Marcia Talley: The Last Refuge

‘It’s punch,’ Amy explained. ‘For grown-ups.’

By some miracle, we found Karen and Dex. Karen had spread a quilt out on the lawn, and graciously invited us to share it.

Just as we got settled down, a series of explosions lit up the sky. ‘Ooooh,’ breathed the crowd. Showers of red and white, fountains of blue, green and yellow, cascaded over our heads. Hot sparks, caught up by the wind, spiraled up, up, and up, then nose-dived, sizzling out harmlessly on the water.

‘And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,’ Paul sang in his gravely baritone.

In the light of a Roman candle, I reached for his hand. ‘That’s “War of 1812,” darling.’

‘Whatever,’ my husband said, squeezing my fingers.

‘You know, I’m really getting tired of hearing Jeffrey complain about how this isn’t right, or that isn’t how it should have been. We’re not about life as it should have been – without slavery, for example – but how it was ! Sure, life sometimes sucked back then, but that’s not because people back then were stupid. Does he think people nowadays are smarter? Frankly, I don’t think that American Idol , JetSkis and high fructose snack foods are evidence that civilization is advancing.’

Hannah Ives

Although he’d never actually admit it, at least not to me, Paul had managed just fine in my absence. He’d gotten through exam period and turned in his grades. He’d finished Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers and sent it off to Brent Morris for a tough-love critique. And he’d even helped our son-in-law, Dante, build a teakwood deck on the home he shared with Emily and our three grandchildren in Hillsmere Shores.

Thanksgiving had come and gone, and even if there had been no sprightly renditions of ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’ to cram the holiday spirit down our throats, the proliferation of TV ads for perfume, aftershave, diamond jewelry and electric razors was a clue that Christmas was just around the corner.

The promos for Patriot House, 1774 started on December the third following the NCAA playoffs. Long before then, though – thanks to YouTube – people had started to recognize me on the street: ‘Say, aren’t you…?’ followed by a pregnant pause while they studied every blemish on my face and tried to work it out. At Whole Foods one day, I’m ashamed to say, I confessed to being Susan Sarandon, and autographed the back of the woman’s Baltimore Gas and Electric bill.

I’m not much into sports, so I missed the debut of the promo, but nobody else in the world did.

‘Mother, did you see…?’

‘Grandma, you looked awesome !’

‘Hannah! I just saw…’

I figured there’d been so much hype that when the show finally made its debut, maybe nobody’d even care.

‘I can’t watch,’ I said, shielding my eyes when I finally caught one of the ads on TV.

Paul tugged at my hands. ‘Don’t be silly. Look at you!’ He pointed at the screen. ‘You look terrific.’

‘I look old.’

‘Not old, sweetheart. Vintage.’

‘Vintage, huh? Like my clothing.’

They’d let me keep a gown, the blue one with ruffles and little pink ribbons that Melody liked, and all the accessories that went with it. When my daughter, Emily, saw it hanging in the hall closet, sheathed in plastic, she grinned and said, ‘So, what are you going to be for Hallowe’en next year?’

‘A witch,’ I replied.

But I did watch the promo. They were my family, after all.

Melody bent over her embroidery.

Jack draining a pint with his pals.

Amy and Alex, in happier times, playing a duet.

Karen up to her elbows in dough, a dab of flour on her chin.

Dex and Gabe, wrestling on the Paca House lawn with Flash.

And me, with an impish grin, taking off my shoes and stockings so I could run barefoot through the grass.

I wondered if I’d ever see any of them again.

We’d exchanged email addresses, promised to stay in touch, but you know how it is. Melody let me know via Facebook when her mother passed away. I telephoned right away, of course, and we began to chat about once a month after that. I promised to take her on a tour of Eastern colleges when she started the application process the following year.

Amy texts me from Kansas City, Missouri where she teaches music in a private school. I wondered if she moved there so she could be close to Drew, serving fifteen years for multiple violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice at the United States Disciplinary Barracks – better known as Ft Leavenworth – about thirty-five miles away. Wondered, that is, until an engraved card arrived in the mail announcing her marriage to Philip Henry Graham, III. Amy and I keep in touch playing Scrabble on our iPhones while she awaits the birth of their first child.

When Karen visited Washington, D.C. for a meeting of the American Sociological Association, we finally managed to schedule that lunch that we had promised each other. Once a year at Christmas a card might arrive from Michael or French, but otherwise…

I was in our basement office, going through the basket where I keep last year’s Christmas cards and updating our address file accordingly, when I came across a plain white business envelope with ‘Hannah’ written on it in a fancy hand. The envelope was sealed, but it was addressed to me, right? So I stuck my finger under the flap, opened it and looked inside.

I gasped in surprise, as Paul had probably intended. But when I read a little further, I felt like a rat, a bum, the lowest of the low.

Paul was upstairs fixing a broken hinge on a cabinet in the kitchen. He glanced up when I entered the room and smiled crookedly around a screw.

‘What’s this?’ I asked, showing him the envelope.

He spit out the screw, and laid his screwdriver down on the countertop. ‘What does it look like, Hannah?’

Tears filled my eyes. ‘It looks like tickets for a trans-Atlantic cruise on the Queen Mary Two, but they’re dated October the seventh. That was ages ago,’ I moaned.

‘It was for our anniversary,’ Paul explained, ‘but as you may recall, something came up.’

‘You bought tickets for a cruise? We were going to celebrate our anniversary on the Queen Mary Two?’

Paul nodded.

‘So, you didn’t forget?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘I feel like a selfish shit,’ I wailed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Paul snatched a tissue out of the box on the counter and dabbed at the tears on my cheeks. ‘Don’t worry, Hannah. I was able to reschedule the cruise. I was planning to give it to you for Christmas.’

‘A cruise? On the Queen Mary Two?’ I was beginning to sound like a broken record.

He chuckled, kissed the top of my nose. ‘Can you be ready to sail by January the third?’

‘I can be ready tomorrow.’ I tossed the envelope into the air with a whoop and watched it spiral to the floor and scoot under the refrigerator. ‘But, wait a minute, Paul. Patriot House debuts on January the third!’

‘That’s why TiVos were invented, my dear.’

He reached for me then, and I came into his arms, grateful that the places I yearned for him to caress were not swathed under yards of silks, laces, braids, whalebones, and furbelows.

Was I flying like Kate Winslet in Titanic ? Making pottery with Patrick Swayze in Ghost ? Carried off into the sunset like Debra Winger in Officer and a Gentleman ?

I’ll never tell.

But later, much later, as I lay back on my pillow with the afternoon sun slatting through the plantation shutters and his arm flung lightly over me, I said, ‘Do you know what I think?’