Reunion (43 page)
Authors: Therese Fowler
“Good morning,” Julian said. He tugged her down onto him. “In case you’re wondering, my shoes are still off.”
“In case you’re wondering,” she kissed him, then rolled off him, “there will be caterers here in about fifteen minutes.”
“In case you’re wondering,” he sighed, sitting up, “I’ll be making the coffee and waiting for my turn in the shower.”
“Just Lucky Charms for me,” she said.
He grabbed her hand before she climbed out of bed. “I need you to know something. This, us, it’s real. For me. I’m done roaming, in every sense.”
She said, “I’m older than you, you know.” As if that were the most of it.
“Do you have a point?”
“If…” She could hardly find words for the feeling that made her throat tighten. She cleared it, and tried again. “If this
is
real, I’m done too.” She had wishes for her future, wishes she’d never been brave enough to make, before. “There are so many things we can do together. I’d like … I’d like to make a difference in the world. We could, you know.”
He nodded. “Kids?” he said.
She tilted her head and smiled at him. “I think so.”
After her shower, she sat on the porch steps feeling purely happy to be looking out into the garden, the sun dappling her legs and the ground in front of her as though she was any old girl on any old porch on any old tropical morning. If you took away the ribbons and the light strings and the vine-and-flower-covered arbor where her mother’s wedding vows would be said, there was nothing at all exceptional here. A woman
in love was as common and unremarkable as the green of a lemon tree’s leaves—until it was your lemon tree, and you.
She heard a car stop at the gate, and Calvin’s voice thanking the driver in his I’m-sure-from-the-Upper-Midwest way. Her mother came through the gate trailing a garment bag and suitcase, as did Calvin. They were halfway up the path before her mother saw her, time enough for Blue to see more clearly than ever the difference Calvin made on her mother’s posture, the composition of her features. It was as though there was less gravity at work on the pair of them. Blue felt a bit like that herself.
“Harmony Blue! Good morning.” Her mother pulled her into a hug. “I’ve got your dress right here with mine.”
“Happy Wedding Day,” Blue said.
“It certainly is. I see we beat the caterers; are any guests here yet?”
“Only one,” she said. “Julian Forrester.”
Her mother’s raised eyebrows and wide smile said everything.
They greeted Julian as if it was routine to see a damp, half-naked man in her kitchen picking the marshmallows out of cereal he’d just poured. “I’m counting my lucky stars,” he joked. “And then I’ll get out of everyone’s way.”
“Why?” her mother asked. “Stay. Better yet: go, and bring your grandparents back with you. We’ll have a buffet available to anyone who was able to wait to restore their energies—and we’d love to meet them.”
“They’ll be delighted,” Julian said, and Blue believed him.
Watching Calvin and her mother at the altar two hours later, Blue imagined how their wedding announcement might read:
The bride wore a white silk tea-length sheath, her silver hair piled on her head and held by seed-pearl combs. Matching heart-and-vine tattoos were visible on the bride’s and the groom’s left forearms. The groom wore blue linen trousers and a white silk guayabera shirt. None of the wedding party wore shoes.
She held Julian’s hand as she stood behind her mother, white lights twinkling all around them in the shady garden, and listened to the judge, who happened to also be the mayor, intone the words that would bind her mother and Calvin for as long as they chose. Melody stood on her other side, wiping at tears just as she was, as this well-deserved moment in their mother’s life unfolded.
“Above you is the sun and below you is the earth. Like the sun, your love should be a constant source of light, and like the earth, a firm foundation from which to grow.”
It was a good start.
ith the house filled to bursting with his brother, his sisters, their friends, his friends, and relatives from both sides of the family, the young man had to wait until after two
AM
to pull his baby book from the library shelf and sneak it up to his room.
The book was a long shot. He’d already scanned all the photographs displayed throughout the three-story house. Every tabletop, every wall display, the mantles in the den, living room, and family room, even his parents’ bedside tables and bureaus. Hundreds of photos of him and his siblings, but none that matched the one he’d seen online—and in line, in the grocery and convenience stores’ magazine racks. A scrunchy-faced infant in a blue knit cap and a mint-green shirt, with a little bit of striped pastel blanket showing.
Generic baby.
He didn’t know why he was so intent on confirming that he was not one and the same as the scandal-child. The smarter thing would be to get some sleep before tomorrow, when he was graduating from the University of Chicago. It was a temporary ending; he’d be back in the fall to turn his anthropology BA into an art history PhD. His mother didn’t mind a bit that her youngest wanted to stay close to home for a little while longer—though she was not as thrilled about his summer plans: ten weeks biking across Europe with his pals Collin and Beck. The party tomorrow night was a celebration and a bon voyage, and was certain to last pretty much all night.
Still. Knowing that his birth date was the same as Blue Reynolds’s son’s was a coincidence he needed to investigate so that he could put it out of his mind. The baby book was the last record he could check without alerting anyone
to what he was doing. If there was no matching photo there, he would put the issue behind him.
With the book under his arm, he used the back stairs to get to his room, creeping as quietly as he could manage and listening to make sure he wouldn’t run into anyone in the hall. If his brother caught him with his baby book, he’d never live it down. Pat would never admit that, in his position, he’d be pulling out his own book to see if he was the one with celebrity blood in his adopted veins. And his sisters—well, more likely either of them would turn flips at the prospect of being Blue’s child. What could be more glamorous? Jill would probably sell out completely if she thought their parents wouldn’t mind.
The thing was, their parents would mind. They’d arranged four private, closed adoptions, with deliberate emphasis on private and closed. It was their belief—-a belief he’d shared until he saw the Blue Reynolds mess—that the only family that mattered was the one that chose the child. They weren’t callous people, just practical, and protective.
At the top of the stairs, he stopped and turned around to go put the book back, hesitating on the step. If he never looked, he’d never have to deal with the question of what to do if he was the kid. The grandfather clock at the opposite end of the hall ticked, slower than the thumping of his heart. Look. Don’t look. Look. Don’t look.
Suppose she was his birth mother. He didn’t need anything from her. He didn’t even want anything from her. He wouldn’t have to tell anyone; it might be enough to just know.
He took the book to his bedroom.
Before opening it, he logged in to his computer and went to the website that had published the photos first. The way this whole thing had come down really pissed him off. His family was Christian, and these extremist people offended him way more than anything Blue Reynolds had done, ever. If she thought she couldn’t take care of a kid, then she couldn’t. If she thought kids should be educated about sex, well, if he hadn’t been, he might have been a father at seventeen. Studying anthropology had taught him a lot of things, but nothing bigger than the importance of being open-minded.
He scrolled down to the photos. She was so young then—younger than Jill
and Jess, who weren’t either of them mature enough to handle motherhood. In his opinion, at least. What would his parents have done if one of them had gotten pregnant?
And… there was the baby picture.
He opened his baby book.
Even as he turned the pages to the one announcing
First Photo,
he knew what he would find. It was going to take some time, though, to decide what he would do.
This, my second novel, was so much a labor of love: Love for writing and for telling a story that engaged my imagination so thoroughly; love for my profession and all the excellent people who publish my work; love for the readers whose responses to my first novel,
Souvenir
, have humbled me beyond words … To
Souvenir’s
readers I send my most heartfelt thanks, and to those beginning with
Reunion
, my warmest welcome.
Second novels are, they say, the hardest to write. The quandary is in deciding how similar the second book should be to the first. I decided to approach the matter much the way a singer might when selecting which songs to record for a new CD. Listeners don’t want the same song on every track—yet they do need to recognize the sound as uniquely that artist’s. Consider this book my track #2, a contemporary, slightly up-tempo offering that I hope is as captivating as readers and reviewers say the first track is.
Novelists work on faith. We sit at our keyboards day after day hoping that what we have to say will be things our readers want to hear. It is my good fortune to have the guidance of a publishing team that can and does steer me so capably as I make my way through to each story’s end, and beyond. I’m grateful to Linda Marrow, Libby McGuire, and Gina Centrello, whose faith in me is invaluable. Wendy Sherman, who has championed me from the beginning, is tops. I appreciate so much the efforts of the crew at Ballantine: Brian McLendon, Sarina Evan, Kim Hovey, Katie O’Callaghan, Christine Cabello, Junessa Viloria, Kate
Collins, Dana Isaacson—and Charlotte Herscher. No less valued are Jenny Meyer and Michelle Brower. It takes a village …
I treasure the camaraderie and support of my writing pals, who know better than anyone else the struggles that take place at the keyboard and behind the scenes.
Most of all, I treasure and thank my enthusiastic family (and not only for the unpaid publicity efforts!). My husband, Andrew, and our four boys get both the pleasures and the pain of living with a “creative type,” and seem to love me just the same.
Random House Reader’s Circle:
What was your inspiration for writing
Reunion
?
Therese Fowler:
This will sound crazy, but the first seed of inspiration was my reaction to the ending of the movie
Something’s Gotta Give
. I wanted to write a younger-man-older-woman story that turned out the way I thought the movie should have.
That gave me a basic plot frame, but the substance of the story really grew from my longtime interest in celebrity, and from my own childhood experiences of growing up yearning for a better life than the one I was living.
RHRC:
This is your second novel; did you find it easier to write
Reunion
?
TF:
Not really. In fact, second novels are widely considered to be harder to write, and I have to agree. There is the difficulty of figuring out how to craft a new story that’s both similar to and different from the first. There is the distraction of the first book’s publication and the activities that go along with it. With the second book you do a lot of second-guessing. Sometimes you have the pressure of a looming deadline. And you can only hope that you can figure out what you did right the first time and do it again.
I’m starting on my fourth book now, and as far as I can tell, the next book is never easier than the one before it. I just worry about different things with each one. Even so, I love writing novels, and feel so fortunate that this is my job. I’m living out a dream that took forty years to come true.
