29. Alice Bad Juju
Alice Bad Juju
Sometimes I wondered what would have happened with my husbands had they not died. If Glen hadn’t been killed in a car crash on the way to his knee surgery pre-op, would we be watching a movie with our kids and dog right now? If Walter hadn’t fallen off that ladder, would we be on the beach hunting for shells? Would we be happy? Sometimes, listening to the stories of my fellow mommune members, I wasn’t so sure. With all the lying and cheating and deception that went on, would any of my loves have lasted?
Maybe it was na?ve, but I always came back to Jeremy. I always believed that we would have been the ones to make it forever; we would have been the ones to fight through the hardest times and make it to the other side. But I never had the chance to find out. And that was what I couldn’t move past. Or maybe I didn’t want to move past it. Was that why I stayed here in this house, pouring salt in the wound?
The first time Jeremy ever brought me to Juniper Shores, twenty-five years ago, we had walked by this house that has been mine for years now. “Babe, one day you and I are going to live in this house,” he said. “It’s going to be all ours.”
I knew that was why I had convinced Walter to buy it, pooling his resources with the insurance money I had saved from Jeremy. Sure, it was a ridiculously large home for two people. But as a bed-and-breakfast, it was perfect. We had our own private suite upstairs, on the front of the house, and the rest was set up ideally for couples or families looking for a beach getaway. I had told Walter it was my dream to run a bed-and-breakfast. But that wasn’t wholly true. It had been my dream to live in this house with Jeremy. It was as if, by buying it finally, I had made good on our promise; I had carried out our dream.
Only now, as I drove alone through town, I realized that one person couldn’t make another’s dreams come true. Not completely, anyway. And certainly not when the other person was dead.
I walked to Elliott’s front door. For months after he left town, I would ride by to see if a FOR SALE sign had appeared in the yard. It never had. And so maybe a tiny bit of me had always been clinging to the hope that he would come back home. Now that he had, my body felt jittery, tingling, alive with the mere thought of being in his arms. I was a forty-five-year-old woman, for heaven’s sake. But he made me feel like some hormone-addled schoolgirl. I was here to have a serious talk with him, I reminded my pounding heart.
But then the front door flew open before I even knocked. And I don’t know if it was me or him or some law of physics or chemistry or nature, but the moment I saw that man, my mouth found his, and his hands were underneath my dress, which I knew was too short, where he could grasp perfectly to pull me into him. Then his mouth was in the hollow of my throat and my hands were in the waistband of his jeans, and I couldn’t even have told you what talking was, much less have done it. Elliott lifted me in the air, and I wrapped my legs around him, my arms around him, my mouth on his mouth. I felt so small and safe in his arms, like I was floating on air, until I came down, soft and slow, on the thick comforter on his bed. I was thrumming with what would come next, grasping for it. Every look, every touch these past couple of weeks had been foreshadowing this exact moment that I realized I couldn’t wait one more second for.
I pulled Elliott’s T-shirt over his head greedily. But he, now shirtless and gorgeous, unbuttoned the top button of my dress, kissing the skin underneath it. Then the second button. Then the third. It was slow and languid, and every time he touched me, I felt like I might burst into flame. He sat back, staring at every inch of me like I was the only woman he had ever seen, like my skin was fresh and young and perfect, like I was new, untouched.
“I love you,” he said firmly, seriously. “I mean it.”
I nodded, pulling him to me, wrapping my arms around his strong, smooth back. “I love you too,” I said, in his ear, so he would know I meant it.
I was reminded that three husbands and several serious boyfriends later, Elliott and I together were some sort of metaphysical poetry. I lost myself in him, forgot I was tethered to the earth for minutes at a time. It didn’t hurt that he was in his physical prime, perfectly fit and toned, filled out and weathered enough to look like a real man. But it was more than that. We had a connection that I could no longer deny, a connection that would force me to make some tough decisions.
Afterward he got up to shower, and I stretched my arms long in Elliott’s bed. I was usually a stickler for white sheets, but, when we were together a year ago, I had come to love his plaid ones, worn soft and thin from washing. I loved looking out the picture window in his sparse bedroom, seeing his boat docked in the canal right out front.
Now freshly shaven, Elliott got back into bed and wrapped himself around me smelling of Colgate and Old Spice. The Original, of course. “Gosh,” he said into my ear, “wouldn’t it be great if we could wake up like this every morning?”
I turned to kiss him. “I don’t know,” I said sleepily, my body so relaxed I wondered how I would possibly go on with my day. “Would it? Or would I become old hat and you would get sick of me?”
He kissed my neck and my shoulder and my elbow. “Never, ever, ever, ever could I get sick of you. You are the most intoxicatingly fascinating woman I have ever known. There is never enough you for me.”
That made me smile. I wondered if all my losses had made me too closed off. On the contrary, it seemed I had shared just enough with this hot, hot antiques dealer with chiseled abs, more stories than O. Henry, and a kind heart. He was perfect. If I was ever going to get married again… But no. Nope. I would never get married again. I loved Elliott, so it was my job to keep him safe. Even from me. Yes, I was back in his bed. But it wasn’t my boyfriends who died; it was my husbands. So as long as I wasn’t walking down the aisle toward him, I reasoned, things would be okay.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to that estate auction right now?”
“I need to leave in five,” he said. “But I wish you’d come with me. Isn’t antiquing with her boyfriend every woman’s dream?”
“Anywhere you are sounds like a dream,” I said. “I wish I could go with you.” I looked over at the old white Sony clock radio on his nightstand that he had pulled out of a box of things from college after his divorce. “But I need to be home. I don’t think Julie could manage without me there for the girls, and Charlotte has a new job, and I promised I’d help with shuffling Iris around to practices so she wouldn’t have to worry. And, of course, there’s bath time and mounds of laundry and…” I trailed off, leaning over to kiss him. He ran his fingers up and down my bare stomach and I said, “Maybe you could just stay right here?”
“Maybe you could,” he whispered. Elliott pulled away, sat up, and studied me as if he was debating something.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s just… well…” He hesitated, and I knew what he was going to say.
“I’m ready to move on,” I said, cutting him off, saying what was in my heart.
His eyes widened.
“No! No!” I amended. “Not from you! To you.”
He put his hand to his heart. “Well, that’s a relief. Geez, Alice. You sure know how to make a man panic. So does this mean that we get to have the talk now?” he asked, grinning at me.
“Let’s do.”
He studied me for a moment, as if unsure how much to say.
“You aren’t going to scare me away,” I said, meaning it. “Elliott, I haven’t felt like this since…” I paused and looked out the window over the water. I was going to say “since Jeremy,” but I didn’t think that was even accurate. I was so young with Jeremy, everything was so rose-colored. “Well, I haven’t felt like this ever. I haven’t fallen like this in my entire life.”
He smiled at me. “Well, good. If you aren’t scared…” He paused.
I laughed and motioned for him to continue. “If I’m not scared…”
“I want us to live together. I want to be with you for real.”
I took a deep breath. I’d had a feeling that was coming. The obvious next thing to say was: “Elliott, you’ve been back in town for a minute. Don’t you think we’re moving kind of fast?”
But I knew the answer even before he said, “Al, we were right here last year before you unceremoniously dumped me.” He grinned and winked at me. “Moving in was the obvious next step. And I know I haven’t been back long, but nothing has changed. I don’t feel like we’re starting over.”
“Me neither,” I whispered. “But the moving thing could be a little tricky.…”
“If you just didn’t have all these hangers-on.…”
I laughed and swatted his arm. “Don’t call them that! They are my family. I love them.”
“Some of them are your family,” he said.
“No. All of them are my family.”
“Fine,” he said. “They’re your family. But what about me?”
“You are my love,” I said. I thought about that beautiful house on the beach, the one I had redone with such tender care, looked after because in some weird way I was convinced that, if I could just make that house good enough, it would bring Jeremy back to me. But Jeremy was dead. The dream was dead. And it had taken me years to realize that. I was scared by how certain I felt, but I knew it was true when I said, “I think I have to leave that house.”
Elliott scrunched his nose. “Bad juju?”
“Something like that.” I knew he was thinking about Walter, about his death-by-ladder. But it wasn’t Walter who haunted me in that house. It was Jeremy. And I knew a part of me didn’t want to let him go. Because if I did, then it was really over. I chastised myself constantly for harping on something that had happened eighteen years ago. Was it even normal to hold on to a love so tightly for so long?
“So do you want to move in here?” he asked.
Elliott’s house was fine. It was small and masculine, and his boat was right there. I had had a change in my financial situation as of late that would have made selling my house and moving into his the most feasible option. But I couldn’t very well kick everyone else out just because I had moved on.
“A fresh start?” I asked.
He smiled. “Sure. I’ll start looking. You do the same.”
I nodded. “But, Elliott, I can’t put a timeline on this. I have to let Julie, Grace, and Charlotte know and give them plenty of time to make a new plan.”
“Sure,” he said. “I get that. I can’t imagine that we’ll find the perfect house right away anyway.”
Was I really doing this again? Mingling finances and lives with another man? Leaving the safety of the mommune? Was I ready for all that? Maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t. But I reasoned that I’d never know unless I tried.
I didn’t want Elliott to leave. But he had a job and a life, and he needed to get to it. “You’re going to be late!” I piped up, trying to sound sunny. “I’ll walk out with you.”
“Stay as long as you like,” he said.
He kissed me, long and deep and sweet. “One day,” he said, “I’m going to sweep you off your feet. I’m going to whisk you away to a lavender field in Provence and keep you all to myself.”
“That sounds lovely.”
“I see you there,” he said. “When I close my eyes and I picture you, that gorgeous dark hair of yours is blowing in the wind in a field of lavender.”
I kissed him again. That wife of his was a fool. Who would cheat on a man like this?
I drove back to the mommune in a love-soaked haze. I knew a life with Elliott was what I wanted, but I was responsible for so many people; so many lives were tied up with mine. I couldn’t just leave them. And I wanted a life with them too. It was impossible to have both.
I walked up the steps and through the house to the front porch. I stood there, watching the waves roll to the shore. Then I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. And I wasn’t even a little surprised to find that when I inhaled, I no longer tasted salt air. All I could smell was lavender.