Family Blessings (27 page)

"Well, maybe I can make the pies and the casserole, too."

"Let's wait till Mom gets home and talk over the menu then."

Chicken! Lee thought when she'd gotten into her car. She sat without starting the engine, gripping the wheel and going nowhere, frustrated and feeling like a jerk for cutting Christopher out when he so looked forward to being with the family on holidays. She was made more miserable by the fact that she was planning a lie, for when the time came she'd tell everybody that Christopher had to work on Thanksgiving day.

The morning of the Grand Day Parade Anoka got crazy well before noon.

Thousands of people flooded in, coming to shop, eat lunch and get a good spot on the curb along the parade route. Cars inched along on every side street, looking for parking spaces.

Children in costume, hand-towed by their mothers, passed the store windows in droves. Lee looked out between the tempera-painted corn shocks and saw people setting up lawn chairs on the sidewalk out front.

Inside, the place was a madhouse. One or two real customers were honestly doing business, but the rest were only creating chaos. Some woman with a bawling baby was looking at greeting cards and wrinkling them when the baby threw itself backward in her arms. A bunch of little boys had discovered the free apple cider and were running in and out, using up her paper cups and bringing their friends in to empty the hot pot. An older woman with a frantic look on her face limped in and asked, "Could I use your toilet, please?" A representative of the Miss Anoka Pageant came tearing in, demanding, "The corsages for the queen candidates--I need them, quick!" The phone rang incessantly.

Customers lined up at the checkout counter. The door opened again and the backdraft blew over a wire stand holding a potted cyclamen plant.

At one o'clock, Lee clasped her head and said, "Enough already!

Let's lock this place up!"

With a feeling of relief they locked the door, put on their jackets and went out to join the throng on the curb waiting to see the color guard come marching down Main Street to the drumbeat of the Anoka High School band.

Ah, sweet relief! It was a heavenly day, and so good to be outside.

Overhead, the sky was deep blue, mottled here and there with puffy white clouds. The temperature on the bank sign read forty-seven degrees, so the sun felt splendid through Lee's denim jacket. Down at the river crossing, the Rum River was frothing over the dam. Along Main Street all the businesses had put out orange-and-black flags, American flags, flags with the school colors and some whose designation was merely decorative.

A police car came inching by, and Lee's heart lurched. But it was someone else at the wheel, not Christopher.

A few yards up the curb some teenagers had gathered and were laughing and jostling each other. One of them threw a basketball-sized pumpkin as high into the air as he could. It hit the blacktop and splattered ten yards, sending people jumping back, then brushing at the orange strings of pumpkin guts hanging from their clothes. Some laughter went up, along with some cursing and complaining.

At the corner of the block Christopher had pulled up his squad car at an angle, cutting offtraffic on a cross street. He'd been standing at the front of the car with the flashing reds on, watching the crowd when the pumpkin hit the pavement.

Immediately he headed that way.

He walked along the concrete gutter in front of the gathered crowd, unhurried but authoritative.

Reaching the three rowdy teenage boys, he asked, "You guys throw that?"

One of them said, "Shit no, man. An old lady did. She went that way, didn't she, Kevin?"

Kevin said, "Oh, yeah, way down that way."

Christopher remained calm. "You're going to have to clean it up."

One of the boys said, "Screw you."

An onlooker yelled, "It flew clear over here!"

A block away, the color guard was approaching, followed by the band--seventy pairs of white shoes stomping through all that pumpkin hash. "Now!" Christopher ordered. "Because if that band gets here first, I'm going to start taking names, and I'm sure a lot of these people would be interested in sending you their dry-cleaning bills."

One of the teenagers relented. "What are we supposed to pick it up with?"

Someone handed over a newspaper. The three boys took the paper, went out into the street, scraped up the pumpkin slime with their hands and piled it into the newspaper while Officer Lallek stood by with his thumbs hooked into his belt, watching.

They came running back to the curb just as the American Legion color guard came by with the flags. Behind them, the band was blaring.

Christopher pointed down the block in the direction of his patrol car.

"There's a garbage receptacle down there."

Grumbling, the boys went toward it.

From the curb in front of her store, Lee Reston had seen it all.

She might have willfully cut Christopher out of her life, but the sight of him--particularly in uniform, performing his duties-still had the power to switch her heart into overdrive. There was so much noise that she hadn't heard his voice, but she'd watched without once pulling her eyes from the scene. He looked as strikingly attractive as ever. The color guard passed and she forgot to stand at attention. The band approached and she forgot to watch their synchronized footsteps.

Instead, she watched the visor of Christopher's hat above the heads between them, hoping he would turn her way and find her standing there.

He removed his hat and placed it over his heart as Old Glory waved past.

He watched the flag.

She watched him.

He stood erect and respectful, raising such a turmoil within her that it felt as if the drums were beating deep in her breast.

The color guard passed and Christopher replaced his hat, leaned over to say something to a small child in the crowd. He laughed, touched the child's head, then straightened, glancing down the street while the band came on, their brass blaring.

As if he sensed himself being studied, he turned and looked over his left shoulder in Lee's direction. Their gazes collided.

Neither of them smiled, but he began coming toward her with the same unruffled pace at which he'd approached the boys who'd thrown the pumpkin.

Flustered, she turned her attention to the band, watched their ranks passing by as even as cornrows. The march ended and the drum section took up a street beat--throom, thr-thr throom.tenors and bass drums answering the snares with such booming vigor it battered the eardrums.

Then Christopher was before her and she could no longer keep herself from looking up at his smooth-shaven face. His mouth moved. He must have said hello, though the drums covered it up.

She said the word, too, though it was lost in the reverberations around them. Their attraction for each other and denial of it were in the forefront of their encounter, coloring it with polite distancing while the entire city of Anoka and her sister looked on. Finally he realized how long he'd focused on Lee, and touched his hatbrim in a polite hello to Sylvia and Pat Galsworthy. A boy on a BMX bike was doing wheelies, threatening to wipe out the rear corner of the band. "Gotta go," he said, and escaped under the guise of duty.

Against her will, Lee's eyes followed him as he motioned the boy over closer to the curb, then answered a greeting from someone in the crowd with whom he stood talking, Christopher with one foot on the street, one on the curb.

Further contingents of the parade passed by--the grand marshal, kids in costume, the Shriners on their purring Harleys, more kids in costume.

Lee pretended to watch the movement in the street, but all the while she kept Christopher in her peripheral vision. He visited with people.

He touched kids on their heads. He caught some candy thrown by a clown and gave it to one of them. He plucked up his radio and put it to his mouth, scowled westward up the street, then turned purposefully and headed back toward his car. Passing I ee, he gave her only a glance, and then he was gone.

The parade kept coming endless kids in costume, the Forest Lake band, the Hopkins band, a float holding the school cooks from Coon Rapids Senior High, more floats, more bands, the football team on a flatbed truck and the cheerleaders waving pompons, the royalty from the Miss Anoka Pageant--but long before the big red city fire trucks rolled by with their air horns deafening, signaling the parade's end, it had ended for Lee Reston.

Chapter 10.

HE didn't call him about Thanksgiving.

On November eighteenth her parents got back into town and Peg called right away. She wanted Lee to make the pumpkin pies and was planning on twenty-three for the holiday meal. She said, "Chris is coming, isn't he?"

"I'm not sure. I think he has to work."

Peg said, "Oh, what a shame."

Lee hung up, burdened by an enormous load of guilt.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Peg and Orrin Hillier were at the Red Owl store shopping for their Thanksgiving turkey when Peg turned into the frozen-food aisle and nearly collided with Christopher, just off duty, still dressed in his blues and shopping for his supper.

"Christopher! Well, for goodness sake, it's you!"

"Hello, Mrs. Hillier."

She gave him a hug, which he returned, holding his frozen chicken divan away from her back. He and Orrin shook hands. They stood and talked awhile, about Orrin and Peg's trip to New England, the stupendous fall colors they'd seen and the covered bridges of Vermont.

They praised the architectural splendors of Charleston and the fine golf courses of Myrtle Beach.

Then Peg said, "I was so sorry to hear you couldn't make it to our house for Thanksgiving dinner."

Unsure of what was going on, Christopher covered his surprise well.

"I'm sorry to miss it, too. You know how a bachelor loves home cooking."

"I was hoping you'd get the holiday off, but Lee said you have to work."

Out of nowhere he blurted the truth. "Not until three."

"Not until three! Why, then, it's settled. We eat at one and you'll be there."

He smiled. "Thanks, Mrs. Hillier. In that case, I will."

"The mulled cider will be hot at eleven, so come early."

"Your family is so good about including me. I just can't thank you enough."

Peg Hillier looked pleased and patted his shoulder. "Nonsense," she said. "You're like one of the family yourself." As proof, he received a grandmotherly hug of farewell.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Lee arranged an elegant centerpiece for Rodney to deliver to her parents' home. It was a lavish mixture of apricot ranunculus, kalanchoes and an abundance of sprayed pomegranates, all tied together with dark trailing ivy and wired bicolored grosgrain ribbon. She put it in a low, gleaming oval of polished brass and signed the card Happy Thankrgiving and welcome home.

Love, Sylvia and Lee. All the while Lee worked on it she was recalling last Thanksgiving when the family had gathered at her house and Greg had still been alive. How many months since he'd died? Five, yet on given days she was still assaulted by anguish at the realization that he was gone forever.

She supposed it was natural that holidays would be the worst.

Lee put the last twist on the wired ribbon and was standing back assessing the arrangement when Sylvia came over to the arranging table and said reverently, "Wow." They stood for a moment admiring the color, balance and texture of the creation.

"It's a masterpiece." Sylvia draped a wrist over Lee's shoulder.

"I wish I could arrange something like that just once in my life."

Lee put her arm around Sylvia's waist. "And I wish I was better at the business side of business. It's why we work together so well, isn't it?"

"Mom's going to love it."

"Men."

To Sylvia, Lee seemed unusually quiet and subdued. "Something wrong?"

Lee only stared at the flowers.

"You thinking of Greg?" Lee got tears in her eyes and Sylvia gripped her shoulder, pulled her over and put her temple against her sister's.

"It's just that it's Thanksgiving . . . the first one without him.

We're supposed to give thanks for all our blessings, but I'm not feeling especially blessed right now."

"I know," Sylvia whispered. "I know."

They stood awhile, staring at the flowers, which had paled in importance. In a quiet, lost voice, Lee admitted, "I've been so lonely, Sylvia."

"Oh, honey," Sylvia said sadly.

Lee blinked, scraped the tears off her cheeks and shook herself.

"Oh, shoot, I don't know what's the matter with me! I do have plenty to be thankful for, and lots of it is right here at this minute." She gave Sylvia a hug. "Thanks, sis. I feel better now. Just getting it offmy chest makes me feel better."

That night at home, Lee tallied up other blessings for which she should be grateful. It snowed that night, a light, fluffy blanket of white.

Janice came home from college, Joey stayed home, and the three of them had a lot of fun making four pumpkin pies and an artichoke casserole together.

They awakened on Thanksgiving morning to a pearl-gray sky and a world garbed in ermine. The snow had stopped falling and no wind blew.

Still in her nightclothes, Lee looked out the window and said, "Yesss!"

They dressed in their finery, went to church, and from there straight out to the Hillier home.

Peg and Orrin lived several miles north of Anoka beside the Rum River on four very pricey acres covered with red oaks. The trees looked rich beyond description in their new dressing of white.

Contrasted against the snow, the black, knurled branches created a stark, stunning tableau like a pen-and-ink drawing. The driveway was long and curved, wending between the oaks on its way to a sprawling, single-level house of salmon-colored brick that had once been featured in a photo layout in Better Homes and Gardens.

Both inside and out, the place radiated class and good taste.

When the house was being custom-built, Peg Hillier had personally chosen every fixture and feature, working not only with the builder, but also with a Minneapolis decorator whose clientele list included officers of the 3M corporation, doctors from the Mayo Clinic and members of the Minnesota Orchestra.