Deveraux - Wild Orchids

WILD ORCHIDS

BY

JUDE DEVERAUX

Jude Deveraux Wild Orchids

Ford

Have you ever lost someone who meant more to you than your own soul?

I did. I lost my wife Pat.

It took six long, tortured months for her to die.

I had to stand by and watch my beautiful, perfect wife waste away until there was nothing left. It didn't matter that I have money and success. It didn't matter that I'm called an "important" writer.

It didn't matter that Pat and I had finally started building our dream house, an engineering miracle that hung onto a cliff wall and would allow us to sit quietly and look out across the Pacific.

Nothing at all mattered from the moment Pat came home and interrupted me while I was

writingsomething she never didto tell me that she had cancer, and that it was in an advanced

stage. I thought it was one of her jokes. Pat had a quirky sense of humor; she said I was too

serious, too morose, too doom-and-gloom, and too afraid of everything on earth. From the first,

she'd made me laugh.

We met at college. Two more different people would be hard to find, and even Pat's family was

completely alien to me. I'd seen families like hers on television, but it never occurred to me that they actually existed.

She lived in a pretty little house with a front porch andI swear this is truea white picket

fence. On summer evenings her parentsMartha and Edwinwould sit on the front porch and

wave at the neighbors as they passed by. Her mother would wear an apron and snap green beans

or shell peas while she waved and chatted. "How is Tommy today?" she'd ask some passerby. "Is his cold better?"

Pat's father sat just a few feet away from his wife at a wrought iron table, an old floor lamp

nearby, and a box of gleaming German tools, all precisely arranged, at his feet. He wasagain, I

swear this is trueknown as Mr. Fix-It around the neighborhood and he repaired broken things

for his own family and his neighbors. Free of charge. He said he liked to help people and a smile

was enough payment for him.

When I went to Pat's house to pick her up for a date, I'd go early just so I could sit and watch her parents. To me, it was like watching a science fiction movie. As soon as I arrived, Pat's mother

"call me Martha, everyone does"would get up and get me something to eat and drink. "I know that growing boys need their nourishment," she'd say, then disappear inside her spotlessly clean house.

I'd sit there in silence, watching Pat's father as he worked on a toaster or maybe a broken toy.

That big oak box of tools at his feet used to fascinate me. They were all perfectly clean, perfectly 2

Jude Deveraux Wild Orchids

matched. And I knew they had to have cost a fortune. One time I was in the citythat ubiquitous

"city" that seems to lie within fifty miles of all college townsand I saw a hardware store across the street. Since hardware stores had only bad memories for me, it took courage on my part to

cross the street, open the door, and go inside.

But since I'd met Pat, I'd found that I'd become braver. Even way back then her laughter was

beginning to echo in my ears, laughter that encouraged me to try things I never would have

before, simply because of the painful emotions they stirred up.

As soon as I walked into the store, the air seemed to move from my lungs, up my throat, past the

back of my neck, and into my head to form a wide, thick bar between my ears. There was a man

in front of me and he was saying something, but that block of air inside my head kept me from

hearing him.

After a while he quit talking and gave me one of those looks I'd seen so many times from my

uncles and cousins. It was a look that divided men from Men. It usually preceded a fatal

pronouncement like: "He don't know which end of a chain saw to use." But then, I'd always played the brain to my relatives' brawn.

After the clerk sized me up, he walked away with a little smile that only moved the left side of his thin lips. Just like my cousins and uncles, he recognized me for what I was: a person who thought

about things, who read books without pictures, and liked movies that had no car chases.

I wanted to leave the hardware store. I didn't belong there and it held too many old fears for me.

But I could hear Pat's laughter and it gave me courage.

"I want to buy a gift for someone," I said loudly and knew right away that I'd made a mistake.

"Gift" was not a word my uncles and cousins would have used. They would have said, "I need a set a socket wrenches for my brother-in-law. What'd'ya got?" But the clerk turned and smiled at me. After all, "gift" meant money. "So what kind of gift?" he asked.

Pat's father's tools had a German name on them that I said to the man properly pronounced, of

course (there are some advantages to an education).

I was pleased to see his eyebrows elevate slightly and I felt smug: I'd impressed him.

He went behind a counter that was scarred from years of router blades and drill bits having been

dropped on it, and reached below to pull out a catalog. "We don't carry those in the store but we can order whatever you want." I nodded in what I hoped was a truly manly way, trying to imply that I knew exactly what I wanted, and flipped through the catalog. The photos were full color;

the paper was expensive. And no wonder since the prices were astronomical.

"Precision," the man said, summing up everything in that one word. I pressed my lower lip against the bottom of my upper teeth in a way I'd seen my uncles do a thousand times, and

nodded as though I knew the difference between a "precision" screwdriver and one out of a kid's Home Depot kit. "I wouldn't have anything else," I said in that tight-lipped way my uncles spoke of all things mechanical. The glory of the words "two stroke engine" made them clamp their back teeth together so that the words were almost unintelligible.

Jude Deveraux Wild Orchids

"You can take that catalog," the man said, and my face unclenched for a moment. I almost said gleefully, "Yeah? That's kind of you." But I remembered in time to do the bottom lip gesture and mumble "much obliged" from somewhere in the back of my throat. I wished I'd had on a dirty baseball cap with the name of some sports team so I could tug at the brim in a Man's goodbye as I

left the store.

When I got back to my tiny, gray apartment off campus later that night, I looked up some of Pat's

father's tools in the catalog. Those tools of his were worth thousands. Not hundreds. Thousands.

But he left that oak box out on the porch every night. Unlocked.

Unguarded.

The next day when I saw Pat between classesshe was studying chemistry and I was English

litI mentioned the tools to her as casually as possible. She wasn't fooled; she knew this was

important to me. "Why do you always fear the worst?" she asked, smiling. "Possessions don't matter, only people do."

"You should tell that to my uncle Reg," I said, trying to make a joke. The smile left her pretty face. "I'd love to," she said.

Pat wasn't afraid of anything. But because I didn't want her to look at me differently, I wouldn't introduce her to my relatives. Instead, I let myself pretend that I was part of her family, the one that had big Thanksgiving dinners, and Christmases with eggnog and gifts under the tree. "Is it me or my family you love?" Pat once asked, smiling, but her eyes were serious. "Is it me or my rotten childhood you love?" I shot back, and we smiled at each other. Then my big toe went up her pants leg and the next moment we were on top of one another.