Authors: Renee Manfredi
“Right,” Anna said.
“I remember when I was eleven or twelve, I had this obsessive—and I mean really obsessive—fantasy about a handsome man chasing my naked body around and around my bedroom. I couldn’t imagine what I wanted him to do when he caught me, mind you.” Greta laughed. “That’s twelve for you. You half know things, and you half don’t.”
Anna laughed. Greta sounded as if she was in a hurry. Anna heard the rattle of pots and pans, the gush of the kitchen faucet. “Who’s your date with?”
“Someone I work with. It’s not that exciting. I’m already looking forward to the end of the evening when I snuggle with Lily in bed and watch her sleep.”
“Are you coming for Jack’s birthday in two weeks? Stay as long as you like.”
“Absolutely I’m coming. Listen, dear, I have to run, but I think maybe you need a break from Flynn. Why not send her to Boston to see her father? Or send her to me. It’ll give you perspective on everything. You sound exhausted and strained.”
Anna said she would think about it.
“Really,” Greta said. “When was the last time you did something
you
wanted to do?”
Anna considered this after she hung up. What did she want to do?
Mainly what she was doing. Except maybe not worry about Flynn so much.
At eleven o’clock, just as Anna was getting ready to turn in for the night, Jack and Stuart came home and wandered into her bedroom where she was watching the news. “Would it have killed you to call?” she said, but she couldn’t be mad. They—in particular, Jack—looked so radiant and happy that she couldn’t help but smile. Jack jumped in bed beside her and nuzzled against her neck. Stuart sat in the easy chair that had been Hugh’s. “We went into Boston,” Jack said.
“Were you clubbing?”
“I wish,” Jack said. “I don’t really feel well enough for that. We went to visit some friends. Wanna come to San Francisco with us? It won’t cost you a cent.”
“No thanks,” Anna said automatically. And then, “What do you mean?”
“Our friend Curtis has three tickets he can’t use. Why don’t you come? It’s only for a few days. Stuart found somebody to cover his classes. So we thought we’d have a hurrah.”
“No, I probably can’t. But it sounds like fun.”
From down the hall Flynn called, “Jack?”
“In here, baby girl,” he called back.
Flynn, then the dog, climbed into bed with Anna and Jack.
“I thought you were asleep,” Anna said, then looked down at what was fastened to Flynn’s red nightgown: one of the hairpins she bought at that auction with Greta.
“Where did you get that?”
“On the floor in the downstairs closet.” Flynn looked down at the fine blond hair, outlined the downy circle with her finger.
“What is that?” Jack said.
“It’s a hairpin. It was a popular thing in the late eighteenth century to make brooches from the hair of your dead loved ones,” Anna said.
“Gruesome,” Jack said.
“This is the hair of a dead person,” Flynn said, and let her eyes unfocus. “This person was just a tiny baby, who is lost, who has lost her way, and keeps turning the wrong way in the dark. She’s afraid she’s going to hell where the storms are. There is no thunder in heaven. Only hell has
storms.”
Anna and Jack and Stuart looked at her. Jack reached for her hand. “Come up here,” he said softly, and settled her between him and Anna. “There is no such thing as hell. Only different kinds of heavens. At least, I’m counting on that.”
Stuart smiled when Jack looked over, then crept downstairs to the drafty sunroom to call David. He sat on the wicker couch, twisted the phone cord around and around his wrist while he waited for David to pick up. It was late, but Stuart knew David well enough to know that he was in bed with a book, the late show turned low so he could ignore it, and a glass of good French wine.
“It’s me,” he said, when David picked up.
“Hi,” he said, then fell silent.
“Well, I’m still at Anna’s.”
“Yes. I figured. Are you coming home? I’m not haranguing, just trying to plan.”
Stuart felt a pang, imagined the warm flannel sheets with his lover’s musky body, his cologne fragrant on the pillows. Stuart’s longing to be with him at that moment, to be surrounded by the familiar scents and textures was like an ache all along his jawbone. How could he just leave this behind? David was the man with whom he thought he wanted a future, a string of pleasant and peaceful days unfolding elegantly from his middle years to his late ones. Yet, it was strange how often Stuart’s forty-two felt like old-age, stranger still that he could more easily envision their deathbed scenes than he could their next vacation.
“Stuart?”
“I’m here. I’m just thinking. I am coming home, I just don’t know when.” That was the truth as far as he knew it. He heard David’s breathing on the other end, a sigh of anger or unhappiness—he couldn’t tell—the faraway sounds of Leno’s monologue, and the clink of stemware on a marble coaster.
“Why? You told me you were going to Anna’s for the party, fine. Now you’ve done it, come home.”
“Anna postponed the party. Jack wasn’t doing great. The party’s in two weeks.”
“I won’t tolerate this.”
“Is that an ultimatum?” Stuart looked up, saw a flash of light outside. Somebody was moving around the perimeter of the house with a flashlight. He stood, peered through the windows but couldn’t see anything.
“No. I’m not making it that easy on you. You need to figure it out. Jack continually treated you like shit, and yet you keep going back to him, you keep setting yourself up—”
“I didn’t go back to him. I came up for his birthday party.”
David fell silent. “You’re going to be there two more weeks? What about your classes?”
“Someone covered for me last week. It’s under control.” Stuart was planning to stay with Pamela in Boston Sunday and Monday nights, then to head back up to Maine Tuesday evening.
“Anyway,” David said. “I guess if you’re not back here the Monday after the party, that’s the information I need.”
Stuart snorted. “So it is an ultimatum. You are, you know, invited.”
David hung up. Stuart dialed again, but put the receiver back to go check who was outside.
It was the nutty next-door neighbor with her dogs. “Come along, come along, the dark draws nigh.”
“Hello?” Stuart called.
The light shone in his direction, and Stuart saw that it was attached to her head. “Good evening,” she said. “Just out for our evening constitutional. Glad to see you boys got home safely.”
“Oh, goodnight,” Stuart said, and headed back in. He sat in the dark, watched the neighbor’s light move past the house, then recede. The sensible thing would be to pack up his things this minute and go back to Boston. David was right: Jack was who he always was and staying here only revivified what had always been. If it weren’t so, why hadn’t Jack come downstairs to find out what he was doing? Jack took his affection and loyalty as a given. It hadn’t occurred to him that Stuart might not have made up his mind.
Stuart again heard noises outside. He went out.
“Not to be alarmed, it is still just us,” she said. “My dogs are old. It can sometimes take a while for them to say their prayers. You’re keeping late hours, young man.”
Stuart said that he was. “Working through dilemmas, you know.” He
stepped outside. The woman looked ghostly in the blue halogen lamplight. Normally, Stuart found such intrusions offensive, but there was something about her he liked.
“Yes,” she said. “Dilemmas, dilemmas. Of course you’re working through them. The young always are.” She paused. “There are many stations along the pilgrim’s path. The way to Santiago is full of peril and false starts.”
“What?” Stuart said.
“The truer the journey, the more obstacles you will encounter. In my experience.”
Stuart didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Santiago? Chile? But later, years from now, he’d remember this night and see how decisions made at critical junctures weren’t what they seemed to be at the time. Certain choices, paths, were as inevitable and as necessary as the rhythm of a beating heart.
At the last minute Anna decided to go with them. Greta was right: she did need some time away. Besides, it was only for a few days. Greta agreed to come up for the weekend, which only left two days of Flynn’s being in Violet’s care—something Anna wasn’t crazy about.
“Flynn is a little overly sensitive to things,” Anna said, walking into Violet’s house for the first time, a couple of hours before the flight to California. Flynn had come over earlier, to make sure Baby Jesus got along with Violet’s dogs. Violet’s house was cluttered—years worth of
National Geographics
stacked in the corners—but clean, Anna saw with relief. “She frightens easily. Especially about things like ghosts. And certain subjects, like death and dying, should be off-limits.” Anna took the cup of tea Violet offered her, looked around. The place was actually nice. Without the excess stuff it would have been beautiful. The ceilings were vaulted and crossed with heavy beams, and the walls were the original plaster. Above the fireplace were architectural prints from buildings in ancient Rome. The temple of Mars, Anna read on one. The gathering place for Caesar and his armies.
“The lass will be fine. I’ll keep her close.”
Anna smiled and thanked her. It would be all right. Violet was warm and wise. Her house was inviting and smelled surprisingly good. Anna had
expected a doggy smell, dust and mildew, but instead there were the unmistakable scents of lavender, jasmine, and lemon furniture polish.
“You have the number of the hotel, right?” Anna said. “I don’t know what room yet, but you can ring the front desk and they’ll patch you through. Or call me on my cell phone.”
Violet raised an eyebrow. “Anna, zany in dress and habit I may be, but my intelligence is equal to any emergency. I’m in charge of watching a young girl, not rebuilding Jericho.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
Violet cut her off. “The boys are waiting for you out there.” Stuart’s Jeep angled into Violet’s driveway. “The lass is upstairs, going through my old hope chest. Shall I fetch her?”
Anna said no, she’d already said goodbye a number of times. Violet embraced her. “Have a good time. You need this,” she said. “Strength comes from pleasure.”
In San Francisco, Jack and Stuart stayed with friends of theirs, a lesbian couple, in Nob Hill, just a few blocks from the Nikko Hotel, where Anna had booked a room. Anna was invited to stay in the house, too, but she wanted solitude and quiet, uninterrupted sleep.
She and Stuart spent the entire first day shopping. Linens and bath soaps from an exclusive boutique, and in Chinatown, silk pajamas and matching slippers for Flynn, along with a jade figurine of a dog.
“Enough shopping,” Stuart said, his arms laden with packages of his own. “We’re never going to get this stuff on the plane.”
Anna put a jade bracelet down, then picked it up again and nodded at the clerk. It was small enough to fit Flynn, and it was time the girl had nice jewelry. Jade was good luck.
Outside, an elaborate funeral procession with at least a hundred people was winding down the street. Someone carried a huge photograph of the deceased. All were in traditional Chinese dress. Anna looked away, picked up the bracelet she’d bought for Flynn, and as she did, the beads broke away from the string and fell to the floor.
“Okay, just okay,” the woman said. “Just a mistake. I bring another, no problem, okay.”
“No,” Anna said. “No.” She handed over her credit card. “I want my
money back. Credit my account.”
The woman argued with her for ten minutes, pointed to the sign that said no refunds and finally went off to get the manager when Anna wouldn’t budge. “Sorry,” Anna said to Stuart, who stood in the doorway watching the funeral march.
“No problem,” he said. “Do you think these were all the man’s children?”
Anna looked over, counted seven children, all dressed identically, ranging in age from about two to fifteen. “Yes,” she said, looking at the woman who was surely his widow, “Probably.”
“Madam,” the store manager said behind her. “This is a very sad day for you indeed.”
“What?” Anna said.
“Please accept my deep condolences.”
Anna whirled around. The manager was surely a hundred if he was a day, and blind. The clerk said something to him in Chinese. “I only would like my money returned,” she said.
The man cocked his head as though listening to the drumbeat outside then nodded. “Yes. But please accept my sympathy on the loss of something precious. We will not give you additional problems.”
Anna was unnerved as she and Stuart walked to the end of Chinatown to meet Jack at Nan King for dinner. “I think he must have thought I was part of the funeral outside. But surely he knew I was just a dumb tourist. Is it me, or is that creepy? The man gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
“Who knows. Probably a language barrier thing,” Stuart said, opening the door for her. All through dinner the man’s comment grew into something like dread. She glanced over at the table beside her—a young couple, a family with two small children—and without knowing why or why she felt this way or under what conviction, she knew she would remember this day, that blind store manager, for the rest of her life.
“Earth to Anna,” Jack said.
She looked over, smiled. “You, by the way, look terrific,” she said. “Your color is good. I know just by looking at you that your T-cells are rallying.”
“You think? Anyway, I must remind you that you are on vacation. Stop worrying. You’ve barely touched the
meow
-shoo pork. Here, kitty kitty.” He pushed the plate toward her.
Anna laughed. “How do you know I’m worrying?”
He handed her his cell phone. “You’ve got that look in your eye. Get it over with, because you have a long night ahead of you, missy.”
Anna stepped outside and dialed Violet’s number. Everything was fine. “The lass has had her dinner and is practicing her dancing. You know, bog-stomping, high-kicks. She’s a jewel. Do you wish to speak to her?” Anna said no, just checking in to make sure everything was all right, she would call again tomorrow.