But waiting was easier said than done. Something about him—something about the pain and anger and confusion that she saw in his eyes—made Helen want, suddenly, to comfort him. Whatever had happened, however Linda had died, he didn't get it. Helen remembered all too well the sleepless nights when she had asked herself, asked God, asked the sun and the stars and the moon: why? Why did Hank have to die?
The only answer she'd ever got was: because. Because he had to. Which was no answer at all.
Completely on impulse, Helen reached across the table and put her hand over his. "Don't punish yourself," she whispered. "It won't change anything. I know."
She felt his hand curl into a tight fist beneath the blanket warmth of her own. He locked a burning gaze on her. "What was your husband like?" he asked out of the blue.
Helen blinked at the question. "The best," she said simply.
Byrne shook his head. His lips firmed into an unrelenting line. The muscles in his jaw flexed. But he made himself respond.
"Then you don't know," he said in a black voice.
Stung, she withdrew her hand.
The waitress came with the chicken and more wine, which at least gave the two of them something to do. By now Helen was an emotional wreck. They had come here to talk about Katie and had ended up talking about Linda— but they hadn't really talked about Linda, either. It was all so cryptic. All Helen knew about Linda was that in some way she had failed her husband.
By having an affair? And then dying before she and Nat could thrash it all out? Undoubtedly that would account for his bitterness.
But it wouldn't account for the anguish Helen was feeling for Linda's sake. That's where all her sympathy had begun to flow—to Linda. Despite Nat's anger, despite his own sense of loss and betrayal, Helen wanted to rally around Linda. The feeling astonished her. She didn't even know Linda. How could she possibly want to defend her?
And meanwhile they hadn't talked about poor Katie at all.
Helen put aside the odd, deep sense of injustice she was feeling for Linda's sake and said, "When do you fly to Zurich?"
"This Friday," Nat answered in a more civil voice. He seemed grateful to get off the subject of his late wife. "We fly back to Salem on Sunday. I don't mind telling you, I'll be glad to have Katie home where she belongs."
"That's great," said Helen warmly. "Before you know it, she'll be making a dozen new friends at The Open Door."
Mollified, he said, "When she gets back Peaches is going to arrange for some of those—what d'ya call 'em?—playdates at the house." He laughed softly. "It's all such a hassle. Whatever happened to spontaneity? Does it all have to be done with appointment books and stopwatches?"
"Supervised play," said Helen. "It's the buzzword of the times."
"Well, the times suck."
She was thinking of Hank; worrying about Russell. "Amen to that."
Their gazes met. She saw in his face an unspoken apology for being a jerk. It was enough. She smiled and said, "This vinaigrette is pretty good."
"Mmm," he agreed, but she saw that he was being listless about his food.
"I want you to know," he blurted, "that I never really considered another preschool besides yours. Linda was so adamant about it. And whatever else, I trust her judgment completely in that."
Blind faith: It was the easy way out. Helen decided to give him a little lecture about it.
"As busy as you are," she said, "I still urge you to check out one or two other schools—for your own satisfaction, if not for mine. Sizing up the building and the playground is fairly easy. I can give you a list of things to look for, although I'd guess that Peaches has done that homework for you. What you need to pay attention to is the staff. Watch how they relate to the children. Pay attention to how clean they keep the children's hands and faces. Look at how much stimulation they offer to children's senses. Watch to see how nurturing they are, and how the kids respond to them. It's those intangibles that count."
He'd begun to smile halfway through her little lecture. When she was done he said, "I saw enough when I saw you on your knees with the finger-puppets. You were great. Patient, focused, lighthearted. I saw enough," he repeated softly.
A slow burn of pleasure began washing over Helen. She'd been complimented on her childcare techniques many times by satisfied parents, but never—never—had she responded with such visceral, aching pleasure. Not even close.
"I'd feel better if ...," she began. But she wasn't sure anymore what it was that would make her feel better, so she let the thought drift away, like goose down in a summer breeze. She was becoming overwhelmed, and she had no idea why.
"You make it look so easy," he pursued in the same soft voice. "Whereas I—" He sighed. It seemed to bring up a lump in his throat, because his voice cracked with emotion as he said, "What am I going to do with a three- year-old who depends solely on me? What if I screw up? What if I wreck her for life?"
If you could see your own face right now, Helen thought, you'd know you weren't going to do that.
But he couldn't, and so she said, "Have you told her anything more about Linda?"
He groaned and said, "Before I left Zurich we had a long talk. I explained that Mommy went to heaven. She wanted to know where heaven was. I said, in the clouds. She wanted to know why we didn't stop off and visit Mommy when we were up in the plane."
Grimacing at the memory, he said, "You can see what a mess I've already made. I said, God wanted Mommy to be with him because he loved her so much. Obviously that was the wrong thing to tell her. She was scared God was going to take me, too, or Peaches. So then I changed my story altogether and decided to go with the facts. I said, Mommy swallowed something that made her very sick. Katie said, 'Medicine?' I said, yes, which turned out to be an even dumber move. Katie got a touch of the flu after I left and refused to take anything to break the fever because she thought she'd die and get hauled off to this heaven place."
Medicine. An overdose. The thought came and went through Helen's mind; she'd think about it later. For now, her smile at Nat's confession was utterly sympathetic: there wasn't a parent alive who hadn't been put through the wringer with his kids over the concept of death and dying.
"How did you finally leave it with her?" she asked him.
"Bottom line? I cut and ran. I think I muttered something about our being healthy and having nothing to fear—you can see how well that logic fed her fever later—and then I just ... got out of there. Thank God for Peaches. She's been straightening it all out for me."
It was disconcerting, how much he relied on Peaches. It was disconcerting that he had cut and run. Over coffee, Helen decided to give him the most profoundly simple advice she could.
"Katie is young enough to get over the loss of someone, Nat, no matter how close," she said, leaning forward with an urgency that surprised her. "But she'll never, ever forget hugs. Reassurances. Warmth. Simple expressions of love. Those are the things she'll remember forever. Believe me when I say that."
Helen was thinking of her own mother, who had died when she was four. What she remembered about her mother and then Aunt Mary were the hugs, the reassurances, the warmth, the simple expressions of love. For one brief instant she was thrown back in time to her early years. A tear broke loose from the secure vault of those memories and rolled down her cheek.
Embarrassed, Helen wiped it away and said, "I love to wax emotional over childhood."
He was watching her with a soft, appraising look. "Because you had a good one," he ventured.
"Yes. And, to be honest, no. I was raised by an adoring mother and then her older sister; but my father left when I was Katie's age, and I never saw him again. I still regret it.''
"Well, I'll be there for Katie from now on," Nat vowed. His cheekbones flushed dark with emotion. "On God's honor, I'll be there."
Chapter 11
Half an hour later, Helen was at home, ducking under a barrage of questions from her daughter.
"Mother!" Becky said, scand
alized. "Dinner—with a man? A rich, good-looking, famous—single—man? Awesome!"
"Not so awesome, dear," Helen said calmly, even though she was thinking it was pretty damn awesome indeed "We talked about preschools almost the whole time.''
Becky was following her mother around the kitchen like a hungry seal. "What's he like, what's he like? Was he, like, cool—or was he geeky? Wall Street can be geeky, I bet."
"Not cool. Not geeky. Somewhere in between. Confused about parenting. I told him to join the club." Helen tossed a soggy filter filled with coffee grounds and replaced it with a new one in the coffee machine. "Russell!" she yelled as she pried open the plastic lid to a can of Folgers. "I can smell the litter box from here! Didn't you change it?"
"So, like, did you talk about sex or anything interesting?"
"No, we didn't talk about sex. What's the matter with you? I told you. It was a business meeting. Pure and simple."
Not so pure. Not so simple. All the way home, the very nearness of him had clung to her like the essence of perfume. She found herself surrounded by him, immersed in him, thinking, thinking, thinking of him. It was more than a little terrifying.
"You know what, Mom? I don't believe you. You look too ... excited," Becky said.
"Excited!" Helen felt her cheeks getting more excited than ever. She'd never been much good at concealing her feelings—Hank had always been grateful for that—and now was no exception.
Scooping coffee out of the can as if she were digging a hole to hide in, Helen laughed all too spontaneously and said, "You know what your problem is, Beck? You're bored. I can fix that in a hurry. Have you cleaned the downstairs bathroom yet?"
"Why?" Becky said instantly. "Who's gonna pee there that's so special?"
"As I thought. Just do it. What did you two do while I was gone besides make a mess of this kitchen? Fold up that pizza box and put it out with the trash. Honestly. Do I have to leave a list for every little thing?"
Suddenly Helen could see it all: every dirty fingerprint on the cupboards, every muddy footprint on the floor. The stainless hood above the stove—when the hell had that been scrubbed last? My God. The place was a pigsty. She began a headlong pass through the kitchen, doing everything at once.
But not without raising Becky's suspicions. Becky was by far the most observant one in the family. Not a whole lot got past her, which was going to make her one heck of a mother to reckon with someday.
"What's going on here, Mom?" she asked with a sideways look and squinty eyes. "You only run around like this when company's coming. Who're you expecting? Is he coming over?"
Russell, responding at last to his mother's shrill summons, arrived through the kitchen door in a clunky shuffle. "Who's comin' over?" he said, heading for the cookie cupboard.
It was the most interest he'd shown in someone else in a year and a half. "Nobody," snapped Helen. "Basement. Litter box. Now," she commanded.
With a beleaguered sigh and a mournful look, Russell trudged through a door in the kitchen and down the cellar stairs while Becky folded the pizza box on itself, then on itself again, and stood on the edges, flattening them with her hiking boots.
Helen stopped to stare at her daughter's feet. "Why do you wear those in the house, Becky? You know they drag sand in by the beachload."
Becky shrugged and said, "I forgot."
"Forgot? How can you forget ten-pound weights on your feet?"
The girl tried to joke her way out of it. "This way, if there's a fire I'll be ready to run."
"You know what? I'm not laughing."
"Ma-a? We're outta litter," yelled Russell from the foot of the stairs.
"You didn't put it on the list," Helen yelled back down.
"I forgot."
"For pity's sake. Becky, go out and pick up a bag, would you?"
"Now? It's almost nine o'clock!"
"I don't care. The smell of cat pee is overwhelming."
"I don't smell anything."
Helen had the Windex out and was cleaning up the marble counters. She poked furiously at something dried and crusty and said, "How can you smell Enchantra from a hundred miles away, and not be able to smell urine strong enough to set on fire?"
Becky was at the back door, pizza box under her arm. She unhooked a black silk windbreaker from the peg rack and slipped it over her black jumper, then paused long enough to fire one last shot. "Somebody's coming. You're only like this when somebody's coming."
"I'm only like this because I'm so very tired of cleaning up after the two of you. You have your assignments. I shouldn't have to beg, bribe, or nag you to do them."
"Who's coming over?" said Russ with mind-boggling persistence.
Becky turned to her brother and said, "Oh ... this guy. He's one of the parents."
"Becky!" said Helen, practically apoplectic by now. "Will you let it go?"
Becky shrugged and off she went. That left Russ, who seemed inclined to seek answers.
"What parent did she mean, Ma? They never come to our house."
Without missing a squirt, Helen went from the counters to the black dishwasher panel, continuing her hand-to-hand combat with drips and stains. "I had to see one of the parents tonight about a little girl whose mother died recently. It's kind of serious and the conversation was too long for us to have over the phone."
"Oh. So why's Becky so upset?"
"Upset? She's not upset," said Helen testily.
"So why're you upset?"
"Oh, for—I'm not upset, either," Helen said without daring to look at her son. "If you don't have anything else to do, Russ, I can think of lots of things."
Mumbling something about homework, Russ backed out of his mother's grip and escaped to his room.
Half an hour later—having changed the litter box herself—Helen retreated to her book-lined sitting room and scanned a shelf or two in search of a popular paperback that she'd once bought and scanned. Yes, it was still there:
What Every Toddler's Mom and Dad Should Know: A Basic Primer.
Helen had been assuming that Nat Byrne would be most helped by scholarly treatises on child care and had lent him some of her college texts. After tonight, she decided that he wouldn't be insulted, after all, with a little help in plain English.
Still following some new and compelling urge, she went to the phone and dialed his number; the phone was ringing before she realized that she must've memorized it from the single call or two she'd placed right after Linda's death.
He picked it up on the second ring. "Nat?" she asked unnecessarily. She realized that she'd know his voice anytime, anywhere. "This is Helen Evett."
"Helen!" he said warmly. "I was just thinking of you." It made her heart sing. "I hope I'm not bothering you at too late an hour," she said. "But it occurred to me that I might have just the book for you."
She told him the title and added sheepishly, "It's.. . a paperback. But it's awfully good, anyway. Really."
He laughed, and she knew from the sound of it that they'd moved onto some new level of intimacy or friendship or just plain ease. Again she felt her heart lift in song. It was as if a new symphony were about to be played, and the orchestra had begun to tune up. Each little off-beat note was thrilling in its own way.
"I wanted to thank you again for hearing me out; I really, really needed that time with you," he said frankly. "I—well, you inspired me, that's all. Katie deserves more than me, but me is who she's stuck with."
"All grammar aside," said Helen, smiling, "I think you're going to do great."
He laughed again, embarrassed this time, and said, "This is ridiculous. We're spending all this time on me when it's Katie who needs the attention."
He was right, which Helen found sobering. What had he actually done for Katie, other than express a certain amount of enthusiasm? Helen tried hard to rein in her warmth, but it was like slowing down a buckboard with two runaway horses.
"Well, I have the book, anyway," she said, shyly now. "Would you like me to mail it?"
She hoped desperately that he would not.
He didn't fail her. "Please, no, don't go through the bother. I could pick it up at the preschool, if someone's going to be there tomorrow at, say, eight?"
"Eight?"
"Too late," he agreed. "Hmm. I gather from something you said that you don't live far from me. Would you mind if I picked it up at your house? At eight? You could throw it out the window or leave it in your mailbox, or —"
"Don't be silly. Ring the bell. I'll—we'll—be home."
"Great. I appreciate that, Helen. And again—for tonight—thank you."
"It was my pleasure."
She gave him her address and they hung up; and Helen understood, really for the first time, why she'd seized the Windex. Company was coming. It was Nathaniel Byrne. She was excited. Becky was right on all three counts.
And Helen, so deluded, so in the dark about her own motives, was suddenly afraid.
****
The following day was one of mixed blessings. The good news was Helen knew exactly where the kids were. The bad news was they were home and bored.
She was feeling absurdly self-conscious about seeing Nat Byrne, and both Russell and Becky had sensed it instantly. They were like hungry cats circling the lady with the can opener.
"What's with the lipstick, Ma?" Russ asked when Helen came back down after supper. He was slouched on the family room sofa, watching a horror flick on cable. "You goin' out?"
Too obvious a shade, thought Helen with regret. But it was too late now.
"Yeah," said Becky with a penetrating look. She tossed a copy of YM onto the massive seaman's trunk that served as a coffee table. "What's up?"
"Can't a person try to look nice around here?" Helen asked, turning the question around. "Speaking of which, it wouldn't hurt you to tuck in the shirt, Russ. And is there nothing better on TV?"
"Nope," said her son placidly. "This is the best I could find." Nonetheless, he began lazily surfing up and down the remote.
Beyond Midnight Page 12