Painting Naked (Macmillan New Writing) (37 page)

Everyone yells hello, welcome home.

Lizzie pushes Beatrice aside and gathers me into a hug. “Congratulations. I knew Archibald would win.”

For once, I’m speechless. I sneak a look at Tom and he just grins and shrugs, like it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t stop himself from spreading the good news. Hands pull me into the living room where red and white roses bloom on my coffee table and helium-filled balloons dance across my ceiling. A parrot piñata with green wings and a red beak hangs in the stairwell. Beneath it, a plastic whiffle bat leans against the wall. My God, they’ve thought of everything. Someone shoves a drink in my hand. Pink, with white blobs floating on top.

“Marshmallow punch,” Fergus booms. “My secret recipe.”

Lizzie nudges me. “Battery acid.”

Cripes.

Casseroles and cold cuts, baskets of warm rolls, and bowls of salad appear out of nowhere. Plates and silverware, napkins and glasses materialize like magic. My friends.
My friends
. I can’t believe they did all this. Tom takes my hand, whispers in my ear. Agent Judith is looking forward to meeting me. How about next Thursday?

Yes, yes. Of course, yes.

Someone pops a bottle of champagne.

Alistair rings from Boston, excited about Archibald. Lizzie admits to e-mailing my sons. Jordan calls five minutes later even more excited than his brother because, hey Mom. Guess what? Bridget and I are getting married.

Oh, my God. A wedding.

“When?”

“September.”

Fabulous.

My heart soars. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I yell down the phone. “It’s a mad house in here.”

“I can tell,” Jordan yells back.

“Congratulations, and I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I close my eyes, open them again. I’m still not believing this. A welcome home party
plus
my son’s getting married?

Wow. Double wow.

Lizzie gives me a glass of champagne. “Dutch sends love and best wishes.”

“Jeez, Lizzie, who
didn’t
you tell?”

She grins. “Elaine Burke.”

Joel slots in a CD and
Moon River
wafts from the speakers. He scoops up his daughter and swings her in circles. Beatrice and Harriet join hands and sway in time to the music. The kids squeal and jump up and down. Fergus and Lizzie glide into a well practiced waltz.

Tom bows and offers me his arm. “May I have this dance?”

I nod and pretend I’m the mother of the groom and we’re taking the floor at Jordan’s wedding. I’ll be wearing a floaty dress and matching high-heels. Maybe a wisp of a hat. I wonder where they’ll hold it. Some place in Pennsylvania, I suppose. Where will I be living then?

Don’t even go there. Not tonight.

Holding me tight, Tom whirls me around and around, faster and faster. Faces zoom past, my feet barely touch the ground. Finally, when I’m way beyond dizzy, we slow down and my partner leans me over in a backward dip and I feel myself curve into a shape I wasn’t meant to be.

Will I be able to stand up in the morning?

Big round of applause. Lizzie yells for an encore and I realize we’re the only ones left dancing. Last time we did this, Tom wore a hideous mask. Tonight, he wears an idiotic grin.

My face aches from smiling.

What the hell did Fergus put in that punch?

We crack another bottle of champagne and the children gather around Beatrice as she reads
Archibald’s Aria
. Not all the illustrations are complete, but the kids don’t seem to care. Some are just pencil, others pen-and-ink. Unfinished sketches.

I think about my mother.

Is she sharing this moment with me? Does she have any idea how much I miss her? Tears well up, trickle down my cheek.

I need a few moments alone.

When nobody’s looking, I slip upstairs and change out of my rumpled travel clothes, splash water on my face. Then I sit on the bathtub and run my hands over the terracotta tiles I glued down and grouted, the walls I colorwashed three times before I got it right. I contemplate the towel rails I chose with such care and the pedestal sink I found at a yard sale, brand new and still in its box. What will the new owners think of my house? Will they love it or tear it down and begin all over again?

Someone taps on the door.

“Jill, are you in there?” Harriet says.

I run a brush through my hair. “Be right out.”

Sipping a glass of champagne, Harriet leans against my dresser. She points to a manila envelope on my bed. The flap is unsealed, my name’s printed on the front.

“What’s this?”

“Happy birthday, Jill.”

“It’s not for another three weeks.”

“So, shoot me, I’m early for once.”

I pull out a sheet of paper and begin to read, but the legal-sounding words blur and run together. Baffled, I shrug and look up.

“It’s a letter of intent,” Harriet says. “The insurance company decided to settle out of court.” She grins and raises her glass. “I knew they would. They can’t afford the negative publicity.”

“You mean—?” I sit down hard on my bed.

She nods. “Forty-five thousand.”

Oh, my God.

“We’ll have their check the beginning of next month.”

Good thing I’m already sitting, because now I have a strong need to lie down.

“I had a feeling that punch was dangerous,” Harriet says. I open my eyes. She’s fanning me with a magazine. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m gobsmacked.”

“And jet lagged,” Harriet adds. She hands me a glass of water. “Here, drink this.”

I ask her to repeat, in words of one syllable, what she told me before I zoned out. I need to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. Her hands fly about as she describes how easy it was. Mine wasn’t the only complaint, and my former supervisor no longer has a job.

Forty-five thousand dollars?

Enough to pay off all my debts?

I’ll do the math tomorrow. Right now, my head’s full of cotton candy and my stomach’s doing cartwheels. I couldn’t add two and two and come up with four if I tried.

With a final whack, the piñata explodes and candy falls into the hands of eager children. Fergus snatches up a Tootsie Roll and hands it to Lizzie with a bow and a flourish. Their daughter comes in with a cake, and oh, what a cake. Tiny green parrots—God knows where they found those—perch on a nest of chocolate twigs. Hearts and roses cascade over the sides. No candles, thank goodness.

Lizzie hands me a knife. “Make a wish,” she says.

But I don’t need to. I’ve got it all. My house, my friends, my business, even good old Archibald. But best of all, I’ve got myself, back where I want to be. What more could I possibly want?

I slice and serve and we dive into the cake and wash it down with more champagne, and I’m wobbly on my feet by the time I bid my last guest goodnight. Now it’s just Tom and me. And my cat. I gather him up and flop on the couch, head spinning, exhausted and too wound up to sleep. My eyes twitch with fatigue. According to my watch, it’s three
A.M.
in London. Way past my bed time. Zachary yawns, curls up, and goes to sleep on my lap. His whiskers are covered with frosting.

Tom bustles about, collecting plates and glasses, picking up trash. I hear the fridge door open and close. Dishes clink as he loads the dishwasher. It wooshes into action and he brings me a mug of tea, then hunkers down by the hearth.

“Feel like a fire?” he says.

I cradle the mug with my hands. “Now?”

“Sure, why not?” He picks up a log. “Got any kindling?”

“I doubt it.”

“Newspaper?”

“Nope.” I shove Zachary to one side and struggle to my feet. “But there’s bound to be something in my office we can use.”

A stray balloon hovers above my desk. Its string dangles in front of that photo of Colin and me. Just what I need. I rip the picture off the wall, take a final look at his face, and tear it in half. Then I place both pieces together and tear them again … and again.

Should’ve done it sooner than this.

I toss the bits in my overflowing waste basket and carry the whole lot out to Tom. He crumples paper and stacks logs, then strikes a match, and as I watch the flames curl around Colin’s pink shirt, I feel a final pang of sadness for the boy I once knew.

Tom nods toward the fire. “Letting go of the past?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“It was time.”

“I know.”

There’s an awkward silence. We’ve never been short on words before. Why now, why tonight after we danced one another’s feet to ribbons? I lean against the mantel, move a candlestick two inches to the left, move it back again. Now what do we do?

“Shall we sit?” Tom says.

I tell him this will be fine.

So we sit. Another silence. Tom drapes his arm across the back of the couch. Crosses his knees, taps his foot. Hums a bit. I think he’s nervous. I certainly am. He just watched me toss my past into the fire, so he knows I’ve worked my way through it. Just like he said I would. Is he going to kiss me?

Oh hell, I don’t know what to do.

What if he does? Will I like the feel of his beard? What if it tickles and I laugh, or scratches my face enough that I flinch? Tom moves closer, takes my hand off my lap and raises it to his lips. Oh my, I didn’t expect this. His beard is much softer than it looks, and I’m wondering what it’d feel like on my mouth, when I find out for sure.

Let me tell you, kissing a guy with a beard is pretty special.

We kiss a bit more and hold hands, and that’s all I want. I’m not ready for anything more. Not yet, anyway. I don’t want to rush. I did that before and I won’t be making that mistake again. We’re not on a cruise ship. We have all the time in the world, except for right now. I push him, gently, off the couch and out my front door. Tell him I’ll commit a mischief if I don’t get some sleep.

I’m living on borrowed time here, can’t wait to fall into bed.

But when I do, I can’t fall asleep, dammit. My eyes refuse to stay shut. Sighing, I get up, slip into my robe and go downstairs. I wander from room to room, weak with relief and gratitude. I came so close to losing all this, and it gives me the collywobbles to think that only a few hours ago I was readying myself to let it go.

My best memories lie within the fabric of these walls. That stain on the ceiling where Jordan chucked a lump of pastry dough to see if it would stick. The grooves in the floor from my bentwood rocker. Those dents in the utility box outside that Alistair used as a backstop when playing baseball. I got an irate call from the power company about that one. They thought someone was tampering with the meter.

The doorframe where Zachary sharpens his claws.

Climbing the stairs, I run my hands along the banister, down the spindles, feeling drips of paint I neglected to sand off. I adjust a couple of pictures that never seem to hang straight and find myself looking at two little boys as they build a castle on the beach. From this angle, I can’t tell which one is which. They used to look so much alike.

Am I ready to fall asleep yet?

Almost.

I wrap myself in a quilt, shove my feet into loafers, and step onto the balcony. Winter taps its frosty fingers on my face. I shiver and pull the quilt tighter. A breeze ripples through the willows. Their ice-covered branches glisten and tinkle like wind chimes. Curls of snow tumble off the roof and spiral down to the patio. In the distance, waves roar and rumble up the beach.

My beach.

My home. I take a deep, cleansing breath. Fill my lungs with hope and fresh air. I look up at a black velvet sky dotted with stars and see Claudia’s smile in the curve of a fingernail moon. It hangs, suspended on invisible strings, directly over Tom’s house. What’s she trying to tell me now?

Promise you’ll go back to Cornwall with somebody special.

You bet I will.

But first, I have to stitch my life back together again.

Sands Point

July 2012

There’s a wedding about to begin in my back garden and I’m holding up the works. I peer over my balcony. Guests sit in rows of rented chairs on the lawn. A blonde justice of the peace stands in her black robes beneath my new rose arbor. The groom and best man wait beside her. Looks as if everyone’s here. If I don’t hurry up, they’ll begin without me.

I shove my feet into strappy sandals, give my seafoam silk dress one final twitch, and grab my bouquet off the bed. Lizzie waits at the foot of my stairs. She wears lavender chiffon and carries a spray of peach roses. Her eyes are as blue as a breaking wave.

“Ready?” she asks.

“You look gorgeous,” I tell her.

Lizzie grins. “So do you.”

We link arms and step outside. The late afternoon sun melts into the horizon like a huge blob of butter surrounded by splashes of paint—orange, pink, and purple—that look as if they’ve been flung up casually by a giant unseen artist. I tell Lizzie I ordered it specially for us.

Three little girls in a froth of lemon organza wait on the patio. They giggle and nudge one another. Ribbons flutter from wreaths of daisies that circle their sweet heads. Molly wanted to wear her fairy wings, but settled for a basket of rose petals instead. Anna and Beth clutch posies of sweet peas and baby’s breath. Tyler carries a blue velvet pillow with two rings tied on top.

“All set?” I whisper.

The girls nod, suddenly serious. Tyler slips the tiny bulldozer he’s been playing with into the pocket of his white pants, and Lizzie bends to adjust his tie as the first bars of Ravel’s
Bolero
waft from the speakers on my porch. The guys from The Contented Figleaf are pulling double-duty today. I put them in charge of music as well as food.

Lizzie and I move slowly forward, Molly in front scattering petals, Tyler and the two girls behind. Tubs of flowers line our path. Ice blue hydrangeas, white cosmos, and crimson petunias. It’s July Fourth weekend and there’ll be fireworks on the beach later tonight. Fergus will make sure of that. I focus my gaze straight ahead. If I waver, I’ll catch someone’s eye and burst into nervous laughter. The guests smile and nod approval. Dear, familiar faces. Friends from close by and far away.