Returning to the living room, he found Bess standing before the sliding door, enjoying the view, with the breeze riffling the hair at her temples. She turned her head at his approach and he handed her a goblet.
“Thanks.”
“Shall we go out?” he suggested.
“Mmm . . .” She was sipping as she answered. He slid the screen open, waiting while she stepped onto the deck before him.
They sat on either side of a small white patio table, angled toward the lake in cushioned chairs that bounced at the smallest provocation. The setting was lovely, the evening jewel-clear, their surroundings those of evocative movies, but suddenly they found themselves tongue-tied. Everything had changed with that dining-room table: there was no question anymore, this was a stab at a new beginning. Subjects of conversation were strangely elusive after their easy-fire repartee upon her arrival. They watched some sails on the water, the rim of trees outlining Manitou Island, waves washing up at the feet of some nearby cottonwoods. They listened to the soft slap of water meeting shore, the particular click of the cottonwood leaves against one another, the sound of themselves drinking, the metallic bing of their gently bouncing chairs. They felt the warmth of summer press their skins and smelled the aroma of someone lighting a barbecue grill nearby, and that of their own supper stealing outside.
But everything had changed and they understood this, so they sat unnaturally hushed, experiencing the uncertainties of forging into that second-time-around.
Finally Bess broke the silence, turning to look at him as she spoke.
“So when did you take this cooking course?”
“I started in April and took nine classes.”
“Where?”
“Over at Victoria Crossing, place called The Cooks of Crocus Hill. I'm doing some developing over there, and I just happened to meet the woman who owns the cooking school.”
“It's funny Lisa didn't mention it.”
“I didn't tell Lisa.” From the first, if only subconsciously, he'd been planning this day, planning to shock Bess. Funny, though, now that tonight was here all sense of smugness had fled. He felt nervous and afraid of failure.
“This woman . . .” Bess looked into her wine. “. . . is she someone important?”
“No, not at all.”
His answer wrought only the subtlest change in Bess, but he detected it in the faint relaxing of her shoulders, of her lips just before she sipped her wine, of her eyes as she lifted them to the distant sails on the water. Too, she set her chair barely bouncing again, sending up a rhythmic bing, bing, bing that eased some tension in his belly.
He crossed his feet on the handrail and said, “I've been trying to do more things for myself lately.”
“Like the cooking?”
“Yes. And reading and sailing, and I've even gone to a couple of movies. I guess I just came to the realization that you can't always rely on somebody else to take away your loneliness. You've got to do something about it yourself.”
“Is it working?” She looked over at him.
“Yes. I'm happier than I've been in years.”
She watched him study the wine in his glass while a slow grin stole over his lips. “You probably won't believe it, Bess, but . . .” His gaze shifted over to her. “I'm even doing my own laundry.” She didn't tease as he'd expected.
“That's wonderful, Michael. That's growth, it really is.”
“Yes, well . . . times change. A person's got to change with them.”
“It's hard for men, especially men like you, whose mothers filled those traditional roles. You're in the generation that got caught in the cross fire. For the young guys like Mark it's easier. They grew up taking home ec class, with working mothers and a more blurred line between the obligations of the sexes, if you will.”
“I never expected to like any of these domestic jobs but they're not bad at all, especially the cooking. I really enjoy it. Speaking of which . . .” He checked his watch and dropped his feet off the rail. “I've got some last-minute things to do. Why don't you just sit here and relax? More wine?”
“No, thanks. I'm going to be more sensible tonight. Besides, the view is heady enough.”
He smiled at her and left.
She remained inert, listening to sounds drifting out from the kitchen—the clack of kettle covers, the bell on the microwave, running water—and wondered what he was making. The sun lowered and the lake looked bluer. The eastern sky became purple around the edges. Over on the public beach people began rolling up their towels and heading home. One-by-one the sails began disappearing from the water. The pastoral coming of evening, coupled with the wine and the sense of dissolving friction between herself and Michael, brought on a welcome serenity in Bess. She dropped her head back against the wall and basked in it.
After a full five minutes she took her empty wineglass and went inside, past the dining-room table to the kitchen doorway, against which she lounged with one shoulder. Michael had put on an audiotape of something New Age and keyboardish, and was measuring Parmesan cheese into a bowl, a blue-and-white dishtowel over his left shoulder. The picture he made was still so unexpected she felt a momentary thrill, as if she'd met this attractive stranger only tonight.
“Anything I can do to help?”
He looked around and smiled. “Nope, not a thing. Everything's under control . . .” He laughed nervously. “. . . I think.” With a wire whisk he whipped an egg, then opened the refrigerator and took out a salad bowl filled with romaine.
“Caesar?” she inquired.
“Class number two.” He grinned.
She raised one eyebrow and teased, “Do you trade recipes?”
“Listen, you're making me nervous, standing there watching me. If you want to do something, go light the candles.”
“Matches?” she asked, boosting off the doorway.
“Oh, hell.” He searched four kitchen drawers, came up with none, pawed through another and frantically lifted a lid off a simmering kettle before stalking toward his office. Finding none there, either, he hurried back to the kitchen. “Will you do me a favor? Check the pockets of my suitcoats. Sometimes I pick them up at restaurants. I've got to get these vegetables off the stove.”
“Where are your suitcoats?”
“Master-bedroom closet.”
She walked into his bedroom to find it impeccably clean, the torchère softly glowing, the bed neatly made. The room itself was engaging. All the decor items she'd chosen blended together in a wholly pleasing way: wallpaper, blinds, bedspread, matching chairs, art prints, a floor urn. The gleaming black bedroom furniture had a rich sheen, even in the reduced lighting. She particularly liked a unique, masculine piece called a dressing chest, and the headboard, shaped like a theater marquee from the thirties. Beside the bed the cover of a Hunting magazine displayed a stag with its rack in velvet. Michael's pocket tailings lay atop the chest of drawers—billfold, coins, somebody's business card, a ballpoint pen but no matches. Though she had planned the room and been in it countless times while decor items were being delivered, now that it was in use and occupied by his personal items, she felt like a window peeper in it.
She opened his closet door, searched for the interior light and switched it on. The closet smelled like British Sterling and him, a mixture so potent with nostalgia she felt her face heat. His shirts hung on one rack, jeans on another, suits on the third. A row of shoes toed the mopboard, one pair of Reeboks with worn white sweat socks poked inside. A rack of ties hung to the left of the door; one had slipped off and lay on the floor. She picked it up and hung it with the others, an insidiously wifely reaction that struck her only after the deed was done, and she whipped around to make sure he wasn't standing there watching her. He wasn't, of course, and she felt foolish.
Searching his jacket pockets proved nearly as personal as frisking the man himself. In one she found half of a theater ticket—Pretty, it said; presumably he'd seen the current hit Pretty Woman. In another was a used toothpick, in an
other an ad he'd torn out advertising a piece of land for sale.
She found some matches at last and scurried from the closet as if she'd just watched a porn movie in it.
The wine glasses were filled and their salad bowls on the table when she returned to it. She lit the blue candles while he came in with two loaded plates.
“Sit down,” he said, motioning with a plate, “there.” When she was seated, he placed before her a plate of steaming, savory food—glazed ham, tiny red potatoes in parsley butter and asparagus with cheese sauce. She stared at it, dumbfounded, while he seated himself at the opposite end of the table and watched for her reaction.
“Holy cow,” she said, still staring at his accomplishment. “Holy old cow.”
He laughed and said, “Could you be more specific?”
She looked up to find two candles and an iris directly in her line of vision, cutting his face in half. She craned to one side to see around them.
“Who really cooked this?” she asked.
“I knew you'd say that.”
“Well, Michael, can you blame me? In the days when I knew you your idea of a three-course meal was chips, dip and a Coke, if you were doing the cooking.” She looked down at her plate. “This is incredible.”
“Well, taste it, go ahead.”
She untied her napkin from around the stem of the wineglass, spread it on her lap and sampled the asparagus first while he held his fork and knife and forgot to use them, watching closely again for her reaction.
She shut her eyes, chewed, swallowed, licked her lips and murmured, “Mmm, fantastic.”
He felt as if he'd just landed a job as head chef at the Four Seasons. He put his knife and fork to use as she spoke again.
“Whatever have you done to this ham? It's incredible.”
He peered around the centerpiece and abruptly clacked down his silverware on his plate. “Aw, hell, Bess, I feel like I'm on Dallas. I'm coming down there.” He picked up his wineglass and slid his place mat down to her end of the table, taking a chair at a right angle to hers. “There, that's better. Now let's get this meal off to a proper start.” He lifted his wineglass and she followed suit. “To . . .” He thought a while, their glasses poised. “To bygones,” he said, “and letting them be.”
“To bygones,” she seconded as their glasses chimed. They drank with their gazes fused and afterward, with their lips still wet, lingered in their absorption with one another until Michael wisely broke it.
“Well, try the salad,” he said, and did so himself.
She was filled with praise, and he with pride. They spoke of cheese sauce, and real estate ventures, and pecan praline mustard glaze, and the smoothness of the wine, and the film Pretty Woman, which they'd both seen. He told her about the Concerned Citizens' Meeting and his hopes for the corner of Victoria and Grand. She told him about the American Society of Interior Designers and her hopes that they would get legislation passed to require licensing, thereby prohibiting the unschooled interlopers of the industry from calling themselves interior designers.
He said, “Hear, hear! You've made me a firm believer in interior designers.”
“You're pleased, then?”
“Absolutely.”
“So am I.” She proposed a toast. “To our amicable business association, and its most successful outcome.”
“And to the condo . . .” he added, toasting the newly decorated room, “. . . a much brighter place to come home to.”
They drank and relaxed over their empty plates. Dusk had fallen and the candlelight created a halo. The scent of the roses seemed to intensify in the damper air of evening. Outside, the calls of the gulls hushed while those of the crickets commenced. Beneath the table Bess removed her shoes. Above it both she and Michael toyed lazily with their wineglasses.
“You want to know something?” he said. “Ever since I divorced you I've longed to live back in our house in Stillwater. Now, for the first time, that's not true anymore, and it feels great. This place suits me. I walk in here and I have no desire to leave.” He looked very self-satisfied as he continued in a quiet tone. “Want to know something else?”
She sat with one fist propping up her jaw. “Hm?”
“Since I've bought this place I've finally managed to get over the feeling that I was ripped off when you ended up with the house.”
“You felt that way all these years?”
“Well, yeah, sort of. Wouldn't you?”
She pondered a while. “I suppose I would have.”
“With Darla it was different. I moved into her place so it never really felt like ours. All of her stuff was in it, and when I left it I felt as if I was only letting her have what was rightfully hers all along. I just sort of . . .” He shrugged. “. . . walked out and felt relieved.”
“It really was that simple, leaving her?”
“Absolutely.”
“And she honestly felt the same?”
“I think so.”
“Hm . . .”
In silence they compared that scenario to their own upon divorcing, all the bitterness and anger.
“Sure different from you and me,” Bess said.
He stared at his wineglass and rotated it on the place mat, finally lifting his eyes to hers. “Feels good to leave all that behind us, doesn't it?”
“Why do you suppose we were both so hateful?” she asked, recalling her mother's words.
“I don't know.”
“It would be interesting to hear what a psychologist would have to say on that subject.”
“All I know is, this time when I got my divorce papers, I just put them away in a drawer and thought, So be it, another item of business closed.”
Bess felt a pleasant shock. Her eyes widened. “You've got them? I mean, it's final?”
“Yup.”
“That was fast.”
“That's how it is when it's uncontested.”
For a minute they studied each other, trying not to let their total freedom cloud judgment.
“Well!” he said, breaking the spell, pushing back from the table. “I wish I could say I prepared a breathtaking dessert but I didn't. I thought I was pushing my luck to make as much as I did, so Byerly's is responsible for the chocolate-mint creme cake.” He picked up their plates and said, “I'll be right back. Coffee?”
“I'd love some but I don't think I have room for dessert.”
“Oh, come on, Bess.” He disappeared into the kitchen and called from there, “Indulge with me. Can't be more than . . . oh, hell, eight hundred calories in one piece of this stuff.”
He returned with two plates of the most sinful-looking green-and-brown concoction this side of Julia Child's kitchen. Bess stared at it with her mouth watering while he went off after the coffeepot.
When he was seated again he dug in and she continued vacillating.
“Damn you, Michael,” she said.
“Oh, come on, enjoy yourself.”
“May I tell you something?”
She was glowering at him less than affectionately.
“What?”
“Something that's been aggravating me for six, closer to seven, years now? Something you said to me just before we got divorced that's burned me up ever since?”
He set down his fork carefully, disturbed by her quick change of mood. “What did I say?”
“You said I'd stopped taking care of myself. You implied that I'd gotten fat and seedy, and all I wore were jeans and sweatshirts anymore; and see what it's done to me? I'm ten pounds overweight and it might as well be fifty. I look at a dessert and feel like a glutton if I eat it, and no matter what I put on or how my hair looks, I'm still critical of myself; and in all these years I've never stooped to putting on a pair of jeans again, no matter how badly I've wanted to. There, now I've gotten it off my chest, and I'm going to see if it feels better!”
He stared at her in astonishment.
“I said that?”
“You mean you don't remember?”
 
; “No.”
“Oh God!” She covered her face, threw back her head, then pretended to pound on the table with both fists. “I go through six years of obsessive self-improvement and you don't even remember the remarks?”
“No, Bess, I don't. But if I made them, I'm sorry.”
“Oh, shit,” she said gloomily, dropping her jaw to a fist and eyeing her dessert. “Now what am I going to do with this?”
“Eat it,” he said. “Then tomorrow, go buy yourself a pair of jeans.”
She looked across the corner of the table at him and put on her puckered, disgruntled mouth, lips all turned inside like a stripped-off sock. “Michael Curran, if you knew all the misery you've caused me!”
“I said I was sorry. And there's nothing wrong with your shape, Bess, believe me. Eat the damned cake.”
She glanced at the cake. Glanced at him. Felt one corner of her mouth threaten to grin. Saw both corners of his do the same. Felt her grin break, and then they were both laughing and gobbling dessert and it felt so damned comfortable at one point she actually reached across the table and wiped one corner of his mouth with her own napkin.
They finished, leaned back and rubbed their bellies and sipped coffee.
At her first taste she looked with surprise into her cup. “What next? Is this raspberry-flavored?”
“Chocolate-raspberry. Sylvia sells it at the shop, fresh-ground. She said it goes well with dessert and that it would be bound to impress a woman.”
“Oh, so you set out to impress me, did you, Michael?”
“Isn't that obvious?” he said, rising with their dessert plates, escaping to the kitchen. She stared at the empty doorway for some time, then finished her coffee and followed him. He was rinsing plates and putting them in the dishwasher when she entered the room. She set their cups and saucers down beside him and remarked quietly, “We've covered a lot of ground tonight.”
He continued his task without looking at her. “You named it earlier. Growth.”