A Woman Like Annie

by Inglath Cooper

  Annie smiled a stiff smile and refused even to consider the prick of envy her sister’s assessment sent along her nerve endings.

  For the next fifteen minutes, the two of them stood and watched. The game stopped for a minute when Jack went over to help one of the boys adjust his glove.

  “Wonder why he’s never married,” Clarice said.

  “Probably some reason you’d rather not know.”

  “Like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. That he goes through women like water?”

  “Says who?”

  “If someone hasn’t snagged him yet, he’s probably not snaggable.”

  “The catch is all the more appealing for the challenge.” A pause and then, “Maybe he’s just never found the right person.”

  “Is that wistfulness I hear in your voice?”

  “Just a tad, maybe.”

  They stood watching, silent for a while. Jack was generous with praise for the boys’ efforts, each of them beaming with pride at being singled out, but none of them more so than Tommy. Like a plant someone had forgotten to water, Tommy positively blossomed under Jack’s encouraging, “Atta boy, Tommy! Awesome catch!”

  Watching them, Annie felt a wearing sense of defeat. Since J.D. had left, she’d sensed Tommy’s certainty that he must somehow be responsible for it. The very thought of that both enraged and saddened her beyond anything she could have imagined. What she’d wanted to give Tommy most was what she had not had in her own childhood. Stability, that grounding sense that all was right in his world.

  “Know what you’re thinking,” Clarice said. “Don’t go there.”

  “I feel like I’m depriving him of something he needs so much.”

  “First,” Clarice said, index finger popping up, “you aren’t the one depriving that child of anything. His father has taken care of that nicely, and any child would be lucky to have a mother so determined to make up for it. Annie, I’ve never known anyone to work harder at anything than you do at being a good mother. I know how important it is to you to give Tommy some of the things we didn’t have growing up. And it would be nice if J.D. had turned out to be father of the year, but he isn’t. That’s a fact. That’s not your fault. And it’s not Tommy’s.”

  “You’re right. It’s just—”

  “He’s happy, Annie. Just believe that, okay?”

  She wanted to. She really wanted to. Looking out at her son right now, she almost could.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FROM THE CORNER of his eye, Jack saw Annie and her sister turn and head back across the field. He’d felt their gazes on him for the last little while, heard Clarice’s laughter tinkle across the lawn, suspected they were talking about him, wondered what they were saying.

  He spent another half hour with the group of boys. There were some pretty good arms among them for six-year-olds, Tommy’s notably the best. Not something Annie would be thrilled to know, but it was true. He definitely had a knack for the game.

  The group broke up, and Tommy followed him back across the field. “Did you ever collect baseball cards, Mr. Corbin?”

  “Sure did. Had a great Hank Aaron.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Still have it, I think,” Jack said, remembering the box he’d kept all his cards in and making a mental note to look for it back at the house.

  “Wow. That must be worth a lot. Where did you get it?”

  “My dad bought it for me.”

  “My dad said he’s going to get me some good ones, but he keeps forgetting. I bet next time I see him he’ll have them.”

  “Bet he will,” Jack agreed. So that explained the concern in Annie’s eyes when Tommy had talked about his dad last night at dinner. Jack had never made fatherhood a priority in his life, but he couldn’t begin to understand having a little boy who spoke of him with adoration hanging off every word and not being downright grateful for it.

  “I need to go to the little boys’ room,” Tommy said.

  “Want me to find your mom?” Jack asked.

  “I can go myself. It’s over there.”

  “Okay.” At the men’s room door, Jack said, “I’ll wait right here.”

  “’Kay,” Tommy said and darted inside.

  Jack nodded at a couple of men standing a few yards away. One of them pulled a pack of Redman tobacco from his back pocket, ferreted out a good-size pinch and stuck it in his mouth.

  “Damn shame to see all this go down the toilet,” the tobacco-less one said.

  The one with his mouth full nodded, positioned the chew at the back corner of his jaw. “Actually thought that Annie McCabe might be able to do something about it. Turns out she’s not much of a mayor. Just like her husband, I guess.”

  “Ex,” the other one said.

  “Yeah. Town shoulda held a new election altogether after he ran off. There’s gotta be somebody around here more qualified than a pampered jock’s wife. She’s probably real good at setting up nail appointments, but what the heck does that have to do with running a town?”

  The other man shrugged. “From everything I’ve read in the newspaper, she’s been the only one trying to get that Jack Corbin not to sell out.”

  The man made a noise that sounded like disbelief. Either that, or he was choking. “Well, her sister’s the editor, so how much of that can you believe?”

  Tommy bounded out of the bathroom. “I’m really hungry, Mr. Corbin.”

  Jack looked down at the little boy. “Then let’s go get some food.”

  They headed back across the grass lawn to the dozen or so tables loaded with homemade offerings. No sign that the boy had overheard those men, but even so an urge to protect him sprang up from some unidentifiable place.

  So was that what everyone here thought? That Annie was a joke as mayor? Were they judging her by the fact that she hadn’t managed to save Corbin Manufacturing? That seemed a few miles short of fair to him. But people were going to think what they wanted. And if they were aiming darts at anyone, it ought to be at him.

  Why then did he feel so bad about Annie being their target instead?

  “NOW ANNIE, I just don’t know how I feel about setting up that dunking booth this year if you’re going to be the one getting plastered. I have to say we’ve got some folks with pretty good aim around here.”

  “Reverend Landers, if it’s part of the mayor’s job to sit in the dunking booth for the Lord’s Acre Sale, then I have no intention of changing tradition.”

  “Well, J.D. wasn’t real keen on the idea when we discussed it. I mean back before he—”

  “I’ll be happy to do it, Reverend Landers,” Annie insisted, trying to head off that particular line of conversation.

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  She glanced over at the field where the boys had made a prisoner of Jack. They were no longer there. “I need to go find my son. You go right ahead and reserve that booth.”

  The reverend nodded. “All right, Annie. But it’ll be a really bad hair day.”

  Annie laughed. If only that were the worst of her problems. One circle around the perimeter of the crowd, and she found Tommy sitting beside Jack at a picnic table, a plate in front of him that actually included a helping of broccoli and two carrots.

  At the sight of her, Jack stood and said, “Hope it was all right for Tommy to eat.”

  “Sure,” Annie said.

  “Hi, Mama.” Tommy picked up a carrot and stuck it in his mouth. “Mr. Corbin said people who play baseball or any other kind of sport need to make their bodies strong by eating stuff that’s good for them. It’s like fuel we put in cars only it tastes better.”

  “Some powers of persuasion, Jack,” Annie said.

  A smile hit his mouth, raising an instant alert sign inside her. “Been told so once or twice.”

  A more confident woman, Clarice, surely, might have called that response flirtatious. Might have acted on it. Sent him one right back with the same kind of edge to it. But Annie’s confidence with the opposite
sex had gone west with J.D. and his twenty-something blonde.

  “Thank you for helping Tommy with his plate,” she said, not quite meeting his gaze. “Aren’t you having anything? There’s plenty of good food.”

  “I’m okay right now.”

  “Hey, Annie.”

  She glanced around to find Tim Filmore aiming one of his I’m-so-sexy smiles at her. He was tall and skinny, the legs exposed beneath khaki safari shorts looking like number two pencils in hiking boots. Convinced he’d been put on earth for the explicit purpose of wowing the fairer sex, he had coal-black hair that looked as though it had been steam-ironed, then glued into place with a good three ounces of mousse for insurance. Cologne hung around him like early-morning fog in San Francisco.

  Annie sneezed and with no graceful exit in sight, said, “Tim, this is Jack Corbin. Jack, Tim works with Clarice at the newspaper.”

  “Lead reporter,” Tim said, pumping the hand Jack stuck out like the handle on the pump of a well long gone dry.

  “Nice to meet you,” Jack said, rubbing an eye no doubt as offended as Annie’s nose.

  “So you’re the man bringing all this to an end,” Tim said, puffing his chest out and cocking his chin. He reminded Annie of a banty rooster confronting another rooster of a much bigger breed, strutting across the chicken yard with fists raised.

  To his credit, Jack looked anything but intimidated. And if Tim hadn’t long since fine-tuned Annie’s dislike of him, she might have actually felt sorry for him. It was as if Mother Nature, having shortchanged him on the outward ability to attract the opposite sex, had loaded him up with an extra dose or two of testosterone so that confidence was never going to be a problem for him.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Jack said, the words as smooth as steel and with just as hard an edge.

  “Quote you on that?” Tim threw out.

  Annie felt like a bystander watching a wreck about to happen. The question: should she throw herself out in front of the oncoming cars or simply pray they swerved in time?

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. And add this to it: I am solely responsible for the decision to shut down Corbin Manufacturing. And despite the mayor’s very admirable efforts on this town’s behalf, this company was ruined a long time before it was handed over to me. As far as I can tell, it’d be impossible to fix a cannonball gash with a Band-Aid. If you’ll excuse me, Annie. Nice to meet you, Tim. See ya later, Tommy.”

  “Bye, Mr. Corbin.”

  “You, too, Jack,” Tim threw out, a swagger in his voice. Clearly, he considered Jack the one to swerve at the last second. “He’s got some nerve, coming here like he belongs—”

  “He owns the place, Tim,” Annie said. “What part of that makes you think he doesn’t belong here?”

  “The part that says he’s a traitor?”

  “You know, Tim, you might want to tone down the hostility just a shade or two. It’s not exactly a win-over technique.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. Maybe that’s why you haven’t gotten anywhere with him.”

  Annie counted to ten. And then back to one.

  “Maybe if the two of us put our heads together, we could come up with the right game plan.”

  “Thanks, Tim. I wouldn’t want to steal your glory.”

  “I’m a generous kind of guy. There are a lot of things I’d be willing to share with you, Annie.”

  Forever. She was staying single forever. “Tommy, let’s go take a look at the dessert table,” she said, ignoring the statement and its implications. “I’m feeling the need for something with chocolate in it. Something really big with chocolate in it.”

  “All right!” Tommy said, leaping up to grab Annie’s hand and tug her along behind him. Of course he already knew where to find it.

  JACK LEFT THE CROWD and headed inside the building, putting some much-needed distance between himself and that Filmore guy. He’d all but undressed Annie with his beady eyes. And he didn’t know which had been more offensive, the man’s cologne or his outrageous flirting.

  But then hadn’t Jack been flirting with her himself right before Filmore came up?

  He took a detour around his own question, finding himself standing in the doorway of his father’s old office. He stepped inside and closed the door. Surrounded by Joshua’s things, all of which Jack was surprised to see were still as they’d been the last time he had been in here, a strange kind of comfort settled around him, as if some piece of his father were still here.

  He crossed the wood floor and sat down in the leather chair behind the big cherry desk. Pictures took up most of the space. One of his mother. An eight-by-ten in a gold frame. She was young. Little more than a teenager. It must have been taken before they’d married. She’d been beautiful in the classic sense. High cheekbones, full lips, straight dark hair.

  Next to her photo was a collection of smaller frames capturing Jack in different phases of boyhood. One when he was about three showed him on the back of a Percheron—Sam’s mother, he thought. Jack’s father stood at the side, a proud smile on his face.

  Another, at seven or eight, pictured him in his little-league football uniform, his stick arms making a mockery of his muscle-man pose. A junior high class photo. Graduation shot.

  “Hello, Jack.”

  Jack turned from the window. A man with gray hair and an uncertain smile stood at the office entrance.

  “How are you?” The man stepped forward and stuck out his hand.

  Jack recognized him then. “Hugh. Good, and you?” He had last seen Hugh Kroner, C.M.’s vice president, at his father’s funeral. He appeared to have aged a couple of decades since then. His eyes were red-rimmed with bags beneath, and his face had deep grooves carved in it.

  “Pretty good. Wish you had a more pleasant reason for being here.”

  “So do I.”

  Hugh glanced at the desktop. “Anything I can help you do?”

  Jack shook his head. “But I appreciate the offer.”

  “It’s too bad things didn’t turn out differently.”

  “It was a solid company for a long time.”

  “Everything runs its course, I guess,” Hugh said. “It’s just hard to see a place close its doors when it’s been around as long as this company has.”

  Jack nodded.

  Hugh sent another glance across the desk, then nodded toward the window. “Well, better get back out there. If there’s anything I can do, Jack. Anything at all.”

  “Thanks, Hugh.”

  Jack went to the window, watching the older man weave his way back into the crowd of people still eating hamburgers and hot dogs. Had the demise of this company hung all those years on Hugh?

  This afternoon had not turned out at all as he’d expected. Where he’d been prepared for hostility, he’d gotten friendliness. Where he’d expected resentment, he’d gotten gratitude for the opportunity to have had what was for years a good company to come to work for every day.

  Those people out there were celebrating the end of what had once been something really good and valuable to them. So many of the ailing businesses he’d gotten inside over the past eight years had not only been crippled by some near-fatal blow, but also suffered the equally stunning trauma of a workforce that turned against it and who considered the company itself somehow to blame for its fate and theirs as well.

  This was apparently untrue at C.M. It made Jack feel grateful and a little humbled.

  “A business has to make money to exist, son. But in addition to that, one of my greatest responsibilities is to make it the kind of place where people look forward to coming each day.” Jack glanced out the window at the group of people who were thoroughly enjoying themselves. It looked as if his father had done what he’d set out to do.

  For so many years, Jack had focused on how much his father had disappointed him. A sharp pain knifed through his chest, at its tip a piercing sense of regret for the fact that he was about to let this company be auctioned off like some dead, worthless thing.r />
  And yet his own wounded pride hadn’t let him consider doing anything else.

  He thought about all the people he’d met earlier, of how many of them were about to lose jobs they’d had for twenty-five years, and yet not one of them had been anything other than polite and respectful to him. In finding a new way to make a living, none of them would be able to afford the luxury of pride.

  There in a moment of clarity, Jack’s reasons for selling off the company seemed the height of pettiness. And suddenly, he wasn’t too sure he liked the man he must appear to be.

  ANNIE SETTLED IN AT her desk the next morning with a cup of coffee, which she used to wash down the aspirin serving as her breakfast.

  She had left the picnic without seeing Jack again, then donated another night of sleep to agonizing over her increasingly desperate hope that he would reconsider the dead-end road along which he planned to send Corbin Manufacturing.

  She picked up the phone and dialed into her voice mail. “You have two new messages.”

  The first was a hang-up. The second made her set down her coffee cup with a thump.

  “Annie, this is Jack. Call me at the factory when you get in this morning.” And he left a number that would ring direct to him.

  Annie clicked off and punched the number in as quickly as her fingers could follow the demand from her sleep-addled brain. Don’t get your hopes up, Annie. Chances are nothing has changed. But for this town, she couldn’t help but hope differently. Hope that Jack might have been affected by the people he’d met yesterday and the direness of what was about to happen to their livelihoods. Hope he had seen them as individuals who needed his company to make ends meet.

  Jack answered with a distracted-sounding hello.

  “It’s Annie. I just got your message.”

  “I’ve postponed the auction.”

  “You—what?” Annie’s voice came out several notes higher than its normal range. She cleared her throat. “I mean, really—”

  “No promises, Annie,” he said quickly, quietly. “I just want to make sure I’ve made the right decision. It seems like the responsible thing to do.”