Читать книгу Almost Home - Debbie Macomber - Страница 13

“I’m so sorry, Aiden, so sorry. I should never have tried to kiss you.” I could hardly meet the man’s eyes as he stood on my front porch, my wind chimes tinkling in the afternoon wind.

How do you explain to someone that your lust carried you away, and you could not resist them? “I am a clumsy elephant, a ridiculous, pathetic, cloistered writer. I don’t get out enough, I hot-flash, I talk to my dogs and half the time I expect them to answer back, I hang out with Brenda, who is so wild and—”

He held a hand up. “Chalese”—his voice was a bit strangled—“please don’t apologize. Please don’t. I mean it. I was flattered, I was. But … this is my job. You’re my job.”

“Absolutely. I know it. The ox in me will never charge at you again.” I slapped my hands to my face. Why must I speak about animals so much?

He took three steps closer to me. “You’re very … engaging. You’ve got this curious, electric aura about you, this mystery, but at the same time you’re so open about who you are and sincere. And you’re so smart. I can almost hear your brain ticking away a million miles an hour.” He rubbed his neck. “But this is not the time or the place for me to …” He coughed. “To return your … kiss.”

Clearly, it wasn’t, that voice in my head assailed me. He-man Aiden would not ever want to return your … kiss. He was trying to alleviate my total humiliation because he was a nice guy, then smooth things over so he could write the article without me making any more awkward kissy-lunges toward him.

“Hey, Aiden,” I snapped, feeling my face get red, therefore resembling a fire engine. Perhaps I should make the sound of a fire engine? “You don’t have to make me feel better here, okay? I don’t need your pity. Ask me the damn questions you need to ask, and let’s get this over with. I’ll keep my kisses to myself.”

His eyes went bleak all of a sudden, his voice gruff. “That wasn’t what I meant, Chalese, not at all.”

“Sure it is. The frumpy children’s book author made a fool of herself, and you’re trying to let her down easy by saying it’s ‘not the time or the place for me to return your kiss.’ Shove it, okay?”

“The last word I would use to describe you is frumpy, even if you are still in your pajamas.”

“I’m working. This is my work uniform. Got a problem with it, close your eyes.”

“I have no problems with your work uniform, even if you do have pink giraffes on your pajamas. And I don’t pity you, so don’t start with that. We’re going to talk about what happened down there another time.”

“Sure we are. As soon as I grow a third head out my spine. Let me grab the dogs, and we’ll walk down to the ocean.” I shut the door, dove into the shower, yanked my jeans on without the usual force, which was strange, and threw a red sweatshirt over my head.

We got all the leaping dogs on leashes and headed for the ocean, the sun golden and warm, shining through the trees in sparkling rays.

The dogs were poorly behaved and rambunctious, as usual, and soon I let them off-leash. They grinned victoriously, their tongues lolling about, and headed off into their high adventure.

Aiden got out a notepad as we strolled along the shoreline and I tried to avoid looking at him. “All right, I need you to trust me a little bit here with a few simple questions.”

I quivered inside but tried not to show it. Trust him. My childhood had about beat my ability to trust any man right out of my body.

“When did you start drawing?”

“I can’t remember not drawing.” That was the truth.

“So you started as a child?”

I nodded. I didn’t want to say that drawing and writing were an escape for me then. That drawing gave me a way to block out my father and the rampant fear he caused, the crushing hurt, the anger, the way I felt when I saw him clock my mother or lock her in their bedroom suite for days in our New York apartment.

Kangaroos in pink aprons I could control. A fox in a tuxedo I could laugh at. A parakeet who braided her head feathers I could handle. Pretty soon, my animals were talking. At first it was simple stuff, from a child’s viewpoint. But that child, moi, grew up pretty quick in that house, and my kangaroos in pink aprons were soon giving little speeches in Australia about the land belonging to everyone. The raccoons in the forests of Oregon were working with the beavers to fight off pollution that was killing the fish. The polar bears were discussing how they could all get along.

“I loved to draw because it was creative. It was fun. I loved animals. Still do.”

I smiled at him with as much confidence as I could muster over my deadly boring answer.

Aiden stared at me. “I know there’s more to it than that behind your beaming, fake smile.”

My stomach clenched as if two vises were being screwed into it. I tried to seem perplexed. “No, I don’t think so. I’m pretty simple. Very normal childhood. Normal life here, too. Normal childhood. Normal. Very.”

I heard the dogs bark in the distance. They loved to run. I wanted to run.

“Why writing and illustrating? Why that career choice?”

Because then I could hide like a hot-flashing turtle and live quietly. “I wanted to write books for kids. I wanted them to love my books, love reading. I wanted to teach them what a truthful, kind society should strive for and how we have to take care of each other and the planet.”

“And?”

“I wanted to make them think.” That was a raw truth. “We often tell kids what they should think. We dump information on them. We tell them what to do, tell them what to learn, tell them how to be. I wanted them to think about their relationships, their lives, their futures, animals, this country, the world, people that look the same as them, and people that are different, people who have different opinions. My animals in my books struggle with the same emotions people do, but reading it from a fluffy bunny appeals to kids more than if I stuck an exhausted mother of three in there.”

I stopped.

“Does that make sense, or do I sound like an inebriated rattlesnake?” I hit my forehead and reminded myself once again to lose the animals out of my conversation.

He nodded at me. “Completely. It’s admirable.”

“Thank you.” Must you be so sexy?

“How did your normal, very normal”—I did not miss his emphasis on those words—“childhood affect your decision to write books with such depth?”

My childhood had affected every part of my life. It’s only been in the last years that I’ve been able to separate “it” from “me,” and I’m still working on it. I hugged my arms around myself. “My childhood allowed me the time to draw and write.” Lots of time. Times of sheer terror move quicker when one can draw white storks in bikinis while hiding under a bed.

“Were your parents supportive of your work?”

“Yes.” My mother was. She snuck me crayons and pencils and pads of paper. My father gave her enough to feed us—barely. He would not allow her to work. It was outrageous, really. We had a fancy apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York, a car and driver for my father, but often no money to buy milk.

The way my mother got my father to spend money for clothes on us once a year was by implying she was worried about what other people would think of our sorry state. We would live through another rage, he’d leave without us for a charity dinner or fancy ball where his face would appear in the society pages the next day—but by morning my mother would have an envelope on her side of the bed. No telling what my mother had to do to get that envelope.

“How?”

I shuddered. “How what?” How come my father seemed to hate me and was much more interested in Christie? How come he often sent me to my room—“Go to your igloo,” he’d order—as if he didn’t want to see my face? How come he was such an angry man and asked me with a sneer if I wanted whale meat to eat? I don’t know.

His eyes narrowed. “How were they supportive?”

“My mother bought me pencils and crayons and paper.”

“And your father?”

I grimaced, then pulled my arms closer to my body. “He paid for them.”

“Was he an artist?”

“No.” He was a nightmare. A black-haired nightmare.

“Was your mother an artist?”

“No.” She was a survivor.

“What did your parents do for a living? Where did you grow up?”

I was feeling more and more ill. “My father was a businessman.” For a while. Until he made his world collapse. “My mother was a full-time mother. I grew up in … I grew up in … in …” What to say? If I said New York, that would give him another door to open. “I grew up in Connecticut.”

So that one was a lie. My father had one of his homes there. We visited once. He hadn’t wanted us to go there, ever again, without him. Sometimes he’d be gone for a week, and later he’d tell us he was at the Connecticut house. He’d stare right at my mother when he said this and smirk.

“Any siblings besides Christie?”

“No.” Maybe. Probably. None that I know of. Mrs. Zebra licked me. Lightning circled, making sure I was okay, then bounded off into the waves again.

“What do you most love about being a children’s book writer?”

That was easy. It didn’t make me feel nauseous with stress. I smelled the sea instead. “I love talking to kids through the stories. I love the creativity, the color, the smell of paint …” I finally unwrapped my arms from the death grip around my worried body.

“You have lots of dogs and cats here.”

“I love animals. They were all strays or abused, and I take care of them, then find them new owners who will be kind and loving and appreciate them.” I did not mention my gigantic veterinarian and grooming bills.

Mrs. Zebra, almost on cue, put her paws on my shoulders and licked my face.

“Why were you rocking yourself?” Aiden asked quietly.

“I’m sorry?”

“When I was asking you questions about your childhood, you had your arms wrapped around your body and you were rocking yourself back and forth.”

“I was not.” But I was. I knew he was right.

He waited. “Difficult childhood?”

“All childhoods have their difficult points.” I tucked my hair behind my ears when the wind blew it across my face.

“But yours had more than a few.”

“That’s it, Aiden,” I said, suddenly angry. I was used to my own anger about my childhood, but I smothered it. Now it was being triggered by Mr. Gorgeous Skyscraper getting way too personal. “That’s enough, okay? I don’t want to talk about my childhood anymore.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I understand.”

“You do? I don’t think so. I can’t imagine that you could. And would you mind not putting it in your article? Please, one favor. You’ve boxed me into a corner, you’ve forced me to talk to you because you’re going to write it with or without my help, you’re going to blow my private life to hell, and I’m asking you for a favor.” My voice pitched, then cracked. “Please don’t mention anything about my childhood—what I said or didn’t say—in your stupid article.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Chalese. I’m not writing an exposé. I’m not going to publicly lampoon you ….”

I closed my eyes when they started feeling hot and wet. An image of my father, yelling, disdainful, sprang to my mind. He would rarely come to my room and tell me goodnight, but when he did it was with a litany of things I wasn’t doing right. He never hugged me. Not once. I remembered the cowering little girl I had been. I felt sorry for that little girl.

“I’m done with this interview, Aiden,” I said as I jogged after my troublesome dogs. When they saw me coming, they grinned and ran fast, checking to make sure I was following. “Come back,” I demanded, leaping over a couple of logs. They turned and grinned again, barking joyfully. “Right this minute, come back, you monsters.”

When I returned to where we had been sitting in the sand, about twenty-five minutes later, he was gone.

Later a huge basket was delivered to my house. It was filled with flowers and gourmet food. The card read, “I’m sorry.”

I sunk into my Adirondack chairs as the sun went down and the night came up, the haunting memories of my father pushed back into their box in my mind.

As I said, the second I set eyes on Aiden I knew it wasn’t gonna be good.

At four o’clock in the morning I gave up on sleep, wrapped my periwinkle blue comforter around my shoulders, and settled into my rocking chair on the porch. Shortcake climbed on my lap as I listened to the lapping waves, the sky bluish black and scattered with stars.

My mother snuck two stray cats she found next to a dumpster in New York City into our home, and I have been a sucker for animals ever since. She was in a poorer part of the city that day; I have no idea why. Anyhow, she heard mewing, headed down an alley, and there were Star and Moon, as we came to call them, starving and helpless.

She snuck them into her bag and brought them home. Luckily, our father was on another business trip and then was planning on “checking on” our Connecticut home. For one week, Christie and I and our mother played with those cats, loved them, held them.

And right before my father came home, raging, dangerous, asking me where my harpoon was, we had to give them away to another family.

We were lost. Lost in a huge apartment with a mother scared down to her toes, a sister who was favored by our father and, to this day, still has nightmares about their “father-daughter” times, and a father who often told me that I belonged in an igloo with a polar bear for a pet.

My love of animals began right then.

To find new homes for my dogs and cats, I created a simple website. It does the trick. I get a surprising amount of hits and adopt out quite a few dogs and cats every year. I have a few dogs, however, who will always stay with me because of their poor behavior.

Shortcake is one of them. I kissed her head.

She slobbered on me.

“Help me.”

Those two pathetic words wept over the phone sent panic streaking through my heart. I almost swallowed the nub of purple pencil I was clenching with my teeth.

“What is it? What’s happened?” I spit out the pencil and dropped the paintbrush in my other hand to the floor. It hit my cat Butterball on the head. She meowed, miffed.

I heard sobbing on the other end of the phone.

“Tell me, right now, tell me.” I abruptly stood up, and my cat Freaky went sailing off my lap. She glared, then stalked off to cuddle up to Rocky, who had horrendous gas problems that morning.

More wretched sobbing.

“I’m coming—I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I felt as if I’d jumped into an arctic lake. “Please tell me what’s wrong!” A spray of rain hit my windows, and I took it as a terrible omen, fear scraping its ragged claws across my stomach. I thudded down the stairs, shoved my feet into pink rain boots, and stumbled for the door.

“Christie! Honey, hang on!” I thought of Christie, who always smelled like roses and baby powder, and I could barely contain my panic. “Should I call the chief? An ambulance?”

“No,” Christie moaned. “But I …”

I sprinted to my truck in my green cat pajamas, sloshing through the puddles, the rain drenching me. Shortcake and Mrs. Zebra leaped off the covered porch and followed me out. I didn’t have time to wrestle them into the house, so I yanked open the door to the truck. They clambered in, their tails wagging with joy at a car ride.

“You what? Is it the babies? Are you hurting? Are you bleeding?”

Christie sobbed again, raw, hopeless.

“Oh no.” Not the twins! Tears sprang to my eyes. “Oh no!”

“Chalese,” she moaned. “Chalese … I am … I am … I am so fat.”

My sweating hand froze on the key to the car, my heart trip-trapping.

“I’m fat!” Christie moaned again. “Fat, fat, fat. My legs are huge and I’ve got stretch marks on my stomach and my boobs are the size of cannonballs and my ankles are the size my thighs used to be and even my ears are fat!”

I leaned against the back of the seat, my heart pattering. Shortcake leaned over and licked me.

“And … and … my skin feels like it’s ripping! These babies are so big and the other three won’t take their naps and the house is a wreck and I used to be fun and smart and sexy and had a sexy car and now I’m fat and all I have time to think about is poopy diapers and where’s the pacifier and I wear frumpy clothes because I’m fat, my hair is greasy because I haven’t had time for a shower for two days, and I don’t have a career and probably never will because I’m fat!”

I breathed heavily, deeply, sagging like I was a drunken rag doll against the back of the seat.

“Are you there, Chalese? Are you there?”

“I’m here, Christie.” Every neuron in my brain had been zapped by stress, but I was still here.

“Can you come over? Please?”

I had so much work to do. I was overwhelmed, exhausted. This book had to get out, or my editor would call and harangue me. He had actually been threatening me with his own heart attack if I didn’t get my book in. “It’ll be your fault, Chalese, your fault!”

“Please, Chalese?”

The life of a mother of three, pregnant with twins, is almost beyond rational comprehension. This I knew. Shortcake licked me again. “Give me five minutes.”