The Older Woman

by Cheryl Reavis

  “I’ll be back to get Scottie in a hour. I promise,” the sister said. Then, “Don’t look at me like that! I have to see him! I love him with all my heart, Kate!”

  “And you’re stupid with all of your head,” Meehan said.

  He couldn’t hear what she said next, but clearly she didn’t hold back with family any more than she did with overzealous paratroopers.

  He had no idea what the situation was here, but from what he did know, he could only come to one conclusion:

  Poor old Scottie.

  Chapter Six

  Mrs. Bee was definitely on a trip down memory lane. She’d been listening to big band music all afternoon—some of which he recognized from having lived with grandparents. At the moment, a girl singer was doing a torchy rendition of “More Than You Know.”

  Mrs. Bee was also baking. Ordinarily, she took a nap in the afternoon, but not today. Man, the smells that were coming up from the kitchen. Apple pie, he thought. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had homemade apple pie—not since his grandmother had died, two weeks before Christmas when he was eighteen. After the funeral Pop had been determined to have the house decorated the way she always did—

  the red cedar Christmas tree hung with all kinds of kid-made ornaments and crammed into a corner of the living room, the multicolored lights strung across the front porch. But there were no kitchen smells. He and Pop couldn’t manage that. By the next Christmas, he had graduated from high school and had joined the army.

  No more homemade apple pie. Life as he knew it was over.

  He’d forgotten how much he missed it.

  So far, he hadn’t made the effort to get downstairs to see exactly what was going on. His best guess was that the church ladies were about to ride again—this time well provisioned. It was probably time for the church’s famous chicken pie supper, and Mrs. Bee was manning the desserts.

  For the last two days he’d been trying to keep a low profile—so he wouldn’t get roped into doing anything else unexpected. Little old church ladies, he was beginning to understand, were not all that predictable. There was still the matter of the notorious magazine, for one thing. Besides that, if he made the trip downstairs, he might be tempted to keep right on moving and go push his luck with Meehan. Restraining his well-honed inclination to take charge of the situation wasn’t easy. He’d clearly found his misplaced audacity again, and he wanted to know if she was upset with him. He especially wanted to know about when she was sick, how bad it was and if she was okay now. She looked okay. She looked better than okay.

  He could ask, of course—and probably would have a few days ago. It wasn’t just his innate, cat-killing curiosity that made him so bold about making inquiries. It was his ongoing quest to understand the people around him. His emotional survival depended on it, just as much as his physical survival had once depended on his ability to go outside his food chain.

  Or he was permanently stuck in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Number five. The one he’d missed on the final exam.

  “The need to know and understand.”

  He smiled to himself, surprised that he remembered even that much of the college course he’d taken in his better, precrash days.

  But in spite of the motivation, he had to bide his time and stay out of Meehan’s way for now. He’d said what he wanted—needed—to say, and that was that. It was all up to her how much it bothered her that he was younger than she was and that he knew she’d had cancer.

  He could hear a different song coming from downstairs.

  “Anytime,” the guy kept singing.

  His sentiment exactly.

  Anytime, Meehan. Anytime and anything.

  For lack of something better to do, he took a shower—which he fully expected would turn out to be the high point of his day.

  When he came out of the bathroom, he saw a narrow, folded piece of white paper lying on the floor, half of it still under the door.

  “Maybe not,” he said.

  He hobbled over to pick it up. It took a while. His name was written on the outside. He didn’t recognize the handwriting. It wasn’t Mrs. Bee’s. Hers looked just like the row of cursive letters they had had up over the blackboard when he was in grammar school. Even her grocery lists looked like they had been done by the schoolteacher she was.

  He unfolded the paper and began to read:

  Doyle:

  I couldn’t get you to the door and I couldn’t wait. We’ve been invited to dinner this evening at seven. I’ll be back to get you.

  Meehan.

  P.S. Refusal is not an option.

  Refusal is not an option.

  What did that mean?

  It sounded like something he would say. She should know by now that he wouldn’t be refusing anything.

  He read the note again, then looked at the clock. He had a little more than an hour to try to figure it out.

  Dinner.

  No problem. That part he got.

  But who would invite the two of them—together—and why? He didn’t get it.

  Not that it mattered. This was the “anytime” he’d been looking for. He didn’t care where they went. The fact that they were making the trip was enough for him.

  He took his time shaving. He even put on a little aftershave. Ordinarily, he didn’t care for the stuff unless he happened to have a really hot date—and how long had it been since that happened? He didn’t actually have a hot date now—or at least he didn’t think he did. He wasn’t quite sure what he had going on here—but whatever it was, he was up for it. Aftershave was definitely in order.

  He stood in front of the mirror looking at the final result. He’d had first-and second-degree burns on his face, but there was practically no scarring. His eyes hadn’t changed much, in the months since the crash. He and Lieutenant McGraw—and the men in the pictures in Mrs. Bee’s World War I book downstairs—all had that same look. It was as if the part of him that had seen Hell itself had crawled up from some dark place and looked out his eyes. He had seen Hell—they all had—and they couldn’t tell anybody about it. He couldn’t, anyway. He always did a little verbal dance around the army shrink’s questions. He was damn good at it, too. Years of practice, thanks to Nina and dear old Mom.

  When you forgive yourself.

  Meehan’s comment suddenly popped into his head. He didn’t want to think about that. He wanted to think about dinner and her. How she would look and how she would smell. He was determined to get close enough to find out about the perfume part—was it or wasn’t it flowery?—and maybe tonight was the night.

  The uniform of the day was the same as always—cargo shorts and a golf shirt. There wasn’t much he could do about it. What he had available had to be weighed against what he could tolerate. His mind went immediately to Rita’s wedding. He’d done some suffering there. Military uniforms and still-new surgical scars weren’t the least bit compatible.

  Rita.

  He hadn’t been thinking about her much of late, but he no longer worried about it. His stomach rumbled. The aromas from the kitchen—meat loaf?—were driving him crazy. Wherever they were going, he hoped the chow was good.

  He spent some time policing the apartment—making sure everything was stowed where it should be. There wasn’t much straightening up for him to do—he was neat by nature. No, he was neat by the sheer force of his old drill sergeant’s will. Even so, if Meehan was actually coming up here, he wanted everything squared away.

  He looked at the clock. He still had time to kill. He should have brought “Michael Mont” and “Fleur” upstairs.

  He drank a glass of water, washed the glass and a coffee cup left over from this morning.

  Music.

  He needed some music to pass the time—except that he already had music. Mrs. Bee’s really old oldies were still coming from downstairs.

  He decided not to sit down—which left looking out the window a distinct possibility. After a moment he walked across the room to do just that. Meehan’s car
was parked in the drive.

  Someone knocked. He made an about-face and tried to hurry—but not too much—to answer the door. He didn’t want to keep her waiting and he didn’t want to seem as eager as he was, either. Meehan didn’t scare easy—he knew that—but he didn’t want to take any chances.

  He took a deep breath and opened the door. There she stood in the hot, stuffy upstairs hallway. It smelled of meat loaf and baking bread and apple pie. And she looked…

  Fine.

  He looked her over again to be sure, and he saw no evidence that she’d ever been ill. He didn’t let himself even consider how extensive her surgery might have been.

  She wasn’t wearing the opaque dress again. She had on khaki shorts and dark-red T-shirt and sandals. He liked her in shorts. A lot. He liked her in anything.

  “Hey,” he said. “I got your note.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately. If this dinner thing had fizzled already, he wanted to know up front.

  The big band music from downstairs suddenly stopped.

  She looked over her shoulder. “Oh—I’m just a little worried about Mrs. Bee. Are you ready?”

  “Roger that,” he said.

  She stood back so he could come out the door.

  “So where are we going?” he asked as he hobbled by her, not quite close enough to identify the scent she was wearing—unless it was meat loaf.

  “Downstairs,” she said.

  “Besides

  that.”

  “Downstairs,” she said again.

  “And

  that’s

  it?”

  “That’s it,” she said. She started to help him by taking his arm, purely a nurse kind of touch. Even so, she apparently thought better of it and let her hand fall.

  “So…we’re not going to dinner, then.”

  “Yes, we are—Mrs. Bee invited us.”

  Which explains the “refusal is not an option” thing, he thought. He was disappointed that there wasn’t a more personal reason for her requiring his presence, but he didn’t really mind. He liked Mrs. Bee.

  “Cool,” he said. “She’s been cooking all day.”

  “She says it’s an anniversary.”

  “Hers and Mr. Bee’s?”

  “She says no.”

  “Whose

  then?”

  “I don’t know—I was hoping you did.”

  “Nope. So how is Scottie?”

  She stopped walking, and so did he. He didn’t think she was going to answer.

  “He’s…worried about his mother,” she said after some consideration.

  “Yeah, he would be, wouldn’t he?”

  “Did he say something to you?”

  “Not exactly. He knew she was crying about something and he pretty much understood that he had to stay out of the way. He’s a good little kid.”

  Meehan was staring at him in that way she had. “Yes. He is.”

  She started walking again, and he went with her.

  “You know you’re getting around a lot better?” she said as he tackled the stairs.

  “Am I?” he asked, because “better” or not, it still hurt.

  “Damn straight,” she said, and he grinned.

  Mrs. Bee was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and she’d shown up “battle rattle”—ready for anything. She was all dressed up—beauty parlor, makeup, jewelry, the works. Maybe even a new dress.

  “Don’t mention the magazine,” he said to Meehan under his breath.

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, trying not to move his lips.

  “You look nice, Mrs. Bee,” he said on the way down, because she did and because his grandmother had always told him women appreciated a sincere compliment—whereas an insincere one could get him hurt.

  “Thank you, Calvin. I’m so glad you and Katie could come tonight.”

  “Smells good, Mrs. Bee. Special occasion, huh?”

  “It is to me, Calvin—and one I can’t share with just anybody. I haven’t been keeping my word about remembering, these last few years. This year I’m making up for it. Come into the dining room. Everything is ready. Ordinarily we’d chat for a while in the front parlor, but I’m a little tired. I hope you’re hungry, Katie. Calvin, I know you are.”

  “You got my number, Mrs. Bee,” he said, following her and Meehan. Everything was indeed ready. The table was set in what must be her best china. The food was already on the table—meat loaf, as he already suspected, mashed potatoes and gravy, cole slaw, deviled eggs, huge homemade rolls, green beans with white corn, a big pitcher of iced tea with lemons floating on top, two pies—one with icing.

  French apple, he guessed.

  And there were flowers—roses and something or other and white candles that had already been lit. The table looked like a page out of a magazine.

  “The menu is nothing fancy,” Mrs. Bee said. “He asked me to fix all his favorites for him when he came home—but of course, he didn’t.”

  Doyle exchanged a look with Meehan. He was on the verge of asking who “he”

  was, but he decided to restrain his “hunt the hill” mind-set again, at least for the moment. Mrs. Bee patted the back of a dining room chair as she went around the table.

  “You sit here, Calvin—and, Katie, you over there.”

  “The table is beautiful,” Meehan said as she took her seat.

  “Yes, if I do say so myself,” Mrs. Bee said. “I promised, you see.”

  Doyle didn’t see, and he didn’t think Meehan did—but neither of them said so. He suddenly realized that the table was set for four. As soon as he and Meehan were seated, Mrs. Bee reached for their hands and said a prayer that included a petition for his and Meehan’s well-being.

  “Comfort food,” she said as soon as she was done, handing Doyle the huge bowl of mashed potatoes. Then, “Oh, I forgot the music.”

  “I’ll get it, Mrs. Bee,” Meehan said.

  “Oh, good,” she said. “I’m still a little scared of that new machine. It does things with those little silver records all by itself. I told that grandson of mine I didn’t need it, but he insisted.”

  When Meehan got up from the table, Doyle watched her walk to the new stereo in the parlor just off the dining room door, intent on verifying one more time that she was as good-looking as he’d only just noticed.

  Yes and yes. She was good-looking in both directions.

  When Meehan sat down again, he glanced at Mrs. Bee—and realized that she hadn’t missed his interest in her other guest. She was a sharp old lady. Nothing got by her.

  The music started almost immediately. He wondered idly if the grandson had given Mrs. Bee a big band CD or if she’d bought it herself. A CD ought to be a piece of cake for anyone as adventurous in her purchases as she was. He could just see her in the mall music store.

  In a moment Frank Sinatra began to sing something that had to be called “Don’t Forget Tonight Tomorrow.”

  Doyle could see that the song brought back memories. He thought for a moment Mrs. Bee was going to cry, and he plunged into a conversation to get her mind off it. He told her about living on Pop Doyle’s farm and his rule for a happy life.

  “Plow straight, plant well, cultivate carefully and harvest like you mean it. If you always do that, he said, whatever bad happens ain’t your fault.”

  Then he told her about his grandmother Doyle and how much she loved to cook. Then he switched to her garden and how she spent hours “putting up” the tomatoes and corn, white cucumbers, and the green beans she grew every summer. She even canned sausage, he told her—and always in a blue Mason jar.

  “Did you help?” Meehan asked when she could get a word in.

  “Had to,” he said. “I couldn’t outrun her.”

  Mrs. Bee finally managed a smile and passed another bowl. Frank Sinatra gave way to somebody singing happily about a tomato and Plato, baloney and Tony.

  They don’t make so
ngs like they used to, Doyle thought. The meal continued, and the conversation flourished without his help. Meehan held up her end with comments on the possibility of afternoon and evening thundershowers, her job at the post hospital and world headlines. She didn’t go anywhere near the girlie magazine.

  They didn’t make cooks like they used to, either, and most of the time he was only half listening. Everything tasted so good. At one point he looked up from his enjoyment to find both women watching him. He winked at Mrs. Bee, making her smile, and no one mentioned the empty chair.

  The wind had picked up outside. There was a rumble of thunder, and the candles flickered in the cross breeze from the open windows. The first drops of rain were beginning to fall by the time Mrs. Bee was ready to cut the apple pie. The phone rang—