“Oh, hi, Keith.” Lifting her face to the ceiling, she scooped her hair back from one temple.
“You got home late.”
“Just a few minutes ago.”
“So, how was the dinner with Lisa?”
Bess flopped onto one of the chairs with her head caught on the rounded back. “Not so good, I'm afraid.”
“Why not?”
“Lisa invited me over for more than just dinner.”
“What else?”
“Oh, Keith, I've been sitting here getting a little weepy.”
“What is it?”
“Lisa is pregnant.”
At the other end of the line Keith released a swoosh of breath.
“She wants to get married in six weeks.”
“To the baby's father?”
“Yes, Mark Padgett.”
“I remember you mentioning him.”
“Mentioning him, that's all. Lord, she's known him less than a year.”
“And what about him? Does he want to marry her, too?”
“He says he does. They want a full wedding with all the trimmings.”
“Then I don't understand—what's the problem?”
That was one of the troubles with Keith. He often failed to understand her problems. She had been seeing him for three years, yet in all that time he'd never seemed sympathetic at the moments she needed him to. Particularly when it came to her children, he had an intolerant side that often irritated her. He had no children of his own, and sometimes that fact created a gulf between them that Bess wasn't sure could ever be bridged.
“The problem is that I'm her mother. I want her to marry for love, not for expediency.”
“Doesn't she love him?”
“She says she does but how—”
“Does he love her?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then what are you so upset about?”
“It's not that cut-and-dried, Keith!”
“What? Are you upset about becoming a grandmother? That's a lot of bunk. I've never been able to understand people getting all freaked out about these things—reaching thirty, or forty, or becoming a grandparent. It's all pretty ridiculous to me. What really matters is keeping busy and healthy and feeling young inside.”
“That's not what I'm upset about!”
“Well, what then?”
Reclining in the chair, with her chin on her chest, Bess picked up the soiled jabot and toyed with it.
“Michael was there.”
Silence . . . then, “Michael?”
“Lisa set us up, she invited us both, then made an excuse to leave the apartment so we'd be forced to confront each other.”
“And?”
“And it was hellish.”
Silence again before Keith said, decidedly, “Bess, I want to come over.”
“I don't think you should. It's nearly eleven.”
“Bess, I don't like this.”
“My seeing Michael? For heaven's sake, I haven't spoken a civil word to the man in six years.”
“Maybe not, but it only took one night to upset you. I want to come over.”
“Keith, please . . . it'll take you half an hour to get here, and I should go into the shop early in the morning to do some bookwork. Believe me, I'm not upset.”
“You said you were crying.”
“Not about Michael. About Lisa.”
From his silence she anticipated his reaction. “You're pushing me away again, Bess. Why do you do that?”
“Please, Keith, not tonight. I'm tired and I expect Randy will be home soon.”
“I wasn't asking to stay overnight.” Though Bess and Keith were intimate, she had made it understood early in their relationship that as long as Randy lived with her, overnights at her house were out. Randy had been hurt enough by his dad's peccadillo. Though her son might very well guess she was having an affair with Keith, she was never going to verify it.
“Keith, could we just say good night now? I really have had a rough day.”
Keith's silence was rife with exasperation before he released a sound resembling escaping steam. “Oh, all right,” he said, “I won't bother you tonight. What I called for was to see if you wanted to go to dinner on Saturday night.” His invitation was issued in an acid tone.
“Are you sure you still want me to?”
“Bess, I swear to God, sometimes I don't know why I keep hanging onto you.”
Bess became contrite. “I'm sorry, Keith. Yes, of course, I'd love to go to dinner Saturday night. What time?”
“Seven.”
“Shall I drive in?” Keith lived in St. Paul, thirty miles away. His favorite restaurants were over in that direction.
“Come to my place. I'll drive from here.”
“All right, I'll see you then. And Keith?”
“What?”
“I really am sorry. I mean it.”
Across the wire she could sense him expelling a breath and drooping his shoulders. “I know.”
After Bess hung up she sat in her chair a long time, curled forward, elbows to knees, her toes overlapped, staring at the fire. What was she doing with Keith? Merely using him to slake her loneliness? He had walked into her store one day three years ago, when she'd been three years without a man, three years trying occasional dates that turned into sexual embarrassments, three years insisting that all men belonged at the bottom of the ocean. Then in walked Keith, a little on the plain side in the looks department, a little on the thin side in the hair department, but one of the best sales reps she'd ever encountered. Known in the trade as a rag man, he'd wheeled in a big 40 × 20-inch sample case and announced he was from Robert Allen Fabrics and that she had decorated the home of his best friends, Sylvia and Reed Gohrman; he liked the looks of her store; needed a Mother's Day gift for his mother; and if she would look through his samples while he perused her merchandise, they might each find something they liked. If not, he'd be gone and would never darken her door again.
Bess had burst out laughing. So had Keith. He'd bought a forty-dollar vase trimmed with glass roses, and when she was wrapping it she said, “Your mother will be pleased.”
He replied, “My mother is never pleased with anything. She'll probably come in here and exchange it for those three frogs that are holding that glass ball.”
“You don't like my frogs?”
He glanced at the three ugly brass frogs, covered with green patina, their forefeet raised above their heads, supporting what looked like a large, clear glass marble. He raised one eyebrow and quirked his mouth. “Now, that's a loaded question when you haven't told me what you think of my samples yet.”
She had looked, and liked, and been assured by Keith that his company maintained careful quality control of its products, would not keep her on ice for three months then ship flawed fabric, provided free samples rather than the “book plan” (which required storeowners to sign a year's contract and agree to pay for all samples), offered delayed billing and followed up every order with a computerized acknowledgment and shipping date.
She was impressed, and Keith went away knowing so.
He'd called a week later and asked if she would like to go to Dudley Riggs's Brave New Workshop with him and his friends Sylvia and Reed Gohrman. She liked his style—live comedy for a first date, which she needed at the time, and mutual acquaintances as reassurance that she wouldn't have another wrestling match on her hands at the end of the evening.
He had been impeccably polite—no groping, no sexual innuendos, not even a good night kiss until their second date. They had seen each other for six months before their relationship became intimate. Immediately afterward, he'd asked her to marry him. For two and a half years she'd been saying no. For two and a half years he'd been growing more frustrated by her refusals. She had tried to explain that she wasn't willing to take that risk again, that running her business had become her primary source of fulfillment, that she still had her troubles with Randy and didn't want to impose them on a husb
and. The truth was, she simply didn't love him enough.
He was nice (an elementary word but true, when describing Keith) but when he walked into her shop she only smiled, never glowed. When he kissed her she only warmed, never heated. When they made love she wanted the light off, not on. And when it was over, she always wanted to go home to her own bed, alone.
And of course there was that thing about her children. He'd been married once, briefly, during his twenties but being childless he had remained marginally jealous of Lisa and Randy and slightly selfish in his approach to many conflicts. If Bess had to say no to him because of a previous commitment with Lisa, he became piqued. He held that her stand on his sleeping at her house was ridiculous, given that Randy was nineteen years old and no dummy.
Another thing—he coveted her house.
He had come into it the first time and stood before the sliding glass doors, looked out over the river valley and breathed, “Wow . . . I could put my recliner right here and never move.”
First off, she hated recliners. Secondly, she felt a trickle of irritation at the very suggestion of him moving into her house. For the briefest moment she'd even had a flash of defense on Michael's behalf. After all, it was Michael who'd paid for the house and helped her furnish it. How dare this upstart stand there musing about usurping the spot that had always been Michael's favorite?
There were many facets of Keith that displeased her. So the question remained, why did she continue to see him?
The answer was plain: he had become a habit, and without him life would have been infinitely more lonely.
She sighed and went to the fireplace, screaked open the metal screen and turned the logs, watching sparks rise like inverted fireworks. She sat before it, with her arms crossed on her upraised knees. Oh, Lisa, don't worsen the mistake you've already made. It's no fun watching a fire alone, wishing things had turned out differently.
Her face grew hot, and the nylon slip covering her thighs seemed to catch the heat and draw it to her skin. She dropped her forehead onto her arms but remained where she was. The house was so silent and bleak. It had never been as satisfying after Michael left. It was home, and she would never give it up. But it was lonely.
Outside, most of the lights across the river had disappeared. She rose and wandered into the dining room—an extension of the family room—running her fingers over the backs of the unused chairs as she passed them, and on through an archway into the formal living room, which stretched across the entire east end of the house, from the river view at the rear to the street view at the front. At the rear corner, where two immense windows met, a grand piano stood in the shadows—black, gleaming, silent since Lisa had grown up and moved away. On it was a gallery of framed family pictures. On Thursdays the cleaning lady moved the pictures and dusted the piano. At Christmastime a huge arrangement of red balls and greenery ousted the five framed portraits. After New Year's the gallery came back and stayed until the following Christmas. It was the only thing the piano was used for anymore.
Bess sat down on the sleek ebony piano bench and slid across it in her nylon slip. She switched on the music lamp. Its rays shone down upon an empty music rest and a closed key cover. She touched the brass pedals, cold and smooth beneath her nylon-bound toes. She folded her hands and rested them between her thighs and wondered why she herself had given up playing. After Michael left she'd shunned the instrument just as she'd shunned him. Because he had liked piano music so much? How childish. Granted, her life had been busy, but there were moments such as these when the sound of the piano would have been comforting, when the feel of the keys would have soothed.
She rose and opened the bench, leafed through the sheet music until she found what she was looking for.
The cover of the bench clacked loudly as it closed. By contrast, the key cover made a soft, velvet thump as it opened. The music rustled, and her raspberry silk sleeves appeared in the thin band of light illuminating the keys.
The first notes shimmered through the shadowy room, harp-like and haunting as she found the familiar combinations and struck them.
“The Homecoming.” Lisa's song. Her father's song. Why Bess had chosen it, she neither dissected nor cared. The compulsion had struck and she'd responded, rusty as she was on this instrument. As she played, the tentativeness left her fingers, the tension left her shoulders and soon she began to feel what a runner feels when he hits his stride, the immense sense of well-being at baring one's teeth to the wind and utilizing some capability that has lain dormant too long.
She was unaware of Randy's presence until she ended the song and he spoke out of the shadows.
“Sounding good, Mom.”
“Oh!” She gasped and lifted an inch off the piano bench. “Randy, you scared the devil out of me! How long have you been there?”
He smiled, one shoulder propped against the dining-room doorway. “Not long.” He sauntered into the room and sat down on the bench beside her, dressed in jeans and a brown leather jacket that looked as though a fleet of Sherman tanks had driven over it. His hair was black, like his father's, and dressed with something sheeny, spiked straight up and finger-long on top, slicked back over the ears and trailing in natural curls below his collar in back. Randy was an eye-catcher—her clerk at the store said he reminded her of a young Robert Urich—with a lopsided, dimpled grin; a way of letting his head dip forward when he approached a woman; a tiny gold loop in his left ear; perfect teeth and brown eyes with glistening black lashes that were longer than some men could grow their beards. He had adopted the rough-cut look of the unshaved young pop singer George Michael, and an unhurried manner.
Sitting beside his mother he played a low-register F, holding the key down until the note diminished into silence. Dropping the hand to his lap, he turned his head infinitesimally—all his motions were understated—and unleashed his lazy quarter-smile.
“Been a long time since you played.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Why'd you stop?”
“Why'd you stop talking to your dad?”
“Why did you?”
“I was angry.”
“So was I.”
Bess paused. “I saw him tonight.”
Randy looked away but allowed the grin to remain.
“How is the prick?”
“Randy, you're speaking of your father, and I won't allow that kind of gutter language.”
“I've heard you call him worse.”
“When?”
Randy worked his head and shoulders in irritation. “Mom, get off it. You hate his guts as much as I do and you haven't made any secret of it. So what's all this about? All of a sudden you're buttering up to him?”
“I'm not buttering up to him. I saw him, that's all. At Lisa's.”
“Oh yeah, that's right. . . .” Randy dropped his chin and scratched his head. “I guess she told you, huh?”
“Yes, she did.”
He looked at his mother. “So, you bummed out or what?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“I was, too, at first but now I've had a day to think about it and I think she'll be okay. Hell, she wants the kid and Mark's okay, you know? I mean, he really loves her, I think.”
“How do you know so much?”
“I spend time over there.” Randy ran his thumbnail into the vertical crack between two piano keys. “She cooks me dinner and we watch videos together, stuff like that. Mark's usually there.”
Another surprise. “I didn't know that . . . that you spend time over there.”
Randy gave up his preoccupation with the keys and returned his hand to his lap. “Lisa and I get along all right. She helps me get my head on straight.”
“She said you've agreed to stand up for them.”
Randy shrugged and let his eyes rove indolently his mother's way.
“And to cut your hair.”
He made a chucking sound, sucking his cheek against his teeth. “There you go. You're gonna like that, huh, Ma?
” His grin was back.
“The hair doesn't bother me as much as the beard.”
He rubbed it. It was coarse and black and undoubtedly a turn-on for many nineteen-year-old girls. “Yeah, well, it's probably gonna go, too.”
“You got some girl who's going to miss it?” she teased, reaching as if to pinch his cheek.
He reared back and brandished both hands, karate-fashion. “Don't touch the nap, woman!”
They poised as if on the brink of combat, then laughed together and hugged, with her smooth cheek against his prickly one, and the smell of his distressed leather jacket engulfing her. No matter the worries he caused her, moments like this were her recompense. Ah, there was something wonderful about an adult son. His occasional hugs made up for the loss of his father, and his presence in the house gave her someone to listen for, someone else moving about, a reason to keep the refrigerator stocked. It probably was time she booted him out of the nest but she hated losing him, no matter how seldom they exchanged banter such as this. When he left there would be only her in this big house alone, and it would be decision time.
He released her and she smiled affectionately. “You're an incorrigible flirt.”
He covered his heart with both hands. “Mother, you wound me.”
She let his high jinks pass and said, “About the wedding . . .”
He waited.
“Lisa asked your father and I to walk her down the aisle.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And it looks as though there's going to be a dinner at Mark's parents' home to introduce the two families.” When Randy made no reply, she asked, “Can you handle that?”
“Lisa and I have already got that covered.”
Bess's lips formed a silent oh. These children of hers had a relationship that seemed to have left her several years behind.
Randy went on. “Don't worry, I won't embarrass the family.” After a brief assessment of his mother's eyes, he asked, “Will you?”
“No. Your father and I had a talk after we left Lisa's. We both agreed to honor her wishes. The olive branch has been passed.”
“Well then . . .” Randy raised his palms and let them slap his thighs. “I guess everybody's happy.” He began to rise but Bess caught his arm.