Marie Sexton - Coda 06 - Fear, Hope, and Bread Pudding (6 page)

I wondered for a moment if she was lying, but then I thought back over what I’d seen, the way they pushed back and forth, both of them begging for approval and then lashing out when they didn’t get it. The way they both pretended the things that hurt them most didn’t matter at all. Cole used his flamboyance to keep her at bay. She used her pretentious nonchalance to do the same to him. And yet neither of them seemed to realize how much they both wanted the same thing. Jon certainly couldn’t see it. He’d never been all that perceptive when it came to other people, and he was far too close to Cole to see the situation clearly. He’d never given Grace a chance. He’d hated her before he ever met her, and now, he was seated squarely in Cole’s corner, ready to defend his lover—no, his
husband
—against any onslaught. I couldn’t blame him for it, but I had sympathy for Grace too. She and Cole were too much alike, both of them stubborn and proud to a fault, both of them struggling to reconcile their own hurt feelings with their desperate need to love and to be loved. They were two sides of the same coin, and it was never more obvious than at that moment, when she’d thrown Cole’s affectation at me.

No. That wasn’t right. Undoubtedly it had been her affectation first, and her son had adopted it without ever realizing.

It was so karmically, cosmically tragic.
I sat for a minute, debating the possibilities. Here I was, stuck in a foreign country with a woman I knew almost nothing of. A woman I’d never planned to like, and yet now, I could feel nothing but pity for her. She was a stranger, and yet in a way, I had more in common with her than with anybody else on the planet. We shared a family—my son, and hers. And maybe soon, a grandchild.
I could walk away now. I could let this play out the way Cole and Jon and even Grace expected, all of us returning to our lives, or I could try to make things right.
“That day tour to Salzburg leaves in less than two hours. Just because they’re gone doesn’t mean we can’t go.”
“I suppose that’s true.” She was still unsure, but she smiled. “I don’t know anything about Salzburg.”
“It’s where chopped steak comes from. The kind with the horrible brown gravy.”
She stared at me for a second, confused, considering my words. “You’re teasing.” But the words were almost a question.
“I am. I think Salisbury is actually in England.”
“So what’s Salzburg known for?”

“Mozart, I think. Anyway, that’s why you go on a guided tour. They tell you why you’re supposed to care.”

She smiled. She was obviously relieved, although I wasn’t completely sure why. “Okay. How long do I have to get ready?”
“All you need to do is throw on some jeans. And long underwear if you have them. Although not necessarily in that order.”
She frowned and touched her hair, and I knew she was thinking about putting herself all back together—hair pulled back, makeup on, designer clothes. I didn’t want that. Whether I was being a horny old fool or whether there was something more, I couldn’t have said, but I suddenly felt brave.
“Leave it down,” I said.
A slow blush began to spread up her skin. I was a bit embarrassed to admit I noticed it first on the skin that peeked between the folds of her robe’s neckline. It moved up her neck in inelegant splotches, then covered her cheeks.
It was absurd. I was sixty-three years old. She wasn’t much younger. And yet here I was, making clumsy attempts to flatter her.
It worked, though. She smiled at me, and I suspected she was thinking the same things.
We’re too old for this.
But what she actually said was, “I will.”

T
HE tour began with a train ride from Munich to Salzburg. There were a dozen other people in our tour group, and although Grace smiled as we introduced ourselves, I could see the cold nonchalance coming back. It was a self-defense mechanism more than anything. We chatted idly with the other Americans in the group. They assumed we were married, and neither of us corrected them. It seemed easier than explaining that we were little more than strangers.

Two hours later, we arrived in Salzburg, Austria, a tiny town turned tourist trap nestled on the northern boundary of the Alps. It was beautiful. Majestic mountains rose to the south. To the north, rolling plains, covered in snow. Baroque towers and ornate churches filled the older part of town. It felt quaint and ancient, yet charming.

The first part of the tour was an hour-long orientation to the sites, and then we were cut loose for three hours on our own. It was briskly cold, and although Grace had done better than I expected, she’d obviously packed more for style than for warmth. Our first stop was to buy her a thicker sweater, a hat, and some mittens. Now that it was only the two of us, she was bright and cheery. She exclaimed over the buildings and things in shop windows with childlike wonder, but she never talked of anything personal. Toward the end of our allotted time, we stopped for hot chocolate at a small café.

“This is nice,” she said. “I had no idea it would be so lovely.” “Me neither.”
“I’ve never done a tour like this.”
“Really? I was under the impression that Cole’s family traveled a

lot?”

 

She pursed her lips and flipped her hair to turn away from me. “That was different.”

 

“How so?”

She furrowed her brow and rubbed the tip of her finger over her lips. “Because it’s okay for me to admit that I’d never even heard of Salzburg until Cole gave us the tickets.”

“And you couldn’t before?”

“Not with Cole’s father, no.” She waved her hand toward the window, indicating Salzburg and our presence in it. “He would never have stooped to anything so pedestrian as a day tour. He’d find it insulting. Instead, he’d take me places and be annoyed because I didn’t know anything about them.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

 

She smiled and waved her hand at me, dismissing the past. “It wasn’t. This is better.”

That made me feel good, so I let the matter drop. We took the train back to Munich and found a place to have dinner. We drank too much wine. We talked about nothing at all and laughed too much, and by the time we made it back to the condo, I felt like I was living somebody else’s life. She opened another bottle of wine and handed me a glass. She sat next to me on the couch.

Too close.
“Are we doing what I think we’re doing?” I asked.
She smiled. “When the kids are away….”

I laughed. It came out way too loud. She put her hand on my leg and leaned close. She really was beautiful. Neither of us was young or perfect. She had little wrinkles around her eyes and bits of gray in her hair, but right then, I thought she was gorgeous.

“I haven’t done this in several years,” she confessed. “It’s been longer than that for me.”
“Since your wife?”

I swallowed hard. Nodded. Ten years since her death, and nobody but her for forty years prior to that. I’d looked at those fifty-plus online dating sites a dozen times, but I’d never had the nerve to follow through, not because of Carol—she wouldn’t have begrudged me a bit of company after all this time—but because I was a coward.

Because I felt too old for romance.

Grace stood up. She held her hand down to me and pulled me off the couch, then led me down the hall to her bedroom. She turned to face me. “Can we leave the lights off?”

I wanted to see her, but then I thought of my own aging physique. “Of course.”

 

“Good.”

She put her arms around my neck and stepped a bit closer. All of those Viagra commercials on TV were suddenly far less funny. “I hope everything still works,” I said.

She laughed, sounding as nervous as me. “We’ll make do.” I may have been old, but it turned out I wasn’t
too
old. I was also relieved to find that memories of Carol didn’t intrude. Grace didn’t feel like Carol or taste like her. They were distinctly separate, which made it easier. Afterward, she lay next to me in the dark, her head barely brushing my shoulder. She didn’t seem inclined to cuddle.
“Are they happy together?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Our sons.”
The question surprised me. “Completely. Couldn’t you tell?”
She shook her head. “No. Not really.”
How could anybody not see their affection for each other? Cole and Jon still grinned at each other like schoolboys more often than not. Then again, things had been tense, and of course Cole had been depressed. He’d tried to hide it, but it was there, and Jon was more aware of it than anybody. “They’re good together, but this adoption thing is hard on them. On Cole especially.”
“Why does he want a child so badly?”
I shrugged, thinking about it. “He’s a nurturer. He takes care of everybody he knows, as much as they let him. I think he’ll be a wonderful parent.”
“Unlike me. He was right, you know. I don’t know the first thing about raising a child. I never did.”
“None of us do, until it’s too late.”
She sighed. “Can I be honest with you?”
“You’re asking that now, while we’re naked? After what we just did? I hope this isn’t about my performance.”
She laughed, as I’d hoped she would. “No. I mean, about Nicky.”
“Who?”
“Cole’s father.”
“Oh.” It surprised me that she’d want to discuss him. “I didn’t know that was his name.”

She laughed. “Well, it isn’t. Not really. He was Cole Nicholas Fenton Davenport the Second, you know, but he went by Nicholas. He hated being called Nick.”

“But Nicky was okay?”
“No. He hated that even more.”

And so of course she had chosen to use that name for him. I wondered if he’d grown used to it, the way Jon had learned to accept being called Jonny, or if he’d resented her for it. “Cole doesn’t talk about him much.”

“Really? I’m surprised.”
“Why?”
She shrugged and turned to face me in the dark. “I’m sorry.” “For what?”

“I feel like I shouldn’t have mentioned him. It feels odd to talk about him right now.”

“Grace, we’re not kids. We both know what this is, right? We were both married—”
“Yes, but you had a real marriage. You loved your wife, right?”

“I still do.”
“I never had that with Nicky.”
“Never?”

She shook her head. She was lying next to me in the dark, so I couldn’t see it, but I heard the rustle of her hair on the pillow. I felt the movement against my shoulder. “He was more than thirty years older than me. I was only twenty-two. My parents had died the year before in a car accident. I had no money. I was working as a waitress. It wasn’t like we loved each other. It was an arrangement.”

I’d certainly never met Nicholas, but the idea of a thirty-year age difference disturbed me. As did the word “arrangement.” “But he married you, right?”

“He wanted a son. That was his primary concern. And I said I could give him one.”
“And in return?”

“He promised I’d be taken care of for the rest of my life.” “Financially, you mean?”

“Yes. It sounds horrible, I know. But I had no money, and he was kind. He never mistreated me. He could have picked up a wife anywhere, but he picked me. I don’t know why, but he did.”

“So you had a baby?”

“Yes. I counted myself lucky that I gave him a son right away. That was what he wanted. And he pampered me and brought me gifts and gave me shopping money. He hired nannies to take care of the baby. I thought I was lucky. It didn’t really occur to me that I should do more, you know? Cole was being taken care of. That seemed like enough.”

“But?”
“But I was miserable. I thought once we were married, I’d fit in with him and his friends. I think he assumed the same thing, but it never happened. I was a joke. The young, stupid, trophy bride. I could barely open my mouth without embarrassing him.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
“It was. Trust me. I had barely graduated from high school, and there I was, suddenly in this world of people who not only went to college, but who had traveled all over the world. Who had seen these things I’d barely managed to read about. People who were actually cultured.”
“Why did he marry you if you were so different?”
“I think at first he found my ignorance endearing. He would sort of pat me on the head and say, ‘Silly Grace’. But over time, the cuteness wore off, and ‘endearing’ became ‘embarrassing’. One night, we were at this party—some kind of charity dinner, I don’t know—and I was trying to mingle with the wives, even though they were all older than me. I wanted him to be proud of me. And one of them said….”

She stopped and took a deep breath. “You have to promise not to laugh.”

 

“That’s what she said?”

 

She elbowed me. “No! I mean,
you
have to promise not to laugh when I tell you.”

 

“I promise.”

She sighed, obviously not convinced. “Well, she said how the Pantheon was nothing like she expected. That it was so much smaller. And I said, ‘I’m so jealous. I’ve always wanted to go to Greece.’”

“Ah,” I said. “You were thinking of the Parthenon.”
“Yes.”
“It’s an honest mistake.”

She laughed. “No, it’s not. Not to people like them, at any rate. It was stupid.”

 

“So, what happened?”

“She laughed at me. She said, ‘Honey, you’ll never be one of us. Why don’t you go hang out in the kitchen, with the mistresses?’”
I could see why she would have developed her air of haughty nonchalance as a shield against their derision. “The mistresses probably would have been more fun.”

“Probably.”
“Were there any good times?”

“A few. In Vail, especially. We’d go skiing. Back when my Cole was little, not even ten yet. Nicholas would ski on his own, and even though Cole could already ski better than I could, he’d stay with me. We’d go down the green slopes together. That’s one of my only memories of feeling like I was a real mother.”

“He still has that condo.”
“Does he? I’m surprised.”
“I’m not.”

She shifted, looking away from me to stare at the motionless ceiling fan over the bed. “He came to live with me for a bit, right after his father died.”

“I didn’t know that.”
“It was only a few months.”
“What happened?”

“He turned sixteen and bought himself a car. I hardly saw him after that. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”
“Sounds like a normal sixteen-year-old to me.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. He was so angry. His father was dead, and I think he was trying to sort out his sexuality. I’d try to talk to him, and he’d just walk away.”