15 Tales of Love (4 page)

The door opposite opened and her father came through, moving cautiously with a walker and assisted by the therapist. He was delighted to see Timmy.

“You are up and walking,” he said. “Do you have time to visit, or are you here for yourself?”

Timmy struggled to his feet. “My appointment’s tomorrow. Andy, it’s great to see you on your feet and coming along. Rose Ellen says you’re going out to lunch. Have a nice outing. It’ll do you good.”

He asked, “Won’t you join us, Tim? It’s been a while and there’s a lot to talk about.”

“I don’t know. I don’t get around very well.” He straightened a little. “But I know your schedule now, and I can arrange to come here again.”

Rose Ellen didn’t let her disappointment show. She should know better. About a lot of things. Timmy had his own life and goodness knows how many girlfriends without encumbrances.

Andy urged, “Oh, join us for lunch, Tim, if you have time.”

Rose Ellen added, “It’ll do Dad good. I’ll bring the car around to the front door.”

She saw Timmy hesitate and thought maybe his condition was embarrassing him, making him seem less than the whole person he should be, that he wanted to be in their eyes.

Andy said, smiling gently, “I’d love to have you,” and Timmy gave in.

“It’ll be nice to chat with you and Rosie again.”

Rose Ellen was surprised, and warmed, at his use of the nickname. She asked her father, “Shall we go to that Mexican place again? They make great fajitas.”

The lunch was a pleasant interlude, after which they went back to the nursing home. Timmy stayed for a while, and her father’s spirits were visibly raised. Afterward, she drove Timmy home, although he said his mother would come for him.

“I hate having to depend on somebody to get around,” he said. “My mother takes me places and then goes shopping. Like she did today.”

Rose Ellen looked at the Hagan’s big colonial house with its wide lawns and old trees and wondered how much restoration Timmy’s family had done on it. An older man came to help Timmy get out of the car and she recognized his father from hospital visits.

Timmy rested on his crutches and looked back at her. “Thanks for the outing. It was fun. Andy’s doing great.”

She said, hiding her hope, “We’ll have to do it again.”

But he didn’t answer.

She didn’t see Timmy at the rehab clinic again for two weeks, and then he was still using crutches. “You don’t follow a schedule,” he said, almost complaining. “I stopped by last week.”

“I can’t always get the same time off to come here. Dad said he enjoyed his chat with you. It’s so nice of you to come. He gets lonely.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t have a whole lot to do.”

Rose Ellen thought he was acting a little odd and asked if he was feeling well. “You aren’t as cheerful as you usually are.” She took a better hold on herself. “Has something happened? I’ve always depended on your being cheerful.”

“It’s just a show.” He looked away from her, at the door into the treatment room, as if willing Andy to be slow in coming out. “All my life I’ve had things easy, everything just like I wanted, until now. And look at you, holding up when everything in your life has gone wrong, and you still smile. When I was down, hurting and broken and wondering if I’d ever walk again, I’d think about how you were doing, sitting there supporting Andy, keeping him going.”

“I’m not that strong. I had to do it for my father. All those years he cared for Mom. He didn’t have anyone to turn to but me.”

“And you put your own life on hold. You didn’t say that, but I could tell, like there was another guy some place, one who left you. You deserve a lot more than that.”

She couldn’t answer. She didn’t think she had told him anything about herself.

He took a deep breath. “It took a long time, but the insurance people finally decided my family’s company wasn’t to blame for the accident after all. There was a flaw or something in the staging we rented, and I got a settlement.” He didn’t look directly at her. “The medical bills are all paid, and I’ve got a little for all my pain and suffering, as they call it.”

“That’s wonderful.” She wished her problems could be solved as easily.

“And I’ll be back working in a few weeks, they tell me. My cast will come off soon.” He tried to laugh and didn’t succeed. “My father says I can ease back in, as long as I stay off the staging.”

“That’s great, Timmy.” She was genuinely glad for him.
But then I will never see you again. What will I have to look forward to?

“So, I guess I’ll actually be a man again, not some kind of helpless wreck.” He stopped and looked directly at her, his face unusually serious. “So, would you consider me, I mean, going out with me? I know I can’t offer much right now . . .”

Caught off guard she said, “Of course.”
And I owe you so much.

“I’ve admired you, liked you, since we first met in the hospital, but I couldn’t say anything to you, not until I knew I’d be whole again.” He hesitated, finally looking directly at her. “And I’m not totally sure of that yet.”

Before she could answer, the door opened and Andy came through. She asked, “Will you go out to dinner with us again?”

He glanced at Andy, back at Rose Ellen. “If you’ll go out with me after . . . like to a movie? I can manage that.”

“I’d love to. I haven’t seen a movie in ages.”

Timmy was there the next time she stopped to pick up her father, and again they went to lunch. But after they had left Andy at the nursing home, instead of seeing a movie, they drove to the nearby state park and sat looking at the waterfront, talking about nothing particular, watching the sun setting. Rose Ellen felt him relaxing a little, and her hopes rose.

“I guess it’s time to go.” He took her hand, held it a moment and squeezed her fingers, then reached for his crutches. “If I had two free arms . . .”

She offered her hand to help him up off the park bench.

“I have two.” She put both arms around him, pressing lightly against him. “I do enjoy your company, Timmy.” She couldn’t quite say ‘I love you.’ Not yet.

She raised her face to meet his eyes. He leaned forward awkwardly and kissed her. “I need two arms to hold you.”

She put her arms around his neck. “You’ll have them back soon.”

“I hope.”

Timmy called her in the middle of the next week. “My cast comes off on Friday,” he said, and she could hear his cautious elation. “If everything is like it’s supposed to be, I’ll go back into rehab.” He paused a moment but she could find nothing else to say. “And I’ll be walking properly in a few weeks, they tell me.”

“Wonderful.” She tried to put her genuine pleasure for him in her voice and to quiet her own uncertainty.
What will happen to me when he’s healed? When he’s back in his own world?

“So,” he said, “if all’s well, would you come celebrate with me? Getting out of the cast?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll call you after, after I see the doctors.”

“I’ll be waiting with my fingers crossed.”

However, removing the cast left Timmy feeling ill and weak. “The shock, I guess. My leg isn’t what it used to be,” he said when he called Rose Ellen. “It looks awful, skinny and pasty white with those purple scars. But let’s celebrate anyway.” He hesitated. “But I guess you’ll have to come here to my folks’ house.”

She liked his parents and had formed an easy, casual relationship with them. “No problem. Shall I bring the champagne?”

It was another week of exhausting exercise in rehab before Timmy was out again. He still had weeks of exercise to go and still used one crutch, but he could drive for short distances. They met for dinner in a small café they had found.

“I’m going back to work next week,” he said. “There are things I can do, as long as I keep both feet on the ground.”

“I hope you don’t overdo.”

“My uncle won’t let me do that. You’d think I was a teenager, the way they act sometimes.”

“It’s just that we care for you.”

He reached across the table and picked up her hand. “I more than care for you, Rosie.”

She met his eyes without answering. Everything she wanted was written there, a future, maybe even the rose-covered cottage.

“I have a job I can do, on my own, sort of as a favor for my uncle, to get back into the swing of things at my own pace.” He hesitated a moment. “I was thinking about that little house you said you wanted, the little rose-covered Kincaid one.” He met her eyes and smiled. “There’s a little house. It’s not Kincaid, a long ways from it, but it could be mine, if I want it. It used to belong to my grandfather and my uncle’s had it for years. It’s empty and he’d like to get rid of it, but not really . . . I mean, keep it in the family.” he stopped again. “So would you go with me to see it? Give me some pointers maybe on how to fix it, do some landscaping? It never had any.”

She wondered if he had something more in mind, but she didn’t ask. She didn’t dare; so many of her hopes had come to nothing but more pain.

The little house was on a back road with no visible neighbors. It had once been a hunter’s cabin, many years ago when the area was woodland. It originally had two small rooms with a sleeping loft above and a stone fireplace at one end. Its shingles were weather-beaten gray–a few were missing–and the open porch sagged at one end. The front yard was overgrown with weeds and birch and pine trees had encroached from the woods behind the house. The original part of the cottage, the hunting camp, was still obvious at the end of a more recent addition, someone’s less than aesthetic attempt to turn it into a year-round house with the addition of a bathroom, a real kitchen, and a bedroom. The addition, while obviously well built, didn’t match the original and gave the house a disjointed and incomplete appearance.

Rose Ellen regarded it with sadness and dismay.
It’s just like Timmy–us–patched together. Not a real house.

Timmy leaned on his crutch and studied the house from the weedy gravel driveway. “I think it’s great,” he said. “I always liked it. I used to come here with my father and uncles sometimes when they went hunting. And it’s a place to start over. It wouldn’t take too much to make the parts match, put new shingles on all of it, change a couple of the windows, build a new porch I could screen in.”

Rose Ellen was less than enchanted when she silently compared it to her long-held dream house. It certainly wasn’t a Thomas Kincaid vision, and she regarded it with a sinking feeling in her stomach.
But
it’s Timmy’s and he likes it.
The house was basically sound and, as the many magazine articles pointed out, it had a lot of possibilities. Her life recently had had no possibilities, and now she might have a future to think about. She could certainly advise him about some landscaping.

He glanced around him, then looked directly at her, his face sober. “This isn’t the way I planned to say this, to propose to you, but would you consider it? I mean, you and me? Getting married and living here when I’m well again? When I can work again? I can get it fixed up in the meantime . . .”

She met his eyes for a moment, felt his concern for her, the love she craved, and then looked again at the sad little house.
It certainly isn’t my Kincaid cottage
. There was no nearby brook, no arched bridge, no picket fence, no roses, but there was promised love and a future.
Kincaid is probably a lot of romantic nonsense, like Trudy said. This is here and now, reality, and there really are a lot of possibilities
.

She smiled at Timmy, then said, “I can always plant the roses.”

FROM SUNLIGHT INTO SHADOW

Andrea Fortune looked at the poem she had been working on for several days, seeking just the right words for how she felt, and was dissatisfied. It wasn’t at all what she wanted to express, and it certainly didn’t help. She sighed, read it again, and was still unhappy with it.

When you move

From sunlight into shadow,

For a moment

The eye is blinded,

Unable to see

The edges of the world.

All is in darkness

Until the eye adjusts

And you can see again.

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes trying to ease the headache, the panic that was returning, the vision she couldn’t erase, the awful what-might-have-happened. Like today, almost a week later, last Thursday was a bright, beautiful spring day, and she had chosen to prolong her enjoyment of it by driving along back roads. The roadside trees were densely packed and the shadow they created across the narrow road was deep. When she drove into it, it had taken a moment for her eyes to adjust to the abrupt change of light and she had not seen the older man and the dog standing at the edge of the road. She didn’t know how close she had come to hitting them.

She had stopped, spoken to him, told him what had happened, but did not ask his name.

“I have that problem with shadows, too,” he’d said pleasantly, apparently not at all disturbed, “and you weren’t really that close. Old Trix and I stay pretty close to the side. Lots of traffic on this road, you know.”

She had returned home shaken, grateful that the man and dog were unhurt, but she could not rid herself of the thought of what could have happened. Any dark shadow across the road now induced a momentary panic.

Andrea knew her reaction was overblown, out of proportion to what had actually happened. She told herself firmly she hadn’t hit the man, apparently had not endangered him or even frightened him, but the nightmares continued. She had written the poem at the suggestion of an article she read somewhere. “To get it out of your system,” the psychologists urged, “write it down.” But it didn’t help. Writing the words only made it worse, brought it all back more sharply. Aspirin wasn’t helping the recurring headache.

She wonder
ed if there were someone she could talk to, someone who would be non-judgmental, who wouldn’t laugh at her, but she didn’t want the expense of a therapist. She considered her almost fiancé, Dennis Worth, with whom she shared most of her concerns, but decided no, she needn’t burden Dennis with this problem. He had an argumentative and quarreling family and a controlling mother to contend with and he needed her to be calm and steadfast. He called her his refuge. His mother tended to think of him as the husband she had lost, the man she had depended on, but mostly tried to dominate. Dennis, so far, had not been totally dominated, as he sometimes said his father was, but he felt his obligations to his mother.

But those obligations, his filial duty as he saw it, often left Andrea feeling she was in second place in his heart and made her wonder if she could, or should, continue to bolster him. As much as she loved him, had always loved him, would he ever move beyond the ‘someday, one of these days’ that he kept promising her? Would he ever be free of his mother’s demands? Ever be able to ignore her hysterics? Sometimes she felt he was weakening, getting too tired to fight back or stand firm. How much longer could she live on unfulfilled hope?

Dennis has so many shadows of his own. How can he help me get free of mine? His are so much longer and deeper. Is there any hope for me?

The other suggestion Andrea read was no help either: do the action over again, repeat whatever happened to prove it could be coped with, that it no longer had a hold. She tried, but driving into a shadow, any shadow on the road, brought back the vision of the man and the dog, causing her to slow down while she looked frantically at the roadside until she could again see clearly. So far, there had been no one else there, but there was still that moment of panic.

Writing poetry was something she did only when she was in the mood for it. Sometimes a scene, a thought, some small occurrence, would produce a tiny snapshot of time that she would attempt to capture in verse. Once in a while she liked the result.

Andrea usually wrote about such things as a strangely colored sunrise—peach and lemon rather than rose. She was enchanted by a small defiant flower growing impossibly in the crack of a sidewalk, an unusually impressive tower of roiling purple-black clouds, or the vividness of a violently red-orange sunset. Such moments touched a chord in her inner being and the words came easily, tumbling out. She had a notebook full of them, and occasionally read one she especially liked to Dennis. Someday, when the time was right, she would show him the notebook, although poetry was not his favorite reading. Someday, when Dennis could see himself and where he was going more clearly, she would share that part of her heart.

Andrea turned to a blank page in her notebook and tried again.

The edges of the world

Hide in the depth of shadows

Made deep by the brightness

Of the sun.

Vision is obscured

By the sudden change

From light to darkness,

And for a moment

I am lost in the blackness.

She dropped her pencil in disgust and pushed the notebook away.
This isn’t helping, and I have things to do. There is too much blackness for me to see through.

She always wrote her poetry, her innermost thoughts, in pencil, but now she turned on her computer. She made herself a cup of coffee while it booted up and thought about what she wanted to work on. She had two writing projects, including one due this morning at the weekly newspaper: an account of last night’s school board meeting. That one she could deal with quickly since it was a routine meeting with no surprises. She didn’t have to go to the office until after lunch, and she preferred working from home when she could. She would send the story to her office computer and edit it there before filing it. It always helped to wait a while between writing and the final edit. Errors showed up that way.

The other project was a short story, a tale of long unrequited love, and it was going nowhere. She half planned to enter a national contest, something she thought of whenever she wrote a story but rarely followed through on, and those few she entered had won nothing. She had a drawerful of first drafts she considered good ideas, but had never finished the editing and polishing. She knew she needed persistence, but she was too easily frustrated.
But maybe it’s just too close to my heart. Like Dennis and his mother.

She put that thought aside and looked at the papers piled untidily on her desk, all unfinished work.
Maybe getting through everything will help clear my mind, get me over this hump. It certainly can’t hurt.

She picked up the notes from last night, took a deep breath, cleared her mind of her frustrations, and wrote the school board article. The short story would have to wait for a better day. Not for the first time she wondered if she put too many things off for that better day.

Andrea met Dennis for an early supper at the Corner Café on Friday as she usually did. As always, she arrived first and was at their favorite table by the window overlooking the sidewalk with her cup of herbal tea. She chose a new rose hip and chamomile blend which was supposed to be calming. She definitely needed serenity. She watched Dennis coming toward her, weaving his way through the clutter of small tables, thinking he looked a little more harried than usual. He was a nice looking man, even if his lightly freckled boyish face made him appear closer to nineteen than almost thirty, and his shaggy mop of brown curls could not be combed into neatness. His slenderness belied the strength in his arms and shoulders, muscles developed through his years of blacksmithing, the well-paying hobby his mother and older sister considered degrading to someone with his social and business connections. Dennis said he needed some outdoor exercise after sitting at a computer all day designing software. He found the two occupations totally compatible.

“Shoeing horses isn’t really blacksmithing,” he told Andrea once. Even if that’s what people call it. That’s being a farrier. It’s fun and pays good money. I like the horses, but I’d rather work with wrought iron creating something useful. There is real satisfaction in that.”

He had made her some fanciful brackets for her new shelves, brackets such as she could not afford to buy, but his mother and sister thought it was too common a job, one beneath the social standing of a Worth. Dennis, they said, was the head of the family now that his father was gone, and he had an image to maintain. An image that did not include physical labor. It was bad enough that he worked with computers and hadn’t gone into banking as his father and grandfather had.

He asked them to consider him an artist, a creator of beautiful things, but they only sniffed. His work wasn’t in that category. And even if it was there was something suspect about artists, the way they live.

At least, Andrea thought
, they seem to find me acceptable, if not their
ideal first choice.
She and Dennis had grown up together, been a steady couple since high school, and his mother seemed to have accepted that. Andrea’s ordinary reddish blond and blue-eyed looks might lack sophisticated glamour, but Andrea’s father was an acceptable business owner, if not on the same level that Dennis’s father had been. Andrea’s choice of a writing career was not quite respectable but Dennis’ mother appeared willing to overlook it
. At least for now, seeing that she apparently thinks we’re not talking marriage. Dennis can’t get married and leave her.

Dennis slid into the seat across from her, grimaced, and said, “I hope your day was better than mine.” He sounded tired.

“It was so-so. What happened?”

“My mother.” She could feel his annoyance and sympathized. “I wish to heaven she’d find something to do besides plan my life for me.” He nodded at the waitress and accepted his usual cup of coffee. “Sometimes I wish this place served something stronger.”

“Not your job, then?”

“That, too. There are days I wish I didn’t have to deal with people. Today I couldn’t please anybody. Least of all my manager.”

She laughed. “I have those days with a picky editor.” When he didn’t respond she asked, “So what is your mother up to now?”

He stirred sugar into his coffee without looking at her. “I’ve accepted a job up north for next weekend. Clover Fields Stable has a bunch of horses that need shoes.” He glanced up at her, his brown eyes dark and sad. “Want to go along? We could leave right after work on Friday. There’s a nice bed-and-breakfast where I stayed last time.” He sighed. “But you’d be alone most of the time and there’s not a lot to do up there.”

She hid her surprise, and her sudden elation, at the invitation. He had never before asked her to share his infrequent work weekends with him, saying that all he did was work and it wouldn’t be any fun for her. Since he usually left early Saturday morning and came back as soon as possible on Sunday, there was no time for fun and games. They frequently spent weekends together, but usually in her apartment, rarely in his. They had never gone anyplace else.

“Sure,” she said, pleased with this prospect of a day in a new place. “I have a couple of books to read and I could get some writing done.
” Maybe work on that short story where it’s quiet and there are no distractions.
“But what does your mother find wrong? Besides the job. You’ve gone away for a weekend before.”

He glanced up at her and again she saw his distress. “Saturday would have been my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. She always expects us to ‘be there for her,’ as she calls it, on those days when she says she can’t cope. I think she needs to move on. It’s been almost five years. Somebody has to do something.”

“Oh. You can’t change the date of the job?”

“No. The horses are used for trail rides and the camp is getting ready to open. They all have to be transported and acclimated, or whatever the owners call it. Next weekend fits into their schedule and I don’t want to pass up work on eight horses.” He smiled a little ruefully. “Besides, it’s a nice place, good people, and I want to keep their business. I like it up there and I need a break from down here.” After a long moment, he sighed again. “Before I have a breakdown. My sister and brother-in-law and their kids will be there for Mom.”

She laughed shortly. “And you need a break from Celia and Ray?” In many ways, Celia was just like her mother and her husband was a total wimp.

Dennis grunted, picked up the menu and put it down again without looking at it. He always had the same thing: chicken pot pie.

Andrea thought about what he had said, then, experimenting a little, suggested, “Maybe it’s time to have something different. The pot pie is really good, but why don’t you try the pulled pork?”

He glanced up at her, raising his eyebrows quizzically. “Are you suggesting I need to make some changes?”

She met his gaze without answering.

“One thing at a time,” he said, sighing and looking down again. “I’ve got to tell Mom I’m taking the job.”

“And if she has one of her sick spells? Will you still go?”

Dennis didn’t answer until they had given the hovering waitress their orders—Dennis again choosing the pot pie—giving Andrea time to remember the last time Elizabeth Worth had gotten her way by spending two days in bed with what she called “an attack of nerves.” Frightened, Dennis had given in. Would he this time as well? Did this job offer enough to offset his mother’s whining?