Heartwood

  “You can be whatever you want to be. Do whatever you want to do. And I’ll back you.”

  “I don’t want you to back me. Not by supporting me financially, or giving me a pep talk as you’re running out the door to your next business meeting. I want you at my side.”

  “I understand what you’re saying … but to do this …?”

  “It’s a fresh start for all of us, Laura. You think I want this just for me? I’m doing this for our marriage. And for Katie. She needs two parents who are happy.”

  And if it makes you happy to be in Ohio, then I’ll be happy too. That is truly the way you feel.

  “Robby, you can’t just throw this at me.”

  “I know. You have to come out to Blair’s Falls for a real visit—you’ve always just run in and out. And then we’ll wait until after New Year’s to move. I know it would be better for Katie if we could do it now so she could start the school year with her classmates, but it will take time to wind up everything in New York.”

  Laura hadn’t agreed to move, she hadn’t even agreed to go out to Ohio to visit, and he was talking about Katie’s classmates and her new school as if it had all been decided.

  “And this gives you plenty of time to help Katie adjust to the idea.”

  What about me? How am I supposed to adjust to it?

  But arguing would be useless. Robby’s mind was made up. Uncle Dan had already promoted him to the position of store manager, with a promise of a vice presidency to come. Now it was Landon’s Department Store and Blair’s Falls that would solve all of their problems.

  –—

  In the weeks that followed, Robby sang the praises of Blair’s Falls to Laura every night on the phone. He told her that during the summer he had already joined a couple of clubs in the town—he’d been that certain Laura would uproot her life for him. Membership in both organizations was limited to prominent men in the community, he told her proudly. It took everything she had not to say that he was so damn prominent because his uncle had handed him a business on a silver platter.

  At the end of every phone call, Robby would urge her again to come out to Ohio for a real visit. And she would keep on finding excuses not to go. And the next day, she would run to Nick’s loft where they would lock the door and for a few hours they would pretend that the world outside didn’t exist.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without this place, and you,” she said to him one afternoon as she was leaving to catch her train.

  “You won’t have to find out, I promise.” He liked to make everything light when they were parting.

  “I mean it. I’ve loved so many people, but you’re … necessary. I need you. I don’t think I’ve ever needed anyone except Katie.”

  “I need you too. Frightening, isn’t it?”

  “Frightening in a good way, or a bad way?”

  “Now you’re fishing.” She reached up and kissed him. “In a good way,” he whispered. “In the very best way.”

  –—

  As Laura rode home on the train the conversation came back to her. She needed Nick—in the same way Christina needed Steven. The same way her mother needed her father.

  What do you know, Mom? All of my life I thought I was like Nana. She loved Grandpa, but I never thought she really needed him. Not like you need Dad. And now … I need Nick. We’re two of a kind, after all, Mom.

  But Laura needed the wrong man. That was what Iris would think.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Katie, there’s an empty cab on the corner, hurry!” Mom began running up Madison Avenue, with her hand up in an attempt to hail the taxi. Katie, who had been dawdling behind her, now slowed down even more. “Katie, come on!” Her mother turned back to urge her, and in that instant a man with a briefcase stepped into the street and took the cab. “Damn it!” Mom swore, which was something she almost never did unless she was really upset.

  Good, Katie thought with sour satisfaction.

  “Honey, didn’t you hear me tell you to run? We could have gotten that one. Now we’re going to be late.” They were going to Uncle Jimmy’s apartment for dinner.

  “You always are,” Katie muttered just loud enough for her mother to hear.

  Mom looked hurt—and surprised. She didn’t expect this kind of thing from Katie. Katie didn’t expect it from herself. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Mom said. “Would you like to explain this attitude?”

  Katie shrugged elaborately and began walking up Madison Avenue. After a second her mother followed.

  Katie was scared, and feeling scared was making her angry. Not that she was going to tell her mother that. Their family was falling apart; it wasn’t Mom’s fault, Dad was actually causing it, but Mom was always the one who fixed things. Only now she wasn’t. And while it wasn’t fair for Katie take it out on Mom, she couldn’t stop it. Even though she was actually on her mom’s side.

  The trouble was, you couldn’t get mad at Dad, because it would be like getting mad at a puppy or a little baby. Dad was always coming up with plans that were going to make them all so happy, but they never did. Now he’d come up with the worst plan yet. He wanted to move them to Ohio. Anyone who knew Mom would know she didn’t want that. But instead of telling Dad she wouldn’t go, she was acting like he’d never said anything. It was like she thought he’d drop it if she just didn’t mention it. But once Dad had an idea in his head he never dropped it. Mom should know that.

  Katie didn’t want to go to Ohio any more than her mother did. She liked her school—except for arithmetic, but she was going to have to take that anywhere—and she had friends here. There were only two of them; Katie wasn’t the kind of person who said hi to dozens of people in the school halls every day, but those two friends were really great. She didn’t want to lose them. And she didn’t want to live far away from Grandpa Theo and Grandma Iris. Katie had come to love them both an awful lot. She didn’t feel the same way about Grandmother Mac, who made you take your shoes off when you walked into the house, and when you were trying to tell her something you could see that she wasn’t really listening because you were just a kid and she was the kind of adult who thought you wouldn’t have anything worthwhile to say. No, there was no way Katie wanted to move anywhere and especially not to Ohio, and she wanted her mom to do something about it fast.

  “We’ll have to walk to Uncle Jimmy’s apartment. We’ll never get a cab in rush hour,” Mom broke into Katie’s thoughts. “I’m sorry, honey.”

  For a moment, Katie was sorry too. Mom tried so hard, and Katie shouldn’t have made her lose the cab. But Katie wasn’t about to say that.

  Her mother sighed. “Still sulking, I see.”

  They walked up Madison Avenue in silence. Suddenly, Katie looked around. She didn’t come into the city often with her mom and the streets tended to melt together, but this stretch of Madison Avenue was looking very familiar. Then she remembered. A year ago when she and Mom were coming home from Rebecca Ruth’s birthday party, somewhere around here they’d seen the weird picture that looked exactly like Grandma Iris in the thrift shop window. She started scanning the store windows. After a couple of seconds she saw what she was looking for on the other side of the street. She ran to the corner, caught the tail end of the “walk” light and dashed across Madison Avenue.

  “Katie, what are you doing?” her mother cried out.

  But Katie was safely on the other side. She heard her mother calling out again, but she raced to the shop and peered into the big window. The picture wasn’t there.

  After a minute or two, her mother ran up behind her. “You scared the life out of me,” her mother panted. “What did you mean by running off like—” She stopped short and looked at the window. “This is that shop,” she said.

  “Yes. The one with the picture,” Katie said. “But it’s not in the window.”

  Her mother let out a breath. “Oh. Well, they’ve probably sold it.”

  But Katie didn’t want to give up so easily. She turned
back to the window, and by putting her eyes right up to the glass and squinting she could see all the way to the back of the shop.

  “Katie, that picture is gone. Let’s go.”

  But Mom was wrong. “It’s still here! It’s on the back wall, right over there. We can go inside and look at it again.”

  “No, we can’t. There’s no point in going in to look at the picture if we’re not going to buy it. We’d just be wasting the saleswoman’s time. And anyway, we’re late,” Mom said in a tone Katie had never heard from her before. Then she grabbed Katie’s hand and almost dragged her away from the window.

  “Why are you being so weird?” Katie demanded as they resumed their walk up Madison Avenue. “I hate it when you’re like this.”

  –—

  Katie’s words came back to haunt Laura later that evening, after they were home from the city and Katie was in bed. Laura settled into a chair in the living room. The truth was, she was feeling weird. And very, very guilty.

  Robby is pressuring me every night to come west. Nick doesn’t pressure me about anything, but he should. We’re sneaking around now, that’s what it feels like anyway, and it’s humiliating and degrading. Nick deserves better. And Robby deserves more too.

  This is unfair to everyone, and I should stop it. But I’m stuck. Me. The one who could always make up her mind in a flash. Sometimes I think I’ll just tell Robby I’m not leaving New York. This is where I belong, and I’ve earned the right to be here. But for the first time in years I’m hearing hope in his voice. He’s getting his confidence back, and he’s working so hard. For us. For Katie and me. But I love Nick.

  I know divorce doesn’t have the stigma it once had, people end their marriages all the time. But I don’t know how they do it. I have a daughter who loves her father. I stay awake nights worrying about what it would do to Katie if Robby and I split up.

  And what about the rest of my family? My brothers think they’re so liberated, but I’m not sure how they’d react if they knew I’ve been having an affair. How would my father take it? He was no saint when he was younger, but he’s an Old World man, and they have different standards for men and women. And of course I know how Mom would react. But I love Nick.

  Laura went to bed. And the next morning, as she did almost every morning, she told herself that she was going to stop being a coward. She was going to make a decision and live with the results. But not today. She just couldn’t do it today.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Iris loved the first weeks of a new school year. She liked walking into a classroom and seeing the bright faces of the freshmen turned toward her, waiting to hear what she had to say. She knew some of these youngsters were sitting there because they had to fulfill an academic requirement, but there were always others who were genuinely excited about the subject—and hopefully they would be about their professor too. During the course of the semester she would discover who the eager ones were, and she would enjoy their energy and enthusiasm.

  An even greater pleasure could be found in the familiar faces who returned for her advanced classes. These were the students who knew what she had to offer them and wanted more of it. Teaching them was a privilege that genuinely humbled her. So she was pleased when one of her favorites came up to her as she was entering the main building of the university on a crisp morning in October. The girl’s name was Debbie.

  “And you can’t call me Deborah, even though that would be more dignified,” Debbie had said during her first student meeting with Iris. Then she’d rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a pretty girl, but Iris liked her sense of humor. “It’s just plain Debbie, because, heaven help me, I was named after Debbie Reynolds.”

  Now Debbie joined Iris and they walked together down the hall toward Iris’s classroom. They were chatting about the summer, when Debbie said, out of the blue, “By the way, that woman who writes about lifestyles—Laura McAllister—she’s your daughter, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “I met her this summer … well, I guess it was more like I saw her. At first I couldn’t believe it was her. I mean, we were in the dining room of this old horror of a hotel in the middle of nowhere. My family was there because my dad is really cheap, but I couldn’t figure out what she’d be doing in a place like that. She’d just been on television talking about her book—the one that everyone is buying now. But when I saw her it wasn’t out yet.”

  The book had been published a month ago. And Laura’s interview with Good Day USA had been on the air about two weeks before that. Iris tried to think back to the end of the summer. She was positive Laura hadn’t mentioned going anywhere. “Are you sure it was my daughter?” she asked.

  “Oh yes, it was at breakfast, and Mom got her autograph for me on a napkin. I didn’t put it together then that she was your daughter or I probably would have gone over and introduced myself.”

  Something cold and nasty stirred in the back of Iris’s brain, but she pushed it a way. Debbie was wrong. She had to be …

  “Although I might not have interrupted her,” Debbie went on. “She and her husband were so happy just being alone with each other. You could tell it was like a second honeymoon or something.”

  Laura’s husband? A second honeymoon? Robby had been in Ohio all summer long.

  “Forgive me for saying so, Professor, but your son-in-law is yummy! He and your daughter make a beautiful couple, she’s so pale and patrician-looking and he’s a little bit wild, with all that curly black hair falling in his face.”

  Robby’s hair was light brown, and cut short. The photographer … Nick … had had black hair. The cold nastiness filled Iris’s brain again and she flashed back to Steven’s wedding. She’d watched Laura say good-bye to Nick at the end of the day, and she’d had the feeling that there was something … But she hadn’t wanted to believe it. But now …

  She and her husband were so happy just being alone with each other … it was like a second honeymoon, that was what Debbie had just said. Only it hadn’t been Laura’s husband, and it wasn’t a second honeymoon. Suddenly Iris felt dizzy.

  “Professor Stern? Are you okay?” Debbie looked worried. “I’m sorry, if it was out of line for me to say that …”

  I’m scaring the girl, Iris thought wildly. I can’t let her see how upset I am. I can’t let anyone see. I never could hide my feelings. Why didn’t I learn to do that?

  “I just meant … you could see how much in love they are. And they’ve been married for a long time too.” Poor Debbie dug the hole deeper.

  “Please excuse …” Iris managed to gasp. “Forgot something … my office.” She ran down the hallway, leaving the bewildered Debbie looking after her.

  Somehow Iris got through the rest of the day. She taught her classes, and she managed to make sense when colleagues and students talked to her. But all the time in the back of her mind were the words “you could see how much in love they are.” And in her imagination she saw her daughter and the photographer standing in the doorway of Laura’s house.

  –—

  “You don’t know she’s having an affair, Iris,” Theo said.

  “Of course she is! She went away to have a horrid, ugly little … tryst. With that man, that Nick!” Iris spat the name out.

  “You don’t even know for certain that it was Laura your student saw at that hotel.”

  “Laura signed an autograph for her.”

  “Maybe Laura decided to get away for a weekend and she ran into—what is his name? Nick?—while she was there.”

  “The hotel was an old wreck, Theo! The kind of place where you go to hide, not for a relaxing vacation. What are the chances of the two of them just happening to decide to go to a place like that at the same time? And they were having breakfast together.”

  “Still, there could be an explanation.”

  “You know better than that.” What she did not say was, You, of all people, know.

  But he understood. “All right,” he said. “Say she is having an affair ?
?? I can understand it, Iris, and you should too.”

  “She’s married!”

  “She was too young when she married Robby McAllister. I said so at the time.”

  “Robby was a fine young man … a remarkable young man, we both agreed on that.”

  “He was. Do you like the man Robby is today?”

  That stopped her. But just for a moment. “You don’t get married for better or for better, that isn’t what the vow says.”

  “Oh Iris, my dear! You know very well that a vow is made in a vacuum. A life is lived every day, and sometimes the things we thought we could do, we can’t.”

  She listened to him, and thought angrily, This is how he excused his own infidelities over the years. This is the way all liars and cheaters do it.

  “So what should I have done during our hard times, Theo? Should I have walked away? Had an affair?”

  “Of course not.”

  I almost did once, although you never knew it, my dear husband. I didn’t go through with it because I’m not like you. I didn’t find excuses, although I had plenty. I didn’t cheat because I have honor. And now, God help me, it looks as if my daughter, of whom I have always been so proud, takes after you. The bitter words came to her lips and tongue. Words she was surprised to find she still could have said after all the years. But she wouldn’t say those words because she had learned the hard way how little good they did. And how much harm. And besides, Theo, who she loved in spite of everything, wasn’t a well man, and she shouldn’t argue with him like this.

  “I had such a good example growing up,” she said more calmly. “I saw how a couple could pull together. My mother stood by my father during the worst of times, when he lost everything, she never said one word of complaint. And even when the money was coming in again, Papa wasn’t the easiest husband. But she brought out the best in him. She put up with his failings and she loved him devotedly.”