The Battered Body (29 page)

“You did?” James looked from her beaming face to Jackson’s. He noted that his father’s expression showed a mixture of both pride and relief. “That’s wonderful! You just went ahead and did it! Congratulations!” He hugged Milla tightly.

“You’re not angry?” Milla sighed in relief. “I worried you might feel excluded, but my dear, I was in
such
a rush to make things official. When I meet your boy I want to be his grandma, not just Pop-Pop’s girlfriend!”

Jackson tapped the face of his wrist watch. “My
wife’s
been on the run all mornin’. The van’s loaded to the roof with crap. Toys, pictures, lamps, curtains, a rug. I think she bought out the damn toy store. I haven’t even had my third cup of coffee yet,” he growled.

Milla linked her arm in Jackson’s. “I couldn’t help myself! I’ve wanted to be a grandma so badly and now I
am
one! James, get ready, because I plan to spoil your son rotten!”

“Your
son
?” Lucy’s voice came out as a croak. She stared at James in disbelief. “Did I hear that right?”

James hadn’t stopped to consider how this news might affect others, like his supper club friends. He’d simply assumed that everyone he knew would share his joy and would congratulate him on his happy reunion with his son. But there was an ashen appearance to Lucy’s face that made him realize that the revelation he had a child with his ex-wife might not be welcome news to some people. As he struggled to speak, James suspected that, if Lucy still harbored any romantic feelings for him, they were about to be irrevocably destroyed.

As his parents sidled quietly away, James opened the scrapbook he kept close at hand. He opened to the last page and showed the photograph to Lucy. “It’s true, Lucy. I only found out yesterday. This is Eliot Henry. My son.”

Without making a sound, Lucy glanced at the picture, looked up at James with wounded eyes, and fled.

James gave the
gum-chewing, iPod-wearing pizza delivery teen such a generous tip that the young man actually paused his music in order to say thanks. Smiling, James shooed him from his doorstep, slid the pie into his warmed oven, and then put the finishing touches to the makeshift dining table.

The doorbell sounded at exactly five-thirty, sending a shiver of pleasure up his spine. Here he was, James Henry, answering the door of
his
house for the second time that evening. And on the other side of that solid piece of wood was not a pimply-faced, skinny teenager wearing a backwards baseball cap, but his four-year-old son.

“I love this house!” Jane exclaimed as soon as she stepped inside. “You have such a huge yard! And a front porch too! It’s just perfect for sipping lemonade in the summer and setting out jack-o’-lanterns in October, right Eliot?”

“Can we make a scary one?” Eliot asked James, his golden brown eyes wide with excitement. “Like a monster from
Where The Wild Things Are
?”

“When Halloween comes, we can carve whatever face you’d like.” James was dying to scoop the little boy into his arms and cover his face with kisses, but he settled for ruffling Eliot’s wavy soft brown hair. “I know the best pumpkin patch too! We can have a hayride and jump in a giant bin of corn kernels and you can go on a pony ride.”

Eliot nodded. “I like ponies. ’Specially the ones with spots.”

“Me too. And I’m glad to hear you’re an animal lover,” James said warmly. “Because we’re having supper at the Hickory Hill Zoo tonight.”

Cocking her head quizzically, Jane unzipped Eliot’s coat and, after removing her own, looked around for a place to put them. “I’ll just toss these on the kitchen counter. Eliot, you go with Daddy and find out what this zoo is all about.”

Eliot reached out his hand and James enfolded it with his own.
Daddy!
He thought.
I’ll never get tired of hearing that word.

Wondering how long it would take for Eliot to start calling him by that title, James led his son into the living room, which was lit by battery-powered hurricane lanterns. James had spent his lunch hour in a bout of frenzied painting and had managed to transform the largest of his cardboard moving boxes into zoo animal chairs. There was a zebra, a lion, a giraffe, and an elephant. The heads were made out of shoe boxes and the giraffe’s neck and elephant’s trunk had been formed using part of a dryer vent. Scott and Francis, who had built the cardboard furniture while wolfing down bacon double cheeseburgers during their lunch break, had rigged all the heads with wire so they bobbed gently when touched. Given their uncanny technical skills, the twins weren’t happy until the animals were given added features. James was delighted when they showed him how to attach a battery to some narrow wires in order to turn on the small light bulbs that would create a pair of illuminated eyes inside each animal head.

“They’re not real, right?” Eliot asked, his high voice growing shriller in amazement.

“No, they’re not. And that’s probably a good thing considering our dining room table is a crocodile,” James teased.

Scott and Francis had taken a rectangular box made for storing an oversized painting from their landlady’s garage and transformed it into a green reptile with a long, spiked tail (another dryer vent cut in half) and jagged, Styrofoam cup teeth. To make the beast less threatening, the twins had painted the croc with neon pink polka-dots and a Cheshire Cat grin. James had set their plates, napkins, and cups on the table and had added another hurricane lantern in the center to enhance the safari-like atmosphere.

“Mommy!” Eliot screeched. “We’re eating pizza on a crocodile!” He swiveled around the room. “I’m going to sit on the lion’s chair!”

James served Jane and Eliot pizza on animal-shaped plates and filled paper cups covered by tiger stripes with cold chocolate milk. When Eliot asked to have his pizza cut up, James smacked himself in the forehead for not considering that a four-year-old might not want to eat pizza with his hands. Jane seemed completely unfazed, however.

“You’re supposed to be a young lion,” she admonished their son playfully. “So act like one! Rip that pizza apart with your giant lion teeth! Like this!” She tore at her slice and chewed with a satisfied growl. Giggling, Eliot copied her.

“How does a giraffe eat?” he asked James.

James sat very straight in his chair, stretched his neck out, bit off a mouthful of pizza, and did his best to chew it using only his molars, thus exaggerating the side-to-side motion of his jaw. Jane agreed that zebras chewed much like giraffes, and copied James’s absurd style of pizza eating. Soon, all three of them were laughing.

After dinner, while savoring raspberry frozen custard pops from the Custard Cottage, Eliot told his parents what he had done at preschool. He went into great detail over which kids were his best friends and which ones made him grumpy because they repeatedly knocked down his block tower. As he licked his custard, Eliot listed all the words he knew that began with the letter
G
and confessed to the number of marshmallows he’d consumed on the sly while supposedly pasting a marshmallow snowman onto a sheet of blue construction paper. By the time his ramble was done, everyone had finished dessert and Eliot began to yawn and rub his eyes.

“I think we’d better head home,” Jane suggested.

James nodded reluctantly. He didn’t want the evening to end. “Can I show him something first? I’ll be quick. I can see that our young zookeeper is getting tired.”

“Go ahead. I’ll clean up our plates and bring your trash bag out to my car. It’s pickup day at our place tomorrow, and since you haven’t officially moved in yet, I’m going to assume you don’t have a garbage can.” She smiled as James realized that he didn’t even know what day to put a can out—not that he had one. “It’s okay. Everyone goes through this when they move. It’s going to take a while for you to figure out the rhythm of this place.”

“At least I know who my mailman is,” he said and felt comforted by knowing that Bennett would be passing by his house five out of seven days a week.

Beckoning Eliot to follow him, James led his son into the small bedroom whose window faced the backyard. “Okay, you’ve got to lie down on the floor for the magic to happen. No, roll over. You’ve got to be on your back for this trick. Good. Now close your eyes. Ready?” James waited until Eliot nodded. He turned off the lights and settled next to his son. “You can open your eyes now.”

“Wow!” Eliot’s voice came out as a whisper. “Magic stars! How’d you do that?”

“The house just came that way,” James answered enigmatically. “Do you think you’d like to hang out in this room? I mean, would you like this to be your room?”

Eliot leaned back on his elbows and surveyed the space. Solemnly, he replied. “Yes. I like it.” He then asked, “Am I moving here, Mom?”

Jane stood in the doorway, surveying the stars. “You’re going to have two homes, Eliot. Isn’t that cool? Sometimes you’ll sleep at my house and sometimes at Daddy’s.” She glanced quickly at James. “But you and Daddy need to spend more time together before you start having sleepovers, okay?”

Her eyes met James’s and he nodded in recognition that what she was saying was both wise and true. He did need to become more familiar with his son’s habits before taking charge of him without Jane present as a chaperone. “Listen, buddy,” he touched Eliot lightly on the hand. “I’m moving into this house over the next few days, but I haven’t picked out stuff for your room yet. I don’t really know how to decorate it. Maybe if you told me the name of your favorite book, I could make this room really special for you.”

Yawning again, Eliot replied. “That’s easy. I like
Curious George
the best. He’s always getting in trouble.”

“Come on, my little monkey. Time to go,” Jane commanded.

Eliot gave James another of his rapid hugs and then submitted to being tightly enveloped in a coat, hat, scarf, and mittens.

“Are you free Sunday afternoon?” James asked Jane as she took Eliot’s mittened hand.

“We sure are. Let’s spend some time going over our calendars then. I figure Eliot’s going to need to stay with me during the weekdays so he can get to school on time, but you could come to our place in the evening and he can come here on weekends. You know, not overnight at first, but for the day anyway.” She drew Eliot close to her. “Why don’t I take care of supper Sunday night? I’ve actually learned how to make a few dishes, believe it or not.”

Recalling what an atrocious cook Jane had been during their marriage, James shook his head. “Pop’s wife will never speak to me again if she isn’t allowed to stock my fridge. I know it’s early on in this whole getting-to-know-each-other thing, but could Eliot’s grandparents stop by for a bit Sunday? Maybe just for dessert? They want to meet him so badly.”

“Of course!” she responded, and then instantly lowered her voice. “But I remember your father all too well. Is he going to hurt me after … how I treated you?”

James shrugged nonchalantly. “If Pop comes at you with his fists clenched, just use Eliot as a human shield. He’d never hit his only grandchild.”

Giving him a playful punch in the arm, Jane waved goodbye and then gave their weary son a piggyback ride to the car. James watched as she buckled Eliot into his booster seat and then fired up the Volvo’s engine. Eliot placed his small hand against the glass of his window and wiggled them in farewell. The car rolled slowly down the driveway and turned onto Hickory Hill Lane.

James stood on the front porch until the bright red taillights grew as small and distant as the winter stars.

Saturday was painting day. James dressed in a ratty sweatshirt and jeans and loaded a thermos with vanilla hazelnut coffee. Carrying a portable CD player and a copy of
Curious George
under his arm
,
he used his free hand to unlock the front door to his new house. He paused for a brief moment, allowing images from his pizza dinner with Jane and Eliot to bring a smile to his face, and then made preparations to paint the kitchen. As he listened to Sugarland’s new CD and sipped coffee, he removed switch plates, filled in nail holes, and applied tape around the windows and woodwork trim. Dipping his brush into a can of white primer paint, James wondered what his friends were doing at the moment and when they’d get together in order to talk about the case. He wanted to tell them about Eliot too, but that kind of news had to be delivered in person.

He had just finished the primer coat when the doorbell rang.

“Surprise!” The supper club members shouted in greeting and filed into his house, rubbing cold hands together as they immediately began to inspect their surroundings.

Gillian strode into the center of the living room and plunked down a green hemp purse embroidered with lavender dragonflies. “Everyone stop right there! I’m going to perform a cleansing ritual called smudging that is practiced by the Native Americans of the Northwest.” She dug out an apparatus resembling a torch from her bag and lit it with a purple Bic lighter. “I’m going to allow the smoke from this cluster of sage, cedar, and sweetgrass to
graze
the walls in every room. I’d like the rest of you to quietly
visualize
James living a life of peace and happiness in this house while I
purify
the air.”

Murmuring to herself, Gillian spun around the room, directing a waft of torch into each corner. Bennett stared at her, in a state of bemused mystification, but Lindy stood with her eyes closed and her hands clasped, inhaling the pleasant scent of the burning herbs. James decided this might not be the best time to ask where Lucy was or if she had spilled the beans about Eliot.