Comfort and Joy

by Judith Arnold

  Not that Robin Greer was an innocent child. The woman managed a store, she raised a son, she was divorced...

  That was part of it too, he acknowledged as he started the car’s engine and waited for it to warm up so he could turn on the heat. Most of the divorced women Jesse knew were like Eileen, oozing bitterness, bristling with resentment. Women like Eileen, or like that hard-bitten lady Bill and Sally Hammond had introduced Jesse to at their Thanksgiving party last week. Still something of a newcomer to the New Haven area, with absolutely no desire to fly back to Los Angeles to spend the holiday with his parents, Jesse had been delighted by the Hammonds’ invitation. He hadn’t known that within minutes of entering their house, he would be dragged across the living room to meet Tracy LaPorte. “She’s a knock-out, eh?” Bill had whispered to Jesse some time later, when Jesse had escaped from the woman’s clutches long enough to flee to the kitchen for a refill on his drink.

  Yes, Tracy LaPorte was a knock-out—except for the rage seething just below her pretty surface, the hostility emanating from her. Less than ten minutes after they were introduced, Tracy had been enumerating for Jesse all the sins of her ex-husband. Her gripes differed from Eileen Becker’s in the particulars, but in tone she was no less resentful than Eileen or any other divorcée Jesse had ever met.

  But Robin Greer… If she hadn’t told him, he never would have guessed that she was divorced. She seemed so happy, so lively, so much at peace with herself.

  He admired her courage in criticizing Eileen’s teaching methods. He admired the fact that she’d raised the sort of son who drew hands on a turkey. When Jesse was seven, he would never have dared to color outside the lines, let alone take his drawing in such a whimsical direction. He might have considered it, but he would have lacked the guts to go through with it. Years of training, discipline and force-fed piety had driven his independence out of him. No wonder it had taken him this long to find the courage to leave that whole scene and forge a new life, faithful to his own ideals and nothing else.

  He was still thinking about Robin Greer a few hours later, when he’d finished up at his office and settled into his car for the short commute from New Haven to Belleford. He was still thinking of Robin’s silky yellow hair and her delicate cheeks, her stunningly bright eyes. What he wasn’t thinking about was the route his car was driving, until he found himself coasting off the turnpike several exits before the one he usually took. He would be able to get home from this exit; the Post Road paralleled the turnpike throughout most of southern Connecticut.

  With an amazed smile, he understood why he’d taken the wrong exit onto the Post Road. If he traveled home this way, he’d pass Robin’s store. Woodson’s, he thought it was called. Woodson’s, or Woodmont’s, or Wood-something.

  Crossing the town line into Belleford, he slowed enough to read the signs that identified the multitude of stores bordering the road. Woodson’s could be anywhere along the route; it could be any one of those countless stores trimmed with blinking lights and electrified Santa Clauses, plastic wreaths and tinsel garlands.

  Woodleigh’s. That was it, Woodleigh’s.

  Applying the brakes, Jesse navigated into the parking lot and coasted to the first parking space he found. Then he locked the car, strode to the building, and shaded his eyes as he peered through the broad panes of the glass front wall. The displays lining the windows featured attractive modern stained-wood tables festooned with holly and poinsettias, red and green tapers protruding from silver candlesticks, decanters wrapped in red ribbons and delicate, hand-crafted Christmas tree ornaments. Beyond the window display, he saw more of the same: elegant housewares, table settings and carved wooden train sets, all sprayed with tiny flecks of rainbow created by the light from the overhead fixtures passing through the crystal stars dangling from the ceiling. A dwarf Christmas tree stood on one end of the polished wood sales counter at the center of the store.

  The sight of so much holiday crapola almost caused Jesse to leave the shop without entering. Stores like Woodleigh’s lived for Christmas. Why shouldn’t they? They undoubtedly raked in humongous profits at this time of year.

  And yet...

  And yet he couldn’t shake the image of a lovely blond woman somewhere within that room full of holiday merchandise, a cheerful woman with penetrating eyes and a son who endowed a colored-in turkey with hands.

  Jesse drew in a deep breath and entered.

  ***

  GLANCING UP from the cash register, Robin saw him standing beneath the mistletoe.

  The mistletoe had been hung above the front door by the sales clerks as a gag. It was hardly noticeable to unwary customers, and the clerks had strung it up with the notion that if a hot-looking guy happened to venture into the store, they’d have a perfect excuse to fling themselves at him and plant big wet ones on his mouth. Not that they would actually do anything like that—they’d have to answer to Bill Woodleigh himself if they did. But since they were supposed to approach any customer who remained loitering too long near the front door, the mistletoe gave them an added incentive to do their jobs.

  The man unknowingly standing beneath the mistletoe right now went beyond hot-looking. In his well-tailored jacket, pale gray sweater and open-collared oxford shirt, his scarf draped untied around his neck, his long legs flattered by slate-gray corduroy slacks and his hair adorably unruly and so black it put Robin in mind of such concepts as midnight and infinity... Jesse Lawson was easily the best looking man ever to plant himself under that wicked sprig of green leaves and white berries.

  Not surprisingly, Kirsten was the first of the clerks to spot him. A tall, well-groomed young woman with ash blond hair and discerning eyes, Kirsten was easily the prettiest member of Robin’s sales force, and the most openly man-hungry. Robin spied on her employee, who managed to look seductive even when she was wearing a plain white sweater and khaki slacks beneath her starchy brown Woodleigh’s pinafore, as she wandered over to Jesse and offered him her most winning smile. If she kisses him, I’ll have to fire her, Robin thought, watching and wondering just how brazenly Kirsten would behave. She really didn’t want to fire one of her best clerks, especially not during the busiest few weeks of the year at her store.

  A customer jarred Robin by plunking a hundred dollars worth of Christmas linens—napkins, placemats, and hand towels—onto the counter and demanding gift boxes. Robin reluctantly turned her back on the door and began to scan the price tags. “Lisa, could you put these things in boxes?” she called to her assistant, who had just finished bagging another order.

  “Do you think she’s going to kiss him?” Lisa murmured, her gaze glued to the doorway as she reached for the stack of unfolded white boxes on the shelf below the counter.

  “If there’s anything Kirsten likes more than men, it’s money,” Robin answered with a chuckle, accepting the customer’s credit card and swiping it through the scanner. “I doubt she’d risk her job, even for him.”

  “I’d risk mine,” Lisa said with an exaggerated sigh. She joined Robin’s laughter for a moment, then caught herself. “He’s coming over here,” she whispered, putting down the box she’d been assembling in order to preen and fuss with her hair.

  If Robin had wanted to run her hands through her own hair, she wouldn’t have been able to. As usual, it was pinned back into a pony tail. Even so, as Kirsten led Jesse among the display tables to the counter, Robin dropped her gaze to her pinafore, hoping her skirt and blouse hung straight beneath it. She knew she looked better now than she had last night at the Brushy Pine School, but better didn’t seem good enough.

  “Hello, Robin,” Jesse said in that delicious voice of his.

  She raised her eyes and presented him with a surprisingly relaxed smile. “Hello, Jesse. I see you’ve finally decided to find out what Woodleigh’s is.”

  Lisa and Kirsten exchanged a glance at this proof that their boss, good old boring ordinary Robin, for whom no man had ever come to call at the store, was actually on a first-name basis wi
th Mr. Gorgeous. Robin’s smile widened at the realization that knowing Jesse might win her a bit more respect from her underlings.

  “I’ve got to finish this order,” she said, turning back to the customer and handing her the charge slip and a pen.

  “Take your time,” he said.

  Needless to say, she completed the purchase in a matter of seconds. As soon as the customer signed the slip, Robin abandoned her to Lisa, who had resumed assembling boxes and lining them with tissue paper, and glided around the counter to Jesse. “Are you looking for something special?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth, then shut it and gazed around the shop. “Just curious,” he said. “What is all this stuff?”

  Robin laughed. “All what stuff?” She surveyed the bustling store. “It’s what we sell here. Housewares, decorator items—”

  “Stationery,” he said, lifting a box of note cards featuring a silkscreened winter scene on the front. He turned the box over, saw the price tag and winced. “Expensive stationery.”

  “High priced, but worth it,” she told him. “These note cards feature one-of-a-kind designs on recycled paper, and...” She trailed off. Somehow, she knew that Jesse hadn’t come into the store to listen to a sales pitch.

  His gaze circled the room again, pausing at one of the butcher-block tables with its matching cane-and-Haitian-cotton chairs, pausing again at the colorful array of placemats and table cloths exhibited against one birch-paneled wall, and again at the hand-painted toy-soldier nutcrackers lined up in formation on a shelf covered with green felt and bedecked with holly. When he turned back to Robin, his eyes seemed darker, shadowed by an undefinable sadness. “What’s wrong?” she asked instinctively.

  He shook his head and grinned. “I was just thinking about some people I visited today at work. I was thinking about their apartments, and how out-of-place these things would be inside them.”

  Visiting some people at work? “I thought you were a lawyer,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “Do lawyers make house calls?”

  “Legal aid lawyers do, sometimes.”

  A legal aid lawyer? Since when could legal aid lawyers afford extravagant leather jackets? Or, for that matter, the stylish threads he was wearing today? Jesse’s clothing fit him too well to have been purchased off the rack at Sears. That sweater looked like cashmere, and his loafers appeared hand-stitched. The scarf looked like cashmere, too. If she had a little more nerve, she would have touched his scarf and sweater to see how soft they were.

  “Would this stuff be out of place in your home?” she asked. It was admittedly a nosy question, but she couldn’t imagine a man as polished and poised as Jesse Lawson living in the sort of house a legal aid lawyer might be able to afford.

  He shrugged. “At the moment, anything would look out of place in it,” he confessed. “I moved here from Los Angeles six months ago, and except for a few pieces of furniture, I haven’t done much with the place.”

  “Do you live in Belleford?” she asked.

  “In one of the condominiums off Brushy Pine Road,” he replied with a nod.

  “Mondo Condo,” Robin let slip. That was the derogatory name she and Joanna had given to the sprawl of condominium developments north of the elementary school. The developments had proliferated in the last few years like toadstools after a downpour. When Robin and Ray had first bought their modest cape cod house in Belleford, the town had been little more than a quiet, underdeveloped bedroom community for people who worked in New Haven. In the nine years since then, however, the town had been built up beyond recognition. Robin had signed petitions and attended town meetings calling for a halt to the development, but the condos kept sprouting.

  Jesse apparently wasn’t offended by the epithet. “Mondo Condo,” he repeated. “That about sums it up.”

  She didn’t have to make amends for having insulted his neighborhood, but she felt she ought to, anyway. “Some of those condominiums are lovely. Your home would probably look nice with a few fancy items in it. A wine rack, maybe, or some of these crystal tree ornaments from Denmark—”

  “I don’t plan to have a tree,” he said curtly. “What would I want with ornaments?” Then he relented, his smile returning. “But I do drink wine on occasion.”

  No tree? “I’m sorry. I’m so presumptuous. Are you Jewish?”

  A faint smile traced his lips. “No. And I’m not Muslim, either. Or Buddhist. Or druid.”

  She recalled his comment at the elementary school last night, about how Eileen Becker ought to have her class acknowledging all the seasonal holidays, including the solstice. But if Jesse wasn’t any of those other religions, why not have a tree? Sure, some people might consider having to lug a tree home, set it up, vacuum the pine needles and then, after New Year’s, haul it to the town dump a pain in the butt. But there were artificial trees. And wreaths. And mistletoe, for heaven’s sake. You could still display some pretty ornaments in your home, even if you didn’t hang them from a branch of something evergreen and pungently scented.

  She refrained from blurting out any more tactless remarks. She was lucky that he hadn’t been offended by her Mondo-Condo comment. Even if not having a Christmas tree was, to her mind, incomprehensible, she didn’t dare to question him about it.

  Instead, she ushered him through the store to a display of wine racks. Some were constructed of varnished wood, others of brass. He appraised their price tags first, then their designs. “I’d probably do better at Wal-Mart,” he muttered.

  “In terms of price, maybe,” she said. “Not in terms of quality.”

  Abruptly he turned to her. He dug his hands into the pockets of his trousers and gazed down at her, his eyes unnerving in their resonant force, in their vividness. “I didn’t come here to shop,” he admitted quietly. “I came here to see you.”

  Robin laughed. She often laughed when she was shocked, and Jesse’s announcement shocked her. A series of emotions raced through her—that she was enormously flattered, that she wished she were as beautiful as Kirsten, that she didn’t have to be as beautiful as Kirsten because Jesse was here to see her and not her model-pretty sales clerk. That she truly wanted to start dating again, and that Jesse seemed much too attractive, much too perilously intriguing, to become the first new man in her life in thirteen years.

  “What did you want to see me about?” she asked.

  Jesse’s smile widened. “About your son, I think.”

  “Philip?” Had Eileen Becker confided in Jesse about her concerns regarding Philip? Had the teacher told her neighbor she thought Philip Greer was weird? And why had Jesse added, I think? Wasn’t he sure why he had come to see Robin?

  “I’d—I’d like to meet him,” Jesse said.

  “Why?”

  “Because...” He hesitated, taking time to sort his thoughts. “Because any boy who’s got the guts to draw hands on a turkey must be pretty special.”

  A wave of maternal pride flooded through Robin. Philip was special. He was the most special, darling, brilliant, magnificent little boy in the world. “He also drew antennae on his turkey,” she reminded Jesse.

  “Even better.” He reflected for a minute, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets and striking an almost diffident pose. The motion of his arms pulled back the flaps of his jacket, revealing the fine, soft wool of his sweater and, beneath it, the fine, hard shape of his torso. “Am I out of line?” he asked. “Asking to meet your son, I mean.”

  “No, of course not,” Robin said quickly.

  “It’s just…I was raised in such a restrictive way. I was always so obedient, so afraid to cross the line. And here you are, raising a son who’s…fearless, I guess. Not afraid of getting in trouble because he broke the boundaries with his turkey. I don’t know. That probably sounds kind of…”

  “Weird.” Robin grinned to take the sting out of the word. “I’m doing my best to raise Philip to be fearless. And to break a few boundaries, as long as he knows what those boundaries are and
he has a good reason for breaking them.”

  “He’s lucky to have a mother like you.”

  Jesse’s compliment touched her more than it should have. She knew how to shrug off flattery, unless it was about the most important person in her life. “I’m lucky to have a son like him,” she said.

  She wondered what he’d think if she brought Jesse home. She wondered what he would think if she brought any man home. She never had, not since the divorce. But if she started dating, the situation was bound to crop up eventually.

  Not that she was dating right now. Not that the word dating related even remotely to whatever was going on between her and Jesse.

  Yet the idea of bringing Jesse home had an undeniable appeal to it. “We close up in half an hour,” she told him. “If you want to stick around until then, sure, you can meet my gutsy son.”

  “I’ll stick around,” Jesse said.

  Her gaze locked with his for an instant. Despite his easy smile, there was something somber in his dark, piercing eyes, something earnest and oddly wistful. Before Robin had a chance to interpret it, Lisa raced over to her and jabbed her arm. “Robin? Are we out of the Swedish votive candles?” she asked. “Ginny went downstairs to the stock room, but she couldn’t find any there.”

  “We just got a delivery of them yesterday,” Robin said, snapping into her professional mindset. “Kevin probably misplaced them.” She grinned apologetically at Jesse. “Crisis time,” she explained. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown, or however the saying goes.”

  “Don’t let me interrupt your work,” he said, taking a step backward and then bending down to examine one of the wine racks more closely. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Chapter Three

  FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, he was going somewhere. He was following the red taillights of Robin’s compact station wagon off the Post Road and onto a winding back lane that lacked adequate lighting. He hadn’t bothered to purchase a wine rack—for a thirty-four year old man, he knew pitifully little about wines, and he tended to buy bottles one at a time, on impulse. He had browsed through Woodleigh’s, engaged in silent debate about whether the toy-soldier nutcrackers were cute or kitschy, whether food tasted any better when eaten off expensive dishes instead of cheap ones, whether someone like Martha Selby, receiving an unexpected windfall of two hundred fifty thousand dollars in an out-of-court settlement with her landlord, would choose to spend any of it in a place like Robin’s store.