Almost Always: A Love Unexpected Novel (19 page)

"But something . . . someone changed that." I said softly.

"Elsa and I graduated together. We were friends. I had all the start-up capital I wanted. My father is not generous in his affection, but money is different. I had enough cash at my disposal to do pretty much whatever I wanted."

"I started the firm and hired several of the stars of the class to work with me. Elsa was one of them."

Kason looked tired. He wasn't used to this kind of conversation and I could see that it was draining him. "Why don't we take a little break? I don't know about you, but I could use a bite to eat."

He looked relieved. "Thanks. I'd appreciate that. I know a place I think you'll love."

Thirty one

We headed out of Oak Park and through some more of the urban landscape. I was surprised when the countryside was soon all around us.

"This is just an illusion," Kason told me. "This green belt we're driving through is surrounded by dense suburbia. It just happens that parts have been kept clear."

"It's a beautiful drive. Where are we headed?"

"To another place from my youth. A very happy place." He turned off the parkway onto a long drive that eventually led to the entrance to Brookfield Zoo. "This is one of the world's greatest zoos. I loved coming here as a kid, but in the last twenty years, there has been so much progress. The animals aren't caged up in sad little spaces, here the habitats are incredible."

I was delighted. There wasn't much I'd rather do than spend the beautiful afternoon seeing lions and bears and apes. Plus, I thought a break from the heavy morning was a good idea. Playing at the zoo was a great way to take a break.

"It won't be gourmet dining, but we can get a decent sandwich here. We'll have to decide which animals to see. We can't possibly do the whole place in a few hours."

When we got to the gate, we studied the map and decided to go to the "Great Bear Wilderness" first. I have always had a fascination with polar bears and Kason told me Brookfield had one of the finest exhibits of the great white beasts in the world.

"This zoo has been around since the thirties. My mother used to come here with her family. She told me that her older brother would always bring marshmallows to throw to the polar bears, who apparently have a sweet tooth. She said he would throw whole bags of them into the exhibit just to watch the bears tear the packages open and gorge on the sugar."

"Obviously, in this day and age, that isn't allowed anymore."

"Better for the bears, I guess, but it sounded like fun to me."

We hopped on the 'motor safari' and wound our way through the vast park. The gardens and fountains were a treat in and of themselves. Autumn chrysanthemums filled every available flower bed and lent their own brilliance to the russet and gold palette of the day.

The bears didn't disappoint. We laughed like children watching them play. Viewing from the underwater lookout, the grace of the big animals under the surface was marvelous and delightful to watch. The grizzlies looked as ferocious as their reputation and they, too, cavorted in their own personal water park.

We walked over to the wolf exhibit where visitors can get into a concealed blind and observe the pack.

"It isn't hard to spot the alpha male, is it?" Kason remarked as the obvious leader passed by.

I put my hand behind him and pinched his. "No, he's standing right beside me. Pretty hard to miss."

"I'm glad you recognize that," he answered with mock superiority. "We don't want there to be any question about who is number one, do we?"

"Oh, absolutely not," I agreed. "I never forget 'he who must be obeyed'."

"See that you don't." He inclined his head and looked regally down his nose at me. I stuck my tongue out at him. "You'll pay for that later," he growled into my ear.

"I hope so."

We stopped in at the penguin exhibit. The tuxedoed birds seemed to have endless energy for play and never tired of sliding on their bellies into their cold, clear pool.

'Baboon Island' was next. We stood across the moat from them making fools of ourselves with the rest of the humans trying to attract their attention. Making monkey noises, Kason stood behind me and began picking at my hair as if grooming me like the animals were doing.

"You're crazy," I laughed at him.

"Crazy about you, my little simian siren."

"I hope I'm better looking than those girls. They look mean as hell."

"Ah, but to a baboon dude, they're lovely. Look at the bum on that one!" He pointed to a mother with an infant clinging to her back. Her rear end was swollen, red and angry looking.

"Yikes! That looks positively painful."

He kissed my neck, oblivious to anything going on around us. I couldn't help but sigh and tilt my head to give him better access to my skin. His touch ignited my skin and made me want to melt into him. And while I couldn't characterize my new feelings for him as pity, there was definitely an element in me that wanted to mother him, if only just a little. I liked knowing his vulnerabilities, even if I found the source of them heartbreaking.

He held me close against him as we watched the carefree animals chasing each other wildly around the little island. Even though they looked fearsome, I could see that it was all in fun for them. They screeched and hollered at one another, tearing around the tree trunks that served as their jungle gym. I pressed my bottom back against him and wiggled it playfully against his groin. He rewarded me with a growling grunty ape noise that made me giggle.

We took a leisurely walk back to the parking lot. It was mid afternoon and time to start wending our way back to the city. Kason left the top up this time because the afternoon had turned cool as the sun slanted lower in the sky.

It was the first time we had spent time together doing something completely ordinary. We weren't in a private plane, or on a yacht, or in a five star restaurant. Our lunch had pulled pork sandwiches washed down with a micro brew from the "Bison Bistro" at the zoo. We shared some cotton candy as we walked around the little lake by the bear exhibit. It was an afternoon that made me feel as if maybe there was a chance for something a little like a normal life with Kason.

We passed a roadside stand selling mums, pumpkins and gourds to decorate yards for the season. Kason pulled over and bought a big pot with three different colors of flower plants, a bunch of Indian corn and several decorative gourds.

"Are you planning to dress up our room at the Drake?"

"Uh, no. I have one last stop before we head into the city. If it's okay with you, I'd like to put this stuff on my mother's grave."

"Of course it's okay." I felt honored that he felt comfortable taking me there.

"I don't get to Chicago often, but when I do I like to at least pay my respects." He gestured toward the backseat and the fall flora. "She loved this kind of stuff. We always had cornstalks in the yard and lots of pumpkins."

We pulled into a cemetery. The sign at the entrance said "Woodlawn Memorial Park". It was actually quite a pretty place with gentle hills still covered with green lawns and a nice scattering of mature trees.

"I don't even remember the funeral. I know I went. Years later, I asked my father and he told me that I had been to the service." He pulled over to the side of the drive and we got out. Kason gathered the autumn flowers and handed me the paper bag that held the corn and the gourds. "I really don't like the idea of being buried. I'm going to go with cremation myself."

I followed a pace behind. "I agree," I said. "It seems like a waste of space and money."

"That's not my reason at all. It used to terrify me that my mother was buried in a box here. Part of me had visions of her waking up, alone and six feet underground."

"Yikes, what a scary thought!"

"I think it's a pretty common childish notion. Now that I'm older, though, it comforts me a little to come here. It's my way of knowing that I didn't imagine her." He stopped by a simple headstone with an angel standing watch at the top. "Maryann Katherine Royce" was inscribed on one side with her dates of birth and death and the other side was blank. "It's a double plot. Someday my father will have the other half. He'll never remarry. Whatever I might say about him, I know that he loved my mother fiercely. She may be the only person he ever did love."

He put the pot of flowers at the foot of the headstone. "You arrange that stuff. I'm inept at that sort of thing." I took the fall corn and the colorful collection of gourds and put them as artfully as I could around and against the terracotta planter. As I arranged them, Kason watched me from a nearby bench. The sun was dipping below the tallest trees and cast a soft ochre light amongst the long shadows.

When I was satisfied with the display I wandered around a bit on the paths that wound through the park. The avenues of the dead lined up in silent rows. I thought of Elsa and her snowy grave, unmarked somewhere in Italy. I wondered if Kason thought of her, too, as he sat quietly on his bench under the oaks.

I didn't walk far away and when I saw him rise, I took that as my signal to go back. He smiled at me and held out his hand to walk me back to the car.

"Thanks for doing that." I didn't know if he meant the gourds or giving him time alone so I just said, "You're welcome," and left it at that.

We drove back into Chicago as sunset approached. The light behind us to the west cast the buildings rising from the lake's shore in gaudy shades of pink and orange. As the colors faded, the buildings began to light from within and the skyline sparkled against the inky violet dusk.

Back in our room, Kason opened a bottle of wine from the bar and we toasted the rising half moon that came up over the lake. "To Maryann Royce," he said as his glass clinked into mine. "She would have loved you, Annalise."

What about you, Kason? Can you love? Can you love
me
?
I understood more about him, but as I had feared, it did nothing to erase the nagging questions I wasn't asking. I simply said, "To your mother," and left it at that.

We decided to have dinner at the hotel. The car was parked, the wind had picked up and we had traveled enough that day. The seafood restaurant in the hotel was quite good and the atmosphere very much the same old school elegance of the rest of the building. We talked mostly about the day and my own childhood.  I described what it was like growing up in my parents' Park Slope home.

"I had my own version of a wonderful childhood," I told him. "But mine is only now just ending. I think my parents would have kept me at home forever if they could."

"I noticed that Marjorie seemed a wee bit upset when you told her about the apartment that goes with your new job."

"It had to happen someday. I can't live in my parents' house forever." Kason nodded in agreement. "They've been great. I know how much they sacrificed for me—for all three of us."

"Tell me about your sisters."

"Olivia dropped out of college after two years. She spent the next two years getting ready to marry Ben. Ben's done very well and Olivia has played the supportive junior league wife to his successful small-town attorney. They have two children. A perfect set of one boy and one girl. Of course, the boy is the first born. Olivia wouldn't have it any other way."

"Do I detect disapproval? Even disdain?"

"A little," I admitted. "Olivia is smart and she's beautiful. I love Ben and the kids. It just seems like such a . . . calculated existence. She had a plan and she executed it with surgical precision. There's nothing spontaneous or unpredictable about my oldest sister's life."

"You, on the other hand, do spontaneous quite well."

"Trust me, that's a newly acquired trait."

"What about your other sister. Amy?"

"Amy is the sweetest person in the entire universe. She wasn't the academic type and neither was her husband Phil. She worked for several years as a warehouse clerk for a heating and air conditioning company right out of high school. She met Phil there. He had come to make his fortune in New York. When his father died he left Phil his hardware store in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He asked Amy to marry him and the two of them run the store now. Phil also has a pretty lucrative handyman service going."

"Children?"

"They haven't had any luck conceiving."

"I think it would be very hard to want a child and not be able to have one."

"It
is
hard on them. They've been married for four years and . . . nothing. They've kind of stopped talking about it."

"What about adoption?"

"I don't know how they feel about it."

"If I wanted a child and couldn't have one, I would adopt. For sure."

"I asked you once before if you wanted to have children. Do you remember?"

"Yes, I do. I dodged the question."

"You dodged it and shut down."

"I know." He cleared his throat. "I've always wanted to have children. But my motivation may be a false one. I've always wanted to give a kid a better father than I had. Even if my mother had lived, I'd still feel deprived. I guess part of me wants to prove I can do better."

"That's not a great reason to become a parent."

"Hey now, that's not the only reason. It's just part of it. Believe it or not, I really like little kids. I'm drawn toward innocence. There's so little of it in my world." He looked at me when he said that and put his hand over mine on the tablecloth.

"You still insist on calling me innocent after what we've done together?"

"I told you before, innocence is more than a lack of experience and it doesn't mean naiveté. Innocence is a way of seeing the truth of the world and reacting to the world in truthfulness."

I laughed at that. "You need to spend more time around children. My nephew and niece are natural liars. 'Not me' is the perpetrator of all naughtiness in Olivia's house. Who broke this vase? 'Not me.' Who ate the last cookie? 'Not me'."