As the maitre'd walked up to him, he noticed a beautiful blonde woman straight in front of him who looked exactly as he'd remembered Aunt Alison when he was a boy. But of course, this woman could not be her, she was far too young. And, yet, after he'd given Aunt Alison's name to the maitre'd, he was led straight to the beautiful woman's table.
"Aunt Alison?" Michael asked.
"So it
is
you," she replied. "Please sit. When you walked in the door, you fairly took my breath away, you look so much like Anthony when he was your age."
Michael smiled. "When
I
came through the door, I thought you looked like you, but I told myself that this woman is entirely too young to be Aunt Alison. I mean, I hate to discuss a lady's age, but you look maybe thirty-two, and you, ahm, can't be."
"No," his Aunt Alison laughed, "I sure cannot be thirty-two. But thank you, Michael, that's so charming."
The waiter came up. Michael took a moment to look at the menu and they ordered.
"So tell me more about yourself and your family. What you're doing here, and so forth," Alison asked enthusiastically when the waiter left.
"I've got a job designing computer chips in Orange County...."
"Did your uncle arrange that?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. And that's why I'm up in this territory, I'm trying to iron out some problems with a chip that's in production. Then, like I said, I remembered that you were living here."
"Yes."
"I can't get over how you haven't changed at all!"
Aunt Alison smiled. "That is the most charming compliment. But, to tell the truth, I've changed considerably. I'm independent, I'm much stronger. I like myself."
"Of course you like yourself. How could you not like yourself? Everyone likes you."
"Everyone
else
liked me because I was sweet and mousy. But I hated myself that way. Now I'm strong and that's the way I like it. But enough about me, I want to hear more about you!"
"No, it's
not
enough about you. I want you to tell me everything about yourself too," Michael insisted.
The two of them talked for two-and-a-half hours. Alison had gotten serious about her art, had gone to art school, and now had notoriety as a Bay Area artist. She currently had work in a show that was traveling the national museum circuit, as well as in several local galleries.
"Nothing like a divorce to make a woman realize she's got talent," she affirmed.
"
If
she does," Michael mused.
"Everyone had a talent, or a skill or a desire. But some people need events in their lives that force them to get at it and either work at what they know about themselves, or find out what they
don't
know."
Michael nodded, appreciating her philosophy. "I'd love to see some of your work."
"I thought you'd never ask!" she answered, with a twinkle. "If you're free, we could go now. And I won't have to fight all these spoils of shopping in and out of taxis." She gestured to the pile of shiny department store bags by her side.
"Let's go!"
Alison directed him to a small but very charming Victorian house in the Nob Hill district.
"Just put the things down anywhere, I'll deal with them later," she said when they came in.
"Nice place, Aunt Alison," Michael said, looking around at a wonderland of art from floor to ceiling as he carefully laid all the packages he'd carried in for her on the floor.
"Thank you. Although there are a lot of things I might be inclined to say
against
your Uncle Anthony, what I can say
for
him is that he's always insisted on my financial security.
"Well, let's see, I guess I could give you a mini tour." She hung her wrap in the hall closet, then took him on a tour of the little house, including the charming box of a back yard where a riot of colorful flowers grew.
"I love flowers," she said. "I like vegetables, and of course, they're more practical. I grow a few tomatoes and cucumbers, but I really love to grow colorful, fragrant flowers."
When they returned to the drawing room, the late afternoon light cut an angle through the bay window that faced the bay. All the walls were covered in original art by famous, or eventually-to-be famous, or never-to-be famous artists. Michael wandered about, taking it all in, fascinated.
"My taste is pretty eclectic, as you can see."
"But where's
your
work, Aunt Alison? I don't see your signature on anything."
Alison pointed to a stand with a portfolio in it. "I've some things in there. I always think I'm going to put up something of my own. I always think that the work in progress will be the one I'll feel like putting on my wall. But by the time it's done, I'm working on the next one in my mind, and the previous one pales. On and on it goes like that. Meanwhile, I'll go to a show, see something by an artist that I think is spectacular, and that's what ends up on my walls. I'm a funny old lady, aren't I?"
"No. At least, you're not old, but you
are
amusing."
Thumbing through the portfolio, Michael stopped short on a pencil sketch of what surely had to be a child Sage holding hands with Anthony. Michael pulled it out. "Is this....?"
"Sage and Anthony. Do you know Sage?"
"As it happens, yes, I've met her."
"She must have been about nine there. She came and stayed with her aunt for a couple of weeks that summer. Who could know the tragedy the near future held for that dear child? Less than three years after that drawing her parents died in a plane crash."
"Yes, I know," Michael answered quietly.
"How is she?"
"What little I know of her, she's... okay. I don't know how much you keep up with what goes on with those people...."
"Frankly, Michael, I avoid it."
Michael suddenly realized that his presence might pain his aunt. "I didn't think... does my being here... are you uncomfortable?"
"Do I seem uncomfortable? No, my dear, I'm very, very happy to see you, and that you looked me up, and that you're here. Don't take my meaning wrong. There's only one person that I don't want to encounter personally... or even mentally."
"Oh. Uncle Anthony, I suppose."
"No, not your Uncle Anthony. Sage's Aunt Victoria."
"Really? How strange, I was just going to tell you, I guess you don't know... I was just going to tell you that she died fairly recently, a few months ago."
Aunt Alison, who had been standing by Michael moved to the love seat, slightly pale.
"Are you okay?" Michael came over to her, concerned.
"I'm fine... I... I'm fine. It's just that when you know you've wished someone no good in your heart and then you hear they've died, it's startling. Be careful what you wish, dear nephew of mine, it may surprise you by becoming fulfilled."
"I hope you don't mind my asking, Aunt Alison, but I've gotten this feeling that there was something uniquely bad about Sage's aunt from everyone but Sage. She's devoted to her."
"There are two things I can say about Sage's devotion to her aunt, one, that that devotion is central to Sage's character. She's very true. I noticed that about her even when she was a child. Her loyalties are inflexible. And two, I am quite certain she doesn't know everything there is to know about her aunt."
"Well, my curiosity is about as piqued as it can get," Michael said. "Would you mind filling me in?"
"No, Michael, I don't mind. I think the time has come. Sage's Aunt Victoria is, I guess I should say
was
a very bright and very beautiful woman. But she always had a plan in mind. You had the feeling around her that she was weighing and measuring every situation, every person.
"She could never to go a party and just have fun, or just get to know people because they were interesting. She socialized in order to size people up, to dissect their inter-personal relationships, to see where she could finagle her way in and get... whatever it was she wanted. More property, more money, more things.
"Her poor husband. We were always so mystified how he managed to get rich in the
first
place, let alone keep his hands on it. He was, candidly, not very bright. As long as he was alive, things were all right. But the moment he died, Victoria really went into action. And her target was my husband."
"Uncle Anthony?"
"Yes. I watched him go from hating her, which he did when Evan first married her and brought her to that hill, to admiring and believing the act she put on when Evan died. As if she were stricken with grief and as if she could barely endure the loss. Then I watched as he fell in love with her."
Michael studied his aunt, sitting in the fading rays of the bay window sun, looking over her shoulder through the window. He could feel her pain, remembering these events, and he could feel her strength in having learned to live with the memories.
She continued, "she'd call him at all hours to go to her place and do anything from check a legal document to repair a fence. Eventually he'd go over for other reasons. I knew it immediately. Anthony is not a man who can divide his loyalties. Once she sank her claws into him, he was lost.
"To this day I don't know how I endured that awful situation as long as I did. I stuck it out for a couple of years, everything in limbo. Anthony refusing to give in to Victoria entirely, that is, he wouldn't divorce me. Victoria, not letting what hold she had on him go. And me, not doing anything either. Just holding on, and hoping either he'd come out from under her spell or that she'd get bored and find someone else.
"I've realized since then that it was really a contest – for her – against
me.
She didn't care about Anthony other than that he was rich and good-looking. But her real emotions were stirred up in her efforts to win Anthony over me.
In the end, I was the one who showed the real strength. Anyone would say that it was Anthony or Victoria who are the strong characters and I'm the weak one, but I was the one who said, enough, I don't want this anymore. I don't want only a part of my husband, I don't want to be any part of Victoria's psychological battle to prove herself the most desirable woman.
"I just woke up at four a.m. one morning and thought, 'I'm not going to do this any more. It's humiliating and it's consuming me.' I got out of bed, packed a few things, then flew here and got a divorce.
"Well, it seems that Victoria didn't find that very interesting, because, as my grape vine had it, as soon as I left, she very much cooled toward Anthony."
Michael came and sat in the chair by Aunt Alison's love seat. "He became available, so why bother?"
"Exactly."
"But why didn't Anthony try and get you back then? He must have seen Victoria for what she was."
"I don't know, Michael, except what I
do
know of him, he's a person who, once he feels humiliated, and is not sure of the territory, does not want to discover that he is making a further nincompoop of himself. I, of course, was not about to go back to him and get Victoria started all over again."
"How strange," Michael said.
"Yes. Life is often like that," Alison agreed. "But tell me about Sage. Is she as beautiful a woman as she was a child? What kind of a person is she, with Victoria's influence, did she stay sweet, or did she turn into a conniver?"
"She's an incredibly beautiful woman, Aunt Alison... remarkable. And, although I've had very little interaction with her, she seems to me to be as sincere, honest and straight forward a person as anyone would hope to meet in life."
Michael tried to decide if he ought to mention the relationship between Sage and Anthony. He decided to keep it to himself for the time being. Nothing was certain, and, given that his aunt thought of Sage as a little girl, it almost certainly would cause unnecessary pain.
Alison stood and moved about the drawing room, turning on antique lamps with mellow flickering lights, as evening shadows stole into the corners of the room. "It sounds," she said in her gentle voice, "as though you care for her in a personal way."
"It does?"
"Yes. Not so much in the words you're using as in the quality of your voice."
"Never mind me," Michael said off-handedly. "I can't be held responsible when I talk about women, I've been trapped in a chip production lab for so long, I'm 'cell' crazy."
His aunt studied him for a long moment until he became uncomfortable. Okay, he wanted to say, you've caught in a white lie, but I'm a bit between a rock and a hard place.
"So what about you?" he said instead. "I mean, what about you
now
? How do you feel about Uncle Anthony now?"
"Getting personal back at me, eh? I do still care about him. I've dated a lot of people, probably a lot more than Anthony has, but I've never fallen in love again. There's nothing like that first love. I believe people look all their lives for it, if they lose it. But even if a person looks forever for someone to replace that love, only first love is first love. I sometimes find myself thinking that Anthony and I should never have been apart. But what is,
is
, you can't undo it."
"Maybe you could start over," Michael suggested.
Alison came and sat on the arm of Michael's chair and put her arm around him. "For a computer nerd you're pretty romantic."
"There's a bumper sticker in there somewhere – 'computer nerds are romantics too.' Or maybe I'm not really a computer nerd."
Chapter 15
T
ina met Sage outside the social science building after their evening class.
"How are all you ologies?"
"Excuse me?"
"Archeology, anthropology – ologies."
Sage chuckled. "My ologies are great. I love them."
That's good. You wanna go out and play now?"
They came to Sage's new car.
"I've got to get straight home and study, although I'm so tired, I don't even feel like driving. Of course, in my zippy, new, little red car it's a lot more fun than in that old limo."
"But think of all the attention you're missing that you used to get when you drove the limo!"