Return to Little Hills

by Janice Macdonald

  “It’s a start,” he said.

  AND NOW he stood in the living room, amidst all the knickknacks and the lumpy armchairs with their knitted afghans and sprung seats. Maude had been sitting at the window with Tinkerbell in her lap and Panda and Poochie at her feet—watching for them, Edie guessed, although Maude vigorously denied it.

  “I’ve got more to do with my life than sit around waiting for my daughter to come home. How are you, Peter? You like music? Gramophone records.” Tinkerbell leaped to the floor, as Maude eased herself up from the armchair, took his hand and led him over to the old record cabinet. “Know how old that is? Edith, make Peter some coffee.”

  “We just had coffee, Mom. I’ll make some for you if you don’t think it will keep you awake all night.” Maude, impossibly tiny beside Peter, was flitting around the room now, thrusting framed pictures at him. Edie caught Peter’s eye and he winked, clearly enjoying himself. I want the freedom to walk away, she’d told him.

  “Look at all these records.” Maude flung open the cabinet door to show Peter the shelves of old vinyl albums inside. “What about a glass of port? You smell something burning?”

  Edie sniffed. “Do you have something in the oven?”

  “Chicken potpie in the oven,” Maude said. “Should be just about done. Here, Peter, play this one. I’ll have the pie with some of that potato salad from yesterday, Edith. Bring it all in on the green tray.”

  Edie glanced at her watch. “Isn’t it kind of late for you to be eating, Mom?”

  “No, not the coleslaw. Don’t like coleslaw,” she told Peter. “Never have. Bring it in on a tray, Edith. The green one.”

  In the kitchen, the oven timer was chiming. Edie took the pie out of the oven and set it on a tray. She took a knife and fork from the drawer and tore off a piece of paper towel. From the living room, she heard a crackly old World War II song that she remembered hearing in childhood. “I don’t eat coleslaw, never have,” Maude was telling Peter as Edie set the tray down on her mother’s lap.

  “She doesn’t like the green peppers,” Edie said, sotto voce.

  “Don’t like the green peppers,” Maude said.

  Edie winked at Peter. “Do I know my mom, or what?”

  “My husband used to collect them,” Maude said.

  “Gramophone records,” Edie murmured to Peter, who had lifted an album out of its cover. “Not green peppers.”

  “Hundreds of them,” Maude said. “I told Vivian to take them, but she’s not interested. Ray bought one of those…deedeedee things.”

  “DVDs.” Edie sat on the floor next to Peter. “And Edie doesn’t want them because she doesn’t have any room in her apartment.”

  “And Edie doesn’t want them,” Maude said. “No room in her apartment, she said.”

  Edie felt Peter clasp her ankle. Still sorting through albums, he was grinning. After he took his hand away, she could still feel his fingers. She wanted to just sit there and look at him. Peter Darling. If she were writing an article, she mused, how would she describe him? Languidly elegant, perhaps. Or would it be elegantly languid? As she watched him he pulled himself up from the floor and dropped onto the couch beside Maude.

  “Maude.” He brought his mouth to her ear. “‘The White Cliffs of Dover’? Have you got that record?”

  Maude’s face lit up. “Got it with Vera Lynn singing. ‘There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover, tomorrow, just you wait and see…’”

  “‘There’ll be love and laughter,’” Peter sang along with her. “‘And peace ever after—’”

  “‘Tomorrow, when the world is free…’” Maude smiled, clearly tickled by the duet. “What else?”

  “‘Red Sails in the Sunset’?”

  “Yep.” She nodded triumphantly. “‘Red sails in the sunset, dum da dadeedee…oh carry my loved one home safely to me.’ Used to dance to that one at the USO. Lots of happy memories. I had a lovely yellow taffeta dress. I was wearing it the night I met Edie’s father. You know ‘I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time’?”

  “‘I’ll be with you in apple blossom time,’” he crooned into Maude’s ear. “‘I’ll be with you to change your name to mine.’”

  Edie watched his mouth. She could drive herself crazy.

  “‘Blue birds will sing,’” Maude warbled. “‘Church bells will chime…’”

  “‘In apple blossom time,’” they harmonized.

  “Good heavens, ‘Lili Marlene.’” Peter was back at the record cabinet. “This is like a walk into the past. The night my parents were married was the worst bombing of the war. They were married at her father’s house in London. My mother told me the story so many times. At the reception after the wedding, everyone was singing and dancing and having such a wonderful time that when the air raid sirens went off, everyone just ignored them. And then one of the guests glanced out of the window and called out that London was in flames. My mother said it was the most terrifyingly beautiful thing she had ever seen. The dark night and the red flames…”

  They all sat there for a while, as though in the spell of his story. Finally Maude pulled herself to her feet.

  “Well if you won’t get the port, I will.” She toddled off into the kitchen.

  “Come here.” Peter, back on the carpet, crooked his finger at Edie.

  Wordlessly, her heart thundering, she sat down beside him. He took her face in his hands and kissed her. Very soft and very slow. She put her arms around him and they kissed until she heard Maude’s voice calling from the kitchen.

  “Hold on, Mom,” she responded.

  “Edie.” Peter’s face was dazed. “Edie, Edie, Edie. I’m quite besotted with you.”

  She laughed, raising her head from his chest to look at him. “Besotted. And you say it as though you’ve just announced that you’re tired or hungry.”

  He laughed too, pulled her onto his lap and kissed her again. She leaned into him, her fingers in his hair, mouth open to his tongue. Her body twisted pretzel-like around him. She couldn’t seem to get close enough. And when she pulled away to look at him between kisses, she imagined him coming home to her after a hard day at school. Candlelight, dinner in the oven. The kids in bed. The kids would have to be in bed.

  “Mmm, Peter,” she whispered between kisses. “I’m trying to stay cool and objective, but…damn.”

  “Indeed.” He pulled away to look at her. “I’ve often been disappointed to discover that reality doesn’t quite live up to one’s fantasies. In this case, however, it exceeded them.”

  “Edie,” Maude yelled. “Where are the…oh, never mind. I’ve found them.”

  “Okay,” Edie yelled back. She eased off Peter’s lap and onto the seat beside him. His mouth, she imagined, looked bruised. He would go into school tomorrow and other teachers would see his still-swollen lips and speculate on romantic entanglements. The thought of her mouth bruising Peter’s excited her so much that she kissed him again.

  “I’ve never kissed a headmaster before,” she said.

  “You still haven’t,” he said. “I’m a high-school principal.”

  “Shh. I prefer the idea of you as a headmaster. It’s much more romantic. Besides, you look and sound like a headmaster.”

  He appeared to be amused. “And your notion of what a headmaster should look and sound like is derived from…?”

  “Movies, of course.” She grinned at him. “Are all the girls in love with you?”

  “Yes, Edie. They arrive at school in their gym slips and blazers, brandishing their hockey sticks and chattering about their jolly-good end-of-term hols.”

  “Are you saying that I’m romanticizing you?”

  “Just a bit.”

  “I get that, too, since I’ve been home. Viv’s idea of my life has no relation to reality.”

  “I should imagine her version is a little more on the spot, though. You do fly off to far-flung places on the globe, do things and take risks that aren’t in most of our frames of reference. By contra
st, my days are spent sorting out fights and motivating parents who can’t see the need for education because that’s what welfare’s for, so why should they drag themselves out of bed to get Sonny off to school? Throw in a few disgruntled teachers who wish to God I’d strangle myself with a butterfly net and then it’s off home to burn dinner and see my daughters up to bed.”

  “Yeah, but would you do anything else?”

  “Absolutely not. Would you?”

  “No.” She shook her head, but saw again the small black question mark she’d seen ever since that day at the hospital in Kabul. “Well, do you want the honest-to-God truth, or the ‘Of course I’d never do anything else, journalism is my life’ version?”

  “The first.”

  “The honest-to-God truth is that sometimes I don’t know if I want to do this for the rest of my life. It’s exciting and challenging and all that sort of thing…but it can get pretty lonely. The boyfriend I mentioned is a freelance journalist. Very exciting, very dynamic, almost completely without scruples. Which,” she added, “I’ve only realized in retrospect. He was married. I honestly had no idea. I knew he was commitment-phobic, but then, so are a lot of men. It all came out after he was captured in Iraq. He’s freed now. Not that I was really concerned. Nothing could hold Ben captive for long.”

  “Edith,” Maude called again. “Come and give me a hand.”

  “Coming.” With a glance at Peter, she jumped up and found Maude in the kitchen pouring something into three small glasses set out on a tray.

  “Port,” Maude said. Her face was pink, her hair pinned up at the sides with gold barrettes. She looked pretty, Edie thought. Something almost girlish about her.

  “Since when do you drink port?” she asked.

  “Special occasion. I’ve got some cheese in the fridge, if you haven’t used it all. Put some of that on a plate. And there’re some crackers in the top shelf of the cupboard. I could open a can of ham—”

  “Mom, it’s late. I’m not even hungry.”

  “Peter might be.” Hands on her hips, she regarded Edie for a moment. “It’s not often that I get a handsome gentleman caller, so if I want to go all out, then I certainly think I have the right to do so.” She brought her face closer to Edie. “Go and put on some lipstick,” she said in a stage whisper. “You look washed out.”

  In the living room, Peter sprang up to take the tray from Maude. Edie dropped onto one end of the sofa. There was an intriguing dynamic going on, she thought. Maude and Peter were both so clearly enchanted with one another that, odd as the thought was, given their ages, she might have felt like a third wheel. That she didn’t, of course, was because of this simmering thing between herself and Peter that was making her nervy and sensitized and hot. Down, girl.

  “So—” she picked up one of the glasses “—are we going to have a toast, Mom?”

  Her face puckered in concentration, Maude lifted a glass. “A toast to music and dancing and feeling young again.” She clinked her glass against Peter’s. “You’re good for me, you know that?”

  Peter smiled from the floor. “Thank you, Maude. It’s entirely mutual.”

  “All right, you two,” Maude looked from Peter to Edie. “You’ve got to clink, too.”

  “To making my mother feel young again.” Edie leaned forward to clink Peter’s glass. “Thank you,” she said.

  “To amber eyes,” he said, looking directly into hers. “And intriguing women.”

  “Have a piece of cheese, Peter.” Maude presided over the tray Peter had set on the coffee table. “Take some, ham too.” She sipped her port, settled back on the sofa and sighed happily. “This is nice. Put another record on, Edie. See if you can find, ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’”

  “Wow, I remember that song.” Edie set her glass down and returned to the album stacks. “Mom used to play it all the time,” she told Peter. “And it always made me feel like crying. Something something…‘I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places…’”

  “‘In that small cafe,’ Peter sang. “‘The park across the way.’”

  “Across the bay,” Edie said.

  He touched her nose. “It’s way.”

  “Bay. Betcha.” She started searching through another stack. “‘I’ll be seeing yooooooooo in all the old familiar plaaaces, that this heart of mine embraaaaces all day throoooooooogh.’” She flung her arms up. “And then the violins get louder and her voice has this throbbing sound as though she’s about to bawl her eyes out. ‘In that small cafaaaaaaay…the park across the bay, the chestnut tree, a wishing well, a small hotel, a carousel.’”

  “Steeple bell,” Peter said. “The children’s carousel comes in the middle somewhere, right before chestnut tree, I think.”

  Edie glanced over at Maude. “Who’s right, Mom?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.” Maude held out her glass. “There’s another bottle in the cupboard.”

  Her head full of the song, Edie went into the kitchen, returned with the port and filled their glasses again. Maude was tapping her feet and singing “I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time.” She smiled as Edie filled her glass.

  “Have a piece of cheese, Peter.” Maude presided over the tray Peter had set on the coffee table. “Take some, ham too.” She sipped some port, settled back on the sofa and sighed happily. “This is nice, Edie. You should come home more often.”

  Impulsively, Edie leaned down and kissed Maude’s cheek. “Yeah, you’re right, Mom, I should.” Despite everything, this was home; its roots deep, tendrils of memories reaching out over the years. This musty old living room where both she and Viv had posed for pictures on the arms of prom dates, their names long forgotten; the dusty-rose brocade curtains that she dimly remembered Maude had bought years ago from a catalog, the plastic daffodils and silk roses blooming improbably together in a brass pot. And Maude, tapping her feet to the music.

  All the moments, Edie thought, all the hours, all the years she’d lived her life away from this place, but this was the picture she saw when she thought of home. It had been that way forever and would go on forever. But it wouldn’t. Tears, fierce and unexpected, stung the back of her throat and she wrapped her arms around her mother, resting her head on Maude’s shoulder. “I love you, Mom.”

  “Nothing more to drink for you,” Maude said. “Peter, don’t give her any more wine. She’s getting maudlin.”

  “Obviously.” Stung, Edie tried to shrug it off. The declaration was prompted less by feelings for Maude, she decided, than nostalgia for a time she knew nothing about firsthand but that always got to her, anyway. The brave fighting soldiers, the faithful sweethearts, the longing and the yearning. Sentimental, tear-jerk stuff. Maybe the next time Maude made her want to slap her forehead in frustration, she should just play “The White Cliffs of Dover.” And drink a glass or two of port.

  “So, Mr. Deejay.” Edie dropped down on the floor beside Peter again. “D’you find it?”

  “Not yet, but I will. ‘A small hotel,’ he murmured. “‘A steeple bell.’”

  “Carousel.”

  “Steeple bell.” He reached for his glass, smiling. “Shall we make a bet?”

  “What?”

  “If it’s steeple bell, I’m allowed to kiss you.”

  “And if it’s carousel?”

  “You’re allowed to kiss me.”

  She laughed. “Such a deal.”

  “Ah-ha,” he said.

  “You found it?”

  “I found it.”

  Edie watched as he carefully lifted the arm of the record changer, removed the record that had been playing and returned it to the album cover. He has a long, thin back, she thought distractedly. The music started—lush, syrupy orchestrals made for slow dancing.

  “Get up and dance, you two,” Maude said from the couch. Tinkerbell had climbed into her lap again. The other two were at her feet. “Waste of good music, no one dancing.”

  He held out his arms and Edie leaned against his chest, swaying with the
music.

  “Ah, look at that,” Maude said. “Edie likes you, Peter. I think you might finally be the one.”

  “Jeez, Mom,” Edie muttered. “Isn’t it time for you to go to bed?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my head,” Maude said. “Just ignore me.”

  So they did. With Peter’s arms around her, Edie’s chin resting on his shoulder, they danced dreamily to the scratchy crackling music.

  “‘I’ll find you in the morning sun,’” Peter crooned softly. “‘And when the night is new, I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you.’” He kissed her then, and when they finally parted, Maude had gone to bed.

  “Carousel,” Peter said.

  “Don’t gloat,” Edie replied.

  “When do I get my reward?”

  Edie lifted her face to him. “What are you waiting for.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “…A CHILDREN’S PROGRAM at the planetarium in Forest Park,” Sophia was explaining when she called Peter at school the following morning. “Natalie and Delphina will be fine, but it might run a little past the twins’s bedtime. Still, I think they’d all enjoy it.”

  “I should imagine they would,” Peter said with a glance at the appointment book open on his desk. “I have a few things this afternoon, but nothing to stop me from being home in time. Perhaps we could have pizza. The girls enjoy that little place on King’s Highway…”

  “I am taking them to that little place on King’s Highway,” Sophia said. “I’m taking them, Peter.” A pause. “You’re not going.”

  Peter leaned back in his chair. “And why is that, Sophia?”

  “Because the girls spend far too much time with you as it is.”

  “They’re with you all day,” he reminded her. “And quite a few evenings too.”

  A pause. “Well, I’ll have a friend with me,” Sophia said. “And you going along would make things awkward.”

  “What friend?”

  “David.”

  “David? David next door?” he asked, thinking of the sixtyish neighbor with whom he occasionally chatted about roses. “How on earth could my going along make things awkward?”