'Tis The Season: Under the Christmas TreeMidnight ConfessionsBackward Glance

by Robyn Carr

  Five

  By the first of May, John’s crew had cleared away most of the shrubbery that had to be torn out to accommodate the changes and had begun working in the yard. He arrived on site early each day to supervise the work.

  Before the work started, he had joined Jess, Leigh and the two rambunctious little boys for dinner one night. The object of the meal was to go over the plans for the way the yard was going to look, review the labor and materials price list and, even though they were friends, sign a contract. It wasn’t exactly a simple process, what with Mitch and Ty jumping up and down, spilling and shouting and, before the night was over, just before bed, getting into a fight.

  It looked to John as though it was a regular brother thing. He had a brother two years older, and they had done the same kind of wrestling and tumbling that began with a tickle and a poke and escalated into warfare. He was just thinking about how it took him back, watching them, when someone started crying. Twins, he discovered, did everything double. Soon they were both crying.

  “Mommy, Mitch poked my eye!”

  “Mitch, did you poke Ty’s eye?”

  “He was tickling me when I told him to stop it, and I didn’t poke it, I—”

  “Did he ask you to stop, Ty?”

  “But, Mom, he told me to tickle, and then I—”

  “Mitch, did you ask Ty to tickle?”

  John glanced over at Jess and rolled his eyes as if to say, “Listen to the genius,” which he had the mental control not to say. “I bet it’s bath time,” he said instead.

  “Nooooo.”

  “Not yet! Mommmm.”

  “Yes, it is!” she said, triumphant.

  Later, in the blessed quiet of the evening over a little coffee, John advised Leigh, “I don’t know much about kids, but I know one thing for sure. You’ll never figure out who started it, no matter how far back the questions go. It’s a lot easier if you don’t get involved. If they can’t fight it out, change the activity. Bench ’em.”

  “Is that how your mother handled things?” Jess asked.

  “Wellllll, sort of,” John said, somewhat uncomfortable. “Her way was a little more devious. I fought with one brother all the time. He was third, I was fourth. There were two years between us, but we were close to the same size. We both had a hand in starting them. She sent us outside or down to the basement to finish, depending on the weather.”

  “Oh,” Leigh said, “then one of you got to win?”

  “No winners,” he said, sipping his coffee. “If no one got hurt, it was a draw. If someone did get hurt, the one who didn’t got punished. Most of our fights ended with us competing to fake the best injury. My brother once stood on his own hand for so long I had already gone upstairs and to bed by the time he thought he had something good enough to show Mom.” He paused as if to think. “Now that I think about it, he’s still a little weird.”

  “But can he type?” Jess asked, chuckling.

  “I think his hand made it all right. He’s a surgeon. Dr. McElroy... Specializes in good looks. He claims to have helped create half the bodies that come skiing here each winter. When he sees a gorgeous woman, his wife has to threaten him to keep him from asking who her surgeon is.”

  Leigh realized that she knew very little about John’s family. Was it possible she hadn’t even asked? And she had accused him of being self-centered...

  “So, Jess, we’re a go on the yard?” John asked, moving onto safer ground.

  They were on one condition, she said. That he take the boys fishing once. They had no uncles or cousins, no one to do that sort of thing with them.

  John said he would be glad to.

  Sometime between that first dinner and the first couple of weeks of work on the yard, the weather got warm enough for John to choose a Saturday for their fishing trip. And Leigh found an excuse to go along.

  “I didn’t realize until the first night you came over for dinner that I never asked about your family.”

  “I’m the youngest of four, and the only one, my mom says, who isn’t ambitious. It’s a pretty well-known fact that I don’t like to work all that much. Well, I like work that feels like play. I found out accidentally that I like to fix things and make things look good. Lucky break, huh?”

  “So, what about your family?” she asked. They were sitting together on the ground right behind the boys, who sat at the edge of the water with long cane poles.

  “Bob is the oldest. He’s about forty. He has his own tool-and-die business in Denver. He makes a great living and has a terrific wife and three kids. Judy, his wife, wanted ten kids until she had two. Number three, she says, was not her idea.

  “Mike, the second one, he’s around thirty-seven, I guess. He’s a minister... Can you beat that? And not a hokus-pokus type minister, but a real live theological mastermind with his own church in Wyoming, a doctorate in theology. He’s married with two kids.

  “Ted, my surgeon brother, has three kids and a wife who will never need a bit of work from a plastic surgeon. Chris is a knockout. She’s his surgical nurse.”

  “I wish I’d had brothers and sisters,” she said, “but I understand why that wasn’t possible. The way my dad had to travel was one thing, and he was kind of up there when he and Mom got married. He was over forty when I was born.”

  “You didn’t know about any of the regular things kids grow up knowing about, did you? About fighting, games, fishing?”

  She shook her head.

  “How’d you figure you’d know enough to raise them?” he asked, nodding toward the boys.

  “Well, first, I knew I wanted children, but I didn’t know I’d get them. And second, I didn’t know I’d be doing it alone,” she said. “And I always had Jess. Do you see your family much?”

  “I go to Denver whenever they’re all going to be at my mom and dad’s. They come here to ski, sometimes in large packs and sometimes in small groups. They’re pretty neat people. There’s one unique thing about my family. No one has ever had a girl. My mom had four boys, and my brothers had boys.”

  Now, she thought. Tell him right now.

  “Do you think much about what kind of life you want them to have?” he asked her.

  “I think about it constantly. I’d like them to have the kind of life you had,” she said. Her voice was wistful and dreamy. “And maybe I’d give them just a smattering of what Jess and my dad gave me. I’m working on my own projects less so I can pay more attention to what they’re doing. Every day I realize how much of the natural instinct for parenting I lack. Like that business about fighting. I never would have thought of something like that.”

  “They’re pretty good guys,” he said. “You must be doing something right. Want more?”

  “You don’t ask an unmarried woman if she wants children, John. It could get you into trouble. She could think you’re discussing the future.”

  “Okay, okay, unfair question. So, you’re working less. That was one of the things you said terrified you.”

  “When I said that, it was true. I just didn’t know the reason. And the reason is simple—whenever I wasn’t very busy working on something challenging, I noticed how lonely I was and how everyone else had friends and things to do. Or seemed to. I began to change that before leaving Los Angeles. I was in a women’s group, did some volunteer work and generally learned how to make friends. Not the kind of friends you can only find hovering over microscopes and computer terminals, but friends who liked going to ball games, movies and the beach.

  “The boys helped me do that. I met some of the other mothers in water-babies classes, tiny-tots gymnastics and finally preschool.”

  “What would it be like for you to just be a housewife?” he asked.

  She laughed at him. “Just a housewife? This is 1990, buster. Talk like that will get you drawn and qua
rtered.”

  “Okay, okay... What if you didn’t have a full-time job besides being a mother? What would that be like?”

  “I’m always going to do some work in addition to raising my family, John,” she said. “When I was growing up and advancing past all the kids, sometimes feeling really arrogant and other times feeling really sorry for myself, Jess would always say something to me that maybe a lot of moms say to their kids. ‘Your best is good enough, Leigh. But you must always do your best.’ I’m exhilarated by work. I’m also exhilarated by my kids. Even though I knew I wanted kids, I wasn’t prepared for how great having them would be. But I’m also capable of doing work I love and that can help other people.”

  “So you’ll always work.” It sounded a bit like an accusation.

  “But maybe not in the same way, John. Maybe if I’m not alone and afraid to be without a huge professional commitment I’ll work at a sane pace rather than in the frenzy I used to use to cover up all that was missing from my life. There was another thing my mother said when I was much older and the projects I worked on were enormously important to the world. ‘I’d like you to remember one thing—if you have something special, you must respect it, and treat it with wisdom and compassion. It won’t do the world any good for you to burn yourself out, but if you have something that will make the world better, give it if you can. If you’re a gifted baker, make good bread for the community. If you’re a gifted gardener, make the world beautiful. If you’re a gifted scientist, make the world safer.’”

  He whistled. “It would be pretty hard not to feel guilty about not working with something like that hanging over your head.”

  “She wasn’t saying that to make me feel guilty. She and my dad had a very strong belief that you should use your skills to make every day good and add to rather than subtract from the world.” Leigh added pensively, “Now one of my great gifts is Mitch and Ty, and Jess reminded me recently that doing my best with them will include sacrifice. Maybe it includes sacrificing that single-mindedness I gave my work. Jess has been talking a lot about love. You know, dating, men, maybe marrying again.”

  “I think Jess has it in for us. It hasn’t escaped me that she’s setting me up.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But I am glad to spend a little time getting to know you again. And no matter what Jess does, we’ll still just bide our time getting to know each other. Right?”

  He just stared at her, then slowly moved his hand to cover hers. “Biding time with you has its high points...and its frustrations.” He was just leaning toward her as if to kiss her when Ty yelled. He had a fish.

  * * *

  “Your bid, Jess. Are we playing bridge or what?”

  Oooops. The mother of the bride was daydreaming, Jess thought. “Three hearts,” Jess said, ignoring her partner’s audible gasp. “I can do three hearts alone,” Jess said, stubborn in her own defense.

  “You’re going to do it alone,” Peg grumbled.

  “She’s in never-never land again. Plotting,” Abby West observed.

  “Any progress? Are we looking at silver patterns yet?” asked Peg, laying down her cards and looking hopefully at Jess.

  It was unclear whether Peg was relentlessly curious about the John/Leigh romance being staged by the mother of the bride or whether she wanted a break from bridge. Peg hated bridge and only played to indulge the others.

  Jess folded her hand and grinned. She had only been waiting to be asked. Thursday was bridge day for the widows’ brigade. Monday—literary discussion group. Tuesday—mah-jongg. Wednesday—garden club. Friday—craft day for seniors. The only thing the women were really serious about was their kids.

  Jess’s three best friends had been keeping a close watch over the progress of Leigh and John’s relationship. While none of the others had this exact problem, they all had the same general problem—grown-up kids who simply weren’t as clever or sensible as their mothers. According to the mothers. And the majority of them were still unmarried. Jess at least had grandchildren.

  “I think it’s going great guns, so far. Since John is working on the yard all the time, I suggested to Leigh that she ask him about activities for the boys. He actually drove them to the community center to sign up for T-ball. Since then, they’ve spent quite a lot of time together. I wonder how she’s keeping him at arm’s length.” She fanned her face with her hand. “You can almost feel the heat. But there are always two little boys between them.”

  “If this works, I want my Rebecca married to a doctor by Christmas,” Kate, the most cynical in the group, put in.

  “It isn’t quite that simple,” Jess argued. She had explained it all before, and it went like this:

  Jess suspected but had not verified that John was the father of Leigh’s children. She could be wrong, but it was doubtful. From the moment she learned that Leigh was pregnant and the children hadn’t been sired by Leigh’s estranged husband, Jess had been scouting for the lover who had somehow broken her daughter’s heart.

  Okay, okay... At first she was going to find him and kill him. But after she’d spent time helping Leigh cope with the divorce, her job change, moving and multiple pregnancy, she began to understand that it had probably been the other way around. Leigh was such a bungler when it came to romance that she’d probably broken the poor fool’s heart. Jess had thought about demanding the name of the responsible man, but then she decided that what Leigh really needed was a specialist who could help her catch up socially with the rest of her age group. Otherwise, Jess’s demands for the culprit’s name would not have done much good. She might have gotten John as a son-in-law, but it would undoubtedly have been far too temporary.

  While Leigh was carrying and birthing the twins—and seeing the therapist—she was also dropping hints about her Durango fling. “He’s just a simple, semi-hardworking guy who hates the whole concept of me having a Ph.D. You wouldn’t want to have me marry just any old ski bum, now would you?” she’d asked. “Oh, sure, he has a job, but until they form a ski patrol in L.A., he wouldn’t budge from Durango. Besides, since this little accident occurred, he’s gotten himself married...and he doesn’t even know about the babies.”

  After she had moved back to Durango, Jess called John out to do fix-it jobs at the house and watched him like a hawk. He never asked about her daughter, but she could see him scanning the place for pictures. She kept one old picture in a frame and moved it around the house to satisfy herself that John indeed seemed to look for it and relax around the eyes and mouth when he finally spotted it. She purposely did not mention her grandsons... She was saving that for a time when she needed his reaction. Now she believed she had him cold.

  Recently Leigh had herself paved the way for what would eventually become Jess’s plan to get her daughter married to the father of her children. It was when Leigh said, “I was always so smart, but so dumb about love. You know, Mom, I might not have picked the right guy, but I sure did love him a lot. And he’s not a bad guy. In fact, he’s a really down-deep good guy. He just couldn’t accept me. I was too much.”

  “Maybe he just didn’t have a chance,” Jess had said.

  “And now it’s too late.”

  No way, thought the mother of the bride. It was never too late. For one thing, Jess knew that John was divorced, although she’d had to snoop to find out. And all she had to do was look at those little boys to see an obvious resemblance to their father. And knowing that Leigh had truly loved and wanted him and thought he was a good man...well, Jess was ready to have the invitations printed.

  In her mind, the marriage was a go. Leigh, however, seemed reticent about returning to live with her mother; she was really dragging her heels. Scared, Jess decided. Well, who wouldn’t be? But the twins were getting big; time had wings. They would start school next fall. So Jess made up a little, tiny, inconsequential heart problem. She didn’t want to tell a big lie—just
expedite her daughter’s return before the boys were drafted into the military.

  “It’s nothing serious, darling,” Jess had said, “and I don’t want you to be alarmed. I just want to spend some time with my grandchildren before I die. This could be my last summer...or then again, perhaps I’ll somehow drift on through many summers.”

  Jess had never done anything like it before. It had been Peg’s idea, actually, and it had been fun.

  Once Leigh was home, Jess had to get her back in close proximity to John, which had proved more difficult to arrange than she imagined. She enlisted the aid of the widows’ brigade. It was Peg’s idea to tell John about her heart condition, too, as the reason for Leigh’s return. Peg really should be closely watched, Jess thought. Deceitful old thing. It was Kate’s idea to get Leigh and John working on the same project together—the renovation of the yard. Jess couldn’t have cared less about having a stupid gazebo, but there weren’t many things she could think of that would take a while to finish. Abby’s contribution was that Jess should drop very, very heavy hints that getting married to someone like John would make her old mother happy. “Old women,” Abby said, “are expected to play matchmaker. Try to conceal that and they’ll know something is up.”

  Now Leigh was home, working on the yard, watching John while he worked on the yard. And Leigh hadn’t said a word. Not a word! But seeing them together—the two of them or the four of them—Jess was convinced they belonged together.

  “I thought you said you could do three hearts alone,” Peg said, drawing Jess back into the game. “Old liar.”

  “Don’t you call me a liar. You’re the one who told me to pretend to have a heart condition.”

  “I know. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Do you do everything you’re told?”

  “I’m sorry, ladies. I cannot concentrate on anything while I’m worrying about that girl. All I want is her happiness. And I’d like her happiness in a hurry, I admit it.”