No Kids or Dogs Allowed

by Jane Gentry

  Music pulsed from upstairs, loud and angry. Elizabeth pushed herself out of her chair and went to the kitchen, where she pounded on the ceiling underneath Cara’s room with the handle of a broom. The noise abated marginally. Elizabeth rapped on the ceiling again, and this fitful communication eventually yielded a compromise: music that was too loud for Elizabeth and not loud enough for Cara.

  After a few minutes of listening to it, enough to allow Cara to save face, Elizabeth poured two cups of chocolate milk and heated them in the microwave. Then she took one to Cara, told her to turn the music off and drank her own hot chocolate while she soaked in a bathtub full of water hot enough, she hoped, to soothe her into sleep.

  The tub was a huge old claw-footed dinosaur, long and deep and comfortable.

  Big enough for two, she thought, and immediately pushed the idea out of her head by submerging herself up to her neck. She leaned her head on the curved enamel edge and closed her eyes. Steam filled the bathroom and clouded the mirror. Heat clouded her mind, and she felt almost weightless in the calming water.

  “I’ve gotta get out of here and go to bed,” she said aloud. The water knew she didn’t mean it and folded her warmly and seductively, and she sank deeper into it and drowsed.

  The phone rang.

  Maybe I won’t answer it, she thought.

  It rang again.

  The water gave her up reluctantly, clung to her, ran sullenly onto the floor. She wrapped herself in a bathtowel and ran for the phone on the nightstand by her bed.

  Steve.

  “Hi,” he said, in a voice full of high good humor. “This is the extremely wrinkled old idiot with slow reflexes. I’d mention my name but I understand you’re tired of it and don’t want to hear it.”

  “Damn!” said Elizabeth, with fervor. She dried herself with one hand, half-freezing in the cold room. The water got its revenge: her damp body erupted into goosebumps.

  “Was that the location joke?”

  She began to laugh again. “Yeah. Apparently you’ve heard a somewhat edited version of the conversation. I’m sure you can imagine the rest. I was stricken speechless.”

  She snuggled naked between the white sheets and pulled the heavy comforter under her chin. “So while I was sitting there, unable to think of a thing to say, I had this sudden image of us sneaking around all over town, hiding from those two terrifying brats, looking over our shoulders like a couple of fugitives, snatching kisses in out-of-the-way places and pretending we don’t know each other in public. Exactly like a bad spy movie. Struck me as funny. Still strikes me as funny.”

  Another peal of laughter roiled up from her midsection and exploded into the room. After a minute she said, “Do I sound hysterical?”

  Steve’s deep chuckle rolled across the line. “Yep.”

  “Not surprising,” said Elizabeth, trying to catch her breath. “They’re driving me crazy.”

  “You’re not going crazy. That’s battle fatigue.”

  “Why don’t they like each other, do you suppose?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Because they’re both so obnoxious,” said Steve. “They’re exactly alike. How could they like each other?”

  “Think they’ll outgrow it?”

  “God, I hope so,” he said. “I’m graying fast.”

  “I haven’t noticed any gray,” said Elizabeth, wishing she could tangle her hands in every hair he had.

  “You’re not looking in the right place.”

  “What place is the right place? Gray hairs grow everywhere, once they start.”

  “Yep.” A chuckle.

  The right place? The right place? There was a sudden silence as Elizabeth realized what he meant.

  “You’re blushing,” he said.

  “Not I,” she said. She wasn’t blushing. She was salivating. Her imagination ran amok, and she galloped right along with it. It wasn’t only his hair she wanted to get her hands on. She wanted to get her hands on all of him. All. Her mind’s eye saw him clearly and liked the view.

  “What’s the name of that church you and Cara go to?” asked Steve. The laugh was still in his voice. “What time does it start? Melody and I will come tomorrow.”

  “Saint Cyril’s. Ten o’clock.” She ventured to stretch her legs. The sheets were like ice. She curled up again in the warm hollow she’d made for herself.

  “What’d he die of, old Cyril?”

  “Froze to death, I expect,” said Elizabeth, observing the rime on the outside of her windowpane.

  “Is that an oblique reference to the weather, or do you want me to get off the phone?”

  “Weather, of course. There’s ice on the outside of my window.”

  “How about you?” Steve asked. “Are you nice and warm? Wearing your long flannel nightie and your bed socks and your mobcap?”

  “Actually, no. I was bathing when you called, and I dried off in this refrigerator and now I’m in bed, and I’m going to be a pretzel tomorrow because the sheets are so cold I can’t move. What’s a mobcap?”

  “One of those Martha Washington hats, ruffled around the edges. Looks like a shower cap. Keeps your head warm.

  “It’s not my head that’s cold. It’s my feet.”

  “Where’s the flannel nightie to warm up the rest of you?”

  The rest of her was beginning to be a little chilled. “I’d have to get out of bed to get it, and I don’t want to. I’d freeze for sure.”

  “Does this antique house of yours have a furnace?”

  “Don’t you know sleeping in a hot room is bad for you?”

  “Are you sure your distant ancestors didn’t come out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony?”

  “As a matter of fact, they did. Why?”

  “Only a Puritan could equate comfort and affliction.”

  “Bah, humbug.”

  “You don’t have an electric blanket, either, I’ll bet.”

  “Electromagnetic waves after your molecular chemistry,” she said. “I read that in one of your books.”

  “Bah, humbug. That’s bad science, but useful fiction,” said Steve. “Since I’m not there to warm your feet for you, I’ll tell you what to do.”

  “What?”

  “Climb into the tub long enough to warm up, put the roomy flannel nightie on and get back into bed. Then drowse and think of me, sharing the nightie, all night long.”

  “I might consider it, if I didn’t know it would keep me awake all night,” she said, admitting deprivation. “Old Cyril, as you so disrespectfully term him, is the first church on the right past Ardmore Square. On Montgomery. Meet you there?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Good night, darling.”

  She did exactly what he told her to. Then, comfortable and warm, she switched off her reading lamp and blew a kiss off her palm into the dark, trusting that it would find its way to Steve’s lips. And when she slept, his endearment echoed like a benediction through her dreams.

  * * *

  Steve, lying in his own cold bed, had an irresistible vision of Elizabeth rising from her bath, rosy and warm and dripping wet, for him to dry. He had a vivid visual imagination: he could see every sweet curve, her round, full breasts, her tumbled hair; could see her lifting her arms and stepping forward, smiling, to meet him.

  He groaned and turned over in bed. Heat flooded through him, lacing his belly and clotting his loins with an intensity that was more pain than desire.

  Was she thinking of him now, fantasizing as he was, dreaming of touching him, holding him, making love? Or did she still dream of Robert, of his body and his kiss? She sounded indifferent when she spoke of Robert, but the mind and the heart often have opposite goals. Elizabeth was a passionate woman; Steve had seen that passion and tasted it. If the memory of Robert subconsciously evoked that passion, then perhaps Joe Salvini did, too.

  Cara had a crush on Salvini, because he looked so much like her father. Why wouldn’t Elizabeth react to that subliminal stimulus, too? Elizabeth, Steve knew, would never let Robert into her
life again, despite his charm. But Joe was everything Robert wasn’t. How could Elizabeth help but respond to him?

  Damn Salvini. And damn Robert. And damn, too, this primal adrenaline-charged competitive urge to fight for a woman, which God had built into even the most reasonable of men.

  At least, he thought, with what scant humor he could muster, I used to be reasonable. Now I’m just another victim of testosterone poisoning.

  He groaned again and closed his eyes, and couldn’t sleep. And tossed. And turned. And dozed uneasily. He dreamed of being tied up and attacked by angry wasps, and woke to find the alarm buzzing and himself tangled in the sheets.

  An eight o’clock wake-up? Mild irritation. On Sunday morning? Extreme irritation. He scowled at the ceiling until he remembered. Oh, yeah, church. He swung his feet to the floor and felt his way to the shower. When he had on his suit and tie, he went to waken Melody.

  “What?” she said, when he tapped on her door. Her voice croaked.

  Steve entered and sat on the edge of her bed. Only the top of her head showed. The rest of her was snuggled under a patchwork quilt that his sister had made and the thirty or so stuffed animals she wouldn’t sleep without. He pulled the quilt down to her chin, and she squinted at him like a sleepy little owl.

  She had squinted like that as a baby, as he’d rocked her and fed her her 6:00 a.m. bottle. The little round baby face, topped with soft blond fuzz, had turned miraculously into a pretty girl, inevitably growing up and away from him. He wasn’t sure how it had happened so fast. He’d just become accustomed to the baby, and suddenly she was a pigtailed child, with Barbie dolls and roller skates and jump ropes and shrieking friends. The Barbie dolls and roller skates gave way to lipstick and boys long before he was ready for it. He smiled. She still had the shrieking friends.

  Daddy’s girl, he thought, with that melancholy pride all men feel as they watch their children grow into competent adults.

  He rubbed his knuckles gently on her scalp.

  “Time to wake up, honey,” he said.

  “It’s Sunday,” she said, closing her eyes.

  “Yeah. We’re going to church.”

  “Church?” she repeated. “What church?”

  “St. Cyril’s Episcopal.”

  She rose from the bed like a cannon shot. All traces of the cuddly baby were gone. Her hair stood out and her eyes were wide open and her teeth were bared. Her braces glittered in the lamplight.

  “Cara’s church!” she said. “I won’t go!”

  “You most certainly will,” said Steve, in what his ex-wife once had called his ex cathedra voice.

  “Why do we have to start going to church now?” roared Melody. “We never did before!”

  “Church is a place where you learn the virtues of unselfishness and self-control,” said Steve, standing up. “Those are two concepts to which it is time you were introduced.”

  “Cara’s been going since before she was born, and she hasn’t learned anything yet,” said Melody, gesturing wildly. “What’s the point?”

  “Sometimes it takes a while to get the message across,” Steve told her. “I want you out of that bed, showered, dressed and downstairs in an hour. Understand?”

  He stayed long enough to get a sullen affirmation, then went down to his coffee and newspaper, shaking his head all the way.

  Dealing with Cara and Melody was like trying to tunnel out of a cave-in: slow, hard and dangerous. There were hazards at every turn. It didn’t matter. He’d keep digging. He intended to have Elizabeth and a couple of bullheaded little girls weren’t going to stop him.

  At nine o’clock, as ordered, Melody appeared. Steve rose to fix her breakfast and got his first good look at her.

  She had on a gray wool skirt that was rolled up until it was five inches above her knees. The legs underneath were bare of stockings. The roll of wool around her waist was badly concealed by a black patent belt, and the combined fabric and leather bulged out around Melody’s middle like a bicycle inner tube. Her hair looked nice—curled and brushed. But her face was adorned with all the drugstore makeup her allowance would buy. Thick eyeliner ringed her eyes, zigging and zagging where her unskilled fingers had faltered. Mascara glopped in blobs on her long brown lashes. Blue eyeshadow winged out nearly to her ears and met a russet blush which reddened her cheeks like an unhealthy fever. The toilette was completed with a violent pink lipstick which made his eyes hurt.

  Her appearance was not exactly a surprise. She had been born wanting four-inch heels and rhinestone earrings.

  “Oh, geez,” Steve said. “There is no balm in Gilead. You’ve used it all.”

  Melody began to look contentious.

  “Your hair looks nice,” he said. “But the rest of you needs considerable repair.”

  “Oh, really, Daddy,” said Melody, flouncing toward the table.

  “Oh, really, yourself,” said Steve. “Go upstairs and wash that goop off your face, put on stockings, roll that skirt down and get a blazer. Right now. I want you back down here in ten minutes, looking like an ad for a temperance union. Go.”

  “Everybody wears makeup,” Melody countered. “Besides, I look like a ghost without it.”

  “You look like a Ringling Brothers clown act with it,” said Steve, mining the archetype for the same image Neolithic fathers had used when their daughters first stained their lips with berry juice.

  Melody’s lips trembled and her eyes filled with tears.

  “You just don’t understand!” she wailed, and fled upstairs, weeping.

  “Oh, damn,” Steve said. He remembered his father and his sister Lin having exactly the same argument, with exactly the same results. History repeating itself. No wonder philosophers feared for the future of humankind. He sank his teeth violently into a tough piece of toast.

  She reappeared with a clean face, a wounded pout and her skirt rolled down, but not all the way. Steve looked at it and decided to let it pass.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  * * *

  The church was Christmas-card perfect, a white-steepled Colonial vintage building which had been carefully preserved. Surrounding it was a low stone wall, which also encompassed a graveyard with apple, oak and walnut trees grown tall among the ancient headstones. If Steve had been in a better mood, he’d have been charmed. Instead, he wondered sourly if Episcopalians had a patron saint of lost causes. Unpleasant pictures of Elizabeth smiling at Joe had populated his unwelcome dreams, and dreams like that were hard to forget.

  He looked around for Elizabeth. She stood at the door, looking like a fantasy in a soft pink wool dress. Its flared skirt swirled enticingly around her beautiful legs as she came to meet them. Her hair wound around its curly self into a prim chignon, secured by a silver and amethyst comb. But the toothed discipline of the silver was insufficient, for a few wispy tendrils had escaped and asserted their independence, and they curled and frothed and beckoned in the breeze.

  Steve sighed. She looked good enough to eat. The tough piece of toast and a pitched battle with Melody were hardly any more nourishing to the spirit than the nightmare memory of Joe Salvini holding Elizabeth spellbound with his charm. His vexation condensed and knotted itself securely just behind his consciousness.

  Beside Elizabeth stood a tall redheaded girl about Melody’s age. Elizabeth pointed, and the child bounced down the steps, all smiles.

  “I’m Gigi McClellan,” she said. “Are you Melody?”

  Melody nodded, too shy to speak.

  “Well, actually, my name’s Ginger, but I changed it. That’s a horse’s name, even if my mom doesn’t think so.”

  Melody giggled. “My Aunt Lin has a bay horse named Ginger.”

  “See? I told you,” said Gigi. “Sunday School’s upstairs. They have doughnuts. And after, the whole class is going for pizza and a movie. It costs five dollars. You want to come with me?”

  With her face shining, Melody turned towards Steve. He had the money out of his pocket before she asked. Then
, without a backward glance she ambled off, with Gigi chattering like a castanet.

  “Do you know how to ride horses?” asked Gigi. “I’ve always wanted a horse, but I have four brothers, and we don’t have enough money to feed five animals that eat like horses, my mom says.”

  Steve watched as the two girls climbed the stairs.

  “Good morning, Madam Magician,” he said, smiling for the first time that day.

  “Gigi could talk to a rock,” said Elizabeth, looking satisfied.

  “How about the four brothers?”

  “They’re too busy eating to talk at all. She wasn’t kidding. Our rector calls them, collectively, the genial young giants. And he isn’t kidding, either.” She pointed toward the parking lot. Across the churchyard toward them came two of the said young giants, who had driven themselves to church. They were laughing at something and poking at each other and looked as wholesome as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

  “Easy to recognize,” said Steve. “They’re as carrot-topped as Gigi. Are they going to be at this Thanksgiving dance Melody keeps talking about?”

  “Geordie is, I expect.” Elizabeth led Steve into the church common room for coffee and pastries. “He goes to Linwoody Boys’ Prep, and he’s a second-former, like Cara and Melody. Or so Cara tells me.”

  She looked suddenly troubled, as she said that.

  “What’s the matter?” Steve asked. The moody knot swelled with the addition of more trouble and nudged at his forebrain. He picked up two foam cups and filled them with coffee.

  “I have this uncomfortable feeling that Cara mentioned Geordie once, with high praise for his general romantic appeal.”

  Steve raised his eyebrows. “And Gigi will introduce Geordie to Melody.”

  “And Melody, having a general romantic appeal of her own,” Elizabeth said, “will probably appeal to Geordie, who has shown no general interest in Cara’s appeal, and while I’m on the subject of appeal, I think I’ll appeal to God for help.”

  “Yeah?” said Steve. “And what are you going to pray for?” His stomach knotted up again.

  She thought of Melody and Cara, of loneliness, of wanting Steve. Of sex and desire and sleepless nights and love.

  “Deliverance,” she sighed, stirring milk and lots of soothing sugar into her coffee.