Afterward they trooped out to the backyard and hauled out shovels and their tender plants and seed packets. Watching Willie Lee attack the ground the best he could with his small shovel, Marilee found her hopes resurface for being able to teach her son simple skills that would enable him to function on a more or less adequate scale with everyday living in the world. Perhaps he would not ever be able to read or to count sufficiently, but learning to plant and grow and cut, and to clean up after himself, would see him a long way when his mother was no longer available to care for him.
Seven
Points of View
“What’s for supper?” Parker asked after giving Marilee a kiss on the cheek.
“I have no idea.”
Sprawled on the couch, having been gazing blankly at the television news, she felt incapable of any endeavor involving getting up and moving around.
“We dug a garden today. Shovels, half the backyard.” At least it had seemed like half.
“Why didn’t you go rent a tiller?” He shifted her legs over and sat beside her.
“I didn’t plan to make it fifteen by fifteen. I just wanted a small garden for the children to grow some flowers, but then I saw the tomato plants, and they came in a container of six, and then Willie Lee saw the cantaloupe seed packets and wanted to grow those—they always put seeds in packets with beautiful pictures of perfect fruit, without all the hard work and bugs. I was just as bad as Willie Lee—I got carried away and bought zucchini seeds because of the picture, and I didn’t remember the awful bugs until I was on the way home. Anyway, I figured before planting the seeds, we needed to get the ground turned and let it sit there for the grass to die.
“I don’t know. It just seemed to…mushroom,” she ended lamely.
She really was unclear as to how she and two children had gotten into digging up a good portion of the backyard. Thinking of it now, she was amazed at the accomplishment, and as Parker began massaging her legs, she told him all about the activity with the children, painting word pictures of their funny antics for him. She had enjoyed digging in the dirt, had gone at it with a vengeance, for which she was now paying.
“Why weren’t the children in school?” Parker asked, having now worked himself upward to leaning over and nuzzling her neck.
Marilee, vaguely aware of his scent and the warm, moist touch of his lips on her neck, realized she had not told him of her decision to remove the children from school.
“I took them out of school for the remainder of the school year,” she said, now experiencing a rising certainty for the decision.
Parker quit nuzzling her neck and sat up. “You took them out of school?”
“Yes, there are less than three weeks left of the school year anyway.” Seeing the disapproval bloom on his face, her certainty faltered. She realized two things at once: she had counted on his approval, and she had not been paying sufficient attention to his manly attentions moments earlier. No man was ever happy to have his advances ignored.
She felt at fault and annoyed at the same time. She was tired and not in the mood to deal with his male needs, nevertheless, this seemed a poor attitude on her part, so she sat up and tried to work up the stamina required of her.
“I believe that more than anything they can learn in the few remaining weeks of school, the children need to be secure and reassured,” she said. “They need to be home for a while.”
“What about your job?”
She saw he was determined to focus on obstacles, instead of swinging immediately into support.
She went on to explain her reasoning for her actions, which had begun to sound truly logical and reasonable when she had told it all to Aunt Vella, yet, in the light of Parker’s expression now, Marilee had to work hard to keep on track.
“Tate doesn’t have a problem with me working at home. He’s giving us all laptop computers. Hooking them up on a network. I had already planned to try to work half days at home during the summer, anyway.”
She thought that despite whatever Parker might be thinking behind his frown, her enthusiasm to proceed with what she saw as a viable healing endeavor for her children remained intact. She became more annoyed at Parker for not immediately grasping this concept.
“I know there is a curriculum available,” she said, continuing to explain her plans for educating the children, “and I’ve heard of some support groups that I want to investigate. I’m going to draw up something for them to study every day. Especially Corrine. She is really smart, and one of her problems at school may have been boredom. Would you discuss ideas with me over supper? I want to start putting a plan in place for the summer.”
If she could get Parker involved, he would come around. And, while she considered herself fully intelligent, she thought Parker better at critical, organized thinking. He could be, if he would apply himself, a great deal of help.
Parker, however, gave a remote shrug that Marilee did not find at all an acceptable reaction. She told herself not to be surprised. Parker could get into a very remote mood, as could every man of her experience.
But here she was more or less inviting him into her life, and he was not responding with any small bit of gusto. She supposed she wanted too much from him, and she felt at fault but couldn’t figure out why, other than that her plans had brought on his disapproval. She felt herself getting all jangled inside, and angry because of it.
When the telephone rang, she grabbed it, as if grabbing some remedy for the conflicting moment. Unfortunately, she heard her mother on the other end of the line.
“Marilee? Marilee, this is your mother.” Her mother had the habit of saying her name twice.
“Yes, Mom.”
Her mother wanted Marilee to take her car for new tires tomorrow.
As Marilee listened to this, Parker stepped close and whispered, “Ask her to take the kids for the evening.”
Marilee, amazed that he would suggest such a thing, scowled at him. “I can’t do it tomorrow, Mom. I can on Saturday.”
Why couldn’t she take it tomorrow, her mother wanted to know.
“Ask her…” He encircled her from behind and whispered in her ear about how they could drop the kids off at her mother’s house.
She wiggled away from him and tried to think of how to put her mother and the tires off until Saturday without getting into a long explanation of having taken the children out of school. She finally got the arrangements straight, promising to go up to Lawton on Saturday morning for tire shopping.
“I have to go fix supper now, Mom. I’ll see you Saturday.” She hung up with a hard click and looked at Parker, who had turned from her and was stroking the back of his head.
“You know I do not leave the children with my mother. She does not want the care of them. She won’t half watch them, and I am not going to leave them up there at her house, with her husband drinking every night.” She wondered what in the world had gotten into him to suggest such a thing.
“Marilee, I want us to go out to dinner. The kids will be okay at your Mom’s for a couple of hours. So what if Carl gets drunk? He doesn’t bother the kids.”
She gazed at him for several seconds, knowing he could not understand that taking them to her mother’s was the same as setting them adrift for a few hours on a vast, turbulent ocean. The thought of it scared the daylights out of her.
“Corrine has had enough of that,” she said flatly.
She averted her gaze, biting back all manner of words she was certain she would regret. She could not sort out what she truly felt. Likely she was overreacting, as was her habit. She just had to get some sort of control of herself.
“How ‘bout gettin’ a baby-sitter for the kids, then?” Parker asked.
“I am too tired to shower and dress, much less call to get a baby-sitter on last-minute notice,” she said, unwilling to move in body or mind. “Besides, I have my pieces for Sunday’s issue to write tonight.” She would have to be writing more at nights now, and she thought him shortsighted not t
o get this point.
“But I can make hamburgers,” she offered, swept with the urge to make up for her stubbornness, “and you can sit at the table and talk to me while I cook.”
This would mean energy spent on cooking, which she should save for her writing job. How much easier if he would have been just as pleased with a can of soup thrown on the stove.
But hamburgers were Parker’s very favorite food, as long as there were buns to go with them—Parker would not eat a hamburger on plain bread. Marilee was fairly certain she had buns in the freezer, and she wanted him to talk with her about the children. She wanted him to understand. She wanted him to share.
He did not fall into the plan with enthusiasm, but he did fall in and follow her into the kitchen, where he went straight to the refrigerator and pulled himself out a canned cold drink, while she peered out the back door to check on the children, who were playing in the dirt at the corner of their newly turned garden. At least Willie Lee was digging in the dirt for some reason, with Munro lying in it and watching. Corrine was sitting nearby in a yard chair; Corrine was a neat person who seemed to avoid dirt.
Seeing the children thus apparently contentedly occupied, and finding hamburger buns in the freezer, Marilee’s spirits revived somewhat, and she had hope that she could set everything right with Parker by serving up both a good meal and the correct, upbeat attitude.
She set about winning him over as she went about preparing supper. She told him of her plans for the summer with the children. She hoped to better prepare them for school in the fall, and to enable herself to take a more forward part of their education, even when they went back to school. She felt she had been expecting too much from the school, a place made for the masses, to deal with the special particulars of her children’s needs. It was her responsibility as a parent to see to those particular needs.
Parker, who had settled himself at the table with his cold drink, waiting for his supper to be served, replied to her remarks with “Hmms” and “Yes, I guess you can do that,” all basically cautionary in nature, and all much less than satisfying.
Finally Marilee said, “Parker, I really would appreciate some support here.”
To which he replied with raised eyebrows, “I’m listening.”
“But you do not seem to be putting forth helpful ideas,” Marilee said. “I do want your ideas, Parker.”
“I don’t think you want my ideas. You already have your mind set.”
She gazed at him, telling herself not to overreact. One thing that she felt always got her into a lot of trouble was her habit of getting so emotional. Both Stuart and Parker had often accused her of this, and she determined at that minute not to give Parker ammunition.
“One thing you need to think about,” Parker said, “is what Anita might think of you takin’ her daughter out of school.”
“Anita wasn’t seeing that Corrine got to school half the time,” Marilee answered, stung to the core. “And I don’t see that she is here, making any of the decisions.”
“Anita is still her mother. You’re makin’ all these plans for a child that isn’t yours. You’re gettin’ way too involved, Marilee. You are referring to Corrine as your child. What if Anita shows up tonight at the door and wants to take her daughter with her? What are you goin’ to do then?”
“I don’t know,” Marilee said. “I’m just tryin’ to deal with ‘right now’ the best I can. I won’t worry about ‘then’ until it happens.”
Now that he had brought the concern to the front of her mind, she experienced fear of exactly that happening. This made her angrier at him for making her more fearful.
“And I don’t know what you expect me to do. Should I just drop Corrine? Not look after her to the best of my ability? Well, who is goin’ to do it, then?”
Clamping her mouth shut, she turned to the stove to remove the hamburgers from the hot pan before they burned. She herself was burning pretty good and didn’t want to say something she would regret.
Parker didn’t say anything more about it, and Marilee found this good thinking on his part.
The atmosphere at the supper table proved strained, despite all Marilee’s good intentions for happiness. She and Parker were patently polite to each other in front of the children. Corrine’s dark eyes moved from Marilee to Parker in a furtive fashion, and seeing this, Marilee brought up the subject of their gardening and the fun they had enjoyed. She managed to get Corrine to smile.
It had been a good idea, Marilee realized. The children had rosy faces. They had been outside, where they needed to be in the spring, and she had the sudden inspiration that tomorrow she would keep them outside most of the day. There were a lot of things she could teach them outside. So many things that must be experienced and could not be found in books. Being stuck at desks in school had no doubt been a major problem for them. They were souls who at this time needed to be out in the sun. And she could give them that.
The thought so pleased her that in a flush of warmth for everyone, she looked at Parker and smiled. He saw and smiled in return.
Marilee and Parker were alone in the lamplight in the living room. After supper Willie Lee had, with the innocence of an untroubled mind, simply lain down on the kitchen rug beside Munro, closed his eyes and gone instantly to sleep. Marilee had put him to bed in his underwear and simply wiped his hands with a damp rag; he had not awakened. Corrine was in the bath.
Parker wanted to make out.
“Corrine will be coming out of the bathroom any minute,” Marilee said, pushing away from him after a particularly stimulating kiss that in truth she was reluctant to end. But the idea that Corrine might see them in a sexual encounter, even one with all their clothes on, was unnerving.
“We’ll hear the door,” Parker said, trying to pull her back against him. He had a very insistent manner this evening that aroused in Marilee both desire and irritation.
“Parker…I am not going to make love with you on this couch.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t want it,” he said in a sultry tone, moving his hand to her breasts.
She did not like his crude phrase, a dislike made even more annoying because, unfortunately, she wanted it very badly and even responded to his touch.
“Parker…I have the children to consider. Corrine could come in here at any moment.”
His pushing the matter made her resolve return, and she was able to extricate herself from his embrace.
Parker gave a sigh of clear irritation. He had been sighing a lot that evening.
“What are you tryin’ to show Corrine?” Parker wanted to know. “Don’t you think you should be more honest? We are goin’ together, Marilee. Most adults goin’ together do have a sexual relationship. Corrine should be aware of this.”
“She is eleven years old and aware of the facts of life, and I have little doubt that she’s seen way more than she needs to see. Heaven only knows what she has seen with Anita.” In Marilee’s view, her sister changed men about like she changed underpants.
“She doesn’t need to deal with any further information about sex right now,” Marilee said. “And I’m not ready to deal with it with them.” This was closer to the truth than was comfortable.
Deep inside Marilee, where even she could not clearly see, was a child who longed still for the loving, nurturing mother she had not experienced. Could she have articulated her vision of a mother, she would have ended up describing Snow White. A way to get this fantasy mother was to be such a mother to these children given into her care, and that left little room for any type of sexuality.
“How long do you expect me to go on like this, Marilee?”
Marilee gazed at him. “I have never believed that a man and a woman could not control themselves until both of them were emotionally ready to handle the complications of sex.”
“It isn’t only that. When was the last time we had time for just us—you and me?”
Marilee could not answer him. She averted her gaze.
“M
arilee, I want some time with you. Is that some sort of crime? I like the kids fine, but there is a time and place for grown-ups…that’s us. You and me.”
“I have the children. That isn’t going to change.” She thought Parker tended to remain on the childish side, too.
He sighed again, with clear irritation. “If you would marry me, we wouldn’t have so many complications. We could sleep together, and you wouldn’t be havin’ to work at night but could be spendin’ that time with me, and you could be free to do whatever it is you want to with the kids during the day.”
A number of things went through her mind, the last being how he said do whatever it is you want with the kids, as if her daily endeavors in raising children were flights of fancy.
“Are you serious about marriage, Parker?”
Parker, never one for any confrontational question, regarded her carefully before saying, “I guess I’m the one who has brought it up, more than once.”
That did not quite seem an answer to her.
“Yes, you are,” she said. “And I suppose I’ve thought you were speaking in the passion of the moment. And marriage isn’t like that. Passion fades, Parker, but everything else remains…the dirty laundry, the headaches and backaches, and the children.”
She paused, giving him time to say something to that. He did not.
“I’m a woman with a handicapped son who will always need my greatest attention and a niece who will always have a part of my life. Marrying me means that suddenly you will have a wife and two children.”
He nodded slowly. “I guess my life has included that for the past two years now, and I’m still here.”
He guessed a lot.
“Yes, but there is a world of difference when you cannot simply walk out that door.”
He blinked at that.
The rest of her doubts got all blocked up inside of her. She would have preferred some response on his part to her last statement, but he remained silent and did not jump in there with passionate proclamations of readiness right that minute to take on her and her children. This did not surprise Marilee. And she could give him credit for using his head and not thinking with his needs.
Cold Tea on a Hot Day Page 8
