The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [34]
She’d lied that night she told Bill that of course she’d told Doug how upset she was about Paisley’s condition. They hadn’t discussed it at all. Doug has the rough outline of the situation now only because Julianne spends time at Paisley’s after work and feels she owes him an explanation on the nights she can’t go to dinner until later. She’ll never tell him about her electric fingers that pick up illness with a touch. It’s not so much that she can’t talk about it as that she’s spared from it. Doug allows her to leave the worst of her fears at the office.
It’s just that, tonight, she’d be grateful for a chance to discuss Paisley’s backache with someone who’d listen without looking like he was about to throw up.
“Okay, be pensive if you want to,” Doug says, cajoling. “Sometimes I’m pensive myself.”
“Never.” He’s so loquacious, she can’t help but smile. In the half light of the car, he turns to her with eyes that seem almost patent-leather black, cow eyes but more intelligent, caressing her with a lambent gaze full of feeling. It makes her believe he’s concerned about her in some deep, heartfelt way that has nothing to do with the cause of her distress, only with his desire to ease it. She recognizes this as the most extraordinary kind of gift.
Does she love him? She doesn’t know. All she knows is that she’s no longer interested in having dinner. She wants to go to her house and have an hour alone with him before Toby comes home. Doug puts on his blinker, then does a U-turn as if he’s reading her mind. He gives her a smile that turns into a leer and makes her laugh. She’s not so interested in the actual sex anymore, given the dryness that makes it painful. What she longs for now are those warm moments of flesh on flesh that sometimes, on the worst days, are the only way to obliterate the dark. She’s glad Doug doesn’t want to know about blackness that invades her less as a premonition than as a certainty, traveling the blood with the very touch and feel of death. She’s glad. If he knew about the darkness, maybe his touch wouldn’t chase it away.
“Better step on it,” she whispers. Even if something is missing—that urgent, clenched fist of desire she used to feel when she was young—she’s grateful for what is left. If an interest in finance and food is healthy, think of the benefits of making love.
Chapter 9
Paisley—Swimming
Here’s another one I never told. I met Mason when I was twelve.
Funny, how some people fall in love. Sort of like being hit over the head with a baseball bat, in the nicest possible way.
I never tell anyone how young I was. I just say I met him at the swimming pool, which is true enough. I’d never liked swimming, but there I sat, an early bloomer in a lawn chair, dazed and hormone drenched, soaking up the sun. My mother had practically kicked me out of the house. I’d been checking my reflection in the mirror a dozen times a day, tossing my hair, stomping through the rooms.
“Go swimming,” she told me. “Do exercise. Take a cold shower.”
The only sport I liked was tennis. Still, you got to wear fewer clothes at the swimming pool. I went every day.
I was so sure of myself, so sure. It was a new feeling. Heady stuff, having people look at you. Boys. All I wanted was to hang out with the high school girls. I thought I was ready for them. Not so. Even the freshmen were two years older than I was. The only ones who paid me any attention were Stacey Johnson—think Rizzo from Grease, but without the soft side—and her two tough sidekicks. All three of them teased me, asking