Better Than This (13 page)

I turned my attention back to Frank, who was bent over examining a dusky coloured rose bush that had grown into a thorny mess.

“Sally planted that when we bought this place,” I said. “I haven’t spent much time out here lately.”

“You need to cut it back. That way you’ll get better blooms. And you need to get some of these weeds out or they’re going to choke it.”

“There’s a lot needs doing,” I agreed, looking around.

Frank indicated another plant that I didn’t know the name of. “Aphids. You need to spray or they’re going to kill it.”

“I should get around to it,” I agreed. The plant did look pretty sad.

“You’ll get beautiful flowers in spring if you look after it.”

He moved on, looking at different plants, stopping to examine their leaves. There had been a time when I’d wondered if Frank was a little simple minded. Even though he’d been a lawyer before he retired I didn’t think his small-town practice would have been too demanding. As long as I’d known him his absorbing interest had been the plants he reared in the giant glass houses behind his house, which he planted out to see if they would survive the heavy soil and cold Oregon winters. According to Sally he’d always left everything to do with home and family to Ellen. He never got involved in disagreements, instead when trouble brewed he retreated to the peace and calm of the world he’d created outside.

I walked around with him as he kept talking about what I should do in the garden, though I was only half listening. I had too many other things on my mind like late night phone calls when nobody is on the line, and nonexistent coworkers.

“You have to nurture beauty, Nick,” Frank said.

I stopped, realizing that he wasn’t beside me any more and I turned around. He was watching me with a curious kind of smile.

“Sorry, Frank. What did you say?”

“You can’t just take it for granted, otherwise you might look around one day and it isn’t there any more.”

“What isn’t?”

“Beauty, Nick. I was saying you have to nurture it.”

He held my gaze for a second longer, then he sort of smiled and the moment was gone. As we moved on and mooched around the garden I kept thinking about what he’d said and the way he looked at me. I had the odd feeling that he was trying to tell me something. I was still thinking about it when he got my attention again.

“What was that?”

“I said we ran into that friend of Sally’s who used to come around. The Hunt boy. Course, he’s not a boy now. You remember him.”

“Garrison Hunt?” The name seemed to reverberate across the years, unearthing a lot of old feelings. I recalled the first night I’d spent in Sally’s parents’ house, how her mother had kept telling me what a great guy Garrison was.

“Yes. You met him didn’t you?”

“Once or twice. Doesn’t he still live in White Falls?” I asked. I was confused. It was a small town. I thought Frank probably ran into Garrison Hunt all the time.

“Oh yes. Still there. Sally sees him now and then when she comes home.”

I stared at Frank. This was news to me. He gazed back at me, his expression completely unreadable.

“Anyway we ran into him yesterday,” he said.

“Wait a minute. Yesterday? You mean in San Francisco?”

“That’s right. He was just walking along the street minding his own business. Almost bumped into him. We had a cup of coffee. He was down here on business.”

“Quite a coincidence,” I remarked.

Frank smiled. “Yes. I suppose it was.”

Which was an understatement I thought. In a city this size, they just happened to run into Garrison Hunt from White Falls, who just happened to be in town on the same day. I didn’t think so.

“So how is he?” I asked.

“Seemed fine,” Frank said.

I was still trying to deal with this piece of news, and work out what it meant when I realized that Frank had moved on, and was talking gardens again. I remembered what he’d said before, about taking care of beautiful things, and now this about Garrison Hunt. Like a child’s puzzle all the pieces that had been jostling around in my head, bumping into each other and not making sense all tumbled and clicked neatly into place. The phone calls. Sally’s behaviour.

Sally and Garrison Hunt. It hit me like a hammer and the blood drained out of my face. Frank looked back at me.

“You okay, Nick?” he asked, his voice tinged with concern.

I left Frank in the garden, claiming I needed to take care of a couple of things, and I retreated into my office where I closed the door and took care of half a bottle of scotch. When I heard Sally’s car it was around mid-afternoon. She and her mother were talking as they approached the front door, then I heard the rattle of Sally’s key in the lock and the door swung open. Frank said they had gone shopping, but I couldn’t see any packages other than a bag from the bakery. I guessed they’d spent the day talking, perhaps in some restaurant where they had gone for lunch. I had it all figured out. The way I saw it, Sally had met up with Garrison Hunt again on one of her trips home. I could see them bumping into each other outside the post office in White Falls, the laughs and apologies as he helped her pick up the letters Sally had been on her way to post for her mother. Maybe they’d gone for a cup of coffee and spent a cozy hour or two reminiscing. Next time Sally was in town they probably had lunch or dinner, and then it became a regular thing. One night he ordered an expensive bottle of wine and confessed to Sally in the romantic flickering candlelight how he’d always loved her and that was why he’d never married. I could see his selfconscious, half apologetic grin, the hint of nervousness in his eye because he was unsure how she would respond, and Sally looking down at her hands because she couldn’t meet his eye, the colour rising in her cheeks.

“So how’s Nick?” he probably asked.

“Oh.” She’d kind of smile but it would become a frown. No doubt she’d confide that things hadn’t been going so well for her at home.

“Sorry to hear that,” he’d say, all understanding. The prick.

Those kind of secrets don’t remain secret for long in small towns, and whether Sally had told Ellen herself, or Ellen had simply heard on the local rumour mill how her daughter and Garrison Hunt were seeing a lot of each other, it would have been an opportunity she couldn’t let pass by. But I knew Sally well enough to know she wouldn’t have taken something like this lightly. I hoped I hadn’t come to mean that little to her. Maybe she had found events moving too fast, she didn’t know how she felt any more, and so she’d decided to call time out. That would explain why she hadn’t been up to visit her parents for a while, and it also explained why Ellen had thought it necessary to come to San Francisco. It was suddenly clear as day. Ellen intended to persuade Sally to return with her to Oregon. The encounter with Garrison Hunt that Frank had told me about was no accident, but undoubtedly had been well planned. All part of Ellen’s campaign.

I met them on the doorstep. “There you are. I was wondering how long you’d be. You have a good day shopping? I guess you didn’t buy much though, did you?”

A flicker of uncertainty crossed Sally’s expression as she registered both my sarcasm and the fact that I’d been drinking. I fixed her with an accusing stare, then turned my attention to her mother.

“Aren’t you going to say hello, Ellen? It’s quite a while since we saw each other isn’t it? How is my favourite mother-in-law?” I lurched towards her and kissed her on the cheek, managing to stumble off balance in the act and bang our heads a little. She withdrew as if I’d shoved my hand up her skirt and her expression wrinkled in distaste.

“You two must have had a lot to catch up on I guess,” I said, grinning malevolently at them.

“You’ve been drinking,” Sally accused, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“We all have our weaknesses. Temptations of the flesh. You know how that is, Sally.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, wondering what I meant by my loaded remark.

“So, where have you been all day? Not shopping obviously. Bump into anyone I know?”

“Nick, what is this all about?” Sally demanded.

“How about yesterday. What did you do? See the sights? Have lunch? Slip into a hotel for a quickie?”

Uncertainty. Shock. Guilt. They all passed in turn across Sally’s eyes. I’d hoped that somehow I had this all wrong, but one look at her and I knew that I didn’t. I was struck with a sudden piercing pain which it took me a moment to recognize as grief.

Ellen began to squeeze past, and being reminded of her presence transformed my pain into rage. “You two obviously have things to discuss. I think I’ll go upstairs,” she said. But I wasn’t about to let her off so lightly.

“What’s the hurry? We haven’t had a chance to have a chat yet. After all this does concern you doesn’t it?”

She ignored me and said to Sally, “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

“While you’re up there you can pack your bags.”

Sally stared at me, the blood draining from her face. “Nick

“What? What is it, Sally? You think I’m being a poor host. Maybe you’re right. Forget that last remark, Ellen. I tell you what I’ll pack them for you. How’s that. I’ll even drive you to the airport. What the hell, I’ll drive you all the way to fucking Oregon. At least that way I’ll know you’re out of the state.”

“Dammit, Nick, that’s enough!” Sally cut in.

“Enough? I haven’t even started.”

“You’re drunk!”

“Absolutely.” My voice had been rising, but now I was shouting. I knew if I looked in the mirror my face would be red and my eyes would be popping. “I think every man has a right to get drunk when he hears his wife has been fucking some guy she knew in high school, don’t you?”

There was a moment of shocked silence. Sally opened her mouth as if to say something but no sound escaped her.

“Don’t,” I said wearily. “If you’re going to deny it, please don’t.”

“I wasn’t going to deny it,” she said quietly, sorrowfully.

“Then don’t explain it either,” I said, but in my heart I was crying out for her to do just that because no matter the troubles we’d had I never thought it would come to this.

That was one scenario of events that passed through my mind anyway as I sat in my study after leaving Frank in the garden. I imagined it all, every word and gesture in vivid detail. It ended with Sally leaving me, fulfilling the premonition of the dream I’d woken from the morning of my meeting with the bank. It was the memory of that dream, and the sharp, painful realization that I might actually lose Sally that stayed my hand. The scotch bottle was already open and I fully intended to use the liquor to dull the shock of my discovery, but in the end I didn’t take a drink. Instead I screwed the cap back on the bottle, and through my anger and pain I tried to understand what had happened.

You have to nurture beautiful things, so Frank had told me. I wondered if his comment had been advice in vague metaphor. Despite my instinctive desire to confront Sally with what I knew, wasn’t that about exposing my pain, voicing my hurt so that I could see her guilt reflected as her own kind of pain? Didn’t I want to show her how agonizing this was for me, and spear her heart the way mine had been? It was all about turning my feelings around, transforming them into a weapon with which I could blindly hit back. It was about me. Me, me, me. And I suppose in the back of my mind was the hope that I could shame her into seeing how wrong she had been, to make her fall on her knees and beg me to forgive her. But what if she didn’t? What if amid her regret and sorrow I glimpsed something else, a glimmer of relief that it was at last out in the open. If she had begun an affair with Garrison Hunt, I believed that it had not been planned. Sally wouldn’t do that. She would have left me first. That she hadn’t done so after the fact suggested that she still had feelings for me, that she hadn’t entirely written off our marriage. The more I considered it the more I saw that whatever happened had begun as a weak moment, an expression of her unhappiness, but once she had time to think things over she had ended the affair. Hence the end of her visits to Oregon, and Ellen’s decision to come to San Francisco.

What I saw finally was that Sally hadn’t been ready to leave me, but if I confronted her with what I knew I might well drive her away. I had a clear choice. Did I want that? Or did I want to fight for her? Painful as it was, I had to accept that if Sally had been so unhappy as to seek solace with another man, then I couldn’t escape my share of responsibility for that.

By the time Sally and her mother arrived home I’d reached some conclusions. I loved Sally. I always had, and there was no question in my mind that I didn’t want to lose her, but I didn’t know either if I could keep secret what I knew. Garrison Hunt insinuated himself into my mind, derailing my train of thought. It was a long time since I’d last seen him, and I had no idea how much he’d changed. In fact I remembered him indistinctly. His features were vague. Brown hair, thinnish face, tallish and lean build. It was his demeanour I recalled more clearly. He possessed the innate inner confidence that you often find in the children of the wealthy. All his life he had been made to feel special. He went to a good school where athletic and intellectual ability were discovered and honed by well paid teachers who instilled in their pupils high expectations of themselves and what their futures might bring, and reminded them they had the means to meet those expectations. That is partly the inheritance passed down among the rich, and it’s worth more than mere money.

If I’d learned that Sally had met somebody, a guy at work perhaps, with whom she’d somehow begun an affair, I would have found it easier to bear. The fact that it was Garrison Hunt made it harder. Not because he had money, although that was tied up in it, but because of who he was, what he represented. When I thought of him all my old feelings resurfaced. I

remembered how Ellen had talked about him the first time I’d met her, making her unsubtle point about the kind of person she wanted her daughter to one day marry. Jealousy. Hurt. Wounded pride. And I allowed myself to imagine what Sally’s life would have been like if she had married him instead of me. I saw them in their big house outside White Falls, which I had never actually seen in real life, but I envisaged a sprawling place on a grand scale, with horses and three or four children and Sally rosy cheeked and healthy in the Oregon snow, curled up with her husband in front of a roaring fire at night with a big dog lying at their feet on an expensive rug that took some tribes-people in a mountainous region on the other side of the earth ten years to knot by hand.