Читать книгу For Better Or Worse - Jill Amy Rosenblatt - Страница 20

The next morning Elizabeth slowed her run to a walk, making her customary stop at Dunkin’ Donuts near Greeley Square. She picked up a bottle of water, lamenting it wasn’t coffee. She came out and ran straight into Ian.

He looked slightly tousled, a blue tee over jeans. Breathe, she ordered herself, you run the show.

He held up a white bag. “Good morning, love. Can I interest you in breakfast?”

“I just exercised.”

“Then you need to keep your strength up.”

In spite of herself, she smiled.

They sat at a table near the back of the square that served as an oasis, the miniature forest of trees encroaching around them, a protective barrier against the building traffic outside. The pace of the morning was slowly rising. It would reach a crescendo in another hour. They spent a few moments in comfortable silence, quietly munching on croissants and sipping coffee.

“It’s been a while since I experienced the European breakfast,” she said, picking out slices of ham and cheese from the waxy paper wrapping.

“When were you there?” he asked.

“I went to Paris when I was seventeen.” She concealed her fondness for the memory: three girls sharing an apartment, suitors calling up from the street late at night, everyone’s apartment windows open with shades up, revealing other young girls clad in their slips, readying for an evening out. It was an exquisite chaos of cafés and museums, and meals of bread, cheese, and wine that were more than enough; just as Hemingway described it.

“And did you find it as Hemingway said, a moveable feast?”

She started as Ian seemed to be reading her mind again, and sidestepped the question. “When did you first go to live in Paris?”

“In my late twenties.”

She nodded. What if we had been there at the same time? What if we had met then? We weren’t, we didn’t, she thought, shrugging it away. “Did you see the Mona Lisa?”

“Of course. Do you know why she’s smiling?”

“She’s in Paris.”

“Are you always out so early, in Greeley Square, near the Dunkin’ Donuts, where you didn’t buy all this food?” Elizabeth asked.

Ian smiled. “Early lesson.”

Elizabeth smirked. “Ah…private lessons, how quaint. How early, last night?”

Ian laughed. “My student is seven.”

Elizabeth grimaced. She felt foolish; now she looked foolish as well.

“Her parents are determined that she properly learn Impressionist painting techniques. She rather likes making a mess with paint.”

Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to laugh. She found his eyes on her, studying her intently, and she glanced away, feeling a rush of warmth flowing through her. She shifted the subject, hoping to quell the rising tide of her feelings. “Did you ever study other forms of painting?”

“There are no other forms of painting.”

“I beg to differ. Modern, cubist…”

Ian shook his head. “Absolutely awful. I hope there are no traditional artists in your family. They’ll be upset by your betrayal.”

Elizabeth thought of her mother, caught in her downward spiral, a cyclone of alcohol, pills, and lovers, unable to complete her work, crying to her daughter to finish it for her. How could she refuse to help her mother? When she was done, she expected her mother to be grateful, only to suffer abuse and accusations of how she enjoyed humiliating her. She almost winced at the memory of Lillian in the studio, entertaining her friends, downing her wine, saying she always knew her daughter would surpass her and how she would teach her daughter what it was to suffer for her art.

She thought of her tattered paintings on the floor of the studio; her eyes began to sting. She betrayed me, Elizabeth thought as William’s face flashed in and out her mind. I had nowhere else to turn.

“Lizzie,” she heard Ian say.

“You can’t always please someone else at your own expense,” she said shortly, tossing down the croissant. She had lost her appetite.

Her watch slipped down toward her wrist but even with the watch face turned away from her, she knew the hour was late. He encircled his fingers around it, gently sliding it back up her arm, his warm hand lingering against her skin.

“I have to go,” she said.

“Do you now?” he said, brushing a stray strand of hair back from her cheek and tucking it behind her ear, tracing his finger over the frame of her earlobe. He was leaning close to her. He smelled warm and she knew he would taste like coffee. Just once. She snapped herself back. No.

She got up, brushing stray crumbs away.

“Thank you for breakfast.”

“Perhaps we’ll meet again some time.”

“Perhaps.” She gave him a long look. There was a gate, a door to her past and a mounting weight on her to try to keep it closed. Somehow he was the key. If she got any closer to him, he would be able to open that door, revealing a ruined and bloody past of rolling California waves and her mother’s bleeding wrists, men who came and went with the tides, and selfish artist lovers who said they loved you but never stayed to prove it. Her mother’s nature was in her; her mother’s weakness; she knew that. Gazing at him, the smooth skin, the careless blond hair, the blue eyes that changed without warning, running hot and cold, she knew she was in danger of him bringing that out in her. The way it had almost come out before.

“I’m sure in a city of eight million people we’re bound to meet again, by accident of course.”

He leaned in, kissing one cheek and then the other. “Until then,” he said softly.

With a pounding heart, she walked away, steeling herself not to look back.