Morning Glory(23)

“I can see why.” I want to ask about his coauthor, but I don’t. Instead, I inquire about his former career. “Do you miss traveling? The work you did in Sudan?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes.” He looks out to the lake, as if willing a stiff wind to carry him away. “I didn’t ever think I’d give up foreign correspondence work. It was my calling.”

“So why did you?”

His eyes look distant for a moment, faraway, before he looks at me again. “Because I thought I had a more important job to do at home.”

“And did that ‘job’ work out?”

“I wanted it to,” he says, “but it never could. It never would.” He rubs his brow. “How about you? Did your work bring you out here?”

“No,” I say. “I left all that behind in New York. Time for a new chapter.”

Our eyes lock. “It’s awfully quiet in here,” I say a bit nervously. “There must be a stereo.”

Alex points to a cabinet on the wall and walks toward it.

“I see you know my house better than I do,” I say.

He grins. “The guy that rented it before you was a fisherman. Friendly guy, but he had a thing for whiskey. Lots of whiskey. I had to help him home more than a few times.”

“Oh,” I say. “That explains the fishhook in the laundry room.”

He smiles and turns back to the stereo. He fiddles with the antenna, but all that comes out of the nearby speakers is static. “No reception. Let me see what old Joe left in the CD player.”

“Old Joe?”

He nods. “The fisherman.” A familiar melody suddenly drifts through the little living room. It makes me freeze, and I don’t know why. And then I hear the silky, sweet sound of Karen Carpenter’s voice.

“‘Rainy Days and Mondays,’” Alex says.

I can’t find my voice. I just stare ahead, fighting back the tears.

Alex sits down beside me. I know he senses that something’s wrong. “I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “If you don’t like it, I’ll turn it off.”

“No,” I say. “No. Please don’t.” I wipe a tear from my eye, just as another spills onto my cheek. “My husband loved this song.” I smile. “Which made him the only straight man on earth to love the Carpenters.”

Alex grins. “The only two straight men on earth.”

I smile again. For some reason, I feel as if someone has lifted a great weight from my shoulders, just for a moment. “James died on a Monday,” I say.

We sit there for a moment listening to the song together, each alone in our own thoughts, until Alex reaches over and takes my hand in his. I don’t let go.





Chapter 9





PENNY

I’ve just cleared the breakfast dishes and have put a loaf of bread in the oven for lunch, honey whole wheat, when I nestle on the couch next to Dex. “Did you have a good time last night?”

He doesn’t take his eyes off the newspaper. “Yes, it was a good party.” He has a headache, I know. I saw him reach for the aspirin after he woke up.

I smile when I think of the way he carried me up the stairs to our bed and held me like he used to. But a mere eight hours later, the spell has lifted. He seems distracted and sullen.

He sets the paper down on the coffee table and turns to me. “I’m going to be spending the next week in my studio,” he says matter-of-factly.

I bite my lip. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?” he snaps. “I have to work. And that’s that.”

I stand up and walk to the kitchen. My eyes sting.

“Penny,” Dex says, his face momentarily softened.

I nod, then open the oven door and peer in at my bread, which is rising nicely and taking on a perfect shade of golden brown. I hover long enough to let a lone tear fall from my eye. It lands on the oven door and evaporates as if it never existed.

“Darling,” Dex continues, walking to the kitchen. “Please, don’t take my work so personally.”

Dex is right, of course. He’s an artist. And being married to one requires the patience of a Tibetan monk. Hasn’t Dex always said that he divorced his first wife because she required constant maintenance? No, I don’t want to be high maintenance, and yet I do want to be loved. Is it too much to ask for him to come home each night?

“I’m sorry,” I say, finally facing him. “I just hate it when you’re gone so long. I get lonely here.”

“My psychiatrist thinks alone time is good for me,” he says.

I want to say, “Does your psychiatrist ever consider what’s good for me, your wife?” But I let a few moments pass, and then I nod. “Dex, you know I only want you to be happy.”