Mourning Becomes Cassandra (26 page)

“What a load of crap,” muttered Joanie, but I didn’t think it was such a bad way of thinking about it, and Mrs. Martin was completely appeased, as Daniel had intended.

We sat down for dinner at four. Phyl had set a beautiful table with her best glassware and china, pillar candles glowing and an autumn garland running its length. By then some stragglers had joined us—a couple of Phyl’s co-workers, her sister Mary, and good old Tom, now a model of deportment.

When all the dishes had been produced, and the sideboard nearly groaned under the weight of them, Joanie rose from her seat at the foot of the table and farthest from her mother. “I’d like to propose a toast,” she declared, raising her festive glass of Blanc de Noirs. “To family and friends and the hands which prepared this food. May we be truly thankful.”

“Here here!”

I clinked glasses with Perry and Phyl and Mary across the table, and we were all about to dig in when Daniel spoke up. “No grace, Joanie?”

A little silence fell—Mrs. Martin froze in spreading the non-dairy butter alternative on her bread—and then Phyl hastened to smooth it over. “Of course. Maybe Cass, since Joanie gave the toast?”

Shooting Phyl a reproachful look, I quickly bowed my head and shut my eyes, so everyone else would. I had never been much of an out-loud prayer, and my months-long hiatus didn’t build my confidence, but too late now. “Father,” I began hesitantly, “we are grateful for your blessings large and small. For the friends and family around this table and the ones who aren’t with us. For this wonderful food and this beautiful house. For health. For love, especially your love, which never gives up on us. Amen.”

A few “amens” and rather more awkward throat-clearings greeted this, and we dug in.

“One grande with whip caramel macchiato, extra hot, and in the seasonal red cup,” I announced, pushing it across the counter at Nadina.

It was the Saturday afternoon after Thanksgiving, and I was glad to see she’d made it back from Ohio. Both Perry and Mrs. Martin had left that morning for Portland, and while the visit had come off better than Joanie had thought possible, she still cheered when the door closed behind them: “I feel great! Must be all the extra
Qi
in the house!”

The hot coffee concoction was meant to be a surprise for Nadina at her skating rink elf job, and it looked like my timing was just right. She was perched on the stool behind the cash register, her jingle-belled felt elf hat at a cocky angle, and a decidedly belligerent look on her face.

“Whoo hoo! Cass, you’re the best! I’ve been sitting here freezing my ass off and thinking I should go crawling back to Petco.” She held the cup up to breathe in the steam appreciatively. “Mmmm…”

“One coffee drink doesn’t rule out crawling back to Petco,” I admonished. “In fact, if you drink my drink it means you agree to go back and talk to your manager. You can’t leave it like that, Nadina. Besides, you are totally gifted with animals, and you don’t ice skate. Who needs an employee discount here?”

“Blah blah blah, don’t nag me, Cass. I can guess what you think now, did you know? I can even hear your voice in my head telling me what I ought to do sometimes.”

“That might not be me—it could be your conscience waking up after all this time. But I’ll give it a rest for a minute,” I conceded. “How was Ohio? Tell all.”

Nadina took a tentative sip and sucked in air to cool her tongue. “It was tense,” she said. “Everyone took turns fighting: me and Mom, then Mom and Aunt Sylvia, then me and Aunt Sylvia because I thought she was being mean to Mom. And then we’d start over again with me and Mom.”

“Bummer. What all did you fight about?”

“Let me see…me and Mom fought about me living with Mike, and Mom and Aunt Sylvia fought about Mom not raising me right, and me and Aunt Sylvia fought because I told her I wasn’t a friggin’ baby—”

“Knock it off, Cass!” Nadina objected, laughing. “But the really biggest fight was when Aunt Sylvia told Mom she thought I should come out and live with her in Ohio.”

“In Ohio?” I echoed. “Live with Aunt Sylvia in Ohio? What, because you were all getting along so well?”

“Because Aunt Sylvia said I need to make a clean start, and since Mom couldn’t control me, blah blah blah.”

The thought of Nadina moving to Ohio made me feel oddly empty, and I couldn’t get my voice to work for a moment. “Did—what did you think about all that?”

“What the hell would I do in Cleveland? I’d have to start over at some crappy new school and not know anyone except my seventy-year-old great aunt. If I don’t even want to live with my own mother, I sure as hell don’t want to live with her.” I felt a wave of relief, and then guilt for my relief—a fresh start for Nadina far away from loser Mike wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. “And I told Sylvia so, and she said to think about it when I wasn’t all freaked out and when Mom wasn’t around to gum up the works.”

Sylvia was no dummy, it would seem. I supposed we had both learned the hard way what happened when you pushed Nadina past the point of rational thought. “Whew!” I whistled. “In between all the fighting, did you eat any turkey?”

“Yeah, but that was almost another fight because Mom said she would do it, and then she fell asleep in front of the TV, and Aunt Sylvia didn’t wake her up because she wanted to say ‘I told you so,’ and so the turkey came out kinda dry.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” I protested. “I should bring you some of my brother Perry’s turkey—it was luscious. No, on second thought, I’ll throw it in the freezer and hold it out as a bribe for when you’ve sorted things out with Blaise. How about if we do some role playing right now? I’ll be your manager, and you come and tell me why I should hire you back.”

“Because I’m the awesomest,” said Nadina incorrigibly. Her gaze suddenly sharpened. “Oh, hey,” she whispered. “Here comes Kyle’s mentor with some lady.”

I turned and, sure enough, saw them cutting across the grass to the rink entrance, James walking jauntily with a pair of hockey skates slung by the laces over his shoulder, accompanied by his tiny, adorable date, all curling blonde hair and blue eyes under a knit cap. Well, this would be interesting. Would this be the friendly, charming James, or the awkward, distant one?

It was both, as it happened. James caught sight of us the next instant, and his face lit up. “Cass! Nadina! I had no idea you worked here, Nadina—nice elf outfit. Did you guys have a good Thanksgiving?” We answered with the usual platitudes, and when I asked after his he answered equally vaguely. So…happy to see me? Apparently not, because the next moment he started looking around nervously until he remembered himself and added, “This is Rachel. Rachel, this is Nadina who goes to Camden School and her mentor Cass.”

“You’re a skater, too, then,” said Rachel, as we shook hands and James fished in his wallet to pay. She gestured toward the figure skates I was toting. “This is going to be very embarrassing for me, I think.”

“I’ve skated since I was in elementary school,” I answered, “But it looks like James knows what he’s doing, so you can hang on to him.” Turning to him I added, “Was hockey another activity you had to hide from your high school friends and enemies?”

With such a pointed reminder of the last time we’d had a friendly conversation, James had the grace to look abashed. It seemed to help him decide something because he suddenly looked me square in the face. “So, hey, does this mean I finally get to meet this mysterious husband of yours? Trent? Or was it Troy? Is he here? We can make this a double date.”

In the split-second I hesitated, Nadina’s jaw dropped and she blurted, “Dude! Way insensitive. Her husband’s dead, remember?”

James, of course, remembered no such thing, it having never been told him in any way, shape or form, and his eyes flashed to my face to see if Nadina and I were perpetrating an elaborate, if tasteless, joke. I felt myself go red, and that, combined with my mortified expression, was enough to tell him the truth. “Good Lord! Cass, what happened? I just saw you last week—” He apparently thought tragedy had struck in the interim—not an irrational conclusion, except that I was standing at a festive skating rink, skates in hand and, up to that moment, a smile on my face.

Had I not been so uncomfortable with having to explain myself, I might have laughed—it was so farcical: Nadina the oversize, affronted elf, James struck by lightning, and poor Rachel looking from one to the other of us, bewildered. “Nadina, he didn’t know,” I managed at last. “Umm…it was pretty sudden—Troy’s death—but it happened almost a year-and-a-half ago. He had an enlarged heart and died in a car accident.”

“Along with their daughter,” put in Nadina breathlessly, now looking quite ready to forgive James and get into the spirit of the exciting revelation. I frowned at her. It was too much tragedy to throw at someone unawares. Nadina scowled right back at me. “If you don’t come clean now, Cass, you’ll just have to do it later, and it’ll be even weirder next time.” True enough.

“I’m sorry,” I began. “I haven’t figured out a graceful way of telling people I meet—I can’t go around announcing that he’s dead whenever his name comes up.”

“Cass, please don’t feel you have to apologize!” James interrupted, putting a hand on my arm to stop me. “I’m so sorry…”

“It’s her ring,” said Nadina matter-of-factly. “If she didn’t still wear her wedding ring, she wouldn’t have to explain anything to anybody.”

“Men don’t notice wedding rings,” I hissed defensively. I turned on James. “Did you notice I wear a wedding ring?”

“No, but is that a trick question?” His gray eyes smiled ruefully. “I thought you were married because when I first met you, you mentioned your husband, and naturally I assumed he was alive.”

“See?” I told Nadina. “It has nothing to do with wearing a ring.” She raised her eyebrows, unconvinced, but had to turn away to help some new people at the cash register.

Rachel’s pitying expression was beginning to be tinged with impatience, and I felt guilty about my miscommunication hijacking her date. “Here you guys, go skate,” I urged. “Please.” Rachel grimaced at me apologetically and then tugged on James’ arm.

He was still watching me thoughtfully. “Are you going to skate, Cass?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I brought my skates just in case. Mainly I came down here to hang out with Nadina and catch up. Please, go enjoy yourselves.” Please! To my relief, he nodded, and they headed toward the skate rental counter. My own skates felt suddenly too heavy, and I thumped them down by Nadina’s macchiato. “Well, that was awkward,” I said to her, when she finished with the customers. “I’ll be so glad when I’ve been widowed thirty years. By then I’ll have more company, and people won’t think I’m such a freak.”

“They wouldn’t think you’re such a freak if you would just take off your wedding ring and admit you’re not married.”

I glared at her. “Maybe. Probably. Can we just drop the subject and go back to your Petco problem?” She sighed gustily but nodded and patted the stool next to her.

We spent the next fifteen minutes role-playing what she could say to Blaise, going over her apology and possible answers to objections, until Nadina knew the gist and could say it in a reasonably polite tone. During these discussions, my eyes wandered frequently to James and Rachel: he helped her lace up her skates, guided her by her mittened hands slowly around the rink while she squealed and slipped, and when she rested against the side he made a few high-speed circuits before doing a dramatic hockey stop next to her and spraying her with snow. Rachel laughed and pelted him with a chunk of it.

Nadina was nothing if not observant—it must be all her dog-whispering prowess. “Think he likes her?”

“Well, he asked her out, didn’t he?” I said mildly.

“That might just be because she’s shorter than he is.”

I laughed. “You sound like my roommate Joanie, who is a towering 5’10” like you. He doesn’t seem worried by his height like you and Joanie seem to be. Besides, Rachel is cute in her own right.”

“Yeah, if baby bunny is your type.”

I tried unsuccessfully not to giggle. “All right, girlie, I think my work is done here. You call your manager and let me know how it goes. Today or tomorrow, okay, before you forget what we’ve practiced.”

When I was halfway down the ramp exit, I heard James calling me. Vaulting neatly over the half-wall surrounding the ice, he clumped across the rubber-padded floor. “Will you be coming in to the office this week?”

Seeing as he didn’t seem to hate me anymore, I nodded tentatively. “I’m sure I will. I like it there.”

He hesitated another moment. “Hey, Cass, I’m sorry again about your husband and about this whole weird situation where we had to dredge it up in public and all.”

“James, really!” I groaned. “It’s not your fault how it all came out or didn’t come out until now. It’s just sort of ridiculous and embarrassing, and I still haven’t figured out how to go about telling people. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, for heaven’s sake.” I fiddled with the blade guards on my skates, but when he didn’t respond, I ventured a glance and found him studying me with an unreadable expression.

“Can I call you later to talk?” he asked.

My voice took on an admittedly whiny note. “Oh, do we have to? I actually don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’m sorry I let you think Troy was alive, and I’m sorry he’s dead, and I really don’t want to hash it out again.”

“No, no. I meant talk about some other things.”

“Oh. Oops.” I blushed. “Sorry to snap at you.”

He grinned. “I forgive you. I’ll give you a call later.” He backed up, waving at me. It occurred to me that James didn’t have my phone number—there had never been any reason to call me before, and email had always done the trick—but I really didn’t want to walk over there at this point. If it was that urgent, he would just have to figure it out.