by Gayle Roper
Then she ran into him! He still remembered the shock of the ice cold Coke washing over him. He shivered all over again. He just hoped that Coke washed out of clothes without staining. After all those years in orange jumpsuits, he didn’t have that many nice clothes.
He waited in the dark, and it wasn’t long until the apartment door opened and the “friend” came out. Going home already? Then she would keep the brother guy. Now that was interesting. But no. The door opened a little bit after the friend drove away, and Clay came out and went to the main house. Soon the apartment lights went out.
He frowned. What was with all these people? If the old man was out of town or off on a binge and Ma brought someone home, he stayed. If Ma was gone, the old man brought bodacious babes home and they stayed. The guys in the can always bragged about their women. It was the way life was.
But these people were different. A thought hit him. He bet anything they were in some weird religious cult, like them nuns in their black dresses, and no sex was part of the deal.
He muttered to himself as he shuffled off down the beach to the house with all the windows. Some people he just couldn’t understand. He’d go look in on those he did.
Sixteen
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Julia glanced out the tall living room windows. It was a bitter day outside, the sky pewter, the sea topped with frothing whitecaps, the wind chilly and insistent. It was a day for collars to be turned up and hands to be stuffed in pockets, a day when winter reminded everyone that it may be stepping aside for a while, but it, like General MacArthur, would return, and they’d better not forget that fact.
She turned and looked around the green-and-crimson living room with its accents of palest yellow and cream. Inside all was cozy and warm with everyone she loved here. Her heart swelled. Thank You, dear Lord, for these occasional perfect moments. They make the others, the painful ones that come with living, bearable.
Leigh and Billy sat on the sofa looking at a scrap-book of pictures taken when the twins were little. Every so often Billy’s chortle would ring out as he pointed in disbelief at a photo.
“I hate to say this, Uncle Ted, but you guys were such dorks.”
Ted, looking wan and weary after expending so much energy eating dinner with them, managed to appear offended. “What do you mean, dorks?”
Billy jumped up and assumed an en garde position, feet apart, one arm raised like it was holding a rapier.
“Ah,” Ted said, nodding. “For your information, everyone in our class wanted our Star Wars light swords.”
“Sure. And you’ve got some oceanfront property in Arizona.”
“Clay,” Ted called. “Tell him.”
Clay was standing by the bank of windows looking onto the dunes, talking with Pastor Paul Trevelyan who had come home with them after church for dinner. They were discussing the Phillies’ chances for a decent season without any apparent hope. Clay had been acting as Paul’s host for the afternoon, a role he had taken on himself without any encouragement from her. Truth be told, Paul came over so frequently, he didn’t need a host. He was very much at home here.
Still she appreciated Clay’s effort. He just didn’t know how familiar Paul was with all of them. He didn’t know that Paul had made Ted a special project, spending large amounts of time with him.
But it seemed to her that there was something strange about Clay’s attention to Paul. It was as if he was trying to keep Paul from talking to Leigh, though why he would do that was beyond her ken. Three times she had seen Clay deliberately step in Paul’s path when he had turned to say something to Leigh. Clay did it so pleasantly that Paul didn’t seem to notice. Neither did Leigh. The upshot was that Paul never had any conversation with Leigh.
“You say we were dorks?” Clay stepped to the sofa, glanced at the photo Billy was deriding, and grinned. He slashed the air a few times with his imaginary light sword, parrying and thrusting right into Billy’s stomach. Billy squeaked and fell back onto the sofa. “Can dorks defeat the vile Darth Vader?”
“We spent a lot of time keeping the universe safe for democracy,” Ted said.
“Yeah, right.” Billy looked at the picture again and shook his head. “You look dumb is all I can say.”
“Just wait until you get old, and we laugh at your pictures.” Ted lay in the leather recliner, feet raised to relieve his swollen ankles. Julia hated to see that retention of fluid, fearful of what it meant.
Her eyes skittered to David who had dragged a dining room chair beside Ted and was talking quietly with him when Billy wasn’t interrupting them with picture commentary.
David.
She took a deep breath as she looked at him. Last night they had gone to dinner and then bowling. She couldn’t remember the last time she had bowled, and it showed. He beat her soundly, and all she did when he told her the final score was 193 to 87 was giggle. She shook her head at the memory. She had actually giggled! She hadn’t giggled since she couldn’t remember when.
He felt her gaze and turned his head, giving her that slow warm smile of his.
She giggled.
His eyes lit at the sound, and she flushed. He held out a hand, and she walked to him. He took her hand in his, unself-conscious in front of the room full of people. She wished she could say the same. She could feel Clay’s frown cut through the amiability of the room like a laser through the darkness. Still, she left her hand in David’s warm grasp.
“That was a wonderful dinner, Julia.” David squeezed her hand. “And the apple-caramel pie was out of this world.”
She beamed with pleasure and swallowed back another giggle. Really, it was too much, the way this man made her feel like a teenager. She’d just begun wearing an estrogen patch this very week, for Pete’s sake! And the flush coming on at this minute had nothing to do with David’s proximity and everything to do with her age. She felt a drop of sweat at her hairline slide down her temple.
“Hey, Grandma Jule.”
Julia turned to Billy, ignoring Clay’s narrowed eyes as he studied the handclasp. She wanted to giggle again at his scandalized look. Poor boy.
“What’s up, Billy?”
“Bill,” he said. “My name’s Bill.”
“It is?” Julia made herself look surprised and confused. “You mean I’ve been calling you the wrong name all these years?”
Bill shook his head. “Clay says that Billy’s for little kids. I’m too old for it now.”
Julia looked at her son. “Clay says, eh?”
Leigh was also looking at Clay, Julia noted, and her look wasn’t too friendly.
“Yeah,” Bill said. “We had a guy talk last night about names and girls and not having dads. He said Bill was best.”
“A guy talk?” Ted looked amused.
“About girls?” David raised an eyebrow.
And not having dads, Julia thought, and felt her heart catch.
Everyone turned to Clay who looked a bit rosy in the cheeks. He looked at Leigh’s enigmatic expression and spread his hands. “Hey, Bill was just a suggestion.”
She snorted.
Julia stepped into the breach with the practice of a mother who’d ended many an argument between her sons by diplomatically changing the subject. “So what did you want me for, Bill?”
“Oh,” he said, called back to his original purpose. “I wanted to know if you have any more old pictures. These are so funny.”
“First we’re dorks, and now we’re funny,” Ted said. “That’s my childhood you’re laughing at, kiddo.”
Bill held up a school picture of Ted wearing a plaid flannel shirt. His hair hung below his ears and touched his shoulders. His bangs were in his eyes. It looked like someone had tried to comb it before the photo, but the effect was still that he had just rolled out of bed. “You look like some homeless kid who lives in his father’s car. Didn’t you ever go to a barber?”
“They didn’t. Nobody did.” Julia studied the picture, then grinned at Ted. “You do look like a little ragamuffin whos
e mother shopped in the rag bin.”
Ted put his hands out to the side. “See? What can a little kid do if his mother doesn’t take care of him?”
“I think you look sort of cute,” Leigh said, tongue firmly in cheek.
“That was when all the guys had long hair.” Julia turned to David. “Remember?”
“Do I.” He brushed his free hand over his close-cropped graying temple. “I had hair that fell below my shoulders.”
“You?” Bill stared at the carefully groomed man in his Sunday slacks, button-down dress shirt, and loosened tie.
“I was a rebel, my boy,” he said with pride. “I still don’t know why my parents didn’t disown me. I’ll have you know that during my junior year in college I even thought momentarily about joining a commune, but I wanted to go to medical school more.” He grinned. “Leslie thought I was wonderfully nonconformist. I lived in jeans and T-shirts, all with holes. You had to have holes to be a real antiestablishment figure.”
“Did you go to Woodstock? Were you a Jesus people?” Bill asked in awe. “I saw all about them on a TV special.”
“I did not go to Woodstock, and I wasn’t a Jesus people, at least not in the strictest definition,” David answered. “They were a California phenomenon, and I lived in New Jersey. But I sure looked like one, and I believed in Jesus like they did.”
“How about Grandpa Will? Was he a hippie too?”
“Apparently not as much as David,” Julia said, thinking how much she’d like to see a picture of the young David with his long hair and holey jeans. She just knew he’d be as handsome as all get-out. “What we need is that old box of pictures I keep stashed in the attic. You can see Grandpa Will’s long hair and giant sideburns in some of those pictures. You know the box I mean, Clay?”
He nodded. “Come on, Bill. You can help me find it.”
The two left the room together. Julia smiled after them. It was good to see Billy—Bill—with a male to emulate.
David tugged gently on her hand. “Sit. I’ll get another chair from the dining room.” She sat. David pulled a chair beside her, and she was a bit disappointed when he didn’t take her hand again.
Several thuds and a groan or two announced the imminent arrival of the rest of the photos. Julia flinched as she thought of her walls and the sharp corners on the box. Bill shuffled into the room, lugging the large box. Clay followed, calling out navigational directions.
“Be careful of that coffee table. To the left, Bill. The left! That’s right. Now straight ahead. Watch the edge of Ted’s recliner. You’re going to trip over it.”
Bill hit the leg rest and howled, mostly for show, Julia was certain.
“My shin! My shin!”
“Is it as badly hurt as your toe was last night?” Leigh asked.
Bill stopped howling and grinned at his mother. “We sure got old Eric, didn’t we?”
Leigh shook her head. “Billy, you’ve got to stop picking on my dates, you know.” But there was no heat in her directive.
“It’s Bill.”
“Oh. Right.” She frowned at Clay who didn’t notice. Paul slid over and took a seat beside Leigh. Poor man, Julia thought. He must be bored silly with all our family pictures.
“I’m serious, Mom. I’m too big for Billy.”
Once more Julia leaped into the breach. “Let’s look for a picture of Grandpa Will, see who can find the funniest.” As she talked, she reached up and opened the top button of her blouse. She fanned the material back and forth to try and create a breeze.
David patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. The patch will kick in sometime soon.”
“Every night at one, three, and five I get awakened in a drenching sweat. I toss the covers off, fall back to sleep, then wake up freezing. It had better start soon.”
Bill put the box down on the sofa between his mother and Paul and rooted through the hundreds of photos inside. Leigh grinned at them with him.
Julia crossed the room and grabbed a great handful from the box. She brought them back to Ted and David.
“Hey, Mom, remember this?” Ted held out a picture of himself and Clay standing on the bank of a stream. “That campground in Colonial Williamsburg.”
Julia groaned. “I don’t think I ever spent a hotter week in my life! Even the swimming pool was close to boiling.”
“At least we learned never to go south in the summer,” Ted said.
“Well, look at this, will you?” David held out a picture of a young Julia in a frothy pink evening gown, orchid at her shoulder, her hair parted in the middle, hanging long and straight and shiny. Her face was young and smiling and full of hope. “Quite a beauty.”
Julia glanced at the photo, then at David, and blushed, quite a phenomenon considering how warm her face already was.
“But more beautiful now,” he said softly as he reached across her to show Ted.
She didn’t quite manage to swallow the giggle, and it came out as an undignified snort. “My senior prom. Just before everything formal went out of style.”
Ted held out a series of photos. “Look at these old Little League pix.”
David leaned over. “I bet Adam’s in there.”
“Here.” Julia stood. “You sit here so you can see better.”
She and David changed seats, and he smiled his thanks. Soon he and Ted were laughing at the earnest faces of Seaside’s Little Leaguers, Ted and Clay and David’s son, Adam, among them. Julia looked at the next picture in her hand and stared, perplexed.
It was a picture of Billy, mussed hair, glasses, and impish grin, but at the same time it couldn’t be him. The clothes were all wrong, the photo itself was too old to be Billy, and the three-by-six black-and-white picture bore scalloped edges like photos sometimes had back in the fifties.
With a trembling hand she turned the picture over. Will Wharton, age 10, was written on the back in her late mother-in-law’s hand.
Will. Her Will.
She turned the picture over again and stared at the boy frozen in time. He had been small for his age, not getting his height until his last two years in high school and his weight in college. Not long before he died, he had talked to Billy about being small.
“I know it’s not easy being the littlest guy in your class,” Will had said to the woebegone Billy.
“Tell me about it,” Billy said. “How do you survive as a little guy when all the bigger guys are picking on you all the time?”
“You learn to run real fast until you finally grow. Then you get back at those guys for all the years of agony.”
“Will,” Julia said, appalled at his advice.
“Yeah,” the then seven-year-old Billy said, his eyes bright with vengeance. “I’ll beat ’em to death.”
Will grinned, first at Julia, then at Billy. “That wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” he said. “How about we plot strategy in a few years?”
Julia’s eyes misted as she studied the photo. There would be no strategy sessions now. She ran a finger gently over the black-and-white face.
Then she looked across the room at the living Bill. It was like looking at a twin. She looked at her real-life twins, Ted and then Clay.
Will and Bill. Ted and Clay.
She smiled. How she loved all her men, so much alike, so very different.
She glanced back at the picture, marveling at Bill’s resemblance to Will.
And she knew. Just like that, she knew.
Shivers slid up her arms, standing all the soft hairs on end, and a soft gurgling sound erupted from her throat as the picture fell from her suddenly lifeless fingers. She stood abruptly, hand pressed to her middle in an attempt to lessen the nausea that roiled through her. She had to get away. She had to be alone. She had to think.
Will and Bill! Clay!
“Mom?” Ted said. “Are you all right?”
“Julia?” David said.
She barely heard them. Without a word she left the living room, the house, the property, and did what sh
e always did when troubled. She went to the beach and began walking.
The wind whipped her hair and tried to force itself down the raised collar and up the cuffed sleeves of her jacket, but she barely noticed. She just stuffed her hands into the pockets and walked toward the water, head down against the blast. Little patches of sea debris—clam shells, scallop shells, seaweed, sea grasses, all washed up and tumbled by the tide—littered the edge of the packed sand line. She passed them, then turned north to walk parallel to the water on the sand, packed hard by the tide.
“Hey, Julia!” It was the ever ebullient Clooney, metal detector in hand. Little spade holes pocked the beach where he had been.
Automatically she waved, trying without success to force a smile, but she didn’t slow. The last thing she wanted to do was look at one of Clooney’s latest finds, oohing and aahing over a brass shell casing or a Kennedy half dollar or a lovely ring, sand still clinging.
“There’s a pair of oystercatchers down there,” he called, pointing toward the north curve of the beach. “You’ll love them.”
She waved again and kept moving. Ordinarily she’d be delighted with the rare opportunity to see the black-and-white birds with their bright orange-red beaks, but not today. Her world had just undergone a paradigm shift of major proportions, and all ordinary things were reduced to ashes. Her mind reeled, grappling with the immensity of what she now knew was truth, and she was overwhelmed with a tumult of emotions.
First anger and despair. How could Clay behave so badly? How could he ignore his responsibilities all these years? Hadn’t he learned anything they had tried to teach him about being a Christian man? And Leigh. Why had she kept Billy’s paternity a secret? What did she hope to gain? Or did she mean to protect?
Then heart-stopping joy. Billy was her grandson. He was really hers! Grandma Jule wasn’t just a courtesy title; he belonged to her and she to him.
And the overwhelming ache of failure. Sheer, unadulterated failure. She had once again fallen way short in her role as mother.
