Because of Joe

by Because Of Joe [Contemporary Rom. ] (lit)

  He was staring straight ahead into the darkness, as though the neighbor's pool was the most fascinating thing in the world. Rags, looking at him, could see the tightness of his jaw. She longed to touch him, to smooth the tension out of him.

  And she wanted him to take her in his arms and say he didn't give a damn what his father suggested.

  What he did was drain his glass and continue, "I think he's right."

  Rags had never placed her husband on a pedestal. She knew he worked too much, didn't sleep enough, and was often distracted. He was occasionally short-tempered, frequently opinionated, and always right. Sometimes she hated being married to him. Sometimes she simply hated him.

  But he was also kind, funny, and the love of her life. His shortcomings had, if anything, enhanced that love just as her obstinacy and lack of clothes sense endeared her to him.

  But at the end of the Bad Day, Rags lay beside her husband in their king-size bed and realized that the man she'd loved since the first time she'd seen him did not really exist, that he was someone she'd invented in the longings of her heart.

  She could not possibly love a man who would deny his own child a family.

  ~*~

  "You haven't been eating right," Rags scolded. "Look at you. You're thin as a rail."

  "Yes, ma'am, I know." Joe batted long lashes at her, and she succumbed immediately, scrubbing a hand through his hair and bending her head to kiss his cheek before going back into the kitchen.

  He looked around the breakfast room, where they'd brought him when he insisted he didn't need to lie down; he just needed juice. "Nice shack, Dad," he commented. "If you'll put on something suitably beach-gentry-looking, I'll take some shots and get you a spread in one of those glossies about Florida living that Miss Ellis Ann always kept on the coffee table and in the guest bathrooms."

  "I think I'll pass," said Tell dryly. He cast a critical eye at the young man he'd learned so grudgingly to love. "What in the hell have you been doing to yourself? If you're doing any drugs other than insulin, Ben will treat you to a full course of hellfire and brimstone when he gets here. He said he took it as an elective to keep Micah and Marley in line."

  "Nah. No drugs. Probably like Mama says, just not eating right, and it's so damn hot down here, I think I fried my brain waiting for you to get back. I didn't want to disturb Miss Ellis Ann. She might haul out that old blunderbuss of her daddy's and shoot me for a prowler."

  Joe's soft southern voice was a study in unconcern, and Tell felt his heartbeat accelerate and trip over itself. Rags approached the table carrying a plate, and he exchanged a look with her. It was one of those fleeting glances he was sure parents had shared over the ages, telegraphing certainty that something was wrong with a child of their hearts.

  "Eat this," she said briskly, setting down the plate. "And drink every bit of that milk. Then you're going to take a nap."

  "Mama." Amusement lit Joe's blue eyes as he caught Rags' hands and drew her down to the chair beside his. "I'm twenty-four years old."

  "So?" She hiked an eyebrow at him. "I'm forty-two. Think you can whip me?"

  "Oh, no, ma'am." Joe winked at Tell and picked up his fork.

  "Why didn't you call?" Tell asked. "You could have flown in and we'd have picked you up."

  Joe shook his head. "I thought it would be better to have my own wheels. I don't mind coming here-Miss Ellis Ann has always been great to me-but I wanted to be able to get out of the way if things got-" he hesitated "-uncomfortable." He forked up noodles under Rags' watchful eye and chewed thoughtfully before going on. "I can't hide behind Mama's skirts any more."

  "What's that Yankee-influenced voice I hear?" Sam's voice rasped from behind them as he came into the room. Tell saw dismay register in the nurse's dark eyes before he rubbed a huge hand through Joe's already messy hair. "Lord, boy, you trying to scare your mama to death with the anorexic look?"

  "Hey." Joe put down the fork to catch and squeeze Sam's hand. "Look at the attention it's already gotten me." He shook his head. "Mama's right about one thing, though. I could use a nap. Someone want to tell me where I can lie down?"

  After watching his son use the edge of the table to support himself as he got up, Tell rose and put a casual arm around his shoulders. "I'll show you," he offered. "Sam, come along and run interference, will you? Joe's not ready to see Mama yet."

  "You bet. Where's your bag, Joe? I'll just bet it's full of dirty laundry." Sam came to Joe's other side, placing a discreet hand under his bony elbow.

  "It is, but I left it in the car." Joe smiled back at Rags. "See you when I wake up, Mama. Pinto beans and fried potatoes and cornbread?"

  "You bet." Rags' voice sounded thin to Tell's ears, and he looked at her over his shoulder, sending her what he hoped was a reassuring look.

  Joe was asleep by the time they left him alone in the room at one end of the hall. It was smaller than most of the bedrooms, but Tell had given it to Joe so that he could wake to the sound of the gulf.

  He stood for a moment, looking at the young man's head on the deep feather pillow, and thought how much more Rags' son than his own Joe had always been. He'd slipped into her heart instantly, but had to fight his way kicking and scratching into his own father's. Old grief settled in Tell's chest, combined with new fear.

  "Sam?" he said.

  His old friend shook his head. "I don't know. I reckon you'll want Joyce and me at supper?"

  "I'd like that. So would Rags."

  "Then tell that Yankee woman to put some onions in those fried potatoes."

  Tell went through Rags' room to the upper deck, slowing his pace to enjoy the soft fragrance that permeated the room. He'd missed that. Among other things.

  Outside, he leaned on the rail, watching her as she stood at the water's edge, waves lapping her feet, her arms folded around herself as though she were cold even though the mercury rested in the nineties. Her fear was palpable; he felt is as strongly as he did his own.

  Look up here, at me. You don't have to be alone in this, Rags. I'm not who I was before. Even though I may not know all the right things to do, I'll listen now. Just look at me.

  For a moment, he thought he'd said the words aloud, because she turned and met his gaze across the bright sand. She looked away again, out to sea, then her arms dropped to her sides, and she started toward the house.

  He met her, coming to a feet-buried stop midway between the rolling surf and the house.

  "Whatever he needs," he said firmly. He put his hands at her waist, feeling the soft warmth of her flesh against his own where her top and shorts did not quite meet.

  He hadn't made her any promises since the early years, when they'd come out glibly and without thought to actually keeping them.

  He saw the doubt cloud her eyes, being chased by what he chose to construe as hope. Let me keep this promise. Give us the means to help Joe, whatever it takes.

  He drew her closer, and she came into him as though she'd never left. Her head fit the same place on his shoulder, her hand rested on his chest as it always had, her heart beat in tandem with his.

  "We," he said, "will take care of Joe."

  Chapter Four

  "Why does Joe get his own room?" Ben didn't look angry, only curious and older than ten. Where, Rags wondered-not for the first time-had this solemn and gentle child come from?

  "Because he's the oldest." She handed him his stack of clothing from the top of the dryer. "In your chest of drawers, Ben, not on the floor."

  "Okay." He turned to leave the laundry room, then looked back. "I used to be the oldest."

  "Yes, you were, and you were good at it, but it's good of you to hand that privilege over to Joe now, too."

  "Privilege, huh?" He grinned at her. "I think it was more pain than privilege, Mama." He tilted the clothing against his chest, and when socks tumbled to the floor, he bent to retrieve them, muttering something.

  "What?" She came to help him.

  "Don't make him be an example all the
time. It's hard for him because he hasn't had his whole life to get used to it."

  "Do Dad and I do that?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "We'll try to stop."

  "Okay."

  She thought of Joe as an example and almost shuddered. The "example" had taught Ben and the twins to play poker, and when she'd intervened, he'd offered to teach her, too. Because she'd never been good at anything and knew how much she would have enjoyed being the "expert," she allowed it.

  Joe was a good teacher and she was a quick study, though not usually quick enough to win against her mentor. The only time she beat him and he had to hand over his entire stack of pennies, he gave her a high five and told her she wasn't half bad at poker for a girl. They'd been discussing the term "for a girl" when Tell walked in.

  He'd been livid. "If you want something constructive to do," he told Joe, "there's the garage I asked you to spray out today. We pull our weight in this family, and if you want to be the senior sibling, you need to do what you're asked to do when you're asked to do it."

  Joe's tan cheeks had lightened several shades in the face of Tell's anger. "Yes, sir," he said, gathering up the cards with clumsy fingers.

  Rags took the cards from him. "Thank you for teaching me, Joe. It was fun."

  "Yes, ma'am." He bobbed his head at her and fled.

  She looked at her husband. "We have adopted him, he is our child, and we need to treat him as such. No one, least of all Joe, expects you to instantly love him like you do Ben and the twins. However, I at least expect you to remember that he is twelve years old and he is not yet schooled in the almighty Maguire ways."

  "Nor will he be, if you play poker with him when he's supposed to be doing chores." His tone was clipped and cold, and she flinched inwardly. She hated him when he was like this.

  When he spoke again, though, he merely sounded resigned. "I'm trying, Rags."

  That was the sad part, she thought. He was trying. He taught Joe along with the other children the right way to do things. When he tucked in the younger ones, he stuck his head in Joe's door and spoke to him for a few minutes. Joe did not welcome touch, and Tell didn't force the issue, but he rumpled his hair sometimes even though the boy flinched away. He laughed at the mildly obscene jokes of early adolescence and cheerfully bought him a new bicycle. When Joe rescued the old 35mm camera from the Salvation Army box, Tell showed him how to use it and brought home a couple of rolls of film.

  Joe consistently called him "sir." When he started to slip and call Rags "Mama" as the other children did, she had hoped "Dad" would follow soon. But it hadn't.

  "Spend time alone with him sometimes, Tell." she said now. "He needs that one-on-one contact you have with the others."

  "'He needs.'" Tell set down his briefcase and went to the refrigerator, taking out a beer and opening it. He took a long swallow, held its cold surface against his cheek for a moment, and said. "We all have needs, Rags. Sometimes, they just don't get met."

  ~*~

  When Tell said, "Do you want to walk?" she withdrew from his arms with a nod.

  "Not for long. I have to keep an eye on those beans." And on my boy. I don't know what's happened to him, but I have to fix it.

  "Micah will be mad that he missed them." He took her hand as they plodded through the sand. "Sam and Joyce will be here for dinner."

  It lay unspoken between them, the suggestion that Joyce would cast a casual medical eye over Joe while she ate her beans and fried potatoes.

  "Do you think I could force him to go to the emergency room?" asked Rags, reluctant to wait.

  "Only if you played poker for it and you cheated, and he didn't teach you to cheat."

  "No, I learned that from you." The bitterness again, forced out by an impetus of fear and punctuated by instant regret. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to say that."

  "You're entitled."

  But she'd hurt him-the pain was obvious in the splintered-glass look in the blue eyes-and the time for that was long past. They'd hurt each other enough, and too often with Joe as the catalyst.

  "No," she said, "I don't think I am." She laced her fingers through his and felt responding heat move up her arm like an electric charge. She stopped walking and faced him. "I'm sure neither of us will ever be able to forget things we said and did to each other, but I think, after twelve years, we should be able to put them completely behind us. For Joe's sake right now, if nothing else."

  He smiled at her, the skin around his eyes crinkling, and she longed to touch it. "Since you agreed with me once yesterday," he said, "I'll agree with you this time and we'll be even across the board."

  She nodded, smiling back, and when he lowered his head to hers, it was the most natural thing in the world to respond to his kiss.

  This was not the intertwined-tongues kiss that came with sex, nor the heartfelt but perfunctory one that accompanied a hello or goodbye. This was the kind of kiss that went with long-time love. Rags knew when his head would tilt and adjusted her own accordingly. She expected the teasing sweep of his tongue against her lips and offered the tip of hers in sensual riposte. She knew how he would taste, how the subtlety of his personal scent would increase her pleasure. Her body seemed to warm and glow, not in a sexual response but in an emotional one.

  "It must be," he muttered, his lips still close enough to hers she felt their vibration when he spoke, "like riding a bicycle."

  If it was, she wanted another ride.

  She had to force herself to draw away. Familiarity was always comfortable, she reminded herself, walking so the cold water splashing up her legs could restore her emotional equilibrium. That was what had sent her back to Indiana twelve years ago. Eleven, actually. Although the Bad Day had started their downward spiral, it had taken nearly a year to reach the bottom.

  "What was it like, going back to Indiana?"

  His words didn't surprise her; their thoughts had always crossed over each other. The results, depending on the situation, had been both wonderful and disastrous.

  "Awful," she admitted, remembering. "If Linda and Jake hadn't been there, I don't know what I'd have done."

  "At the time, I wanted it to be awful," he said. "I thought if you went up there and had no family around, you'd be back in Florida in a matter of days. But you had family, didn't you? As long as you had the kids, you didn't need anyone else. And Jake could do the things like jump-start your car or pick up heavy things." He caught her hand again, giving it a squeeze and retaining it in a loose clasp. "I'm not trying to start an argument. That's really what I thought."

  "I guess I thought that, too. But I didn't have Joe, so even that wasn't right. The other kids blamed me for leaving him with you, blamed me for leaving you, blamed me because it got so damn cold up there. And even though Jake helped out now and then and never complained, I never got over feeling guilty about asking."

  He laughed, the sound sweet on her ears. "And when the kids were in Florida, they blamed me for letting Joe live with me, blamed me for letting you leave, and blamed me because it was so damn hot here."

  His glance strayed to the upper deck of his house, and the laughter left him. "And I took it out on poor Joe. Ah, Rags." The clasp on her hand became painfully tight. "What's wrong with our boy?"

  ~*~

  "I'll explain it to you later, Mama, I promise."

  Joe stood in the doorway to the laundry room, a towel hitched around his hips, his gaze locked with Rags'.

  She looked back at the prescription bottles in her hands. "What can I do for you?" The foreboding that had sniped at her heels ever since she'd boarded the plane for Florida was in her heart now. It felt stone-like in her chest.

  "You can give me some clean clothes. You know Grandma wouldn't appreciate seeing me like this. It's hard enough on her that we don't wear neckties to the table."

  Her movements feeling jerky and wooden, she set down the bottles and reached into his bag to pull out shorts, a shirt, black bikini briefs. "They're wrinkled," she said, maint
aining her grip on the clothes. "Let me iron them for you." Let me do anything for you that will make you better.

  "Better let her do it, Joe." Tell came into the room. "You can sit at the bar in the kitchen with me and help me peel onions. Better yet, you can peel the onions and I'll look at your pictures. You did bring some, didn't you?"

  "Yeah. Hand me the big envelope out of the bag, Mama, and give me those bottles, too. And don't iron the clothes. I'll just wrinkle 'em right up again."

  "If you let go of that towel," she said, grinning at him even though her face felt stiff, "you'll be embarrassed."

  "Nah." But he adjusted the knot in the terrycloth before taking his things from her hands. "'Course, Dad would probably start feeling inadequate, but..."

  "You are such a brat." Tell relieved him of the bottles, scanning their labels. "I certainly hope you intend to explain all this junk before your mother plans an intervention for your drug use."

  "We can't have an intervention," she said, willing to play the game because maybe it would help keep Joe safe. "I didn't bring a thing to wear."

  Joe pulled his shirt over his head. "I met Grandma upstairs before I took a shower. She told me southern cooking would fatten me up in no time, but not to tell you that, Mama. It might hurt your feelings."

  "Okay. Was she glad to see you?" Rags obligingly turned her back when he spun his index finger at her.

  "Yeah, I think so."

  The towel sailing into the top of the washer signaled Rags she could turn around again. She looked at him carefully, finding the laughter in his eyes, the quirky smile that transformed his entire face, the hair that cow-licked itself onto his forehead no matter how he combed it.

  "You look better since you've slept," she said, determinedly cheerful. "We may decide to keep you after all."

  "Shoot, he ain't big enough to use for bait." Sam spoke from the door of the laundry room. "I'm going into town to pick up Joyce-she has a flat on that fancy doctor's car of hers. You need me to pick anything up, Miss Rags?"

  "Yes, my first name." She gave him an exasperated look. "You've known me for twenty-some years, Sam. Don't you think we can drop the 'miss' by now?"