Therese Fowler - Souvenir

She stepped inside and eased the door closed, wanting Carson’s first awareness of her to be when she slid beneath his covers. She stood and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. The place still smelled slightly of cut pine and stained wood and curry, one of Carson’s favorite flavors.

When she could see, she crossed the wide front room to the stairs that divided it from the kitchen. Grabbing the railing, she pushed off her sneakers and began climbing the stairs. A tread creaked underfoot and she paused, waiting, her heart loud in her ears, then went on. By the eighth step she could see into the dark loft. She stopped and listened for the sound of Carson’s even breathing. Though they’d spent only a few nights together as adults, they had slept over at each other’s homes innumerable times as children. She knew the sound of his sleeping self almost as well as she did her sister Kara’s. Before Brian and his unexpected proposal eighteen months earlier, Carson had been the son her parents never had, and she had been Carolyn and Jim’s adopted daughter.

Straining to hear Carson, the only sound she could make out was the low hum of his refrigerator, and then the chirpee-chirpee-chirpee of a cardinal in a nearby tree, announcing the sun’s progress. She climbed the remaining steps, cringing at another creak, then stopped, trying to make out his form on the bed at the far side of the room.

‘Does this mean you changed your mind?’

Meg jumped as if stung. There was Carson, sitting in the love seat they’d once hauled away from a bankrupt orange grower’s estate sale. She couldn’t quite see his expression, but she could hear in his voice that he was wide awake.

With all her heart, she wished she could say yes, her presence meant exactly what he guessed. But softly she said, ‘No.’

‘Then why are you—?’

‘Shh,’ she said, going to him and reaching for his hand. ‘Come here.’

He stood, and before he could speak again, she kissed him hard, kissed him until she felt dizzy and brave and determined not to chicken out. She put his hands on the hem of her shirt and, with her hands on his, helped him draw it over her head. In another moment, they were undressed and lying on top of his sheets, the pale light painting them moonlit blue.

One last time . She would savor every touch, every sensation, the fullness of his lips, his squared jaw, the dark stubble as it rubbed her neck and grazed her breasts. She would not forget one moment of this, would always look back and remember how making love with him transported her. She would keep the memory like a priceless, irreplaceable jewel. She would remember how he pressed into her as if his life, their lives, depended on it, as if he could secure eternity.

Afterward, Carson lay on his side watching her, twisting a strand of her coppery hair. ‘What other proof do you need?’ he asked. His eyes shone with determination and hope, and she had to look away. Her first loyalty was to her family; how could it be otherwise? She had to marry Brian for their sake, was resigned to it, would do it and would try to never second-guess herself afterward; this she had already vowed.

‘I know how it seems,’ she said, ‘but that’s exactly why it can never work. We’re too intense. That’s what this proves.’ The lie, same as she’d told him a year and a half before, tasted bitter. Love that had grown from childhood friendship and adolescent curiosity, that had now withstood so many long months of complete separation, could never be a damaging, undesirable thing – and yet that was the story she was selling.

He sat up and looked away. ‘I should’ve made you leave as soon as I heard you open the door.’

‘No,’ she said, touching his back. ‘We needed to do this, so we can put our past to rest.’ This much at least was true, she thought.

He looked over his shoulder at her, eyes narrowed. ‘You think this, one last quick fuck, is going to do it?’ he spat, making her flinch. ‘You thought you could come here and offer something you knew I couldn’t resist, and then marry Hamilton with a clear conscience? You are unbelievable.’ He lunged out of bed and pulled on his jeans, keeping his back to her.

The matter of her guilty conscience – and God knew it was guilty – was balanced by the good she was doing her sisters, her parents. What he said was exactly what she’d thought, and what she would do. She stood up and pulled on her shirt, absorbing his anger, deserving it. Then she reached up and unhooked her gold chain from her neck.

‘I never took this off,’ she told him as she draped it around his, hooked it, then smoothed his wavy brown hair, filing away yet another last sense of him.

‘Not even when he—’

‘Not even then.’

Carson turned and looked down at her. ‘Does he know I gave it to you?’

She nodded.

‘Then he’s as stupid as I am,’ he said, moving away from her to the window, to a view of endless rows of orange trees lit emerald by the early sun.

She loved that view, the way the Earth always looked newborn there in the rising mist. But by this evening, the view would be as lost to her as if she’d left the planet. Brian’s apartment windows did not look out on this, the kind of life she was born to. She would be a businessman’s wife. The man she would see on all her future mornings would not be this rangy one, whose long fingers were equally capable of picking fruit or strumming a guitar – or holding her hand or feeding her pizza or braiding her hair. Once she left here, she would never touch Carson again.

The thought was a gut punch. How, how could she have let this happen?

Her longing to take back her bargain with the Hamiltons surged, so strong it threatened to undo her. She could take it all back, reclaim her life as her own … If Carson would push her just a little , if he tried to persuade her, if he assured her that everything he didn’t even know was wrong would somehow turn out all right, she would come back to him.

But he stayed at the window, his heart already closing to her, and the moment passed.

She finished dressing, engulfed by regret but still daring to hope she would take a part of him with her, if God or fate allowed. Then she went to him and touched his arm.

He jerked away. ‘You better go,’ he said, turning. His face was closed now, too. This shouldn’t upset her – she had it coming, all his anger, all his venom, the chill of such a blank look – and yet she was cut through by it.

‘Okay.’ She would not let herself cry.

‘But here – let me give you this.’ He put his hand on her cheek and leaned in, kissed her with slow deliberation, kissed her with such passion and grace that she could no longer hold back her tears. Then he pushed her away and said, ‘Guess I’ll see you in hell.’

PART I

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December .

– James Barrie

ONE

Reminders. Meg didn’t need more of them, but that’s what she got when her father let her into his new apartment at the Horizon Center for Seniors Wednesday evening. He held out a plastic grocery bag.

‘What’s in there?’

‘Notebooks, from your mother’s desk,’ he said. ‘Take ’em now, before I forget.’

He did more and more of that lately, forgetting. Idiopathic short-term memory loss was his doctor’s name for his condition, which right now was more an irritation than an issue. Idiopathic , meaning there was no particular explanation. Idiopathic was an apt term for Spencer Powell, a man who lived entirely according to his whims.

Meg took the bag and set it on the dining table along with her purse. This would be a short visit, coming at the end of her twelve-hour day. Hospital rounds at seven AM, two morning deliveries, a candy-bar lunch, and then four hours of back-to-back patients at her practice – women stressing about episiotomies, C-section pain, stretch marks, unending fetal hiccups, heavy periods, lack of sex drive, fear of labor. And still four hours to go before she was likely to hit the sheets for five. An exhausting grind at times, but she loved her work. The ideal of it, at least.