Lifelines: Kate's Story (26 page)

Tomorrow,
on her way to her mother’s, she would take the boxes to the library. A donation
from David.

With
the books gone, the study emerged as a sterile room of empty bookcases. Kate
rolled up the carpet and dragged it out to the spare room, then stood on a
chair from the kitchen as she unhooked each panel of the heavy brocade curtains
David had bought to shut out the heat on hot summer days.

The
luxurious drapery didn’t go with clay, any more than the braided rug. As for
the hardwood floor, the man who installed it said its finish was used in bowling
alleys, so what harm if she dropped a bit of clay from time to time?

She
must be insane to tear apart a beautiful—a distinguished room, and turn it into
a potter’s shed. Well, not a potter’s shed, because she seemed to have given up
on pottery in favor of inartistic modeling.

David
wouldn’t approve of clay in their beautiful house, and Jennifer would hate
Kate’s destruction of her father’s study.

David
wasn’t coming back.

Neither
would Jennifer come back, if Kate didn’t find a way to improve their
relationship. The original plan had been for Jennifer to return home for the
summer, but now she said she had a summer job in Seattle. Was it true? Just
last week, she’d asked Kate for more money.

Had
Kate interfered too much, made too many demands and asked too many questions?
She knew confidences came when the confider was ready, and intimacy couldn’t be
forced. Admit it, Kate. You’ve clung to Jennifer when your daughter needs to
establish herself as separate from her parents. Be a wise parent, not a clinging
widow.

Kate
shoved her hair back from her forehead. With the books gone, the desk dominated
the room. She couldn’t use it as a working surface for her clay projects, and
the computer shouldn’t share space with clay dust. Both desk and computer
needed to go.

What
if she said yes to Mac? Would he expect ... how soon would they go to bed
together? Where? Here, in her house? Could she, in the bed where she and David
slept for twenty years?

“Jesus,”
she muttered.

Socrates
turned and walked out of the room.

“I’m
sorry,” she called after him. Apologizing to a dog for swearing?

She
would use the damned desk. It might be genuine mahogany, and a sacrilege, but
it was the right height. She would put plastic over it and use the adjustable
drafting chair from upstairs—the chair David bought Jennifer to work at her
drafting table in the days when she thought she would become an architect.

Why
not bring the drafting table down, too, then put the desk in front of the
window where she could work in sunlight?

Once
she’d emptied the desk drawers into a box, the heavy mahogany wasn’t as
difficult to move as she’d expected. She shoved the love seat out of the way
against the wall, and then pushed the desk right under the big skylight a
couple of feet from the window.

She
stared at her work, panting slightly. Moving David’s desk hadn’t changed its
identity. Had she really thought she could work in clay without remembering her
husband lying under this desk, dead of a heart attack?

Damn
... damn ... damn.

She
would not sit in this room and cry for David. Eventually, grief must end.

She
didn’t know where Socrates had gone, but maybe she didn’t care. She escaped the
study for the garage, but knew she couldn’t stay there. If she couldn’t use the
desk, she must find something else, but the bench she’d been using in the
garage was too high and much too heavy.

She
prowled through the back of the garage, shifted boxes and finally uncovered the
table she and David used before they bought the oak dining set. It looked like
wood, but was actually Arborite.

Perfect.

It
was hell getting it into the study.

No,
not the study ... her workroom.

She
carried David’s computer upstairs to Jennifer’s room and set it on her
daughter’s desk. Then she picked up the drafting chair and closed Jennifer’s
door on the computer.

She
wasn’t sure she liked the label
workroom
, but what else could she call
it? Her studio? Once she got rid of the clutter, it might look like a studio.
She placed the drafting chair against the wall, pushed the dining table beside
it, and tried to push David’s desk out of the office. Socrates appeared in the
doorway, took one look, and disappeared again.

She
wrestled the desk into the hall, but didn’t know what to do with it from there,
so she turned her back and went back into her studio, where the table fit
nicely under the skylight. She put the drafting chair between table and window
to get the sun over her shoulder as she worked.

She
would sell David’s desk or put it up in Jennifer’s room, though she couldn’t
imagine how she’d get it up the stairs. If she had to hire someone to move it,
she may as well sell it. Put an ad in the paper offering the desk, the love
seat, and the braided rug she’d stuffed in the spare room to the highest
bidder.

David
died in this room.

Kate
stood at its center, closed her eyes, and listened. She could feel David here,
but not his death. Husbands died; wives continued the path of life. She could
work here.

She
carried in the box of clay from the garage, then went back for her bowl and the
sponge she used to wet the clay. She put fresh water in the bowl in case she
wanted to stop rearranging furniture and bury her hands in clay. She displayed
her only two works in clay on David’s bookshelves: Socrates, and her father’s
head.

From
the garage, she fetched a box of pottery books from her teenage years. She
would set up the wheel here, too, in case she decided she wanted to throw clay
later.

While
she was taking her Master’s degree in Seattle, she’d done a painting for a
psychology project—a melancholy winter scene to communicate her own sense of
loss about Michael. She unearthed it from the garage and hung it on the studio
wall opposite the window.

Kate
the amateur artist owned this studio.

She
sat on the drafting chair and tucked her feet up on the rail. Too high, but
she’d fiddle with the adjustment until she got it right. The sun’s warmth felt
good on her back. She reached for the damp cloth over her clay, thinking
vaguely that if she weren’t so hungry, she’d work on a piece. She didn’t have
an image in her mind, just a feeling, and she wanted to try to communicate her
emotion into clay.

The
doorbell brought Kate out of her trance. She felt disoriented and realized the
only thing she’d eaten all day was a single glass of orange juice.

The
doorbell rang again. Mac? Mid-afternoon, and she hadn’t figured out what to do
about him yet.

She
had to climb over the desk to get to the front door. She climbed up and slid
along its length, then hopped off the other end.

She
took a calming breath and then opened the door, stepping outside to keep Mac in
the open air. A forty-nine year old woman needed to be cautious about
complicated situations.

Mac
looked rumpled, but rested. What had she expected, predatory lust in his eyes?
This was her friend, the man who’d kept her sane all winter by letting her work
on his house, by talking to her without asking anything in return.

“You’ve
been working,” he said with a smile in his voice.

Last
night he’d asked for a kiss, but now she realized he’d probably wanted only to
ease his loneliness. If she was disappointed, it proved she hadn’t adjusted to
life alone as well as she thought. The natural need of woman for man, the
desire for intimacy after barrenness.

“Kate?
Is this a bad time?”

“Sorry.
I’ve been shifting furniture and I forgot lunch. I’m lightheaded.”

“Anything
I can help with?”

“I’ll
be fine as soon as I eat.”

“I
meant the furniture.”

“Oh.”
She felt sixteen and self-conscious. “It’s a desk.”

“Lead
me to it.”

She
opened the door and he got two steps inside before he saw it jamming the hall.
“Where do you want it?”

“I
thought upstairs in my daughter’s room, but it’s heavy, and the stairs—I guess
the spare bedroom.”

He
followed her up over the desk, then along the hall to the spare room. She
wanted to laugh about the awkwardness of her jammed hall, but needed to avoid
his eyes. When she showed him the spare room, she tried not to look at the bed.

He
said, “We’ll need to move that bed. We can put it under the window.”

When
he stepped towards the bed, she stumbled against it, and stepped back so he
wouldn’t accidentally touch her. He’d asked if he could kiss her and now she
could think of nothing but sex, and she didn’t know if he had the same
thoughts. Not that it mattered. A one-night stand with a younger man who’d
walked out on his wife for the second time had to be a bad idea.

He’s
left his marriage. Your marriage is over, too, and you’re consenting adults.

Shut
up! For Christ’s sake, think of something else, and stop swearing!

Together,
they moved the bed against the window. Then Mac sent her after an old blanket,
which he wrestled under the pedestals of the desk before they moved it. “So it
won’t scratch the hardwood floor,” he said.

When
they moved the desk, she looked back and saw two curved scars on the hardwood
from when she’d moved the desk into the hall earlier.

When
they’d placed the desk in the spare bedroom, he asked, “Anything else?”

“I’m
not sure ... I’ve reorganized the—one of the rooms as my studio.” She led him
away from the guest room and its bed, hoping he wouldn’t notice she was as
jittery as a nervous cat. In the studio, he stood between the love seat and the
table and studied the room.

“I’ll
probably ruin the hardwood floor,” she said uncomfortably, “working with clay
in here.”

“I
wouldn’t worry about it. That’s an epoxy finish. If you do mess it up, you can
sand it down and put a new coat on. In any case, the floor is yours to throw
clay on if you want.”

“Yes.”
She ran her hand over the surface of the table. “I need to figure out something
for my tools.” She’d visited the craft shop several times, and had purchased a
collection of instruments for forming clay.

“I
could build something for you.”

Transferring
her needs from a dead husband to a live friend wouldn’t look after Kate Taylor.
“Thanks, but I think I need to make my own room, and my own tool holder. How’s
the house?”

“Pretty
much finished.”

She
paced from the table to the bookcases. She wanted to fiddle, put more touches
in the room to make it hers. She needed to evict the love seat and replace it
with a single, comfortable chair. Her chair, her room, her future. She was
healing. This room was an important step, but now she needed to take another
step.

She
said, “Mac, can we go somewhere to eat?” then wanted to back out the instant
she said the words.

“I
have a twenty-four footer at Madrona Bay Marina. We could stop at the grocery
store for supplies, cast off the lines and play with the wind for a few hours.”

“A
sailboat?” she squeaked.

“Do
you like sailing?”

“I
don’t know.” Lying about on a sailboat on the isolation of the ocean would be
reckless ... and probably stupid.

She
stared at the table and decided that when she’d sent him away, she would tear
off a new piece of clay and try to shape the wind as it tossed seawater over the
peak of a wave. She knew modeling the wind would be beyond her skill, but what
did it matter? Her clay was for herself, not anyone else.

“Kate?”

It
couldn’t be wise, but she wanted to go. Ever since the night she ruined both
David’s car and her unborn child’s life, she’d tried so hard to be good, as if
she could bring the baby back. Had she been trying to bring David back with
good behavior? She didn’t know, but today she’d desecrated the room where her
husband worked on his beloved book, and for the first time since his death, she
felt truly alive.

When
she was twenty, before she learned to fear her impulses, she would have leapt
at an afternoon on a sailboat with Mac. The trouble was, she’d grown to believe
she couldn’t be relied on to distinguish between healthy impulsiveness and
dangerous recklessness. What would she tell a client agonizing about whether or
not to accept an invitation?

What
if he seduced her out there on the ocean?

So
what, Kate? You can always say no.

Or
yes.

T
he
knock on the back door came as Evelyn placed her steaming cup of instant coffee
on the refrigerator shelf. It must be Noel!

She
pressed her hands to her face. She had no lipstick on, hadn’t arranged her
hair, because Noel had gone to Seattle today. But that knock on the back door
must be him. Kate would come to the front, and Kate wasn’t due until tomorrow.