The ride was quiet and gave me time to give a great deal of thought to Tristan. Much as I was curious about the circumstances of Elsa's death, maybe it was none of my business. But, being brutally honest with myself, it wasn't her death that was eating me alive. It was the fact that Tristan had loved her enough for 'expectations'. He had loved her enough to expect a lifetime spent by her side. To expect a family, a life, friends, homes, travel--all the things that couples do. He had planned with her and dreamed with her. Irrational though it was, I was jealous of a dead woman. The only woman, apparently, who ever earned the right to expect anything out of Tristan King.
I managed to hit the Upper West Side by seven-thirty thanks to my early start. I avoided the worst of rush hour and was home by just a little after eight. I got the Eep squeezed into a parking spot in front of the Caperelli's house and walked the few yards to our stoop. Mom was waiting at our open door.
It was so great to hug my strong, beautiful mother. After the emotional upheaval of the past few weeks, I found her more comforting than ever. My parents are solid and everlasting--a constant reminder of goodness and love in the world. They are not complicated or mysterious; they're the kind of blessing every child should know. I embraced my mother with gratitude just as I always did when I returned home from time in the Berkshires.
Mom and Dad had always understood that Jenn and I worked the Berkshires because it was a good way to make great pay in a pretty setting not too far from home. New York City is not a place with abundant summer jobs. The Berkshire Hills offered us jobs in the arts and recreation that we couldn't match anywhere else. But we were always aware that the area belonged to people like Suze and Nicky, Brian and Cole, and yes, Tristan. It was always a good thing to come home to a place where we didn't feel like strangers.
Mom and I had a cup of coffee on the stoop and watched the neighborhood bustle alive with kids on their way to school, people scurrying off to work and shop. Mrs. Caperelli came over with a coffee cake from the bakery and we went inside to share it. Mom gave her an update on Dad. He'd called at seven to complain about being cooped up in a hospital and to tell her that the nurses were all angels. He said the meals weren't as bad as people always say they are, but to bring an Italian sub from Delmonico's Deli when she came. Mrs. C would make sure the report was properly 'distributed' through the neighborhood.
My Dad was sitting up in bed watching the news when we got to his room.
"Daddy!" I hugged him gently, trying not to move him too much. He had his left arm in a sling and I could see the bandages around his rib cage. There was a cut above his right eye held together with stitches. I hated to see him like that.
"What are you doing here, Angelcakes? Marjorie, I'm fine. Why did you call Raina?"
"Mom called to keep me from worrying when I saw you getting beat up on the news. She didn't ask me to come, in fact she told me not to. But I wanted to be here."
"Well you're a sweetheart and I'm always glad to have my little girl home."
"I wish it was different circumstances. Dad, you need to stay out of these messes. You're getting older…" It frightened me to think of how many close calls he'd had over the years.
At that he laughed harder that he should have until his ribcage stopped him. But he was still grinning when he threatened to put me over his knee and show me just how old and weak he was.
"Daddy, you've never laid a hand on me, so I would have nothing to compare it to."
We talked most of the morning away and shared the Italian sub plus his hospital lunch among the three of us. He was right, the hospital lunch wasn't half bad. After lunch, I left them to nap a little--he in his bed and she in the recliner next to it. I watched them doze off together just as they did most Saturdays and Sundays after lunch.
I wondered if Tristan would ever get to that point with…well, with anyone. Did he and Elsa take a half-time nap during Sunday football like my sister Amy and her husband Phil? Or did he and Elsa nod off poolside after a two-Mimosa brunch like Olivia and Ben?
Try as I might, I couldn't stop wishing that somehow, some way I would take a cozy nap beside Tristan someday. I knew there'd be more sex. I knew I hadn't begun to experience the kinds of intimate pleasures his body could bring to mine. He would fuck me, suck me, take me this way and that. And it thrilled me to think of it, it really did. But at that moment, in that hospital room, the intimacy I really longed for was dozing beside him in the quiet peace of of a lazy afternoon.
***
I took a walk around a nearby park and let my parents rest. I took out my tablet reader and thumbed through a couple of magazines. I watched young parents strolling their children along the walkways, people taking their dogs out for a mid-afternoon pee and vendors wrapping up their lunchtime shift. They rolled their carts with hot dogs, pretzels and sodas toward wherever it is that food carts go to sleep at night.
I went back to the hospital and spent another hour or so with Dad and then Mom and I called it a day. I was tired from the early start that morning. I had acclimated myself to late nights and sleeping in. Getting up at dawn, combined with my worry about my parents had worn me out.
Mom and I picked up take-out Chinese and I was sound asleep in my room by eight-thirty.
"Raina, Jenn's on the phone." My mother called me downstairs the next morning and handed me her phone.
"Hey Jenn, why are you calling on Mom's phone?"
"Raina, I have been trying to call you since about ten last night!" Jenn sounded frazzled and frustrated.
I went over to my purse where my forgotten phone, now dead, lay at the bottom. "Sorry Jenn, I was so tired I left my phone in my purse and it went dead. I don't even think I brought the charger. Damn."
"Raina, Tristan King showed up here last night. He said he had been phoning the number Tom gave him all through rehearsal. He seemed kinda frantic. He wanted to know how to find you and thought maybe I had another phone number."
"You could have given him Mom's number." Tristan…frantic because he couldn't get in touch with me? Yessss!
"I didn't know if that would be okay, so I told him I would get in touch with you myself through your Mom's phone this morning. I told him I had talked to you earlier and that everything seemed fine."
"If you don't mind, go ahead and call him and give him Mom's phone."
"Sure thing, Rains. How's your Dad?"
"Beat up, but fine. He's too tough to let a few thugs get him down."
"Keep me posted. I've gotta go to work now. I'll call Tristan right after I get off the phone."