The Things We Do for Love (14 page)

“I think it’s a worthy topic,” he said.

Cameron decided to play her hole card, which was something she knew from her contact with his family. “Bridget would like to brew one for you to drink. She finds your distaste for commitment distressing and she wants her children to have little cousins to play with.”

His reaction was all she’d hoped for. He shut up and shot his sister an assessing and condemnatory look. “She never would,” he said, but not so much to Cameron as to the world in general. “It would go against everything my mother ever taught her.”

“Except how to brew love potions,” Cameron answered sweetly and moved away.

B
EFORE SHE AND
G
RAHAM
went on the air, while they were waiting for the show to begin, Mary Anne told him, “I like your jacket.”

“Thank you.” He smiled down at the rich brown blazer. “Busy with your family? I understand your grandmother’s better.”

“Yes. How did you learn that?”

He nodded in the direction of Jonathan Hale. Mary Anne nodded.

Graham said, “He seems to be the source of all current news about you.”

Soon they were on the air and Graham opened with the day’s dating topic, Is all fair in love?

The first question seemed off-subject to Mary Anne—a breakup issue from a thirty-eight-year-old woman
named Kay. “Graham, I was seeing this guy, and everything was going really well. Now, a few months ago, all of a sudden, he would hardly talk to me. He is always remote now. He suddenly doesn’t have time to get together and he just says he doesn’t really have time for a relationship. And no matter how many times I ask what’s wrong and if I did anything to upset him, he just says nothing has changed, he’s just really busy. We were good friends, and now we’re not even friends.

“The thing is, I know he does this to people when he’s mad at them. So, he’s mad at me and he won’t say why, and I have no idea what I did.” As if to squeeze her question into the day’s topic, she added, “He’s not being fair to me.”

Mary Anne watched the even breaths rising and falling in Graham’s chest. She could tell from the expression in his eyes that he was focused entirely on the questioner and her question. He said, “Kay, I’ve known people like this. Now, I don’t know you, so I don’t know if you’re someone who imagines people are mad at her when they’re not. But you said there’s been a change in your relationship, so it sounds to me as if something did happen—for him anyhow.

“All I can tell you is that if he still hasn’t told you what the problem is, he probably never will. And it may never seem fair to you.”

Mary Anne was making up her mind about the man who’d dumped Kay without any explanation. She interjected, “Graham, is that passive aggression?”

“Well, it can look that way if you’re on the receiving end of it. But I don’t think what you call it is as important as it is to accept that there are some things you can’t change.”

“Do you think he’ll be back?”

Why would you want him?
Mary Anne thought.

“Even if he does, you’ll have some big communication work to do.”

“Do you think he’s being honest with me?”

“Kay, if he cares about you at all, he’s going to be reluctant to say anything he thinks will give you pain. I’d just let this one go. Believe there’s something better out there for you. I believe there is.”

“Okay.” She sounded forlorn. “Thank you, Graham.”

“Thank you, Kay. Look in the mirror and remind yourself how special you are. Even if the man of your destiny hasn’t found you yet, you can make yourself feel great. And that’s something you can carry with you every day, your whole life long.”

There was a gap between callers, and Mary Anne said, “Graham, did I just hear you say that we each have a destiny in regard to our romantic future? Do you think we each have a soul mate?”

“Probably a few of them. Most of us are likely to fall in love many times in our lives. The partner of our destiny is the one we choose to be with—I think of destiny as something we make happen.” He gave her a smile, his eyes conveying the intimacy they had shared on their one date. The smile said he liked her, said maybe he would choose to be with her. But then his eyes shifted through the window of the booth…toward Jonathan Hale.

“We have another caller. Hello, this is Graham Corbett. You’re on the air.”

“Graham, my name’s Elinor. This really is a question about fairness in love. What do you think about a man
breaking an engagement with one woman and immediately asking another out—and her agreeing?”

Mary Anne knew immediately who the caller was. Elinor Sweet. She looked from Graham to Jonathan, who had become alert as a bird of prey. He knew the caller as well as Mary Anne did. He looked less chagrined than annoyed.

Graham said, “I would say that’s a case of ‘All’s fair in love,’ Elinor.”

“What if she used unfair means to steal him from his fiancée?”

Mary Anne drew her eyebrows together. Unfair means. What did Elinor mean?

“Such as?” Graham asked.

“A love potion.”

Suddenly, Mary Anne felt something like relief. This was going to make Elinor look ridiculous. Elinor, not her.

“I’ve never heard of a love potion that worked,” Graham replied.

“Suppose it
did
work?” Elinor asked. “Would that be fair?”

Mary Anne said slowly, “Didn’t someone in Arthurian legend enchant Sir Lancelot somehow? I think maybe she made herself look like someone else, though. Do you remember, Graham? It didn’t work though. Lancelot broke free of the enchantment. This all seems hypothetical.”

“How strange
you
should say that, Mary Anne,” Elinor said. “As I have reason to think
you
bought a love potion with the intention of giving it to another woman’s fiancé?”

Mary Anne was shocked. Mortified and furious. Cameron would never have told Elinor Sweet such a thing. Had Cameron told Paul everything? She didn’t
know what to say, and she saw numbly that both Graham and Jonathan were staring at her.

Graham said, “Elinor, I think when someone breaks an engagement there’s probably a good reason. It’s hard to accept, but sometimes people have second thoughts about marriage as the wedding date approaches. Thanks for your call,” he said firmly, ending the discussion.

The next caller was a man named Jesse. “My question is really similar to Elinor’s,” he said. “But first, I’m really curious if Mary Anne bought a love potion? Mary Anne, can you answer the last caller?”

What could she say? The relief she’d felt as Graham rescued her from Elinor’s accusation gave way to panic. She must lie. She
must.

She laughed, almost scornfully. “What do you think, Jesse?”

He laughed, too, accepting this. “Okay. Silly question. My question is for both of you. What
do
you think about someone trying to steal someone else’s girlfriend or fiancé? Do you think it’s okay?”

Graham said, “I would say it depends on the circumstances. If a couple is living together, that’s often the equivalent of a common-law marriage. I definitely wouldn’t try to lure a married woman from her husband.”

“I don’t think a person can
steal
a boyfriend or girlfriend,” Mary Anne said. “That makes it sound like the person leaving the first relationship for a second has no will in the matter.”

“Good point,” Graham agreed.

Was it her imagination, or was he deliberately
not
looking at Jonathan?

Jesse launched into a brief story of his own situation.
He was extremely attracted to another man’s girlfriend and had let her know that if she was ever again available, he’d be interested. Graham responded that he saw nothing wrong with this.

The next caller was a man who thought that it wasn’t fair for a woman to go out on a date with him three times but not be physically affectionate with him.

Mary Anne knew that if her mother was listening to the show, she would at this point turn it off. Mary Anne wasn’t a talk-radio listener herself, so she could understand that. She just hoped she wasn’t going to have to hear about it when she returned to Nanna’s house.

But for the first time it occurred to her that her family might have heard the accusation about the love potion. The love potion, however, wouldn’t upset her mother nearly so much as the idea of Mary Anne attempting to “steal” another woman’s fiancé.

By the end of the show, she could feel sweat not just on her upper lip but all over her face. As soon as they were through, she grabbed her water bottle and drank from it greedily.

When they emerged from the booth, Jonathan eyed Mary Anne with equal parts curiosity and compassion. “Sorry I let Elinor through. She told me her name was Judy, and honestly I didn’t recognize her voice. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Mary Anne said blandly.

“Where did this love-potion stuff come from?” Jonathan asked.

There it was again, and this time Mary Anne truly didn’t
want
to lie. She would have liked to be able to tell both these men the truth. It was all so stupid, and love potions didn’t work anyhow.

Mary Anne squinted as if puzzled. “Doesn’t Dr. Cureux’s ex-wife make love potions? Clare—the midwife? Though I can’t imagine her path and Elinor’s crossing. Who knows?” She thought it was a first-rate acting job and hoped this would be the end of the love-potion conversation.

Graham glanced at Mary Anne. “Busy tomorrow night?”

Jonathan Hale stared at Graham, astonished. “Are you asking her out?” he said.

“Is there some reason I shouldn’t?” Graham asked.

Hale replied, “Mary Anne and I are seeing each other.”

Mary Anne’s face grew hot…with anger. Why did he assume that? They’d had a couple of dates. She would challenge it, but not in front of Graham.

Instead, she told Graham, “It’s my aunt’s birthday. We’ll have some sort of celebration.”

With a glance at Jonathan, Graham said, “Before Jonathan set me straight, I was hoping you’d go to the movies. They’re showing
My Fair Lady
at the Old Vic.” The Old Vic was Logan’s refurbished theater, now used for everything from local plays to screenings of old movies.

“Oh, I would have loved that,” Mary Anne said. Knowing she was going to have to get the facts across to Jonathan the minute they were alone, she decided to give him a hint and said to Graham, “Would you like to join us for the birthday party?”

The moment the words were out, she regretted them. Not because of anything to do with Jonathan but because it would mean Graham spending time with her parents.

“Yes,” he said. “I’d like that.”

Hopefully, she added, “Though we might start dinner too early for you. Five-thirty?”

“Perfect.” With a triumphant smile at Jonathan, he said, “Well. Enjoy election night,” and walked out of the studio swinging his car keys.

Jonathan Hale stared at Mary Anne. “What are you doing asking him? And where’s my invitation?”

“I didn’t invite you,” she said heatedly, remembering, as soon as she spoke, that they were going to have to be on the radio together in less than an hour. “You and I have had two dates—”

“Three,” he said.

Was he counting that meal when he was still engaged to Angie?

“But,” Mary Anne continued as though there had been no interruption, “I’m sorry if you felt that we had an exclusive relationship. I had no idea you thought that was the case.” Her own words shocked her.
Don’t I want an exclusive relationship with Jonathan Hale?

She said, “Why did you suddenly get interested in me anyway?”

Jonathan looked less arrogant, less sure of himself. “I guess I noticed Graham being so interested in you, and I took a second look. I must have been blind before.”

He sounded almost forlorn. He looked at her, seemed to be thinking many things, then abruptly changed the subject. “Let’s go grab something to eat before we go on the air.”

D
URING THEIR DINNER
at Logan’s one Indian restaurant, Jonathan was an interesting and charming companion. Mary Anne noticed that he didn’t try to run down Graham, nor did he ask about her relationship with Graham or hint again that she should invite him to Aunt Caroline’s birthday dinner.

Instead, they talked about the stops they would make that evening at the political headquarters for the various local candidates—usually, this meant a restaurant or bar where the group of candidates felt welcome. In the local election, it wasn’t Democrat or Republican that mattered. Rather, for the city council, several candidates seemed to be part of one group wanting particular things for the city, while another group wanted other things.

Jonathan’s choices for the city council were like hers, but that was irrelevant to the evening’s news. They would go where candidates and voters were, beginning half an hour before the polls closed, quizzing people on the street, the candidates, the people getting out the vote.

Mary Anne swiftly found that she and Jonathan worked well together on the air. They fell into a pattern in which she would describe the scene and then he would interview the people around them. He would hand the mic
back to her, so to speak, and she would describe more of what was happening. Every hour, they did a brief check on the polls of the national elections; but in Logan it was the local race that had become hot.

Mary Anne was especially impressed by the fact that Jonathan showed no ill feelings over their earlier contretemps. Granted, if he’d become surly, it probably would have destroyed any affection she did feel for him. But many men
would
have held it against her, and it didn’t seem that Jonathan did.

At nine-thirty, they reached Giuseppi’s Italian Bistro, where David Cureux and three other candidates for city council were awaiting the election results. Mary Anne approached the restaurant uneasily, hoping that David Cureux wouldn’t be surrounded by his family, those people who knew about the love potion and had been indiscreet with that knowledge.

There’d been no time since her show with Graham to buttonhole Cameron, but Mary Anne intended to call her first thing in the morning.

Cameron, however, was at Giuseppi’s, apparently as Paul Cureux’s date—or groupie, since Paul was providing live music. Paul and Cameron often used such public occasions to exhibit to all of Logan that they were a couple, even though both, to each other and to their families and closest friends, insisted they weren’t. To Mary Anne, it had always seemed a circuitous way of proving that they were unavailable. Part of her had always suspected that they
were
attracted to each other but unwilling to act on it. She could imagine reasons for this. Cameron’s terror of ever becoming pregnant exceeded paranoia. And Paul had an equal fear of commitment.

With dismay, Mary Anne saw that her father was also among those supporting her neighbor. No, that wasn’t right—he was “supporting” the bar, flirting with Elinor Sweet, of all people, who sat at a bar stool beside him basking in the attention of a man thirty years her senior. To complete the recipe for a catastrophe, across the room, sitting with David Cureux himself, was Graham.

Mary Anne’s father noticed her. She saw the brief flash of guilt, of being found out, like a small boy with his hand in the cookie jar. Then he stood up and wove between tables and other patrons to reach Mary Anne. “Here you are at work,” he said, smiling and breathing Jack Daniel’s fumes. He planted a kiss on her cheek.

Paul returned to the microphone, picked up his guitar and sat down on a stool. “Can’t perform,” he said, “without mentioning my day job. Had a little trouble
at the zoo
today. We have acquired two primates, which is a lot for a small facility like ours.”

Mary Anne’s father told her, “I’ll probably sit in on a set with Paul a little later on. I mentioned the possibility, and he was all for it.”

Right.

As Paul began a version of Simon and Garfunkel’s “At the Zoo,” with highly customized lyrics detailing his trouble with young monkeys, Mary Anne accepted the fact that she must introduce her father and her colleague. “Jonathan, this is my dad, Jon Clive Drew. Dad, this is Jonathan Hale.”

“Glad to know you,” her father said. He told Jonathan, “I’m proud of her. I always knew she’d do things with herself. Newspaper editor and radio reporter, and she was a New York magazine editor, too. For a fashion
magazine. Like one of those beautiful girls in
The Devil Wears Padma
.”

My God. Prada!
she wanted to shriek.

“No surprise she turned out so pretty. My mother was Miss McDowell County.”

Shut up,
Mary Anne thought.
Go away. Please go away.

Jonathan said, “I think she’s very special, too.”

Mary Anne did not relax.

“She always has guys after her,” her father went on. “Always been that way. It’s because she’s a real lady, like her mother. Really ladylike. That’s how we raised her.”

Mary Anne murmured to Jonathan, “Let me dash to the ladies’ room before we start.”

“Sure,” he said, continuing to look askance at her father.

Just don’t let him get started on mining.
Yes, her father had left West Virginia and become a movie star. But he still loved to expand the one summer he’d spent working in the coal mines to make it sound like a lifetime of danger. After hinting at extreme risks and gory accidents, he would recount the practical jokes he and the other miners had played on each other, jokes of profound insipidity, none of which Mary Anne found funny. Replacing the filling of someone’s sandwich with axle grease…gluing someone’s boot to the ceiling of the dry room. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Then
he would demand the attention of the room, borrow the nearest guitar—even if someone had to run half a mile to get it—and perform “Dark as a Dungeon.” He would follow this up with a maudlin story about a man he’d barely known being crushed in a mine. And then he’d cry.

In the bathroom Mary Anne lingered, hoping that her father would return to Elinor Sweet’s side. And she
thought about what a terrible and selfish hope that was, that he would be lecherous toward a young woman and unfaithful to her mother—that she would have him do that rather than embarrass her with Jonathan. Inevitably, her disloyalty to her mother made her hate herself.

And loathe her father.

As she emerged at last from the ladies’ room, she collided with Graham, who was leaving the men’s. “Hi, there,” he said.

There was a look of concern in his eyes.

Though Jonathan had been polite to her father, here, suddenly, she saw rationality; saw the serious reaction that her father’s behavior merited. Here, she suddenly knew, was someone who could understand how she felt at this moment.

The knowledge shocked her. It was like an electric current, this sudden understanding of Graham Corbett’s maturity and insight.

“Hi,” she answered.

She thought she could hear her father’s voice from the bar. She and Jonathan wouldn’t be here long, and that was the only bright spot. By the time her father pushed his way to Paul’s microphone, she would be elsewhere.

Graham gazed into her eyes for a long moment, looking as if he wanted to ask what he could do to help. “We had the radio on,” he said at last. “You sound good.”

“Thank you.”

“Man, I’ve seen waves higher than that building across the street,” came her dad’s voice from the next room, louder than Paul’s singing.

Mary Anne drew a slight breath of relief. Her father was onto his favorite hobby, deep-sea fishing. She found the
fishing stories marginally better than mining tales. Giving Graham a small wave, she turned back toward the bar. And now she found herself face-to-face with Elinor Sweet.

Elinor said, “Nice
lie
on the radio, Mary Anne.” She lifted her eyebrows at Graham. “She bought a love potion to give to Jonathan Hale. Well, no one has said who it was for, but she definitely bought one. Bridget Cureux told me.”

Mary Anne was shocked at Bridget’s indiscretion. She’d suspected something of the kind, suspected Paul because of his teasing. But suspicion was somehow so different from discovering that one’s suspicions were true.

“I didn’t lie,” Mary Anne said, because she hadn’t. She’d deliberately
misled
everyone, which was different.

“You’ve wanted him for years. He used to joke about it to Angie.”

Mary Anne felt her face flood with color. Jonathan had known? And joked to his fiancée about her crush on him?

“Well, now he knows how he got interested in you. I just told him, and, believe me, he knows I’m not lying. I told him he could ask Paul Cureux if he didn’t believe me.”

Mary Anne’s opinion of Angie Workman sank. How could she be friends with this horrible woman?

She tried to summon something resembling poise. “Whatever, Elinor. I need to get back to work.” She couldn’t stand to look at Graham, and only stepped around Elinor and walked back into the bar.

W
ITH
P
AUL’S MUSIC
in the background, Jonathan and Mary Anne conducted their broadcast. Jonathan said, “Dr. Cureux, we’re hearing from voters that their first interest is fiscal responsibility. A number of them think you can offer that, but some are concerned about past
actions of members of the city council. What do you plan to do to prevent the things we’ve seen happen this fall?”

“You’re referring to unauthorized spending on the part of individual council members,” David Cureux remarked. “Jonathan, I think the democratic process is taking care of that problem. The council member involved in the problem was asked to step down and did so. The people of Logan
do
know what they want.”

Mary Anne’s father crowded toward the group around the microphones, leaning in around Paul Cureux’s shoulder. “And we want David Cureux!” he shouted and followed this with a West Virginia University football cheer that was taken up by a few other drunks in the bar but no one else as it was entirely irrelevant to the election.

Save this, Mary Anne,
she thought.
You can rescue this situation; you can avert total disaster.

All the panicked thoughts of her youth bombarded her, telling her she could not afford to freeze now, that she
must
divert attention from her father. She said, “Dr. Cureux, I’ve been noticing the symbol on all your campaign posters, the family. Can you tell us about that?”

“My daughter Bridget did that. She chose to make the family out of PlaySkool figures to reinforce our belief that Logan is a good place to raise children—that it’s child-friendly and that we care about kids here. Most every decision in government can be boiled down to, ‘What is good for our kids?’”

“That’s right, kids are everything,” Jon Clive Drew said, butting in.

Mary Anne hadn’t known that Bridget designed the logo. She hadn’t known Bridget was capable of anything but shooting off her mouth to people like Elinor Sweet.

She saw Graham put his hand on Jon Clive’s shoulder, lean close and say something to him.

Jon Clive looked up distractedly. “Progressive Rummy?”

“I met your wife and sister-in-law walking a short time ago,” Graham told him. “They mentioned it. We’re counting on you.”

Mary Anne was fascinated by this assertion of Graham’s. Could it be true? Had he gone home after his show and met her mother and aunt? How else would he know about their obsession with that card game?

Yet she couldn’t help wondering if drawing her father toward home was Graham’s own impulse. She wanted to know more, and she saw with disbelief and pleasure that her father was following the younger man’s lead.

Her eyes suddenly streamed. Gratitude, pure and deep, shot through her. She felt that no one in her life had ever shown her more mercy than Graham Corbett had in that moment.

Outside later, as she and Jonathan put their equipment into Jonathan’s car, he said, “So. Elinor gave me the lowdown on the love potion.”

Mary Anne had almost missed many of her cues in Giuseppi’s because she’d been planning for this conversation. She found she cared little about Jonathan’s opinion at the moment, and this helped her care less about her pride. As he shut the tailgate of his Subaru station wagon, she looked at him.

She managed a small smile. “You believe that I dosed you with a love potion and that you are attracted to me because of it,” she said, as if to clarify his point of view.

“Elinor encouraged me to ask Paul Cureux for the facts.”

“And did you?”

“Didn’t have a chance.”

Mary Anne nodded. “Well, I can promise you one thing, Jonathan. I have no knowledge of you drinking any love potion.”

He looked as if he didn’t quite believe her.

“Do you believe yourself to be under the spell of a love potion?” she asked, taking care to sound properly amused.

Suddenly, he grinned. “Very nearly. How did Elinor come up with this story?”

“Why didn’t you ask her?”

“She said it was from Bridget Cureux and that Bridget’s mother made the potions.”

“Yes, well, Elinor also told
me
that you used to tell your fiancée all about the crush I had on you.” Mary Anne made it sound as though she found
this
unbelievable. The thing was…she didn’t.

“There’s some truth in that,” Jonathan admitted. “I thought you liked me. I apologize if that assumption was wrong.”

His honesty disarmed her. She felt it deserved an equal show of probity.

He unlocked the passenger door for her, and Mary Anne climbed in. When he had slid behind the steering wheel, she said, “I
did
buy a love potion. But I didn’t give it to you.”