Читать книгу Happy Endings Are All Alike - Sandra Scoppettone - Страница 13

7

Jaret’s father was always tired when he came home from work. He owned a small but lucrative insurance firm. His office was in Riverbay, a half hour’s drive away. Bert complained nightly that he was overworked and could never find efficient help. He hinted that life would be much better, easier, if only Kay would come to work for him. It was the last thing Kay Tyler was going to do. “Rather death,” she’d said once when he asked her directly.

Kay wasn’t against working, although she was very happy at home doing pottery and painting. She was against working for her husband. “The surest way to screw up a marriage is to spend twenty-four hours a day together,” she said.

But that was exactly what Bert wanted. Twenty-five hours a day would have been preferable, because he was madly in love with his wife. She was, he insisted, different, special, unique among women.

The main thing for Kay about Bert was his looks. He often accused her of regarding him as nothing more than a sex object and she had a hard time denying it. “Well, kid,” she often said, “I can’t help it if you’re a looker.”

“What about my mind?” he’d ask.

Kay would shrug and say, “Who needs it?”

Of course, she didn’t really mean it. She just said it to keep Bert aware of the way women were treated. And he knew that. What he didn’t know was that Kay was not overwhelmed by his mind. She would have preferred him to be a little more lively, quicker, with interests beyond his business and Time magazine. At twenty, when she had married him, she hadn’t known any better, hadn’t seen beyond his looks. He’d been five years older, with a kind of dashing air of sophistication which she didn’t find out until later was nothing more than good taste in clothes and an extraordinary sense of good food and wine. Not good enough! But, oh, those looks.

It drove Kay mad that she was so shallow, such a sucker for thick blue-black hair that grew in a perfect widow’s peak, huge, almost-black eyes, eyelashes thicker and longer than any woman’s she’d ever seen, a nose meant for a sculptor’s eye and a real mouth. Most men had stingy little mouths but not Bert. It was wide, beautifully shaped and lovely to kiss. And even though she’d been dead set against him growing it, the luxurious quality of his beard and mustache gave him an even more romantic look. He was short, only five feet seven, but Kay didn’t mind as she was only five feet.

The truth of the matter was that Kay found most men dull. It was the rare man who could engage her. Bert thought he was an exception and Kay saw no point in correcting that impression. And, in a way, he was an exception; she loved him dearly. Aside from being gorgeous he was kind, considerate, gentle and loving. And that was a lot.

“Hello, darling,” Bert said, handing Kay a small bouquet of sweetheart roses, something he did at least once a week. “How’d your day go?”

She sniffed the flowers, smiled, kissed his lovely mouth. “Thanks, honey. I made a really fantastic bowl. I’ll show you after dinner.”

“Great.” He put an arm around her as they walked to the kitchen.

“How was your day?”

“Well, Helen botched up three letters and couldn’t find Cohen in the file because she’d put it under K. I spent hours looking for the damn thing. My God, I’m tired.”

“Seems to me if Cohen wasn’t under C the most natural place in the world to look would be under K. Got to get on top of these things, kid!” She smiled at him, ruffled his hair.

“You see, that’s exactly why I need you, Kay. Who else would think of that?”

“Don’t,” she warned. “Want a drink?”

He nodded.

The Tylers always had a cocktail hour before dinner and Jaret and Chris were welcome to join in the conversation, a prerogative Jaret sometimes exercised but one Chris never did anymore. When he was home he was invariably in the room he had built for himself in the basement.

This was one of the evenings Jaret had decided to sit with her parents, drinking the light vodka and tonic she was allowed since she turned eighteen. In the middle of their conversation, Chris, in satin soccer shorts and T-shirt, walked through the room.

“Want to join us, Chris?” Bert asked, always hopeful.

“Does a chicken have lips?” he answered, not bothering to look at anyone, continuing to walk toward the kitchen.

“God, I’m sick of that expression,” Kay said. “Can’t you come up with something new?”

He didn’t answer. They heard him head downstairs to his room.

“I could strangle him,” Kay said.

“Oh, Mom, he’s just at that age.”

“The age of a moron.”

“Remember what I was like when I was sixteen?” Jaret asked as though it were twenty years ago rather than two.

“You bet. Articulate, bright, fun. Girls are always . . . Kay stopped herself, realizing she shouldn’t be a bigot about the male sex in front of Jaret. It wouldn’t help things. “Actually, you were a pain in the neck.”

“Right. We didn’t get along at all then. Remember?”

Jaret, from age fourteen to sixteen, had been at terrible odds with her mother and it had scared and hurt Kay until she remembered how she’d been with her own mother and how they’d later become friends. That she and Jaret were good friends already was a real plus; she hadn’t expected it for years.

“What a brat I was,” Jaret went on.

“You were never a brat,” Bert said. He was as entranced by his daughter as he was his wife. Jaret, aside from being exceptionally bright, had real beauty, and it pleased him to know that she would have her pick of men when the time came for her to marry.