by Zoe Chant
Joey bit his lip hard. He so wanted to tell her the truth. This was far worse than last night, when he’d finessed the ‘camping trip’. Letting his mate believe a lie felt terrible. But how to tell her?
She was looking at the kids, not at him. “Or maybe Pink and Lon saw something in one of these old books.” She indicated battered picture books in a yellow bookshelf.
Now, Joey’s fox insisted. Tell her now.
“I believe him,” Joey said slowly.
Doris looked startled. He hesitated, the urge to spill everything nearly overwhelming. But not yet. He knew he had not yet earned her trust enough for that.
Luckily, Lon gave him a chance to speak indirectly by saying, “We did see it!”
“Did!” Pink echoed.
“I believe you,” Joey assured them. Still addressing the children, or at least speaking while looking at them, he said, “At least, until proven otherwise, I tend to believe anything a child tells me. Even if it’s not convenient to my worldview. Consensus reality is not a hard rule. It changes from century to century, region to region.”
The kids stared blankly at him, then returned to their drawings.
Joey risked a glance at Doris, whose expression was impossible to read. But he saw no disbelief. She was sitting on the floor. She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees as she said, “My parents would argue with you. My sister too. For them, everything is black and white. Nothing is real that they can’t see and touch.”
“Do you believe everything is black and white?” Joey asked, holding his breath.
Doris looked away, then back, and met his eyes. “I don’t. I guess you could say my being a drama teacher is a compromise with what I wanted to be true as a kid. Since then . . . well, I never much liked the Red Queen character in Alice in Wonderland, except I’ve always loved her saying that she often believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
“Only six?” Joey laughed.
Doris’s smile faded a little. “Though I have to admit, many of us are still seeking Number One.” She looked down at Pink scribbling away, and Lon drawing more carefully, little shoulder blades poking the back of his shirt as he tried to outline a vaguely equine shape. “Bird would agree. But then she writes stories that have dragons that are as real as the human characters.”
Joey leaned forward. “Have you ever asked about Bird’s impossible things?”
Doris said softly, “Sometimes I’ve wanted to . . . I think I’d like to live in Bird’s world. I did, as a kid. But then I had to grow up.”
Joey caught himself leaning toward her. His arms ached to hold her, and his mind streamed with words, beginning with, I am a nine-tailed fox. He was half a breath from confession when she gave a short sigh. “I know I’m beginning to sound silly.”
Joey said with total conviction, “Nothing you say is silly to me.”
And she met his eyes, honest, true, maybe a little yearning.
Lon looked up, breaking the spell of the moment. “I can’t make those things right.” He gestured by his head.
“Antlers?” Joey asked.
“Yes! Antlers. Auntie Nicola said that’s what they are.”
“But horses don’t have antlers,” Doris said gently. “And they don’t come in red. Are you sure your animal was a horse?”
Joey knelt down beside Lon, and glanced at the tube-shaped animal with four straight legs. Lon had attempted to draw the cloven hooves. The antlers looked like whiskers rising from the animal’s ears. But the red was there, crimson bright. It did look like fire.
“That’s a qilin,” Joey said.
“A what? Sill . . .”
“Qilin. Sounds kind of like tsill-in.” He said it slowly. “They’re found in China, mostly.”
Lon’s eyes widened. “China? Do you have to go on the freeway?”
“Oh, it’s farther than that. You have to go on a boat or a plane.”
Lon stared at his qilin. “Did he fly here? Or swim?”
“It’s too far to swim, unless you’re a kraken,” Joey said.
Lon pointed at the silver drawing. It looked much like the horse, with the same tube body and four straight legs. But he’d drawn a pointy face, and a fan of plumed tails. “Is that a krackle?”
Joey smiled. “That’s a nine-tail fox.”
“Is he from China, too?” Lon asked.
“They’re most commonly found there,” Joey said. “But they can turn up all over the world.”
Lon looked puzzled, and Doris said to him, “What do you think they’re doing here?”
“Pim-im,” Pink chimed in.
Lon corrected, “Purim. Granny Z said it’s Purrr-eeem. They came for Purim.”
“Pim-im,” Pink repeated, and pointed to her own paper, on which she’d chalked a gray creature that looked kind of like an octopus. Joey realized this was her version of his portrait as she said, “Woof.”
“She liked all those tails,” Lon said.
Footsteps coming up the stairs interrupted them. In came a tall, thin man with the same thoughtful gaze as Lon, followed by another young man as handsome as an ancient Greek statue. “This is Brad, Pink and Lon’s father,” Doris said. “And his friend, Isidor.”
“Hi!” Brad smiled at Joey, then bent to look at the drawings. “Cool. Listen, kids. Isidor made you a tent out of blankets. But if you’d rather color—”
“Tent!” Pink banged her crayon down. “Tent!”
Lon looked from his sister to his father.
“As soon as you put away your crayons,” Brad said. “We’ll wait.”
As Lon began meticulously slotting the crayons back into their box, Pink launched herself off her chair. Her solid little body smacked into Isidor’s leg. “Unca Sdor. Tent!” she announced, dancing on her toes and reaching up.
Isidor bent and with the ease of much practice, hauled her up one-armed and set her on his shoulder.
“Tent,” Pink stated with satisfaction.
“All done,” Lon said, putting the crayons back on their shelf.
“I saw Nicola got hijacked into lunch prep.” Brad smiled at Doris and Joey. “Thanks for watching them while I took a shower.”
“It was only a few minutes,” Doris replied. “They’re great kids. I’m happy to do kid-wrangling any time.”
The four trooped back down the stairs, leaving Doris and Joey alone.
She looked like she was torn between following them and staying, so he said, “A moment?” And when she turned back, “I hope I didn’t cross the line last night.”
Her gaze shifted away, then back. Eyes met eyes. She blushed a rosy color and her lips curved into a smile that was close to a grin.
His heart ignited in his chest and his fox leaped inside him for joy, simple creature!
“You didn’t,” Doris said. “Or if you did, then I did, too. I was a willing participant. Ugh. That sounds so . . . PE-teacherish. The truth is . . .” Her gaze shifted away. “I don’t even know how to have this kind of conversation. Kinda laughable, isn’t it? Sixty-two, being pushed toward retirement, and I’m as awkward as a freshman in high school.”
“I don’t see anything laughable here,” Joey said. “All I see is you.” He took a step closer.
She caught her breath, her gaze moving around the room full of toys from three generations. It was a room for children—another safe space, he realized.
Go to her, his fox yipped frantically.
She must make the next step.
Doris flicked a puzzled, wistful glance his way. “I guess I’m off-balance because, well, I’m nothing to look at. As well as old. Not just middle-aged. Sixty-two in our culture is old. Though men—you—look great at pretty much any age,” she said quickly. “I like . . . I feel . . . I don’t see what you can possibly see in me.”
Joey reached to take her hands. “I see beauty. It’s not the conventional beauty that is so common and so forgettable, the type we see in magazines and movies. I see how laughter has shaped your eyes, how
humor has framed your kissable mouth. Everything about you delights me, excites me, and makes me long to get closer. It’s the real beauty, the kind that lasts a lifetime. It’s the beauty that I hear in your voice that is so much a part of you, the generosity with which you look at the world. I see honesty, so rare, and so lovely and that is more than merely beautiful to my eyes.”
She gave him a tremulous smile. “I think . . . I’m afraid this is too good to be true,” she admitted. “People like me just don’t get . . . people like you.”
“People like me?” he repeated. “What do you see in me?”
She took in an unsteady breath, the round curves of her breasts moving beneath her loose, practical sweatshirt. Oh, how he longed to bring her the pleasure they both deserved!
But he waited, and she said, finally, “In you . . . I see the sun.”
“Sun?” he repeated, startled.
“Your smile is like sunlight. It’s bright, and free, and . . . and kind. As kind as spring. And you’re smart, and you love cooking, and you’re good with kids—but now I sound like a job interview,” she said desperately. “I’m no good at this.”
“This?” he prompted, staying where he was, though every muscle, every nerve, longed to touch her, caress her.
“This . . . whatever it is between us. I like it, but I’m scared of it.”
“Because?” he asked, as softly as possible, as his fox stilled within him.
“Because I guess I’m afraid I’ll wake up. It’ll be just a dream, and the reality you’re stuck with is spinster Doris Lebowitz, who only got noticed by boys and men for all the wrong reasons. And not many men,” she added with a wry twist to her voice.
“That,” he said, “is because you and I hadn’t met yet.”
She gave an unsteady laugh, and he went on. “I see that you and I are alike in good ways, we’re different in good ways. That makes you more interesting every time we talk. You’re attractive—”
She smothered a disbelieving snort, but he could tell she was pleased. Even if she didn’t quite believe him. That was okay. He intended to tell her the same thing for the rest of their lives, in as many ways as he could think of.
Starting now.
“Outside of television,” he said, “the world is made up of people of all sizes and shapes and ages, and they find one another. In each other’s eyes, they are Apollo and Aphrodite. To me, you are made of entrancing curves my hands long to explore—but I’ll stop if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“It does . . . and it doesn’t,” she murmured. “It’s just that this territory is very new for me. I thought I was so far outside the magic boundary of attractive that I couldn’t even get into the parking lot. And I don’t know what to do with hearing it.” She added quickly, “But my life is perfectly okay. If you change your mind. I was fine with being single. But since I met you, well, everything is different. Everything.”
“Is different a good thing?” he asked.
Her smile was both wistful and transcendent. “Oh yes. Oh, yes, so much that, well, like I said, it’s new.”
“Then that makes it more fun for us to explore,” he said. “Learn each other together. Shall we try again? Last night we were tired, and full of Queen Esther’s best. Shall we try again now?”
She stilled, stiff, then pressed her lips together, her gaze appealing and determined and soft all at once. And she walked into his arms.
The air in the attic, peaceful and warm moments ago, crackled suddenly with electricity. Though he could feel the doubts deep within her, she still met him with a brave sweetness that overwhelmed him with tenderness—and something else, as the softness of her breasts pressed up against his chest. He kissed the sweet spot under her ear. Along the soft skin of her jaw.
When her breath hitched, he slid his hands up her arms, pausing to caress the delicate skin above the collar of her sweatshirt before cupping her face, one hand sliding under her hair to the base of her skull.
And then he kissed her, sweet and friendly at first, but at her tentative, exploratory response the kiss changed to firm and demanding and hungry. Slowly her hands came up and moved from his shoulders to lock around his neck—
“Doris!” Elva’s voice echoed up the stairwell.
Doris jumped as if she’d been shot. “Mom?”
She slapped her hand over her mouth, her eyes both horrified and crinkling with mirth. Doris looked so much like a teenager caught necking that Joey had to smother his own laughter.
“What are you doing up there?” Elva called plaintively. “Somebody has to make the salad, and Nicola dusted off in a huff—”
Sylvia cut in. “Mother, let’s take a step back, okay?”
Doris’s mother sounded confused, and a little upset. “But you were the one who—”
Doris turned to Joey, and when he let out a rueful laugh, her worry changed to a grin. “Joey and I are just tidying the attic,” she called down the stairwell.
The voices stopped.
“Rain check?” Joey asked.
“Yes,” Doris whispered.
Joey’s fox yipped in triumph as she gave him an endearingly lopsided grin and she almost ran down the stairs.
Joey followed more slowly, breathing to shed the heat she’d ignited in him. A sun, all right! He saw the sun in other people, but felt it most brightly in her. He’d always thought of himself as transparent as water. We find it in each other, he was thinking as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
Since the kitchen was the site of frantic lunch preparation, he bypassed it and stepped into the mud room, where he found the twins.
“ . . . Marrit’s a road that’ll lead to a cement wall,” Vanessa was saying.
“You don’t like her.” Vic put his fists on his hips and tipped his head.
“I don’t know her. It’s just that she’s . . .”
“She says we’re not real. How is that not a challenge?” Vic grinned.
“Oh, I get it. You see her as a dare?”
The two became aware of Joey.
“We need a run,” Vic said. “We’re going crazy cooped up inside.”
Joey said, “The two little kids saw Xi Yong and me. Somehow.”
The twins’ expressions sobered instantly.
“Okay, in that case we’ll take the night shift,” Vic muttered.
Which—Joey hoped—might give him and Doris a chance to be alone.
FOURTEEN
DORIS
He’d kissed her again.
In the light of day.
All the old worries started to crowd around the moment her foot hit the first step, but she was far too exhilarated to heed them. Joey Hu was not Phil the Philanderer—he had a far nicer house then she did. Not that he even knew that. He hadn’t asked where she lived, much less what she owned. Phil had weaseled that out of her in the first half-hour they talked, amid so much flattery she’d actually believed him.
Well, she’d wanted to believe him.
She relived the kiss all the way to the landing, her heart thrumming at the idea of more. But halfway down to the kitchen, she thought, consensus reality?
She had to laugh. Imagine explaining consensus reality to a seven-year-old and a three-year-old. He was clearly great with college kids, but he must not have experience with younger ones. Except he did have the teen niece and nephew, and it was clear he’d known them for a long time. And other than the big words and difficult concepts, he was so good with Pink and Lon.
Consensus reality . . .
She stopped right outside the kitchen. He hadn’t told the kids they were wrong, or that they were making things up. She’d appreciated that. Lon especially seemed to be sensitive to adult scoffing. But . . . consensus reality? What even was that?
And where had she heard that recently?
She snapped her fingers. It was Bird!
She opened the kitchen door. Her mother let out a squawk, nearly dropping a tray of freshly baked cookies. “Doris! You’re underfoot.”
> “I thought you needed me to—”
“Sylvia’s got it in hand. Out, out, out! You can make the pies for tonight.”
Doris exited the kitchen. She had a sudden, overwhelming desire to talk to Bird. Only her cell was in her car, turned off because it was useless up here. Cells never got any bars—but there was that old rotary phone.
She entered the den and headed for the alcove, then paused when she heard voices. Granny Z was saying, “Oh, I think it’s funny when they threaten me, those telephone spammers. He doesn’t know where I live.”
“Scammers, Gran,” Nicola said. “I guess you have to have your fun, but still …”
“They think they can bully this old trout into giving them my social security number, but they’ll learn, I hope. Besides, if I’m making them listen to my silly stories, they aren’t bothering some other poor soul.”
Nicola said, “Well, now that you’re done, I need to use this phone right now. We’re not getting out of here tomorrow, and I need to call in to make sure my shift at the store is covered.”
Granny Z tottered out of the alcove. “Oh, there you are, Doris! Such a nice young man, your friend. So polite and helpful. And so are those young people he brought. But where’s the one from China? I wanted to ask him some more questions about mahjong.”
“He might be in the TV room,” Doris said. “I haven’t seen him all morning, but that could be said for half the people in the house. Can I bring you some lunch?”
Somehow the word ‘lunch’ spread through the house, and pretty soon the kitchen was full of voices and the clatter of serving dishes and crockery, after which people departed in various directions carrying their food.
Joey wasn’t among them. Doris walked through the house, poking her head in every room that held the buzz of conversation, and asked, “Can I bring you anything more?” while she looked specifically for Joey. But he and Xi Yong were missing.
Doris made her way back, checked the mud room—and their jackets were both there.
Bathroom? she wondered, and then, Now I’m being a creeper. She drew the line at banging on bathroom doors!