Louder Than Love (13 page)

Lake Views

The rain seeped into my dreams early Saturday morning, drumming on the dirty skylight over Pete’s bed in his studio on 110th and Broadway. We lay with our legs intertwined, facing each other. He was wearing his favorite T-shirt from the eighties, a red shirt so washed, it was now a dull orange. It sported a huge MTV logo on the back. “There are all different kinds of love,” he was telling me, pushing my hair back behind my ears.

I woke up to the sounds of Abbey crying in bed next to me and rain falling on the leaves of the Japanese maple outside my bedroom window. “What if he doesn’t come?”

“Oh sweetie, I doubt a little rain will stop him.” I drowsily kissed her and rolled back over, wanting to get back to the dream. What had Pete been telling me? What had felt so lifelike a moment ago seemed vague now. I let my eyes close, willing the dream reel to loop back and continue. Next to me, I could hear the scraping of Abbey’s long lashes as she blinked against the pillowcase.

“But what about Bear Mountain?” she whimpered.

“It won’t wash away in the rain,” I assured her. “If we can’t show him Bear Mountain today, we’ll do it another day.” It was 7:46 on a sopping wet Saturday, with no hope of sleeping more now. Adrian’s train wasn’t due until 11:25. Following Abbey as she padded to the kitchen, I began to revamp the day’s plans in my head. Picnicking at the mountain was out. I had planned on grabbing bread from the farmer’s market after we collected Adrian from the station. Assorted European cheeses had been carefully selected from the import store. Instead of whipping up the pasta primavera salad I had in mind, I began to prep the vegetables for soup. It was definitely a damp-to-your-bones soup kind of day. I added the tiny tubes of pasta for a heartier result. Then I dragged out the bread machine and involved Abbey in making a fresh loaf of our own from my favorite Amy’s Bread cookbook. We definitely had the time this morning, and I needed to burn off some nervous energy. My dream was still hovering close. Funny I had dreamed of Pete in that old apartment. Usually my dreams of him took place outdoors, in the wide open where I couldn’t contain him. He felt close to me now, as he had been so close in the dream. Yet here Abbey and I were, so far away from that place. Her little hands were on top of mine, measuring and adding ingredients. The rain spilled from the gutters and beaded into tears that rolled down the kitchen windows.

“Our house feels cozy today,” Abbey observed.

“It sure does.”

Finally, after breakfasting and showering and putting the kitchen back together following our impromptu cooking session, it was time to go meet the train. The rhythmic thumping of the wipers was like a metronome that paced the beating of my heart. Breathing deeply, I swung down the long drive into the lot of the commuter station, letting my eyes survey the scene. The 11:25 had just pulled out, and a meager handful of passengers were sifting down the steps from the station. Umbrellas began to blossom up, obstructing my view. I pulled up as close as I could and popped the door locks open. Seeing him was a delightful gift, an assurance I hadn’t conjured him up in my lonely mind. He was indeed there, hunched and hurrying to the dry sanctuary of my car and inside before I could relish the vision any further.

“So much for Bear Mountain!” I greeted him as he dripped a rainy kiss onto my cheek. He was wearing a black leather jacket that took the brunt of the weather. It had the cut and thickness of a motorcycle jacket, but without all the goofy zippers and buckles. Very clean and classic, perfectly broken in.

“No problem, I’m easy, whatever you gals want to do. Hiya, Abbey.” He smiled into the backseat.

“Hello, Adrian Graves,” she said earnestly. I could hear the mixture of shyness and delight in her tone. “Guess what we’ve been listening to!”

“Um.
Led Zeppelin IV
?”

Abbey laughed, even though there was no possible way she understood his humor. “Silly Adrian. Your CD!” As an afterthought, she quickly added, “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.” We spent the short trip back to the house singing along to the CD, including a raucous rendition of “Octopus’s Garden” with Adrian belting out the chorus in his best Liverpudlian baritone.

“We have a surprise for you. It involves yeast,” Abbey said mysteriously as we entered the house.

“It smells amazing in here!” Adrian, shrugging off his jacket, allowed Abbey to proudly lead him into the kitchen to marvel at our freshly baked bread. “Nice thing to do with your daughter,” he commented to me. She had scampered off to the piano, pretending to provide us with a reprise of “Octopus’s Garden” in G position.

“It’s pretty easy. We used the machine today, but sometimes we do it by hand. You just have to devote the time to the rising up and the punching down.” I handed him plates from the cupboard for the table. “My mom used to bake a lot with me . . . so it’s become a household tradition.”

“Lots of rising up and punching down in my household, too,” he admitted. “My dad was a man of few words.” He mimed the jabs of a prizefighter to finish the sentence. “As for my daughter . . . I
did
take her for her first tattoo.” Adrian chuckled at his confession. “That’s about as close as we got to any sort of tradition. She and her mum, well . . . they shop together. Bonding on Bond Street.” He ducked in and kissed me. “Has it really only been three days?”

Soft and low, his voice liquefied a part of me.

“Crazy, right?” We held each other, listening to the rain compete against Abbey’s piano playing. “It’s cozy in here, isn’t it?”
Great, Katrina. You’ve been reduced to stealing one-liners from your preschooler.

“Very. Let’s never leave,” he murmured into my hair. Although he had abandoned his jacket in the other room, I swore the heady and smoky smell of the leather still lingered there on his skin, mixing with that peppery scent I was quickly becoming addicted to.

“Well, if this rain ever stops . . . I am sure Abbey would love to show you the lake.”

“So there really is a lake in Lauder Lake, then?”

***

Abbey grabbed both of our hands and practically dragged us down the street after lunch. “Wait till you see my lake!” We paused at the wet sand to peel off socks and shoes, then rolled up our jeans and walked around the bank of pine trees until the lake came into view. The beach was deserted, not surprisingly. Abbey ran ahead, yelling insults at the gulls and galloping to the edge of the water.

“This is lovely. I had no idea it was so close to your house.” Adrian bent to pick up a smooth stone and effortlessly skipped it toward the dock. “You’ve got a nicely kept secret out here.”

“More like a forgotten secret. Lauder Lake used to be a resort community, before all the wealthy New Yorkers moved on to more luxurious digs in the Catskills.” We sat on an area of sand that had been dried by the emergent sun and watched Abbey scavenge for interesting bits of shell and pebbles along the shore.

“Their loss.” Adrian dug his toes into the wet sand.

“When I was little, I assumed everyone had a lake at their disposal within walking distance,” I admitted. “I spent every day of every summer here. Except when I was twelve and I tried sleepaway camp, which I hated.”

“I think I would come down here every day, too, if I lived here. Even in winter. Growing up in a port town, you learn to appreciate the grounding, calming effect of water.” He had been squinting out across the lake before turning his gaze on me. “‘For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.’”

“I like that.”

“It’s not mine. Cummings.” He tossed his hair back. “I’m glad you have this sanctuary here for you and for Abbey.”

I looked down at our sandy toes. “All those years I lived in the city . . . this place was never far from my mind.” We gazed past the sand, dimpled from our steps, to the gentle push-pull of the small ripples and the lush thicket of green that bordered it far across the surface. “Like a reminder it would always be here for me when I needed it.” It had certainly been a comforting constant after my heartbreak and homecoming four years ago.

Adrian nodded, tracing around my hand splayed behind me for support. Here and there his finger would touch one of mine as he outlined it in the sand, sending that delicious zing of electricity I remembered feeling in my car that day we met.

“New York feels that way to me,” he said quietly. “From the first time I visited, I felt like I knew it well. Like I had conquered it in one huge bite. And then I went back home to London and felt like I was wearing a cheap, ill-fitted suit. New York was like a love affair that I didn’t allow myself to commit to fully, like I didn’t deserve it. I thought of it a lot, though, especially when things got tough back home. My career . . . hadn’t turned out like I’d imagined, and things with the wife had turned bloody ugly, and I felt like all my friends there . . . well, they were different, too. Maybe it was me who changed. Anyway. I knew I would end up there eventually.”

He hoisted himself up abruptly and half jogged, half ambled to the water’s edge. Abbey ran across the sand to meet him, holding out her hand to show him something she had scavenged. I sighed, feeling as if our talk had unwittingly brought a melancholy down upon us. Determined to change that, I hopped up, leaving behind my handprint Adrian had traced in the sand, and ran toward them. “You’re it!” I tagged Abbey, who squealed and took up the chase. Round and round she barreled in pursuit before giving up on me and catching Adrian on the arm as he did an exaggerated slow-motion jog away from her.

“Tagyerit!” she bellowed as Adrian turned to chase her. She zigzagged back up the beach, screeching with anticipation of being caught.

“Gotcha back!” Adrian lightly reached out and stretched one of her curls as she tried to fake him out with a feint to the left and then to the right.

“Aw, Mommy hasn’t been it yet!” Abbey complained, quick to pout like many a four-year-old is wont to do when the game doesn’t go exactly as planned.

“Let’s both get her, all right?”

Delighted once again, Abbey tag-teamed with Adrian and they chased me until I was out of breath with laughter and fatigue. I shrugged out of my red zippered hoodie and brandished it like a brave bullfighter. They brought me down to the sand in a fit of giggles, then collapsed next to me, breathing hard and grinning.

“Oh Abbey, look at you. Where’d all that mud come from? Come on, dirty monkey, let’s get you home and cleaned up.” We hiked back to the road. Adrian hoisted Abbey up in a piggyback ride so we didn’t have to put her muddy feet into her clean shoes. From her perch, she happily sang over his shoulder as we walked.

“Dirty clouds.”

Adrian tilted his head in the direction she was pointing. “You’re right, Abbey. Do you think that means more rain?” I loved the way he took the time to respond to her observations.

“Yep.”

I hosed off her feet by the side of the house while Adrian had a cigarette and admired my mom’s hydrangeas in the front garden.

“Can I watch my show?” Abbey whispered. She was a creature of habit even with company around.

“Abbey . . .”

“You’re going to do boring stuff. Like talk.” I had to stifle a laugh.

“I will think about it, okay?” I turned to Adrian. “I’m going to help her get changed. If you want a drink or anything . . .” I gestured vaguely toward the breakfront sideboard.

“That’s Mommy’s happy drink.” Abbey pointed to the squat, bubbled glass bottle of tequila with its big nobby cork that had been left out after Wednesday’s powwow with Leanna and Marissa.

“Abbey!” My embarrassment was plain, but Adrian just looked amused. I ushered her into her room, and she pulled on the clean pants I handed her. Out the window, the three p.m. sky looked like a seven p.m. spring evening, darkening as a distant thunder rumbled.

“Please can I watch
Maxwell
now?” Her face contained a mixture of remorse and innocence. I could tell she didn’t know exactly how to read mine.

“One show. As your quiet time. In my room.”

“Yes!” she hissed in victory.

Adrian had the fireplace ablaze with one popping log and some driftwood and was inspecting the liquor over in the dining room. I normally didn’t imbibe while home alone with Abbey. In fact, most of the collection was the leftovers of bottles friends had brought over at one time or another. He disrobed a half-full bottle of Canadian whiskey from its purple felt bag; Liz liked to drink it with ginger ale and had left bottles of both after her most recent visit. I watched as he mixed a big one the exact same way.

He looked up. “Can I interest you?”

“Mmm. Ginger please, no Crown. I’ll get some ice.”

We settled on the couch across from the fire. “To happy,” Adrian echoed Abbey’s adjective. We clinked glasses.

“To happy.”

Adrian stretched his legs, crossing ankle over ankle, and put an arm around my shoulders. “And where might Abbey be?” he asked into my hair.

“She usually has an hour of quiet time in the afternoons. Sometimes it leads to a nap, but these days, mostly not.” I strained my ears and finally picked up a few notes of the
Maxwell
theme song. “Do you hear that?” He concentrated, squinting and biting his bottom lip until the hairs underneath stuck straight out. Finally, he shook his head in defeat. “It’s your song:
solving crimes without claws, he always lands on four paws . . . 
” I prompted.

“Ah. Max.” In the half-light of the fireplace, it was hard to tell if he was blushing. “My ears aren’t what they used to be.” I leaned and kissed him right under his lobe in consolation. He returned the favor by peppering my cheek lightly before finding my lips and lingering there. I silently cursed my mother’s choice of couch; it was a red velvet Victorian affair, hand-carved in mahogany. Its deep tufts and weak springs made it comfortable for sitting, but if leaning back, the crest across the top was murder on your neck. It had been acquired during my college days, and while I had always thought it looked nice in front of the fireplace, I had never tried to get cozy on it with another human being. Abbey and I usually chose the overstuffed chair to cuddle on or the big beanbag chair in her room. Pete and I had had more modern tastes, opting for a low long IKEA sofa in highly impractical ivory to grace the hardwood floors of our co-op. In storage with so many other relics from that time, it wouldn’t fit in here any more than Adrian and I fit on this tiny uptight thing. I grabbed him and we rolled with a plunk and a laugh onto the Persian rug.