“Dad?” he said.
Michael sensed whatever was coming would be of import. He waited silently.
“You didn't give me hell for using the cocaine.”
“Oh, yes I did. A dozen times while you were fighting for your life. I just didn't say it out loud.”
“I won't do it again, I promise. I want to get well and be happy.”
Michael put his hand on Randy's hair. “That's what we all want, son.” Then he leaned over and kissed Randy's cheek and told him, “I'll be back soon. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Randy said.
And with those words another fragment of pain dissolved. Another window of hope opened. Another beam of sunlight radiated into their future as Michael leaned down to hug his son before leaving.
* * *
Randy was released from the hospital shortly before suppertime that day. His mother and father walked him out into the sunshine of late afternoon, into a setting crowned by a cobalt-blue sky and a world where people moved about their pursuits with reassuring normality. Down at the public beach on Lily Lake some families were lighting barbecues and calling to their kids to be careful in the water. At the ball diamond across the street, a group of little boys were playing kittenball. A couple of blocks north, on Greeley Street, Nelson's Ice Cream Parlor was doing its usual landmark business, lining the concrete step out front with a row of lickers of all ages. Out on the river the drawbridge was raised, backing up traffic clear up to the top of Houlton Hill. The day-trippers were pulling their boats behind their packed cars, heading back toward the city, and the residents of Stillwater were sighing, looking forward to winter, when the streets would once again become their own.
“Where to?” Michael asked, sitting behind the wheel of his Cadillac Seville.
“I'm starved,” Bess replied. “Would anyone like to pick up some sandwiches and eat them down by the river?”
Michael turned to glance at Randy in the backseat.
“Sounds fine with me,” Randy said.
And so they took the next halting step in their journey back to familyhood.
* * *
Six weeks later, on an Indian summer's day in mid-October, Bess and Michael Curran were married in a simple service in the rectory of St. Mary's Catholic Church. The ceremony was performed by the same priest who'd married them twenty-two years before.
When he'd kissed his stole and draped it around his neck, Father Moore opened his prayer book to the correct page, smiled at the bride and groom and said, “So . . . here we are again.”
His remark brought smiles to the assembled faces. To Bess's, which shone with happiness. To Michael's, which radiated hope. To Lisa's, which might have been touched ever so slightly by smugness. To Stella's, which seemed to say, It's about time. To Randy's, which held a promise. And even to Natalie's as she lay on her daddy's arm and studied the glistening silver frames on the eyeglasses of Gil Harwood.
When the priest asked, “Who gives this woman?” Lisa and Randy answered, “We do,” bringing another round of smiles.
When the bride and groom repeated the words “. . . until death do us part,” their eyes shone with sincerity that had depth far beyond the first time they'd spoken the words.
When Father Moore said, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” Lisa and Randy exchanged a glance and a smile.
When their mother and father kissed, Lisa reached over for Randy's hand and gave it a hard squeeze.
The small wedding party went to dinner afterward at Kozlak'a Royal Oaks, overlooking a beautiful walled garden decorated with pumpkins, cornshocks and scarecrows. The personalized matchbooks awaiting them at their table and reserving it for them said Mr. and Mrs. Curran.
Spying them, after he'd seated Bess and was taking a chair himself, Michael picked up one of the books and folded it into her hand, saying, “Damn right, once and for all.” Then he kissed her lightly on the lips and smiled into her eyes.
* * *
There were, as in all relationships that matter most, wrinkles that needed smoothing for all of them in that bittersweet autumn. There was Randy's intense counseling, his loss of a way of life, of friends, of drug-dependency, and his search for inner strength and positive relationships. There was family therapy, and the painful resurrection and obliteration of past guilts, fears and mistakes. There was Lisa's anger when she learned her mother and father were selling the family house. There was Michael and Bess's frequent frustration at living with an adult son when in truth they were impatient to have total privacy. There were Michael and Bess themselves, the husband and wife, readjusting to married life and its constant demands for compromise.
Ah, but there were blessings.
There was Randy, coming home one day and bringing a new friend named Steve, whom he'd met in therapy and who wanted to start a band that would be drug-free and would play for school kids to spread the message “Say no!” There was Michael, turning one day from the kitchen stove as Randy asked, “Hey, Dad, think you could teach me how to make that?” There were suppers for three, with three alternate cooks, and Randy eating healthily at last. And days when Lisa and Mark would come breezing in with the baby, calling, “Yo, Grampa and Grandma and Uncle Randy!” And the simpler homely joys of Bess shouting, “All right, who put my sweatshirt in the dryer and shrunk it!” And of Michael, breaking a radiator hose on his way home from work and calling home to hear Randy volunteer, “Hang on, Dad, I'll come and get you.” And of Randy learning to change his niece's diapers and describing what he found inside them in phrases that had the entire family in stitches. And one day when Randy finally announced, “I got a job at Schmitt's Music selling instruments and giving drum lessons to little kids. Pay sucks but the fringe benefits are great—sitting around jamming whenever the place isn't busy.”
And one day Bess went out to the County Seat and bought herself a pair of blue jeans.
She had them on when Michael came home from work and found her in the kitchen making Parmesan cream sauce for tortellini—it was her turn to cook. The pasta was boiling, the roux was bubbling, and she was mincing garlic as he stopped in the kitchen doorway and tossed his car keys onto the cabinet top.
“Well, lookit here . . .” he said in wonder, “. . . what my bride is wearing.”
She smiled back over her shoulder and twitched her hips.
“How 'bout that. I did it.”
He ambled toward her, dressed in a winter trench coat, cocked one hip against the edge of the cabinet and perused her lower half. “Looks good, too.”
“Y' know what?” she said. “I really don't care if they do or not. They feel good.”
“They do, huh?” He boosted himself away from the cabinet and put both hands on her, splayed and inquisitive. “Let's see . . .” He rubbed her, back and front, all over her tight blue jeans, kissed her over her shoulder and murmured against her mouth, “You're right . . . feels very good.”
Giggling, she said, “Michael, I'm cutting up garlic here.”
“Yeah, I can smell it. Stinks like hell.” He turned her fully around and caught her against himself with a two-handed grip on her buttocks. Her arms crossed behind his neck, the paring knife still in her right hand.
“How was your day?” she asked, when they'd shared a nice long kiss.
“Pretty good. How was yours?”
“Crappy. This is the best part of it so far.”
“Well, good,” he said. “I can make it even better if you'd care to turn off those burners and put down that paring knife.”
“Mmm . . .” she murmured against his lips, dropping the paring knife on the floor, reaching out blindly to the side, groping for the control knobs on the stove.
At the other end of the condo the door opened.
Michael dropped his head back and said quietly, “Oh, shit.”
“Now, now,” she chided gently, “you wanted him back, didn't you?”
“But not when I have a hard-on in the middle of the kitchen at suppertime.”
<
br /> She giggled again. “Just keep your coat buttoned awhile,” she whispered at the same moment Randy stepped to the kitchen doorway.
“Mom, Dad . . . hi. Hope we're not disturbing anything. I brought someone home for supper.” He drew her forward by a hand, a pretty young woman with dark hair and a smile that had put a boyish look of eagerness on Randy's face. “You remember Maryann, don't you?”
Two parents turned, joy on their faces, their embrace dissolving as they reached out to welcome her.