Family Blessings

by LaVyrle Spencer

  She forced herself to speak to Christopher lest the others wonder at her reticence.

  “Your glass is filled with cranberry juice,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “So you’re on mid-shift today.”

  “Yes. Three to eleven.”

  “Will it be busy?”

  “Tonight it will. Lot of college kids home for the weekend, getting together at bars. You know kids and alcohol.”

  Askance, she watched him put away a helping of potatoes and gravy that covered half his plate.

  “So how about you?” he asked. “T omorrow’s the biggie, huh?”

  “That’s right—biggest shopping days of the year, tomorrow and Saturday. I’m not looking forward to it.”

  “And after that you’re into the Christmas rush.”

  “That’s already started. In my business we have to start preparing permanent Christmas arrangements so they’re ready to sell on Thanksgiving weekend.”

  They talked about superflcialities only, locking away what really mattered and behaving like Greg’s friend and Greg’s mother with Janice and Joey near enough to hear every word they said.

  At two o’clock Chris checked his watch and said to Peg, “I’m sorry to do a hit-and-run, but I have to be at roll call in thirty minutes, dressed like a cop.” He pushed back his chair and rose, holding back his tie. “That means a stop at home first.”

  Peg looked disappointed. “So soon? But you haven’t even had your pie.”

  “Someone else can have my piece. I’m so full.”

  “I’ll send one with you.”

  “Oh, no, that’s not necessary . Everything was so delicious.”

  They went on exchanging dialogue while he moved away from the table and Peg rose to disregard his polite refusal of the pie. Orrin stood and those around the table bid Christopher farewell. After a moment of indecision, Lee got up, too, and went with him to the foyer while Orrin got his gray wool chesterfield coat and plaid scarf, holding them as Christopher slipped them on. Peg emerged from the kitchen with a triangular piece of tinfoil.

  “Here’s your pie. A Thanksgiving dinner just isn’t complete without pumpkin pie. Lee made it.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I see where Lee gets her compulsion to send leftovers home with everybody. And thank you for another wonderful holiday.” He kissed Peg’s cheek, shook Orrin’s hand and kissed Lee’s cheek.

  She opened the door and said, “ ’Bye.”

  “ ’Bye, and thanks again.”

  She lined the edge of the door with one hand while watching him walk down the wet driveway to his Explorer, which waited in a turnaround some distance away.

  The wind had come up and lifted the end of his scarf as he opened the truck door and waved before getting in. He always did that— waved that way—and Lee was struck with warm familiarity watching him do so again.

  As usual, from the moment he drove away the ebullience went out of the day.

  LEEand the kids stayed till 6:30 P.M., then Janice said she wanted to get home and change clothes: she, too, was going out with a bunch of friends that night. At home, Joey and Lee changed into sweat suits and turned on the TV while Janice switched on the radio in the bathroom and spent time redoing her makeup and hair. Jane and Sandy came by for her at 8:30, leaving Lee and Joey watching an old rerun of a Waltons Thanksgiving movie.

  At 9:15 the doorbell rang.

  Lee glanced over at Joey, sprawled on the sofa, and discovered he was sound asleep.

  She got up from her chair and went to answer.

  Christopher stood on the front step, dressed in uniform, his squad car parked in the driveway behind him with its engine still running and the parking lights on.

  She opened the storm door and he held it that way while she stood on the level above him in her sweat suit and slippers.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said—no smile, no softness, just a statement of fact. “Could you come out to the car for a minute?”

  “Joey is here.”

  “Tell him where you’re going and come outside, please.”

  “Can’t we talk in the house?”

  “No, not with Joey there.”

  Suddenly, things inside her began trembling. How indomitable he was to face this head on, far more than she, who had eluded the confrontation in various temporizing ways.

  “All right,” she said, “let me get my jacket.” She opened a coatcloset door and called into the living room, “Joey, Christopher is here. I’m going out in the car to talk to him a minute.”

  He shifted onto his left side, facing the back of the sofa, and mumbled something while the TV played behind him.

  Outside, she preceded Christopher down the walk to his squad car. He opened the passenger door and waited while she got in. Inside it was warm, the heater blowing. A multitude of gear formed a barricade between his half of the seat and hers. A rifle stood barrelup beside her left knee. On the dash a large radio, glowing with red lights, was mounted beside a larger speaker pointed at the driver’s seat. On the seat itself a wooden cup holder was secured in place with space behind it for a bunch of notebooks that were wedged upright. Behind the driver’s seat a glass partition divided the front from the back, while behind her a steel mesh partition did the same.

  He got in and slammed the door. On the radio, the county dispatcher’s voice crackled intermittently. He reached up and lowered the volume, then took off his hat and wedged it behind the speaker. Resting his left wrist on top of the steering wheel, he turned to look at her.

  After an uncertain stretch of silence they both spoke at once.

  “These past few weeks—” he said.

  “I’m sorry about—” she said.

  They both clipped off their remarks.

  She picked up first. “I’m sorry about the Thanksgiving invitation.”

  “This isn’t about that. I understand perfectly well why you didn’t call and ask me.”

  “It was selfish of me. I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted. Now let me say what I came here to say.” He sat back, looking straight out over the steering wheel at her garage door, which was closed for once. “These past few weeks have been bad. I don’t like the way things were left between us. I’ve been miserable, how about you?”

  “Lonely.” She, too, looked straight out over the dash.

  He turned to study her profile, dimly outlined by the pale lights from the dash. The radio light put a ruby haze on the tips of her eyelashes and rouged her cheeks. Her mouth looked somewhat sullen. “I know all the reasons we shouldn’t keep seeing each other, but somehow when I add them up they don’t seem to matter much. The plain truth is, I want to see you again, and I want it clear that I’m not coming around looking for leftover lasagna, or for sympathy, or to fill in for your son. I want us to be together without all that baggage between us, but I’m working mid-shift right now so the timing is crummy. My next night off is Sunday. Would you go out to a movie with me?”

  “What would I tell Joey?”

  “Tell him the truth.”

  “Oh, Christopher, I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not.”

  “You didn’t hesitate to tell him we were going walking together last summer, or swimming, or riding on a Ferris wheel.”

  “But the difference was, he went with us most of the time.”

  “No, the difference is in how you perceive us, not in how he will. If you tell him you’re going out with me, he’ll accept it. Just lay it out there, plain and simple.”

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  He let out a mirthless nasal huff, rested his elbow on the window ledge, pinched his bottom lip and looked off to his left.

  “Well, I am!” she said defensively.

  He rolled his head to face her. “Yeah, this is pretty scary, going out to a movie.” His tone became more assertive. “Don’t make anything of it. Just tell him, ‘Chris and I are going out to a movie. S
ee you later,’ and walk out with me.”

  She thought about it awhile and surprised herself by agreeing. “All right, I will.”

  She seemed to have surprised him, too. He said, disbelievingly, “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  He reached for the radio volume though she hadn’t even heard the word “Bravo” signaling a call for the Anoka officers.

  “. . . reporting a vehicle going north on southbound lane of Main.”

  He plucked his mike from the dashboard and said, “Forty-one to base. Did you copy if that was West Main or East Main?”

  “East Main.”

  “Ten-four,” he said, then to Lee. “I’ve got to go.”

  She opened her door and the dome light came on. “I’ll see you Sunday.”

  “I’ll call with the time.”

  “Okay.” She got out.

  “Hey, Lee?”

  She leaned down and looked across the seat at him.

  “Good pie. I had it on my break.”

  She smiled and slammed the door.

  ONSunday night she didn’t have to worry. Janice went back to her own place in the late afternoon; Joey got listless and called Denny Whitman, then announced, “I’m gonna go over to Denny’s house and play video games. Can you give me a ride?” “Sure,” she said, giving herself clear sailing, even as far as getting ready was concerned.

  With the house to herself, she experienced a sense of ambivalence about what to wear, how much to fuss, whether or not to wear perfume. Lord in heaven, she was going on a date for the first time in twenty-six years. She was terrified!

  She put on a pair of blue jeans (an effort to reduce the significance of this event) and a pullover sweater, the same makeup she wore to work every day and the same amount of perfume. Her hair? Well, her hair came as it was. She tugged at it, calling up a memory of Janice’s long, young mane, and wondered again how a man of Christopher’s age could prefer her over her daughter .

  He arrived at the time they’d arranged, and she hurried to the door with a queer tight feeling in her chest, blushing maybe the tiniest bit, wondering what in the world she was letting herself in for.

  He was wearing jeans and a red down-filled jacket and acted much less flustered than she.

  “Hi,” he said, stepping inside and closing the door with the small of his back. “All ready?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to call Joey first. He’s at Denny Whitman’s playing video games. I’m not sure if he needs a ride home or not.”

  “Okay.”

  While she dialed on the kitchen phone and spoke to Joey, Christopher ambled in behind her and sauntered around the room, looking at this and that, slapping a pair of leather gloves against his thigh. He glanced at a Pyrex baking dish holding leftover peach cobbler on the stove, and at a note on the refrigerator door that said Pick up watch at jeweler’s. He bent over the kitchen table and read a school announcement Joey had brought home about upcoming teachers’ workshop days.

  Plainly, he heard her say, “I’m going to a movie with Christopher, but we should be back by nine-thirty,” and after a pause, “The Firm.”

  He was watching her and listening quite pointedly when she answered Joey’s question about what they were going to see. She spoke for a minute longer, then hung up and told Chris, “Denny’s dad will bring him home.”

  To his credit, Christopher refrained from saying I told you so.

  In the front hall he held her denim jacket while she slipped it on; at his truck, he opened her door . . . just like a real date.

  During the movie he sat low on his tailbone with both elbows on the armrests. Sometimes their elbows touched. There was a kiss onscreen, and throughout it Christopher and Lee kept their eyes riveted on the scene and wondered what the other was thinking.

  In the truck afterward he asked, “Did you like it?”

  “Yes. Did you?”

  “Not as well as the book.”

  “Oh, it was better than the book!”

  The discussion lasted all the way home. When they got there the lights were on just as she’d left them. Joey’s bedroom was in the rear so they couldn’t tell if he was home yet or not.

  “Do you want to come in and have a piece of peach cobbler and ice cream?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  They got out and went inside.

  Pulling off her jacket she called, “Joey? Are you here?”

  No answer.

  She threw the jacket on a living room chair and went back to his room to find it dark. When she returned to the kitchen Christopher had hung his jacket on the back of a chair.

  “He’s still gone. He knows he’s got to be home by ten or he’s in trouble.” It was 9:45.

  She got out two sauce dishes, put peach cobbler in them, set them in the microwave and took ice cream from the freezer. When she tried to scoop it out, her muscles bulged, but nothing else moved.

  “Can I help?” he asked.

  She gave him the ice-cream scoop and opened a drawer to find spoons.

  The buzzer went off on the microwave and she carried the two bowls to him, waited while he added the ice cream, then took the desserts to the table while he put the ice cream away in the freezer.

  They did all this without ever so much as brushing against each other.

  They sat down. The house was intimately quiet—no radio, no television, no Joey moving around anywhere.

  She picked up her spoon and gouged into the cobbler, then glanced up to find Christopher intent on her, sitting motionless, his wrists resting against the edge of the table beside his bowl. His blue eyes were steady, smileless, sure.

  He said, “Let’s get this over with,” and took the spoon from her hand, put it back in the bowl and drew her toward him around the corner of the table. She let herself be pulled sideways onto his lap while his arms came around her and his face lifted to kiss her. There was no subtle foolery, no dissembling, not from the first. The kiss was wholly sexual, wet and filled with motion. He tilted his head back, opened his lips and stroked her teeth and tongue. She looped her arms around his neck and let it happen . . . and happen . . . until her heart seemed to expand against her ribs, leaving little room for her lungs to fill and empty. They tasted and stroked each other in the way each had imagined many times, in a whorl of sleek tongues and moist lips, while a full minute slipped away, and then two. In the middle of that time, he shifted her on his lap, dropping her to one side, bending above her until they were twisted together like a pair of tree trunks from a long-ago storm.

  It ended lingeringly, with an easing of his hold and a slow unwinding of their bodies until her face was again above his. Their lips parted but stayed close. Their breathing was strident. His hands rested lightly on her sides.

  He spoke first, in a voice half-trapped in his throat. “I wasn’t sure I could choke down those peaches without getting this out of the way first.”

  “Me either,” she answered, and slipped from his lap to return to her chair.

  They picked up their spoons and each ate a bite of warm cobbler and cold ice cream. The air around them seemed smothering, as if it contained too little oxygen for their needs. She glanced up and saw him watching her, his elbows on the table and his spoon leaving his lips. Suddenly, the nine years’ dearth of physical affection seemed to catch her like the crack of a whip. It coiled around her body, knocked the spoon from her hand and hauled her from her chair back to his.

  It happened so fast. One moment she was safely seated. The next she was standing above him with her hands on his face, lifting it, bending above it and picking up where they’d left off moments ago. And ten seconds after that—without a break in the kiss—she had thrown one leg over his lap and straddled him, striking the table edge with her hip, then taking a ride with him as he pivoted his chair at a sharper angle away from the table.

  His arms slid low, pulling her flush against him. She embraced him from her high vantage point, kissing his warm supple mouth while his ha
nds slid around the backs of her thighs and cupped them gently from behind, near the bend of her knees. They shared the . avor of peaches and cream from within each other’s mouths, and that sleek fit of two tongues mating, of lips sliding in an endless quest. They had put this off so long it felt like a reward which they shared. They did so, however, sitting smack in view of the front door, while her mind clamored, Don’t come in yet, Joey, please don’t come in!

  When things got too crazy inside her, she drew back, as one drugged, realizing she had to get off his lap. “I have to—”

  His open mouth cut off the words. His arms snapped her back where she’d been and his shoulder blades came away from the chair. They’d played the song and dance so long that they explored now with exquisite relief, tasting each other and letting their feelings carry the reckless moment. It fled her mind how young he was, for this close, age had no significance. It fled his mind how old she was, for it had never mattered to him nearly as much as it had to her. Kissing, they were merely man and woman, and very facile ones at that.

  They ended the kiss mutually, if reluctantly.

  Though their mouths parted, their eyes refused. They sat beguiled, breathing hard, a little stunned, his hands still cupping the backs of her thighs in her tight blue jeans.

  “Joey could come,” she whispered, and slowly swung her leg off him, his right hand trailing around her kneecap, lingering there until she reluctantly backed off and returned to her chair.

  They centered themselves before their peach cobbler, which was now surrounded by a lake of melted ice cream. She picked up her spoon and watched the white liquid drip from its tip. She looked up at him.

  “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ ve done that?”

  “No, but I’d like to.”

  “Nine years.”

  “Are you kidding? That’s not natural.”

  She shrugged.

  “You never kissed anyone since your husband died?”

  “A few times I did, a year or so after he died. But never like this. Always testing myself to see if I could, then afterwards feeling as if I wanted to hurry home and brush my teeth.”