Remember the Time (7 page)

But it had never felt like hers.

Kate’s dream of owning an antique shop had come true without her having to lift a finger, and she’d resented the hell out of Paul for that. He’d found the building, bought it, picked the interior and exterior colors. He’d had all the renovations done. He’d said, “All you have to do is fill it up with stuff to sell.”

She’d felt like a child whose school project had been usurped by well-meaning parents; as if they were the ones being graded. Paul had taken her dream out of her hands, made it reality, and in so doing, had taken away all the joy it should have brought. She had felt no sense of achievement. It was just another gift from Paul that wasn’t really hers to keep. Another bribe to placate her. As if the shop could ever make up for his infidelity.

But she’d smiled at him. Pretended she was thrilled. It wouldn’t have done any good to do otherwise.

It seemed she had nothing that was her very own. Except that damned scar.

Now she watched as Mike spread his arms and indicated a five-foot space of empty wall in his study. “When I mentioned to Cindy that I was looking for a small sideboard, she said she’d try and locate one for me. I want to put it here.”

“Does it have to be a sideboard? I mean, couldn’t you use a small bookcase more?” She eyed the stacks of books pushed against the wall, some of them three feet tall.

“But I’ve got this lamp I really want to use.” Mike walked to a cabinet and bent to open the bottom door. “And I don’t think it’ll fit on a bookcase.” He pulled out a copper lamp base and set it on the floor while he continued searching for the shade. “What do you think?”

Kate didn’t reply. She was suddenly, inexplicably fascinated by the jeans he wore. Well-worn, they looked as soft as chamois. They fit him loosely, but when he bent over they became a second skin.

Mike located the mica shade and attached it to the base. “Kate?” He looked over his shoulder.

“Huh?” Kate’s eyes lifted. “I’m sorry, Mike. What did you say?”

“Do you think it’ll fit?”

She thought it over for a moment. “Oh! You mean the lamp?”

“What else would I mean?”

Kate smiled and shook her head. “Nothing. Yes, I think it’ll fit.” She paused. “Did anyone ever tell you you have a very nice ass?”

Stunned, Mike sat back.

Kate grinned. “Don’t tell me you’re blushing?”

A beat passed, and then Mike said, “As long as I’ve known you I’m constantly amazed by the fact that you never engage your brain before you open your mouth.”

“I was just making an observation.”

“How am I supposed to take that observation?”

“It was a compliment. What did you think it was? A come-on?” She laughed, and wondered herself why she’d said it. “Just say ‘thank you.’ ”

“Gee, thanks, Katie,” Mike said, standing. “Means a lot coming from you.”

“I can’t believe no one in that harem you’ve had has ever told you that before.”

“Not that it’s any of your business.”

They walked out of the house together. Mike accompanied her to the street, where she thanked him again and continued toward her own house. She slowed down and then stopped in the middle of the street. Turning, she said, “I’ve decided.”

He waited to find out what she was talking about. With Kate, it could be anything.

“About the house, I mean. I want you to do it for me.”

He knew better than to show his elation and, so, in a businesslike tone said, “Good. I’ll come by tomorrow morning and we can see what needs to be done.”

She turned and raised her arm in a wave.

K
ate entered the house and fought down a feeling of panic. She shouldn’t have said yes to Mike. She should have pretended to think it over, as she’d originally planned, and then told him no. She didn’t know what had come over her. Now it was too late. She’d committed herself.

What was today? She checked the calendar with its color-coded dots that ordered her life. Red meant call Cindy at the shop. Blue was garbage day. Green was the day Homer got his heartworm pill. Yellow told her that the Orkin man was coming for the monthly spraying. On and on they went. A Technicolor march of time in a gray life.

Her finger landed on Thursday, with its black dot.

With the last of the weeds pulled, Kate sat back on her heels and brushed off her hands. There had only been a few this time, and she dropped them into the paper bag she’d brought with her. The yellow lilies she’d placed in the urns last month were unrecognizable and she pushed them into the bag as well. Reaching into the basket she always brought, Kate took out the plastic gallon jug of water and emptied it into the urns.

Her stop at the florist shop this morning had yielded two dozen strawflowers and two large stems of sea holly. They followed the water into the vases. Finally, with a sponge she’d dampened with a little of the water, she wiped off the smooth granite stone. As always, she silently read the few words engraved on it.

Paul Allen Armstrong, Jr.
Born—June 6, 1959 Died—March 11, 1994

Died March 11, 1994. The words circled in her mind, an endless tape loop of bad dreams and rainy days. Tragedy. The cemetery was her cathedral and the gravestone her confessional.

Kate sat against the giant beech. It was the only tree whose leaves still clung to its branches. She gazed across the gentle hills of Thornrose Cemetery. Sunlight glinted off marble and granite. She was alone. Closing her eyes, she began talking, always with the same six words.

“Baby, I miss you so much …” Today she intoned them like well-rehearsed dialogue. She knew her lines inside and out, but after countless performances they’d begun to lose their meaning for her. Instead of the heartfelt plea they’d been, they’d become just words.

“Baby, I miss you so much,” she repeated, trying to recapture the anguish she’d felt that first year of his death. “I had some really bad days this month …”

As Kate “spoke” to Paul, she tried to conjure up an image of his face. It got harder all the time, frightening her. But, finally, there it was. Clear, hazel eyes peering out from under an impossibly thick fringe of golden lashes. Even in his twenties, his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed. In the summer, his light brown hair and eyebrows became gilded by the sun. He’d always kept his hair short, but not cropped. He’d had to contend with a slight wave in it all his life. His ears lay flat against his head, showing off the strong lines of his jaw. His mouth had a perpetually amused lift to it. His lips were remarkably sensuous. When he smiled, he
revealed teeth that were the product of thousands of dollars’ worth of orthodontia. His smile also revealed the dimple on the right side of his cheek.

She could see it all now, and she smiled back at the portrait that her mind allowed her to view.

“Hey, Katie! Look at this!”

She follows his voice into the living room of the hotel suite where the Giants have put them up. He has pulled the heavy curtains to reveal a sparkling view of San Francisco Bay, the twin red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge just visible above the buildings that surround the Embarcadero. Draping his arm over her shoulder, he points out Alcatraz Island to her.

She smiles at his excitement. “Where is it?”

“South of here,” he answers, knowing she means Candlestick Park. “God! Can you believe we’re really here?”

“I’m not surprised,” she says, putting her arms around his waist. “You’re a great ballplayer. Anyone can see that.”

Paul has gone from single A ball to triple A ball to the majors in two seasons. He is a phenomenon that has made the Giants’ scouting staff look like geniuses, and the Giants’ owner wet his pants. At the tender age of twenty-two he is the Giants’ starting second baseman
.

Everything comes easy to Paul Armstrong. Not that he doesn’t appreciate it. He does. But he’s also come to expect it
.

Raised in an upper-middle-class home, with a father, mother, and sister who have always looked on him as their All-American Golden Boy, he can do no wrong
.

Paul Allen Armstrong, Sr., made his money through hard work and good business sense. The small sporting goods store he’d started has turned into a small empire that stretches across Virginia and Maryland. Paul had worked in the Staunton shop since the age of twelve. His parents supported his baseball habit that began in Little League. When coaches started telling his father the boy had real talent, he focused all his energy on helping his son, and the boy had come through
.

He had the satisfaction of seeing his son conquer high school ball and, on the basis of excellent grades and incredible ability, win a scholarship to James Madison University. Paul was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in his first year
.

Women hovered around Paul like hummingbirds around an irresistibly bright flower. He’d chosen Kate for her independence, her wit, her beauty, and her love of baseball. His personal life-plan, which he’d explained to Kate more than once, called for a major league career, a wife that would be the envy of every man, and a couple of kids, one of which would hopefully be Paul Allen Armstrong III
.

Now, as he stands at the window of the hotel, she knows he sees it all falling into place. Turning his head, he places his lips against Kate’s ear. “Let’s make a baby.”

Kate buries her face in his neck, suddenly shy. They’ve been married only a few months and their lovemaking still seems like a forbidden pleasure, after all the years of holding back
.

He gently pushes her away and kisses the corner of her mouth. “C’mon, Katie,” he whispers. “Let’s do it.”

Kate opened her eyes and shivered. The sky had become streaky with clouds. While she’d daydreamed, the Indian summer had crept away on tiptoe, leaving behind the sharp breath of winter. The change was in the air she took into her lungs, and it frightened her.

It had happened slowly, this fear of change. So slowly she hadn’t been aware of it. It began in the fourth year of their marriage, when she’d say things to Paul like, “I don’t want to try that new restaurant. Can’t we just go home?” Or she’d make excuses not to meet a new team wife. When the team fired one of the coaches she had been more upset about it than Paul. That had been the year they’d bought a very expensive, very luxurious condominium
with a panoramic view of San Francisco and the Bay.

It wasn’t Kate’s idea. She didn’t mind the apartment they rented for the season. They occupied the top floor of an Italianate row house on Bush Street. The landlords, an unobtrusive gay couple who lived below them, always held the rooms for them at the beginning of the season. Kate loved the house, dressed in slate blue with white and cinnamon trim. She loved being able to walk out the door and catch the electric streetcar to all her favorite junk shops. Far from home, she really loved the sense of stability the neighborhood gave her.

But Paul was a star, making money they couldn’t have imagined the first couple of years they were married. One afternoon, on an off day, he’d driven her downtown on the pretext of sightseeing near the wharf. They’d ended up in front of a towering glass and steel monstrosity called the Pier 51 Towers.

“Why are we stopping here?” Kate asks
.

“The Breedens bought one of these and they invited us up to see it,” he replies, walking her to the entry
.

A doorman dressed in a maroon jacket and matching cap opens the heavy glass door for them. The lobby is all marble and brass. Two of the biggest ficus trees she’s ever seen flank the elevators
.

“Pretty fancy,” she whispers, as the elevator doors silently slide open. What she is thinking is
, Pretty pretentious.

They enter the glass box that takes them to the thirty-fourth floor while giving them a view of the harbor. Paul and Kate don’t speak during the short ride
.

Sue and Jimmy Breeden greet them at the door, eager to give them the grand tour of their new home away from home. Secretly hoping this won’t take long, Kate makes all the appropriate admiring noises. She loathes the cold feeling the glass and marble and granite give her. The kitchen reminds her of an
operating room, with its stainless steel sterility. Yes, the view is spectacular, but can a person really live here?

As the door closes behind them, Paul asks, “So, what do you think?”

She shrugs. “It’s all right for some people, but it’s not me.”

“You didn’t like it?”

The expression on his face gives her the first warning sign
.

“No. I didn’t. Did you?” They stand in the middle of the echoing hallway. Kate turns to face Paul. “Did you?” she repeats
.

“Yeah, I did. A lot.”

“Really?”

He tries a different tack. “Look, Kate. I think it’s time for us to buy some property.”

“And you think this is where you’d like to live?” She is incredulous
.

“Let’s go have lunch and talk about it.”

Sitting in one of the many seafood restaurants along the wharf, they have their first real argument as husband and wife. In the end, tired and angry, Kate gives in when Paul says, “It’s my money and I say we buy it.”

They had moved in three weeks later.

That had been a bad year for Kate. She’d blamed it on the condo. It didn’t feel right. It wasn’t “home.” She remembered how she’d yearned for the familiarity of Staunton. And of Mike. His phone calls always seemed to come at the moment she was at her lowest. But her calls to him were only made when she felt really good. It would have been too humiliating to complain about her life. Even to Mike.

She had to mask something she was growing more afraid of as the years went by: that she had made a mistake in marrying Paul. The niggling thought that maybe they weren’t the perfect couple bored into her brain like a small worm that had found its way into an apple. It
couldn’t be seen from the outside, but the damage was done.