CHAPTER SIX
August 28
“LIV, CHECK THIS OUT.”
Allie pokes her head in the door of the bookstore. I push a few books back onto the shelf and follow her outside to admire the rainbow window display she’s constructed.
“Looks great.” It does, too—all colorful with big, cotton clouds and silver streamers of rain.
“Good.” Allie pushes her glasses up as we head back inside. “Hopefully it’ll get some people in for the book signing. This local gal writes novels that all have themes about color. She’s coming Saturday afternoon, so we’ll see if that helps traffic on the weekend. We could sure use it.”
“Business isn’t so great, huh?” I ask.
“No. And they’re raising the rent on this building at the beginning of the year, so…” Her voice trails off and she shrugs. “We’ll see what happens.”
“Hey, how was your date?” I ask, in an effort to divert the topic from her dwindling business. “Didn’t you go out with Brent again last weekend?”
“It was great.” Her cheeks get a little pink. “Brent is nice and cute and a great kisser.”
“Can’t go wrong with any of those qualities.”
“You got that right.”
We both look up when the bell over the door rings. A plump, blond woman strides toward us, a sheaf of flyers in the crook of her arm.
“Morning, ladies,” she says. “I’m Natalie Bergman from Epicurean, the kitchen and cookware store over on Larkspur.”
“Oh, I love that place,” Allie says. “I got a bunch of stainless steel pots from you guys and some great napkin rings.”
Natalie beams. “Glad to hear it. You might be interested in this, then.” She waves a flyer at both of us. “We still have a few spots open for a cooking class that starts next week. I was wondering if I could put a flyer in your window.”
“Sure. Leave a few on our counter, too.”
Natalie stacks up the flyers and hands one to me to tape in the window. “It’ll be a great course, held over in the Epicurean kitchen classroom. Tuition includes all supplies and food.”
I skim the flyer. French Cuisine Classics! Learn the techniques of French cooking in this sixteen-week intensive course. All levels welcome. Tuesdays 7:00-9:00 p.m.
“I have the registration forms too.” Natalie digs into her bag and produces another stack of papers. “If either one of you wants to take one.”
“I will.” I’m almost surprised when the words come out.
Natalie hands me the form. “You’ll love the course, really.”
After she leaves, Allie asks, “You’re going to do it?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“Nah.” Her red curls flop as she shakes her head. “I’m not much for cooking.”
“Neither am I.”
I guess that’s the point, though. If you don’t know something, you find out about it. And if you can’t do something, you learn how. Especially if it’s something that intimidates or scares you.
Dean isn’t home when I return to our apartment, but his briefcase is by the door. I remember that he was going to play football this evening, so I leave the flyer on the front table next to a pile of mail and put a frozen lasagna in the microwave.
I head out to tend to my balcony garden. A few blooms still flourish in the late summer sun, but the plants are starting to wither a bit. I clip off dead flowers, sweep up the leaves, and water the plants.
Dean comes back, dirty but cheerful because his team won the game. I’m glad when he comes over to kiss me—even with things all weird and tense between us, he still kisses me often and strokes my hair, and I still rub his lower back in passing and hug him around the waist. While we try to pretend everything is okay.
He heads off for a quick shower before dinner while I set the table.
“How was your day?” he asks, pulling a clean T-shirt over his head as he comes out of the bedroom.
“Good. Worked at the bookstore for a few hours.” My stomach twists suddenly as I take the flyer from the front table. “A woman from a cookware store dropped this off. She asked if we could put it in the window.”
Dean glances at the paper. “Classic French cuisine?”
“I… I was thinking of registering for it.” My heart thumps against my ribs.
“That’s a great idea,” Dean says.
“It is?”
“Sure.” He drops the flyer back onto the table. “Don’t you think so?”
“Well, yeah. Lord knows I’m a lousy cook.”
“So you’ll learn to be a good one.”
“It’s once a week for an entire semester,” I say.
“Sounds like you’ll learn a lot, then.”
“It’s expensive.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I drum my fingers on the table. “So it’s okay if I register?”
“Of course it’s okay.” Dean looks at me with a hint of puzzlement. “You don’t need my permission to take a class, Liv. If you want to register, go ahead. I think it’s a great idea.”
I turn and head back into the kitchen. I wonder if I was secretly hoping he might talk me out of it, but now a spark of excitement lights inside me.
I could actually learn how to cook. The pressing need for that particular skill hits home when I take the burned, gummy-looking lasagna out of the microwave.
Surely I can do better than this.
Dean pauses in the kitchen doorway, shuffling through the pile of mail.
“Anything good?” I push a knife through the pasta.
He doesn’t respond. I glance at him. Concern gleams in his expression as his eyes meet mine.
“Dean?”
He moves closer to me and puts an envelope on the counter. My heart stutters. I recognize the looped handwriting, even though I haven’t seen it in ages.
I pick up the envelope and peer at the smudged postmark. Austin, Texas. That means nothing. She could have been passing through, probably en route to Mexico.
I’m surprised she remembered our address. I’m surprised she even has our address.
Dean settles his hand against the nape of my neck. “You want to open it?” he asks.
“Not really.”
We stand there for a few minutes. Unease simmers in my belly. Finally I rip open the flap, my fingers shaking. I unfold the single sheet of paper, and position it so Dean can read it too.
Liv,
Stella tells me you’re still married. I moved to Florida last year and am now traveling through the south. I could use the money you promised, so please send a cashier’s check care of the address below.
I let the letter fall to the counter and try to think. It’s been, what… three years? I’d been married to Dean for just a few months. We were living in Los Angeles—his last fellowship position before starting at King’s University.
Through some convoluted communication with my aunt Stella, I found out my mother was living less than an hour away in Riverside. I wrote and told her Dean and I were going to be passing through (which we weren’t), and that I’d like to see her. I didn’t expect her to respond. The following week we drove out.
It’d been a brief visit—an hour, tops. Dean was outwardly polite and inwardly seething. My mother was indifferent toward him and hostile toward me. I tried to be composed and did not succeed.
“Guess she doesn’t have my email address,” I say.
Dean pulls me closer, spreading his hand over the side of my head. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. He knows what it’s like, how knotted everything gets inside me. My memories of my father are faded almost to nonexistence, and I had a twisted relationship with my mother.
When I had a relationship with her at all.
All the old emotions roil up into my chest—anger, fear, sadness, inadequacy. I’ve learned to control them over the years, but they swarm up again the minute she makes contact.
Dean wraps his arms around me and shifts so our bodies are pressed together. It feels good, the muscular length of him against me, his arms tight around my back. I rest my cheek against his chest and breathe.
He’s so solid, so secure. He’s been the one constant in my life, the one person who hasn’t abandoned me or given up on me. The one person who would tell me not to give up on myself.
I move away from him first, pressing my lips to the side of his neck. I’m no longer hungry for dinner—least of all microwaved lasagna—and Dean says he had a late lunch anyway, so we both settle in for the evening.
He goes into his office to work, and I change into my nightgown, curl under an old quilt, and find an I Love Lucy marathon to watch.
Lucy Ricardo. She would’ve been a good mother. Nutty, but good. Probably a heck of a lot of fun, too.
The candy factory episode is half over when Dean emerges. He sits beside me on the sofa, and we shift around a little until I’m lying with my head in his lap. He strokes his hand over my hair, then underneath the quilt and around to my breasts.
It’s been two weeks now—longer than we’ve ever gone without some form of intimacy—and my whole body floods with relief and arousal. For a few minutes, Dean rubs my breasts through the cotton of my nightgown. I squirm as my nipples harden, and then he starts to roll them between his fingers. Heat tingles across my skin.
Dean strokes the curve of my hip, gathers the material of my nightgown in his fist, and drags it up to my waist. I can feel him getting hard, and I rub my cheek against his crotch. Urgency spools through my lower body, sparked by my increasing pulse.
I shift again until I’m lying face-up with my head still in his lap, and he’s looking down at me with a hot gaze that makes my blood shimmer. I squeeze my thighs together because the delicious throb is starting. Dean pushes the quilt aside and pulls my nightgown up farther so my breasts are exposed.
His breath escapes in a rush as he palms the full globes. I shiver.
“So damn beautiful,” he mutters.
It’s an incredibly erotic feeling, lying there with my head in his lap and my nightgown bunched up, naked except for my white cotton panties. He starts stroking me again, sliding his hand to rub my breasts, my nipples, and back down over my belly to the edge of my panties. He slips his fingers teasingly beneath the elastic.
“You want to come, beauty?” he whispers.
The husky note in his voice fires my excitement. In response, I writhe against his hand. I’m still squeezing my thighs together because the throb is building, but Dean urges my legs apart.
He pushes his hand beneath my panties, fingers toying through the damp curls, until he reaches the place where my arousal is centered. Then he splays his hand over my folds, sliding one finger easily into me while his thumb circles my clit.
It’s not enough. I buck my hips, trying to thrust myself harder against his hand. A smile tugs at his mouth. He slides his arm beneath my shoulders, his other hand coming around to pluck at my nipples. Fire streams through my veins.
I press my face into Dean’s shirt and moan. My skin is hot, flushed. His breath echoes through his chest. I feel my arousal coiling tighter, and even though I crave that explosive release, I love this moment of being close to my husband again, hearing the pound of his heart against my ear, the heat of his body flowing into mine.
He grips me harder just before the tension breaks, as if he knows I can’t prevent it any longer. His hands and fingers work harder—in me, over me, on me—and then the sensations rocket through me, causing me to choke out his name as I clench my thighs around his hand and ride the exquisite wave.
He holds on to me, easing the last tingles from my body, and then I go limp and just breathe against him while he strokes my damp belly.
After a few minutes, he tugs my nightgown back over my hips. I can still feel his erection and think I should do something about it, but he doesn’t seem to expect anything in return, and anyway I’m drained from all the tension of the past weeks and now this.
So I’m grateful when he pulls the quilt back over me and lies down behind me, wrapping one arm around my waist. There’s not a heck of a lot of room on the sofa for both of us, but it’s a warm, cozy cocoon, and I fall asleep with the movement of his breathing against my back.
I go to the bank the next day and get a cashier’s check. I consider writing a return letter to my mother, but I can’t think of anything to say. I put the check in an envelope and seal it, then scribble the address and drop it in the mailbox on the way home.
It’s unsettled me, the unexpected contact. I try not to think of my mother often, even though she’s still there like a shadow.
I don’t have many pictures of her or good memories either, but the letter ignites flashes of our life together—the hot, vinyl interior of our old car, the floorboards littered with crumpled potato-chip packages and candy wrappers.
The stares of other kids as I walked into what felt like the hundredth classroom. Sitting cross-legged on a beach boardwalk as my mother arranged her bracelets and necklaces for sale. The sound of her moans coming from a stranger’s bedroom.
There’s now a perpetual tight knot in my chest. I try to ignore it, try not to think about the fact that it’s tangled up with all the other confusion that has risen to the surface in the past few weeks.
After Dean leaves the following morning, I clean the living room and do a load of laundry before heading out. On my way to the Historical Museum, I stop to get a coffee at a place on Ruby Street.
“Mrs. West?”
I’m not accustomed to being called that, so at first I don’t respond.
“Mrs. West?”
I turn. Behind me is the blond grad student I’d met outside Dean’s office—Marcy… no, Maggie. She’s looking at me a trifle uncertainly, her pretty face bare of makeup, her hair pulled back into a messy bun. A heavy-looking backpack is slung over her shoulder.
“Maggie Hamilton,” she says. “We met last week. I’m one of Professor West’s students.”
“Yes, of course. How are you?”
“Busy.” She rolls her eyes and sighs. “Grad school is not for the faint of heart.”
“No, I imagine it’s not.”
“Everyone tells me I should be glad I’m working with Professor West, though.” Maggie holds up a finger to indicate that I should wait while she places her coffee order. Then she turns back to me. “You know, because he’s so brilliant, and it’ll be great to have his name behind my work.”
“I’ll tell him you said that.” I step back to add cream to my coffee. “Good luck to you.”
“Thanks.” She grabs two coffees from the server and puts them into a paper-cup carrier along with a few sugar packets.
“I’m meeting with him right now,” she continues before I can leave. “Thought I’d bring him a coffee too. We’re supposed to tackle my thesis topic again, so I figure a little buttering-up can’t hurt.” She gives me a half-grin. “But don’t tell him I said that.”
I shake my head and say nothing. Words jam up into my throat. I move to get some napkins while she waves and pushes the door open with her shoulder, balancing the coffee tray in one hand. I watch as she heads for a blue hatchback parked at the curb.
I’m not jealous—Dean has taught and advised plenty of pretty grads and undergrads, and I’ve never once had reason to be concerned. And nothing about Maggie Hamilton should make me apprehensive, except that she’s a young woman bringing my husband a coffee.
Which is exactly what makes the knot in my chest tighten.
As I walk down the street, I try to push Maggie Hamilton out of my thoughts, but she’s there and Dean’s there and they’re sitting in his office drinking coffee that she brought him and discussing her paper about medieval gynecology or whatever.
When I get to the museum, I hate that I’m giving in to a worry that shouldn’t even exist, but I call Dean on his cell phone and ask if he wants to meet for lunch.
“Sure, but it’ll have to be quick. I have a one o’clock departmental meeting before my Crusades seminar.”
The dullness of his afternoon schedule is oddly reassuring. I work at the Historical Museum for a few hours, typing up a new brochure and showing a group of kindergarteners around. Then I head over to campus.
We get sandwiches from one of the university eateries and sit on a bench in the quad. It’s a hot, end-of-summer day—bright sun, boats dotting the lake, blue sky. Students walk along the paths cutting through the grass, their backpacks hitched over their shoulders and their strides purposeful.
“I saw one of your grad students at Java Works this morning,” I remark. “Maggie Hamilton.”
“She told me.” He pulls a sandwich from the bag and hands it to me. “She’s not one of the better students. Far from it, unfortunately.”
“How did she get into the grad program, then?”
“Her father is a big donor to the university,” Dean says. “The chairperson of the history department, Jeffrey Butler, was also the medieval history professor at the time. He accepted Maggie’s admission, but only worked with her for a year before he retired.”
“That’s why you ended up with her?”
He nods. “She took a year off, then reentered this summer. She thinks she’s entitled to be in the program.”
“Did you approve her thesis topic?”
“Not yet. She doesn’t get that she needs to review the existing research before coming up with her own original question. She’s got a lot of work to do.”
This, too, is oddly reassuring, though I don’t want to examine the reasons why. We eat in silence for a while, sharing a bag of pretzels and watching the passersby.
“How did you know you wanted to study medieval history?” I ask. I know he had a childhood love for the King Arthur tales, but I’ve never known how he got on that career path later in life.
“Junior year abroad,” Dean replies. “I went to Italy and Spain. Worked on an archeological dig. One of the professors liked the work I was doing on material culture and suggested a research project combining that with architectural analyses. I thought it was fascinating.”
“Fascinating?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Studying relics of times past, figuring out what people did, who they were. You’re reconstructing the memory of a society, changing and revising it when you discover something new. It’s important.”
“Aside from King Arthur, why medieval history?”
“It’s when a lot of modern institutions started. Important works of literature, printing press, religion. The bridge between the ancient and the modern worlds.”
I pick the crust off my sandwich and toss it to a nearby bird. “I was a library sciences and lit major because I like to read.”
He chuckles. “I didn’t apply to grad school thinking I’d change the face of medieval scholarship, Liv. Some things you learn as you’re doing them.”
Like parenting, I think, except people like my mother don’t learn anything.
I rub my chest, the knot still tight in the middle of my breastbone. Dean shifts to look at me.
“And?” he asks.
“Oh, hell. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m thinking about a baby because I have nothing else to do. And what if we did have children and I turn out to be like my mother?”
He puts his hand on my back. “You’re nothing like your mother.”
“God knows I did everything I could to prove that to myself,” I say.
“So why are you worried about being like her?”
“Because what if everything I’ve done in my life is to prove that I’m not? I finished high school, graduated from college, met and married you, tried to find a stable job, a career of some sort… all to convince myself I’m different from her.”
“Liv, you are different from her. You have nothing to prove to anyone, least of all yourself. You never have.”
“But I still haven’t done anything, Dean. I went to college thinking I’d start a career, do something important, but instead…”
“Instead you married me.” Tension threads his voice.
“I married you because I love you. I wouldn’t change that for the world. But what if I hadn’t? Would I have made something of myself or would I still be working at Jitter Beans? Or would I have headed off to some other city just like her?”
“What’s the point of wondering that, Liv? None of that happened. And you know I’ll support you in whatever you want to do.”
I toss the rest of my sandwich to the birds. Dean’s hand slips away from me. The ache in my chest expands.
He picks up our empty wrappers and throws them in a garbage can. He stands there for a minute, the afternoon sun glowing off his hair, his expression both pensive and remote.
I love him to my bones, but suddenly I’m wondering what I might have been without him.