Текст книги "After Forever Ends "

Автор книги: Melodie Ramone

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Текущая страница: 36 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

Oliver shook his head, “We don’t need to see them. Why didn’t you show these to Ren?”

“He wouldn’t listen to me! He was so hurt and so angry! He started shouting at me, telling me I was a liar and then he just left. He just walked out on me. He didn’t even bring his things with him. I let him go, yeah? I thought he was just angry and he’d be back. I sat there and I waited all night and he never came back. He left me, just like that. And now, he won’t talk to me. I‘ve called, I‘ve e-mailed. I‘ve written him letters. I even went to his house and banged on his door. I faxed these papers to him, but nothing. Not a word.”

“Oh, Gwen,” I sighed, “What a mess! I wish that there was something that we could do.”

“There isn’t,” Her eyes were filled with such sincerity they made me ache, “And I don’t want you to think that’s why I came here at all. I really did come just to visit. I’ve missed you both so much.”

Gwennie stayed for a while longer. When she left, she hugged us both. “I probably won’t see you again for a very long time,” She said, “But I want to thank you for all the kindness you’ve always shown me. If there ever comes a day when he asks, please tell Renny something for me? Tell him I’m sorry,” She said sadly, “Tell him if I could do it again, I’d tell him everything. And, please, tell him that I’ll love him forever. Nothing will ever change that. Forever.”

Oliver and I looked at each other, recognizing the echo of ourselves in that statement. Forever. We’d said that word to each other a million times. Her saying it and knowing she meant it in the light that Warren wasn’t giving her another chance was heartbreaking.

When we did deliver the message, Warren wasn’t interested in hearing it. “It’s more than that. She’s not honest about anything. She’s not honest about how she feels, what she does…anything. She’s not the Gwennie I knew. She’s a rock star now. She’s led about by the spotlight. She’s all caught up in the lifestyle. I can’t do it. I can’t pretend to be happy living like that, even if she is there. All I want is to play my piano and have a quiet life. There‘s no room for either of us in each other‘s worlds,” He sighed, “Besides, all she does is break my heart. Every single time.”

After he let Gwenllian go, Warren, firmly in his late twenties, lived alone in his grandparent’s house where his only mistress was his piano. He claimed to have friends, but I never saw any. When I would come by the house, it was never tidy and was always littered with cereal boxes and empty pizza containers.

“Mum, please don’t come over and clean my house!” He complained, “It’s not like I have rats scurrying about!”

“I’m not cleaning you’re house, I’m just taking out your rubbish, which is sort of the same thing in your case. Your grandmother Ana would be spinning in her grave if she knew you’d turned her house into such a muddle. How is work coming?”

Warren had used his connections with Gwen to remain a composer. He’d earned a name for himself by writing several songs that landed in the UK top twenty, but lately he’d seemed to have had enough of the lime light again and was quietly writing jingles for Annie’s advertising agency. He was teaching music from his home as well.

“It’s fine, Mum.”

“When was the last time you got out of the house?”

Being as music was his one true love, he didn’t get away from the piano long enough to meet a lady or at least create any foundation for a serious relationship. He always seemed lonely to me, even if he didn’t recognize it himself.

“Ah, Mum!” He scratched at his chin, which badly needed shaved, “I’m busy! I don’t have time for complications!”

“I’m not telling you to complicate your life!” I told him, “Just get out of the blasted house once in a while and I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. It would be nice for you to meet someone, don’t you think?”

He rolled his eyes at me, “And what do you suggest? I could run an advert, I suppose. Find some lovely lass on the internet! Can’t you read it now? ‘Single white male. Working musician. Seeks down to earth lady with brains, beauty and elegant taste. Must enjoy listening to jingles repeatedly and having potential mother in law invade domicile without notice’. That or I’ll somehow miraculously find a nice girl in the local pub?” He turned, as if speaking to an invisible someone, “‘May I buy you a drink, Miss?’” He raised his voice to sound more feminine and turned as if speaking to himself, “‘Oh, yes! Ten! And then let’s go back to your flat where I can infect you with some lethal virus and leave you for dead!’” He turned back to me, “Sound good, Mum?”

“I don’t suggest you run an advert,” I narrowed my eyes at him and pretended that he’d insulted me, even though what he had just said was quite funny, “Or go looking in any pub, especially not most of the ones in this town. I just wish you wouldn’t spend your life hulled up in this old house. It’s a big world out there, Warren. Once upon a time you were out in it and now you’re holed up in Welshpool like a hermit! Life is short, Son. Use your wings now and again before they atrophy and fall off.” I had an urge to mention that the same thing might happen to his penis, but I held myself back. I knew my son would have a problem with his mother referencing his penis, especially having it fall off.

He rolled his eyes at me again.

About a month later he rang to tell me he had struck up a conversation in the market with the cashier. Her name was Heather and she wanted to be a music teacher, but couldn’t find a job locally.

“I took her out for coffee. She’s very clever, Mum, and she’s seems like her feet are on the ground. Anyway, I told not to worry if she couldn’t find a job teaching. I told her about my idea to start my own music school.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I told her I’d help her out is all. I’ve been looking into it and I’ve found an empty building in Newtown. I think I’ll do it, Mum. I’ve got a quid or two stashed away.”

“Is she pretty, Warren?”

“What? Ah, Mum,” He sounded annoyed with me, as usual, “Yeah, she’s pretty. And, yeah, I’ve asked her out to dinner as well and she accepted. Are you pleased that I’ve made contact with someone of the female persuasion? I thought it might calm your fears some that I’ll without a doubt die alone and without love.”

“I never said that.”

“Ah, you didn’t have to. I know you too well.”

And what did my youngest son, Warren, go and do next? He took that girl, Heather, out on a date. And then another and then several more. They went on holiday together for two weeks and seemed to be getting along smashingly until one September a year later when she kissed him at our house and casually told him she was in love with him.

What did Warren do after that? He had his father go with him to pick out an engagement ring for Heather and he asked her to marry him. She accepted and the couple took their time planning a date. About six months later he happened to check his mail. Inside the letterbox was an envelope addressed to him with a CD inside. Curious, he opened it. A note scrawled in familiar handwriting read:

Dear Warren,

You probably remember me as the big sister who used to tell you to turn your music off and go to bed. I changed my mind. I want you to drop everything you’re doing at the moment and put this song on and I want you to listen to it. You have to listen to it. You have to before it’s too late. I love you, Little Brother, but you’re very stubborn and very stupid.

Love,

Caro

PS And before you go jetting out on your first impulse to go and see Heather, breathe. Just breathe.

Scribbled in black marker on the blank CD were the words “He Said”. Warren popped it into his player and, no surprise, he heard Gwenllian’s voice. What did Warren do then? According to legend, he listened to the song about ten times. Then he picked up his jacket and walked straight out his front door to go to Heather’s work and tell her he only wanted her. However, on his way there, he said he stopped at a red light and took a breath as his sister had suggested. Before he knew it, he turned right instead of left and found himself on the M16 doing well over the speed limit. He made it to London in half time, had a chat with a doorman he used to know, convinced the man to let him inside uninvited and walked into an apartment building where he met Gwenllian Hughes as she was crossing the lobby to exit. She froze mid-step and they stared at each other in an uneasy silence. Finally, Warren, without approaching her, from halfway across the room, scolded her for lying to him and accused her manipulation and being a heartless wench. Gwen stood in silence and allowed herself to be rebuked. At the end of his tirade. Warren confessed that he’d made a colossal mistake by just leaving like he did and told her that she was the only woman he had ever loved and was the only one he ever wanted to love him. “Who cares if you’re married or I’m supposed to get married? “ He demanded. “Details! Complications can be simplified! It’s just doesn’t have to matter if we want to be together!“

And what did Gwennie do? She dropped her headset on the floor and she ran into his arms. I wasn‘t there, of course, but two weeks later, the doorman, whose name was Diego, told me the story before their wedding. “Neither of them would let go of the other," He smiled, “Like they were afraid if they did they’d lose each other forever. It was quite a while before they left the lobby.”

Gwenllian Hughes became Gwenllian Dickinson in the same registrar’s office where Oliver and I had been married forty-four year before. There was a new constable, of course, and the room had been cleaned and dusted, but otherwise it looked the same as it had that day all those years ago. Alexander grinned and nodded, “This is a good place, "He whispered and both Oliver and I agreed. Bess couldn’t make the occasion, but Oliver and I stood with Carolena, Adam, Gryffin, Lakshmi Alex, Lucy, Nigel, Nattie, Mickey and Annie and Steffen, and we watched our Warren and the girl from down the street take their vows. When Gwen kissed him she whispered, “I’ll love you forever, Ren,” and he whispered the words, “Forever, Gwennie” back to her.

It was all his father and I needed to know that they’d come full circle. We were thrilled.

After swearing that there would never be another secret between them, Warren and Gwen settled into Ana and Eddie’s old house. They sat together hand in hand and laughed at everything and everyone around them all the time. Gwen took time off from recording to help Warren set up his school of music in Newtown, which attracted many students just because she was involved. She released two more albums in collaboration with him and went on a world tour. He stayed home to mind his students. Five years later, her next album was released to a cooler response, but I think that was fine with her, especially since she had just discovered she was pregnant. In May of the following year she bore twin daughters. What do two consummate musicians name two baby girls? Aria and Lyric, of course. Three years after that, they had a son they called Cade, which was, of course, short for Cadence.

Five years after the last grandchild came into the world, Oliver and I were sitting at the kitchen table. Spread out before us were a pile of papers. Bank statements, retirement fund quotes, life insurance policies, an inventory of all we owned, the deed to the land in the wood, and the receipt from the cheque from the bank for the amount that Oliver had just sold his medical practice.

“This is depressing,” He said with a grin, “But it must be done.”

“It must.”

We sat together and figured out exactly what our life’s work was worth and devised a way to split it among all seven children and our grandchildren. It was not as easy a thing to do as I might have thought.

“They can sell the cars,” Oliver sat back in his seat, “And really anything else they might want to get rid of. I imagine there’ll be some.”

“And what about the house and the land?”

“I’ve thought about that. This land’s been in my family for almost three hundred years. Caro lives too far, it’ll rot out by the time she gets back here to it. Nigel loves the wood, but he’s busy with his own life. His children aren’t interested. It would sit. Annie and Bess…they’ve no attachment. Bless them, they’d just sell it off. Natalie’s a wonderful choice, but she’s got her own home and family, she doesn’t want to be bothered coming out here. So that leaves us two choices. Our sons, Gryffin and Warren.”

“Warren lives the closest,” I said quietly, but it was my sensibility talking, not my heart. “He’d care for the place.”

“Aye, he does.” Oliver nodded in agreement, “And he would take care of it. Maybe he’d even use it sometimes. But his piano wouldn’t fit in here and I don’t think he’d ever want to tear himself away from his music.”

“I agree.”

“It’s Gryffin who loves the wood most of all,” Oliver was looking at the papers on the table, “He always has.”

“He does.” I agreed, relieved that he said what I’d been thinking, “Gryffin understands the winds and whispers. He has a special tie to the faerie folk.”

“He’s connected to this place in a way the others are not,” Oliver’s face relaxed as he looked into my eyes, “He’d live here if it were empty. I’m sure of that. He’d live here with Lakshmi and he’d write his stories under the tree like he used to when he was little.”

“I know he would.”

“And he wouldn’t change it up.” Oliver was deep in thought. “I reckon he’d probably not change a thing. He respects the magic of the place.”

“He’s made up of all the magic that’s here. If any of the children got a full cup of muffin magic, it was our Gryffin.”

“Now that’s the truth.”

“Ollie, there is no choice. The cabin and the land need to go to him. You know that as well as me.”

He nodded again, “I thought the same.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“If I go before you, I want Carolena to have my ring,” I ran my fingers over it, “To give to Kitty one day.”

“All right, Love,” He wrote it down. “Anything else? “

“I think we’re finished.”

“I hated doing this when I was thirty. It was much simpler then. It reminds me of my mortality and I hate that. I’m only sixty… something…”

I laughed, “And getting senile, I see! You’re sixty seven, Sweetie!”

“Am I that old?”

“That’s not old!”

He laughed. “Sixty seven! Here I was thinking that old bloke in the bathroom mirror was me and to find out I’m still young.”

“Quite.”

“I’m a very mature eighteen, that’s it, yeah?”

“Yes, that’s it.” I drummed my fingers against the table.

He looked at me thoughtfully, “Don’t you think it’s time for you to go and see your friend Sandra?”

I took a deep breath, “We’ve tried so many times. Something always seems to happen. Every single time. I’ve more or less given up.”

“You talk to her five days a week on the phone, Love. I’m officially retired now. We’ve never taken a trip to Ireland in all the years we’ve been together. Why don’t we take a hop over and see her?”

“We should.”

“Aye, we should. Why don’t you call her and see when it would be best for her. There’s nothing stopping us now.”

A sudden excitement was coursing through me, “I’ll do it now!” I began to stand up, but Oliver caught me by the hand.

“Can you believe it’s been fifty years?” He asked slowly, as if he were contemplating a deep secret of the universe, “I bet you a quid she looks like hell.”

We both burst out laughing.

I had not been to Ireland since I was a child of about nine. I had forgotten how incredibly beautiful the countryside was. Sandra lived in a small village about two hours outside of Dublin in a ridiculously huge old manor that housed a small museum.

“She married well,” Oliver noted as he parked the car.

I didn’t say anything, but I had known that her husband was from old money and was a descendant of Duke Whoever-He-Was of Wherever-He-Was-From. She had mentioned that she lived in a manor house, not that it was in reality a small castle.

“Her parents weren’t exactly poor, either.” I muttered.

A tall, heavy set old woman in a rose coloured silk suit came out the great front doors and jogged down the steps. “Silvia!” She shouted, “Silvia! Silvia! Oh, Sil!””

“Great galloping green grasshoppers!” Oliver gasped, “It’s Sandra!”

I instinctively hurried toward her with my arms open. We met half way and clung to each other in the way that I had only seen two women cling to each other in films. Both of us had tears rolling down our faces.

“Oh, Sandy!” I said into her snow white hair, “It’s been so long!”

“Oh!” She sobbed, “It hasn’t been a day!” She pulled back and looked at me. Her face was wrinkled like an old piece of parchment, “Look at you! Silvia Cotton! All these years and you’re still beautiful! Hardly a wrinkle! And you’re wearing the hair clip I gave you at school!”

“Of course I am! Did you think I’d lost it?”

“I didn’t think you’d still have it!”

“A gift from my best friend? It’s a treasure!”

“Oh, Sil!” She threw her arms around me again. “My best friend!”

Oliver stood patiently to the side. When Sandra finally looked at him, he flashed that charming smile, “Sandy Ashby! The Grand Trumpeter of Bennington Palace!”

That was a nickname he had given her first year when she passed gas during a timed exam.

“It was so loud it echoed!” She had told me one night after lights out, “And it was just me and Ollie in the back of the class. So everyone turned and looked at us. I was dying from embarrassment, but Oliver just got that nutter grin and he said, ‘What? They give us a decent amount of fibre in our meals!’ Oh my God, Sil! He took the bloody fall for me!”

We had laughed so hard about it that the Professor McClellan came into our room and told us if she heard another peep again we’d both be in detention.

“Oliver,” Sandra was positively beaming at him, “Do you want the first thing I say to you to be shut up? Oh, do come here!”

He lifted her off the ground with a hug. “Ah, Sandy, it’s good to see you after all these years! You look well.”

“You look old,” She teased, “And so do I! Enough of your politeness! Come on, you two! Come inside! Have you eaten?”

Sandra brought us up into her mansion and introduced us to a few members of her staff. “They’re at your disposal,” She told us, “You can pick up any phone and dial 9.” Oliver and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows. Neither of us had ever been in a home so fine.

Sandra seemed to think nothing of the surroundings. Her husband had left her the manor years earlier in exchange for her not divorcing him. “He owed me more than this,” She told me with the look that only another woman could understand, “But I took it anyway. He’s dead now, did I tell you?”

“No, you didn’t mention it.”

She nodded. There was not even a hint of emotion in her voice, “Yes, well, you know he was considerably older than me. He died in Hawaii, of all the places he could have been wasting his last moments, with his newest mistress. As if a twenty-nine year old divorcee with three children was in Hawaii with a seventy-nine year old man because she loved him!”

She glanced at Oliver, who was noticeably bored. “Ollie,” She prodded him gently, “Do you still like to golf?”

“I don’t golf, Sandy. I whack golf balls. I find it much more therapeutic than driving myself mad trying to knock a walnut into a tiny hole. Alexander is the golfer.”

She laughed, “Well, my husband was a golfer and there is a nine hole course in the back. Or, if you’d rather, you can just go whack some balls. We have plenty of grounds, I’m sure you won’t bother anyone.”

“Wicked!”

“I’ll have Jacob get you the clubs. You’re a bit taller than John was, but they should be all right.”

Between whacking golf balls and borrowing a fishing pole to fish in her stocked pond, Oliver more or less disappeared for the next week and stayed gone. It left Sandra and me alone to laugh and talk for hours. It was just like we were girls again.

She and I took a long walk on the grounds the day Oliver and I left. The conversation turned to old classmates.

“You know, Meredith Ainsworth died at Christmas. She had a nasty fall from a horse about a year before and broke her spine. She wasn’t paralyzed, but she never got back up on her feet very well. It was all downhill from there. She was my husband’s cousin’s wife. Did you know that?”

“You never told me that! I think of her from time to time. I supposed she’d married some Greek oil tycoon or a prince or something.”

Sandra laughed and shook her head, “No, not a prince, just an heir to a great fortune! James is a good man and he gave her a good life. They had five daughters, can you imagine that? Beautiful girls. Bitches all of them, but they adored her. She was a wonderful mother, too. It was effortless for her. She loved them all so much. They had a yacht and sailed all over the world together with their children.”

“Wow. I’m glad for her.”

Sandy nodded, “Meredith never changed. She never got a clue in her head and she never gained an ounce of fat on her body. Her husband absolutely adored her. He gave her everything she wanted. She had a stable full of beautiful horses, Arabians and Andalusia’s. The last time I was at her estate she asked me if I still talked to you. She wanted to know about you and Oliver, about how you two had got on after Bennington. Then she wanted to know all about Alexander. She wanted to know how he was and what had happened to him, if he was happy. When I told her he’d married Lucy she was relieved. ‘He can’t take care of himself,” she said, ‘He absolutely could never make it alone. I’m so glad he married someone who’d do it all for him so Silvia didn’t have to take care of them both’. She really did love him once. As much as she claimed to hate him after Easter that year, the way she talked about him to me that day was as if he was the one that got away.”

“For her, I’m sure he was. I don’t know what it was about them, but they were kind of special together. Still, he treated her so awful in the end.”

“Actually, she told me that after graduation he phoned her and they talked it out. She thought that there might even be a second chance, but it never came about. She thought that he was in love with you.” Sandy paused, as if waiting for me to respond. When I didn’t, she continued, “I told her that was silly, but she didn’t think so. She said you, Alex and Oliver were a bizarre triangle and she knew she could never make it into a square, so she gave up hoping. She said she couldn’t compete.”

“The three of us have always been close, but I’m sure none of us ever intended on excluding her.”

Sandy smiled, “Well, she was very spoiled. Being as she was not the centre of attention, she probably felt excluded. But speaking of Alex and his exes, I saw Sarah Farnsworth not long ago in Belfast and she’s looking quite sprite. She looks ten years younger than any of us,” Sandra drew a deep breath and sighed, “When I think of us from Bennington, I still think of us all as being so young. Those are the pictures I have in my head. Us, just kids, making our way through school. We really looked out for each other, didn’t we?”

“Always. We were a family.”

“It’s hard to believe that any of us have died,” She wiped tears from her eyes. “Poor little Meredith.”

“She was sweet in her own way.”

“She was! Oh, how I hated her once! And why? In the end, we were in the same family. Cousins. We were friends,” She sighed, “And then there’s Lance. Did I ever tell you that I had a crush on him?”

“Of course you did.”

“He didn’t find me attractive. I was too tall,” She smiled. What she said was true. Lance liked Sandra, but she was not at all his choice in women being as he only stood to her chest. “But I thought he was one of the most handsome boys at Bennington.”

“He was a bit of a cutie in his day.”

“I’m just so glad I knew him. Merlyn, too. Merlyn was a nice boy. He used to help me with my luggage the first and last days of school. It was like a tradition, him helping me haul them out of the car and through the gates. I was always forgetting my code, you know, to get in, so he’d wait for me and punch his in. I don’t know why he did it,” Sandy wasn’t looking at me as she spoke. Her eyes were fixed on something far away.

“He did it because he liked you. Merlyn wouldn’t have stood there waiting for just anybody.”

“Yes, I would have counted him as a friend. I would have dated him if he’d asked me. My father would have had a fit with him being black, but I’d have done it anyway. I never cared about anyone’s colour. Merlyn was a great chap. He came from such a good family Daddy would have had to have gotten over it sooner or later,” She had a look on her face like she had a completely separate thought, then came back and finished, “But Ollie and Alex…they were well above my station.”

“You knew the twins the whole time you were there!”

“I did. I met them first year, but they weren’t my friends. Not until you came along. Ollie was nice to me, but Ollie was nice to everyone unless they irked him. It wasn’t like he made any effort to notice me. We just had classes together. And Alexander? Well, I don’t know what went on with me and Alexander. There was that short period in time when I thought we might get to know each other. I was terrified!” She laughed, “He was so handsome and so bloody mean! I think I might have brushed him off more than I meant to because after a while he wasn’t anything more than polite to me. He never gave me the time of day again.”

“What are you talking about? Alex was very fond of you! I know he was because he told me! And so was Oliver!”

She patted me on the back, “They may have been fond enough of me, but I was not on their social magnitude! I wasn’t in their crowd! They only chose me because they chose you and I came attached.”

“Social magnitude?” I snorted, “I was invisible, too!”

Sandra burst out laughing, “Oh, Silvia! I always loved that about you! You were always in your own little world! You didn’t know how much you stood out. When you got to Bennington everyone was talking about you. You had all that lovely red hair and those huge boobs!” She laughed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, “And Oliver was besotted with you from moment one. Oh, he’d sit and watch you like there wasn’t another woman alive. It didn’t matter what you were doing, he couldn’t take his eyes off of you! That really brassed the girls off, but the boys were all jealous of Oliver. There wasn’t one who didn’t fancy you.”

“That’s not true!”

“No, it is! That morning you arrived everyone was chattering. ‘The new girl, you should see her! She looks like a right snob’, the girls said, ‘She was on the quad flirting with the Dickinson twins! It was terrible!’ The boys were all going on about how gorgeous you were. I decided to hate you immediately and then I saw the name on the list of my new dorm mate. Silvia Cotton. I knew it was you! They did everything by the alphabet…why wasn’t there a B that year?” She laughed out loud and squeezed my shoulder, “When you walked into that room and said hello to me I wanted to scream. I was sure you’d be awful, but you were so sweet. And helpful! Remember I found that hole in the seat of my uniform and you fixed it straight away! How long exactly did it take us to be best friends?”

“I don’t know. Six minutes?”

She laughed again, “Bennington was a lonely place for me until you came. No one noticed me. You took the time to see me. You were my first best friend, Sil. I lived for those late nights when we would sit up and talk way past lights out. They meant the whole world to me. I was so sad when you got to move into the game keeper’s quarters. I was happy for you, but I missed having my best friend all to myself. I wanted to throttle Oliver for stealing you away like that!”

“I’ve always missed you since. Isn’t it odd, though? All these years and it’s like we’ve only been apart for five minutes, really.”

“That’s how you know a soul mate. Time and distance make no difference. You just pick up where you left off.”

We sat for a long time. Finally, I asked what I was thinking, “We missed so much of each other’s lives. We talk on the phone often, but now that I’m here, look at me and tell me true, Sandra. Was yours a happy life?”

She looked up into the sky, “I think so. My marriage was a train wreck. My husband drank and philandered. My children were spoiled rotten. They had no respect for me. There were times I was unhappy. It got better once they all left. I got on with my life then, I had discreet affairs. I travelled. I have some regrets, but all in all, I’d say yes. How about you?”

“I could die right now and know I had a wonderful life. I had wonderful friends, a wonderful marriage and wonderful children. I did all I wanted to do and saw what I wanted to see. Yes, I’ve have had a great life.”

“Regrets?”

“None.”

“I didn’t think you would.” We were quiet for what seemed an age. Sandy finally spoke. “You lied to me once.”

“I did?”

“Yes. The night you came back to Bennington after you married Oliver. You told me a huge lie.”

“What was that?”

“That sex was like magic,” She said and we both laughed until it hurt, “It was never like magic for me!”

“I’m sorry!” I said sincerely.

“Ah, it’s all the same, isn’t it?” Sandra still looked like herself when she smiled. I could see that little girl from Bennington peeking through the folds in her skin, still see that little spark of wonder in her blue green eyes, “I got over the disappointment.”

“I was never disappointed. Sex was always magic for me.”

“Well, why wouldn’t it be for you? You and Ollie are the stuff young girls dream of. You don’t hear of a story like yours too often.”

People were always telling us that. “We are very lucky.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t even have to work at it. Your marriage, I mean. Don’t tell me it was always wonderful. I couldn’t bear to hear it!” She pressed her hands to her ears. “I know he’s not perfect!”

“No,” I answered slowly, “He’s not perfect. Sometimes we did have to work at it. Sometimes we still do. We don’t always agree. Sometimes we even fight, but we make each other laugh, too. That’s our secret. We just laugh at each other. And at ourselves. Well, we really just laugh at everything and everyone.”