Widdershins (8 page)

I needed some distraction and considered my options. I wasn’t in the mood to fight with my art, either physically or with my paint program on the laptop. I could check my e-mail, but that held no appeal. I could watch TV or a movie, but I’d done far too much of that over the winter. I could read a book, but even that was a chore. Hardcovers wore me out because of their weight. Paperbacks needed to be held open unless I broke the spine, and in this house, that was like a capital offense.

So I plugged the headset into my cell phone. Wendy was working tonight at the paper. Sophie was with her boyfriend Jeck, and Geordie had a gig. But I knew Mona would be home, and even if she was drawing or inking one of her comics, she could still talk while she did it.

I tapped in her number, and she answered before the first ring ended. “Please be someone interesting,” she said.

I laughed. “Oh, right. Put the pressure on me.”

“Oh, hello, Jilly. Sorry about that. It’s just that I’ve been getting telemarketers and crank calls all evening.”

“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

“Only if you’re a telemarketer.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to ink a page that I loved this afternoon and now find spectacularly boring. Or maybe it’s just that it’s Friday night and even though Lyle’s out of town, I still feel I should be out doing something.”

“I know the feeling.”

“I thought you had Daniel coming over this evening.”

“I did. But he’s gone now.”

“Why does that sound foreboding?”

“Did it? It wasn’t meant to.”

“What happened? Did he get called in to the hospital?” She paused, then added before I could answer, “Except nurses aren’t on call, are they?”

“I suppose they can be.”

Now I paused. I looked out at the dark garden again, at my faint reflection on the windowpane, a small woman in a wheelchair.

“Except I asked him to leave,” I said.

“Oh, dear.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I’m coming over,” she said.

“You don’t have to—”

I didn’t get to finish because she’d already hung up.

I hadn’t locked the door after Daniel left, so Mona was able to walk right in and find me in the greenhouse studio. The Professor didn’t like me leaving the door unlocked when I was home alone. It wasn’t so much that we lived in a dangerous neighbourhood. He just got nervous because it was me, in my wheelchair, or hobbling about with the aid of a pair of canes. It was also why he’d gotten me the cell phone, which he insisted I always keep close at hand.

“Jeez, gloomy much?” Mona said as she came into the darkened room.

She shed her coat by the door and took off her cap, ruffling her short blonde hair so that it stood up around her head. Her usual inch or so of dark roots were missing, which only meant she’d taken the time to dye her hair recently.

“There are some candles by the laptop,” I said. “Along with a box of matches.”

Mona smiled. “That is so you. Working on your laptop by candlelight.”

“Remember my first computer?”

“An Etch-a-Sketch board attached to the back of a typewriter does not a computer make.”

She found a couple of candleholders, stuck candles in and lit them.

“There we go,” she said, setting them on the worktable closer to where I was sitting.

My reflection was stronger in the window now, the garden behind the panes turned into dark mystery. A faint hint of cedar rose from the scented candles. Mona fetched Sophie’s chair and rolled it over so that she could sit near me.

“Do you want something to drink?” I asked.

“What do you have?”

“Tea or coffee that you have to make. Juice, pop and beer. Or we could open a bottle of wine.”

“From Bramley’s cellar?”

The Professor kept a decent wine cellar, though it was Goon who stocked it, coming back from the wine store with boxes of rare vintages that he happily stowed away in the basement. Goon wouldn’t say a thing about me sharing a bottle with Mona, but he would know. He had such a radar for that kind of thing that he’d probably know the moment he came into the house.

“Where else?” I said.

“Red or white?”

“Red.”

“Be right back.”

I listened to her in the kitchen when she got back from the basement, taking glasses from the cupboard, rattling around in one of the cutlery drawers to find the opener, the pop of the cork when she pulled it out.

“To Bramley and Goon,” she said when she got back, clinking her glass against mine.

“To generosity and good taste,” I said.

Mona smiled. “Same difference.”

We sipped our wine. As usual, it was exquisite.

“So, what happened?” Mona asked. “Or would you rather not talk about it?”

I shrugged. “There’s not much to say. Daniel was perfect and so I broke up with him.” I gave her a considering look. “You don’t seem surprised.”

Mona shook her head. “I’m only curious why it took so long.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

It came out more snippy than I’d meant it to, but she’d caught me by surprise.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was rude of me.”

“No, it was rude of me.”

She smiled and offered her glass to me.

“To us, in our rudeness,” she said.

I clinked my glass against hers again and we had another sip.

“But what did you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s just . . . you know when you see a couple and they’re so obviously right for each other?”

I nodded.

“Well, I didn’t get that from you and Daniel. I mean, you’re right. He is perfect. Handsome and kind and generous. But it always seemed to me that whatever light he had was reflected from what you cast.”

All I could do was look at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just . . .”

Her voice trailed off as I shook my head.

“God, what are you?” I asked. “Psychic? That’s exactly how I felt. Well, I don’t mean the light business, but it’s just . . . whatever music we listened to, it was what I was into. I chose the movies we watched. He only read books by authors I’d recommended to him. He never seemed to offer me
anything
of himself. He never even really talked about himself.”

“For . . . what’s it been? Two years?”

I had another sip of my wine, then tapped the arm of my wheelchair. “Well, I’ve been kind of distracted.”

“Okay, but that’s still weird,” Mona said. “I mean, how could you, of all people, let that go on for so long?”

“I don’t know. I just did. And then, when I started to think about it, I got lazy. It was less complicated to just go with the flow. I mean, dealing with all that I’ve had to, it was . . . just easier having this one nice thing to look forward to, even though it felt sort of hollow.”

Mona nodded sympathetically. “I know what you mean. I’ve stayed in relationships that weren’t bad, but they weren’t particularly good either. They just were, and they kind of wear you down so you don’t really have the energy to deal with them the way you know you should.”

“I thought you’d think I was crazy to break up with him.”

“Nope. I don’t think anybody will.”

“Oh, god. Did everybody feel the same way?”

“It’s not like what you think,” she said. “We were happy if you were happy. But we couldn’t help but think you’d need more intellectual stimulation than it seemed you were getting.”

“Daniel isn’t dumb.”

“I didn’t say he was. He’s just not . . .” She smiled. “One of a kind, the way you are.”

“Ha-ha.”

“I’m being serious here. You never could take a compliment.”

I shrugged, but she was right. I don’t know why, but they always seemed suspect.

“You know what the real telling point was for me?” I said. She shook her head.

“I never told him how I’m damaged goods.”

“Oh, please. You met him in intensive care. He was there when you were brought in. There’s probably nothing he doesn’t know about what the accident did to you.”

“I mean, from before,” I said. “When I was a kid. All the trouble I got into, living on the streets and all.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Just topped our glasses and set the wine bottle back down on the worktable.

“That
is
telling,” she finally said.

I knew what she was thinking.

“I was going to bring it up a bunch of times,” I said, “back when I realized that we were getting serious, but then I got uneasy because he’d never talk about himself.”

“It doesn’t mean he was a bad guy,” she said.

“I know.”

“It’s just . . . some people don’t have interesting lives.”

“I could have done without a lot of my own interesting bits.”

“You know what I mean. Some people don’t have a story. They just drift through their lives.”

“Everybody’s got a story.”

Mona nodded. “But the point I’m trying to make is that they’re not necessarily interesting—not even to themselves. So they latch onto somebody whose life is more interesting, or appears more interesting, because that adds some luster to their own.”

“I suppose.”

I didn’t want to feel that way about Daniel. Not because it’d make my staying with him for a couple of years even more pathetic, but because of what it said about him. Except it seemed to be true. Unless he had some dark past like I did that he’d wanted to keep from me the way I’d kept mine from him.

It’s a weird thing, and it all happened so long ago that sometimes I just like to pretend I can forget. And really, when is it the right time to tell someone how you were abused as a kid, shuffled from foster home to foster home, became a junkie, sold your body . . .

“So, what are you going to do now?” Mona asked.

I raised my eyebrows. “Well, I’m not going to get involved with another guy any time soon. It just never seems to work out for me.”

She nodded. “Yeah, it’s weird how this kind of thing leaves you feeling so vulnerable, even when you’re not the dumpee.”

“I think I’ll be happier as a spinster—you know. I can be the mad old lady living in the back of the Professor’s house.”

Mona laughed, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She didn’t try to jolly me out of my mood either. Instead, she refilled our glasses, and we let the conversation drift to topics that didn’t carry as much emotional weight.

I don’t know when we finished that bottle and opened another, but we were well into that second bottle when the conversation inevitably came back to me and my messed up relationships, except now we were being silly and giddy about it. We started making a list of all the people we knew who were single, straight, and available.

“Well, how about Jonathan at the Half Kaffe?” Mona said after we’d already listed everyone from Bernard Colbert, the stuffy head librarian at the Lower Crowsea Branch of the Newford Public Library, to the twenty-something and way too handsome Frank Jee who delivered take-out from his dad’s Chinese restaurant on weekends.

“I always thought Jonathan was gay,” I said.

“I don’t think so. He used to hit on me all the time when I first started going to the cafe.”

“Okay, then what about Goon?”

“Oh, please.” Then she grinned and said, “What about Geordie?”

That sobered me because of all the guys in the world, I wouldn’t let Geordie be made part of a drunken joke.

“No,” I said shaking my head. “It’ll never be with Geordie.”

“Why not? You guys are best friends and, I’m sorry, but everybody knows you carry a torch for each other. You’re just never single at the same time.”

I knew it was the wine talking, but she wasn’t far from the truth.

“We had our chance years ago,” I said, “but we didn’t take it and I’m glad we didn’t. You know that.”

“Liar.”

“Besides, he’s got a girlfriend. A fairy queen, no less.”

“Who lives in a shopping mall and calls herself Mother Crone.”

“That’s just her speaking name. Fairies all have two—their true name and their speaking name.”

“So, what’s her real name?”

“I don’t know. But Geordie does.”

“Still,” Mona said, “they can’t be that serious. She never goes anywhere with him.”

“I don’t know. We don’t really talk about her.”

“But if she wasn’t in the picture—”

“Geordie and I still wouldn’t get together,” I said. “Not like that.”

“But you’re best friends. It’s all so
When Harry Met Sally.”

I sighed. “Life’s not a romantic comedy.”

“More’s the pity.”

“And think about it. You’re right. Geordie and I really are best friends. So if we did get together, what would happen when we broke up?”

“You guys wouldn’t break up.”

“Every relationship I’ve ever had has fallen apart. Every relationship
he’s
ever been in has broken up.”

“Except Sam.”

“Who just vanished on him.”

“But—”

“Mona, let me ask you this,” I said. “How often do you get together with your exes?”

She pulled a face. “Like, never.”

“Exactly. I don’t want that to happen with me and Geordie, and I know he feels the same.”

“But what if it didn’t?”

“Do you ever see the girls he goes out with?” Before she could answer, I did for her. “They’re all gorgeous. Mother Crone’s a knockout. Tanya’s a movie star. And remember Sam?”

“You’re gorgeous, too.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m old and broken.” I lifted a hand to stop her before she could argue what was such an obvious and plain fact. “I’m not saying oh poor me. It’s just how it is. And I can live without a guy in my life. Trust me. It can be a real relief sometimes.”

“I guess. It just seems sad.”

“It doesn’t have to be. I’ve got a bunch of great friends. And I’ve gotten to the point where I’m pretty much comfortable in my own skin, even if some parts are a bit worn out and don’t work as well as they should anymore.”

Mona gave me a slow nod. “And you can’t force love anyway.”

“Nor can you plan for it. It happens or it doesn’t.”

Mona picked up the half-full wine bottle, but I laid my hand over the top of my glass.

“No more for me,” I said. “I don’t even know if I can get out of my wheelchair with all I’ve had tonight.”