The Things We Do for Love (10 page)

Lucille opened the door. “Well, hello, Mr. Graham.” Graham had noticed that shortly after their initial introduction he had become “Mr. Graham” to Lucille, rather than “Mr. Corbett.” This, he knew, was a sign of approval, and he amused himself thinking of what his own mother might have to say about the fact. His father had passed away two years earlier, but his mother was still thriving in Memphis. She was coming to spend Thanksgiving
with him, but he’d been toying with the idea of driving over to see her before then.

Mary Anne came downstairs. She looked fabulous. A black dress, above-the-knee length, with something he thought was called a sweetheart neckline. The back dipped low, revealing sleek muscles.

Graham swallowed.

Mary Anne said, “Good night, Lucille. I’ve got my key.”

“You have a good time, you two,” Lucille replied.

Mary Anne pulled the door shut behind herself as they stepped onto the porch. She was slipping on a black cashmere coat, and Graham helped, drawing it up over her shoulders. “You look absolutely beautiful,” he said. “Have I ever mentioned how beautiful I find you?”

“Never,” she replied, looking amused.

He opened the passenger door of the Lexus and held it while she got in.
Gorgeous legs,
he thought, watching with approval as she found her shoulder belt and pulled it on.

Graham carefully closed the door and was just sliding behind the steering wheel when a van bearing the logo of the local florist pulled to the curb across the street. He and Mary Anne both peered at it with interest, and Graham deliberately took his time fitting the key into the ignition.

A moment later, the delivery man hurried past them and up the steps to Mary Anne’s grandmother’s house, carrying a vase containing two dozen red roses.

Graham said, “Would those be for your grandmother?”

Mary Anne shrugged. “No idea.”

He said, “You are popular, aren’t you?”

She made a noncommittal sound but didn’t look pleased by the floral delivery. Instead, she seemed tense.

“They aren’t from me,” he said.

Mary Anne, glancing at him, realized he was burning with curiosity about who had sent the flowers. She was curious as well, and distressed by the idea that they might be from Jonathan Hale.

No. Silly. He was engaged to another woman. He would
not
be sending flowers to Mary Anne.

Graham said, “Everything all right?”

“Yes.”

As he switched on the headlights and pulled away from the curb, Graham wondered if Mary Anne regretted agreeing to come out with him. If the roses were from another man, maybe she wished she’d left her evening open.

He slowed the car again. “Do you want to go back and see about the flowers?”

Mary Anne glanced at him. Abruptly, she was frightened. Frightened because she liked the clean line of his jaw. He’d shaved before their date, she could see. He was so…
nice
. She managed at last to answer his question. “Of course not.”

Graham examined her answer and smiled, easing the car forward again.

He nodded toward the radio. “Music?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “What sort do you like?”

“Lately, world music. Especially from Scandinavia. I stumbled on it. You know Josh?”

Yes. College student, summer intern at the station, journalism major. Mary Anne nodded.

“He introduced me to it. People singing in languages I don’t know, about legendary feuds. What about you?”

“Oh. Music?” She considered. “Sort of…folk music?”

Graham eased on with the conversation—date talk.
“What do you like to do in your free time? I’ve seen you on your bicycle.”

“Probably not very often.” She thought guiltily of Cameron’s Women of Strength hiking trip and how she had canceled in order to be on Graham’s show. Now, she was on a date with the man her cousin liked. The fact that
not
going on a date with him would never result in his asking out Cameron was no consolation. Cameron wouldn’t hold it against her, any of it, but Mary Anne hated the idea of doing anything that would hurt her cousin.

Graham distracted her by asking her to tell him about her family.

This took some concentration. “Well, you know what my father does.” She hurried on. “My mother is a church secretary. Her degree is in French. My brother, Kevin, is two years older than me. He’s a chemist with a pharmaceutical company.”

“That’s quite a contrast. Between your parents.”

“Yes,” she agreed, her stomach tightening. “He was a miner before he began acting. He was an extra in something, and one thing led to another. They were married here.”

“And they’re still married.”

She nodded mutely. Graham Corbett didn’t need to know the details. There were many things Graham didn’t need to know, because as her own mother would say, “It’s no one’s business.”

“I told you my father’s an alcoholic,” she finally said.

“Recovered?”

She made a seesawing motion with her hand, thinking that the whole scenario would be impossible to explain and that it wasn’t her family’s way to talk about it
anyhow. She turned to see Graham’s profile. “What are your parents like?”

“My father passed away a few years ago. My mother is a novelist.”

“Really?”

“Evelyn Corbett. She writes steamy novels about the South. All her characters behave badly—and truly, I have to admit. I think she’s good.”

Mary Anne took a deep breath, imagining what it would be like to live in a family in which twenty-first-century reality was acknowledged.
Like being freed from a cage.

Nonetheless, she’d chosen to come to Logan and live with her grandmother, whose reality was the opposite.

With almost eerie perception, Graham asked what she was thinking. With a laugh, Mary Anne told him, concluding, “We’re very refined on the Billingham side.”

Graham asked, “What do your grandmother and your mother think about your father’s alcoholism?”

“My mother wishes he wouldn’t drink. I’ve never heard my grandmother mention it.”

Graham smiled slowly. “Do you collude, to protect your grandmother from unpleasantness?”

“It’s just not something that is going to be fixed by talking about it.”

“Maybe not, but talking about such things can be healthy.”

Mary Anne simply stared at him. She made no sign of agreement.

Graham found a parking space half a block from Rick’s. Part of him wished he hadn’t waded into these murky waters. But he knew more about Mary Anne now.

“You grew up in Florida?” he asked.

“Yes. I still miss the ocean.”

He reflected that she must love her grandmother very much to choose to live in Logan with her, locked in the past in a home where no whisper of evil was allowed to pass through the door.

Their table at Rick’s was upstairs by the window, an intimate spot near one of the fireplaces. When Mary Anne entered the restaurant with Graham she noticed that both men and women looked toward them, noticed them. The reaction accorded her less pleasure than it might have another time.

Why had she even brought up her father’s drinking? It wasn’t relevant, and she hated the idea that every unpleasantness of family life had to be discussed and dissected. There were times when it seemed wisest to say nothing about some things.

They perused their menus and then ordered, were served their wine and some bread and butter. They talked casually of the renovation of the local movie theater, of that day’s radio show, of the restaurant and its chef. But she was preoccupied.

“What are you thinking?” he asked at last.

“That not everything in life has to be talked to death.”

He was buttering a slice of bread but lifted his eyes. “Yes?”

“Well,” she said, “think about good manners—or discretion—or what-have-you. It’s for other people. Basically, good manners come down to making things comfortable for others.”

Graham smiled. It was unexpected, a slow smile from his eyes, from under that wavy brown hair.

Mary Anne felt comfortably warm under the grace of that smile. Perhaps because she felt so much…so much attraction, she downplayed everything. “You probably think it’s just dysfunctional.”

“I think there’s a lot of truth in what you said,” he answered. “About the purpose of good manners. Or maybe the
definition
of good manners. Briony and I had a friend who seemed to have been raised with no manners. She invited herself to dinner and stayed till two in the morning. I used to go put on my pajamas and bathrobe and walk out in the living room setting the alarm clock, asking Briony if she needed to get up at five forty-five or five-thirty in the morning. Briony would say, ‘Ellen, you must be exhausted. We mustn’t keep you.’ But Ellen never got these cues. And you’re right. Because good manners would have dictated that she wouldn’t make us uncomfortable by inviting herself to dinner or staying so long that we needed to hint at her to leave.”

Mary Anne giggled at the image of Graham in pajamas and bathrobe setting an alarm clock, all for the benefit of the dinner guest who wouldn’t leave.

Graham’s answering smile reached his eyes.

I like him. I can’t believe how much I like him.

It occurred to her that this was the kind of man she
should
marry. And having been married once, Graham probably wasn’t afraid of marriage or commitment.

He said, “I hope you can meet my mother at Thanksgiving. She’s coming for a visit. I think she’ll like you.”

Mary Anne tried to imagine what qualities she possessed that would seem likable to his mother, the novelist. “Why?”

“Maybe because I do.”

Her heart thudded. She considered asking Clare Cureux if the effect of the love potion could be for
her
to fall in love with the person who had drunk it. Not that she was in love. But she felt differently than she ever had before.

“I think I was a disaster on the show today,” she said.

“You did fine. The danger, with that kind of live radio broadcast, is giving bad advice. You didn’t do that.”

“I don’t think I gave any
good
advice. I couldn’t believe how many people would have such strong opinions about the barista’s dilemma.”

“It happens sometimes. Don’t worry about it. And keep in mind that what we’re talking about is dating and we’re not answering too many life-or-death questions.”

“Well, it can feel life-or-death if you’re twenty.”

“True.”

Mary Anne found herself breathing deeply, as if Graham’s presence made her freer, released something stifling that had been smothering her.

Determined to keep away from the subject of her own family, she asked Graham about his education and where he’d met Briony. He’d done his undergraduate work at Yale and had met Briony at an intercollegiate soccer tournament. She’d been playing for Notre Dame. Then came the dinner date with several of Briony’s team members. A brief long-distance courtship, followed by decisions to live in the same place, living together, then marriage. She’d been working on her master’s in education at the university in Marshall when she’d died.

“What about you?” Graham asked.

“Columbia, actually. I really could be doing something more with my degree.”

“Why aren’t you?”

The question was bald. She didn’t want to examine the
why.
But honesty niggled at her. “Fear,” she admitted.

Strangely, he didn’t ask her to explain, and Mary Anne was relieved. His silence left the way open for her to say more. “Writing is exposure. It’s like being naked. It’s easier to work…at the level I do.”

After dinner, when they stepped out into the crisp night, Graham asked, “Would you like to walk for a bit? I always like that after a big meal.”

“That’s a great idea.” They walked down Stratton Street past Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church. “That’s where my parents were married,” Mary Anne said.

“It’s pretty,” Graham said. “I particularly like the stained glass.”

“You’ve been inside?”

“Many times.”

Mary Anne was startled when a figure stepped out from the building that housed
The Logan Standard and the Miner.
A photographer clicked their picture, paparazzi style. It was Joel Naggy, a junior photographer for the paper. Though only seventeen—and a not particularly mature seventeen—Joel often got good shots that other photographers would have missed. Mary Anne said, “Don’t bother. I won’t put it in the paper, Joel.”

“Wasn’t going to offer it to you,” he said. “I have bigger plans for that shot. Want to pose for one? How about a kiss?”

Mary Anne did not even want to think what he might mean by “bigger plans.” “Go away,” she said. She remembered, suddenly and acutely, finding a tabloid discarded in the trash one day. She must have been about twelve. She’d
seen her father’s picture, realized that he was drunk and had one arm around one bimbo and the other around another.

Well, Joel, whatever his pretentions, was not the paparazzi. Clearly, however, he thought Graham was big news. Mary Anne supposed he was right.

They continued walking and Joel eventually fell behind.

Mary Anne remained silent.

“Not a big deal,” Graham told her. “I’m not Brad Pitt.”

“But didn’t one of the entertainment magazines just do a spread on you?” she asked. Someone had mentioned it, and when she remembered who, she was racked by guilt. Cameron.

“Nevertheless,” he replied. “In any case, I’m proud to be seen with you.”

“I don’t want to be in a magazine,” she said. “Not for walking down the street with someone. I don’t want to be famous. Or infamous. Or any of it. Having my byline widely recognized—I’d like that. Nothing more.”

Graham gave her a surprised glance.

“I’m serious,” she said. “It’s a disgusting way to live.”

Like her father?
Graham wondered. He wanted to point out that her father’s antics probably would have been agonizing for her even if they’d never been featured in the national press.