by Jane Peart
After she had showered and shampooed and put moisturizer on her face, Robbie wrapped herself in her old chenille robe, which was as soft and warm as Linus’s security blanket in the “Peanuts” cartoons and which probably served the same purpose for her. Although not particularly hungry, she opened a can of clam chowder for herself and a can of tuna for Cyrano, who had followed her into the kitchen. As she got out a saucepan, her mind was still occupied with plans, to put in for six weeks’ leave to go somewhere and think about what her next step should be. Maybe she could go to her family’s cabin at the lake near their home. It was still warm enough, and there was a wood stove for heat on chilly nights.
The persistent buzz of her doorbell intercepted her concentration. Who could that be? she frowned. Then she concluded that it was probably the paper boy who had come to collect. He lived in the neighborhood and watched for her car on collection nights.
She got out her billfold. Calling “Just a minute, Bart,” she shuffled in her wooly slippers to the front door. Opening it, she gasped in total amazement. “You!”
Tyler Lang smiled a tentative grin, one eyebrow raised. “I’m not Bart. May I come in?” he asked.
For a stunned moment, Robbie felt a traitorous hope spring up within her, but she quickly put it down. “What are you doing here?” she stammered. “I mean, in Atlanta?”
He looked handsomely casual in a gray turtleneck sweater, blue corduroy jacket, and gray slacks. “If you’ll invite me in, I’ll tell you all about it,” he suggested.
“Well—” Robbie began doubtfully, then became conscious of her appearance. “I just—” She tightened the belt of her robe and made an ineffectual stab at her wet hair.
“I won’t tell anyone this is the same beautiful girl I’ve seen smiling out from all those Trans-Con posters plastered on the walls of every airport from California east,” he vowed with the old teasing quality in his voice that she remembered so well. “Please, Robbie, may I come in? We’ve got lots to talk about.”
With inner reluctance and some mental reservations, Robbie opened the door wider and stepped back so that Tyler could walk inside.
“I just got in off-flight. I’m making some coffee. Would you like some?” Robbie realized she was talking rapidly, covering her nervousness. Meanwhile, she led the way through the living room into the tiny kitchen and went behind the counter. She somehow felt safer with the divider between her and Tyler. “You sure you don’t want some?” She held up the coffee pot.
“No thanks. Actually I’m ‘coffeed-out.’ I drank about a half dozen cups getting up my courage to come over here.”
“I have some decaffeinated,” she offered weakly, then realized how stupid that must have sounded. But she was surprised at the usually calm, self-composed Tyler admitting a need for courage.
The silence between them lengthened and grew awkward. Feeling shaky, Robbie grasped the steel edge of the formica counter for support. Why has he come?
Tyler walked around the small living room, his hands jammed into his pockets. He paused in front of the Bermuda watercolor and stood looking at it for a long moment. “I remember the day you bought this,” he said quietly. “In fact, I remember everything about that trip to Bermuda.”
Tyler came back over to the counter, folded his arms, and leaned forward saying, “Robbie, is there any chance, any chance at all, for us?”
Automatically Robbie backed up a little and reached behind her to steady, herself on one of the kitchen chairs. Reminding herself that Tyler was all wrong for her and that he had betrayed her trust and disappointed and disillusioned her, Robbie wanted to clap her hands over her ears and not listen to whatever he had to say. She did not want to rail under his spell again. But her heart demanded insistently that she hear what he had come to say.
“First of all, I want you to know I’ve waited all these months to come. I wanted to test myself and be sure I wasn’t on some kind of emotional high. That what I felt was real. I’ve waited since the hijack to come, mainly because I didn’t want you to think I was trying to manipulate you or kid myself, or that I’d had some kind of ‘deathbed conversion’ or anything like that. I wanted to test what I was experiencing and see if it would wear off. Well, it hasn’t. And I think it’s genuine. So I had to come.
“Robbie, I want you to marry me. Yes, I said, marry. I’ve never gotten you out of my mind. I tried to. Believe me, I tried, but I couldn’t. Then, that night, the night of the hijack—you’ve heard how people who are drowning see their whole lives pass in front of them? That’s something like what happened to me with that gun pointed at my head. I saw everything and realized I had nothing. Material things, plenty—a plush apartment with a fabulous view, a sportscar, a sailboat, money, freedom—they all spelled loneliness—a big zero! I knew there was a big hole in my life. Part of it was that I didn’t have what you had, what I’d seen in you and secretly envied. A sureness, some strong convictions about life and its meaning and purpose.”
T J. shrugged. “Call it faith. Whatever it was, I didn’t have it, and I knew I needed it—desperately. I thought I had a pretty good life going, but, that night, I knew if I died that I’d have left nothing, no one. What I’d been missing all those months, Robbie, was you— what you had offered me and I’d been too selfish to take. Not just a fleeting affair, but a lifetime together of loving and sharing and building something worthwhile. I promised myself that, if I got out of that jam, I’d find out what I was lacking, go after it, and take some definite steps to make a new beginning. That’s why I’m here, Robbie. I know now that I need you to show me how to believe like you do. How about it? Can you forgive me? Give me a second chance?
“Believe it or not, I’m even going to that church on Peachtree Street when I’m in town on Sundays—you know, the one on the bulletins you used to have lying around here. That minister makes a lot of sense. I’m even thinking about joining it. Someday”
“You mean here in Atlanta?” Robbie asked, bewildered.
“Yes. Didn’t I say I’ve transferred back here…three weeks ago.” Tyler grinned. “You’ve heard the saying, ‘you can take the boy out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the boy.’ I found I missed too many things. The thing I missed most was you, Robbie.”
Still not quite able to grasp all that Tyler was saying, she asked, “What about the fabulous apartment with a bay view?”
“Swapping it.”
“For what?”
“What would you say to a Cape Cod cottage, with a picket fence, and an old-fashioned garden?”
Robbie stared at Tyler blankly.
He walked around the counter and said softly, “I’d like to make a suggestion, Miss Mallory, about your future.”
“What kind of suggestion?” Robbie asked dazedly.
“Marry me.”
“I thought you weren’t interested in marriage. If I remember correctly, you made that pretty clear. You said you liked being single.”
“That was then; this is now. A guy can change. People do change, you know. Please believe me, Robbie, I have changed. I know what I want now. And I want you.”
Robbie stared at him. Did she dare believe what he was saying? For a moment, her eyes moved over his face searchingly Behind that teasing twinkle and under the slightly mocking smile, she saw the honesty the yearning, and the tenderness that she had longed to see there. Inside her heart began to melt.
But something held her back. She remembered that terrible day in Chicago when Sue Thompson had revealed Tyler’s double dealing. She would have to confront Tyler with that or it would always be between them. The key to his apartment which he had given to Sue would have to be explained, as well as her enigmatic remark. Stumbling for words a little, Robbie told Tyler about the meeting, what had happened, and what she had inferred from it.
He frowned. “Sue Thompson?” He seemed deeply puzzled, but gradually his face cleared. “You mean Ron Jamison’s girl? So that’s it!” Tyler’s expression underwent a change until
it was one of combined bewilderment and relief. “So that’s what your note was all about when you returned the key! And what you meant with that crack about my handing out keys to my apartment like prizes in Cracker Jack boxes. I didn’t understand any of it, until right now Actually, Sue and Ron were secretly married, but were waiting to announce it until Ron made captain and she could transfer her base to the West Coast. I lent them my apartment for a three-day honeymoon while I was out of town on that flight for four days.”
He halted and demanded, “Now does that satisfy you? Are all your doubts cleared up, and now do I get my answer?”
Suddenly Robbie was in total confusion. Everything had happened so fast she was trying to make some sense of it. Distractedly she put her hands up to her face and hair.
“Oh, this is awful! This isn’t the way a girl is supposed to look when she’s being proposed to!”
T. J. threw back his head and laughed. Then he said, “You look just fine to me. Haven’t you heard the saying, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’? Robbie, it’s always been your inner beauty that dazzled and attracted me. Don’t you know that’s all that counts?”
Utterly speechless, she made another ineffectual little gesture with her hands. T. J. roared and pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly. “You little idiot,” he said with rough tenderness. “Don’t you know I adore you?”
She held her head back so that she could look up at him and asked, “You do? Really?”
“Yes, of course. Didn’t you know? I’ve loved you a long time, and I don’t intend to stop.”
Foolish tears filled Robbie’s eyes. Tyler brushed back her hair and wiped away the tears with his thumbs. Then he cupped her face in both hands and said very gently, “I guess there’s nothing to do with a face like this but kiss it.” That he proceeded to do very thoroughly.
A deep peace began to flow through Robbie. A happiness she had not dreamed possible filled her. Then she thought of the verse she had taken from the Christmas tree on New Year’s Eve and taped to the kitchen bulletin board for this year. As the words came to mind, she realized joyously that they were being confirmed completely.
“Trust in the Lord, and do good;… And He shall give you the desires of your heart.”
