The Mulberry Tree

And, suddenly, she was keenly aware that she was sitting on Matthew Longacre’s lap, and they were alone. Not that it was an unpleasant feeling, but she didn’t want what this could possibly lead to. Not yet. Right now, she felt as though Jimmie’s spirit was too close, as though he were hovering over her. But at the same time, she couldn’t come up with a reason for moving away from Matt’s comfort and warmth.

“Maybe you should learn how to—” Matt began.

Bailey pushed herself out of his arms. “Don’t you even think of telling me that I should learn how to live for myself,” she said. “Show me a person who lives for himself, and I’ll show you a narcissistic personality disorder.”

Matt laughed. “I know, and you’re right. My ex-wife lived for herself and no one else, and I can tell you that she was as narcissistic as they come.”

Bailey looked at him expectantly, waiting for more of the story. But in the next moment a cold drop of rain hit her on the nose, and she got off Matt’s lap.

“Let’s go inside,” he said as he stood up, “and I’ll tell you all the most intimate details of my past. It’ll take your mind off your own troubles.”

“I see. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

“Famished.”

“And you’re willing to bare your soul to pay for your food?”

“Sure am.”

Bailey took a step toward the house, then turned to look back at him. “How many other people have you told this story?”

“No one on earth. And I can tell you that Patsy has done everything to get me to tell her why I married Cassandra.”

Nodding, smiling, Bailey turned back and walked toward the house, Matt behind her. Twenty minutes later, he was seated at the kitchen table. Before him was a strawberry and mascarpone cheese muffin, and Bailey was mixing the batter to make a Dutch baby—a big, baked pancake that would be filled with blackberries and sliced nectarines, then sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar.

“It’s time to pay the piper,” she said. She knew she should feel embarrassed about what had just passed between them, but she didn’t. Instead, she felt better than she had since the night Jimmie died. In fact, the colors in the room, ugly as it was, seemed brighter than they had before. Her big silver range seemed to gleam as bright as a star. “Story,” she said. “Tell me your story.”

Matt didn’t attempt to hide his pleasure at her asking. “Have you ever wanted something that you knew was no good for you but you couldn’t keep from taking it?”

“Yes,” Bailey answered instantly. “Chocolate.”

Matt smiled. “No, I mean, something bigger, more—”

“How about a basket the size of the one Moses floated in filled with Godiva chocolate? Raspberry creams. Caramels. Truffles. And you’ve been on a flavorless thousand-calorie-a-day diet for four weeks and three days, and you’re so weak your head spins every time you stand up, then, suddenly, there’s that chocolate, all that heavenly, rich, creamy chocolate. You could bathe in it, coat yourself in it. You could bite into it and watch it run down your arm, then lick it off. Is that the kind of wanting you mean?”

When she finished, Matt’s eyes were wide, his mouth open. “You know, I don’t think I wanted Cassandra that much.”

Smiling, Bailey lifted her spoon from the custard and held it out to him. “Taste this.”

As Matt tasted the creamy substance, he closed his eyes. “How?” he whispered.

“I used a whole vanilla bean. Makes the taste stronger. Enough of that. Now tell me your story.”

“Okay, where was I?” He gave the spoon another lick. “I’d just graduated from school with a design in architecture. Top of my class.”

“I’m impressed.”

“And said to impress you. But don’t be,” Matt said. “Maybe if I hadn’t been given so many awards and offered so many great jobs, I wouldn’t have been so full of myself. And if I hadn’t had so many offers, I wouldn’t have been so disdainful of them, so I might have taken one in St. Louis or Minneapolis. I would have worked in an office and learned something. But I didn’t take one of those jobs, and I didn’t learn anything—not anything about architecture, anyway. No, I wanted to set the world on fire with my designs for personal houses, domestic architecture. No office buildings for Matthew Longacre. In the end, I took a job with a very rich man, old money, generations of it, on Long Island. I was to build a jewel box of a house for his only child, his daughter Cassandra, who was marrying Carter Haverford Norcott the Third the following spring. I had the idea that if I made a truly beautiful house for him, and it was seen at a huge, rich wedding, I’d get more commissions, then more and more.”

“But you ran off with the bride instead.”

Matt took a while to answer. “The irony is that I didn’t really want her. In fact, I never really saw her. It was that life I wanted. My . . . ” He hesitated. “My mother came from a family like that one. When she ran off with my father, her family disinherited her. Years later, even after my father left her and my mother was waitressing and taking on any job she could get to support her two kids, she—” Matt looked away, and Bailey could see the anger on his face.

“She had class,” Bailey said.

“Yes. My mother had class.”

Bailey watched him as he picked up his spoon and turned it about in his hands. “And you wanted that class back.”