Wreathed (25 page)

“What if I did?”

“Not flowers, which would have been a normal thing to do. Not candy, which would have been nice. Especially Godiva. For future reference.”

“Noted,” he said.

“You didn’t do any of that. You, Adam Lewis, sent me a giant stuffed giraffe.”

“So?”

“Why?” I asked.

“Does it matter?”

“The giant stuffed giraffe means something. What it means, I don’t know. I didn’t bring my magic decoder ring to the office that day. But it means something to you. More importantly, it means that you’re not just operating on a factual, analytical, dispassionate basis. You sent me that giraffe for a reason. I want to know what that is.”

“Who says it means anything? Maybe I had a coupon.”

“It means something. Spill.”

He leaned back in his loveseat and stretched. “You’ve seen giraffes up close, right? At the zoo, I mean.”

“Sure.”

“Giraffes in the zoo are clumsy and awkward,” he said. “They look like they were put together by a committee. But everything about them is basically functional. The spots are camouflage. The long necks are for getting leaves off the tall trees. As a package, the giraffe
works
, but it’s not what you would call
charismatic
, the way that lions and tigers and elephants are, or, you know,
cute
, like penguins or koalas or babies are. The giraffe is not romantic, if you follow me.”

“So, the giraffe is meant to be, what, an ironic comment on your own character?” I asked. “That’s the most cryptic thing I’ve ever heard. Do you have a secret decoder ring I can borrow that explains all of this?”

“Are you going to listen to the explanation, or just make sarcastic comments?”

“Sorry. Go ahead. By all means.”

“We only think that the giraffe is not romantic because we see the giraffe in the zoo, where there’s no room for them to roam. But in their natural habitat, the giraffe can run, and all that awkwardness, all that clumsiness, just goes away. In the wilds of Africa, the giraffe is graceful. It’s beautiful. It’s inspiring, almost. And that’s what I want to be. And for a while there, with you, that’s what I was.”

I looked at Adam, sitting on that loveseat. He didn’t look like a giraffe. He looked like a wolf coiled up in his den, dark and dangerous.

“If you really felt that way, why would you want to give up on that?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t you want to keep feeling that way, if you could?”

“I want to have that feeling again. I want to feel the way I felt when I saw you walking towards me in that red dress and those ridiculous high heels. It’s just that a relationship has to be based on something more than just how you feel about each other, or how you make each other feel. There has to be a logical basis to it, or it won’t last. And when I look at you, everything that’s logical and reasonable in my life becomes that much less important. It’s like the ground is slipping from under my feet. And even now, even though we’re upset with each other, even though both of us are ready to walk out of here and never see each other again, I can feel that attraction, that passion, and it’s pulling me towards you. And that scares me.”

“It scares me too,” I said. It wasn’t the least bit true, but I said it anyway. “But I think that being scared like that is a feeling worth having. And if nothing else, it’s something that we can build on. If you feel a certain way towards me and if I feel a certain way towards you, we at least have that much in common. Don’t we?”

I was sitting on the edge of my loveseat, as though Adam was pulling me towards him, slowly, imperceptibly, as inexorably as a glacier moving downhill.

“We have something,” Adam said. “Something big. And no, I don’t want to throw it away, or give it away. But I don’t trust it, not yet.”

“I understand that,” I said. “Believe me. But the main impediment all this time has been your uncle’s will, and now he’s alive. There’s no reason for either of us to distrust each other.”

For the second time, I saw Adam’s face turn thoughtful, and saw that feral glow shine out of his eyes. “I want to try,” he said. “I think we owe it to each other to give ourselves a second chance. We might want to take it a little slower this time, though.”

“If you say so.” I didn’t believe for a second that going slowly was what he wanted, but I was willing to go along with it if he was.

“Having said that, I would come right over there and give you a big, wet kiss on the lips right now, if it wasn’t for one thing.”

I looked at Adam for a long moment, waiting for him to grin, waiting for him to tease me, and then I realized he was being serious for once. “Because your Uncle Sheldon is standing out on the back porch eavesdropping on us,” I said.

“No, I’m not,” Sheldon said.

Chapter 30

Adam insisted that we call Mother and let her know about Sheldon being alive before we drove up there. “Speaking as someone who had it happen to me just now,” he said, “I can’t recommend the experience to anyone else. It’s not a good kind of surprise, you understand?”

“But it would be so much fun the other way,” I said.

“I have no doubt that it would be an entertaining and edifying spectacle,” he said. “And I wouldn’t mind witnessing it from a safe distance, like you do with wrecks in car racing. But I think maybe everyone has had enough agita for one day.”

So I gave him my phone and he called her and explained things to her. Adam made several quite interesting faces, including one that made him look like he had a baby moth trapped in his ear. “OK,” he finally said, after listening to the initial blast. “Here’s Wendy.” He handed me the phone without a word of explanation.

“Coward,” I said.

“Even the bravest man can only stand so much before he breaks.”

I think Mother took the news that Sheldon was alive about as well as anyone who found out that they just lost a quarter of a million dollar inheritance would take that news, by which I mean, not well. On top of that, it took me quite some time to reassure her that we were not playing an elaborate practical joke on her. “We know he’s alive,” I said. “He’s sitting in Adam’s house, right across from me. I drove him up here from Cape May. He’s drinking a diet ginger ale and refusing to talk to you on the phone.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Gwendolyn Rose. You can’t possibly expect me to believe this nonsense.”

I ignored her provocative use of my full name. “This is a special kind of Sheldon Berkman nonsense. It’s true, what Adam told you. I drove down to the house in Cape May, like we talked about, and Sheldon was there, fixing it up. He’d been waiting for you all this time. The funeral was a fake, designed to get you down there. It was supposed to be romantic.”

“Am I to understand that the plan was for me to attend the funeral, to undergo the ordeal of thinking Sheldon was dead, and then to walk into that ugly house that we drove past, and then have him jump out of a closet and frighten me to death?”

“He never intended to frighten you to death, no, but the rest of it is accurate. He nearly gave me a heart attack this afternoon, though, but that was because he thought I was you.”

“He’s gone blind, then,” she said.

“No, just cranky, annoying, and demanding. It seems to be common for people his age. Of course you wouldn’t know about that.”

“I want to talk to this man,” Mother said. “In person would be best, if the coward has the nerve to face me. I want to explain to him how badly he has miscalculated.”

“I am driving him up to see you so that he can apologize in person,” I explained. “I had planned to just dump him on your doorstep and watch the fireworks, but cooler heads prevailed.”

“Just as well, I suppose. You’ll call me when you get close?”

“Sure,” I said. “It shouldn’t take but an hour to drive up there.”

“Neutral site,” Sheldon said.

“Hold on a second, Mother,” I said. “Sheldon, what do you mean by ‘neutral site’?”

“I want to see her, but I am not giving her home-field advantage,” Sheldon said. “I will meet her someplace out in public. Very public. So she doesn’t shoot me, the way you two keep threatening to do.”

“That won’t help you if she claims temporary insanity,” Adam said. “We can stop and get you a bulletproof vest, I guess.”

“He wants to meet somewhere public,” I explained to Mother.

“Oh, how tiresome. Very well. I suppose the mall will do.”

“Where do you want to meet in the mall?” I asked. “I can’t think of anywhere except the food court on the top floor, as long as you promise not to throw him over the railing.”

“Yes,” she said. “I think that has possibilities. I will meet you there in one hour.”

We piled into Adam’s Jaguar and headed north on Route 9, headed for I-287 and the Bridgewater Commons Mall. We made good time, driving most of the way in silence. Sheldon was too traumatized (or excited, it was hard to tell) to say anything, and there wasn’t anything that Adam and I had to say to each other that we wanted to say in front of him. Adam had the satellite radio in his car set to the all-Springsteen station, so we listened to that until we got to the highway, at which point I got tired of listening to sad ballads about the decline of the Northeastern industrial corridor and flipped over to the ’80s station.

“You know where we’re going, right?” Adam said.

“You want to be over to your left and then take the exit for Route 22 and then follow the signs for the mall,” I said. “We’ll be there in a few minutes. Try to find a space in the top level of the parking garage.”

“Doesn’t sound hard. Are you sure you are going to be OK driving back with me to Freehold tonight to pick up your car, and then going back home? That’s a lot of driving in one day.”

“I think I can figure something out,” I said. If worst came to worst, I figured that I could always find a motel in Freehold somewhere and drive up to Morristown in the morning. I was certainly hoping that it wouldn’t come to that. I wondered if Adam had finished the renovation on his bedroom, or if it was six inches deep in sawdust.

“I don’t think I’m going to feel like driving all the way to drop Uncle Sheldon back to Cape May,” Adam said.

“You better not ditch me, kid,” Sheldon said. “You still have all my stuff in storage from when you cleaned out my apartment. I need to rent a truck tomorrow and drive it all back.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but if you are counting on me to help you load it back again and drive back to help you unload it, you are sadly mistaken.”

“It’s not that difficult,” Sheldon said. “Once you decide to put your life back together, everything else you need to do after that is just putting in the work. Getting started is the hardest part.”

Adam took his right hand off the steering wheel. He squeezed my knee, and I took his hand and held it. It felt warm and comfortable.

“This is what I want to know,” Adam said. “You did this, all of this, in order to talk to this woman you hadn’t talked to in forty years, right?”

“So?” Sheldon said.

“So, why did you leave her in the first place?” Adam asked. “If she was your one true love and all.”

“I told Wendy’s mother that it was another woman,” Sheldon said. “If memory serves.”

“That’s what she told me,” I said.

“So was that why?” Adam asked. “Who was she?”

“There wasn’t another woman,” Sheldon said. “I said that there was, but that wasn’t true. I knew she wouldn’t have believed the real reason.”

“Which was?” I asked. “Assuming you think that we’d believe you.”

“I fell in love with Alaska,” Sheldon said. “Oh, and the Air Force, too, but mostly Alaska. I’d never been anywhere outside of New Jersey before basic training. Alaska was big and wild in those days—still is, but not the way it was back then. I learned to hunt and fish and climb mountains. Every day that I worked was a challenge, and every day I had off was an adventure. And the only thing missing was Emily, and I knew she’d never want to join me there.”

“So you just gave up?” I asked.

“I made a mistake,” Sheldon said. “I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought I was doing the right thing by ending the marriage. We were different people who wanted different things out of life. She wanted to be a big wheel in politics. I wanted to work on airplanes and serve my country. And we both thought those things were important.”

“The things you want are always important,” Adam said.

“But sometimes, what the other person wants is more important,” Sheldon said. “Especially when that person is the most important person in the world for you. I forgot that. I let myself forget it. That’s what I wanted to tell her. That’s why I did what I did.”

I looked at Adam, but his eyes were on the road. How important was I to him? How important was he to me? I didn’t know the answer to either question.

“Here’s the exit,” I said. “We’re almost there.”

We walked past the movie theater and the sporting goods store and the little cart that sells the bejeweled smartphone cases and headed towards the food court. I spotted Pacey standing in front of the Hollister store. Simon and Benjy were gnawing on soft pretzels the size of their heads and were not noticing another thing in this world.

“Are you Mr. Berkman?” she asked Sheldon.

“That’s me,” he said.

“Good. I am Emily’s other daughter, Patricia. You can call me Pacey, everybody else does. These are my kids, Simon and Benjy. Say hello to the nice man, kids.”

“Horseradish,” Benjy said.

“Benjy. Stop that. Never mind him, he says that to everyone. You will find my mother sitting in front of the little Japanese place, over on the left. I will not be joining you, as I am afraid that words will be used that I don’t want my kids to hear.”

“Horseradish,” Benjy repeated.

“Quiet, dear. Adam and Wendy and I will wait here until Mother is done with you. Keep in mind that I have had to hear her opinions on you, nonstop, for the last hour, so I am not very pleased with you myself at the moment. My recommendation is that you start by groveling at her feet.”

Sheldon’s lips quivered. He said something that was too quiet for me to hear but which might have been, “It’s not fair.”