Читать книгу Man With A Mission - Muriel Jensen - Страница 9

JACKIE INSERTED HER KEY in the lock on the front door of her home two blocks from downtown, grateful that her assistant manager had all the night shifts at the inn this week. She anticipated a cozy dinner with the girls and a peaceful evening. That did happen more often than not—at least, it used to—but she knew the moment she opened the door and heard screeching voices that it wasn’t going to happen tonight.

She heard the baby-sitter’s quiet efforts to calm the girls. They seemed to be having no effect.

With a wistful wish for a different life—any other life, at least for tonight—Jackie dropped her coat and purse on the nearest chair and hurried toward the kitchen, where the melee was taking place.

“I can’t believe you did that!” Erica was shrieking at Rachel, who faced her down stubbornly, bony arms folded atop a flowered dress Jackie had never seen before. The fabric looked familiar, though. “It was mine!” she said, her voice high and shrill and almost hysterical.

Ricky had been a casual father at best, sometimes attentive but more often unaware of his children, caught up with the pressures of his work and his own needs. But the children, of course, had grieved his loss. Erica had turned from a happy, cheerful child to a moody one. Rachel seemed less affected personally, except that she wanted details about death and heaven and didn’t seem to be satisfied with Jackie’s explanation. “Mom bought it for me! You’re such a selfish little brat! I hate you, hate you!” With that Erica flung herself at Rachel.

Jackie ran to intercept her just as Glory Anselmo caught Erica from behind and held her away. Glory was in her second year at Maple Hill Community College’s computer classroom program. She played volleyball in her spare time and was built like a rock. A very pretty brunette rock.

“Erica Isabel!” Jackie said, pushing Rachel aside with one hand while catching one of Erica’s flailing fists with the other. Erica was dark-featured, tall and slender, built like her father’s side of the family. Rachel was petite like Jackie, and blond. Both seemed to have inherited personality traits from some long-lost connection to the Mongol hordes. “Take it back.”

“I won’t! Look at what she did to my pillowcase!”

“I made it beautiful!” Rachel extended her arms and did an end-of-the-runway turn. That was when Jackie realized she’d cut a hole for her head and two armholes in Erica’s pillowcase, the one patterned with cabbage roses and violets, and was wearing it like a dress. She’d added a white silk cord that also looked familiar.

Jackie groaned. Glory, she could see, was having a little difficulty keeping a straight face. It was funny, Jackie had to admit to herself, if you weren’t the one required to make peace.

Glory caught Jackie’s expression and sobered, still holding on to Erica. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bourgeois,” she said. “I should have checked on Rachel. She was being really quiet.”

Rachel, who had brains beyond her years and an almost scary sense of style in everything she did, said, “I was quiet ’cause I was…what’s that word for when you get a really good idea and you just have to do it?”

“Inspired?” Jackie guessed.

Rachel smiled widely, delighted that she understood. “That’s it!”

“Well, I think you should be inspired to give Erica your pillowcase,” Jackie ruled. “It’s fine to be inspired, but you don’t try out your designs using someone else’s things.”

“Please.” Erica clearly loathed the idea. “It has pigs and ducks on it. I think she should clean my room for a year!”

“No way!” Rachel shouted.

“Then she’ll pay you the amount of the pillowcase out of her savings,” Jackie arbitrated, “so you can buy a new one.”

Rachel pouted. She was also frugal.

The tension eased somewhat, Glory freed Erica’s arms.

“Now take back the ‘I hate you,’” Jackie insisted.

Erica looked her mother in the eye. “But I do hate her.”

That cold-blooded admission might have chilled someone who hadn’t seen Erica defend Rachel from the neighborhood bully who’d tried to take Rachel’s candy bar just two days ago. The fact that Erica had demanded half the candy bar in payment for her protection didn’t really figure into it. Rachel understood commerce.

“No, you don’t.” Jackie touched Erica’s hot cheeks. She was a very physical child and touch usually soothed her. “You’re just too young to understand the difference between frustration and hatred. What’s our rule about hate?”

Erica gave her a dark look but repeated dutifully, “We can hate things, but not people.”

“So?”

“So, I take it back,” Erica conceded ungraciously, “but if she messes with my stuff again, even if I don’t hate her, I’ll…” She hesitated. Jackie also had rules against violence or threats of violence. “I’ll let Frankie Morton take all her candy!” Frankie Morton was the bully.

Rachel ran upstairs in tears.

Jackie grinned over Erica’s head at Glory. “Want to stay for dinner? Promises to be eventful.”

Glory acknowledged the joke with a nod. “Thanks, but I’m meeting a friend.”

“It’s a guy friend,” Erica informed Jackie. “They met at the library. But tonight he’s taking her to dinner.”

Jackie was happy to hear that. Glory worked so hard that she seldom had time for dating. “Anyone we know?”

“I don’t think so,” Glory replied, gathering up her things off one of the kitchen chairs. “His name’s Jimmy Elliott. He works for Mr. Whitcomb. He’s a fireman and fixes furnaces when he’s off.”

“Oh.” The mention of Hank’s name darkened her already precarious mood.

Glory, purse over her shoulder and books in her arms, asked worriedly, “Is that bad?”

“Of course not.” Jackie walked her to the door. “He and I just don’t get along very well.”

“You and Jimmy Elliott?”

“Hank Whitcomb and I. He’s just moved his office into City Hall.”

“Oh. That’s a relief. I really like Jimmy.”

“Well, have a wonderful time.”

Glory stopped in the doorway. “One more thing,” she said, handing Jackie a folded piece of paper, her tone sympathetic. “This is from Erica’s teacher. I didn’t read it, but Erica says Mrs. Powell picks on her because she’s having trouble paying attention.”

A note from school completed the destruction of Jackie’s flimsy attempt at a good mood.

She went back into the kitchen to ask Erica about it, but Rachel had just returned with her ceramic savings bank shaped like a castle with a blond princess in the tower. She knelt on a chair at the table, her eyes and the tip of her nose red from crying. “How much was the pillowcase, Mom?” she asked.

Jackie sat down opposite her, trying to remember. It had been part of the package with two sheets and the bedcover. Erica had been feeling blue, she remembered, and objecting to the childish decor of her room, done when she’d been about five. New bedclothes had seemed the simplest and quickest solution.

“It was on sale,” Erica said, pulling silverware out of the drawer to set the table, her nightly chore. “The whole set was eighty dollars. I remember ’cause I thought it would be too much. But the lady said it was half price.”

Encouraged by Erica’s assistance, Jackie asked, “Then how much would you say one pillowcase would be?”

Erica came to the table and sat, the silverware in hand. “The bedspread would probably be half, don’t you think?” she asked, her mood lightening fractionally.

“That sounds reasonable.”

“So…” Erica closed her eyes, concentrating. “That leaves twenty dollars, and the sheets would probably be three-fourths of that. So…that leaves five dollars for the pillowcases.”

Rachel pulled the rubber stopper out of the bottom of her bank and reached in with little fingers to withdraw bills. Change tinkled to the tabletop. She counted four singles, then asked Erica, “Four quarters in a dollar, right?”

“It was two pillowcases for five dollars.” Erica fell against the back of her chair in disgust. “You only wrecked one.”

The disgust with her sister was a habit, Jackie knew. But this burgeoning willingness to be fair gave her hope after all.

“What’s half of five?” Rachel asked, her expression also brightening somewhat.

“Two-fifty,” Jackie replied. “Two dollars and two quarters.”

Rachel handed over the money. “I’m sorry.”

Erica snatched it from her. “Just leave my stuff alone.”

“And?” Jackie encouraged.

“And I won’t let Frankie Morton steal your candy.”

Jackie’s hope wavered. “And?” she repeated.

Erica looked at her perplexed, then asked uncertainly, “Thank you?”

“Yes!” Success at last. How often did a mother get to repair an argument and provide a lesson in math and morals all at the same time? “I’m proud of both of you. You fulfilled your responsibilities,” she praised, hugging Rachel, “and you…” Erica tried to evade her embrace, but Jackie caught her and wrapped her in a fierce hug. “You were generous in victory and didn’t gloat.”

As Erica hugged back, the baby gave a strong kick.

Erica straightened away from her, brown eyes wide with awe. “It kicked us!” she said, putting a hand with purple fingernails to the spot.

“Probably just wanted in on the hug.”

Rachel ran over to touch also, the three of them standing motionless and silent, waiting for another sign of life. It came with another strong kick. They looked up to share a smile.

Without warning, Erica’s smile evaporated and she said with a sigh, “Pretty soon there’ll be someone else to mess with my stuff.”

Jackie refused to let Erica’s change of mood dissolve her thrill of success over the pillowcase incident. She made a salad while microwaving spaghetti sauce from the freezer and boiling noodles, and chatted happily over dinner about nothing in particular.

While Rachel related a long and complicated story involving the lizard in the terrarium in her classroom and its shed tail, which someone had put in Mrs. Ferguson’s purse, Erica caught Jackie’s eye and smiled hesitantly.

Jackie smiled back, sure that before she knew it, Erica would be a teenager and they’d be at loggerheads all the time.

Or she could get lucky. Some mothers did. Evelyn, Jackie’s secretary, had three daughters in their early teens, and they seemed to love not only each other, but their mother as well. With her own lively and interesting but contentious girls, Jackie envied Evelyn her family’s closeness.

But Jackie was never lucky. She was blessed in many ways, but never lucky. Her victories were all hard-won.

Erica helped Jackie clear the table while Rachel took her bath.

“Are you gonna yell about the note?” Erica lined up three cups next to a stack of plates while Jackie sorted silverware into the dishwasher’s basket. She went back to the table without waiting for an answer.

“Difficulty concentrating isn’t exactly delinquent or disruptive behavior,” Jackie replied, dropping the last spoon in. She didn’t look up but felt Erica’s glance of surprise. “But it’s not very good for grades. Are you thinking about Daddy? It takes a long time to get over the death of someone you love.”

Mrs. Powell’s note had admitted as much but expressed concern that Erica’s inability to concentrate seemed to be worsening rather than improving.

Erica put the butter and the fresh Parmesan in the refrigerator and went back to the table to collect their placemats and take them to the back porch to shake them out.

She returned and set them on the table. “I used to at first, but I don’t much anymore.” She came back and stood beside Jackie, leaning an elbow on the counter. “I mean, he kind of liked us, I guess, but he didn’t really seem to miss us when he was gone, then it seemed like he was always anxious to be gone again after he came home. That’s kind of weird for a dad, isn’t it?”

“He loved you girls very much.” Jackie kept working, afraid that if she stopped and made the discussion too important, Erica would withdraw. “Grandpa Bourgeois never showed Daddy much affection when he was little. The only time he spent with him was to show him around the mill and to teach him how the company worked. Some people have to be shown how to give love, and no one ever did that for him.”

“You did,” Erica said. “He didn’t notice though, did he?”

Jackie was astonished by that perception. “No, I don’t think he did.” Now she couldn’t help but stop, realizing this was important. “But when I came along, your father was an adult. Sometimes adults don’t learn as well as children.”

“Is that why he was with that lady in Boston when he had the heart attack?”

Erica asked the question so directly that she must have known the truth of her father’s death for some time.

Jackie felt shocked, breathless.

“I heard Mrs. Powell and the principal talking about it when I brought in the permission slip so Glory could start picking us up from school.”

“You mean…after I became mayor? You’ve known for that long?”

Erica nodded. “I think everybody knows. A lot of people look at us like something bad’s happened. Not just Daddy dying, but something that isn’t fair. Like they look at you when you’re in a wheelchair. Like they don’t want to hurt your feelings and they’re pretending they don’t notice, but you know they’re really glad they’re not you.”

“You should have told me,” Jackie said, touching Erica’s arm, waiting for withdrawal and relieved when it didn’t come.

“You couldn’t fix it,” she said sensibly. “He was gone. But why do you think he did it?”

Jackie struggled for the right answers. “I think,” she began carefully, “that when someone doesn’t love you when you’re little, your heart is always empty and looking for love, and sometimes doesn’t even recognize it when it gets it. So it keeps looking.”

Erica shook her head. “Didn’t that hurt you?”

“Well…” Jackie felt curiously embarrassed, as though Erica was judging why she’d stayed in a loveless marriage all those years. “It did hurt me, but maybe not as much as you’d think. Because I understood how he was. And being married to him gave me you and Rachel, and the two of you are absolutely everything to me.”

Erica frowned. “And the baby.”

The baby. Erica seemed to be ambivalent about the baby, excited over the feel of a kick one moment, then unhappy about its eventual arrival the next.

“What is it you don’t like about the baby coming?” Jackie asked directly.

Erica looked guilty.

“You can tell me,” Jackie encouraged. “Are you afraid the baby is more important to me than you are?”

Erica shifted her weight, looking down at the floor. “No,” she said. It had a convincing sound.

“That it’ll get more attention than you?”

“No.”

“That it’ll change everything?”

Erica heaved a ragged sigh then looked up, her eyes pooled with tears, her lips trembling. “Mom, what if you die?”

“What?” Jackie couldn’t help the surprised outburst.

“Well, what if you do?” Erica demanded in a tearful rush. “Nobody expected Daddy to die and he did. And you’re at risk!”

Jackie took Erica’s hand and led her back to the table, where she pushed two chairs together and lowered her onto one. “What do you mean, ‘at risk’? Where did you hear that?”

“Sarah Campbell’s mom’s a nurse. She was talking about it with Mrs. Powell at the Valentine’s Day party at school. Mrs. Campbell brought treats.” Erica drew an anxious breath. “All ladies over thirty are at risk of stuff going wrong when they have babies ’cause they’re really too old. You should only have babies when you’re young.”

Caught between the need to calm her daughter and the personal affront at being considered “old” at thirty-four, Jackie focused on soothing Erica.

“Honey, that just means that they take special care of you if you’re over thirty. Sometimes there’s a problem, but most babies and mothers come through the delivery safe and sound. And I’m not old enough to be that much at risk anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Erica looked worried. “You’re not as old as Grandpa or Addy Whitcomb, but you’re pretty old.”

And feeling older by the moment, Jackie thought. She went to the counter for a tissue and brought it back to Erica. “My last checkup at the doctor’s proved that the baby is growing perfectly, and I’m healthy as a horse. There is nothing to worry about.”

Erica swiped at her eyes and dabbed at her nose. “We didn’t know there was anything to worry about with Daddy.”

“That was a heart attack. My heart’s fine. My checkup was perfect, remember.”

“What would happen to us if you died?”

Jackie accepted that as a legitimate question and was grateful she was prepared for it. “When Daddy died and I found out I was pregnant, I put it in my will that if anything happened to me, you and Rachel and the baby would go and live with Haley.”

Erica brightened. Jackie tried not to be offended. “Really? And that’s okay with her?”

“Yes. And her new husband, too. She talked about it with him when they got married.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. So there’s nothing to worry about. Now, you’re not going to bump me off so you can go live with Haley, are you?”

Erica smiled—finally. “No. I was just worried. Brenda Harris’s dad left when she was little, then her mom died in a car accident, and she’s lived at a whole bunch of different places and hasn’t liked any of them. All the houses have different rules and new people you don’t know. I’d hate that.”

“So would I.” Jackie leaned forward to wrap her in a hug. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve got everything looked after.”

Jackie felt the strength of her daughter’s return hug. “Okay. Thanks, Mom.”

“Sure.”

Erica went upstairs to do her homework and Rachel came down to report that she was bathed. She stood in footed pink pajamas patterned with black-and-white Dalmatian puppies.

“When I’m grown up,” she said, dragging a stool over from the lunch bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room, “I’m going to wear one of those floaty nightgown things with the feathers around the neck and the bottom.” She had a predilection for “floaty things” that was fed by Glory’s love of old movies from the thirties and forties where the women wore glamorous nightclothes.

“I like those, too,” Jackie admitted, closing the door on the dishwasher and setting it to run. “How was your day?” she asked, wiping off the counters.

“Pretty good. Things are kinda dull in first grade. How was your day?”

Jackie rinsed off the sponge, squeezed it dry and propped it up behind the faucet. “Well, things are never dull at City Hall. Some new tenants moved into the basement offices today. One of them is a man the city just hired to take care of our electrical repairs. And his mom is going to work in his office some of the time, and guess who she is?”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Whitcomb.”

Rachel smiled. She loved Addy Whitcomb. “Does she do electric stuff?”

“No. She’s just going to answer the phones, take messages.”

“Erica’s not so mad at me anymore,” Rachel said, abruptly changing the subject.

“You shouldn’t have cut up her pillowcase. But it was good that you paid her for it.”

“I just didn’t think pigs and ducks would make a neat dress like the roses. Your plain blue ones weren’t very good either.”

Jackie frowned at the knowledge that one of her pillowcases had been considered.

The chiming clock in the living room sounded seven, time for Rachel’s favorite television show about castaway children on a tropical island. She leapt off the stool. “Gotta go, Mom. Castaway Kids is on!”

Jackie replaced the stool, looked around her tidy, quiet kitchen, and said a prayer of gratitude that though the evening had begun in crisis, they’d managed to turn it around. Another family miracle.

It was a fact of life, she thought, that raising two little girls was often more difficult than running a city of four thousand.

HANK DROVE HIS MOTHER HOME after dinner at the inn, grateful that Jackie hadn’t been working tonight. Running into her once had been all his good humor could handle.

Fortunately the electrical problem he’d encountered at City Hall this afternoon had been simply a blown fuse caused when his massage-therapist neighbor plugged in a faulty microwave. Once he’d found his flashlight, then the fuse box, the problem had been easily solved.

“I’ve got a girl for you,” Adeline said.

The problem of his mother was unfortunately less easily dealt with than electricity. Unlike other mothers, she didn’t beat around the bush or try subterfuge to fix him up with a date. She’d once brought a pizza and the daughter of a friend of hers to his apartment and left them there.

“Doris McIntyre’s niece is visiting for a couple of weeks from New York,” his mother said, “and she needs someone to show her around Maple Hill.”

“Mom, she can see it in a two-hour walk. One hour if she doesn’t go to the lake.”

“Hank, don’t be difficult.” She folded her arms and looked pugnaciously out the window at the dark night as they drove down the two-lane road to the lake. “I’m not getting any younger and I have yet to have one grandchild. Not one. Everyone else in the Quincy Quilters has at least one, most of them several. Bedelia Jones has eleven. I have none. Zero. Zilch. Na—”

“I got it, Mom,” he interrupted. “But I’m single. Shouldn’t you be speaking to Haley and Bart about giving you grandchildren? They’ve been married six months. Let them give you something to brag about at your quilting sessions.”

Adeline made a face. “They’re waiting.” She imbued the word with disappointment.

“For what?”

“They didn’t say, I didn’t ask.”

“So I’m the only one you interrogate?”

“You’re my firstborn.”

“That means I inherit everything you’ve got. It doesn’t mean you’re allowed to harass me.”

“Is wanting you to meet a good girl and settle down harassment?”

“No, but trying to pick her for me is.”

“I’m not picking her for you,” she insisted, apparently affronted that her good intentions were so misunderstood. “I’m helping you find some potential candidates. You don’t seem to be working toward it at all.”

“I’m building a business.”

“I’m going to be seventy in ten years!”

He laughed outright. “Mom, that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Right now you’ve just turned sixty. And a youthful sixty. Relax. There’s lots of time.”

There was a moment’s silence, then she asked gravely, “What if I told you I was dying?”

His heart thumped against his ribs and he swerved to the side of the road, screeching to a halt. “What?” he demanded.

“Well, I’m not,” she said, tugging on her coat collar, clearly feeling guilty for having startled him, “but what if I was? Am I to go to my grave without ever holding a grandbaby in my arms?”

Hank put his left hand to his face and rested the wrist of the other atop the steering wheel. “Mom,” he said, “I’m going to drive you to your grave myself if you ever do that to me again!”

“I was trying to make a point,” she huffed.

“The point is you sometimes act like a lunatic!” He checked the side mirror and pulled out onto the road again, his pulse dribbling back to normal. “I’m trying to build a business, Mom. Relax about grandchildren, okay?”

“I’m thinking about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re alone.”

“I like it that way.”

He turned onto the short road that led to her driveway, and drove up to the house. He pulled to a stop and turned off the engine. He always walked her up the steps and saw her inside.

“I thought you came home because you realized that while you loved your work for NASA, you didn’t have a life. It was all future and no present.”

He jumped out of the van, walked around to pull out the step stool he kept for her in the back, then opened her door and placed the stool on the ground. He offered her his hand. “That’s true. And I’m enjoying my life here. I just need a little time to get all the parts of it together. Be patient, Mom.”

She stepped carefully onto the stool, then down to the driveway. After tossing the stool into the back of the van, he took her arm to walk her up the drive.

“You’re not still trying to prove something to your father with the business, are you?” she asked. “I mean, you were an engineer at NASA. You don’t have anything else to prove. You don’t have to expand Whitcomb’s Wonders until you have franchises all over the country and appear on the big board.”

He opened his mouth to deny that he was trying to prove anything, but he knew that wouldn’t be true. Every time he did anything, he could imagine his father watching him, finding fault.

“He always tried hard,” she said, squeezing his arm, “and he did well, but everything was difficult for him. Then you came along, all brains and personality, and he couldn’t help resenting that. I know I’ve told you that a million times, but I sometimes wonder if you really understand it. He loved you, he just resented that you were smarter than he was, that things would be easy for you.”

“I worked liked a dog to end up at NASA.”

“I know. But some people work hard all their lives and never get anywhere. He had dreams, too, but he never got out of that little appliance repair shop.”

Hank remembered that his father had little rapport with his customers and slaved away in the back room, taking no pleasure in his work.

“Anyway,” Adeline said, “sometimes old insecurities can come back to haunt us when we’re trying something new, or reaching for something we’re not sure we should have. You deserve to be happy, Hank. And if you won’t reach for that happiness, I’m going to keep working on it for you. So, when can you see Laural McIntyre?”

Hank drew himself out of moody thoughts about his father to the present and the urgent need to get out of meeting the visitor from New York.

“Actually, I’m meeting Jackie on Saturday,” he said, walking his mother up the porch steps.

She brightened instantly. He could see her smile in the porch light. “You are? Where?”

“Perk Avenue Tea Room.”

She looked puzzled. “Where?”

“It’s a new coffee bar, tearoom, desserty sort of place on the square.” She didn’t have to know that they’d be “meeting” because Jackie was cutting the ribbon for the grand opening, and he was helping with the wiring for the sign, which wasn’t expected to arrive until late Friday night.

His mother studied him suspiciously. “You were fighting the last time I saw you together.”

He nodded. “But you didn’t see everything. I ran into her later, we talked, and…I’m seeing her next week.” A slight rearrangement of the truth, but the truth all the same.

“Well, see now, that wasn’t so hard.” She gave him a quick hug. “Will you tell me all about it after?”

“The shop, yes,” he said. “Jackie, no.”

She shrugged, seemingly undisturbed. “I’ll just ask the girls at Sunday School. Thanks for dinner, sweetie.”

“Sure, Mom.” He ran down the steps as she closed and locked the door.

Great. Jackie’s girls were in his mother’s Sunday School class. She’d mentioned that once, but he’d forgotten.

When he’d been a kid, she’d had spies everywhere. It had been impossible to see a girl, cruise downtown, or sneak a beer without someone reporting him to his mother.

It was annoying that he was thirty-five, and nothing had changed.