Author's Note:
The back story: Caroline and Kate are not yet married. Kate is neither pregnant nor dead. The ladies are meeting for lunch at Caroline's insistence. Three years prior to this lunch engagement Caroline and Kate parted ways over a difference of opinion. Kate has been on hiatus in America for that period of time and today will be the first time that they have seen each other since their split up.
Part One: Facades And Charades
Everything about the restaurant reeks of Caroline. Haughty. Fine china paraded atop freshly laundered crisp white linen table cloths. A hum of soft background music sweetens the gregarious ambiance. Wait staff impeccably groomed, standing at the ready- on beck and call for their high maintenance clientele. It's the perfect place to impress Katherine Ebike McKenzie- or so Caroline thinks.
Caroline springs to her feet at the sight of seeing Kate nearing the table. She hasn't seen her in three years, yet she is the exact same Kate that has continually occupied both her night and day dreams.
"Am I late?" Said somewhat sheepishly. She's eyed the red wine already poured and awaiting her presence.
"Late? Of course not, gosh…no, no, not at all. Please, take a …sit down, please." As Caroline seats herself, she takes a quick glance at her watch confirming her hasty reply was indeed correct. The time check was at best a deception at worse a dishonest gesture. Caroline was well aware of the time. It was exactly ten seconds later than her previous time check.
"A bit early, actually. It's nice...very nice to see you. You look…wonderful." Caroline felt an unintended broad smile sweep across her face. It tempered her anxiousness. "Wine, hope you don't mind. I took the liberty to order. Chianti. You used to…"
"You remembered? "
"Hmm, I did. Cheers." She's managed to maintain her smile but her heart sank at the question. How dare Kate think that she could ever forget? Never in a million years could she forget anything they shared.
"Cheers." It's said with a smile and the clink of two wine glasses.
Oh God she says "cheers" the same way she used to say her name in the depth of their lovemaking. "Cheers" It rings in Caroline's ears. It produces an unwanted chill across her pale freckled skin. Composure must be summoned.
"Ooh...America…wow. So how long has it…been?" Caroline knew damn well how long it had been, in all likelihood to the very minute.
"Too long…I suppose." It's more nervous than weak, Kate's smile. But she has managed one, nonetheless.
"Three years…hmm." God, she loves that brown-skinned woman sitting across from her! Is it too obvious? She's holding the wine glass much too tight; she's incapable of slackening her grip - on either the wine glass or Kate. She'd take a sip of wine were it not for an unsteady hand. Better to hold tight the wine glass than display unrequited desire.
If Caroline knew the length of time since when they last were together why did she ask? Kate is caught off guard, doesn't quite know what next to say. Caroline's not daft only complicated. Kate debates whether to come clean and tell her – "yes, three years two days and exactly twenty nine minutes. But who's counting?" There's that nervous smile, again.
"That long?" She can fake this. She really can; she has only to try, harder. Avoid those sea blue eyes that capture and drown their prey.
"Yeah, I'm afraid so." Caroline has managed to move her hand from the bowl of the wine glass to the stem. She's twisting the glass at the stem, a pretense of nonchalance. Her head is bowed. Albeit, she wants to meet Kate's eyes with hers but there is a pesky unchecked tear that has dedicated itself to moistening her eyes. It requires all the strength that she can muster to overwhelm its persistence and drive it back from whence it came.
"Life- it's been good to you? America. Was it…well…you know… what you thought it…" Composure has won out over tears. Thank God for the years of secrecy and hiding; they have made Caroline a master of disguise. She even finds a smile…disingenuous but good enough she reckons.
"I suppose…except for…well… I mean… yes, yes and you… Caroline. Has life been good to you since..?"
This is the first time Kate has said her name, melodic, refreshing as a cool summer breeze. Every syllable of her name rolls off Kate's lazy tongue like a gentle slow flowing river. Oh my God! She hasn't heard her name said like that for three long years. It actually hurts to hear her say it. It brings back too many memories- cuts her to the quick. Her eyes are heavy and they involuntarily close shut. She doesn't know if her eyes had been shut for seconds or minutes or however long it was before she hears her name again. Caroline opens her eyes inadvertently peering directly into Kate's; she hopes they're not teary, her eyes.
"They seem to be slow to take our order." A deliberate deviation from Kate's inquiry; it's all the reply Caroline can bring herself to say. She's been unduly shackled by the sound of her name. There's tension in her voice not directed at anyone in particular and certainly not intended for Kate. Hell, she can't stop staring at Kate even though it's obvious that Kate is uncomfortable with the eye contact.
Unsettled by Caroline's unremitting gaze, Kate has taken to biting her lower lip, brushing away imaginary lint from her jacket and glancing about the room. Looking nowhere yet everywhere. Everywhere that is except in Caroline's direction.
She's struggling to find something appropriate to say that will lead the pair back to neutral grounds.
"How's the wine?" Caroline asks - "Your Mom…?" Kate asks. They've spoken in unison. Both ladies keen to break the awkward silence.
"Sorry, you go first."
"I was meaning to ask about your Mom. She's doing fine?"
"Yep, right as rain…My Mother…Alan. The boys, too. William, he knows we were meeting, today. I erm…I… umm …told him."
Kate suspects he's the only one she confided in regarding today. "William." His name slips ever so easily from her lips. The memory of him makes her smile. Caroline is quick to recognise this.
"He's very…fond of you. You know that."
"Yes, yes, I do and I of him." Kate counsels herself- Move along; mustn't dwell on double entendre. Caroline is a genius at that game.
"And Gillian? Mustn't forget Gillian should I? Has she married?"
"Oh good Lord!" Caroline snickers. "If you'll recall, she prefers her blokes in lots of a Baker's dozen."
"I could never figure you two out. You were so different. But yet… you're still friends, are you not?"
"When she's not being a total…You know in some ways we're not that entirely different." Kate's quizzical look initiates a quick exuberant declaration of their differences. "We're not the same in that way! I don't do or can't appreciate casual sex. If I love and trust someone to have sex with them – I'm not going to sleep around."
"I was jealous of her, you know. You always seem to be there for her. You got along so swimmingly, didn't you?" The revelation was not meant to be spoken aloud. But sincerity got the better of Kate.
"Jealous? Of Gillian? Her? No! Why? What on earth would make you think…She's my stepsister. You are my….you were my. There was no need. I assure you. Among the many other things she's slept with …well she's hardly my sort, now. Is She? Good Lord...Kate."
"Well, I was. Jealous of her and Joh…" She decides not to finish her sentence. "People can't help how they feel, Caroline."
"No shit Sherlock. Tell me about it."
"Caroline." Chastising takes place promptly.
Caroline makes a silly face, clasps her hands together in prayer-like fashion and pleads playfully for an excusal. "Sorry. Is there a chance of an overlook? Might I be allowed to use my get out of jail free card?"
Kate giggles and nods yes.
Kate has done it again, made her smile from ear to ear, and lifted her spirits like no one on the planet could ever do. At that very moment it is the happiest Caroline has been for years, three years precisely. It takes all she has to restrain herself from jumping up from her seat and pulling Kate into her arms. Instead, she elects to let those beautiful blue eyes do the talking for her. She's staring googly-eyed at Kate but she doesn't care besides she just can't help it.
Her staring renders Kate tongue-tied and her willpower is melting faster than the speed of light. She knows if she doesn't quickly come up with something anything to restart the conversation and re-direct her thoughts she's going to leap into Caroline's arms weak-kneed and without decorum.
"Right. Okay" Pops out of Kate's mouth. It's a deceptive pretext. A stalling tactic because she still can't think of anything meaningful to say until suddenly a name pops in her head.
"John? He's still writing? Master class…so say the critics. I for one think it was a piece of …." She's rambling on. Doesn't really know what she's saying. She's just putting it out there, more or less filling the air with the sound of her voice - nothing more than innocuous chitchat. A red herring tossed out to defend against those alluring blues eyes that are unswervingly gnawing away at her pretense of indifference.
Then, all of a sudden in mid sentence, Kate stops her rapid-fire delivery. One look at Caroline's face instantly makes her regret the course the conversation has taken.
"Oh Caroline, I, I didn't mean to…It's over and done. All's forgotten. The words came out, half tearful, ridden with remorse. Instinctively, Kate reaches out to join hands with Caroline. But Caroline's hands remain stationary. Her whole body is stock still. Her face is without color. Her fingertips are pressed against her temples. She's now staring downward, unresponsive, unaware of Kate's apology, unaware of the hands that's been offered.
Kate's words have ripped into Caroline's open wound like a dull jagged knife, driving her thoughts to where she doesn't want to go. To what she doesn't want to think but she's angry and hurt and cannot control her thoughts. So her thoughts lash out at Kate. "Damn you Kate why did you have to bring up John! Why now! Why here! Did you not feel the connection we had! It's about the novel, isn't it? It's about how I supported his work. How I saw the beauty of our love within his words while you interpreted his work as an escapade of resentfulness, disrespect and a flawed interpretation of a love he has no business writing about."
Unstoppable, her thoughts go on and on and on. Memories, good ones, bad ones, vignettes of her and Kate, happy ones and sad ones overwhelm her, rendering her incapable of rational thought. She cringes as she feels a stabbing pain in her chest. It was just as Gillian had said- you really could die of a broken heart. Only Caroline wasn't dying. She was just falling to pieces like a jigsaw puzzle that had taken a hard tumble.
Part Two: Sonnet 18
"It's lovely. No I mean it. It's lovely." The reply was earnest; meant to steady unsure shifting eyes. It did the trick. His smiling was proof that his previous nagging uncertainty had been replaced by heady self-pride.
John tightened his lips together whilst simultaneously nodding his head. "Right," was all he said. As he sat back casually in the office chair, reclining his long legs outwardly crossed at the ankles, toes upward. Conversation ceased. A comfortable silence filled the room.
John maintained his wistful gazing of his ex-wife, taking note of how the sunlight draped across Caroline's face. She had grown more beautiful in her mature years. Something he had not noticed until that very moment. He preferred to reckon it to her genes and not her newfound love life.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date…Shakespeare." John gave a tight smile.
"Aha, yes?" Caroline was unsure where John intended to lead the conversation.
He took his clue from her look. "Love Sonnet…you and umm….you know…Shakespeare often killed off his lovers too. Just as I have done with umm Kate." He made no mention that he had so callously killed off Kate one day after her wedding and whilst she was in the final months of her pregnancy- a pregnancy that she had yearned for many years. All for the sake of moving along the narrative?!. It was the most shameful in your face bait and switch trope ever pulled on the unsuspecting 2.7%.
"I see. You and Shakespeare?" She couldn't believe that she had actually linked John and William Shakespeare in the same sentence. Caroline checked the urge to raise her eyebrows.
John was a gangly man but in that moment he seemed so small, so out of place. He was childlike, so wanting of her approval and Caroline, well, she was much too kind, much too giving, much too selfless to do anything but support him despite the thousand and one nagging voices inside her head, warning her that she would live to regret her decision. The voices fell upon deaf ears. When it came to John she always let his neediness override her Oxford educated intellect, time and time again. Why would this be any different? Anyway, what would it matter? It's only fiction. Surely, Kate and the other 2.7% would see there was beauty amongst the flawed.
Part Three: The Quarrel
"Silly of me to have thought that love was love, no matter the possessor. Silly of me to oppose you and all your 2.7% idealism. To have had the independent thought that fate plays no favorites. That fate is as cruel as it is kind. That life can be sometimes…well… entirely…unfair. Does it really matter that much, John's novel? In the end it's only fiction, isn't it?" That's what Caroline had said in the heat of the argument, three years ago.
"You don't get it. Do you Caroline and I doubt if you ever will. For centuries fiction has educated the masses. It's not just a stupid novel, for God sake! It's trope at its finest. Eat your own but I'll not stay to watch you." And she didn't.
As much as Kate was a kind and accommodating person there was a stubborn side to her and no amount of placating or pleading one's case would move her. She came to resolutions in her own time and on her own terms. So, Caroline figuratively, opened the door for her to leave. She thought time and distance might bring about a close to the quarrel. It didn't. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and for whatever reason- only they themselves knew- neither blinked.
When Caroline finally gave in and told Beverly, her PA, to ask Kate to come to her office three months had passed.
"So, right…erm…here's the thing Kate. I don't think…err…I really don't…I want to say that I am very sorry, sorry for everything I said or did or didn't do. I shouldn't have… Look, I'm not very good at some things, sometimes. You know that."
"Caroline. It's fine. Really. And I'm glad you asked to see me 'cause…"
Caroline cut her off. Her eyes widen and she smiles a tight smile. "You are? Then…err… we can be "friends" again?"
"Caroline, I never stopped –I'd like us to try …"
Again, Caroline interrupted Kate mid-sentence. "I'm so happy. I could leave here early. I'll get Mom to look in on Lawrence. I can be at yours by 4:30. We could talk more if you like or we could you know. I'll stay the night." Caroline's once tight smile turned into a mega watt smile, which was in stark contrast to Kate's mannerism.
"No, Caroline. That's not what I mean. Look, I've been waiting for the right moment to give this to you."
The envelope that Kate hands to Caroline looks official; it fades Caroline's mega watt smile to blackout. She nervously opens and reads it. "It's your…Kate? You don't have to do this."
"It's my resignation Caroline and yes, yes I do…have to do this. It's a great chance…I've been offered an excellent challenge- a position I know I will enjoy. And my mother, she's in America so it's not like I'll be completely on my own."
Caroline is still in a state of denial. "Don't go." It's said so sincere that Kate almost gives in.
"Caroline, we've moved so quickly. I've demanded so much from you in such a short time. Now, you'll have the space to know who you really are. What you really want. You have so many people, besides me, besides us, who you have to think about. It's best this way. You'll come to see that" She's being conciliatory now.
"Will I? See you leaving as a good thing. Right. How likely is that?" There is a definite sarcasm in her tone. Ignoring Kate she turns her attention to the pile of documents on her desk. Caroline is miffed at Kate for having used that old standard "It's not you. It's me." break up speech on her – how fucking magnanimous of her.
The bell rings offering an excuse for Kate to leave. "I should go. I've got 9F." She's lying.
Caroline is still searching through her paperwork and chooses not to respond to Kate. If it were anybody but Kate she'd discharge her fury in a guns-ablaze fashion. But with Kate she's always held back the full force of her temper.
"Right. Caroline, I just want to say thanks for…In my whole life I've never ever …Thank you for everything." To say what she really wants to would serve no purpose, not now.
Caroline finally looks up and speaks. "Yes. And umm…congratulations…err…with, with your new position in America. If, if it's what you want then, then I'm err…err… happy, happy for you."
"Thank you." Kate closed the door behind her gingerly as she quickly disappeared into the refuge that the other side of the door offered.
Part Four: The Breakdown
"Caroline!" She heard the call of her name. Unlike the first time, the hearing of her name this time was impotent, distant, yet commanded an urgency that pulled her back to the present, rescuing her from a self-imposed exile.
"Caroline, what's happening? What's the matter? Are you okay?" Any thought to feign indifference was ignored.
"I need…excuse me could I get…I….err…I need a glass of water, please."
"Would you like anther glass, Madame?" The waiter had the lock of Caroline's son William. He was his age, of his frame, tall, slight. He was perhaps a bit better looking than William, at a closer look.
"Caroline, you have a full glass in front of you!" Kate motioned the waiter away as she spoke.
"Err, I have to….uhm…use…please excuse me." Caroline turned her head toward the direction of the Ladies Room, missing the sight of the bewildered look on Kate's face.
Kate exhaled a deep sigh as she watched Caroline disappear from sight. She is utterly shamelessly madly in love with Caroline. And no amount of running away or hiding in America could ever change that. Who had she been kidding? Kate takes in a deep breath and breathes out "mhm." It's a passive surrender. She loves Caroline as is. Standard Bearer can come later.
"Sorry…I had to…erm…go….use….Sorry." Caroline pointed to the direction from which she came before settling once again in her seat.
"You came back." It was said with raised eyebrows-relieved, not wanting to be the cause of an early unexpected departure but yet knowing full well she would have been the very source.
"Yes, I did." Although it's said firmly with eyes fixed on her lunch companion; it's not really what she wanted to say.
"But you didn't – come back. To me… all those years ago. How could you have been so bloody stubborn? How could you not have known how much I loved you…love you? I said forever, I meant it." That's what Caroline yearned to say but her words are forever imprisoned. Acceptance of their futility nefariously steals the courage to release them.
"We probably should order, it's getting on." Caroline said it so quietly that her words could be mistaken as an indistinguishable whisper. While all she really wanted to do was scream at the top of her lungs for the world to hear how much she regretted her decision to support John and his stupid novel. How she had always known the influence that stories had on society's perception. How Kate and the 2.7% really do matter. And that neither fiction nor real life should deny their happy endings. Caroline is however convinced that Kate will perceive her contrition, late in coming, as only an insincere means to grab back what she has lost. So she remains silent, acquiescent. Resigned to another 2.7% unhappy ending; this one of her own volition and not that of an insensate author.
'Right." There's a softness, an amiable tone in Kate's voice, sounding much like it did in their early days when she was…her Kate. Her beautiful wonderful Kate.
"It's changed the menu- since when we last were here." Caroline thinks her voice is back to normal but it's not. Kate can not only hear the hurt in her voice but also senses the love. It's like quicksand that swallows the defenseless.
"Everything changes in time, Caroline. Menus. You. Me." Kate's dark chocolate brown eyes are at their finest. They're moist but bright. Her beaming smile is wide and genuine. It lights the room. It tugs at Caroline's heart.
"I've always loved veal scaloppini. Nothing else seemed to…well if memory serves me correctly, you too have always loved it…have forever, haven't you?" A double entendre at its best.
"No…No I haven't. It's you. That I've loved always…will forever. And that's a mighty long time, Caroline." Kate has always had an uncanny ability to see through Caroline's many facades. To hear Caroline's unspoken words. To know a double entendre when she hears one.
They reach out for each other's hands. The smiles are neither nervous nor strained. They are broad and happy. Their eyes are alive and glistening. If the glistening is from tears, they are tears of relief, of joy for requited love.
Time has a habit of not standing still but true love no matter the possessor has a habit of never letting go, despite the passage of time.