Love Me or Leave Me

by Gwynne Forster

  Drake stopped by the den, told his family good-night, mostly to indicate that he was staying in his own room, and headed up the stairs. What he did was his business, but he didn’t want to cause speculation about Pamela. After all, as his Seneca grandmother was supposed to have counseled, “Many suns drink from the ocean before the clouds weep and water the earth.” So the less known about his relationship with Pamela, the better. Still, he’d be the first to say that each time they were together, his feelings for her grew stronger. And as the weekend progressed, it bore heavily upon him that she fitted well with his family and they would quickly and easily love her.

  “How’d you enjoy your weekend in the country?” he asked her as they walked down the hallway to her apartment that Sunday evening.

  “I loved it, and that surprised me, because I’ve always considered myself a very urban creature. I loved everything about it.” Then she shocked him with the question, “Why wasn’t Velma at Eagle Park this weekend? They don’t seem to spend a lot of time together.”

  “Russ was working at Eagle Park because he needed to consult with Telford about the structure he’s working on. When he’s designing a structure, he stays to himself, and work is his whole life. He’s fortunate in that Velma understands that and supports him.”

  “She is a very likable person. I am hoping that she and I will become close friends.”

  “Is your bridesmaid’s dress ready?”

  “I’m picking it up Thursday.”

  A rueful smile played around his lips. “Do I look like a man who doesn’t want to leave you?”

  She opened her arms, and he rushed into them. “There’ll be other nights, darling, hopefully more than I can count.”

  He gazed into her eyes and asked himself what more a man could want. “I hope you’re good at math,” he said in a feeble effort to let her know that he empathized with her wish. “I’ll call you tomorrow, and you can let me know when we can be together this week. I’ll get our tickets for our flight to Texas Friday afternoon.” He left her with the feel of her kiss clinging to his lips.

  At seven-forty the following Friday evening, he stashed their bags in the trunk of the black Cadillac he’d rented and headed away from the San Antonio International Airport out San Pedro Avenue en route to Waverly. “I hope your father isn’t planning to give me a hard time, because something tells me I’m not in the mood for it.”

  She didn’t seem concerned. “Do you ever lose your temper?” she asked him.

  He put the car in cruise control, flipped on a Duke Ellington CD and hummed a few bars of “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”

  “You know I am not easygoing. I keep my counsel and try not to let people and situations rile me, but I can lose it, and I definitely have done that.”

  She released a soft whistle. “I don’t think I’d like to be there.”

  Remembering an encounter with a football teammate while in college, he grimaced. “No, I don’t suppose you would. A classmate heckled me once too often, and I flattened him. He was out till an ambulance arrived. Scared me almost to death.”

  “Is that the last time?”

  “It’s the last time I used my fists. Watch out for the exit.”

  “About four miles. What time are we leaving Sun day?”

  He told her and winced when an oncoming car met them with full headlights blazing. A few minutes later, he turned off the highway and into the lane leading to Pamela’s home. “Here we are, and I hope I don’t meet any more drivers like that one. He practically blinded me.”

  The brown Tudor-style house seemed eerie in the moonlight and out of place in the sleepy Southern environment. To his surprise, Phelps Langford opened the door.

  “It’s time you got here,” Phelps said. “I’m starving.” He extended his right hand to Drake. “It’s good to see you again. Come on in.”

  Thoughts of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf flickered through his mind, but he shoved them aside. “How are you, sir? I wasn’t sure I ought to risk this trip.”

  When Phelps laughed, he saw Pamela’s resemblance to him. “Oh, nonsense. I jerked your chain, and you jerked right back. Men do that sort of thing. You know that.”

  If that was the apology he’d get, he supposed it beat not getting one. “Happy birthday. I hope you’ll have as many more.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not sure I want to live to be a hundred and thirty. Everybody I care about would be dead. How was your trip?” Phelps turned, looked back at his daughter and grinned. “I’m not ignoring you, it’s just that—”

  “I know,” she said. “You’re mending fences, and it’s a good thing. Where’s Mama?”

  “She’s dressing.”

  Drake remembered how long it took her to dress during his previous visit and figured he’d starve before he got a chance to eat. But she swept into the living room, embraced her daughter and then Drake. He could see from Phelps’s expression that the man would prefer that he didn’t hug his wife. He ignored the man and gave Delta the greeting that an attractive woman deserved.

  If he’s stupid enough to think I’d make a pass at my girlfriend’s mother, let him sweat.

  “I settle for three courses normally, but this is a special occasion.” She raised her glass of champagne. “To my husband, the man I love and who loves me. May I stay here as long as you and leave when you go. Happy birthday, dear.”

  After dinner, Phelps opened his gifts, a digital camera from Pamela, a set of encyclopedias of the English and Russian languages from Delta and a gold tooled leather travel kit from Drake.

  “Well, I hit the jackpot. All of you gave me something that I can keep forever.” He spoke directly to Drake. “You’re a gracious man. Thank you.” Then he caressed the encyclopedias. “Delta knows I’ve wanted these for a long time. I translate…er…texts for the government as a consultant.” From that, Drake gathered that the man handled secret computer-related materials.

  Phelps went to the piano and ran his fingers over the keys. “Anybody willing to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me? I don’t mind playing, but danged if I’ll sing to myself.”

  Drake cleared his throat and reached for Pamela’s hand. “Can you sing in the key of F?” She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  When they finished singing the familiar song, Phelps opened the piano bench to look for sheet music. “You’ve got some voice, there, Drake. I won’t insult you by asking why you didn’t pursue voice as a career, since it’s obvious that you followed your preference. Do you know ‘Mariah’? ‘They call the wind Maria’?”

  “I haven’t sung it since college, but I’ll try.”

  He sang the song twice because Delta asked him to, and found that he enjoyed the singing, because it gave them a pleasant way to pass the evening. “I’m finished now,” he said. “‘O Holy Night’ and Brahms’s ‘Lullaby’ are the only things I’d ever heard Pamela sing.” He looked at her and winked. “How about singing ‘Villia’?” She obliged, and the evening sped away. Intent on being circumspect, he kissed Pamela’s lips quickly in her parents’ presence and told them all good-night.

  I hope to hell I don’t walk in my sleep, he said to himself, showered and went to bed.

  The knock on his door shortly after six the next morning startled him. He was about to say “Come in” when he realized it could be one of Pamela’s parents. He got up, put on a robe and wrapped it tightly, opened the door and looked into Phelps Langford’s face.

  “Good morning. Glad to see that I didn’t awaken you. It’s a good morning for fishing, and I thought you and I might go out and catch a few. Digger’s Brook is only about a few miles down the road, and the trout’s good right now. Or we could go down to the San Antonio River, but the catch isn’t half as good. I’ve got breakfast just about ready, and Delta and Pamela will sleep till ten. We can be back by then.”

  Drake rubbed his fingers over the bristles on his chin and opened his eyes a little wider, aware that Phelps hadn’t expected to find Pamela in his room. “Give
me ten minutes and I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  “Good. I like a man who doesn’t waste his life in bed.”

  The compliment was lost on him, for he wanted nothing more than to crawl back in that bed and sleep for hours. He brushed his teeth, shaved, splashed water over his face, put on his clothes and made it to the kitchen in eleven minutes.

  Phelps placed a platter of scrambled eggs, country sausage and bacon, biscuits and individual bowls of grits on the table, poured two glasses of orange juice and looked at Drake. “Coffee now or later? You Yankees are peculiar about when you get your coffee.”

  Drake had always thought Maryland was a Southern state. “I’m not. I want it as soon as I open my eyes.”

  The smile on Phelps’s face lit up his eyes, and he knew he’d like the man if only because his daughter looked so much like him. “I’ve already had two cups.” He put a wooden trivet on the table and set the coffeepot on it. “My wife uses one of those electronic coffeemakers, but I perk mine the old-fashioned way—right on top of the stove.”

  Drake poured himself a cup, blew it, took a sip and smiled with pleasure. “Best coffee I’ve had in years. I haven’t done much fly-fishing, but I’d like to try.”

  “Well, it takes practice, so we’ll go downstream and cast for mullets or catfish. How’s that?”

  “Suits me as long as it’s relaxing. I try to keep my weekends as free of stress as possible. Enough of that when I’m on the job.”

  It surprised him that he found talking with Pamela’s father easy. And the man could cook. “These biscuits are ready to walk. Wonderful! Who made them?”

  Phelps stopped eating, rested his fork on the side of his plate and stared at Drake. “Who do you think made them? Delta can’t even fry corn bread. She’s great at fancy cooking, but don’t ask her to cook a pot of grits. I’ve tried to figure out how to ruin grits, and I don’t see how it’s possible, but Delta manages every time.”

  “Hats off to you, man. I don’t suppose it matters who cooks as long as there’s someone in the house who does it well enough to prevent starvation.”

  “Right. Can you cook?”

  “Sure. I’m a scientist. Give me a recipe book, and I can make anything in it. And I can cook grits.”

  He changed from sneakers to boots while Phelps cleaned the kitchen, and at a quarter of seven they headed for Digger’s Brook in Phelps Langford’s Buick LeSabre.

  “Nobody around here to go fishing with,” Phelps said. “I didn’t have brothers or buddies growing up, my older sister treated me as if I were her toy and now I can’t make close friends because of my work. Friends ask questions, and when they don’t get answers, they provide their own. You know what I’m saying?”

  He did, indeed. The man was saying that he’d had a lot of lonely hours. “After Pamela was born, we tried for some more, but we weren’t lucky. The problem was with me, not Delta.” He turned into a little dirt road and parked under a tree. “I’m hoping Pamela will give us some grandchildren before I get too old to enjoy them.”

  The best thing for me to do is ignore that last statement, and I hope he doesn’t put it more pointedly than that. Drake directed the conversation away from himself. “Why didn’t you have buddies, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “We lived in the suburbs, and our house was about half a mile from the next one. The property also had a high fence and a big iron gate, thanks to my dad’s paranoia about theft and privacy.”

  They prepared their rods for fishing and Phelps took two folding chairs from the trunk and placed them at the edge of the brook. “Might as well be comfortable,” he said.

  Drake dug around in his mind for references to the name Langford, found none and asked, “Was your father well-known?”

  “He’s still living. He was a famous Olympian in the nineteen-thirties, and he owns a company that produces a popular brand of canned fruits and bottled juices. He’s also difficult to live around.”

  They cast their lines, and he sat back in the chair and enjoyed the cool and refreshing morning breeze. “How far are your parents from here?”

  “They’re up in Amarillo, thank God. I’d like to see my mother more often, but a little of my dad goes a long way with me. I’m sixty-five, and he’ll immediately start telling me what’s wrong with my life and how to live it. Pamela tells me you have a wonderful family.”

  “I have, and I am grateful for that. Russ, my second-oldest brother, is getting married in a few weeks, and we all like his fiancée. She’s our older brother’s sister-in-law. Telford—he’s my oldest brother—has a wonderful wife, a godsend to all of us, a wonderful big sister. Our house had been a huge bachelor pad for four men—us and our cook and surrogate father—and she and her wonderful six-year-old daughter made it a real home.”

  He saw the red ball on his line bobbing in the water and jerked the line. “Hey, there’s a fish here.” He reeled in a catfish of at least three pounds, put it in the bucket and cast again.

  They talked until the sun began to make them uncomfortable. Phelps opened the bucket. “Let’s see what we’ve got in here. Hmm. Not bad. Three catfish and four mullets. Haven’t done this well in a long time. I’m ready to go if you are. They must be wondering where we are.”

  At this point, Drake’s concern was about who would scale the fish, for he didn’t know how to begin. “I’ll take these out back, skin the catfish and scale the mullets,” Phelps said. “By the time Delta and Pamela get up, I’ll have ’em iced down.”

  “While you’re doing that, I’ll heat up the coffee. You want a cup?”

  “Wouldn’t mind it a bit.”

  He warmed the coffee, filled two mugs and headed toward the back deck. It occurred to him that Phelps Langford needed a male friend, but would willingly settle for a companionable son-in-law. Well, he didn’t mind filling in, but no one should think he could be lured into anything. He’d follow his own lights, though it was a relief to know that the man was likable and that he was enjoyable company. He opened the screen door and stepped out onto the deck, and his eyes widened when Phelps nailed the catfish’s tail to a plank of wood, picked up a knife and pulled the skin off.

  “Here’s your coffee. I had no idea that those fish had skin rather than scales.”

  “So you’re both out here. Where’s the coffee, honey?” He looked up to see Delta standing in the doorway looking like a model who had a date with a photographer. He hoped Pamela didn’t feel the need to look perfect every minute of the day.

  “We drank it all. The pot’s on the stove.”

  Delta went back into the house and after about ten minutes, Pamela came through the door, moving as if she had to drag herself. “Hi. Mama said you’ve already been fishing.” She seemed to squint at him when she said, “Did my daddy get you up at five this morning?”

  “No. He waited another hour. But not to worry, I enjoyed the world as it was before other humans polluted it.”

  Phelps stopped scaling the last mullet and looked up at him. “Heavens, I thought maybe you were already up.”

  He looked at the man and couldn’t prevent the grin that spread over his face. “You’re kidding.”

  Phelps returned to his task. “Well, you certainly were gracious about it.”

  “I enjoyed it once I got my eyes open, and I certainly enjoyed the fishing.”

  “Unless you have some plans, I’ll fry these up for lunch, a real fish fry right over there on that grill I built.”

  Pamela moved closer to him, and he observed her closely to see if she was trying to tell him something. But she only wanted him to know she was glad he was beside her. He looked down at her and squeezed her hand. “Does he think we can eat those five big fish?”

  “He’ll bake some corn bread and stew some collards, and we will eat every tiny piece of that fish. Daddy is great at frying fish.”

  Her pride in her father touched him, and he was glad they had come to terms. “If he’ll fry ’em, I will definitely eat my fill. Do we h
ave time to ride over to see the Coopers before lunch?”

  Her eyes seemed to beseech him. “We could, but it would be awkward. Selena wouldn’t let us leave in time to get back here for lunch. Do you mind?”

  He didn’t mind, and he realized that making her happy and secure with him was by far the most important thing he could do at that stage of their relationship. “Of course not.”

  It occurred to him that Phelps, too, was putting forth a lot of effort to ensure a pleasant weekend when he said, “After lunch, we could rest a couple of hours in case you need to catch up on your sleep, and then we can go over to the club and swim. If you want to play tennis in this scorching heat, you can do that, too. Me, I just want a swim.”

  “Sounds good to me. What about you?” Drake asked Pamela, who hadn’t moved from his side.

  “I’d love to swim, but no tennis for me this afternoon.” She tugged at his hand. “Come on. I’ll get you another cup of coffee.” He’d had three cups already, but if she wanted to be alone with him, he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “I’ve had enough coffee this morning,” he told her, leaning against the kitchen table, “but I’ll take anything else you’re offering.” Her arms went around him, and she raised her face for his kiss. Looking down at her, it occurred to him that he was happy, that he felt balanced, as if he were at last centered. He lowered his head and flicked his tongue over the seam of her lips. She pulled his tongue into her waiting mouth, and as if he’d touched a live wire, electricity flashed through him. He tightened his grip on her and loved her until the feel of her hands pushing against his chest surprised him.

  “Wh—?”

  “I th…think Daddy just passed the door, and I didn’t want him to get a shock on his way back.”

  He could only shake his head in wonder. “I forgot where we were. Woman, you’re dangerous.” He tried to make light of it, but she had stopped him in good time, because hot blood had begun to heat his loins and he would have been hard-pressed to control his reaction. “I’m not usually so careless. If I’ve got two free hours, I can take a nap.” The feel of her lips brushing the side of his mouth didn’t soothe his aroused state.