by Jane Gentry
Steve handed her the car keys. She left without another word.
“I guess that means we’re going home,” he said regretfully. “I guess it also means old Dad tossed a ball that missed the basket.”
“What basket?” said Elizabeth, putting on her trench coat.
“I told her today was a new day, and nobody cared what she wore last night, they all had better things to worry about.”
“Why in the world would you tell her that?” demanded Elizabeth. “Surely you knew better.”
“It sounded good at the time,” he said.
“You need a keeper.” Men, she thought, and not for the first time, have no sense.
“Want to volunteer for the job?”
“Then I’d need a keeper.”
“I’ll volunteer for that job.”
“I know you would. We’ll think about it.” She retrieved her umbrella from its repose in the foyer. “You want me to walk you to your car?”
“Supposed to be the other way around, isn’t it?”
“You can only be the walker if you have a bumbershoot,” she said. She stepped outside with the umbrella and pushed the magic open-it-up Mary Poppins button. “Otherwise you have to be the walkee.”
“Oh,” he said. He took the umbrella from her hand and put his free arm around her waist. “I didn’t understand the protocol.
Through the foggy drizzle that remained of the storm, they could see their cars. Neither girl was visible.
“Where could they be?” Elizabeth asked, worried, as they walked toward Steve’s car.
“If the theory of precedence has any value,” said Steve, “Melody is under the dashboard.”
“Of course. Stupid question,” said Elizabeth. “Cara never wants to see anybody from Harkness again as long as she lives. She wants to change schools and says if I won’t let her, she’ll go live with Robert.”
“She knows how much you love her,” he said. “You going to let her blackmail you like that?”
“That’s not blackmail, it’s an attempt to escape her embarrassment,” said Elizabeth, dismissing the thought. “She couldn’t go, anyway. Robert doesn’t want her. Responsibility makes him break out in hives.”
Now that they were next to his car, Steve could see Melody hunkered down in the back seat. Lucky Mel. Both her parents loved her, wanted her and needed her. He had custody only because he worked at home and was more accessible to his daughter. Marian had always tried hard to act in Melody’s best interest, even when Marian herself was hurt by it.
Feisty, rebellious, hot-headed Cara needed a father as well as a mother, Steve knew, to guard her and guide her and help her grow up. Steve wanted to take Cara into his own heart and let her dig a little safe place there and know without question that she had a father who would love her and help her until he died.
Robert was going to break Cara’s heart, and Steve didn’t see how to prevent it. It enraged him.
He handed Elizabeth the umbrella, and breaking his vow not to give her advice, asked, “Have you told her that?”
“Of course not, Steve,” Elizabeth said. “Why hurt her feelings for no reason? I just tell her I won’t allow her to go, and that’s that.”
“She’s sure to find out what he’s like sometime,” said Steve.
“Not from me, she won’t,” Elizabeth said decisively. “Besides, he does love her, in his fashion.”
“Listen to me, Libby. If you don’t tell her about Robert, it’s going to cause a significant disaster some day,” Steve said. “Please think about it.” He curved his hand around her soft cheek and found it chilled. “Kiss me quick, darling, and get in your car. You’re cold, and you’re getting soaked.”
“I hate quick kisses,” Elizabeth complained, turning her face up to his.
“Better than no kisses at all,” he said.
“I hate a Pollyanna,” she said, half meaning it.
“Shut up,” he murmured against her lips. “You’re wasting time.”
She certainly didn’t want to waste time. Who knew how much time she’d have with him? As soon as he’d kissed her, he left, and with a sigh as mournful as the November wind, she watched him drive away.
When she reached her car, Cara was lying on her back on the front seat, with her coat wrapped around her head and her feet pressed against the cold window of Elizabeth’s door. She swiveled to a sitting position as her mother opened the door, but the coat remained in place.
“You’re going to smother,” said Elizabeth.
“Good!” said Cara, folding her arms across her chest.
“Fasten your seat belt,” Elizabeth said, starting the car. “Cara, what happened to make you leave?”
Cara ripped the coat off her head. Her hair frizzed electrically around her face and her green eyes glittered. With rage, Elizabeth was happy to see, and not with tears.
“They called Melody and I the Bobbsey Twins!”
For once, Elizabeth was too dispirited to correct her grammar.
“That wasn’t very nice,” she said.
“They said she was Flossie and I was Freddie, and they’re going to call us that all the time.” She slid as far down in the seat as her seat belt would let her. “I hate Melody. This is all her fault.”
Elizabeth declined to say that it would all blow over. She wasn’t sure she believed it herself. Children were quite capable of fastening on such an incident and carrying its effects well into adulthood. She could imagine Cara and Melody, attending the fiftieth reunion of their Harkness class and being greeted by old friends. “Hey, look, girls! It’s Flossie and Freddie!”
God preserve us all from that, she thought. Being a teenager was hard enough without being deliberately humiliated on a daily basis.
“If anybody calls you Freddie,” she said. “Just refuse to answer. They’ll quit.”
“No, they won’t,” said Cara. “I want to change schools.” She scowled. “It fits Melody, though. Flossie the Cow.”
Elizabeth wanted to slap her.
“If I ever hear those words out of your mouth, or hear that you have said them to anyone,” she told Cara angrily. “I will personally remove from your life the telephone and the television for the next entire year.”
Cara looked at her, her eyes as shuttered as a steel safe door.
“I mean it,” said Elizabeth, more calmly. “It would be wrong and malicious. I don’t care how much you dislike Melody, I will not have you being deliberately slanderous. Do you understand me?”
Cara nodded sullenly.
Elizabeth hoped that guaranteed compliance.
* * *
Cara locked herself in her room as soon as they got home. Elizabeth, on her way to her office, tapped on the door. Cara needed something to do besides ponder her trouble.
No answer, but she hadn’t expected any.
“Would you go downstairs and put a frozen pizza in the oven, please?” she asked. “I don’t have time to fix lunch. And would you bring me a cup of tea and some pizza when it’s ready?”
Cara would, she knew, delay until just before Elizabeth became annoyed enough to take action. How the child could gauge her mother’s state of mind so exactly was a mystery, but she had a genius for it.
Elizabeth went into her office and switched on her computer. The McNulty Paper Box Company, had moved up in the world and, in keeping with its new dignity and increased importance, had become McNulty Paper Container Manufacturing Corporation. They still made boxes, but now they made more sizes, and they had new customers, and they had for the first time issued stock. Elizabeth stuck a disk in her floppy drive, opened their books and began to work.
At a quarter till three, her stomach began to complain of neglect.
Fifteen seconds, she said to herself, and I am going to be really cross with that girl.
And as if by magic, Cara’s door opened and Elizabeth could hear her thumping down the stairs to the kitchen. After considerable noisy activity, she appeared with the pizza and an entire pot
of tea, two cups and two plates, and set them carefully on Elizabeth’s desk. She had folded the napkins in the shape of campaign hats, put pizza on the good china and arranged the entire assembly atop a lace doily on a black lacquered tray.
Elizabeth thought the gesture was a tacit apology.
“Thank you, darling,” she said. “That looks wonderful.”
Cara munched on the pizza and considered her mother speculatively.
Uh-oh, Elizabeth thought, and her suspicion was soon confirmed.
“That was Sara Fane on the phone,” said Cara.
“Yeah?” said Elizabeth warily.
“Yeah,” Cara told her. “She said Dr. Fane said I ought to go to a public school next year. Because of Melody. She knows. She’s a doctor.”
“Oh, is that right?” asked Elizabeth. “Well, she’s a very good orthopedic surgeon. I’d trust what she told me. Did she say if you stayed at Harkness that it might cause hip dysplasia, scoliosis or rotator cuff injury?”
“Probably something like that,” said Cara, encouraged.
The elegant tray was no apology. It was a bribe, softening her up for the touch.
“I guess we’ll have to take the chance,” said Elizabeth. “It would be awful if any of those things happened, but one must sacrifice for a good education.”
She grinned as Cara stomped out of the room.
At seven o’clock, she instructed Cara in the womanly art of tuna-noodle casserole, asked for a small glass of wine and considered calling Steve.
Later, she thought, her head still filled with McNulty and his boxes. Soon as I finish this. If she once heard his voice, she’d stay on the phone for an hour, and she didn’t have an hour to spare. Besides, a good talk with him would be her reward for finishing up with McNulty.
Cara brought the casserole and the wine. Elizabeth ate with one hand and entered data with the other. After a while, her back started to hurt. Got to get one of those ergonomic chairs, she told herself, and glanced at her watch: eleven forty-three.
“Good grief,” she said. It was much too late to call Steve. Considerate of him, she thought, to leave her alone so she could work. But still, she wouldn’t have minded a call just to let her know he was thinking about her.
The television nattered downstairs. Cara was still awake. And tomorrow was a school day. She made Cara go to bed, then worked for two more hours before she finished and could get some sleep herself.
She arose stiffly the next morning at six, dropped Cara at school and carried to Mr. McNulty and his boxes their new accounting software. That evening she staggered home exhausted, laden with carryout tacos from Pancho’s Mexican Villa.
“I’m going to take a short nap,” she said to Cara. “Save me a taco and wake me up if Mr. Riker calls.” She lay on the couch where she’d be sure to hear the phone and woke up, cold, at half past three. Cara had long since gone to bed.
She hadn’t heard from Steve in two days. There was a limit to consideration. At six, when she got Cara up, she intended to call him and demand an explanation.
But Cara came into Elizabeth’s bedroom just before the alarm went off.
Elizabeth sat up in bed. She was so groggy that she couldn’t focus her eyes. “What do you want for breakfast?” she asked, squinting at Cara.
“I can cook my own oatmeal,” said Cara. “So you don’t have to get up. I want to do everything for myself this morning.”
“I’m certainly happy to comply with that,” said Elizabeth. So I’ll just call Steve, right now, she thought. Then her heavy eyes slammed shut and she fell unconscious onto her pillows until after ten o’clock.
“Oh, God. McNulty!” she said, as she leapt out of bed.
The floor was icy. The furnace was off. She leapt into bed again.
Steve.
To hell with McNulty. If he had a problem, he’d call. She’d never had a shy client yet. She’d call Steve this minute. She didn’t care if he was in the middle of saving an alternate universe. She didn’t even care if he were in the middle of saving this universe. She didn’t give a damn if her untimely interruption delayed the publication of his new book by three years. If he was in some arcane writer’s trance, and she was the hateful Person from Porlock who made him mess up the best work he’d ever done, then too damn bad. She was going to force him to surface and demand some attention.
She had to go downstairs to turn on the furnace, but that could wait. Who needed it? She put wool socks on over her pajamas, stuck her feet into her snow boots and bypassed her bathrobe in favor of a full-length down coat with a drawstring hood. It was as ugly as a city dump and so poofy that it would have made Olive Oyl look fat, but it was really, really warm.
Then she sat cross-legged on the bed, picked up the receiver and discovered that the line was dead.
“Rats,” she said to the universe she presumed Steve was now saving and went to search out the cause. The last place she looked was Cara’s room. The bed was neatly made and the phone lay on the coverlet, disconnected.
There was the problem. She set the phone on Cara’s bedside table, stretched out on the bed and called Steve.
“This is the Person from Porlock,” she said.
“I was about to resort to carrier pigeon,” he told her. “Your phone’s been busy since Sunday.”
“Since Sunday?” Elizabeth said, puzzled. “I don’t know why you couldn’t get through on Sunday, but Cara was on it half of Monday night. And I was certainly here last night, all night long. Maybe there’s something wrong with the line.”
“Maybe,” said Steve. “You ought to get it checked.”
“I will, if it happens again. I wondered why you hadn’t called. I was beginning to get my feelings hurt.”
“And vice-versa,” said Steve. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” she said. “When I wasn’t too tired to feel anything at all.”
“Get the program finished?”
“Yep. It’s up and running. It only needs watching for glitches for a couple of days. McNulty, et al, are very pleased.” She yawned hugely. “Actually, all the work has been therapeutic. It’s kept me out of touch with developments.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I understand from Cara that Sara Fane’s mother says Cara will have orthopedic problems ranging from tennis elbow to housemaid’s knee if she doesn’t go to a public school next year.”
Steve chuckled.
“All right for you to laugh,” said Elizabeth. “Melody isn’t bugging you for a transfer.”
“No,” said Steve. “She wants to skip a grade. She’s smarter than Cara, you understand, and much more suited to the rigors of advanced scholastic work and the more sophisticated social milieu of the Third Form.”
“I see,” said Elizabeth, perversely happy to realize that he had kindred problems.
“She did mention that Geordie ought to skip a grade, too,” said Steve. “I believe she plans to talk to him about it.
“God help us,” she said.
“He will,” said Steve confidently. “Want to have breakfast with me?”
“Can’t,” she said. “I’m trouble shooting at Mr. McNulty’s fancy new container corporation, and I am at this moment one and a half hours late. Soon to be two.”
“Thought the program was up and running,” said Steve, very disappointed. “I also thought we’d have breakfast at home. Do you realize I haven’t had a kiss in almost forty-eight hours?”
“Better than you do, I expect,” Elizabeth told him. “Why don’t you and Melody come have supper tonight? I’ll fix some spaghetti or something.”
“No opportunity for kisses there,” said Steve.
“We can play footsie under the table,” she promised. “Best I can do, I swear. I’m going to be at McNulty’s until at least five.”
“I think my hero is going to be in a violent battle today,” said Steve. “He’s going to let an entire universe be wantonly destroyed because he hates all the life forms in it.”
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“Sublimating a bit, are we?”
“Don’t you read Freud? War is a substitute for sex.”
“We have to talk about that,” said Elizabeth.
“Freud and his theories?” asked Steve. “Or sex?”
“Sex.”
“Sex is not a conversation topic. It’s an action sport. I’ll show you next time I have a chance.”
“Yeah, well, the next time we have a chance is what I want to talk about.”
“What’s the matter? Postcoital remorse?”
“Don’t be stupid. I never felt less remorseful about anything. I just know where it’s leading, that’s all.”
“God, I hope so. You’re incredibly dense if you don’t.”
“I’m concerned about setting a good example for the girls. I’ve been telling Cara since she was ten that premarital sex is not a good idea.”
“Marry me now, then,” said Steve. “Solves the problem neatly.”
“Do not bug me about this. I have enough trouble.”
“Look, Libby,” said Steve reasonably. “You and I both know that what’s appropriate for children and what’s appropriate for adults is different. I agree that we shouldn’t carry on a physical affair in front of them, even after we’re married. But with sufficient discretion, we can have what we want and need. All parents, married and unmarried, walk that line. We can do it, too.”
“I agree with that,” said Elizabeth. “But I think I ought to practice what I preach, and so I feel a little hypocritical. I’ve always been honest with Cara.”
Steve was silent for a long minute. Finally he said, “Have you, now? What about the way you’ve deliberately misrepresented Robert?”
There was an immediate explosion, born of guilt and uncertainty.
“How dare you?” Elizabeth asked. Her rage made her voice shake. “I’ve done what’s best for her. I’ve protected her all her life. And I’m going to keep doing it, despite your misguided advice to the opposite.”
“You think that’s good for her?”
“Of course it’s good for her!” Elizabeth said furiously. “Do you think a child ought to know its father is a congenital liar and incapable of fidelity? Let her love him as long as she can. She’ll find out soon enough. And I hope she’ll be forgiving enough to love him regardless of his faults, when she does.”