Karl seized on the possible change of subject. Anything to stop the scratch of the needle on whatever album of broken relationships they were playing. “What was your childhood like?”
“Besides moving in the middle of the night because my dad was caught up in another failed scheme?” She gave the bassinet a little push, but it didn’t rock.
“You never imagine your parents excitedly looking at baby stuff?” Not that Karl could imagine his father ever stepping into a giant, baby-stuff-filled store like this one, but his father had enjoyed his children. He’d been strict with the boys and a little afraid to break the girls, but Karl had never doubted that his father had wanted them. Catholic prohibitions on birth control hadn’t been the reason his parents had had four children.
Vivian bent to look at the tag on the bassinet. It was on the tip of Karl’s tongue to tell her to stop looking at the price—that he could afford whatever she wanted for their baby—but he stopped himself. He wanted to know the circumstances that had made her who she was, and being frustrated with her for being frugal—clearly a result of her childhood—wouldn’t help.
“Maybe buying a bassinet first and a crib later is a waste of money,” she murmured. “But we have some time to think about it.”
When he caught up to her, she was ready to respond. “My parents got married because my mom was pregnant.” She smiled wryly. “I mean, at least we got married on the same night I got pregnant. The marriage even came first, really.”
This bassinet rocked when she pushed it. They watched it in silence until it came to a stop. Karl took Vivian’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
“My mom lost everything because of her pregnancy. No one actually said those words to me, but my aunt Kitty used to remind my dad of that when they fought, and I often overheard.” This time, she was the one to give his hand a squeeze. He squeezed back, to support them both. “My mom’s parents hated my dad, and they eventually disowned her. She dropped out of college. She died in childbirth. When I got older, I wondered if my aunt Kitty tried so hard to get custody of me because she felt guilty for her family abandoning my mom. I don’t know and I’m afraid to ask.”
Karl stepped closer to her so that he could wrap his arm around her, a full understanding of her childhood finally beginning to form in his mind.
“Even though I was an accident who forced him into marriage and then killed the woman he loved, my father never let me believe I wasn’t loved.” She tucked her head against him and he pressed a kiss against her hair. “I’m not pretending he was a great father. He’s a liar and a cheat who could never figure out how to make sure there was food in the house for his kid. But he always had time to listen to my stories from school. He would take me to the library and the park. And when he told me I could be anything I wanted to be, I believed him. My dad’s greed is just the negative side to his vision for a better future. He always believed in me.”
Vivian shifted a bit, as if to pull away from him, but Karl kept his arm tight around her. He wanted her against him as he processed what she said. Their respective fathers had each fought for their belief in their children, only they each seemed to be fighting for a different team. His dad also believed in his children and in a better future. Only Pawel had taught him to believe in justice and fairness. That there is a right answer, even if it is the hard answer, and that usually right and easy are on opposite sides.
Karl opened his mouth to say the words Vivian wanted to hear. Not just “I love you,” but also that he didn’t judge her past decisions. That he understood them and, more importantly, he didn’t care anymore. That he wanted her more than his sense of self-righteousness.
But his memory of his father grounding him for an illegal hit during a hockey game was as fresh in his mind as if it had happened yesterday. The ref hadn’t seen the hit, but his father had. Not only had Karl been grounded for a month, he’d had to call the opposing player and offer an apology. “Just because the ref didn’t see you, doesn’t mean you can get away with cheating,” his father had said before Karl had taken a deep breath, dialed the number and prepared to ask forgiveness, all the while knowing any absolution would have to wait until the next time he went to confession.
So the words never came out. He put down the shopping basket he was carrying and turned so that he faced Vivian, putting his cold hands against her warm face. The fire of her lips melted his as soon as he touched his mouth to hers. Her lips were soft and, when she opened her mouth to welcome him, moist. He could feel the puffs of her exhaled breath on his cheek.
If only he could say the words, then he could have a kiss like this every night of his life. And every morning. And before he left for work and when he came home from work. And just because his wife was amazing. Her tongue slipped into his mouth before he could pull back and say anything. If he was going to pull back and say anything. His track record so far wasn’t very good.
Vivian slid her hands down his back and grabbed the waistband of his pants. Karl stopped thinking and just let himself feel.
Vivian was the one who finally broke the kiss. Her lips were shining from a mixture of their kiss and her lipstick, and her eyes were bright.
“I’m sorry,” Karl said. Not for the kiss—he could never be sorry for the kiss—but for his inability to say the words she wanted to hear.
Vivian closed her eyes for several seconds. When she opened them, their brightness had been replaced by pity. She nodded, patted his cheek with her hand and walked off. Karl was left standing in the middle of a field of baby furniture alone.
He caught up to her in the forest of baby toys.
When people accused Karl of having a stick up his ass, he was never shocked. He just preferred the term straitlaced. Like he also preferred righteous anger instead of judgmental fucker. An administrator for the Illinois Department of Human Resources had called him that last name once. Karl hadn’t particularly cared for the sexual affair that the administrator had been having with a key figure in the state’s Department of Human Resources office, but the high-pay, low-work jobs that her family got without ever seeming to have to interview had been a concern. The administrator had been arrested the day after giving Karl his epitaph.
The problem was not that Karl didn’t know who he was; it was that he didn’t think he could be flexible without breaking. Even for Vivian, who was shaking a rattle with a wide, bright smile on her face.
But he was willing to try. “What are you doing on the twenty-ninth?” he asked her.
“Probably working. Why?” Before she could shake the rattle again, Karl took it from her and put it in the shopping basket he was carrying. “Why’d you do that?” she asked.
“Even if our baby has no interest in the rattle, you seem to like it.”
Vivian raised one eyebrow at him. Maybe the people who called him overbearing were right. He pulled the rattle out of his basket and handed it back to her. She gave it one loud shake, which reverberated through the store, then handed it back to him. “Why do you ask about the twenty-ninth?”
“It’s Phil Biadała’s wedding. I’d like a date.”
Vivian put down the set of colored rings she was holding and assessed him. He didn’t squirm—he never squirmed—but he did relax his stance. Just a little.
“Okay. Let me clear it with your mom first, but okay.” She picked up another rattle, giving it several shakes.
He smiled. “My mom will say yes.”
“She’s still under the impression we will kiss and make up.” She put down the second rattle and picked up another. If she was trying to make each rattle more annoying than the first, she was succeeding.
“Is a perfect nuclear family no longer the goal?”
Karl had a feeling she was now shaking the rattle because she didn’t know what else to do. He’d made her nervous, which hadn’t been his objective. But he was pushing himself, and t
here was no reason she couldn’t be pushed along with him.
Finally, she set the rattle down and lifted her face to his. Her expression was perfectly smooth, with no wrinkles to reveal how she was feeling. Only her eyes betrayed her nervousness. “It’s still the goal. But I’ve not changed my mind about what I deserve.”
As much as it hurt to admit it, Malcolm was right. “You do deserve it.” He picked the rattle off the shelf and handed it to her. Then he picked another off the shelf and handed that one to her, as well. “And I’m trying.”
* * *
AS HE HAD been for the past several nights, Karl was the last customer to leave Healthy Food. It didn’t seem quite right to call him a customer, but he never stayed to help clean up, so he wasn’t an employee. He offered to help, but Susan always shooed him out the door with a reminder about his real job and its importance to the city. Despite his protests, he always looked relieved when he walked out the door as the mops came out. Relieved and tired.
Vivian didn’t blame him for either. Cleaning up a buffet restaurant was a nightmare—people managed to get food in the strangest places when it was their responsibility to carry it to their tables. Plus, Karl had a job. One that was important to him. More important to him than she was.
Not that she could blame him for that, either. She could be angry with him—often was angry with him—but she’d been around the Mileks long enough to know that Karl had idolized his father. She’d also learned that Papa Milek had been more willing to say “I love you” than “good job,” and all the Milek children were expected to hold to his high standards of being a good citizen. Susan spoke with such praise about how Karl had stepped into the role of man of the house after the car accident. Up until he’d married his ex-wife, Karl had tried to play father to his sisters, even when his pep talks and advice had fallen on deaf ears.
His struggle with his expectations of himself and the imagined expectations of his father had looked physically painful, especially when surrounded by baby furniture that was all supposed to be about joy. She could feel sorry for him, and even have to restrain herself from smacking him, but she couldn’t blame him.
She moistened her finger on the little sponge next to the register and began to count the money in the till—something else to do so she didn’t think about Karl and his inner-little-boy struggles with his grown-up self. The register made satisfying crunching noises as the Z-tape printed out. Her brain must make similar noises when she thought about her situation and how easy it would be to pack her bags and move into Karl’s apartment to play family. He cared for her; Vivian didn’t doubt that. He would be faithful and honest. Frustrations or not, they were friends. It would be so easy to believe that was enough.
When he kissed her, she believed it was enough.
She looked down at the money in her hand and sighed. She’d lost count. It would have to be recounted—this time with actual attention paid to it. The longer she spent counting the money, the further away her bed got. She restacked the bills and started over. Then began the long process of checking credit card receipts against the record in the till. And checks from the few old Poles whom Susan still allowed to pay with a check.
Healthy Food was full of traditions—things that were “just the way they were when Pawel’s mother was still alive,” to quote the old-timers. Grandfathering in people who could pay with a check—a privilege that was not passed down to children—was cute and homey. An ancient cash register that had to be repaired every two weeks and an old dial-up credit card machine were not. Vivian would love one of those fancy systems with the credit card slot attached to the monitor. Then there would be only one receipt for the customer to take and one receipt for her to count.
Vivian had suggested the idea to Susan once. Her mother-in-law’s response had been a halfhearted “I’ll think about it” followed by “people love to chat while we ring them up. Would a faster system make them think they had to hurry along?” And that was the rub of having a restaurant passed down from Milek to Milek. Modernizing anything was too easily seen as an affront to tradition. Some people still complained about the new, clear sneeze guards over the food, even though it was incomprehensible to Vivian that people could prefer the green light the old sneeze guards had cast on their mashed potatoes.
Being in Susan’s position when the waitress uniforms finally disintegrated into rags would be terrifying. But also an awesome challenge.
The first week or so Vivian had worked the register at Healthy Food, someone had counted the register a second time. Not out of suspicion, but to make sure she’d done it right. It hadn’t taken long for Edward and Susan to realize that Vivian was never wrong in her count. She hadn’t counted money in her years of dealing, but she’d counted almost everything else. Now Vivian prepared the deposit with no one looking over her shoulder, a new feeling of trust after years under the 360-degree cameras. Fate had an ironic sense of humor.
Her chores for the night done, Vivian set the register so it would be ready for the morning, packed the deposit away in the safe and helped out until Susan was ready to go home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
KARL SAT AT one of the big round tables with the one old man too feeble and the two teenagers too cool to dance at the wedding reception. He was neither, but—he looked out over the conga line snaking around the dance floor—the abandonment everyone else seemed comfortable with just wasn’t his thing. He could walk around the room, talk with people and otherwise be social—but no dancing. The thought of a conga line made him shudder in horror.
Vivian’s exuberance made it difficult for her to hang on to the person in front of her, but she laughed every time her hands slipped off Chuck Biadała’s shirt and he turned back to admonish her for not keeping up. She’d not known a single person from the neighborhood the first time she’d sat at Healthy Food’s register and started ringing up customers. She’d been a stranger—an outsider—and not just because she wasn’t Polish. She wasn’t from Chicago, she hadn’t gone to Mass or Catholic school with these people and she was suspicious of sweet cheese pierogies, but her smiles and kindness had integrated her with the neighborhood. Now, when he walked around Archer Heights with his wife, she seemed to know more people than he did.
She exaggerated the kick of her legs out to the sides, whooping as she did so. Her face glistened with sweat, making her skin glow and her eyes shine. Sometimes it was hard to believe this exuberant person was the same woman who’d quietly played solitaire in his apartment and knit him a cap. He knew better than anyone the difference between public and private faces. But what amazed him about his wife was how her public face invited people in.
Karl knew how to smile and shake hands. He could ask questions and get people to talk with him, but he also knew that—even at his most friendly—he intimidated people. He was a serious person and people took him seriously. Until now, he’d been content to raise his eyebrow and have people tell him their problems out of fear. Fear, intimidation or friendliness—he didn’t really care why they told him about city problems, just so long as they told him. He had a responsibility to the city and he couldn’t fulfill his duty without the help of the citizenry.
However, watching Vivian, he wished people would tell him out of love. Because people loved her. His neighborhood adored her. His family treasured her. Everyone she met warmed to her immediately. When she’d been cooped up in his apartment, terrified he’d learn about her past and kick her out into the street, he’d been completely unaware of how welcoming a person she was. Wasn’t that how the saying went? He couldn’t see the forest for the trees? Karl had been so close to Vivian that he’d only been able to see her fear. Now, with a little distance, he could see her courage, too.
She tripped over her feet, stumbled into Mr. Biadała and laughed. When Mr. Biadała turned back with concern on his face, she waved him off.
What a terrible shame it wo
uld have been if he’d won the argument over her working at Healthy Food or living with his mom. If his suspicions of her had triumphed, he would never have gotten to know this lively, laughing woman. Knowing this vivacious side of her made the quiet, contemplative side more special. That was the side she saved for him, just as he saved his macabre sense of humor for her.
The song ended. Vivian had one hand on the slight bulge of her stomach and was resting the other on Mr. Biadała’s shoulder. She looked happy and was smiling but the skin around her eyes was tight and... My mother died in childbirth. His heart stopped at the memory of those words. The doctors said everything was fine, there were no complications, but what if they were missing something?
When he stood up the chair scraped against the floor and would’ve toppled if he’d not grabbed on to it. He didn’t bother to tuck it under the table. Worries over Vivian trumped manners.
By the time he’d stumbled past other wedding guests and up to Vivian, her hand was off her stomach and resting at her side again.
“Are you okay?” he asked. She was more than just the mother of his child—she was a part of his life, and he didn’t want anything to happen to her.
“Hmm?” Her voice was dreamy as she smiled up at him, her skin electric with joy. He cushioned her face in his hand and rubbed his thumb over her cheek, which was puffy and still lovely. “Hmm...” she murmured, as she rested the weight of her head in his palm. He relaxed with her, able to support and help her for the first time in what felt like months. Since she’d moved in with his mother and started working, he felt as if she didn’t need him anymore. Being needed by his wife, if only as a headrest, felt nice.
Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She GoesA Promise for the BabyThat Summer at the Shore Page 49
