She looked like a cadaver, Peter thought, as he stood in the foyer with Beverly and watched Karen, closely followed by Winola, negotiate the broad curving steps with infinite care, planting one crude wooden support firmly into the thick carpet, while holding on to the banister with the other hand, hopping off her good right leg, and then swinging the bad left one down under her. She was barely more than skin and bones beneath her cotton dress, her skin had a strange translucent quality to it, and there was something about her eyes, an expression in the blue-gray depths that he couldn’t define and didn’t remember ever having seen before.
“It takes me forever to get anywhere, but I have to be careful not to fall on this knee,” she said as she finally reached bottom, took her other crutch from Winola, and started toward him across the polished hardwood floor.
A fleeting frown puckered his narrow face and was gone. The Karen he knew would have said something like: “I didn’t want to fall at your feet and risk you getting all swelled in the head.”
“I thought you handled that rather masterfully,” he said with a smile, stepping forward to take her in his arms for the first time in so many months.
Karen stiffened. She had prepared herself for this moment, had even looked forward to the comfort of having him hold her. But, when he drew close, all of a sudden, it wasn’t Peter reaching out to grasp her but Bob, and with a little cry she jerked backward, almost losing her balance.
“I’m sorry,” he exclaimed. “I didn’t realize a little hug would hurt.”
“She’s still pretty sore,” Beverly said to cover the awkwardness.
“Well, would a kiss on the cheek be okay?”
“Sure,” Karen replied. But she had to steel herself against a shudder when she felt his warm breath on her cheek and his lips graze the corner of her mouth. One of the crutches slipped out from under her.
“Are you all right?” he cried, steadying her.
“These things have a mind of their own,” she said with a brittle smile as she slipped out of his grasp and planted the perverse pole more firmly on the slick floor. “I figure by the time I get the hang of them, I won’t need them anymore.”
“And that won’t be much longer now, will it?” Beverly chimed in. “Since you’re making such excellent progress.”
Peter glanced from mother to daughter. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said.
“Don’t you agree our precious girl looks a whole lot better than the last time you saw her?” the mother coaxed.
“She certainly does,” he replied politely, thinking he had never seen her look worse.
“Never mind about me,” Karen said brightly. “Tell us about graduation, Peter. Was it everything you hoped it would be? And the drive down—was it terribly long? Are you famished? You must be absolutely exhausted. Do you want a nap first? Or would you rather have dinner?”
“Dinner would be fine,” Peter replied. He had stopped outside Portsmouth for a quick lunch, but that was more than eight hours ago, with only a candy bar in between, and his stomach had begun to rumble. He could rest later.
“Wonderful,” Beverly said quickly, thinking if they waited much longer the roast would be ruined. “Why don’t you go wash up and then we’ll eat.”
“Do you want me to see you to your room?” Karen offered, although the thought of having to navigate the stairs again, under his watchful eye, made her wince.
Peter grinned. “That’s all right. I know the way.”
This was his third visit to the Kern home, and on each occasion Beverly had put him in the big corner guest room with the damask curtains and antique-rose wallpaper. Peter took his suitcase and climbed the stairs. He had identified the strange expression in Karen’s eyes. It was fear.
He took his time in the bathroom, letting the cool water run -over his head and neck. Then he changed out of his jeans into slacks and a crisp sport shirt. By the time he entered the dining room, everyone was seated. He shook hands with Leo, who had come to the table in his suit and tie, winked at Laura, a teenager in ponytail and shorts who reminded him of his own sisters, and slipped into the chair beside Karen.
Dinner began. Salad followed the soup, a rib roast followed the salad, and peach pie followed the roast. Coffee cups were filled, emptied and filled again. Second helpings made their way onto Peter’s plate without his asking for them, and, all the while, the Kern family talked around one another, in a strange kind of play in which he was expected to take a part, except that he didn’t know any of the lines.
“Spring is such a lovely time of year,” Beverly began.
“You can feel the energy in the air,” agreed Leo, blinking his myopic eyes.
“There’s still two more weeks of school,” Laura fretted.
“It’s the season when life begins anew,” Beverly continued. “A fresh start, a clean slate. Isn’t nature grand?”
“If you like spiders, mosquitoes and yellow jackets,” Laura parried. “There’s a hornet’s nest behind the garage.”
“The garden has never looked so beautiful,” Beverly said proudly. “Everything is in bloom. It’s absolute perfection.”
“Perfection is in the eye of the beholder,” sniffed Laura.
“I thought that was beauty,” Karen put in.
Beverly pouted. “They said it was going to rain today.”
“I took my umbrella,” Leo replied, “but I didn’t go out.”
“That’s why it didn’t rain.”
“Probably.”
“My arthritis flared up for nothing.” Beverly massaged her left thumb.
“Do you like the rain, Peter?” inquired Laura.
“Sometimes,” Peter answered, trying to keep up.
Four pairs of eyes turned to him.
“What does that mean?” the girl demanded.
“Why does it have to mean something?” her father asked.
“Because,” Laura told him, “everything means something.”
“No,” Karen said, with an unfamiliar edge to her voice, “not everything. There are some things that have no meaning at all.”
“We’re not going to talk about that, are we?” Beverly exclaimed.
“We’re not talking about anything,” Karen replied.
“There you are,” Beverly cried, flinging down her fork. “A perfectly good pie, ruined.”
“A perfectly ruined pie,” chirped Laura.
“Don’t be silly,” Leo argued. “The pie is perfect.”
Laura giggled. “There’s that word again.”
“Very funny,” Karen said.
“Did someone make a joke?” Leo wanted to know.
“Go ahead,” said Beverly. “Laugh all you want to.”
But no one was laughing.
“Is there more coffee?” Peter asked, feeling as though he had somehow stumbled into the Mad Hatter’s tea party.
“Of course there is,” Beverly crowed, replenishing his cup with a flourish. “There, you see, Peter understands.”
But Peter didn’t understand at all.
“I like the rain when it’s fine and misty and you can’t hear it and you can barely see it,” he told Laura. “Then it’s fun to go out walking and feel the wet on your face.” It was called Ithaca rain, and he and Karen had often walked in it.
“Oooh, how romantic,” cooed the teenager.
Peter grinned, remembering. “It can be.”
“We don’t have rain like that,” Laura grumbled. “Here it just pours down and drowns you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Karen replied.
“Romance doesn’t matter?” Laura asked.
“I think romance matters,” Peter said.
“The rain doesn’t matter,” Karen amended.
“Nothing matters to you anymore,” Laura said moodily.
Beverly dropped her coffee cup, the fine bone china shattering in the saucer. Leo almost choked on a piece of the perfect peach pie.
“Are you satisfied?” Karen glared at her sister.
&nb
sp; “Don’t take it out on me,” Laura retorted with a toss of her ponytail, her eyes flashing. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Nobody said it was,” Karen hissed.
“No, indeed,” Beverly added.
“Of course not,” Leo soothed.
“I wasn’t careless.”
There was a sharp intake of breath around the table.
“That’s enough of that,” Beverly barked.
Leo sighed wistfully. “It’s been such a nice dinner.”
“I hate living like this,” Laura cried. “Nobody can ever say anything.” She jumped from her seat and ran from the room. “I hate it.”
“Teenagers,” Beverly sighed with a dismissive shrug. “They can be so emotional.” She smiled benignly at Peter and then nodded at Karen. “It’s such a lovely night. Why don’t you take Peter into the garden?”
“Yes, Mother,” Karen said obediently.
They went out onto the patio, seating themselves in separate lounge chairs, Karen’s crutches drawn up on either side of her. The night air was warm and fragrant, and the lights from the house cast long shadows across their faces.
“What’s going on around here?” Peter asked, as soon as they were settled.
“What do you mean?” Karen responded.
“I mean the tension at dinner,” Peter declared. “It was like everyone was afraid to breathe.”
“Nothing’s going on,” Karen told him.
“Is it something about me?” he pressed.
“Of course not,” she assured him. “Everyone’s been looking forward to your visit. I guess they must just have had a bad day, that’s all.”
“And what about you?” he asked softly. “Have you been looking forward to my visit?”
“Of course I have,” Karen replied in genuine surprise. “How could you even ask that? Why, I was standing in the window for over an hour tonight, just waiting for the first glimpse of your car.”
“I’m sorry,” Peter said quickly.
“But I suppose I do owe you an apology,” she added because it was easier to talk in the dark. “You know … for my knee being bad, and for you not being able to hug me.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” he declared. “I was just feeling a little sorry for myself. Look, maybe you shouldn’t even be sitting out here like this. Maybe you should be in bed with a heating pad or something.
Karen sighed into the shadows. He was such a good person, always so considerate, so caring, so willing to accept blame that wasn’t his.
“We can sit a little longer,” she said.
He smiled broadly, although she could barely see it, and then leaned over to pick up her hand. “It won’t hurt to hold hands, will it?”
“No,” Karen assured him. “It won’t hurt a bit.”
“Is the arm all healed?”
“Pretty much.”
“Do you think you’ll be ready for the fall semester?”
Karen looked off somewhere past his shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
“You haven’t?”
“No,” she said flatly.
A college degree, which had once been a primary goal, now seemed irrelevant to her, and the cloistered atmosphere of the Ithaca campus incredibly impractical. Nothing she had learned at Cornell had prepared her for, or protected her from, the nightmare of the real world.
“You’ve only lost one term,” he continued. “That shouldn’t be very hard for you to make up.”
“I don’t want to think about it now,” she insisted, a bit more sharply than she had intended. “I have a lot of other stuff to figure out first.”
“I wasn’t trying to rush you,” he assured her. “It’s just that I know how important it is to you.”
Was, she thought sadly. It was strange how she had come to see many of the things that had mattered before December 22 as part of the past, not the future.
“I just need some time,” she said more reasonably.
“Of course you do,” he agreed, letting go of her hand.
“Time to get my priorities back in order.”
There was an awkward silence then, with each of them tense and unsure, trying to figure out what was really going on in the mind of the other.
“Does that mean maybe we should put our plans on hold for the time being?” he asked tentatively, deciding to give her the option, but hoping she would reject it.
Karen’s heart lurched painfully at his words. Her worst fear was about to be realized. Now that he was here, now that he had seen how awful she looked, he had decided he didn’t really love her after all, and was trying to find a kind way out.
“If you think that would be best,” she said.
Peter sighed. “I just want you to be sure.”
“I understand.”
There was another pause as the two of them sat there surrounded by the fragrant darkness, together but apart.
“You almost died in that accident,” he said after a while. “I suppose an experience like that can have a profound effect. So I think you should take all the time you need to decide what it is you really want.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, wishing he wouldn’t worry so much about letting her down easy and just say what he needed to say and get it over with.
That was it then, he thought. But he couldn’t let her slip away from him without one last effort. He got out of his chair and stood beside hers, looking down at her through the shadows.
“Just do me a favor, while you’re doing all that heavy thinking, okay?” he pleaded. “Remember how much I love you.”
Karen gasped with relief. He wasn’t trying to end their relationship. He still loved her, despite what she looked like, despite how she behaved. What had she been so worried about? She was so caught up in the moment that she didn’t notice him bending down to brush his lips against hers.
It was so unexpected, his coming down at her out of the dark, that Karen couldn’t help herself, she shuddered and cried out.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, startled. “Are you in pain?” He leaned toward her. “Are you cold?”
The words came out of her nightmare.
Are you cold? he had asked. Welly I can certainly take care of that.
Without warning, she was fighting for air and pushing against him with all her might.
“What’s the matter?” he cried.
“Get away!” she wheezed, trying to cover her face. “Get away from me!”
He tried to grab at her flailing hands. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he shouted. “Tell me what to do.”
At this angle, the lights from the house slanted across his face. Somehow, through her panic, she could see genuine concern in the brown eyes—brown eyes—and realized that it wasn’t the demon from Central Park, it was Peter.
“I don’t know what happened,” she gulped as her body, soaked with perspiration, went limp. “I couldn’t breathe there for a bit.”
“You scared me half to death,” he admitted, his own heart racing. “I mean, you were staring at me like I was some kind of monster.”
“Was I?”
“Do you need some medicine or something?” he asked, peering at her, not only with concern in his eyes but with bewilderment.
She shook her head. “No, no medicine. I’m fine now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. It was nothing, really.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call what just happened nothing.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, feeling like a fool. “I promise.”
“Well, even so,” he said, still a little unsteady, “maybe we’d better call it a night.”
Karen let him lead her inside without resistance. She was more than ready to escape his scrutiny. They said their whispered good-nights in the upstairs hallway, just outside her room. Peter ran his index finger lightly down her cheek.
“I do love you,” he murmured.
“I love you, too,” she e
choed.
He smiled, a happy smile that spread across his whole face. “Then, as far as I’m concerned,” he breathed, “that’s all that really matters.”
Karen shut her door with a soft click and leaned against it, wondering if he were right.
Peter Bauer had never been her mother’s choice of a suitable husband. Beverly had made no bones about that. He wasn’t going to be a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer, he wasn’t going to graduate from Harvard or Yale, and his family was not prominent in any way. That was three strikes against him, in her mother’s book, which flatly eliminated him from any serious consideration.
He had, however, one thing in his favor, and if truth be told, it was the only reason Beverly had not insisted that Karen put a speedy end to the relationship the moment it became serious. Peter’s father ran a very successful small business which, according to all indications, Peter would eventually own. So, although the boy might never set the world on fire, he would at least be able to provide well for his family, even as an engineer, and even if it meant that her daughter would have to live in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
Peter had told them that his father’s manufacturing company would soon convert into producing parts for computers. Beverly knew nothing about computers, but Leo did and told her that they were going to be very important one day.
Although Beverly continued to encourage Karen to seek out what she called better options, she had resigned herself to Peter’s presence in her daughter’s life.
“After all,” she would say with a shrug, “until you catch a bigger fish to fry, you don’t want to let go of the one in the pan, or you may end up with no supper at all.”
Until the “accident.”
Without bothering to wash her face or brush her teeth, Karen undressed and hoisted herself into bed, snuggling deep under the covers, despite the muggy night.
In the past five months, Beverly had not been able to say enough about Peter—about how thoughtful he was, how sincere, how loyal, and how much he obviously cared for Karen. Suddenly, all the doctors and dentists and lawyers that had been out there for the seeking were forgotten, there was no longer anything so terribly wrong with being an engineer, and she took every opportunity to tell Karen how fortunate she was to have found such an exceptional suitor.
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