FOURTEEN
scary small person
ansley
“We made it,” I said to James over my car’s Bluetooth speaker, as I was pulling out of Linda’s driveway in Athens’s charming Five Points neighborhood.
“We sure did,” he said. These last few days had really brought out a different side of James. I was beginning to see him not as the slick, suit-wearing lawyer, but a family man capable of standing by my side when the chips were down—like when I was drowning in poop and finger paint.
Against all odds, I had even managed to put a presentation together for Jack. “You should know that Jack’s coming by the house at three.”
“So what you’re delicately telling me is to keep it clean?”
I laughed. “Exactly.”
It would have been more professional to have our meeting in my shop, but I wanted Jack to be in a home I had put my stamp on from top to bottom. And I knew it was childish, but after seeing him with Georgia a few nights earlier, I wanted him to remember what it was like for us to be more than client and decorator.
At three on the dot, Jack walked through the front door, Biscuit licking his bare ankles with gusto. I snapped my fingers at her. “Biscuit! Stop that!”
Jack laughed as he walked into the living room. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by paint chips, wallpaper books, fabric swatches, and furniture catalogs.
“Wow,” he said. “This is not what the other decorators brought by to show me.”
“They aren’t as brilliant as I am,” I deadpanned.
He nodded. “Clearly.” He paused. “Are the girls having fun?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “It was very, very kind of you to let them use your boat.”
He sat down on the floor across from me. “How are they, Ansley? Are they OK? I want to do something to help. I really do.”
I smiled at him, that familiar warmth running through me. He was such a kindhearted soul, a generous man. That was what had always drawn me to him.
“Caroline is just going to have to feel it, I think. And Sloane . . .” I shook my head, hoping he didn’t hear the crack in my voice. But he must have, because he scooted beside me and pulled me into him.
“I want so badly to be mad at you,” he said. “I want to hate you for not giving me what I want. But then I think of all you’re going through and I understand you a little more. And I can’t hate you as much as I want to.” He kissed the top of my head, and a little laugh broke through my tears.
“This is the least professional interview I’ve ever done,” I said.
“Ansley, we both know I don’t know a thing about being a parent. But I know about you. I know they are your life, but don’t lose yourself in this.” I looked up into his earnest face. “Please.”
“I’m trying,” I said. “That’s why I want to do this house so badly. It will help me focus my attention somewhere other than on Sloane and Adam and even Caroline and James. Their unhappiness is so consuming.”
“How’s your mom?”
I shrugged, and as if she heard him, she called from her room, “Ansley!”
“I’ve got her, Ans,” James called from the kitchen. He walked into my mother’s room, saying, “Ansley is with a client. Remember?”
As I was saying, “She seems better,” James walked in. “I’m sorry, Ansley,” he said, “but I think you’d better come in here.”
I got up, and Jack followed me. Mom was looking around the room and glanced up at me when I came in. “What’s wrong, Mom?”
I could tell she was confused. “Whose suitcase is that?” she asked, pointing to the corner of the room.
“What?” I asked.
“Whose suitcase?” she repeated.
“Well,” I said slowly, “it’s yours, Mom. You’ve had it for like twenty years.”
“It’s not mine,” she said indignantly.
I looked at Jack helplessly. He rolled the suitcase to her. “See?” he said, pointing to the plate at the top of the suitcase.
“Those are my initials,” she said.
“Right.”
“My initials, but not my suitcase.” Then she peered at Jack. “And who in the world are you?”
“Oh my God,” I said. “Is she having a stroke?”
“Ansley, for heaven’s sake, I’m not having a stroke.” Then she looked up. “Jack, why in God’s holy name do you have my suitcase over here? It belongs in the corner.”
Jack looked concerned. I was sure I looked horrified. This was what I had been talking about for months now, what the doctors assured me was just old-age confusion.
“Mom? Do you know where you are?”
Now she really looked confused. “Darling, of course. I’m in the same bedroom I’ve had since I was a little girl at my parents’ house in Peachtree Bluff, which is now your house in Peachtree Bluff, much to the chagrin of your brother John.” She grinned at me. “And this is Jack, the man you have loved since you were a teenager but are too foolhardy to let back into your heart now.”
Jack laughed. “She seems fine to me.”
I sighed in relief. “Thanks, Mom. That’s great.” Whatever it was seemed to have passed.
I wanted to take her to the doctor or at least call, but every time I did, they acted like I was this delusional woman who couldn’t accept that her mother was aging.
“I’m so sorry, Jack,” I said when we were back in the living room.
“It’s OK,” he said. “It’s hard. When that started to happen to my dad, it nearly broke my heart. The first time he didn’t remember who I was . . .” He looked away from me, and I wanted to wrap him in a hug and kiss him. It was one of those moments—not the first and probably not the last—that made me realize what Jack and I had had as kids was nice, but what we could have as adults could be so much more. He was different. I was different. But we still shared so many important things.
“Before crisis strikes again . . .” I said, holding up a handful of swatches.
Jack softened and put his hand up to stop me, the hostility of move-in day behind us. “Of course I want you to decorate my house, Ansley. That was half the reason I bought it.”
I smiled coyly. “You won’t be sorry.”
“I know I won’t be sorry,” he said. “I . . .” He trailed off, smiling. “Do you remember that night we fell asleep on Starlite Island?”
I laughed. “Remember? Oh, I’ll never forget. And we woke up, and it was four thirty in the morning?”
He nodded. “We paddled as fast as we could from Starlite back to the dock, and as we were running across the street, you stopped in front of my new house and said, ‘Man. That one could really shine in the right hands.’ ”
That had been a perfect night, as so many of those young nights with Jack had been—besides the fear that my parents would wake up and kill me for spending the night out with a boy, of course.
“That night, I remember thinking I would give anything to buy you that house, to live there with you and make it our own.”
“Jack . . .” I said.
He shook his head. “No, I get it, Ans. This isn’t me coming on to you. It’s just I could tell in the yard that I had hurt you, that you thought I didn’t remember. But I did. I remember.”
“Well, thank you.”
He smiled. “And, also, Caroline told me to buy it, and she’s a really, really scary small person.”
Between my laughter I said, “Caroline told you to buy it?”
He winked at me. “She had some notion that maybe you would fall in love with the boy next door.”
All those years ago, I had. I had fallen in love with the boy next door—or the boy down the street, anyway. Sitting with Jack now, I had the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I could fall in love with the man next door too.