How Sweet It Is - Alice J. Wisler [35]
“Your grandpa seemed to have loads of money.” She lifts a piece of smoky catfish off the grill with Ernest’s tongs. “What did he do?”
“You mean besides traveling all over the world after he lost his wife?” I deliberately pause for effect. “He was a surgeon in Pennsylvania. You know, one of those rich doctors.”
Sally smiles and pokes me with the end of the tongs. “How’s the hot tub?”
“I haven’t…”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t been in it yet!”
————
Catfish and trout always taste better when you’ve caught and cleaned them yourself. We enjoy our meal out on the deck as a tame breeze blows against our faces.
After we wash the dishes, Sally helps me pull the covering from the hot tub and shows me how to heat the water. Sometimes all you need in life to get something done is sheer determination, and Sally is set on enhancing her mountain cabin weekend with time in the hot tub. She’s brought her swimsuit, a cute little one-piece that slenderizes her even more than she normally looks. I put my suit on, too. I try not to look at my scars, even though Sally does. “They are healing nicely,” she tells me in her most medical tone of voice.
“But they’ll never completely fade,” I say. I know this for a fact, regardless of Dr. Bland’s attempts to encourage me. “Will they?”
She looks at me with empathy; her eyes are full of warmth and understanding. “Deena, they will only cause you as much trouble as you allow them to cause you.”
That’s a strange thing to say, I think, as I lower myself into the bubbly water. That isn’t even an answer to my question.
Later, as we put sheets on the couch’s pullout bed, Sally tells me that she ran into Lucas at Starbucks. “He tried to avoid me at first, but I made a great effort to make sure he noticed me.”
“How’d you do that?”
“I stood right in front of him as he went over to that little counter to put cream in his coffee.”
“What did he say?” I want to hear that he asked about me, that he missed me, that he was oh-so-terribly sorry for cheating on me. I wait, feeling like Giovanni must when my aunt pulls a dog biscuit from her pocket.
Sally tugs at the corner of the fitted sheet and smoothes it onto the mattress. Then she sits on the edge of the bed and glances down. “I lied.”
“You didn’t see him?”
She’s let her hair down from the clip, and now her red curls bounce as she shakes her head. Looking at me, she explains. “I did see him.”
“At Starbucks?”
“Yeah.”
Okay, I think, this is going around in circles, like Giovanni before he settles onto the rug by the sliding glass door.
Sally bites her lower lip, the familiar Sally gesture that endears her to me. “I told him you were madly in love with a cardiologist and living in London.”
Laughter bursts out of me. “Really?”
She peers at me, lets her eyes lock with mine. “Are you mad at me?”
“That you lied? No.”
Her sigh, a form of release, fills the living room. She smiles. “It was just time for payback. You should have seen his face.”
Lucas once said if we lived in London we could go to a different pub every night and see a play at the theater every Saturday. He was in an artistic mood, and his voice was rich with dreaming. “I’ll play polo and then we can eat those tea sandwiches or scones or whatever they eat over there.”
I held his hand and told him that I would go anywhere with him. Now I say to Sally, “He always wanted to live in London.”
She nods as her eyes grow wide for emphasis. “That’s exactly why I said you were living in London. I wanted him to feel something.” She twists a curl around her index finger. “I wanted him to feel jealous.”
My thoughts spin. Jealous? Is that what I want him to feel? Is that what I feel? Hatred—that’s my little flame I keep throwing sticks into. Keep those fires of hatred burning.
Sally, who has never been able to be serious for any length of time, is ready to get back into her comfort zone. She scans the room as a smile rushes to her mouth. “What’s with all these kitchen tools?”
“He collected them, won them, bought them, whenever he traveled.”
“He… meaning your grandfather?”
“Good