"I thought that's what I'd been doing."
"No. What you've been doing is cutting off your nose to spite your face. What you need to do is go to that man you love and tell him you'll marry him, and let everybody else suck dead gladiolas--I believe that was the phrase, wasn't it?"
Lee laughed in spite of herself. The waitress brought their salads and Lloyd picked up his fork with scarcely a pause in his monologue.
"There's one other thought I've had, and I believe I've considered it quite thoroughly since the night when you told me about this whole ruckus those silly women have kicked up. I think Bill would give you his blessing if he could. He'd want you to be happy. After all, you're the mother of his children. If you're happy, they're going to be happy in the long tun."
"Do you really think so, Dad?"
"Yes, I do."
"Mother suggested that I was being disloyal to Bill by taking up with Christopher."
Lloyd just shook his head. "Honestly, that woman. She means well, but sometimes I'd like to kick her butt. Mothers get . . . well, you know.
They have this image in their heads of what's right for their daughters, and when it doesn't turn out that way they can get pretty forceful. They tell themselves they're doing it for their daughters' good, but they're really doing it to get their way."
"Oh, Lloyd, I can't tell you what a relief it is to hear you say these things."
"I'm only telling the truth. I'm not really one of your family, so I can look at the situation a lot more impartially than they can.
Now eat your salad and stop looking as if you're going to leap off that chair and kiss me, because people will think I'm the one who's robbing the cradle."
"Lloyd Reston," she said, smiling at him very warmly, "you are the dearest, most sensible, lovable man in the world."
"Well, I'm close, but not quite the most. I expect that honor goes to this fellow you love. I've been around the two of you enough to see how you respect and admire each other and how doggone much fun you always manage to have when you're together."
"Yes, we do."
"And if I may be so bold . . . I understand that your affair was sexual, too. Well, I say, more power to you, Lee. That was probably the real burr under those women's saddles. You'll pardon me for saying it, but I've seen your sister touch her husband exactly once in all the years I've known them. As I remember he had a wood tick on his neck and she picked it off for him one time when we were picnicking somewhere. As for your mother and father-well, I'm not going to make any remarks about them, but I suspect, given their age, that lust has rather lost its stronghold over at their house.
"So I say, if you've found a virile young man who loves you to pieces and wants to sweep you off your feet, get swept. Now eat, I said."
Lee felt so light she was certain she'd float off her chair and bump the ceiling.
"May I say just one thing more?" she asked.
"Make it quick. My stomach is growling."
"I love you."
Lloyd lifted his gaze to his happy daughter-in-law and said, "Yes, I suppose you do. I've been around so long, what other choice do you have?"
He dug into his Caesar salad. She dug into hers. They wiped their mouths and exchanged messages over their linen napkins, smiling like conspirators.
Chapter 19.
HE had decided even before Lloyd dropped her at home. His blessing was all she'd needed to make her see how wrong she'd been to turn Christopher away. Lloyd's word carried more weight than all the others combined, for if he the father of her first husband--could give her the right to second happiness, so surely should the others be able to do the same.
She kissed his cheek and he patted her arm before she stepped from his car and tripped to the house as if there were no earth beneath her feet.
With her impatient heart racing, she dialed Christopher's apartment.
"Be there, be there," she whispered, but got his answering machine instead.
This message was too momentous to leave on a tape recording: She dialed the police station and the dispatcher said, "He's working midshift, Mrs. Reston. He'll get off at eleven o'clock."
She checked her watch. It was after ten.
Suddenly she was racing. Into the bathroom, into the tub, out of the tub, into clean clothes, thinking, Hang on, Christopher, I'm coming.
At 10:45 she went into Joey's room and woke him up.
"Hey, Joey? . . . Honey?"
"Hen? Mom? What time is it? Feels like I just went to sleep."
"You did." She sat on the edge of his bed while the hall light slanted in a golden fan on the floor behind her. "It's only quarter to eleven.
Sorry to wake you but I'm going over to Christopher's. I just wanted you to know in case you woke up and found me gone."
"To Christopher's?"
"I didn't think you'd mind."
"No. Hey, way to go, Mom."
"I may be gone late because he's just getting off work now."
"Grandpa must have done some fancy talking tonight."
"Yes, he did. And I'm going to do what he and you said I should do.
I'm going to marry Chris."
"You are?" Even in the deep shadow she could see his crooked smile.
"Gee, Mom, that's great."
"I'm going to tell him tonight."
"Well, in that case . . . maybe I shouldn't expect you till morning."
It struck Lee how society's perception of unmarried sex had changed in a single generation. Her own mother couldn't accept Lee's having an illicit affair, yet she could sit here on her son's bed and joke with him about it.
"I promise I'll be here to fix you breakfast."
"Waffles?" he asked.
"Is this extortion?" She hated making waffles .
"Well, heck, you can't blame a kid for trying."
"Okay, waffles."
"All riiight."
"I owe you more than waffles though, don't I?"
"Aw, Mom . .."
. . too much work.
"Well, I do. I owe you an apology. I'm really sorry for how I acted the other day when you came into the bathroom. I had no right to bark at you and say the things I said. I know I hurt your feelings."
"Yeah, well, I figured out why."
"And you called Grandpa and told him to have a talk with me, right?"
"Well, you wouldn't listen to me." She arranged the covers across his chest and tipped forward, pinning him in place with the blankets.
"You're a very perceptive young man, Joey Reston. You're going to make some woman an exceptional husband someday." She pecked him on the face.
"And it won't be long either. I just asked Sandy to marry me and she said yes. We're thinking maybe we'll go to school one more year and then do it."
Lee's mouth dropped open. Before the adrenaline reached her extremities, he laughed in falsetto and said, "Just kidding, Mom."
"Oh my God . .." She put a hand to her heart. "You scared the living daylights out of me!"
"Just getting even for that tongue-lashing you gave me in the bathroom.
I didn't think the waffles and the apology would quite cover it."
With the edge of a fist she thunked him on the chest. "You inconsiderate brat."
"Yeah, but you love me, right?"
"I do." She was laughing inside. "Yes, I surely do." She sat a moment on her son's bed, feeling happiness come and flood her, feeling things finally falling into place. "Well, I guess I'd better get going so I'm there when Christopher gets home."
"Tell him hi from me. And if he says yes, tell him he better be able to pee into the toilet bowl without getting any on the floor if he knows what's good for him."
"Joseph Reston!"
"G'night, Mom. Have a good time."
"Just you wait till April Fools' Day. I'm gonna get you so good."
"Hey, listen, woman. I gotta get some sleep. Tomorrow's a school day."
"All right, all right, I'm going."
She kissed him once more and headed for the door. As she reached it he said, "Seriously, Mom, I'm glad for you."
With a happy heart, she smiled and turned off the hall light.
It was ll:l5 when she reached Christopher's place. Approaching his door she felt a quivering of anticipation within, the kind of anticipation a woman in her mid-forties believes gone with her salad days--that green, burgeoning optimism that she'd had when she'd married Bill, fresher perhaps because this love she felt was so unsought. It had chosen her, she had not chosen it. What a fool she'd been to let her family rob her of this happiness for even so short a time. This was her life, hers alone, and life was not a dress rehearsal. Fleet and final as it was, she owed herself the taking of all the happiness she could get from it, and Christopher was the key to so much of that happiness.
She knocked and waited, holding a vision of him inside her head and an eagerness within her heart. In seconds his voice came from the other side of the door.
"Who is it?" Ever the policeman, ever cautious.
"It's Lee."
The dead bolt clacked and the door opened, bumping aside his black work shoes, which sat on the tug. He stood before her in stocking feet, still dressed in his uniform, his hair pressed flat from the rim of his hat, holding a yellow plastic container of microwave Beefaroni from which a spoon protruded. The room smelled like the freshly heated food.
"Well, this is a surprise."
"Not at all. We both knew the other day at school that we couldn't stay apart."
"You might have known but I didn't. I thought it was really over for good."
She offered a fey smile, letting her eyes wander up to his hair, down to his dear blue eyes and full lips. "Would you mind, Officer Lallek, if I came in there and kissed you?"
She stepped over his shoes, unceremoniously took him in her arms and kissed him. He kissed her too, holding her with one arm while the other hand was occupied by his snack. It was a kiss of sentimental sweetness, unNshed rather than unruly. She fit so nicely beneath his downturned head with its neatly trimmed hair and closed eyes. The shape and texture of his lips and tongue were as familiar to Lee as the interior of her own mouth. She took her time enjoying the kiss, washing him with an almost lazy swoop of her tongue that said she had been a very silly woman, indeed.
When the kiss ended they stood peacefully, smiling at each other.
"Mmm . . . what are you eating?"
"Beefaroni."
"Tastes good."
"You want one? I can heat one for you."
"Hen-mm . . . wouldn't taste nearly as good firsthand. Would you like to finish yours though?"
"Not particularly, now that you're here."
"Do anyway. I'll watch."
He grinned wryly. "You'll watch?"
She rested her forearms against his bullet-proof vest and traced the outline of his lips with an index finger. "I'll watch these," she murmured, "closing around the spoon and moving while you chew. I've missed watching these."
He chuckled and said, "We police officers meet all kinds."
"Eat your cheap noodles," she said in a rich caviar voice.
He freed his hands and stood before her plying the spoon, keeping his eyes on her over the plastic cup. When his mouth was full she kissed his cheek, which was puffed slightly, its muscles shifting as he chewed. He smiled, swallowed and said, "You miss me or what?"
"Huh-uh. That's not why I'm going to marry you. I'm going to marry you so you can level my washing machine and mow my grass, shovel my snow, stuff like that."
The spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. He leaned back to give himself ample space to see her face. "You're going to marry me?"
"Yes, I am, Officer Lallek. I'm going to elope with you."
"Elope!"
"Quicker than you can say Chef Boyardee Beefaroni."
"You don't say."
"I'm tired of people telling me what I should and shouldn't do.
I'm tired of sleeping alone and eating alone and watching you cruise by my house at night when you think I'm sleeping and I won't see you."
"Since when did--" "I saw you. You went past on Sunday night at ten, and the next night just before you got off duty, and plenty of other nights, too."
"How about tonight?"
"I wasn't home. I was out with Lloyd getting preached to. Then when I got home I took a bath and put perfume behind my knees and put on clean underwear and told Joey I was coming over here to propose to you."
"Is that so? Clean underwear? And perfume where?"
"In all the places where two can enjoy it more than one."
"Here, hold this." He handed her the container, then swung her up like a hammock in his arms and ordered, "Flip that dead bolt."
When she had, he carried her to the kitchen where the bright lights were lit over the table and the silverware drawer hung open.
"Set that down on the cabinet," he ordered.
She got rid of the container, then doubled her arms around his neck while he carried her to the bedroom. Above the bed he released her knees, letting her slide down his body until she knelt on the mattress.
Holding her face in both hands, he kissed her, a long flowing river of a kiss upon which they drifted together, with the promise of a much longer ride ahead. When it ended they remained close, breathing on each other in the dark, setting their hearts on a straight, mutual course toward permanence. The levity they'd shared at her arrival had been dispelled by the import of this solemn moment.
"Christopher, I'm sorry," she whispered. "I loved you and I listened to them. I'm sorry."
"It's been hell without you."
"For me too."
"I didn't want to come between you and your family though. I still don't."
"Lloyd made me see that it's their problem, not ours. If they love me they'll accept you, and they love me. I know they do, so I'm willing to give them a second chance. Will you marry me, Christopher?"
"I'd marry you here and now if I could."
"I meant it when I said I want to elope. Do you think we could?"
"You're serious!" he said, surprised anew.
"Yes, I am. I'm not giving anyone a chance to influence me again.
I just want us to get on a plane and go someplace. The only one I'll tell is Lloyd, because I'll have to ask him if he can stay at the house with Joey while we're gone. I always thought it would be so romantic to be married in a garden. Do you think we could use the tickets to Longwood Garden, or is it still winter in Pennsylvania?"