Snowbound Weekend & Gambler's Love

by Amii Lorin

  As she savored each successive spoonful, Vichy's gaze roamed lovingly over the large kitchen, which was a combination of up-to-the-minute appliances in old-fashioned country decor.

  The line of cabinets above and below the sink were varnished, natural wood, carefully made and fitted by her father's clever hands. Matching wood paneling covered three of the walls. The remaining wall was covered with a bright white-, orange-, and tan-striped wallpaper. The ceiling was open-beamed, the plaster between sparkling white. Everything in the room, as, indeed, the whole house, was showroom clean. The very neatness of the property, both inside and out, was a clear indication that her sixty-year-old mother and sixty-one-year-old father were still fighting fit.

  When they'd polished off their soup and most of the biscuits, Bette filled their cups with steaming, dark coffee and sat a pumpkin pie on the table.

  "Fresh baked this morning," Bette announced. "First of the season."

  "Looks good enough to eat," Vichy smiled. "I haven't had good pumpkin pie since I was home for Thanksgiving two years ago."

  "Well, then, stuff yourself," Bette invited with a proud, sweeping hand motion. "Plenty more where that came from. Mom made four of them this morning."

  "Four!" Vichy laughed.

  "You know Mom," Bette grinned. "She claims she still can't get used to cooking for only three. She slid one of the pies in the fridge and the other two in the freezer just in case Mattie or Josh drop in with their assorted brood."

  "Drop in?" Vichy's eyebrows arched. "Mattie in Williamsport and Josh in Easton, and she expects them to drop in?"

  "What can I tell ya?"

  Bette's lifted shoulders displayed more elegance than her elocution. "Mom is—well, Mom. She'll never change. She'll probably stop the cortege on the way to her own funeral and declare she can't go just yet, as she has to get supper first."

  Although Vichy shook her head in despair at Bette's corollary, she had to smile simply because it was so very near the mark. With cool disregard for the perfection of their mother's handiwork, Bette sliced into the pie.

  "Mmmm, heavenly," Vichy murmured around the first bite. "Tastes like home."

  "Maybe that's because it is," Bette laughed. "You sound like someone who's been very, very homesick."

  "Maybe that's because I have been," Vichy admitted seriously. "Homesick, and just plain sick of it all."

  Bette was quiet while she removed their empty plates from the table, then, after refilling both coffee cups, she asked softly, "What happened, Vichy?"

  "Absolutely nothing," Vichy's smile held a hint of bitterness. "I just, finally, faced the fact that nothing was going to happen." Getting up, she walked to the counter where she'd deposited her handbag. Plucking her leather cigarette case from the depths of the large bag, she turned back to Bette. "In a word, hon, I've failed," she said steadily. She paused to light a cigarette, drawing the taste of it in deeply before, indicating the thin cylinder between her fingers, she sighed. "I really can't afford this habit. At the moment, I'm on my economic knees."

  "You're broke?"

  "Well," Vichy grimaced. "Let's say I'm very badly bent. I have a little money—damn little—saved, and I do have the holiday engagement. But, come the first of the year, I am going to have to get down to some serious job hunting."

  "Then you really did mean what you said!" Bette exclaimed. "You've given up your dreams of a Grammy?"

  "I've given up my dreams, period," Vichy replied flatly. "The clouds have completely dissolved around my head. I know now there'll be no fame, no fortune, no Grammy."

  "But, Vich—" Bette began in protest.

  "No buts." Vichy cut her off with a sharp shake of her head. "I'm tired of it all—the piano bars, the dives, even the intimate little supper clubs, where no one is really ever listening." Her soft mouth twisted, as if with a sour taste. "I'm tired of men on the make who think I'm an easy target. God"—her laugh rang hollow—"I'm just tired of men and their predictable lines and come-ons."

  During the shocked silence that followed her outburst, Vichy crushed out her cigarette and immediately lit another.

  "I'm sorry, hon," Vichy apologized softly. "I really had no intention of laying my grief in your lap." She hesitated, then laughed self-deprecatingly. "I guess what I was going to do was lay it in Mom's lap." She shrugged helplessly. "So much for the independent self-image I've been harboring."

  "You really are tired of it all, aren't you?" Bette's face mirrored her concern.

  "Yes." A genuine smile restored Vichy's lips to their natural, sweet line. "I'm somewhat like a runaway teenager in reverse. Instead of running away from home, I'm running back to it."

  At that moment the back door opened and the one voice Vichy had been longing most to hear exclaimed: "Victoria Lynn Parks, why didn't you let us know you were coming home? Dad and I would not have left the house for a second if we'd known."

  CHAPTER TWO

  Long after the voices of today had grown silent, Vichy lay in her bed listening to the voices of yesterday.

  "Hurry up, slowpoke. You don't want to be late for your first day at school, do you?" The fourteen-year-old Mattie had chided her six-year-old self, right in this very room.

  "Hey, bones," a ten-year-old Josh had called up the stairs to a thin, seven-year-old Vichy—then Vicky. "Your giggly girl friend Sue is on the phone."

  "Is Mommy going to die?" Vichy's eight-year-old, tearful voice asked fearfully.

  "Of course not, pumpkin." The maturing voice of the then-sixteen-year-old Mattie assured. "Mommy will be home before you know it with a brand new brother or sister for us."

  "Vic-key."

  "Vich-ee."

  "Vic-key."

  "Vich-ee."

  "No, no, Bette, it's like this," the fourteen-and-a-half-year-old Josh pleaded with his eighteen-month-old baby sister.

  "Vic-key. Now you say that."

  "Vich-ee." Everyone smiled at baby Bette's effort.

  "Okay," Josh had figuratively thrown up his hands. "You win, bright eyes, Vichy it is."

  And Vichy it had remained.

  "Silly fool."

  The words were whispered into the dark room through quivering lips. Blinking against the hot sting flooding her eyes, Vichy sat up and clasped her arms around her raised knees. All of a sudden she wanted, very badly, to hug Mattie and Josh close to her love-parched heart.

  Yes, indeed, she thought wryly, rubbing her eyes against the comforter covering her knees, you are one silly fool. But, Lord, it was good to be home!

  Tears sparkling in the shaft of moonlight that cast her bed in a pearllike light, Vichy went over the hours following her parents' return from the market.

  The water works had burst from her first look at her small, plump mother, standing just inside the kitchen door, a produce-stuffed shopping bag in each hand.

  The moisture had slipped from between her eyelids a second time when, on entering the house moments after his wife, her father had caught Vichy close in a fierce, emotion-revealing bear hug.

  At her mother's insistence, they made a call to Mattie in Williamsport. Vichy smiled shakily as the echo of her sister's voice sang in her mind.

  "You're home to stay," Mattie had cried in delight. "Oh, Vich, that's wonderful. I'll bet Mom and Dad are overjoyed. And, oh, yes, has Mom told you?" she rushed on. "I'm going to be a grandmother in April, and now you'll be here—we'll all be together again."

  Now the memory of her sister's happy voice drew a fresh deluge of tears. Reaching for a tissue from the box on the nightstand by her bed, Vichy assimilated Mattie's news.

  Little Nan, the first of her parents' grandchildren, pregnant! It seemed impossible, yet, Nan's wedding September a year ago had been the reason Vichy had made a quick visit home.

  How beautiful they had looked, both the nineteen-year-old Nan and her seventeen-year-old sister, Brenda. Come to that, Vichy smiled in the darkness, Mattie had looked pretty darn beautiful herself at thirty-seven.

  Vichy had no
sooner said good-bye to Mattie than her mother was dialing Josh's number in Easton. Her brother's reaction to her news was no less enthusiastic then Mattie's had been.

  "Hey, that's terrific," Josh had fairly shouted. "You've probably made Mom and Dad's day. Day, hell, you've probably made their year. I can't wait to tell Caroline."

  Vichy chuckled in the still room, her amusement renewed at the memory of where Josh had told her his wife, Caroline, and his young son were. It was too much! Tears surrendered to laughter. Rotten Robert, the scourge of the family, in a dance class! Oh, that poor dance instructor.

  In the end, Vichy had not laid her problems in her mother's lap, nor had she cried, figuratively or otherwise, on her mother's shoulder. Her parents had accepted, without questioning, her explanation of being tired of working at night.

  That she had not fooled them for one minute Vichy was sure of. She was equally sure they would not pry or try to force the issue.

  Sighing with contentment, Vichy slid back down under the covers. Her contentment was premature and short-lived. Eyes closed, composed for sleep, new voices intruded, shatteringly painful, even after six years.

  "You have a beautiful body, made for love. There's nothing to be ashamed of. Let me love you, darling. I mean really love you."

  How many times had Brad whispered those impassioned words within those short two weeks from the day they met until the day he'd slipped the ring on her finger? More times than Vichy cared to remember.

  But, whether she cared to remember or not, the bittersweet memories flowed on. Eyes tightly closed, Vichy felt her cheeks flush as in her mind she lay in Brad's arms, innocently happy in the fulfillment of his physical lovemaking.

  Defenseless in her love and trust, Vichy had made her handsome young husband the center of her existence, physically and emotionally. And for six months Brad had taken full advantage of that trust, gorging himself on her, coaching her on the ways and means of arousing and satisfying him.

  At the end of those six months Brad had proved himself a rat. But, Lord, he had been a hot-blooded rat!

  Vichy groaned aloud. She had found out, in a degrading and shocking way, precisely how hot-blooded and how very much of a rat Brad was, six months to the day of their wedding.

  Moving restlessly under the suddenly oppressive, handmade comforter, Vichy tried in vain to block the torrent of memories that should no longer have had the power to humiliate her, but did.

  "You've become my life"—Brad had vowed fervently countless times during those months—"my only reason for existing." She had actually believed him.

  His handsome face expressing tenderness, his hands gently caressing, Brad had bound her to him with his beguiling words.

  "I need you every bit as much as I need air to breathe. No woman I've ever known has had the power to make me feel as complete as I feel with you."

  There had been more, much, much more of the same. On and on, ad nauseam, Vichy remembered cynically. And I swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sinker. But then, Vichy exonerated herself, I was so unbelievably innocent, and Brad was so very good at it that even a seasoned veteran could have been forgiven for eating up every one of his words. But it was the last words he'd spoken to her that still stuck in her mind—festering, shaming her.

  Giving up tiredly, Vichy allowed the memories free run, praying against hope that airing them would, at long last, expunge them.

  Some four months after their marriage Brad's honey-tipped tongue had even soothed away the devastation Vichy felt on being informed, during a routine visit to a doctor, that she would probably never be able to conceive a child.

  "We have each other," he had crooned. "And you have your career." It was not until much later that Vichy was to wonder if his deep sigh had been one of disappointment or relief.

  Vichy had considered it pure good luck when she had been booked into the same lounge, in the same hotel in which they'd met, at the time of their six months' anniversary. And even better luck that Brad had been able to secure the same room in which they had spent their wedding night.

  Her engagement had called for two appearances a night, the first at dinnertime, the second later in the evening for the drinking crowd. Brad, a compulsive gambler who loved every minute of it, winning or losing, never appeared for the early show. But, every night for two short weeks, he would stroll into the room sometime during her last performance. Vichy always knew the exact moment he sauntered through the room, for wherever he went, female eyes followed his progress and lips murmured in appreciation of his passage.

  Vichy had been only momentarily concerned the night he had not shown up at all. Only for a second had she considered looking through his favorite rooms for him, so sure had she been that he had planned some kind of six-month-anniversary surprise for her.

  Wondering what form that surprise would take, excitement coursing through her, Vichy had hurried to their room.

  Flinging herself onto her side, Vichy buried her face in her pillow to muffle the whimper of pity that escaped her lips for the shock her younger self had received on entering that hotel room.

  Dupe that she had been, Vichy had not even wondered why the door to their room was locked. Fingers trembling in anticipation, she had still somehow managed to insert the key, turn the lock, and open the door silently.

  The room was bathed in a soft light from the lamp on the dresser, illuminating clearly the couple locked together on the bed. As if turned to stone, Vichy had frozen in place two steps inside the room, her mind trying to deny the scene her eyes were riveted to. But there was no denying the position of the man and the woman, nor any question of their identities. The woman was a cocktail waitress in the lounge Vichy was engaged in. The man was most definitely Brad. Her Brad!

  They had been so totally involved with pleasuring each other that even now Vichy had no idea what had alerted them to her presence. Had she cried out or gasped aloud? Vichy didn't know, but, then, what difference did it make now?

  Choking with revulsion, Vichy had backed away from the sight of his sensuous face, the sound of the woman's excited laughter. To this very day, Vichy was unclear as to exactly where she'd gone that night. In a town that never seemed to sleep, she had walked, sightlessly, until, becoming aware of the time somewhere around nine a.m., she had walked into a lawyer's office. Within those lone nighttime hours Vichy had grown up—the hard way.

  Lessons learned painfully are never forgotten. Vichy had not forgotten, nor had she been able to love any man since. To her way of thinking, except for her father and brother, the male of the species were simply not to be trusted.

  Cold fingers brushed away the tears pooling under her eyes. Vichy was not crying for the woman she was today, but for the starry-eyed innocent she'd been six years ago. The death of that innocence had been painful in the extreme. Rebuilding her life at twenty-three after she'd received her divorce, six months after she had seen the lawyer, had been plain hard work. Being aware of the fact that she was the first member of her family to obtain a divorce had not made the rebuilding any easier.

  Oh, there had been men in her life over the years, several in fact. But she never let any of them get too close. That in itself had not been easy, for while she held them off, she fought a silent battle with herself.

  Brad had awakened her sensual being, had created in her a natural hunger. She had all the normal needs and urges of a healthy young woman. Fear lent her the strength to repress those needs. She'd vowed that never again would she leave herself open to the type of crushing hurt Brad had inflicted on her. Momentary appeasement, she'd reasoned, was simply not worth the price.

  But abstinence by choice demanded its own price, and after six years the coin of frustration and loneliness had become bloated by inflation, its emotional weight growing heavier each year.

  Another groan whispered through her lips and Vichy kicked impatiently at the suddenly confining covers. Perhaps I should take a lover, she thought despairingly. A stranger for the night, chosen cooll
y and coldbloodedly with one purpose only: relief and assuagement—my own.

  Soft bitter laughter lived only seconds in the dark room. After all these years she wouldn't know how to go about it. And, even if she did, she knew without doubt that she'd lack the courage to go through with it.

  Two weeks of her mother's gentle, bustling care, her father's gruff protectiveness, and her sister's sometimes zany humor went a long way in filling the emptiness Vichy had felt yawning inside herself.

  The first weekend she was home, Mattie, her husband, Tom, and their youngest daughter, Brenda, came to visit. Most of the first day was spent on Vichy and Mattie catching up on the news of each other. Talk filled the house, sometimes everyone talking at once. Vichy was given a glowing report on her pregnant niece's health, Mattie's excitement over becoming a grandmother evident in every word she spoke.

  The second day found them settled into comfortable conversation, broken at intervals by the high-spirited banter between Bette and Brenda, who were separated in age by only four years.

  The second weekend Josh descended on them, Robert in tow. During that weekend pandemonium ran rampant, and by the time Josh and Caroline departed for Easton with the scourge, Vichy was beginning to feel like the self she had once been.

  All of which made it that much harder for Vichy to leave again to honor her commitment in Atlantic City. But, telling herself she had only two short runs to go, leave she did the weekend before Thanksgiving.

  Atlantic City was hardly recognizable as the same city in which her whole family had vacationed the year Vichy was eight. Admittedly, Vichy's memory of that time was sketchy, yet, the change was so dramatic she could not possibly fail to notice.

  Though the streets were jammed with cars and tour buses, the city itself had a forgotten, overlooked air about it, not unlike a faded beauty whose admirers and lovers have left her, alone and deserted. Just driving through it depressed Vichy, making her vaguely sad.