Shakespeare's Christmas (20 page)

“Oh, is he the ponytail guy who showed up at the wedding rehearsal?”

“Yeah,” I said, not even trying to look up this time. “How’d you know?” Why was I even asking, knowing the Bartley grapevine as I did?

“Lou O’Shea was in yesterday. She and Jess have a bed on layaway for Krista for Christmas.”

“They seem like a nice couple,” I said.

“Yeah, they are,” Mary Maude agreed, dipping a french fry in a puddle of ketchup. She’d made a trail of paper napkins to keep her winter white in a pristine state. “They sure are having a hard time with that Krista since they had Luke.”

“That’s what I hear. You reckon she feels unloved now that the little boy’s here?”

“I suppose, though they were real open with her about her being adopted and telling her they loved her enough to pick her out. But I guess maybe she feels like Luke is really theirs, and she isn’t.”

I said I hadn’t realized that the O’Sheas were so open about Krista being adopted.

“Lou more than Jess,” Mary Maude commented. “Lou has always been more out-front than her husband, but I guess he’s had more practice at keeping secrets, him being a minister and all.”

Ministers do have to keep a lot of secrets. I hadn’t thought of that before. I got up to get some more tea—and another napkin for Mary Maude.

“Lou tells me the man you’re seeing is quite a looker,” Mary Maude said slyly, bringing the conversation back to the most interesting topic.

It had never occurred to me someone as conventional as Lou O’Shea would find him so. “Yes.”

“Is he sweet to you?” Mary Maude sounded wistful.

This was everyone’s day to want to know about Jack. First Anna, now Mary Maude. Weddings must bring it out in women. “Sweet,” I said, trying the word on Jack to see how it fit. “No. He’s not sweet.”

Surprise hiked up Mary Maude’s eyebrows. “Not sweet! Well, then! Is he rich?”

“No,” I answered without hesitation.

“Then why are you seeing him?” Suddenly her cheeks got pinker, and she looked simultaneously delighted and embarrassed. “Is he . . . ?”

“Yes,” I told her, trying not to look as self-conscious as I felt.

“Oh, girl,” said Mary Maude, shaking her head and giggling.

“Emory is single now,” I observed, trying to steer the conversation away from me and into a channel that might lead to some knowledge.

She didn’t waste time looking shocked. “Never in a million years,” Mary Maude told me as she consumed her last french fry.

“Why are you so sure about that?”

“Aside from the fact that now it would mean taking on a newborn baby and an eight-year-old girl, there’s the man himself. I never met anyone as hard to read as Emory. He’s polite as the day is long, he never uses bad language, he’s . . . yes, he is . . .
sweet.
Old ladies just love him. But Emory’s not a simple man, and he’s not my idea of red-blooded.”

“Oh?”

“Not that I think he’s gay,” Mary Maude protested hastily. “It’s just that, for example, we were outside the store watching the Harvest Festival parade, back in September, and all the beauty queens were coming by riding on the top of the convertibles, like we did?”

I’d completely forgotten that. Maybe that was why riding in the Shakespeare parade had plowed up my feelings so deeply?

“And Emory just wasn’t interested. You know? You can tell when a man is appreciating women. And he wasn’t. He enjoyed the floats and the bands. He loved the little girls, you know, Little Miss Pumpkin Patch, that kind of thing, and he told me he’d even thought of entering Eve, but his wife didn’t like the idea. But those big gals in their sequin dresses and push-up bras didn’t do a thing for Emory. No, I’m going to have to look farther than the furniture store to find someone to date.”

I made an indeterminate noise.

“Now, we were talking earlier about Lou and Jess O’Shea. They were watching that parade catty-corner to where I was standing, and believe me, honey! That Jess can enjoy grown-up women!”

“But he doesn’t . . . ?”

“Oh, Lord, no! He is devoted to Lou. But he’s not blind, either.” Mary Maude looked at her watch. “Oh, girl! I have to get back.”

We tossed our litter into a can and walked out still talking. Well, Mary Maude was talking, and I was listening, but I was agreeable to listening. And when I dropped her off at Makepeace Furniture, I gave her a quick hug.

 

I COULDN’T THINK of anywhere to go but back to my parents’ house.

I walked right into yet another crisis. The couples dinner in honor of Varena and Dill, which had been rescheduled at least twice, was once again endangered. The high school senior who had been booked to babysit Krista, her little brother Luke, and Anna had caught the flu.

According to Varena, who was sitting at the kitchen table with the tiny Bartley phone book open before her, she and Lou had called every adolescent known to babysit in Bartley, and all of them were either flu victims or already attending a teen Christmas party the Methodist church was giving.

This seemed to be a crisis I had no part in other than to look sympathetic. Then a solution to a couple of problems occurred to me, and I knew what I had to do.

Jack would owe me permanently, as far as I was concerned.

I tapped Varena on the shoulder. “I’ll do it,” I told her.

“What?” She’d been in the middle of a semihysterical outburst to my mother.

“I’ll do it,” I repeated.

“You’ll . . . babysit?”

“That’s what I said.” I was feeling touchy at the sheer incredulity in my sister’s voice.

“Have you
ever
kept kids before?”

“Do you need a babysitter or don’t you?”

“Yes, it would be wonderful, but . . . are you sure you wouldn’t mind? You’ve never been . . . I mean, you’ve always said that children weren’t your . . . special thing.”

“I can do it.”

“Well! That would be—just great,” Varena said stoutly, obviously realizing she had to show no reservations, no matter what she felt.

Actually, I had kept the four Althaus kids one afternoon and evening when Jay Althaus had been in a car wreck and Carol had had to go to the hospital. Both sets of grandparents had been out of town. Carol had been a frantic, panicked, pathetic mother and wife by the time I answered her phone call.

So I knew how to change diapers and bathe a baby, and the oldest Althaus boy had showed me how to heat up a bottle. I might not be Mary Poppins, but all the children would be alive and fed and clean by the time the parents got home.

Varena was on the phone with Lou O’Shea, giving her the good news.

“She’s glad to do it,” Varena was saying, still trying not to sound amazed. “So Lily should be there about, what? Six? Will the kids have eaten? Oh, OK. And there’ll be Anna, Krista, your little boy . . . oh, really? Oh, gosh. Let me ask her.”

Varena covered the receiver. She was making a big effort to look cheerful and unconcerned. “Lily, Lou says they’ve agreed to keep the Osborn kids, too. At the time, they thought Shelley was coming with her boyfriend.” Shelley was the flu-ridden teenager.

I took a deep, cleansing breath, like I did in karate class before I began my kata. “No problem,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

I confined myself to a nod.

“That’s not a problem, she says,” Varena said chirpily into the phone. “Right, it’ll only last three hours at the most, two more likely, and we’ll be just a few blocks away.”

Sounded like Lou was a little concerned at the prospect of my babysitting such a mob.

The doorbell rang, and my mother hustled into the living room to answer it. I heard her say, “Hello, again!” with a kind of supercharged enthusiasm that alerted me. Sure enough, she led Jack into the kitchen with a pleased, proud air, as though she’d snagged him just when he was about to get away.

I found myself on my feet and going to him before I even knew I was moving. His arms slid around me and he gave me a kiss, but a kiss that said my parents were looking at him over my shoulder.

“Well, young man, it’s nice to see you again. We’d begun to think we wouldn’t get to lay eyes on you before you left town.” My father was being bluff and hearty.

Jack was wearing a blue-and-green-plaid flannel shirt and blue jeans, and his thick hair was brushed smoothly back, gathered at the nape of his neck with an elastic band. I patted his shoulder gently and stepped away from him.

“I saw a mighty lot of presents in the living room,” Jack said to my father. “Looks like you-all are having a wedding.” He smiled, and those seductive deep lines suddenly appeared in parentheses from his nose to the corners of his thin, mobile mouth.

Mother, Father, and Varena laughed, as charmed by his smile as I was.

“As a matter of fact,” Jack went on, “I hoped this would be appropriate.”

“Why, thank you,” Varena said, surprised and showing it, taking the shallow wrapped box Jack pulled out of one jacket pocket.

When I turned to watch Varena open the present, Jack’s arm went around my waist and pulled me against him, my back to his chest. I could feel the corners of my mouth tug up, and I looked down at my hands, resting on the arms crossed below my breasts. I took a deep breath. I made an effort to focus on the box Varena was holding.

She lifted the lid. From the tissue, she extracted an antique silver cake server, a lovely piece with engraving. When Varena passed it around, I could see the curling script read “V K 1889.”

“This is just beautiful,” Varena said, delighted and not a little stunned. “However did you find it?”

“Sheer luck,” Jack said. He was pressed very firmly against my bottom. “I just happened to be in an antiques store and it caught my eye.”

I could see the wheels turning in my mother’s head. I knew she was thinking that this was a serious present. Such a gift announced that Jack planned to be seeing me for some time, since he was displaying such a great desire to please my family. My father’s face lit up (way too obviously) as the same idea occurred to him.

I felt I was watching a tribal ritual unfold.

“I have to put this somewhere conspicuous, so everyone’ll notice it,” Varena told Jack, plainly wanting him to realize she was very pleased indeed.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said.

And before you could say Jack Robinson, Jack Leeds was installed at my parents’ kitchen table, a grilled cheese sandwich and bowl of soup in front of him, Varena and my mother waiting on him hand and foot.

After he’d eaten, Mother and Varena practically threw us out of the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to help with the dishes. They were flabbergasted when Jack offered to wash. They turned him down with fatuous smiles, and by the time I climbed into Jack’s car I was torn between laughter and exasperation.

“I think they approve of me,” Jack said with a straight face.

“Well, you
are
breathing.”

He laughed, but he stopped abruptly and looked at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. He started the engine.

“Where are we going? I have to be at the manse at six o’clock,” I reminded him. Mother and Varena had immediately told Jack I’d volunteered to keep the kids.

“We need to talk,” he said. We were silent on the ride to the motel, Jack grim and taciturn, I uneasily aware that I was not on the same page.

As we turned on the corner by the Presbyterian manse, I thought of Krista, Anna, and Eve.

And, oddly, I suddenly remembered spending nights with other girls when I was really young. I remembered how I’d carry a whole suitcase full of stuff with me for an overnight visit, everything and anything I thought we might want to play with, or look at, or gossip about.

Including a memory book.

Chapter 7

JACK WAS STAYING IN A DIFFERENT ROOM, SINCE THE motel manager was having the bathroom window fixed from the break-in in the room he’d had before.

I was already on edge when we went in, and when Jack sat on one of the stuffed vinyl-covered armchairs, all my systems went on defense. I perched on the edge of the other chair and eyed him warily.

“I saw you last night,” he said without preamble.

“Where?”

He sighed. “Out with your old boyfriend.”

I made my breathing slow, fighting the rage that swept through me. I gripped the armrests of the damn orange chair. “You got back to town early, and you didn’t call me. Did you come back on purpose to spy on me?”

His back stiffened. He was doing a little chair gripping of his own. “Of course not, Lily! I missed you, and I finished what I was doing early, and I drove all afternoon to get back here. Then I saw you in that diner with the cop.”

“Were we kissing, Jack?”

“No.”

“Were we holding hands, Jack?”

“No.”

“Was I looking at him with love, Jack?”

“No.”

“Did he look happy, Jack?”

“No.” Jack bowed his head, rubbed his forehead with his fingertips.

“Let me tell you what happened the last time I went on a date with Chandler McAdoo, Jack.” I bent to his level until he had to look me in the eyes or be a coward. “It was seven years ago, the bad time, and I had been back in Bartley for two months. Chandler and I went to the movies, and then we drove out to the lake, like we’d done when we were kids.”

Jack’s hazel eyes didn’t flinch, and he was listening. I knew it.

“So when we were at the lake, Chandler wanted to kiss me, and I wanted to feel like a real woman again, so I let him. I even enjoyed it . . . a little. And then it went a little farther, and he pulled my T-shirt up. Want to know what happened then, Jack? Chandler started crying. The scars were real fresh then, red. He cried when he saw my body. And that’s the last I saw of Chandler for seven years.”

A heavy silence settled in the cold motel room.

“Pardon me,” Jack said finally. He was absolutely sincere, not mouthing a social catchall. “Pardon me.”