Feasting on Leftovers
(November 22, 2012)
When he asks to take them out to dinner on Thursday, she almost takes too long to respond. Gets lost in the fact that this involves pre-planning and promises, something he doesn't do with her (with Kiley, yes, but not her). What's more Thursday is Thanksgiving, a fact which could not possibly have escaped his notice. Because she knows all too well it sometimes can, she checks just to make sure. Yes, he's very aware of the day, which adds a layer of implicit, unspoken claims. And she's not sure she's ready to lay claim to anything so easily lost.
As though sensing a possible, disastrous wrong turn in this thing they're not doing, he's already half-way through paving her an escape route of assumed other plans. Without thinking she reaches out to touch the inside of his wrist, quieting him instantly.
"We'd love to."
The pleased light in his eyes is just brilliant enough to blind her to the fact that she'd been keeping the day open just in case, the same way she makes fewer and fewer lunch appointments on the off chance he'll call. They have a regular table at a quiet back-alley pub, perfectly equidistant from their respective offices, a neutral no man's land where neither can be seen as going out of their way for the other. She ignores Webb's seemingly endless number of appointments which always take him to her side of town after lunch, and what kind of gentleman would he be if he didn't walk her up to her office, when it was so convenient?
He has one today, something only semi-important at the Japanese consulate, at some unspecified time which if he leaves with her he'll just make. They walk at a brisk pace, hands in their coat pockets, every inch the busy colleagues. Webb's good at pretense, and Mac's always been a quick study.
"Thursday." He repeats solemnly when they arrive at the watch-group's offices, as though afraid she's forgotten in the six blocks. Not likely. "Call me if you need to cancel."
She won't. Kiley would never forgive her if she did. Already she's trying to find the time to go shopping for the new dress her daughter will insist she needs. It hasn't escaped her notice that her seven-year old has the beginnings of a crush on this man who takes her to the ballet and Disney movies, makes fry-ups (sorry Harm), and calls her Mata Hari.
He smiles at her from the doorway and mouths, "Thursday."
"Thursday," she whispers back. Her daughter might not be the only one with a crush.
From the front desk, where she's opening the day's mail, Mrs. Barstow nods approvingly as Clay takes his leave. "Your Mr. Webb, such the gentleman." Mac's attempted to explain he isn't 'her' anything, but the receptionist never listens. Sometime in August she just gave up (sometime in October she started to like it). The sixty-nine year old grandmother thinks Webb walks on water, finds him utterly charming, and advises her to 'hold onto this one, dear.' Sarah bites her lip and imagines that if Clarissa Barstow knew what 'her Mr. Webb' actually does she'd slip that brass letter opener between his ribs without batting an eye.
That should probably bother her more, but she had six-years of perfect. She figures a person only gets to ask for that once, and this isn't a half-bad way to spend her remaining time.
Which isn't to say she doesn't have her doubts. There are days when it feels like that's all she has.
When he disappeared for two weeks in May and she wound up leaving fourteen voicemails he didn't return. Stood in his office when he got back, trembling with suppressed rage expecting the same old crap of 'need to know' and 'I can't tell you where I go or what I do,' and got blindsided instead by him asking why it mattered, voice laced with something precariously close to hope. She told him she wouldn't put Kiley through this again, and neither one of them said anything about the fact her daughter never went through it the first time.
In August, when he brought Kiley a wayang kulit shadow puppet from Indonesia, a hand-made ghost of buffalo leather that hangs beside her bed. Mac pulled him aside with a harsh warning, and he left the dark blue batik table cloth he bought for her on the couch, with a look of apology that almost made her forgive his sins in advance.
Now when she can't wipe the smile off her face, and she thinks if she's not careful she could get used to feeling like this.
He presents every gift to Kiley in person, never by mail, never when Sarah can't assure herself he's real. And she gets ludicrously detailed daily schedules from his secretary, fifty-percent of which she knows are utter fabrication. (It still makes her feel better.)
And even though she knows this is not the way to keep from getting hurt, she tells Kiley about the dinner on their walk home from school, prompting an odd celebratory hopscotch, and excited babble about where Clay, who this month she's decided to call by his full and proper name of Clayton, might be taking them and will there be scones. Mac seriously hopes not. It sounds horrendously formal and inappropriate for an American holiday.
Clayton Webb is corrupting her daughter. How weird is that?
She makes a mental note to buy the fixings for a weeks worth of vegetarian meals and feels mildly better about it.
Not that it's always been this way. Ten months ago, when she'd finally worked up enough resolve to take her daughter to meet Webb because she didn't like having unpaid debts, Kiley had regarded him with no little distrust, stared up at him with wide liquid brown eyes and pronounced solemnly, "It's the Nobody Man."
There'd been a tiny flicker of emotion on Webb's face, just a deepening of creases for a fraction of an instant, a scream of pain that echoed in the silence of his usually neutral expression. And in her guilt, Mac found herself asking him to lunch before she could think better of it. It was a strange, tentative affair, filled with false-starts and lingering silences, until they finally gave up and just let Kiley chatter on incessantly about some nonsense, which Clay treated like a mission briefing, listening with sharp intensity, offering the occasional deferential insight, and taking the disdainful rebukes of the pig-tailed tyrant like those of the DCI himself. By the time Sarah paid for the meal, Kiley had commanded his presence at her birthday party and deigned to give him a name.
She's actually given him several, tries out a new moniker nearly once a month, some variations on his real name, some seemingly crafted from thin air, and Mac can't tell whether she's searching for the right one or if they're all the right one and somehow her daughter knows the difference. Kiley called him Webb for almost six weeks in the summer and sounded so much like Harm, she had to ask her to stop. After that it was John, and Sarah thought that just served her right. She hopes Clayton will stick, but doubts it.
"He likes it, Mom."
He likes everything Kiley does.
Sometimes late at night, she lays awake, stares up at the ceiling and worries that when she finally comes to her senses about all this, its going to wind up hurting everyone. Sometimes she thinks it's going to hurt Clay the most. And sometimes, during moments like this when her daughter is dancing between snow patches and dreaming of scones on Thanksgiving, she prays she'll just stay crazy, and it won't end at all.
The week goes by and she blessedly manages not to regain her sanity, so on Thursday when Clay comes to pick them up, they're both wearing new dresses, Kiley's a beautiful verdant green that makes her seem like a forest nymph, Mac's a simple blue sheath. It was on sale and will double nicely for all those holiday parties she'd need to do on the fundraising circuit, and she's so relieved she won't have to go back out when the crowds start to build, and she forgets all of that the moment Clay's eyes slide to hers as he tells Kiley, "You look beautiful."
The restaurant is quintessentially Clay, exclusive and individual and dripping with ambiance. The kind where the menus don't have prices and the waiters come in between the courses to brush away crumbs that have accumulated in front of Kiley. It's too much, too formal, too expensive, too good, too everything . . . it might even be too perfect. She doesn't know. She just knows its wrong, not what she wanted at all.
Halfway through the salad, he senses her discomfort isn't abating, and leans over to with hesitant, imploring eyes, to whisper, "Should we go?"
She shakes her head no, but she's never been as good a liar as he is.
Excusing himself from the table with a half smile, he comes back in three minutes with a full-fledged one and assurances that all has been taken care of. She's about to protest once again, when he touches her lightly on the shoulder and asks, "Don't you trust me, Mac?"
His smile is cocky, but his eyes are afraid, like this might just be the most important question he's ever asked. And she's made Clayton Webb fear . . . that shouldn't make her feel anywhere near as good as it does.
"Absolutely."
They wind up sitting around her coffee table, in their best clothes, with a spread of carryout from one of the more exclusive restaurants in London. Briefly she wonders how much that cost him, but he holds up a forkful of butternut squash ravioli for her to taste with a smile that says he doesn't care.
"Wait!" Kiley interrupts, tiny voice filled with so much distress, Clay nearly drops his fork to check she's okay. "We haven't said thanks. Dad always made us say thanks."
Oh God. She might just be the world's worst mother. Webb regards the turkey roulade like its booby-trapped, and she knows he's preparing to bolt.
But Kiley continues on blissfully oblivious to the sudden tension. "I'm thankful Mom's not so sad anymore." Clay looks at her like a small miracle has just occurred, until she pokes him in the ribs and whispers, "It's your turn. I'm hungry."
"Oh, I don't know, this right now is pretty good."
"Mom?"
You. She thinks, I'm so thankful for you. But that emotion's too real, too close home, and she's not sure the 'you' just means Kiley, so she shrugs and smiles and says, "I'm pretty thankful Clay managed to talk the chef into takeout."
The joking response seems to put them back on course and the rest of the dinner is pleasant, but Clay doesn't offer to feed her anything else, and she makes sure not to touch him.
Yes, she's a coward. It keeps her safe.
She gets up to make the coffee, charging Kiley with devising their after-dinner entertainment, expecting a board game or, God forbid, Charades, so when she comes out to find the two of them laughing and twirling to 'Paper Moon,' it stuns her so much she doesn't think to resist as the song changes over and Clay holds out his hand.
"You've never danced with me."
They fit together just as they always have, so naturally, so simply, but differently, too. Over eight years have gone by and it should separate them, keep them at arms length, but somehow, gloriously somehow, it doesn't. They've known each other for years and yet they're meeting each other anew, different people, maybe better people.
Clay's hand slips from her waist to the base of her spine, and she lets herself be pulled a little closer, her fingers moving from his shoulder to brush the nape of his neck, just lets herself feel this, this quiet, perfect moment happening in her living room with 'I Thought About You,' for a soundtrack. He's asking a question with this dance, and she thinks her answer might be 'yes.'
Yes.
Such a scary word . . . 'yes'. (She's always been better at 'no') Yes opens doors, accepts possibilities, takes chances on changing the status quo.
And maybe her status quo isn't wonderful, maybe its lonely and cold, but its hers and its comfortable. What's more, maybe she doesn't have a right to have her status quo change. She's had a wonderful man in her life, a man who should still be here, and what would he think if he walked in now? Would he feel betrayed?
Needing to get away from this confusing thing that's happening, she steps out of Clay's embrace with a sad smile. And though her eyes are begging him not to go, she's the one running away, so the message might not be all that clear.
She wants this. It's all she can think when she sinks onto the bed she and Harm shared. The bed that's felt empty and lonely for over a year, and she's so tired of being lonely. Rolling onto her side, she reaches out to touch her husband's pillow. I miss you. Drawing it close to her body, she tucks her face against it and wishes she could still smell him there. Wishes he could be lying here beside her because a pillow doesn't hold her back, and it had felt so good to be held.
Is this okay, Harm? Is it okay to want another man to hold me because you can't? Is it okay to want it to be the man standing in our living room? Is it okay that it's Clay?
And then as if in answer to her unconscious prayer for this thing she needs so much, Harm's words come to her, floating up from the abyss of long forgotten memories, to wash over her in benediction.
"I know he was my friend, and I'm gonna miss him. I'm gonna miss the way you looked when you talked about him. He made you feel good . . ."
Go in peace.
He's gone when she comes out. Kiley's curled up on the couch asleep, and Clay's gone, and isn't that just the way her life works?
Kneeling beside the couch, she brushes the strands of hair away from Kiley's face. "I'm so sorry, sweetie."
She can't blame Clay. She really can't. Can't blame this man who's probably never worn a hand-me-down pair of clothes or eaten food that wasn't freshly cooked because what is she offering him but leftovers of another man's life? Everyone gets tired of leftovers eventually.
Which is why when there's the faint jingle of keys in the lock, and Clay comes through the door laden down with groceries, she doesn't know what to do, doesn't understand at first.
"Hey."
"Hey."
He motions her into the kitchen with a jerk of his head, and proceeds to unload the groceries in near silence—milk and raisins and coconut and day old bread from the bakery down the block (she doesn't want to know how he managed that)—such a strange combination of food. It takes her a moment to place what she's looking at, and when she does her eyes instinctively seek out the recipe box. It's open and the notebook sits on the counter.
"Is this okay?"
Yes, it's okay. This might be the most okay she's been in ages.
Nodding, she moves over to pick up the notebook, open, not to the recipe for bread-pudding, but the battle-plan at the back. Plans in her hand, initials in his, the paper Thanksgiving they never had.
Clay comes up behind her, reaching around to touch the smeared ink of the last line. "I'm sorry we never got to do that. I wish . . ."
The kiss is sweet and brief and full of promise, and when she pulls away its only to rest her head on his shoulder, to close her eyes and feel something frighteningly like happiness.
"Next year. We'll do it, next year."
- + - + - + - + -
I hope this has been as much fun for you as it has been for me. Happy Holidays. I'm off to go back to my larger angsty piece.
Panache