Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Glass in one hand, phone in the other, I hit the study.
I’d redecorated it post-Roland to rid it of the cloying, dark masculinity he preferred, so now it was bright, elegant and feminine, decorated in creams, salmons and peaches.
But before I moved to the desk where the PC was, I walked to the inlaid bookshelves, which were covered in pictures.
The one that had pride of place (for now, I often rearranged them) was a photo of all the gang at Mika and Tom’s wedding last year.
I smiled at it and then looked next to it, where a formal portrait of Allegra and her husband Darryn sat.
My daughter had elected to wear her grandmother’s vintage tulle extravaganza of a Dior wedding gown. Darryn had elected to wear a white jacket for his tuxedo, which worked beautifully with Allegra’s dress and his midnight skin.
I hadn’t been certain about Darryn for Allegra because doctors, on the whole, could be arrogant, surgeons often thought they were gods, but neurosurgeons thought they were the god. And Darryn was a neurosurgeon. And frankly, no one wanted to be married to a man who thought he was god.
But he’d won me over because he loved my girl unreservedly, showed it openly, he had an acerbic sense of humor I adored, and he was, indeed, delightfully arrogant because he also happened to be frighteningly intelligent, he knew it, and he didn’t suffer fools.
My Allegra was a nurse practitioner. They worked at the same hospital and had a stunning, newly built apartment in Battery Park.
I moved along to the wedding photo of Nico and his Felice. My daughter-in-law had gotten married barefoot and with flowers in her hair. She also made her own jam and maintained an herb garden on the fire escape off their apartment in the East Village. Being the good mother I was, regardless of all of this, I loved her anyway.
(Not true, I tried to love her, however, she wasn’t very lovable, but I could pat myself on the back because I hadn’t given up—on the other hand, she also wasn’t my biggest fan, but sadly, she wasn’t as good at hiding it.)
Then there came the picture of Valentina and her Archie. He was a cameraman at sporting events, she was the assistant to a line producer of a network evening news program. He resembled a bear. She had my grandmother’s delicate, petite frame. He was rough and rowdy. She could make a party out of a funeral.
They’d had their own commitment ceremony in the Bahamas that no one was invited to, so in my Valentina’s “wedding” photo, she was wearing a bikini.
I still had not forgiven her for that, any of it.
I didn’t care they didn’t want to be married.
However.
A bikini?
And…
I wasn’t invited?
With a good deal of practice, I mentally set that aside, moved down the line and stopped at a black and white photo of Mother and Dad.
Mom was wearing Dior (again, Christian Dior had been her favorite). Dad had a precisely folded pocket square in his dinner jacket. Clamped between my mother’s two darkly enameled, perfectly manicured fingers was a long, elegant cigarette holder bearing a lit cigarette (ah, a tragic indication that ignorance was not bliss). Dad had his arm around her and was smiling down at her like she hung the moon. She was smiling haughtily at the camera like her husband had just given her the stars.
It was one of the only photos that depicted how much they did indeed love each other.
Of course, they were much younger. The photo had been taken before their children came along (I had a younger sister who moved to Florida after her divorce five years ago, and we both had a younger brother who was a law professor at Yale—we were all close, emotionally, but sadly not close locationally).
So, for Mother and Dad, in that picture, love was in first bloom, and they hadn’t yet settled into their personalities, their responsibilities, their places in society or the people they would become.
But I knew their first-bloom love had never died, I just wished they both felt freer to express it, share it with their children, and mostly, each other.
I wondered if Mother would have been different if Dad couldn’t allow her to pass within reaching distance without gliding a finger along the back of her hand.
Perhaps not. Perhaps it would be her beautiful little secret.
But perhaps she would.
I was just glad I knew before I lost her (and yes, it was to lung cancer), that Jamie had her approval.
I wouldn’t have cared if he hadn’t (case in point, she wasn’t Roland’s biggest fan, lesson learned: always listen to Mother).
But I was glad to know Jamie did.
My phone vibrated in my hand, and I looked to it.
It was a text from Mika, and I hoped she didn’t need to cancel our lunch. She would be great help with the overhaul of the closet.