The Night We Met

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  in late August. We were lying naked beneath the sheet, having just made love.

  "What about? Are they coming home for the weekend?"

  Classes were due to start the next week.

  "No."

  I was, of course, disappointed. I still had a hard time not taking it personally when my sons didn't need to see me as much as I needed to see them. But I'd learned to be pretty good at not letting on how desperately I craved their visits.

  "He wanted to talk about two things. First, he let me know that Jimmy and Rhonda broke up."

  We'd met the girl the previous spring, when Jimmy had brought her home for a weekend visit. I'd liked her as well as al his other female friends.

  I nodded. "And the second thing?"

  "He asked me what I thought about him switching his major to hotel management. He'd like to work for me ful - time when he graduates and someday take over the resort."

  Nate sounded surprised. I wasn't at al .

  "What'd you tel him?"

  "That I had to talk to you first regarding the resort, but that he had my fall support on the major if he's sure it's what he wants to do. I need to know he's not doing this because he feels he owes us."

  "Keith loves the resort. He was miserable in Fort Col ins this summer."

  "He never said anything to me about that."

  "It probably isn't the kind of thing a guy talks to his dad about." I couldn't help the cocky little note in my voice.

  Leaning over, Nate nipped lightly at my lips with his teeth. "Then I guess it's just as well he's got a mama, isn't it?"

  I couldn't agree more. And spent the next half hour rewarding Nate for being so astute.

  "Speaking of the resort, I have something I want to run by you," I said the next morning over breakfast. Elizabeth had spent the night with a friend she'd met in first grade who was also going to be in her second-grade class when school resumed after Labor Day.

  Nate looked up from the paper and grinned at me. "Were we speaking of the resort?"

  "Uh-huh." I couldn't eat the toast I'd made for myself. My stomach had been invaded by butterflies.

  "Last night. About Keith."

  "Oh, right. So what about it?"

  Putting the paper down, he gave me his fall attention. Which made me even more nervous. For once, I had no idea what kind of reaction I was going to get.

  "Wel , this doesn't have anything to do with Keith, actually—though you are going to call him today, aren't you? And tel him that Jimmy and Elizabeth wil be given the same opportunity but we'd love to have him in the business?"

  "Is that what we'd love?"

  I blinked. "Wouldn't you? Over the years, you've

  given so much of yourself to the place, taken it from something mediocre to an impressive venture with a niche al its own."

  "We could sell it and be set for life."

  "We are set for life. Besides, what would we do with all the extra money except leave it to the kids?"

  "If we don't sell, it'l always be a part of our lives. Even when I retire and quit going in every day, Keith will still call with questions. He'l still run things by me."

  "Is that bad?"

  He shook his head, the lines around his eyes crinkling as he grinned. "No, I think that sounds pretty damn good. I just wanted to make sure you knew what we'd be getting into. We'l be signing on for life."

  "Haven't we already done that?"

  I wasn't speaking just of the resort, but it applied. That business was a part of our family, just like our house and our piano and our memories.

  "I'l call him this morning."

  I smiled, and sipped my coffee. Our son would graduate. And he would come home. Oh, not to live under my roof, I knew that. But to take his place in a life that Nate and I had built. The thought made me feel cozy. Secure.

  Sometimes things worked out just the way you hoped.

  "You never told me what you wanted to talk about— something to do with the resort."

  I'd realized that, of course, but I'd decided I'd ponder things a little longer, enjoy the anticipation before I risked the possibility that Nate might not be as excited by my plan as I was.

  Glancing at him over my shoulder, I left the water running in the sink, rinsing our coffee cups for the dishwasher. I saw that Nate had his briefcase in one hand.

  "We can talk about it tonight."

  He set his briefcase on the table. "How about if we do it right now?"

  He'd figured out it was important to me. I should've known.

  Perhaps I had known. From the moment I'd broached the subject that morning. Nate understood me.

  I turned off the water. Dried my hands. And faced him. "What would you think about me quitting work?"

  "That'd be fine. You don't have to work. You know that." He was frowning. "I'm just not sure it'd be good for you to stay at home all day."

  "Me, neither." I'd get too lonely. And feel worthless. "We know me too well, huh?"

  "So I take it you have something else in mind?"

  "I've been spending more time at the women's shelter in Denver. In addition to my regular volunteer days, I've been going when I drop Elizabeth off at the dance studio and help the women while she's in class."

  "Help them how?"

  "Write letters, do their hair, play with their children."

  Hands clasped behind my back, I waited.

  "Why didn't you say anything about it?"

  "I don't know. I guess I needed to feel things out for myself before I could talk about it. I wasn't convinced I'd like it. Or be good at it."

  When he nodded, his expression contemplative, I told him about my talks with Lori. And al the times his daughter's words had come back to me over the past months.

  "I feel I need to do something with this, Nate."

  "Then I'm sure you should."

  I told him about my eventual plan to open a shelter in Boulder. Not a government-run one like the one in Denver, but a private one, where I'd have less red tape to deal with and more control over the rules. I'd need funding, though. We talked it over and decided I'd spend a few years in some official capacity at the shelter in Denver first and then see where my heart led me.

  Chapter 16

  In the spring of 1991, just before her eighth birthday, my second-grade daughter came home from school to announce that she was quitting dance class. She didn't like it. And she wanted to play soccer. So I became a soccer mom.

  I was forty-two years old, standing on the sidelines with women ten years my junior, cheering for the only girl on the team. Nate made it to every game that spring and during the '91-'92 season, became the coach of Elizabeth's team.

  Some things don't take much training—only heart. Keith graduated from Colorado State University with honors and a bachelor degree in hotel management.

  And Jimmy introduced us to Lydia, the woman he was sure he was going to marry, and decided to spend his last college summer in Fort Col ins so he could be close to her.

  We'd missed Lori and Charles the previous Christmas. They'd been on a trip to Africa but were talking about getting to Colorado sometime that summer. I hoped they did. I was ready to approach the city of Boulder with my plan to open a battered women's shelter in a space I'd found a couple of miles from downtown. Even though Nate and I had written the plan and been over it many times, I wanted Lori's opinion before I presented it. She might have suggestions about agencies I should contact— dealing with government red tape was a natural for her after practicing law in Washington.

  And while I was going to have a private facility, I still needed to abide by certain regulations.

  Elizabeth would be starting fourth grade that next fall; she was pulling away from me much more rapidly than her brothers had. As much as I worshipped the ground that girl walked on, she tried my patience.

  Besides, at forty-three, I wasn't getting any younger.

  We bought our first computer that summer. Keith said we needed a system for the resort if we were goin
g to move into the twenty-first century with any success.

  And Nate brought one home, as well. Elizabeth loved it and I had to fight to get her to help around the house— even just to keep her room picked up and to practice the piano. If she wasn't on the computer or playing with friends, she wanted to be at the resort with Keith.

  Her big brother had a lot more patience with her than I did. And he was living in a suite at the resort, so she always had a place to hang out where she'd be safe and not in the way.

  Lori didn't make it home, after all, but we wrote each other often, and the day after school started in September, I made an offer on the big, old house I'd picked out. With renovations I could get a common room, a kitchen, two dormitory-style bathrooms, and at least ten small bedrooms, each with enough room for a single bed and a set of bunks.

  I hired a construction crew for the major carpentry, plumbing and electrical jobs, and Nate helped me work on the place every weekend that fal . By the new year, I was ready to interview counselors, a cook and house mothers. My licenses had come through, and so had some extra funding from the city. The resort was putting all its charitable contributions behind the venture, as well.

  I was forty-two and just starting out.

  The television series Cheers broadcast its last episode in May of 1993. Nate and I had been catching the show since it began, shortly after the end of our separation. I'd been fond of Sam Malone, bar owner, in spite of himself and was sad to see him go. Nothing, not even make-believe, lasted forever.

  Except maybe in reruns—and memories.

  Jimmy graduated right on schedule, certified to teach high school English, and already had a job at one of the schools he'd visited in Denver a few years before. He'd talked Sherry, the current woman of his dreams, into a position at a nearby parochial school. I was glad to hear she'd be living with her parents, who were from Denver, and not with him. Times had changed, but in that area, I had not.

  On her tenth birthday, Elizabeth wandered down to the kitchen just as I was putting the finishing touches on her cake. Scraping frosting from the side of the bowl with her finger, she sneaked a taste.

  "Hey," she said. "It's good."

  As if she hadn't expected it to be? I raised my eyebrows in exaggerated disapproval.

  And that night at the dinner table, with both of her brothers present, Jimmy with Sherry at his side, she cleared her throat and stood on her chair to make an announcement. She told everyone, but mostly her father and me, that beginning immediately, she was changing her name.

  "I will no longer be answering to Elizabeth," she stated, her manner unequivocal as she stood there in jeans and a T-shirt, her arms folded across her chest. "From now on I'm Beth, so I'm my own person and not like my mother, Eliza."

  It hurt. A lot. But I pretended not to notice. I was sure she meant in name only.

  Beth was the one who told me that Keith had a steady girlfriend. I knew he'd dated occasional y, but never the same girl more than once or twice. Unlike his brother, he'd certainly never brought a girl home. Beth spent a lot of time at the resort during the summer of '93—whenever I was at the shelter, where I oversaw all the books and made executive decisions but left the women and children to the professionals who could help them. One day when I picked her up, she was ful of the juicy news that she'd wheedled out of the housekeeping staff.

  Keith had been seeing one of the maids. She was twenty.

  "Four years younger than him, Mom," Beth said, her skinny legs bouncing on the seat as I drove.

  She'd grown in the two months since I'd bought her those shorts for her birthday. They were too smal . "She has blond hair and she's working for the summer so she can afford to go back to UC in August. She's studying nutrition. Her dad's a minister and it's just the two of them."

  "What happened to her mother?" I asked, ashamed of myself for prying. My son did not deserve a nosy mother who invited third hand gossip through a ten-year-old.

  "Dunno. But it's cool that he's a minister, huh? Kinda like you entering the convent."

  I could follow the logic—we'd both dedicated our lives to the service of God through organized religion— only his dedication had lasted. "Kind of."

  "They've gone on dates every weekend since May, and Ethel says neither one of 'em's seeing anyone else."

  Ethel. An older woman who'd been with us as long as we'd owned the resort.

  "Have you met her?"

  She grinned. "I talked to her a couple times, but she doesn't know that I know she's Keith's girlfriend."

  "Does she know you're his sister?"

  "I guess so. Doesn't everybody?"

  "Does she have a name?" I figured if I was going to commit the offense, I might as well go al out.

  "Uh-huh. Emily."

  "Is she pretty?"

  "'Course. She's with Keith!"

  I wondered if my oldest son was using condoms. But I certainly didn't ask his busybody sister.

  "Did you know Keith's seeing a girl in housekeeping?" I asked Nate as we lay in bed that night.

  "No."

  "He hasn't said anything to you about it?"

  "No." He sounded half-asleep. We both had to be up early in the morning.

  "Has he mentioned dating anyone at al ?"

  "No."

  Nate rol ed onto his back, laughing at me in the darkness. "You jealous?"

  "Of what?"

  "The fact that your oldest baby might be changing his loyalties from you to another woman?"

  "Of course not!" The thought had never crossed my mind. At least, I didn't think it had.

  "It just bothers me that he hasn't even mentioned her. I mean, I'm his mother."

  "And he used to tell you everything."

  Oh, hell. Nate was right. Again.

  I was jealous. There'd been no threat with Jimmy. He'd had so many girlfriends there'd been no opportunity for a switch in allegiance. But Keith...

  "He'll tel us when he's ready."

  I wondered when that would be.

  The older I got, the more confusing life became. I'd given up control years before, but my need for it still got the better of me now and then.

  I was forty-five years old and sometimes I just didn't understand life. My perspective was clouded, I know, by the women and children I saw going in and out of the shelter. It was hard to reconcile myself to the untenable situations from which they'd come, the horror stories they had to tell, especial y when I felt helpless to do anything about them. The shelter offered a great service. It couldn't fix the world.

  But that didn't stop me from trying. To that end, in the spring of 1994, with Lori's long-distance help, I contacted all the local law firms in Boulder, as well as the college of law at UC, asking for volunteers to offer free legal advice to the women at the shelter.

  "It's incredible," I told Nate over a meat-loaf-and- baked-potato dinner one night. "I was hoping for three or four responses—you know, thinking we'd do one

  night a month or something. As it turns out, I've got so many lawyers offering to help, including Roger Kempton, that defense attorney who handles so many of Denver's high-profile cases, that we'll be able to do two sessions a week."

  Nate picked up a rol . Broke it and arranged a pat of butter in the middle, just like he'd been doing for the twenty-six years I'd known him. "Might be good if you could do one night and one day," he said. "That way women who work in the evenings can stil get help."

  "And private lawyers could do the day hours," I added. I'd started out thinking only government attorneys would be volunteering and they were committed during the day.

  "Mom, can I have the other half of your potato? Coach says I need the carbs."

  "Of course." Passing the foil-wrapped potato from my plate to hers, I got up and sliced the cake I'd made for dessert while Nate, who was no longer coaching now that Beth was on an all-star city team, discussed defensive strategy with his daughter.

  We had a soccer game that night. I'd completely forgotten.

>   A week later, I asked Keith to bring his girlfriend to Beth's eleventh birthday dinner. We were going to her favorite restaurant on the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver.

  Ten months after I'd first heard about her, my son still hadn't mentioned this girl to me.

  "That's okay, Mom. It's Beth's big day. She doesn't need a bunch of strangers hanging around."

  What struck me was that he hadn't denied the girl's existence.

  "Who is she?"

  "Nobody."

  He was sitting behind his desk at the resort. I'd stopped by to have lunch with Nate.

  "I wonder how she'd feel if she could hear you refer to her like that?"

  He had the grace to look ashamed. "Let it go, Mom, huh?"

  I agreed. What else could I do?

  But I didn't like it.

  I asked Nate about her over lunch.

  "He's never said a word to me."

  "Have you met her?" She'd only worked at the resort for a couple of months the previous summer. I'd learned that from Beth.

  "Don't you think I would've told you if I had?"

  "Yeah."

  "He's playing this one close to his chest, Liza. You just have to leave it alone."

  I was pretty sure I couldn't. I'd tried.

  "Doesn't it bother you?"

  He shrugged, his eyes a little tired-looking as he glanced up at me. "I can't imagine telling my mom about the girls I dated. It's not something a guy usually wants to discuss with his mom."

  "Jimmy does." He and Sherry had split. Brenda had been next. Now it was Kaylee.

  "Because with him, it's never gone very deep."

  That bothered me, too. I was worried about both boys.

  "So you think he's serious about this girl?"

  "This is Keith we're talking about. What do you think?"

  Keith didn't do anything lightly or without reason.

  Kind of like his mother, Nate had said more than once.

  But a person had to be prepared.

  "Is she going to be working here this next summer?"

  "Not so far." Nate didn't seem concerned one way or the other.

  I couldn't share his complacency.

  Depending on just how serious my son was, the girl could become part of my immediate family' And I'd never even met her.