She appears to consider the offer. “I wouldn’t impose,” she says.
I’m about to argue with her. “We’re nearly family,” I say, and find my hand reaching out in a gesture, but somehow I miscalculate the space between us and touch her arm. This is too much. We both recoil, and I think, Well, that’s that.
Then she accepts my invitation.
58
Helen
SEEING DEBORAH SITTING IN JOHN’S favorite chair, sipping wine out of a glass he almost certainly used at some point, is unsettling. More than unsettling—crazy-making.
She’s been in my condo for about an hour. We ordered in some sushi—vegetarian for me—and while we wait for it to arrive I take a shower and put on my pajamas. She’s still fully dressed—I can’t imagine her any other way—and hasn’t even taken off her shoes.
“Do you miss him?” she asks. She is openly looking around my living room and dining room, which is minuscule compared to her Palo Alto home, but more comfortable, in my opinion. Not as funky and full of character as John’s fantasy San Francisco Victorian, of course. There’s a plush taupe sofa, love seat, and matching large armchair, the one Deborah is sitting in. An antique pine coffee table, and a similar square table with four upright chairs for the dining alcove. Walls mostly bare. My wall art is in my office, which is covered with photos of children. Patients. Many of them dead, although many have survived, too. I like to be reminded of that fact. Though all this will be quite different in a few months. The office turned into a nursery, toys and blankets and diapers strewn around.
I wonder how I’ll handle it. I like everything in its place. I hang up my clothes the minute I take them off. I wipe down the sink and bathtub immediately after using them, wash my dishes as soon as my meal is finished.
When John entered my life, I found myself trailing after him, picking shirts and socks off the floor, putting dirty glasses in the dishwasher, constantly tidying. I remember Deborah’s pristine house. Perhaps we have more in common than I’d thought.
“Did you follow John around, cleaning up after him?” I ask Deborah. She seems surprised for a moment, then smiles. It is not a particularly nice smile. I must remind myself if I start to soften towards her—she is not a nice woman.
“No, I had him trained. What, did he do that to you? He knew he could get away with it, then. I made sure he understood that everything had a place.”
“Right, that’s my rule, too,” I say, and Deborah lifts her wineglass in a mock toast. “But I could never get him to follow it.” I say.
Two women, complaining about their man.
“You’ll be interested to hear that in the . . . other . . . household, John was the neat one,” Deborah says. She smiles again, but this smile has anger in it. “He told me that MJ was impossible as a housekeeper, impossible in the kitchen, leaving pots and pans and dirty saucepans in the sink. So he took over the housekeeping. Can you believe that? I wonder how that creature is doing without her personal maid service.”
“At the reception, all she could talk about was tending to her garden,” I say.
“Yes,” says Deborah, but curtly. “Well, she’ll get to keep her damn garden. And house too.”
I don’t respond. I don’t know what arrangements have been made between the two of them, and I don’t care to know. Deborah doesn’t strike me as either a generous or merciful woman. As a judge she would have been a hanging judge and would have adjudicated to the strict letter of the law. Yet MJ, that mess of a woman, apparently got something out of her. Squeezed a drop of benevolence out of that stony heart.
Deborah breaks the silence with a strange question. “Tell me, how did you meet John?” she asks. She pauses, and then says, “He never told me. He refused. Which was unusual.”
“Through the hospital,” I say. I’m pleased that John refused to share this part of our lives with her. And I’m not sure I want to, either.
“You won’t give me any more than that?” she asks, and I am surprised by the pleading in her voice. She has put her wineglass down, still half full, and there is a plaintive look on her face. Is this some sort of trick? But what advantage could she have tricking me into telling my love story?