A Gift of Love

by Judith O'Brien

  Robert’s magnanimous gesture was repaid a hundredfold with savory meals of fresh fruits and vegetables grown on his own land and artfully presented amid centerpieces of flowers or whimsical baskets, or in “canoes” made from hollowed-out loaves of French bread. Even the location of meals changed according to the whim and mood of what Robert routinely referred to as “his ladies”.

  Sometimes they ate in the vast kitchen with its brick walls and copper pots hanging from an arched wall above the row of ovens and gas burners; sometimes they ate in the garden on place mats made from green and white striped cloth to match the umbrella above the table; sometimes they dined beside the pool on the low recliner chairs that Corey’s grandfather had fashioned and built from strips of wood; sometimes they ate on a blanket on the lawn, but with crystal goblets and fine china for what Mary called “a special touch.”

  This flair for dining and entertaining earned Mary a great deal of praise a year after her wedding, when she gave her first big party as Robert Foster’s wife. At the outset, she was alarmed and intimidated at the thought of entertaining Robert’s friends, people who she feared would think they were her social superiors and who she was certain would look upon her as an interloper, but Corey and Diana weren’t worried at all. They knew whatever she did, she did with love and with flair. Robert Foster felt the same way. Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, he said, “You’ll dazzle ‘em, darling’ - You just be your sweet self, and do things your own special way.”

  After a week of consultations with the entire family, Mary finally decided to have a Hawaiian luau at poolside beneath the palms on the lawn. And as Robert had cheerfully predicted, the guests were indeed dazzled – not only by the sumptuous food, gorgeously decorated tables, and authentic music, but by the hostess herself. On the arm of her husband, Mary moved among her guests, her slim figure wrapped in a lovely sarong, her free arm draped from wrist to elbow with spectacular leis made of homegrown orchids from their own greenhouse, and as she encountered each female guest, she presented her with a lei that matched the lady’s apparel.

  When several men complimented her on the amazingly tasty food and then expressed amused shock at the discovery that Robert Foster had plowed up part of his lawn for a vegetable garden, Mary signaled her father, who proudly offered tours of the garden by moonlight. As Henry Britton showed the tuxedo clad gentlemen along the neat rows of organically grown vegetables, his enthusiasm was so contagious that before the night was over, several of the men had announced their desire to have vegetable gardens of their own.

  When the ladies asked for the name of her caterer, Mary stunned them by naming her own family. Marge Crumbaker, the society gossip columnist for the Houston Post who was covering the party, also asked her what caterer as well as what florist she had used, and Mary grew tense, knowing she might seem like a fool, but she admitted the truth: despite the popular notion that all domestic duties were sheer drudgery, and than any intelligent woman would want to find other, more appropriate uses for her time, Mary loved to cook, garden, and sew. Sue was in the midst of confessing that she also enjoyed canning fruits and vegetables when she noticed an elderly, white-haired woman who was sitting slightly off to one side, rubbing her arms as if she were chilled. “Excuse me,” Mary explained with an apologetic smile, “but I think Mrs. Bradley is cold, and I need to find her a wrap.”

  She sent Corey and Diana into the house to find a shawl, and when they returned, they found Mary talking to their grandmother about the interview with Marge Crumbaker. “I just know I made us all sound like The Beverly Hillbillies!” she confided miserably. “I don’t even want to know what she says about us in that column.” She shook the shawl from the girls and asked her mother to bring it to Mrs. Bradley, then she melted into the crowd to look after her guests.

  Corey and Diana were stricken at the possibility of being held up to public ridicule. “Do you think she’ll make fun of us?” Diana asked.

  With a reassuring smile, Rose put her arms around their shoulders. “Not a chance,” she whispered encouragingly, then she headed off to give Mrs. Bradley the shawl, hoping she was right.

  Mrs. Bradley was glad for the lacy, handmade shawl. “I used to love to crochet,” she said, holding it up to admire, her long, aristocratic fingers gnarled with arthritis. “Now I can’t hold a hook in my hands, not even those big ones they sell in the stores.”

  “You need a hook with a large handle that’s specially made to fit your hand,” Rose said. She looked about for Henry, saw him standing nearby, talking to a middle-aged man about growing edible flowers, and signaled him to come over. When Henry heard the problem, he nodded at once. “What you need, ma’am, is a hook with a big, fat, wooden handle that’s shaped to the grip of your hand, with small indentations low on the handle, so it won’t slip out of your fingers.”

  “I don’t think they make any like that,” Mrs. Bradley said, looking hopeful and despondent at the same time.

  “No, but I can make you one. You come by the day after tomorrow and plan to stay for a couple of hours so I can fit it to your grip.” He touched her twisted fingers and added sympathetically, “Arthritis is a curse, but there’s ways to work around it. Got a touch of it, myself.”

  As he walked away, Mrs. Bradley watched him as if he were some sort of mythical knight in shining armor. Slowly she transferred her gaze to Rose and politely excused her to return to the other guests. “My grandson, Spencer, is attending another party nearby. I asked him to come for me at eleven o’clock to take me home. You needn’t stay here on my account.”

  Rose passed a sweeping glance over the banquet tables and, satisfied that she wasn’t needed elsewhere, she sat down beside Mrs. Bradley. “I’d rather talk with you. You’ll need to use thick yarn with Henry’s hook. I intended to teach Diana how to crochet and I showed her a picture of a place mat, hoping to spark her interest. She turned up her nose at the notion of crocheting rectangles. She suggested we make them in the shape of apples, lemons, strawberries, and things like that. She drew up some sketches. They were simple and bold. You’d enjoy making them.”

  “Diana?” Mrs. Bradley interrupted doubtfully. “You don’t mean little Diana Foster?”

  Grandma nodded proudly. “I do, indeed. That girl has an artistic streak a mile wide – they both do. She paints and does charcoal sketches that are excellent. And Corey’s fascinated with photography, and quite good at it. Robert bought her developing equipment for her fourteenth birthday.”

  Mrs. Bradley leaned forward and followed Rose’s gaze, smiling a little when she spotted the girls. “I don’t envy your life when the boys discover those two,” she chuckled.

  Unaware that they were being scrutinized and discussed, Diana and Corey observed the festivities from the sidelines near the dessert tables. It was not the sort of gathering to which teenagers were invited, and so they were pretty much on their own. At their father’s request, Corey had been acting as “roving photographer,” moving from group to group, trying to capture the mood of the party and the faces of the guests without being too obvious or in the way.

  “Are you ready to go inside?” Diana asked. “We could watch a movie.”

  Corey nodded. “As soon as I use up the rest of this roll of film.” She looked about for a face she hadn’t photographed yet, realized she hadn’t taken many pictures of her own family, and scanned the crowd to see where they were.

  “There’s Grandma, over there,” she said, starting forward. “Let’s get a pict-“ She stopped short, and her breath seemed to catch in her throat as a tall young man in a white dinner jacket suddenly strolled out of the crowd. “Oh, wow!” Corey breathed, unknowingly clutching Diana’s wrist in a vice and stopping her short. “Oh, wow…” she whispered. “Who is that? He’s over there, being introduced to Grandma,” she clarified.

  Diana followed the direction of her stare. “That’s Spencer Addison. He’s Mrs. Bradley’s grandson, and when he isn’t away at SMU, he lives with her. He always has.” Rac
king her brain for any other tidbits of information she’d heard over the years, she added, “He has a mother somewhere and a half-sister who’s a lot older, but he doesn’t have much to do with them… Wait! I remember why he lives with his grandmother. His mother kept changing husbands, and so Mrs. Bradley decided Spencer should live with her a long time ago. He’s nineteen or twenty, I don’t know which.”

  Corey had never had a crush on a boy in her life, and until that moment she’d harbored considerable derision for all the girls she’d known who had. Boy were just boys and no big deal. Until that moment.

  Choking back a surprised giggle at Corey’s mesmerized expression, Diana said, “Do you want to meet him?”

  “I’d rather marry him.”

  “First you have to meet him,” Diana said with typical practicality and attention to protocol. “Then you can propose. Come on, before he leaves-“

  In her haste, she grabbed Corey’s hand but Corey yanked it back in panic. “I can’t, not now! I mean, I don’t want to just barge up to him and shake his hand. I can’t. He’ll think I’m a jerk. He’ll think I’m a kid.”

  “In the dark, you can pass for sixteen.”

  “Are you sure?” Corey asked, ready to rely completely on Diana’s judgment. Although there was only a year’s difference in their ages, to Corey, Diana was the epitome of youthful sophistication – poised, reserved, and outwardly confident. Earlier, Corey had felt she herself looked especially nice that night in her “nautical” outfit of wide-legged, navy blue pants and a short navy jacket trimmed in gold braid at the wrists with gold anchors appliquéd at the shoulders and gold stars on the lapels. Diana had helped her choose the clothes, then she’d styled Corey’s heavy blond hair into a fashionable knot atop her head, which they’d both agreed gave Corey a more mature look. Now Corey waited in an agony of uncertainty while Diana gave her a close once-over.

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “What if he thinks I’m a troll?”

  “He won’t think that.”

  “I won’t know what to say to him!” Diana started forward, but Corey pulled her back again. “What’ll I say? What’ll I do?”

  “I have an idea. No, bring the camera with you,” Diana said when Corey started to put the camera down on a vacant lawn chair. “Don’t worry.”

  Corey wasn’t worried, she was petrified, but in the space of a moment, fate had thrust her out of childhood and onto a new path, and she was too brave and too excited to try to retreat to the safety of the old path.”

  “Hi, Spencer,” Diana said when they reached their destination.

  “Diana?” he said in the flattering tone of one who can scarcely believe his eyes. “You’re all grown up.”

  “Oh, I hope not,” she joked with a regal ease that Corey mentally vowed to copy. “I wanted to end up taller than this by the time I grew up!” Turning to Corey, she said, “This is my sister, Caroline.”

  The moment Corey yearned for and simultaneously dreaded had arrived. Grateful to Diana for using her real name, which sounded older and more sophisticated, Corey forced her gaze up the front of his white pleated shirt, past his tanned jaw, until it finally collided with his amber eyes, and she felt a jolt that made her knees knock.

  He held out his hand, and as if from far away, she heard his deep voice – a velvet voice, intimate and caressing as he repeated her name. “Caroline,” he said.

  “Yes,” she breathed, gazing into his eyes and putting her trembling hand in his. His palm was warm and broad, and his fingers closed around hers. Her fingers tightened involuntarily on his, inadvertently preventing him from breaking the handclasp.

  Beside her, Diana was rushing to her rescue, trying to distract Mrs. Bradley and their grandmother from Corey’s enraptured pose. “Corey still has some film in her camera, Mrs. Bradley. We thought you might like to have a picture taken of you and Spencer, together.”

  “What a lovely idea!” Mrs. Bradley said, leaning around Diana and breaking the spell by addressing Corey directly. “Your grandmother tells me you’re quite the young photographer!”

  Corey looked over her shoulder at Mrs. Bradley and nodded, still gripping Spencer Addison’s hand.

  “How would you like Spencer and his grandmother to pose, Corey?” Diana hinted.

  “Oh, pose. Yes.” Corey loosened her grasp on his hand and slowly pulled her gaze from his. In a sudden flurry of motion, she stepped back and raised her camera, looked through the viewfinder, and aimed the camera straight at Spencer, nearly blinding him with the unexpected glare of her flash. He laughed, and she shot another picture.

  “That was a little too quick,” Corey said in breathless apology, hastily focusing again. This time he looked straight at her and smiled – a lazy grin that swept across his tanned features and touched his tawny eyes. Corey’s heart did a somersault that she feared made her camera hand shake as she took that picture and the next one. Thrilled with the opportunity to have lots of pictures of him to look at in the morning, she forgot all about poor Mrs. Bradley and took two more shots of him in rapid succession.

  “And now,” Diana said, sounding as if she was about to choke on something, “how about a few shots of Mrs. Bradley with Spencer. If the pictures turn out,” she added in a deeply meaningful voice aimed directly at Corey, “we could bring them over to their house in a couple days.”

  The realization that she’d completely forgotten about taking Mrs. Bradley’s picture made Corey flush to the roots of her hair, and she immediately vowed to produce a photograph of the two of them that would do credit to a professional portrait photographer. With that goal in mind, the technicalities of photography temporarily replaced her preoccupation with her handsome subject. “The torchlight makes it tricky,” she said. With the camera to her eye, she addressed Spencer. “If you could move over behind your grandmother’s chair… Yes, just like that. Now, Mrs. Bradley, look at me… and you, too… Spencer…”

  Saying his beautiful name sent shivers down her spine, and she paused to swallow. “Yes, that’s good.” Corey took the shot, but when the pair started to part, she wasn’t at all satisfied with the stiffness of the pose she’d arranged. “Let’s take just one more,” she pleaded. She waited while Spencer stepped back into the frame. “This time, put your hand on your grandmother’s left shoulder.”

  “Aye-aye, Admiral,” he said, teasing her about her jaunty naval outfit, but following her order.

  Corey held on to her composure at the endearing little joke, but she tucked his words away in her heart, to be savored later. “Mrs. Bradley, I’d like you to look at me. That’s good,” she said, scrutinizing the light playing on Spencer’s features and its effect on the ultimate outcome. She liked the way his large hand looked as it rested almost protectively on his grandmother’s shoulder. “Now, before I take the picture, I’d like you each to take a second and think of a really special time that you spent together, just the two of you when Spencer was a little boy. A trip to the zoo, maybe… or the day he got his first bicycle… or an ice cream cone he dropped and still wanted to eat…”

  Through the viewfinder, she saw a fond grind drift over Spencer’s face, and he glanced down at his grandmother’s white head. At the same moment Mrs. Bradley’s face softened with a smile of remembrance that made her eyes twinkle, and she looked up at him, spontaneously lifting her right hand and laying it over his. Corey snapped the shot and another immediately after, her heart pounding with delight at the unexpectedly intimate moment she was almost sure she’d captured on film.

  She let the camera slide down and smiled at both of them, her eyes shining with hope. “I’ll have these developed at a camera shop. I don’t want to try to do it myself, they’re too important.”

  “Thank you very much, Corey,” Mrs. Bradley said with gruff pleasure, but her eyes were still shining with whatever memory Corey had evoked.

  “I’d like a picture taken with you, too, Spence, and then we have to go or we'll be late!” a plaintive female voice said, an
d for the very first time, Corey realized that there was a girl with Spencer. A beautiful girl, with a small waist and big breasts and long, slender legs. Corey’s heart sank, but she obediently stepped back to take the picture, then she waited until the flickering torchlight threw a shadow over her rival’s face.

  The following week, Corey’s pictures were ready to be picked up and Marge Crumbaker’s column appeared in the Post. The entire family gathered around the dining room table and held their breaths while Robert opened it to the society section. An entire page was covered with pictures of the guests and decorations, the food and flowers, and even the greenhouse and garden.

  But it was Marge Crumbaker’s column that made the family beam as Robert Fraser proudly read her words aloud:

  “As she presided over this lovely party and looked after her guests, Mrs. Robert Foster III (the former Mary Britton of Long Valley) displayed a graciousness, a hospitality, and an attention to her guests that will surely make her one of Houston’s leading hostesses. Also present at the festivities were Mrs. Foster’s parents, Mr. And Mrs. Henry Britton, who were kind enough to escort many fascinated guests and would-be gardeners and handymen (if we only had the time!) through the new garden, greenhouse, and workshop that Bob Foster has erected on the grounds of his River Oaks mansion…”

  Three

  THE PARTY HAD BEEN A GREAT SUCCESS AND SO WERE THE pictures Corey took of Spencer Addison and his grandmother. Corey was so excited that she ordered two enlargements of the best picture . one for Mrs. Bradley and one for herself.