Neither Present Time Page 15

  “I’ll go check on her,” Aggie said as she began to descend the steps.

  “I thought we could have lunch somewhere nearby and then drive over to the Roosevelt,” Beryl called down to her. “It’s too far to walk. And then, I had somewhere special I thought you might like to see.”

  Aggie smiled back up at her. “That sounds good.”

  “I like them,” Ridley said, hopping over to stand next to Beryl as they watched Aggie and Cory talking.

  Beryl sighed. “Me, too.”

  Chapter 24

  “Tell me everything,” Shannon insisted eagerly when Aggie came to her house Monday evening to pick Percival up.

  “Well, let me show you,” Aggie said, pulling out her camera.

  “Oh, my God,” Shannon moaned as Aggie began clicking through the photos she had taken at the various monuments and memorials. “Who is that?”

  Aggie grinned. “That’s Ridley, Beryl’s friend, and he’s gay.”

  “Damn,” Shannon muttered. “Is he really gay, or…?”

  “He’s really gay,” Aggie assured her.

  Sighing in resignation, Shannon took the camera to get a better view of Beryl. “She’s attractive,” she said, looking up at Aggie. “Not beautiful, but very nice-looking.”

  “She is,” Aggie agreed. “She wouldn’t say so, but she is.”

  Shannon frowned at one of the photos. “Where is this?”

  Aggie leaned over to see which image she had on the camera. “That’s the Folger,” she beamed. “The Folger Shakespeare Library?” she added at Shannon’s blank look.

  “Did she know you teach Shakespeare?”

  “She didn’t then,” Aggie smiled. “She just knew we liked books and wanted to take us to one of her favorite places. It was sweet.”

  Shannon watched Aggie’s face for a moment. “So,” she said, clicking back through the photos again, “she’s attractive, she loves old books, including Shakespeare, she likes your great-aunt… she is single, isn’t she?” she asked, glancing sharply over at Aggie.

  Aggie’s shoulders slumped a little. “Well, kind of.”

  “What do you mean, ‘kind of’?” Shannon asked with a frown.

  “She and her partner just broke up a few weeks ago,” Aggie explained. “We bumped into her as we left a restaurant.”

  “You’re kidding,” Shannon said. “In a city that size? What are the chances?”

  Aggie shrugged. “Anyway, she’s definitely not over that situation yet.”

  “What happened?”

  “The partner cheated and Beryl found out,” Aggie said.

  “Sounds familiar,” Shannon said darkly.

  Aggie shook her head. “I don’t understand why being faithful and loyal is so hard.”

  “It isn’t hard to do,” said Shannon. “It’s hard to find.”

  * * *

  “Aunt Cory? We’re home,” Aggie called out a short while later. She and Percival couldn’t find Cory anywhere on the main level of the house. “Go find her,” she whispered to Percival, and he trotted to the kitchen door where he barked to be let out.

  Aggie opened the door and Percival raced down the path to the garden. Aggie followed, and found Cory sitting on her bench as dusk fell a little early in the shady depths of the garden.

  “Hey there,” she said, sitting beside her aunt. “Aren’t you getting eaten up by mosquitoes?” She looked closely when Cory didn’t respond. “Have you been crying?” she asked in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

  Cory sniffed, but didn’t respond immediately. Aggie noticed a bundle of letters, tied with a ribbon, lying in her lap.

  * * *

  Corinne pulls on her Navy pea coat – “Why on earth do you keep that dreadful thing?” Candace had asked in disgust when Corinne first pulled it out of her closet – and goes out to the garden. Snow is falling lightly, the small flakes twirling lazily in the cold air, and landing lightly on the dark green leaves of the holly and nandina bushes just off the path. She finds Helen sitting on a bench where she is mostly sheltered from the snow by the overhanging branches of an oak still clinging to its dried, brown leaves.

  “Here you are,” she says, sitting close to Helen who smiles and wraps an arm around Corinne’s shoulders.

  Helen has been with them for six months, six glorious months. Corinne has never been so happy… except she can see the growing restlessness in Helen’s eyes. Sometimes, when she looks at Corinne, Corinne knows she isn’t really there.

  “What are you reading?” she asks, picking up the book lying in Helen’s lap.

  “Rilke,” Helen says.

  “In German,” Corinne smiles. She snuggles closer. “Aren’t you cold?”

  Helen looks around as if surprised to find that it is winter and it is snowing. “I hadn’t thought about it.” She tilts Corinne’s face up and kisses her tenderly. “I’m never cold with you around,” she says with a hint of her old roguish grin.

  “Flatterer,” Corinne scolds. “It’s almost sunset.”

  “Sunset?” Helen asks, puzzled.

  Corinne looks at her uncertainly. “Doesn’t Chanukah begin at sunset tonight?”

  “Oh, that,” Helen smiles. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “But I want to,” Corinne insists. “You’ve been with my family all this time, and you’ll have to live through Christmas. I want to do something for you.”

  Helen laughs softly. “I can’t remember the last time I set foot in a temple,” she says, and her eyes suddenly lose focus as the smile slides from her face.

  “Don’t!” Corinne wants to cry. “Don’t see them!” but she knows Helen cannot forget the scenes she witnessed after the Allies entered Germany. Her office was charged with helping to get food and clothing and medical supplies to the survivors of the camps.

  “I don’t go to temple,” Helen repeats quietly, “but that wouldn’t have stopped them from taking me away.” She looks at Corinne, looks into the open, innocent face she loves so. “They would have locked us up, also. For this,” she says, kissing Corinne softly. “Just for this.”

  Corinne feels hot tears run down her cheeks as she nestles into Helen’s shoulder, tears that quickly become icy trails on her skin.

  Helen pulls away after a moment and stands, her hands thrust deep in her pockets as she says, “I have to go back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Helen turns to look at her, and Corinne can see the storminess in those changeable hazel eyes. “I have to go back. See how things are now. Maybe… maybe go to the Mediterranean from there.”

  She is so restless, she is ready to explode, and Corinne wonders how she didn’t see it before now.

  “Come with me,” Helen says, looking back down at her.

  “But… Terrence,” Corinne says, biting her lip.

  Helen comes back and sits next to her. “I think he’s ready to be on his own more,” she says gently. “Talk to him. We could leave in the spring.”

  There is an urgency to her voice, and Corinne knows that Helen must go, whether Corinne goes or not.

  “You should go,” Terrence says when Corinne does talk to him. “Helen needs you.”

  Unlike Candace, who sees and resents, or her parents, who see only what they wish to, Terrence sees and understands. He and Helen have spent long hours talking and walking together, increasing Candace’s resentment – sentiments echoed in her angry pounding on the piano in the parlour as she plays moody pieces by Bach and Beethoven.

  “Why does he talk to her?” she asks jealously.

  “Because she listens,” Corinne says. She suspects that much of Helen and Terrence’s time together is spent in a companionable silence, both of them lost in their own memories and thoughts.

  “But don’t let her make you parachute in,” Terrence smiles as he wraps his good arm around Corinne’s shoulders.

  “What do you mean, parachute?” Corinne demands. “Helen has never parachuted. She was a courier.”

  Terrence laughs,
a sound Corinne hasn’t heard from him since before the war. “And how do you think she was getting behind enemy lines to deliver her messages? How did you think she broke her leg?”

  Corinne frowns. “She told me she broke it when she was caught in rubble in a bombing in London.”

  Terrence nodded. “I expect she didn’t want to worry you,” he says, and he limps away, chuckling.

  * * *

  “What’s wrong?”

  Cory wiped her eyes and smiled a tremulous smile. “I’m just being silly. Silly and old.”

  “You’re anything but silly,” Aggie said, wrapping an arm around Cory’s shoulders.

  Cory took a deep breath. “Live your life, Agatha. Live your life, every second of it. You can’t live without regrets, but don’t let the regrets be from not living.”

  Later that evening, alone in her room, Aggie sat in her bed, clicking repeatedly through the photos from their weekend in D.C. Glancing at the bedside clock, she saw it was nine-thirty. It’s not too late, she thought, biting her lip. She picked up her cell phone and scrolled through the numbers. Clutching the phone to her chest for a second, she thought about what Cory had said, and pushed the call button.

  “Hello, Beryl?”

  Chapter 25

  Beryl yawned as she and Ridley finished a set of pushups.

  “Tired?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I heard you talking late last night. Claire or Aggie?” he asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “Aggie, thank God.”

  Claire had been calling frequently since the night they had run into her outside the restaurant.

  “No wonder you don’t want to see me,” she’d said the first time Beryl had answered the phone.

  “What are you talking about?” Beryl had asked, not understanding.

  “You’ve already got someone,” Claire said accusingly. “How long has this been going on?”

  Beryl was so astonished that she could only laugh. “You are amazing,” she said. “You cheat on me, for who knows how long, and now, you’re trying to make this my fault?”

  “Why do you even talk to her?” Ridley had asked in total incomprehension.

  Beryl shrugged. “I’d hate to think we can’t even be friends, after all that time.”

  Ridley snorted. “The only way Claire will be friends is if she can put you back where you belong.”

  “Well, that’s not going to happen,” Beryl insisted.

  “You’ve been having lots of long conversations with Aggie,” he said now. “Things are going well there?”

  “Yes,” she said with a small smile. She looked at him and noted the dark circles under his eyes. “Why were you up? You didn’t sleep again last night, did you?”

  He shrugged and didn’t answer. “Come on, next set,” he said.

  Beryl let it go. Ridley hadn’t been sleeping well in the few weeks since Cory and Aggie came to visit. She could hear him sometimes, yelling in his sleep in the middle of the night. Other times, she would hear him out in the kitchen and knew he hadn’t gone back to bed.

  “So, how is Aggie?” he asked during their next break between sets.

  “She’s good,” Beryl panted. “Getting ready for the new school year.”

  He smiled. “It always feels exciting, doesn’t it? The start of a new year? Makes me want to go buy notebook paper and pens. Next set.”

  “She said Cory’s been different since their visit here… seems to have stirred up lots of memories for her,” Beryl said, watching Ridley from the corner of her eye as she took a drink from her water bottle.

  His expression darkened, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Have you talked to George lately?” she asked as they moved to the pull-up bars.

  “No,” he said curtly.

  “You want to go by the bookstore tonight?” she asked, delaying the start of her pull-ups.

  He pumped out a set before saying, “No, I don’t think so.” He wiped his face with a sweat towel and said, “Why don’t you go, though? It’s been a while since you were there. Get up.”

  Standing on a chair to reach the bar, Beryl grunted through eight pull-ups before she dropped back to the ground, panting.

  Ridley grinned. “Remember when you couldn’t do one?”

  * * *

  When Beryl got back to the apartment later that night, there was one light left on for her, but Ridley was in his room with the door closed.

  She had gone to The Scriptorium where George was thankfully working alone, giving Beryl the opportunity to talk to him.

  “Are you two… talking?” she had asked hesitantly, feeling a little guilty about going behind Ridley’s back.

  George flushed. “Well, we talk on the phone, but he hasn’t wanted to get together lately, so…” He shrugged.

  Beryl bit her lip, wondering how much to say. “Do you like him?” she asked.

  George met her eyes. “I really like him,” he admitted.

  “Then don’t give up,” she urged. “Something’s bothering him, I don’t know what, but you probably have a better chance of getting through to him than anyone else.”

  Beryl shushed Winston, who was meowing loudly as she came into the apartment. She picked him up and held him to quiet him. She listened at Ridley’s door, but couldn’t hear any sounds. She turned off the living room light and went to her room. She and Aggie had already talked – their conversations had become a nightly occurrence, the part of her day she looked forward to the most. It seemed they never ran out of things to talk about. As much as she knew she was getting to like Aggie – “more than like,” said an insistent voice in her head – she was grateful for the distance separating them. I am not going to drop back into that same old pattern of falling for someone too quickly, she often thought. In her talks with Aggie, as they compared notes on their breakups, she was embarrassed to realize how much she had subjugated herself to Claire without even realizing she was doing it.

  “You blame me, but you let it happen,” she knew Claire would have said, and she knew, too, that there was a kernel of truth in those words.

  “Never again,” she replied harshly to that voice, deathly afraid of making the same mistakes again if she got involved with Aggie, or anyone else.

  She got changed and slid into bed, Winston curling up next to her, purring loudly.

  She wasn’t sure what time it was when she was startled awake by a shout. Leaping out of bed, she raced out into the living room where she could hear more shouts coming from Ridley’s room. Hesitating just a second, she opened his door to see him thrashing about, tangled in his sheets.

  “Ridley! Ridley!” Beryl called, trying to wake him. She reached for his shoulder to shake him awake and, without warning, he grabbed her by the throat and the arm, pulling her off-balance as he yanked her across the bed where she crashed into his wheelchair before landing heavily on the floor. The impact drove the air from her lungs, but her gasps for breath were further inhibited as his weight crashed down on top of her and his fingers closed like a vise around her windpipe.

  “Ridley,” she rasped in panic, “it’s me, Beryl…” but he seemed deaf.

  The strength of his grip on her throat was terrifying. In desperation, she began kicking and clawing at him. Not until she scratched at his face did his pressure lessen as he seemed to realize where he was.

  “Beryl?” he gasped in horror. He rolled off her. “Oh God, oh God… did I hurt you?” He helped her sit up, gulping air painfully into her lungs.

  “I’m okay,” she managed to croak. She looked up at him, barely able to make out his features in the dark. “Are you all right?”

  Without warning, he began weeping, clutching his hands around his abdomen as if he were in physical pain. Beryl scooted closer to him and he let her pull him into her arms. She could feel him trembling as he sobbed. She didn’t know how long they stayed there, but eventually, he quieted.

  “Every night, it’s the same,” he whispered, sitting up and ta
king a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m trapped in the wreckage; my legs are pinned and I can’t move. My weapon is just beyond my reach, and all I can do is wait. I hear the sounds of my buddies screaming, hear shots being fired and laughter… and I’m waiting… waiting for that face to come around the corner of the Humvee and point a gun in my face…” He pressed his fists into his eyes. “And I am so fucking scared.” She could feel his shame at that admission.

  He looked up at her. “If I hurt you, I’ll never forgive myself,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him shakily, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm. “Serves me right for trying to wake a Marine in the middle of a bad dream,” she tried to joke, but he was having none of it.

  “I’m not safe to be around,” he said.

  “We need a drink,” Beryl said hoarsely. “Come on. Neither of us is going back to sleep after that.”

  She winced as she tried to get up. She wasn’t sure she didn’t have a couple of cracked ribs, but she wasn’t going to say so to Ridley.

  He uprighted his chair, pulling it near the bed so he could place one hand on the seat, the other on his mattress and hoist himself up into the wheelchair. Beryl realized she had never seen him without his below-knee prosthesis on, or without his shirt.

  When they got out to the kitchen and turned the lights on, she was startled by the number of scars marring his trunk. What she could see of his right leg below his shorts was horribly scarred also.

  Turning to the frig, she asked, “What do you want?”

  “Milk.”

  “Milk?” she asked, turning to stare at him. “Not a beer?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think alcohol is a good idea right now.”

  By the time she poured two glasses of milk, he had wheeled up to the table, his head resting on his hands.

  “Here you go,” she croaked.

  He looked up at her worriedly, an expression of utter remorse on his face as he saw the bruises beginning to show on her neck. She could see marks where her fingernails had raked his cheek.

  “Don’t,” she said. “We’re both okay. But someone may report us for domestic violence.” He didn’t smile. She took a drink of her milk and said, “When was the last time you talked to someone about your PTSD?”