Absence of Grace (4 page)

“You plan to marry her?”

“Who?”

“The lady in red.”

They stared at each other until Paul looked away.

“What’s her name?”

He cleared his throat. “Amber.”

The line, ‘amber waves of grain,’ from “America the Beautiful” popped into Clen’s head. Once again, she struggled not to laugh.

Paul scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Hell, I don’t know. She can’t cook.” His face reddened, so perhaps he realized how self-centered that sounded.

He shifted his feet, then he began to read the paper she’d handed him. “Whoa. You’ve appropriated more than your share.” Only five minutes in and he already had the aggrieved spouse act down pat.

“Actually, I’ve been extremely generous.”

“Oh, come on, Clen. There’s no need for this.” A wheedling note distorted his rich baritone. “We make a good team.”

Not only unfaithful, but delusional. “You do realize you didn’t say, ‘Don’t leave me because I love you.’”

“That goes without saying, babe.”

“Yes, it’s pretty much gone without saying for thirteen years.”

“I don’t recall hearing it all that often myself.”

“You may be right.” She paused, gazing at him with more attention than she had in a while.

He glanced away.

“So tell me. Why did you marry me, Paul?”

“What?”

“Did you love me?”

“Of course.”

“And now you don’t.”

He rubbed his forehead then glared at her. “What is love, anyway?”

“You must have some idea if you claim to have felt it.”

“Hell’s bells, Clen, stop being so damn analytical. That’s the problem, you know. Love is...excitement, spontaneity, the thrill of the chase.”

“And then you caught me, and the thrill was gone.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Is that why you didn’t want children?”

He looked away from her. “I thought you didn’t want them. And I was good with that.”

“No, you didn’t think that at all.”

He shifted, turning sideways, as if to leave, and yet he stayed.

“I think love is unselfish, intimate, honest.”

“There,” he said. “That’s it in a nutshell. We see the world in fundamentally different ways.”

“How odd we never noticed.”

Possibly, it was the most honest they’d ever been with each other. Too bad they’d left it until it no longer mattered.

Paul pulled in a breath, then sighed and dropped his gaze from hers. “What are your plans?” He asked the question in the same offhand way he often asked how her day had been.

She’d always suspected he didn’t care about her answers, and so this last time she didn’t try to give him one. There was no longer any point. They’d become that couple in the Audrey Hepburn movie,
Two for the Road.

Question: What kind of people don’t even try to talk to each other?

Answer: Married people.

1982

Seattle,
Washington

Pam greeted him with a kiss, then led him over to where the guest of honor was seated. “Grannie, this is Gerrum Kirsey. Gerrum, my great-grannie Adelaide.”

He accepted the hand Adelaide offered, to find her grip was surprisingly robust for an elderly woman.

She smiled up at him with eyes alive with intelligence and mischief. “It’s a relief to finally meet you, Gerrum Kirsey, and to see you’re human, after all.”

“Grannie!”

“Well, the way you described him, I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if he’d shown up wearing a toga and toting a lightning bolt.”

“I had strict orders. No lightning bolts and definitely no togas.”

“Oh, well. I suppose Pam told you I’m much too old for such excitements.”

He raised his eyebrows in a silent question that drew a chuckle from Adelaide, the sound as robust as her handshake.

“She did happen to mention something about a ninetieth birthday?”

Adelaide sighed. “Oh my, that sounds old, doesn’t it.” She cocked her head, smiling at him. “Pam tells me you’ve asked her to marry you.”

He hesitated, and Grannie Adelaide pounced. “Ah, I see perhaps my granddaughter was the one who popped the question. Well, she always seems to know exactly what she wants and is prepared to go after it. An admirable quality, I suppose. Tell me, Gerrum, do you always know what you want?”

“No. Not always.” In fact lately, uncertainty had been causing him a great deal of difficulty.

“You mustn’t let Pam bully you while you make up your mind.”

“Grannie, what a thing to say.”

Adelaide reached for her great-granddaughter’s hand, the one with the diamond ring he’d so recently placed there, and rubbed her thumb across the stone. “Dear Pam, you remind me so much of your grandfather. That’s why you’re my favorite. But constant certainty can sometimes be difficult to live with.”

“Indecision can be every bit as annoying.” Pam’s tone held that sharp note he’d learned to be wary of.

“Yes, of course it can.” Adelaide nodded at him with what looked like collaboration. Thick as thieves, the two of them. No question, he was going to enjoy being related to this woman.

Adelaide released Pam’s hand and sat back, smiling. “I suppose I’d best speak to the other guests, otherwise your mother will be annoyed with me. Come back and see me later, Gerrum. There are things you need to know about this young woman that only I can tell you.” Once again, the eyes were twinkling.

Pam laughed, but to his ears, it sounded a touch off. Or perhaps he was projecting the unease he was feeling.

He’d known the Palmer family was, to put it in the vernacular, filthy rich. But full comprehension had eluded him until he walked into this gigantic room with its angles and curves of white, chrome, and glass.

Random color was provided by the two huge paintings that looked like framed drop cloths that bookended the room. No doubt they were worth more money than he could hope to make in three lifetimes. But nowhere was there a cozy nook where a person could flop onto a slightly rumpled chair and dip into a book.

“I like your grandmother,” he told Pam as they walked over to the bar set up next to a fireplace large enough to roast a cow.

“She likes you, too, but she was teasing, you know. About having things she could tell you. About me.”

“Oh, is that so. And here I thought you two were close.”

“We are, and she would never tattle on me.”

“I may have to take Grannie Adelaide to lunch sometime.”

“Don’t you dare.” She punched him lightly on the arm, but she was smiling. So maybe he’d misread that slight hint of annoyance earlier. Usually, he had the opposite problem, that of missing Pam’s storm warnings.

The bartender handed a glass of champagne to Pam and a rum and tonic to him, and they stood for a moment, out of the flow of guests, sipping their drinks. It was rather like standing on the sidelines of a scene from a Cary Grant movie, Gerrum thought. Uniformed maids passing trays of intricate hors d’oeuvres, freely flowing liquor, the women in elegant gowns and glittering jewels, the men in formal black and white.

In a flurry of peach silk, Pam’s sister came over and leaned in to whisper dramatically, “Mother wants us.”

With a look of apology and a brief touch on his arm, Pam left him. He continued to sip his drink, watching Adelaide receiving birthday greetings, thinking about what one of his colleagues said when he learned of the engagement.
If you want to know how a girl will turn out, look at her mother
.

What he hoped was that Pam would turn out like Grannie Adelaide with her twinkly eyes, good humor, and forthright manner. If that happened, he’d be a lucky man indeed.

He finished the drink and turned to the bartender. “Tonic and a twist, please.”

“No rum?”

“Not this time. Thanks.” Not that he wouldn’t enjoy another drink. But one was his normal limit even when he wasn’t just off-center of everyone’s attention as Pam’s newly intended.

Pam still hadn’t returned, and he was about to mingle on his own, when her brother approached and gestured with his glass toward the door to the terrace. “Shall we?”

Gerrum followed Winston Palmer the Third into the cool of the Seattle evening. Below the terrace, a perfect swath of lawn stretched to the water’s edge where an elegant yacht lay twinned by its reflection in the still waters of Lake Washington. The onset of twilight had turned the overarching sky a deep and lovely rose, and the distant peaks of the Cascades floated like clouds in the clear air.

“You looked like you needed rescuing.” Winston’s tone was patronizing, his gaze assessing.

“Not at all. I was perfectly content in my corner.”

Winston raised an eyebrow and fished out a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter. “Pamela tells us your father was a commercial fisherman.”

“That’s right.” Gerrum declined the proffered cigarette.

Winston lit up, inhaled, and blew a cloud of smoke he waved away from his face. “Good money in it?”

“It rather depends on your definition of good.” And no doubt Winston’s definition would vary considerably from Gerrum’s.

“Is that why you chose the law?”

He chose the law after a day spent in his underwear on the Seattle docks shivering his way through an Army physical. Which he’d passed with flying colors. A no-brainer after that. Maintaining his student deferment as long as possible was vastly preferable to becoming intimately acquainted with a Vietnamese rice paddy.

“Commercial fishing’s a hard life. Uncertain,” he said, instead.