Family Blessings (20 page)

Up in the sky a boom and a whistle . . . another starburst of glitter, blue and red this time . . . pop, pop, pop! . . . and voices in chorus.

"Ohhhhhhh . .."

"Christopher?" she said, very quietly.

"Hen?" He swung his face to her profile, just beyond their joined shoulders.

"You're very good for me," she said, keeping her eyes on the sky.

Chapter 7.

A couple of weeks after the Fourth of July, Janice came home from work one night at 9:45. It was hot in the house and she looked tired as she came down the hall and dropped one shoulder against the open doorway of Lee's bedroom.

"Hi, Mom."

"Hi, honey." Lee was sitting up in bed reading, wearing a pair of short yellow pajamas. "Busy at the store?"

Janice ran a hand through her hair and gave her head a shake.

"Not very. Gosh, it's so hot in here, Mom. I wish you'd get air-conditioning."

"Why don't you take a lukewarm shower? That'll make you feel better."

Janice pulled her blouse out of her skirt and unbuttoned it. She lifted her left foot and took off a white flat, hung it over an index finger and did the same with the right, then propped herself against the door casing once more.

"Mom, could I ask you something?"

"Of course." Lee patted the mattress and rested her magazine on her legs. "Come here."

Janice sat on the bed with one knee crooked up, the other foot on the floor. "Mom, what do you do when you've tried everything within the range of good taste to get a guy to notice you . . .

only he doesn't?"

"Some guy in particular?"

"Yes . . . Christopher."

Lee sat absolutely still for five seconds, then closed her magazine and put it on the nightstand, giving herself a brief grace period in which to concoct a response. Leaning against the pillows again, she said quietly, "Oh, I see."

"Mom, he treats me like a kid sister and I just hate it."

"There's quite a bit of difference in your ages."

"Seven years, that's not so much. You and Daddy were five years apart."

Lee considered Janice's reply. "That's true. Two more isn't so terribly lopsided."

"Then why doesn't he pay any attention to me? I've tried dropping hints, but he doesn't pick up on them. I've looked in the mirror and I'm not a troll or anything. I've acted like a lady around him, engaged him in conversation, complimented him, dressed nicely, tried in every way I know how to let him know I'm interested and old enough to take it seriously. So what is it?"

"I don't know what to say."

"You're with him a lot. Does he say anything about me?"

"He asks how you are. He's concerned about you just like he is about all of our family."

"Concerned," Janice repeated with a grimace, staring at her white flats as she held them sole to sole in her lap. "Hooray." She sat there looking dejected. Out in the yard crickets were carping. In the living room Joey was watching TV with the volume turned low. Janice's voice grew quiet with sincerity. "I've had a crush on him since the first time Greg introduced him to us. It was at the police station, and he was dressed in his uniform, just pulling up in a squad car.

Honest, Mom, he stepped out of that car and my heart just . . . just flew into my throat. I'm sure he knows. Kim says I look at him like he's fresh-buttered popcorn."

She raised her disillusioned eyes to Lee and they laughed. Once.

Not too cheerily.

Lee opened her arms. "Come here, honey."

Janice stretched across the bed and nestled in the crook of Lee's arm.

"We women have a rotten deal, don't we?" Lee Nbbed Janice's hair with her jaw.

"Not anymore. Lots of women ask men out on dates."

"Then why haven't you?"

Janice shrugged. Lee stroked Janice's hair back from her temple and let it fall again and again. It was beautiful hair, mid-back length, auburn, naturally wavy. She had inherited her hair from Bill's side of the family. "I guess I want him to ask me."

At that moment Joey interrupted. "What are you two doing?" He appeared in the doorway and leaned against it where Janice had been.

He was dressed in a gray T-shirt and shorts, and filthy white socks with the toes belled out like light bulbs.

"Talking," Lee replied.

"Yeah, I bet I know about what. Janice has got a crush on Chris, hasn't she?" He started to cackle softly, in falsetto.

Janice rolled her head and told her brother, "You know, Joey, it might not hurt you to get a crush on somebody. Maybe you'd grow up a little and pay some attention to your personal hygiene. You've got half the ball diamond on your shirt and I can smell you clear over here."

Lee said, "Could we have a little privacy here, Joe?"

"Yeah, yeah . . . I'm going to bed."

"After you take a shower."

He made a disgusted face and rolled away from the door frame with his shoulders artificially slumped. A minute later the shower started down the hall.

Janice drew herself up and sat with her back to Lee.

"Kim says I should just call him up and ask him to do something.

Go to a movie or something. What do you think, Mom?"

"Honey, it's up to you. When I grew up girls didn't do things like that, but I realize times are different now."

"The thing is, I'm scared he'll say no again, then I'll feel like a jerk."

"Again?"

"That one night I asked him if he wanted to go for a swim, but he'd already gone with you. This time though, I'd ask him earlier in the week for a Friday or Saturday night. Maybe make some dinner plans at some place casual." She looked back over her shoulder wistfully.

"What do you think?"

Lee studied her daughter and felt a swell of maternal sympathy.

Janice was such a pretty girl. How could any young man brush her off?

"I think mothers should stay out of decisions like this."

Janice remained on the crumpled sheets in her crumpled blouse staring at her bare knees. Finally, she gave a rueful laugh.

"Well, hell, Mom, you're no help at all," she said, and pulled herself off the bed.

Half an hour later when the house had finally grown quiet, Lee lay in the dark with the pillows mounded under her ear, considering her reaction to what Janice had said. When Janice had mentioned Christopher's name she'd felt a spurt of panic. Or had it been jealousy? How ridiculous. Either one was ridiculous, given Christopher's age. He was fifteen years younger than herself and she had no business considering him anything more than a friend.

Yet she did. What set him apart was how she'd come to rely on him. He was wise beyond his years, perhaps made so by virtue of his chosen work or his unhappy youth.

In the month since Greg's death she had seen Christopher perhaps a dozen times. It was obvious she was using him as a substitute for Greg.

She understood this clearly and supposed her reaction was typical.

Any mother who'd lost a child would seek the company of those closest to that child to get over the hurdle of first loss. When the young people were around--any of them--she could talk about Greg with less pain. The girls came by occasionally, and Nolan had even stopped in the flower shop one day, just to say hello.

Then what was so different about Christopher?

She flopped over on her back. The sheets felt sticky and she wondered why she hadn't taken the trouble to have air-conditioning installed after the shop had proven itself and she'd no longer had to watch every penny. Those damned crickets could drive a person crazy. She switched to her side and stretched one leg onto a cool part of the bedding with the top sheet between her legs.

What was so different about Christopher?

He wore a uniform and drove a black-and-white police car. When she saw it pulling into her driveway she had the momentary illusion it was Greg pulling in, Greg stepping from behind the wheel, Greg in that neat navy blue uniform with badges all over the chest. Mercy, Christopher's coloring was even like Greg's.

Brown hair, blue eyes, tan face. He had the same stocky build.

The police department had a weight room over behind Perkins restaurant where they worked out all the time, and to Lee every fellow on the force had the thick-necked, toned, muscular shape that spoke of a man keeping fit because someday his life might depend on it.

So what about holding hands with Christopher on the Ferris wheel?

That was comfort, nothing more.

And the kiss between the eyes?

More comfort.

And the compulsion to touch his bare arm?

She tossed a while longer.

No more iced tea after eight o'clock at night if this is what it did to her! She rolled to her other side and stared at the moonlit window, listening to the rasp of crickets and a faint susurNs of leaves as a night breeze filtered past. Then silence.

Utter silence, in which she lifted her head off the pillow and looked around the darkened room.

Silly single woman who'd given up those jitters years ago! What in the world had gotten into her tonight? Then she heard it, faintly . . .

in the distance . . . a siren . . . so far away even the crickets started up again.

Was he still working night shift? Had he had any more high-speed chases? There . . . see? She didn't even know the answers to these things because she hadn't seen him for two weeks. Wasn't that proof there was nothing untoward about those few moments they'd held hands on the Ferris wheel?

She spent two more weeks without seeing him. During that time she devoted part of every day to settling Greg's business affairs.

She'd been fighting with the bank for weeks and was on the phone at the flower shop yet again with someone named Pacey, finding it difficult to get over the loss of Greg when she had to fight these battles daily to clear up his affairs. "But I told you, Mr. Pacey, it's not going through probate. He didn't own enough property to make it worth the trouble."

"In that case my hands are tied."

"Good lord, it's only a four-hundred-dollar savings account!"

"I understand that, but unless he was a minor you have no jurisdiction over his assets, and of course, he was no minor."

"But do you realize, Mr. Pacey, that even after I sent you a copy of his death certificate your computer still sent me another monthly statement? I just want to close it out so that doesn't happen again."

"I'm sorry about that, Mrs. Reston. It sometimes takes a while for the paperwork to be entered into the computer."

"And what about his motorcycle payment? The same thing happened there.

I came into the bank over a month ago to let you know he was dead and that his motorcycle was insured. Today I got a notice claiming his payment was overdue and there's a late charge tacked on!"

After a puzzled pause, he asked, "What day did you say you came in?"

When she told him, he said, "Just a minute, please," and put her on hold.

She had developed a headache. It seemed to intensify while she stood listening to Barry Manilow sing in her ear. Handling Greg's business affairs became a constant reminder of him--looking at his handwriting in his checkbook register, finding notes he'd made on papers in his files, unearthing evidence of plans he'd had for the future. When snags like this came up--and it was often--she found it harder to cope.

Sometimes, after a conversation with someone like Pacey over some tie-up she couldn't control, she'd have herself a brief cry, fueled largely by exasperation.

She was still on hold when the shop door opened and Christopher walked in, dressed in his police uniform. At the same moment, Mr. Pacey returned.

"Mrs. Reston?"

"Yes." Her eyes followed Christopher as he came inside and smiled at her.

"Your son certainly had paid off his car, but the trouble is he used it as collateral against a loan he took out for a motorcycle."

"I know that, Mr. Pacey! I told you that the first time I came in!

My trouble is that I can't transfer ownership of the car to my daughter without the registration card, and you won't release that without the motorcycle being paid for, and the insurance company is paying for the motorcycle, not me, but they haven't issued a check yet."

She heard him draw a breath of strained patience. "Then wouldn't it be a lot simpler, Mrs. Reston, just to go through probate?"

Her voice was trembling as she said, "Thank you, Mr. Pacey," and slammed down the receiver with such force the bell tinged in the phone.

Christopher stood watching her across the length of the shop. He looked totally out of place amid a tiered display of potted yellow mums and blue hydrangeas. She stood behind a Formica counter with both hands pressed flat upon it, striving to calm herself.

Frustration won out.

She made a fist and thumped it on the counter as hard as she could.

"Damn it!" She squeezed her eyes shut.

"What's wrong?" He picked his way between cut flowers and revolving stands of greeting cards to the opposite side of the counter. He rested his forearms on it, bending at the hip and bringing his face down to the level of hers. "Bad day?"

She swung around, presenting her back, hands caught on the edge of the counter, blinking hard at the ceiling.

"Why is it that every time you see me, I'm crying again? I swear I go through days without crying, and you walk in here and I'm at it again."

"I don't know," he replied quietly. "Seems to be a rhythm to it, doesn't there? I've sort of been on a downer again myself, so I just thought I'd stop by and see how you're doing."

She turned back to face him, managing a self-deprecating smile.

Looking at him in his visored hat and crisp collar and tie, she felt her frustration begin to dissipate. "Oh, hell, I don't know."

"What was that all about on the phone?"

"The joys of settling an estate."

"Ah, I see." He was still bent over the counter, forearms resting on it. The gold band of a wristwatch peeked from under his left cuff. A single bow of a pair of sunglasses was hooked into a pen hole of his shirt pocket. His pose tightened his collar and stretched taut the skin of his neck, which was cinched by a carefully knotted tie held in place by an APD tiepin. As usual, the sight of him in uniform seemed to add ten years to his age and make him her peer.