Restoration: A Novel (Contemporary / Women's Fiction) (10 page)

She stroked his wavy hair and ran her fingertip along the
rim of his ear.  She watched her hand touching him as she traced the outline of
his face, his nose, his lips, his jaw, experiencing every sense through her
fingertip.

“Tell me about your family.”

He was smiling with his eyes closed, enjoying her touch. 
“I’d rather listen to the sound of your voice.”

“Please.”  She brushed the back of his ear with the tip of
her nose.  “You keep burrowing into me, discovering places I didn’t know
existed.  It’s my turn.”

“My life was pretty simple.  Uneventful and pleasant.”

“I crave uneventful.”

He tucked his arm that wasn’t around her beneath his head,
propping it up on the pillow.  “I grew up in Connecticut.  My father was in
insurance.  My mother stayed home raising my sister and me until we were in
elementary school, and then she went to school.  She took courses here and
there through the years.  She eventually earned her degree in anthropology.”

“What in the world did she do with an anthropology
degree?”

“Nothing, she simply enjoyed getting it.  Then, she went
on to study history and earned a degree in that.”  He gazed up at the ceiling,
smiling while he talked.  “I think she’s lining up a law degree in her sights
now.  My father is very pragmatic; so although he supports her efforts, I know
it drives him crazy seeing her loading up on all of this knowledge and not
doing something practical with it. 

“But she enjoys the journey of learning.  She was
instrumental in nurturing my interest in the arts.  She’d take my sister and me
to museums and engage us in discussions about what we saw and what it all
meant.”

“She sounds wonderful.”

“She is.”  He rolled his head sideways over the pillow and
looked at her.  “I’m sure she’d love to meet you.”

A smile crept across Tess’s face.

“Is that a yes?” he asked hopefully.

“I think so.”

“We could drive up to Connecticut one weekend.  Or better
yet, how about Thanksgiving?  It’s only three weeks away, and she’s a great
cook.”

“Sounds delicious.”  Tess frowned, feeling truly
disappointed in what she said next.  “But I’m supposed to make my annual trip
to Florida.  Turkey, family and more turkey.  Although it always feels like
I’ve had too much family and not enough turkey.”

“Too much togetherness for you?”

“I always feel like I revert to being thirteen again, and
my brother and sister are regressing right there along with me.  It’s the three
of us in adult bodies sounding like when we were kids.  There’s my know-it-all
older sister, the good child with the perfect life, always trying to mollify us
with her wisdom.  Then there’s my younger brother: charming, uncomplicated and
as bratty as they come.  He plays that role very well.”

“And you?”

She thought for a moment, her finger tracing a continuous
circle on his chest.  “I’m not sure how they see me.”

“What do you see?”

“I don’t know.”  She nodded uncomfortably.  “I don’t know
that I see myself clearly at all.  There’s who I was before Randall Wright, and
then there’s now.  The distance between makes the view rather blurry.”

“Whose view are you using?”

“What do you mean?”

“Wright seems to be the lens you view everything through.”

Tess bit down on her lower lip and drew in a breath. 
“Let’s not go there now.”

“All right, we’ll stay with Thanksgiving…for now.  What do
you say?  Can I call my mother and tell her to set another place at the table?”

“It sounds tempting, but I don’t want to disappoint my
father.  It’s the one time of the year we’re guaranteed to see each other.”

“Then I’ll call my parents and ask what weekend they’re
free to meet this remarkable woman who can carry on quite a conversation about
art and the Church in the Middle Ages.”

“I’d like that.” 

As she pictured herself with Ben at his parents’ home, she
regretted declining his offer but knew she couldn’t disappoint her father and
not show up for Thanksgiving.  She draped her arm across his chest and drew
closer to him. 

“You said your upbringing was uneventful, but it sounds
like it was filled with discovery and lots of love.  I’d take your uneventful
upbringing over mine any day.”

He gazed at one of her paintings hanging on her bedroom
wall.  “If we’re going to trade, how about your talents for mine?”

“I hate writing,” she said with a shudder.  “And I don’t
think you’d like spending hours inpainting a damaged section of a canvas no
bigger than a postcard.”

“You’re right about that.  I’d like to have your talent
for painting, though.”

She drew her head back to see his full face instead of
just his profile.  “Ben, please don’t go there.  I’m enjoying this too much.”

He looked at her.  “I like this, too.”

She eased back toward him and nuzzled his neck.  She
expected some reaction; a reassuring hug, an intimate kiss.  But he lay still,
absorbed in his thoughts.  Finally, he shook his head regretfully, turned his
head toward her once more and gazed into her eyes.

“A couple of weeks ago over dinner, you told me no one
would control your life like Randall Wright controls your mother’s.”  He
hesitated finishing his thought.  His mustache hid his lower lip as he bit it,
and when he stopped, it bore the faint indentation of his teeth.  “You don’t
paint anymore because of him  It looks like you’ve moved from city to city
because of him, too.  Or fled, I’m not sure which. 

“It seems to me that the one thing you never wanted to
occur has happened, maybe without you realizing it.”

She quickly propped herself up on her elbow and glared
down at him.

 “Who do you think you are, Sigmund Freud?”

“Tess.”  He reached out to pull her back down next to him.

She flinched from his touch.  “I opened myself up to you. 
I exposed my soul to you in a way I’ve never done with anyone, and this is how
you honor that trust by throwing it back in my face?”

“If the things I’m saying bother you, I’m sorry.  But Tess,
I care about you.  I want you to be happy, not haunted.”

“You think you have me all figured out.” 

“I had to share my observations, my thoughts, whatever you
want to call them; otherwise, these things about your past are just going to be
there like a big rock wedged between us.  I don’t want that.  Maybe my timing
is off.  Hell, there’s never a good time for these kinds of conversations.”

She crawled off the bed.  “You use your clever writer
phrases to hide behind and try to paint yourself as caring.  But you’re no
different than the other men I’ve dated.” 

“Tess, stop.  I know what you’re doing.”

She thrust her hands on her hips.  “Oh, you do?  That’s
because you’re fucking Sigmund Freud, right?”

He grunted as he sat up and threw his legs over the side
of the bed.  Bending forward, he pulled his shoes out from under the bed and
slipped them on. 

“Isn’t that right?  You think you’ve got me all figured
out, don’t you?”  She shouted her punishing words at his back.  “And I suppose
I should feel grateful that you came into my life to rescue me from
self-destruction.”

Sitting on the bed with his head drooping between his
shoulders, he told her, “I’m willing to stand by you as you work through your
pain.”

“And sanctimonious, too!”

He stood up and walked toward the bedroom door, hesitating
in the threshold.  “I don’t know how things are going to turn out, and seeing
as how we’ve become a bit of a train wreck here tonight, I might as well throw
something else on the pile.  Maybe it can be salvaged, maybe it can’t.”

He looked over his shoulder at her.  “I love you, Tess.  I
want to make love to you.  I know that’s the last thing you want to hear coming
out of my mouth.”

Her eyes followed him as he left her room.  Love.  The
word seemed to spring up from the earth, wrapping around her, holding her in
place like the thick, twisted roots of the oak trees in Central Park.  Men had
proclaimed love before.  Loved her kisses.  Loved her body.  Loved her sex. 
None had ever loved her.

That was just as she wanted it.  How dare Ben love her!

She hurried into the living room.  As he reached the front
door, she shouted at his back, “You should’ve fucked me the other night while
you had the chance.”

His hand slipped off the doorknob.  He reached into his
pants pocket, pulled something out, turned at the waist and tossed it to her. 
She instinctively reached out and caught the jingling object.  It was a key on
a plain plastic ring.  Before she could toss it back and tell him she sure as
hell wouldn’t use a key to his apartment, he told her Kenyon LeMere had spoken
with his artist friend.

“The studio is yours for the next six months.  The address
is taped to the key ring.”  He shifted his gaze away from her and to the
floor.  “Good luck, Tess,” Ben said and then left.

***

Orgasms were nature’s most effective sleep aids.  She
wished she could take the aftereffects of a great orgasm in pill form and
escape into sleep.  She’d keep a huge bottle of them in her medicine chest for
nights like these. 

Tonight, Ben was going to give her all the benefits of an
orgasm without the sex, without the fondling and groping; just two arms around
her, holding her and soothing her.  She was enjoying the experience until he
ruined it by picking at the scabs of her wounded past. 

Her insurrection condemned her to spend the night alone,
chasing Randall Wright out of her mind and replaying her ruined evening with
Ben.  Once, she even tormented herself by imagining a different scenario that
ended with Ben staying.

The sanctuary of her apartment offered none.  Everything
in it seemed to press against her and surround her, taunting her: her
paintings, the box with her mutated drawings, Ben’s roses.  All these objects
were now part of a debris field left in the swirling wake of Ben’s abrupt
exit. 

She hurried out of her dress and into a
maroon-and-white-striped sweater, a pair of chinos and brown penny loafers. 
The colors in the sweater complemented her copper hair.  She’d worn her hair
the same way for years: shoulder length and parted in the middle.  Its natural
bend made it just wavy enough to be stylish.

She left her apartment.  Habit propelled her in the
direction of Mazzaro Brothers.  Under the artificial light illuminating the
sidewalks, she walked the familiar route toward work.  Coming upon the pub
Sharon spoke fondly of, she heard the muffled Irish melodies leaking through
the walls.  She paused and listened to the frolicsome music.

What the hell!  She yanked on the door handle and walked
in.  Immediately, she knew why Sharon liked the place.  There was an atmosphere
of playfulness about it.  Every chair had someone seated in it or at least a
beer glass on the table holding the space while the drinker either danced on
the small dance floor or relieved himself of some of the imbibed beer. 

A threesome played all the traditional Irish instruments:
tin whistle, fiddle, and bodhran, along with guitar and keyboard.  The two men
and one woman swapped instruments as the songs demanded.  Young and old enjoyed
the music that seemed to bridge the generation gap.  Patrons, sometimes half or
twice another’s age, laughed and toasted each other from adjoining tables.

Tess found an empty stool at the bar.  The bartender
immediately acknowledged her with a smile.  With his black hair, blue eyes and
a square jaw that bore the shadow of a face left unshaven for a day or two, he
was certainly a treat for the eyes.  He wore a black, collared shirt with the
bar logo embroidered on the chest.  She wondered if this was the guy Sharon
swooned over.  He strolled over to her, cleared away the empty glasses and
wiped down the bar in front of her with a white rag.

“What can I get you, lass?” he asked with a lilting brogue
that confirmed he was the tall, dark and Irish one Sharon spoke of.

“I’ll have a pint of Harp.”

“Aye, a whole pint.  You don’t mess around.”

“A glass will go down too quickly and you’d have to pour
me another one.  I don’t want to make you work that hard.”

“I’d work hard for you.”  He winked, strolled over to the
beer taps and drew a pint for her.

While she enjoyed her Harp, her foot kept the beat,
tapping out the rhythm of the songs.  She smiled at the lyrics that spoke of
drunken sailors, bays filled with beer and other irreverent humor.  There was
the occasional sad, sentimental song, but the threesome never lingered too long
in sorrow, and rousing fiddle music followed these tear-invoking works. 

Between sets, the bartender stationed himself nearby and
flirted with Tess until a waitress appeared with an empty tray looking to
replenish it with pints.  When he finished building them, he always came back. 
Tess’s third Harp numbed the disquieting feelings that had driven her from her
apartment.  The combination of the music, beer and the bartender’s company
moved the evening along quickly, and she was glad she’d come.

When the last set ended, she slid her final tip of the
night across the bar, hopped off the stool and waved to the bartender.  He hurried
over to her, ignoring a customer who tried flagging him down by waving a
fifty-dollar bill.

“You’re not leaving so soon, are ya?”

“It’s closing time.”

“Aye, so it is.  Well, you just made the time fly by so
quickly with your lovely presence that I’d lost all track of time.  If you have
time to spare, I’ll be done shutting down here and I’ll escort you home.”

A skeptical scowl wrinkled her face.

“You look like you can take care of yourself, but me Mum
says a soul shouldn’t walk the streets of Dublin alone at night, and I’m sure
she’d feel the same about New York.  And I always listen to me Mum,” he said
innocently.