Did she really need him to bend for her? Did she really need him to say, “Yes, I believe in luck, I believe in Santa Claus, I believe in family and God and all the things they represent, I believe my life was saved by divine intervention”? Was that why she was holding back, refusing to give herself over to love?
She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that whenever he started talking about how she’d saved his life, she became edgy. Whenever she analyzed the differences in their outlooks on life, she held back. Whenever she remembered how much she had desired him last Sunday night, she felt scared. She wanted things simple; she wanted the expected routines and rituals. She didn’t know how to deal with a man like Jesse.
“You’re turning to ice out here,” he murmured, tightening the coat flap around her and hurrying her back indoors. A blast of hot air from the heating vent by the door slammed into their huddled bodies, and she extricated herself from his coat and rubbed her fingers together to restore sensation to them. “You don’t like the car,” he inferred.
“I do, Jesse,” she countered, forcing a smile. “I think it’s great.”
“But...?”
But I want to love you, and I’m frightened. I want you to make this easy for me. “I think the car’s terrific,” she said, “and I’m happy you won’t have to drive that tiny rental car anymore.”
“Maybe I should have bought a new car,” he said, glancing through the front window at his illegally parked Honda. “But I kept thinking of what it would look like to my clients if I drove through their neighborhoods in some flashy thirty-thousand-dollar vehicle. It would be like shoving their noses in their own poverty.”
“And your radio would get ripped off,” she observed. “A used car is probably a smart idea for someone in your line of work.”
He nodded. “Well. I just wanted to show it to you. I’ll let you get back to work.” He kissed her cheek, then straightened up and buttoned his coat.
She touched his arm, holding him in place. She had failed to tell him she loved him, but she had to let him know in some way how pleased she was by his impromptu visit. “Jesse—I’m really glad you came by to show the car to me.”
The corners of his mouth twitched upward. “One of these days, I’ll take you for a spin in it.”
“A spin?” She groaned at his unintended pun. “The last thing I want to do is sit next to you when you’re spinning in a car.”
His laughter mingled with hers. “All right. No spins, I promise. I’ll see you Saturday.” With that, he left the store.
A heavy sense of loss overtook her as, gazing through the glass, she watched Jesse climb into the blue Honda, fasten his seatbelt, gun the engine and drive away. What was wrong with her? Why did she want so desperately to play it safe with him? Why was she so afraid to let go?
She wanted him, yes. But the thought of any man other than Ray loving her, knowing her so intimately...
She’d been afraid the first time with Ray, too. Even in high school, she’d been aware that some of her classmates slept with their boyfriends. But she never had, not because she was a prude, not because she didn’t understand the facts of life or possess a healthy streak of curiosity, but because she didn’t love those boys. She had dated Ray for a year and a half in college before she’d finally agreed to spend the night with him. And as excited as she’d been, she’d also been petrified.
Ray had been gentle with her, and she’d enjoyed the experience greatly. But her fear had never been based on the physical aspects of what was occurring. It had been a matter of emotions: did she love Ray enough to make the moment meaningful? Was it more than simply sex they were sharing? She believed that making love had to be spiritual to be right. It had to entail a joining of souls as well as bodies.
It had been right with Ray. They’d loved each other then, and they’d continued to love each other for nearly seven more years. After their relationship began to disintegrate, they’d still made love whenever he was home. Yet it was no longer as satisfying to Robin, no longer as fulfilling. Her love for him was on the wane, and the sex was no longer spiritual. Their souls were traveling in different directions.
She didn’t doubt that she would enjoy making love with Jesse, but enjoyment wasn’t the issue. The issue was, how could she make love with a man who claimed to have no soul at all? How could she ever find something spiritual with him?
***
ON SATURDAY EVENING, Robin and Philip drove to Jesse’s condominium. Philip expressed relief when Ms. Becker didn’t appear on her porch. He galloped down the stairs to Jesse’s door and drilled the doorbell, causing it to sound incessantly until Robin shoved his hand away.
Jesse opened the door, dressed in blue jeans and a crisp white shirt. “Come on in,” he welcomed them, stepping aside so they could enter the living room.
It was big. Robin could say that much for it. A swanky-looking leather couch stood against one wall, a rocking chair, a table and a lamp against another. An empty modern fireplace consumed a third wall. And that was it. No pictures, no plants, no knickknacks or clutter. Not a single personal touch, not an idiosyncratic item to personalize the room.
“I like this place,” Philip announced, pulling off his jacket and darting to the rocking chair. He sat on it and energetically pumped his legs, giving himself a ride. “I like it a lot better than my dad’s apartment in Washington. His living room has books and newspapers lying all over the place, and he gets real mad whenever I touch them. Can I see the rest of it?”
“There’s not much to see,” Jesse warned, running to catch up with Philip as he raced into the dining room.
Robin followed, and tried to hide her shock. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the room, not a table, not a chair, not a sideboard. A breakfast bar separated it from the kitchen, and four stools were positioned two on each side of the counter to provide an eating area. The kitchen looked like a real room only because it was filled with the cabinets and appliances that had come with the house. “Oh, wow!” Philip hooted, noticing the three neatly arranged place settings on the breakfast bar. “Are we gonna be eating here? It’s almost like a restaurant, Mom!”
She laughed sheepishly. “That gives you an idea of the quality of the `restaurants’ I take him to.”
“Well,” Jesse said to Philip, “we’re eating at the counter because we haven’t got anyplace else to eat. I haven’t bought a dining table yet.” He took Robin’s parka, scooped Philip’s jacket off the floor, and hung them both in the coat closet. Then he returned to the kitchen and filled a pot with water.
“Can I help?” Robin asked.
Jesse shook his head. “The meatballs and sauce are already made, and so’s the salad. All that’s left is cooking the spaghetti.”
“What’s for dessert?” Philip asked.
“Ice cream,” Jesse told him.
“All right!” Philip flopped onto one of the stools, discovered that the seat revolved, and busied himself spinning himself in dizzying circles.
Robin scanned the vacant dining room one last time, then moved around the counter to the kitchen. “Why haven’t you bought a dining table yet?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound disapproving. “You’ve lived here since June.”
He pulled a fistful of dry pasta from a box, estimated its volume, and dumped it into the boiling water. Then he shrugged. “I guess this place doesn’t feel like home to me yet.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Robin said with a laugh. “How could it feel like a home when you haven’t done anything to make it a home?”
Jesse glanced at her, grinning impishly. “You think I should spend a fortune at Woodleigh’s?”
“Woodleigh’s or Wal-Mart,” Robin answered. “It doesn’t have to be a fortune, Jesse. Just a few pictures on the walls, or something...”
He shrugged again, apparently not sharing her concern. “I’ll get around to it one of these days,” he said, “once I start settling in.”
“Are you sure it’s not that you’re planning to
return to California eventually?”
“Are you from California?” Philip interjected. “Wow, that’s neat. I’ve been to California, sort of. Once, when we visited my grandma in Hawaii, we changed planes in Los Angeles. I never got out of the airport, though.”
“L.A.X.,” Jesse grunted. “What a tourist attraction. I bet Hawaii is much nicer than L.A. Do you visit your grandma often?”
“Uh-uh. It’s too expensive. Mostly, she visits us, on account of she’s just one person. She comes every summer. She won’t come in the winter. She hates cold weather,” he added with a disdainful sniff.
“It makes her sick,” Robin defended her mother to Philip. “It aggravates her arthritis.” She turned back to Jesse, who was vigorously stirring the spaghetti in the pot. “I can’t imagine living in a place for six months and not settling in. My family spent only five months on a base in Wyoming, and you wouldn’t believe how beautifully my mother furnished that house.”
“It’s obviously a knack you’ve inherited,” Jesse praised her. “You know how to make a house a home.”
“Because it’s important,” she said, then stifled herself. She wasn’t going to torment Jesse with yet another sermon on her feelings about the necessity of having a real home. She had probably already bored him to death on the subject.
Jesse served the meal, including red wine for the adults and soda for Philip. Robin winced inwardly as she recalled her advice to Jesse about purchasing a wine rack. That was the least his condominium needed.
Maybe she could buy him something homey for Christmas. She wanted to get him something he’d like, something he would be able to use. Certainly not a dining table, but maybe a framed print, or some andirons for his fireplace, or a crystal fruit bowl for the table in the living room. A house plant, perhaps, or...a tree. A full, towering Douglas fir, festooned with lights and tinsel and a huge silver star at its apex, would do wonders for his living room.
Philip’s behavior at dinner was exemplary. He even ate half his salad, along with plenty of spaghetti. He sang one of his favorite songs, “On Top of Spaghetti,” to the tune of “On Top of Old Smoky,” and assessed with Jesse the odds that Ms. Becker could hear their voices through the wall dividing the two condominiums. After dinner, he wolfed down a generous portion of ice-cream, and Robin didn’t object when Jesse led him downstairs to watch television in the den.
“Dinner was delicious,” Robin said once she and Jesse were alone in the kitchen. Over his protests, she insisted on helping him to rinse the dishes and stack them in the dishwasher. Once the pots were scrubbed and the counter wiped, Jesse refilled their glasses with wine and led her into the living room. No sooner were they seated on the couch when Philip appeared at the top of the stairs to ask, “This guy on the news said something about the deficit, Mom. I forget, which is worse? The deficit or the debt?”
“In twenty-five words or less?” Robin chuckled. “The deficit.”
“That’s what I thought,” Philip muttered, vanishing down the stairs again.
Jesse leaned back into the leather-covered upholstery and arched his arm casually around Robin’s shoulders. “You ought to go into politics,” he joked. “You sure know how to cut through the crap.”
“I’ll let Philip go into politics for me,” Robin rejoined. “I’ll explain things for him, and he can carry out the policies. He’s got more energy than I do.”
“He does have a lot of energy, doesn’t he.”
Philip might have energy, but he lacked diplomatic skills. Gazing about the austere room, Robin remembered what her son had said as soon as he’d entered Jesse’s house: that he liked it a lot better than he liked his father’s apartment. “Does it bother you when Philip mentions his father?” she asked Jesse.
“Why should it bother me?”
Robin mulled over her answer. It shouldn’t bother Jesse, but she had presumed that most men would feel uncomfortable about the ex-husbands of women they were romantically interested in. “You told me all about your ex-girlfriend in Los Angeles,” she recollected. “But you never ask me about my ex-husband.”
Jesse considered her words, then shrugged. “What should I ask? You grew apart, you broke up, he cares about Phil and you aren’t bitter. Is there anything else I need to know?”
“You know more than that,” Robin recalled, her eyes meeting Jesse’s for an instant and then shifting away in embarrassment.
He studied her attentively, reminiscing. Then he nodded. “You mean, that he’s the only man you’ve ever made love with? That’s not important to me. You’re what’s important to me.”
“Yes, but—”
“Robin.” His fingers floated through her hair, stroking in a consoling rhythm. “The only thing that matters is that you’re a woman with strong values. I admire that. I really do.”
“Maybe you admire it,” she said, smiling timidly, “but you’d rather have gotten me into bed last Sunday, wouldn’t you?”
“Not if you were entertaining doubts.”
“You weren’t frustrated?”
“Of course I was frustrated,” he admitted with a short laugh. His thumb reached her earlobe and traced its curve, causing a ripple of longing to twist through her. “I’m still frustrated. But frustration isn’t fatal.”
“I’m sorry, Jesse,” she confessed. “I’m trying to work it out, I’m trying very hard—”
“Don’t try,” he placated her. “It’s all inside you, and it’ll come out when it’s ready.”
“And in the meantime, you’ll get tired of waiting, and—”
Jesse leaned toward her, brushing his lips along her temple. “I don’t think I’ll have to wait that long,” he whispered.
The implication in his words was as arousing as the tender caress of his thumb along her ear. She suffered another surge of longing, dark and demanding, and if it weren’t for the intrusive patter of sneakered feet on the stairs, she might have been tempted to act on it.
Philip rescued her from doing anything rash by barging into the living room. “The guy on the news said something about Koala Lumpy. Where’s that, Mom?”
“Koala Lumpy?” she puzzled. “You mean, Kuala Lumpur. It’s a city in Malaysia.”
“Malaysia,” Philip repeated. “That’s in Asia. They rhyme, Jesse. Malaysia, Asia.” With that astute observation, he disappeared down the stairs again.
“He’s amazing,” Jesse commented, staring at the staircase. “You’ve got yourself an incredible little boy.”
“Any little boy could figure out that Malaysia rhymed with Asia,” Robin argued, although she was thrilled that Jesse considered her son as amazing as she did. “And never call him a little boy to his face. He thinks he’s a big boy.”
“Ah, yes. Little boys play with Smurfs, isn’t that right?” Jesse deliberated for a minute, his smile deepening. “I don’t know much about kids, Robin, but Philip seems so—so free-wheeling, so eager to embrace the world. If I had ever asked my parents about Kuala Lumpur, they would have treated me to a ten-minute dissertation on the good works of missionaries in Malaysia. And when they were through, they would have told me to spend more time studying the Scripture and less time asking so many questions.”
“Then you’re the amazing one,” Robin observed. “You turned out pretty well, under the circumstances.”
Jesse drew Robin closer to himself, cushioning her head against his shoulder. “Phil’s turning out better,” he said. “You’re lucky to have a son like him. Or maybe he’s the lucky one, having a mother like you.”
Robin might have basked in his compliment—or modestly refuted it, giving Philip all the credit for what a wonderful boy he was. Instead, she allowed herself a private smile and let the truth of his words sink into her and settle comfortably inside her heart. Jesse had just all but admitted that he believed in luck. He wasn’t as much of a non-believer as he believed he was.
***
ROBIN’S PHONE rang early Sunday morning. Her voice was thick with sleep and contentme
nt when she answered it, expecting to hear Jesse’s voice on the other end. Words of gratitude took shape on her tongue, thanks for the lovely evening she and Philip had had with him, his kindness in making dinner for them, his generosity in choosing to respect her reticence rather than resent it. If pressed, she might even confess that he was the finest man she’d ever met, and that she did love him.
The voice she heard in response to her drowsy “Hello” wasn’t Jesse’s, however. Cutting through the static in the long distance connection, she heard her ex-husband say, “Robin? It’s Ray. I’m going to be stateside for Christmas, and I want Philip with me for the holiday.
Chapter Ten
SHE BOLTED UPRIGHT in bed and tried to clear the mists of sleep from her brain. “Ray? Where are you?”
“I’m in Buenos Aires right now, but I’m going to be back in the States next week. It cropped up at the spur of the moment. I know you weren’t expecting this, Robin, but... If I’m going to be in the country, I’d really like to see Philip.”
“But—but you just saw him!” That wasn’t exactly true. Ray had been stateside in October, and after a couple of days in his Washington, D.C. apartment, he’d flown to Connecticut and spent a weekend with his son. Whenever Ray was in the United States during the school term, he took a room at a motel in Belleford so he would be able to see Philip without interrupting his son’s class attendance. Usually, however, Ray timed his furloughs for February, when the schools were closed for a week around Presidents Day, and for August, when Philip had his summer vacation. During those school breaks, Philip could fly to Washington to visit his father.
“I know, I know.” Ray’s conciliatory tone only agitated Robin. “But this is special. An Argentine businessman I’ve been working with was planning to take his children to Orlando for Christmas, but he suddenly found out that he couldn’t take the time off from work. He’s passed the reservations along to me, and I was able to wheedle some free time. Robin, it’s Orlando.”
“Florida?” What on earth did Ray want to do in Florida? She wished she wasn’t still half asleep, her mind muddled with drowsiness.
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