“Visiting hours begin at twelve noon,” the guard informed him when he asked for a visitor’s pass. “It’s six-fifteen in the morning.”
Lucas eyeballed the man, almost daring him to refuse. “My father is having spinal surgery in an hour and a half, and this may be my last chance to see him alive.”
The guard handed Lucas a pass. “This is irregular, buddy, but if it was my dad, I’d do what you’re doing.”
“This is a pleasant surprise,” Calvin Jackson said when Lucas walked into his room. “I didn’t expect anyone this morning, and especially not you, but I’m glad you came. It’s something I won’t forget.”
Lucas dragged the chair close to the bed and sat down. “It was the right thing to do.”
Calvin laughed. “I see you’re not ready to bend, but you’re here, and that’s what matters to me.”
He hadn’t been in the room more than a few minutes when a nurse breezed in. “I’m sorry,” she said to Lucas, “but I have to anesthetize him now, so you’ll have to excuse us.”
Lucas raised one eyebrow. “I’m old enough to watch, and I plan to stay with him until that thing takes effect.”
Calvin didn’t flinch when she administered the hypodermic with a jab, but Lucas narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t dream that sticking a needle in a sick man could give a person so much pleasure,” he said between gritted teeth. “Can’t you find a more humane way to get your kicks?” he asked the nurse. The woman reddened and hurried out of the room.
“I’ve been thinking that one is sadistic,” Calvin said, “and it seems you agree.” He held out his hand, and Lucas grasped it. “At least, I’ll be out of this pain no matter what happens.” He squeezed his son’s hand and gave in to the drug’s effect.
Susan arrived at Wade School early that Tuesday afternoon, for she knew that if Lucas found Rudy and Nathan waiting for her in the hall beside her classroom door, he would take them into his office, and she would have to go there for them. She didn’t want to arouse Lucas’s concern further about her relationship with the children and, she especially didn’t want him to know about their gifts. After carefully considering her options, she left the gifts in the trunk of her car and went inside, where the echo of her steps reverberating throughout the empty hall gave her a sense of unease. It was as if someone were walking behind her. She looked back and saw no one, but nevertheless, she accelerated her pace, as if that would banish her suddenly terrible feeling of aloneness.
The door slammed, and she whirled around as Rudy and Nathan ran toward her. “Miss Pettiford. Miss Pettiford,” Rudy sang, “I made a A in reading. I made a A.” Susan bent down as the child launched herself into her arms.
“I did, too,” Nathan said. “Look what I got.” He opened his arms, and Susan knelt and hugged both of the children to her breast. They smothered her face with kisses, and when tears trickled down her cheeks, Nathan asked, “Is something wrong with you, Miss Pettiford? You aren’t crying, are you?”
Rudy stepped back, and her eyes seemed twice their normal size. “Gee. Are you sad, Miss Pettiford?”
She forced a smile. “No, I’m not sad. I’m crying because I’m so happy that you got A’s. That’s what we’ve been working so hard for.”
“I’m glad you’re not sad,” Nathan said.
Rudy, who had begun to ape Nathan, smiled and hugged Susan’s leg. “Me, too.”
Overwhelmed with emotion, Susan knelt again and wrapped both children close to her body. In the happiness of the moment, she closed her eyes and enjoyed the gift of the children’s love.
“Good evening.”
She opened her eyes and stared at Lucas Hamilton. Speechless. No words that she could muster would take away the censorship of his gaze. He patted the children on their shoulders.
“We’ll speak later, Miss Pettiford.” With that pronouncement, he headed for his office.
I’m in for it. He’s either going to report me or move me to another class. Unmindful of the tension between Susan and Lucas, Rudy ran after him and grasped his hand to get his attention
“Mr. Hamilton, I made a A in reading, and my foster mother said I’m going to the museum with Miss Pettiford next Saturday. I’ve never been to a museum. Is it big?”
He looked down at the child and smiled. Susan turned away. “Nathan, wait here for Rudy and come to class along with her.” She reached for her classroom door and stopped when Nathan tugged at her hand.
“I almost forgot to give you this note from my grandmother. She told me that God is going to bless you. Is he?”
The simplicity of children’s thoughts, and their uncomplicated way of viewing the world and its contents made her wish that adults could occasionally revisit their childhood. Nathan gazed up at her, open and trusting, as refreshing as a cooling spring rain.
“I hope so, Nathan. I could use a blessing.”
Nathan took her hand. “My grandmother talks to Him all the time. I’ll ask her to get one for you.”
She leaned down, kissed the boy’s forehead and went into the classroom to await the children she tutored. At the end of the class, she left the building with Rudy and Nathan quickly in order to avoid an encounter with Lucas. She opened the trunk of her car, got the gifts and handed them to the children.
“Thank you, Miss Pettiford,” Rudy said, reaching up to hug Susan. “I’m going to be just as pretty as LaToya. I love you a lot.”
“Me, too,” Nathan said with his arms tight around Susan.
“Who is LaToya?” Susan asked Rudy, although she suspected that she knew the answer.
“One of my foster sisters. She said she’s prettier than I am.”
Susan took them by the hand and walked toward where Ann Price had parked her car. “Children love to say things like that, Rudy. Don’t pay any attention to it.” They reached Ann Price’s car and, after greeting the older woman, Susan turned and headed for her own car.
Lucas leaned against the driver’s door of the car. “Are you trying to force my hand? I pride myself in doing properly anything that I undertake. You know I’m supposed to report you for your behavior with these children. What was in the bags you gave them?” He held up both hands. “Don’t bother to answer. You’re going to make me choose between my feelings for you and my obligation as principal. One more infraction, and it will be no contest.”
She walked around to the other side of her car, opened the door with the key and stood beside the open door. “Rudy needs care, but you don’t see that. You see the rules, the impersonal rules that don’t take into account children like Rudy. You—”
“Or women like you. Are you sure you don’t need that child more than she needs you?”
She tightened her lips to control their trembling and blinked back the tears. “Everybody needs someone, Lucas. Everyone but y-you, it s-seems.”
“Look, I’m just—”
She interrupted him. “Doing your duty? Right.” She got in, slid across the seat, ignited the engine and revved it. He moved, and she drove off. However, when she got out of her car in front of her house, he stood there, waiting for her. She didn’t want to see him, or anyone else. Yes, she needed the children; each time she looked at them, hugged them or watched them smile was a reminder of what she would never have. They brightened her life, not completely, but sufficiently to ease the emptiness.
“Good night, Lucas,” she said, without looking directly at him, and walked on to her front door. When she put her key in the door, his hand covered hers.
“I hurt you. I know I did, and I’m sorry. Something isn’t right with you. What can I do to help?”
“Nothing. You . . . Please . . .” Suddenly, the weight of it settled on her, shattering her, and she was back at that moment when the last doctor she visited told her that there was no alternative to a hysterectomy. Her head moved from side to side as she groped, mentally, for a way around it.
“What is it? Susan. Let me help you.” He took the key from her hand, opened the door and walked in holding
her arm. “This is somehow mixed up with the reason why you went to bed with me, isn’t it?”
She wouldn’t tell him. It was her business, and she would deal with it. “You’re way off. I’m fine.”
“You’re not, and I can prove it,” he said, easing his arms around her and tightening his hold on her.
“There’s not going to be anything between you and me, Lucas. What happened between us is . . . it was great, and it’s over.”
“You think so?” His mouth covered hers and, for a minute, she gave in and took from him what she needed. When he turned down the heat and began to cherish her, it was as if he set off an alarm reminding her that each time she was with him, she wanted him more. She moved away from him.
“If you have to report me to the board, there’s nothing I can do about it. I appreciate your leniency.”
He stared at her. “How can you respond to me like a nail to a magnet one minute and in the next act as if you never saw me before?”
“I’m tired. I’d offer you some supper, but I don’t have the fixings of one.”
“I get the message.” He started toward the door, turned and walked back to her. “You may not believe this, but I really don’t want to hurt you. Still, I know it’s better that I do it now, than it happens later when you’ve grown to love that child more than you love yourself. Good night.” She didn’t try to detain him.
Susan changed her clothes, slipped into a pair of corduroy pants and a turtleneck sweater and sat down to review her plans for the Burton woman’s house. Her client had kept the sketches for several days and then telephoned her approval. Susan decided to decorate the downstairs first. She listed the items that she would purchase the next day for delivery to Mrs. Burton’s house, closed her notebook and went to the kitchen to search for food. The telephone rang, and she considered not answering it, for she did not want to speak with Lucas. However, a glance at the caller ID window told her that the caller was Cassie. “Hello, Cassie. How are you?”
“Uh . . . fine. Kix is working tonight, and I was wondering if you’d like to eat with me. We could get a bite at Sam’s or maybe over at The Watering Hole, but that’s so crowded.”
Susan agreed to Sam’s. “We don’t have to eat hamburgers.” She didn’t feel like driving, but she offered.
“Oh, we can take my car, since it’s my idea. I don’t get dressed up to go to Sam’s. Twenty minutes?”
She’d never seen Cassie when she wasn’t dressed up, but it didn’t matter; she didn’t plan to take off her clothes again until she was ready for bed. “I’ll be over to your place in twenty minutes,” she said.
If Cassie wanted sympathy for her refusal to have children, she could forget it. “Tonight, I’m telling her just like it is,” Susan said to herself.
Susan’s eyebrows rose when Cassie told the waiter, “I’ll have a shot of vodka.”
“What’s wrong, Cassie?” she asked after ordering a glass of wine. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“My husband walks around the house smiling and whistling—he can’t sing, you know—and being a perfect gentleman, but he’s treating me the same way he’d treat you. Maybe not as warmly. Last night, he kissed me on the cheek, turned over and went to sleep. On the cheek, dammit.”
Susan thought for a minute. “You don’t have to tolerate that. After living with him for years, you know where he’s vulnerable.”
“Yes, but Kix has a will of iron.”
The waiter brought their drinks, and Cassie stunned Susan by putting the vodka to her lips and draining the glass. “That’s not the way to go, Cassie.” she said.
“That’s all men think we’re good for,” Cassie said, “and half of them get another woman as soon as your belly starts to protrude. I’m not doing it.” She knocked her fist on the table.
“I don’t believe that’s what really worries you, Cassie. If you don’t want to tell me, at least be honest with yourself. You’re experiencing a genuine crisis, and I think you ought to get help.” Cassie signaled for the waiter. “Not another vodka, Cassie, unless you plan to let me drive us home. I do not want to be the subject of a front page story in The Woodmore Times.”
A waiter brought their food. “Did you want something else, madam?” he asked Cassie.
She looked first at Susan and then at the waiter. “Not right now. Thanks.”
Susan reached over and patted Cassie’s hand. “I may not have sounded friendly, Cassie, but I meant well.”
“I know. You’re the only person I can talk to. My sister’s so righteous and so wound up in Rafe McCall—he’s her husband—and the paper, that she doesn’t give a hoot about anybody or anything else.” She speared a shrimp and slid it between barely parted lips.
“Cassie, why don’t you see a psychiatrist? You need professional help with this.”
Cassie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “You’re joking. In this town? In two days, everybody would know my business. Everything they didn’t know they’d fabricate. All they’d need would be to see me walk into that doctor’s office.”
“What will you do if Kix leaves you? Will you ever forgive yourself?”
“My problem is whether he’s ever forgiven me.”
“Oh, come on now. That isn’t what’s bothering you. You haven’t forgiven yourself for sleeping with that other guy. Forget that. It’s in the past. Concentrate on keeping your marriage intact.”
Tears pooled in Cassie’s big brown eyes. “I love him, Susan. He’s everything to me.”
“Then go home and make him feel good about himself.”
“I will, if he’ll let me.”
“He’s not going to kiss me on the cheek and turn his back tonight,” Cassie said to herself as she walked into the house. Susan was right. She’d been married to Kix long enough to be able to get him to do whatever she wanted him to do. She showered, put perfumed lotion all over her body and donned a transparent royal blue nightgown and negligee. Kix loved a quiet, restful environment. So, she lit candles in the bedroom, put on a CD of Mozart’s early violin concerti and chilled a bottle of wine. He wasn’t strong on alcoholic drinks, but he’d join her if she wanted a glass of wine. When she heard his key in the door, she hurried and opened it as she’d had a habit of doing during the early days of their marriage.
“Hi,” she said. “I thought you’d never get here.”
He glanced at his watch. “Same time as usual. What’s the urgency?” He bent down to kiss her cheek, but she turned her face and met his mouth with her lips parted. Apprehension stole over her when he hesitated, so she gripped his shoulders and was rewarded with the feel of his tongue sliding into her mouth. When he broke the kiss, his quizzical gaze reminded her of the night he discovered her infidelity, the night on which she was so eager for sex that she forgot how she normally behaved with him and allowed him every liberty that she’d given to her lover.
“Let’s have some wine,” she said, hoping to cloud his memory of that fateful night. “I had an exhausting day, and I expect you did too.”
“Mine was about the same,” he said. “What happened to you? I called a couple of hours ago to suggest we have dinner together at the restaurant. Where were you?”
“At Sam’s with Susan. I’m getting to like her. Too bad I didn’t know you wanted me to join you.”
He poured two glasses of wine, handed her one, and she walked ahead of him into the living room, intent on making it a romantic evening, and that meant not drinking the wine while standing in the kitchen.
He knows what I want, and he’s planning to make me ask for it. All right, dammit, I’ll ask. She exchanged the Mozart CD for Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo,” walked over to him, held out her hand and said, “Let’s dance.”
“I thought you were exhausted.”
“I’m not too exhausted for what I want.”
He stretched his arms out on the back of the sofa, spread his legs and let his gaze drift from her head to her ankles. “What do you want, Cassie? You can wo
rk up to it with first one ruse and then another, or you can come right out and tell me.”
“That’s not the feminine way, Kix. I want to dance with my husband.”
Kix stood, opened his arms, and she walked into them. She realized almost at once that he intended to make her show her hand, for he held her as loosely as he would a woman he barely knew. She moved closer, locked one hand to his buttocks and tightened her hold on him. As if by reflex, his genitals moved against her body, and she let him feel the print of her teeth on his ear, something she always did after he ejaculated into her. If he wanted to play hard to get, she didn’t mind playing dirty in order to get him. She took his left hand, rubbed it against her erect nipple and had the pleasure of hearing him suck in his breath. When she undulated to the beat of the music, he bulged against her, put a hand behind her head and shoved his tongue into her mouth.
She let the negligee drop to the floor, so that his eyes could feast on her body through the lace that covered it, and slipped down one strap, to expose a turgid nipple. She knew she had him when he swallowed so heavily that his Adam’s apple bobbed furiously. He licked it slowly, teasing her.
“Take it in,” she moaned. “I want you to suck it.”
His hot mouth covered it, and when he started to suckle her, she reached down and began stroking, squeezing and fondling him. He picked her up, carried her up the stairs and put her in bed. Minutes later, he was storming inside of her, almost frantically driving her and himself to climax. As soon as she exploded around him, he released himself—grudgingly, she thought, realizing that neither of them had enjoyed it.
He lay above her, still locked inside her body, his gaze penetrating her. “Sex is not a substitute for love and devotion, Cassie, and it won’t solve problems, at least not the one that you and I have. When you give us a family, that will solve our problems. All of them.”
“You promised to wait till things were settled at my job.”
“And how many weeks ago was that?” He rolled off her, lay on his back and locked his hands behind his head. “At the end of six months, I will either be an expecting father or filing for a divorce. That’s final.”
Getting Some Of Her Own Page 16
