Brass Ring (15 page)

Jon opened his appointment book and grimaced. The accessibility conference was next weekend, and he would be hard-pressed to say which event was more critical. He and Claire would have to split the tasks. Not their usual mode of operation, but necessary in this case. “We’ve got a conference in Baltimore next weekend,” he said to Gil, “but one of us will be here to meet with you.”

In the kitchen, he found Claire and Amelia leaning over the counter, studying a recipe card. Amelia looked up when he wheeled into the room.

“Hi, Jon.” She grinned at him. Amelia’s straight, chin-length hair had turned completely gray in the few years since Jake’s death, but the color looked so natural on her and so perfectly matched the smoke of her eyes that he could barely remember its original shade. “Claire had given me her manicotti recipe, and it didn’t turn out right, so she’s changing it for me.”

The thought made him hungry. “It’s been a while since we’ve made that ourselves, Claire,” he said. “How about when Susan gets here? She loves it.” Susan was coming home later this week to pick up her car.

“Sure.” Claire didn’t look up from the card. She was still in her slip. She stole a look at the clock on the microwave, and Jon could feel her agitation from across the room.

“I found the problem,” she said. She walked over to the table and started rummaging around in her purse, pulling things out, littering the tabletop with keys and change and folded-up scraps of paper. “I can’t find my good pen,” she said. A rare line of irritation bisected the skin between her eyes. She turned on the overhead light and held the purse up to peer inside.

Amelia caught Jon’s eye. She nodded her head in Claire’s direction as if to say, “What’s with your wife?” and he shrugged in response, although he knew. Claire had been talking about the play all day, talking about it as though they’d been invited to the White House for dinner. What should they wear? What time should they leave? Amelia was an interruption.

“Have you seen it?” Claire looked at him. “The good pen you gave me?”

“No.” He reached into the basket they kept on the counter, pulling out a dime-store pen. “Use this one.” He wheeled toward her and pressed the pen into her palm.

Claire closed her purse with a snap and jotted something down on the card before handing it to Amelia. “That should do it.” She smiled, but it was not a Harte smile. Not by a long shot, and Amelia knew it.

“You all right, hon?” Amelia rested a hand on Claire’s arm.

“We’re just running so late.” Claire lifted her hair from her shoulders as though it was making her too warm and let it drop again. “Sorry. I’m frazzled.”

Jon looked at the clock himself. The performance was at eight. It was now six-thirty. They had plenty of time.

“Well, you guys enjoy yourselves,” Amelia said. She patted Jon’s hand, nodding again in Claire’s direction. “Get this girl to relax, Jon,” she said.

“I’ll do my best,” he promised.

Claire did seem more relaxed once she was dressed and putting on her makeup at the vanity dresser in their bedroom. She was wearing a red dress he had always liked but hadn’t seen on her for a while.

He was in his closet, pulling a gray tweed jacket from its hanger, when he heard a car on the gravel driveway followed by the slamming of a car door.

Claire, lipstick in hand, looked at him as he wheeled out of the closet. “Who can that be?” she asked.

They heard the kitchen door open and then a female voice.

“I’m home!”

Susan. A couple of days early. He and Claire exchanged looks across the bedroom, and for the first time in what seemed like weeks, Claire flashed him a genuine smile.

“In here, Suse,” she called, and a moment later Susan popped into the room.

“Hey, guys.” She grinned. “I could get a ride home tonight instead of Tuesday, so I took it.”

Claire was on her feet, pulling her daughter into a hug. “It’s so good to see you, honey,” she said.

Susan was dressed in black jeans, chunky black shoes, a green wool jacket and a blue baseball cap set low above her huge, nearly black eyes. Shiny dark hair fell in rivulets over the green hills and valleys of her jacket. She was the world’s cutest kid. Jon grinned and held his hand out to her.

She bent down to hug him, pressing her lips to his cheek. “Where you guys going, all decked out?”

Claire reached out to straighten the collar of Susan’s jacket. “To a play,” she said.

Susan took a step back to study her mother. “That dress is so sexy on you, Mom.”

Claire smoothed her hands over the skirt of her dress. “Sexy?” she repeated. “It’s just a simple dress.”

They were both right, he thought. The red fabric had a shine to it, but the dress buttoned up the front and was plainly cut, almost tailored. On most women, the dress would indeed look simple. But on Claire it was undeniably sexy—the red stood out in flaming contrast to her dark hair, the shimmery fabric clung to her breasts and the slender line of her hips.

“Susie’s right,” he said. “You look terrific.”

Claire waved away the compliment. “Well, I wish we weren’t going out, now that you’re home,” she said to her daughter. “You should have let us know you’d be getting in today. Don’t you have classes tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I do. That’s why I have to go back tonight.”

“Tonight?” Claire’s smile faded.

“You just got here,” Jon said.

“’Cause I could get a ride, Dad.”

“But we expected you to spend a few days with us,” Claire said.

Susan shook her head, and the streaming hair changed course on her jacket. “Can’t, Mom. Sorry. I’m just gonna grab something to eat and head back.”

Claire looked at her watch. “But we won’t be able to spend any time with you.”

Just what she wants
, Jon thought. Susan had planned this well.

“Look, Mom, I wouldn’t have been home at all if I didn’t have to leave my car here because of the storm and had to get it, so this is just like a bonus or something that I’m here at all, all right?”

Jon had to smile. Sometimes Susan’s reasoning was so convoluted, so desperate, that it was nearly impossible to follow. He shared Claire’s disappointment, though. He’d wanted Susan around for a few days this week, wanted the three of them to feel like a family. “Maybe we should skip the theater?” he suggested to Claire. He didn’t share Claire’s enthusiasm for seeing this play, not even after she read him the review from the local paper, in which the performance of the entire cast—and most notably, of Randy Donovan— was deemed “magnificent.”

Claire gnawed her lower lip uncertainly, but Susan didn’t give her a chance to answer.

“I’m only going to be here five seconds, Dad.”

“Of course we’ll skip the play,” Claire said. “We’ll go out to dinner instead—to Anita’s, okay, Susie? Your favorite? Then we can—”

“Mom, please,” Susan said. “I don’t have time and you’ve already got plans, okay?”

Claire’s shoulders sagged and she looked at Jon.

“What time’s your first class tomorrow?” he asked.

“Not till eleven,” Susan answered.

“Could you drive down in the morning, then? Not have to drive all that way tonight in the dark?”

“I have stuff to do at school in the morning.”

“She’ll be fine driving,” Claire said as she ran a comb through her hair. “She’s the best driver. Remember she won that award in high school?”

Susan rolled her lovely eyes. “I’m not the best, Mother. I’m an okay driver. A good one, maybe. That’s all.” She finally unzipped her jacket but still didn’t take it off. “I’m sorry I can’t stay longer. Next time.” She started toward the door. “I’m getting something to eat and then I’m out of here.”

Claire wrinkled her nose at Jon once Susan had left the room. “Oh, well,” she said. “At least she cares enough to not skip her classes tomorrow. And she is an exceptional driver.”

He gave her a smile. “You about ready to go?” he asked, and she was on her feet before he’d finished the question.

He could see no logic whatsoever in the Sunday-night traffic jam that greeted them on Maple Avenue. They inched toward McLean, Maple giving way to Chain Bridge Road. They were still talking about Susan, but as the traffic thickened, Claire grew quiet, and he knew her attention had shifted from their conversation with their daughter to the evening ahead of them.

The cars came to a standstill, and Claire glanced at her watch for the third time.

“We’ll make it,” Jon said. It was only seven-thirty, and they were moving again.

“That must have been the problem.” Claire pointed to a tow truck as it lumbered around the corner, dragging a dented gray BMW behind it. “Poor people,” she said. “Hope no one was hurt.”

After another half-mile or so, he noticed that Claire had raised her purse to the window and was holding it up against the glass.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“The lights in the sideview mirror,” she said. “Blinding.”

Blinding? He glanced in the rearview mirror near his head. Lots of traffic, but nothing out of the ordinary. He looked at Claire again. She was pressing the purse to the window with her palm, and her eyes stared straight ahead. He said nothing. She was doing many things lately that made no sense to him.

She’d spent nearly two hours at lunch with Randy. She’d arrived late for the meeting they’d had scheduled with Tom Gardner, one of the foundation consultants, and she seemed completely unable to focus on their discussion. Even Tom had commented on it.

“Yoo-hoo, Claire,” Tom had said. “You with us?”

Claire had blushed and apologized, but she didn’t lose the preoccupied furrow in her brow, the faraway glaze to her eyes, and in that moment Jon knew that her obsession with Margot St. Pierre had in some way shifted to Margot’s brother.

They’d finally talked about her tardiness later that afternoon, sitting in her office. She apologized again, then told him about the play tickets and how much she wanted Jon to meet Randy. She added, with some hesitation, “I might like to have lunch with him again sometime.” She was sitting behind her desk, doodling with a pencil on the edge of a memo pad. Long, sloping lines, backward Ss, covered the border of the paper. “I’d like to have him as a friend. I’ve never really had an opposite-sex friend, the way you have Pat.”

He thought of Pat, of his friendship with her, a friendship tender, simple, and long-standing. And thoroughly platonic. The comparison gave him some comfort.

He’d worked out at the gym after leaving the office, and each time he thought of Claire having lunch with Randy, he made himself recall his lunches with Pat. Pat was a good listener, the kind of listener who made him feel as if every word he said was significant, who pressed him for details he simply couldn’t believe anyone other than himself would find interesting. He pictured the dimples that made Pat look so young and vulnerable, and he began to imagine Randy looking like Pat—overweight, goofy grin, endearing. Of course Claire would want to spend time with him. And the fact that he enjoyed talking with Pat took nothing away from his feelings for Claire. They were two different people; he received different gifts from each of them. And so he told himself, as he studied the lines in his face in the locker-room mirror, that was the way it would be with Claire and Randy Donovan.

One of the two handicapped parking spaces at the theater was vacant, and Jon pulled the Jeep into it. There was one low step into the foyer of the chapel, which he negotiated easily with a wheelie. Claire picked up their tickets at the small window in the center of the cold foyer and hung up their coats before they made their way to their seats in the second row.

Jon transferred to the padded pew, and Claire wheeled his chair to the side of the aisle, parking it against the wall, out of the way.

The theater was filling quickly, and Jon was glad to have so many warm bodies around him to take the chill from the air. Claire sat next to him and began reading the program. Jon read the bio on Randy. Randy Donovan had been one of the founders of the Chain Bridge Theater ten years earlier, and there was a long list of productions that he had directed or in which he’d appeared. And he was the owner of the Fishmonger Restaurant, as Claire had mentioned. Theater? Restaurant? Was he gay, perhaps? Jon was disgusted with himself for stereotyping the man but comforted by the thought all the same.

He was holding Claire’s hand as the play began. The first fifteen minutes established that the little French town of Dassant was suffering from famine and plague and a serious decline in moral standards. The group of women on the stage lamented their woes, at great length, and Jon found his attention wandering.

Suddenly, a tall, bearded man dressed in a dark suit appeared on the stage. The magician, no doubt. Jon felt the sharpening of tension in Claire’s fingers.

Randy Donovan had total command of the stage. He would fit in no role other than the lead. He stood over six feet tall with a powerful build, his hair and beard jet black, and Jon tried to discern if his charismatic presence was part of the role or simply part of Randy himself. One thing was for certain: It was no longer possible to equate Randy Donovan with Pat Wykowski.

Claire leaned close to whisper to him. “They dyed his hair,” she said. “It’s not actually that dark.”

The play was lost on him. Instead, during the next hour and a half, Jon found himself reevaluating his life, picking apart the world he’d made for himself. He’d built it with such confidence, with such a sense of comfort and ease. He’d thought it was solid. Right now, though, it seemed made of glass.

He was completely dependent on the woman at his side, wasn’t he? She’d rescued him from his dungeon of self-pity when he was a teenager and taught him how to turn his gloomiest thoughts into creative ideas. She had been by his side through everything. Through the fun stuff—traveling, conferences—and through the terrible times as well. The illnesses he’d had. Infrequent, but incapacitating. Taking care of his intimate physical needs. Right now, that thought made him cringe.

He clutched Claire’s hand more tightly, and she squeezed his in return, although her eyes remained fixed on the stage.

She had been his only lover, and he hers. She didn’t know what it was like to make love to a man who could feel the touch of her fingers on his skin, who could achieve an erection with ease. A man for whom climax was not a small triumph.