Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,74

you. Fly out here, and we’ll drive back together.”

“No, I … I’m going to stay here now. I got a postcard from Dennis. I think he’s coming here.”

“When?!”

“I don’t know. He sent a postcard but didn’t specify dates. So how’s Renie doing at a spa? She told me she hates spas.”

She laughs. “Not anymore! She got a hot stone massage yesterday. I think she has a crush on Loni, one of the masseuses. Well, we all do. Later today, we’re going to the Pool of Rising Consciousness, and then we’re going to get a seaweed wrap, and tonight it’s candlelight yoga.”

“Oh? Well, I’ll be cleaning the house later, so you’re not the only one who knows how to have fun.”

“How was the wedding, Cece?”

“It was beautiful.”

She waits, but I don’t want to say more.

“Listen,” she says. “We’re going to stay another day here and then start back. So look for us in … maybe three or four days? If Dennis comes, hang a flag outside if we need not to come in.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m serious. Oh, and guess what. Lise called Steve and he might be coming to see her soon. They’ve been talking and talking. Okay, I have to go. We miss you, we love you, we’ll see you soon!”

THE NEXT MORNING, I put on a Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys CD, change into an old black T-shirt and jeans, put a bandanna over my hair, and go out into the garden. The crew I hired to help me did a fabulous job: I love the blue delphinium next to the sea of lavender. Wildflowers surround the flattened boulder I thought would be good for sitting on to meditate, or just sitting on, period. I work the soil a little, stake up some of the taller plants, do a little deadheading. It’s a warm morning, in the eighties, and I can soon feel sunburn starting on my cheeks, across my nose.

It’s beautiful out here. Just as good as your other garden.

“It will be. It needs more time.”

I love the daisies.

“I put them in for you.”

I know.

“Do you know?”

Nothing.

“Penny?”

I work for another hour or so, then sit down on the top front porch step to think about whether I might want to go to a movie tonight. I’m just about to go inside to see what’s playing when a car pulls up to the curb. I watch as the man in the car sits still for a minute, then opens the door and gets out.

Dennis.

I yank the bandanna off my hair, fold my hands tightly together in my lap. As advertised, he’s missing most of his hair. But there are those eyes.

I watch him come toward me and everything in me goes quiet. I feel like a stopped clock.

Just before he reaches me, I stand up.

But he sits down and stretches his long legs out before him. He’s wearing a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, faded jeans, and black cowboy boots. He stares straight ahead to say, “I thought I’d shine my boots before I ask you to go dancing, but I’m going to have to ask you for the polish.”

I sit down beside him and I can see the tension in his jaw. And at that moment, all my own fear goes away. I am his lover and his sister and his mother and his brother and his friend. I couldn’t look worse and it couldn’t matter less. All that matters is here we are. I say, “I’ve got polish. The rest, you don’t have to ask for.”

He smiles then.

We sit out there talking until there’s a red sun hanging low in the sky. Then I take his hand and pull him up. There are eggs we can fry for supper. After that, I’ll take a bath. And we’ll see.

After he comes into the front hall with me, I say, “How about if we—”

“Yes,” he says.

I COME INTO MY bedroom from my bath with a towel wrapped around me. Dennis is sitting at my desk, reading a book I keep on my nightstand, letters van Gogh wrote to his brother. “Listen to this,” he says. And he reads me a quote: “I have a terrible need of—shall I say the word?—religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.”

I nod, my throat tight, my heart full.

He turns off the overhead, and in the light of the moon, he takes his clothes off. And then he opens his arms and says, “This is how