Sins of the Fathers (3 page)

They fell easily into the bickering that used to heat up their high school days.

“Sure I can. The one who started it was clearly the female. There he was, having a pleasant little swim with somebody he liked when, wham! Smacked in the face by cold water.”

“There she was, minding her own business, when he plopped down in her bathtub and started telling her what to do.”

They glared at each other across the table until he grinned. “Truce?”

She smiled back. “Truce.” It was an old, familiar ritual: fighting with Hasty and making up. Both had hot tempers but they quickly cooled. Neither was a seether.

He shoved back his chair and picked up his glass. “Want to show me what you’ve accomplished so far in getting this place back in order?”

The worst of the chaos was gone, but his clenched fists and tight jaw showed how shocked he was at what he saw. He stood silent before the empty china cabinet with its missing dishes and shattered glass and whistled in dismay when he saw the slashed sofas and chairs that the upholsterers had not yet picked up.

“You’re having to fix all this up by yourself?”

“Of course not. I’m hiring people to do most of the work, and Tom was here two weeks to oversee the initial phase, which involved a horde of workers, a fortune in trash bags, and a big blue roll-off container on the front lawn. But he had to get back to work, so since then I’ve been—you know.” She gestured toward the rooms in their barren chaos and tried to seem nonchalant.

Hasty strolled over to the baby grand piano and lifted the keyboard cover. The finish had survived without a scratch, but when he played a quick scale, he frowned. “Some of the keys don’t play.”

“The men were looking for something, so they ripped out a few wires, strings—whatever they are.”

He played several gapped chords, which jangled her nerves. “Getting it repaired is on my list. I just haven’t gotten around to it.” She didn’t mean to sound defensive, but she’d lived all summer with Tom coming home every weekend and being surprised at how little progress had been made.
Just let them try to do it
, she fumed.

Hasty held up both hands. “Hey, I was just seeing how bad it is.”

“Well, don’t. I’m not real patient these days with people who wonder why it’s taking me so long to get the house back in order.”

He looked around and shrugged. “Looks pretty orderly to me. A bit patchy, maybe, but it’s not as if you lived in the whole place.”

Anger flared up inside her. “I still have to fix up the whole place.” She strode around the room, waving her arms and saying the things she had been thinking for so many weeks. “People who don’t have to live in this mess have no clue how long it takes to decorate and refurnish a whole house from scratch. I have to find people to plaster, paint, and paper, then I have to nag them until they show up. I have to be here when they come. I have to find people to recover or refinish all this furniture and be here when they come to pick it up. Simultaneously I have to be out in stores buying pillows, sheets, blankets, or mattresses to sleep on. And don’t forget towels to dry on and dishes to eat on. Do you realize we didn’t have a single cereal bowl when those gorillas were through?”

“Hey!” He held up a hand to stop her, but she wasn’t finished.

“This very day I have devoted five hours—
five hours of my life
!—to buying lamps, and you have the temerity to stand there and ask whether I’ve gotten the piano repaired? Nobody but you even plays the damn thing anymore!”

Furious, she collapsed onto the couch, forgetting that all its cushions were stacked on the floor awaiting the upholsterer. She landed with a tooth-jarring thud.

Hasty slid onto to the piano bench and played a quick arpeggio. “Whew! If you have sunk to swearing, you must be upset. But it doesn’t take five hours to buy lamps. You could have done it in two.”

“If I bought them only to please myself. I have to think about what Tom will like.”

“It’s not me you are mad at, then, it’s Tom. Tell him about it, not me.” He bent over the keys and started playing something that sounded vaguely familiar. He looked over one shoulder and announced, “I call this ‘Joplin Minus Certain Keys.’”

Only Hasty could make her feel like crying and laughing at the same time. She retrieved the top cushion from the stack and sat enjoying the odd, choppy music. Of course it was Tom she was mad at. She tried so hard not to bother him with domestic details when he was away, but she was everlastingly tired of trying to second-guess his preferences. She had trekked through half a dozen stores that day trying to figure out which lamps he would like, not because he was hard to please but because when he came home, he would look at each lamp and ask why she had chosen brass instead of pottery or pottery instead of something else, and whether she felt she had gotten the best price for each one.

He probably considered that “taking an interest in the home.” To Katharine, it felt like she had to justify every decision she made. Why couldn’t he just once come home and exclaim, “Great lamps, Kat! You’ve got excellent taste”?

Maybe because I’ve never told him how I feel,
she thought as Hasty executed an especially tricky part of the Joplin.
Why should he know how much that frustrates me? I don’t know what frustrates him anymore, either. Most of the time we live in totally different worlds. Maybe we ought to talk about that when he gets home.

A wave of longing for her husband swept over her. How long had it been since they’d had a weekend when they didn’t either drive up to the lake—which involved a round of drinks and get-togethers with various friends—or dash through a calendar crowded with things to do at home? How long had it been since they had simply lazed around with coffee and talked about things that mattered to each of them?
We’ve got to stop filling up our weekends,
she vowed.
We need space and time to do nothing together.

Did Hasty sense her thinking about Tom? He broke off in the middle of a bar and swung around on the bench. “Have you even started on that room you were fixing up for yourself?” He got up and wandered across the foyer. She got up and followed to gloat over his surprise. “Wow! This is a major improvement.”

“It is, isn’t it?” She joined him and leaned against the doorjamb to admire the transformation she and Hollis had accomplished.

Formerly called “the music room,” it used to be a gloomy mix of dark red and taupe inhabited by unread coffee table books, the seldom-touched baby grand, and a grumpy bust of Beethoven. In its new incarnation, soft peach walls echoed flowers in the Aubusson carpet that covered the oak floor. Sunlight streamed through wide wooden blinds at windows uncluttered by drapery. Mahogany bookshelves flanking the fireplace held her favorite books and a few treasures that had escaped the devastation. An old mahogany secretary glowed against the back wall. A new lateral filing cabinet sat opposite the fireplace next to her new mahogany desk with its green leather chair. The only discordant note was her new computer, sitting in boxes on the floor.

She was basking in the beauty of the room and Hasty’s admiration when he spoiled it all by adding, “Now all you have to do is use it for something.” He pointed to the computer. “You said you didn’t have a computer. What do you call that?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t have a computer. I said I didn’t have a working one. I haven’t gotten around to hooking it up yet. But I will—soon.” She didn’t want him thinking that was a hint.

He nudged the rug with his toe. “They didn’t steal this? It’s a beauty.”

“They stole the first one I bought. This is a replacement. Not quite as nice, but almost.”

“Come on, Kate, you saw that other rug how many times—two? three? It was still rolled up when the break-in occurred, wasn’t it?”

She gave him a wry grin. “Yeah, but I will forever remember it as the most perfect rug in the universe. It was the first thing I had bought in years to please nobody but myself.”

“That’s pathetic.” He stepped back into the hall and looked into every room he could see from there. “So how long will it take one woman to completely refurbish a house this size?”

The challenge in his voice made Katharine bristle. “I told you, I’m not doing it alone. Tom and I talk a lot, and his niece Hollis—remember her?”

“The one with the degree from SC
AD
?”

“Yeah. She’s been great at helping me choose fabrics and wallpaper, but we don’t want to rush it.”

He snorted. “Let me guess: she isn’t content to pop into JCPenney—pardon me, Bloomingdale’s or Neiman Marcus—and pick up the first curtains and bedspread she sees, right?”

“No,” she admitted. “We traipse all over town scouring Atlanta for one-of-a-kind furniture, fabrics, and wallpaper to create what she calls ‘a unique look.’ We have also spent an indecent amount of time choosing dishes, glasses, pictures, rugs, and what few accessories I’ve bought. We devoted two hours to picking five sets of bathroom cups and soap dishes. Can you believe that?”

“I can believe it’s possible. It’s hard to envision you doing it.”

“Follow me around for a few days,” she said grimly. “Furnishing an entire house is an exhausting process, but it does have to be done. I just wish it didn’t take so long. The only rooms that are pretty much finished so far are our bedroom, the kitchen, and my study.”

He ambled back toward the kitchen door. “Which ought to tell you something.”

When she reached the kitchen he was already at the fridge, refilling his glass. He asked over his shoulder, “Do you want more?”

“Make yourself at home, why don’t you? But yeah—bring the whole jug.” Even with the family gone, she still made tea in plastic milk jugs, a gallon at a time.

She padded back to the table barefoot and stretched out her legs. It was nice to have somebody waiting on her for a change. “What was that supposed to mean, ‘Which ought to tell you something’?”

He dropped three cubes of ice in her glass with one hand and poured tea with the other. “The fact that you fixed up those three rooms first implies they are all you really need. Here you are, wasting your precious time and your excellent mind—”

She held up her glass in a mock salute. “Thank you, sir, for the compliment, even couched in insult.”

“Come on, do you really enjoy spending days and days on such momentous decisions as—what? Stripes versus plaids?”

She gave a short, unfunny laugh. “Most recently, peach versus blue. Of course not. We both know I hate shopping, so don’t make it any worse than it is. I’ve been doing it for weeks and weeks, and there’s no end in sight. But at least I’m getting a break starting tomorrow. A friend and I are going down to the beach for a few days.”

“Bully for you.” He slid into the chair across from her again, slouched down in his seat, munched a cookie, and considered her with a thoughtful expression. “You know what your problem is?”

“I have a destroyed home.”

“No, that’s your situation. A problem is usually not the problem, it’s what you do with the problem. Your problem—” he waved the cookie in her direction for emphasis “—is that you don’t have a deadline. I see it all the time in my grad students. If they are running out of money or have to finish by a certain time—say they have a wife and kids to support, or there’s a postdoc program they want to apply for—they buckle down and finish. Otherwise, the process drags on
ad infinitum
. If you had to have this house finished by a specific time, you wouldn’t spend five hours buying lamps and you wouldn’t let Hollis bully you into traipsing all over town looking for stuff. Folks always work better with a deadline.” He picked up his tea like a man who has just had the last word.

“We’re getting there,” she snapped, furious. “These things take time. How dare you show up after a three-week vacation and tell me I’m not working fast enough?” To her mortification, she burst into tears.

Hasty left his seat and bent over her chair. “Oh, Katie-bell.” His breath was soft and warm in her hair and she felt the steady
thump thump
of his heart against her head. “I didn’t mean to beat up on you. I came to make it all better by taking your mind off things for a little while. But look what I’ve done.”

“It’s not you.” She sniffed and tried to stop her tears. “It’s me. The whole time I’m shopping, I feel like I’m slogging through mud in cement boots. I don’t know what the heck I’m doing all this for. I don’t even know who cares. And I hate it!” She laid her head on her arms and sobbed.

He gently pulled her up and toward him, cradling her head with one hand while the other rubbed her back in long, gentle strokes. She sobbed out weeks of frustration. Finally she gave a little hiccup. “I’m soaking your shirt.”

“Good. It needed a wash. And you needed a hug.”

It felt good to stand there with somebody else holding up the universe for a change.

It felt too good.

“Go get your bathing suit,” he whispered, dropping his arms to circle her waist. “Let’s swim.”

She tingled all over.

Summoning every ounce of willpower she possessed, she pulled away, turned her back, and looked at her watch. “I can’t. I’ve barely got time to dress before going out again.”

“Nowhere you have to go would be better than this.”

Behind her, Hasty put his hands on her shoulders and began squeezing gently. Outside, the pool still sent out its silent invitation. She knew what Hasty wanted. Was that what she wanted, too?

Of course it wasn’t. What she wanted was for Tom to be standing there.

She shook her head. “I can’t. One of our favorite artists is opening a show at a Midtown gallery. I need to see if she has anything we could use.”

His hands grew still. “You’re a dreadful liar,” he whispered in her left ear. “You aren’t convincing me at all.”

“I need to go. I do.”

He began massaging her shoulders again and spoke in rhythm. “Can’t wait and browse the gallery another time? The event will collapse if you don’t show up? Your walls will crumble if they don’t get paintings before tomorrow?”

She laughed and broke free. “Yep. All of that is absolutely true.”

He shook his head. “You know darned well that the only important thing about that opening is that it provides you with an excuse not to swim with me.”

She felt a slow flush rise in her cheeks and silently cursed the genes that had given her auburn hair, white skin, and cheeks that blushed at the slightest provocation. Not that Hasty was such a slight one. He was darned attractive, and Tom was gone far too much.

She shoved back her hair and held it to her neck. “Sorry. If you had called to check, I could have saved you a trip.”

He wiggled his eyebrows in his hopeless version of a leer. “Which might be why I didn’t call. How about if I go home to change, then take you to dinner and the opening?”