Family Blessings (25 page)

"My pleasure," he said.

They spent some seconds enjoying the fact that they'd reconnected before she let her mouth quirk. "You damn fool. I could have gotten them for you at half the price, wholesale."

He reared back and laughed. "Wouldn't have been half as much fun though, would it?"

The ref's whistle blew and they remembered why they were there.

The play stopped, however, and the teams went back to their huddles.

"So," she said as if their past contretemps had not happened, "you want to come over Saturday night and have some pot roast with Joey and me?"

With that simple question his life became happy again. "You don't have to ask me twice."

They grinned at each other in anticipation until his radio crackled and he reached for it.

"One Bravo Seventeen."

The dispatcher came back, giving him a staticky message.

"Copy," he replied, and to Lee, who hadn't comprehended a word

, the dispatcher had said, "Teenage runaway. Gotta go check it out.

What time on Saturday?"

"Six-thirty."

He touched his hat, walked two steps away, then came back. "You gonna make gravy?"

"I take it you like gravy?"

"Never learned how to make it myself."

"What's a pot roast without gravy?"

His lingering smile said the last thing he wanted to do at that minute was check out a teenage runaWay. "See you."

She swiveled and watched him respond to duty, his thick-soled black shoes making the metal bleacher tremble beneath her feet, the crease in his navy trousers breaking behind the knees, his jacket puffed out above the waist, the leather holders full of heavy paraphernalia hanging thick from his belt, even in back. He turned left, bounded up the steps, taking them two at a time. She watched him climb to the top, turning her back to the field while he shouldered his way around the opening in the chain link fence and walked briskly to his squad car. Opening the door he glanced down, saw her following his progress and raised a hand in farewell.

She saw his smile and waved back, watching until the black-and white pulled away, amazed at how his return into her life lent it a buoyancy that had been lacking since she'd spooked and cut him out of it. All right, so she might be making a mistake, but Lord it felt good to be looking forward to a night with him again.

On Saturday evening one of those bleak October rains was falling when Christopher arrived at Lee's house. Joey answered the bell and said, "Hi, Chris."

"What do you say, Joe?"

"Saw you at my game Wednesday."

"Sorry I couldn't stick around. I got a call. But I saw your sack.

Man, you really nailed him!"

"I got him again in the last quarter, too!Jeer, you should've seen that guy. Took him the whole time-out to get back on his feet, and then after that his linemen were really on me. This one big bruiser . .

."

Lee stuck her head around the kitchen corner and despaired of getting a word in edgewise. She wagged two fingers at Christopher while Joey went on babbling excitedly, moving toward the kitchen with their guest, walking backward without realizing it.

For Christopher, returning to this place, to these people, to these homey comforts filled his heart with a sense of belonging.

The table was set for three. Some bronze-colored flowers decorated the middle of it. The kitchen was bright and cozy with the rain beating against the sliding door and the curtains drawn against the dark. The smell in the place made his mouth water-beef and cooked onions, coffee, fragrant steam rising from kettles on the stove. And, of course, there was Lee wearing carpet slippers and a blue sweat suit, moving about, getting a meal ready while her son rambled on as he would with a father or a big brother.

". . . and the coach said, Tear their legs off' and I think I almost did. Hey, Mom, Chris was there when I made my first sack!

He saw it!"

"Yes, I know. Hi, Christopher." She was thickening gravy at the stove, and neither of them gave away their gladness at being together.

"Smells good in here."

"You bet your badge. I didn't eat much today. Hope it's okay if I put it on right away. Joey, will you fill the milk glasses?"

Christopher asked, "Can I do something?"

"Sure. You can put this salt and pepper shaker on the table." She handed him the pair. "Then reach up onto the top shelf behind me and get down two bowls for the potatoes and the carrots."

Such plain family activity, but moving around the room together, Christopher and Lee felt a subtle shift in their relationship.

Perhaps, for the moment, they simply indulged in playing house.

He got down the bowls, she filled them, then put them in his hands.

Women set tables differently than men, he noticed. Not only bronze flowers, but bearded wheat sticking out of them, and place mats and a pair of rust-colored candles. She handed him matches and he lit them.

There was a jumble of activity--Joey with the milk, Lee opening the oven door, finding pot holders, running water into empty kettles, handing Chris another bowl of food to set on the table.

Then, at last, the three of them sat down to a tableful of steaming foods that Norman Rockwell surely must have painted dozens of times.

Roast beef, mashed potatoes, rich dark gravy, bright orange carrots, sweet peas in a thick white sauce, a tossed green salad and something i rown, moist and unidentifiable in a casserole dish so hot it burned Christopher's fingers.

"Ouch!"

"You okay?"

"Yeah." Mesmerized, he reached again . . . for the spoon this time.

"What's this?"

. "Corn-bread stuffing with pork sausage."

"Oh my Go-o-o-d." He drew out the word as if singing a canticle.

They feasted for the better part of an hour while the raindrops tapped ' against the window like a thousand impatient fingers, while the warmth from the oven suffused the room, and a fourteen-year-old boy amused them all with tales of football and school pranks.

They laughed and had refills and Joey asked Christopher what was the first bust he ever made. Christopher wore a self-deprecating grin as he replied that the very first day of work he was watching the crosswalk by Lincoln Elementary when he'd spied a seven-year-old urinating against the corner of the school building. Scared the kid half to death when a great big police officer in an official blue uniform stood above him and gave him a lecture. Forever after, everybody at the station snickered when they recalled that on his first day on the force Chris Lallek busted a sevenyear-old for peeing on the school building.

The three at the table laughed and felt relaxed with each other.

Lee said, "There's apple cobbler and ice cream." Christopher expanded his chest and rubbed his stomach. "I couldn't hold one more morsel .

.

."

He released his breath and added, ". . . But give me an extra scoop."

When his dessert was gone, Christopher said, "That's the best meal I've had since the last time I ate at your house. Thanks, Lee."

"It's nice to cook for a man again." It was true. Joey was merely an eating machine. He'd eat metal bolts if they were sauteed in butter.

But cooking for a man was different, and there was no denying she'd put extra effort into tonight's meal.

They worked together cleaning up the kitchen, rinsing dishes, loading the dishwasher. Lee was washing off the top of the stove when she paused and said, "Christopher, I know I shouldn't take advantage of you, but would you do me a favor?"

"Name it."

"I put a couple of tugS in the washer the other day and it walked halfway across the basement floor, then afterwards it was sagging way down on one corner. Would you mind leveling it for me?"

"Don't mind at all."

"Joey, will you go downstairs with Chris and show him where?"

Her laundry room was all finished off and brightly lit. A pair of her panty hose hung from a towel bar on a plastic clothespin.

Chris thought about taking them off her sometime. Joey got one of his dad's levels and they jostled the machine onto two legs and screwed the other two this way and that until the machine sat level.

Christopher was dusting off the knees of his jeans when she came to the laundry room doorway rubbing lotion into her hands. "Ah, you fixed it.

Thank you so much." She walked past him, plucked the panty hose down and folded them. "Most things I'll tackle on my own, but that's one I won't. Thanks again."

She led the way back upstairs. "Anybody for a game of Parcheesi?"

They began a game of Parcheesi, but midway through it Joey got a phone call--obviously from a girl. His voice cracked from contralto to soprano and back again while he said, "Oh, hi, I thought you were going out with your family to your aunt's house tonight . . . Yeah, but just a minute." He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "Hey, Mom, would you hang this up when I get in your bedroom?"

She complied, and returned to the kitchen table, crooking a knee onto her chair seat while standing beside it. "He'll be on for two hours.

The telephone is his newest toy. You want to keep playing or should we watch TV?"

"What do you want to do?"

"Watch TV. I'm tired. I worked today."

"Me too. I'll help you put this away."

When the Parcheesi game was boxed, they went into the living room and she tucked herself into a corner of the sofa while he stretched out on his back on the floor.

"Hey, there are chairs," she said.

"No, this is fine." He tipped his chin up and looked at her backward, then concentrated on the screen.

"All right, stubborn." She tossed him a sofa pillow that landed on his face. He tucked it beneath his head and said, "Thanks."

A situation comedy flickered through its tired scenes before them.

She flicked channels with the remote control. The rain kept pummeling the windows behind the closed curtains. In the bedroom, Joey laughed, then his voice returned to a distant murmur.

Lee lowered the volume on the TV. Occasionally her eyes would wander to the figure stretched out across her living room floor, to his flat stomach and crossed ankles and everything in between.

Guiltily, she looked away and returned her attention to the television.

But it swerved back to him of its own accord.

"Hey, Christopher?" she said.

"Hen?"

"I've been thinking a lot about the story you told me . . . about your growing up." He lay very still with his hands behind his head. "I'm glad you told me. It makes me understand your relationship with Judd."

"I didn't tell you so you'd feel sorry for me."

"I know that. But I'm glad you did just the same. Your parents .

. . they sound like very sad creatures." She waited but he said nothing. "Do you think it would make any difference if you tried to make peace with them?"

"No, I don't."

"Have you ever tried?"

"Drop it, Lee."

"But they're your parents."

He sat up and swung around to face her. "Hey, listen," he said calmly.

"We've got to get one thing straight. Don't crusade with me about them.

I know it's hard for you to swallow, but I hate them. And with just cause. In my book, a parent doesn't inherit the right to respect from his children, he earns it. And mine missed the chance years ago."

"But surely everybody deserves a second chance."

"I said, drop it, Lee." She could hear the tight control in his voice.

"But, Christopher, family is so important and they're your--" "As far as I'm concerned, they're dead."

"Why, Christopher, that's an awful thing to say!"

He leaped to his feet, threw the pillow onto the sofa and headed for the front coat closet.

She was up and after him instantly. "Christopher, I'm sorry." She caught his arm before he reached the front hall. "I'm sorry," she repeated. "It's just that . .."

He spun on her. "It's just that you live in a dream world, Lee."

She had never seen his mouth like that, curled in upon itself in a hard, flat-cheeked face. "You think that just because your mom twirls a baton at a Fourth of July picnic and your dad grills steaks you can somehow get the whole world to do that? Woman, you are so naive! You were born into this ideal family, and you raised an ideal one of your own, but they're not all like that.

There are millions of Judds in this country-- poor, hungry, neglected, scared to death because they don't know what's going to happen to them the next day. And so they turn to drugs and gangs. They become pushers and rapists. Well, I'm one of the few lucky ones who got out--no thanks to my parents. So don't ask me to forgive them, Lee.

Don't ever ask that of me, because I won't."

She took his face in her two hands and whispered, "So much anger.

I've never seen it before."

He jerked away, twisting his head up and to one side. "Don't!"

She dropped her hands. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

He got his jacket out of the closet. "No, I'm the one who's sorry. I spoiled this perfectly nice Saturday night after you went to so much trouble cooking for me and everything. And I had a good time talking to Joey and . .." He'd put his jacket on and zipped it up. At the top of the zipper his hands stalled while he looked at her beseechingly. "I'm sorry I ruined it, that's all."

"I shouldn't have brought up the subject of your parents. I promise I won't again, okay?"

He took some gloves out of his pocket and flapped them toward the bedroom. "Okay if I go say goodbye to Joey?"

She stepped back and said, "Sure."

He went down the hall and leaned into her bedroom, glimpsing it for the first time perfume bottles on a dresser, open closet doors with dresses hanging inside. Joey was lying on top of a blue-flowered bedspread that was all messed up beneath him. The bottom of one enlarged sock was pointed straight at the doorway, propped on top of a knee. Two pillows were piled beneath his head. They, too, had blue floral cases.

"Hey, Joey . . . see ya. Gotta go."

"Already?" Into the phone Joey said, "Just a minute."

Christopher flourished the pair of gloves. "Thanks. I enjoyed it.