Still Waters (13 page)

Jenna hadn’t liked it when he brought up the subject of marriage the other night. He had seen the shock on her face and the momentary shimmer of distaste. Her reaction had hurt him, but only for a little while.

After thinking it over, he realized that he’d acted rather like an oaf, blurting it out like that.

“Well then, we should just get married,” he’d said, with all the passion of a wet mop. What was he thinking? At least when he had proposed to her, he had done it the right way: candlelight and roses, soft music in the background. With a woman like Jenna, it was sometimes difficult to know what note to strike, and obviously he’d struck the wrong one the other night. They’d barely spoken since.

If only she knew how he felt about her. She held an almost unmanageable fascination for him. When he had told her that she was uncivilized, he had meant that she was like him: cold and strong, cutting to the quick of things, unafraid to slice to the bone. She was magnificent. And she was perfect for him.

When they married, Frank intended to put her up on a pedestal and keep her there, always. She deserved no less than complete and utter adoration.

Of course, judging from recent events, she might be feeling a little less enthusiastic about the idea of marriage. But that was all right. Frank was infinitely patient, and eternally unrelenting. Jenna belonged with him — belonged
to
him, even. And one day in the not-too-distant future, they would be man and wife.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

J
ENNA HAD NEVER REALLY BELIEVED IN
fairy tale endings.

When she was a child, her father had taken her to see a matinée of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
. It had been the first time Lucien had taken her to the movies. As an adult, she could never remember which city they were living in at that time, but she remembered everything else about the afternoon clearly. She remembered the soaring ceilings and beveled mirrors in the theater lobby, the red seats and carpeting in the auditorium. Lucien bought the two of them a bag of caramels, which were usually forbidden to her because they were bad for her teeth, and they sat together in the front row of the balcony.

For the occasion, Jenna had worn her new velvet dress, the one that so nicely brought out the bluish tones in her big gray eyes. Her black hair had been brushed to gleaming, and her stockings had been pure white. And Lucien did not wear his uniform that day, but instead wore a suit and tie like all the other fathers. His tall frame and handsome, ascetic face had drawn many admiring glances from women they passed, both young and old.

The colors on the movie screen had been like something out of a dream. Jenna had laughed at the dwarfs, sighed at Snow White, and covered her eyes when the beautiful queen turned herself into an ugly old witch. She had enjoyed herself up to the end, the very end, when the prince kissed Snow White and brought her back to life.

On the drive back to base, her father had asked her seriously what she thought of the movie. His questions to her were always serious, and he would listen to her answers as if she were an adult with opinions valuable enough to matter.

“Did you like it?” he’d asked.

She’d considered carefully before answering, not wanting to hurt his feelings. Finally she’d confessed that she didn’t like the end, because it wasn’t true that you could kiss someone and bring them back to life.

In reply, Lucien had pointed out that it wasn’t true you could talk to a magic mirror, either, or that someone could make a magic apple which would put you to sleep.

But Jenna was not to be put off so easily. She was precocious, and her natural instinct was to argue. “That’s true.
However
people do talk to
themselves
when they look in the mirror, and you can put
poison
on an apple. So those parts aren’t really implausible.”

“But the part with the prince was ‘implausible’?” her father had asked. When she’d nodded he’d added, “It’s just make-believe, Jenna.”

She’d shaken her head and said flatly, “It could never happen. They shouldn’t try to make us believe that impossible things can happen.”

If her father had been an ordinary parent, he probably would have read her the riot act for being so outspoken to an elder. But nothing about her father had ever been ordinary. He had quietly accepted what she said, then asked her about schoolwork.

But before he’d turned his face back to the road, Lucien had looked her full in the eyes. And in that instant Jenna had seen two things. The first was approval, which Jenna knew came because he liked to hear her opinions, especially when they differed from what other people thought. And the second was sadness, which she had attributed to the fact that her mother had died when Jenna was a baby, and her father had not been able to kiss her back to life.

It didn’t occur to Jenna until years later that maybe the sadness had been for
her
, for the fact that even as a child she couldn’t let go of hard-edged reality long enough to enjoy some make-believe, some magic.

And as she watched her son walking around an art gallery in the early summer of 1956, she wondered if maybe a little magic wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Jenna smiled. Christopher was being a real sport today. He seemed to understand that this trip was important to his mother, so he was behaving as best he could. He carried himself with great dignity, held her hand politely, and looked at all the pictures on the wall as if he were seriously pondering the artists’ meaning and choice of colors.

What a little man he was, this child of hers. If only she could tell him how he lit up her life, transformed her world from a dark, cramped, lonely place to an expansive universe filled with light. She wished that Lucien could have lived long enough to meet his grandson. The two of them would have been great pals in their own way.

Jenna and Christopher stopped in front of a particularly famous piece of art. She hunkered down, her cotton dress brushing the floor as she pointed up at the painting. “You see, Christopher?” she said. “This is abstract art. It’s not a picture of a thing or a person. It’s like…a picture of a feeling.”

He gazed solemnly at the seemingly-random brushstrokes, taking in the assortment of color and odd angles. “I like it,” decided the budding art critic. He pursed his lips. “But is it a finger-painting, or did he use a brush?”

“That is an excellent question.” Jenna’s heart leapt as she recognized the voice behind them.

“Uncle Adam!” Christopher exclaimed. “Did you come to play baseball?”

“Maybe later,” Adam replied. He turned to Jenna, a friendly smile on his face.

Jenna rose slowly. She was pleased to see him — absurdly pleased, actually. They hadn’t seen each other since meeting at Bill and Kitty’s house weeks before, and the last place she’d expected to encounter him was here, at the museum. It seemed to make the day even more special, and that worried her.

“Well, you two may think it looks like a finger painting, but I happen to like this picture.” She spoke briskly in an attempt to cover how hard her heart was beating. “It’s very — ”

“Sloppy?” Adam interjected.

“Forceful,” she declared.

“Forcefully sloppy,” he conceded engagingly. “Or maybe…sloppily forceful?”

Jenna laughed out loud, then clapped a hand over her mouth. Christopher looked up at her reproachfully. “Mommy. You said we couldn’t be noisy.”

“Sorry,” Jenna whispered. She wasn’t usually prone to quick laughter, but Adam seemed to have that effect. And that also worried her.

“Is Uncle Adam coming to the park with us?” Christopher’s eyes were wide and innocent.

“Oh, I don’t think so, sweetheart. Uncle Adam probably has to work this afternoon.”

“No,” Adam spoke up. “No, he doesn’t. I’m taking the afternoon off.”

“Oh.” Jenna paused. Of course, the polite thing to do was invite him to join them. She just wasn’t sure that it was a good idea.

But as usual, Christopher took the decision right out of her hands. “You can come to the park with us,” he told Adam self-assuredly. “We don’t have any baseball stuff with us, but Mommy says we’re going to have hot dogs.”

“It just so happens that hot dogs are my favorite food,” Adam told him. Then he looked at Jenna. “Is it all right if I tag along?”

“Sure.” Jenna spoke before she could stop herself. She bit her lip. Then, shaking off her worry, she looked down and smiled at her son. “Come on. I have one more painting to show you, and I hope that you like it as much as I do.”

The Phillips Collection had opened its doors to the public in 1921. Housed in a courtly red-brick mansion on a quiet, tree-lined street in DC, it was the country’s first museum of modern art. And in 1923, when the gallery purchased Renoir’s transcendent painting
Luncheon of the Boating Party
, it had given the nation’s capital a joyful masterpiece to call its own.

The painting hung in a special alcove on the second floor of the gallery. Jenna caught her breath as they came around the corner and saw it hanging on the wall. It was as enormous as she remembered, over five feet across, and full of life. Colors glowed like crystals, as brightly as if paint had touched canvas only moments ago. The faces smiled and chatted and contemplated the beauty of the day. Looking at that painting was like being transported to the French countryside in 1885. It evoked the scent of lush vegetation, the taste of wine, the music of companionable laughter.

Simply put, it was magic.

“Mommy,” Christopher breathed. “I want it.”

Jenna held his hand tightly.
Me too,
she thought.

* * *

It wasn’t until they were halfway to the park that she remembered to ask Adam why he was at the gallery today.

“Kitty told me you’d be there,” he said. “I sent her some flowers for her birthday, and she called to thank me. She mentioned that you and Christopher were going to be here, so I decided to take the afternoon off.” He looked at her. “I hope I didn’t intrude on your time together.”

“Not at all. Christopher was very pleased to see you. And so was I,” she added recklessly.

It was a beautiful late-spring afternoon. Azalea bushes bloomed in tiny front yards, and the sidewalks were full of people. Christopher skipped between Adam and Jenna, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for the three of them to be together.

They walked up Massachusetts Avenue toward Dupont Circle, passing venerable buildings of sparkling silver granite. After securing their lunch from a sidewalk vendor, they crossed the busy boulevard, which swept around Dupont Circle like a moat. At the center of the circle was a giant marble fountain carved with Grecian figures. Jenna, Adam, and Christopher sat at the fountain’s edge, eating hot dogs and drinking soda pop as they chatted idly, in fits and starts. On one side of the park, old men were playing chess at a cluster of stone tables under the trees.

Jenna closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun, feeling as if the heat shining down was warming her from within. She heard Adam chuckle, and she opened her eyes to find him watching as Christopher chased pigeons with great delight.

“I wish I could be made so happy by a hot dog and some pigeons,” he said.

“I don’t even remember the last time I felt that happy.” Jenna spoke without thinking. “I think maybe when Lucien and I were in Cuba. He’d been posted there, and I — “ She stopped.

Adam turned and looked at her with interest. “Go on.”

“I was going to the English school in Havana. The headmistress was a real proponent of fresh air and exercise — she used to take us on trips to the mountains, and we’d go on long hikes. I remember that on one of those trips, we hiked to the peak of a lower mountain, and I could see straight out to the ocean. I stood there, with my arms out, and the wind blowing through my hair, and I felt…happy. Joyful.”

“Free,” Adam supplied.

“Exactly. Happy and free. I’ve never felt that way before. Or since, for that matter.”

Jenna looked up to find Adam watching her intently, and she felt the prickles of a deep blush forming in her cheeks. What was wrong with her? She wasn’t the type to spill out memories of personal moments like that.

“Your face is red,” Adam told her.

Nice of you to point it out
. Aloud, she simply said, “The sun is rather strong today, isn’t it?”

“Then let’s go sit in the shade.” Without waiting for her consent, he grabbed her hand and stood up, pulling her to one of the wooden benches that ringed the park.

“Where’s Christopher?” Jenna asked. “I don’t see him.”

“He’s fine. He’s over there.” Adam gestured, and Jenna saw her son playing under an old tree, walking along the roots that jutted up from the dirt, his arms held out like a tightrope walker. “He’s having a grand old time.”

“Yes. He’s really enjoying himself today.”

“Are you?” Adam asked her.