Once in a Lifetime (14 page)

She stepped back and looked him in the eye. “Why do you think I understand my feelings, that I’ve settled on what I want from our relationship, when you haven’t gotten that far?”

“I may move with the speed of a tortoise, but when I get to the end of the row, I know where I want to go from there. You left the table crying. Why?”

She’d thought she hid that from him. “The…the tenderness, the… Telford, you can’t conceive of what I felt. Do you really love Tara?”

“If you could imagine what having her unqualified love and affection does to me, you wouldn’t ask that question. She’s precious to me. Of course I love her.”

“I don’t want her to be hurt.”

“She’ll never get that from me. Come on back and eat your breakfast. Henry’s keeping it warm.”

“By the way,” he said as they walked back to the dining room, “Tara wants to go to the warehouse with me today. Is it all right with you?”

“Now that Biff Jackson’s no longer there, of course, I don’t mind.”

“Biff’s out of the picture. A builder in Corpus Christi, Texas, phoned me for a reference, and I gave him a glowing account. He hired Biff at a good salary, and I expect him to stay down there.”

She released a deep sigh. “What a relief!”

“Tell me about it. I’ll take Tara to church school and, from there I’m going over to the school construction site. We’ll be back around one, and about three or so, she and I will go down to the warehouse.”

“If you was eating grits, your breakfast wouldn’t be fit to eat by now. I cooked you some fresh pancakes,” Henry said and set a pile of them in front of her.

She’d heard that love begets love, but she’d never been sure of it until now that she found herself surrounded with it. She
watched Telford and Tara leave and could hardly believe the joy in her life.

“Quit looking a gift horse in the mouth,” Henry said as he joined her at the table for his usual breakfast of stewed fruit, waffles, sausage and eggs. “There ain’t no flies on Tel. And with that bitter tongue he’s got, he ain’t about to mislead you. My biggest problem with him growing up was him thinkin’ he had to say somethin’ just ’cause it was the truth.”

“What about his parents?”

“His mother never did decide whether she wanted to be a wife, and whenever she felt tied down, she’d up and leave. Miss Etta didn’t let them three little boys get in the way of her freedom. No, siree. She’d be here one day and next morning when everybody woke up, she’d be gone. She come back for good after Mr. Josh died of a broken heart, but by then, the boys didn’t care too much.”

“And their father?”

Henry looked toward the ceiling and inhaled deeply. “Now there was a man. His family was everything to him. Trouble was he felt like he had to get rich so they could have everything they wanted, and he pretty nigh worked himself to death. Then, old man Sparkman tricked him out of his good name.” He let out a long breath and shook his head as though disbelieving what he knew to be a fact. “He was a proud, honorable man, and it killed him.”

She stopped eating while she tossed ideas around in her head.
Might as well go all the way.
“Three handsome, intelligent, wealthy and extremely eligible men, but they’re not married, and I haven’t seen any evidence that any of them has a love interest.”

“None but Tel, you mean. Well, if you watched your dad grovel for your mother’s affection, while she ladled it out like a prize for his good behavior, you’d be careful about tying up with a woman, too. Miss Etta was somethin’ else!” He looked toward the ceiling. “And she got a lot to account for.”

As long as they didn’t argue endlessly, she thought. Anything was better than living in that environment. Right then, she
couldn’t think of any reason why she rushed into marriage with Jack other than to escape her battling parents.

“Today is Tara’s birthday. I’d like to make her a cake before she and Telford get back here.”

“Well, whatta you know? It’s Tel’s birthday, too. Make two of ’em. He likes chocolate.”

She made a cake with caramel frosting for Tara and a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for Telford, placed them on a shelf in the pantry and put five candles on Tara’s cake and seven on Telford’s.
Lord, please don’t let Henry choose today to make cabbage stew.

“Let’s have that standing rib roast for dinner, Henry.”

“You been here almost four months, and you still don’t know dinner from supper. What else?”

“Roast potatoes, some fresh green beans—string beans, to you—broiled fluted mushrooms and a salad. I hope you have black-cherry ice cream.”

“Always got that. What are we startin’ with? You Northerners always have to have something to
start
with. I starts with the first thing I puts in my mouth.”

“I’ll make some cold-minted pea soup.”

He distorted his face. Mocking. “Do tell!”

When Telford and Tara went to the warehouse construction site, she drove into town, bought two birthday cards, a bicycle for Tara and a leather-bound book of the world’s best loved poems. He’d never told her he cared for poetry, but a man with his soul and sweetness had to love poems.

“We’ve spent the day together,” Telford told Tara when they returned from the warehouse.

“And I made some friends. Guess what?”

“What?”

“When I’m big, I’m going to have lots of friends, and you will be my best friend.”

He did his best to ignore the emotions racing through him. “Thanks. Go practice for an hour. After that, maybe your mother will let you swim.” She hugged him and ran off to her
room. He stared after her for a few seconds, before going up to his room and getting to work.

He’d just sat down for supper when Russ and Drake walked in. “Happy birthday, brother,” they said in unison. He knew it was his birthday, but with Russ and Drake out of town and Henry becoming forgetful, he figured it would pass like any other day.

“I wasn’t expecting you two,” he said after they embraced each other.

“You didn’t think we’d miss helping you celebrate your birthday, did you?” Drake asked him.

Tara ran to him and plastered his face with kisses. “Happy birthday, Mr. Telford.”

Alexis raised her wineglass. “Happy birthday. I hope you have many, many more.”

“Here’s your starter,” Henry said, as he served the pea soup. “Another one of them fancy Northern ideas.”

Next, he brought in the main course, sat down and watched as Russ, his biggest critic, savored the prime rib. “Henry, you’re getting a raise.”

“Don’t give it to me; Alexis is the one with the recipes and this fixation on the clock.
Oven at four-twenty-five degrees and roast it twenty minutes to the pound,
” he mimicked to a chorus of laughter.

When they finished, Henry darkened the room and Alexis brought in Telford’s lighted cake. Russ began to sing “Happy Birthday,” and they all joined him. Alexis whispered in Telford’s ear, and he left the room as Henry turned out the lights. Tara’s screams reached record decibels when Alexis and Henry walked in with her lighted cake as they sang “Happy birthday, Tara,” and Henry pointed to the bicycle that Telford had leaned against the sideboard.

“This is what family should be,” Telford said to himself as he tried to remember if he’d ever enjoyed his birthday so much.

Alexis handed him a small package wrapped in gold-foil paper and tied with a greenish-brown ribbon. He gazed at it,
then at her. She couldn’t hold his stare, but lowered her eyelids, communicating to him without even trying. He wanted to take her and hold her. His need to touch her gripped him with a powerful force, bruising his nerves until he trembled. She had him, and he knew that every man in the room was aware of that fact.

Slowly, to get his emotions under control, he untied the package, pressed the ribbon flat, folded it, put it in his shirt pocket and slid off the paper wrapping. A glance around him confirmed what he hadn’t doubted: Henry, Drake and Russ looked not at the package but at his face. The small, red leather-bound volume, its lettering gold-tooled, lay in his hands while he stared at it and told himself not to look at Alexis Stevenson.

Tara’s little hands clutched his thigh. “Let me see, Mr. Telford.”

He handed her the book, got up and walked to the other end of the table. He was making a public statement, but hadn’t she done the same? With his right hand, he grasped her shoulder and with his left one, he caressed her head and held it. When she looked up at him, her lips soft and glistening, he bent to her and caressed her welcoming mouth with his own.
I’m not giving her any peck on the cheek, because that’s not how I feel.
He increased the pressure, and her arms went around him, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind as to what she thought of his public declaration.

“Mr. Telford’s kissing my mummy.”

“And doing a good job of it, too,” Drake said.

He broke the kiss, looked down at her and grinned. With the happiness flowing through him right then, he couldn’t help it. “Thanks. I suppose Henry told you, huh?”

She nodded. “I hope you like poetry.”

“I do, but if you gave me a horseshoe, I’d like that, too.”

He went back to his chair and retrieved the book of poems from Tara, who still stood there.

“Read me something, Mr. Telford, please.”

He didn’t feel like reading aloud to that assemblage, espe
cially not love poems. “Later. All right?” She nodded and ran back to her chair. “Let’s have some of this cake.”

After consuming slices of both cakes, Russ said to Alexis, “You’re a genius, because only a genius could get Henry to turn out a meal like this one. And I’m serving notice. On December the first, I’ll be thirty-three. I love stuffed, roasted fresh ham, smoked salmon and coconut cake; and I’ll definitely be home for dinner.”

Drake stood and raised his wineglass first to Telford and then to Alexis. “Mine’s right around the corner. In July I’ll be thirty-one. I’ll eat anything you serve, especially chateaubriand, so long as you make me one of these unbelievable caramel cakes. Let me tell you, this is good stuff.”

“What day are we speaking, Drake?” she asked.

“July twenty-eighth, and I’ll be home for dinner.”

She looked at Henry, and Telford’s heart swelled with affection for her when he saw that she wouldn’t leave the old man out of it. “When’s your birthday, Henry?”

“Day before you come here, and I ain’t telling none of you how old I was.”

“Let’s see. I came to Harrington House the fourth of April, so yours is the third.”

“Tara coulda figured that out. Your chocolate cake is fit for a king.”

“I made it for a king.”

Russ’s whistle split the air.

When she would have helped Henry clear the table, he said, “You go on in the den. Me and Tara will bring the coffee.”

“How about a stroll along the river?” he asked her later.

“After I get Tara to bed. Will that be too late?”

He shook his head. “No, she’ll be asleep long before it gets dark at around nine-thirty.” He wanted to be with her, and he’d accept whatever time she gave him.

He sat in the big brown leather chair that his father had preferred and sipped some tawny port, while Russ and Drake
nursed their snifters of cognac. He wondered if they realized that they had accepted Alexis as a part of him. He was certain now of what he felt, but he still didn’t know what he’d do about it. Russ hadn’t uttered a word about his kissing Alexis in a way that couldn’t be dismissed as a polite thank-you, which meant that his brother acknowledged its seriousness. He’d meant all that that kiss implied, and both Henry and his brothers had to know it.

He waited in his room impatiently until his phone rang and he heard her voice. They met in the foyer and strolled away from the house hand in hand toward the narrow bend of the Monocacy River, about a city block from Harrington House.

“Thank you for my gift and for that wonderful cake,” he said when they neared the river. “I don’t know when I’ve been that surprised or as happy. I saw the marker on Shelley’s ‘Love’s Philosophy.’ Did you mean that for me?”

She nodded. “I, uh… Yes, I did.”

He repeated the last few lines.
“‘And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea; What are all these kisses worth, If thou kiss not me?’”

She gasped. “You knew that poem?”

His fingers squeezed her hand. “I read it for the first time while I waited for your call. It touched me, too. I was looking for a poem to read to Tara. I promised her I would, you know.”

“Did you find one?”

“Yes, and I already knew that one. It’s Leigh Hunt’s ‘Jenny Kissed Me.’ Funny thing; Tara reminds me of Jenny in that poem.”

She projected an aura of quietness that he didn’t quite fathom. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk… Maybe she didn’t need to and he shouldn’t second-guess her.

They sat on a bench facing the river as the sun began setting, and she cleared her throat. “Henry told me about your home life as a child and as a teenager. I’ve alluded to the similarities in our young lives, but I never told you that my parents argued
and squabbled as if they hated each other, or at least it seemed that way to me as a child.”

Her hand, locked in his, began to perspire, and he could feel her tension. “Apparently it continued after Velma—my sister—and I left home,” she went on. “I never knew why, but our mother finally ran out of the house one night during a blizzard, and they found her the next morning, frozen to death. My father called Velma and said he was going to Alaska. He left before the funeral and didn’t give us a forwarding address. We haven’t heard from him since he left.”

He eased his arms around her and locked her to him. Telling him that had cost her something, and he wanted her to know he appreciated her confidence. “You can’t know how sorry I am to learn this. Does it still hurt you?”

“No, but the potential for that in my own marriage was so strong that I… I suppose I became a Quaker to learn how to deflect meanness without letting it be a part of me. Telford, my parents made us so miserable.”

“I understand now why you won’t argue, not even as polite debate, but try to clean that out of your mind. There are occasions when failing to argue can be viewed as cowardice.”