This seemed to be a crisis I had no part in other than to look sympathetic. Then a solution to a couple of problems occurred to me, and I knew what I had to do.
Jack would owe me permanently, as far as I was concerned.
I tapped Varena on the shoulder. “I’ll do it,” I told her.
“What?” She’d been in the middle of a semihysterical outburst to my mother.
“I’ll do it,” I repeated.
“You’ll… baby-sit?”
“That’s what I said.” I was feeling touchy at the sheer incredulity in my sister’s voice.
“Have you
“Do you need a baby-sitter or don’t you?”
“Yes, it would be wonderful, but… are you sure you wouldn’t mind? You’ve never been… I mean, you’ve always said that children weren’t your… special thing.”
“I can do it.”
“Well! That would be-just great,” Varena said stoutly, obviously realizing she had to show no reservations, no matter what she felt.
Actually, I had kept the four Althaus kids one afternoon and evening when Jay Althaus had been in a car wreck and Carol had had to go to the hospital. Both sets of grandparents had been out of town. Carol had been a frantic, panicked, pathetic mother and wife by the time I answered her phone call.
So I knew how to change diapers and bathe a baby, and the oldest Althaus boy had showed me how to heat up a bottle. I might not be Mary Poppins, but all the children would be alive and fed and clean by the time the parents got home.
Varena was on the phone with Lou O’Shea, giving her the good news.
“She’s glad to do it,” Varena was saying, still trying not to sound amazed. “So Lily should be there about, what? Six? Will the kids have eaten? Oh, OK. And there’ll be Anna, Krista, your little boy… oh, really? Oh, gosh. Let me ask her.”
Varena covered the receiver. She was making a big effort to look cheerful and unconcerned. “Lily, Lou says they’ve agreed to keep the Osborn kids, too. At the time, they thought Shelley was coming with her boyfriend.” Shelley was the flu-ridden teenager.
I took a deep, cleansing breath, like I did in karate class before I began my kata. “No problem,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
I confined myself to a nod.
“That’s not a problem, she says,” Varena said chirpily into the phone. “Right, it’ll only last three hours at the most, two more likely, and we’ll be just a few blocks away.”
Sounded like Lou was a little concerned at the prospect of my baby-sitting such a mob.
The doorbell rang, and my mother hustled into the living room to answer it. I heard her say, “Hello, again!” with a kind of supercharged enthusiasm that alerted me. Sure enough, she led Jack into the kitchen with a pleased, proud air, as though she’d snagged him just when he was about to get away.
I found myself on my feet and going to him before I even knew I was moving. His arms slid around me and he gave me a kiss, but a kiss that said my parents were looking at him over my shoulder.
“Well, young man, it’s nice to see you again. We’d begun to think we wouldn’t get to lay eyes on you before you left town.” My father was being bluff and hearty.
Jack was wearing a blue-and-green-plaid flannel shirt and blue jeans, and his thick hair was brushed smoothly back, gathered at the nape of his neck with an elastic band. I patted his shoulder gently and stepped away from him.
“I saw a mighty lot of presents in the living room,” Jack said to my father. “Looks like you-all are having a wedding.” He smiled, and those seductive deep lines suddenly appeared in parentheses from his nose to the corners of his thin, mobile mouth.
Mother, Father, and Varena laughed, as charmed by his smile as I was.
“As a matter of fact,” Jack went on, “I hoped this would be appropriate.”
“Why, thank you,” Varena said, surprised and showing it, taking the shallow wrapped box Jack pulled out of one jacket pocket.
When I turned to watch Varena opened the present, Jack’s arm went around my waist and pulled me against him, my back to his chest. I could feel the corners of my mouth tug up, and I looked down at my hands, resting on the arms crossed below my breasts. I took a deep breath. I made an effort to focus on the box Varena was holding.
She lifted the lid. From the tissue, she extracted an antique silver cake server, a lovely piece with engraving. When Varena passed it around, I could see the curling script read “V K 1889.”
“This is just beautiful,” Varena said, delighted and not a little stunned. “However did you find it?”
“Sheer luck,” Jack said. He was pressed very firmly against my bottom. “I just happened to be in an antiques store and it caught my eye.”
I could see the wheels turning in my mother’s head. I knew she was thinking that this was a serious present. Such a gift announced that Jack planned to be seeing me for some time, since he was displaying such a great desire to please my family. My father’s face lit up (way too obviously) as the same idea occurred to him.
I felt I was watching a tribal ritual unfold.
“I have to put this somewhere conspicuous, so everyone’ll notice it,” Varena told Jack, plainly wanting him to realize she was very pleased indeed.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said.
And before you could say Jack Robinson, Jack Leeds was installed at my parents’ kitchen table, a grilled cheese sandwich and bowl of soup in front of him, Varena and my mother waiting on him hand and foot.
After he’d eaten, Mother and Varena practically threw us out of the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to help with the dishes. They were flabbergasted when Jack offered to wash. They turned him down with fatuous smiles, and by the time I climbed into Jack’s car I was torn between laughter and exasperation.
“I think they approve of me,” Jack said with a straight face.
“Well, you
He laughed, but he stopped abruptly and looked at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. He started the engine.
“Where are we going? I have to be at the manse at 6:00,” I reminded him. Mother and Varena had immediately told Jack I’d volunteered to keep the kids.
“We need to talk,” he said. We were silent on the ride to the motel, Jack grim and taciturn, I uneasily aware that I was not on the same page.
As we turned on the corner by the Presbyterian manse, I thought of Krista, Anna, and Eve.
And, oddly, I suddenly remembered spending nights with other girls when I was really young. I remembered how I’d carry a whole suitcase full of stuff with me for an overnight visit, everything and anything I thought we might want to play with, or look at, or gossip about.
Including a memory book.
Chapter Seven
Jack was staying in a different room, since the motel manager was having the bathroom window fixed from the break-in in the room he’d had before.
I was already on edge when we went in, and when Jack sat on one of the stuffed vinyl-covered armchairs, all my systems went on defense. I perched on the edge of the other chair and eyed him warily.
“I saw you last night,” he said without preamble.
“Where?”
He sighed. “Out with your old boyfriend.”
I made my breathing slow, fighting the rage that swept through me. I gripped the armrests of the damn orange chair. “You got back to town early, and you didn’t call me. Did you come back on purpose to spy on me?”
