When I hang up the phone, I turn to my new roommates and dust off my hands. “Sold the house.”
“Already?” Lise says.
“Yeah, he’d been ready to buy for a while, just needed the right house. And he wants everything in it, too!”
“Boy, are you lucky,” Joni says.
I look into her friendly, open face and tell her I know I am. But a few minutes later, I go up into my room, close the door, and sit on my bed, my hands clasped in my lap, and in my chest is a raggedy sadness. Outside, the sun hangs at the horizon, then drops. Day is done.
I’M LYING AWAKE, THINKING ABOUT DENNIS. IT’S BEEN OVER A week and no word from him. I wonder if he just wanted to say he was thinking of me and that’s all. If on a languid day or a sleepless night he was flipping through memories and chanced upon me. I wish I’d kept a copy of the letter I sent him. Was it too much? Did it offend him somehow?
I turn on my side, flip my pillow, but it’s no use; I’m wide awake. I went to sleep early, at nine o’clock, exhausted from having started work in the garden, and fell asleep right away. Then I woke up an hour later.
I should know better; I’m a creature of habit. I like to go to bed at eleven and get up at seven; everything works better that way.
I turn on the light and consider going downstairs, where someone is watching television, a movie, it sounds like. But I don’t want to watch television, I want to go out onto the front porch and sit.
I put a robe on and go downstairs. It’s Lise watching television, and when she sees me, she looks up and smiles. I point to the porch, then go out there.
I’m lying in the hammock swinging gently back and forth when Lise comes out. She has two cups of tea, and she hands me one. I like how Lise makes tea: no bags for her; she uses real tea leaves.
We sit in silence for a while, and finally I say, “Well, I think I made an ass of myself.”
“Why do you say that?”
I tell her about hearing from Dennis, about the letter I wrote to him, how I’ve heard nothing back.
“But you’ve moved!” she says. “And the mail is so slow. He probably wrote you and you just haven’t gotten it yet.”
“Still, if he were really interested, don’t you think he’d call?”
Lise shrugs. “From the way you described him, maybe not.”
“I’m going to ask,” I say, suddenly.
“What?”
“I’ll be right back.” I go up and get my wooden box from my closet. I bring it out onto the porch, put it on the wicker table, and open it. I light the black pillar candle that’s in there, and take out my favorite deck of cards.
“What’s all this?” Lise says, looking into the box. “Oh, the I Ching,” she says. “I’ve heard about that. What else have you got in there?”
I show her and she pulls her chair up to the table. “Well, get busy asking,” she says. “And when you’re done, I’ve got a question, too.”
Funny how drawn people are to the notion of fortune-telling, how susceptible they are to the thought of something supernatural offering a deeply personal revelation. The most pragmatic, the most sophisticated women used to fawn all over Cosmina, wanting her to tell them things they couldn’t hear any other way.
I teach Lise how to make certain spreads with the cards, how to draw the Runes from the bag and place them out before her. I tell her how to throw the coins for the I Ching, how to record the straight and broken lines. She won’t tell me her question, but she’s not satisfied with any of the answers she gets; I can see the disappointment in her face. “Maybe you should read for me,” she says.
“How about your tea leaves?”
“Can you do that?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Finish your tea and let me try.”
Lise finishes her tea and hands me her cup. I tip it to the side and stare, just like Cosmina used to do. Well, there they are. Tea leaves.
I look up at Lise.
“What?” she says. Her face is serious in the candlelight, wanting.
I look down into the cup again, at the tea leaves. Most of them are grouped together, but there are a few apart, migrated up the sides of the cup.
“There has been a division,” I say. “A separation.”
Lise says nothing, but she leans in closer, so I know I’m on the right track. “But what has pulled apart is not really apart; it is made of what it separated from.”
I don’t look at her, fearful of her saying, “Oh, I see. Did you hear me yelling at Sandy?”
But she says nothing. She just sits. Waits. I tip the cup more, and some of the tea leaves that have separated join the larger mass. “A movement, a change of position, and things come together again.” I look up at her. “Faith.”
She starts to say something, but then the screen door bangs open and Renie and Joni come out. They’re in their pajamas: Joni in a white nightgown, Renie in sweatpants and a T-shirt.
“What are you doing?” Renie asks.
I point to the box. “Telling fortunes.”
Joni pulls a chair up. “Oh, boy. Can I play?”
I take a little offense at the term, but at its heart, I suppose we are playing.
Renie looks into the box and snorts. “Wait, let me put a sign in the window,” she says. “SPECIAL: PALM READINGS, FIVE DOLLARS. How many of the words should I misspell?”
But she sits down. Eventually, she, too, has a question, though she won’t tell us what it is. “Pull a card for me, Cece,” she says.
“You should pull your own,” I tell her and she says no, I should do it. I spread the cards and offer them to her.
“You do it,” she says, and so I pull one out and give it to her. I hand her the book so that she can read the interpretation. She reads it to herself. Then she throws the book onto the table. “What a bunch of crap,” she says, and goes inside.
The rest of us look at each other, and then I pick up the book and read aloud. “It says it’s time for her to nurture herself or another,” I say, and Joni says, “Oh, right. Nurture. That’s Renie, all right. All sweetums and nookums.”
I read more bits and pieces: “If you refuse to be cared for, it may be time for you to admit that you are human and in need of such care. If you are lonely, consider meeting with someone who means a great deal to you.… If you have been ignoring how you truly feel, if you have lost your deepest connection to yourself, it is time for a reunion.”
“Yeah, lonely or alone, that’s Renie,” Lise says. Then she looks at me and says, “Oh!”
“What?” I say.
“You pulled the card,” Lise says. “That message is for you. Reunion. Go and see him!”
“Go and see who?” Joni asks.
ONCE AGAIN, THERE IS NOTHING IN THE MAILBOX FROM DENNIS. I check my email again just in case he might have called my publisher to get the address, though why would he have done that when he has my cell number?
There is no email from him. Of course there isn’t.
There is, however, an email from Alice Green. She’s my lecture agent, and I love her. She takes great pleasure in doing her job, and she does it well. With her, I never have to worry about a thing: the travel arrangements, getting feedback from the people to whom I’ve presented a program, being paid promptly. The venues she finds for me are almost without exception really good. But I emailed her yesterday, telling her to not book any more events for me, that I’d let her know when I was ready to accept engagements again. Now she’s asking me to call her, and so I do.
“You’re okay, right?” she says.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Really. I’m making some changes to my life. Pretty radical ones. I sold my house and practically everything in it and moved in with some other people. I’m taking some time off. I think I might want to work a lot less, maybe stop altogether. I want to do some traveling, some volunteering …”
“You know,” she says. “I had a friend who sort of did what you’re doing. She just up and left her life, really. Quit her job, sol
d her house, moved to a much smaller place. She said she wanted to be a citizen of the world, travel all over, not have to worry about taking care of anything. But after eight months, she was miserable. Because what she’d found out was that she loved taking care of things. And she loved her house. She hadn’t realized how noisy or intrusive living in an apartment could be. She even tried to buy her house back, but she couldn’t. So she bought another one, just down the block from her old one.”
“Scary story.”
“Well, right. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No, I’m glad you did. I know you only told me out of concern. But listen: I love where I’m living. It’s not a life I would have predicted for myself, but I love it! If things end up not working out after all, I’ll move again. But for now, it’s perfect.
“And about the house … I loved my house, too. But the other night I drove over and walked around my old neighborhood and looked at the lights on in my old place and I didn’t feel any regret at all. And all the things that I could see from the sidewalk that he had rearranged … they just looked nice in there. I wished the guy who bought all that stuff well.
“When I got back to my new house, everybody was making ice cream sundaes in the kitchen and I just felt … glad. And here’s something else: it wasn’t a sudden decision, really; it had been brewing for a while. It took my doing it to understand how long I’d been wanting to do it, if you know what I mean.”
“Hmmm,” Alice says. “Now you’ve got me thinking!”
We laugh, and she says, “Let me know when you want to come back. I’ll bet you could craft a great lecture about the very thing you’re doing.”
I thank her, and then call my editor. This will be a harder call, I think. But when I do speak with Celeste and tell her I’m taking a break from writing, she says, “Good for you. It’s about time.”
“Really?”
“Really. I’m so glad you’re doing this, Cecilia. I feel you’ve needed it for some time.”
“But …” I laugh, flustered. “I guess I thought you’d be disappointed. You know, good old reliable Cecilia, turning in her manuscripts year after year.”
“Of course I love publishing you. But I care more about you than about your books. To be honest, I’ve felt a kind of sadness in you, and I was beginning to get worried.”
“A sadness? Well, as you know, my best friend died.”
“Yes, and again I’m sorry for that. But I think all this began before that. You haven’t taken a break for … well, for as long as I’ve known you.”
“Huh. That’s what Penny told me, too. Before she got sick, she kept telling me to slow down.”
“Maybe I should have told you the same thing. But listen, I want you to take all the time you need. You know all of us here love you and wish you the best.”
After I hang up, I go to the website for the Arms. I click on Volunteering and look at the various possibilities. I don’t know exactly what I’m interested in doing, and the photos of the patients make me a little nervous. But I’ll go for an interview and find something I can do. I promised.
And speaking of promises, after the garden is in, maybe I’ll travel a bit. I’ll go on a road trip. And maybe I’ll just drop in on Dennis when I do. Surprise.
Or maybe that’s not a good idea.
I close my eyes.
What have you got to lose?
“Pride.”
What good has that ever brought you?
“What if it’s clear that he doesn’t want to see me? And I will have come all that way!”
Then you will get back in your car and see what else there is to see.
I look out the window into the clear blue sky. Here comes the drone of an airplane, the sound of a jogger running by. Here I am in the world, free.
I go outside and get in my car, planning to take a ride over to Summit Avenue, to see what the Arms looks like. But halfway there, I turn around. Not yet.
IN THE KITCHEN, JONI IS MASSAGING CHICKEN BREASTS. SHE USES a big heavy mallet but she doesn’t pound; she moves the smooth side of the tool across the meat like she’s ironing it. Her hair, that explosion of long golden curls, is corralled by a green-and-white bandanna.
“Chicken schnitzel,” Joni tells me, before I can ask.
“Still no letter,” I say, sliding into the booth.
“Maybe he’s taking his time, thinking of what to say.” Then, looking up, her blue eyes bright, she says, “You don’t think he’s on the way here, do you? You sent him that postcard with your new address, right? What if he just shows up?”
It’s not impossible that he would spontaneously appear, but I doubt it, and I tell her this.
“He might also be really busy with something,” she says. “Don’t take it personally.”
“Oh well,” I say, sounding more dejected than I mean to.
“Why don’t you go there and surprise him?”
“You know, I was just thinking of that. I want to take a road trip, anyway. And then I could sort of drop in on him. I’m really curious to see what he’s like now!”
Joni reaches for two eggs, cracks them at the same time, then starts beating them. “It’s so powerful, old flames. I once found a treasure trove of letters from a guy who was one of my boyfriends in high school, letters he’d written to me the first year I was in college. They were in a suitcase I kept doll clothes in when I was a little girl. I found it in the basement one day and brought it up, thinking I’d clean it out and give it to my daughter for her dolls. But when I opened it up, there were all these letters. I’d forgotten I’d put them in there.
“I brought them into the bedroom and sat on the bed to read a couple, and I ended up reading all of them. I remember it was a rainy day, lots of thunder, and I had the bedside light on and I was wearing a lilac-colored cardigan that had a hole in one elbow and I had an apron on over that—I’d just finished braiding egg bread and I was letting it rise—but I read those letters and time just fell away. I was back there with Pete Massotti, state wrestling champ. I was at Guffy’s Drive-in, sharing French fries with him; lying in the backseat of his car and making out with him; getting all dressed up to go to the prom with him and wondering if I should go all the way that night—which I did not—and, sweet boy that he was, he didn’t pressure me. When Erin came home from school, when the front door banged open, I looked up from one of those letters and it was like I was coming out from under anesthesia.
“I came downstairs, and Erin, she was seven then, said, ‘What happened?’ And I … I just didn’t know what to say. She stood there, staring at me. I must have looked like some kind of zombie. She asked if she could go next door and I said yes and then I went to check on the bread and it had over-risen but I put it in the oven anyway and then I went back upstairs and gathered up all those letters that were spread out on the bed and I … Oh God, I threw them away. Isn’t that awful? I threw them away. I wish I hadn’t done that. But they were so powerful, they scared me. I loved my husband, I was so happy with him, but I swear, if Pete had shown up right after I read those letters, I might have run away with him. In my apron and my sweater with a hole in it.”
She rolls a lemon on the counter to soften it, cradles it in her hand to sniff it, rolls it some more. I love watching Joni in the kitchen. For her, cooking is a practical sacrament. At work, she makes things whose names I can’t pronounce and wouldn’t know even if I could pronounce them. She showed me Ultramarine’s menu for the season and I told her it should come with a glossary. But here at home she makes simpler food, healthy comfort food, and it’s always delicious.
“Don’t you wish you could see him again?” I ask.
“Who? Pete?”
“Yeah.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I think maybe it was just one of those times when a memory picks you up and carries you off like dandelion fluff. I’ll tell you what I would like to do. I’d like to go on that road trip with you. That would be fun; I love road trips.”
/> “Come with me!”
She laughs. “I can’t leave work. I can never leave work! I’ll probably die at work. But you should go, definitely. Look, he contacted you first!”
“True. Do you want some help cooking? Got anything easy I could do?”
“You want to frost the cake?”
“We’re having cake?”
“Yeah, chocolate cake and cream cheese frosting. It’s a healthier version: whole wheat pastry flour, buttermilk, canola oil, brown sugar. The frosting isn’t so healthy, but it’s a birthday cake; you have to let up a little when it’s a birthday cake.”
“Whose birthday?”
“I picked this day to be Renie’s birthday. You have to surprise her; she says she doesn’t like you to make a fuss over her birthday, but she kind of does like it. So what we do is pick a random day every year, and voilà.”
“I didn’t know; I didn’t get her anything.”
“She doesn’t like presents. She really doesn’t, that part’s true. One of us always gets her a joke present, though; Lise is doing it this time. We do sing the birthday song and light the candles. You’ve got to sing the birthday song and light the candles, no matter what age you are. On my dad’s last birthday, we put eighty candles on the cake, and it melted all the frosting!” She dips a chicken breast into the flour, then into the egg, tenderly. It looks like a mother bathing her newborn.
“So where is the cake?”
“On the back porch, cooling. It should be ready to frost by now.”
I go outside to get it, put it on the kitchen table. It’s beautiful, nearly black, and it smells so good. “Where’s the frosting?”
“Not made yet. You can make it. Stick of butter, cake of cream cheese, a little salt, a little vanilla, powdered sugar; nothing to it.”
“How much vanilla? And salt? And powdered sugar?”
She stares at me, her hands on her hips. Then she says, “Okay, I’ll make it; you frost it.”