Epilogue: It's a Love Thing


Mills River, North Carolina

13 months laterFebruary 10th


It was still cold outside, but had warmed enough to enjoy a walk. That's all I asked for.

Madeline held a brisk stumble behind me as we strolled down the mountainside. She would reach up and try to snatch at the bare toes dangling out of the sling across my chest. Questions came continuously, about things I had no clue to answer with her childish curiosity about babies and where they came from and why her new little brother had never arrived gift wrapped.

"Why didn't God put a bow on his head, Mommy?"

I rolled my eyes up to the snowy sky and reached behind me for her to take my hand. When her tiny fingers were tangled snuggly in mine, I slowed my pace as we moved around the last curve at the bottom of the hill, heading for the mailboxes and the horse farm she adored.

"I think it's because God thought Little Benny was cuter without one, Bug."

Madeline's brow crossed when I looked down at her, but then she nodded.

"Okay."

There was only a short stint of silence as I moved my eyes from her, down to the giggly, smiling face hidden deep in the warmth of the sling, and then back to my daughter's between the wool brim of her snowcap and scarf.

"But wait, Daddy said he came from the 'Sheet Monster'."

I choked on my iced breath as I wavered a moment in the middle of the empty back road.

"He what, honey?"

Maddie smiled up at me proudly, explaining herself. "He said that there's a monster in your bed. He said it made Ben and then it gave him to you for a present."

"Oh did he…?"

"Yep. And Daddy said that you fight the monster every night. Is that true, Mommy? You fight a monster?"

I was trying not to laugh, not to growl, and not to run right back up the mountain with a five-month old attached to my chest and a wide eyed 6-year old dangling off my arm, to go and slay the man who was to blame for both of them. Luckily, Madeline was too fascinated with the horses' noses poking through the fence at the right side of the road, to continue the conversation.

The Sheet Monster, I shook my head and opened our mailbox nearby where she petted the giant neighing beasts. We'll just see if the monster gets to come out of its cage tonight--

I held onto my little Benjamin, the one I always dreamed of, as I pulled the stack of bills and advertisements and letters from the mailbox. He stared up at me with a toothless grin, raising his chubby arm out into the midday light and February cold, reaching for my face as I nibbled on his fingers and scanned the names on envelopes. His eyes were undeniably Mort's, his smile, according to the Sheet Monster himself, was mine. And somehow unexplainably, Benjamin managed to hold the scent of both cinnamon and strawberries, so often that it scared the both of us into un-comprehendible laughter.

"Mommy, I need a carrot for Shadow!"

I glanced up from the letters to see Maddie running towards me, then tugging at the back pocket of my jeans for the bag of carrot sticks.

"Be careful of your hands, sweetie."

"I will," she giggled and ran back to the fence while I occupied myself on a small, melting bank of snow to the side of the road, with a baby and plenty of mail. It wasn't until I saw a well travelled, well deserving letter poking out from under the water and electric bills, that I grew curious myself. I lifted it and read the scratched lettering beside the numerous stamps.

Michel Roux

There was no return address because he didn't have one to give.

I smiled knowingly, since I'd been waiting for one of his letters. I wrote to him just the same, all the time, but always sent the letters to the address of his studio in Naples, where he often dropped in on occasion from travelling. He must have been off venturing, to have left the address blank this time. I smiled wider as I shuffled with Ben and the other mail to rip open the envelope and pull the folded paper from within.

I'd kept in touch with Roux in countless letters and with endless words over the last year or so. He was always telling me about the places he visited, the incredible people he met, the exotic wines he tasted or the art he'd seen that reminded him of me. He wished me well consistently, inquired about the family and the romance he knew had been rediscovered in my life. He was like a long lost brother or distant care taker, a friend for a lifetime.

I stood on the wet ground, stroking through Benjamin's soft brown curls and dancing around to keep warm as Maddie laughed and brushed the horses' faces at her short level near the fence. The letter and his ancient looking, scroll writing, took me back quickly, to his scent and his soft touch and the way he taught me how to love again without needing for me to actually love him.

My Roxanne,

I'm standing on the starting steps of the Great Wall of China, believe it or not. I felt a surge and I had to write to you. I can picture you here, with two small twins running at your ankles and that little one strapped on your back, hiking as one. I can see you so clearly here, in this foreign land, in this cultural breeze, that it makes me want to wretch and cry.

The pictures you sent of the late winter Appalachian snow were beautiful and they fed me inspiration for almost a full week as I painted. It's cold here too, but it's a bitter and emotional cold, it's good for only relinquishing bad memories to the wind. Not like the memories of you. Those ones belong in a warm summer cross draft off the Pacific Coast, where they can consistently return to me anytime I please.

I've been on this boat for almost a year, barely making one port meet the next before I sail away again. But it feels so good. It's never felt this good before. It could be partly due to my having come across something on the streets of Paris only a month ago. You're always telling me in these letters to get out and find that match for myself, the one you 'know I need to realize I deserve'. Well my dear, I think I found her.

She's an American girl, if you can believe that much of this letter at least, a girl right from your neck of the earthly woods; a dead-end town in Tennessee as she tells it. I'm sure you know as little of it as I ever did. Needless to say, Izzie's a singer, a darling little crooner, and she somehow stumbled from out of nowhere and changed everything.

What do you think it is about Paris that can make that sort of thing possible?

I thought about all of it thus far, tried to process the idea of Roux, my Roux, off romancing and finding adventure with some other woman, one he loved and would love long after the letter. I wasn't jealous. I was beside myself with joy in fact. It's all I'd ever begged of him. It was all I ever wanted and I smiled as I hauled Madeline and Benjamin back up the road for home, reading casually.

Tell me in your next letter, Roxy Love. I want to hear from you the second you put that fresh bundle of joy down for a much needed nap. I want you to write to me about all of the fine things you have there on your dreamy mountainside in the middle of the universe.

Know I'm thinking about you from point A to point B. Know I love your words and your memories and your glorious perfection in this world. I'm sending a pat on the back to that lucky baby maker of yours, and kisses to as many of the little ones as you can find.

I'm also sending imaginary guitar tunes for you to listen to, beautifully, as always.

Love enduring, Roux

I sighed then, my eyes sparkling with pure happiness as I walked and glanced down into the sling at the yawning face of the baby. There was so much about that gypsy man that had so simply saved my own life, my own heart and spirit that I could never deny him for a second of the time he was worth in letters. I knew I would go home and write to him, then tell Mort about it, and then I'd wait until the next string of stamps arrived and told of his continuing venture. I was hooked on the freedom he had across the miles that I couldn't travel myself. But I always realized that I was no less free for it, I was just free here, in the arms of the man I really loved and at the curiosity of my children. Free in my own interesting sort of way.

It's Valentine's Day, and at the top of the mountain, is a man who holds all the freedom and adventure and fun I could ever really ask for. He's Chef Boyardee and a SpongeBob impersonator and the Sheet Monster most days of the week. But today, and most every night we can find capable of it, he's the oddball lover I found in the woods.

And I can't wait to get back to our little castle in the sky and remind him of it, thoroughly.


Another 8 Months later – April 8th


It was an ordinary day, as it ought to have been.

Mort's parents had come to town a few days before and were spoiling their grandkids left and right, never giving us a single chance to cook or clean or take care of them. They were doing it all, forcing Mort and I to rest, and actually sleep in. We took advantage of it, of course, did some major writing in our office together on a screenplay we were attempting to develop, a new turn in the field of words and plot for us. But on this day for some reason, while I barreled through a few chapters on my new book, music and the sound of the moving laptop keys carrying me away, Mort was nowhere to be seen or heard from. He'd gone off an hour before to 'make a sandwich' and had never returned. It wasn't something I could concern myself with really, it just seemed odd as I skirted around the end of the last paragraph to another chapter for the day. I was almost there in fact, finished, completed, when I heard the door of the office creaking open behind me.

"Honey?"

His voice was like honey, smooth and rich, sweetened to perfection, tempting. I raised my hand over my head and waved a single finger for him to see my desperate position. He stood behind my chair, idly breathing and stroking the loose curls on my neck as I concluded typing, stressing the last sentence of the paragraph to a close.

When I saved the document and shut the computer screen, he sighed in relief.

"Done?"

I turned in the chair and looked up at him, "Done. Where have you been?"

"Working on something."

I eyed him curiously as he pulled me up to stand at his level, my chin resting against his chest.

"Wanna see?"

"Of course. Where is it?"

He smirked from the corner of his mouth, grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the office and downstairs to the first floor again. His mother was in the kitchen baking cookies with Maddie, while his dad held Ben in the recliner and watched the White Sox game with Max.

"How are we doing, Max-a Million?" Mort shouted as he tugged me to the front door.

Max stood up on the couch and cheered with a jump, "Winning! Winning!"

"That-a boy! Be good for Pop, and Maddie," he turned his face back to the kitchen as I threw on my shoes. "Be a good helper for Gram. I'm taking Mommy for a walk."

"Okay," she smiled as he led me into the breezy late afternoon of early summer.

And we walked, just as promised, hand in hand, me tagging behind in the gust of his anxiousness, laughing as we moved up the road, higher up the mountain. We were the last house at the top, so I knew from here it could only mean isolation and seclusion, wherever he was taking me.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?"

"No," he chided with an extra tug of my hand, "You know me better than that."

I sighed and continued to follow, watching as the sun just barely started to turn over into the preempt of a sunset. The sky began to fade slowly into oranges and pinks, with a distant sea of blue and purple on the valley of the southern foothills. And there we were, struggling to reach the top of the world, breathing in exhaustion by the time Mort finally slowed his pace and turned around to stop me in the middle of the empty road. He smiled down at me like a kid in a candy store, and gently eased something from the back pocket of his jeans.

"Come here," he whispered, spinning me around to lean against him, eyes turned away. He covered my view of the downside to the mountain lane with an old bandana, a blindfold, something I couldn't possibly have been less fond of from previous experience.

"Is this really necessary?"

"Really," he murmured with a lingering peck on the curve of my neck. "Really, really…"

"Where are you taking me?"

"It's right around the corner. Here," he took both of my hands in his, moving me back in the direction I had been previously, and walking me slowly, blindly, upwards.

I counted the steps it took until he stopped me again, where my shoes hit the crunch of soil and woodland grasses and mountain pebbles. There were 48 perfectly balanced, perfectly sublime steps of darkness and beauty and scent and giggling laughter to get to where he wanted me. Mort held me gently for a moment, before placing me in a more precise spot, and leaving me motionless as he rustled with things I couldn't necessarily determine. There were what felt like high grasses surrounding my body, almost like stalks of corn or something similar, but I couldn't figure it out and didn't particularly want to, not until he was ready to reveal it all.

I heard what sounded like clinking glass, boot steps on a softer patch of ground, and then there was a simple beat, a tangy sort of memory through music. It was song I knew, among the millions that I had categorized as Roxy Love or Roxanne or whoever I could be. And while I stood humming the opening to the tune, I felt his hands return, touching my waist gently as he breathed deeply into the crook of my neck.

"You ready, Sunshine?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Mort."

He sighed with a laugh and slowly untied the sash over my eyes, tugging it away as I readjusted to the natural brightness of the world around me. Imagine for a moment if you will, the most improbably ideal turn of events, the most transcendent ending to an already overfilled circle in life. Then double that, add a man who forever tries when he doesn't need to, an inviting spot on a warm mountain valley in North Carolina, and that's what I was standing upon.

The curious boundaries of grass I was sure I was surrounded by, weren't even close to what I pictured, they were altogether too sunny and yellow and glorious for that. Their petals were soft and sweet smelling and they were even taller than me in most cases. On the dusty ground beneath me, was a blanket, an old blanket, strewn with a tired old radio and a bottle of white wine, nothing more and nothing less. And then there were the arms that held onto me, the fingers that had already begun to work the buttons of my shirt long before I'd even let myself fall to crying. Those teasing hands were the best part of it all.

"What do you think?" He hummed on my cheek from behind, as he slowly pulled my shirt from my shoulders, kissing them lightly in the warming sun. "Did I do okay?"

I giggled and brushed back a few tears as I turned in his arms.

"Don't ask stupid questions."

Mort laughed and tugged at the button of my jeans, leaning down to nibble at the skin spilling from my revealed bra. I moaned into an arch against him, holding his neck and shoulders for support to keep from falling weakly to the ground. I heard the zipper from my jeans and breathlessly cheered him on as he managed to pull them down from my hips, carrying me to the blanket in one sweeping movement. His kisses were spontaneous and unplanned and monumental as they matched the curve of my stomach, his hands working to discard my jeans and shoes in one fluid movement the whole time.

And I laid there in pink lace beneath him as he hovered over me, staring down with the most utterly wild hazelnut in his eyes, singing quietly to REO Speedwagon. I shook my head and softly hissed up at him as he crawled from the ground to stand over me, rather. His hands went to his shirt, pulling it from over his head and knocking off his glasses.

"You planned this well."

I smirked at the lyrics and the smooth glow of his chest and stomach dancing in the sunlight.

"I had to make it up to you."

Mort let his shirt dangle loosely in his hand, testing me, teasing me with the song's beat.

"Are you going to dance for me, Mr. Rainey?"

He laughed and began to twirl the cotton shirt around, his hips swaying as he belted out, "'Cause it was us baby, way before then…and we're still together…"

I crawled to my knees, whispering up at him, "And I meant every word I said," as I reached the belt of his jeans, unhooking it and tugging him closer to the blanket again. He stood in my grasp, following with: "When I said that I loved you…I meant, that I loved you forever…"

"Did you?"

He nodded as I ripped the belt off and unfastened the button of his jeans, pulling until he fell back down on top of me in the grass and bottomless sunflower haven. The tightness of cinching denim at the center of my pleading thighs was nearly too much to bear in the summer heat, but my fingertips gained a fair enough hold on his shoulder blades, where I could cling to him for safety, the safety I felt I needed. I wasn't sure I'd be able to control the situation for long, not as well as he seemed to be doing.

"I screwed this up the last time. I wasted all those sunflowers."

"No sweetie," I tried to assure him, my hands holding his face down to my lips. "It was nothing."

"Yeah, right…" a soft sigh came as he kissed me lightly, hovering in the sunlight like a God. "It was perfect and I knew I had to do something to fix it. So I planted all of these for you."

I laughed, "Is this where you've been sneaking off to?"

He nodded and held my laced bottom towards his pleading midsection, rougher.

"I've dreamed about doing this here all year, since we left Italy."

I could feel tears welling up inside of me, because I'd underestimated him again, as I always managed to do. There was very little he couldn't think up or concoct in terms of romance, and I just needed to learn to accept that about my husband.

"Is this your new scheme to get me pregnant again, because if it is I'm not going to--?"

He stopped me, hushed me, and silenced my indifference to the situation. His tongue rammed through by parted lips like a shot in the night, or in the middle of the brilliantly sunny day for that matter. His hands were harsh but content to soothe and vex across my entire body, tearing at bra hooks and lace unmentionables until I was as bared to the world as when I had arrived 32 years before. Mort planted wild, reclusive kisses on my neck, following the plain of my chest and the valley between, around, and across both of my awakened, spirited breasts. When one was lost in the heated cavern of his seductively entrancing mouth, the other was fondled by his spindle-like fingertips.

I begged for him, pleaded with the purple skies high above me that it would never end, at least not until I was ravished enough to accept anymore. And I knew that would never happen. He was too good at what he did to me, too practiced and analytical in the process to be any less than entirely and substantially unchallenged, flawless and faultless.

"I want to see you in this light," he finally mumbled at the peak of my breast, lifting me up and turning me over until it was him resting in the gentle soil and quilt fabric, and it was me straddling him like a fairy in the middle of a magical field. I felt no different in that moment.

Mort just grinned hopelessly up at me, letting his hands wander over my exposed stomach and thighs and breasts under the light of the falling sun. I arched at the touch and let my hair fall down damp and loose across my entire back, moaning out with softly fluttering eyes to clouds.

"Like a work of art," I heard him whisper from the ground, gripping my bare thighs to rock me against the still protruding, desperate rock beneath me and the denim. I challenged his control all the more by moving in circles across his lap, bringing my hands down to rest in a scratching, aching tremble over his hardened pecks, and he groaned with me, throwing his head to the blanket again, "…Good God, woman…"

The song on the stereo's mixed CD changed over to something entirely too appropriate, and I glanced down at him with a roll of my eyes and a smirk.

"You would."

He was gasping for air as I worked to pull down his jeans and reveal only the high rising cotton of his boxers under the day's light and the sunflower canopy. I did this as seductively as possible, playing off of the beat of the coming lyrics, ready to sing the moment I slid his boxers from him the same.

"I believe in miracles…"

"Do you?" He teased.

I winked, "Where you from, you sexy thing?"

"Chicago," he chided as I crawled back to his completely exposed form and gripped my thighs tight around his lap. "Show me how your dream goes," I whispered into his ear, leveling myself on his lap, toes digging into the warm soil and nails into his heated skin.

One of his hands left my hip to reach down and stroke the firm ache of his cock where it tapped lightly against the moistness of my center. He sat up then, holding me to him and somehow managed to lift me enough so that I barely rode the surface of his prematurely dripping head. I held onto his shoulders, fingers twisting with his messy hair at the curve and my eyes matching his for every stroke of passion and desire longing inside of them.

"Was I on top in your dream?"

"You were on top, like an angel in the sky."

I giggled and ran my hands through his hair and down his sweating back.

"Was it slow or brutal?

I could tell my mocking was only making him harder at the seams beneath me. Mort squeezed my hips tougher, gently easing inside of my readied centerfold, to the heat he required.

"You decide," he finally hummed on my lips as I fell down quickly to entirely consume him, gripping his shoulders for sustenance, crying out his name with the sudden drop in longitude. He held me like he'd never held me before, as if he were meeting me for the very first time, or rescuing me for the very first time, or making love to me on an entirely fresh plane. It wasn't the case, it would never be the case, but the way that my hips rode his, and the way the dew from his chest melted my rigidly peaking breasts with comfort, it was how I always wanted it to stay.

So it wasn't an Italian field of sunflowers overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. So it wasn't some romantic getaway to a far off land. So we weren't too crazy kids in the woods, out to spend a summer wrapped up in insanity and fresh lake water.

So what…

This man has tested a lot of limits for me and me the same for him. He is consistently trying to justify life by creating more and more of it within me and all around us. He's protected me from the very beginning and never let me fall without a hand to catch my head since. So we waver, we tumble and fall and make mistakes and regret things. Okay, that's human, that's righteous. And yeah we both had to nearly lose one another to separate parties to realize that fate was already decided a long time ago. But that's just the way it goes in some stories.

Perfect endings can only be achieved when the middle fluctuates fairly between despair and uncertainty, loss and pain, wishful thinking and knowing chances.

And trust me when I say, we have plenty of that to go around in our little love thing.