Marcia Talley: Through the Darkness

“I let my fingers do the walking through the yellow pages, just like everyone else,” I said.

I was hugging Connie good-bye when Dante stomped into the room wearing a fresh blue oxford cloth shirt, his ponytail dripping.

“Can you give me a hand, Emily?”

I prayed it wasn’t with the lounge chair, but from the sodden looks of him, Dante had that situation well under control.

Emily glanced from her husband to the playpen where Tim had picked up the block and was pummeling Lamby with it. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t worry about the baby,” I cut in. “I’ll be happy to watch him.”

“On that note, I’m outahere!” Connie blew everyone a kiss and disappeared.

Emily checked her watch. “Tim will be wanting to eat in a few minutes.”

I knew better than to volunteer for that . Emily was breast-feeding.

Dante still looked dark, angry. “Hauling that chair out of the pool put a deep scratch into it, right across the logo.”

Emily winced.

Those chairs had cost a pretty penny. Paradiso hadn’t opened yet, and already the snake had entered the garden. “Throw a Paradiso towel over it the night of the opening,” I suggested. “No one will ever notice.”

Dante threw me a half grateful smile. “That’ll have to do. Come on,” he said to Emily. “You need to sign something. It’ll only take a minute.”

“Go ahead,” I told my daughter. “Tim’s not going to starve to death in the time it takes you to sign a few papers.”

To tell the truth, ever since I entered the room, I’d been longing to pick up and cuddle my grandson, but since he had been happily entertaining himself, I knew Emily wouldn’t have seen the point of it.

Once Emily and Dante were gone, though, I leaned over and lifted Tim from the playpen, adjusted his legs until he was comfortably straddling my hip, and carried him over to the French doors. A squirrel, looking thoroughly out of place in the Japanese-style garden, dropped from the branch of a fir tree and scampered across the flagstones.

“That’s a squirrel,” I told my grandson as I opened the doors and carried him outside into the spring sunshine. “Can Tim-Tim say ‘squirrel’?”

Tim’s tiny brow furrowed. Who is this person and why is she talking so goofy? But when he caught sight of the squirrel, Tim stretched out his arms and squealed in sheer delight. His smile lit up my heart.

What is so special about grandchildren? I wondered. I loved my daughter, of course, but I was absolutely crazy about my grandkids. Was it because I felt a sense of failure in raising Emily? Emily had been a sullen and willful child, leaving home after college for a life on the road, incommunicado, learning everything the hard way-from her mistakes, and there had been quite a number of them. Maybe with this child, Tim-or with her older ones, Chloe and Jake-I’d have a second chance.

Tim wrapped his chubby hand around my finger and latched on tightly. He had bright green eyes and a fuzz of fine, peach-colored hair, inherited, I’m proud to say, from my side of the family. Our baby sister, Georgina, had been blessed with hair like that: it was the color of buttered sweet potatoes. I kissed the top of his head thinking, And just as sweet-smelling, too .

A Welsh poet once said that perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild. As Tim and I stood in the doorway watching that squirrel scatter a family of sparrows into a clump of ancient boxwood, flapping and cheeping, I knew exactly what that poet meant.

Paul extracted the business section from the SundayCapital , smoothed it out, rested his elbows on the table and began reading. “Well,” he said, glancing from the paper to me over the top of his reading glasses. “It looks like Paradiso’s grand opening was an unqualified success.”

I turned the burner under the oatmeal to low and wandered over to check out the paper. Unbelievably, the Capital had devoted almost the entire front page of the section to Paradiso’s debut. In addition to the article, the editors published three pictures, all in color, all above the fold.

Dante and Kendel Ehrlich, the wife of the Maryland governor, looking radiant as usual, cutting the ribbon.

Emily and Dante grinning broadly, raising glasses of champagne with a group that included Annapolis mayor Ellen Moyer.

A shot of the swimming pool, sparkling like topaz, surrounded by dozens of tuxedo- and evening-gown-clad partygoers.

“That wide-angle lens makes the pool look big as a football field,” I commented.

“It is big as a football field,” Paul snorted. “Glad I don’t have to maintain it.”

I tapped Dante’s photo with my fingertip. “Our son-in-law looks handsome, doesn’t he? Black tie was a good call.” I probably sounded smug. Black tie had been my idea.

“Apparently.”

“It was a fantastic party.” I sighed, remembering.

“Dante’s investors have deep pockets, Hannah.”

Indeed, they had. The guests at the elaborate, invitation-only gala had spilled over from the open bars and hors d’oeuvres tables that surrounded the swimming pool, flowed into the elegant, wood-paneled reception area, and trickled into the gift shop where Alison, Ben, and some of the other guides had taken turns handing out souvenir mugs, pocket calendars, and gold mesh bags of sample-size beauty and health-care products, all emblazoned with the spa logo.

On the veranda, using a sauté pan over a gas ring, François cooked up tortellini to order. Next to him, the sous-chef carved wafer-thin slices of prime rib, turkey, and ham for the guests, who could eat on the veranda, if they chose, or amble down to the beach, where tables and chairs had been set out. At surfside, illuminated by luau torches, another of François’s acolytes prepared Mongolian barbecue, using oversized chopsticks to toss personalized meat and vegetable mixtures over a sizzling grill, all to the appreciative oohs and ahs of the hungry crowd.

On the day before opening, though, I feared it would never come together. For weeks the concrete slab had been ready for the gazebo, but it wasn’t until late on Friday that a tractor-trailer delivered it-in four parts. Dante freaked when he saw the pieces until the workmen demonstrated how easily the whole thing could be assembled. By the time Tuxedo Junction arrived late Saturday afternoon, set up their instruments, and swung energetically into “String of Pearls,” the orchestra had no clue that the gazebo they were playing in had been moldering in the rose garden for years. And how they played! Big Band music drifted out over the Chesapeake Bay until one o’clock in the morning. Paul and I were among the last to leave the dance floor.

In the photographs, you couldn’t see the tool chests, of course, or the table saws, sanders, and routers, or the scaffolding that had been taken down and stashed in the garden shed. And the reporter hadn’t stopped to wonder about the locked door marked STAFF, behind which the paint cans and drop cloths had been hastily stowed prior to the party.

You couldn’t see me in the pictures, either, thank God. At the last possible minute, after what seemed like hours of indecision in front of my closet, Paul had zipped me into a blue taffeta evening gown that was eight years too old and a half size too small. I hadn’t had time to shop for anything new.

As if reading my mind, Paul grabbed my hand and pulled me into his lap. “You looked gorgeous,” he whispered into my hair.

“Hah!” I looked like a bridesmaid at a cut-rate wedding.

“I mean it. I always liked you in that dress.” He kissed me on the mouth. “The last time you wore it, I believe I got laid.”