by Modean Moon
“It’s what, Ginnie?” he asked softly.
“It’s—” It was what? Unexpected? That went without saying. Devastating? That he would drive through the night to be with her? Not her, she reminded herself. His son. Necessary, she realized as she felt tears sliding down her cheeks. Oh, so necessary. “It’s snowing,” she said, trying to stop her tears, wanting to keep any knowledge of them from Neil, and knowing she hadn’t.
“Then the drive may take a little longer. Will you be all right?”
She nodded and then realized the telephone line couldn’t carry that answer. “Yes.”
Ginnie heard the church bells a few minutes later. It was midnight, only midnight, and she felt as though the night had gone on forever. It would have before Neil could get here, she thought. She clicked off his schedule in her mind. Pleasant Gap was an hour and a half north of Little Rock, in the daylight, on dry roads. The mountains would be treacherous tonight. And he still had to make telephone calls. And say his goodbyes. And go by his apartment. It was going to be a long night.
She struck a match, lit a burner on the antique Roper range, filled her red kettle and stood for minutes trying to decide between tea and hot chocolate. When the kettle whistled, demanding a decision, she still hadn’t decided. She turned off the burner and went into the living room.
A very long night, indeed.
The puppy whimpered in his sleep, a log popped in the fireplace and outside a branch scraped against a window screen, but all else was silent. Oppressively silent.
She turned on the stereo and set it to play repeatedly. The tinkling music-box sounds seemed, now, inappropriate, and yet they filled the corners of the room and the shadowy recesses of her mind. They filled them innocuously, true, and perhaps they couldn’t drive out any large demons, but the little ones, the ones that were lurking about ready to make mischief, would find those spaces filled and have to move on.
Ginnie parted the sheer curtains and looked out into the now fiercely swirling snow. On the street below, barely visible, a police car crept past, the light from its spotlight refracted into thousands of tiny crystals as it tried to scan the ancient and overgrown privet hedge that guarded her boundary lines. So. He had done that. He had called them. That was one thing less he had to do. Was he on his way yet?
She settled down on the floor beside the coffee table, tucked her feet under her long wool skirt and leaned back against the couch, staring into the fire.
She had sat that way for countless evenings, enjoying her solitude, but now the isolation bore in on her, reminding her of how alone she really was, while out in the night Todd made his way to her.
How had it started? When could they have done something about it?
Ginnie glanced at the tree. The first Christmas. The Christmas when she was so full of being a new wife and a new mother. Todd was twelve. Was he ever really only twelve? Although small for his age, he had always seemed so much older. They had bought a tree that year. Living in Little Rock, they bad no way to cut one. Todd had helped decorate the tree. She’d taken one special ornament from the box and explained to him that it had been on every tree she’d ever had. He’d reached for it and she’d let him hold it a moment before she took it and hung it among the pine needles. It was the last ornament to be placed, and she and Todd had stood back to admire their handiwork. Neil had come to stand beside them, put his arm around her and hugged her close. She’d turned into his embrace, full of love for him, and met his light kiss eagerly, The next day, she’d noticed a small cut on Todd’s finger, and days later, when taking down the tree, she’d found what was left of her special ornament.
Had that been the first sign? “You have a memory that just won’t quit,” Neil had said to her—no, had yelled at her later, much later, just before the final fight. “You never forget anything. But do you ever understand the significance of it?”
Maybe he was right; maybe she didn’t understand, she thought, resting her forehead on her knees, but her memory served her well in spite of that. If she worked at it, she could remember all the bad times, concentrating on them and relegating the good times to a deep dark closet to be taken out only when the pain was bearable.
She caught a glimpse of something shiny peeping out from under the edge of the couch and reached idly for it, finding a Polaroid snapshot, one of many they had taken that evening, one that must have been misplaced in the excitement. It showed her, on the floor with Paul, Cassie and Frank’s youngest, laughing as he tied a big red bow around the wriggling puppy.
She leaned closer to the soft pool of light from the floor lamp and examined the picture and the stranger she saw in it. The emerald-green wool draped gracefully over her small figure. Its color matched that of her eyes and complemented the warm honey blond of her hair, caught now in a loose knot atop her head, but with its soft curls as willful and unrestrainable as ever. The cowl collar of her dress was a perfect foil for a long slender neck and a delicate, almost fragile jaw and high cheekbones. She still looked helplessly young, she thought ruefully. If nothing else, the past few years should have given her at least the appearance of maturity. Even now she was sometimes mistaken for one of her journalism students. Maybe it was the slight tilt to an otherwise straight and classic nose. Maybe it was the hint of fullness in her lower lip. But in this picture, she was pretty.
What a strange thing to discover at thirty.
Neil had told her that she was beautiful, often, at first, but she had never quite believed him. She’d never doubted that she was attractive. But beautiful? No. She’d always thought herself too—too young-looking, too short, too thin, too underendowed. Cute, perhaps. Not beautiful. Could he have been right about that, too?
She was in her bedroom before she realized why she’d gone there, moving an enormous flowering white African violet from the top of a big square trunk.
“Don’t do this to yourself,” she whispered urgently, but she knew that she would.
Inside the trunk, under piles of blankets, rested a shallow wooden box, and inside that box she had buried the tangible evidence of her marriage. She lifted the box from its burrow and carried it into the living room. She curled on the corner of the couch, pulled the floor lamp closer to her, touched the top of the box hesitantly and opened it.
Chapter 2
It was all there—divorce decree, marriage license, wedding ring and pictures. Hopes and disappointments. Laughter and loss. Ginnie hadn’t allowed herself to look at any of it for almost two years. Not since...
Todd’s middle-school picture, the latest she had of him, was what she had studied then. She put the documents and ring box on the seat beside her and pulled the picture from the top of the stack. He had been such a beautiful child, the image of his father and his grandfather. Three generations of Kendrick men stared back at her from dark brown eyes beneath thick, rich eyebrows. A shock of coffee-brown hair had rejected the photographer’s orders and swept defiantly over his broad forehead. His eyes gleamed with anticipation, and a careless smile parted his lips to expose perfect white teeth and emphasize the dimple in his chin, which, when maturity firmed his already strong jaw, would be a cleft. She hadn’t found an answer two years ago. No matter how hard she looked, she knew she wouldn’t find one now.
She felt the pressure of still more tears behind her eyes and the twist of a grief she had thought was long ago dealt with.
It was a trick of the light. She knew it had to be. But now Todd’s eyes were glittering with rage, an unspeakable, unanswerable anger, directed at her. She turned the picture facedown on the cushion, and as if that wasn’t enough, she slid it under the pile of documents and held her hand over it until she could slow her racing heart and silence the voices her imagination was all too ready to provide.
Was there an answer? She shook her head in defiance of the tears that threatened to spill over. Or was it all just some horrible, pointless waste?
Reluctantly, Ginnie reached for the picture at the bottom of the box, also a Polaroid snapshot, this o
ne taken by an unknown tourist who had walked up to them, almost apologetically, as she and Neil sat on the seawall in Galveston and offered to take a photo of them if they would just take one of him and his son. God, how she had loved Neil. No one looking at the poorly composed photograph would ever doubt that. She stifled a laugh. Looking at him, one would swear he loved her, too. She’d thought he did. But that was before the doubts began creeping in. That was when she was still wrapped in the wonder and the excitement, the magic of having been singled out by him. He’d noticed her when she was a member of the press corps covering what was now recognized as a landmark case in Arkansas law. He was a charismatic and triumphant young attorney who, in a ten-day trial, had alternately chipped and then bulldozed through the state’s reportedly airtight case, gaining an acquittal for his client and cementing for himself the reputation of being the criminal attorney.
She didn’t remember the questions she’d asked, but she did remember the way Neil’s eyes acknowledged those questions, and she did remember the easy grace with which he’d fielded questions from the other reporters and how, after he signaled the end of the press conference, he’d spoken her name almost questioningly. Surprised, she turned back to him and found his warm, engaging smile all for her.
“I don’t suppose you could...I mean...Damn it!” he’d said.
She stared at him, wide eyed and wondering. The man who had just proven his eloquence before hundreds of people was actually having trouble speaking.
She quirked an eyebrow, smiled hesitantly and waited.
He grinned, an apologetic, lopsided grin, and Ginnie knew at that instant she was lost forever.
“What I’m trying to say is that if your schedule would permit...”
“Yes?” she asked, hating her inability to hide her breathless anticipation.
“Will you have dinner with me?” he asked abruptly.
She nodded. Something as simple as forming words seemed suddenly beyond her power.
It was hard, now, to remember that he had ever been speechless. She had tried, for a while, to hold on to that one sign of vulnerability, that one evidence of humanity in him, until she had been forced to relegate it to the shallow wooden casket with her other painful treasures.
Neil had found his voice that night. Over dinner. Keyed to a fine pitch by the intensity of the ten days of trial, he’d talked, and talked, and talked. And she’d listened, dazed and intrigued, and totally captivated, until she sensed he was winding down, ready to surrender to the exhaustion she knew awaited him. Then she’d excused herself, returned to her desk, wrote her story, went home and tried to sleep.
Neil’s phone call caught her the next afternoon as she was leaving the office.
“Ginnie.” His voice caressed her. “I have to see you again.”
This time her powers of speech were a little better. “Oh, yes.”
A month later, after seeing him every night, working every day, and sleeping, well, practically not at all, she again met Neil at the courthouse. They went before a judge, a friend of Neil’s. Ginnie’s roommate was her maid of honor. Neil’s partner, Kirk Williams, was his best man. Their only guest was Neil’s son, Todd, then twelve and ill-at-ease in his new blue suit, watching, carefully watching each event of his father’s wedding and not at all happy when, after a brief celebratory dinner, he was sent home with Kirk.
Maybe they should have talked more about Todd before the wedding, but Ginnie knew it would have made no difference. She would have married Neil had he had six children. One beautiful, silent boy couldn’t have stopped her. Then.
Oh, be honest with yourself, Ginnie, she raged silently. Was it Todd who drove the first wedge between you and Neil? Or was it something within Neil?
Or did you do it yourself?
Tea, she decided suddenly. She would have tea. She would sit in the brightness of her kitchen and drink hot tea and not think of Neil—that was over—or Todd. A shudder ran through her. Would that ever be over?
She left the living room and walked into the kitchen. Needles of snow pelted against the windows and piled even higher in their corners as Ginnie lit the stove and waited for the water to heat again. The outside light illuminated only the whiteness, no details, of the backyard. When the kettle’s whistle pierced the silence, she filled her cup and set the kettle on the warming ledge. She lit all the burners and remained at the stove, chafing her arms, waiting for the fire to take the chill from the room.
Warm. It had been warm in Galveston. She leaned against the oven, still hugging herself, as a wave of longing swept through her. She threw her head back and sighed. She had been so young, much younger than she should have been at twenty-four, much too naive to suspect that Neil’s careful and oh, so, wonderful lovemaking had been anything other than an expression of a love as deep and consuming as hers.
She had learned slowly, refusing to harbor the doubts that crept in on her until forced to, refusing to accept that Neil’s work did not really require the hours he gave it, refusing to acknowledge that his political ambitions did require that he present at least the facade of a happy marriage, refusing to recognize that he had needed a mother for his son—a son who wanted no one between himself and his father.
Her hands on her arms were too reminiscent of Neil’s hands. Her self-hug, though innocently started, was too reminiscent of his embraces. She balled her hands into fists and beat impotently against the white porcelain of the oven wall behind her.
“Remember the bad times,” she moaned. “Remember the bad times. Remember the bad times!”
But now she couldn’t. Now all she could remember was the salty taste of his skin and the comfort of his arms holding her close. The hotel where they’d stayed on their honeymoon jutted out over the gulf. In the distance, a storm was building, darkening the sky and roiling the clouds, and the gulf waters were beginning to peak and break, but inside there was only the quiet hum of the air-conditioning and the mingled sounds of their steadying breathing. They were alone in the world, just the two of them, wrapped in a cocoon of contentment.
Neil cupped her face with his hand and traced her cheek with his thumb.
“I love you, Ginnie. I never thought I’d be able to say those words again. I never thought I’d know what they really mean.”
She turned in his arms, sure of his love, sure of their future. Her lips found the soft velvet of his skin just above his heart and with the tip of her tongue she traced the outline of her mouth against his chest. She could feel his heart beating and drew a deep breath as it quickened at her touch.
“I love you, Ginnie.” She felt the words as he whispered them into the rapidly darkening room. “And Todd will, too.”
She willed herself to relax as her muscles began tightening. He was only answering the question she had not yet dared to ask.
“I hope so,” she murmured against his chest.
He tightened his arm around her. “Trust me. It won’t be long.”
“Should we have waited, Neil? Should we have given him more time to adjust to me, to adjust to the idea—”
“Ssh.” He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Todd needs you. Almost as much as I do. He just doesn’t realize it yet.”
He would realize it. She accepted Neil’s words. Too many wonderful things were unfolding for her to worry, needlessly. She’d held the thought, though, and by the time they returned to Little Rock, it was a part of her. Unfortunately, it had not been a part of Todd.
Ginnie recognized Todd’s minor rebellions as an attempt to irritate her, make her lose her temper and show herself in a bad light to Neil. She recognized it and refused to be drawn into a power play with a twelve-year-old. And it wasn’t a constant struggle. So many things about Todd reached out to her—his fierce independence, his gentle care of Charlie, the old, blind collie that slept beside his bed. He was a bright and loving boy when he chose to be, but he seldom chose to be when he and Ginnie were alone.
Their first night home had set the pattern. S
he and Neil had picked Todd up on their return to town and taken him to dinner, to an out-of-the-way seafood place down on the river. Todd had monopolized his father’s attention, excluding Ginnie from the conversation. She’d let him. After all, she had had Neil’s undivided attention for ten glorious days. She understood Todd’s need.
That evening, when Todd came into the den to say good-night, even at twelve, he went willingly to his father for a hug.
“Say good-night to Ginnie,” Neil prompted.
Ginnie bent to embrace the boy, but he backed away from her. “You’re not my mother,” he said quietly.
She let her arms drop to her sides and watched him walk stiffly from the room.
“Ginnie?” Neil rose from his chair and came to stand beside her. “I’m sorry. I’ll speak to him.”
“No.” She smiled, trying to hide the hurt Todd’s snub had caused. “That might make matters worse. I guess...” She drew a deep breath, only beginning to realize the magnitude of the job facing her. “I guess I’m going to have to work harder at this than I thought.”
Later that evening, she had begun learning how much harder she was going to have to work. Returning to the den after her bath, she heard a low voice in Todd’s room. Hesitantly, not wanting to intrude, she paused at the door. There was only the one voice, Todd’s, speaking softly and insistently. Curious, she pushed open the door and in the shaft of light from the hallway, she saw him curled on the floor, his head resting on Charlie’s side. He looked up guiltily. She smiled, conscious of the inadequacy of the new peach satin and lace robe she wore for Neil’s benefit, and walked to Todd’s bed. Turning down the covers, she held out her hand to him.
“I think you’ll be more comfortable in bed,” she said casually.
Todd ignored her hand but rose from the floor and reluctantly crawled up on the bed.
She studied him in silence for a moment, then sat beside him.
“No,” she said as though no time had intervened since his hurtful words. “I’m not your mother. Your mother will always have a special place in your heart that I can never fill. I don’t ever want to try to take that place away from her. But I love your father, and I want to love you. I want us to be a family. I want us to do things together, to be together, to love each other.”
