“Yeah,” said Catherine, looking at her bare thigh and balancing in that direction to allow Nathan to strip her lower half completely. Crossing her two hands in front of her, she grabbed the bottom of her tank top and pulled it over her head so she was completely naked.
Nathan smiled, licking his lips, and held up his arms so Catherine could pull off his shirt for him. “Good,” he said, “good.” He ran his hands and mouth all over her body, stroking and caressing, before picking up Catherine and moving her a few feet, pulling down his own shorts a few inches, and frantically grinding into her on the kitchen counter.
It was quick, too quick for Catherine. He grinned. “If you help me out a little bit, we can do it all again pretty soon,” he told her, breathing into her hair, still inside. “Let’s try the dining table. We won’t even have to use coasters.”
She was delighted to oblige.
Over the space of four days, Nathan and Catherine sampled every room in the house. They slept in his childhood room, screwing several times in front of his Farrah Fawcett poster—his teenage self loved her, he told her—and experimented with different positions in the living room and in the bathrooms. Finally, pleasantly sore, they counted up everywhere they had been, proud of their creativity.
“This,” he said late one night, “is just about perfect.”
Catherine felt wonderful. It was all very domestic-y, snuggling around the house, making out in the hallways, watching television and then enjoying lazy, why-not-now feel-ups during the commercials.
It was so perfect, so special, that it seemed right to keep it to themselves. There’d be time enough to let everyone know. Catherine felt sneaky, just a bit, by not telling Anita. But it was okay—someday it would be a little family joke they’d all share, right? And that would make it all right.
And Nathan was gorgeous. There was no doubt about that. He was clever and amusing and definitely knew how to use his body to please her—and himself.
“The only place we haven’t been,” he told her on their fourth morning waking up next to each other, having wowed Farrah yet again with their ingenuity, “is your bedroom.”
“But Nathan,” said Catherine, whose room was the master bedroom of the apartment. “Are you sure you want to sleep in that bed?”
“Who said anything about using a bed?” he asked, playfully smacking Catherine’s ass a few times and then chasing her, naked and giggling, down the hall.
This, then, could be her future, she thought, sitting on the sofa at the San Remo apartment. Being with Nathan, being a part of Anita’s family. She could be Mrs. Lowenstein the Younger. They’d get his kids for part of the year—maybe the summers and the holidays—and take them to shows and trips to DC to see the Smithsonian and all the brilliant, educational things one should do with children. And then she’d surprise them with tickets to an amusement park and they’d ride the roller coasters and win prizes at the midway games. She’d even, Catherine decided, maintain a warm and loving relationship with Rhea, Nathan’s former wife. Almost former wife. A few papers to draw up. That was all. Oh, that was maybe a bit contemporary, the wives all getting along, but it really was what was best for the children.
She’d seen their pictures, Anita’s three grandchildren by Nathan, many times in the shop over the years when Anita wanted to brag about their latest accomplishment. But now she studied the photos in Nathan’s wallet when he was sleeping off the sex, covering up Rhea’s face with her finger and mentally putting herself into the picture. The photos were a few years old, he said by way of explaining how the kids were younger than he’d described and that Rhea was still there in his wallet.
“It’s not like I can just throw away a picture of my kids,” he said, and Catherine agreed.
It was perfect. Nathan just needed to get his affairs in order, he’d said. And all she had to do now was show him how happy she was and bide her time.
nineteen
Anita was using the minutes between the end of the day and the arrival of the girls for the monthly club meeting to tidy up the bins at Walker and Daughter. Without fail, some customer left a few skeins of the reds in with the purples, or some other colorful mix-up, and Anita enjoyed a quick sort-and-tidy to keep herself occupied. She was just finishing up with some washable blue multi when Dakota and James strode into the shop.
“Anita,” he said. “Would you mind coming down for a quick coffee?”
Dakota was fairly bursting in an effort to stay still. “What are you going to say, Dad?” she asked. For days, she’d been needling him about his refusal to even consider the Italian trip.
“Delighted,” said Anita, as though he’d just suggested the tasting menu at Le Bernardin instead of coffee in a to-go cup. She took James’s arm and the two left the shop to go downstairs.
He didn’t say anything until they’d sat down. And then he didn’t begin where Anita expected, with a list of reasons why Dakota should not go to Italy and look after Lucie’s daughter. Instead, he talked about Georgia. About how hard it was to move on. The way sadness rose to the surface of his thoughts at inopportune times. About his fear that he’d let Georgia down if Dakota made a poor choice. A mistake.
“Finally,” said Anita. “Finally, you’re talking.”
James shrugged. It was hard to say what he wanted, similar to the things he shared with Catherine, but it became easier as he spoke. A better plan might have been to pick a more secluded setting to spill his guts to the older woman who had been Georgia’s mentor, but sometimes what matters more is what is said and not where it is said, right? This is what he told himself, brave enough not to care that strangers might see the tears in his eyes.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that grief is individual,” said Anita. “Quit trying to fit into someone else’s grieving schedule. No one thought anything of the fact that I didn’t find someone else after Stan. Why not? Because I was a dried-up old lady. But you, such a virile man, you should be rushing out and getting married. Well, that’s nonsense. Five years is a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of things.”
“I’m just so . . . at a loss,” said James. “It’s not about relationships. I date. It’s about love. I can’t even conceive of feeling that way again. And when I think of all the time I wasted . . . I just hate myself.”
Anita watched James intently, waiting for long periods of time to see if he was done talking. The last thing she wanted to do was interrupt. This was the chat she’d been waiting for, the one she always promised Georgia she’d be available to have, and there was more than enough time to get to talk of Italy.
“Life is a peculiar set of coincidences, James,” she said eventually. “If Georgia hadn’t been at the park that day, crying because she thought you stood her up, I probably never would have noticed her there. So you did me a great favor.”
“Maybe,” he said. “That’s crazy.”
“And yet it’s the truth. That circumstance led to one of the great friendships of my life. Meeting Georgia and then knowing Dakota saved my sanity after Stan’s death. You see? It would be comic if it weren’t so tragic.”
“On the one hand, I’m glad,” said James. “And on the other, I wish I’d just tried harder. Showed up instead of writing letters. I’m so selfish, Anita, I’d wish for you to never have met Georgia if it meant I could have had all those years with her instead.”
“Of course,” said Anita, not the least bit upset. “Things might have been very different. Sometimes, I like to pretend there’s a version of me living in some other dimension that has made none of my mistakes and suffered none of my pain. I like to think about her sometimes, Other World Anita.”
“I get that,” said James, pressing his lips together to squeeze in the flood of emotions. “Who knows what might be?”
“But let’s look at what we do know about this world,” said Anita. “Georgia’s life—and even her illness and death—led all of us to new things. Different decisions. They seem less attractive from this vantage
point, maybe, less what you wanted. But in the end they’re just different.”
“I was an asshole,” he said bluntly. “And I’m paying with my heart for the rest of my life. It’ll never be enough. When do I get over the loss?”
“When you forgive yourself for all the things you can never change,” advised Anita. “She loved you. You, and Dakota, and Catherine. If Georgia could see your true self, why can’t you?”
“I can’t ever have anyone in my life like that again,” he said with finality. “I would never expect someone to just accept that my sadness is never going to go away. They’d always know they were second best.”
“The sadness is just part of who you are now, James,” said Anita. “You’ll find that person. You will. And when you do, you’ll finally be ready to let it go.”
“What now? Decide to let Dakota go off to Italy and find myself all alone?”
“She’s going to grow up whether you like it or not,” said Anita. “And there will be moments when you might not even enjoy her company. Trust me, it happens. But the love never changes. There never comes a moment when you wouldn’t throw yourself in front of a bus to save her life. Trouble is, you only hurt her when you hold her back.”
“There were some options I thought of,” he said. “Ways to maybe make this summer thing work out.”
“And maybe putting a little space between you and Dakota would help you with your own emotions about Georgia,” said Anita. “You’re smothering her because you’re afraid to lose her mother all over again. That’ll never do.”
“So what now?”
Anita shook her head. “I can’t tell you. Grief has no timetable. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you, and to themselves,” she said. “We grieve loss. It’s not always about death.”
Anita had news of her own, she told James.
“I’m going to let the girls know tonight that we’re holding off on the wedding for a little bit,” she said.
“Nathan?” asked James. But Anita shook her head.
“I have a younger sister,” she began. “And she’s out there. Somewhere. I suppose that, technically speaking, she ran away. But not before I told her to get lost. Years ago, when I thought I was far wiser than I am.”
“Anita, I don’t buy it,” said James. “You’re too good to do anything like that.”
“Like anyone, I’ve learned from my mistakes. It’s a terrible thing, what we can say to each other,” she said. “And, to be honest, from this vantage point the details don’t much matter anymore. Years flash by in an instant and one day you find an old photo and it’s time to stop pretending that a part of your family is missing.”
“So your sister’s alive, then?” James looked puzzled.
Anita reached for a napkin from the dispenser to dab at her nose. “If you can believe it, I genuinely don’t know,” she said. “I spent forty years grieving the loss of my sister, and all that time I could have done something about finding her. But I expected she should come to me. And why? Being open to a reconciliation is not the same as making an effort. That’s why I had you to lunch that day when you returned in Georgia’s life. I needed to find out if you were genuine.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
“We’re more alike than you may know,” said Anita. “And in many ways, you were much braver than I’ve ever been. I don’t think it’s strange you ache for Georgia, James. I still miss Stan and I also love Marty. It’s not a tap you can just turn off.”
“And your sister?”
“Sarah.” Anita pulled out another napkin. “She had wild curly hair. Dark. The day I saw Georgia sitting in the park, crying, I thought, ‘Maybe there’s Sarah.’ That’s what drew me to her, with her knitting. But that was fantasy, of course. Sarah would have been in her late forties by the time I met Georgia. The mind, it can play tricks. And in this case, how lucky for me that it did. So you see? Actions and reactions. Choices.”
“I never knew,” said James.
“Of course you didn’t,” she said, using her hands to pat her cheeks and smooth out her face. “We all typically don’t go around revealing our secret shames. But, sometimes, we are graced with enough awareness to learn from them. Marty and I are going to find her, James. And then we’re going to bring my sister home and have our wonderful wedding. All of us, together.”
Upstairs, the women were getting down to the serious business of eating Dakota’s maple apple muffins, and sampling chocolate-dipped biscotti. Dakota had been up most of the night, baking, trying to ease her stress.
“I almost forgot,” she said. “I also brought ginger sparklers.” The soft ginger cookies were a favorite of Lucie’s daughter, who enjoyed not only the chewy texture of the treat but also the name.
“Speaking of all things Ginger,” said Lucie, “I went looking for her father.” She swallowed a mouthful of muffin and, without even being aware of it, reached into the Tupperware container to take out a second muffin. Just to save for later.
“That’s a little out of left field,” said Peri, nibbling thoughtfully.
“Yeah,” admitted Lucie. “But he was easy to find. He doesn’t work at Sloan-Kettering anymore but at a pharmaceutical company up in Connecticut.”
“Did you find his address?” asked Peri.
“E-mail and home. Right off the bat,” said Lucie. “And then I looked up the cost of his house.”
“Whoa,” said KC. “You are serious, lady.”
Lucie stopped knitting her throw to reflect. “I don’t know. Am I? It’s been several days and I haven’t called.”
“So five years is nothing but three days seems like a long time?” asked Peri.
“And now I know Ginger has a little brother and another on the way,” added Lucie, not answering Peri’s question.
“How?”
“People put photos all over the Web. I found their own postings and I even found ones at Flickr from when they went to a friend’s wedding.”
“How much of your day are you spending on this stuff?” asked Dakota, who was only half listening to the chatter as she wondered whether Anita could work her magic on James.
“Clearly too much,” interjected Darwin. “I think you should talk to a therapist before you make any rash decisions based on middle-of-the-night Google searches.”
“Maybe,” said Lucie. “But I’ve been wondering if I should change that. Send him one of those ‘Dear Sperm Donor’ letters.”
“Those are meant for men who were paid for their genetic material, hon,” said KC. “You’re more of an old-fashioned paternity suit waiting to happen.”
“Oh, I wasn’t planning on suing him for child support,” said Lucie. “That doesn’t seem quite fair.”
“Did you force him to have unprotected sex?”
Lucie laughed. “No, he was a willing accomplice.”
“Then, folks, we have a winner,” said KC. “You can go after him if you want to. You spill it, you pay for it. That’s how the system works.”
“That’s not my motive, KC,” said Lucie. “I’m not looking for a paycheck—I can take care of us just fine.”
“So what, then?” asked KC, who’d always been more direct than tactful.
“I don’t know,” admitted Lucie, who’d been packing for Italy for days, trying to organize her computers and her papers and squabbling with Ginger about why she couldn’t bring more than one suitcase filled with toys. She was tired and confused, and as she packed, she’d spent chunks of time on the phone with Darwin, weighing the pros and cons of reaching out to Will. Even now, she couldn’t decide which option made more sense. “Maybe I’m just weird,” she said now.
“We all have someone we wonder about,” piped up Catherine. “The person who looms large in our imagination, whether they were ever as great as we remember or not.”
“Like you and Georgia,” said Darwin. “You came to the store to find her.”
“And you know what? She’s still the one I wonder about,” said Cat
herine. “Where is she now? What is she thinking? Can she hear my thoughts?”
“I think that kind of stuff, too,” said Dakota.
“Me, too,” said Peri. “I wonder what she thinks of the new paint job, or what she’d say when I order too much inventory.”
“No doubt she’d have prevented me from smoking,” said KC. “There. I’ve come clean. I’m a smoker. A habitual puffer.”
“I don’t think she could have stopped you from smoking,” said Dakota, shaking her head.
“I don’t think so, either, kiddo,” laughed KC. “I’m a lost cause. But as great as Georgia was, she would so kick our asses for spending too much of our lives pining. I just call it like I see it.”
“She’d like to be remembered, though,” said Darwin.
“For sure,” agreed KC. “She had an ego even when she was just answering phones. And she could have just called this store A Whole Bunch of Yarn on Sale Here but instead she put her own name on the door. She was proud, and rightly so.”
“But don’t dwell on her, right?”
“Dwell schmell,” said KC. “Don’t you think Georgia has enough going on trying to get James to let Dakota go to Italy? The rest of us could give her a break, let her spend more time going to the spa or whatever it is that goes on in the ether.”
“You really think she wants me to go to Italy, KC?”
“For sure, Little Walker,” said KC. “Since never has James come to a meeting and asked to speak to Anita. That’s gotta be a sure sign something’s going on.” She reached across the group to do a multi-grab in one lean, snagging both a maple apple muffin and a biscotto. Taking a bite, KC winked at Dakota, who was frowning in concentration, wishing she could hear the chitchat one floor below.
“Okay, new topic, right?” asked Dakota. “So, Catherine, what’s in the bag?” Dakota pointed to the compact shopping bag Catherine had brought with her to the meeting.