Marriage Seasons 01 - It Happens Every Spring (30 page)

As Steve stepped into the kitchen, Esther Moore's head popped
up in the stairwell that led to the basement. "Hey there, Steve! Welcome home! Have we got some surprises for you!"

Suppressing the urge to growl, he set his briefcase on the table in
the foyer. "Hello, Esther," he replied. "How is Brenda this afternoon? I called earlier, but she didn't answer."

"That was probably because we were keeping her busy. Get
yourself down here and see what the TLC has been up to today!"

What on earth was the woman babbling about now? Esther and
Charlie Moore kept their fingers right on the pulse of the neighborhood, and most of the time Steve didn't know who or what they
were talking about when they shared some juicy tidbit of gossip.
He had no idea what the TLC was, but if anyone had upset Brenda
any further, he wouldn't stand for it.

He was halfway down the staircase when he heard Patsy Pringle
cry out.

"Oh, my stars and garters! Oh, Lord, have mercy! Lice. Girls,
he's got lice. Everybody back off now. Just back away slowly and let
me deal with this."

Holding his breath, Steve stepped into the basement to find a
beardless fellow who slightly resembled Cody perched on a chair.

With fear in his eyes, the young man blinked back tears as he
stared at Brenda. "What's a lice?" he asked her. "Is it gonna kill
me?"

Brenda was sitting across from Cody. For the first time in more
than a week, she was dressed in jeans and a blouse and looked halfway normal. Her face was pale as she brushed her damp cheeks.

"Lice won't kill you," Patsy told Cody, patting his shoulder. "Sit
still. Don't move a muscle. Ladies, we've got to get something to
debug this boy. And I mean quick."

Ashley and Esther were pressed back into the farthest corner of
the basement, holding hands and looking for all the world like they
might be sick. Cody's lower lip trembled. Steve stared for a
moment, realizing for the first time that the kid actually had a
lower lip.

And then Cody let out a yowl.

"Stop!" Brenda said suddenly. She rose from her chair and held
her hands toward the young man. "Stay, Cody. It's all right. I
promise. It's me, Brenda. I'm here with you, and everything will be okay. There's just a little bug in your hair. A few little bugs. You
don't need to be scared."

"Okay," Cody said with a nod. He sniffled. "I'm not scared of
bugs. Sometimes I eat bugs."

"I bet you do when you're really hungry." Brenda nodded at
him. "Lice are small, and they can't hurt you. They just make your
head itchy. Patsy and I will get rid of them for you."

"Okay," he said again.

Brenda turned to Steve and spoke in a calm but decisive voice.
"Look on the bottom shelf of the closet in the girls' bathroom," she
ordered. "Grab everything you can find."

Then she told the other women, "Justin brought lice home from
the nap-time mats in kindergarten, and Jessica got them from her
T-ball helmet. I have everything we need. The stuff is old, but it's
probably better than nothing."

"We'll use whatever you have, and then I'll bring more later,"
Patsy said. "Oops, there's a flea!" she exclaimed, taking a small
jump backward. "Fleas and lice. What next?"

"Scabies, I'll bet," Esther offered from the far corner of the basement. "We used to get'em when we were kids. Awful, just awful!"

"It's all right, Cody," Brenda was cooing as Steve hurried up the
stairs. "You'll be fine in just a minute. Patsy, can you shave his head
first? And then we'll put on the medicine."

Steve rooted through the closet in the master bedroom. Nothing. Not a thing that looked like it might treat lice. His heart racing
at the very idea of the parasites even now scattering on their six tiny
legs throughout his house, Steve suddenly remembered that
Brenda had told him to look in the girls' bathroom. Why didn't he
listen to her better? He was going to have to start concentrating on
something besides real-estate contracts if this kind of thing kept
happening.

The stash of lice treatments was right there on the lowest shelf of
the smaller bathroom, just as Brenda had said. He gathered up a
few more items that looked helpful-triple antibiotic cream, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, anti-itch treatment. Throwing everything into a basket from which he had dumped a bunch of ribbons
and hair clips, he raced back down the stairs.

"Can lice jump?" Ashley was whimpering from the back corner.
"I feel like they're all over me. I'm just itching something crazy!"

"That's an old wives' tale," Patsy said. "Lice don't jump-they
crawl from one host to another. They're just little parasites, not
Godzilla. Everybody's going to be okay, including Cody. Steve,
fetch us some plastic bags, would you, hon?"

While Patsy and Brenda worked on Cody, Steve ran back up the
stairs and grabbed a handful of grocery sacks from the pantry. At
least he knew where his wife kept those. Fleas, lice, scabies. This was
not good, he thought as he took the steps two at a time back down
to the basement.

"Good," Patsy said, handing a bag to Brenda. "Put all the hair in
this, and we'll give it a good spraying before we burn it. Sweep all
those snippings from the floor, too, Steve. That'll take care of anything that might have been in the beard."

As obedient as a child, Steve swept the masses of knotted hair
into a pile on his basement floor and dumped it into a bag. The last
he recalled, the floor had been plain, painted concrete. Had this
new gray-green, stone-patterned vinyl been part of Brenda's rehab
project? If so, she had chosen well.

Standing, he took in the green walls, the new tables, the shelving
systems, the sink, and the photographs of the children hanging on
the walls. This was nice. Very nice. No wonder Brenda had been so
eager to work on it-running back and forth into town to buy supplies each day, as Pete Roberts had told Steve. She and that LeClair
fellow had accomplished a small miracle together.

Steve's last memory of the basement involved seven or eight
teenagers eating pizza while they reclined on the sagging blue sectional sofa and watched television. Pizza boxes, tennis shoes, backpacks, textbooks, and empty soda cans had littered the concrete
floor. The walls had held a jumble of framed pictures, trophies, award ribbons, and original child-created artwork. Now the room
was transformed. Perfect. Something you could show off in a magazine.

Even Cody, face and head now totally buzzed and tears streaming from his eyes, came across as something new and better. Patsy
had begun rubbing some sort of cream onto his shiny head, and
Brenda was dusting his neck with powder. As if communicating
through telepathy, the women simultaneously hurried Cody over
to the sink and began to scrub his fingers and arms.

To Steve's surprise, the young man had started to look almost
human. He had ears and a mouth, a long neck, and thin, ropy
arms. He was skinny. Much too skinny. But he stopped weeping
when Brenda ordered him to blow his nose into a tissue and then
washed his face with a thick white cloth.

When Cody straightened from the sink, he focused his blue eyes
on Brenda. "Okay. I'm better now."

"Lots better," Brenda echoed.

"Amen to that." Patsy shook her head as she threw her tools into
a plastic bag. "I'm going to have to sterilize all this stuff and then
soak it in antiseptic liquid. Now listen here, people," she said, turning to address everyone, including the two women huddled in the
corner. "If word of this gets out, my customers are going to be wary
about coming to Just As I Am. So we'll consider today's activity a
TLC matter, and none of us will breathe a word of it. And I'm talking to you, Esther Moore. No matter what, don't you dare tell
Charlie."

"I never keep secrets from my husband," Esther said firmly.
Then her shoulders sagged. "But ... okay. On this, my lips are
sealed. Charlie doesn't care about the TLC anyway. Says we're
nothing but a gaggle of silly geese."

"How about you, Steve?" Patsy asked.

"I'm mum." He held up a hand in the Boy Scout pledge of
honor.

"Cody?" She turned to the young man. "Don't you say a thing about lice or fleas; you hear me? You just tell people that Patsy
Pringle cut your hair, and she did a mighty fine job of it too."

"Patsy Pringle cut my lice," Cody began. "Wait. .. oh no..

"I'm done for," Patsy moaned. "Well, I guess I've weathered
worse. No one ever lets me forget the time our new nail girl gave
everybody a fungus. That was ten years ago. Lord, help us all."

Still muttering what sounded like a prayer, Patsy grabbed her
tools and the bags of hair and opened the sliding glass door. Steve
watched as she climbed the hill to the street like a Sherpa headed
for the summit of Everest. Esther and Ashley, still clinging to each
other, made a wide circle around the area where Cody's hair had
fallen, and they, too, hurried outside.

Steve took a step backward as Brenda began dumping a variety
of liquids and powders on the new vinyl floor. What could he do
but help? He fetched a mop and several old rags, and together they
bent over the task of disinfecting their basement.

"Smells like the hospital," Cody said. He was standing near the
sliding door. "Like when my daddy and me went there, and they
said, `Mr. Goss, we can't help you no more, so you'll just have to
make your way.' That's what they said. And then my daddy said to
me, `Cody, you're twenty-one, so you'll just have to make your
way.' And that's what we did."

Brenda stopped mopping and looked up. "Cody, what happened to your daddy?"

He sucked on his lower lip for a moment. Steve could see those
blue eyes filling with tears, and he braced for another scene.
Though he needed to call his office, needed to hurry off to an
appointment for a house showing, needed to do a hundred other
things, Steve realized that for the first time in weeks, something
was happening in his house.

Cody had become a human being . . . and Brenda had too.
Maybe there was hope for them after all.

My daddy put me out on the side of the road." Cody spoke as he
stared at Brenda, teardrops hanging from the ends of his long dark
eyelashes. He reminded her of a newly pared potato, his bald head
gleaming white and slightly misshapen. He sniffled loudly and
shook his head. "Then he drove off, and that's what happened to
my daddy."

Brenda reached out and laid her hand on his arm. So gaunt that
he almost frightened her, Cody placed his free hand on top of hers.
She knew the whole story was buried somewhere inside this troubled young man, but she had no idea how to release it.

Cody kept gulping down deep bellyfuls of air. He glanced at
Steve. "Who's he?" Cody asked Brenda. He looked at Steve again.
"Who do you think you are, fella?"

"This is Steve Hansen," she answered quickly. "You know him,
Cody. He's my husband."

"He doesn't look like Nick."

A chill washed down Brenda's spine. "Of course not. Nick was a handyman, remember? He painted the basement. Now, let's get
you upstairs and see if we can find some chocolate cake."

"Nick didn't share his hot dogs with me," Cody complained to
Steve. "He's not like Jesus."

Brenda knew she didn't have any cake. She hadn't felt like baking-or doing much else-for the past few days. But she had to
divert Cody from the subject of Nick. If he said anything ...

"Do you share your hot dogs, Steve?" Cody blurted out the
question as Brenda urged him toward the staircase. "Because I like
hot dogs."

"I always share my hot dogs," Steve replied. "Did your daddy
give you hot dogs? I bet he did."

Cody stopped walking and blinked his big blue eyes at Steve.
"Yessir, he did. Whenever he could find work, they would pay him
money, and then he bought hot dogs for us. We built a fire near
our car, and my daddy read the Bible to me while we waited for the
hot dogs to cook. We always said our Bible verses a few times, so we
wouldn't forget them. Sometimes the hot dogs got sort of black
while we were doing Psalm 139, but we ate them anyway. Do you
like hot dogs?"

"I sure do." Steve stood from the chair where he'd been resting
after mopping the floor. "If I had some, I'd share them with you.
We could cook them over a fire, just like you and your daddy."

"Hey, I like you!" Cody's face broke into a smile, the sight of his
joy marred only by his brown teeth. He turned to Brenda. "I like
Steve better than Nick. You should like him, too, and not Nick."

"Cody, I'm married to Steve." Brenda continued to try to push
the young man toward the stairs. "Of course I like him. He's my
husband. Now let's go see what we can find in the kitchen."

"Do you, Brenda?" Steve asked.

She paused. "Do I what?"

"You told Cody you like me. Do you?"

Brenda clenched her teeth for a moment. "That's a ridiculous
question. We're married."

"I know, but I've lost track of you. You've been gone a long time,
and I'm not sure how you feel anymore. Do you like me?"