Skipping a Beat (14 page)

“Next time you watch it, notice how there are these little bits of music that play when a certain character comes on-screen. Like with Luke Skywalker, the music is kind of brave and bright, right? Well, those are called leitmotifs. Wagner is the guy who created the idea of leitmotifs, but he did it for opera characters.”

“Seriously?” Noah leaned over and picked up a stick, then flung it far out into the river. Bear sprang off the rock and landed in the water with a terrific splash. “Cool. Is Wagner still alive?”

“Nope,” I said. “He died a long time ago.”

“Hmm.” Noah pondered this for a moment, then said, “Hey, I’ve got a trick question. Say you go out to dinner with two friends. You each pay ten dollars, but then the waiter realizes he overcharged you because the bill was only twenty-five dollars. So the waiter goes and takes five bucks out of the cash register, and he gives you each a dollar back, but he keeps two dollars for himself as a tip. So you’ve each paid nine dollars, and he gets a two-dollar tip. But that’s only twenty-nine dollars total. What happened to the missing dollar?”

I blinked rapidly a few times.
“What?”

“Think about it. If you can’t figure it out, I’m usually here after school. I’ll tell you the answer next time.”

“Next time?” I repeated dumbly.

“I’ll bring more chips,” Noah said. He tossed the stick into the water again. Didn’t that dog ever get tired? Didn’t the kid ever stop talking?

Noah looked over at me and grinned. And when the dog’s head broke the surface, I could swear he was doing the exact same thing.

Eighteen

“IS IT WRONG TO want to bitch-slap a saint?” I asked Isabelle a few hours later as I cradled the phone between my ear and shoulder and popped a medicinal chunk of dark chocolate into my mouth. I’d come home and taken a long, hot shower after hanging out with Noah, but by the time I’d gotten dressed and dried my hair, Michael still hadn’t returned from the office.

“Trouble in paradise?” she asked.

I wandered into our living room and sank onto a couch, wincing as I bent my scraped knee. “How do people
do
it?”

“Oh, honey, I’ve been waiting for us to have this little talk. First the man takes out a condom, but only after buying the woman lots of dinners and complimenting her shoes. But of course he can’t like them so much that he wants to walk around in them, because that would mean we’d need to have a whole different kind of talk—”

“How do people stay married?” I interrupted.

“You’re asking me? I was married for six minutes, and I think we were both drunk for five and a half of them.”

“Do you know anyone who’s happy? Who’s really in love with their spouse?”

Isabelle considered it. “Posh Spice? What does she have to complain about?”

“But didn’t Becks hit on their nanny or something?” I asked.

“I think that was Jude Law. What is it with hot celebrities lusting after their nannies anyway?” she mused, just before breaking into an off-key and off-lyric rendition of “Just a spoonful of medicine makes the sugar go down.”

“Stop it,” I ordered. “Don’t even think about taking up a new career. As either a singer or a nanny.”

“But those Beckham boys need a helping hand at home,” she said. “I’d institute shirtless Fridays for all fathers in that house. Think of the laundry they’d save. Nudity is very Scandinavian, you know.”

“They’re British,” I said.

“Same continent.”

“Take Dale and Bettina,” I said. “What brought them together? Do you think they were ever in love?”

There was a long silence.

“Perhaps they’re not the best example,” Isabelle said. “You weren’t just thinking of them having sex, were you?”

“Thanks for putting that image in my mind,” I said. “Hang on while I go dip my brain in a bucket of bleach.”

“Look, marriages are strange,” she said. “Did I ever tell you about the woman I know whose husband cheated on her for four years? They worked it out, if you can believe it. She says she loves him more now than she ever did before.”

“She forgave him?” I asked incredulously.

“To hear her talk about it, they started over. And this time around, they’re doing things differently. They go see a counselor every week, even when things between them are good, then they go out for dinner afterward. It’s a little annoying being around them, frankly, because those saps are always holding hands.”

“I don’t know if I could ever be that forgiving,” I said. “It seems kind of weird. I mean, with Michael—he had a fling. But four years?”

“She says they almost became strangers in their first marriage. She’s glad the affair happened, in an odd kind of way. It ripped them apart for a while, but now they’re happier than ever. She said if she had a choice—to live out their lives in their old marriage, or go through the pain to get to this one—she’d choose this one any day of the week.”

“But I bet her husband didn’t give away all of their money,” I said.

“Yeah, he’s loaded,” Isabelle said. “Actually, I think most of the money is hers. Hedge funds.”

“I never dreamed Michael would be this successful,” I said slowly. “When we moved here, I figured we’d both make enough money for a house and a couple cars, maybe take a nice vacation every year. But I never imagined … this.”

Even though I knew Isabelle couldn’t see me, I swept out my hand to encompass our living room in cool tones of blue and cream and rose, with its three separate groupings of furniture. “Someday it probably
will
feel like a dream, though,” I said, almost to myself.

“So he’s definitely going through with it?” Isabelle asked.

I sat up abruptly. “Why do you ask that?”

“I was just wondering if after his … experience … started to wear off, if he might rethink things.”

“Isabelle, that’s just what I was thinking,” I said excitedly. “It makes sense, right?”

“I don’t know,” she said, drawing out the words. “Maybe not, if what happened to him was powerful enough. I was just wondering.”

I lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. “Yeah. I guess we’ll find out. So what are you up to today? Still thinking about Beth?”

“Every minute. She should have the letter by now. I know her parents said they were going to tell her about the adoption, so it’s not like I’m going to come as this big surprise. Or maybe I am; maybe she doesn’t think about me at all. Anyway, I’m trying to stay busy. In fact, Jake just drove up, so I need to run—literally,” she said. Jake was Isabelle’s personal trainer, but he was fifteen years older than she, and he had the wiry body of a long-distance runner. Since he was a competitive swimmer, he also had the unsettling habit of shaving his body. “It’s just not right,” she’d once complained. “Isn’t having a crush on your personal trainer a requirement for women? I mean, how else do you motivate yourself to show up?” Instead, Jake was madly in love with Isabelle and aggressively spotted her when she lifted weights.

“Are you wearing spandex, you little tease?” I joked.

She snorted. “I’m just hoping he doesn’t make me do endless squats like last time. He was panting more heavily than I was. Plus I’m just narcissistic enough to like the attention.”

“Maybe it’s better than getting a hot young guy so you don’t have to primp before you work out,” I said. “Think of the time you’re saving.”

After we hung up I lay there for a minute, then stood and stretched my arms over my head, scanning our living room as if seeing it for the first time. I tried to imagine what my life would look like if I left Michael. I’d decorate my own house, cook my own meals, take my car to Jiffy Lube to have the oil changed. Maybe I’d start dating, and fall in love again. I might even remarry. Michael and I would become nodding acquaintances, the type of people who exchanged holiday cards but didn’t talk for the rest of the year.

I was surprised by how much the thought hurt. I pictured myself running into Michael decades from now—his dark curls gone gray, a different wedding ring gleaming on his hand as it closed around the handle of a cane—and I squeezed my eyes shut against the image.

“Hi.”

I turned and saw him standing there. I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t heard him come in. We stared at each other for a moment, and I could feel him gauging my mood. But I only felt numb, and very, very tired; my turbulent emotions seemed to be giving me a temporary reprieve.

Then my stomach rumbled. “You said something about dinner?” I asked.

Michael nodded. “I’ll even cook, unless that scares you away.”

“Okay,” I finally said, and I smiled despite myself. A temporary truce it would be. “All I’ve had since breakfast is a handful of potato chips, and I’m starving.”

Nineteen

THE SECURITY BUZZER RANG at 9:00 the next morning, taking us both by surprise.

“Are you expecting anyone?” Michael asked, and I shook my head. He stood up and walked to the video screen hidden inside a closet by the front door. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and his feet were bare. Michael had, without a doubt, the world’s ugliest feet—big and knobby and stark white—and he’d always been embarrassed by them. He had drawers full of expensive socks, and he even wore them to bed. But apparently now he was embracing all of God’s creations, even the ones with unsightly bunions.

“Is it a Jehovah’s Witness?” I asked brightly. “Hang on, let me get you a tambourine and you two can run off together.”

Michael gave a laugh-snort, then pressed a button and spoke through the intercom: “Can I help you?”

I stood up and walked over to look at the screen. It was a woman driving a small four-door car that looked like it had seen better days. “Oh! Sorry! I, um, made you these,” she said, struggling to thrust a wicker basket out through her car window and holding it up toward the camera. “They’re homemade. Oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies. I hope you aren’t allergic to anything. I didn’t put in nuts just in case. I know it isn’t much, but I just … I wanted to give you something …”

“Do you want to come up to the house for a minute?” Michael asked, and she nodded.

And why not? I wondered. Why not act as if it was totally normal to have a stuttering stranger show up on your doorstep with a basket of cookies? In Michael’s world, maybe it was, just before unicorns started high-stepping in a chorus line and the skies rained down lollipops.

Michael held open the front door as the woman got out of her car and approached us. She appeared to be in her early thirties and was plain-looking; her face was round, and her eyebrows were so blond they seemed to blend into her white skin. She looked around our entryway as her mouth hung open like a B-list actor expressing surprise. I knew just how she felt; I’d done the same thing the first time we walked in here while the real estate agent hid a smile and started mentally spending her commission.

“My twin sister died,” the woman blurted. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even tell you my name … It’s Sandy.”

“Come sit down for a minute,” Michael suggested.

“I don’t want to bother you.” She hesitated.

“You’re not. Please, come in.”

He led her to our library, which was smaller and cozier than our living rooms. It had walls of bookshelves and a cluster of furniture forming a half circle around a slate fireplace. She sat down on a buttery yellow leather couch, and Michael sat across from her. I followed them in; it felt disrespectful to do anything else. But I sat as far away from him as possible, on the other end of the couch.

“I’m—um—I used to work as a paralegal, but I quit when Shannon was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I took care of her. Now I’m a substitute teacher.”

Michael nodded and kept his eyes trained on her face.

“Shannon and I felt like twins—we
were
almost twins,” Sandy said. “Irish twins, I guess you’d call it, since we were born eleven months apart, and the funny thing is, we really are Irish. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. It’s just still hard, you know, to talk about it.
Her
. To talk about Shannon.”

Sandy took a shuddering breath. “I’m telling this all out of order, aren’t I? Our parents died when we were in college. It was a small plane crash. Dad was a pilot in the Air Force before he retired, and he kept a little plane for weekend rides. It was their twenty-second anniversary, and they were out by themselves. After that, Shannon and I just had each other. We were always close before, but … then, we were the only family we had.”

“You must miss her terribly,” Michael said, his voice gentle.

Sandy nodded and squeezed her eyes shut. “I ache with missing her. I’m not married or anything, so … I don’t know, sometimes I think it makes things worse that I’m not married and don’t have kids, but then other times I don’t think anything would help.”

“I’m so sorry,” Michael said.

“Thank you,” Sandy said. She didn’t try to stop the tears this time. They overflowed and slid down her soft-looking cheeks. “No, I mean,
thank you
. All that money you’re giving away … I read you were giving some to cancer research. I can’t believe you’re doing this. You’re going to help so many people, people like Shannon. You’re going to save lives.”

Michael reached over and took Sandy’s hand. “I hope you don’t mind my telling you this,” he said. “But I believe your sister is safe and loved.”

Sandy’s head snapped up, and she held her breath for a moment, and suddenly, I realized this was the real reason she’d come.

“You do?” she whispered. “You think she’s still … around … somehow? And that she’s okay?”

“I do,” Michael said. “With all of my heart.”

“Is that—is it because that’s what happened to you?” Sandy asked. “After your heart stopped?”

“Yes,” Michael said simply. And the honesty and the—well, I guess you’d call it the
faith
—filling up that one word didn’t make Sandy’s tears stop. But something in her eyes changed, softened.

“I just wish I could tell her I love her,” Sandy whispered. “I wish so bad I could hug her one more time.”

She was crying even harder now. I stood up and found a box of tissues and put them down next to her.

Michael nodded. “You will,” he said. “Someday. I really believe you will. After you’ve lived a long time, and maybe had those kids, and done all the things you need to do here.”

Sandy put her face into her hands and her shoulders shook, but her weeping was different now. Softer. After a moment, she stood up.

“Thank you,” she said again, quietly this time, and she left without another word.

After a few moments I went into the kitchen for some chamomile tea, but I couldn’t get Sandy’s face out of my mind.

She believed Michael. She didn’t even know him, but she trusted him completely. Yet I couldn’t. I’d never believe Michael had gone to another dimension, or heaven, or whatever he wanted to call it. How could you go to a place that didn’t exist?

But maybe the other things he’d said had a hint of truth, I thought as I stirred honey into my tea. Like that I cared so much about money that it had somehow warped me. He hadn’t used those exact words, but I knew what he meant.
It hurt
, I thought in surprise. I wasn’t a pampered snob—if anything, I felt more insecure now than I ever had before in my life—but others might see me that way. My shyness in fancy social situations could look like haughtiness: Did people watch our driver open the car door for me to slide inside and sneer, not seeing me flush with embarrassment as I tried to pull the door shut behind me, having forgotten once again I was supposed to let the driver do it?

Suddenly I remembered a client named Margaret, for whom I’d thrown an eightieth birthday party at the request of her family. It was a big bash—she had seven kids and twenty-four grandkids—and I’d handed her a glass of golden, bubbly champagne as she stood there, surveying the room full of smiling faces and getting ready to slice into a giant coconut cake.

But the knife had stayed still in her hand as she’d turned to look at me.

“Inside, I still feel sixteen,” she’d said, almost in wonder. “How can I be eighty years old when I’m still a girl?”

I’d looked into her faded blue eyes with the deep wrinkles bracketing them, and suddenly felt a kinship with her. Secretly, that was exactly how
I
felt: What people saw when they looked at me didn’t reflect who I was inside. At my core, I was still a girl without money, a person who worried she didn’t fit in, someone who walked around with a silver sliver of fear buried deep inside her, like a bit of shrapnel even the most skilled surgeon would never be able to remove. Whenever I woke up at night, it took me long moments to reorient myself, to realize that we weren’t in our old apartment with the roaches and peeling linoleum floors, and that I didn’t have to cook spaghetti three nights a week to save money.

I shook off the memory and took a sip of my tea. It was too hot and it burned my tongue, but I barely felt the pain. Because by then I was walking back toward our library, and I saw Michael still sitting on the couch.

Something about the way a shadow darkened his face, the tilt of his head … All in a rush, the day came back to me when I’d come home to see my father sitting on a couch in the exact same position, confessing to my mother how he’d thrown away everything we owned.

Michael thought I cared too much about money, but he didn’t understand, I thought, gripping my mug so tightly my fingers hurt. Why couldn’t he understand? Yes, it was horrible when my father gambled all our money away. But even worse, so much worse, was everything else I lost when my father abandoned me. When he stopped loving me.