Happy Any Day Now (15 page)

I turned to see Marti standing at the break in my privet hedge, having taken the shortcut garden path between her place and mine.

She carried a shopping bag and wore a highly amused expression.

“Don’t let me stop you,” she said in that honeyed Southern drawl that attracted gnats. “This is waaay better than HBO.”

“Oh God,” I muttered as I struggled to rehook my bra.

I couldn’t blame her for the intrusion. She worked mostly out of her home office, so I never knew when she’d take a break from writing and drop by. If she heard cello music on the wind, she retreated, respecting my practice time. Today, no music and no way of knowing Charlie had arrived early. Besides, she was delivering on a favor. I’d asked to borrow a particular bra that was constructed like a Gothic cathedral, with flying buttresses and suspension grids. I thought it might do the job of holding up my assets in the halter top I wanted to wear for my date with the man she was currently eyeballing with unabashed interest.

Charlie shot me a questioning look.

“Charlie Pruitt, meet Marti McDowell,” I said. “Marti’s my neighbor and friend.”

Marti said, “A pleasure to meet you, Your Honor. I’ve heard all about you.”

“No, you haven’t.” I was already mortified.

“Okay, I’ve heard so much about you. All of it highly complimentary. Is that better, Judith?” She
tsk
ed. “Shame on you. Embarrassing me in front of the judge.”

“Call me Charlie. Please.”

“Okay, Charlie.” She ambled over to the table and perched one butt cheek on its glass top. “So, Charlie, what do you think of same-sex marriage?”

I saw his double take segue into a second, more appraising look. Marti was wearing cutoffs, a schmutzy tank top, a Ravens cap, and combat boots, standard attire for working in her garden.

“Marti, for heaven’s sake.” But by now I was laughing. Charlie’s mouth was drawn into a tentative smile.

“Honey, he’s a judge, isn’t he? I just want a judicial opinion. You know, like on CheapLawyer.com. You can ask one question about anything legal for twenty bucks.”

“It’s fine,” Charlie reassured me. He leaned toward Marti. “This isn’t for publication, because I’m not supposed to express opinions without my gavel, but between us, I’m all for civil unions. A contract between two consenting adult parties. I say give them all the nuptial benefits. It’s only fair. Marriage, on the other hand, is a sacrament. Goes back to Genesis. Did God say Adam and Bruce? Eve and Ellen?” His eyes were twinkling. He’d caught on to her. Smart Charlie. But I bet those views were, under the humor, solid convictions.

Marti waved a finger at him. “Hold on one cotton-pickin’ minute. We need to debate this, Charlie, my newest dear friend.” She pulled a chair out for herself. At which point I intervened and shoved it back. “Court will be in session some other time,” I said. “Charlie and I have dinner reservations.” We didn’t, but the ploy worked.

“To be continued, then.” She handed me the shopping bag. “Wear that”—she pointed into its recesses—“and it will change your life. Okay, my aphids are waiting.” She snapped an order, but finished with a smirk. “As you were, troops.”

After she marched off, I exhaled. “She has boundary issues, but she’s really a good person.”

“Funny lady. And very attractive. Great body. She
is
a lesbian, right?”

“Card carrying.”

Once she was out of sight, Charlie moved behind me and wound his arms around my waist.

“She ever hit on you?”

Was he proposing a threesome? No, not Charles Evans Pruitt, Mr. Conservative. And he knew better where I was concerned.

“Never. We’re not each other’s types.”

“Am I your type?” He rotated me into his embrace. “Because, oh girl, are you ever mine.”

Girl? I was almost fifty. I didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered.

He resumed his nuzzling, but for me, at least, Marti’s appearance had broken the spell.

Okay, maybe the spell wasn’t broken. Maybe it was just chipped and able to be repaired with wine, oysters, crab cakes, and a little sweet talk for dessert at Petit Louis. We’d find out.

I
t wasn’t clear what was on the menu for after dinner. In spite of my architecturally buttressed bosom and Charlie’s obvious fascination with it, conversation at the restaurant was all about Chloe’s SAT scores and her college options. No sweet talk.

Time was also a factor. My date had an hour’s drive back to his hotel in D.C. and an early meeting at the Justice Department the following morning. Part of me was relieved it looked like we weren’t going to consummate this reunion. The other part was disappointed.

Disappointed won out when he surprised me by asking, “How about a nightcap at your place?” He reached across the table and with a single finger drew a sinuous trail from the base of my neck down to my décolletage, from which he fished out the gold cello pendant Geoff had given me. Yes, I’d worn a gift from one man on a date with another. Sounds as if my reservoir of chutzpah ran deep and cold, but the truth was more neurotic. Since Geoff had first snapped the closing catch for me, I’d taken off the protective necklace only long enough to dip it in jewelry cleaner. You don’t screw around with Miss Fortune.

“Lucky charm,” I explained.

Charlie fingered the talisman, then let it fall against the prickling skin of my cleavage. “I’ll say.” He hiked his eyebrows suggestively. Which was so frat boy.

Now, this was where I could have turned back. Instead, a half hour later, a scotch-mellowed Charlie was on the last stop of my house tour, in my bedroom, a place I’d never thought would hold Charlie Pruitt. It seemed smaller for containing him.

He stopped to examine the large oil painting of a blond, green-eyed, shirtwaisted Victorian matron that hung over my dresser. “Pretty. She’s your grandmother?”

“My Caucasian grandmother, you mean? You’re talking Grandma Roz, whose apron always smelled of herring? Grandma Roz, who made a single chicken last from one Sabbath to the next? Grandma Roz, whose fingernails—?”

“Okay, okay, I get it. You came from poor but hardworking Eastern European stock.”

“Jews. Outcasts. That was one side. On the Korean side, I’m descended from radish farmers and shopkeepers. And you know what? I’m not ashamed of that anymore. Most of the world is made up of people who toil with their hands and earn an honest living.”

“Unlike my folks, who lived off the sweat of their exploited workers on one side and plundered the judicial system on the other.” He chuckled. “You don’t need to be so defensive, Ju-ju. Scratch the surface and we’re all human beings.”

Hardly a Rush Limbaughian sentiment. It was either the booze mellowing him out or him doing what it took to soften me up for the seduction.

He moved on, sipping scotch as he went. He picked up the photo I’d propped on my night table. “Is this you?”

I nodded.

“The child with you is Brenda, right? Your grade school girlfriend.”

I had no memory of telling him about Brenda, but I must have. That’s what I had with Charlie that I didn’t have with Geoff. The bond of shared memories. Some of them horrendous, though with him massaging my right shoulder I wasn’t thinking that way.

“You were a cute little thing. Incredible eyes. But it’s hard to look at. You seem so sad.”

“I was. I’m not anymore.”

“I can see that.” He replaced the photo but kept staring at it while he said, “I want to make you happier. I hope I can.”

“You can try,” I said.

Even I wasn’t sure whether that was a challenge or an invitation.

• • •

We made love. An act that probably raised more questions than it answered.

One minute we were sitting on the quilt, feet on the floor, discussing whether Israel could take out the Natanz uranium enrichment plant; the next Charlie was overcome by lust or geopolitics and began to undo my top. Everything else came off quickly, propelling us toward the moment of truth: how I’d look to him after all these years.

Foreplay for a forty-nine-year-old woman involves stroking the light dimmer, but even in shadows I could see he’d changed. Well, of course he had. Could I have expected the abs of a twenty-five-year-old? He had a bit of a paunch. The freckles that had been just a spattering near his shoulder were now raised and darker, and one below his collarbone really needed to be seen by a dermatologist. His runner’s thighs had held up, but his calves had sprouted rivers of varicose blue. Why did I find all this erosion so endearing?

“God, Ju-ju,” he whispered, then backed off to appraise me as if I were something old but valuable on the block at Christie’s. “You’re as spectacular as ever. How did you make time stand still?” Obviously his midrange vision was beginning to go. Very gallant, nonetheless.

I rewarded him by pressing my lips against his. He tasted the way I remembered. Of Glenfiddich. He kissed the same. Magically. I didn’t want him to stop. Ever. Why did he have to stop?

Apparently because he’d misplaced an appendage more important than the one that swung between his thighs. “My BlackBerry. Damn. So sorry. Really. Be right back. Promise.”

He dashed downstairs stark naked. He dashed upstairs. You had to laugh. Naked man carrying briefcase is an automatic giggle. I controlled myself while he rolled through his e-mails; then it occurred to me that I ought to be furious. This was a serious case of coitus interruptus.

“I really do apologize,” he said, not glancing up from the tiny screen. “Terribly rude of me. But it’s an exceptional case. If I reverse the lower court decision, it would break precedent and all hell could break loose. I’m expecting a call from the White House.”

And so we made love to assorted dings and dongs, none of which signaled the leader of the free world was calling. Only once, when the device sounded an identifying warble, did he reach across me to the night table and check the text message. “Mother’s nurse. Ah, one of Kiki’s prescriptions is running low.”

Ugh. Just the mention of her name and all my residual estrogen vaporized into thin air. Charlie had to work hard after that to get me back into high gear.

The sex itself? Charlie’s psychologist wife and globe-trotting reporter girlfriend had inspired innovations in his technique. It was notably better than the old basic insert Tab A into Slot A, which had been good enough twenty-five years before. Now, as soon as we got over our initial nervousness and found our old rhythm, it was
very
good. Okay, so maybe the man wasn’t as creative as some I could name, but who was? The musician in me was certain it would improve with practice, and for what was really a debut, he more than got the job done. And it was Charlie.
Charlie!
I had schlepped a ton of emotional baggage for him. I bit back tears afterward.

For the record, no one said anything about love at any time during the proceedings. But after a respectable twenty minutes of recovery with me nestled in his arms, Charlie said something I knew Marti would think was even better:

“We need to do this again soon. See each other. Though the other should be a project as well.” He kissed the top of my head. “Next weekend is a washout. It’s Mother’s Day and I’m taking you know who to dinner at a restaurant that still serves tomato aspic. But the following week, I’m taking Friday off to make it a three-day weekend. I’m going to fly up to the Landing, the place in Maine.”

The Landing was the family’s summer compound situated at the end of Cove Haven Island on Penobscot Bay.

“I’d love you to join me there.”

I had vacation time coming. At the Maryland Phil, you bank days to use at your discretion. And God knows I was due for a break.

“The water won’t be warm enough to swim, but we can go sailing. You’ve never seen the Landing, have you?” He’d never invited me. Had he, no doubt Kiki would have barred the door. “It sits on a bluff overlooking the sea. The scenery is beautiful. We could eat lobster three times a day and make love four. How does that sound?”

“Like wishful thinking.” I laughed.

He ran a fingertip down my cheek. “Don’t be so sure. You make me feel young again, Judith. Like old times.”

New times are never like old times. Even
I
knew
that.
“I’ll let you know,” I managed to say just before his BlackBerry chimed.

T
heodora Gottlieb, MD, leaned back in her oversized chair, the thready cascade of her blond-growing-out-to-silver hair almost lost in the buttercream leather. She steepled her fingers in a contemplative arch. This was my first appointment with her in months and although I was in dire need of a tune-up, what I’d really come in for was a fix.

I’d been hitting the Internet full throttle since the panic attacks, searching for advice from fellow sufferers. Not the best idea. The cellist chat rooms were filled with accounts of careers killed, lives ruined by stage fright. Anxiety, it seems, has a way of spreading. First the terror centers on playing solo; then it might expand to playing ensemble, then maybe leach over to other areas of your life. Today I couldn’t hold a bow. Tomorrow I could have a phobia about anything long, hard, and pleasure providing. Oh no, I had to nip this in the bud pronto. And that would take the magic pill.

Not so fast, was my shrink’s unspoken message. I’d been filling her in on how I’d been doing since we last met, including the bouts with stage fright. Now she scrutinized me with her savvy gaze. “Interesting, this need to end your relationship with Geoff as soon as your former boyfriend entered the picture. You rushed to cut him loose because . . . ?”

The same question Marti had asked evoked the same answer. “Because I thought it was better than stringing him along while I worked out my feelings for Charlie. A process”—Theodora loved the word “process”—“that included screwing. And I couldn’t,
wouldn’t
do that with Geoff in the picture.” That
was
the reason, and not a scummy one either, but in Theodora’s huge, panoramically windowed office it resounded as smug and self-righteous.

I sneaked a glance at my watch. Twenty minutes of psychobabble and we still hadn’t gotten to the real reason for my visit. “An interesting rationale,” she was saying. “You might want to probe beneath the surface here.”

Well, no, I really didn’t want to wade in much deeper. She’d redecorated since my last visit and the new sea blue walls and shelved artifacts of Israeli Roman glass, so liquid, already made me feel as if I were drowning.

“Not to be rude, Dr. G, but I came here to talk about my stage fright, not my sex life.”

She had been twirling a spiral of Botticelli curl, but now she stopped and leaned forward, her face a caricature of incredulity. “You think your personal and professional crises are unconnected? Come on, Judith, we’ve been working together too long for that.” She paused for a reaction.

I gave her a prickly one. “If there’s a connection between my performance anxiety and anyone else, it’s Irwin. It was Irwin I hallucinated in the audience.”

“A father who wasn’t around to give you approval. But he’s only one in a cast of characters playing the roles of judge and jury. There’s Charlie, who left you because, in your own words, you weren’t good enough. Might his appearance revive those old feelings of inadequacy? Feelings that translate into panic in precisely the arena where excellence is most important to you: onstage. Just a thought.”

A ridiculous thought. “So far, all signs point to Charlie thinking I’m more than adequate,” I snapped.

“So far.” Theodora plucked that note. “This relationship is all very new. Please remember you’re in the first stages of rediscovering each other. And then there’s Geoff, still in your life, marginalized romantically but acting as your coach, someone to whom you’ve granted thumbs-up/thumbs-down authority. This anxiety might be about a healthy reluctance to give up your power. What do you say?”

I said, “I guess.”

She scribbled a word on her ever present legal pad and underlined it twice. Probably “Resistant.”

“And now one more challenge: Richard’s terminal illness. How are you dealing with that?”

I was trying
not
to deal with it and shamefully succeeding until the day before, when Angela gave us the latest report. The metastases in Richard’s brain were screwing around with his occipital nerve. His sight was going.

At her announcement, a hush had settled over the orchestra. I’d squirmed in the silence. And deserved to. It had been three weeks since Geoff and I had been to the Roland Park house. I’d called a few times, but the conversations were always brief. Which was my doing. I told myself I didn’t want to wear out a sick man, but that was crap. What I didn’t want was to hear the details that added up to his dying. Not Richard. So I put distance between us because I couldn’t bear to see, to feel the pain of it.

What a selfish clunk I was. What a lousy friend, mentee, whatever.

After rehearsal, I’d taken my guilty self to the closest Barnes & Noble, filled a shopping bag with large-type mysteries and audio books, and went to see him. The housekeeper stopped me at the door and took the bag. Mr. Richard was sleeping and not to be disturbed. “Holding his own,” she’d told me with a pitying shake of the head.

Now I pulled a tissue from one of the pale blue boxes scattered over every flat surface in Theodora’s aquarium of an office. She gave me an empathic smile.

“Richard has been more than just a stand partner to you, hasn’t he? A friend?”

I sniffed, tying to hold back the tears.

“Stand partners can be like family, close as siblings,” she proposed.

“Some are,” I acknowledged.

“Go with that, Judith.”

It had been her “that,” not mine. I shrugged, stalled halfway down the path to enlightenment.

Theodora prodded, knee in my behind. Richard was twenty-some years older than I, not a good fit for a brother. But the daddy spot was vacant.
The daddy spot was vacant!
My mermaid shrink nearly flipped herself out of her chair with delight over her discovery.

“I don’t buy it,” I said, throwing cold water on her theory. “Richard always treated me as an equal. Plus, it’s not as if he’s looking to play papa. He has kids.” Sons only, but still. A tone-deaf commodities broker and a physics professor at Stanford whose musical tastes ran to Coldplay. And grandkids. Twin boys. But still.

Theodora shot me a frustrated look. “In any event, he’s been a potent male influence. And now this accomplished and caring man is dying, and waiting in the wings is Irwin, whom you know only for abandoning and subsequently neglecting you. Not a fair trade, is it? A transaction that might very well elicit a need for denial on your part.”

My denial was undeniable. I blew into my scrunched-up ball of Kleenex.

“The point is, you’ve gotten past it. You’ve self-corrected. You made phone calls. You went to his home yesterday with the intention of seeing him. That tells me you’re showing compassion even while adapting to the inevitability of his moving on.” As if he and his furniture were being hauled to New Jersey. “And you’re preparing yourself to take over his seat, I assume.”

“Yes, but if I can’t perform solo, I won’t be able to do that. Will I?”

She gave that a moment’s thought and took pity, I suppose.

“Very well.” She scrawled and tore off the scrip. “I have to tell you, Judith, Inderal will help you get a handle on the physiologic manifestations of your stage fight, but it may not cover the emotional panic.” She reached for a clip of papers on her desktop and handed them over along with the prescription. “You can begin to practice the breathing and relaxation techniques on these handouts. They should help. Long term, though, you’ll have to deal with the underlying issues that are sapping your confidence. All right, next week same time?”

Not good. I’d be just returning from Maine. Among the details I’d skipped with Dr. G.

I mumbled something about a heavy schedule and calling to fit something in and watched her face crimp with disapproval.

“Don’t wait too long,” she warned.

“I won’t.” I was already on my feet and moving toward the door. I flipped her a good-bye with my precious prescription.

• • •

A half hour before curtain Friday evening I popped my first Inderal. Fifteen minutes later, my heartbeat, which had jolted at my first glimpse of Berenson Hall and pounded with each reluctant step toward my doom, had slowed and evened out. By the time I finished my warm-up, I’d lost the tremor in my hands and my salivary glands had kicked in. In my chair onstage, I closed my eyes against the terrifying audience taking their seats and visualized myself floating high above the concert hall, clouds supporting me, sun warming me. Deep breath. Sun. Clouds. Breathe from the gut, not the lungs. Hold to a count of three, exhale slowly through the nose. That’s what Dr. G’s handouts instructed. I’d been practicing.

My solo in the first half of the program was brief. I felt a twinge of unease as I drew the initial bow stroke; then I timed my breathing to the leisurely rhythm of the music and I was fine. Slid right through it. Better living through chemistry.
Woohee!
as Marti would have exalted.

I wanted to share my triumph with Geoff. He managed to avoid me all evening. But after the concert, on a survivor’s high and just about dancing to the exit, I crashed into him.

“Judith,” he acknowledged. The last time we’d seen each other had been on my porch with Charlie. My lingering image of Geoffzilla was from the rear, scaly tail dragging, monster claws retracted. Rodan had thrashed him. “You seemed to be handling the anxiety up there. Crisis overcome?”

“I saw Dr. Gottlieb and she agreed I could try a little Inderal. She said . . .”

While I babbled on, his attention drifted to his watch. When I came up for air, he said, “Yes, I thought you might be on the meds.”

“You could tell? How could you—?”

He cut me off. “We’ll have to talk some other time, I’m afraid. I’ve got people waiting.” Deliberately vague, but what wasn’t vague at all was his impatience to be gone and the chill in the air.

What had I expected? A liege lord ready to do my bidding when I decided to bestow my royal favors? That wasn’t Geoff.

“We’re on for Monday?” I hooked him with that.

“
I
am.”

“See you then.”

“Right.”

“Great.” We had work to do. I had an audition to ace.

I rode that surge of euphoria until the drug wore off.

• • •

I got home at eleven to find my answering machine flashing three messages. Charlie clocked in at nine fifty-two, oblivious to my anxiety issues because I hadn’t shared them. Would he, a civilian, have understood? Also, we hadn’t reached the point in our relationship where I was willing to show weakness. Would I ever? Who knew? I’d been there, done that, got the T-shirt . . . and the boot, first time around.

He was sorry he’d missed me. I needn’t call back tonight. He was early to bed, figuring he’d better bank as much sleep as possible to face that Mother’s Day lunch with Kiki on Sunday.

I’d sent my own mother a card, though this year it had been a half-hour project at the Hallmark store looking for something that didn’t gush, because I was still exasperated with her. Also it had to be a simple sentiment—she missed subtleties in English—and not funny. Greeting card humor eluded her.

The day before, I’d e-mailed her to see if my presumed father might be persuaded to take a powder for the holiday so just the two of us could have brunch at Miss Shirley’s Café. It wasn’t a time-honored tradition, but we’d done it last year. She’d e-mailed back: “You don’t say we do something Sunday you and me, so I make other plan. Tomorrow morning good time to come. Father not here after ten.”

When I listened to the next message, I was reminded of the Korean saying my mother recited: “When you’re healthy, have many trouble. When you’re sick, have only one. Be happy for many trouble.”

Richard Tarkoff’s voice was slushy and he spoke slowly, but I could hear him straining for the old lilt. His labored breathing was a sure sign of slippage.

“Sorry I missed you yesterday, my dear. Sleep seems to be my default these days, but I do want to say thanks for the books. The large type really makes a difference. Just what the doctor ordered. They tell me loss of coordination is next on the list of top ten plagues for mets to the brain,” he said. Then a beep sounded and the message cut off. I pressed for the next one.

“Apologies,” he resumed. “I’m simultaneously short-winded and long-winded. What I was about to say is I can still manage around fifteen minutes daily on the cello, but that’s not going to last without working fingers. And just as I was getting the hang of Paganini’s twenty-fourth Caprice after fifty years—” A dry laugh led to a cough. “I may have to ask Sarah to move the damn cello where I can’t see it. The idea of that beautiful Goffriller sitting ten feet away taunting me to play it—ach, it’s just too much to bear.”

And then he surprised me. Although he’d announced after the last futile round of chemo that he was finished with treatment, and vowed to spend whatever was left of his life without an anti-nausea suppository shoved up his ass, now that the time had actually come to give up the fight, he’d changed his mind. He was nudging his medical team to find a miracle. His oncologist was turning over every rock to come up with a clinical trial that admitted the most desperate cases.

“If I’m lucky, I’ll live to regret my decision.” He sighed. “I’m just not ready to surrender.” Proving once again that the life force is stronger even than the gravity of death. “So them’s my parting words for now: Never give up the ship. Be well, sweetheart. Speak to you soon, I hope.”