The first day of November came cold and clear. It served to magnify the barren trees against the sky, and the dusting of frost over the dead grasses highlighted the hardness of the ground. It was entirely appropriate for Toussaint. All Saint’s Day. A day for remembering the dead.
I didn’t like Toussaint. I didn’t know what to do on it.
My memories of Peter were private. I had mourned. I had worked through all the cycles of my grief. He would always be a part of me, for the person I am is due, in large part, to him.
I didn’t know what to do on Toussaint because he was buried in a family plot in Massachusetts. I had no grave to visit, no place to leave flowers. But I felt guilty if I didn’t do something in his memory. So in the past, I had honored his memory by making his favorite meal: clam chowder and sourdough bread.
The only problem with that ritual was that I happened to hate clam chowder, and I much preferred a normal baguette to sourdough. My heart just wasn’t in it.
I pulled on my checkered pants and tank top and lumbered down the stairs to the kitchen. I made the breads in autopilot and sipped my morning espresso without enjoying it.
What would Peter have done if the situation were reversed?
I tried to picture him, tried to imagine where he would be were he still alive. He certainly wouldn’t have given his whole day over to morose thoughts of me. He probably would have done something I’d liked to do. Read my favorite poem, drunk a glass of my favorite wine in toast to me. Something of that sort.
So why did I feel the need to make a crock of clam chowder that I’d never eat?
Rousing myself from the stool where I was sitting, I grabbed a bottle of Bushmill’s, Peter’s favorite whiskey, and a shot glass and marched up the stairs.
I flung open the door to my room and stood in front of the picture of Peter that graced my night table.
After pouring a shot of whiskey, I raised the glass in his memory. As I downed the shot, a ray of sunlight fell directly on the photo. I’d done the right thing.
Satisfied, I started toward the kitchen, but I ran into Cranwell and Lucy on the stairs.
“That bad a day already?” Cranwell was eying the bottle of Bushmill’s I held in my hand.
“It’s Toussaint.”
“Oh.” Cranwell left it at that. At least with me. I heard him later that evening asking Sévérine about it.
“Have you heard of Tucson?”
“Toussaint? Yes. It is the first day of November. The English call it the day of All Saints. In France this is the day to remind us of the dead. We visit cemeteries if we live not so far away, and we clean tombs and leave flowers. Chrysanthemums.”
I went to bed early.
I heard a soft knock on my door after I had turned out my light. I was wearing a silk chemise and didn’t even think of throwing on a robe until after I had reached the door.
I turned the handle and opened it, using the door to shield my body.
It was Cranwell. He was in his silk pajamas and was shifting his weight between his bare feet. He looked about ten years old.
“I’m sorry. About the whiskey crack.”
“That’s okay. You didn’t know.”
“No, but I do know you.”
“I had a drink in his memory. One. Bushmill’s was his favorite.”
“I just wanted you to know that I was sorry” He turned to leave, but I came out from behind the door and placed a hand on his forearm.
“Thanks.”
He put a hand over mine and squeezed it, clearing his throat as if to say something.
I waited.
His eyes searching mine made me aware of how little I was wearing.
“Good night.”
“Good night, Freddie.”
Cranwell’s public reading tapered off, but he’d started asking questions. Lots of questions. He was no longer looking for facts, but rather for opinions. The topics ran the gamut from politics to gender. And they were not always the easiest to answer.
He caught me at work in the garden one overcast, gusty afternoon, as I was tidying it up for winter. The gusts kept catching the tail of my gray plaid wool shirt, trying to pull it over my head. Thankfully my black wool turtleneck and trousers kept the bite of the wind from my body. And the thick gray stocking cap jammed over my braided hair trapped my body heat. But clouds were beginning to scour the steel-colored sky, and I was in a hurry; it felt like the onslaught of the first winter storm.
“Freddie, pretend you were married in the Middle Ages at the age of thirteen. What would you have taken with you when you left home?”
“At thirteen? That’s asking for a lot of imagination.” Not to mention a lot of thought. And that’s something I didn’t really have time for. The wool of my hat was making me itch. I tried to scratch through the wool yarn, but I only succeeded in smearing mud across my forehead.
He squatted beside me, in blatant disregard of his mulberry cashmere sweater, pleated pants, and five-hundred-dollar driving moccasins. He casually took a handkerchief from his pocket, hooked a finger around my chin to turn it toward him, and wiped the mud away. Then he began to help me pull up the few weeds that had lingered after the frost. Wouldn’t you know he’d be the type to carry a handkerchief?
“Really Freddie, what would you take?”
“My favorite things.”
“But what are a thirteen-year-old girl’s favorite things?”
I thought back through the years to my preadolescent days and the box of treasures that I had kept underneath my bed.
“Yo-yos, art projects, dried flowers, insect collections.” I stopped for a moment to tug at a particularly stubborn root. “Paper dolls, gum machine jewelry. Favorite books. Notes from friends.” Rain began splotting around us. The wind had begun to blow more forcefully. Three rows left. I wouldn’t be able to finish. “Time to go inside.”
Cranwell helped me to my feet and picked up my pail of gardening tools. “Would you like me to run this to the garage?”
The raindrops were starting to fall faster.
“No. I’ll just leave it in the kitchen and take it back tomorrow.”
We sprinted the fifty yards to the kitchen’s back door. Cranwell helped me shove the door shut and bolt it.
“It’s going to storm all night,” I commented as I pulled the hat from my head and stuffed it into my pocket.
“You think?”
“I know.” I’d gotten used to the weather’s rhythm during the three years I’d spent in Brittany. As if the wind’s chill fingers had followed me inside, my teeth began to chatter. “Espresso?” I asked as I made a beeline for the machine.
“Great. It’ll help take the chill off.”
Primed by the jolt of caffeine, I opened my mouth and started talking; I soon found I couldn’t stop. Before I had the presence of mind to censor my words, I heard myself talking to Cranwell about the day Peter died.
“I was always nervous when I knew he was flying somewhere. And I was always nervous when I knew he was on assignment. But that’s the funny part: He wasn’t flying that day, and he wasn’t on assignment. I always thought that if something happened to him, I would know. I would feel it.
“I felt nothing. I thought they were joking when they told me. I just could not believe that he would leave this world and that I would have no knowledge of it. That’s what was most devastating.
“That and the fact that I have no idea whether or not I believe in heaven anymore, and even if I did, I don’t know whether or not he’d be there.”
“He wasn’t a believer?”
“Not that I know of. And I knew him very well.” If Cranwell really wanted me to talk about my ongoing feud with God, I’d decided that the time was now. “I just don’t know if I can be part of a religion with a God like that.”
“What did you do after he died?”
“I went to a therapist in Paris, and that helped.” The French are great humanists and humanism is noble. It’s very big on human potential and relatively silent on guilt and sin. “But mostly I cooked. I cooked these fabulous five-course meals. For myself. It was the second year, when I moved here, that I really worked through it. This chateau was my therapy. I worked on one room at a time, contracting out what I couldn’t do myself. By the time it was finished, I had worked out the grief.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Of course.” I’d had enough of talking about Peter. I shrugged out of the heavy wool shirt I was wearing and set it on top of the island. “What made you want to be a writer?”
“Don’t know, really. I just always knew I had the ability to write a book. I finally got to the point where I had something to write about.”
“I’ve always heard you should write about things you know. Is that true?”
“In certain ways. I write about international espionage, politics, and conspiracy. I don’t know anything personally about that sort of lifestyle. But I do know about betrayal. I know about loyalty and what it costs. I know about love and the sacrifice it requires.”
I caught myself gazing deeply into his eyes, leaning toward his voice. I blinked and reoriented myself on my stool.
“If I strictly wrote what I knew, I would continually be writing an autobiography.”
“Your life must be so different.”
“Than whose? Than yours? We have quite a bit in common, I think. I go underground when I write, and you live your life hiding out.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, Freddie, you do. Why else do you refuse guests? Why else do you live twenty miles from the nearest town?”
“I need solitude.”
“So do I. When I write. But I always surface afterward. You need to reconnect with the world.”
“I go to Italy every January.”
“And visit whom?”
“I go to the Forum. I go to the Coliseum. I go to Capri.”
“To visit whom? You visit ancient sites when you travel; you live in a forest populated by ancient, mythical characters. You even try to push away God, the giver of life, the healer of broken hearts. Your whole life is one long communion with the dead. It’s time to move on, Freddie. Let Peter go.”
“That’s ridiculous. Peter died four years ago.”
“And now it’s time to move on.”
Just what I needed: an amateur psychologist. Refusing to listen, I turned my back on Cranwell and my attention to cleaning our coffee cups. After a while, he left.
I felt like swearing, but even that overwhelming urge couldn’t override a childhood of sermons and Sunday school.
The only times I’d thought of Peter all autumn were the times Cranwell had brought him to mind.
When I started on a tart crust for dessert, I’m afraid I was a little more vicious with the pastry than I needed to be. I ended up throwing it away and starting all over. It would have been too tough.
I thought about what Cranwell said the next morning as I worked in the kitchen. Although most of it was garbage, he did have a point about moving on. And I had moved on.
In my head.
But I still wore my wedding ring. I looked at it in the clear morning light which filtered through the windows. It was a simple solitaire set into a platinum band. Peter had picked it himself, and I had always loved it. But maybe it was time.
As an experiment, I took it off.
Kneading and shaping baguettes and brioches, my finger felt naked. When I went up to deliver Cranwell’s breakfast that morning, I felt exposed. The ring had protected me for so long that I had taken it for granted.
Cranwell was seated at the table, with his butterscotch-colored robe flung over his caramel and burgundy paisley silk pajamas. He looked up from his computer, glancing at me over the top of his glasses.
I handed him the tray, and then I spooned a cube of sugar from the bowl with my left hand. It rolled into the coffee with a plop.
It was just a test, to see if he’d notice.
He took the cup from my hand, looking at it, but not really seeing it.
But when I turned to leave, he caught my hand, stopping me.
“I can help you later.” He was trying to tell me something with his eyes, and I could not look away from them.
“Help me what?” I swallowed.
“Look for your ring.”
My hand trembled; my cheeks flamed. I couldn’t help it. “It’s not lost.” I tugged my hand loose and left the room.
On my return to the kitchen, I pulled the ring from my pocket and screwed it back onto my finger. It seemed safer.
That afternoon, as I made crêpes for dinner, I tried to decide what it was about Cranwell that was so attractive. I’d always thought that self-delusion was reserved for cowards, and so I could not deny that he was attractive and that I was attracted to him. That is not to say that I trusted him. I absolutely did not.
Would not.
As I slid pats of butter across the crêpe pan, poured pools of batter on the metal surface, and spun a rake across the mix to spread it out, I had to be honest with myself. Cranwell was attractive.
His eyes were hypnotic.
But my feelings for him were not all based on the way he looked. They had something to do with his laugh. It started in his chest as a ‘humph’ and then ricocheted inside him until it burst out into a chuckle.
I enjoyed making him laugh.
It was also enjoyable to see him smile. Smiles started in his lips, and sometimes, if I were lucky, they would crimp lines beneath his eyes and cause them to glint. They were quiet smiles.
In myriad ways Cranwell seduced the senses. His eyes, his laugh, his smile. The way he carried himself. The clothes he wore. The textures and layers that made the man.
Sliding a spatula under the last crêpe, I flipped it onto the top of the pile.
At least I had identified him. At least I knew who my nemesis was.
The problem was that, in spite of everything, I liked Cranwell. And maybe he really had changed. Maybe he wasn’t the playboy he had been. I decided that the challenge would be to avoid falling in love with him. And that was going to cause some difficulties. I could tell already, because on top of everything else, Cranwell liked to listen. And heaven help the woman who finds a man who will listen to her.
I comforted myself with the thought that the first step in waging war is taking measure of the enemy.