Dare to Love (22 page)

“Just wait, Andrea, you'll see. They'll be married by the New Year.”

They wrapped in silence, while Gloria tried to work up the guts to talk to Andrea about sex. Should she just come right out and talk about climaxes—female ones? Or should she approach Andrea more subtly, maybe ask a couple of leading questions first?

And then she remembered there was something else she needed to ask.

“How's that boy you were with at the hospital last weekend?”

“Jeremy? He's really doing okay, Ma. He has some tough times ahead of him, but so far he's pulling through. They have him in detox and he's still having hallucinations, but he seems to be ready to go straight. That's most of the battle won right there.”

Gloria nodded. Her whole family was pulling for the boy. They all knew, firsthand, what the young man was going through. They knew all about the hell of rehab.

“You'll let me know if there's anything I can do, won't you?”

“Yeah, Ma. I'll let you know.”

The packages were almost all wrapped. Gloria watched Andrea reach for the last box in Scotty's pile. She watched her daughter measure and cut a piece of paper to fit the package, and took a deep breath.

“Do you like sex?”

“What?” Andrea dropped the scissors, putting a nick in the dining-room table.

“You know—sex. Do you like it?”

“No offense, Ma, but that's really none of your concern.”

“Just answer me, Andrea. Do you like it?”

“Sure, I like it. Who doesn't, if it's with the right person?” Andrea paused in her wrapping to study her mother. “Wait a minute, Ma. Are you having troubles? Is there something wrong between you and Pop?”

Gloria snorted. Leave it to Andrea to try and turn the tables.

“No. There is nothing wrong between your father and me. He's as randy as ever, and I still tingle every time he touches me. But what about you? Do you ever, you know, tingle?”

Andrea's face filled with color. She resumed her wrapping. “That's none of your business, Ma. Now how about we change the subject?”

Gloria was encouraged by the blush on her daughter's cheeks. Maybe that Doug Avery was as good as he looked, after all. Maybe they'd have a very merry Christmas yet.

“I'm only trying to help, Andrea. You're a grown woman. It's not natural for you to go so long without sex. Your body needs the, uh, release.”

“Stay out of it, Ma.”

“Andrea, sex is natural, it's necessary—”

“Ma! Shut up!”

Gloria smiled.
Yep. It just might turn out to be a glorious Christmas, after all.

* * *

“O
KAY
,
GANG
, we've got time for one more before we wrap it up for the week. Someone throw out a pressure situation.”

“This really rad girl invites you over for a party. You get to her house and find out it's just you and her. Her folks are gone for the weekend. You're sitting next to her on the couch, getting up the guts to make a move on her, and she pulls out this joint and wants you to try just a toke or two.”

Doug listened to Jay Wilson describe every boy's dream. “Okay, Jay's got a good one. Shane? What would you do?”

“Take a stand?”

“How?”

“Tell her she's so cool she doesn't need that stuff?”

“She doesn't buy it,” Jay called out.

“But she's so beautiful and smart. She could have any guy she wanted. Why would she want to mess herself up like that?”

“She's bored. Nothing's exciting anymore.”

“I guess that means I'm not exciting, and if that's the case, I don't feel so good about being there anyway.”

“Catch.” Doug tossed Shane a miniature DARE Bear. He'd earned it. Doug was glad. Shane had been the only student in the class who had yet to earn a bear.

Doug looked over at Andrea as the kids packed up for the day. She was leaning against a desk, talking to a pretty red-headed girl. The girl had been crying during recess. Now she was smiling. Andrea was great with the kids. He didn't know what he would have done without her in the classroom with him these past months.

Which raised a question that had been nagging at him more and more. Next week was graduation. What was going to happen to him and Andrea after that?

“You got plans for the weekend?” he asked her as they walked together out to the school parking lot.

“I've got to get to the mall. I've barely started my Christmas shopping.”

“You could pick up some great things at Winterfest.”

“What Winterfest?”

“Down at King's Island. Stan was telling me they've turned the whole amusement park into a winter wonderland. Some of the rides are open, and all of the shops, of course.”

“But King's Island is two hours away. That's kind of far to go just to shop, don't you think?”

“I wasn't just thinking about shopping. I was thinking about having you all to myself, taking you on an old-fashioned sleigh ride, having to cuddle you to keep warm.” Doug paused and then jumped in feet first. “I was thinking about staying in the hotel there and having our own private Christmas.”

“Oh, Doug. Don't do this. I want so badly to make you happy. God knows you deserve it. But I just can't do something that's going to make things even harder.”

“But why does it have to? Did something terrible happen last Saturday night when I slept with you all night long?”

She sighed, stopping beside her car to look up at him. The sadness in her eyes pierced Doug.

“More than you know. I haven't been able to sleep all week for missing you beside me. And that was after only one night. You're like an addiction. It scares me.”

Doug got the feeling that a lot more than a weekend was at stake here.

“Just what are you saying?” he asked carefully. He slid his hands into his trouser pockets.

“I don't know,” she said, sounding as confused as a child. “I'm trying so hard to find a way out, to forgive myself, but it's just not working. I'm beginning to think it never will. And I just can't risk losing it all again.”

“So what are you saying?”

She looked up at him, her eyes pleading for understanding. “I guess I'm saying it would be best if we don't see each other anymore—in a personal sense, I mean.”

Doug digested her words in silence. He felt there was something he should do or say, something he could give her that would help her find the courage to try again. But as he stood there in the semideserted parking lot, he couldn't find that elusive something.

“I guess if that's the way you want it...” He took a long last look at her, then walked away.

D
OUG LOOKED AT
the address in his hand. It was written with faded ink on a yellowed scrap of precinct notepaper. He remembered the day he'd written it there. Someone had come up to him just as he was finishing, and he'd ripped it off the pad so quickly that he'd torn the edge. But he'd kept the information.

He ran his calloused finger over the jagged edge of the paper, thinking back to the man he'd been seven years before, the man who'd told himself he was relieved—glad even—to see that the address was in such a nice part of town. And suddenly he was consumed with rage. He crushed the scrap of paper, wadding it up in his fist, and threw it across his living room.

He thought of the mass of grief and guilt Andrea had subjected herself to on behalf of her baby brother and her ex-husband, the penance she was paying still. And he thought of the sacrifices his mother had never made. He thought of the tears Andrea had shed for those she loved, for him, and the tears his mother had never shed.

Still seething with anger, Doug grabbed his keys off his coffee table, stuffed his arms into his leather jacket and strode out of his apartment as if the devil were at his heels.

Andrea needed something from him. He knew that. He knew he hadn't pushed her hard enough to not give up on them. And he had a pretty good idea why not. In his own way, he was as frightened as she was.

Doug got into his car and sped across town to the elite neighborhood where politicians and doctors lived. He slowed as he turned onto the street he was looking for, and came to a complete stop before he was in front of the right house.

He gazed at the huge white building, noting the freshly painted black trim, the perfectly manicured lawns, the mass of brightly colored flower beds. Anger was replaced by a childish fear, resentment by a lost piece of innocent hope. Maybe there was some explanation, something that would make the betrayal less damning, something that could explain the years of abandonment, of pain, of lovelessness.

Doug zipped up his jacket, slid his keys into one of its pockets and adjusted his wristband. He strode up to the front door of the imposing mansion as if he had every right to be there.

“Yes? May I help you?”

Lord.
They even had a maid in a uniform.

“Yes. I'm looking for Dora. Dora Littleton.”

The hired help looked him over, from the scuffed toes of his boots, along his tight, faded jeans, to the hair he probably should have had cut weeks ago.

“Who may I say is calling?”

“D-Deputy Douglas.”

“Just one minute, sir.”

The door swung toward him, and Doug had the sudden notion that the woman meant to shut it in his face and lock it. He grabbed the edge of the door with one hand, pushing it inward as he stepped up onto the marble floor of an incredibly luxurious foyer.

“I'll just wait in here, if you don't mind. It's unbelievably cold out today.”

The maid looked like she was going to protest, but with one glance at Doug's face, she apparently thought better of it.

“Yes, sir. I'll get Mrs. Littleton.”

So much for loyalty,
Doug thought, scuffing the toe of his boot along the grouting that held two slabs of decorator marble together.

Now that he was there, he wasn't even sure why he'd come. He wondered how she'd look, if her hair was still the soft brown he remembered or if she'd turned graciously gray. He wondered if Mr. Littleton might be home.

“What's the meaning of this? Who are you and what do you want?”

He recognized her voice. He couldn't believe it. He actually recognized her voice.

But that was all he remembered about the woman standing before him. Gone were the stooped shoulders, the weary eyes, the gentle lips. The woman was regal, tall, erect and as cold as a headstone. Her lips were taut with displeasure.

Doug pulled out his wallet, flashing his ID, seeing the whole bizarre scene as if from a distance. A safe, unemotional distance.

“The name's Avery. Doug Avery. Mean anything to you?”

He felt a queer sense of satisfaction as he watched the color drain from her perfectly made-up face. It was good to know, after twenty-five years, that she still remembered him.

“Doug? Oh my God. Doug? What do you want? Why are you here? You want money, don't you? How much?”

Doug felt his heart sink like a stone. “Hi, Mom. I'm glad to see you, too.”

“Doug? Why are you doing this to me?” Her silk pantsuit trembled around her.

“I wasn't aware that
I
had done anything to
you,
” Doug said, trying to find some spark that would prove the woman's humanity.

Doesn't she feel anything? Isn't there any kind of maternal instinct inside her? Isn't there something that binds us together?

“You've got to go. Chad's due home any minute. He can't find you here.”

“I meant to ask you about that. I know I was young, but I remember the guy's name as Philpot, Larry Philpot.” His words were bitter, but they only portrayed the tip of what he was feeling.

She looked distracted for a minute, and Doug had the funny feeling that she was trying to remember if she'd ever known a Larry Philpot.

“He, uh, turned out to be something of a bum. Never could keep a job.”

“Guess you were a little too hasty there, huh? At least Dad worked.” As soon as the words had escaped his lips, Doug remembered the sound of his father's hand smacking his mother's face, and felt ashamed for having said them.

But then he remembered the feel of that hand against his own head, the anger that had been turned on him because of this woman's desertion, and he didn't feel sorry for hurting her.

“What do you want from me?” Her words were pleading. Suddenly she looked her age, even older. Her years of hard living seemed to have caught up with her in the space of two minutes.

“Why? Why did you do it?”

She looked impatient. “How can you ask that? You know what he did to me—”

“I don't mean that.” Doug cut her off. “No one could blame you for leaving him. But what about me? Why did you leave me there with him? I was just a little kid, for heaven's sake, barely out of diapers.”

She started to cry then, small tears that were wiped away before they could smudge her eye makeup. She looked around, as if fearing the servants' sharp ears, and then led Doug into a private sitting room to the right of the hall.

Doug refused the seat she offered him. He refused the drink, too, surprised that she didn't immediately help herself to a stiff glassful from the fully stocked sideboard.

“You've certainly done well for yourself. How long have you been living in the lap of luxury?”

“I met Chad twenty years ago, when I was waitressing at the Morse Road Golf Club. He didn't care that I didn't have a good family name. He only cared that I was pretty and innocent.”

Doug cringed. “How'd you pull that one off?”

“I'd learned how to pretend almost anything, by then. And Chad saw what he wanted to see.”

“So the poor fellow married you, not knowing that you'd ever lived with another man, let alone borne his son?”

“I did what I had to do, Doug. And I've been a good wife to Chad all these years. I learned what I had to learn to fit in with his family and friends, and I've been faithful to him since the moment we met. I'd even have given him children if he'd wanted any.”

Doug stood in the middle of her elegant little room and wanted to throttle her. Like, he was supposed to be impressed by her fidelity? “Where was all that loyalty when I needed you?”

Dora sank down onto a velvet-covered sofa, running her fingers through her meticulously styled and frosted hair.

“You're all grown up now, Doug. I can see how tough you are. You were tough then, too, tougher than I ever was. Sometimes your courage frightened me, because I couldn't find any myself, but mostly it made me ashamed. I wasn't fit to be a mother—especially not yours. I couldn't take care of myself. How was I supposed to take care of a kid who had more of the answers at five than I did at twenty-five?”

“You thought I'd be better off with
him?
”

“No! But Larry wouldn't take you with us. And I just couldn't stay anymore. Your father found out about Larry. If I'd stayed, he'd have killed me.”

At least something finally made sense, Doug thought, strangely relieved to know that there'd been some logic to his mother's desertion.

“And Littleton still doesn't know any of it, does he? He doesn't know about my father, or Philpot, or even about me,
does he?
”

Dora shrank back at the anger in Doug's voice. She looked toward the door of the sitting room and shook her head.

“And you aren't going to tell him, are you?”

She looked up at him, her eyes pleading with him not to make waves. “I'll give you money, as much as you want. You can set yourself up anywhere you'd like, take a cruise, go to the Bahamas. I'll buy you a yacht.”

Doug smiled derisively. “Yeah? And how would you explain that to Chad?”

“I give to charities all the time.”

She gave to charities, but she'd never bothered to look up the son she'd left behind in the slums.

Doug shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and headed toward the door. “Well, thanks, but no thanks. In case you didn't notice when you looked at my wallet, I'm a cop. Here. In Columbus. And I've got a job to do. A job I wish someone had done back when I was a kid.”

He looked over his shoulder at the woman who'd given him birth, almost as if waiting for some kind of approval for the good he'd made of his life, some kind of maternal pride at what he'd accomplished. What he saw was the stricken look in her eyes. She didn't care what he was; she was only afraid of the threat his existence posed to her well-ordered life.

“Don't worry,
Mother,
I'll keep our little secret.”

Her relief was so palpable it was almost sickening. And that's when Doug's anger turned to pity.

“I've got a question for you,” he said, turning to face her when he reached the doorway.

“What?” She didn't sound too eager to hear it.

“Did you ever consider leaving with me, instead of Philpot?”

“Come on, Doug. You said you're a cop. You have to know that life isn't really sweet and pretty like they show you on TV. How far do you think I'd have gotten if I'd had a child hanging around my neck? It would have taken one hell of a man to have been willing to raise your father's son. I'd never have gotten farther than the next block.”

Doug swallowed hard. He wished he'd never asked. “You could've tried.” She could have gotten a job then, tried to support him herself.

“This is the real world, Doug. And the reality of it is each man for himself. When the chips are down, that's all you've got. There's nobody out there who'd have made the kind of sacrifice you're asking. Life doesn't work that way.”

Doug thought of Andrea, of her warmth and generosity, of the kindness within her that wouldn't allow her to take a chance on failing him. And he realized then what he had that he could give her. His love.

He looked at his mother for the last time. “You're wrong. It can be that way.”

He walked out of the house, away from the past, without looking back.