Family Blessings (34 page)

She had closed her eyes when his voice opened them again. "Hey, Mom?"

"Yes?"

She could see the line of his body cutting off the light along the edge of her door. He pushed it open and stood slump-shouldered, the hall light outlining the hair she had rearranged earlier.

"I'm really sorry I scared you," he said. "I never thought about what you said before, I mean, how you worry about us when we're out of your sight. I didn't mean to do that to you."

Her throat began filling instantly.

"Come here," she said.

He walked around the foot of the bed to her side, where she'd never stopped sleeping after Bill died, even though it was farther from the door. She put up her arms and he sat on the edge of the mattress, bending over her.

"I love you," she said as they hugged, "and that's the important message in everything that's happened tonight. If I didn't love you I wouldn't care about where you are or what you're doing."

"I love you too, Mom."

And with those words, the knot of sadness dissolved in her throat.

Christopher called the next day, right after church.

"How's everything with Joey?" he asked.

"We had a talk and things came out all right."

"I could see it coming, that's why I thought it was best if I got out of there."

What a kind and caring man he was. It struck Lee again, as it had over and over when she'd lain in bed last night, that whatever her needs, he was always there for her. Turning to him had become so natural for her that it was hard to imagine her life without him. Not only had he come on the run last night, now he was calling the way a true friend would, concerned once more for both her and Joey.

"Christopher, I can't thank you enough for coming. I'd forgotten how stressful it is to handle a teenager without a partner. When I saw you coming up the walk, I felt . .." She found it hard to put into words.

Even now the thought of him brought a welcome reprise of the relief and gratitude she'd felt last night.

"What?" he prodded.

"Relieved. So relieved to dump my worries on someone else for once.

And so often you seem to know how I need you, and you show up as if by magic. It always feels right when I . . . I turn to you. I guess I rely on you too much, but just to have you there .

. . it means so much to me, Christopher."

"I like being there for you."

The line grew quiet while their feelings extended beyond those of friends into that winsome world of near-lovers.

After a while he cleared his throat. "I've thought about you a lot since Tuesday. Could I see you today? I thought, if you don't have any other plans, I'd take you and Joey out to brunch somewhere."

Disappointment deluged her. "I'm sorry, Christopher, but Lloyd is here. I was just going to start making some chicken for dinner."

"Bring him along. I'd like to see him again, too."

Lee looked toward the wall dividing her from the living room where Lloyd was reading the Sunday paper and Joey was playing a video game on TV.

"All right. I'll ask him." She raised her voice. "Lloyd?Joey?

Either one of you interested in going out to Sunday brunch with Christopher?"

Joey came around the corner in his church clothes. The mention of food once again brought him running. "Yeah, sure . . . where?"

She covered the mouthpiece. "I'm not going to ask him where," she whispered. "That would be rude."

Lloyd called, "That sounds good to me."

She told Christopher, "They both said yes, and that goes for me, too.

I'll put the chicken in the refrigerator and cook it tomorrow night."

"How about over at Edinburgh?"

"I've never been there, but I hear it's fabulous."

"I'll pick you up in thirty minutes."

At Edinburgh Country Club, they were seated by a window that looked out across the snow-covered golf course. In the middle of the room an ice carving of a dolphin formed the centerpiece for the main buffet.

Around them, in tables of all sizes, extended families were brunching likewise. Everywhere Lee looked she saw grandparents, parents and children: Three generations out for a family get-together, dressed in Sunday clothes, talking and laughing. The four of them-- herself, Christopher, Joey and Lloyd-looked as if they were another of those families. For a while she indulged in the fantasy that they were, that she and Christopher were a pair who'd left their home for a pleasant Sunday meal among others. Last night they had handled a crisis over Joey together, and today here they were, like those around them, putting the incident behind them and going on with life.

She sat across the table from Christopher, listening to him talking with Lloyd about the canine units of the Anoka police force, then listening while Lloyd told about a black labrador he'd had when he was a boy on the farm. Joey got into the conversation, too, with an anecdote about his friend's dog who had once chewed the crotches out of all the family's underwear in the dirty-clothes basket.

Everyone laughed, and the waitress came to replenish their coffee.

Lloyd said, "Well, I think I'm going back for more of that fetruccine."

Joey said, "Me too, Grampa. But first I'm gonna have some bread pudding with caramel sauce."

Left alone, Christopher and Lee watched them go. "I like Lloyd," he said.

"So do I."

Christopher's eyes veered back to the woman across the table, catching her watching him steadily, wearing an unmistakable look of admiration.

Maybe even love.

"Was your husband like him?"

"I suppose so, in some ways. But Bill was less patient, maybe even a little more judgmental than Lloyd. I think he got that from his mother."

"I'm surprised to hear you say that about Bill."

"Why?"

"Because you told me once you'd had a perfect marriage."

"A perfect marriage doesn't mean the people in it are perfect.

Usually it means that they both overlook each other's imperfections."

He thought about that awhile, then asked, "So, didn't you get along with your mother-in-law?"

"I got along with her just fine. But she was judgmental. When Bill died she said I was crazy not to pay off the house with the insurance money so I'd be secure. She thought I shouldn't go to school, shouldn't start a business--what if it failed and all that. Then when Sylvia decided to quit her job with an accounting firm and come in with me, Ruth said it would never work out. Two sisters working together every day--she said we'd be at each other's throats in no time. But we've managed just fine. We each have our fortes and we stick to them.

She takes care of the business and I take care of the arranging."

Joey returned to the table with a mountain of the restaurant's signature dessert, which he dug into, doubled over the plate.

"Hey, Christopher, guess what," he said with his mouth full.

'"What?"

"My birthday is next month and I'm going to be fifteen. That means I can get my driver's permit."

"Your mom better look out then."

Lloyd returned and the talk moved on to a variety of subjects.

Eventually, Christopher checked his watch. "I hate to break this up, but it's after one-thirty and I've got to report for roll call in an hour."

Joey said, "Do I have time for just one more piece of dessert? I didn't get a chance to try that chocolate fool stuff with all the nuts in it."

Lee said, "Go get one, quick, and take it with you in a napkin."

Observing him hurry away, Lee remarked, "The bottomless pit," and they all rose, chuckling.

Chris took them home. They thanked him before he drove away, and Lloyd said he thought he'd go home right away, too, he was tired and his Sunday crossword was waiting for him. He drove off only moments after Chris did.

Lee spent the afternoon wrapping Christmas gifts and making popcorn balls, listening to Christmas music on the stereo and enjoying the arrival of a gray twilight that brought a light snow along with it. In the midst of that dusky time of day someone knocked on the front door and . .

she answered to find Christopher there again, this time in uniform with his trusty radio in its leather sleeve on his belt.

"Hi," she said, opening the storm door and letting him in. "Back so soon?"

He held up a napkin with a square grease stain on the bottom.

"Joey forgot his chocolate fool in my truck."

"Oh, thanks," she said, taking it from him and carrying it toward the kitchen.

He followed and stopped beside the table, perusing it and the disorderly room. There was a difference between it and the dirty rooms of his youth. This disorder had a homely warmth to it.

"Wrapping gifts, huh?"

"I have been, but I'm about to put this junk away. I've got a backache from bending over too long. Want a cup of coffee or something?"

"No, but what's that I see over there?"

She looked where he was pointing and couldn't help smiling at his boyish pose, the back of his hand to his nose, the index finger straight out. "Why, I believe those are popcorn balls. Could it be you want one?"

He answered with his eyebrows, Groucho Marx style.

"Help yourself." While she began putting away Christmas wrap, he peeled the plastic covering from a pink popcorn ball and bit into it.

"Mmm . .." It stuck to his teeth and he had to work his jaw to manage chewing. "Did you make them?"

"Aha. Family tradition."

"Mmm . .."

He leaned against the cabinet, chewing the sticky treat, watching her clean off the table, wipe it with a dishcloth, find a Christmas centerpiece and put it there, then get a broom and begin sweeping. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans and an oversized sweatshirt emblazoned with the words MAD ABOUT MINNESOTA! On her feet she wore white socks with dirty bottoms, reminiscent of her son's. All the while she moved around the room he was remembering lying on his couch kissing her last Tuesday.

"Where's Joey?"

"Sleeping off last night. He's been lost to the world most of the afternoon."

He put the popcorn ball down on the cabinet, sucked off a thumb and finger, went up behind her, took the broom from her hand and angled it against the edge of the table. "Come here," he said, and led her by the hand into the work area of the kitchen where they couldn't be seen from the bedroom hall. "I didn't get a chance to do this this morning, and it's been driving me crazy."

He put his arms around her and kissed her, standing in the middle of the messy kitchen with the popcorn popper and dirty kettles and syrup bottles littering the sink and countertop, and bits of ribbon and wrapping paper littering the floor. She gave him no : resistance, doubling her forearms behind his neck and leaning against his chest in its metal-bound bullet-proof vest. The kiss began friendly, as if it might be brief, but they started swaying in unison and opened their mouths, and everything felt so lovely that they kept on swaying and soon they were gyrating their heads. He ran his hands up beneath her sweatshirt and over her bare back just above her waistband. Even when his radio crackled and he reached down to adjust the volume, they continued the kissing and swaying.

"Is that for you?" she asked against his mouth. "No."

They went on pleasuring each other with their mouths until it seemed absurd to continue without doing more, yet they were doing no s2 more.

At last she freed her mouth, but left her arms where they were.

"This is so exciting," she teased with a crooked smile. "It's like hugging a brick wall."

"Gotta wear em when we're on duty," he said of his flak vest, "but if you want to hug me without it, just name the date and time and I'll be there."

"Tuesday night, seven o'clock. Joey usually goes to the movies because it's dollar night."

"Can't. Gotta work."

"Wednesday night, seven o'clock. Joey doesn't go to the movies but what the hell--let's shock him."

"Can't. Gotta work."

She was sort of hanging on him, her mouth pasted with a saucy smile.

"Fine squeeze you are. Get a woman to proposition you, then you dream up excuses."

"How about Tuesday noon at my apartment? I'll fix you lunch."

,i,.

The word "nooner" flashed through her mind. "Seriously?"

"Men-hen. Something light that won't make you logy." He grinned suggestively, still rubbing his hands over her warm, smooth back while her chin drilled his chest and he arched back to look down at her.

"It's a date," she said, and slipped from his arms.

The word came to her again and again. Is that what it was going to be?

A nooner? Was he anticipating it the way she was? Fearing its complications? Living with this uncertainty about what would happen once they had uninterrupted privacy?

On Tuesday morning, just before shutting off the bathroom light and heading for work, she gazed at herself in the mirror in wide-eyed wonder. Good God, she was heading for a romantic liaison at high noon!

There was no other explanation for her preparations. Why else had she shaved her legs, and put on perfume, and scrubbed her fingernails until the flesh tore beneath them? And shaved under her arms and put on her best underclothes, and made sure her pantyhose had no runs, even though they'd be hidden beneath her slacks?

Could it be she was planning to take them off?

No, she was not! She was merely covering all bets.

The morning seemed to crawl. Of all plants to work with, she ended up arranging dyed heather, and it stained her fingers so badly they looked inked. Before she left the store at noon she went into the bathroom and gave them the scrubbing of their lives, then applied some strong-scented almond-oil lotion, as much of it as her hands would absorb. She also refreshed her lipstick and brushed her hair.

"Hey, Syl?" she called, moving through the store. "I might be gone a little longer than usual. Any problem?"

"No. I'll be here. See you when you get back."

Parking in Christopher's parking lot, heading into the building, knocking on his door, she felt as if she were heading toward some nefarious dealings. She was meeting a man for lunch. So what?