Ex’s and Oh’s (9 page)

“Subconsciously I think I’ve been looking for a man like my grandfather ever since.”

“At least we won’t be competing for the same guys. You can hold out for the saints and I’ll take the sinners.”

Caroline never knew what Tori was going to say. “You like sinners?”

“Not abusers or criminals or creepy guys, but I prefer guys who are at least as bad as I am.”

While Caroline was wondering about that, Tori led the way back through the building. After making sure everything was locked up tight, she said, “What else was in the box that day?”

They fell into step, starting toward the realty office a few blocks away. “My father’s watch and some framed pictures and photo albums. My father was an amateur photographer, and my mom and I were his favorite subjects. Every time I looked at them that summer, I cried and cried. The hardest part was coming to the end where there were pages left unfilled. A psychiatrist would probably say I began compartmentalizing my life the day I put them away. Lately, I’ve been allowing myself to imagine how different my life might have been if my parents’ plane hadn’t
crashed.” Caroline placed a hand over her little paunch. “I want more for my child. Someday, when my baby is old enough, I’ll tell him or her all the stories that make up our family history.”

“Do it before he’s fifteen. Or it’ll be too late.”

They reached the realty office in silence. Before Tori went inside and Caroline unlocked her car, she said, “Does Andy know how often you think of him, how much you love him?”

Tori looked straight ahead.

“Don’t give up on him, Tori. I have to believe that when it comes to our children, it’s never too late.”

Andy’s back was to Tori, but she could tell from the tenseness in his shoulders that he’d heard her. He pretended to look out the window. He got a bag of chips out of the pantry. He reset the clock on the microwave. That thing was always off.

Eventually he ran out of diversions, but he still didn’t look at her.

“Come on, Andy. Where would you like to go. Europe? Spain? How about Vegas?”

“Yeah, right, Mom.”

She was trying to entice him to take a vacation with her. Most kids would jump at the chance to go to Vegas,
and Europe; oh, she would have been dancing around the room at the prospect. “It’s summer. Your dad would give you the time off.”

He was shaking his head before he’d given it any thought.

Accepting that, she tried a different tack. “It seems like we never see each other anymore.”

“I’m here all the time.”

In your room, she wanted to say. In your own sad silent world.

“You’re dressed up. You going out?”

He still wasn’t looking at her, which made the observation all the more telling. “I don’t have to. We could go somewhere. Are you hungry? Or we could take in a movie. I know guys your age don’t want to be seen with their mothers. We could go to Traverse City where nobody would know us.”

“It’s Friday night,” he said. “I’m riding my bike to Dad’s.”

“I could drop you off there later. Hey, we could invite one of your classmates to go with us.”

She knew she’d said the wrong thing the minute it left her lips. Andy drew himself up to his full height, and yet he seemed to retreat before her eyes. Taking a water bottle from the refrigerator, he mumbled a goodbye of sorts.

She knew he was mad. But he never raised his voice. Most of the time she had to go in search of him to see if
he was even home. The only sign that he was gone now was the quiet click the door made as it closed.

When it comes to our children, we can’t give up.

Yeah, right, Tori thought. Caroline had meant well, but she didn’t know shit about Andy’s problems. Nobody knew how deep this rift went. Except Tori and Andy.

She wandered aimlessly through her house. She didn’t know how Andy stood the silence. She hated it. She always had. She needed people, noise, action, excitement, anything but silence. Pattie would be busy with Dave and the kids, but Tori considered calling Nell or Elaine or Caroline.

Her reflection in the mirror across the living room startled her. Damn, she looked good. Sometimes she forgot just how good.

Wetting her lips, she smiled demurely at her image, imagining that some attractive man was smiling back. The girls were great. They were fantastic. If she needed a shoulder to cry on, an ear to bend, or unconditional acceptance, she would call them. But she needed something they couldn’t give her. She needed to see that first spark of interest in a man’s eyes, needed to feel strong arms around her, and to know someone thought she was beautiful, even if she knew the truth.

She forced the need down for now. But she knew it was only a matter of time.

Caroline
was becoming accustomed to the scent of disinfectant and stale breath that permeated the manor, as the staff and residents call it. It hadn’t made her queasy in a week. Other than a brief episode of morning sickness every day upon arising, she felt wonderful. It was Tuesday. She hadn’t heard from Tori since Friday when they’d looked at those vacant office spaces. Caroline wanted to talk to her, but so far, their only communication had been through voice mail.

Caroline took long walks every day. She read voraciously and indulged in an occasional nap. And every day she visited Karl.

She’d found that if she arrived in the morning, he was more alert. True to form today, he was awake when she entered his room. As he had each day this past week, he waited to smile until after he introduced himself.

She accepted the handshake. Inside, she felt a pang of disappointment because he didn’t know they were family.
Still, she arrived every morning at ten, and every morning she asked, “Shall we find some sunshine, Karl?”

As always, he gave the invitation some thought before accepting, and after a shaky rise to his feet, he began the long walk, steadying himself with his cane. Many of the other men wore knit pants with elastic waists. Most shuffled through their days in their bedroom slippers. Karl dressed every day in old but freshly laundered slacks and pressed, buttoned shirts. His shoes and belt were old leather, his hair sparse and white, his hands age-spotted. He was a nice-looking old gentleman, and undoubtedly had been a handsome devil in his youth. Caroline hadn’t planned to feel such tender affection for him.

He always tired halfway into his walk to the courtyard. With quiet dignity, he accepted a ride in the wheelchair she pushed. She spoke to several residents and staff along the way, but Karl said nothing until he reached their destination, and then only after she spread the quilt on the ground near his chair in the dappled shade of a flowering crab-apple tree.

“Tea, Karl?” she asked, taking a Thermos and two teacups from her woven bag.

“Only if it’s Earl Grey.”

The brew steamed as she poured. And every morning as she watched him take that first sip, she felt a sense of wonder, for Earl Grey had been her grandfather’s favorite
tea, too. Her
other
grandfather’s. She wondered if Henry had thought of Karl often through the years, and vice versa. Had Karl known that Anna died young? Caroline had so many questions. She’d tried asking a few of them a few days ago, but they’d only confused and frustrated Karl. She hadn’t brought them up again.

“Are you my new secretary?” His voice was raspy and his finger shook slightly as he pointed at the legal pad she’d been using to take notes of his stories.

“Actually, I was an attorney in Chicago for twelve years. I’m thinking about opening a law office here in Harbor Woods.”

“You’ll want to look into reciprocity between Michigan and Illinois. I imagine there’s an exorbitant fee, but it would be more efficient to waive into the Michigan State Bar than to take the exam again.”

Caroline stared at the old man. Reciprocity was a term used by attorneys. “How did you know that?”

He looked at her blankly. “How did I know what?”

“How did you know about reciprocity between states?”

“Rep what?”

She was adjusting to the way Karl’s mind worked. He could recall in vivid detail events that had happened ten, fifty, even seventy-five years ago, but couldn’t recall something he’d told her moments earlier. One of the kindly
aides compared an aging mind to the intricate workings of a clock whose gears slipped. “Sometimes,” the other woman had said, “everything lines up, and the clock strikes the proper hour, but most of the time you get something else entirely. There’s a delicate beauty in the rhythm of it, if you look for it.”

Caroline was learning to look for it.

She was also learning to take each day as it came. She enjoyed her morning visits with Karl. The residents whose rooms overlooked the courtyard kept bird feeders outside their windows. Flowers bloomed everywhere. Hummingbirds and finches and butterflies made the gardens home. Sitting in the sunshine on this warm July morning, Caroline was discovering a new way to understand, a new way to get to know a kindly, gentlemanly old soul.

“There’s Shane,” Karl said.

He was full of surprises today, but he was right. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Shane talking to a nurse on the other side of the courtyard.

“Do you know him?” Caroline asked, curious.

Karl sipped his tea thoughtfully. “I used to hear his parents yelling from my house. Sometimes they screamed at each other, sometimes at Shane. That boy was always into something. Once I went out to get an onion and fresh tomato from my garden, only to discover they’d all been pulled.
All the carrots, too. Everything was laying on top of the ground, ruined. I knew right away who’d done it. He couldn’t have been more than five or six years old, but Shane admitted to it right away. I didn’t know what to do with him. It was either take him over my knee or take him fishing. Ever since then, fishing’s all he wants to do. Haven’t known a moment’s peace since, but at least my garden thrives.”

Caroline laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Everything.” Looking into Karl’s watery blue eyes, she sobered. “Life, I suppose.”

Caroline was a little surprised to see Shane waiting for her when she left the manor. He’d dropped in to say hello to Karl, but hadn’t stayed. She’d thought he’d left the nursing home twenty minutes ago.

It wasn’t even noon yet, and already the sun was so hot the asphalt parking lot felt soft beneath the soles of her shoes. The local meteorologist was calling it the first heat wave of the summer, and was predicting that it would last through the upcoming holiday weekend. The weather was big news here.

Shane was opening his car door when she reached her vehicle, which was parked next to his. This was the first time they’d spoken since she’d gone to the marina last week.

“I’m curious about something,” she said. “I noticed books on Karl’s bedside table. Does he like to read?”

Shane looked at her over the roof of his car. “No.”

“But he used to?”

“Yes.”

Sometimes talking to Shane felt like conducting a cross-examination. Despite that fact, understanding dawned. “So now you read to him,” she said quietly.

He shrugged, something he often did when she came to close to something personal.

“What are you reading to him now?”

“
The Old Man And The Sea
is one of his favorites.”

“He likes Hemingway?” she asked.

“A lot of people up here claim a connection to Hemingway, who spent summers near Horton Bay when he was a boy. If you want the locals to know you’re a tourist, call it
Horton’s
Bay.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

He didn’t get into his car. It was as if he had something on his mind. That, at least, wasn’t surprising. She knew his situation, and the man had more than his fair share of problems. A little while ago she’d been picturing an urchin pulling up vegetables in his neighbor’s garden. That urchin had grown into a man who read the classics to a dear old friend. “Karl’s lucky to have you.”

He shrugged.

“What did Karl do?” she asked. “For a living, I mean.”

“He was a lawyer for forty-five years. I thought you knew that.”

Caroline shook her head. “All I know is what you and Karl, and Anna, have told me.”

Shane nearly singed his arm where he attempted to rest it on the top of his car. Being careful not to touch the hot roof, he looked at Caroline over the top of it. Until now, he hadn’t thought about how it would feel to have to make the kinds of discoveries she was making. He’d always known exactly where he came from. He knew his father had taken up with other women from time to time and that his mother drank too much. In the summertime when the windows were open, everyone on their street had known. Shane knew he resembled his uncle in Wisconsin, and he knew that if he needed anything, either his sister down in Baton Rouge or any one of his cousins would come through. He couldn’t imagine
not
knowing those kinds of things.

“Do you think Karl ever guessed the reason Anna married his best friend?” she asked.

Sweat ran down the side of Shane’s neck as he answered. “If I’d received a letter like that, I would have wondered.”
He thought about the care meeting he’d just had with Karl’s doctor. During a recent examination, Dr. Anderson had noticed something unusual when he’d listened to Karl’s heart. The subsequent EKG had revealed a leaky valve. Time was running out for his old neighbor.

“Besides the letter,” she said, “did you find anything else in the lighthouse?”

“Sixty years’ worth of dust.” He squinted as he looked at her, the hot breeze ruffling the collar of her shirt at her neck. “I searched the entire place, Caroline. That diary isn’t there.”

“That means that everything I’ll ever learn about Karl will come in the form of the brief memories he shares over morning tea. He must have received that letter while he was in France, and yet he hid it in the lighthouse. I wonder why.”

“Maybe he felt it belonged there.”

“That’s what Anna’s first entry said, too, and yet it’s not there.”

“There is another place it might be,” he said, then silently cussed himself out for opening his mouth.

“Where?” she asked.

“In Karl’s house. Maybe he’s the one who found it.”

She wasn’t asking anything of him. He could have gotten in his car and gotten the hell out of there. Instead, he
heard himself say, “Would you care to conduct a little search sometime?”

He hadn’t meant to offer. Caroline knew, because he practically bit through his cheek after asking. “When?” she asked.

“Lately I have a long list of things I’m not doing, but my to-do list is wide-open.”

She wasn’t surprised he wasn’t going to let her live that down. “Imagine that. When?” she asked again.

“The week before the Fourth is always hell at the marina. How about next week. Tuesday?”

“Tuesday, it is.”

He finally got in his car and drove away. He didn’t look back. She knew, because she watched to see if he would, not that it would have mattered. His beard hid his expressions anyway. Perhaps that was why he wore it.

She didn’t know what was wrong with her. Here she was, sweltering in a parking lot that smelled like hot tar, wearing the most unbecoming clothes she owned—she couldn’t even zip up her pants all the way anymore. And she was wondering what Shane would look like in the middle of her bed, wearing nothing at all. Last night she’d cried while watching a movie. She never did that. The books assured her it was normal to be emotional right now, due to fluctuating hormone levels. She wondered if
it could have anything to do with these fantasies. She didn’t have any idea who to ask, which was fine, since she had no intention of acting on the fantasy anyway.

On Friday, Caroline watched the salesclerk ring up her purchases. The impeccably dressed woman looked extremely happy. She was probably working on commission.

“Didn’t I tell you Auntie Tori would take care of everything?” Tori asked, nudging Caroline’s shoulder with her own.

Eyeing the stack of clothes being placed carefully into bags with sturdy handles, Caroline said, “Remind me never to go shopping for maternity clothes with someone who looks like that.”

The clerk smiled. Clearly, she wasn’t buying this “Auntie Tori” business any more than Caroline was. That was nearly all Caroline hadn’t bought.

Everything in the boutique had been designed by two sisters who, when pregnant themselves several years ago, had found that the fashions available at the time looked as if they came from a tent and awning shop. The sisters had decided to design their own line, and the pieces were fabulous.

Tori had an eye for fashion, and had helped Caroline select most of today’s purchases. Some were fluid and were
designed to conceal her growing waistline. Others were fitted and would accentuate it.

“Now,” Tori said, helping Caroline carry the packages. “For the right shoes.”

“Did you say shoes?”

Caroline reached the sidewalk, laughing.

Something was happening to her this summer. For most of her life she’d been dynamically focused and completely goal oriented. She’d had Maria and her grandfather and a few colleagues with whom she’d been friendly. Not one of those colleagues had contacted her since she’d left Chicago. It was as if she’d stepped off the face of the planet, fallen through the stratosphere, and had landed here in Harbor Woods. All because her grandfather hadn’t thrown away a letter written long ago by the girl he’d loved and married.

“Do you believe in fate, Tori?” Caroline studied the other woman closely.

All morning she’d been trying to find a way to broach the subject of Shane. She and Tori had talked and they’d laughed and Tori had teased Caroline about her growing waistline, but there hadn’t been an opening into which she could slip Shane’s name casually. She didn’t want to blurt it out, for doing so would make it seem as if there was more
to the relationship than there was. Outside of one brief fantasy, there wasn’t much to tell.

“I believe we create our own fate,” Tori answered. “And I believe in shoes. Are you coming or aren’t you?”

Caroline started to follow, only to pause, dizzy.

“Are you all right?” Tori asked.

The question took Caroline back to her grandfather’s house in Lake Forest when she’d been sure she would explode if one more person asked her that. She no longer felt like exploding. And it wasn’t difficult to breathe. She
was
light-headed, however. “I think it’s this heat,” she said. “Would you mind if we shop for shoes another time?”

“Do you need a ride?” Tori looked concerned.

Reaching for the bags Tori carried, Caroline said, “I think I’ll slip into something cool, such as the restaurant on the corner, and have something cold to drink.”

“In that case I’d better keep moving,” Tori said. “Are you coming to girls’ night tomorrow?”