Autumn's Child

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  She had already been in her floaty nightgown when he had come that first night, and the sex had been focused but leisurely. She had been on top, and after he was finished, she had slipped her hand between her legs, her orgasm accompanied only by a flutter of her eyelashes and a slight jerk in her torso.

  The second night she did have a bottle of wine opened, and they sat out on the balcony, saying only a word or two about the moon. He knew very little more about her than he had when first shaking her hand Friday afternoon.

  * * * *

  “So you’ve been jilted.”

  “Gran!” Colleen was so shocked she couldn’t get out more than the one syllable. How did Grannor know? Colleen had not said anything to anyone about what she had seen before sunrise. It was unlike her not to instantly tell all her friends everything, but she had known what would have happened if she had told Amanda. Amanda would have been so outraged on Colleen’s behalf, attacking Ben so harshly that Colleen would have felt compelled to defend him. That’s what had happened with her other friends four years ago.

  “I suppose you aren’t used to that, a pretty thing like you.”

  “Ben did not jilt me. We were not a couple.”

  Grannor’s laugh was almost a crackle. “Is that what they call it now, ‘being a couple’? I don’t imagine that he plans on marrying her.”

  Marry? “He hasn’t even known her for a week.”

  “I hope you have a plan. If you want him, you’ll have to fight for him.”

  It was after lunch on Wednesday. Colleen and Grannor were supposedly going on a short walk, but her grandmother had gone directly to the Adirondack chairs angled away from the shore line. Colleen waited until her grandmother was settled in one. “I’m not willing to think about relationships in such combative terms.”

  “Don’t think big words can change anything, missy,” Grannor scoffed. “I told you that you needed to act quickly, and now you see what happened when you didn’t. I imagine the Healys are going to be none too pleased when they hear about this.”

  What about me? Don’t you care about how I feel?

  No, probably not. Any normal grandmotherly concern was entrenched behind Grannor’s prickly fortress. Colleen had thwarted her. Colleen hadn’t taken her advice. Colleen was now another exhibit in Grannor’s museum of grimly gleeful “I told you so.”

  Why do I put up with her?

  Colleen knew the answer to that. Because she needs me. Her maternal grandmother, her mother’s mother, was easy to love, easy to be with, but having had eight children of her own, Grammy O’Connell had many granddaughters, five of whom lived near her in St. Paul. But whom did Eleanor Ridge have? She, Laura, Kim, and Norton’s wife all brought out the worst in each other. Colleen was the only one who could deal with each of them without turning into—her mother wouldn’t like her saying this, but the phrase fit—a white-hot Southern bitch.

  Her grandmother was a bigot and a snob. She was arrogant. She had no interest in other people’s opinions. But Colleen did have good memories. Sometimes, when her mother and brothers were escaping to the familiar carnival of the Healys’ home, Colleen would stay in Carlsville with her grandmother. Together they would go through the china closets and select what dishes to use at dinner. Then they would go into Grannor’s shaded, lavender-scented bedroom with the high four-poster mahogany bed. Grannor would take out her jewelry and let Colleen play with it. The fox-head brooch with its glittery diamond eyes scared her, but she loved the rest of it, looping pearls around her neck, topping them with a garnet necklace and a set of lapis lazuli beads, turning herself into a Christmas tree. She would cover her arms with heavy bracelets, cloisonné cuffs, silver bangles, and gold charm bracelets. She would have to spread her fingers wide to keep the bracelets from slipping off her narrow wrists.

  As a child, Colleen had loved her grandmother; as an adult she felt sorry for her. But if Grannor was going to be nasty about Ben, that would be nearly unforgivable.

  * * * *

  The punishment for not following Grannor’s advice started on Thursday evening. The inventory was almost complete. A lid to a chafing dish, a sterling water pitcher, and a few stray pieces of flatware could not be found. Only two of the sets of china were completely intact, but Grannor said that some of those pieces had been broken even before she herself had been born.

  As usual, Colleen went into her grandmother’s room after dinner.

  “That young man of yours—”

  “If you are referring to Ben,” Colleen interrupted—and no one ever interrupted Mrs. Norton W. Ridge IV—“he is not my young man.”

  Grannor ignored her. “That class he has been working on, whatever it is that he went into the village for Friday night, he said that he didn’t have to actually sit in a classroom.”

  “A lot of instruction happens that way now.”

  Grannor was shaking her head as if online classes were yet another way that the world was going to hell in a golf cart. “Tell him he can stay on to do it here after you all leave. He can have dinner with me and keep me company, at least until the bridge ladies return.”

  “Wait. You want him to stay here?”

  “Yes. We should invite him to stay here while he works on that. He doesn’t have other plans, does he?”

  “You want him to stay on here? At the lake?” With Leilah?

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “But he can’t work here,” Colleen countered. “He needs an internet connection.”

  “He has managed so far, hasn’t he? Leilah says that she gets some kind of dial tone in the boathouse. That’s why he hasn’t had to go back to the village.”

  “Leilah can get a cell signal?”

  “Signal, dial tone, it’s all the same, isn’t it? Leilah says that it isn’t, and she is making a plan to bring some kind of wire into the house. It seemed like nonsense to me, but I told her to do what she likes. You should also tell him that he can clear his comings and goings with her.”

  Nonsense wires and Colleen telling Ben something? What was happening here? “Are you saying that it’s all right for Ben to stay in the boathouse?”

  “My dear child, what would ever make you think that I would dream of intruding on such a private matter?”

  Only every breath that you have ever taken. “Then shouldn’t Leilah have some say in this?”

  “The invitation needs to come from the family, honey lamb. You should know that.”

  “Then shouldn’t it come from you? Why bring me into it?”

  “But it is from me. I’m merely asking you to deliver it.”

  Why? “Is this some kind of test, Grannor? To see if I can hold up my head, act like a Ridge?”

  “And if it is?”

  Then figure out a better one. A poorly designed test enraged the students and then was impossible to grade. Colleen had learned that her first year in teaching.

  But whatever the test, Colleen liked getting As.

  Jason and Amanda said that Ben had gone to the second floor to inventory what was stored there. Colleen could hear Leilah working in the kitchen, so she went up to her grandparents’ old bedroom at the far end of the second floor. It was being used as storage for the bulkier items that Grannor had brought up from Georgia.

  Ben was sitting on one of the rolled-up carpets, a pile of crumpled newspapers at his feet. He was unwrapping Royal Doulton toby jugs, pottery vessels fashioned in the likeness of the heads of famous personages—pirates, presidents, Henry VII’s six wives, the Three Musketeers. There were ten or so already lined up. Colleen hadn’t known that her family had them. They were ugly. She hated them.

  The one he was unwrapping was a woman wearing a white Tudor-era headdress. A brown stick-thing was leaning against her head forming the jug’s handle. It was an axe. This must be Anne Boleyn. Oh, lovely.

  She should look on t
he bright side; she liked looking on the bright side. Ben might not want her, but at least he couldn’t chop off her head. How was that for sunny optimism?

  “I have a message from my grandmother. She really does appreciate how much time you’ve spent on these inventories.”

  That was a lie. Grannor was gracious when people did things for her. Her manners were appreciative, but actual appreciation, awareness of what sacrifices had been made on her behalf…no, Eleanor Ridge took other people’s helpfulness for granted.

  So why was Colleen lying? She didn’t like to lie. She hated it. And why, of all people, was she lying to him?

  Because I don’t want you to know how much you hurt me. Not ever.

  She knew that she had the world’s worst poker face. She could never hide how she felt. Her brothers used to tell her that they won card games because they were so good at calculating odds. Finally her mother had told her that she either needed to quit playing with them or stop squirming every time she pulled a good hand. She hadn’t done either one. She had gone on playing, squirming, and losing. She hadn’t minded losing.

  She minded now. She was losing now.

  “It was no trouble,” he said.

  Now he was lying too. Of course it had been trouble.

  “She says that you are very welcome to stay while you work on your degree.” Colleen rushed her words. She needed to get it out.

  “What?” Clearly he had not expected this. “Stay here? I would not want to impose on her.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. My grandmother only lets people impose on her when she wants to have something to get outraged about.” That, at least, was the truth.

  Ben was standing now. Colleen didn’t remember him getting up. She used to find his posture sexy. His collarbone held his shoulders broad and straight; his hips were trim and tucked. Now it made him seem aloof, like the sort of guy who stopped returning your calls or didn’t remember your birthday.

  “She is being very generous,” he said. “I will think about it.”

  This was the right place to end the conversation. Yes, she had told a white lie, but she hadn’t gotten weepy or whiny. It was time to stop.

  Except she wanted to punish him. She wanted to make him pay for what he had done. I know, she wanted to say. So much for having a poker face. I know about you and her. I saw you on the lawn. I heard your footsteps in the hallway.

  “So she says,” she continued, her voice as even as before, “you can clear your comings and goings with Leilah.” I know.

  She wanted him to suffer. She wanted him to feel guilty.

  And what exactly would that accomplish? It wouldn’t make her feel any better, and this wasn’t about her. It was about her grandmother. Grannor would never admit it, but she had made a mistake coming here during the off season. “Grannor’s lonely, Ben. She doesn’t care what you do with the rest of your time. She wants someone to have dinner with.”

  “I’m not good at chitchat. You know that.”

  “Then don’t chitchat. If you can get her off that gossipy, bitchy thing, she’s an interesting woman. I suppose you’ll have to talk to Leilah, but please think about it. Please.”

  Was she begging again? Pushing him, pressuring him? Well, maybe. But how could it be wrong to ask someone to help a lonely old woman?

  Chapter 5

  As soon as school started again, Colleen got two pieces of disappointing news. She and Amanda had applied for a grant to develop a high school foreign-language curriculum for the kinetic learners, the athletic kids, drawing on the research done for the primary grades. The committee praised their application, but the three anticipated grants had been cut to one. Colleen and Amanda didn’t get it.

  On top of that, her summer plans fell through. She was supposed to spend a month touring Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand with a group of Norwegians, then traveling on her own for another three weeks, but the organizers of the Norwegian tour decided that there were enough young people in the group that they didn’t need an interpreter.

  She never relied on her summer income to pay her regular bills. She saved that money, half in her retirement account, half in her travel fund. Subletting her apartment provided even more money for those two savings accounts.

  Not only did losing the summer gig make it impossible to reach her savings goal for the year, but it also meant that she would need a place to live. She approached the couple who were going to sublet her apartment. Oh, yes, they were still coming to Charlottesville for a summer program and were so looking forward to living at her place. Colleen didn’t push them. She wasn’t the sort of person who made awkward requests of others.

  She could go to Chicago and live rent-free with her father and his second wife, but Genevieve would try so hard to make Colleen feel welcome that it would exhaust both of them.

  Grannor, on the other hand, wouldn’t do a thing beyond telling Leilah to set another place at the table. Colleen would go there. Surely Ben would be gone by then. Once the other summer residents returned, Grannor was likely to start hinting that his time was up. But when Colleen turned in her students’ final grades on a Thursday afternoon, he was still squatting in the boathouse, having dinner with Grannor every night that she didn’t have other plans.

  He couldn’t be staying because he enjoyed those evenings. Leilah must be like the sirens in the Odyssey, the beautiful, mythic creatures whose irresistible songs lured sailors into drowning themselves.

  Grannor seemed pleased at the idea of Colleen coming for the summer. In fact, she encouraged her to bring friends. “I like having young people about, and you teachers aren’t busy in the summers, are you?”

  How little Grannor knew of the real world. Colleen didn’t have student loans, but most of her friends did. They had to work in the summer. Amanda was the assistant manager of the athletic camp that used the school’s facilities. Other friends taught in various summer schools. But the Fourth of July would be a long weekend this year, so Colleen was able to invite a few people to come to the lake.

  The weeks passed. Colleen proctored the AP exams; Ben was still at the lake. She wrote her own final exams; he was still there. As she calculated the final grades, she was resigned to the notion that he was going to be there. With Leilah.

  She celebrated the end of the school year with her friends Thursday evening and the next morning finished packing and organizing her apartment for her renters. Her phone went off continually. People were hoping that she would stay for the weekend. Some wanted her to change her mind and come to their parties. Other people who, being incapable of making social plans for themselves, were calling to hint that if she was doing something, maybe she could invite them to come along.

  Being the person whom everyone liked took a lot of time.

  She was trying to close her extra suitcase when the phone went off again. Dum…dum…her breath caught.

  It was the Olympic fanfare. That had been Ben’s ringtone. Four years ago he had jokingly programmed it into her phone, saying that he might as well be her Olympian since he would never be America’s. But that had been four years ago. She had upgraded her phone at least twice. The data must have transferred automatically. Her phone, pathetic little creature, had never lost hope that he would call.

  “Ben?”

  “Where are you? Are you still at school?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad I caught you so you don’t have to backtrack. Your grandmother’s had an episode of some sort, and we are at the hospital in Staunton.”

  The hospital? “What do you mean an ‘episode’? Is she okay? What happened?”

  Grannor would hate being in the hospital. She had bragged that she hadn’t been admitted since the birth of her youngest child sixty years ago.

  “She’s still in with the doctors so I can’t tell you much.” Both he and Leilah had been with her when it happened,
he said, and by the time the ambulance arrived, she was conscious again. “You should come straight to the hospital. You were planning on coming today, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, yes…Of course, I’ll come straight there.” Colleen looked around frantically. How much did she have left to do?

  “She seems stable,” Ben was saying. “There’s no reason to drive like a crazy person.”

  “I won’t.”

  Staunton was on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains about forty miles from Charlottesville. Colleen’s phone continued chirping as she drove west on interstate 64, but driving was one of the few times she ignored phone calls. She did pick up when she heard the children’s song “Brush Your Teeth.”

  “Hi, Dad. I’m in the car so I’ve got you on speaker.”

  “Then I’ll be quick. You shouldn’t talk on the phone while driving. You’re going directly to the hospital?”

  So he had heard about Grannor. “How did you find out?”

  “Ben Healy called. I’m on my way to the airport now.”

  “You’re coming? Right now?” Things must be worse than Ben had told her.

  “Genevieve is out west with her son’s family, but your brothers will probably get in Saturday morning.”

  “Sean and Finn? They’re coming?” This must be really serious. Colleen had been about to move around a slow-moving horse trailer, but decided not to. Now was not the time to get fancy with the driving.

  “I don’t know exactly when they’ll arrive, but don’t you worry about that. You focus on driving carefully.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  Her father didn’t usually lecture her about road safety. He was upset.

  This should have prepared her, but she almost didn’t recognize the small, white-haired woman in the hospital bed, IV lines snaking into her arm, a nasal cannula feeding oxygen through her nose. Was she in the wrong room? No. The man rising up from the bedside chair, folding up his newspaper, was Ben.

  Ben…Ben…For a moment she saw nothing else. The room, the world, swirled and dissolved, leaving only him. How incredible he looked, with those cheekbones and green eyes, that copper-black hair. Suddenly everything that had happened—Leilah, his footsteps in the dark hall, the awkward conversations—none of it mattered. He was here, waiting for her.