She knew then that he was up to something. He hadn't come to her house at two a.m. just to cry on her shoulder. "I know that grin." She gathered her legs in closer, shrank back against her arm of the couch. "And I don't like it."
He slid his arm onto the back of the couch and moved in closer, hemming her in. "I just figured out how you can pay me back."
"Nick. I said I don't like this."
He made a pouty face. "Don't you want to pay me back?"
"Well, of course. You know I'd do just about anything for you, but—"
"Anything?" The black eyebrows rose and the dark eyes gleamed.
Looking at him, Jenny felt such warmth, such abiding affection—and she knew he was after something every bit as impossible as Sasha, the book-loving art therapist with the fat cat. "Nick, come on."
"Listen. Just listen. You haven't even let me say what it is yet."
"Oh, Nick."
"Don't Oh, Nick me. Just listen. Just give me a chance." He jumped to his feet again, stuck his hands into his pockets, pulled them out and gestured widely, with a sweep of both hands. "I know what I need, Jen. I know what's required. And I know you're the one to do it. I mean, you're my friend, so you know all about me. You're going to know right away the areas where I need the most work. And you're a woman, so you're going to be an expert in what I need to learn. And on top of all that, you're a teacher. That is your job. You work with fourth-graders, all day long, pounding into their pointy little heads whatever fourth-graders are supposed to know. I guess what I'm saying is, if you can teach fourth-graders, then you can teach me."
"Teach you what?"
And he told her. "How to be sensitive and understanding. How to really relate to a woman. How to get in touch with my feminine side and my inner child. How to—"
She was shaking her head. "Nick. No."
But he was nodding. "Jen. Yes. That's what I want from you. That's how you can pay me back. Because I've figured out what's wrong with me. I need to be trained."
* * *
Chapter 2
« ^ »
Jenny balked, as Nick had pretty much figured she would. She shrank back to her own side of the couch and she groaned, "Train you?"
Nick didn't let her reluctance get him down. He scooted even closer to her and kind of leaned over her, thinking that maybe he could overwhelm her with his enthusiasm, not to mention his size. "Yeah. Train me. Make me into the kind of man Sasha would want for her husband."
Jen faked a glare, narrowing those pretty blue eyes of hers and making her soft, wide mouth into a grim line. "Nick. Get back to your own side of the couch. And do it now."
He stayed nose to nose with her for a count of five, just because it was so much fun to be there. Then he shrugged. "Sure, Jen." And he backed off.
She was quiet, over there hugging the opposite couch arm. He shot her a glance. She glanced back, furtively, trying to read him, trying to figure out how to get him to drop this scheme—which he was not going to do. Finally she said, "This idea is a really bad one, Nick."
"No, it's not."
"Nick, I would have no idea how to do what you're asking. You're a grown man, way past the stage of training."
"No, that's not true. I'm only thirty-three. I can still learn. I can be trained. Just last year, I took that course in computer assisted drafting, remember? I got some training. And I got an A, too."
"It's not the same, Nick."
"Why not?"
"Oh, Nick." She let out one of those deep, woman-type sighs, a sigh that managed to hint at everything and tell him nothing, both at the same time.
"There." He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. "That's it."
"What's it?"
"The way you said that, 'Oh, Nick,' and then you sighed. I know that was supposed to mean something. If I had some training in how to get along better with women, I would know what. I could be sensitive and understanding. I could relate to you the way you need to be related to."
He could see by the set of that strong Swedish jaw of hers that she wasn't buying. "I've got no complaints, Nick. You relate to me just fine."
She could be so damn stubborn sometimes. "Jen, I'm not talking about you, specifically. I'm talking about women. I'm talking about Sasha."
"Then it's Sasha you should be talking to about this."
"You read that note. How can I talk to Sasha when she doesn't want to see me anymore?"
Jen just looked at him, wearing one of those how-do-I-get-through-to-you expressions. Then she unwrapped her stretched-out sweatshirt from around her knees and stood. She started picking up the photo albums. Nick knew what that meant. First, came the picking up. Then she would be shooing him out into the cold, dark night. She turned with the albums, carried them across the room and put them away in a cabinet at the base of one of the bookcases.
When she marched back over, scooped up her wineglass and started toward the steps that led up to the dining area and the kitchen, he decided he needed to try a little begging. "Jen. Please. I want to change. I'm ready to change. And you could help me to change."
She paused with her foot on the bottom step. "If you want to change, you will."
He put all his heart into looking really pitiful. "Aw, Jen."
Naturally she relented—at least a little bit. "Look. I'll do some thinking about it, okay? Maybe I can recommend some self-help books or something. And I'll see if I can dig up some kind of therapy group you could get into."
He gulped at that one. "Therapy? You think I need a shrink?"
She'd started for the kitchen again, but then turned back. "Nick. Stop it. I don't think you need anything. I think you're just fine the way you are."
That made him feel better. "You do?"
"Yes. I think you are an extremely capable and focused man. And if you've decided that you want a wife, you'll find her. You should just give it a little time—and maybe look for a new place to meet women, because a woman who goes to the Nine-Seventeen Club is probably not looking for a partner in life."
That remark bugged him a little. He defended himself. "I told you, I went there because I was lonely. And Sasha was—"
"I know, I know. Sasha was lonely, too. Nick, it's all right. There's nothing wrong with a singles bar. I was only suggesting that you might find another place to look for a wife." Since he couldn't come up with an immediate reply to that, she turned and made her escape. There was a counter to his left, with stools beneath it and a pass-through into the kitchen, so he could hear her in there, running the water, rinsing out that wineglass. He even heard the little clink as she set the glass down.
Then she was back, standing over him. "Nick. It's late."
He thought about his house, about the way the huge rooms echoed, especially late at night, and he stared up at her, putting on the pitiful look again. "Don't make me go back to that house of mine. I just can't take it tonight. And tomorrow is Sunday, Jenny. Waking up Sunday morning in that house of mine is the worst."
"Maybe you should move, then."
"Maybe I should. But that doesn't help me tonight."
She pressed her lips together, looking exactly like the schoolteacher she was. All she needed was a pair of those old-lady half-glasses perched on the end of her nose. He thought of what it must be like, to be one of her fourth-graders. That she would be strict, but she'd have a heart with the troublemakers, too.
"Just a pillow and a blanket," he coaxed. "I'll stretch out right here."
She made a little tsking sound, with her tongue against the back of her teeth, and then she turned, marched up the steps, through the dining room and down the hall. She reappeared a moment later with a big, soft quilt and a pillow.
She tossed the bedding at him and he caught it. "Thanks, Jen."
"You can use the futon in the spare room."
Nick hated that damn futon. He'd slept on it three or four times over the years. It had a mattress like a large, flat rock. "Thanks. Right here will be just fine."
"Pol
ly will probably be up early."
"Good. I'll get to see her before I leave."
Jen wrapped her arms around her middle and rubbed at one stockinged foot with the toes of the other. "Nick. I do … wish that what you wanted was something I could really help you with. Because you honestly are the best friend a woman could have."
"So." He gave her a wink. "Maybe there's hope for me, huh?"
A soft smile lifted the corners of her mouth and lit up her eyes. "Oh, I think so. Definitely. I think that whatever you want, you'll figure out a way to get eventually. And if this Sasha really is the one for you, she'd better come to her senses right away and realize what a lucky woman she is."
That gave him an idea. "Hey. Maybe you could give her a call. You could tell her—"
"Nick. Good night." Her expression said he'd better not push his luck.
So he didn't. "Night, Jen."
Jenny turned and headed down the hall.
The next morning, Jenny woke at a few minutes after eight, which was late for her. She tossed back the covers, swung her feet to the carpet and went to open the wood blinds that covered her bedroom window.
The sun was out, which cheered her. On that day exactly four years ago, the sky had been overcast, steely gray with high fog.
Next to the rim of ivy that grew close to the back fence, a scruffy-looking robin jumped around on the lawn. Jenny smiled as she watched the bird peck the cold ground, ruffle its feathers and then tip its throat back and warble a brief song. Then, finished warbling and pecking, the robin flew off, taking flight into the blue sky and disappearing from her sight.
Jenny turned from the window. Her leggings and sweatshirt lay across the corner chair. She reached for them.
When she emerged from her bedroom a few minutes later, she found Nick and Polly at the oval-shaped oak dining table. The winter sunlight bled down through the skylight over their heads. Jenny and Andrew had scrimped and saved to get that skylight. Nick had put it in for them, just before Andrew's death, to lighten the area that had always seemed too dark, since it lay in the heart of the house, surrounded by other rooms.
Nick sat in Andrew's place, at the end of the table. Polly sat where she always sat, in the curve of the oval, right next to him. They had their heads together, silvered black and chestnut brown.
Jenny remembered other mornings, remembered Andrew spooning up Grape-Nuts, and a much-younger Polly, babbling away to her father, her own breakfast cereal getting soggy in the bowl because she'd rather talk than eat. Jenny's heart contracted. Her loss felt suddenly achingly fresh—an old wound reopened.
Polly glanced up and saw her mother standing in the entrance to the hall. Nick looked over, too.
"Hey," Nick said. "I made the coffee and brought in the Sunday Bee."
"Great," Jenny chirped, forcing a brightness she didn't feel at that moment. Briskly she strode on past them, heading for the kitchen, needing a minute or two to get her emotions back under control.
Jenny got down her favorite mug from the cabinet. In the other room, Polly started talking to Nick. "Okay, listen. I want you to read the Erica Jong poems right away. They'll give you some idea about how a woman really feels." Her voice was low and confidential, full of authority and something else—excitement, yes, that was it. Jenny filled her mug as Polly continued, "And you can just glance through those Woman's Days and Cosmopolitans. Look for the articles about relationships, you know? Things like how to communicate with the people you love and how to keep love alive when you've been married forever, okay? Oh, and buy some CDs by Enya and Celine Dion. Women your age really go for that stuff."
Jenny heard Nick grunt, a sound that seemed to indicate agreement.
Sipping her coffee, Jenny turned the wand that opened the blinds to the window over the sink. The sun came in, having cleared the rooftops now. It shone through the winter-bare branches of the fruitless mulberry tree in the center of the lawn.
From behind her, Polly was giving further instructions to Nick. "And read the Sonnets from the Portuguese. It's pure woman's passion, from a woman's point of view. As you read those, we'll talk about them. In depth."
Jenny had heard enough. She turned from the window and marched to the table. Now she'd gotten past her moment of self-pity at the sight of Nick sitting in Andrew's place, she saw what she hadn't noticed before: a stack of books to Nick's left, a pile of magazines to his right and a batch of videos dead center. Both Nick and Polly were looking at her again—Nick, rather sheepishly, Polly with impatience.
"What, Mom?" her daughter demanded.
Jenny pulled out the chair next to Polly and sat. "What is going on?"
Polly sat back in her chair, folded her arms over her still-flat chest and announced with way too much disdain, "Nick has come to me for help. And I'm not going to let him down."
Jenny sipped more coffee, glancing from Polly to Nick and back to Polly once more. Then she set the mug down and massaged her temples. "Nick, what have you been telling her?"
"Now, Jen, I just—"
Polly didn't let him finish. With an irritable little snorting sound, she interrupted, "Nick told me that he's in love, Mother. With a woman named Sasha. And that he wants to change. I think it's … beautiful, that he wants to understand a woman's needs. And I am going to help him."
Jenny looked at her daughter, at the slim nose and green eyes she got from Andrew. At the unsmiling mouth—which was full of braces she always tried to hide—and at the stubborn jaw so much like Jenny's own. The urge came hard to ask, And what, exactly, does a thirteen-year-old know about a woman's needs?
Jenny restrained that urge. Polly would only react with adolescent outrage if she did. She spoke gently. "Honey, I really don't think—"
This time Nick was the one who didn't let her finish. "Come on, Jen. What can it hurt? The worst that can happen is I'll read a few good books, right?"
Polly chimed in again, loftily now, "And just maybe he'll end up with the woman of his dreams." She put her hand on Jenny's forearm and she lowered her voice to a drone of great solemnity. "Mom. Nick is our friend. And people help their friends."
Jenny looked into her daughter's eyes and immediately felt herself weakening. Those eyes—Andrew's eyes—fairly danced with anticipation at the prospect of "training" Nick to be worthy of the elusive Sasha Overfield.
How long had it been since Polly had become really excited about anything? Too long. Back in August, Polly's best pal, Amelia Gordon, had moved across town to a big, expensive house in Greenhaven. Ever since then, Polly spent too much time in her room, writing in the blank books she used as journals, listening to Robynn Carllson and Vivaldi on her Walkman and reading good literature that was probably too mature for her.
As Nick had just said, what harm could it do? And there might be a real benefit to this silliness, if helping Nick with his "problem" brought a general improvement in Polly's attitude.
Of course, beyond being silly, the scheme was more than likely utterly futile. The Sacramento Kings would make the NBA Finals before Nick DeSalvo was ever going to read a whole book of nineteenth-century love sonnets. And beyond its impossibility, the whole thing felt wrong, somehow. Probably because this Sasha woman seemed totally unsuited to Nick, anyway. Why should he make himself over to try to please a woman with whom he had nothing in common?
"Mom." Polly squeezed her arm. "Please."
"Yeah." Nick put in his two cents. "Come on, Jen. Give us a chance here."
Jenny looked from her daughter to Andrew's friend, who had become her friend. Nick's deep-set dark eyes held the same appeal as Polly's leaf green ones. How could she fight them both?
And why should she even want to, really? The worst that could happen was what probably would happen: Nick would quickly lose interest—and for a little while, Polly would be a pure trial to live with as she sulked over his lack of dedication to her plan.
"Mom?" Impatience had found its way back into Polly's voice. "Nick needs this. Let me help him."
> Nick said nothing more. He just waited.
And Jenny heard herself agreeing, "Oh, all right. Why not?"
* * *
Chapter 3
« ^ »
"All I'm saying is, it seems like a lot of whining to me," Nick grumbled. "A lot of whining that doesn't even rhyme. I mean, come on." He held up the book of sonnets and read, "'Oh, Beloved, it is plain I am not of thy worth nor for thy place!'" He grunted. "Whining. Damn confusing whining. Exactly what does this woman mean?"
Polly was only too eager to enlighten him. She explained in her best intellectual tone, "In this sonnet, the eleventh, Elizabeth Barrett reveals her fears of unworthiness for Robert Browning's love. She feels she's just not good enough for him, and so she renounces him."
"Oh, well now. That makes a damn lot of sense." At the oven a few feet away, Jenny smiled to herself as she checked on the potatoes. It was Wednesday, the third day of Nick's "training." So far, he was sticking with it—but griping all the way.
Nick continued, "Neither of them are married to anyone else, right? And she wants him and he wants her. She writes poems and so does he."
"So?" Polly demanded, sounding put out.
"So, they like the same things and they wouldn't be cheating on anybody. What's the damn problem?"
"I told you, Nick. She feels like she's not good enough for him. He's a man of the world and she's barely ever left her house."
"Then she should get out more. He could help her with that."
"Nick. She's shy. And she's been sick a lot."
"And that's his fault?"
"No." Polly spoke with admirable patience. "But she's very sensitive. She's afraid she won't fit into his world."
"So she's whining about it—and telling him to get lost. What the hell good is that going to do either of them?"
"Oh, Nick…" Polly was shaking her head; Jenny knew that without having to turn and look.
Jenny shut the oven door. "Dinner in ten minutes. Polly, you'd better get the table set."
Husband in Training Page 2
