by Dana Corbit
“He told me all of that, but I don’t see how it makes a difference right now.”
“Then you weren’t listening.”
I stared at her, trying not to be annoyed but failing. This was the second time she’d hinted that I was partially responsible for tonight’s fiasco when blaming me was like holding the wet tennis shoes responsible for being left out in the rain. First, she’d told me I didn’t see what was laid out in front of me, and now she was accusing me of not listening.
“Come on, Yvonne. I know it’s hard for a parent not to take her child’s side in an argument, but isn’t this a little over-the-top?”
She only smiled, but then her expression grew serious again. “I loved my daughter-in-law. Don’t ever question that. But I never thought she was good for my son.”
I had just sipped my coffee, so I felt fortunate that I didn’t spew the brown liquid across the table. With effort, I managed to swallow it. Yvonne’s revelation surprised me, but what did that have to do with Luke pulling away from me? “He told me about Nicole,” I said, guessing she expected me to say something.
I’d surprised her, too. I could tell by the way she lifted her cup toward her mouth and then lowered it without taking a drink.
“He doesn’t usually talk about her,” she said finally.
“He said that, too.”
Yvonne nodded and then pressed her hands on the edge of the table. “My son’s been killing himself, trying to prove himself to someone who’s no longer alive to appreciate his efforts. He’s thrown himself into his work at the expense of everything else in his life.”
“He said she always thought of him as a disappointment.”
Settling back in her seat, Yvonne crossed her arms over her chest in a self-satisfied gesture. “Then you do understand.”
Wait, had the two of us just participated in two parallel conversations? We must have. Otherwise, why would she guess that I understood something we hadn’t even discussed as far as I could tell? “No, I don’t think I do.”
She frowned at me as if I was missing something incredibly simple. “In the last month since you’ve been here, I’ve seen more of my son in daylight hours than I have since his wife died. You reminded him to take the time to enjoy his son. To smell the roses, so to speak. To live his life.”
I shook my head, as much to dispel her assumptions as to deny the truth in them. “He didn’t do those things for me. But it doesn’t matter why he did it now because he’s back to his workaholic ways, anyway. He comes later and later every day.”
“Only because his boss demanded that he be there if he planned to keep his job.”
I had been ready with a retort, but it died on my lips. I would have called it an “aha moment” if “duh” didn’t seem to define it better. Luke had based his self-esteem on this job; of course he would panic if that job were in jeopardy. Would he ever learn not to judge himself based on everyone else’s expectations?
“Do you see the problem now?” she asked.
I could only nod. That I did see didn’t change anything, but I chose not to tell her that.
“Can you give him a break just this one time? I know how much he looked forward to tonight. Just let me take you to the restaurant. You two can have a nice quiet dinner and maybe talk a little.”
“Why does this matter so much to you?”
“Because you’re good for my son,” Yvonne said. “It’s been a long time since he’s been around someone who’s good for him, and I don’t want him to mess this up.”
Because she’d made a good mother’s argument and because, let’s face it, I’m a pushover, I agreed to go. I hadn’t eaten dinner, either. And, if I gave myself some time, I would come up with a dozen or so other reasons why this was a perfectly rational decision. Maybe the biggest reason was that I enjoyed feeling as if I’d been run over by a pickup because I was well on my way to experiencing the first tire tracks.
Dinner couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if Luke and I had sat cross-legged on a bed of nails, eating linguini. Even the checkered tablecloths, the globed candles and soft music failed to wrap us in a romantic cocoon.
Though I had a little in common tonight with Molly Ringwald’s character in Sixteen Candles, Sam’s sweet, tabletop birthday cake scene this was not.
“How’s the lasagna?” Luke asked to break the silence. His own fork kept twisting in his plate of spaghetti and meatballs, but he hadn’t taken a bite.
“Fine.” Nothing against Gino’s lasagna—it was probably scrumptious—but I might as well have been gnawing on cardboard for all I tasted it. “How’s yours?”
He took a bite, chewed and swallowed so he could offer an opinion. “It’s good.” He spun his fork in the spaghetti for a long time before he spoke again. “I’m sorry about being late. It couldn’t be helped.”
“Your mom told me.”
“I’m glad you agreed to come even though it was so late. I really wanted to see you tonight.”
Really? If that was so, then why had he spent the whole time since he’d met me at Gino’s acting as if he preferred to be right back at the building site he’d left an hour ago? He was so nervous, distracted. You could take a workaholic out of the office, but you couldn’t take the office out of his head.
If I knew I was going to be this lonely at dinner, I would have stayed at home with Splendor’s Deanie and Bud. Even if they didn’t end up together and she did have a nervous breakdown, at least they could argue passionately instead of being so annoying civil—the way we were.
“Really, I’m sorry.”
I chewed and swallowed another bite. “It’s fine.”
“Is it?”
No, I wanted to shout. It wasn’t okay for him to forget it was my birthday, as he so obviously had. When I looked up from my plate, Luke was studying me, his eyes narrowed.
“It’s the new habit, anyway,” I said.
“I should have explained before.”
“Explained what? That you didn’t want to see me anymore?”
I stabbed my fork into my lasagna.
He was shaking his head, but I was on a roll and couldn’t stop.
“Ever since I told you I was staying on, you’ve been—I don’t know—distant.”
“Not distant. Just busy.”
“Aren’t they the same?”
“No, they’re not.” He shook his head to emphasize the point. “That would imply that I had a choice here, and I don’t. Clyde has been breathing down my neck about cutting out of work early ever since you came here. I told him I would make it up after…”
Though he let his words trail off, I understood that he’d meant after I went home.
“So I messed up your plans by staying too long and wearing out my welcome?”
“No.”
He started to reach for my hand across the table, but I went for my napkin and wiped my mouth instead. For a few seconds, he rested both hands on the table, palms up and fingers partially curled in, but then he returned them to his lap.
“I don’t see it that way at all,” he told me.
“Then how do you see it?”
I crossed my arms and waited for his answer. The waiter started toward us, but when he saw my tense pose, he wisely turned away, giving us a few extra minutes to decide whether our dinners were satisfactory.
“I’m glad you’re still here. I want you here. But there was only so long I could let my work slide. Believe me, Clyde noticed it was sliding, too.
“I had to buckle down and make up for all the hours I was cutting, and when you said you were staying another week, I realized I couldn’t wait any longer.”
“What do you mean ‘make up’ for them?” But even as I asked it, realization dawned. “You mean you taking the time to put your family first—that was all just an act.” Was the time he’d spent with me an act, as well?
“It wasn’t like that, and you know it.” At the edge of the table, his hands clenched and unclenched, showing his frustration.
I shook my head. Obviously, I didn’t know Luke at all.
“Don’t you get it? I’m doing the best I can.”
“I don’t know what I think, Luke.”
“But I know.”
I looked up at him. Was it hurt that I saw in his eyes? “You told me I was a good dad. I liked it that you thought so. I didn’t want to lower your opinion of me, but I couldn’t lose my job just to preserve that opinion.”
“I never asked you to do anything.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Didn’t you? Your approval comes with a price, and that’s doing things your way.”
“That’s not fair, and you know it.”
“Maybe not, but it’s true.”
I would have protested again if the waiter hadn’t tried a second time, approaching the table and glancing nervously at our barely touched dinners. After assurances that the food was wonderful and hints that we couldn’t take our lack of appetites out on his tip, he retreated to the kitchen.
Needless to say, our dinner date went downhill from there, and I’d thought we’d already reached the southernmost point of lousy. Only I would end up on a crummy date that was determined to be all it could be. Luke wouldn’t even look at me, but I wasn’t looking back, either. He’d hurt me, and I’d hurt him back. We were even, so why did it feel like we’d both lost?
The waiter didn’t even bother to ask us if we wanted any spumoni. He just brought the check, processed Luke’s credit card and packed both our dinners into to-go bags.
So much for the day I had dreaded for years and then looked forward to for the last few weeks. I’d imagined balloons and maybe a cake. None of my fantasies had included a dinner I couldn’t eat and a dressing-down I didn’t deserve.
As we stood to leave the restaurant, I leaned over and blew out the globed candle on the table. It was the only candle I would be blowing out tonight.
When I used to have problems at night, Mom would tell me to sleep on them. “Everything will be clearer in the morning,” she would say.
But as I sat in the middle of my bed the next morning, my blankets tangled around me from an all-night wrestling match, I decided that clear had to be overrated since I wasn’t any closer to seeing it. Maybe it was just better if we saw our mistakes through a foggy film than through sparkling glass.
First light filtered in through my partially open blinds. Sunshine and blue skies were in the forecast for today’s Fourth of July celebrations, but it wasn’t as if I had any place to go.
I expected to see Princess in the doorway, ready to start meowing for her breakfast, but I was alone. Just how early was it? The bedside clock said six forty-five. The least I could do on my vacation was to sleep in until eight.
Still, since I wouldn’t be getting any more sleep this morning, I threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. I was still smoothing out the sheets when the doorbell rang. Could this morning get any stranger?
I slipped a summer-weight robe over my pajamas, and then hurried down the steps. At the front door, I patted my hair down and then hesitated. Serial killers didn’t usually show up before seven o’clock, did they? And if they did, would they bother to ring doorbells to announce themselves?
“The early bird gets the worm,” I whispered, the side of my mouth lifting as I thought of myself wiggling as the worm.
Pausing for one last yawn, I pulled open the door.
“Happy Fourth of July, Miss Cassie.” Sam stood there holding a big bouquet of balloons, but they were pink and purple rather than the holiday’s traditional red, white and blue.
Instead of waiting for an invitation that I was in no way ready to give, the little boy pushed past me into the house, first pummeling me with the balloons and then pulling them like a parachute after him.
Slowly, I turned back to the doorway, my heart pounding in my chest. I wasn’t ready to see Luke again so soon, but I couldn’t leave him out there on the porch either.
Luke stood in front of me with a white bakery box in his arms. He lowered his gaze to the box, and when he looked up again, he smiled.
“Happy birthday, Cassie.”
I had no time to be shocked or happy or any of the other feelings that were mingling inside of me, each vying for a leadership role, because Luke leaned in and touched his lips to mine.
And I was lost. No matter how unclear my thoughts were when it came to last night and to the series of events leading up to it, my thoughts about Luke were filled with pinpoint precision. I was in love with him. So different from the way I’d felt about my former husband—admiring certain things about him—I loved Luke, all of him. I loved his strengths, I loved his flaws, and the truth in that unnerved me.
Being that vulnerable to another human being seemed downright suicidal. Could I handle the pain when I lost him?
Luke pulled back slightly and pressed the box into my hands. I lifted the lid to find a birthday cake with pink roses all over it. A birthday greeting and my name were written in lavender script across the top.
“Sorry it’s late.”
“Don’t you mean early?” I indicated with my hand toward the sun that was still low in the eastern sky.
He shrugged, grinning. “It’s never too early to make things right, right?”
Because he posed it as a question and looked about as sheepish as a guy could, I smiled back. “Thank you. That was sweet.” We couldn’t continue standing there on the porch, especially me in my nighttime getup, so I stepped back to let him inside.
“I wanted to apologize about last night,” he told me. “The things I said.”
“You’ve already apologized.”
“Last night I didn’t even know everything I’d done wrong. Now I do.” He shook his head. “No wonder you were so mad at me. I can’t believe I forgot your birthday. It’s just with everything going on— No. There’s no excuse.”
“I could have reminded you.” I could also tell him that he’d missed the point for at least part of my frustration with him, but I still hadn’t worked out in my mind if I’d had any right to those feelings.
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
“Why aren’t you at work?” I glanced away as I asked the loaded question. What was I fishing for, a fight?
“Haven’t you heard, it’s Independence Day? Even poor schmucks like me get the day off today. Besides, I couldn’t talk a single subcontractor into working today.” He shot a glance past me. “We’d better go see what’s he’s up to.”
I led him deeper into the house and set the cake on the kitchen counter. Sam was running around the family room in a circle, the balloons trailing behind him. Princess yawned in the recliner, looking unimpressed by the performance.
“Hey Sam, those balloons are for Miss Cassie, remember?” Luke called out to him.
Sam slowed long enough to yell “Happy birthday” and kept right on running.
“Oh, let him have fun for a few minutes. I’ll have to get dressed before I run around the family room with my balloons, anyway.”
Luke grinned at my attempt at humor and crossed back to the counter. Lifting the lid off the box again, he glanced down at the cake. “I didn’t figure you’d want it to say ‘thirty’ on it or anything.”
“Thirty’s not so bad. Better than the alternative.”
“Three decades looks great on you.”
I couldn’t help chuckling at that. “You could have picked a better time to say that to me.” Reflexively, I patted my hair again, wondering just how much of it was sticking out in all directions.
He reached up and brushed back my hair himself. “You couldn’t look bad if you tried. Not to me.”
“Sounds like a challenge.”
“Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t have suggested that. I know what an overachiever you can be.”
I smiled. We were back to our easy banter, but it felt forced today. Just as I started to excuse myself to my room to change, Sam came roaring toward us, a trail of colors behind him.
“Did you tell her,
Daddy?”
“You mean ask her. No, I didn’t ask her yet.”
I looked back and forth between them, before crouching in front of Sam. “What did you want to ask me?”
“There’s a bicycle parade.”
“Parade?” I turned to Luke for clarification.
“We thought it would be fun if the three of us went to the Mantua Fourth of July Parade. It’s about the biggest thing around here until Santa shows up in the Christmas parade. You’ll have to wait until November for that.”
I tried to ignore his last comment and the squeezing feeling it produced inside my heart. November was a long time away, and I’d never be around to greet old Saint Nick.
“It begins this early?”
“No. Ten o’clock.”
Ten o’clock? Above the stove, I glanced at the microwave clock. Because the numbers read only 6:57, I turned back to him and raised an eyebrow.
“We need to get there ahead of time,” Luke explained.
“Tough to get a seat on the parade route?”
“We won’t be sitting.”
“We’re riding bikes in the parade.” Sam was springing up and down as he made his announcement.
I shook my head. It was way too early in the morning for any of this. I needed to crawl back into bed and pull the sheet over my head. Maybe when I awoke again, everything would be back to normal, if there was such a thing. “No, I don’t think—”
“Come on. It’ll be an adventure.”
Adventure? It sounded like holiday torture to me.
Luke continued as if I was already on board. “Sam and I did this last year. This time he gets to ride his own bike.”
“With training wheels,” Sam chimed in.
“I don’t even have a bike.” I would have said I’d left mine at home, but I didn’t have one there, either. By choice.
“I borrowed my mom’s this morning.” Luke told me. “All we have to do is decorate it.”
“Great.”
That my response wasn’t exactly infused with enthusiasm only made Luke laugh.
“I haven’t ridden a bike in over ten years, Luke.”
