by Jane Gentry
“Yes, but wasn’t it fun?” She threw the towel over his head and yanked. “Come here.”
He came. “Just what I wanted,” he said.
“No ideas,” she warned, fending him off with a quick hand. “One fast kiss, a loaf of bread and McNulty.” She leaned forward from her waist and let him peck her on the lips.
“Hardly worth the effort,” he said.
“Don’t complain.” She flicked him with the towel.
“You know,” he said, drying himself. “I have a lot of money. Maybe I’ll buy McNulty and his damn boxes. We can have all our conferences in that bed.”
She considered. “Good idea. I’ll ask him if he’ll sell. What shall I say if he wants a partner?”
“Don’t be lewd, madam,” he said. He held up a pair of red bikini panties he’d spotted on the dressing table. “Yours, perhaps?”
She grabbed for them and he held them out of her reach.
“Awful small,” he observed, holding the scanty silk aloft between his thumb and finger. “Is this it? Where’s the rest of them?”
“Gimme,” she said. “You bully.”
“Scandalous,” he told her. “Might as well not wear anything, as these.”
“You wish,” said Elizabeth.
He grinned. “I do, indeed.” He spread the panties in two hands and squatted, holding them for her. “Here. Step in.”
She put one hand on his shoulder and balanced first on one foot, then the other. He pulled the red gossamer into place and kissed her, just below her navel.
“There,” he said. “All fixed, to my intense regret. What next?”
She reached in a drawer behind her and fished up a bra. He put out his hand and she gave it to him.
He looked at it with pure masculine satisfaction. It was red, and it matched the panties. He held it by the straps, so she could put it on.
“You do know, of course, that I’d rather be taking this off you?” he said from behind her as he fastened the catch.
She spun away from him, into the bedroom. He followed and put on his clothes as he watched her dress.
“How would you like to live in Hawaii?” he asked. Elizabeth clad only in a small red bikini every single day was an enchanting idea.
She grinned over her shoulder, having divined his meaning. “Don’t be lewd,” she said.
* * *
It was full dark by five o’clock. Elizabeth built a fire against the chill and started the spaghetti sauce. Cara came downstairs, and Elizabeth pressed her into service as a salad maker. The doorbell chimed just as Cara had finished, and she ran to answer it.
Elizabeth could hear her delighted welcome.
Joe Salvini. Damn. He had come to examine her Civil War memorabilia, of course. She had forgotten all about him.
Cara led him into the kitchen, chattering. “You’re why Mom made me make so much salad,” she said.
“Am I invited to dinner?” he asked, when he saw Elizabeth.
She welcomed him cordially. Maybe this was just the break she needed—Cara and Melody, with Joe to think about, would be too busy to fight with each other.
“I hope you like spaghetti,” she said.
“You ask an Italian that?” he said, grinning. He was dressed in a really wonderful suit. His shirt was starched, still fresh and gleaming white, and his cuff links were small, discreet and obviously real gold.
Come to think of it, he’d been dressed just as expensively on Parents’ Night. Elizabeth had just been too agitated to notice. Must be some restaurant his parents own, she thought.
Curiously she asked, “What’s the name of your restaurant?”
“Con Amore,” he said.
Con Amore. Of course. It wasn’t just a restaurant. It was the restaurant, and as she recalled, his family owned at least five different places that were famous. World famous, actually. She had read about them in Fortune Magazine, once, in her dentist’s office.
“We’re taking a class of kids to cook in Con Amore?“ she asked.
“Why not?” asked Joe. “I learned to cook there.” He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. “May I help with dinner?”
“Help?” said Elizabeth. She handed him a spoon. “I’m not about to give you bottled spaghetti sauce. You’ll have to cook it yourself.”
“Now, now,” he said. “Don’t be a food snob. We can do very well with this and a few extra ingredients.”
“I’ll bet your mother never used a bottled spaghetti sauce,” said Elizabeth, watching as he opened the cans.
“If she did, she never let me know about it,” he admitted. “But I’m not the purist she is.”
He poured the sauce into a saucepan and asked for a big skillet, which Elizabeth produced.
“Now what?” she asked.
He dripped a little of the sauce on his finger and tasted it. “Not too bad,” he announced. “You and Cara can dice onions and garlic.”
Before Elizabeth could move, Cara got a knife and chopping block and put them down on the cabinet beside the stove.
“Here, Mom,” she said. “I’ll get the onions.” She raced for the onions like a manic squirrel, deposited them and when the doorbell rang, ran to answer it with the hasty admonition “You stay there and chop, Mom. I can do everything else.”
Elizabeth, considerably aggravated, watched her go.
“Determined little thing,” said Joe, amused but sympathetic.
“Disastrously,” muttered Elizabeth.
“In a few years she’ll have her own life to worry about,” said Joe. “Then she’ll ignore yours.”
She could hear Lin saying, “This too, will pass, and something worse will come to take its place.”
“I don’t know whether that’s comfort,” Elizabeth said. She lifted her head and listened. “That ought to be Steve and Melody at the door.” She handed the chopping knife to Joe. “I’ll go see what’s holding them up. It’s too cold to stand outside.”
As she passed through the corridor into the den, she heard Cara’s clear, cold, arrogant dismissal.
“You’ll have to come back some other time,” she said. “My mother has company, and she doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Cara!” Elizabeth said. Even for Cara, that was tremendously rude. She looked at Cara’s hostile face and told Steve and Melody to go into the kitchen and help Joe chop vegetables. Then, furious and embarrassed and feeling helpless, she grabbed Cara by the upper arm and dragged the dreadful child to her room.
She removed the telephone and said, as calmly as she could manage, “I will give you ten minutes to pull yourself together, then I will expect you downstairs with two apologies, one for Mr. Riker and one for Melody. You are confined to the house for two weeks, no telephone and no television. For every extra minute you delay, I will add an extra week. I will not tolerate these bad manners, and you’d better make up your mind to change your behavior, right now.”
Cara had that hard, shuttered, wooden look. For a second Elizabeth was almost frightened, both of her own rage and of Cara’s relentless intransigence. The rage would pass without incident. Elizabeth was a grown woman. She had long ago learned to control herself.
But Cara—that was another matter. She had always been willful and stubborn, but she was mathematically analytical. She could generally be reasoned with. But if she believed herself to be in the right, she fought without quarter, and didn’t know when to quit. Elizabeth harbored the hope that as Cara matured, reason would conquer. She wondered, as she shut Cara’s door and went downstairs, if she’d been too optimistic.
Steve had set the table. If anything could have amused Elizabeth at that moment, it would have been the sight of the two big men on domestic KP with kitchen towels around their waists, stirring sauce and making salad and laying out utensils while the lone female in the area sulked at the table, as sullen as a storm cloud.
“Ready to resume chopping?” asked Joe, holding up the knife.
“Naw, I’ll chop,” said Steve, taking over her station
beside Joe. “You go pour us all a big glass of wine, Libby. Some of that ‘66 claret from the basement.” He patted her on the fanny of her tight jeans and directed her toward the basement door.
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder, to see Joe and Steve grin at each other.
“Making a statement?” asked Joe.
“Yep.” Satisfaction.
“Well, you don’t need to,” said Joe equably. “I’ve figured it out already.”
“Good,” Steve said. He juggled three of the onions briefly. “Tell me how you want these chopped.”
“Chunks the size of your thumb.” He looked across the room at Melody. “You’ve certainly set yourself a problem, haven’t you?”
Elizabeth didn’t want to hear any more about problems. She shut her ears against their speech and went after the wine. Once she was in the basement, she didn’t want to come up again. She considered using the phone to send out for apples and cheese and hibernating there, in the eerie half-light, until reason prevailed in the upper world.
It would be a long, long stay. With a knot in her stomach, she climbed to the surface to find Cara lurking outside the basement door, at the bottom of the back stairs.
Elizabeth, looking at her big forlorn eyes and hunted face, almost felt sorry for her. She had been crying. Elizabeth hoped that indicated repentance rather than defeat.
“You want to walk in with me?” she asked.
Cara nodded.
“You understand you’re to stay?” said Elizabeth. “After all, we do have guests.”
Cara nodded again. She wiped her sleeve across her nose and stood.
Her back was straight and her head was high. No penitent, she. She was one hundred percent righteous dissenter, made to do a repugnant deed by forces beyond her control.
“May I presume you’ve made up your mind to be polite?” Elizabeth persisted, seeing danger in Cara’s stance. The potential for subversive action was still alive and well, even if the requisite apology was imminent.
Cara stared at her, balefully. Then she swiveled her head forward and marched into the kitchen.
Oh, well...half a loaf. Elizabeth followed her daughter through the door.
Cara stood like Nathan Hale before the British hangman, with her feet apart and her hands behind her back and her chin elevated and made her declaration in a voice that was strong, if expressionless.
“Thank you, Cara,” said Steve gravely.
He turned his gaze on Melody and waited.
Melody looked at the table and mumbled. “Thank you, Cara,” she said.
Cara sat as far away as she could get from the Rikers, folded her arms and stared at the wall. Over by the stove, Joe shook his head.
“I think the thing to do,” he said to Steve and Elizabeth, “is to pretend they’re not here. They’ll either loosen up and join the conversation or sit here and stew all night. It’s up to them.” And suiting action to words, he handed Steve a bowl of garlic cloves. “You want to mince these for me?”
“All of them?” Steve asked. It wasn’t a large bowl, but it was half-full.
Joe grinned. “What, you think I’m trying to throw a monkey wrench into the romance?”
“Why would you need to?” said Steve. “We’ve monkeys enough already.”
Cara and Melody had created their own little corner of gloom behind the table. Steve gave them a long, considering look.
“Actually,” he said, more to himself than Joe. “The real problem is that we seem to have forgotten who the parents are here.”
Melody and Cara snapped their heads around and glared at him.
“I want the two of you to go watch TV. We’ll call you when dinner’s ready. Now,” he turned to Joe. “How small on this garlic, and how do I peel the damned things?”
Both girls scraped their chairs across the floor in an individual mutiny and let them thud against the wall.
Steve was acting like a father—to both girls, and both had responded immediately to the confidence in his voice. Elizabeth, remembering who was Mommy, said, “Please put those chairs back under the table and straighten the rug.
Impassive compliance. They then left the room. Cara slapped the swinging door with the flat of her hand and disappeared. Melody let the door swing shut then opened it with the tip on one finger, as if it were something slimy, avoiding the area Cara had touched.
Elizabeth sagged against the wall. “God, they’re horrible,” she said. It was the first time she had admitted it to anyone but Steve.
“They certainly are,” said Joe quietly. “I had no idea.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t eat this garlic,” said Steve. “Maybe we should tie it around our necks, instead.”
“I wish I thought that were funny,” said Elizabeth dismally. She uncorked the wine and filled the glasses Steve handed her.
Joe took the bottle from her and let it glub-glub into the sauce. Then he grated Parmesan onto a small plate and poured olive oil over it.
“Here,” he said, setting that and a loaf of Italian bread on the table. “You’ll feel better if you eat something.” He dipped a piece of the bread into the oil and cheese and went back to the stove, munching thoughtfully.
Elizabeth sat in the chair Cara had left. She felt absolutely exhausted. Apples in the cellar were looking better all the time. Steve took the chair beside her, broke off a piece of the bread and fed it to her.
Joe brought the spaghetti and sauce to the table and filled three plates.
“I have to call the girls,” said Elizabeth wearily.
“I wouldn’t,” said Joe. “They’ll give you dyspepsia. My mother always made anyone who was being obnoxious eat after everyone else did. Why should their temper ruin our dinner?”
“I should talk to your mother,” said Elizabeth.
“You should,” said Joe. “Having eight kids has given her some extraordinary insight into the art of raising children.” He waited for Elizabeth to pick up her fork, then he twirled the spaghetti expertly and put a bite in his mouth. In a few minutes he said, “Not to change the subject, but do you still feel like showing me the Civil War stuff?”
“You don’t think our own civil war is violent enough?” asked Elizabeth. “Do you want to know about somebody else’s, too?” She pushed her plate away from her.
She hasn’t eaten a thing, Steve thought. He squeezed her hand and patted it. She turned her palm into his and clung to him. “What Civil War stuff?”
“Things passed down in my family—sword, letters, et cetera. Want to see them?”
“Of course,” said Steve, who was avid about history in any form. Unpublished letters were grist for his mill.
On her way to fetch the box, she looked over the stair rail at Melody and Cara. They sat with their arms folded, watching a situation comedy. Neither of them smiled.
Awful little creatures, she thought. And then, unexpectedly, she was filled with compassion for the two children. She went into the den and bent over the back of the couch.
“Don’t you want some spaghetti?” she asked softly, laying a hand on each rigid back. “You can eat it in here. I’ll even bring it to you.”
A sniff from Cara and another from Melody. Tears welled up in their eyes and their chins quivered. Elizabeth put an arm around each skinny set of shoulders. “And then, as soon as you eat,” she said, “we’ll look at those old pictures. You can show Mr. Salvini the one of the baby, Cara.” She got the spaghetti and put it in front of them.
“When you finish, Melody, you bring the plates into the kitchen, okay?”
Melody squeaked out a yes.
“Cara, after you’re through, go get the box of pictures and letters. I want to show them to Mr. Salvini.”
Cara sniffed again.
“Should I get the sword, too?” she asked, her voice quavering.
“And the sword,” said Elizabeth. She gave each back an encouraging pat and returned to the kitchen. Well. That certainly hadn’t been as hard as she’d thought. Cara and Melod
y seemed almost tractable for once. Maybe Steve had been right. Maybe all that was needed was for her and Steve to take firm control. It certainly seemed to have been effective so far.
Fifteen minutes later, Melody brought in the plates, and they could hear Cara going up the front stairs. She returned with the box of letters and the sword, and a faded Union jacket slung casually across her arm.
“I got this out of the cedar chest,” she said to Elizabeth, indicating the uniform. She put the box and the sword on the table and held the coat up by its shoulders. “Is it okay?”
Joe and Steve were both on their feet, laying out the contents of the box and examining each piece eagerly.
“This stuff ought to be in a museum,” said the historian, picking up a little envelope of pressed flowers and examining them with exquisite care.
“Have you ever thought about publishing these letters?” asked the writer, reading avidly. “What a gold mine of information on day-to-day living. Especially the letters from the wife. Amazing. No doctors, no medicine, the war raging practically outside her bedroom window, and if that weren’t horror enough, having to go every day and read the casualty lists.”
“Why weren’t there doctors?” asked Melody.
“All gone to war,” said her father. “Not that they could do much good, for those old diseases. A cut could kill you then.” He shook his head, imagining himself far away from Elizabeth and the children, worrying about their survival and not being able to help them if they needed it. He put his arm around Elizabeth’s waist and pulled her close.
“But what did people do?” Melody persisted. “What if they needed help, like for the baby? And what’s a casualty list?”
“The newspapers printed the names of men who had been killed or wounded.”
“That would be awful,” said Melody. “To look in a paper and see your husband’s name.”
Unfortunately, Elizabeth could imagine that all too clearly. She could see that other Elizabeth standing in the street with her back to the cold December wind, clutching the baby and scanning frantically through the casualty lists. Could hear the wails and sobs around her as other women discovered, in that public place, that the men they loved were dead. Could see her giving the paper to someone else and walking her cold way home, still worried because she knew the battle count was not complete.