'It's pretty impressive,' she nodded.
'I've gotten into cooking,' he said. 'Mostly stir-fry and grilling, but I make my own marinades.' He had the doors of the behemoth Sub-Zero opened wide and was unloading his groceries.
'Better get that ice cream in the freezer,' he said, taking her grocery bag.
'I changed my mind on the ice cream. Just milk.' He looked pleased.
'So, what do you say to some sauteed chicken breast, maybe a little pasta?'
'Really, just a glass of wine is fine. I can't stay long. I spent the day helping my mom pack up her house and I need a shower. I'm pretty filthy.'
'I wasn't going to say anything.' He grinned, but then quickly added, 'You look great, Elaine. Really.' He smiled. This was new, a carefulness with her feelings that she wouldn't have credited him with.
'Here, sit.' He gestured to a bar stool on the far side of the island. 'Pinot grigio okay? I'll make a little extra chicken. Once you smell the garlic, you'll change your mind. So Polly's moving?'
She sat back with her glass of wine and watched as he piled ingredients onto the countertop, pulled down a saute pan and pasta pot from the overhead rack, and set the water on to boil. A few sips of wine and the tightness she'd been feeling all day began to unravel.
'She's on a tear. You remember her china? Blue rims with little birds and berries?' But no, of course he wouldn't. 'Sixteen place settings of Haviland and she was ready to haul it off to Goodwill.'
Neil selected a chefs knife from a butcher block and began expertly mincing garlic. 'Did you take it off her hands?'
'I'm putting it in storage. Darcy may want it when she gets settled.'
He smiled good-naturedly. 'Don't hold your breath, Elaine.' Their daughter was living with a bunch of people in a farmhouse outside of Eugene, Oregon. She had spent the previous year living in trees for their own protection. It was their daughter's form of rebellion to actually live out the ideals of the sixties, in contrast to her parents who had merely smoked a little pot and feigned the styles.
'Well, tomorrow's the last day, then we're done. Except for the sideboard. I have to find some movers to take it to my house.' She felt self-conscious when she referred to the house as hers. 'You can't believe the estimates I've been getting just to haul one sideboard and a couple of chairs across town.'
'Do you need a hand?' he asked. 'Michael and I could rent a truck.'
She answered reflexively. 'Oh, no, I'll figure something out.
'I have to rent something to drive anyway. Might as well be a truck. I could pick it up in the morning, swing by Polly's after I stop at the police station.' Neil was reaching for the phone, pressing a number on the speed dial. 'I'll give Michael a call, see if he's free.'
'It's almost midnight. Really, this isn't…'
'It's Saturday night. What do you think, I'm going to wake him up?' He wedged the phone between his shoulder and ear, and sliced the chicken breast into strips as he talked. 'Hey. It's your old man.' He was talking to Michael's voice mail. 'If you're not doing anything in the morning, I could use your help. Someone made off with my car, and I promised your mother we'd help her move some furniture from Polly's. Shouldn't take more than an hour or so. I'll be up for a while. Give me a call.'
It was Neil's habit to lowball the time involved in doing anything. He never allowed for traffic or missed turns, for checkout lines or the myriad of obstacles that could spring up. He saw only the unimpeded flow of his will. She, in turn, had always overcompensated by anticipating every roadblock. Right now, for instance, she could imagine with perfect clarity the phone call she'd get tomorrow: Neil explaining that he'd been held up by mysterious forces, the rental car agency that had rented every truck off the lot before his arrival, the desk sergeant who needed more paperwork filled out. Of course, it would only be a few more minutes and then he'd be on his way. Fifteen minutes, tops.
She knew him better than he knew himself. She could predict what he would order off a menu. She knew his habits and secret vanities, the way he squinted when he looked in the mirror, the way he could disappear into a project and not hear what was around him, not the babies crying, or later, the boom boxes thumping in the upstairs bedrooms. She knew the kind of jokes that made him laugh, the strangled cry he made when he climaxed, how he was always a little sheepish afterward.
She let the last swallow of wine roll around in her mouth and slide warmly down her throat.
He was the same man, and yet he wasn't. The entire time they'd been married, he'd never made anything more complicated than a sandwich, and here he was, testing a strand of pasta from the pot, sifting chopped basil and pine nuts over the chicken. She wondered how else he had changed.
The food was good. She had another glass of wine, and she talked about her mother's defection to North Carolina, and he talked about a trip he'd recently taken to Phoenix for a convention that had been heavily attended only because it was February and Phoenix was warm in February. They exchanged opinions about Michael's new girlfriend and agreed that this one seemed good for him, not like the last one. And they reminisced, like old friends who haven't seen each other in years. He had forgotten, until she mentioned it, the three months his crazy aunt lived with them. Poor thing, she really was crazy, not just an expression. They shouldn't laugh, but did he remember how they found the coffee can half-full of pee under her bed? And Daisy, the pet goat. What had they been thinking? The constant bleating and the damn thing ate a thousand dollars' worth of landscaping before they'd found a home for it.
Was it Banff where they'd cooked up the idea of getting a little dairy goat? It was that old man, the caretaker, and his stories about the health benefits of goat's milk. He would come by the cabin on some pretext, always in the late afternoons, and hang around telling them yarns about cougars and grizzlies until Neil invited him to stay for dinner. What a character. The trip had ended badly, though. They had been there a little less than five days when Michael found a yellow jacket nest.
'You remember? He swelled up like one of those balloons in the Macy's parade.' Neil shook his head in wonder.
One minute Michael had been screaming and the next he was turning blue. Elaine would never forget how calm Neil had been when he told her to hold the boy still while he punctured his throat. He needs air, Neil had said. She had screamed at him, called him a bastard and who knows what else, all the while desperately trying to wrench her baby away from him.
'Man, you were a she-cat,' Neil laughed.
Elaine smiled, but the memory filled her with shame. 'I didn't trust you,' she admitted.
He stopped and looked at her and took this in, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. 'I would never have let anything happen to Michael.'
She nodded. 'I know. Nevertheless.'
Every day of their marriage, patients had turned their lives over to Neil. He had split them open at the sternum, taken hold of their beating hearts, and they had adored him for it. She had envied them their faith, the look she had seen in their eyes when they introduced themselves later in a restaurant or a store. 'Your husband is an amazing man,' they'd say. 'But I guess you know that.'
Tears sprang up in her eyes and she pressed them back with her fingers, shaking her head at her foolishness.
'When we split up, I realized I'd been bracing for it for years,' she said. 'When Jody and Hal separated. And then Kris Little, the Dali guy that used to work at the gallery. He dragged himself around like a dog that's been hit and left in the road. And I was thinking, when the time comes… I don't know what I was thinking, not that it wouldn't happen to us but that I was going to manage it better.' She closed her eyes and exhaled jaggedly. 'I mean, I loved you, but I just held a little in reserve, you know?'
He reached over and tentatively rested a hand on her back. He stroked her hair, smoothed the back of her neck. 'I loved you, too.' His voice was soft and hoarse.
The moment was suddenly taut. His hand slowed, feathering across her skin, leaving trails of heat. Elaine felt herself suspended from a great height and she willed herself to fall.
And then they were kissing. Their mouths and their hands remembered. He squeezed her hand and pulled her to her feet. She followed him through a dark, high-ceilinged living room and up an open staircase with cable railings like a ship's, and she had the sensation of being at sea, the taste of salt, a swaying unsteadiness in the rolling dark.
