Chapter 9 #2
They went out the next day to walk around the Village.
He liked the friendly chaotic jumble of her neighborhood, with restaurants, gourmet food stores, and high-end vintage shops with Vuitton trunks in the window.
It felt inviting and informal, and he loved it.
They made love before lunch when they went back to her apartment, saw a movie in the afternoon, and went skating that night in Central Park, their taxi driving them past the tree at Rockefeller Center on the way home.
It was an entirely New York experience, but different from any he’d had before.
He came to the city as a businessman to work there, and came and went quickly.
He hadn’t tasted the life of a New Yorker, and she did everything to make it enjoyable for him.
They had dinner at The Grill and Le Bernardin, as he had requested, and they made love anytime they felt like it.
Devon got up early on Thanksgiving morning to put the turkey in the oven, and when Charlie woke up as he heard her stirring, they made love.
She set a beautiful table for the meal, with delicately embroidered linens that had been her grandmother’s.
Everything she touched was beautiful and thoughtful and meant to please him, and he suddenly had tears in his eyes as they sat down to their Thanksgiving meal and a memory flashed through him.
She had folded the napkins into swans, and he looked at her as though he had seen a ghost, or been visited by one.
“My mother used to do the napkins that way on Thanksgiving. She taught me how to do it, and I used to help her set the table.” He unfolded one, and redid it correctly from a deep memory he had long forgotten.
His fingers remembered how to do it more than his mind.
For an instant, he wondered if his mother had sent Devon to him.
His mother had loved all the same elegant, genteel things that Devon did.
He had married a woman who had no interest at all in elegance or gracious homemaking, who hired a caterer because she couldn’t be bothered, and his father hadn’t cared about the little touches his wife had provided, but Devon did all of it.
She had arranged a beautiful bouquet of flowers for the table, which Charlie’s mother would have done too.
“She was very artistic. She used to paint landscapes,” he said, remembering that too. “I still have one somewhere. My father didn’t like seeing it, it upset him, and he told me to put it away.”
The dinner they had made together was delicious, and they walked to Washington Square and back again afterward, and watched a favorite old movie they both loved that night and made popcorn.
Without knowing it, Devon had provided all the little thoughtful touches that his life had been missing, all his life, since his mother’s death, doing everything his wife should have done for him, and didn’t.
Devon had restored what was lost, and given him his fair due, and he was overwhelmed with all the tender sensations of joy and gratitude that it brought up in him.
“You are the most perfect woman I have ever known,” he whispered to her after the movie, and they made love again.
They went to see the tree at Rockefeller Center on Friday night, which was decorated but not lit yet. Then they went for a drink at the Plaza, and he took her for a hansom cab ride in Central Park, which was corny but wonderful as they snuggled under a blanket and kissed as it started to snow.
They had a Chinese dinner afterward, and saved their fortunes from the cookies.
His said “A very good year ahead,” and hers said “Good things are going to happen.” And then they went home, which felt like home to him now too.
It was easy to settle into the magic of the world she created around her, and included him in.
He felt happy and peaceful and relaxed, and as though he was finally in the right place.
He had called Liam on Thanksgiving,and Faye had sent him a text that said just “Happy Thanksgiving,” and though he was sure she had sent it to her entire address book, andnot particularly to him, he sent her the same generic greeting.
It had been the best Thanksgiving of his life.
The hansom cab ride in the snow was the most romantic moment.
The horse was white with a purple blanket draped over it and its owner wore a top hat.
Devon felt like the princess in the fairy tale with him again.
They took a long walk around Central Park on Saturday, and wandered in and out of a few stores, which were crowded on the holiday weekend, and then they walked all the way back down to the Village.
He was leaving the next day, and they were both trying not to think about it.
The good news was that he would be back in the first week of January for his portrait, so she would only have five weeks without him this time, not eleven.
He was spending Christmas in Atherton with Faye and Liam.
Devon had invited him to come for New Year’s Eve with her, but he wasn’t sure of his plans yet, and he wanted to spend time with Liam before he went back to France.
She had to accept her role in his life in second place after his son, and sometimes his wife.
She didn’t complain, she accepted it gracefully, and was grateful for the week they had just shared.
She couldn’t ask for more than that. Everything about it had been perfect, for both of them.
Charlie was in awe of the magic she had created, and the home she made for him while he was there.
—
They made love that night and the next day before he left. Her eyes were sad when he kissed her, and so were his. He had a heavy heart, leaving her. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay there in her arms and her bed and her warm cozy home forever.
“See you in January,” he said in a hoarse voice, fighting back tears.
“Thank you for every minute of this week.” He thought of the swan napkins again but couldn’t say it.
She had given him a cherished memory of the past, and memories for the future to keep him warm.
She had given him everything beyond what he could have dreamed of. He kissed her before he got in the car.
“I love you,” he whispered. There was nothing else to say.
She had done and said it all, and she stood smiling and waving on the sidewalk in a pink fuzzy sweater as he drove away, with his heart aching, as he tucked it all into his pocket like a string of bright beads that would remind him of each moment.
He looked strangely sober as he boarded the plane.
It was late afternoon and it was dark. Her light had shone so brightly for the entire week.
As the plane took off, he thought of the napkins again.
He remembered his last Thanksgiving with his mother, the flowers on the table, the swan napkins, a beautifully embroidered tablecloth like Devon’s grandmother’s.
All the little touches that Devon did so naturally and so well, and it was like an omen that the same fate would befall her as his mother.
He couldn’t bear it, losing another person like her.
She was too perfect for this world. She loved him too much, and he knew that if something bad happened to her, he couldn’t save her either.
One day she would die, just like his mother had.
He had his phone in his hand and he wanted to thank her for an exquisite week, but he felt as though his fingers were frozen and he couldn’t.
He couldn’t write her anything. He just stared out the window at the clouds they were flying through and the night sky above them.
There were tears running down his cheeks, as he thought of Devon and his mother.
He closed his eyes in a pain he hadn’t felt in years.
He stared out the window for a long time, with a feeling of terror and despair, and then he fell asleep, and woke when they landed in San Francisco.
He hadn’t eaten dinner or watched a movie.
He was going to send Devon a text, thanking her, but as he slipped his phone into his pocket, he knew he couldn’t.