The Look of Love: A Novel (17 page)

“Not really,” he says. “I don’t own a lot of stuff, have a great cleaning lady, and am not home a lot. The neat-apartment trifecta.”

I walk to the window. “The views are amazing from up here.”

“Yeah,” he says. “They are pretty great. I didn’t expect to like Seattle as much as I do.”

“The city gets under your skin, doesn’t it?”

Cam uncorks a bottle of wine, pours two glasses, and walks to the balcony, where he stands beside me and offers me a glass. Our eyes meet. “You’ve gotten under my skin too,” he says, reaching for my hand. I let him take it. “In the best of ways.”

I take a sip of wine and smile. “Thank you.”

His cell phone buzzes on the kitchen counter.

“It’s OK if you want to take that,” I say.

He makes an annoyed face in the direction of his phone. “I don’t want to, but I probably should. I’ve been trying to track down a very important source all week, and this could be him.”

I smile. “Go ahead.”

He picks up the phone. “This is Cameron Collins,” he says in a confident, businesslike tone. I love his voice, so confident and, well, sexy. “Yes, hi. Thank you so much for calling.” He casts an apologetic glance at me and then holds up two fingers as if to say, “Just two minutes.”

I nod as he walks to his bedroom down the hall. His voice is muffled from behind the partially closed door, but the intensity in his tone comes through.

He returns five minutes later, looking harried and distracted. “Sorry,” he says.

“I’m enjoying the view,” I say, reaching for his hand in an attempt to regain the closeness the call interrupted. “Thank you for telling me about . . . Joanna earlier.”

“I wanted to tell you,” he continues, sitting beside me. “It’s important that you know the circumstances that have molded me.” He’s thoughtful for a moment. “You know, she was going to have surgery. A potentially life-saving surgery, one that could have cured her, but she passed away three days before the scheduled operation.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say in a hushed voice.

He rubs his forehead. “Yeah, you mentioned that your neurologist was in favor of your having surgery. I have to be honest and say that, well, I’m worried about you. What if surgery really could prevent the type of cognitive decline your doctors are worried about?”

I sigh. “For now, I’m not ready to have the operation. Of course, Dr. Heller thinks I’m foolish, and you probably do too.”

“I don’t,” he says. “But you know that I side with science. Still, it’s your decision, Jane, and no one else’s.”

I nod. “I know it sounds crazy, but I believe that what I see is real.”

“You mean, your gift, your ability to see love?”

“Yes,” I say. “It’s a gut feeling. And even in the face of Dr. Heller’s warnings about the damage these episodes may be doing to my brain, I know I must complete my process.”

Cam looks inquisitive. “You mean, identify the six types of love?”

“Yes.”

He leans closer to me. “Do you ever wish that you could see love in your own life?”

“Yes,” I reply. “It would make things a whole lot easier, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He looks away suddenly and rubs his hand through his dark hair.

“Why do you say that?”

He shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

“No,” I say, a little more firmly than I intended. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

He looks at me, hesitant at first. His eyes soften. “She didn’t know me in the end,” he says. “After all those years of loving her, of caring for her, she didn’t even know me.”

“But it was her illness,” I say. “Not her heart.”

“That’s what I tell myself,” he says. “But I looked into her eyes in the end, and there was no love there.”

“Surely she loved you, deep down,” I reassure him. “She just couldn’t access it anymore. She was ill.”

He nods. “And yet it’s nagged at me all these years, how love is like a switch that can be turned on and off with the flick of a finger. If it can be illuminated and then darkened so quickly, effortlessly, how can you trust it?”

“Oh, Cam,” I say, reaching for his hand again. He takes it in his.

I inch closer to him. “I want to kiss you.”

He smiles and leans toward me. His skin smells of soap, fabric softener, and man. “Thank you for telling me your story,” I say. “I think I understand you now.”

“I still don’t believe in all the voodoo,” he says, grinning. “And I may side with your doctor about there being a medical explanation—”

I place my finger on his lips. “Let’s agree to disagree. For now, I just want to kiss you.”

He smiles bigger, then pulls my hand to his mouth and kisses it softly, before cupping my cheeks in his hands and pulling my mouth toward his. He kisses me softly at first, then with a surge of intensity, and for a moment, I forget the season, the month, the day of the week. I am entwined with Cam, and he with me.

342 Pine Street #4

M
el stares at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. It is the first of June, and he misses his late wife, as he always does this time of the year, when birds are chirping and couples walk hand in hand through the market. He can see her there, the way she used to be, standing behind him in the mirror, arms lovingly wrapped around his shoulders. The mirage feels so real, he swears he can smell her perfume.

As he walks to the elevator, through the lobby of his apartment building, and out to the street, he thinks of Adele. The two were married the first weekend of June fifty years ago, and he is sorely aware of this fact when he sees a wedding party in the distance, posing in front of the iconic Pike Place Market sign. He smiles and waves at the bride in a fluffy white dress, walking in heels along the Market’s cobblestones, with her new husband beside her. A photographer follows behind, documenting their love in all its perfection.

Adele always loved weddings. She’d place her hand on her heart, and the other in Mel’s hand, and say, “Look at them, dear. Aren’t they beautiful?”

She was special, Adele. She could read him like a book, and even when she came across an unsavory passage, she never once set the book back on the shelf. She adored the story of their love, even the rocky chapters.

High school sweethearts don’t often last, but Mel and Adele stood the test of time. And when her cancer came, Mel faced it fiercely. He could not fathom the idea of letting a disease take the love of his life. But it did. First it took her body, whittling her away to a mere ninety pounds. Then it took her mind, ravaging her brain, until she no longer recognized him.

Adele had died on June 2, eight years before. She took her last breath at a quarter past nine. Mel held her hand and watched her eyelids flutter for the last time, then crawled into her hospital bed and held her for hours, until her body grew cold beside his and the hospital staff told him he must go.

The night of her death, Mel went home to the apartment they had shared above the market, and for the first time, he felt like a stranger in his own home. Without Adele, home felt like a hollow place. Where there was once love and laughter, there was only sadness, grief. He couldn’t bear to sleep in their queen-size bed with the quilt Adele had lovingly made. Instead, he retreated to the couch, where he has slept for the past eight years.

Sometimes, even now, and especially on warm June days, he expects her to round the corner and appear in the distance, smiling. She’d hand him a sandwich, kiss him, and ask when he’d be home for dinner, though he was home for dinner at five o’clock sharp each day. She never got tired of asking him, and he never got tired of telling her. “When will you be home for dinner, dear?” “Five o’clock, darling.”

There was a cadence, a rhythm to their life together that ebbed and flowed naturally, like the relationship between the moon and the tide—pulling, giving, balancing each other out. And so when Adele passed, Mel lost his moon. He lost his rhythm. Everything seemed out of step—sleep, meals, the hours of the day. He was like a tide that no longer knew when to come in or go out. He simply floated, the way a piece of driftwood in Elliott Bay might, caught in the current, pushed this way and that, until one day, it finds its way to shore on a sunny June day. And for the first time in a long time—years, maybe—it dries out in the warm sand.

Mel stands at his newsstand and feels the sunshine on his face. He is seventy-three, too old to be working day in and day out the way he does, but what else is there for him now? Take up golf? Sit in his apartment and watch sports? He bristles at the thought of retirement. Besides, he likes to be in the thick of life. The market is like a beautiful river, filled with people who stream in and out with their flowers and their bags of spring asparagus and bright red radishes and honeycomb in plastic cups. He likes to sit on the riverbank and wave and watch and take it all in. And occasionally someone passes who strikes him. A mother and a child. A young man and his prom date with a corsage pinned to her dress with shaking hands, no doubt. Or . . . a woman.

Vivian first appeared at the market on Christmas Eve. With her fur-lined coat, sharp temper, and British accent, she was a pay grade or two above him.

It was a schoolboy crush, he told himself, not unlike the time, before Adele moved to Seattle and enrolled at West Seattle High, he pined for Betty Lou Mansfield, the most popular girl in school. One Friday after school, he asked her to have a Coke with him at the diner, and she turned him down with such cruelty, he vowed never again to forget his place.

But now, with Vivian, he’s steered back into Betty Lou territory. And though he has no real way of knowing whether Vivian is even remotely interested in him, his fascination with her is growing. He wonders, for instance, how she takes her eggs; if she likes the opera as much as he does; and whether she seeks the moon each night, if only a glimpse of it glowing behind the clouds, the way he has a habit of doing.

It’s foolish, he tells himself, to think that she might want to know him the way he wants to know her. And yet, when she walks by his newsstand, he cannot look away.

On this particular June morning, Mel finds himself in a starched shirt, with freshly combed hair (well, what he has left of it), at Vladimir’s Egg Nest, in the market. Founded by a Russian immigrant in the 1970s, the restaurant serves the best omelets and eggs Benedict in Seattle, and every Friday, Mel sits at a corner table by the window. He likes to read the newspaper and watch the seagulls peck at clamshells on the ledge beneath the windowsill.

Vladimir’s grandson, Johnny, approaches Mel’s table. “The usual?”

“Yes, sir,” he says with a nod. If he needed to state his order, which he doesn’t, he’d say: “Two eggs, over easy. Dry wheat toast. And please bring out the Tabasco when you have a moment.”

Johnny disappears into the kitchen just as the restaurant door squeaks open. Mel turns to see Vivian standing in the entryway. She looks beautiful in a black dress and gray cashmere cardigan. A strand of pearls clings to her neckline. She notices him and, just briefly, the edges of her mouth turn upward. Even the tiniest notion of a smile from her makes Mel beam.

“Table for one?” Johnny says, reappearing from the kitchen.

“Yes,” Vivian says coolly. His question has mildly irritated her. Don’t people know that one does not draw attention to solitary dining?

He seats her at the table beside Mel. “Best view in town from right here,” Johnny says, pulling her chair out for her.

“I can see that,” she says, looking out to the bay.

Johnny hands her a menu, and Mel watches as her delicate, manicured hands hold it, closed.

“Two eggs, over easy. Whole wheat toast, no butter,” she says, clearly speaking from experience.

Johnny exchanges a glance with Mel. “Excellent choice,” he says. “I’ll have that right up for you.”

Vivian stares out the window. Mel folds and refolds the napkin in his lap a dozen times, and each time he opens his mouth to speak, he closes it quickly. For some reason, nothing he can think of to say seems worthy of her air space. And so he sits silently, relishing being near her.

When Johnny returns with their identical meals, he also sets a bottle of Tabasco at Mel’s table. “Bon appétit,” he says, turning to seat a group of people who have just entered the restaurant.

Mel douses his eggs with a generous dose of Tabasco. Before taking a bite, he looks up and his eyes catch Vivian’s.

“Excuse me,” she says. “May I borrow the Tabasco? There doesn’t seem to be any at my table.”

Mel’s eyes light up, and he fumbles to set his fork down. “My pleasure,” he says, speaking two words that sum up everything he feels for this mysterious woman. It is his pleasure to sit beside her, to pass the Tabasco, to exchange sideways glances across breakfast tables.

It will be his pleasure.

After she has finished her meal, Vivian pays her bill and stands to leave, but before she walks out the door, she turns to Mel and offers two words of her own: “Good day.”

And as the door closes and she disappears into the market, Mel thinks to himself,
Yes, it is a very good day
.

June 9

I
hear my phone ringing in the kitchen, where it’s plugged into the wall outlet beside the counter, and I groan as I sit up in bed. Sam lifts his head up from the corner of the mattress, then sets it down, echoing my irritation at being roused before eight a.m. I was at the shop, up late into the night finishing the arrangements for Katie’s wedding—sixty vases of white hydrangeas studded with irises, not to mention the elaborate ceremony decor for the church—and I was counting on at least another hour of sleep to provide the energy I need to be both the wedding florist and a bridesmaid today. Alas, I forgot to turn the ringer off last night, and now I am . . . awake.

I stumble to the kitchen and see Dr. Heller’s name on the screen. “Hello?” I say groggily.

“Jane, sorry to call this early,” she says. “But you’ve been on my mind. It’s been a few months since your last office visit. And you know my position on surgery. It’s a novel procedure, Jane, with minimal risk. I think it’s the only option, and you must take it. I’m worried about you.”

I sigh. “Dr. Heller, I’d like to live through this year without surgical intervention.”

“You still believe what that woman told you, don’t you? That your health condition is actually a gift?”

“Yes,” I say. My heart beats faster as I think of Colette and her instructions to me about not failing in my search to identify the six types of love. “And as much as I trust you and understand your concern, I feel that I must see this through.”

I can sense Dr. Heller’s disappointment. “Even if that means destruction to your brain? We have measurable results about what your episodes are doing to your brain, Jane. With each episode, damage happens, eating away at your brain tissue. And it’s getting cumulatively worse.”

I sink into the couch. “You may be right,” I say. “And I may regret the decision. But my sense is to keep moving forward. I can’t explain why or how, but I know I must.”

“I have made my best medical recommendation,” Dr. Heller says. “I only hope you’ll continue to consider it.”

“I have, and I will,” I say.

“And, Jane,” Dr. Heller continues. “There’s something else. And I hesitate to tell you, but . . . actually, no. I’m sorry. I . . . I . . . never mind.”

“What do you mean, Dr. Heller?”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not my place to meddle.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Just be careful,” she says.

“I don’t have any idea what you mean.”

“I’ve already said too much.”

“What are you thinking about?” Lo asks, as I pause on the lower steps of the church and look up at the sky. The clouds appear rippled and wispy, like a fine layer of lace draped over the blue sky.

“My mom,” I say, half-smiling. “She used to love weddings.”

“I know she did,” Lo says softly.

“She used to let me try on her veil,” I continue. “The one she wore when she married my father. I used to pull up a stool and climb to the top drawer of her dresser and carefully unfold it. She’d clip it in place, and I’d feel like a princess.”

Lo turns her gaze from the clouds back to me. “You’re worried that you’re not going to have your day, aren’t you?”

I shrug. “A wedding, you mean? No, it’s bigger than that. It’s not the wedding I’m concerned about.”

“But love,” she says matter-of-factly.

I nod.

“Me, too,” she continues, squeezing my hand.

Together we walk ahead up the steps. The ceremony is at three, and we have time to give the church flowers a final once-over—freesia and white roses, with a mix of hydrangeas in shades ranging from stark white to spring green.

Katie and her mother emerge from the bride’s room and gasp at the sight of the blooms. “They’re perfect,” Katie says through tears of joy. I bend over to retie a bow on one of the back pews that holds a nosegay in place. “Come on, you two, let’s get you dressed. Mary just got here and she wants to give you updos.”

“Updos,” I say with a grin as Lo and I follow Katie down the hall.

“I love weddings,” Mary says, taking a lock of my hair and threading it through the curling iron a moment later. “The sense of possibility. The way two people declare their love together so publicly.”

I smile. “Me, too. Airports, weddings, and hospitals all give me that fluttery feeling in my stomach.”

“It’s beginnings and ends that are so poignant,” Mary says nostalgically, pinning a curl to my head. “What did F. Scott Fitzgerald write? Something like, ‘I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything.’” She nods. “I want to be loved like that. Decisively. Intentionally.”

I know these words sting Lo, because when she sits down in the chair for her hair to be styled, she changes the subject immediately. “We need to get a girls’ trip on the calendar. For the winter. Somewhere sunny.”

Mary points to her bulging belly. “But I’ll have to bring along a little guest.”

“That’s OK,” Lo says. “We’re baby friendly.”

Mary smiles. “She’ll fit right in, I think.”

My eyes widen. “
She’ll
?”

“Yes,” Mary says. “I just found out. I’m having a girl.”

“That calls for champagne,” Katie says, walking toward us with a freshly uncorked bottle. She looks stunning in her gown, and I help her attach her veil to her intricate updo as Lo leans into the mirror and reapplies a bit of red lipstick.

“Maybe you’ll catch the bouquet,” Katie says, eyeing Lo and me.

I smile, but Lo looks taken aback by the comment. “I don’t favor that tradition,” she says, shaking her head vehemently.

I see that her eyes look troubled, and I make a mental note to ask her about Grant later. Something happened, or didn’t happen.

Suddenly, Katie turns to me. “How much time do we have before the ceremony?”

I glance at my cell phone on the dressing table. “Five minutes.”

She grimaces. “I think I have to pee.”

“I’ll take you,” I say, smiling. “You’re going to need help with all your . . . layers.”

She grins. “I’m already second-guessing the shapewear.”

We walk down the back hallway of the church and round a corner, which is when I notice Josh in the distance, in a well-tailored tux. His good looks equally match Katie’s, but I know that their love is bigger than skin-deep. I’ve seen it. I’ve
felt
it.

“Stop!” Katie shouts down the hallway as soon as she sees Josh walking our way. “Close your eyes. Don’t look at me! It’s bad luck!” I close my eyes too. Their love is too powerful to look at.

But he doesn’t obey. I watch him saunter toward us through squinted eyes. He’s unable to take his eyes off his bride. And without uttering a word, or with any regard to my presence, he tucks his strong hands around the bodice of Katie’s dress and pulls her toward him. My heart palpitates a little in the presence of their electric connection. I look away as he kisses her. Their love is intense, and I can’t risk having an episode like the one I had the first time I saw them together, right before the ceremony.

“You,” he says to Katie, “look divine. I have never in my life seen a woman more beautiful. Never.”

She grins. “Thank you, handsome,” she says. “But you’re going to ruin my makeup and I haven’t even walked down the aisle. And where is the bathroom?”

I point ahead. “Just around the corner, I think.”

Josh gives her a final peck. “See you at the altar.”

“This better not have been bad luck,” she says.

Her husband-to-be shakes his head. “Nah, we don’t believe in bad luck, remember?”

I intended that Lo and I be each other’s date to the wedding, as we shared the work of the floral design and bridesmaid duties. She couldn’t invite Grant, obviously. Despite her hope that they’d be able to bring their relationship out in the open by spring, he hasn’t yet left his wife, and as a result, they have not yet stepped out of the shadows. When Katie insisted on meeting Cam, and Lo promised she didn’t mind being dateless, I invited him.

“It’s a good thing he’s coming,” Lo says with a sly smile as we check over the delivery of Katie’s white roses. “We need to see how he looks in a suit. Baggy suits won’t cut it.”

In a Tom Ford suit, gray with detailing around the edges of the lapels, Cam makes his entrance at the reception. When he walks up to me and kisses my cheek lightly, Lo flashes me a triumphant, approving grin.

The lights are dim in the Four Seasons Hotel ballroom, but the table arrangements are perfectly accentuated by the glow of candlelight.

Cam leans in and whispers to me, “As far as bridesmaids’ dresses go, you’re rocking that one pretty well.”

I smile and take a sip of my wine. In social situations, especially at weddings, I keep my head down as much as possible. If I look out into the ballroom, if I focus on the couples in my midst, my vision may completely shut down.

Lo looks sad, staring emptily at her phone beside me. “Have you heard from him?” I ask.

She shakes her head and sets her phone down on the table with a sigh. “No,” she says. “And I won’t. He has an event tonight. With his wife.”

I lean back in my chair and sigh. “That can’t feel good.”

She nods. “It doesn’t. But I’m trying to trust him through his process. He says he loves me. And, God, do I love him. I . . .”

Her voice trails off as her eyes wander across the room. And a moment later, I see what she sees: Grant . . . and his beautiful wife. His arm is tucked around the petite blond woman’s waist. They’re both smiling and chatting with Katie’s parents.

Lo shakes her head. “I don’t believe this,” she says. “He’s
here
?”

“Don’t panic,” I say. “So you have a shared connection. He probably couldn’t get out of it.”

“But look at them,” she fumes. “They look so . . .
happy
. That is
not
the picture he painted.”

I glance across the room. “Just because they
look
happy doesn’t mean they are.”

Katie, making her rounds, walks up to our table next. “Can someone spare a glass of white wine?” she whispers to me. “This meet-and-greet stuff is brutal.”

I smile and pour her a glass, which is when she notices the distressed look on Lo’s face. “What is it, sweetie?” she asks.

Lo points to the corner of the room where Grant and his wife are laughing with another couple. “How do you know them?”

Katie squints, then nods. “The woman in the gold dress?”

Lo nods.

“I could be wrong, but I think that’s one of Josh’s father’s colleagues and his wife,” she says. She frowns. “Honestly, it’s all a blur. My newly minted mother-in-law insisted on inviting every person in Seattle, apparently. I—” She pauses and searches Lo’s face. “Is something the matter?”

Lo turns to me. “Do you see it, Jane? Tell me. Are they . . . ? I have to know.”

Katie looks at us both, perplexed, but I focus ahead. I let my eyes wash over Grant and his wife. I can see Lo’s distress. They certainly look the part of the happy, loving couple—both beautiful, all smiles, well dressed, body language that speaks to love, respect for each other. I stare, and I wait, and I wait.

“What do you see?” Lo asks impatiently.

“Nothing,” I say finally, after a few moments pass.