“I know,” she whispered while the force field of longing built and billowed around them.
“Then why are we going through this, Lee?”
“Because I . . . I . . .” If she said any more she was going to cry, so she swallowed her excuse.
“It’s still the age thing with you, isn’t it? It’s not just them, it’s you, too.”
The office door opened and two students came out, chatting, carrying a tagboard sign and some masking tape. Both Lee and Christopher visibly started and stepped back, putting more space between them.
When the students’ voices had trailed away, he said, “Well, listen . . . I have to go. Somebody’s waiting for these.” He indicated the tube of papers.
“Sure,” she said. “Besides, this isn’t the time or place.”
He took another step backward and said, “It was good to see you. Every time I drive past your shop I hope you’ll be in the window, but . . .” He shrugged and let the thought trail off.
“Christopher . . .” She reached out as if to detain him, but her touch fell short.
He reached out blindly behind himself for the handle of the glass door through which they could easily be seen by several office workers. “All you have to do is call, Lee.”
With those words he retreated and left her standing in the empty hall.
ANY progress she’d made was reversed by those few minutes of seeing his face, hearing his voice, learning that he remained in the same tortured state as she. Yearning . . . merciful Lord, she had never felt yearning as powerful as during those fleet, fraught seconds while she faced him in that hallway, while her heart reached and her blood coursed and she maintained a proper distance. The following day and even the day after that she had only to recall their meeting to react the same way, with an upsurge of emotion spanning the cerebral to the sexual. How simply he elicited such response from her. He had only to step into her sphere to transform it and her into the realm of the extraordinary.
The letdown came with surefire pointedness, however, in the ordinary quiet of her own home.
She was back to crying again, failing to listen when Joey talked to her, sighing often and caring little about domestic duties. At the shop, the halting reconciliation that had begun between herself and Sylvia suffered a setback when her sister came to her one day as she was counting daffodils in a large white bucket.
“Lee, Barry met a man at his office who’s about your age and—”
“No thank you.”
“Well, aren’t you going to let me finish?”
“Why should I? So you can fix me up with this guy and quit squirming over what you did to Christopher and me?”
“I’m not squirming.”
Lee gave Sylvia a point-blank stare. “Well, you should be. If it wasn’t for you I’d be married by now.”
Sylvia had the grace to blush.
Lee put a rubber band around twelve daffodils, trimmed off their ends and stood them in the water. “I’ve been thinking, Sylvia. Would you be interested at all in letting me buy out your share of the business?”
Sylvia’s mouth dropped open. “Lee, my God, is it that bad?”
“Or I suppose I could sell you my interest, but I still need a steady income, and with Joey only three years away from graduation I need to think about helping him out with college, and having something to keep myself busy after he’s gone from home. That’s why it would work better if I bought out your half rather than the other way around.”
Sylvia rushed forward and touched Lee’s hand. It was wet and held a Swiss army knife. This was the first time they’d touched since the breakup.
“Do you really want that, Lee?”
Lee removed her hand and concentrated on her work. “Yes, I think I do.”
“Well, I don’t.”
The daffodils were all trimmed and clustered. Lee carried them away toward the front of the shop. “Think about it.”
HER mother called her the next day at home, obviously alerted by Sylvia that Lee was beginning to show signs of disassociating herself from the family. “Lee, Dad and I were wondering if you and Joey would like to come over for dinner one night this week.”
“No, I’m sorry, Mother, we wouldn’t.”
She stunned Peg just as she had Sylvia.
“But . . .”
“Mother, I’m right in the middle of something here. I can’t talk now.”
“All right. Well . . . call me sometime.”
Lee made no reply. It felt fantastic to pull a reversal of tactics on her mother.
OF course, Janice called, too: by now it had become obvious the three of them were burning up the wires between their telephones. Janice said, “Hi, Mom.”
She replied coolly, “Hello, Janice.”
“How are you?”
“Lonely,” she replied. Score three for Lee, she thought while Janice struggled for a response.
“Mom, Grandma called and said you’re thinking about quitting business with Aunt Sylvia. You can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . because it’s so successful, and you love what you’re doing.”
“You know, Janice, I used to. But somehow it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.”
“But you’re so good at it.”
“There’s not much satisfaction in that fact either lately.”
“If I came home this weekend, could we talk about it?”
“No. It’s a decision I want to make on my own. And it’s going to be a fairly busy weekend. I work on Saturday and there’s a bake sale after church on Sunday. Then in the afternoon I planned to go to a matinee with Donna Clements.”
Once again she’d flabbergasted her daughter by failing to issue the quick plea for Janice to come home so they could make peace at last.
Lee found she didn’t want peace. Anger had taken over and it made her feel more alive than she had since this debacle began. When Janice hung up, Lee could almost picture her daughter standing motionless with her hand on the phone, staring at the wall, watching their way of life disintegrate.
ANGER, manifested in that way, however, eroded Lee’s spirit in the week following her emotional divorce from three of the people who mattered most in her life. She grew churlish at work.
She cried at embarrassing moments.
She became snappish with Joey, who didn’t deserve it.
He came into the bathroom one night after supper and found her on her hands and knees, scrubbing around the toilet bowl. With her butt facing the door, he couldn’t tell she was crying.
“What you doin’, Mom?” he asked innocently.
“What do you mean, what am I doing!” she retorted. “Can’t you see what I’m doing? I’m scrubbing the toilet seat that you manage to piss on every time you go! Why boys can’t hit a hole that big is beyond me! Then they leave it for the women to scrub up! Move! You’re in my way!” She backed into his ankles and he leaped out of the way.
“I’ll scrub it if you want me to,” he said, hurt by her sudden attack.
“Oh sure, now you’ll scrub it. Now that I’ve already done it! Just get out of my way!”
He slinked off and closed himself in his room. Later that night he heard his mother weeping the way she had the night she broke up with Christopher.
THE phone rang at work the next day. Sylvia answered and laid the receiver on the counter. “It’s Lloyd,” she said. Lee wiped her hands on her smock and felt hope infuse her spirits. Lloyd could always make her feel that way, and it had been so long since she’d talked to him or seen him. When she picked up the receiver her face held a note of gladness that matched her voice. “Lloyd?”
“Hello, dear.”
“Oh, it’s so good to hear from you.”
“How are things over at that shop of yours today?”
“I’m surrounded by narcissus and pussy willows. Does that mean spring is here?”
“It must be, because I’ve caught a case of spring fever. I’ve been feeling a l
ittle cooped up here lately and I was wondering if you’d mind cheering up the life of a lonely old bachelor by going out to supper with him.”
“Tonight?”
“That’s what I was thinking. I’ve eaten a couple of those meals over at the Senior Citizens Center this week and they’re enough to make you puke. What do you say to a nice fat juicy steak up at the Vineyard?”
“Oh, Lloyd, that sounds wonderful.”
“I thought I’d come by for you at seven.”
“I’ll be ready.”
When Lee hung up she caught Sylvia watching and wondering, but she divulged nothing.
AT the Vineyard, Lloyd ordered a carafe of red wine. When the waitress had filled their glasses and left, he took a sip and said, “Well, I’ll get right to the point, Lee.” She felt her blood begin to plummet at his clipped, businessy tone. “The point being Christopher Lallek.” “Oh, Dad, not you, too.”
“No, no, not me, too,” he said, leaning forward as if with great enjoyment. “I’m not joining the ranks of those misguided fools who think they have a right to tell you how to run your life.”
“You’re not?” she said, amazed.
“Not at all. I came here to talk some sense into you, but not the kind of sense they’ll agree with. Now, what’s this I hear about you telling Christopher you aren’t going to see him anymore?”
“Joey must have called you.”
“He’s been calling me quite regularly, as a matter of fact. And telling me how hard you are to live with lately, and how you cry yourself to sleep at night. A while back he told me all about a long talk the two of you had when you were walking through the art gallery. By the way, you made that boy feel like he had the greatest mom in the world by spending the day with him that way. But back to the issue at hand—you’ve broken up with Christopher.”
“Yes, I have.”
“Very noble . . . and very unwise, don’t you think?”
She was too stunned to reply.
Lloyd covered her hand on the tabletop between them. “Lee, honey, I’ve known you for a long time. I’ve seen you sad and I’ve seen you happy, but I’ve never seen you any happier than during these past few months while you were seeing that young man. If I may be so crass, I’m not sure I ever saw you that happy when you were married to my son. I’m sure he’d forgive me for saying so because the two of you had a good marriage, and heaven knows I’m not taking anything away from that. But this . . . this young Lochinvar put a glow on you that hurt the eyes of those who don’t wear it themselves. Could be some of them got a little jealous.” He released her hand, took a drink of his wine, then studied the glass thoughtfully. “It’s not easy to be stuck in a marriage that’s twenty, thirty, forty years old and watch someone of your age fall in love and walk around looking like a ripe peach again. I’m not saying your mother and your sister don’t have happy marriages. I’m just saying that the best of marriages get a little stale and shopworn after a while. And as for my granddaughter. That’s pretty easy to understand. Naturally she’d get into a snit, being upstaged by her own mother.
“But don’t you let any one of them talk you out of your happiness. You worked hard for it. You raised those kids and gave them nine good years after Bill died, and during that time you hardly ever thought of yourself. When you started dating Christopher you put yourself before them for once, and if you don’t mind my saying so, it was high time. Children can get selfish, you know. You can give them so much of yourself that they expect it all.”
“I haven’t been giving them much of anything lately,” she admitted.
“Well, that’s a temporary thing. It’s because when you’re not happy you dont have as much to give. So what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you think the time has come for you to stand up to them—all of them, your mother, your sister and your daughter?”
“I thought that’s what I’d been doing.”
“No. What you’ve been doing is cutting off your nose to spite your face. What you need to do is go to that man you love and tell him you’ll marry him, and let everybody else suck dead gladiolus—I believe that was the phrase, wasn’t it?”
Lee laughed in spite of herself. The waitress brought their salads and Lloyd picked up his fork with scarcely a pause in his monologue.
“There’s one other thought I’ve had, and I believe I’ve considered it quite thoroughly since the night when you told me about this whole ruckus those silly women have kicked up. I think Bill would give you his blessing if he could. He’d want you to be happy. After all, you’re the mother of his children. If you’re happy, they’re going to be happy in the long run.”
“Do you really think so, Dad?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Mother suggested that I was being disloyal to Bill by taking up with Christopher.”
Lloyd just shook his head. “Honestly, that woman. She means well, but sometimes I’d like to kick her butt. Mothers get . . . well, you know. They have this image in their heads of what’s right for their daughters, and when it doesn’t turn out that way they can get pretty forceful. They tell themselves they’re doing it for their daughters’ good, but they’re really doing it to get their way.”
“Oh, Lloyd, I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hear you say these things.”
“I’m only telling the truth. I’m not really one of your family, so I can look at the situation a lot more impartially than they can. Now eat your salad and stop looking as if you’re going to leap off that chair and kiss me, because people will think I’m the one who’s robbing the cradle.”
“Lloyd Reston,” she said, smiling at him very warmly, “you are the dearest, most sensible, lovable man in the world.”
“Well, I’m close, but not quite the most. I expect that honor goes to this fellow you love. I’ve been around the two of you enough to see how you respect and admire each other and how doggone much fun you always manage to have when you’re together.”
“Yes, we do.”
“And if I may be so bold . . . I understand that your affair was sexual, too. Well, I say, more power to you, Lee. That was probably the real burr under those women’s saddles. You’ll pardon me for saying it, but I’ve seen your sister touch her husband exactly once in all the years I’ve known them. As I remember he had a wood tick on his neck and she picked it off for him one time when we were picnicking somewhere. As for your mother and father—well, I’m not going to make any remarks about them, but I suspect, given their age, that lust has rather lost its stronghold over at their house.
“So I say, if you’ve found a virile young man who loves you to pieces and wants to sweep you off your feet, get swept. Now eat, I said.”
Lee felt so light she was certain she’d float off her chair and bump the ceiling.
“May I say just one thing more?” she asked.
“Make it quick. My stomach is growling.”
“I love you.”
Lloyd lifted his gaze to his happy daughter-in-law and said, “Yes, I suppose you do. I’ve been around so long, what other choice do you have?”
He dug into his Caesar salad.
She dug into hers.
They wiped their mouths and exchanged messages over their linen napkins, smiling like conspirators.
19
SHE had decided even before Lloyd dropped her at home. His blessing was all she’d needed to make her see how wrong she’d been to turn Christopher away. Lloyd’s words carried more weight than all the others combined, for if he—the father of her first husband— could give her the right to second happiness, so surely should the others be able to do the same. She kissed his cheek and he patted her arm before she stepped from his car and tripped to the house as if there were no earth beneath her feet.
With her impatient heart racing, she dialed Christopher’s apartment.
“Be there, be there,” she whispered, but got his answering machine instead.
This messa
ge was too momentous to leave on a tape recording: she dialed the police station and the dispatcher said, “He’s working mid-shift, Mrs. Reston. He’ll get off at eleven o’clock.”
She checked her watch. It was after ten.
Suddenly she was racing. Into the bathroom, into the tub, out of the tub, into clean clothes, thinking, Hang on, Christopher, I’m coming.
At 10:45 she went into Joey’s room and woke him up.
“Hey, Joey? . . . Honey?”
“Hm? Mom? What time is it? Feels like I just went to sleep.”
“You did.” She sat on the edge of his bed while the hall light slanted in a golden fan on the floor behind her. “It’s only quarter to eleven. Sorry to wake you but I’m going over to Christopher’s. I just wanted you to know in case you woke up and found me gone.”
“To Christopher’s?”
“I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“No. Hey, way to go, Mom.”
“I may be gone late because he’s just getting off work now.”
“Grandpa must have done some fancy talking tonight.”
“Yes, he did. And I’m going to do what he and you said I should do. I’m going to marry Chris.”
“You are?” Even in the deep shadow she could see his crooked smile. “Gee, Mom, that’s great.”
“I’m going to tell him tonight.”
“Well, in that case . . . maybe I shouldn’t expect you till morning.”
It struck Lee how society’s perception of unmarried sex had changed in a single generation. Her own mother couldn’t accept Lee’s having an illicit affair, yet she could sit here on her son’s bed and joke with him about it.
“I promise I’ll be here to fix you breakfast.”
“Waffles?” he asked.
“Is this extortion?” She hated making waffles . . . too much work.
“Well, heck, you can’t blame a kid for trying.”
“Okay, waffles.”
“All riiight.”
“I owe you more than waffles though, don’t I?”