Come Pour the Wine (46 page)

“Earlier you said you wanted to see me for
two
reasons …”

“Right … Last week one of my partners died … heart attack. A young man, forty-six. He’d never been sick a day in his life. Left a wife and three children. It hit me right in the gut, really shook me up and forced me to step outside myself and take a good look at what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I began to come up with a few answers.”

“Such as … ?”

“Most people wait until they retire to find Shangri-la, but sometimes it’s too late. Even if they reach that age, time collects its dues and life tends to play some dirty little tricks on you … bad kidneys, hardening of the arteries, et cetera, et cetera. It sounds hackneyed, but I decided that life
shouldn’t
be put off. I’ll never be forty-eight again, and I know I’m taking my retirement at the most productive time, when my earnings are probably greatest … But I say to hell with it. I want to do all the things I’ve dreamed about while I’m still relatively young, healthy and vigorous. When I get
ready
to come back I’ll work my butt off, as long as I don’t get arthritis of the mind … But I want it
now,
not later. There are no guarantees, no second chances.”

He paused, took a sip of coffee and looked closely at her. “Janet, I booked passage on a freighter. I don’t know how long I want to be away—two years … maybe longer … Now, that’s not too much to steal out of a lifetime, is it?”

Janet merely shook her head, thinking that Allan was even more extraordinary than she’d thought. Lots of people talked about doing such things, but that’s as far as it ever went, even among those who had the freedom and money to do what they wanted. It was as if they didn’t take life seriously enough to find out what it was about, to do more than just go along …

“I don’t know whether you’re with me on this or not, but that’s the point … to have you with me would really give it all some meaning …”

Still she couldn’t answer.

“I asked you before how much you liked me, Janet. I don’t think you quite answered that.”

Almost in a whisper she said, “More than anyone I know—”

“Then come with me … there’s a whole world out there, Janet. Let’s share it with each other. I love you enough for the two of us, and if we have nothing more than this trip together, I think we’ll be able to say at the end it was at least worthwhile. That at least we were
living
our lives, not just going along…”

There were tears in her eyes.

“Will you come?”

As with Bill, there was some of the old confusion about where sex and love began and ended. But Bill and Allan were so very different … and suddenly, as she looked across at Allan, she no longer felt like hesitating … there was a
good
feeling not to be ignored … How would the children feel about her going away with a strange man? They’d probably disapprove … and the role reversals here made her smile. And her mother … ?

As though reading her thoughts, or at least tuned to them, he said, “Janet, you don’t owe anybody anything, you don’t need the approval of anybody … except yourself. You paid your dues a long time ago. You belong to yourself. That’s quite a change, I admit. Are you up to it?”

“Will you let me think about it?”

“Until Sunday … only until then.”

She looked at him uneasily.

“Think about it, darling … carefully … Now I’ll take you to your car.”

She took in a very deep breath. “I’ve decided to stay in the city tonight.”

He squeezed her hand gently. “I’ve waited a long time to hear you say that.”

S
HE STOPPED AT THE
shop and picked up her overnight case, then they took a cab back to the Plaza.

There was nothing strained or awkward when she was finally in his arms.

He undressed her unhurriedly, pausing to kiss her as each garment came off, The touch of skin on skin, each new caress, brought them the knowledge that it had been worth waiting for, and yet the wish that they’d never waited at all.

They made sweet, gentle love. Janet had never known the tenderness of such giving. Her needs had been locked away for so long she was shocked at the intensity of her desire. Imagine … Allan Blum, her “very good friend” …

The second time it was she who set the pace.

Her pleasures were his rewards. He wanted more than anything to achieve happiness for her, and in doing so his own became supreme.

In the morning she awoke in his arms, delighting in how she felt, marveling that it had been possible after so long … Curling herself to fit him even closer, she asked, “What’s the ship like, Allan?”

“Well, it’s a freighter as I said, with the best staterooms afloat. But what I like best is that they take on only twenty-five passengers. It’s a Japanese line, and it’s not the circus we had going to the Caribbean. This time I don’t want to share my life with a hundred people I don’t give a damn about. I don’t want a programmed vacation, when you have to be
on
for people. I want to relax, feel I can be myself, shave off my beard and grow it back if I want and not give it a second thought.”

“I love beards. My grandfather had one and my father wore the loveliest mustache. You’d have loved my father, Allan … I realized yesterday how much like him you are.” A strange and moving thought came to her … James Stevens and Allan Blum were the products of five thousand years, emerged out of the desert at Canaan … and
she
was a part of it too.

“That’s quite a compliment, darling … Now, what’s your pleasure today?”

“Let’s not plan.”

“You’re right. We’ll just do, as they say, what comes naturally….”

On Saturday morning Janet said, “I’d like to go home … with you. Your ship doesn’t sail until midnight on Sunday. Would you like that?”

“Need you ask?”

“I’m anxious for you to meet my closest friends and, of course, my daughter. Unfortunately Jason’s away on a job in Arizona. I wanted so much for the two of you to meet. Well, one can’t have everything, can one?”

“Not everything, but more than enough, Janet, if one really wants it. Dreams can’t come true, sayeth the sage, unless you decide to make them reality. Well, this lucky one has so decided …

Allan drove Janet’s car into the driveway and turned off the motor. Coming around to her side, he helped her out. She stood there for a moment, lost in the past, then she looked closely at Allan. Her Westchester home seemed more beautiful today than even the first time she and Bill saw it together. She’d been so frightened he wouldn’t buy it, and secretly she knew he hadn’t wanted to … Do you like it, Bill? … It’s really for you, Janet … a house is a woman’s domain …

Quickly she took Allan by the hand, walked up to the front door and unlocked it….

Allan clearly adored the house. It was everything he expected, as were Kit and Nat, who couldn’t have been more gracious from the moment they walked in to meet him.

Nicole, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more reserved, though Mark’s warmth made up for her aloofness—which sat poorly with Nicole. The idea of Allan Blum staying overnight in her mother’s house didn’t seem to faze Mark in the least … well, it did her.

She was even more upset when Mark drew her aside and said, “You seem to have forgotten how it was your
mother
who came to our defense when we went off to Europe that summer—”

“True, but I’d say this is
slightly
different.”

“How so?”

“Mark! This happens to be my
mother.
Don’t you see the difference?”

“No, except that you’re acting more like a fluttery mother than a daughter. Put it another way … you’re more than a little like your protective father. Why isn’t your mother entitled to do what you and I did? Or
he
did … ?”

“Because she’s an older woman and she’s my
mother,
damn it,
and
I don’t like it
and
I don’t want to talk about it—”

“Well, I think maybe you should. You can’t use one set of standards for yourself and another for your mother. It doesn’t exactly make sense. Last I heard, she was over twenty-one and—”

“Mark … I don’t want to talk about it—”

“Why? You still want your mother to be some tower of virtue, your eternal virginal mother? Well, darling, you just don’t have the right to lay that kind of thing on her. She deserves a little—”

“I told you I don’t want to talk about it …”

Mark suspected, though, that what Nicole really was upset about was that now her mother and father wouldn’t get back together. Allan Blum was a threat to getting her parents back, and for her mother to have anything to do with him was to make her darn near some sort of scarlet woman … a betrayer of her father. Daughters and fathers … well, he certainly would stay off
that
subject with her …

After everyone had left, Janet took Allan by the hand and led him down the hall to her bedroom.

He looked about the room, then at the bed.

“When Bill and I divorced I sold all the old furniture. It seemed too painful a reminder of … anyway, Allan, you, sir, are the first man to sleep in
this
bed.”

He smiled … she’d read his mind. He sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to make love in a bed that held any memory of her former husband….

Next morning Janet took special pleasure in watching Allan through the kitchen window as he dove into the pool. His body was firm and slim. Not an ounce of flab. He looked as good as he had felt to her the night before …

She basted the chicken with the marsala wine, added fresh mushrooms, then went to the bedroom and changed into her bikini.

They splashed about the pool and raced each other the length of it and back like a couple of kids.

He got out first, then helped her up over the side.

“Did you ever try scuba diving?” he asked.

“No, never. Is it exciting?”

“Unbelievably. That’s just one of the things I intend to do on this trip.”

For a while they lay on the pool chaises, letting the sun warm their bodies. They held hands, content just to be near each other, but Allan couldn’t help his thoughts from returning again and again to what her answer would be. So far she had said nothing about going with him. The decision, of course, had to be hers alone or it couldn’t possibly work out. No prodding, no pleading. It had to be that way.

“It’s noon. How’s the old appetite?” she asked.

“Like a lumberjack’s.”

“Okay, let’s go get changed and have at it.”

Janet wheeled out the chicken and salad on a tea cart as Allan opened a bottle of extra dry white wine. They sat quietly, lunching and enjoying the peace of the summer afternoon.

“I love this house. I guess maybe it was always more mine than Bill’s. He hated it … and now it’s as though he never lived here. I mean, he’s just no longer a part of this house, if that makes any sense.”

“It makes a lot of sense. Especially to me.”

Taking a sip of wine, Janet asked, “How long did you say you’d be away?”

“I don’t know, darling. For as long as it takes. This is the kind of thing you have to play by ear. That’s sort of the whole point of it.”

“Allan … I’ve thought about us.”

“I hoped you had.”

“Well, I’ve done more than think. I’ve watched you, watched
us …
I’ve decided … I want to live with you … I mean really live with you … permanently.”

He closed his eyes … Thank God, it had been uphill, but he’d made it.
They’d
made it …

He got up and kissed her. “Janet, I promise you this … I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make sure you’re never sorry.”

“And I’ll try to do the same for you …” She looked away for a moment, then … “Allan, what in the world do I tell the children?”

“The truth … it’s not exactly a sin to be in love. Even if we are over forty.”

Janet called Nicole and asked her to come over, said there was something important they needed to talk about….

When Nicole arrived she was more than relieved that Allan Blum wasn’t there. Sitting on the sofa, she watched her mother, who seemed enormously happy. Still, there was a peculiar knock in her pregnant tummy … she just couldn’t accept that Allan Blum had slept with … “You said there was something important to talk about …”

Janet smiled uneasily. “Darling, I never thought that this would ever possibly happen to me again, but a kind of miracle has happened to your mother … It seems I’ve been given that much talked about second chance at life. Now don’t laugh, but it’s true … I’m in love, Nicole, and I’m going to take it as a rare gift … I’m going away with Allan Blum tonight. We’re taking a—”

“You mean you’re just going off with a
stranger?
Just like
that
… ?”

“He’s
not
a stranger. Not anymore.”

“He is to me, and he always will be.”

“If you’ll forgive me, dear, I think your attitude is a little unfair. I know this
seems
sudden, and it may be confusing to you, but—”

“No, I think you’re the one who’s a little confused, mother. I feel this is … do you want the truth?”

“I’m sure I can depend on you to give it to me, dear.”

“Well, I don’t think what you’re saying is love is love at all. It’s just more of the same sort of thing that happened to daddy, only delayed a little … Now it’s
you
trying to recapture
your
youth. If this Allan Blum is so important to you, why don’t you get married, for God’s sake?”

Janet had always known that Nicole hoped she and Bill would remarry. Now she was just showing her disappointment, and in the process making Allan the scapegoat … But she couldn’t help but be struck by the irony of the situation, her daughter the righteous one, the pillar of convention … she, the mother, the naughty rebel, for God’s sake. Talk about your signs of the times, or was it really a new kind of prejudice … youth against the notion that older people—especially parents—could actually talk about love, especially the
act
of love … as though it were the exclusive domain of the young and innocent. Well, my darling daughter, much as I love you, I’m just going to have to take my chances of incurring your stern disapproval. I’m going to go on living, my way, on my terms … It was a speech she would have liked to have given out loud, but she thought now was a bit premature. Nicole was upset, so what she said in an even tone was, “Darling, I don’t want to get married just now for some of the same reasons you didn’t want to marry Mark in the beginning. And I really do have as much right to my choice as you did, dear. And Nicole, I would like to suggest that love isn’t shameful or sinful, not at any age.”