Reflection (37 page)

She found her grandmother at the piano in the living room.

“Gram.” She sat down on the other piano bench. “Do you feel strong enough to be left alone?”

Gram looked at her in surprise. “Left alone?”

“Yes. You're getting around well. We could put a chair in the little hallway where you feel safe in case it storms, and—”

“Has something happened?”

Rachel shook her head. “No, but I have to go,” she said. “I'm hurting Michael. His son was beaten up because some kids think Michael and I are having an affair. His son hates me without even knowing me. And Lily told me that Katy's pregnant. I can't stay here…” Her voice broke, and Gram moved quickly from her bench to Rachel's. She put an arm around her granddaughter's shoulders.

“I'm perfectly fine to be left alone,” Gram said, “but I don't want you to go. Does Michael know you're thinking of it?”

“Not yet. I'm going to pack and be ready to leave before I call him so he can't change my mind.” It would be far too easy for him to dissuade her if she called him now. She didn't have nearly as much to lose as he did. “If I'm gone, he'll be able to focus on his family again. And his church. He'll regain everyone's respect.”

“When will you go?” Gram still had her arm around Rachel's shoulders, and it felt good and warm.

“In the morning.” She pressed one of the piano keys so lightly it didn't make a sound. “You can't leave that quickly.”

“I have to. I'm so sorry to rush off, Gram. I've loved having this time with you. But I'm afraid if I stay one more day, I'll end up staying one more month, and I don't want to…” She thought of the tired quality to Michael's voice on the phone the night before. “I think that deep down he'll be relieved if I go. It will make things easier on him.”

“Well.” Gram lowered her arm and folded her hands in her lap. “Let's you and me have a nice dinner together tonight, at least.”

“All right,” Rachel said. “And thanks for being so understanding.”

She spent the afternoon packing and trying to reach Chris, who was either not home or not answering the phone. She went about her work with a calculated numbness. At least now she would know Michael's whereabouts. She would know where to send Christmas cards, the news of the year. She was immensely glad they had not “crossed the line,” as he had called it—that she could leave with no more guilt than she'd brought with her.

By suppertime she had her closet emptied and one packed suitcase standing by the bedroom door. The smells from the kitchen were enticing. Gram had made couscous and vegetables. Rachel set the table, and when she took her seat across from her grandmother, she saw tears in the older woman's eyes. She reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

“Oh, Gram, I'm sorry.” She had a sudden idea. “Why don't you come with me?” she asked. “Just for a visit. A few weeks. You'll get to meet Chris, and you'll love San Antonio. “

“That's not it.” Gram drew her hand away to wipe her eyes with her napkin.

“What is it then?”

Gram shook her head. “It's been hard for me, watching you with Michael,” she said. “I believe so strongly that you two were meant to be together. You're soul mates, like I said.”

“Yes, we are, but—”

“And I know it's my own life I'm trying to relive through you. I know that. I see myself reflected in you, and I see a second chance. You could do what I didn't have the courage to do.”

“Gram, what are you talking about?”

Gram looked at her hard, her eyes clear now. “I want to tell you something,” she said. “Something about my own life. There was a man named Hans. He was very special to me, and I loved him deeply, but I lost him. I never should have lost him. And you never should lose Michael again.”

HANS VISITED REFLECTION OFTEN
, three or four times each year, even when Peter was traveling. Peter knew of these visits. He even seemed aware of the bond between Helen and Hans, and he told her more than once how glad he was that the two of them had become friends.

Hans never arrived without an armload of gifts: puzzles and books for Peter, intriguing food from around the world for Helen, toys for Johnny. Johnny in particular looked forward to his visits, because Hans was full of adventure. He took the boy to Hershey Park or canoeing or skating. And he and Helen went on long walks together. She was a daily walker, enjoying that time for herself, but having Hans with her intensified everything she saw and felt. When weather permitted, they often ended up in the tree house, two adults acting and feeling like children. During the long gaps between his visits, Helen talked to Hans in her mind, sharing her thoughts with him until she could no longer separate what she had actually told him from what she only wished she were able to tell.

She was twenty-nine years old in 1940 when Hans spent a full week with her during one of Peter's many foreign trips. It snowed for most of the week, and she and Hans and Johnny spent much of their time trudging happily on their snowshoes through the quiet white world above Reflection. The three of them spent their days building forts and snowmen, but it was the nights Helen treasured most, after Johnny was in bed. The nights were filled with music and conversation. And something else, something she couldn't easily admit to herself: a desire that was new to her, a mix of pleasure and pain.

She and Hans played the pianos together each night. They played with that ecstatic fury she came to recognize as a form of sublimation. She was filled with love as she played, for the music as well as for the man sitting on the other side of the black sea from her, and when they had finished a piece she often felt overcome with emotion, occasionally laughing, more often fighting tears.

She experienced her body in a new way around Hans. Until then, her body had been something of a shell, a vehicle to get her from one place to another. But she was suddenly aware of the fullness of her breasts, the hunger in them when she was close to him. She wanted him to touch her, and when he'd take her hand to help her up a snowy slope or over a frozen brook, she felt the warmth of that touch for an hour or more. And always, during that week, she felt the emptiness inside her that dear Peter could never hope to fill.

She tried, in a very conscious way, to enjoy the time with Hans without dwelling on what she couldn't have. Still, sometimes at night she woke up crying, the source of her tears no mystery to her.

The night before Peter's return, Hans sat with Helen on the floor of the library after Johnny had gone to bed. They sipped wine and watched the dying embers of the fire as they listened to Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto on the record player. When the piece was over Hans took her hand.

“You and I are two of a kind, you know that, don't you, Helen?”

There were threads of flame moving from his hand through her body. She felt the heat in her cheeks, her throat.

“Yes,” she said.

“I adore Peter,” Hans continued, “so this is hard for me to say, but I must. I love you, and I find that there is no other woman I want to be with as much as I do you. Peter leaves you alone so much—I would take you with me.”

Her mouth was dry. “It's my choice that I don't go with him much of the time,” she said.

Hans didn't seem to hear her. “I watch the two of you,” he said. “Obviously there's a deep attachment between you. Peter respects your opinions. He defers to you often and seems to listen to your suggestions about his work. But it's all so…intellectual. So cerebral. And you have such
passion
inside you, Helen.” He tightened his hand around hers. “I catch glimpses of it when we're together. But most of the time, it's locked up in here.” He touched the tips of his fingers lightly to her breast.

He was right, but until this week she had never known it. She and Peter were passionate about music and politics, but never about each other. Not the way Hans meant. She had not realized she was missing anything until then.

She had never felt closer to anyone in her life than she did to Hans, and for a moment she thought she might tell him everything. She clutched his hand with both of hers. She steadied her breathing and opened her mouth to let the words out, but they wouldn't come. It would mean a betrayal. But more than that, it would change things in a way she wasn't ready to change them. She doubted she ever would be ready.

He waited a moment for her to speak, and when she didn't, he continued. “What I'm saying to you is that I love you. Deeply. I seem incapable of caring this way about another woman. I compare them all to you. And I know you love me, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Then will you marry me, Helen? Will you ask Peter for a divorce and marry me?”

She imagined having a life with Hans. She could listen to him play the piano every day, travel with him, enjoy a passionately physical relationship that was missing for her now. But it could never happen. She and Peter had a symbiosis, pure and simple. Neither of them could exist without the other. And she owed Peter more than she could say.

She shook her head slowly. “I can't do that,” she said. “I'm committed to him.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.” She did. She told Hans how Peter had saved her and her family from poverty. “If it weren't for Peter, I'd be scrubbing toilets,” she said.

“I didn't know about any of that.” Hans smiled slowly, sadly. “But I still think Peter's an extraordinarily lucky man. And he doesn't deserve you. Fond though I am of him, and much as I can appreciate what he did for you, he just simply doesn't.” His voice was rising. “You should be with a man who can love you wholly,” he said fervently. “Peter takes you for granted. He…”

She saw his anger and knew where it was coming from. Leaning forward, she touched his arm. “I know about Peter,” she said softly. “I know that he is not completely faithful to me.”

Hans looked at her in surprise. “Do you know…?” He let his question trail off.

“Yes.” She nodded.

“And yet still you want to stay with him?”

“Yes. It's true that ours isn't a marriage based on passion, but there are other things equally as important. I have Peter's love and respect. I have his honesty. And trust, and friendship. I have more than you can know, dearest Hans. I love you both, but he is my husband.”

She went to bed that night filled with pain and longing, knowing she had set the boundaries for their relationship and in so doing had killed her most treasured fantasies.

Peter returned the following day, and that night the three of them sat in the living room listening to a new recording of a recent Huber work, Lionheart, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Helen found the music unbearably beautiful. She lay on the carpet, eyes shut as she listened, filled with the peace of having the two men she cared about close to her. Toward the end of the music, she looked over at her husband. He was watching her, tears in his eyes.

“I love you,” Peter mouthed, and she remembered why she was with him.

After they went to bed that night, Peter lay awake humming a melody, a slight variation on the second theme of a new composition. He wanted her to listen to it, to comment. She did, suggesting a change of her own, which he scratched down on a piece of paper he kept on the night table. She watched him as he wrote, his profile barely visible in the moonlight. He was a very handsome man. The twist of love she felt in her chest as she watched him was real. Still, as they lay down together, as he lightly kissed her temple and bid her good night, the cool fingers of regret pinched her heart, and she knew she would have to live with that feeling for the rest of her life.

RACHEL HAD GROWN SLUGGISH
in her packing. She pulled things from her dresser drawers and folded them with leaden hands. She'd been shaken by Helen's story about the pianist. Shaken that after all these years her grandmother still suffered such deep regret over the man she'd felt so close to and had to give up. Helen's voice had trembled as she talked about him, and Rachel had listened with the empathy of a woman who understood that pain, but the story would not make her stay. It only served to double her sadness. She hurt now for her grandmother as well as for herself.

“What do you think you're doing?”

She turned from the dresser to see Michael standing in her doorway, and she couldn't deny that her distress at seeing him there was edged with relief.

“Gram called you,” she said.

“Yes. I was about to leave for the support group, but she rescued me.” He gave her a rueful smile. “Second week in a row I'm missing.”

She lifted a stack of jeans from the dresser. “Well, to answer your question, I'm going to leave, before either of us gets in too deep.”

“We're already in too deep.”

She dropped the jeans on the bed. “Michael, I've brought nothing but harm to you,” she said. “I've hurt your son, I've turned your congregation against you, threatened your marriage, practically wrecked your career, and just about destroyed your credibility in the land fight.”

He leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded across his chest. “Well, aren't you a powerful little thing?” he said. “That's all bull, Rachel. You haven't done a thing. Some kids hurt my son, and some unforgiving people have spread rumors. I'm the biggest threat to my marriage, and what happens to my career is entirely in my own hands. You have done nothing wrong. All you've done is be my friend, and I've needed that.”

He walked over to where she was standing by the bed and put his arms around her. He held her tight, and she locked her arms around his back. “Were you planning on letting me know you were going?”

“Of course. I couldn't have left without saying good-bye.”

“I don't want you to go,” he said. “Please, Rache. Please stay.”