Nora Roberts - Tribute

“He wanted the star more than the woman. That was a lesson I had to learn. But he gave me Johnnie. My beautiful boy. Johnnie’s gone now. I lost my beautiful boy. It’s been a year, and still I wait for him to come home. Maybe this one will be a boy.”

She laid a hand on her belly, picked up a short glass, rattled the ice chilling the vodka.

“You shouldn’t drink while you’re pregnant.”

Janet jerked a shoulder, sipped. “They didn’t make such a to-do about it when I was. Besides, I’ll be dead soon anyway. What will you do with all those pictures?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ll pick the ones I like best, have them framed. I want pictures of you in the house. Especially pictures of you at the farm. You were happy here.”

“Some of my happiest moments, some of my most desolate. I gave Carlos-Chavez, my third husband-his walking papers right in this room. We had a vicious fight, almost passionate enough to have me consider taking him back. But I’d had enough. How he hated it here. ‘Janet,’ he’d say in that Spanish toreador’s voice that seduced me in the first place, ‘why must we camp out in the middle of nowhere? There isn’t a decent restaurant for miles.’ Carlos,” she added and lifted her glass, “he could make love like a king. But outside of bed, he bored me brainless. The problem there was we didn’t spend enough time outside of bed before I married him. Sex is no reason to get married.”

“Ford never bores me. He made me a goddess, and still when he looks at me, he sees me. Too many of them didn’t see you.”

“I stopped seeing me.”

“But in the letters, the letters you kept, he called you Trudy.”

“The last love, the last chance. I couldn’t know. Yet maybe some part of me did. Maybe I wanted to love and be loved by what I’d lost, or given up. For a little while, I could be Trudy again.” She stroked her fingers over one of the white pillows. “But that was a lie, too. I could never get her back, and he never saw her.”

“The last chance,” Cilla repeated with photos spread before her, and Janet on the bright pink couch. “Why was it the last? You lost your son, and that was horrible and tragic. But you had a daughter who needed you. You had a child inside you. You left your daughter, and that’s haunted her all her life-and I guess it’s haunted me too. You left her, and you ended the child when you ended yourself. Why?”

Janet sipped her drink. “If there’s one thing you can do for me, it would be to answer that question.”

“How?”

"You’ve got everything you need. It’s your dream, for God’s sake. Pay attention.”

Crazy. She had to be crazy hosting a party. She didn’t have any furniture, or dishes. She didn’t own a serving spoon. She was at least three weeks out from delivery on her stove and refrigerator. She didn’t own a goddamn rug. Her seating consisted of a single patio set, a couple of cheap plastic chairs and a collection of empty compound buckets. Her cooking tools were limited to a Weber grill, a hot plate and a microwave oven.

She had supplies, God knew. A million festive paper plates, napkins, plastic cups and forks and spoons, and enough food-which she didn’t know how to prepare-stuffed into Ford’s refrigerator to feed most of the county. But where were people supposed to eat ?

“On the picnic tables my father, your father and Matt are bringing over,” Ford told her. “Come back to bed.”

“What if it rains?”

“Not calling for rain. There is a thirty-percent chance of hail and locusts, and a ten-percent chance of earthquakes. Cilla, it’s six in the morning.”

“I’m supposed to marinate the chicken.”

“Now?”

“No. I don’t know. I have to check my list. I wrote everything down. I said I’d make crab dip. I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never made crab dip. Why didn’t I just buy it? What am I trying to prove? And there’s the pasta salad.” She heard the lunacy in the rant, couldn’t stop. “I took that, too. Eating pasta salad through the years doesn’t mean you can make pasta salad. I’ve been to the doctor through the years. What’s next? Am I going to start doing elective surgery?”

Though it was tempting, he didn’t put the pillow over his head. “Are you going to lose your mind like this every time you give a party?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Good to know. Come back to bed.”

“I’m not coming back to bed. Can’t you see I’m dressed? Dressed, pacing, obsessing and postponing the moment when I go downstairs and face that chicken.”

“All right. All right.” He pushed himself up in bed, scooped back his hair. “Did you agree to marry me last night?”

“Apparently I did.”

“Then we will go down and face the chicken together.”

“Really? You’d do that?”

“I’ll also face the crab dip and the pasta salad with you. Such is the depth of my love, even at six o’clock in the morning.” Spock rose, yawned, stretched. “And apparently his. If we poison people, Cilla, we’ll do it together.”

“I feel better. I know when I’m being a maniac.” She walked to him, leaned down and kissed his sleepy mouth. “And I know when I’m lucky to have someone who’ll stick with me through it, right down to the crab dip.”

“I don’t even like crab dip. Why do people eat stuff like that?” He gave her a tug, pulling her onto the bed. And rolled on top of her. “People are always making dips out of odd things. Spinach dip, artichoke dip. Have you ever asked yourself why?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“Why can’t they be satisfied with some Cheez Whiz on a cracker? It’s simple. It’s classic.”

"You can’t distract me with Cheez Whiz.” She shoved him off. "I’m going down.” She tugged her shirt back into place. “I’m ready.”

IT WASN’T ALTOGETHER horrible or intimidating, Cilla discovered. Not with a partner. Especially when the partner was as clueless as she. It was almost fun. She thought, with some repetition, and a bit more skill, boiling pasta or mincing garlic might slip past the almost and become actual fun.

“I had a Janet dream last night,” she told him.

“How can the simple tomato come in so many sizes?” He held up a beefsteak and a handful of grape tomatoes. “Is it science? Is it nature? I’ll have to do a study on it. What was the dream about?”

“I guess it was about love, at least on one level. And my subconscious poking around about what it means. Or what it meant to her. We were in the living room of the farm. The walls were my walls-I mean the space was mine, the color of the paint, but she was on that bright pink couch. And I had photographs spread on this glossy white coffee table. Photos I’ve managed to get my hands on, the photos your grandfather took, photos I think I might have just seen in books. Hundreds of them. She was drinking vodka in a short glass. She said it had been a year since Johnnie died, and how she hoped this baby was a boy. She said it was her last chance. Her last love, her last chance.

“It’s so odd. She knew she was going to die soon. Because I knew. I asked her why, why did she do it? Why did she turn away from that last chance and end it all?”

“What did she say?”

“That if I could do anything for her, it would be to find that answer. That I had it all in front of me, but I wasn’t paying attention. So I woke up frustrated because, as she said, it’s my dream. If I know something, why don’t I know it?”

Ford took up his assignment of slicing the beefsteak. “Is it too much to accept she might’ve been too sad, too deep in the dark, and saw it as the only way to end the pain?”