by Pamela Morsi
“No, no of course,” he whispered. “Two grown-up people like us. There would never be any silly romance stuff going on.”
Calla’s heart was beating so loudly she worried that he could hear it. Breathlessness was not a feeling to which she was accustomed.
Get a hold of yourself! she silently admonished. She wanted to move away from him. She could have easily freed her hand, but somehow she didn’t want to relinquish the warmth, the connection that he offered.
“I don’t… I don’t have flings or…or affairs or whatever you call it,” she told him.
Landry lowered his chin slightly. “I’m not sure I have a word for what I want to have with you. Whatever it is, it’s kind of a new thing for me.” He rose to his feet and took a step closer to her.
Calla stiffened her back.
“I don’t want to scare you,” he said. “I just want to kiss you.”
She didn’t know what she thought about that. Her brain seemed sluggish as her senses tightened into electric expectation.
Landry laid his palm across her jaw and raised her face toward him. His movements were slow, deliberate, as if he were drawing out the anticipation. Finally, she could no longer wait and she met his lips with her own.
He tasted like chocolate and Calla couldn’t get enough. She trembled in his arms. Landry wrapped her tightly in his embrace. She felt so safe, so cared for, so desired.
When their lips parted, he continued to hold her close. Calla buried her face into his neck and shoulder, taking in the wonderful masculine scent of him. Oh how she had missed this! She could no longer believe that she’d been willing to forego this, willing to say these feelings were only something from the past.
Landry stepped back and seated himself once more on the stool facing her. His expression was smoky with desire.
“Do you think I could get away with seducing you on Canasta Street in the middle of a Monday afternoon?”
“Uh…maybe,” she answered.
He laughed. “I take that as a challenge.”
Chapter Five
Calla was genuinely surprised how easy her venture into school volunteering turned out to be. The book group was scheduled for Thursday mornings, which just happened to be Dr. Walker’s weekly match at the handball court. The office staff used that time to clear up paperwork and the doctor was completely fine with Calla staying a half hour later each afternoon to make up her share.
Jazleen was as good as her word. Monday morning, she made her way to Cavitz Alternative High School and filled out the paperwork to officially become a student again. Calla didn’t see any magical change in the girl. And when she asked, “How was school?” Jazleen’s responses always centered around whether or not she’d seen Landry that day, which was apparently what she thought Calla wanted to know.
On the first day of the book club, Calla found herself almost as leery of going to school as Jazleen had been. The building did not have a gathering place for students, a statue of a long-dead community hero or a motto in Latin over the doorway.
Cavitz Alternative was located in a corner building in the shadow of a busy expressway. It had once housed a dry goods emporium, the name of which was still visible in the tile of the lobby. Calla was loaded down with what she hoped were the perfect accoutrements for a book club. She must have looked as out of place as she felt because a young woman stopped to help her.
“I need to find the book group.”
The woman nodded enthusiastically. “Second floor, study hall,” she told Calla, pointing toward the wide stairway in the back.
Struggling with all she had to carry, Calla wandered around until she found the elevator. She took it up one flight and then, after asking more directions, found herself in front of a door with a sheet of white paper identifying the location.
She tapped politely a couple of times before turning the knob. The room was empty. Calla set her bags on a nearby table and surveyed it slowly. Dingy, aged glass block provided light from the upper half of the two outside walls. There was an old but comfy-looking couch in one corner and a couple of mismatched armchairs. The center of the room was dominated by a functional-looking library table surrounded by chairs.
Calla immediately set to work. She dragged the table to the wall and rearranged the chairs to form a conversation circle around the couch. What the space needed was a coffee table, but of course there was nothing like that. She allowed disappointment to spark innovation and borrowed the metal wastepaper basket by the door. Hanging on the wall above it was a small bulletin board that held only two notes. One was a schedule for the room’s use, the other an admonition with exclamation points about cleaning up your own mess. Calla decided the room could do without both for a couple of hours. She set the bulletin board facedown across the top of the wastepaper basket to create an instant coffee table. From her bag she got out a table runner. It was too long, but it covered the width of the board perfectly. She folded it so that it hung down a few inches from the floor on either side. Calla liked the look. It was welcoming and cozy. She added a couple of candles for a centerpiece.
Her Sunday best tablecloth covered the big table next to the wall. She’d brought her nicest things. Most of them never got out of the cabinet except on Christmas. The Fosteria glass pitcher that had been her mother’s was soon filled with raspberry tea. The tray Mark had bought for her on a trip to Washington displayed the fancy finger sandwiches she’d made. There was a plate of apples that she’d carefully cut into leaf patterns and brushed with lemon juice. And for something sweet, she’d made a pineapple upside-down cake with red maraschino cherries in the centers of the rings.
She’d just finished laying out the forks and napkins when the door opened. A stylish young woman, short and round and wearing black jeans and a bright pink sweater, came through the door. She pulled a rolling bag that looked more like an oversized briefcase than a piece of luggage.
“Hi, I’m Lyssa,” she said. “I’m the group leader from Literature for All of Us.”
The two shook hands. “Calla Middleton, volunteer,” she said, by way of introduction.
“This looks lovely,” Lyssa said.
Calla smiled, pleased. “Well, Landry…uh, Mr. Sinclair said that you wanted it to be like a ladies’ book club. So, it seems you’ve got to have fancy food and nice tablecloths.”
“You’ve outdone yourself,” Lyssa said. “We usually just have juice and chips. I hope we can count on you coming every week.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Typically the volunteers make themselves scarce during the meeting,” Lyssa said.
Calla nodded. “I think that would be best. My son’s girlfriend is in this group and I’m sure she’ll settle in better without thinking I’m looking over her shoulder. I’ll find someplace to bide my time and then I’ll come back to clean up.”
Perhaps five minute later the girls began arriving and Calla made her exit. She passed Jazleen in the hallway. The girl sidled over to her and spoke in a furtive whisper.
“I just saw him go into the teachers’ lounge around the corner and all the way to the end of the hall.” The girl added a thumbs-up sign for emphasis.
Calla could only shake her head. But she did follow those directions. As she approached the door, it opened and Landry walked out. If he was surprised to see her, he gave no indication, just a wide grin of pleasure at having run into her.
“Have I discovered the truth about you, Mr. Landry?” she asked. “Are you one of those principals that hang out in the teachers’ lounge?”
“Not really. And none of my teachers get much lounging time.”
“But you’re here now.”
“Looking for you,” he admitted. “I thought you might be hanging out here while the book group is in session.”
“Actually Jazleen sent me in this direction,” Calla told him. “She saw you headed this way.”
Landry grinned. “I like that girl more and more,” he said, chuckling. “I wanted to give you
a tour of our school.”
“Great.”
“The teachers’ lounge here is about what you’d expect,” he said, opening the door wide enough to peek in. “A coffeepot and a refrigerator. Not the complete comforts of home, but it works. And you are welcome to hang out here anytime.”
“Thanks.”
They began walking down the hallway. He kept his voice low so they wouldn’t disturb any classes in session.
“We have eighty-six students currently enrolled,” he said. “Ten teachers, six full-time and four part-time. We’ve got a staff of three, a few volunteers and a dozen trained mentors that are here on a regular basis.”
“That seems like a lot of people for so few students.”
“It’s a ten-to-one ratio, which is much better than a typical school,” Landry said. “But many of our students have been in our educational system for years without spending ten minutes with a teacher, so I figure it all evens out.”
He showed her an empty classroom that had only a half-dozen desks.
“We do both day and night classes,” he said. “We try to accommodate varied schedules, so all the classes are small.”
Calla nodded.
“On the first floor we have our Family First program,” he said. “Right now we’re just providing child care for our students when they’re in class. We’re hoping to start up some regular parenting classes not only for our students and alumni, but for all the young parents in the neighborhood.”
“Wow,” Calla said.
“Our students face a lot of obstacles to education,” Landry said. “We try to figure out what they are and deal with them as effectively as we can.”
The tour included a tiny but up-to-date computer lab, the half-dozen shelves that made up the school’s lending library, and a former loading dock that had been turned into an experimental theater.
“Our students are from a media generation. They write the plays, perform the plays, provide the music and even capture it all on film.”
Calla couldn’t help but be impressed. “Jazleen is going to love it here,” she said. “I’m beginning to think this is where Nathan should have gone.”
Landry shook his head. “Nathan is a lucky guy. He’s smart, motivated and he had parents that had an eye to the future. He was going to flourish no matter what the educational element. Our students need a little more help to get them on to a more level playing field.”
In the stairwell, Landry took her hand. “Are you saving your Saturday night for me?”
She nodded.
“Good, can I have Friday night and all of Sunday, too?”
“You’re going to get very tired of me,” she warned.
He shook his head. “I can’t help myself. You’re like hard liquor, completely intoxicating and very addictive.”
By the time he took his leave they were back on the second floor in front of the study hall. The ninety-minute book club meeting was ending. Calla waited for the first few girls to leave before she made her way inside.
She spotted Jazleen immediately. A large girl, heavily pregnant, was talking to her. Jazleen’s face was completely blank, revealing nothing. When Jazleen caught sight of Calla, she immediately made an excuse to get away.
“So how was it?”
“I think that’s the question I’m supposed to ask you,” Calla said.
Jazleen shrugged.
It was a noncommittal gesture, but it wasn’t negative. Calla took that as a good start.
“The real reason I’m here is to score you points with the principal.”
Calla smiled. “Well, you’re doing a great job. I just spent the whole time you were in the book group touring the school.”
Jazleen raised an eyebrow.
“Did he show you the Lust Bin?”
“The Lust Bin?”
Jazleen laughed, her face lighting up as if from the inside. “It’s really the janitor’s closet, but sometimes couples sneak in there to steal some snug time.”
Calla tutted and shook her head. “No, I missed the Lust Bin. I’ll have to ask him about it next time.”
“Don’t have him tell you about it,” she teased. “You’ve got to have him take you there.”
The next few weeks passed almost like a checklist. Nathan’s college paperwork in the mail. Check. Halloween candy. Check. Buy a turkey for Thanksgiving. Check. And every Thursday, Calla made her way to the book group. Coming up with interesting snacks to serve and decorating the table was quickly becoming an important and cherished part of her week. She had begun to know the girls now, and as they loosened up with each other, they also did with Calla. They didn’t always express their appreciation directly, but she felt it and she liked it.
Missing the week’s meeting for Thanksgiving was a bit of a letdown, but it spurred Calla to action. Since Mark’s death, she and Nathan had shared the holidays alone. Their celebrations were quiet and at times bittersweet. A husband and father was most missed on family occasions, and becoming accustomed to not having him there did not make the loss any easier to bear.
“Jazleen, I want to invite you and your aunt for Thanksgiving dinner,” Calla announced the weekend before the holiday.
The kids were on the couch. Jazleen was sitting up and Nathan had his head in her lap. Both were reading. Calla saw Jazleen’s book was Beloved by Toni Morrison—the group’s chosen title for the next meeting. They looked up at her comment.
“That’s a great idea!” Nathan said.
Jazleen seemed hesitant. “I don’t know if my aunt will come.”
“Tell her I bake the best pumpkin pie she’s ever tasted,” Calla said. “And that I’m inviting Mrs. Gamble and Eunice.”
Nathan frowned. “Do you think they’ll come?”
“I know they will,” Calla answered. “Landry Sinclair is going to be here.”
Calla was right, of course. She never doubted for a minute that a gossip like Eunice wouldn’t jump at the chance to spend time breaking bread with her current favorite subjects.
With Nathan’s help, she moved some of the living room furniture upstairs and pushed the heavier pieces against the walls, then brought in the dining table, extending it as far as it would go. The linens, now staples of book group days, were already ironed, and Calla brought down her good dishes from the top cabinet over the sink.
In fact she was standing on a chair retrieving them when Jazleen showed up in the kitchen.
“You’re going to kill yourself!” the girl predicted.
“Let me hand these down to you,” Calla suggested.
Together they made quick work of the task. When all the plates and cups and saucers were safely on the counter, Jazleen spoke.
“I came to ask you a favor. No, I guess I came to collect on a favor. You owe me, remember.”
Calla did remember. Jazleen’s tone was so sharp and defensive, it was obvious that the girl was not at all accustomed to making requests
“Okay,” Calla said, hoping fervently that she wasn’t going to ask the impossible. The only way Jazleen would ever learn to ask for help was if she could anticipate that it would be provided.
“You know Darlada,” she said.
Calla nodded. The heavyset, heavily pregnant young woman was one of the book group members.
“She’s got nowhere to go on Thanksgiving, so I wanted to invite her here,” Jazleen said. “Now, you got to know up front that she eats a lot. I can bring a dish of something, but you’re still going to have to cook more than you thought.”
“Of course she can come,” Calla said, thrilled not only that it was such an easy request, but that Jazleen was the person to think of it. “We should have asked the entire book club.”
“Everybody has a plan except Darlada,” Jazleen said. “She’s got…she’s got nobody really, and I don’t like the idea of her spending another holiday alone. She wrote a poem about eating potato chips last Christmas. That ought to be just a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
Calla agreed.
“Jazleen, you tell her that I’m delighted and excited to have her here to share our holiday,” Calla said. “And she can eat as much as she wants. There is always way too much food.”
The young woman seemed surprised at that last statement and Calla wondered how many holiday dinners she had been to.
Calla did recruit Jazleen to help her with the cooking. The girl was handy in the kitchen, but she had no experience with fancy cakes or pies and she knew nothing about basting a turkey. The two spent most of the day working together in the kitchen, Nathan coming in from time to time to check on their progress and sneak nibbles. It became a game between him and Jazleen. He would let her catch him at it and she would feign fury and chase him out of the room.
By the time the guests began to show up, everyone was in high spirits. Gerty Cleveland had dressed more attractively than Calla had seen her in twenty years.
“I can’t let Eunice and Mrs. Gamble show me up,” she explained.
There might have been some danger of that. Each woman had on her very best Sunday outfit. Eunice pretended that this was nothing out of the ordinary, but Mrs. Gamble was not so discreet.
“I’m so excited to have on this dress,” she said. “I was beginning to think the next chance I’d get to wear it I’d be lying in my casket.”
Nathan answered the door for Darlada and the girl hesitated on the porch. She had changed her mind and was making excuses why she couldn’t stay, when Jazleen went out and dragged her in.
“I’m not in the right clothes,” she whispered worriedly to Calla. “But I’ve got so big, I can’t fit into anything else.”
In jeans and a sweatshirt the size of a pup tent, she was under-dressed for the occasion, but Calla didn’t care.
“When we’re pregnant we always think we look worse than we do,” she told the girl. “Once you get your figure back, everything will fit beautifully.”
