narrow to accommodate its gargantuan size, had had to be hauled up over the balcony and through the French windows.

Turning out the light, she huddled under the blankets and lay waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark. She could hear Dex shuffling and the whoosh of the central heating system as it sent out welcome warm shafts of air and, as always, the roar of the ocean. Usually it was a lullaby, but tonight it did not send her to sleep.

The light of the half-moon fell onto the smooth, untouched pillow beside her where Bill's head should have lain. She stared at it for a long moment, wondering where he was sleeping. And if he was with Melissa. Her heart was a leaden lump in her chest, and she buried her forty-five-year-old face in her own monogrammed Italian cotton pillow that was smooth
as silk and twice as expensive. She thought angrily that women should be told about monogrammed linens. Like cigarettes, they should come with a warning label:
Caution: This may not last forever.

When she and Bill were young marrieds, their cheap plaid flannel sheets, soft from many washes at the Fluff & Fold, had kept them warm when the cranky heating system in their old two-room walk-up had gone on the blink yet again.

Bill had been a resident at Chicago's tough Cook County Hospital then, and Lara was struggling with a boring job. They had been so poor, and so happy. A pang of nostalgia swept over her as she recalled the smell of mildew that had greeted them each time they opened the door of their walk-up apartment, and the eternal odor of spaghetti bolognaise; that was all she had known how to cook. She remembered how Bill's chilled naked body had felt, slipping into the narrow bed beside her. She so warm under the flannel, he still freezing from his drive back through the snowy streets after night duty at the hospital. And how she would burrow like a rabbit into his arms, snuffling the intoxicating smell of his skin, a mixture of soap and hospital antiseptic and the citrusy cologne he always wore, and the familiar musky, sexy maleness of him. They never spoke. He didn't want to wake her and she wanted him to catch a few precious hours before the grueling life of a hospital intern took him over again. That is, unless they made love, which is what usually happened. And then they did not need to speak. Their close-wrapped bodies, their clinging arms and searching lips had said it all. Hadn't they? Sometimes Lara thought her memories seemed more like dreams.