Chapter lxii
lxii
THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY, EVA AND I WERE SUPPOSED to go shopping together.
“To take your mind off things,” she said. “Plus it’s good luck to buy a new dress for the opening night of a gallery show.”
I didn’t really believe that shopping would take my mind off Dax, or the heaviness that settled on my heart when I thought about a future without a partner, without that kind of love. Still, it was nice to have something to look forward to. But for the second time in a row, we had to change our plans. This time she was sick—not strep like Sammy’d had, luckily, but a head cold—so instead of shopping, I went up to her studio with some tea.
“How are you feeling?” I asked when I walked in the door, glad I could take care of her for a bit, the way she took care of me.
“Like my brain is full of cotton wool,” she said.
“Can I get you decongestants? Something else?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I have what I need. Come, sit.” She indicated a chair set near her couch.
Eva’s studio was beautiful. Being there felt like living inside a museum. She had one wall that was covered floor-to-ceiling with her framed artwork, and another that held a huge tapestry she’d made. She’d embroidered pillows, which were placed artfully on her bed. The sun was streaming in her window.
“So,” I said, wanting to hear about something happy, something hopeful. “How have things been with your paramour?”
Eva laughed. “We had to cancel our plans for dinner last night, but we’re having fun together. Enjoying each other’s company.”
I loved that Eva was having a romance at eighty-nine. I wanted that, too.
“I’ve never asked,” I said, “but at one point you intimated that there was someone in your past …”
Eva looked down at a ring she wore on her right-hand ring finger. “He gave me this,” she said, showing me a delicate gold ring with a small ruby in it. I knew she always wore it, but I hadn’t known there was a meaning to it. “It was a promise ring, right before he left to serve in the Korean War. He said that when he came back, he would trade it in for a diamond, and we would get married.”
I looked at the ring again. “He never came back?” I said softly.
“He never came back,” she repeated, turning my question into a statement.
Then she looked up at me. “But that was a long time ago. A very long time ago.”
I nodded.
“Speaking of lovers,” she said. “Any new developments with your doctor? A change of heart?”
I shook my head. “It’s over,” I told her, blinking back tears. “It’s just it’s not the time. I don’t know if it will ever be.”
“That’s what I kept thinking,” she said, handing me a tissue for my tears, “that it wasn’t the time. And then the time passed me right by. Don’t let it do the same to you.”
I took the tissue and wiped my eyes. “I won’t,” I said. “Promise.”
But I wasn’t sure if it was a promise I could keep.
“Even though we’re not going shopping today, please make sure you get a new dress,” she said, seemingly out of nowhere. “For the show. For luck.”
“I will,” I said.
And that I knew I would do.