She nodded. “I love to gorge on books and I always bring a few with me when I travel.”
“So you’re not one to pack light,” he said. “You do know you can get books electronically?”
“Not the same as real books.” She shook her head. “I love the feel of the pages as I turn them, the smell…”
His lips curled at the passion in her voice. “The smell?”
“A brand new book—as an old one—definitely has a smell. And you seem to like them in paper, too,” she said, waving a hand in the direction of the shelves. “Anyway, the session was a gift from my Granny, so I took it. I found myself unexpectedly enjoying the initial questionnaire about my reading habits that my bibliotherapist sent me. Nobody had ever asked me these questions before, even though reading fiction is and always has been essential to my life. I couldn’t wait to get started.”
“How was it? Do you remember it well?”
“Amazing. In a word, amazing,” she said. “I always wanted to do it again, but I never had the time. So all the preoccupations I have had have just kind of been simmering. And I always wondered if I should try it again.”
“Well, I had a particularly enlightening session with my therapist today,” he said. “It gave me a lot of insight into my current preoccupations.”
“Oh? What is preoccupying you at the moment?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”
“I do, partially. But you need to think about it, because that is also part of the therapy, right?” Completely lost in conversation with him, she relaxed back into the armchair. “You don’t just come out of the session cured. There’s homework. So, what goes?”
Being alive while my daughter will soon be gone. Feeling lust for a forbidden woman. But apart from being too obvious and too dramatic—and it went without saying, he could not tell her the second part of his problem—so instead he told her, “I am irked that moral principles are absolute and unchanging; they should be relative to one’s situation. And yet, they are cemented.”
Which was true and also encompassed significant portions of his general sense of foreboding and impotency.
“Hmm. Ethics, then. I’m going to think about some books,” she promised. “Are there writers right now that you’ve read recently that you just absolutely hate or feel like they’re overrated?”
“I’ve never been able to force myself to like Salman Rushdie,” he said.
She smiled at that. “I don’t particularly like him very much. I don’t like Jonathan Franzen.”
“Hmm…yes. I guess it’s mostly über males. Apart from classics, have you read Michael Critchon’s A Case of Need?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a light read, a thriller about medical ethics. You might find it interesting.” He stood, walked to the bookshelf, found the volume he was looking for, and placed it on the table between them. “It won an Edgar Award.”
“Thank you. It’s funny, you know…a lot of women I talk to—and a lot of men, too—read along gender lines, which it doesn’t seem you do at all.”
He watched her page through the book, nodding appreciatively. “I don’t think it makes that much of a difference. For example, I think Lydia Davis is better at writing about men than Jonathan Franzen is.”
“So what do you think you should be reading more of?” Ava asked him.
He let out a short, bitter laugh. “Most people would probably say self-help. They think I need all the help I can get. Are you one of them?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” She looked at him, surprised. “For me, self-help doesn’t help at all. But when I can read about a fictional character’s struggle and see one of my problems under a whole new light.”
She gets it. She gets what books could mean to a person. They’d reached what a regular shrink might call a breakthrough. It suddenly felt easy to tell her about his own struggles. That led to a growing desire to kiss her again.
“Well, how about this. How to stop loss from hurting. Because I still don’t think I’ve got the hang of that one. And how to deal with the fact that sometimes, no matter what you do, or how much money you make, if life has other ideas for you, happiness will remain elusive. Perfection isn’t attainable.” And then, beneath the lust, there was some quiet, unnameable emotion that made him want to lay down his pride, rest his head in her lap, and weep. “I still haven’t read anything like that.”
Ava opened her mouth to respond, but she in the end she had to agree, “I don’t think those books have been written yet.”
He nodded. “Whoever writes them will be a bestseller.”
“A couple either-or questions,” Ava said. “Answer these off the top of your head: Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?”
“Tolstoy. Dostoevsky got me nauseated with Notes from Underground.”
She laughed at that. “Brontës: Emily or Charlotte?”
“Charlotte, for sure.” Then he mused, “Strange, I always considered myself a Wuthering Heights man.”
“Well, you kind of remind me of Rochester sometimes…”
He was vaguely insulted by the suggestion. “Rochester is far too abrasive.”
“Yes, he is and so are you.” She smiled at his shocked face and added, “He is the beast Jane tames and yet he is so real. And, well, apart from keeping a wife locked in the attic and being ugly, you are also stern-featured, sometimes rude and abrupt, and like to order people around. You even have a…sort of shaggy, beast-ish mane like his.”
Well. Interesting strategy, doubling down on the original insult. “And again, I don’t know if I like the way you see me,” he said. And as with Rochester and Jane, there is more danger than anything else in these strange encounters of us. Then he nodded, and staring deep in her eyes, he reconsidered, “Well, I suppose we have some kind of similar…situation.”
“He is one of the best male characters ever created.” Pretty similar to the way Jane kept coming up with ways to tease Rochester and draw out his interest from day to day. But…what are my motives? So that Alek does…what? Lose control and ravish me? Or lose interest in me? “So, we have our first book: Jane Eyre. What else?”
“Do you have a perfect short story?” he asked.
“Head, Heart by Lydia Davis,” she murmured. “It helped…explain some things to me.”
“Really?” His mouth dropped open, and for a moment he didn’t know what to say. He wanted to ask her what those things were, but it felt like prying, and he wanted her to volunteer the information, to trust him with it.
“Let’s do something,” Ava said, getting excited with an idea forming in her mind. “You have a few writers over for dinner. Who’s there, living or dead?”
“How big a dinner party is this?”
“Six, including you.”
“Seven, then,” he said, “because you are coming.”
“Then we have to make it eight, as I’ll be bringing a guest,” she drawled, punctuating it with a toss of her blonde hair over one shoulder.
“Who?”
“Hemingway. To get everyone drunk.”
He laughed. “Okay, so we have eight guests. Hemingway is there to bring booze.”
A long pause, as both of them got lost in thought. Suddenly, she said, “No planning, think spontaneously. How many guests you want. I’m sure we can put together an awkward group of historical figures for a slightly moody party.”
“Beckett is there. Woolf is there. Kafka is there, just to see his face.”
“I’d invite Franzen just to make you uncomfortable.”
He laughed. “You are mean.”
“Who would want to go to a dinner party like this?”
“Honoré de Balzac, he really liked coffee; Henry James, a sufferer of chronic constipation. It would be funny to torture him with the cheese plate; Walter Benjamin, good to have a German in there; Raymond Carver, the dinner party scenes in his stories were basically what we’d have.”
“And the wild card? Who it would be? James Joyce?”
>
“No. Walter Pater.” At her curious gaze, he added, “No one ever suspects Walter Pater.”
“It would be hard to imagine a more dispirited assortment of figures.” She laughed. “What a special evening it would be.”
He nodded. “Undoubtedly.” Especially since you would be there.
“It’s a little male heavy. We need more women,” she observed. “Dorothy Parker.”
“Good choice. I like a woman with biting wit. And we can invite DeBeauvoir. Did you know she wrote a very interesting study on De Sade?”
“Is that what’s on your list, too?” she asked him. “Besides the hamburger thing, I mean. She has to show up, take off her clothes, and indulge in some orgy or S&M?”
He blinked, surprised at the sudden change of subject.
“No, I don’t have a list. Never had. That was Olivia’s teasing us,” he said, not smiling now. He scooted to the edge of the chair, reached over and brushed a blonde lock off of her face.
Being with her pleased him, talking to her stimulated him…touching her aroused him. And he wanted more than what didn’t quite fit in his rational explanation of male lust.
“I know what I want when I see it even though I’m pretty picky these days. She has to be all kinds of wonderful.”
“And perfection isn’t attainable, you said that yourself,” she breathed, dropping her eyes. He was so close now that she could smell the intoxicating scent of his aftershave and it sent a shiver coursing across her skin.
“Maybe not,” he said. And then his gaze turned to a framed photo of Rachel over the fireplace. “She promised me forever.”
Wow. She struggled to follow his conversational leapfrog. Aleksander Maximilian clearly had a list of subjects he was willing to discuss. “Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them.”
“Not that I blame her for not keeping the promise. But when you can, you should keep the promise. That’s what love is. Love is keeping the promise you made, anyway, no matter what.” Aleksander shot her a look. “Do you believe in true love?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have an answer. But she thought that if true love did exist, keeping the promise, anyway, no matter what, was a pretty good definition of it.
Chapter 20
The next hours passed in relative calm, if one discounted the awkward undercurrent of sexual tension between Aleksander and Ava.
The snow began to fall outside slowly in giant, fluffy flakes as they had lunch and since it didn’t stop, Ava decided it was better for Olivia to stay inside.
Strains of Bing Crosby’s White Christmas filled the air as Aleksander put his daughter on the couch in front of the crackling fire, and under Olivia’s baton, they began to decorate.
Sydney and Ava strung real pine wreaths and garlands up and down the staircase railings. Matthias lit candles that smelled like spiced cranberry. And Kira popped enormous bowls of popcorn which Olivia insisted they all needed to eat.
It gave the house the type of Home for the Holidays coziness that Better Homes & Gardens loved to capture.
“Now, it’s feeling like holidays. Tomorrow we can start decorating the tree.” Olivia smiled, clearly pleased at the state of the room, and then made some notes on her journal. And looked up with a pensive look on her face. “Daddy, remember when Mom burnt the apple pie and the whole house filled up with smoke?”
“I remember, Pumpkin. It was just two Christmases ago, wasn’t it?” He chuckled at the bittersweet memory. “I thought we were going to have to call the fire department.”
“Daddy, I want apple pie,” Olivia said, shifting on the sofa and sitting cross-legged.
“I’ll send Matthias to buy one,” he said with a grin.
“Oh, no, no, no.” Olivia shook her head empathically. “I want to make it from scrap.”
“From what?” Aleksander asked.
Ava pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. She corrected her gently, “You mean from scratch.”
“Oh, yes, from scratch.” She giggled, the sound ringing out and making the adults smile. “We go to the supermarket and choose the apples, then we peel them. And I want to make the pie. With flour and sugar and butter and eggs. Like Mommy used to do.”
“I am not sure it’s a good day to go shopping…” He looked at Sydney who shrugged and motioned with her chin to Ava.
She could tell he was thinking of the crowds they’d braved at the do-it-yourself.
“If it’s just to buy ingredients, I see no problem,” she said, noticing the snow had stopped. “We’ll be in and out.”
“If it’s okay with Ava, it’s okay with me.”
“And I will make my delicious sour cream to go with it,” Ava offered.
“Sour cream?” Clearly, Olivia doubted Ava’s choice of recipes.
“Trust me,” Ava told her. “My sour cream will knock your socks off, baby.”
Aleksander quipped, “Please don’t make the smoke detectors go off.”
She smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
As Olivia got up to get her coat, though, Aleksander waved her down. “Hold up.”
Ava looked at him, confused.
He was looking at his cell phone, a grim look on his face. “Dr. Follett just landed and is on his way up. He wants to check up on Olivia.”
“Ah, Daddy,” Olivia complained with a pout.
“I promise you, Pixie, we’ll get that pie made.” Ava gave Olivia an apologetic look, all the while feeling a chill skittering over her nerves.
Sydney, who had been quietly leafing through a magazine, got up. “How about we put some order in your room, Liv?”
Satisfied, Olivia went up with Sydney, and Ava followed them.
She busied herself making sure all the preparations for the doctor were ready, hoping she wouldn’t blush or make it known how often her thoughts about Aleksander had strayed toward inappropriate.
Truthfully, as hard as she tried, it had happened more times than she could count.
Aleksander had said Dr. Follett was coming to check on Olivia’s progress, and she supposed that made sense.
But she couldn’t help but feel worried. Why couldn’t she stop thinking that the chief of the pediatric neuro-oncology department had come to check up on her?
When Dr. Follett arrived, Aleksander could tell that Ava was nervous. Her posture had become more rigid, and her voice had taken on a more professional tone.
Dr. Follett went through the house, making notes in his infamous notebook.
Finally after checking Olivia’s vitals and Ava’s recordings, he nodded his head, seemingly satisfied with the environment set for little Olivia and even more satisfied with her health condition.
Toward the end of the hour-long visit, just when Ava seemed to be letting out that breath she’d been holding, Olivia pulled on her cardigan sleeve and asked, “So, are we going to make that pie?”
Darn. She wanted to disappear in a puff. But she had learned to contain herself, to preserve calm while whirlwinds of emotion swirled about her. It was an important survival skill in her world. She said calmly, “Of course we are.”
Dr. Follett stopped dead in his tracks and looked down at the little girl. “What?”
Aleksander noticed Ava cringe, before pasting a smile on her lips, as Olivia described with alacrity their plans to go out to buy ingredients and then bake an apple pie and Ava’s offer to make her special sour cream.
Dr. Follett listened to everything silently, just nodding his head and making notes in his notebook as the girl talked away.
Ava had to control herself not to interrupt Olivia when she began to tell how nice it was to have had Ava accompanying them to choose the Christmas tree and have lunch with them.
Dr. Follett pursed his lips and when Olivia finished, he said, “But, Olivia, for a few more days, I’d rather you stayed out of crowds.”
“Aaaah…”
“Just until next week, okay?” When the girl nodded, he tur
ned to Ava. “Dr. Larsen, I would like to revise some procedures with you. In private, if possible.”
She prided herself on never being at a loss in any situation. She couldn’t afford to be. The patients and the staff would interpret any sign of doubt or hesitation as weakness. Like dogs or wolves, they could smell fear and weakness. Then their fangs came out. “Of course, Dr. Follett.”
“You can use my office, if you wish,” offered Aleksander as gestured to the door at the end of the corridor.
“That will be good,” Dr. Follett said.
That will not be good, not at all. Smile in place, Ava followed Aleksander and the doctor.
After closing the door, Aleksander went to his bedroom and exited by the French doors onto the veranda, fully intending on eavesdropping.
Although his office veranda doors were closed, he’d been able to make out enough words to understand that Ava was being warned that getting involved with Olivia other than providing her medical care was not appropriate or ethical behavior.
Which in his opinion was monstrously unfair. And he could not contain his proud smile as he heard Ava’s firm voice as she replied to her boss, saying that unethical would be not to indulge in fulfilling such an innocent wish of a terminal girl.
Afterwards, he accompanied Dr. Follett to the car making small talk, knowing that if baking a pie for Olivia had gotten her schooled down as an unruly teenager, there was no room for doubt that it was even less ethical for him and Ava to get involved.
When he meandered into Olivia’s bedroom, Ava was sitting by his daughter’s bed, reading her a book, clearly contradicting any orders she had been given.
Olivia sat up in bed, and like a broken record, she asked, “Pie?”
He smiled. “Yes. Of course, pie.”