Puppet Page 32

  THIRTY-ONE

  AS soon as they get back to the house on Palmerston Avenue, Amanda orders a pizza and Ben lights a fire in the living room fireplace. “I don’t think it’s been used since I was a child,” Amanda marvels, warming herself in front of the flames, recalling the image of her mother sitting on the sofa, oblivious to the dangerous sparks shooting toward her feet.

  “Seems to be working fine.” Ben smiles, walks out of the room.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get a corkscrew.”

  “What for? There’s no wine.”

  “Oh, but there is.” He returns carrying a corkscrew in one hand and a bottle of expensive Bordeaux in the other. “I have a case in the car,” he explains before she can ask. “I keep forgetting to take it up to the apartment.”

  It occurs to Amanda that this is a ruse, that he’s been planning this evening all along, and that the wine and the roaring fire are all part of a master plan to seduce her. At least she finds herself hoping as much as he uncorks the bottle and she retrieves some glasses from the kitchen. It’s been a long, trying day, full of unpleasant surprises. She could use a pair of strong and tender arms around her. Tender enough to rekindle pleasant memories, strong enough to keep the unpleasant ones at bay. She lowers her chin while lifting her eyes and smiling shyly. Remember how good we used to be together, the smile says.

  He pours them each a full glass of wine, lifts his glass to hers in a silent toast. He smiles. I remember, the smile says.

  Forty minutes later, they are sitting on the living room floor in front of the fire, their backs against the sofa, devouring a large, thin-crust pizza with double cheese and tomato slices, and finishing off a second bottle of wine. “This is nice,” she says, enjoying the pleasant buzz that has settled in around the top of her spine. “I needed this.”

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “That it has.”

  “Your mother—”

  “Let’s not talk about my mother.”

  “Let’s not,” Ben echoes.

  “Or Hayley Mallins or Rodney Tureck or any of those silly people.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “And not Jennifer either.”

  Ben clicks his glass against Amanda’s in agreement. Jennifer is summarily dismissed.

  Their eyes meet, lock, linger. She giggles, knowing she isn’t quite as inebriated as she is pretending to be, wondering if Ben is pretending the same thing. Being even slightly drunk permits them a greater range of options. They can say things to one another that might normally be considered off-limits. They can do things that might be regarded as ill-advised. They can cross invisible lines, then giggle and step back. They can throw caution to the biting wind, give in to the temptation that’s been pulling at them like a magnet since she stepped off the plane, and make mad passionate love in front of a romantic fire. It was the wine, they can say in the morning, pulling themselves out of their respective fantasies, going back to their lives. “So what will we talk about?” she asks, giving him three minutes before he kisses her.

  “Why don’t we talk about you?”

  “Oh, God, not her. She’s so boring.”

  “She’s many things,” Ben corrects. “Boring isn’t one of them.”

  “Only because you don’t know her very well.”

  “Only because she never sticks around long enough.”

  “Consider yourself lucky.”

  Ben stares into his glass. “Ever think about moving back here?” he asks after a pause.

  The question catches her off guard. Amanda feels an involuntary arch of her back, like a cat whose defenses are suddenly on high alert. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because it’s your home.”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “Because it would give you a chance to get to know your mother,” he offers.

  “I repeat, why would I want to do that?”

  “Because she’s your mother.”

  “We aren’t talking about my mother, remember?” Amanda finishes the wine in her glass, reaches for the bottle.

  “Sorry. I forgot.”

  Her fingers brush against the back of his hand. He makes no move to pull his hand away. Two minutes, she thinks.

  “What would I do back here anyway?” she asks.

  “The same thing you do in Florida.”

  “Except I’d be colder.”

  “Only in winter.”

  “Which lasts six bloody months.”

  “Three,” he corrects, holding out his glass for her to fill.

  “Only according to the calendar.”

  “I thought you loved the change in seasons,” he says.

  She nods, picturing the first miraculous appearance of buds in the spring. “I don’t have a license to practice law in Canada,” she reminds him, the buds bursting, the image scattering, like pollen, as she divides what’s left in the bottle between their two glasses.

  “You got more than I did,” he points out.

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  Amanda takes a quick swallow. “There. Now we’re even.”

  He laughs. “So you go back to school for a year. Pass the bar here.”

  “Pass a bar?” She takes another gulp of wine. “I’d rather go in it.”

  One minute.

  “We could even open up a practice together,” he says with a laugh, as if he knows how ridiculous this suggestion is. “God knows there’s plenty of lowlife to go around,” he adds, leaving room for the possibility he doesn’t consider his suggestion quite as far-fetched as it seems.

  “God knows that’s true,” Amanda says, avoiding both interpretations altogether, and staring into the empty box on the floor between them. “What happened to the pizza?”

  “I guess we ate it.”

  “So fast?”

  Ben finishes his wine, lowers his glass to the floor, and leans toward her. “There’s another reason for you to come back,” he says quietly.

  Thirty seconds, Amanda thinks, downing the rest of her wine in a single gulp. This is it, she is thinking. And not a moment too soon. Her heart is beating so fast, she’s in danger of going into cardiac arrest. “And what would that be?” She reaches across him, careful to let her breast brush up against his arm as she deposits her empty glass next to his, then looks into his eyes expectantly. And it’s about time, she is thinking, her body swaying toward his. Ten seconds … nine … eight …

  “Well, there’s this house,” he says, his tone suddenly all business as he leans back against the sofa and stares at the fire. “If your mother goes to jail, which seems increasingly likely, you’ll probably have to sell it.”

  “What?”

  “I said—”

  “I heard what you said.” Amanda pulls back angrily. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about my mother.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “The hell you are. What’s going on here?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. You set me up.”

  “Set you up for what?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. You did this on purpose.”

  “Did what on purpose?”

  “It was payback for the things I said to you in the car, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble remembering that far back.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insists.

  “Yeah, well, I’m going to bed.” She clambers unsteadily to her feet. Is it possible she’s mistaken? That Ben really has no clue what she’s so upset about? That she let her fantasies and her ego get the better of her? No, Amanda decides, catching the sly smile behind his seeming confusion. He knows exactly what’s going on.

  You’re a lawyer, not a therapist, she told him in the car. You’re certainly not my husband anymore.

  You’re absolutely right.

&nbs
p; Amanda storms into the hall, stops, returns to the living room, her fury building with each step. “You were wrong, you know.”

  “Wrong? About what?”

  “You aren’t a bigger prick as a lawyer.” She pivots around on her heels, runs up the stairs. “You can show yourself out,” she calls from the top of the landing. “Son of a bitch,” she cries as she slams her bedroom door behind her and falls on her bed, using her pillow as a silencer, not wanting to give Ben the satisfaction of her tears. How long has he been waiting to humiliate her? she wonders. Since this afternoon? Since she arrived back in Toronto? Since she left?

  She hears the front door open and close, and she goes to the window. Ben is trying to force his keys into the lock of the white Corvette. “You’re too drunk to drive, asshole,” she mutters, returning to the bed, hoping he gets stopped by the police, charged with drunken driving, thrown into jail. Or better yet, maybe he’ll crash his car into a tree.… “No,” she says, quickly withdrawing her silent curse. “I don’t want you to get stopped by the police. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. Ever. Do you hear me? I take it back. I take it back.” She returns to the window, but his car is already gone. “I take it back,” she is crying as she pulls back the covers of her bed and collapses inside. “I take it all back. Everything. Do you hear me? I take it back.”

  She wakes up at two o’clock in the morning with a pounding headache. “I thought this wasn’t supposed to happen with good wine,” she says, debating whether to get out of bed and take something for it. Ultimately she opts to do nothing. She has the headache she deserves. It would be an injustice to dilute it.

  Ben is right to hate her. She humiliated him when she walked out eight years ago without either apology or explanation, and she’s been using him shamelessly ever since she got back to town. If he managed to get back even a little of his own tonight, well, more power to him. She asked for it. At any rate, everything that happened today and everything that didn’t happen tonight have made one thing crystal clear: there’s nothing to be gained by sticking around town any longer. Ben doesn’t need her. Her mother doesn’t want her. What is she doing here except making everyone, including herself, miserable? She’ll call the airlines in the morning, book the first available flight home.

  Amanda crawls out of bed, walks to the window, stares down at the now-empty driveway between her house and the house next door. “I really hope you got home all right,” she whispers, debating whether to call Ben. But her cell phone is in her purse, and her purse is downstairs, and she hasn’t got the energy to go down there, although there’s a phone in her mother’s room, she remembers, traversing the small hallway. “I’ll just be waking him up,” she says into the receiver, as she sits down on her mother’s bed, pressing in Ben’s number. She hangs up when the recorded voice reminds her she’s forgotten to include the area code. He’s probably with Jennifer anyway, she thinks, watching Sean Travis emerge from the shadows flickering across the wall, his arm around his pregnant wife, also named Jennifer. So many Jennifers, she thinks, as their images are absorbed by a shadow from a nearby tree. “I wasn’t very nice to you either,” she acknowledges, once more reaching for the phone, this time remembering to include the area code.

  The phone is answered after two rings. “Hello?” The familiar voice is muffled, husky with sleep.

  “Sean?” She pictures her former husband sitting up in bed, securing a blue cotton blanket around his naked torso.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Amanda.”

  A pause. “Amanda?”

  “I’m sorry to be phoning you so late.”

  “Has something happened? Are you hurt?”

  “No. I’m okay.”

  “Are you in some sort of trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t understand. Why are you calling?”

  “Is there a problem?” she hears Jennifer ask from somewhere beside him.

  “I’m in Toronto,” Amanda says.

  “Toronto?”

  “Remember how you once told me that until I worked things out with my mother, I would never really grow up?”

  “I remember how angry you got,” he says gently, after a pause.

  “Yeah, well, sometimes it’s hard to hear the truth.”

  Another pause. “So, how’s it going?” She laughs.

  “It ain’t easy.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t. But I’m also sure you can do it.”

  Amanda’s eyes fill with grateful tears. “Sean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I just want to apologize.”

  “It’s all right. I was only half-asleep.”

  “Not for waking you up. Although I guess you can add that to the list.”

  “There is no list, Amanda.”

  “No? There should be.”

  Silence. “Sean?”

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  Amanda shakes her head. “I was a lousy wife to you.”

  “We were just a bad fit,” Sean allows graciously.

  “You never stood a chance.”

  Another silence. Then: “Well, it all worked out in the end. I’m very happy now.”

  “The baby’s due this summer?”

  “July eighteenth.”

  Amanda nods. “You know that I wish nothing but good things for you.”

  “I know. I wish the same for you.”

  “Good luck, Sean.”

  “Good-bye, Amanda.”

  Amanda remains on her mother’s bed for several minutes cradling the receiver, now damp with her tears. The apology she gave Sean was long overdue. As is the apology she owes Ben, although that apology will have to wait till morning, she decides, returning to the hall, feeling the warmth from the fireplace rising to embrace her. Had they replaced the screen? Or were sparks even now shooting toward the carpet? She races down the stairs and into the living room, already seeing the headlines in the morning paper: Lawyer Burns to Death in Murderer’s House. And just how many people would be upset about that?

  Amanda runs into the living room, immediately sees that the screen is in place. She pulls it aside and pushes at the dying embers with a nearby poker.

  “What are you doing?” a voice asks from behind her.

  Amanda screams and drops the poker, spinning toward the sound.

  “Careful,” Ben says, getting up from the sofa and retrieving the poker from the floor, returning it to its stand beside the fireplace.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Trying to sleep.” Ben points to the rumpled pillows of the sofa.

  “I thought you left.”

  “I’m sorry, Amanda. I was in no condition to drive.”

  “Where’s the car?”

  “I put it in the garage.” He stretches, smooths down his hair. “I’m probably sober enough now. I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “No,” Amanda says quickly. “I don’t want you to leave. Please—don’t go.”

  The light from the fire dances across Ben’s face, illuminating his confusion. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I think you do.”

  A long pause, then, “You were right,” he admits. “About my setting you up.”

  “I know.”

  “I honestly didn’t plan it in advance. It just kind of played itself out.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” They take small, tentative steps toward one another.

  “I don’t know what I mean,” she tells him. “I just know what I want. I want you. And it doesn’t have to mean anything. It can be for revenge, if that makes you feel better.”

  “For revenge,” he repeats, leaning over to smooth some stray hairs away from her face.

  “Or for old times’ sake.”

  “For old times’ sake.”

  “Or just something to get out of our
systems once and for all,” she says as he bends his head to kiss the side of her mouth.

  “Something to get out of our systems,” he says, kissing her full on the lips.

  “Once and for all,” she repeats.

  And then nobody says anything.

  When Amanda wakes up at seven o’clock the next morning, Ben is gone.

  “Damn,” she says, wrapping herself in the pink blanket he obviously placed over her before he left, and pushing herself off the floor. “Damn.” She pushes some hair away from her face, recalling the softness of Ben’s touch, the hardness of his body, the effortless way in which their bodies reconnected, as if they’d never been apart. Even now she feels him pounding away between her legs, and she has to grab the side of the sofa to remain upright.

  What has she done?

  Wasn’t she the one who told him it didn’t have to mean anything, that it could be for revenge, for old times’ sake, something to get out of their systems once and for all? Was she crazy? Dammit, did he always have to take her at her word? “Damn you, Ben,” she whispers, hearing a loud banging on the front door. “Ben?” She runs to the door and throws it open.

  Mrs. MacGiver, wearing a green tweed coat and knee-length, red vinyl boots, stands on the other side of the threshold. “I came for my tea,” she says, not seeming to notice that Amanda is wearing nothing but a large pink blanket.

  “Mrs. MacGiver …”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me inside?”

  Amanda steps back to let the old woman enter. Immediately she hears water coming from the upstairs bathroom, realizes the shower is running. “Ben,” she gasps, fighting the urge to throw off her blanket and run up the stairs to join him. He’s here. He didn’t leave. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. MacGiver,” she says, fighting to contain a smile that is rapidly spreading across her face. “I forgot all about your tea.”

  “You forgot it?”

  “Yesterday didn’t go exactly as I planned.”

  “You forgot my tea,” Mrs. MacGiver repeats incredulously.