Authors: Nadja Bernitt
“I’m in town for a few days and couldn’t leave without seeing you and the old house.”
“After what you went through over there, I can’t imagine you’d want to see it again.”
“It was her home, Mama.”
“Yes, yes it was.” Mrs. Johnson wiped her forehead with a dishtowel.
Marsha headed for the doorway. “I’ll be upstairs. Call me, Meri Ann, and we’ll do lunch or something.”
“I wish we could, but this is my last day.” Meri Ann reached out and squeezed her hand. “But I promise, I’ll be back.” She knew she would, one way or another.
Marsha’s mother sat down at a worn oak table. “It’s just not the same without Joanna. To this day I miss her so—our lunches, shopping, her friendship. She listened to me, and I did the same for her.” She held her hand to her cheek. “Looking at you I see a strong resemblance, especially in the eyes and the mouth. Even the hair color, but, of course, hers was longer.”
“Everyone sees the resemblance and yet I can’t remember what Mother looked like.” She knew it must sound impossible. “I have photos, but I can’t really see her face. Oh, the feel of her skin stays with me, her scent, things she said: like, elect rich congressmen. They steal less.” Meri Ann forced a weak smile and let it fade. “If I close my eyes, I can see her standing at the door, the tilt of her head, but her face is blank.”
“Don’t fault yourself. We never see the people we love exactly as they are, anyway. As long as she’s in your heart, you’ll be fine.”
But
would
she
?
“There’s so much about her I don’t know.”
Mrs. Johnson nodded in understanding. “I see you’re troubled.”
“Yes, I am.” Meri Ann took a chair on the opposite side of the table and struggled for a place to start. “I have to ask, did Mom ever talk about another man?”
Mrs. Johnson folded her dishtowel, unfolded it, then set it aside, her reluctance to speak evident. “Your mother and I shared secrets,” she said, finally, “but we agreed, she wouldn’t tell mine, and I wouldn’t tell hers.”
“That was a long time ago, I doubt she would hold you to that promise. And it would help me understand her, maybe even to discover what happened to her.”
The dear woman went to the sink. There was a window above it with wooden sashes. She opened it, and a cold breeze drifted in. “Your mother’s kitchen window faced mine. See it right over there? Joanna kept it open, except for the coldest days. We’d call to one another. It broke my heart when that window went shut after she disappeared.”
“Was there a man?”
Mrs. Johnson turned around, tears in her eyes. “There was someone, but close as we were, she never told me his name.”
Meri Ann nodded slowly. “I feel so bad for my father.”
“Who knows what happens between two people, what drives them apart. I have troubles of my own and a terrible temper, but I don’t have Joanna’s nature. What I mean is her courage. I can’t quit my marriage; can’t even quit my bridge club, and I complain about everyone in it.”
“Did Mother say she was leaving Dad?” The words hurt just to say them.
Mrs. Johnson rose from her chair and turned off the stove. She busied herself with the cookies, the way she had with the dishtowel. “Smell the burned sugar,” she mumbled, “over-cooked.”
“You’ve got to tell me, was she leaving?”
Mrs. Johnson faced the window, as though she didn’t have the strength to watch Meri Ann’s reaction.
She gulped a deep breath and said, “Yes, dear. She was.”
M
endiola sat alone at a back table in the Bar
Gernika
, a Basque restaurant spelled in the Basque tradition. The boxcar of a room stretched ten tables long and two wide, a comfortable eatery, even with the hard, oak chairs. The place was empty except for Mendiola and the owner, Danny, prepping for dinner. The sizzle and smell of frying chorizo filled the air with garlic.
Mendiola studied his half-empty bowl of lamb stew and nursed a second beer. His eyes intermittently checked the door. Kari was late.
Danny called to him from an open grill, nearly as long as the counter. “Maybe she’s not coming. Ah,
biotza
,
huh, Jack?”
Sweetheart
in Euskera, the Basque language. Such a simple word, Mendiola thought, light and easy. He’d whispered
biotza
in Kari’s ear after they’d made love the first time. “She’ll be here, Danny,” he said.
Mendiola tilted his chair against the wall and peeked out the window onto Grove Street, a street where his father’s people had built their community well over a century ago. It was the street where his father met his mother after a
jai
alai
game, and the street where Mendiola thought he’d met the woman he’d wed.
The bell on the entry door jingled.
Mendiola lifted his face to the sound, watching the door open.
Kari stood framed by the light. Her shoulder-length hair hung in gentle waves, dark against her ivory skin. Her black eyes sought him.
“He’s back there.” Danny thumbed in Mendiola’s direction.
“Thanks,” she said in that all-too-sultry voice only she knew how to turn on and off at will. She moved toward him. Her full hips swayed this way and that as if to avoid hitting the chairs in the narrow space.
“Did I keep you waiting, Jack?” Her tone was playful.
It ticked him off, almost as much as what she’d said last night. He finished the beer in his glass and stared at her crotch. It wasn’t much higher than the hem of her skirt.
“Jack,” she said the way she might speak to a naughty puppy.
“Kari,” he said the same way to mock her.
“Don’t lets—”
“Don’t play high-school cute with me.”
She eased down into the chair across from him and licked her pouty lips.
An urge swept him to thrust his hand under the table and up her skirt and spoil her perfect composure.
Instead he replayed the scene in his bed last night, and how he had wanted her. She’d asked, “do you love me?” “Yes,” he’d said, barely able to breathe, but it was lust more than love. “Say it,” she begged. He’d said, “love” to please her. Then she’d said, “I know you do.”
Sonofabitch…
I
know
you
do
. Her conceit registered ten on the Richter Scale and made his insides quake. Later, it ate at him, making him feel like a fool.
He tilted back on his chair and said, “What the hell am I doing here?”
“Don’t talk in riddles. You wanted my answer. At least you did last night.”
What he’d said was, “Make up your mind.” But he’d regretted it the moment he’d said it, the absolute stupidity of it. Let’s see… tennis pro with red Maserati or small-town detective… eenie, meenie, miney, mo.
He said, “Yeah, well, I was stupid last night. I’ve been stupid since day one with you. It’s gotta stop sometime.” His body felt heavy from the thought. He wiped his mouth with his napkin, smelled the lamb stew. “Today.”
“What are you saying?”
“My life’s a wreck. I’m not living, just existing. It’s like I’ve shut myself in a box.”
Her eyes widened. “Me too. I’m ready to come back. I want you, Jack. I know you’re mad at me, but I’ll do whatever it takes to make it work. Just ask me. I’ll do it.”
Mendiola tried to hold his jaw from dropping. “You what?”
She pushed her hair from her shoulder and tilted her delicate chin to the side.
So damn beautiful. He’d never really believed she wanted him, not from the first time he’d put the make on her and she said, “You intrigue me.” Intrigue. He’d wanted the word tattooed on his chest.
“Aren’t you going to say something, Jack? I know what I want.” She reached in her purse and pulled out a diamond solitaire, the one he had given her, and the one she’d taken off six months ago but not returned.
She lowered her voice, “Put it back on my finger, ask me again.” She dangled her hand over his bowl, holding the ring.
His mouth went dry.
He took her hand in his, pulled it to his lips, and kissed her fingertips, palms, even his own diamond ring. He said, “
Agur.
”
She pulled back from him, her pale skin two shades paler. “Say it in English.”
He drew in a long breath and cleared his throat. It was hard not to look away but he owed it to her to meet her eye-to-eye. “Ah, Kari, you know what it means. It’s goodbye.”
R
obin Wheatley sat on the edge of his bed, looking across at his wife’s. A floral spread spanned the twin beds, giving them a king-sized appearance. But underneath the beds were separate—two separate beds for two separate people.
Water drummed against the shower wall in their adjoining bathroom. Steam escaped through the partially open door. He traced his car keys along a pink zinnia in the spread and listened to Tina humming.
“Jesus loves me, this I know… .”
She’d been singing the child’s hymn all week. But today, in particular, each childish note wore him down. He checked his watch and worried about the time. She’d been in a glum procrastinating mood all week.
He approached the door and knocked. “Tina, better get a move on.”
The faucet creaked off, and the drumming water stopped, her singing as well. But she didn’t answer.
He stared out the window at the snow on the foothills, white and virginal. His thoughts drifted to Tina, her naiveté when they’d married—so young, dutiful and adoring. She embodied everything he’d thought he wanted in a wife. A dozen years later Joanna appeared at the door to the conference room, a completed application for office manager in her delicate hand. She’d smiled, nodded. Her face animated with expectation. He’d thought she was beautiful, but it wasn’t a standard kind of beauty. More a compilation of fascinating, slight imperfections that made him want to look at her all day. The way she smiled with her pale brown eyes, the slight cast to them, and the way her right eyebrow arched a fraction higher than the left. Mies van der Rohe said God is in the details. That’s how it was with Joanna, an intricate feminine collage. Her velvet voice wafted back to him. “So your first name’s Robin,” she’d said. “I like that. I’m crazy about birds. If you hire me it’s fate.”
The bathroom door opened, jarring him back to the moment.
“You don’t have to go with me,” Tina said, daring him more than anything as she stepped into the room. With a white towel wrapped around her head she resembled a Sikh.
He supposed she looked mannish to some. God knows, she worked out and had for the last twenty years, since her insecurities began. But he hadn’t noticed the sinewy look of her muscular arms and legs until the night they’d seen Joanna’s daughter on television. And now Tina was seeing the psychoanalyst twice a week instead of monthly. Her paranoia on the upswing, her face taut with worry.
“I want to take you,” he said.
“No, you don’t. You want to forget I exist. I see it in your eyes. You still think of
her
.”
True, he thought of Joanna every day now. She came to him in the sounds of a throaty woman’s laughter, or whenever he saw an eagle soaring in the sky, or caught the scent of someone wearing her perfume. Meri Ann’s face brought it all back. But she would be gone in a matter of days, his life back to normal. Tina needed him, and he couldn’t abandon her.
“You’re upsetting yourself for nothing,” he said.
“Am I?”
She moved to her dresser and watched his reflection in the mirror. Deftly, she untwisted the towel and her limp, damp hair fell down her back.
He pictured Joanna’s hair, the luscious feel of it in his hands, like an undulating seabed of silk threads. Tina grew hers long after Joanna disappeared, as though to appease him, as though he could bear to touch it after… after… .
“There you go, off in space, Robin. You’re two different people under one skin. Ever think you should see a professional?”
He kept his expression free of any visible emotion, but inside he seethed, hating her and hating himself for his weakness.
“Comes over you like a cloud.” Her self-satisfaction amazed him. “You’re with her now, aren’t you?”
He quickly glanced away, unnerved by her knowing, wishing he could push Joanna away and never see her image again. He said, “Can’t you forgive me, Tina?”
“Isn’t that why I see Dr. Wilks, to let him listen to my dirty little secrets? Tell him what lurks in my heart; vent my anger in harmless outlets? I wanted her dead, Robin. You know that? I spent days, weeks, most of a year thinking how I’d kill her. Want me to tell you how sick I—
The blood rushed to his head. His skin felt on fire as if he’d just stuck his head in an oven. His hands began to shake and he clasped them together. “Shut up. Just shut up.”
“I know, darling. Tell it to the doctor. Let him deal with my pain. Why should we both be upset?”
She drove him to rage and still he endured her punishment. “I try so hard.”
“And aren’t you good to never balk at the bills? A Brigham City Wheatley, the cream of the crop. I can still see you in your white shirt and black slacks, ready to leave on your mission; me waving goodbye with my brilliant engagement ring for all to see. Such a good catch, the son of our temple’s elder. Well, such is the pity.”
He hung his head, waited while she slipped into a lacy camisole and a soft black sweater. Consciously or subconsciously, she dressed like Joanna.
She picked up her purse from the dresser. Her hand delved into the small rectangle and came out with a lipstick. She leaned close to the mirror. “I saw how you looked at Meri Ann. Now I’m glad she came to town, just to confirm that telling expression on your face. It proves something, doesn’t it?” She circled her mouth with red, then capped the lipstick. “Well?”
“Do you want me to leave?” he snapped. “Because I think that’s what you want. You don’t give me a chance. You want to go to Dr. Wilks alone? Go. If you need me, call. I’ll be at the office.”
He picked up the rolled structural plans for Albertson’s proposed distribution center and recalled yesterday’s late afternoon meeting, his frustration and theirs. It would never be built, because what they wanted and what they were willing to pay for it were millions of dollars apart. As he left the room, he heard Tina mumble.