The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes (18 page)

“You’re good at it,” Jack said.

“I think I was at one time,” she said, remembering the person she’d been before Cory. Before Tim. Before everything had turned so deadly serious in her life.

“You mean before you had to become a responsible parent?” Jack asked.

She nodded.

“You rose to the challenge, Eve,” he said, his face sober for the first time all night. “I admire you for that, but I think you still have some fun left in you. What do you think?”

She nodded. “I think I do,” she said.

“And you know what we need now? Desperately?”

“What?”

“Ice cream!”

She laughed. “Wow, yes!” she said, the suggestion of ice cream creating an instant need in her. His enthusiasm was infectious. If he’d said they needed toothpaste, she might have responded the same way.

It was late and they drove to the one place that was always open: the University Diner.

“I used to work here,” she said as they settled into a booth.

“You did? Was it fun?”

She thought about his question, remembering the hours she and Lorraine had spent serving up grillswiths together. “Yeah, it was, actually,” she said.

A waitress took their order—two hot-fudge sundaes—and then Jack reached across the table and held both her hands in his.

“So,” he said. “Brothers? Sisters?”

“Neither.”

“Are your parents still in Oregon?”

Back to reality. “My mother died when I was twelve,” she said, “and my father is a question mark. I spent ages twelve to six…seventeen in foster homes.”

He looked stunned by the answer, and she quickly added, “It wasn’t that awful. I mean, losing my mother was awful, of course, but the foster homes weren’t that terrible.”

For the first time that evening, Jack seemed at a loss for words. Eve held her breath as he stared at her.

“I just dumped a lot on you.” She tried to smile. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry,” he said quickly. “I was just trying to imagine what it would be like to go through what you’ve gone through. Maybe that’s why you seem so strong.”

“I do?”

“Hell, yes. You have a…quality about you.”

“I do?” she repeated.

“It’s like you’re made of steel.” He let go of her hand to touch her hair. “And I don’t just mean your razor-wire hair.” He smiled. “I don’t mean that you’re cold, either. You’re anything but cold. But you’re tough. I knew it the minute I saw you the other night with Marian. You can’t be kicked around.”

She lowered her gaze to their hands. She
had
been kicked around, but he was right: she would never be kicked around again.

“I’m glad I seem that way,” she said. “I had no idea.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“I don’t even know your major,” he said finally. “What are you studying?”

“Psychology,” she said. “I love it. I’m working on a paper about foster care right now.”

“Good,”
he said fervently. “You can use your past to fuel your future.”

I like you,
she thought.

“My family—my parents and brother—all live in Richmond,” he said. “I took time off between high school and college to travel, so that’s why I’m only now, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, in my fourth year.”

Tim’s age, she thought. But that was the only thing the two men had in common.

“You’ve been lucky.”

“I don’t take it for granted,” he said, and she nodded. “Can I meet Miss Cory?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“I like you,” he said.

She stood up and leaned over the table, intending to kiss him softly, quickly on the lips, but he grabbed her shoulders to keep her from sitting down again, and the kiss turned into something she would not soon forget.

She called Lorraine when she got home, waking her up and not bothering to apologize.

“I met a guy I really like,” she said.

“Well, damn, Eve.” Lorraine sounded sleepy. “For a while there, I thought you were going to come over to our side. Do I know him?”

“He’s in the drama department. His name’s Jack Elliott.”

“You went out with Jack?”

“You know him?” She tensed, afraid Lorraine might say something that would ruin the precious sense of joy she felt.

“If you’ve got to be with a guy, he’s a good one to be with,” she said. “I mean, he’s not bad-looking.”

“He’s gorgeous, really,” Eve said.

“If you say so.” Lorraine laughed. “And he’s not a jock. Not the macho type.”

“That’s true,” Eve said, “but he’s still very…” She wrinkled her nose, searching for the right word.

“Manly,”
Lorraine supplied with a chuckle.

“Yeah, that’s it,” she said. It was a silly word, but the image of Jack’s masculine hands and perfect teeth stayed with her for the rest of the conversation, and by the time she hung up the phone, her belly felt tight with desire.

J
ack arrived at one o’clock the following day carrying a canvas bag he called the “Cory-Dory bag.” Cory was not an easy child to win over, however. Especially not by a man. She’d had so little experience with them. She was generally clingy with Eve, even when she met a new woman at the park or in a store, but when Jack arrived, she leaned against Eve and buried her head against her hip.

“Ah,” Jack said.
“S-h-y.”

“Y-e-s,”
Eve replied. “Let’s go in the living room.”

She walked with difficulty, Cory clinging to her leg.

“So, what do you have in the Cory-Dory bag?” Eve asked.

“We have to sit on the floor to find out,” Jack said.

“Let’s sit, Cory.” She pried her daughter’s hands from her leg and sat down on the carpet across from Jack. Cory sat next to her, leaning against her as she eyed the stranger with suspicion.

Jack peered inside the bag. “Hmm,” he said. “Cory, what do you think? Would you like to see the B-thing first? Or the G-thing? Or the P-thing?”

“Wow, Cory,” Eve said. “You’ve got a lot to choose from. Which do you want to see first?”

Cory pressed against her, lowering her gaze to the floor.

“Well, I want to see the B-thing,” Eve said to Jack.

“Oh, a very good choice,” Jack said. He pulled a long green balloon from the canvas bag and began to blow it into a slender tube. “Would you rather see a giraffe or a doggie?” Jack asked.

“Giraffe.” Cory’s voice was so soft it was barely audible. Eve started to repeat the word, but Jack had heard it.

“A giraffe it is,” he said. He gave the balloon a few twists, pulled another couple of balloons out of the bag, blew them up and incorporated them into the sculpture until he had a reasonable facsimile of a giraffe.

Cory giggled, her blue eyes crinkling up the way they did when she was amused. “Do the doggie now,” she said.

“Please,” Eve reminded her.

“Please,” Cory said.

“We need hats first,” Jack said. “I never do the doggie before everyone is wearing a hat.”

He made three hats out of balloons and placed them on their heads, then began working on the dog. By that time, Cory was completely captivated.

Marian came home from the grocery store and laughed at the sight of them sitting on the floor, wearing their hats, surrounded by a menagerie of balloon animals.

“Make a hat for Marian!” Cory glanced at Eve. “Please,” she added. She was on her feet by then, moving between Eve and Jack, her small, fair-skinned hand resting at times on his shoulder as he worked. Eve studied him with gratitude. From where she sat, his dark eyelashes lay long and thick against his cheeks, his intent concentration a sham for Cory’s sake, as he created a green-and-purple hat for Marian.

“Can you make a cat?” Cory asked.

“A big cat,” Jack said. “A lion.” He roared at her, shaking his curly head against her midriff and she giggled wildly.

“A lion, a lion!” She jumped up and down.

Eve looked at Marian, who stood in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, a smile on her face. She caught Eve’s gaze, her eyes telling her,
This is it, Eve. This is the man for you and Cory.

The G-thing turned out to be water pistols. Guns. Before Jack reached into his bag for them, he insisted they go into Marian’s small backyard. When he first pulled out the gun, Eve gasped. Suddenly she didn’t know him. He was a stranger, capable of hurting them.

“Cory!” she shouted at her daughter, who stopped her wild running and looked up at the alarm in her voice.

By then, Jack had produced a yellow gun and a red gun, and she realized they were all made of cheap plastic. Still, her heart thudded in her chest.

“They’re already filled.” Jack didn’t seem to notice her reaction. He handed her the red pistol, and Cory the yellow.

“What am I ’upposed to do?” Cory looked in bewilderment at the water pistol in her hand.

“Should I show her, Eve?” Jack pointed his pistol at Cory.

“No, don’t shoot her!” Eve said. “You’ll scare her.”

“I had no intention of shooting her,” Jack said. He pointed the gun at Eve and pulled the trigger. Eve screamed, then laughed as the cold stream of water caught her on the neck. She aimed her gun at Jack and shot him squarely in the face.

“How do you do it?” Cory was still studying her gun.

Jack walked over and helped her aim the gun. She was not a good shot, but she loved the game anyhow, and within minutes all three of them were soaked and cold and laughing.

“Somebody needs to change her clothes and have her nap.” Eve ran a hand over Cory’s damp red hair once they were back inside.

“No,” Cory said.

“Yes.” Eve took her hand. “Let’s go. I’ll be back in a minute, Jack.”

Cory wouldn’t budge. “What’s the other thing?” she asked.

“What other thing?” Eve was puzzled.

“The other thing in the Cory-Dory bag,” Cory said, her focus on the canvas bag on the sofa.

“You have a good memory, Cory,” Jack said. “The P-thing. We’ll save it for another day, okay?”

Cory looked reluctantly at the bag. “Okay,” she said.

Eve took her upstairs and into the nursery, where they’d replaced the crib with a twin bed. “Do you like Jack?” she asked her as she helped Cory out of her jersey.

“Yes,” Cory said. “He’s silly.”

“I guess he is.” She tucked Cory under the covers and pulled the shade.

“Leave the door open,” Cory said, although Eve had never once closed it.

“She’s beautiful,” Jack said, when Eve came downstairs again.

“You were amazing with her.” She sat on the other end of the sofa from him, curling her feet under her. “She’s usually so shy with men.”

“Her father must be a redhead, huh?”

She nodded without hesitation, used to the deceit. In her mind, Cory’s father looked exactly like Tim with red hair.

“Is he very involved with her?” he asked.

She shook her head. “He was killed in a motorcycle accident when Cory was a baby.” This was the lie she’d told Lorraine and the women at the park and anyone else who inquired. It was the lie she would one day tell Cory. She’d decided it was best to get Cory’s mythical father completely out of the picture.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jack said.

“I didn’t even put his name on the birth certificate because I didn’t want him to be involved with her. He wasn’t the sort of guy I thought he was.” She ran her hand over the floral fabric on the sofa. “He turned out to be a criminal.”

“Drugs?” he asked.

“Among other things,” she offered vaguely.

“It’s hard for me to imagine you with a guy like that,” Jack said.

She thought of Tim and how he’d used her. “It’s hard for me to imagine it, too,” she said.

For the next week, they met twice on the grounds for a bite to eat and they spoke every night on the phone. On Saturday, Jack arrived with a twelve-inch, red, Radio Flyer bicycle with training wheels. He called Eve outside to see it before showing it to Cory.

“I wanted to make sure you’re okay with this before I give it to her,” he said.

“Oh, my God, Jack!” Eve said when she spotted the bike. She was both astonished and a little unsettled by his generosity. “This is too much.” She meant it. Generous gifts came with obligations.

“I know,” Jack admitted. “And I promise not to be Santa Claus every time I see her. But indulge me right now, okay? I’m having fun.” His kidlike grin was hard to resist.

“Okay,” she said.

They called Cory outside and watched her eyes light up at the sight of the bicycle.

“Wowie!” she said, running over to it. She looked at the bike from front to rear, then up at Jack. “You got the same color as my hair!” she said.

Jack laughed. “You’re right, Cory-Dory. And I had to look high and low for it, too. Why don’t you hop on?”

Eve helped Cory onto the bike, but she stayed on only three seconds before getting off again. “It’s scary,” she said.

“Scary?” Jack looked surprised. “I asked the guy in the bicycle store to sell me the unscary one.”

Cory looked at him, and Eve knew she didn’t quite follow what he was saying.

“Maybe in a few days you’ll feel brave enough to get on it,” Eve said.

“I think she’s brave enough now, aren’t you, Cory?”

Cory put her skinny leg over the bike again, and Eve had an image of her riding down the slightly sloped driveway and into the path of a car. “The first thing we’ll teach you is how to brake,” she said.

Cory sat down on the bicycle seat and gripped the handlebars.

“Great job!” Jack said.

“You look like a big girl,” Eve added.

Cory bit her lower lip. “Will I tip over?” she asked.

“Impossible,” Jack said. “You have these cool training wheels in the back to keep you from tipping over.”

Cory peered around her shoulder to look at the training wheels.

“So, how do I make it go?” she asked.

They gave her a lesson in the driveway, and soon she was riding on her own, but as if she could read Eve’s mind, she back-pedaled to brake every few feet.

“Excellent!” Jack said once she’d managed the length of the driveway without braking. “You’re ready for the sidewalk.” He helped her turn onto the sidewalk, and Eve walked next to her as she rode.

“There’s a big bump!” Cory cried. The sidewalk up ahead was cracked over a tree root.

“It’s not that big,” Eve said. “You can go over it.”

Cory shut her eyes and let out a yelp as she rode over the bump.

“All right, Cory!” Jack called from behind them. “Cory-Dory rose to the challenge, boys and girls. She went over the bump like a pro.”

Cory didn’t seem to hear him, her forehead furrowed in concentration. She brought the bike to a standstill and put her feet on the ground.

“I want to get off now,” she announced.

“Let’s just ride it back to where Jack is,” Eve said quietly as she turned the bike around. “And you didn’t thank him. This is an extremely nice gift.”

“I don’t want to go over that bump again,” Cory said.

“You’re not going to tip over.”

Cory eyed the bump as if it were the Grand Canyon, but she climbed aboard.

“You hold on, Mommy,” she said.

“I’m holding on.” Eve put her hand lightly on the back of the seat and they negotiated the sidewalk with relative ease.

“Well, we all survived,” Jack said, rolling his eyes at Eve with a smile.

“What do you say to Jack?”

“Thank you for the bike,” Cory said. “Did you bring the Cory-Dory bag?”

Jack laughed. “Greedy little Gus, aren’t you?”

“What does that mean?” Cory asked.

“It means you want everything handed to you on a silver platter,” Eve said.

“What’s a silver platter?”

“It just means you’re a normal three-year-old girl,” Jack said. “And Marian’s going to stay with you this afternoon while I steal your mom away for a while.”

Cory looked truly alarmed. “You’re going to steal her?”

“She’s in her literal phase,” Eve said to Jack.

“Your Mom and I are going to a bookstore for a while. Okay?”

“Can I come, too?”

“No, honey,” Eve said. “You’ll stay here with Marian. But I’ll buy you a book, okay?”

“Okay.” Cory ran into the house. “Marian! I’m staying with you for a while!” she yelled.

Eve turned to smile at Jack. “This was really wonderful of you,” she said, her hand on the seat of the bike. “She’s going to love it.”

The used bookstore was near the university. She’d not been in it before and the ceiling-high stacks crammed with old books took her breath away. She found an ancient book on psychology, some of the theories and approaches in opposition to those she was learning, and she found a copy of
Charlotte’s Web
to read to Cory, but then remembered about Charlotte dying at the end and decided against it.

“I have to be so careful with Cory,” she said to Jack. “She’s afraid of so much. I don’t want to make it worse.”

“Maybe you’re too careful,” Jack suggested gently.

“I don’t think I can be,” she said. “What makes you say that?”

He pulled a dusty book from the stacks and studied the cover. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said. “What do I know about raising kids?”

“Come on,” she said. “What made you say I’m too careful?”

“I’ve only seen you with her for a few hours, so I really have no right to—”

“Jack! Tell me.”

“Maybe you coddle her a little too much,” he said. “When she’s afraid, like on the bike or when she was shy about meeting me, you sort of…I don’t know, comforted her. I think she liked that comfort.”

Eve was quiet. Marian had said similar things to her and the criticism worried her. She was so afraid of failing her daughter.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “It really isn’t my place to—”

“No, I…” Eve let out a sigh. “You might be right. I’m not sure how else to be. I worry about her so much.”

“What are you afraid of?” he asked.

Where to start? “Of losing her somehow,” she said. “Of having her get hurt. Of having her suffer in any way.”

“Part of life, Evie,” he said. “Although I understand that you’ve had more than your share of the bad stuff.”

“I know.”

“You’re a good mom,” he said. In the privacy of the stacks, he put his arms around her and kissed her. “And a beautiful mom.”

She wasn’t beautiful. She was a plain Jane, but she believed that he meant it, that he saw something in her another man might not see. He pressed gently against her, his erection connecting with her belly. It had been so long since her body had reacted to a man. So long! Lowering her hand between them, she let the back of her fingers brush over him. He sucked in his breath.

“Jeez, girl,” he said. “You are brazen.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not complaining.” He laughed.

“I’m not usually…brazen,” she said, then laughed herself. “I don’t even know what I am usually. It’s been so long since I liked anyone.”

“My fault,” he said. “Coming on to you in a bookstore. You know, usually I—this is going to sound bad, but I want to be straight with you. Usually, if a girl—a woman—wanted it and I liked her and found her attractive, I’d take her to bed right away. As soon as I could. But I don’t want that with you. I mean, I definitely
want
you. I just don’t want to move too fast and spoil what could turn out to be a really good thing.”