by Robyn Carr
The printer sat on top of a small bookcase that held some very different titles. Collections of Dickens, London, Melville, Tolstoy, even Austen. There was an old copy of The Jungle Book, a children’s edition of Tom Sawyer, and other classics. There were hardcovers and paperbacks. The Little Prince, and Illusions, by Richard Bach. Did he read them, or were they here for another reason? Had they been his wife’s? She finally picked up a copy of Moby Dick and, caressing it, went downstairs to luxuriate in the living room again. And to wait.
For him. What kind of guy can do this? she asked herself again. Give a complete stranger, who’s obviously in a mess, a key to his house? And be so unworried? It was pretty hard not to like this guy. She liked his house, his generosity, his soft spot for a couple of unlucky kids. The thing that bothered her the most was that she couldn’t quite tell if she liked him as a friend…or a man.
Then it was Friday, her third day in Mike’s house. She knew she shouldn’t complicate things. But she wanted to know about the man who owned interesting books and clothed and fed them because it was “just happening.” Her note said: “Will be at the library today until 2:00 p.m. Appointment downtown with landlord at 2:30. Do you like tacos? We’ll eat at 5:30–6:00 or so. Join us if you can. C.”
She was back at the house by four. On the bottom of her note were some pencil scratchings. “I’ll bring beer. M.”
She showered and washed her hair. She was eager for his presence, for his approval and his concern. She would promise not to take up his space for long, and maybe she would learn a little more about the man who locked the tool cupboards to keep the children safe, the man who kept classics in one room and new fiction in another. The man who would bring beer, even though there was already beer in the refrigerator. He had been here, but his presence had flowed through without leaving a mark. Had he been here every day? Waiting for just such an invitation?
No way could he flow through her life without leaving a mark; already, she would never be able to forget him. He had touched them all in a permanent way. The way life can be forever changed by the smallest act. A man gives a quarter for a cup of coffee, but instead of coffee the recipient makes a phone call for a job and ends up being president of the company, makes millions, tells the story in the New York Times.
When he arrived he rang the bell. Carrie let him in, and Cheeks growled.
“Hello, Mr. Cabinaugh,” Carrie said. “Mommy, Mr. Cabinaugh is here for tacos. Our mother is being very careful with your house, Mr. Cabinaugh.”
“Carrie, you can call me Mike,” he said, picking her up. She was light as a feather. A six-pack in a brown paper bag was under his other arm. “Are you feeling better?”
“Was I sick?” she asked him.
“No, but your house burned down.”
“Oh, that wasn’t our house, we were renting it. We had a ’partment before. Are you feeling better?”
He smiled broadly. “Was I sick?” He liked the games precocious children played.
“No, but our mother says we’ve taken your house.”
He laughed, delighted. His laugh rumbled through the house, and Cheeks nearly lost his composure, seriously growling. “I loaned it to you because I wanted to. Have you told him yet that this is my house?”
“Maybe if you give him part of your taco, he’ll start to like you.”
“No way. He can like me or not, I don’t care.”
“Maybe he’ll bite you if you don’t share,” she said.
He looked at her in such shock that her giggle exploded. Both her hands came together in a clap; she’d teased him good.
“He won’t bite you really,” she said.
Mike wished that adults could look at one another the way children looked at people. A child’s look was so unashamed, so blatantly invasive. They wanted to see you. They looked hard. Without flinching or feeling self-conscious, looking you square in the face to see what you were made of, what you were about. And they didn’t care a bit that you saw them looking. If adults could do that, friendship wouldn’t take so long.
“Maybe we should have a fire tonight,” he said. “It’s cold and rainy outside.”
“Our mother says the fireplace is brand-new.”
“It’s been used. Come on,” he said, even though he carried her into the kitchen where the sound of meat sizzling indicated Chris was working.
Tacos were not fancy by anyone’s standards, but Mike thought the kitchen smelled wonderfully homey; she might as well have been baking bread. And she might as well have been wearing an evening gown; she cleaned up real good. But it was only a pair of jeans. His eyes went right to her small, shapely rear, although when she turned around to greet him he shifted his gaze guiltily to her face. She smiled and said hello, and he began to color because he had sex on his mind and was afraid she would know. It had been a while since he’d had that reaction. He hardly knew this woman, but he couldn’t wait. He was somewhat ashamed, somewhat relieved. He had hoped that part of him wasn’t all used up. He also hoped he wasn’t going to be terribly disappointed when he didn’t get things his way, which he suspected he wouldn’t. He handed her the bag. “Smells good. Can we have a fire? The screen is safe, and I’ll watch the kids.”
“That would be good. I don’t want them to be afraid of safe fires.”
He cocked his head to look at her, impressed. “I thought you might be more nervous about it…after losing everything.”
“I have them,” she said, smiling. “The other stuff wasn’t that valuable.”
Kyle was sitting on the counter by the sink, and Mike grabbed him with his free hand. Holding a kid on each hip, he hauled them off to the living room to get the fire started while Chris fixed tacos.
She heard him talking to her children, and she peeked around the corner to see what was going on.
“We’re going to stack the logs very carefully, like this, so they won’t fall. What would happen if a log fell off the grate while it was on fire? That’s right, it might fall right out of the fireplace and onto the rug. Uh-huh, we have to put some paper underneath, here, like this, to start the fire easier. Yep, the wood would burn without the paper, but the paper makes it hotter quicker. Paper burns very easily. Now, Kyle, is that very hot? Yes, you must not go closer than this. The screen will be very hot, too, while the fire is burning. There, isn’t that warm and pretty?”
Chris handed him a cold beer. “Thanks,” he said.
“About ten minutes for tacos.”
“The kids want a drink, too, don’t you?” Both kids stared at him hopefully. “Chocolate milk?” Their eyes became wider, more hopeful.
“Uh, Mike, they should come into the kitchen….”
“They can’t see the fire in the kitchen.” He saw Carrie and Kyle holding back gurgles of desire.
“What if someone spills?” Chris persisted.
“So? We want chocolate milk by the fire. Don’t we?” He looked at one, then the other, and they nodded very carefully. Carrie’s tongue was poking out of her mouth, and her eyes beseeched her mother’s sense of adventure.
“All right,” she said. She heard them laugh, all three of them. When she was safely in the kitchen stirring chocolate into glasses of milk, a smile ran through her body. He was spoiling them, giving in. Thank you, God. He was gentle and giving and fun, and they would remember him forever. Chris had been worried about the total absence of male role models for them, but she had lacked the time, energy or courage for even the most innocent of relationships with men. Also, she had thought it necessary to keep them safe from her poor judgment. She had really messed up when she picked Steve. This was good; they needed a decent man to think about, to remember. As did she.
She brought them their drinks, a beer for herself. “I turned the meat off for now. It looks like we’re going to have a cocktail hour here,” she said.
“Good,” he said, passing the milks. “Relax. Enjoy yourself.”
She sucked in her breath and flinched as her younger child sloshed hi
s drink to his mouth. Before long Kyle’s indelible mark would be on the fireman’s rug.
“I said, relax. I could throw a cup of chocolate on the carpet right now just to get it over with if it’ll help you calm down. Don’t be so nervous.”
“It’s just that everything is so nice. Practically new.”
Mike knew, as he had known the very night her house burned down, that although she seemed to own almost nothing of any value, she was not a person who had done without all her life. She didn’t come from poor people. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. He had come from poor, blue-collar Irish Catholics transplanted from the East Coast. His mother had fried round steak on special occasions; his father had said, “Chewy? Good for your teeth.” The way Chris talked, or walked, or held her head, or something, he knew she had grown up differently. “It’s new because it’s hardly been used, Chrissie. That isn’t necessarily good.” That won him a grateful smile. “What did the landlord say?”
“He said he’d get back to me.”
“What?” That made Mike a little angry.
“Actually, he offered me a few hundred dollars—my original deposit. But he wanted me to sign a paper that promised we were uninjured and wouldn’t seek a larger settlement. I wouldn’t sign it. I told him that I lost several thousand dollars’ worth of stuff—none of it new, but none of it stuff that we could spare. It’s not as though it was my fault, really, although I should have had some insurance. I would have expected him to be a bit more compassionate.”
“Son of a bitch. Sorry,” he said, glancing at the kids. “Now it’ll only go harder on him. Sue him.”
“I’m not really the suing kind,” she said, and thought about adding, anymore. “But I will try to get a little more money out of him.”
“A bunch of money. The fact is, you could’ve all been killed.”
“I know,” she said, shuddering. “I’ve given a lot of thought to that.”
She had condemned herself for the risk she had exposed Carrie and Kyle to, living on pride as she was, struggling to be independent. Renting a cheap, crummy house in a questionable neighborhood when Aunt Flo would have taken them in—probably after a mere tongue-lashing and Chris’s promise never to disobey again. Her kids could have more, be safer. It only meant admitting that she had been a fool, a senseless fool, and she had already been punished plenty for that.
But having more had never been the issue. Even though she had grown up rich, she didn’t miss luxury all that much. She wanted to recover, not beg forgiveness. She wanted to make herself safe, not sink into someone else’s provisions. She wanted to call Flo and ask if they could make up, not call Flo and ask for plane fare. She didn’t want to be completely beaten, a total victim. She had been teetering on the edge before, ready to pick up the phone and call Chicago collect, but she always managed to steal one more day of independence. Pride. Her father’s gift to her. Fierce and unyielding. And sometimes quite tiring.
“I haven’t called my aunt yet,” she said apologetically.
“No hurry on that,” he said. “Did you find the printer?”
“Yes. And books—wonderful books.”
“My brother,” Mike said. “I’m the oldest one in the family and wasn’t interested in college. I just wanted money and a man’s work—my father’s son, all right. The other kids are all hotshot brainy types. Tommy—he’s about twenty-nine, I guess—is a professor. Big-shot professor. And a coach. Every time he was working on a book with his class, he wouldn’t shut up about it. You’d think he was gossiping about the neighbors, he was so wound up and chatty. He’d always give me a copy.” He laughed at himself. “I never let on that I read them, but I read them. Hell, with Tommy carrying on for weeks, it’s like taking the class.”
“I had a little college myself,” she said. “Two years. I studied literature.”
“Then you know,” he said, as if there were a club for the few people who cared enough to discuss the little-known secrets about things that happened inside books, a small group who entered these classic stories, lived in them briefly but were forever changed, deeply touched.
During tacos they talked about Chris’s writing, even though she usually tended to be secretive about that, too. She was slightly embarrassed about her novice status and the enormity of her ambitions. She wanted to be the next J.K. Rowling. Her love of books had begun these dreams, but it was the way creating a story of her own could take over her life, consume her thoughts, charge her with energy, that kept her enthusiasm so high. It took her away from her petty, surface concerns, while at the same time making her probe more deeply into her inner self than was possible to imagine.
She especially liked stories for kids; there was something magical about them, and she identified so closely with the emotional impact of their experiences.
“I don’t think everyone remembers details from their childhood the way I do,” she offered in partial explanation. “I remember what I was wearing the day Barbara Ann Cruise pushed me out of the lunch line; I remember the exact feeling of being third-to-the-last picked for the soccer team. It might as well have been last to be that unpopular. And the first boy-girl party, sixth grade. I know I was the only one not invited, and I was so miserable and hurt that my mother let me sleep with her. I remember those feelings so exactly that it’s almost scary.”
And, she explained, she loved kids in general. Loved what they had to build on, endure, traverse, overcome, become. Had she finished her degree, likely she would have chosen a field in which she would be working with children—probably teaching at the elementary level.
She was amazed at how she went on and on, how natural it felt, and how nice it was to have someone encourage her to continue.
“Do you want more children?” he asked her.
“I’d like to concentrate on doing all right with these two. I’ve got no real job skills, but I’m a good writer. Eventually I want to stay home with the kids and write for a living. Writing for kids is the only thing I’ve ever done that feels right.”
Carrie and Kyle asked to be excused and ran off to play quietly.
“How about if you remarry?” he prodded.
“No chance of that,” she said emphatically. “My ex went on a business trip and never came back. Before Kyle was even born. Now my future is in these two hands,” she said, holding up her palms.
“Never say never; gets you into trouble.”
“I’ll be fine. I land on my feet. When times get real tough, I work overtime, or I clean houses. If I clean for people who are away working, I bring the kids along. And with that schedule, I can write. As long as I take care of the kids and do enough writing so that I feel I haven’t given up every little dream I ever had, then I’m as happy as I expect to be.” She watched his face. “Maybe I won’t write great books,” she said. “I’ll write a few good books if I work very, very hard—books like the kind you have in your bedroom, books that entertain, that help people imagine, get away and expand a little. The kind you have in your study, people are born to write.”
He smiled a small smile.
“I didn’t sleep in your bed,” she said.
“I know,” he replied quietly.
They shifted their eyes away. She wondered how he knew, wanted to ask, but had too much fun with the fantasy. Had he rigged something? Left a pencil on the bed? Positioned the bedspread just so?
He had glanced away because he was embarrassed by how he knew. When she was gone, doing errands, he had lifted the pillows from his bed, hoping to smell her on one of them, disappointed when he had not. He had thought about the pillow on the hide-a-bed but had restrained himself.
He was relieved when the children chose that moment to interrupt. They all played a game of Candyland in front of the fire and watched a thirty-minute Muppets rerun on TV. Mike scratched Cheeks behind the ears, inadvertently creating a slapstick routine with the terrier. Every time he reached toward the dog, Cheeks snarled blackly, then allowed the scratch anyway. The game made t
he children laugh with uncontrolled passion.
At eight o’clock Mike turned off the television. The fire was dying down. He turned on the light behind his recliner, pulled the kids onto his lap, and opened a big Richard Scarry picture book. He began to read.
At eight-thirty Kyle was asleep on Mike’s chest with his thumb in his mouth. But Mike was still reading. His shoes were off; his voice was growing slower and scratchier. Chris stood and hovered over them. “Come on, Carrie. Bedtime. I’ll help you.”
“Not yet, Mommy. I want to fall asleep here, like Kyle did.”
“It would be better if you brushed your teeth and fell asleep in your bed,” Mike said gently, kissing her forehead.
“Okay,” she said, “but first finish the story.”
“I’ll read to you again next time. Let Mommy put you to bed.”
Chris lifted Carrie out of the recliner. “Let me get Carrie settled, then I’ll come back for Kyle.”
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t offer to carry Kyle. He wanted to be left alone with him for a few minutes, alone in the dim evening with a child in his arms. Mike embraced the little boy tightly. He inhaled the smell of his hair, the redolence of child. Tangy. Sharp. Kyle snored when his thumb came out of his mouth. Mike put it back in. Childhood was so short.
Too soon, Chris took him away. Mike felt a choking sensation in his throat and something binding his chest. He reached behind him to turn off the lamp. The living room was bathed in firelight, glowing but dark. When Chris returned to the living room she said, “There,” in that way a mother does when her duties are done, even though she’s still on call. Joanie had said it that way when she finally tucked rambunctious Shelly into bed; that kid wanted to go all night.
Then Chris sat on the sofa and looked at him. He knew he was caught in the shadows and that she might see the tear that had slipped down his cheek. He decided he wouldn’t wipe it away because then she would know for sure. He wasn’t ashamed of emotions like these, but crying was so intimate, and he didn’t want to invite her in any further yet. He wasn’t all that sure this was something she could share. She must have known, however, because she gave him a few moments of respectful silence while he suppressed his emotions. She did, after all, know of his losses.