He Loves Lucy

by Susan Donovan

  “Hi, Mimi.” Theo kissed her cheek. “This is my friend Lucy Cunningham, and we need to pick up her pass for the weekend.”

  “Welcome, Lucy!” Mimi opened her arms and leaned over the utility table, pressing Lucy to her big bosom. “Any friend of Theo’s is a friend of mine.”

  Mimi rooted through a box of manila envelopes. “Ah. Here we go.” She opened the flap and pulled out a long white neck strap looped through a laminated card that read: All Access Pass.

  “Is this your first time at the State Games?”

  Lucy poked her head through the strap and flipped the ID badge faceup. “Actually… uh…” Lucy forgot what she was saying because Theo had just reached over and extracted her ponytail from the strap, then stroked the back of her neck. “It’s my first Special Olympics anything.”

  Mimi’s mouth opened in surprise. “Oh, wow!” She smiled at Theo conspiratorially, then squeezed Lucy’s hand in both hers. “It’s going to blow your mind, sweetheart.”

  They went to a Mexican place on Fowler Avenue for dinner, where Lucy ordered the grilled sirloin, pinto beans, and a salad arid was thoroughly charmed by Theo’s family.

  Vivian and Martin Redmond were much older than

  Lucy anticipated, in their early eighties if she had to guess, and she soon learned they were Theo’s great-aunt and great-uncle. Vivian was gracious and kind and Martin was a firecracker and had them all laughing. Lucy saw immediately that Theo’s stunning blue eyes were a trait among males in the Redmond clan and Martin must have been a real looker in his day. Lucy glanced from Theo to his uncle and back again and was hit by this wistful thought-that it would be nice to know Theo when he was an eighty-year-old charmer, telling jokes to his grandchildren while they ate dinner at some Mexican joint.

  Irrational longings like that did nothing to lower her expectations, Lucy realized. She had to stop being such a sentimental goofball.

  “Lucy, we’ve been so impressed by your progress on the WakeUp Miami show.”

  As nice as it was, Vivian’s comment brought Lucy right back to reality. It made her realize she’d gone several hours without thinking of herself as Lucy Cunningham, media makeover guinea pig. She’d gone most of the day without worrying how her legs looked in her shorts, whether her upper arms were too fleshy for this conservative tank top, or whether she was sweating like a sow in the sun.

  She glanced at Theo across the round table and he smiled at her.

  “Thank you, Vivian,” Lucy said.

  “So tell us about your family, Lucy. Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

  And apparently, that was it-there would be no haranguing her about calorie intake or how many abdominal crunches she did each day or the total inches lost off her upper-thigh circumference. They’d already moved on to another subject. Lucy sighed in relief.

  “My mom and dad retired to Fort Lauderdale a couple years ago, and I left Pittsburgh and moved to Florida to be near them. I have an older sister who’s married with three little kids-she lives in Atlanta- and a younger brother who’s in his medical residency back in Pittsburgh.”

  The table got very quiet, and Lucy looked over to see that Theo’s fork had paused in midair. He put it down and cleared his throat.

  “Interesting,” he said. “I didn’t know your brother was in medicine.”

  “Mmm-hmm…Pediatrics. He’s in the internship year of a three-year residency. We don’t see him often because I guess the internship year is the worst.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “Theo was going to be a doctor,” Buddy announced matter-of-factly. “But then Mom and Dad died and he had to come home to be with me and then his girlfriend said she couldn’t love him if he wasn’t going to be a doctor. Norton didn’t like her, anyway.”

  Buddy reached up and stroked Theo’s hair, as if to comfort his big brother. Then Buddy started to cry.

  Lucy’s body buzzed in embarrassment. She felt like she was intruding on a private family matter.

  Vivian caressed Buddy’s shoulder and Martin shrugged sadly and Theo looked at her from across the table and grinned.

  That was the last straw for Lucy. Theo was so completely not what she’d first assumed him to be. He was single-handedly raising his brother. He had the patience to coach special athletes. He was brilliant enough to get into med school. He’d had his own share of loss and pain. And he was able to hang on to his fine sense of humor in the process.

  She felt ashamed at how she’d once assumed Theo was just a pretty face and a perfect body. She’d done the one thing she’d always despised most-she’d. judged someone by his appearance.

  And right then, Lucy knew that no matter how hard she tried to deny it, it would be a blizzardy day at Disney World before she’d ever find a man she wanted more than Theodore Redmond.

  The pageantry of the opening ceremonies surprised Lucy. She was expecting something schmaltzy and low-budget, not something so powerful. Seventeen hundred athletes ranging in age from eight to eighty stood in clusters under bright field lights and a cobalt blue evening sky, their T-shirts forming a rainbow around the stadium track.

  Loud, inspiring rock music blared from the sound system as a cavalcade of law enforcement vehicles roared onto the grass, their lights and sirens sending the crowd into a frenzy. Then the torch was carried into. the stadium by a small group of police officers who’d completed the last ten miles of a statewide torch run.

  After a rousing welcome speech from the emcee, a young woman assigned the job of reciting the Special Olympics oath rose from her chair onstage. Little by little, she neared the microphone, her left leg dragging, her physical imperfections clear for all to see. She stood tall in front of the huge crowd and said the words slowly and deliberately, in a voice thick with difficulty: “Let me win,” she said. “But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”

  Lucy sat in the bleachers between Martin and Vivian, humbled to tears. She wondered how many hours of practice had gone into that short walk to the podium and those simple lines of speech. She wondered how much courage it had taken for that woman to do what she’d just done.

  Suddenly it was clear why Theo wanted Lucy to be here. He wanted to teach her a compelling lesson in a gentle way. He wanted her to learn to put her own struggles in perspective. Theo, who was out there somewhere in the sea of red shirts, was a very smart man.

  Lucy tried to surreptitiously wipe the tears from her cheeks.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I cry every year.” Vivian handed her a tissue. “It can be overwhelming to see how much potential there is in all of us.”

  Lucy appreciated Vivian’s words and her quiet smile and told her so. Together they watched as officers handed the torch to a few Special Olympics athletes, who took off around the track to light the Special Olympic Flame of Hope, the fire shooting high into the dark sky.

  The emcee announced, “Let the Games begin!”

  Competition began early the next day and ended late into the afternoon. Theo’s aunt and uncle lasted only a few hours before the sun and the heat sent them back to the house. They did stay long enough to see Buddy win the one-hundred-meter and the long jump and then receive medals for the events.

  Twice that morning, Lucy, Vivian, and Martin left their seats in the stands for the shady picnic area, where the award platforms were arranged behind potted plants. Twice Buddy stood atop the highest of three blocks while a volunteer hit the play button on the boom box and the Olympic theme blared. Twice Buddy smiled, pumped his fist in the air, and the instant the music ended shouted, “Who loves me now?”

  The second time he did this, Lucy turned to Theo to ask him what Buddy was doing, but Theo had already started to explain. He said it was Buddy’s good-luck ritual, one he’d used since he was eight, when he won his first Special Olympics event.

  “It was the two-hundred-meter breaststroke, and right before it started my mom went to the side of the pool and hugged him and said, ‘Everybody loves you, Buddy.’ So whe
n he touched the wall first, he ripped off his goggles and pumped his fist in the air and yelled, ‘Who loves me now?’ Everyone laughed, and he’s been winning ever since.”

  By four that afternoon, Buddy had six gold medals hanging from his neck and Lucy felt like she’d run a marathon herself. The heat and all the pure emotion was exhausting, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the competitions. There seemed to be a lot of hugging going on, which fascinated her. Hugs seemed to be as important as the medals. After a singles tennis match, the victor dropped to her knees and kissed the court before she was crushed with hugs from her coach, parents, friends, and even her competition. When a tall, strong high jumper hit the bar with his shoulder and cried in disappointment, he was hugged by his rivals.

  At about five, Theo drove them back to the house, where they planned to eat and get showered and changed for the evening’s festivities-the closing ceremony and victory dance. The dance was all Buddy talked about on the drive from the stadium. Apparently, the dance was the best thing about the Summer Games.

  “Are you going to dance tonight, Lucy?” Buddy had turned his excited sun-brown face around toward her in the backseat of Theo’s car, where she sat enjoying the air-conditioning.

  “I’m not a big dancer, Buddy.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a party pooper!” He turned around in his seat, clearly disappointed.

  Theo caught her eye in the rearview mirror and smiled. “Tonight just might change all that, Luce,” he said.

  Dinner was ready when they arrived, and Martin and Vivian waited for them in the cavernous dining room, sipping cocktails and looking cool and rested. Lucy was starving. It was all she could do not to attack the meal of grilled halibut and vegetables, cold corn relish, and salad. She wanted to shove it in with her bare hands until she was so stuffed she couldn’t move. Instead, she forced herself to eat a sensible portion slowly, with utensils and everything, and enjoyed the company.

  After dinner, Lucy had just enough time to get a shower and change before they had to leave again. She’d only brought one nice outfit-a new sundress in a size L-no “Xs” anywhere on the tag. It was a simple sheath in muted oranges and pinks, with a zipper in the back and a scoop neck. It hit just above her knees. She put on a pair of fisherman sandals and dabbed on some lip gloss and gave herself a sprite of Paradise Awaits. She kept her hair loose around her shoulders so it could dry naturally.

  Lucy was writing in her food journal when Buddy began calling her name from down the long hallway.

  “Lucy! Let’s go! I can’t be late!”

  She met Buddy in the foyer, immediately noticing how dapper he looked in his white cotton button-down and chinos, his short hair glistening with gel, his face scrubbed clean. When Lucy asked Buddy why he wasn’t wearing his gold medals, he looked at her like she was from Mars.

  “It’s uncool to wear your medals to the dance,” he said. “It looks like you’re bragging.”

  Theo strolled into the foyer, jangling his car keys and patting his pants pocket for his wallet, and Lucy’s heart just about fell to the white marble floor. He was wearing a pale blue loose-fitting rayon shirt with an open neck, white linen slacks, and sandals. He looked squeaky clean. He glowed from the sun. He smelled like heaven; A little patch of golden-brown hair appeared just below the hollow of his throat.

  She had the strangest urge to lick him there.

  Theo stopped, turned, and gave Lucy an odd little frown-almost as if he’d just heard her thoughts out loud. That would be a problem, since throat licking wasn’t something friends did to each other as a rule; at least it wasn’t something she’d done with any friend she’d ever had.

  “Can we just go now?” Buddy stood by the front door with his hands on his hips. “You are staring at each other like you do on TV and I just really feel like dancing.”

  The closing ceremony was short and sweet, and as a few special awards were handed out Lucy’s body stung with awareness. Theo sat next to her in the stands, the long solid length of his thigh pressed up against her from hip to knee. All Lucy could think about was the kiss they’d shared on another track in another town, the one that they’d agreed was a mistake, and how she could go about getting another one.

  Lucy turned slightly and looked at Theo. He was staring at her with that odd little frown again. But he didn’t look her in the eye. He scanned her face, stopping with particular concern on her lips. Then his nostrils flared.

  Lucy needed to say something funny and say it now or she was going to throw her arms around Theo Redmond’s neck and kiss her trainer in front of thousands of mentally retarded Floridians.

  She was saved from this humiliation when the emcee announced that the Games had come to their official close and added, “Would anyone care to dance?”

  It was mayhem. Athletes stampeded out of the stands and swarmed the infield, jumping and running and shouting as the DJ began his program.

  Lucy and Theo hung back in the stands for a while to get a good view of the action.

  Many of the girls and women wore nice dresses, all along the spectrum from church clothes to chiffon prom dresses complete with matching corsages. The boys and men sported everything from the usual shorts and tees to slippery oversize suits and spats.

  The crowd went into a frenzy when the disc jockey played “The Chicken Dance,” followed by “Wooly Bully,” then the Village People’s “YMCA,” and ‘The Macarena.“

  “That DJ has got to start pacing himself,” Lucy said to Theo. “He’s already played all the greatest songs known to man and it’s not even eight thirty.”

  “Dance with me, Luce.” Theo grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet.

  “But-” Lucy stumbled forward, tugging on the hem of her sundress.

  “No buts tonight.” Theo led her down the steps and across the track, greeting at least a dozen people he knew on the way, never stopping, finally pulling her onto the grass and into his arms.

  “I’m not the world’s best dancer, Theo.”

  “And that’s going to be a problem here?” He gestured broadly at the crowd around them and smiled down at Lucy.

  She had to admit he had a point. There was some rather unconventional movement taking place on the grassy dance floor, and much of it didn’t require a partner or even a beat. One woman was happily doing the 1960s-era Swim. There was a long and disjointed conga line snaking through the crowd, gleefully knocking apart small groups as it went. There was a Rockette-like kick line of women with decidedly un-Rockette-like physiques. And some waltzing. Plus a lot of jumping around and hollering.

  Lucy didn’t think she’d ever been around so many people who couldn’t care less what others thought of them.

  “Thanks for asking me here this weekend.”

  Theo’s face softened, and in the bright stadium lights his eyes twinkled down on her. “Thanks for coming.”

  The DJ chose that particular moment to play Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” which made Lucy groan and turn her face away from Theo’s.

  “Does Elvis make you uncomfortable?”

  “Just some of his lyrics.”

  Theo’s hand pressed into the small of Lucy’s back and brought her even closer. She felt herself mold into him, rest her cheek on his hard but comfortable chest. Why did everything about Theo have to be just right? Why couldn’t his chest feel too bony under her cheek, or too fleshy? Why couldn’t she be disgusted by the scent of his skin? Why couldn’t she be annoyed by the sound of his voice?

  One of Theo’s hands moved to her hair and Lucy started. She tried to pull away, but he kept her there, and that’s when she felt his lips press down on the top of her head.

  “Viv and Martin like you, Luce.”

  “I like them.”

  “You look lovely tonight.”

  “God. Just stop, Theo.”

  She pushed away enough to break his embrace, only to find her face right below his. He inclined his head enough to bring his lips too close to hers.

&n
bsp; Her pulse kicked up to heart-attack speed. “I think we need to stay away from running tracks. We make mistakes on running tracks.”

  “Damn, Lucy.” Theo’s breath was warm and sweet on her mouth, and all it would have taken was the slightest forward movement on her part and they would be kissing again. It’s what she wanted. It’s what she feared.

  “Can I dance with you?”

  They pulled apart to look down at the source of the request. It was a man no more than five feet tall, at least sixty years old, wearing four bronze medals around his chubby neck and a very wide grin on his elfin face. He stared at Lucy with open adoration. He drooled just a little.

  “Of course,” Lucy said, feeling Theo’s hands fall away from her body. It was probably for the best. Of course it was. So she welcomed her new dance partner and put one hand on his shoulder as he put a hand on her waist and gazed up at her.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said. “I’m Fred. Are you married?”

  They arrived back at the house about ten thirty. Viv and Martin were already asleep and Buddy went right to bed. It had been a very long day for him.

  Lucy said good night to Theo and was about to venture down the long hallway toward her guest suite when he called her.

  “Wanna go for a swim?”

  Of course she did. Or did not. Of course she wanted to spend more time with Theo. No she didn’t.

  “I didn’t bring a swimsuit. Sorry.” She gave him a nice smile. “Good night.”

  “You don’t need one.”

  Her brain seized momentarily. Then she said, “Oh yes. Yes, I do. I need a suit so bad you wouldn’t freakin‘ believe it.” Theo’s laughter caused the heat of embarrassment to spread over her face. “Good night, Theo.”

  “We can turn off the pool lights, Luce. And with the twenty-foot privacy fence, only NSA spy satellites could see us.”

  He was serious! Theo wanted to go skinny-dipping!

  “No thank you.”

  “OK, fine. I give up. There’s a whole closet of swimsuits in the cabana. Let’s find one for you.”