Mother To Be

by Cheryl Reavis

  "I can't," she repeated.

  He hesitated for a moment longer, then abruptly reached into his shirt pocket and put a folded piece of paper on her desk.

  "What is this?"

  "A map to Becenti's homestead."

  "Lucas, I told you – "

  "I know, I know. This is just in case you decide to make an old woman and your brother rest a little easier."

  The two of you might rest easier if I went, Lillian thought, but she wasn't at all sure Johnny Becenti would. She had, after all, been approached for this job because of her highly developed ability to vex the man senseless.

  "Goodbye, Lucas," she said pointedly.

  He gave a tolerant and forgiving smile before he stepped out of the office and walked down the carpeted hall, his footsteps muffled and soon inaudible.

  "Damn it!" she said in exasperation. She didn't want to be tolerated or forgiven. Intellectually, she knew she had no reason to feel guilty. Intellectually – but not emotionally. And her family had no right to make her feel this way. She was a lawyer, not a psychiatrist. Johnny Becenti's problem was not a legal one.

  She looked at her watch again. She needed to shower and change her clothes. She needed to put some real effort into this evening. Stuart Dennison, "the big state legislator," as Lucas had so inelegantly described him, would be waiting. Their relationship had been on such an even keel lately, and she wanted to keep it that way. Stuart had suddenly recovered all the cheerfulness and good humor that had first drawn her to him, and regardless of his uncharacteristic insistence that they find the time to have dinner together tonight without fail, she was truly looking forward to seeing him. She had known him since she was a young law student, and except for the last several months, they had been lovers for nearly as long. She respected him, perhaps loved him. She certainly needed him. He complemented her in every way, his sanguine nature perfectly offsetting her cynical intensity. His quick grasp of a legal situation had helped her more than once to win a case. And she liked to think that she had helped him, as well. Her unwillingness to suffer fools gladly and her uncanny ability to know what people meant regardless of what they said, had made it possible for him to weed out more than one political hanger-on, some of whose ulterior motives would have proved disastrous to Stuart's career. He made her laugh – or he used to – and he would again. Their relationship was definitely taking a turn for the better. She knew that without a doubt.

  She sat down behind her desk and stared at the stacks of papers she needed to process, and the envelope with the snuff can she should have given to Lucas. She didn't have time to go home and change for dinner. And she didn't have time to start any of her legal tasks. Her mind went abruptly to Johnny Becenti. What in the world was going on with him? She hadn't seen him since just before his wife died. Surprisingly, the two of them had managed to work together then without getting into any major lawyer-policeman squabbles. In fact, they'd gotten along quite well trying to get Jack Begaye – who had defiantly married Lucas's Meggie-out of a great deal of legal trouble. Becenti hadn't broken any rules for Jack as far as Lillian knew, but he still had done everything he could to help Meggie's wild young husband fight the false accusations that could have destroyed their happiness and their marriage. And it was just that kind of thing that always puzzled Lillian so. Becenti was rigid and "by-the-book" – and yet he wasn't. He could have washed his hands of both Lucas and Jack on more than one occasion – no one would have blamed him – but he didn't. He'd thought them both worth salvaging, and he'd been right. And, if she admitted the truth, she "owed" Johnny Becenti as much as Lucas did.

  She abruptly got up and walked around the desk to the window. The sun was almost gone, leaving a pale orange horizon in its wake. Spring was coming, but it was still cold. She looked out across the street. Cars. People. But no reservation trucks or Johnny Becenti relatives. No relatives of hers, either, for that matter. She was off the hook, but she certainly didn't feel like it.

  She abruptly made up her mind. She would leave for the restaurant now, even if she would be somewhat early. She got her purse out of her desk drawer and hunted through the jumbled contents for the silver-and-turquoise compact Stuart had given her early in their relationship – before he'd understood that Lillian Singer had already made her decision as to which world she would belong. She didn't wear Southwestern Navajo-type jewelry, or buttons, or bolos, or anything else. She wore gold and not much of that. Gold studs in her ears. A delicate gold chain around her neck. The compact Stuart had given her was the only silver-and-turquoise item she owned.

  She brushed her hair, powdered her nose, painted her mouth. Better, she thought, looking into the compact mirror. But not as good as if she'd had the time to go home. Even so, she was looking forward to this evening. Candlelight. Breast of chicken in champagne. New Zealand raspberries. Stuart. Precisely what she needed after a day like today. She smiled at her reflection before she snapped the compact closed. She would work later, or early in the morning. But, for now, headache or not, guilt or not, she was going to relax and enjoy.

  The restaurant was crowded when she arrived, somewhat surprising to her because the opera season hadn't yet begun. She stood waiting in the dark entry while the maitre d' located Stuart's reservation at the lighted podium. She could smell the aroma of baking bread, hear the murmur of conversation in the dining area and the classical guitar music that played softly in the background. She noted immediately that she was surrounded by elegantly dressed women and that there was not a navy blue power suit like hers among them.

  "This way, please," the maitre d' said, sending her off with a tuxedoed hostess. Lillian followed, threading her way carefully in the dim light. All the tables were set with gleaming silver and glassware. The candles were lit, the napkins intricately folded.

  She saw Stuart before he saw her. His table was well away from the flow of traffic, a choice location beside floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the formal garden. He was not alone. She didn't recognize the blond-haired woman seated at the table with him – a young woman wearing a "little black dress" and pearls appropriate for the posh surroundings.

  A colleague? Lillian wondered. Relative? Friend of the family?

  The woman leaned forward to say something to Stuart, and he moved closer to hear. Lillian watched them, their whispered words, their bodies not touching but clearly wanting to. He was smiling, oblivious to anything but the woman in the black dress.

  Lillian faltered.

  None of the above.

  A phrase immediately came to mind, one she'd actually seen in a newspaper advertisement for this particular restaurant.

  Intimate dining.

  Intimate.

  Stuart saw her then and stood. He was smiling for her now. So happy to see her. Explaining to the woman in the black dress that Lillian Singer had indeed arrived.

  She had no choice but to walk forward. Indeed, there was no reason why she shouldn't. She was here by invitation – by very insistent invitation, actually – and he was smiling still, his boyish handsomeness all too apparent.

  "Working late again, I see," he said in spite of the fact that she had arrived early.

  Early. And dressed wrong.

  She let him pull out her chair, and she sat down heavily, as if her legs wouldn't hold her anymore. She took a quiet breath before she acknowledged the woman, but she felt anything but serene. She wanted to believe that she had jumped to some erroneous conclusion based solely on a split-second observation. Intellectually she knew that she had no reason to feel such anxiety or such a sense of intruding into a situation where she didn't belong. But it was that same inexplicable thing that had made her a good lawyer – a Navajo thing, perhaps – the ability to know what people were about, regardless of what they said or did. And Stuart's smile didn't fool her. He was about something. She could only sit here and awkwardly wait for the revelation.

  She abruptly smiled at the woman. "Lillian Singer," she said, before Stuart could introduce
her.

  The woman returned the smile shyly, disarmingly really. Like a little girl. She just missed being beautiful, something only another woman would notice under the artful makeup. "J. B. Greenleigh," she said, her voice whispery soft. Unnaturally soft. Learned, like the makeup. "I've heard so much about you. From Stuart," she added.

  "Oh, yes?" Lillian answered, glancing at Stuart. He was watching J.B. as if she were some doted-upon child who had just carried off her parents'-night recitation perfectly.

  "I'm really glad you could make it, Lillian," he said, finally glancing in her direction.

  Oh, really? Why? Lillian almost said, her penchant for outspokenness driving her hard. She needed to understand the significance of this unexpected threesome, and, in spite of her early Navajo training, she had never been one to patiently wait for events to unfold.

  "Is anyone else coming?" she asked instead, her sarcasm subtle but not lost on Stuart. He looked at her sharply and then at J.B. Then, as if by some prearranged signal, J.B. suddenly slid back her chair.

  "I must go powder my nose," she said. "I'll be right back." She smiled at them both and left.

  "I'm sorry, Lillian," Stuart said immediately.

  "Sorry?"

  "I hadn't planned – well, J.B. wasn't going to be here. You're early."

  She looked at him, not knowing what he expected her to say about that. She forced herself to wait. The silence lengthened unbearably.

  "Stuart, just get to the bottom line here, okay?" she said when he didn't go on.

  He gave a slight smile. "The bottom line."

  "Please," she said.

  He took a deep breath. "Lillian, you know how important you've always been to me. The success I've had – I owe a great deal of it to your – "

  "The bottom line, Stuart," she said again.

  "All right. There's no use dragging it out, I guess. J.B. and I are...getting married."

  Lillian heard him perfectly. She'd expected the worst, but even so, it took a moment before she could respond. "I...see," she finally managed. He looked miserable, as unhappy as she felt, but she showed him no mercy. "Isn't this rather sudden?"

  "No – not really," he said in spite of the fact that his engagement had to be sudden or it had to have happened while he and Lillian were still lovers.

  "How is it she's heard all about me and I seem to have missed any mention of her?"

  "Lillian – "

  "Isn't she a little young, Stuart?"

  "I love her," he said quietly, his eyes begging her to understand.

  But it was her brother's voice she heard. When a man loves a woman, Lillian, he wants to marry

  "Ah, yes," she said sarcastically. "Love. Well, then. That's that, isn't it?"

  "We were hoping you'd come to the wedding."

  She gave a short laugh. "Oh, please, Stuart, let's not torture both your women with your naive notion of civilized behavior. She's young enough to think she has to go along with it. I'm old enough – uncivilized enough – to tell you to go to hell."

  She stood, dropping her purse off her lap. He retrieved it for her, but he held on to it when she would have grabbed it out of gis hand.

  “Lilian, you know I care about you. I’ll always care about you –“

  “Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to call you a liar in front of all these people.” She took her purse out of his hand, and she stared into his eyes for a moment.

  But there was nothing left to say, not without yelling or crying or upending a perfectly set table. She abruptly turned and walked away.

  Chapter Two

  I'm fine with this, she kept thinking. No problem. Stuart had been all but out of her life even before he'd made his sudden wedding announcement. She had gotten used to his not calling, not asking her opinion, not being around. In fact, she had been so busy herself that there were times when she'd hardly noticed. But how much easier it would have been now if, in the last few weeks, he hadn't made her think he was coming back again. Why did he do that?

  Her mind belabored the question all that sleepless night and all the next day, and eventually it gave her an answer – whether she really wanted one or not. It had been her experience both personally and professionally that guilty men either found fault or made jealous accusations to justify their infidelity or to give themselves an excuse to get out. Clearly, Stuart hadn't felt the least bit guilty – he would have had to have some sense of commitment to their relationship for that, But Lillian Singer had simply been his longtime significant other. He owed her no consideration, no explanations beforehand. He had "cared" about her enough to let her bask a little in the light of his newfound happiness, but not enough to tell her the reason for it. I'm fine with this.

  She must be fine. She was able to take care of her court cases with competence if not with her usual ease. She even managed to go for hours at a time without thinking of Stuart or his new bride-to-be. She went to work; she came home. She ate. She slept. And in spite of all she could do, she kept finding reasons to look at herself in the mirror.

  Not young, she thought every time she did it. J.B. Greenleigh was young. Lillian had been brought up to revere old age and its wisdom, and until now, she hadn't minded any of her birthdays. She was reasonably attractive, educated, successful, healthy, thin.

  But she was not young. And the more she looked at her reflection, the more she was certain that J.B. Greenleigh's appeal wasn't just that she was white and therefore more suitable to be a politician's wife. It was that J.B. Greenleigh wasn't knee-deep in her forties.

  Face it, she thought. You, my dear, have been dumped – big time.

  And there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn't be younger, even if she wanted to be, and she certainly couldn't be any less Navajo. She'd had years of practice living off the reservation, and she'd already gone as far as she could with that.

  On Friday she lost the court case she'd been working so hard on – an outcome she hadn't expected despite all her courtroom experience. She had relentlessly and logically shown without a doubt that the prosecution had not proved its case. Unfortunately, all her stellar arguments had apparently gone right over the jury's head. In fact, she had been so surprised by the verdict that her considerably-less-than-gracious remark about it had cost her a two-hundred-dollar sanction.

  She returned to her office that afternoon, poorer if not wiser, to find a terse message from Stuart among the pile of yellow While You Were Out slips on her desk. She was to call him ASAP. Not a request, an order. And, he explained further, if she happened not to be able to reach him, he would come by her place later.

  With or without J.B.? she wondered. She closed her eyes at the possibility of a "with J.B." scenario, and for the first time since that disastrous so-called dinner, she was ready to admit that perhaps she wasn't fine after all. She certainly didn't feel fine. She felt overwhelmed, exasperated and embarrassed – hurt, damn it! She wanted to cry, throw back her head and bawl until she felt better. And the last thing she needed from Stuart was some kind of token Let's-go-check-on-poor-poor-Lillian visit.

  "I can't deal with any of this," she said aloud, tossing the message aside. Her secretary was just passing her open door.

  "Did you say something, Lillian?"

  "I've decided to run away, Grade," she answered, leaning forward and resting her head in her hands for a moment.

  The inconceivable notion that L. Singer, Esquire, would do such a rash and uncharacteristic thing made the woman smile. "Can I go, too?" she asked anyway, because it had been that kind of week.

  "Next time, Grade," Lillian answered. She slid back her chair to look for her purse. "You haven't seen me this afternoon, okay?"

  "Except if Stuart calls, right?"

  "You haven't seen me," Lillian repeated.

  "What if the family calls? Will you be at home?"

  "You haven't seen me," she said, putting her purse strap over her shoulder.

  "Aha!" Gracie said, holding up one finger. "I believe
I've got it now. I haven't seen you. Have a nice weekend, Lillian – wherever it is."

  There wasn't much chance of that, but Lillian didn't say so. Where exactly would she go if she did happen to decide that running away would be the most satisfying rebuttal to all her recent aggravation? In her current frame of mind, she was certain that she didn't want to go to some quiet, restful place where she had nothing to do but think. She didn't want to think – therefore she didn't want to hide out at home. Neither did she want to go to Window Rock to see the family. She needed a puzzle to unravel, a problem to solve. She needed –

  She abruptly began to move the papers around on her desk, and she found the map almost immediately. She unfolded it and looked at Lucas's meticulous drawing. She thought that she could find the Becenti place. The question was whether or not she felt up to the challenge of this particular brand of problem solving. She would be unwelcome, of course. And her wise counsel would likely go unheeded. There was no reason for her to even attempt it – except that she didn't like her current loser status, and she needed to try to accomplish the impossible to assuage her wounded ego. She'd taken two major hits in a week – but did she want to stand in plain view for another one?

  She gave a quiet sigh. She could drive to Window Rock, or beyond toward the Becenti homestead, if she wanted, and she could bail out at any time. She hadn't accepted Katie Becenti's quest, even if she did still have the twenty-dollar bill and the snuff can. She wouldn't have to explain herself to anyone if, once she got there, she decided not to talk to Johnny Becenti after all. A long, quiet drive was certainly preferable to going home and having to worry about whether or not Stuart and his bride-to-be were going to sneak up on her.

  She shoved the map into her purse and stepped into the hallway.

  "Lillian!" Grade called from the receptionist's desk. "Stuart's on the phone again!"

  "You haven't seen me!" Lillian said over her shoulder, walking swiftly toward the private back entrance to the parking lot. She let the door quietly close on whatever Grade replied.