Lightning That Lingers

by Sharon

  "Philip? Something wrong?" Michele was staring at him, her narrow face set in the tense way it did when she found him unusually cryptic.

  "No." He smiled at her and bent to kiss her goodnight as he buttoned his shirt. "Thanks again. Darrell. Tell April and Julie—"

  "I know." Darrell gave him a long-suffering look. "Another night."

  The air outside was crystalline, carrying the tranquil scent of the fresh snowfall that glazed the birch branches near the club's back door and spread like a skirt of moonlight over fields and rooftops. It was icy cold. Clean. And he breathed it deeply. Things were not as bad for him as they had been at first. The feeling of being vaguely revolted with himself had passed as Michele had predicted it would. He had come to accept it, and that was neither bad nor good. It was necessary.

  Chaucer met him at the mansion door. He climbed the wide staircase in the darkness with the owl on his shoulder, pausing for a moment on the first landing. Gazing out the huge windows at the black, star-sprinkled sky and the pristine expanse of the lake, he thought of the girl who had refused his kiss and said softly, "I want you in my bed, brown eyes."

  The owl stirred and when he glanced at its starlit face, it gave him a slow wink.

  The baby owls were ready to be fed again and by now he was weary. But he was also disciplined, and so he fed the orphans, and when they were full, put them back into the shoebox and set that into an armchair wedged against his bed. If they woke up and managed to clamber out of the box, he didn't want them tumbling to the floor.

  Tired as he was, he read Nicholas Nickleby for half an hour to wind down. Reaching over to turn out the light, he found himself face to beak with the owlets who had scrambled up on his pillow. They were staring intently at him, side by side, twin puffballs with eyes the color of spring dandelions.

  "Doubles, anyone?" he said, and reached up to tickle the breast feathers of one, then the other. "You're cold, I suppose?" He raised himself on his elbow. "I'm going to lay the cards on the table with you two. I'm a human who studies raptors. You, by the way, are raptors, which is why I happen to know how to take care of you. I'm very sorry to have to tell you this, but I'm not your mother. There are limits to what you should expect." They toddled closer to his warmth. "This is really beneath my dignity. I have an advanced degree, you know." The yellow eyes, shining at him like four tiny moons, held no more awe of him than Chaucer's ever had. With a sigh, he lifted an edge of the cover. "All right, come on. Just this once."

  The babies scurried down into the warm hollow beside his body and he carefully dropped the cover again.

  "Don't get used to this. When you're old enough I'm going to rehabilitate you to the wild."

  They were cuddled up with their heads on his arm as he drifted to sleep.

  CHAPTER 2

  Dear Mom,

  Things are going so well at the library that it's hard to keep that "new job" caution. Mrs. Paynter the library director is quite charming. She collects fossils, paints in a lively primitive style that reminds me of Grandma Moses and, at least once a day, the library and staff are thrown into chaos hunting for her lost glasses. While she doesn't like to initiate new ideas herself, she doesn't seem to mind if the rest of us do. I've already added gerbils to the children's section, and I'm meditating upon a good place to set up an aquarium.

  Annette, the adult librarian, has been a tremendous help. I can't wait until you meet her. What a ball of fire! Very foxy for a librarian too. She has a younger sister—Diane Dorst—you may have heard of her; she models in New York. Diane flew in last Thursday for a week of vacation and yesterday I spent the day with Annette, Diane, one of Diane's friends from high school, and Lydia, who's one of the library aides (and rather tart of tongue, but good-hearted underneath). In the late afternoon they drove me around Emerald Lake and we looked at the wonderful old mansions built by Chicago millionaires a hundred years ago as summer homes for their families. The names are amazing—they rival Lake Geneva with its Wrigleys, Chalmerses, and Sears. Many were hidden from the road by trees, Including Lily Hill, belonging to the Brooks family, which the local history books claim was the showplace of the Midwest in its time. But I saw enough to have visions of ladies with frilly parasols crossing green shaded lawns while little boys in knickers and girls with huge hair ribbons rolled hoops on gravel pathways, their proud papas watching from the verandas. Did I tell you that their mail was, and still is, delivered by a boat? Just like On Golden Pond. Some of the mansions have remained in the family, though Annette said even the rich can't live on quite the same scale anymore.

  After the lake tour we had quiche at Annette's, of which she said (tartly of course) we didn't have to worry about eating it, not being real men. Which leads neatly into the subject of men.

  You'd never guess where they took me afterward. To see male strippers. No kidding. And they take off everything. Every stitch. Can you believe this is legal in Wisconsin? Or that you'd find it in a small town like Emerald Lake? Actually most people in town don't frequent the place. The clientele is affluent, mainly youngish, and from Milwaukee and Chicago and the resort areas around Lake Geneva, even though it's quite a drive. Of course you want to know how your only begotten child bore up in the face of naked men. Not well. However, I did see the most handsome man in the world. Yes. It's true—there is a most handsome man in the world and he lives in Emerald Lake. Do you remember the bust of Alexander the Great we saw in the Getty Museum last summer? This was him. So now I know what Alexander looked like from the neck down, too. You know how one sometimes reads a description of someone as having an aristocratic appearance, and you think (in a down-to-earth American way) tch-tch, what's aristocratic? This man looked aristocratic, and here he was, taking off his clothes for money. And you just knew he was the kind of man who drives a Corvette, wears aviator shades—and has a huge poorly trained German shepherd who barks at company and tries to poke his nose in your crotch. Dreams die hard. Mind you, I could have kissed this guy but I was too embarrassed. You know me. However, no one thought the worse of me for being timid about it all. They thought I was joking.

  I love you,

  Jennifer

  P.S. I've finally had a piña colada. Interesting stuff. I may have more.

  Five days after she'd dropped the letter to her mother into a friendly blue box marked U.S. MAIL,

  Jennifer stood at the library window, her elbows on the window ledge, her chin in her hands, her legs against the radiator's warm teeth. The Wisconsin outside was a Christmas card. She could see Emerald Lake stretching flat and frozen to the stark trees on the distant white shore. Iceboats skimmed far out on the lake under colorful sails, and nearby, teenagers walked mitten in mitten along the lakepath, past young mothers pulling sledloads of small children bundled into shapes like teddy bears under their layers of winter clothing. The clear, crystal-free black ice of the nearby cove was beginning to fill with ice-skaters let out of school at three-thirty. Red and yellow pompoms shone bright on skate laces, polished blades swept in swirls and figure eights, shaving foamy ice-dust from a scarring surface. Her imagination could hear the laughter and shouts that the window glass silenced.

  This was life, a thing she watched happening from the other side of a clear pane while she hung back and hung back, guarding the brave dreamer inside. She took no risks, and that gave her quiet, safety... and restlessness.

  The sun was low above the hills behind the lake, a swollen wreath of fiery white, the emblem of one more fading day. The afternoon had been still and to her right an elderly gentleman had nodded asleep behind a newspaper. The long rectangles of sunlight from the back windows crept imperceptibly across the brown carpet between the stacks.

  Soon the after-school crowd would fill the round pine tables around her with their landslide of homework questions, and she would be too busy to stand by the window thinking of laughing blue eyes and a beckoning hand that each time brought a hard lifting sensation inside her stomach.

  She looked back over her
shoulder as Mrs. Paynter sailed around the corner, her black silver-stranded hair straggling, her sensible shoes library-soft on the floor, her arms filled with clipboards and rolled posterboard. Spying Jennifer, she said, "Ah, here you are! I knew you were going to take your break but I assumed you take it in the back room.... Have you seen what Annette's done back there now? I walked in to have my lunch, sat down on the desk, and found myself practically cheek to cheek with an unclothed man. The cheek I contributed was on my face. His was not!"

  Divining that Mrs. Paynter was referring to the Cougar Club calendar, Jennifer diplomatically suggested, "Maybe it's art."

  "Art! If that young man had been a woman, he would have been a hussy. Naked is naked, even if they have him posed so you can't see his ding-dong."

  Jennifer's eyes flew wide and she tried to disguise her eruption of laughter as a rather unsavory episode of choking.

  Mrs. Paynter was not deceived. "I'd like to know what you call it then."

  Hastily, with a spreading grin, Jennifer said, "Oh, nothing at all. I do everything I can to avoid the subject entirely. I'm not much of a..." She found it necessary to clear her throat, and the grin died. Well, come on, Jennifer, what is it that you're not much of? A woman, perhaps? An odd bitter thought. Was that what watching life through a window did to you? Did it make you increasingly odd, more bitter? Either she must learn to accept herself as she was or she must learn to be more open to life. More open—wasn't that what she was doing by moving to Emerald Lake, living in a new community, nourishing new friendships? Yes. I'm starting. So don't panic. Impatient that she had caught herself worrying again, she dropped the unfinished sentence and gave the raft of posters in Mrs. Paynter's arms an interested look.

  "What have you got there?"

  "Publicity for the fund drive!" Rearranging the motley collection of paper, Mrs. Paynter unearthed a poster, rolled off a thick red rubber band and opened the poster with a flourish. "Every year we try to work around some inspirational little phrase. This year we've chosen TAKE THE DUMB OUT OF FREEDOM, and as you can see, we've used an Abe Lincoln motif."

  Jennifer studied the Lincoln motif, trying to look inspired. On the poster, Lincoln stood beside a log cabin, his head a copy of the penny profile. Gear-shaped snowflakes flew around his hapless figure. Under his arm he was holding a book labeled "Shakespeare" that looked as big as a suitcase, and big bare toes like Snuffy Smith's adorned feet blue with cold.

  "It's very..." Corny. Jennifer dragged out the hesitation, nodding thoughtfully, but she wasn't proof against the latent anxiety in Mrs. Paynter's earnest face. "Very nice. I take it you've sort of based things on the story about Lincoln walking barefoot through a blizzard for miles to return a book he'd borrowed. Since this month is his birthday?" More nodding. "Ah-huh. Very clever."

  "I'm so glad you think so!" Mrs. Paynter said, beaming. "Annette and Lydia didn't seem to care for it at all."

  Unhappily, Jennifer found herself in the position of having to spend the next few minutes hypocritically pshawing Annette's very astute criticisms. Hasty to abandon that unprincipled role, she said, "I'd be more than pleased to help out, if you need any extra bodies."

  "Why, isn't that kind. We rely for most of our support on our Friends of the Library group— saints, all of them—but I've got a two-hour slot on Saturday that—let me see..." The stack clutched in her arms teetered, threatening an avalanche as she excavated her clipboard and gazed myopically at the top page and then said, "My glasses! Don't tell me I've mislaid—"

  "They're on the top of your head, Eleanor."

  "Oh yes"—retrieving them—"thank you. Are you busy on Saturday afternoon from one to three?"

  "No. That'll be great," Jennifer agreed, imagining a few pleasant hours spent painting posters or making telephone calls. She was more than a little unsettled ten minutes later when Annette stopped by her desk to hand her the latest Publisher's Weekly, and said, "Be busy Saturday afternoon. Eleanor may try to con you into donating an hour toward the fund drive."

  "I've already signed up for two hours. Why not?"

  "Oh, how they prey on the young and innocent," Annette said dryly, gazing skyward. "Kid, make it a resolution never to volunteer for anything again until you've found out what it is."

  Saturday afternoon at two o'clock Jennifer stood, an icicle, in front of a small boutique on the corner of Emerald Lake's busy shopping thoroughfare.

  A top hat teetered on her head, threatening to envelop her eyebrows, and over two layers of thermal underclothes, she wore a sober-hued frock coat, a high collar and starched cravat, a long waistcoat, and woolen trousers that were rolled up at the cuff to keep them from dragging on the icy street. The Lincoln motif.

  On one side of her was a rather optimistically large papier-mache log cabin with a slot in the roof for contributions. When someone tossed in a donation, she was supposed to pull a string that was rigged to release a puff of dry ice smoke from the tin chimney. On her other side, on a stand, was an old schoolbell that Eleanor had painted with a crack and the words "Let Freedom Ring." She was supposed to ring the bell to attract attention, which was not something she had any great desire to do despite her determination to be a good sport. The bell's toll in the frigid sunlit air was sharp and loud and she hardly would have been surprised if they could hear it all the way to Philadelphia.

  She was squinting up into a cold bright sun when a snowball came spinning past her head and disintegrated against the brick wall behind her. She ducked, but a second missile carried off her top hat. Her short hair swirled in an icy gust of wind as she swung around looking for her attacker. A little crew of children peeked, giggling, around the corner of the bank three doors down, their eyes glowing above scarves, below stocking caps.

  "Darn it all!" Irritation warred with a strong desire to laugh. "So. Munchkins." She bent to pick up her hat, dusting off the snow, and the small faces disappeared, probably manufacturing more ammo. A smile blossomed as she swept up a handful of snow and packed it good. She tossed it discreetly up and down behind her back until she saw the line-up of small faces peer cautiously out. She took three running steps toward them. The children scattered, shrieking excitedly as she let fly with her snowball.

  It never came within ten feet of them. Instead it whacked full force into the sleeve of an expensive suede jacket on one of two men who had chosen this particularly bad moment to emerge from the bank. Dismayed, she began to call out, "I beg your pardon!"

  The words perished in her throat. Beneath the suede jacket were the magnificent shoulders and narrow waist that she had last seen as Peter the Policeman. Dark snapping eyes behind leather-trimmed aviator glasses were glaring at her. At his side, not quite as tall, but infinitely more graceful in a light cream-colored cotton parka and heather gray wool pants that were cut more for comfort than to show off the exquisite contours underneath, was the man whose image could control the rhythm of her heart.

  He had seen her too. The sweet-cruel eyes had begun to fill with interest, amusement, and to her horror what appeared to be a dawning recognition. It was impossible surely that in so many people, over so many nights, he would have retained her image—but he was coming toward her. With her pulse thumping, she backed up quickly until the brick wall at her back slammed her to a stop. The stovepipe hat fell forward onto the bridge of her nose.

  Strong hands in cashmere gloves pulled her out from the wall and, with a slow, careful movement, resettled her hat. Sky-blue eyes smiled into hers. The warm mist of his breath caressed her lips. Natural light made him more real, much more man than ornament. No dream held her, but a forceful human being. Smothering in his nearness, she missed the approach of the other man until he spoke.

  "Friend of yours, Philip?" The tone was filled with disdain, and, twisting to look at the handsome face above the suede jacket she encountered the look she was most accustomed to receiving from very good-looking men: dismissal. But instead of dwelling on that discovery, she thought disjointedly that she knew the bl
ond man's name. Philip. It was one of those names she could never say without imagining it written in longhand in Spencerian script as though it belonged to some Elizabethan scholar-playwright.

  "I'd know this worried brow anywhere." Philip drew off his own light wool muffler and teasingly covered the part of her face that her own hands had hidden recently at the Cougar Club. "No doubt about it. Same lady."

  She recognized his accent. The diction was upper-class, but softened by a lack of either emphasis or affectation. It was the type of voice her mother called Midwest Patrician, and it clearly didn't match his profession. That profession and all the circumstances of their previous meeting were strong in her mind as she tried to assert herself in a situation that was inherently flattening. His light touch felt like a capture.

  "Look," she said to the open space between the two men, "I'm sorry about the snowball,"—especially if you think I threw it at you to attract your attention, she added mentally—"but you see, there were four children..." who naturally by now had vanished. Her eyes were drawn irresistibly back to Philip, whose face carried nothing to indicate whether he thought the children were fictitious, or even that it mattered. He was smiling at her in a way she couldn't fathom, a way she found immensely threatening.

  She had no idea what to expect next, so she was startled when he took the muffler and began to arrange it with care around her neck. The fleecy fiber held his body's warmth, and the soft cashmere of his gloves brushed underneath her chin on skin made hypersensitive by the cold. Bittersweet shocks of reaction wavered through her upper body and compressed her chest, and she inhaled a stinging lungful of chilled air as his hands lightly covered her cheeks, gently massaging them. Filled with strangled pleasure, she was so taken aback that she couldn't immediately frame the words to make this bewildering attention stop.