No Dark Valley (75 page)

Before she left Dunmore after Thanksgiving, Celia told Bruce she had visited her grandmother's grave, had stood there for a long time, praying for God to let her grandmother know right now that she would be joining her in heaven someday, and that she loved her and thanked her for all she had sacrificed and was sorry for all the grief she had caused her.

So the two o'clock gift, the jewelry box with its inscribed verse reference, is meant to be a symbol
, Bruce wrote,
of the ornaments of grace in a Christian's life, and of Celia's circling back to the instruction of her parents and grandmother. The interior of the case is lined with soft velvet the color of atoning blood. Every time Celia opens the lid, she will see the red velvet and be reminded of how much God loves her
.

At first Bruce had resisted the idea of resorting to someone like Patsy for the two o'clock delivery, someone with such a total lack of dramatic flair. But the more he thought about it, the more fitting it seemed, since he and Celia had been talking about taking Milton and Patsy out for dinner some night soon and sharing with them the story of how God had brought them to himself, first of all, then brought them to each other. Bruce had already told Milton about Celia's mistaking him for Kimberly's husband, which Milton thought was very funny.

At three o'clock Milton Stewart walked down the driveway to Celia's front door, Bruce wrote after the next delivery, carrying a gold gift bag with musical notes stamped all over it and tissue tucked inside
. There were six CDs in the bottom of the bag, all of the ones they had at the Barnes and Noble over in Greenville recorded by a clarinet virtuoso named Richard Stoltzman, whom Elizabeth Landis's husband, Ken, had recommended. Richard Stoltzman had a vast repertoire, everything from classical to jazz. One of the CDs even had “Amazing Grace” on it.

Bruce had already told Elizabeth that he and Celia were planning to visit her church tomorrow, on the day after Valentine's Day, and he had even been so bold as to ask Elizabeth if she could make a couple of requests of their song leader, which she had promised to do. He knew Celia liked the song “Wonderful Grace of Jesus” as much as he did. Of all the hymns about grace he had heard so far, that one had the happiest melody, in his opinion. He particularly liked the chorus, which described grace not just in moderate terms, as a flowing river, but flamboyantly, as “the mighty rolling sea.” He liked the men's line “Broader than the scope of my transgressions, sing it!”

At four o'clock Bruce carefully guided Maddy down the Stewarts' driveway on her little ambulance car, the one Celia had helped him locate the week before Christmas from an upscale toy shop she found on the Internet.

Bruce placed the gift in Maddy's hands. She held it gingerly, as if it were a fresh loaf of bread she didn't want to squeeze. He helped her ring the doorbell, then stepped around the corner of the house to wait for her. Celia opened the door and stepped out on the concrete stoop. She asked Maddy to help her open the present. He heard them laugh as they tore off the paper and ribbon.

“Oh, look,” Celia said, “it's a video.”

“Cartoons?” Maddy said.

“No, it's a story,” Celia said. “A very nice story.” Then she told Maddy to wait right there while she went inside to get a Valentine treat for her, which turned out to be a big lollipop wrapped in red cellophane. When she came back, she called out, “When you see your uncle Bruce, tell him I like the present very much.”

At his desk a few minutes later, Bruce wrote,
At four o'clock Maddy brought Celia a video of
Emma,
the one with Gwyneth Paltrow, which Celia had told Bruce was one of her top five favorite movies, along with
Pride and Prejudice.

She had told Bruce she liked
Emma
even a little better than P & P, as they had come to call the other one, because she could identify so much now with Emma Woodhouse, who thought of herself as very alert and observant, although she had completely overlooked all the virtues of the man right under her nose, her neighbor Mr. Knightley.

She was very fond of Austen, “now that I have grown up,” she had said. On a bookshelf next to her sofa was a dark blue volume titled
The Complete Works of Jane Austen
, and she had taken to reading Bruce excerpts from it in the past several weeks. She was still ashamed to think how she had once considered Austen's works nothing more than Victorian twaddle. Now she was full of admiration for them.

“Her humor is so understated,” she had told Bruce one day. To illustrate, she read several passages, among them the famous opening line of P & P, with which Bruce was familiar, since it was also in the movie: “‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.'”

Bruce pretended not to catch it. “I don't see anything so funny about that,” he said.

And she pretended to explain the meaning patiently. “She's using irony. She's really saying that it's everybody else who thinks the man needs a wife to help him spend all his money. She's just making an observation about all the mothers in the neighborhood who can't wait to get their eligible daughters married off to somebody rich.”

“Well, then, that's good for him, I guess. He's got his pick of the whole lot.”

“Oh, like women are apples or something? Like a man can stroll through the orchard looking them over, then whenever he feels good and ready just reach up and pluck one?”

“Well, yeah, or like watermelons. He can thump them all on the head till he finds a good one.”

“And I guess he ought to check their teeth, too, like when you buy a horse.”

“Not a bad idea. Here, open up.”

They had talked at length by now about how each of them had been more than a little guilty of both pride and prejudice toward the other. Bruce didn't believe it when Celia first told him that the original title of Austen's book had been
First Impressions
. She had to prove it by showing him the exact sentence in the introduction to her
Complete Works
.

“That's funny,” Bruce said. “I had a little discussion once with Elizabeth Landis about first impressions. You were mentioned in the conversation, as I recall.”

“You and Elizabeth talked about me? I would have expected it out of you, but I thought she was my friend.”

“Oh, she was on your side, believe me.”

“Well, she was on your side, too,” Celia said. “Seemed like she was always finding a way to work you into a conversation—‘He's so good with kids,' ‘You should see him in play rehearsals,' ‘He's got a great sense of humor,' ‘He's a true gentleman,' blah blah blah.”

“Blah blah blah? Are you suggesting none of it was true?”

“Hey, I wasn't born yesterday.”

“I'm not touching that one. No way am I going to comment on a woman's age.”

The five o'clock delivery was made by Kimberly, along with her new baby girl, Reagan, wrapped up in a white blanket. Bruce was a little nervous about this one, realizing the method of delivery was a gamble. He had told Kimberly to give him a signal when she left Celia's apartment, and twenty minutes later, after saying good-bye to Celia, she looked straight toward his window, raised one thumb, and nodded.

The last gift had to be a book
, Bruce wrote.
Specifically, Bruce wanted poetry. So he asked their mutual friend Elizabeth for suggestions, and she told him without hesitation that he could do no better for Valentine's Day than a collection of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who, she said, not only had a lovely first name and an underappreciated literary gift but also, interestingly enough, had found the love of her life at the age of forty
.

He had decided on a slim, gorgeously bound volume of Browning's
Sonnets From the Portuguese
, which he had ordered over the Internet from a bookshop in London that specialized in rare editions.
None of your ordinary mass-produced books would do for this gift
, he wrote.

First he had gone to the library and done some reading of Browning's poems on his own, thinking he might like to get a complete collection. But many of them had such melancholy subjects—deserted gardens, the tears of an angel, a dead person's hands, lost bowers, exiles from home, and that horrible one about the children weeping. Never would he give Celia a book with such lines to stumble across: “But the young, young children, O my brothers, / They are weeping bitterly! / They are weeping in the playtime of the others.”

So he had settled on the
Sonnets From the Portuguese
for the five o'clock gift, the final one before he came to her door at six. When the book arrived from England, he was tempted to underline certain passages: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” But it was Celia's book. He would let her do any underlining.

When Bruce had gone to the hospital right after Reagan was born three weeks ago and had looked at her through the window of the nursery on the maternity ward, he had received a small glimmer of understanding about how it worked with parents and their children. All the love he had felt for Maddy these two and a half years was miraculously reproduced and heaped upon this new baby he had never even held yet, without an ounce of it being subtracted from Maddy. It had to be one of the most astounding properties of love, that ability to multiply itself. Bingo, just like that, he had loved her. All those other babies who looked pretty much like her behind the window—well, they were okay, but nothing to compare to her.

When Matt had appeared at his side there at the window, Bruce had shaken his hand and asked what the baby's name was. When Matt told him it was Reagan, Bruce had said, “Oh, I get it,” and when Matt had looked confused, Bruce said, “Last names of U.S. presidents—that's how you're naming your kids.” Matt, who was in perfect control of himself, had laughed, then told Bruce he was starving and asked him if he wanted to go down to the cafeteria with him and get a cheeseburger.

After writing about the book of sonnets, Bruce paused and looked at the clock. Five-thirty—time to get dressed for dinner. He wanted to add one more sentence, but first he had to check on something. He left his bedroom and bounded upstairs. Kimberly was in the kitchen, peeking into the oven, where a large heart-shaped pizza was warming. Evidently Matt had heard about the Pop's Pizza Palace special, too, and had splurged for Valentine's Day.

“I don't want all the details,” Bruce said to her. “Just tell me one thing—did she hold the baby?” Kimberly nodded. Celia had come forward and taken Reagan from her arms, she said, before she had even offered. Bruce went back downstairs.
After opening the book of poetry
, he wrote at his desk,
Celia held Reagan for the first time
. He closed the notebook and went to take a shower.

When Bruce appeared at Celia's door at six o'clock with a box of Godiva chocolates, she was wearing a red dress he had never seen. He wished there were truly special-occasion words he could pull out at such a time to describe how she looked. All the standard adjectives fell far short. Finally he said, “Wow.”

He stepped inside, handing her the box of candy, which she set on the couch, where she had the other gifts laid out. She spread her hands to take them all in and said, “Wow, yourself.”

The restaurant was one Virgil Dunlop had suggested to Bruce: Capriccio over in Greenville—a small classy place with real art hanging on the walls. “For a genuine once-in-a-blue-moon type of celebration” was what Virgil had said. And the restaurant lived up to the recommendation. It was clear that the owner of Capriccio knew a thing or two about the fine art of dining out. Everything—music, decor, cuisine, service—was perfect.

Over dessert, which was something called Bavarian Cloud that the two of them shared, Celia smiled and said, “You know that time Kimberly sprained her ankle and you came to my apartment to get Madison?”

Bruce almost said, “You mean the time you practically shoved me out the door?” but decided against it. He knew by now, of course, why his mention of the movie
The Cider House Rules
, about an abortion doctor, had affected Celia so strongly. Instead he said, “You mean the time you fed me sugar cookies?”

“Right, and the time you tried to show off by throwing your napkin into the trash can.”

“Yeah, but at the last minute I decided you needed to see I wasn't totally perfect in every way, so I missed on purpose.”

“Right, that time. Well, anyway, you were saying something that night about how things that happen to you in real life can seem like something in a fairy tale.”

“Are you sure I said that?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Celia said. “I always pay very close attention.”

“You mean like that night a year ago when Kimberly and I came to your apartment and Patsy introduced me as Kimberly's
brother
?”

“She never said that.”

Bruce shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the waiter standing a discreet distance from the table, as if wanting to ask something. Bruce motioned him over. “What would you do with a beautiful but difficult woman?” he said.

The waiter gave a little bow. “I'd bring her to Capriccio at least once a week, sir.”

In a way it seemed totally wrong—like a desecration of sorts, most certainly an anticlimax—to take Celia to the mall after such a dinner. What a contrast in atmosphere. But Bruce had planned this whole day as seriously as if it were a military maneuver, and the mall was part of it. In the end it would prove right, he knew that. And if Celia complained about the bright lights of the mall seeming a little on the unromantic side for Valentine's Day, he would remind her that she had started the day by hearing a stump grinder in the backyard.