by Dianne Drake
* * *
Well, he’d opened his mouth and put his foot right in, and he felt bad. She’d been cheated on, and he’d just compounded the problem. It seemed he owed her another apology. But what he didn’t understand was why she was avoiding what had happened that night. Why she claimed she didn’t remember it. She did. Everybody in Marrell did.
Since she’d called to tell him she would be joining them for pizza after all, he would apologize. But would she apologize to him? For anything?
“One hour, Dad,” Matthew yelled from the hallway. “One hour for the pizza, then I need to come home and practice.”
“Leanne might be a slow eater,” Caleb said on his way to the closet to pull out a shirt to go with his well-worn jeans. Frankly, it surprised him she’d agreed to meet them there. His invitation hadn’t been friendly. Hadn’t really been an invitation. And his attitude—well, that was something he needed to work on. At least the quick-trigger part of it. She brought out the bad in him, though, and while part of him thought she deserved it, a growing part disagreed with that. A growing part of him wished they could start all over. “It may take her longer than an hour to eat her pizza.”
“We’ll just have to tell her to hurry.”
Perfect logic in such a young mind. Had his own mind ever been that logical? Because lately it was anything but. “That’s not the polite thing to do. If someone eats slowly, we have to wait for them.”
“Why?”
He smiled at his son, who was standing in the hall, looking deadly serious. “Would you like it if you went out to eat with someone who was much faster than you, and who left the table before you were only halfway through your meal?”
“It might make me eat faster.”
“I know, so you could go home and practice. Look, buddy. Your audition’s still three days away, and you’re going to do fine. So right now, let’s just concentrate on a pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms and extra cheese.” He winked at Matthew. “And anchovies. Great big ones. With eyes in them that are looking at you.”
Matthew scrunched his face. “I hate anchovies! And anchovies don’t have eyes.”
“Then what do they see with?” Caleb asked him, trying to keep a straight face. It wasn’t too often that Matthew got stumped on the little things, and he was enjoying this. Enjoying watching his son struggle through the reasoning process to find his answer.
Finally, when Matthew realized he didn’t even know what an anchovy was, he asked, “Dad, what’s an anchovy?”
“It’s a tiny fish—” Caleb gestured to indicate about four inches in length “—with a big mouth—” he gestured to his own mouth, only larger “—and huge black eyes.” He indicated saucer-sized eyes, and ran after Matthew, still gesturing those saucer-sizers, grabbed him up and tickled him.
“No,” Matthew half squealed, half laughed.
“Yes,” Caleb said, dropping Matthew down on the bed, then pouncing on top of him, still tickling him. It was so nice when Matthew let himself be a little boy. These moments were rare, and Caleb enjoyed every one of them.
“I can get away,” Matthew warned, trying to squirm his way out from under his dad. He did so, for about a second, then Caleb caught hold of him, and pulled him right back, only this time not to tickle him but to hug him. Normally Matthew resisted displays of affection, and Caleb was surprised that he allowed the hug for a good ten seconds before he tugged out of it and ran away, calling after him, “No anchovies!”
He loved that kid. Until Matthew, he hadn’t had a clue what love was about. He’d known the derivatives of it—lust, liking, affection, fondness. But Matthew had taught him love, and new ways to do it every single day. To look at him was to love him, and if that’s all Caleb could do for the rest of his life—just look at Matthew—he’d be the happiest man in the world. Actually, he was the happiest man in the world. And the luckiest.
* * *
The pizza was getting cold, but Matthew hadn’t found just the right angle from which to snap its picture, so Leanne and Caleb sat at the table and watched the boy pose the pizza every which way imaginable. Leanne was glad the three of them were spending this time together, glad Caleb was over his moodiness. Glad she’d changed her mind ten different times and finally decided to join them and, hopefully, straighten things out.
Because when Caleb wasn’t being moody, well...at this point in her life, there really wasn’t anybody else she enjoyed being around the way she did Caleb. Sad to say, but she’d been isolating herself for so long. All work, then time for Eric when she’d been able to. But there was nothing at all isolating about being with Caleb. He simply laid it out there, take it or leave it. Amazing how taking it had become something she almost wanted to do. Without the attitude switches midstream, of course.
“Dad and Dora are taking off for a long weekend,” she said, as Matthew climbed up on a chair and knelt over the pizza to get a straight-down shot of it. “They’re going to Helena, for what Dora’s calling a civilized weekend. Dining, dancing, shopping at someplace other than a trading post. I’m glad they finally recognized how much they belong together.”
“After how many years?” Caleb asked.
Leanne blew out a long, contemplative breath and shook her head. “Probably going on to thirty.”
“That’s a long time to wait to find your true love.”
“Especially when she’s been right there all this time.” Leanne relaxed back into her chair and smiled. “Better late than never, I suppose.”
“Sometimes never is better than anything else,” Caleb quipped.
“You’re referring to your marriage?” she asked him.
“If that’s what you want to call it. She was not what I would have chosen if I’d been in the mood to look for a wife. Which I wasn’t.”
“Yet you married her.” She thought back to all the men she’d dated over the years, and none of them had ever fit. Not truly. Not even Eric, which was why she wasn’t as torn up about his other girlfriend as she might have been, or even should have been. And it wasn’t that she didn’t want to be married, because she did. But all the men queued up in her past had been too focused on other things—career, money, themselves. Other women. She wasn’t sure why that was the type she’d always reeled in, but it was, and she was tired of the grind. So much so she was beginning to give up on the notion that it still might be out there for her. “You took the plunge, signed the papers, did whatever married couples do.”
“Because...” He didn’t say the words, but nodded at Matthew. “I wanted to do the right thing by her. So, we had a baby right off. And I don’t regret anything about that. But our little sham of a marriage was only a bump in the road, and I think we both knew that at the start of it. We weren’t suited. Didn’t communicate or interact much. It was like we lived our separate lives, and the only thing that ever brought us together was...” He nodded at Matthew again. “And even then, that wasn’t too often. I think I always looked at our divorce as the formality of ending something that had never really started in the first place.”
“But you got Matthew.” She, too, looked over at the boy, who’d taken about twenty shots of the pizza, and was now sitting, waiting to eat a piece of it.
“And he was worth every second of those inconveniences of being married.” Caleb put a slice of pizza on Matthew’s plate, then one on Leanne’s, and took one for himself.
“Would you do it again?”
“Maybe. Don’t know for sure. I like the idea of a perfect little family, but disrupting what I already have scares the hell out of me. And I have to think about what’s best for Matthew. So, maybe, one day I’ll think about getting married again. If any woman would have me at that point.”
Leanne laughed. “Oh, I think you’ll be have-able. If you want to be. Question is, do you want to be?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what I want to be. At least, not in my f
uture. As far as my present...” He pointed at Matthew, who was ear-to-ear pizza sauce. “Seems about perfect to me.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, perfect shows on him. You’re a great dad.” Because she’d been raised without a mother, she knew how empty it had felt. But Matthew wasn’t empty, the way she’d been. His life was full and Caleb worked hard to make it that way. He was the kind of dad every child deserved. “So, is the pizza good?” she asked Matthew.
He nodded. “But it’s not healthy.” He looked up at Caleb and smiled. “Right, Dad?”
“Right, buddy,” Caleb said, giving Matthew the thumbs-up. “A lot of calories, a lot of fat.”
“But it’s good,” Leanne added, biting her lip to keep from laughing at Matthew’s seriousness. When she’d been his age, she’d been all into junk candy, soda and anything else that hadn’t been good for her. Plus, she’d had a dad who’d traded time and attention for junk food gratification, so for her it had worked out.
“In moderation,” Matthew said, reaching for his second slice.
“Do you even know what moderation means?” Caleb asked him. “Or is that just a word you’ve read?”
Matthew shrugged.
“Moderation means staying within reasonable limits. Not having or doing too much. Do you understand that?”
Matthew looked up, grinned, and shook his head. “It means having two pieces of pizza instead of three.”
“That’s my boy,” Caleb said, the look of pride on his face unmistakable.
This was nice, Leanne decided as she debated taking a second slice of pizza or heeding Matthew’s warning that it wasn’t good for her. The warnings of a five-year-old. She chuckled. Caleb was handling that situation just right.
Chapter Five
“ARE YOU SURE you want me here?” Leanne asked.
“He wants you to take pictures.” Caleb handed her Matthew’s camera, then led her through the door into the waiting area of Hans Schilling’s school. “I told him I would, but he didn’t trust me to do a good enough job.” He was dressed in a business suit today, charcoal gray with a light blue dress shirt, clean shaven, no boots. Handsome as the devil and nervous as hell.
“You know he’s going to do just fine,” she said, patting Caleb on the hand.
“This is worse than when I took my medical boards, and I was pretty nervous about that.”
“Was Matthew nervous this morning?” she asked him.
“I don’t think the kid gets nervous about anything. He got up, ate his usual cereal, showered, brushed his teeth, got dressed, gathered up his music and walked out to the truck like it was any other day. But me—I couldn’t eat, I used hand sanitizer rather than shampoo, tried on three suits and four shirts, put on socks that didn’t match, and took a couple of antacid pills to settle my stomach. Then couldn’t find the keys to my truck, which were in the bowl on the kitchen table—same place I always put them.”
“It’s an important day for you,” she said.
Caleb shook his head. “Not for me. For Matthew. He needs this.”
“And he’ll get it. I met Schilling briefly the other day. He came to have a routine physical from Dad, and we chatted in passing. He seems to have great insight into life in general. I’m sure he’ll see the talent and the potential Matthew has, and accept him.”
“Wish I was that confident,” Caleb grumbled. The waiting area in the recital hall resembled a lodge, much like everything in Marrell did. Lots of wood, wide-open spaces and rustic decor. Not the kind of place he would have expected from a world-renowned pianist but, then, he’d never known a world-renowned pianist before, so he really didn’t know what to expect. “But Matthew’s only been in there five minutes, and I’m ready to fall apart.”
“How long does the total audition take?”
“About two hours. He’ll hear Matthew play first, then ask him questions. After which he’ll give him an academic test to make sure he can be placed appropriately, if accepted.”
“Then it sounds to me like Matthew’s going to have a pretty easy time of it.”
“Except that he’s two years younger than the children Schilling normally accepts. His starting age is seven, and he’s making a huge exception for Matthew, just auditioning him.” Thanks, largely, to his grandmother’s apple pies and Hans Schilling’s voracious appetite for them.
“When he’s accepted—and you notice I said when, not if—will he live here?”
“That’s a requirement. Schilling likes to keep the kids close, so he can see to the proper discipline they need, both academically as well as musically.”
“And Matthew’s agreeable to that?”
“He’s agreeable to anything that will allow him to practice on a concert grand piano. Which I don’t happen to have.” Having Matthew leave him, even if he’d only be a few miles away, was something Caleb wasn’t sure how he was going to handle. Schilling allowed liberal visiting hours. Parents were welcome anytime except during practice hours, and they could come and go as often as they pleased. Schilling also allowed plenty of time for the children to go out with their parents for hours, even for a few days when the schedule permitted. So, it wasn’t like he and Matthew were going to be separated forever. They weren’t. He’d see him every day. But he’d only be tucking him into bed on the weekends, when Matthew came home to visit, and to Caleb, that already felt like hell. “It’s a good program, and Matthew needs that kind of structure in his life, especially with his...”
“Gifts?” Leanne supplied.
“Right now, he’s easy because he’s only five. But I can see the time coming when I won’t be able to give him everything he needs. Academically maybe. Emotionally definitely. But musically... For Matthew, it’s all tied up in one tight little ball that I can’t untie. That’s where Schilling comes in. He works with the parents of children like Matthew. Teaches them how to take care of their children’s special talents.”
“So, when will Matthew be leaving?” she asked.
Caleb moaned. “Too soon. School’s on hiatus for six weeks right now, but in another couple of weeks it’ll resume, and I’m afraid my life is going to change in ways I don’t even want to think about.” He dreaded that day, didn’t know how he was going to get through it. But this was about Matthew, not him. “And I’m not looking forward to it. But you do what you have to do to take care of your kid.”
“Unlike my father, who did anything he could to occupy himself with work and not me... Anyway, can I get you some coffee, Caleb?” Leanne asked. “Or prescribe you a tranquilizer?”
“Was Henry really that bad?”
“Dad was never bad. He just never had time. I think he counted on my mother to raise me, and when she died, he didn’t know what to do. So, he didn’t do anything.”
“I guess I never saw that.” Probably because there had been too many other things to see, and deal with.
“When I was younger, I didn’t either. But as I got older...” She shook her head. “Anyway, about that coffee...”
He could see by the melancholy look on her face that this wasn’t a topic she wanted to talk about. So, he rooted around the rest of the questions he wanted to ask, like, Would you have been less of a bully if your dad had paid more attention to you? Or, Was your bullying merely a way to get your dad’s attention? He played it safe. For now. “Just keep talking to me. That’ll work.”
Forcing herself to smile a smile that never quite made it all the way to genuine, she held up the camera. “How about I take a picture of you?” She clicked before he had time to protest. “And another, since Matthew likes multiples of the same thing.”
“He likes to analyze them for subtle differences. He told me no two pictures are ever the same.” Caleb walked over to the front window, the one with the expansive view of the meadow in the foreground and the river in the background. A movie crew was filming down at the river tod
ay—an adventure movie, he’d heard. Meaning Marrell was brimming with activity—something entirely new for him. Something to indicate his little town really was growing up. “I appreciate you taking time off work to come with us. I know Matthew wanted you here for himself, but I think I need you more than he does.” Because, quite simply, he liked being around Leanne. It was conflicting, it was troubling, but none of that stopped him. Like it hadn’t stopped him all those years ago. Except he was older now. Knew better. He hoped.
“That’s what old friends are for,” she said, backing away from the concert grand in the lodge’s lobby, then taking a picture of it. “Will they let us in to see Matthew during any part of the interview? Because I’d like to get some pictures.”
“Right now, they’re going over some of the preliminaries with him, but when he plays, we can watch him from an observation booth.”
“Dr. Carsten?”
Caleb spun around to face the tall, austere blonde woman who was standing in the doorway through which Matthew had disappeared moments earlier. “Yes?” he asked, tentatively, as his momentary lapse of nerves was exiting and a new round tromping in.
“You and your guest are welcome to join us in the studio. Matthew is becoming acquainted with the piano, and Maestro Schilling will be joining him momentarily. So, if you’d like to follow me, I’ll be glad to explain the next part of the process to you, and allow you a minute or two with Matthew before he proceeds into the audition portion of this interview.”