The Book of Someday Part 5

There's a hint of hesitation before he says: "I went to a sunrise Ma.s.s. I always go to Ma.s.s on Easter, and on Christmas."

"Ma.s.s? I never knew you were a Catholic."

"Well." His att.i.tude is boyish, sheepish. "Now you know."

For the s.p.a.ce of a pulse beat Livvi's uncertainty continues. Undiminished.

And then.

Then she's receiving a kiss that's sweet with the taste of communion wine. A lingering kiss-being delivered with the purity of a sacrament.

In addition to the trips and the hotel rooms, there are the days and nights Livvi and Andrew spend together in the Pasadena guesthouse that is Livvi's home. A little treasure she's able to afford only because her landlady, a flamboyant former television writer, gives Livvi a reduced rent in return for Livvi's services as a part-time personal a.s.sistant.

The guesthouse has a lovely, old-world sensibility. There's a gracefully tiered fountain in a little outside courtyard. The courtyard's perimeter is blanketed in bougainvillea blossoms that are the color of red chili peppers and as delicate as rice paper. Inside the little three-room house are vases of fresh-cut flowers, walls finished in cream-colored plaster, arched windows kept open to the breeze and fronted by fine, wrought-iron grillwork, and floors covered in rose-colored Saltillo tile. Livvi's furniture is simple. And her bed is high and welcoming, dressed in clean, unbleached cotton.

Livvi has been in this serene s.p.a.ce for thirty-six months. Andrew is the only man who has slept with her under its roof.

This is Livvi's cloister. The hiding place where she has insulated herself from the shadows of the past.

Now a missile has been sent whispering through the night. The attack has come in the form of a midnight phone call-and it has shattered her sense of safety.

While Livvi is putting her cell phone back onto the bedside table she's wary, glancing at Andrew, to see if he's still asleep. He is. The call must have been too brief to wake him. It is one of several that have occurred in the last few weeks. This time, unlike the others, Livvi picked up on the first ring. The entire exchange lasted only a few seconds.

There was Livvi's groggy "h.e.l.lo" as she was turning on the lamp.

The whispery voice saying: "Olivia. Is that you?"

Then Livvi pressing the Off b.u.t.ton-dropping the phone as if she'd touched fire.

Livvi is shifting her attention back toward the bedside table-afraid the phone will ring again.

When it doesn't, she cautiously turns out the light. And slides down under the comforter-holding her breath. She is wide awake. And she stays awake. For hours. Agitated and sick.

Livvi had truly believed she was safe from the ghosts of her past, but they are making it clear that they're more agile, and have a much longer reach, than she ever imagined.

Sleep, when it finally comes, is riddled with disturbing images. Among them is the vision of the woman in the silver dress and pearl-b.u.t.ton shoes-the woman whose fiery-red lips are making way for a shrieking howl.

And at the first sight of her, Livvi is fighting for consciousness.

She wakes up shaking-and crying.

Andrew is instantly bringing her near. Nestling her against his chest. Lacing his fingers into hers like a drowsy parent comforting a frightened child.

Livvi-infinitely grateful for his sheltering presence-isn't noticing that in Andrew's grip her fingers are being spread unnaturally wide. She isn't noticing that the fit is just the tiniest bit uncomfortable.

Micah.

A Small Town in Kansas ~ 2012.

The cab is turning the corner, bringing the place into view. Micah isn't comfortable with what she's looking at. The worn steps. The neglected lawn. A cracked driveway littered with old newspapers, all of them rounded, in various stages of decay, like a trail of decomposing turtle sh.e.l.ls.

The smudged leather on the back of the seat is faintly sticky. The taxi smells of gasoline and of the driver's rancid breath. While the cab is pulling to a stop, Micah is looking toward the door handle. Eager to be gone. But also apprehensive about what's waiting for her on the other side of the pa.s.senger window.

"Are you sure this is it?" she asks. There's tension is in her throat and in her chest.

The street is completely silent. Not even the bark of a dog.

The driver turns his head, sunlight glittering across the gray stubble on his cheeks. Micah is listening to the click of false teeth and watching a fine spray of saliva sail from his mouth as he's telling her: "You said Pine Street. One-eight-nine. This here's one-eight-nine."

Micah gets out and hands the driver twenty dollars to cover the fourteen-dollar fare. Then the cab pulls away-and she's alone. In the middle of a street that's as wide and flat and plain as the wind-whipped Kansas landscape that surrounds it.

Being in this vast, open s.p.a.ce has Micah on edge; she's not fond of freshly tilled fields and sunshine. She prefers forests and the dark of night-places friendly to things that need to be concealed.

The noiseless emptiness of the street is bordering on eerie. Micah's instinct is to abandon her plan. This search for answers and absolution suddenly seems much too frightening. But before she can unzip her purse to find her phone, to get another cab and escape, the weather-beaten door at 189 has been opened. By a man who's calling to her. And saying: "You're a little early, aren't you?"

Micah can't comprehend what she's seeing. She can't believe how much he's changed. If she'd pa.s.sed him on the sidewalk she wouldn't have recognized him. It's obvious that he's only in his early forties, but he's skeleton thin and has a scruffy beard. His hair, the magnificent hair that was as black as a midnight ocean, is gray. And he's leaning on a cane, looking incredibly frail, as if he could be toppled by a pa.s.sing breeze.

What in the world has happened to him? To Jason. Her Jason. The Jason who was always so lithe and alive.

"Well, don't you want to come in?" he asks.

Micah, not knowing how to respond, tells him a lie: "Yes. I want to come in."

While she's walking up the driveway, and onto the porch, and into the house, Micah is wildly uncertain.

She has searched Jason out and traveled here a.s.suming he would be essentially the same man she left seventeen years ago. On that sun-dappled day in September, in Cambridge, not far from the Harvard campus; when she had walked away from him, down the steps of the brownstone where a Justice of the Peace was waiting to perform their wedding. This is the Jason that Micah has come here wanting to see. The young man, the handsome, appealing man. He's the one who could have given her the rea.s.surance-and the forgiveness-she needs.

But the Jason in Micah's memory isn't in any way the man who has ushered her into his house, who is standing in front of her now. And it's tearing her apart.

His living room is small and square-shaped, surprisingly tidy. The thrift-shop furniture, a sofa and two chairs, is spotless: slip-covered in sky-blue bed sheets held in place by neat rows of chrome-colored safety pins. He's gesturing for Micah to take a seat on the sofa. After she does, he slowly, tentatively, as if trying to keep pain at bay, lowers himself into one of the chairs. He's struggling to hold his head up, drawing ragged breaths, exhausted by the effort of simply sitting down.

Nothing about this moment or this place seems to make any sense. Micah can't think of what to say, how to begin. She can't sort out her tangled emotions. Her shame-for having treated Jason so badly on that September day in Cambridge. Her pity-for the wreck that he's become. Her selfish disappointment-for having flown all the way to Kansas, wanting the beautiful Jason she knew so well, and ending up with an invalid she doesn't even recognize.

Micah has had countless men. Countless lovers and affairs. She's spent her life in a carnival of male attention and s.e.xual adventures. But in that delicious, ever-changing parade of men, there has only been one Micah has never forgotten, never stopped loving. Only one who has been important. Only Jason. Always. And only. Jason.

His expectant expression is letting Micah know he's waiting for her to speak first. "I'm not sure where to begin," she says.

"Well, I figure you probably have some questions you need to ask." His cane has fallen onto the floor; he's leaning forward, fishing for it with a hand that's colorless and unsteady. "Want to know the joke of this?" he laughs. "When I was a kid my mother's favorite charity was multiple sclerosis. Because it was such a b.i.t.c.h of a disease and she felt so sorry for the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who got it."

Micah can't bear to see how depleted and feeble he is. She's glancing around the room, doing her best not to look at him, wishing it were yesterday and that she'd never gotten on the plane. All she can think to say is: "How long have you been living here?"

"I figured you'd have that information already."

"Why?"

Micah shifts her gaze to meet his. And he smiles in a strange, surprised sort of way.

And she asks: "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I don't know," he chuckles. "I was just thinking...you're mighty pretty."

Mighty pretty. That homey, Midwestern style of saying things. Micah hasn't heard a phrase like that for a long, long while. For some reason, hearing it now is bringing her close to tears. The heat of those waiting tears-and the kindness she's noticing in his eyes-is melting something in Micah. Something that's been frozen with fear ever since the final day of her trip to New York.

Without intending to, she's telling him: "I have cancer. It's bad and they want to do surgery. I'll probably lose my b.r.e.a.s.t.s-"

Micah stops. For an instant everything has gone blank.

Then she tells him: "If I don't say yes to treatment right away, I'll probably die. But I'm thinking maybe, because of the evil I've done, dying is what would be fair. I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't fight the cancer...that it's my punishment and I should just let it happen. To finally make amends."

He shakes his head, staring off into mid-distance, processing what he's just heard. "Sounds to me like right now you're not thinking straight."

After a while, he looks back at Micah. He seems perplexed and asks: "What could you ever have done that would deserve letting yourself die for it?"

His gaze is open, direct; and in it Micah is catching a glimpse of unvarnished truth. This is a good and honest man whose concern for her is genuine. There's not one shred of judgment or revulsion in what he has said. And Micah, craving the release that comes with confession, tells him something she has never told another living soul. She names, precisely, the evil that she has done.

It leaves him stunned.

For several minutes neither of them speaks, neither of them moves. The stillness is so complete that Micah can hear the beating of her own heart and the pulsing of blood in her veins.

When the phone rings, it shatters the silence like a scream. When Micah answers it, everything she thinks is real is being made unreal.

Such a profound mistake-with such simple roots.

A rushed text message: 189 Pane Street inadvertently typed as 189 Pine Street.

A disabled man in his forties, an MS patient, expecting a noon visit from his new caseworker; a woman he's never met.

Micah's arrival on Pine Street at eleven forty-five.

While Jason-the man Micah has come to see-is three miles away. Waiting for her on Pane Street.

In the background of the photo that Micah has just been handed there's what appears to be a church picnic, or perhaps a neighborhood block party. In the foreground is a moderately pretty woman with an unremarkable haircut and a slightly lopsided smile. On either side of the woman-leaning against her affectionately-are a pair of extraordinarily handsome teenage boys.

Micah is taking a last look at the photo then handing it back to Jason, while he's saying: "Wendy. Scott. And Coulter. Those three are my world."

The expression in Jason's eyes suggests that he's a truly happy man. "It's amazing how good our life is right now. Wendy's just opened a cupcake business, she's a terrific baker. And the boys are doing great. Growing like weeds. Scott's a soph.o.m.ore...unbelievable soccer player. Coulter, our basketball star, starts high school next year. G.o.d, I wish you weren't leaving this afternoon. I'd love for you to come by and meet everybody. Have dinner with us, or maybe..."

Micah isn't really focusing on what Jason is suggesting. For most of the hour that she's been with him in this coffee shop, on Pane Street, she's had trouble keeping track of the conversation. She has been too upset and confused. Now she's beginning to understand why.

In spite of how fit and healthy he is, Jason has turned out to be more of a shock, more of a disappointment, than the frail, frayed man she'd encountered on Pine Street. It's dawning on Micah that that man, because he was crippled and suffering, was, in a strange way, what she had expected Jason to be-what on some perverse level she'd needed him to be.

This actual Jason is thriving and completely content. And it's almost as if Micah has been blown apart by that.

"I'm considering a run for city council," he's saying. "I think I can make a difference, do some good." Then he pauses and asks: "Does that sound too corny? What do you think?"

Micah's head is spinning...I don't know what to think. I came here expecting you to say how hard it was to survive without me all these years. I was planning to ask you to forgive me. For walking out on you and breaking something sacred-something that never should've been broken. I thought the hurt from that would be permanent. It never even occurred to me that it could be temporary-that it could heal, and go away. Jason, you used to say I'd marked you, made you mine. I thought that mark was indelible. I honestly don't understand...how could what you had with me be replaced by things as trivial as cupcakes and soccer games?

Micah is startled to see that Jason is settling the bill, getting ready to leave. He's planting a brotherly peck on her cheek and scooting out of his chair. "Wish I could stay longer but I've got to pick my boys up. Coulter has a game this afternoon."

When Jason is a few feet from the table, he pauses and looks back at Micah. Taking in every detail. The way an art lover would admire a recently rediscovered Rembrandt.

Then Jason is strolling away, sending Micah a jaunty wave, a lighthearted good-bye. Completely free of nostalgia. Or reluctance.

And the pain is devastating.

It wasn't that Micah came here wanting to rob Jason of whatever bliss he has found. It's that she had needed the rea.s.surance of knowing he'd missed her, and felt his life was diminished, just a fraction, because she hadn't been in it.

While she's watching him walk away, Micah is experiencing a jealous sort of mourning. She's not wishing Jason any harm. She's simply wishing he could have proved to her that she was important. That she had been loved. That she had mattered.

On the way to the airport Micah is at first numb. Then disappointed. And finally, in an unexpected way, relieved.

She discovers the relief when her driver, a black man with a shaved head and flawlessly manicured fingernails, glances up at the rearview mirror and says: "Your time in Kansas-business or pleasure?"

Micah is recalling fleeting images of the haggard MS patient in the blue, slip-covered chair: and Jason, happy and smiling in the crowded coffee shop. "I was here on business," she says.

"You get everything done you came to do?"

Micah, looking out at the horizon, is talking more to herself than to the driver, when she replies: "I came here to see a man I used to know...to say things I thought were important."

"Did you get the chance to say those things to him?"

"Not really," Micah murmurs. "They turned out to be irrelevant."

The driver puts his full concentration on the road. He does it with a kind of courtliness, as if trying to give Micah some privacy.

And Micah, continuing to gaze toward the flat line of the horizon, is realizing that the only item of importance she communicated during her trip to Kansas was the secret she confided to the stranger on Pine Street.

The admission made in that splinter of time just before Jason's phone call came, asking why she wasn't on Pane Street.

The single sentence that explained what her evil was-the heartsick confession in which Micah said: "I killed someone."