A Perfect Stranger (37 page)

She called the real-estate agent the next morning, listed the house, called several museums, the libraries at both the University of California and Stanford, and a moving company, asking for several men and some boxes and tape. It was time to go now. She had made up her mind. She wasn't sure where she was going, or what she would do, but it was time to get out of the house that had been John Henry's and never hers. Maybe it was even time to go back to Europe, but of that she was not yet sure. With John Henry's letter she was absolved of her sin. She folded it neatly and put it in her handbag. She wanted to put it in the bank with some of her important papers. It was the most important piece of paper she had ever owned.

By the end of the week she had made her endowments to the museums, and the two universities she had called had divided up the books. She kept only a handful of the ones she had shared with John Henry, and of course the book of poems in which he had left the last letter to her the night he died. She had already gotten a phone call from her father and she told him about the letter. There had been a long silence at his end of the phone then, and when he spoke to her again, his voice was husky as he apologized for all that he had said. She assured him that she bore him no malice, but as they hung up they each wondered how one got back a year, how one took back words that could never be unsaid, how one put balm on wounds that might never heal. But it was John Henry who had bandaged up Raphaella's anguish, he who had given her the finest gift of all with the letter the truth.

It all seemed like a dream as Raphaella and the servants packed the last of the boxes. It had taken them a little less than two weeks, and by the following week, on Christmas, Raphaella planned to be back in Spain. There was really no reason for her to be here. The house was all but sold to a woman who was madly in love with it, but whose husband needed just a little more time to make up his mind about their final bid. The furniture was all going to auction, except for a few small pieces she was sending to her mother in Spain. There was really nothing left for her to do there, and in a few days Raphaella would move to a hotel for her last nights before leaving San Francisco for good. Only the memories remained now, drifting through the house like old ghosts. Memories of dinners in the dining room with John Henry, Raphaella wearing silk dresses and pearls' of evenings in front of the fire' of the first time she had seen the house. She would have to pack up the memories and take them with her, she told herself as they finished packing, exactly one week before Christmas, at six o'clock. It was already dark out and the cook had made her a dinner of eggs and bacon, which was precisely what she wanted, and with a stretch and a sigh she looked around John Henry's mansion as she sat on the floor in a pair of old khaki slacks. Everything was ready for the movers to take to the auctioneers and to the shipping company, which would be sending on to Spain the few things that she wanted. But as she sat finishing the last of her eggs and bacon, her mind drifted again to Alex and the day they had met again on the beach, exactly a year before. She wondered if she would see him again if she went back there, but she smiled to herself at the improbability of it. That dream was over now too.

When she finished the eggs, she took her plates back to the kitchen. The last of the help would be leaving in a few days, and it was strangely pleasant, she had discovered, to take care of her own needs in the oddly dismantled house. But now there were no books to read, no letters to write, no television to watch. She thought, for the first time, of going to a movie but decided instead to go for a brief walk and then go to bed. She still had some things to do the next morning and she had to go down to the airline to get her return ticket to Spain.

Glancing at the view now and then, she wandered slowly down Broadway, looking at the sedately handsome houses and knowing that she wouldn't miss them when she left. The house that she had missed so acutely was much smaller, much simpler, with painted beige and white trim and bright flowers in the front garden in the spring. Almost as though her feet knew what her head was thinking, she found herself walking in that direction, until she turned the corner and saw that it was only a block away. She didn't really want to see it. Yet somehow she knew that she wanted to be there, to sense once again the love she had known there. She had said good-bye at last to the house she had known with John Henry, now it was as though she had to let go of the place where she had known Alex too. And maybe then she would be free to find another home, a place of her own this time, and maybe one day a man she could love, as she had loved Alex, and John Henry before that.

She felt almost invisible as she walked there, drawn by some powerful lure she couldn't really explain. It was as though she had waited all week to come here, to see it again, to acknowledge all it had meant to her, and to say good-bye, not to the people, but the place. The house was dark when she got there, and she knew that no one was inside. She wondered even if he were away, in New York maybe, and then she remembered that Mandy was in college. Perhaps she had gone home already for Christmas vacation, to Kay, or to Hawaii again, with Charlotte. All of those people seemed suddenly so far from Raphaella's life, and she stood there for a long time, looking up at the windows, remembering, feeling all that she had felt there, wishing Alex well, wherever he might be. What she did not see as she stood there was that the garage door had opened and the black Porsche had stopped at the corner, the tall dark-haired man at the wheel sitting and staring. He was almost certain that it was Raphaella standing across the street from the house, looking up at the windows, but he knew that it wasn't possible, that it was an illusion, a dream. The woman who stood there, dreamily staring, seemed taller and much thinner and she wore old khaki pants and a thick white sweater, with her hair tied in a familiar knot. The silhouette was much like Raphaella's, as was something about her expression, from what he could see at that distance, but he knew that Raphaella was in Spain, and according to his mother she had just about given up life. He had lost all hope of being able to reach her. She had never answered his letters, and from what his mother had said she was beyond hope. She had cut herself off from everything she had once cared about, given up dreaming and being and feeling. It had almost killed him for a year, but now he had made his peace with what was. Just as he had learned that he couldn't go on tormenting himself over Rachel, he had also learned that he couldn't hang on to Raphaella anymore. She didn't want him to. He had understood that much, and so, reluctantly, after a year of sorrow he had given up. But he would always remember' always' . He had never loved any woman as he had loved her.

And then, deciding that the woman outside his house wasn't Raphaella, he put the car back into gear and drove into the garage. Across the street the boy who so passionately loved the black Porsche came out and stood gazing at the car with his usual awe. He and Alex were friends now. One day Alex had even given him a ride down the block. But now it wasn't the boy who caught Alex's attention. It was the woman's face that he saw in his rearview mirror. It was she' it was. He got out of the low-slung Porsche as quickly as his long legs would allow and darted rapidly under the automatic door just before it closed. And then suddenly he stood there, barely moving, only watching her, as across the street she stood trembling, watching him. Her face was much thinner, her eyes larger, her shoulders seemed to sag a little in the clothes she had worn to pack boxes, and she looked tired. But it was Raphaella, the woman he had dreamed of for so long and had finally understood he would never see again. And now suddenly she was here, watching him, and he wasn't quite sure if she was laughing or crying. There was a small smile on her lips, but the streetlights caught the shimmer of a tear drifting slowly from her eye.

Alex said nothing, he only stood there, and then slowly she began to come toward him, carefully, as though she were fording a stream that ran between them. The tears began to run swiftly down her cheeks, but the smile widened, and now he smiled at her. He wasn't sure why she was there, if she had come to see him, or only to stand there and remember and dream. But now that he had seen her, he wouldn't let her leave him. Not again, not this time. Suddenly he took the last steps toward her and pulled her into his arms. His lips were on hers and he could feel his heart pounding as he held her, and then hers as he pressed her still closer and kissed her again. They stood in the middle of the street, kissing, but there were no cars around them. There was only one small boy who had come to see the black Porsche and had wound up seeing them kissing instead. But it was the Porsche that filled him with wonder, not the two grown-ups clinging to each other in the middle of Vallejo, laughing softly as the man wiped the tears from the woman's eyes. They kissed one last time as they stood there, and then slowly, arm in arm, they walked into his garden and disappeared into the house as the boy shrugged his shoulders, glanced for a last time at the garage that housed his dream car, and went home.