Beauty & the Beasts

by Janice Kay Johnson; Anne Weale

  “Five minutes into the movie you quit noticing them.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Dad straightened from his sprawling position and rested his elbows on his knees. He suddenly sounded serious. “Garth, about Madeline—”

  On a spurt of alarm, Garth demanded, “What did she tell you?” He’d thought they were friends!

  His dad’s brows rose. “What makes you think she told me anything?”

  Garth scrambled to cover his slip. “I just thought…I mean, why do you want to talk to me about her if she didn’t complain or something?”

  “Because I suspect you still don’t want me seeing her, and she’s important to me. But neither of us want to hurt you.”

  Garth spun in a couple more circles, not sure what to say. Whenever he thought about Madeline and his dad, he felt tangled inside, scared and angry and guilty. Finally he muttered, “What do you want me to say? It’s okay?”

  “That’d be a good start.”

  “Well, it’s not okay!” Garth burst out, lifting his head. “I mean, I don’t care. If you can figure out someplace to dump me, I guess I don’t have anything to say about it, do I?”

  “Nobody is dumping you,” his father said quickly. “Your mother expects you back in September, just like always.”

  “Oh, and you believe that,” he said sarcastically.

  “Yeah.” Dad’s voice was level. “I know your mom. I know how much she loves you.”

  “Easy to say,” Garth mumbled.

  Dad ignored that. “Do you just not want me to remarry? Or do you object to Madeline in particular?”

  How was he supposed to know? No, that was kind of a lie to himself. “What, are you just going to pick someone else out if I don’t like her?” he asked rudely.

  Dad’s eyes narrowed. “You know better than that.”

  “Well, what difference does it make, then?”

  His father lost it. “Goddammit, talk to me!” he roared. “How can you not like Madeline?”

  Garth glared at him. “I do like her!”

  “Then what?” As he always did when he was agitated, Dad tugged at his hair until it stood up in clumps. “What’s the problem?”

  “You want to know?” Garth shot to his feet. “I’ll tell you! She’s too cool! You won’t want me around if you’ve got her!”

  Dad rose to his feet, too. “Garth, I love you. You’re my son. This isn’t a competition!”

  “No?” Garth asked belligerently, his fingernails biting into his palms. “I heard you and Mom talking when you left. It was all about who I’d live with. It was like I had to choose!”

  “We never asked you to choose!” Dad had a satisfyingly shocked expression. “We wanted the best for you. We weren’t arguing over you.”

  “And Mom,” Garth raged on, “she picked Chuckie, didn’t she? It was me or him, and he won!” The knowledge was a flesh-eating acid in his stomach.

  “Her relationship with him has nothing to do with her feelings for you.” Dad gripped Garth by the shoulders and looked deep into his eyes, as though to convince him with this fake-sincere gaze. “She loves you. I love you. Dammit, even Madeline loves you! She’d be your stepmother. Wouldn’t you like that?”

  Garth ducked his head and shrugged.

  “What?” his father asked.

  Garth hated being a crybaby, but tears filled his eyes. He wouldn’t look up. “Why would you love me when you can love her?” The question was raw.

  “Because you’re my son. Because I love you no matter what else is going on in my life.” Dad went on and on, saying all the same stuff Garth had heard from his mother. So he just tuned it- out and nodded every once in a while. No adult was going to say, Yeah, you’re right, I won’t really want you around once I have her. They didn’t want to admit it was true even to themselves. But he could see through their phony baloney.

  Dad finally let him go. Garth went into his room and cast himself onto his bed. In a second Ron had hopped up and was walking on his head, peering down at his face. Garth rolled over, squeezed Ron in a hug that had the kitten struggling and began to sob in huge silent gulps.

  Ron and Chev were the only ones who really loved him, and he was going to betray them.

  “YOU’RE WELCOME to come with me to the catadoption today,” Madeline said as she stuck a can of cold juice in her tote bag. “What I do for Ten Lives is important to me.”

  “Yes, I see that.” Her mother set down her coffee cup with a decisive click. “I’d like to come.”

  “You would?” She had to be hearing things, Madeline thought.

  “Certainly.” Mrs. Howard stood. “Do I need anything?”

  “A book maybe, in case you get bored. I always bring a drink. Sometimes a bag lunch.”

  On the drive to the shelter Madeline kept sneaking glances at her mother. Yes, she really was here. Especially amazing, since she had yet to visit Ten Lives, despite knowing Madeline’s involvement.

  “It may not be very clean yet,” Madeline warned. “Volunteers will barely be getting started changing litters and feeding the cats.”

  Serenely her mother said, “Well, I hardly expect it to look like my living room.”

  Right.

  Mrs. Howard hovered in the entry while Madeline and Joan stuffed cats and kittens into carriers. To her credit, she helped carry them out to the car and stack them on the back seat and in the rear of the station wagon. Nor did she say a word on the drive to Lynnwood about the chorus of yowls that filled the car, although a pained expression occasionally crossed her face. And, bless her heart, she carried cats into the big pet store, giving Madeline time to set up the sign, lay out materials on a card table and put cats that were likely to get along with one another in the large wire cage with shelves that the store had provided.

  “No, these’ll stay in their carriers,” she told her mother, gesturing at several to her left. “They’re not crazy about other cats.” Glancing past the older woman, Madeline felt her heart lurch. “Oh, here’s Eric and Garth.”

  “Dr. Bergstrom!” Mrs. Howard gushed. “How lovely to see you again.”

  Wordlessly Garth set down the plastic carrier he carried. Conscious of Eric talking to her mother a few feet away, Madeline opened its wire door and Garth reached inside for the two black-and-white kittens. They went into the large cage.

  “Can you place them together?” he pleaded.

  “We’ll try.” She looked at him with compassion. “Are you sure you want to be here?”

  He set his jaw. “I need to see who takes them.”

  “Okay.” She touched his arm. “I’ve always felt that way, too.”

  One of the store employees produced two more folding metal chairs. Madeline hadn’t expected Eric to stay, but he promptly settled down behind the table with every appearance of permanence.

  When he wasn’t watching his son, his narrowed determined gaze rested on her. Once, when her mother was chatting with someone who’d stopped to show off their ten-week-old Sheltie puppy, Eric said in a low voice to Madeline, “We need to talk.”

  She turned her head to see Garth watching them. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, and when their eyes met he jerked away and crouched down to pet Chev and Ron.

  “Have you talked to him?” she asked.

  Eric’s hesitation told her what Garth’s reaction had been. Seeing the knowledge on her face, Eric tightened his jaw. “Yes. He’s a kid, Madeline. He’ll come around.”

  “He needs to feel secure about you,” Madeline said quietly. “Right now you’re all he thinks he has.”

  “Goddammit, he—” Eric cut himself off.

  Madeline turned a bright smile on an older couple who’d stopped, oohing and aahing over the cats.

  “Our daughter and her children are planning to get two kittens,” the woman said. “Are any of these brothers and sisters?”

  Assured that several were, the couple hurried out, promising to phone her. Garth hovered as a young woman visited all the kitte
ns, finally choosing a small black-and-tan tabby.

  “Maybe Chev and Ron won’t go today,” he said hopefully when the woman left with the kitten in a cardboard carrier.

  “It’ll only get harder,” Madeline said, pretending not to notice the unhappiness that flooded his face.

  He turned away quickly, and she guessed he was hiding tears.

  Miracle of miracles, they placed a ten-year-old white cat named Snowman, a handsome fellow who’d come to the shelter when his elderly owner had to go into a nursing home. Snowman fought being put into the cardboard carrier, but the middleaged woman, who’d chosen him to keep her older female cat company, persuaded him. She’d stroked him gently and talked to him in a soothing murmur until he’d purred and she’d been able to back him into the box, petting him until she’d closed the flaps.

  “Poor guy, he must be frightened,” she said, and smiled calmly at all of them. “I’ll take good care of him. Matilda likes her Fancy Feast. Do you suppose he will, too?”

  Snowman, Madeline felt sure, was going to put on a few pounds and live a pampered life.

  The woman had no sooner departed than a family appeared.

  “Grandma said you had kittens,” the boy began, but then he spotted them. The boy and his sister dropped to their knees beside the wire cage. Their mother stopped at the table.

  “Oh,” the boy breathed, “look at these black-and-white ones!”

  Grudgingly Garth took Chev and Ron out to be held by the boy and girl, who were perhaps ten and twelve. They cuddled the kittens tenderly, and after a bit even shy Chev began to purr. The whole while, Garth stood over them, ready to snatch his charges back at any moment.

  The mother lowered her voice. “We adopted a kitten six months ago, but he wasn’t in very good health from the beginning. Of course by the time we realized that, it was too late. We already loved him. We recently found out that he had leukemia, and he went downhill fast. It broke the kids’ hearts.”

  “That’s hard,” Madeline said sympathetically. “Are you sure you’re ready for a new pet?”

  “Oh, we’ve waited a couple of months. This time we decided to get two, so they’d have company when the kids are at school and I’m working. I’m a single mother,” she said as an aside.

  Keeping an eye on Garth, Madeline discussed Ten Lives’s policies and queried the woman about how safe their home was and how much of a commitment they were prepared to make to their pets. She was satisfied quickly, but she couldn’t tell if Garth felt the same.

  The mother went over and visited Chev and Ron, as well. The girl looked up. “Mom, can we have them?” Her eyes held such anxiety and hope, Madeline had a welcome feeling of rightness, especially when she saw the same expression in the boy’s eyes.

  She looked at Garth, standing quietly now behind the family. He gazed down at the two kids for the longest time, then gave an agonized nod. His face contorted and he hurried away. Eric rose and strolled after him. On the edge of tears herself Madeline felt a stab of gratitude that Eric had stayed.

  It was twenty minutes before they returned from the back of the store. Garth’s eyes were red and puffy, but the tears had been scrubbed away, and he seemed not to mind his father’s hand on his shoulder. Madeline couldn’t help remembering a similar scene, only Eric had been comforting her.

  Garth was careful not even to glance at the cage that no longer held his two little boys. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Do you need me to stay?”

  She shook her head. “We’ll be fine. Garth—”

  “I’m okay,” he said woodenly.

  “You taught them how to love.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “Thanks to you, they’ll have a fine life.”

  Tears leapt into his eyes again. He gave a jerky nod and fled.

  “I’m sorry,” Madeline said helplessly to Eric. “Maybe fostering was a terrible idea for him.”

  “No.” He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and kneaded lightly. “You’re right. He did give them a chance at a fine life. But they’re not the only ones who learned. He did, too.”

  “I hope so,” she whispered.

  Eric gave her a quick hard kiss. “We’ll talk later,” he said, a promise and a threat, and strode out.

  Madeline looked over to see that her mother was dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

  “So,” Mrs. Howard said with a final sniff, “we’ve done quite well today, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, and we have another hour.”

  But the heat of the summer afternoon had brought a lull in business. Store clerks chatted quietly with one another, and the few customers who passed had carts loaded with birdseed or dog food.

  It seemed a good moment to say difficult things.

  “Mom,” Madeline began, but her courage failed her, and when her mother glanced over inquiringly, she said the first thing that came into her head. It turned out not to be far from what she’d intended. “There’s an audition tomorrow night in Everett. It’s a community-theater production.”

  Mrs. Howard waited, only a certain stillness about her betraying that she understood Madeline was telling her something important.

  “I thought I might try out for a part.” Madeline took a deep breath. “Would you like to come and watch?”

  “I don’t believe,” her mother said unsteadily, “that anything on earth would make me happier.”

  Hardly aware she did so, Madeline began to align the edges of the stack of handouts. It helped, somehow, to have her hands busy and not to be watching for her mother’s expression.

  Even so, it was hard to say, I might have been wrong. I’m starting to understand why your life felt empty, how you might have convinced yourself that you were making the right choices for me.

  Hoping her mother would be patient, Madeline said, “Garth doesn’t want me to marry his father. He’s frightened. His mother just remarried, and he thinks she doesn’t want him anymore, and…well, Eric and I have discussed the possibility of not seeing each other for now. Until Garth is ready. No, let me say this,” she said, when her mother began to protest. “The thing is, I’d almost convinced myself that he’d be happier with me as his stepmother even though he doesn’t know it. Assuming,” she added scrupulously, “that I’m reading Eric right and he’s thinking of asking me.”

  She took another breath and went on, “Anyway, I suddenly saw how easy it is to believe you know best when you’re the adult. Maybe you even do. Maybe Garth is wrong in not wanting me to marry his dad.” At last she said it. “Maybe I was wrong in thinking life somehow would have been better if you’d let me be more normal.”

  “I don’t know,” her mother said, and her face held painful honesty. “I’ve had plenty of years to think about everything I did and why I did it. It wasn’t all bad, truly.”

  “No. I know. I’ve been remembering. The night Annie opened was one of the most glorious of my life. There I was, out on the stage, singing and dancing, and people were laughing and cheering me.” Madeline gazed into the past, a bittersweet smile touching her lips. “Of course, I thought I had the most beautiful voice in the world.”

  “You sang from the moment you got up in the morning.” The affection in her mother’s voice was new to Madeline. “You used to stand in your crib and rattle the bars and hop around, burbling. Even then, I knew you were dancing and singing.”

  “But I have a terrible voice.”

  “Not terrible…”

  Their eyes met, and suddenly both were laughing.

  “It was fine for an eight-year-old,” her mother said. “It just…well, didn’t develop into anything special.”

  Madeline wrinkled her nose. “I sing in the shower.”

  “I know. I’ve heard you.”

  And just like that they laughed—no, giggled— again. Mother-daughter. Momentarily in harmony.

  The silence that fell afterward was companionable, easy. Madeline had more she wanted to say, but her mother beat her to it.

  “There was a time you loved acting
and modeling.” Her mouth compressed. “My mistake was not letting the choice be yours when you started not wanting it. And yes, you were right—money was part of the reason. I had no way of earning what you could. But it was more. My life felt empty, I suppose, and your success filled it.” She looked directly at Madeline. “I’m sorry,” she said starkly.

  “Maybe, if we’d just talked…”

  “I fear that’s my fault, too. Expressing feelings never came easily to me.” Her wrinkles deepened. “Which I regret more than I can say. Perhaps it’s what destroyed my marriage. Understanding what I do about myself, I’m not at all sure I should try again.”

  With new certainty Madeline said, “But something has changed, hasn’t it? I know a few women whose best friends are their mothers. I’ve always envied them. We could try.”

  Tears sparkled on her mother’s eyelashes. “I’d like that very much. Oh, Madeline, I am so sorry!”

  Flooded with emotion, tears filling her own eyes, Madeline whispered, “And I’m sorry, too. It shouldn’t have taken me so long to grow up.”

  They hugged, cheeks pressed together, fingers gripping hard. The embrace was awkward, but real. Mother-daughter.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MADELINE PARKED in the alley as always and was unlocking the back entrance to her boutique when a hand closed on her shoulder. Her heart took a wild jump and she spun around.

  “Eric! God!” She pressed a hand to her chest. “You just about scared me to death.”

  In khakis and a heather green T-shirt, he had no right to look so handsome. Perhaps the fright had made her realize his impact afresh.

  “I’m sorry. I made plenty of noise coming down the alley.”

  “Not enough,” she said tartly.

  “You haven’t returned my phone calls.”

  “I told you I needed to think.”

  He turned the key in the lock, opened the door and ostentatiously handed the key back to her. “I won’t accept a decision not to see me.”

  -Her rare temper awakened and she lifted her chin. “What will you do—keep sneaking up behind me in alleys?”

  Between set teeth, Eric said, “I’m not a stalker.”