by Jane Gentry
Sammy wouldn’t.
“Is he going to bark all the way to Lin’s?” asked Elizabeth.
“Looks like it,” Steve told her.
Cara took hold of his collar. “Lie down, Sammy,” she said.
Sammy wouldn’t. He put his front legs on the hump in the floor and his fanny on the seat and hung his head over Steve’s shoulder.
Steve elbowed him. “Don’t slobber on me,” he said.
Sammy moved.
“Don’t slobber on me, either,” said Elizabeth, but she put her arm around him. He put his nose into her neck and snuffled. She moved her arm. “I’m going to smell like dog,” she complained.
“He just had a bath,” said Melody. “He smells better than I do.”
Elizabeth turned around and eyed Cara, who already had her mouth open. She subsided into her corner of the car. She and Melody still hadn’t spoken to each other.
Steve turned into a convenience store.
“I told Lin I’d bring some soft drinks for the kids,” he said. “You girls come in with me and pick some out.”
Cara headed for the ginger ale.
“Oh, yuck,” said Melody disdainfully. “That’s so babyish.” She herself had considered ginger ale the pinnacle of sophistication, until she’d discovered sparkling apple cider, put up in champagne bottles. She had a magnum of it in her hand.
Both girls were dressed in skirts and blazers, but Melody had recently begun a growth spurt, much to Cara’s dismay. She actually had a waist and nascent bosoms, of which she was very proud. Cara remained unadorned by nature and considered Melody’s surging development manifestly unfair. She was, she had told Elizabeth indignantly, the only girl in her class who didn’t wear a bra.
The clerk, an older woman, smiled across the counter at Cara. “Never mind her, honey,” she said. “When she grows up, she’ll be glad to have a little sister.”
“She’s not my sister,” said Cara, through her teeth. “And we’re exactly the same age.”
Which was almost true—their birthdays were a month apart.
Melody set the apple cider on the counter and preened.
“Great,” Elizabeth muttered to Steve. “Just what we needed.”
“Stiff upper lip,” said Steve, whose hands were full of ginger ale and colas. “Let’s go, everybody.”
From the car, Sammy moaned pitifully.
Elizabeth felt like doing the same.
When they were back on the road, Cara stewed in silence, while Melody carried on a lengthy and obnoxious monologue about her prospects for skipping a grade.
At last Cara could stand it no longer.
“Why would they let you skip a form?” she asked, dripping scorn. “You can’t even write an A paper in English.”
Unfortunate, but true. Melody had a good head for math, but English didn’t interest her. Cara had much better grades and never let anyone forget it. They traded insults for five minutes.
Finally Elizabeth turned around in her seat.
“Stop that,” she said. “I’m tired of listening to it. And don’t you dare upset Lin’s house with it. Those little boys try to copy what you do, and this mean-spirited sniping is no example to set.”
Neither miscreant looked contrite, but each did, at least, be quiet. Elizabeth, facing forward, could feel hostility like a blanket of doom emanating from the back seat. As Steve pulled into the Vorklands’ drive, she turned around again.
“Be pleasant, even to each other, if it kills you,” she instructed. “The boys think you’re adults, and children feel very insecure if the adults they depend on fight.”
They filed in silence to the house. Johnny met them at the door. Elizabeth happened to enter first, and Johnny flung himself at her legs, yelling, “Me up! Me up!”
Elizabeth picked him up and hugged him. He had on a turtleneck with red dogs printed on it, and denim overalls and little red hightops. He looked adorable.
Sandy followed, with two fingers in his mouth. He had on jeans instead of overalls, and they had slipped down over his little round belly. He looked solemnly at Elizabeth and Johnny, then said to the assemblage at large, “He gots to wear diapers and sleep in a crib.”
By then the rest of the family had appeared to say hello. Daniel and Zach compelled the girls up to the playroom to inspect a fort they’d built of blocks, and Elizabeth, glad to be rid of them for a few minutes, carried Johnny into the kitchen. She looked around her wistfully.
Lin said gently, “The girls giving you two a hard time today?”
“I’m beginning to consider a boarding school,” said Elizabeth. “A convent, with walls twelve feet high.”
Lin grinned. “You find one yet?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t think they have ‘em anymore. I keep searching the back pages of women’s magazines, but all I find are country clubs for underachievers.”
“Which Cara and Melody definitely are not,” said Lin. She dipped her hands in flour and patted at a mound of risen dough.
“Parker House rolls?” asked Elizabeth, seeing the muffin tins sitting on the cabinet. She let John slide off her lap and offered to help.
Lin waved her over to a stack of raw vegetables that needed to be cut for salad. “Steve looked a little tight-lipped.”
Elizabeth related the activities of the past few days as she chopped carrots. “I really thought we were making some progress,” she said mournfully. “And today they sounded worse than ever.”
Lin considered. “Leave them here for the weekend,” she said. “I’ve got some nonpregnant clothes they can wear. Even for Cara, in the attic. I used to be almost that skinny, when I married Tom.”
“You think they’d go for that?” asked Elizabeth hopefully.
“I don’t see why not. God knows I could use the help. I’m sleepy all the time.” Lin poured the salad into a wooden bowl. “I’ll ask them myself.” She went off to the playroom and returned a few minutes later. “All set. You’re a free woman until Sunday afternoon.”
Thanksgiving was an unqualified success.
Chapter Twelve
Steve pulled the car over as soon as they were out of sight of the house.
“Come here,” he said, turning in his seat and holding out his arms.
Elizabeth came. “I hate bucket seats,” she said, leaning across his lap.
“We could move to the back.” He pulled the chignon pin from her hair and let it flow across his arm. Her green eyes glittered wildly as she slipped her arms around his neck.
“We’d get arrested,” she murmured against his lips.
He kissed her slowly, savoring the taste of her, the soft pressure of her breasts against his chest, the feel of her securely in his arms. They hardly ever had the opportunity to be alone, and he was going to make the most of it. He slipped his right hand under her sweater and scraped lightly at the lace over her nipple. He got an immediate response.
“I really ought to get you home,” he said huskily.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “And hurry. We can get arrested from the front seat.”
* * *
Elizabeth unlocked her front door.
“Last one in bed’s a Puritan prig,” she said, racing for the stairs. Steve slammed the door and locked it and took the stairs three at a time until he caught her.
They exploded through the bedroom door, laughing and shoving. Steve collapsed on the old bed and pulled Elizabeth down on top of him.
He gathered her skirt in his hands and rubbed at her bottom. “I hate panty hose, did you know that?”
“Less conversation,” growled Elizabeth. “More action.”
“I love you,” he said. He hooked his thumbs in the hated hose and pulled them partially down.
She pushed up, straight-armed and leaned over him.
“If you really love me, why don’t you do something about Cara and Melody?” she said.
“What would you suggest?”
Elizabeth grinned. She got up and took care o
f the panty hose herself. “Exorcism?”
Steve began to laugh. “Come here,” he said.
“I want another kiss,” she announced.
“I think I can manage that,” he said. “Anything else you want?”
“How about a little loving?”
“I think I can manage that, too.”
“I’m sure you can,” she said approvingly. She put her hands to the buttons of his shirt.
“It’s our pants we have to take off,” said Steve.
“First things first.”
“Okay. Marry me.”
“Oh, Steve, how can I? Those two would destroy us. We’ll have to wait until they’re grown up.”
“They’re never going to grow up, and it’s five years till they’re in college. Never mind growing up. I am not going to wait five years to marry you because we have the two worst children on the East Coast.”
“Are you sure they’re the worst?”
“Damned near it,” he said grimly. “Maybe exorcism isn’t a bad idea at that. Or hypnotism. Now, hypnotism—that’s a good idea.”
“Like this.” She swung his boxer shorts rhythmically in front of his eyes. “You will be reasonable. You will be reasonable.”
“Marry me,” he said again. “We have to take control sometime, Elizabeth. Now’s the time.”
“You call this control?” she asked, grinning.
His clothes were in a heap on the floor, and he was rapidly stripping off the last of hers.
“Marry me,” he said. “Or I stop right here.”
“Oh, no, don’t do that. We’ll get married. We’ll get married.”
“You mean it?”
“Let’s talk about it later,” she said, eagerly running the flat of her hands down his body.
He started to refasten her bra.
“What are you doing?” she asked, alarmed.
“A little judicious blackmail. No marriage, no sex.”
“That’s supposed to be my line.”
“Talk about it now.”
“Okay. I’ll marry you. I have to. I love you too much not to.”
“Will you still mean it in the morning?”
“I’ll still mean it in a century, if I’m still alive to say it.”
“When?” he demanded.
“Christmas,” she said. Christmas, with its anticipation, joy and pleasure. Definitely sometime around Christmas.
“Christmas?” He beetled his brows. “When, Christmas?”
“New Year’s Eve,” she said, with certainty. A time of hope and renewal and looking to the future. Her heart rose inside her like a helium balloon.
He smiled into her shining eyes. “New Year’s Eve it is.” He unfastened the bra again and cast it away from them. “There,” he said, lifting her breasts in his hands. “It’s nice to come to an agreement.”
Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed and held out her hands. “You come here,” she said. She spread her knees so that he could stand between them and bent her head to bite at his thigh.
“Ow!” he said. But he didn’t move.
“Crybaby.” She bit again.
Steve considered it, later, as one of the best afternoons of his life, even though three more very satisfying days followed.
* * *
Sammy climbed into the car on Sunday with the air of an exhausted playboy and responded to all attentions with a grunt. He had snatched and run with so many toys that he was worn out with the hilarity of being chased. He sprawled across the back seat and snored, with his head in Cara’s lap.
“Miggy’s going to have pups,” said Cara. She arranged Sammy’s head so he’d be more comfortable. “The name of the father is Pierre’s Pappy’s Pass the Buck. Isn’t that silly?”
“They’re going to be born on Christmas,” said Melody, who interrupted and took over the story Cara was telling. “Aunt Lin has them all sold, already, because Pappy is really famous. And, Daddy, you know what I did? I took Aunt Lin’s horse, and Uncle Tom’s teaching me how to jump. I didn’t even fall off. I can be in a show next year, if I practice.”
Elizabeth turned around in time to catch the look on Cara’s face: complete disgust, as if she’d stepped in something nasty and had nowhere to scrape her shoe.
So much for détente.
Cara didn’t speak the rest of the way. She kept her head turned away from Melody, staring at the passing landscape. She played idly with the buttons of her shirt or twisted her hair around her index finger or rubbed at Sammy’s wiry coat. Melody, oblivious, talked nonstop about horses, about the prizes she was going to win, about the neat clothes you wore at horse shows, about boys.
Meanwhile Cara seethed with a quiet, furious energy that filled the car like a miasma rising from a swamp.
Steve had taken Elizabeth’s hand as soon as they’d pulled away from the house. She was accustomed now to holding hands with him, and the physical connection with him was strengthening. All the way to Lin’s they had discussed when and how to tell Cara and Melody that they were getting married, and had come to no conclusion as to the proper time. But to announce their intentions now, felt Elizabeth, in this hostile atmosphere, would be disastrous.
During Melody’s monologue, Steve looked across the seat and questioned her with his eyes. She glanced at the girls and shook her head. She just couldn’t stand the thought of any more emotion in the confined space of the car; it seemed about to explode at the moment.
His eyebrows snapped together and his lips tightened. He didn’t say anything but withdrew his hand from hers and put it back on the steering wheel.
Elizabeth leaned her head back and closed her eyes. It seemed a long way home. She thought of the pot roast she’d left simmering, and a wave of nausea swept through her.
* * *
When they walked into the house, with Melody and Cara trailing like a couple of Cassandras, Steve said to Elizabeth, “No more waffling. It’s time.”
He herded the bunch of them into the den, looking as grim as if he were about to announce an execution.
No smile, no conciliation, no preamble. Elizabeth held her breath.
“Elizabeth and I,” said Steve, standing before them like a litigator, with his hands behind his back and a scowl on his face, “are going to get married on New Year’s Eve.”
There was dead silence.
Après moi, thought Elizabeth fearfully. It seemed as if his words hung in the charged air for minutes, during which they flamed and curled and writhed like dragons.
But it was only a nanosecond before Melody shot to her feet. “I won’t live in the same house with her!” she shouted.
“Sit down and be quiet, Melody,” said Steve. His voice was rock hard and cold as death.
Cara rose like a ghost from the couch, wavering and unsteady on her feet, and said to Elizabeth, “I always knew you didn’t love me.”
This was the last straw for Steve. “Your mother does love you,” he told Cara. “We love you both. We also love each other. This silly feud has gone on long enough. We are not going to be blackmailed by a couple of thirteen-year-old extortionists. You’ll live together—” this to Melody “—and you’ll learn to like it.”
Elizabeth, looking at their two intractable faces, foresaw disaster.
“It’s time for dinner,” said Steve. “Come and eat.” He went into the kitchen.
Melody slammed out the front door. Cara fled to her room. Elizabeth lay on the couch and put a pillow over her face.
In a few minutes Steve came to sit beside her. He rubbed gently at her stomach.
“Is it safe to come out?” she asked. The pillow muffled her speech.
“I think so,” he said. He lifted the pillow and laid it aside.
“That was horrible,” she said.
“They’ll come around,” said Steve. The tears in her voice made him heartsick. “We’ll keep coming for dinner, we’ll carry on a normal life, and they’ll get used to it.”
She struggled to sit up and leaned i
nto his arms. “I hope you’re right, but it looks pretty grim to me.”
He brushed the hair away from her face and kissed her temple. “Everything will be okay. You’ll see.” She snuggled against his chest, and his voice rumbled comfortingly in her ear. “They’re just children, Elizabeth. If we lead, they’ll follow. Do you want something to eat?”
She shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”
“Sammy was,” said Steve. “I put some of the gravy out of the pot roast on his kibble.”
Just the thought of eating made Elizabeth sick. “You should have given it all to him,” she said.
“How about a glass of wine, then?” said Steve.
“I’d agree,” Elizabeth said. “But I’m afraid Melody is going to freeze out there in the car. It’s awfully cold.”
Steve didn’t answer this. Instead, he rose and built a fire, then got the wine and a small bowl of mashed potatoes with gravy and set them on the coffee table in front of her.
“I know you don’t want the roast,” he told her, “but I hate for you not to eat.” He bent to kiss her. “I’m going to take Melody home and talk some sense into her. We are going on as we planned, Libby. We’ll be here for dinner tomorrow.”
After he left, she put the pillow over her face again. The potatoes got cold and the wine breathed its efflorescence sweetly into the air, and she didn’t care what became of either of them.
The next morning Cara came down to breakfast calm and dry-eyed and looking determined.
Elizabeth braced herself.
“Are you really going to marry Mr. Riker?” said Cara.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “New Year’s Eve.”
Cara went to school without further comment. She showed up right after sports—no detention, the first day without one in a long, long time. Melody and Steve came for dinner every night. Cara ate quietly and retired to her room; Melody went into the den to read and do her homework. Cara and Melody didn’t speak. They incurred no detention on Tuesday nor on Wednesday nor for the rest of the week. On Saturday, when they were at last able to sleep in, Elizabeth woke at six and lay in bed, staring into the dark. This poisonous, silent truce was almost worse than open battle.