by Jane Gentry
“Daddy loves you and I know it, and if you keep seeing Mr. Riker, I’m going to live in California and you can’t stop me. Daddy said he’d send me the money anytime I wanted to come.”
Elizabeth reached out a trembling hand to brush the wild hair away from Cara’s eyes. Cara flinched away from her.
“Do you know how unhappy that would make me?” asked Elizabeth quietly. “My arms would be so empty. You mustn’t think of such a thing.”
She got up and left Cara’s room. Even with all she had said, she couldn’t bring herself to tell her precious, antagonistic, vulnerable, beloved daughter that Robert didn’t want her, had never wanted her, and never would.
She went back to her room with a heavy heart and crawled beneath a wool blanket and a down comforter, where she lay staring at the ceiling for hours. A winter storm rose with the moon. Dark clouds slid frantically across a darker sky and an icy wind whistled underneath the eaves.
The clouds swept no faster and the sky was no darker than her thoughts.
In the morning, when she went to Cara’s room, it was apparent that Cara hadn’t slept much, either. She lay, hollow-eyed, staring at the ceiling, just as Elizabeth had done. Elizabeth smoothed her hand across Cara’s forehead.
“Don’t you feel well, honey?” she asked. Cara did seem a little warm to her. She went for the thermometer and stuck it in Cara’s mouth.
“You have a fever,” she said, a minute later. “Is your throat sore?” She made Cara open her mouth. Her throat was a bit red, but didn’t show the distinctive little white eruptions of a bacterial infection. Probably just a cold.
“I have to go to school,” Cara croaked. “I have a test tomorrow.”
“If you feel better, you can go this afternoon,” Elizabeth soothed. She went into the bathroom and poked through the medicine cabinet for the aspirin substitute. Couldn’t give a kid aspirin, anymore, she remembered, because of Reye’s Syndrome. There wasn’t much she could do about Cara’s cold, but at least there was assurance that if a secondary infection developed, something could be done about it. How much more worrying these little illnesses must have been one hundred and thirty years ago. When young Elizabeth Thomas was caring for her baby, even a cold could put a child in danger of death.
She gave Cara the tablets and tucked her back into bed. It wasn’t until she was on her way downstairs to make the coffee that she remembered McNulty, at nine o’clock.
“Oh, damn,” she muttered. “I’ll just have to call and cancel again.” If Mr. McNulty wasn’t getting impatient, he ought to have been. She wouldn’t have blamed him. If anything could have made her regret that ecstatic morning in bed with Steve, neglecting McNulty could.
She made tea with lemon and honey in it and carried it up the stairs to Cara. Cara took a few sips and went back to sleep. Elizabeth pattered down to get her coffee and take the paper off the front porch. She’d heard the door rattle as the paperboy passed.
And Steve was coming. How could she have forgotten that? She smiled. He was the one bright spot in what was shaping up to be a pretty bad day. By the time he arrived, she had donned her usual winter garb of sweaters, jeans and loafers and had her curly hair pulled into a ponytail.
“You look sixteen,” he said, when she opened the door to him. “I love it, but are you sure McNulty will?” He had a bag of fresh bagels in one hand and Sammy’s leash in the other.
“No McNulty today,” she said, kissing him hello. She freed Sammy and kissed him, too. “Mama loves you best,” she told Sammy, grabbing his whiskers and touching her nose to his.
“At least I got the first kiss,” Steve said. He set the bagels on the foyer table as he shed his coat. “Why no McNulty?”
“Cara’s sick.” She picked up the bagels and led Sammy into the kitchen by dangling them in front of him. He sat by the table and slavered.
“What’s the matter with her?” Steve asked. “She looked a little wan last night, but I thought it was just because she was mad.”
“A cold, I guess. She has fever and a sore throat and a headache and just feels generally bad. I can’t go off and leave her.” She gave Sammy a bagel. He carried it into the dining room, so he could dine in elegance on an antique oriental rug.
“You could if you left her with me. I’ve had lots of experience with tea and cookies and bringing sick little girls soup.”
“She wouldn’t like it.”
He grinned. “She probably wouldn’t, but it won’t make her any sicker, and you won’t have to leave poor McNulty in the lurch. Besides,” he said, “I feel like I owe him something.”
“That you do,” Elizabeth told him. “Okay. It’s a deal. I’ll go dress. Can you make oatmeal?”
“No. I hate oatmeal. How about a nice bagel and some scrambled eggs? I can manage that.”
She grabbed his ears as she had Sammy’s whiskers and kissed him soundly. “I adore you, did you know that?”
“It’s about time,” he said. “God knows I’ve worked hard enough to get it. Are you sure I haven’t lost out to Sammy?”
“Well, I wouldn’t push my luck,” she said, as she headed for the back stairs. “He’s very appealing.”
Elizabeth, as she dressed, smelled burning toast. “That would be the bagels,” she thought, grinning. She took a winter white wool suit from her closet, thought of Sammy and put it back. She had, somewhere in all these cleaner’s bags, a lovely heather brown tweed. Sammy ought to match that just fine, and she could pet him to her heart’s content. Finally she confined her curly hair into a bun, approved of her image in the mirror and left the room.
Now for the hard part. She crept into Cara’s room and touched her cheek.
Cara, seeing her mother dressed, said with dismay, “Are you leaving?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “But Steve’s here, if you need anything.”
Cara’s eyes flamed, and not with fever.
“And,” said Elizabeth hastily. “He brought Sammy. Do you want me to bring him upstairs?”
Cara scowled and closed her eyes again. “Yes,” she said.
“Want some more tea?”
“Yes,” Cara said. Elizabeth bent to kiss her cheek, and Cara held up her arms for a hug. Elizabeth pulled the blankets up around Cara’s shoulders and kissed her again.
Then she said, “Cara, mind what I said about being polite,” and went downstairs to the eggs and burned bagels.
“How’s she feeling?” Steve asked, when Elizabeth appeared in the kitchen. He was scraping the burned bits off the bagels into the sink.
“Feverish.” She sat at the table.
“Too feverish to complain?”
“No. She objects to you but considers Sammy a sufficient compensation.”
Steve smiled. “Sammy the Conciliator.”
Sammy, sitting beside Elizabeth, heard his name. He laid his huge muzzle on the table and stared fixedly at her plate.
“Bad dog,” she scolded. She gave him half a bagel.
“You’re impossible,” said Steve.
“He is not,” Elizabeth retorted. “A bagel now and then won’t hurt him.”
“I wasn’t talking about him,” Steve told her. “Do you have any idea how his manners have deteriorated since he met you? It’s scandalous.”
“He has perfectly wonderful manners,” Elizabeth said. “He never grabs and he never takes anything without asking.”
“You call laying that fur ball of a head on the table asking?“
“You’re just jealous because he’s better looking than you are,” said Elizabeth. Steve’s bagel was loaded with cream cheese and raspberry jelly and ready to eat. Elizabeth lifted half of it and fed it to Sammy, bite by bite. “There. That’s two whole bagels. That’s enough for one big dog.”
“I see I’m going to have to be faster if I’m going to get anything to eat while he’s got you around to pilfer for him,” said Steve. He moved his plate out of her reach.
“You don’t have to do that,” said Elizabeth, who
had gulped her breakfast and was now preparing to leave. “I told him he couldn’t have any more.”
“You can’t have any more are the only five words in English that he doesn’t understand.” Steve stood to walk her to her car.
* * *
The tea, he thought, as he brewed it, didn’t have any nourishment in it. He rooted about in the pantry until he found some instant rice, which he cooked until it was soggy. Then he sprinkled it with sugar and cinnamon and poured a little milk on it. It looked awful, but Melody loved the stuff when she was sick. Maybe Cara would, too. He put the tea and the rice on a tray, added a couple of bagels as an afterthought, called Sammy and went upstairs.
Cara squinted up at him from her nest of blankets. “Where’s Sammy?” she said.
Sammy put his big nose on the bed and licked her face.
“If you’ll move your legs a little, he’ll get up here with you,” Steve said.
She moved her legs, and Steve patted the space she’d left. Sammy sprang up joyously, circled two or three times and flopped down so vigorously that the bed bounced like a trampoline. Cara looked pleased. She sat up so she could pat Sammy’s head.
“If you try to make him get off,” Steve told her, “he pretends to be in a coma.”
She almost smiled at that. Her blue flannel pajamas were twisted and looked uncomfortable and her hair fuzzed messily around her face.
If I knew her a little better, Steve thought, I’d offer to tie that hair back so it wouldn’t bother her.
“You ready for a little breakfast?” He produced the rice.
“I’m not hungry,” said Cara, looking at it suspiciously.
“My mother used to make me this, when I was sick,” said Steve, dipping the spoon into the mush and poking it at Cara, as if she were a baby. “It’s got brown sugar and cinnamon in it.”
She was feeling ill enough to want to be pampered, even if Steve was the pamperer. She opened her mouth.
“That’s good,” she said reluctantly. She opened her mouth again. After five or six bites she took a sip of the tea and lay down. “Can Sammy stay?”
“I don’t know how I’d make him leave,” Steve said, patting her legs.
Sammy slitted his eyes when Steve got up and collected the food but made no move to follow him, even when he walked out of Cara’s room with the bagels in his hand. Steve decided to leave the door open so Sammy could get out if he wanted to. As he left, he glanced over his shoulder to see Sammy snuffle happily and snuggle against Cara’s legs.
Cara’s pajama sleeve fluttered as she reached down to scratch his ears.
“Aorrwr,” he complained, when she withdrew her hand. She smiled as she burrowed into her pillows. Sammy inched his way up the bed so he could put his head on her hip. She patted him again and he subsided with a satisfied “Mrroph.”
Steve got a pad and pencil from Elizabeth’s office and looked in on Cara again as he passed her door. She was asleep with one hand on Sammy’s big head.
He whistled as he went downstairs.
* * *
Elizabeth returned at noon.
“How’d it go?” she asked, as she came into the kitchen.
“Very well,” said Steve, who was proud of his success. “I fixed her some breakfast, and she ate it. She and Sammy are still asleep.”
“She wasn’t rude?” said Elizabeth.
Steve grinned as he kissed her. “She didn’t feel well enough to be rude.”
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” said Elizabeth ruefully.
“I think it’s bad,” said Steve. “I hate to see her sick. Go check on her, and I’ll put some lunch together.”
“What kind of lunch?” asked Elizabeth, remembering the primitive breakfast.
“Tuna salad,” said Steve.
“And how do you make tuna salad?” Elizabeth wanted to know.
“Tuna and mayonnaise,” Steve said. “Why?”
“Go back to what you were doing,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll put lunch together.”
“You don’t like my cooking,” Steve said.
Elizabeth pinched his cheek. “What you do can hardly be called cooking, my heart, try though you may. I don’t see how Melody managed to grow up without rickets or something.”
“Does this mean we’re invited to dinner?” he asked. He put his arms around her, and she leaned against them.
“Of course. Any night. Every night, if you want to. But only if Sammy comes, too.”
“I’ll buy the groceries,” he offered.
“You can help pay for them,” Elizabeth said, smiling at him. “But you all too obviously don’t have any idea how to buy them. Your poor child.”
“I’m an idiot savant,” he agreed. “I’m only good at one thing.”
“Two things,” she said. “And that’s sufficient to keep me happy forever. Go back to your plotting, or whatever that is you have spread all over the table. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Cara was still asleep, and Sammy snoozed beside her. When Elizabeth kissed her, she woke up and said, “Sammy’s taking a nap with me.”
Sammy raised his head, but made no move to get off the bed.
“Grin, Sammy,” said Elizabeth, scrubbing at his curly pate with her knuckles.
Sammy grinned.
Cara laughed. “I love that,” she said.
“And how are you, pet?” Elizabeth asked. “Now that you’ve slept all morning?”
“Better,” said Cara.
Elizabeth got a hairbrush and two red ribbons off the dresser and helped Cara sit up.
“You’re a mess,” said her doting mother. She straightened the pajamas and put Cara’s hair into two near braids. “I understand Steve made you some breakfast. What was it?”
“Some goop with brown sugar and cinnamon,” Cara said.
“And was it good?”
“Yeah,” Cara said. “I guess. It was soft on my throat.”
“And how is your throat?”
“Not sore anymore. Can I...” Backtrack. “May I go to school this afternoon?”
Elizabeth laughed. “In this case, your first instinct was correct. It’s can I. No. You’re still sick. So you’re not able to go.”
“I can’t tell the difference,” Cara grumbled.
“We’ll talk about it later,” said Elizabeth, tugging at a braid. “You want some lunch?”
“I guess,” said Cara. “What?”
“How about some nice chicken noodle soup?” She got Cara’s bathrobe and helped her into it, then searched for her slippers. One was under the bed, the other was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s the other one of these?” she asked.
Cara didn’t know.
Elizabeth tossed the lone slipper into the closet and got Cara into socks and sneakers.
“There,” she said. “Wash your face and brush your teeth and come downstairs.”
Cara came to the table carrying the book she was reading and set it beside her bowl. Steve noticed the title and author and asked, “How many of those have you read?”
“All of them,” Cara told him. Sammy ambled over and put his head in her lap. She gave him her toast, and he lay down under her feet to eat it.
“I have some others I think you’d like,” said Steve. “I could bring you some, if you want me to.”
Cara slurped at her soup, torn between her desire for the books and her unwillingness to consort with the enemy. The books won.
“Okay,” she said.
She left her bowl half-full on the table and went back up to bed. Elizabeth broke some toast into it and set it on the floor for Sammy, who ate much more enthusiastically than had Cara. When he’d licked it clean, he stood in front of the sink and barked.
Steve got up. “I need a bowl for water,” he said.
“Is that how he lets you know he’s thirsty?” Elizabeth asked, mightily impressed. “That’s really smart of him, to know where the water comes from.” She got a bowl and filled it and set it on the floor.
�
�He not only knows where water comes from,” said Steve. “He wants the bowl cleaned out and refilled every time he wants a drink. It gets to be a nuisance. Day after tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Do you think Cara’s going to be well enough to go to Lin’s?”
“I expect so,” Elizabeth said, whisking the soup bowls into the dishwasher. “I don’t think she has any fever this afternoon, and her color looks better to me. I may send her back to school tomorrow.”
Sammy finished his drink and wiped his chin across Steve’s pants.
“Damn it, Sammy,” he said. He got some paper towels and soaked up the water on Sammy’s beard. “I hate it when you do that.”
They sounded like parents, she thought, discussing the minutiae of kitchen and kids and dogs and daily life. And it was no illusion. Cara was thawing toward Steve, Steve treated Cara as tenderly and gently as he treated Melody—he was a good father, and Cara, Elizabeth thought, was beginning to respond to that, a little. A comfortable contentment filled her, hope and stability and Steve’s committed presence combined to make her feel more secure than she had since they’d met.
Sammy climbed the stairs, presumably hunting for Cara.
“I’ve got to go back to work,” said Steve. He got a paper towel and wiped up the water Sammy had dripped on the floor.
“So do I. Are you going home?”
“I can work here in the kitchen, if you don’t mind,” Steve said, “Plotting is a pencil and paper job for me. Give me a kiss and get out of here so I can concentrate.”
Elizabeth went up to her office, floating on air. For the first time in weeks she worked without worry clouding the back of her mind. She’d have to call Lin later, she thought, and find out what to bring for Thanksgiving dinner. Cara and Melody hadn’t exactly called a truce, but all those little boys were wonderful buffers, and Cara truly enjoyed the Vorklands. The day, which had started out so badly, had turned out very well. Even the prospect of the girls scowling at each other across the supper table didn’t cause Elizabeth any discomfort. She’d had victory enough for one day.
* * *
On Thursday morning Steve drove away from Elizabeth’s house with a carful of girls, dogs and pies. The pies were safely in the trunk, but Sammy could smell them and kept barking into the hole where the armrest went. Melody turned him around several times and said, “Sammy, sit!’