And Peter had a sly look in his eye when he asked her at breakfast the next day if he’d won his bet.
“No, you lost this time,” she smiled, and laughed.
“You mean he didn’t kiss you, Mom?” Peter looked disappointed and Megan made a face of utter outrage.
“You’re disgusting,” she accused him. “Whose side are you on?”
“Mom’s,” he said clearly, and then he turned back to his mother. “Would you tell the truth if he did, or would you lie just to win the ten bucks?” He loved teasing her, and she laughed as she made them all pancakes.
“Peter, how insulting! I have more integrity than to lie to my own flesh and blood to win a bet.” She handed him a plate of pancakes and poured syrup on it.
“I think you’re lying, Mom,” Peter accused her.
“I’m not. I told you, we’re just friends, and I like it like that.”
“Keep it that way, Mom,” Rachel added. Another country heard from. Liz looked at her youngest daughter with interest.
“When did you get interested in this?”
“Peter says he likes you, and Meg says you’re going to marry him.” In some ways, she was sophisticated for eleven. She was nearly twelve, but not quite. She had just turned eleven when her father died, and like all of them, she had grown up a lot in the past year, as had their mother.
“Let me reassure you all,” she said with a broad smile, as they finished their breakfast, “two dinners do not constitute an engagement.”
“It’s too soon for you to be going out,” Annie added, looking at her sternly.
“And when do you think it would be appropriate?” her mother asked her with interest.
“Never,” Megan answered for her younger sister.
“You’re all nuts,” Peter said, as he got up from the breakfast table. “Mom can do whatever she wants. And Dad would think it’s fine. Dad would be dating by now, if it had happened to Mom instead,” and she realized as she listened that by the grace of God it could have. And she thought Peter’s comment interesting, as she mulled it over on her way to work. Would Jack have been dating by then if she had died instead? She had never thought about it, but she suspected he might. He had a healthy attitude about life, and too much joie de vivre to get buried in a closet, mourning her. Peter was right. Jack probably would have been dating. It made her feel better about seeing Bill Webster.
He called her in the office that day, and asked her to go to the movies with him again the following weekend. They seemed to be seeing a lot of each other suddenly, and she didn’t mind. She enjoyed him.
And this time when he came to take her out, Jamie let him in, and brought him up-to-date on the situation.
“My sisters don’t think you should be taking Mom out. But Peter thinks it’s all right, and so do I. The boys like you, and the girls don’t.” He summed it up for him nicely, and Bill laughed out loud and mentioned it to her on the way to a small French restaurant in Sausalito.
“Are they really upset that we’re dating?” he asked with interest.
“Are we?” Liz asked easily. “I thought we were just friends.”
“Is that what you want, Liz?” he asked her gently. They were at the restaurant by then, and he had just pulled into the parking lot as he turned to look at her. He was anxious to hear how she answered the question.
“I’m not sure what I want,” she said honestly. “I have a good time with you. This just kind of happened.” It was how he felt as well, but he was beginning to feel more for her than he’d expected. At first, he would have been satisfied to be her friend, but now he wasn’t as sure. He was beginning to think he wanted more from her. But they didn’t press the point any further, as they walked into the restaurant, and stayed off heavy subjects for the rest of the evening.
But this time, when he took her home, Peter would have won the bet, if there had still been one. Just before Bill walked her into the house, he pulled her carefully into his arms, and with a look of tenderness in his eyes, he kissed her. She looked a little startled at first, and then she relaxed in his arms, and kissed him back, but afterwards she looked sad, and he was worried.
“Are you all right, Liz?” he whispered.
“I think so,” she said softly. For a flash of an instant, kissing him made her think of Jack, and she almost felt as though she were cheating on him. She wasn’t hungry for a man, she hadn’t been looking for anyone, but Bill Webster had walked into her life, and now she had to deal with her feelings about him, and her late husband. “I didn’t expect that,” she said, turning to look at him, and he nodded.
“Neither did I. It just kind of happened. You’re an amazing woman.”
“No, I’m not,” she smiled at him, as they lingered outside. It was nice to be out in the fresh air, and not within earshot of her children. It would have made her uncomfortable if they had been aware of what had just happened. And as though to reinforce what they had both felt that night, he kissed her again, and this time she kissed him back with greater fervor. She was breathless when they stopped and a little worried. “What are we doing?” she asked, as they stood beneath the stars of a September night, and he smiled at her.
“I think we’re kissing,” he said simply. But it was much more than that, it wasn’t just idle curiosity, or the hunger of two lonely bodies, it was the clear attraction that happened sometimes between a man and a woman, a meeting of minds as well as lips. There were a great many things they liked about each other, although they had already agreed that they were very different. He liked fleeting relationships of all kinds, and everything in her life was based on permanence, marriage, children, career, even her two employees had worked for her for years. There was nothing temporary in her life, and he knew that about her. It was almost a challenge to him to be different. But he wasn’t sure now if he wanted to be temporary in her life either. This was a new experience for him, but she wasn’t the kind of woman he usually was attracted to. “Let’s take this slow,” he said to her, “and not think about it too much. Let’s just see what happens.” She nodded, not sure what to say to him, or if anything more should happen.
But by the time she was in the house again, and he was gone, she was consumed by guilt over what she’d done. She felt as though she had betrayed her husband. But he’s gone, she told herself, and he was never coming back. But then why did it feel so strange to be kissing Bill, and so wrong, and at the same time so exciting? It unnerved her as she thought about it, and she lay awake for a long time that night, thinking about him, and Jack, and wondering what she was doing.
And the next morning, when she woke up, tired from a long, sleepless night, she told herself that they would have to go back to their easy friendship, without adding complications to it. She felt better when she decided that, until he called her at ten o’clock that morning.
“I was thinking about you, and I thought I’d call and see how you were,” he said gently.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she said simply.
“What were you sorry about?” he asked, sounding strangely calm and more than a little happy. “I was only sorry that we didn’t kiss again. That was pretty great stuff, as far as I’m concerned.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Bill … I’m not ready.…”
“I understand. No one’s pushing. This is not a race. We don’t have to ‘get’ anywhere. We’re just there for each other.” It was a nice way to put it, and she was grateful that he didn’t press her. It made her feel a little silly for being so worried.
“How about if I come and cook dinner for you and the kids on Saturday? I have a night off, and I’m a pretty fair cook. How about it?” She knew that she should turn him down, but was surprised to find she didn’t want to. And what harm could there be in letting him cook for them?
“All right. I’ll help you.”
“I’ll bring the groceries. Is there anything special the children like?”
“They eat anything, chicken, fish, steak, pizz
a, spaghetti. They’re easy.”
“I’ll think of something.”
“Jamie will be thrilled.” And the girls would hate it, but she didn’t say that. It was a good opportunity to encourage them to relax about him. They could see how harmless he was, or was he? Were they right after all that this was a potentially dangerous situation? She hated to think that. She wanted to be his friend, and she liked kissing him. But did it have to be more than that? She couldn’t see why. Maybe they could just keep it to kissing. She certainly wasn’t going to let it go further than that, for her own sake, not her children’s.
He arrived at six o’clock on Saturday night, as promised, with three bags of groceries. He said he was going to cook them southern fried chicken, corn on the cob, and baked potatoes.
He had brought some ice cream bars too. And as he buzzed around her kitchen, he wouldn’t let her help him.
“You relax,” he told her. He handed her a glass of wine, poured one for himself, and proceeded to cook them an excellent dinner. Even the girls were surprised and pleased when they ate it, although Megan continued to refuse to speak to him. But Jamie chatted with him throughout the meal, and Peter did too, and eventually Annie and Rachel joined the conversation. They were talking about schools, and colleges for Peter. He had set a date for his college tour with Liz, in early October, and Bill gave him what advice he could. Although he thought Berkeley might be fun, he felt Stanford and UCLA the better choices for him, for a variety of reasons. And they were still discussing it at the end of the meal when Rachel, Annie, Jamie, and Liz cleared the table. Peter was still deeply engrossed in conversation with Bill, and Megan slipped upstairs without thanking him for dinner, and Liz was furious with her. But afterwards, Bill told Liz not to push her.
“She’ll get used to me, give her time. There’s no rush.” He kept saying things like that, and they always made Liz faintly nervous. Why did they have to give her time? Surely he was not going to stick around long enough for it to matter. But that was not what he had been hinting.
He kissed her again that night, after all the kids went to bed, and it made her nervous to kiss him in her house. This was getting very cozy, and a little too familiar. And he had been very nice to her children. It had all the makings of a full-scale romance. Jack had been gone for nine months by then, and she was beginning to feel as though she were walking through a mine field, which might explode at any moment. Megan was poised for attack, the other girls were unsure, and more than anything, Liz had her own emotions to deal with, her concerns about Bill, and his propensity for temporary attachments, by his own admission, and her sense of loyalty to Jack, which was being severely challenged by her feelings for Bill Webster.
She felt that way all through September and into October, and it was a relief when she left for the weekend on the college tour with Peter. But in spite of that, Bill was calling every day, and even called her at the hotel in Los Angeles where they were staying. It was a surprise to hear from him, but she was smiling when she hung up, and this time Peter didn’t comment. He didn’t want to say anything to upset the delicate balance of their romance, mostly because he liked him, and wanted it to work out between them. And he knew from little things she said how ambivalent his mother was feeling.
When they got back, she waited a few days before she saw Bill, and then only for a quick hamburger in the cafeteria on a night he was on duty at the hospital, but Bill had been anxious to see her. The nurses all recognized her, and some came over to say hello, as did the chief resident, and everyone said to say hello to Peter.
“Everybody loves you, Liz.” She had made a big impression on everyone with her devotion to Peter. Not all parents were as attentive as she was, in fact few were. And she was attentive to Bill too, always asking him questions about his work, and concerned about him, and the challenges and stresses he faced daily. When he was with her, he was always aware of how much she cared about him, sometimes more than she was. She had a hard time admitting that to herself. It still had too many implications.
It wasn’t a coincidence when, the following week, early on a Saturday morning, after they came back from L.A., she stood quietly on Jack’s side of their closet, looking at the jackets that still hung there. They looked lifeless now, and sad, and it depressed her to see them. She didn’t hold them close to her anymore, or stroke them as she once had, or try to imagine him as she clung to them. It had been several months since she held his lapels to her face and smelled them, and as she looked at them now, she knew what she had to do, for her own sake. It had nothing to do with Bill, she told herself. It had been ten months since Jack died, and she was ready. And one by one she took the jackets off the hangers, and folded them in a neat pile. She would have offered them to Peter, but he was too tall and too young to wear them, and it was easier to dispose of them than to see someone else wear them.
It had taken her two hours to empty the drawers and the hanging part of the closet, when Megan walked into her room and saw what she was doing. Megan started to cry, and for an instant Liz felt as though she had killed him. Megan stood there staring at the neat piles of his clothes on the floor and sobbed, and as Liz looked at her she started crying, for her children, for him, for herself. But no matter what she hung on to now, they had lost him. He wasn’t coming back, and he didn’t need the clothes anymore. It was better to give his things away, she told herself, but as she saw Megan’s distress over it, she wondered.
“Why are you doing that now? It’s because of him, isn’t it?” They both knew she meant Bill, and Liz shook her head, as they both stood in the walk-in closet crying.
“It’s time, Meg.… I had to…. It hurts me too much to see them,” Liz said, as she cried and reached out to her daughter, but Megan pulled away, ran to her room, and slammed the door, and a few minutes later, Liz followed. But Megan didn’t want to talk to her, and Liz went back to her own room, to put Jack’s clothes in boxes. Peter walked by her room and saw what she was doing, stopped and looked at her, and then quietly offered to help her.
“I’ll do it for you, Mom. You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” she said sadly. It was the last remnant of him that he had left behind, other than his trophies, and his photographs, and a few mementos, and of course their children.
Peter helped her take it all out to the car, and as though sensing that a turning point had come, one by one the children came and watched her. There was a look of loss evident in their eyes, and at the very last, Megan came out of her room and looked at her mother. It was obvious that it wasn’t easy for Liz either, and then, as a silent move of support for her, each of the children picked something up, a box, a bag, a coat, and carried it to the car. It was a last gesture of good-bye to their father. And at the very end, Megan came, carrying the last armload.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered through her tears, and Liz turned and clung to her, grateful for the bond between them.
“I love you, Meg.” Mother and daughter cried as they held each other, and the others were crying too by the time the car was full.
“I love you too, Mom,” Megan said softly, and the others came to hug her.
She was taking the clothes to a local charity drop, and Peter offered to drive her.
“I’m okay. I can do it alone,” she reassured him. He was wearing a smaller neck brace by then, and had just begun to drive again, and he insisted on driving her. She was too upset to drive the car and she knew it. And together, they drove slowly out of the driveway, with the car piled high with his father’s things, as the others watched.
They were back half an hour later, and Liz looked ravaged, and when she walked back into her closet that afternoon and saw the empty space, her heart gave a little tug, remembering what had been there, but she felt freer. It had taken her a long time, but she knew she had been right to wait until she was ready, despite the endless advice she’d been given about when to put away Jack’s clothes.
She sat in her room for a long tim
e, staring out the window, and thinking of him, and when Bill called late that afternoon, he could hear in her voice that something had happened.
“Are you okay?” He sounded worried.
“More or less.” She told him what she had done that day, and how hard it had been, and his heart ached as he listened. In the past two months, he had come to care about her deeply.
“I’m sorry, Liz.” He knew it was a sign of some kind, a symbol of the fact that she was slowly letting go of the past, and saying a last good-bye to her husband. He would always be a part of her, and their children were his legacy, but she was loosing her grip on his reality and daily presence. “Can I do anything?”
“No,” she said sadly, they both knew it was a private agony, and a solitary moment.
“I was going to ask you if you wanted to go out tonight, but maybe that’s not such a great idea.” She agreed with him, and he said he’d call her in the morning. In the end, he called her again later that night, just to see how she was. She still sounded sad, but a little better, and she’d spent a quiet evening with the children. They had all calmed down after the sorrow of the morning. And only Liz was left with her memories, and her sense of loss. The others seemed to have come to terms with it long before she had.
The next day when he called, she sounded more herself again, and he was pleased when she agreed to see him that evening. She seemed quieter than usual, and more subdued, but after they talked for a while, she was laughing again, and seemed in better spirits.
They went for a long, quiet walk, and held hands, and when he kissed her this time, they both knew it was different. She was ready to face the future, to let go of the past, and move forward.
“I love you, Liz,” he said, as he held her close to him, and she smelled his now-familiar aftershave. He was so different from Jack in so many ways, and she cared for him, but she could not bring herself to say the words. Not yet. And maybe never.
The House on Hope Street Page 15