Bed & Breakfast Page 7

  Of course she knew that neither her mother, who thought “a lovely home” was life’s crowning achievement, or her sister, Lila, whose Hilton Head home had been featured in Southern Living, would see it that way. To their eyes it would look cramped and grimy, “bohemian.” She could imagine Josie, smiling while she tried to find something complimentary to say about New York brownstones, or Lila, looking around and trying to locate the nonexistent dishwasher, or ducking her head into the tiny bedroom, seeing the Japanese erotic print over the bed, then pronouncing it “really cute and artsy.” Which was why she hadn’t invited them here during their last visit. Better to let them think she was rude than to have them condescend or feel sorry for her.

  She moved to the couch, pulling off her hat, shrugging out of her coat, and sitting down to unzip her ruined boots. The answering machine’s light blinked twice. Maybe Sam had called, even though she’d told him not to. She punched PLAY and stood, chanting, “Sam, let it be Sam” like a mantra, until she heard Reba’s voice: “Cam? Cam, you there? Pick up. Come on. I can see you there sulking and lurking. Pick up ... Okay. I guess you’re not there. Listen, when I came back to the store after we’d had lunch, Cheryl was in a guilty snit-fit about not taking me along when she goes to see her family in Raleigh. We had this awful fight. I won’t use up the tape giving the gory details, but the upshot is that she’s decided to screw her courage to the sticking place and asked me to go with her. So I’m going to go. I know I told you I’d be in town, and I know you’re going through a bad patch, so if you want me to I’ll stay. Fact is, now it looks as though I’m going to get what I want I’m getting cold feet. I wouldn’t mind using you as an excuse to stay in town. So ... give me a call as soon as you get in, will you?”

  Cam punched the STOP button and stood perfectly still, biting her lower lip. So. Wimpy Cheryl, whom she’d never thought was deserving of Reba’s affection, had actually come through. Reba’s offer to stay in town sounded klutzy, but she knew it was sincere: if she asked Reba to stay, Reba would stay, and there’d never be any reminders about the sacrifice. Still. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have other friends. She’d had lots of invitations. But she knew she was too emotionally rocky to be with anyone but Reba. Surely by the time you were approaching menopause you could act like a big girl and get through the holidays alone.

  Besides, she hadn’t played the other message. The other message might be ... She punched the PLAY button and heard: “Hi, Cam, it’s Betsy. Gee, I miss you. Seems like ages since you’ve been up to visit.” Cam shook her head, steeling herself against more tears, and moved to the kitchenette to look for the roast-beef sandwich as Betsy continued: “The only friends I have in East Haddam are women from the environmental action committee and the other mothers in the play group, and it’s just not the same. I was just saying to Josh the other . . .”—a yowl and a crash were heard in the background—“Oh, Cam, hold on a minute, will you? I’m cooking supper and Terrence . . . Terrence!” Betsy’s voice rose in motherly command, “Terrence, I thought we’d agreed—Josh, will you—Oh, hold on, will you, Cam?” Imagining Betsy rushing to stop two-and-a-half-year-old Terrence (whom she and Reba had christened Little Napoleon) from strangling the cat or yanking down the draperies, Cam picked up the sandwich, saw that it was crushed and soggy from having been dropped in the snow, and realized she’d have to settle for a working girl’s supper of scrambled eggs, toast, and glass of wine.

  “Cam?” Betsy resumed her message with a sigh, “Cam, it’s me again. Terrence knocked over the fire screen. Since we told him that Santa is going to come down the chimney, he tries to crawl into the fireplace every time our backs are turned. Anyhow, so, what was I saying? Oh, yes. Josh and I were talking the other night and saying how it’s been months since we’ve heard from either you or Sam. So, how are you two getting along? Still a hot item?” Betsy’s voice dropped to the sly tones of a matchmaker, natural enough, since Cam had met Sam at Josh and Betsy’s apartment.

  Betsy and Josh had thrown a big party to officially announce the success of their $10,000 high-tech conception of embryo Terrence. It had been a uniquely contemporary and strange celebration, reminding her of nontraditional weddings in the early seventies, when hippie couples with flowers in their hair had gotten married in public parks, sounding like actors improvising lines instead of a man and woman exchanging vows. Much as she’d disliked the all-female, hush-and-giggle cookies-and-punch showers of her mother’s generation, where pregnancy was coyly referred to as “having a cake in the oven” or “swallowing a pumpkin seed,” she’d felt even more ill at ease munching macrobiotic hors d’oeuvres and listening to men discuss episioto-mies and postpartum depression. When Josh had toasted “our gestating son” and downed a glass of champagne (which, naturally, Betsy couldn’t drink), then added, “I feel just great about being pregnant,” she’d turned her head and suppressed a smile.

  Her eyes had met and held those of a tall stranger standing in the corner, and their “I know what you’re thinking” amusement had been so undeniable that she’d smiled as though she’d seen an old friend. For a half second, she’d thought perhaps she actually did know him, from way back, because Southern, basketball, and military flashed through her mind.

  As the guests had broken into applause and shouts of congratulations, she’d looked away, wondering why he’d prompted such a host of associations, and as she’d moved to the buffet table she’d unraveled it. The basketball part was easy enough to understand: he had a basketball player’s body, six-two or -three, with lanky arms and legs, still slim, though thickening around the middle. The military hint had probably come from the erect posture and the “barber shop” haircut. The Southern part? Maybe the intimate look instantly softened by the deferential smile. And what a look, what a smile. Brownish green eyes that could make a girl’s socks roll up and down, and, if she wasn’t mistaken, his smile said his socks were rolling up and down too.

  She didn’t see him again until everyone had settled themselves informally to eat the buffet supper, and she’d found herself sitting two people away from him. The conversation had, thankfully, shifted from sperm samples and Lamaze classes to food, particularly holiday food. She’d heard him say to a woman with red hair who was sitting at his feet, “We always serve Hoppin’ John for good luck on New Year’s.”

  “Are you Southern?” the redhead wanted to know.

  “I’m so Southern I’ve got a cousin I call Aunt Sister,” he’d joked, but no one except Cam laughed, so he’d gone on to say, “To make Hoppin’ John you take about a pint of cowpeas . . .”

  “What kind of peas?” the redhead asked.

  He made eye contact with Cam again, and said, “Dried local field peas, black-eyes would be okay,” and she’d nodded.

  The next thing she could remember was standing next to him outside the apartment while guests took their coats from the rack Betsy had put in the hall. He’d reached to help her but, out of habit, she was already putting on her own coat. Then, with a gesture so intimate that it had made her feel as though he was undressing her, he’d reached over and done up the top button of her coat. They’d been crammed into the elevator with other guests and when they’d reached the lobby, the redhead, who clearly had her eye on him, grabbed his arm and pulled him aside. “You don’t even know this guy’s name,” Cam reminded herself, feeling an absurd twinge of possessiveness, but she’d stalled, moving to the doorman to ask him to get her a cab, even though she was perfectly capable of getting her own cab and generally did so. On the street there was the usual milling about and leave-taking, people deciding if they’d share cabs and who should be dropped off first, and just as she was about to climb in with a crowd who were going to the West Side, he’d come up behind her and said that he had a car and would be happy to take her home.

  “You have a car?” she’d asked, incredulously. “Either you’re rich or you haven’t been in town too long.”

  “Sorry, it’s the latter,” he said, looking around
. “Now can you tell me which way to Lexington Avenue? That’s where I parked.”

  As they walked toward the garage, he taking her elbow because he was afraid she might slip in the snow, he told her he’d recently been transferred from Atlanta to head up a medical research lab in New Jersey. He’d met Josh, who was making an industrial film about the company, and Josh had been kind enough to invite him to the party. “I accepted,” he told her, “because I’ve been here for two months and still don’t know a soul I didn’t meet through work. When I got the invitation I thought, ‘What the hell is an amniocentesis party?’ ”

  “It was a first for me, too.”

  “I didn’t quite get Josh’s speech about people getting pregnant. Even in New York, it’s still only women who get pregnant, isn’t it, Miss—?”

  “Tatternall. Cam, short for Camilla, Tatternall. And I prefer Ms.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when men use Mr. it doesn’t tell you whether or not they’re married, and Ms. gives women the same advantage.” As soon as the words left her mouth she realized that she sounded as though she was pumping him to find out if he was married. Which of course she was.

  “As you please.”

  “And what shall I call you?”

  “Dr. Samuel Magruder. Not a real doctor, as my mother would say. A Ph.D. in chemistry. Sam will do.” They had stopped under a streetlight. The snow was coming down powdery soft as confectioners’ sugar. “Cam and Sam,” he said. “It rhymes, but can we dance to it? And when did you come to the Big Bad City, Miz Cam?”

  “Ah, back when I thought Utopia was a place on the map.”

  “Where from originally?”

  “Hard to say, really. I was born in Quantico, Virginia, while my daddy was stationed there. He was from Lou’siana. My mother’s family is from Beaufort, South Carolina. That’s where they met while he was in training on Parris Island. We always went back there when we weren’t traveling with him, so I guess that’s as close to home as I get. My mama’s the earthbound type. She’s got tap roots deeper than a live oak’s, but me ... I’ve lived on bases all over the world. I’m just a military brat.”

  “I knew there was something about you. I’m a military brat, too.” Oh, that smile had wattage. “My mother was from Brunswick, Georgia—that’s where I was born—and my daddy was from Waxahachie, Texas. But by the time I entered college I’d gone to twelve different schools and lived in about eighteen different places.”

  “I know what you mean. You’d just get used to one place and—whoops—there you’d go again—being transferred. You got pretty good at psyching out new places. But you always knew that even when you made friends, it wasn’t going to last.”

  “But it was exciting to travel,” he said. “Especially when you were a kid and didn’t have to do the packing. My grandaddy never got more’n thirty miles from the farm where he was born and he always told us only rich people got to travel around the world like we did. So what’s wrong with being like a turtle and carrying your home on your back? Home is where the heart is. Home is where you make it. All this stuff about the trauma of rootlessness sounds like a Woody Allen movie. Then again, I’m not the introspective type.”

  “We weren’t trained to be introspective. We were trained to follow orders.”

  “Nothing wrong with discipline. Lots of military brats were top of the class.”

  “Or complete screw-ups.”

  “I’ll bet you were top of the class.”

  “Actually, I was both. Sometimes I think I still am. Okay, Sam,” she went on, trying to make her point, “tell me the first thing that comes to your mind when I say the word ‘secure.’ ”

  “ ‘Secure’ is a verb, as in ‘secure’ meaning to batten down the hatches.”

  She laughed. “See what I mean?”

  He laughed too. “Sure, I know what you mean. If my mama’s to be believed, the first words I ever said were ‘hup-hup’ ’cause we lived near the parade ground. I didn’t mind getting a transfer up here, but my wife just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving our place in Atlanta. I thought, ‘It’s a house, it’s just a house.’ ’Course I’d known for a long time that property was about all we had in common. That and the kids. But the kids are almost grown. And, truth to tell, I’ve never cared much about property, or things, or money.”

  “Nor have I,” she said archly. “Which may explain why I work for a nonprofit organization and hence don’t have much of it.”

  “I’m making more money than I ever thought I would. Money’s not my problem.” He stopped abruptly as they reached the corner and the light changed, then he looked up at the street signs, muttering, “So, this is Lexington and Eighty-third, only another block to go to the garage,” as though the need to secure his geographic position was foremost in his mind.

  She wanted to ask more about his marriage but she knew better. She didn’t think he was a man who talked about his relationships or his feelings. In fact, she was surprised that he’d said as much as he had. With a man like this—“a man like Bear” flitted across her mind—you never got anywhere by pushing. That was something her mother had never understood. Her mother simply didn’t understand men, whereas she.... Yet did having countless affairs but never finding a real mate qualify as understanding? She’d have to think about that tomorrow. She looked both ways, then stepped off the curb and started to cross the street against the light, saying, “Come on. This is New York. Pedestrians still have some rights here.” But he waited for the light to change before catching up with her.

  “Yeah, this is New York,” he said. “That’s why it’s gonna cost me fifteen dollars to park for a couple of hours.”

  He took the FDR uptown, turning the Volvo’s heater on high, but leaving the windows open a crack, so that her feet were warm but her face tingled with cold. She said how much fun it was to be in a car instead of a cab and as they approached the Triborough Bridge, he suggested that they keep driving north. He asked if he could turn on the CD player. She said, “Sure,” and hoped to God he wouldn’t play country-western. He surprised her with a pumping, erotic Argentinian tango, and they fell silent, acutely aware of each other’s presence.

  They found a dilapidated roadside diner with Edward Hopper Nighthawks lighting and a hatchet-faced waitress from central casting. She ordered coffee, but he said the macrobiotic food at Betsy and Josh’s hadn’t really done it for him and ordered hash browns, eggs over easy, sausage, and white toast. They went through the “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” and “What did you do during Vietnam?” questions that still seemed so important to their generation. “You know, if we’d met when we were in our twenties we’d never have been able to talk like this,” he said. “You’d have thought I was a baby killer and I’d have thought you were a nutcase who was undermining the country.”

  “But I was right. About Vietnam, I mean,” she said.

  “I know that. I knew that before I went.”

  “Then why . . .” But she already knew the answer. Southern boys whose fathers were in the military did not say no to duty.

  Thinking that she looked washed-out, she excused herself and went to the ladies’, relieved her bladder of the cider she’d had at the party and the two cups of coffee she’d drunk while they’d been talking, brushed on blusher, touched her mouth with Vaseline and thought she didn’t look half bad. The smile he gave her when she rejoined him at the table reaffirmed her confidence. Since she’d mentioned that she missed driving, he asked if she’d like to take the wheel. She said yes and he handed her the keys, moved the passenger seat back to accommodate his legs, and stretched out with his eyes half shut. “I figure you for a fast woman, Miz Camilla. Don’t be gettin’ us a ticket.”

  “You guessed right,” she told him. “I’m the original lead-foot. I love to drive fast.” And cruising along a nearly deserted highway at two in the morning made her feel excited and peaceful and very young.

  “Going home for Christmas?” he asked.

&n
bsp; “No. I haven’t been home since my daddy died.”

  He waited for her to elaborate but when she didn’t, he confessed, “This Christmas is going to be strange for me. I’m flying down to see my kids, but since my wife and I are legally separated now, I guess I’ll be staying in a hotel, so I won’t want to stay for long. And then there’s New Year’s Eve. No matter how old you get, you still feel queer as a red-headed stepchild when you don’t have plans for New Year’s Eve.”

  “I figured out years ago that no one has plans for New Year’s Eve,” she told him nonchalantly, “but they think everyone else has so they feel too embarrassed to mention it. Then, around December twenty-ninth, people start making phone calls. At first the conversation is casual, then one of them breaks down and confesses that they don’t have any plans. People always find something to do, but it’s usually at the last minute.”

  He shifted his weight and turned to look at her. “I suppose you already have plans. If you don’t,” he added quickly, “then what say we get together and make some Hoppin’ John?”

  “That’d be fine. I was planning to ask some friends over,” she said, though that had been no more than a vague possibility, a last resort if she didn’t have a better offer. “You could invite anyone you wanted, come early, and help me cook.”

  “Can’t think of anyone I’d invite, and I can’t cook, but I’d be happy to provide the liquor, come early, and stir the pot at your direction.”