Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [152]
Arriving home, I find that Richard has covered one wall of the apartment with irregularly shaped splotches of yellow. At least a dozen different shades, beautiful, rich hues—the deep golden of a mellow aged Gouda, the color of burnished wheat on an autumn afternoon. And not the whole wall, just a small section, maybe four feet square. Some of the splotches look like he has just waved the brush back and forth a couple of times, and one of them, the last one in the row, is just a single stroke of ochre, barely the width of the paintbrush. He’s dumped the brushes in the kitchen sink without rinsing them and is lying on his bed in a paint-spattered sweatshirt, sound asleep with his shoes still on. He looks still and peaceful, his fingers interlaced, the tops of his knuckles smudged with paint.
He stirs as I remove his shoes. “Welcome home,” Richard says, his voice raspy with sleep.
“Looks like you’ve been busy,” I say, nodding toward the wall.
“I remembered you said you always wanted to live in a yellow house,” he says, taking my hand. “Do you like it?”
I do, and the fact that Richard remembered this touches me. I put my arms around him and lay my head on his chest. “I love it. Yellow is a happy color, don’t you think?”
“Yes, and there are many shades of happiness. You can take your pick,” he says, sitting up and gesturing toward the wall.
“Looks like we’ve got plenty to choose from,” I tell him.
“It’s a miracle I was able to get anything done, what with the parade of hovering visitors you lined up to save me from myself,” he says.
“I didn’t want you to be lonely.”
“Lonely would have been a luxury,” Richard says, smiling.
“Hungry?” I ask.
“No, thanks. That nice young man stopped by and brought me some dinner.” Richard reaches over and pulls a grease-stained bag from his bedside table and takes out half a corned beef sandwich. “A cup of tea would be nice, though, if you’re making it.”
“What nice young man?” I ask, getting up to put the kettle on.
“Ben. Fiona’s nephew,” Richard says, his mouth full of corned beef. “He’s been working in the building, and he’s taken to stopping by, probably on your orders, I’m guessing,” Richard says, sitting up and donning his glasses, just so he can look superciliously over the top of them at me.
“I didn’t tell him to come. Maybe Fiona did,” I tell Richard.
“Or maybe it wasn’t me he was coming to see,” Richard murmurs, raising the newspaper to his face.
The last time I saw Ben was the night he kissed me on the balcony. It hadn’t been much more than a week ago, but it felt like months. I was afraid I’d hurt him, which I probably had. Given where my life is now heading, for once in my life, I’ve managed to do the prudent thing.
Make that twice. I’m instantly reminded of Jake and our aborted tryst in the kitchen. Jake’s kisses were so full of urgency—so different from Ben’s, which had been tender, sweet, tentative. Nothing like months of fitful ruminating, and the elegant foreplay of a terrific meal designed, I can now see, to push all of my buttons. The difference? A long and complicated history—which actually had turned out to be the problem.
While I’m waiting for the water to boil, I stop to peek in on Chloe again, asleep in my bedroom. My flight had been delayed for several hours, and I’d gotten home too late to see Chloe awake. But, because I’d insisted, Fiona and my father had dropped her off and put her to sleep in my room. I didn’t want her to wake up one more morning without seeing me. Back in the kitchen, I measure the tea out and put a few biscotti on a plate.
“Mira, I want you to do something for me,” Richard says, startling me. I hadn’t heard him get up and am surprised to find him standing at the kitchen counter leaning heavily on his cane.
“Of course, Richard.”
“I want you to take me to an AA meeting,” he says. It’s the first time either Richard or I have acknowledged his, so far as I know, one and only period of transgression in over twenty years.
“Of course