by Modean Moon
It seemed like weeks since they had had an evening together. Tonight should be—no, she corrected herself, tonight would be special. And later, after Todd had gone to bed, if the weather held—it was really too early, but perhaps they could build a fire in the fireplace and relax, together, in front of it with the wine she had chilling.
She looked over her shoulder as the swinging door whooshed open. Todd went immediately to the refrigerator, poured himself a glass of milk and slumped at the kitchen table, but he was smiling.
“Homework all finished?” she asked, smiling back.
He nodded. “Is that your chicken thing?” he asked. “Sure smells good.”
The rain began pelting against the window, tight little drops that would sting and penetrate. A fire for sure, she thought. Cozy, warm and private, locking out the whole world, not just the rain.
“Can I go to the movies tonight?”
She frowned at the tomato in her hand and placed it carefully on the cutting board. “You know your father’s going to be home tonight, Todd.”
“Oh, well, yeah. But there’s a super new movie at the Twin. A lot of the guys are going.”
He sounded so wistful that she bit off her hasty denial. He’d been complaining for days that he never saw his father, but still, he was just fourteen, and for the most part a solitary fourteen. And it was Friday night.
“Who’s going?” she asked.
“Oh, Tommy Wilcox, and Barry White, and maybe Joe Grimes. Can I, Ginnie?”
It wasn’t her favorite group of kids. They were all at least a year older than Todd. Tommy already had his driver’s license. But they were Todd’s friends, she reminded herself again. Not hers. “What’s playing?”
Todd mumbled his answer into the milk.
“What was that?” Ginnie asked, laughing.
“The Fiend From Black Forest Camp,” he mumbled again.
She quirked an eyebrow at him. “I think we’ve had this conversation before, Todd.” Twice, as a matter of fact, she remembered.
“Oh, come on, Ginnie. Everybody goes to those movies.”
“Not quite everybody, Todd. I know one young man who is not going to go.”
“Good grief! This one’s supposed to be better than any of the Halloween or Friday the Thirteenth movies.”
She kept her voice even. “And according to the movie critic at the newspaper, gorier than all of them put together, and with absolutely no plot.”
He slammed his glass down on the table.
“Todd, I want you to go to the movies with your friends. I want you to have a good time. But I don’t think films like that are healthy.”
She returned to the cutting board, busying herself with the salad while she felt his glare boring into her back. She hated scenes like this. It would be so much easier just to say, Go ahead, Todd. Do what you want to. But somehow, someone had to establish the parameters for acceptable behavior, and somehow, someone had to start drawing this family together. And somehow, someone had to make those two goals one.
Suddenly the knife slipped and she pricked her finger—a little prick with a tiny drop of blood. She tossed the knife down and stood sucking on the wound. The sting was an insufficient excuse for the unhappiness roiling within her.
“When’s supper?” Todd asked, and she noted with relief that the tension was gone from his voice.
“As soon as your dad gets home,” she said. “Have you heard from him? I didn’t think he’d be this late.”
She sensed his presence beside her. “Is it a bad cut?” he asked.
“No. 1 am sorry about the movie, Todd. If it were some other film, if it were an evening when your father wasn’t planning on being home, I’d say yes.”
“Well...yeah. How about some homemade cookies?”
“Will that do it?” she asked.
“Not really,” he said, “but I guess I can live with it.”
“It’s a deal. What kind?”
“Chocolate chip?”
“No chips. Peanut butter?” she countered.
Just then Ginnie heard a furious scratching at the back door, and she and Todd turned and spoke simultaneously. “Charlie.”
She started toward the door, but he beat her to it, let the old dog into the house and knelt beside him, drying him with a towel he had grabbed from the counter.
“That’s a good boy,” he crooned as he worked on the dog. “We forgot all about you, didn’t we, boy? It will be all right.” He ruffled the animal’s coat, warming him.
Ginnie leaned against the counter watching Todd’s affectionate care of the dog. Seeing him relaxed and not defensive reminded her of the other times she had seen him this way and dulled the memory of his usually manipulative attitude toward her. He seldom asked her for anything, and homemade chocolate-chip cookies seemed such a small request.
“Do you want nuts in them, too?” she asked.
“What? Oh, the cookies. Why?”
“Because,” she told him, “if I’m going to the store for chocolate chips, I might as well get nuts while I’m there.”
His face broke into a big grin. “Of course I want nuts in them.”
“Do you want to go out in the rain with me?” she asked. “Or do you want to stay here and make sure that supper doesn’t burn?”
“I’ll finish drying Charlie,” he told her, “and I’ll watch dinner for you.”
At least the cookie-baking had been a success, Ginnie thought later that evening as she tidied the kitchen. She left the table set for three and the wine cooling in the refrigerator, but the chicken and dumplings had been held too long to salvage. She scraped the soggy mess into Charlie’s bowl.
She heard the muted sounds of the television through Todd’s closed door, but in spite of the late hour, she decided not to say anything about it. There was really no reason for him to have to get up early the following morning.
“Good night, Todd,” she called to him.
Well after midnight, lying sleepless and alone in the expanse of the bed, she heard Neil’s voice in the hallway and the soft murmur of Todd’s response. A few minutes later, Neil entered the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
She watched his shadowy form moving quietly through the room as he struggled out of his shirt. She turned on the bedside lamp for him.
“You’re awake,” he said softly.
“Yes.” The one-syllable word said nothing and yet said everything.
“I saw the cookies downstairs. It was nice of you to do that for Todd.”
“I enjoyed it, and Todd seemed to. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind for the evening, but it passed the time much better than just sitting around wondering what happened to you. I suppose something really important came up.”
“You suppose?” he asked.
She sighed and swallowed, trying to ease the tightness in her throat, trying to keep the pain from her voice. “A phone call would have been nice.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A phone call,” she said dispiritedly. “Something simple like, ‘Ginnie, I’m sorry, but I’ve run into something more important than keeping a promise to my wife and son. Don’t wait supper. I’ll see you sometime after midnight.’”
“You wanted a phone call, did you?”
She looked up at him sharply when she heard the anger in his voice.
“How many? And how badly did you want them? Obviously not badly enough to get home from work on time, nor to be here at the time when I said I would call back to talk to you.”
“You called?”
“Twice, Ginnie.”
“You called.” Confusion muddled her thoughts. “But I was—here, except...”
“Except the two times that I interrupted meetings for the express purpose of getting in touch with you.”
“But I—Todd didn’t tell me.”
“You should have asked him, Ginnie. It probably just slipped his mind. You know better than to jump to conclusions without checking your facts.”
“Neil, I—” But she had asked Todd, and he had asked for the first time in months that she do something for him. No. She rejected the thought that crept into her mind. He didn’t deliberately send her out of the house. He wouldn’t have done that. Would he?
“Neil?” It was important that he understand. “I did ask him. Once about an hour after I got home from work, and again after I got back from the grocery store.”
He stopped in his march to the closet and stood quite still. “Are you saying that my son lied to you?”
No. He wouldn’t understand. There was no point in pursuing it much further. “I’m saying that one of the three of us lied—either him, or me. Or you.”
He stood silently for a moment longer before whirling and going into the bathroom and slamming the door. She listened to the sound of the shower. When he came to bed, he said nothing else, and neither did she. That night, each lay alone, separated by more than the width of the bed, unwilling or unable to reach out to the other, but when Ginnie awoke the next morning she found herself a willing prisoner in his arms.
The even thud of his heartbeat and soft fanning of his breath against her forehead told her he still slept. Carefully, not wanting to awaken him, she pulled herself up on one elbow. His schedule of the last months had taken its toll. New lines crept out from his eyes. Even in sleep he seemed weary. As she watched, he frowned and stirred. Not awakening, he tightened his hold on her and pulled her closer, nestling his head against her breast.
A wave of compassion washed through her. Asleep like this he did not seem larger than life. He seemed defenseless, somehow vulnerable. In his sleep he held her as though he needed her. She could almost believe that he loved her as much as she loved him. Her eyes misted as she lowered her head to the pillow and held him cradled against her.
For this moment, at least, she could hold him. For this moment, at least, she was all he needed. For this moment, at least.
She held on to that moment for the days that followed, the weeks that followed, as one meeting after another took Neil away from home, as one emergency after another from his law practice ate up what time he didn’t have scheduled for political conferences.
Todd, of course, went to see The Fiend From Black Forest Camp, after getting permission from his father without telling him that he’d been refused permission three times by Ginnie.
And he spent more time with Tommy Wilcox, Barry White and Joe Grimes, coming home from school later each afternoon after going directly to his father now with requests to study with his friends in the evening.
Ginnie knelt on the rug before the fireplace, alone in the house, again, except for Charlie who slept nearby.
Useless. That’s what she was, she thought. And ineffectual—except at work and except for the big shaggy collie who responded so openly to affection. She ran her hand over Charlie’s coat, and he sighed with pleasure, but even that was an illusion. Charlie would welcome anyone’s affection, but he only volunteered his own to Todd. She was an outsider even with the dog.
It wasn’t a particularly important story. That was the irony of it. It was a sordid little tale of drugs and sex and violence that had erupted into murder. The trial was scheduled for Monday, the following day, in Fort Smith, and Ginnie had been given the assignment. The call from her editor had come only that afternoon, and in the emptiness of that dreary Sunday she had welcomed the assignment. But now, as she packed for the trip, she wondered at the wisdom of her going. She’d felt strangely free as she’d arranged with Mrs. Stemmons to come to the house for the several days she’d be gone. That feeling had persisted as she dragged down her suitcase and began going through her wardrobe. Was it normal to feel so liberated?
She tried to tell herself that she would miss her home, that she would miss Neil, but she knew that even staying here she would miss Neil.
She pushed down the lump in her throat and refused to think of that. Jury selection started early the next morning, and she had almost a three-hour drive facing her. She couldn’t leave before Neil came home, yet for one fleeting moment she considered leaving him a note. It was petty, she knew, but she wanted him to feel the same sense of loneliness she did.
Neil stood in the doorway silently watching her as she bent over the suitcase unaware of his presence. A knot twisted in his gut as he watched her placing carefully folded clothes in the bag. He’d known she was unhappy, but, God, not this unhappy. He clenched his hands to keep from grabbing the suitcase and throwing it across the room. He couldn’t let her leave. No matter what it took, he couldn’t let her out of his life. She was his sanity, his lifeline, his stability.
“Where are you going, Ginnie?”
She had heard nothing before his softly spoken words, and caught in her own thoughts, she started guiltily. He was looking not at her, but at the suitcase, his face ashen, lines curving down to each side of his tightly held mouth.
“I—oh,” she stammered in the face of his displeasure. “Fort Smith.”
His gaze trailed from the suitcase to her face, and for a moment she saw mirrored in the warm satin brown of his eyes the same insecurity, the same pain she knew was in her own eyes, but only for a moment. His eyes narrowed and she was once again aware of his displeasure.
“Why, Ginnie?”
Anger rescued her. What right did he have to be so disapproving? She had barely seen him for months. She raised her head and squared her chin defiantly.
“Pete Wilkins broke his leg playing football yesterday. I’m going to cover the Higgins trial.”
He turned from her so that she couldn’t see the relief flooding through him. She wasn’t leaving. He hadn’t driven her away. And then his own anger, born from his fear when he thought he had, surfaced. What right had she to frighten him that way?
“Just like that, you’re going? You did plan to say something before you left, didn’t you?”
She sank onto the bed clutching a silk blouse to her, its texture the only softness in the room, in her life. Her anger drained from her. She didn’t want to fight with him—she never wanted to fight with him.
“Of course I planned to tell you, but I wasn’t sure I’d have the opportunity. Unless I want to be driving all night, I have to leave soon, Neil, and I didn’t know when you’d be home or where to reach you.”
“I should have known you’d find some way to twist this around to make it my fault,” he said. Damn! Why had he said that? That wasn’t what he meant. What he wanted to do was take her in his arms and beg her never to frighten him that way again, never even to think of leaving him, but her head had jerked up belligerently at his words. She opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her.
“What if I said I don’t want you to go?”
“You don’t want me to go?” she asked incredulously. “Why not? You’ll barely miss me, if you miss me at all. Will you miss me, Neil?”
He choked back an oath. If she knew just how much he would miss her, would she use that as a weapon against him? Or would knowing that he could be dependent upon anyone destroy the image that she had insisted on building of him? Either way, he couldn’t run the risk.
“Is it the assignment, Ginnie? Or were you just looking for an excuse to run away from your responsibilities here?”
“Responsibilities?” she cried. “What responsibilities? Mrs. Stemmons will be preparing the meals and providing what custodial care Todd allows—that’s all I do here, anyway.”
Did she believe that? Could she really believe that? Neil jerked off his tie and threw it across the room. His words, carefully planned in the seconds his physical action required, refused to cooperate. All that came out was a hoarse, “You can’t go.”
She was on her feet instantly, in front of him, her face contorted. “Do you want me to quit my job, Neil? Is that it? If it is, say so, and we’ll argue this right now. But if that isn’t it, then I don’t see any reason for what you just said. I have a job I love, a job that I held when I married you. I’ve offered to quit, but
you told me it wasn’t necessary. I have a master’s degree in journalism, Neil. For God’s sake, let me use it.”
“I’m not stopping you from using your degree, Ginnie, or from using your brains. The Higgins trial could take a week. Or longer.”
“I know.” She was defeated again—by the closed look on his face, by her own warring emotions. She didn’t want to be away from him a week, and yet something within her told her she needed this time away. If only he would say, Please don’t leave me, Ginnie. I need you with me.
She hid her grimace as she turned, folded the blouse, placed it in the suitcase and snapped the latches closed.
“It’s late, Neil. I have a long drive.” If he would just take her in his arms and hold her, wish her safety for the trip, congratulate her on getting the assignment— anything except stand there silently, she wouldn’t feel this misery.
She lifted the suitcase from the bed. He took it from her.
“I’ll carry this down for you.”
He carried the suitcase downstairs, then took it outside and placed it in the trunk of her car. She turned toward him hesitantly. It was all he could do not to carry her back into the house. It seemed that she stood there forever before she finally got in the car and drove away.
He watched until her taillights were no longer visible before he walked back into the house.
Todd looked up from a television program he was watching. “She’s finally gone, is she?” He grinned. “Maybe she won’t come back.”
Todd’s words were so close to his own thoughts that Neil could not tolerate them. He whirled on his son. “Don’t you even think that, Todd.”
Ginnie cried all the way to Fort Smith. Neil paced the house restlessly until just before dawn when he fell into a troubled sleep on the couch. Neither would have admitted their actions. If asked, neither could have explained them.
The week stretched endlessly for Ginnie. The trial was a tired cliché. It was difficult to believe from the boring way the case was presented that people’s lives were at stake. Capital felony murder was the charge. The prosecution trudged through its steps, and the defense plodded along with no trace of the brilliance that Neil would have brought to a case with such ingredients. Ginnie found her motel room clean, impersonal and empty when she returned each evening. And no reporter in the courtroom needed a master’s degree in journalism that week.