15 Tales of Love (6 page)

She climbed out of her Focus, picked up the basket tote in which she carried her clothes, towels, water bottle, and a book. She put the tote down in the tufts of grass at the edge of the sand and looked around. As usual, after the supper hour there were few swimmers. Most of the picnic tables under the trees were filled with families. She could smell the hamburgers grilling. She didn’t see anyone she knew.

As she walked toward the water, she noticed that the life guard was not in her usual place. Renee was an old friend and Jasmyn hoped she wasn’t sick or something.

The water was cool enough to be refreshing and she went in quickly, not slowly as she sometimes did when the water was colder, what she thought of as ‘sneaking in.’
It’s best to do something unpleasant quick,
Uncle Horace would say.
Gets it over with.
He was frequently right.

She swam leisurely to the barrier ropes, rested there a moment, swam back to where she could touch bottom with her toe and then went back to the ropes. Four such laps were her usual routine, varying between crawl and backstroke to exercise arms and shoulders tense from desk and computer work.

As she walked out of the water, a familiar laughing voice said from behind her, “Lookin’ good, Jaz.”

She turned to scowl at Rory McAlpine, and was surprised to see him wearing the life guard’s vest. She asked, “Where’s Renee?”

He grinned. “And hello to you, too.”

She didn’t answer, bracing herself against his charm. She didn’t want to like this infuriating man, but she couldn’t help it—he was very likable. And very good looking. She squashed the thought.

Uncle Horace once said a ship needs a rudder, otherwise it just goes where the wind blows. Rory didn’t seem to have a rudder, and wasn’t planning to go anyplace. Lately he seemed to be paying more than usual attention to Jasmyn whenever they met, making her wonder if he was thinking she was the next female to be conquered. She generally ignored him
. I’m committed to Matt, no matter how handsome and charming Rory is. He just doesn’t fit into my life plan.

Rory sighed elaborately. “Renee was offered a job she said she couldn’t turn down, so here I am on the evening shift for what’s left of the summer. Figured I should use that training I took way back when.” He sighed again, shaking his head. “And you aren’t glad to see me at all. I’m devastated.”

“Nothing devastates you, Rory. You don’t stick at anything long enough.” 

He smiled, a little sadly she thought, which was odd. “I haven’t found the right place yet.”

“I don’t think you ever will.”

He turned to watch a young mother with two toddlers at the water’s edge. “Maybe you could help me look, Jaz.”

His serious, straightforward suggestion caught her off guard. Rory was usually just breezy. “I am engaged to Matt Colby. You know that.”

“Only sort of. You don’t wear his ring and you’ve never made an announcement, and now Matt’s gone off to Boston to a new position and goodness knows who he’ll hook up with.” He paused for a fraction of a second. “Or maybe he already has.”

She was shocked at this suggestion of Matt’s possible infidelity, but realized she had been entertaining the same thought.
Rory’s right
, w
e aren’t formally engaged, we’ve just been talking about it. Forever.
“How did you know that? He just told me this afternoon that he’d been accepted at the research library.”

“He’s been talking about it for a week.”

Jasmyn considered that and its damning implications. Matt and Rory did know a lot of the same people. She didn’t comment.

More people were returning to the water and Rory turned away. “Got to get back on duty,” he said. “Think about it. I’ll give you a call.” He glanced back at her, his face and tone still serious. “Or come swimming. I’ll be here most evenings until dark.”

She watched him walk back to the edge of the lake, stop to talk to the young mother and greet a couple of teenage boys carrying floats which were not allowed in the swimming area.
He has the personality for this
, she thought,
charming, never offending, and apparently capable, which isn’t surprising, considering all the things he’s done.

She wrapped her towel around her waist, picked up her bag and went home. She didn’t look back at Rory.

“So,” Uncle Horace said. “Matt’s gone off again and you don’t know where, or when he’ll come back, but you’re going to sit around and twiddle your thumbs while he’s off doin’ whatever it is he wants?”

His tone irritated Jasmyn; it was too close to the truth. “We have an agreement,” she said.

“He’s just keepin’ you on the string.” It was a nice Saturday afternoon and he was finishing up the woodpile, which had been left to thoroughly dry out before he put it into the shed. “If he’s free to do what he wants down there in Boston, you should be doin’ the same thing here. You’re too young to be tied like that.”

She didn’t answer.

“You got to look deeper.” He hefted the piece of wood in his hands. “This here piece of wood looks solid, like it should burn good. And look at that one over there.”

She looked where he was pointing at the small pile of pieces still on the ground.

“This here is popple,” Horace said, indicating the one in his hand. “Soft, don’t burn so good.” He put the stick on his pile and picked up another one. “This here is oak, solid, no matter what it looks like.”

Jasmyn didn’t know one kind of wood from another, but she could see that the stick in his hand was misshapen by a knot, and a broken stub protruded from one side. The piece of popple, the old name for poplar, was straight and smooth. She didn’t comment.

“Matt’s like that popple,” Horace said, and went back to stacking wood. “Looks nice, acts the big professor, high and mighty, above all of us, but maybe he ain’t too dry on the inside.”

An old, dented, green pick-up truck pulled into the driveway. Jasmyn was surprised and a little dismayed to see Rory climb out of it.

He strode confidently toward them, smiling. “Hi, Jaz. How are you today, Mr. Jameson?”

Horace smiled warmly at him. “Tolerable, Rory, considerin’ the weather.”

Rory stepped toward him. “Let me give you a hand with that wood.” He collected all of the remaining pieces into a large armload and stood up. “Over there on that pile?”

Jasmyn watched him stack the wood competently. Horace watched and said nothing.

Rory turned toward them. “Got a rake somewhere? I’ll clean this up for you.” He swung his arm over the ground littered with bark and chips.

“That’s my job, got to keep busy, and you come here to see my girl, not help me.”

“Always glad to help. Haven’t stacked wood in a while.” He looked sideways at Jasmyn. “I’m on my way to the lake, but I wondered if you’d do brunch tomorrow, that diner out on the highway has this special . . . a Sunday special, some fancy omelets with all the extras.”

She couldn’t think of a snappy answer. She enjoyed brunch and the diner produced an excellent meal, but she and Matt rarely went out for breakfast since he wasn’t a morning person. She realized there were a lot of fun things Matt didn’t want to do, but did she want to do them with Rory?

“Oh, go along,” Uncle Horace said. “You don’t get out much anymore.”

She could hear the disapproval in his voice, his annoyance with Matt’s leaving her.

What harm can it do? Matt must be eating out
.
With somebody
. Resigned and exasperated she said, “All right, Rory. This once.”

He grinned at her. “Once is how to start.” He looked at Horace. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Jameson. Jaz, I’ll pick you up around nine-thirty or so.”

“Sure.” With Rory it would always be “or so,” never definite. But did that make a lot of difference?

She watched him climb into the truck and wave to her, smiling as he backed his truck around. She asked, laughing at herself, “Where did you meet Rory, Uncle Horace?”

“Know his folks. His father’s one of those fix-it-up guys, can do most anything, really smart. Makes a pretty good livin’ at it, doin’ a little of this and a little of that. Rory helps him out a lot. Came over couple of years ago and helped me straighten up the old barn, put in a couple of braces.”

She didn’t answer.

“Lot of satisfaction in helpin’ folks out, you know.”

“I’ve known him since high school. He never seemed to have any goals. Didn’t go on to school.”

“Lots of folks don’t need to.” He turned to look at the littered ground he intended to rake. “And some folks never learn anything no matter how long they go to school.”

“You mean Matt, Uncle Horace?”

“It the shoe fits, honey.” He turned to peer closely at her. “Think about that piece of popple and the oak stick. Only one of them is dry on the inside. Outside don’t count.”

Just what is inside?
Well, why not? Maybe Rory would be fun. I haven’t had much fun lately.
She said, “Well, I said I’d go. I never told Matt I wouldn’t do anything while he was gone. Even if he seems to expect it.”

Horace smiled at her. “I think you’ve said good-bye to him this time, and it’s his loss. Books can’t make up for people, and maybe it ain’t books that he went to Boston for.”

She looked down the road to where Rory had gone, considering him. He did have a few good traits that Matt lacked, like helpfulness and consideration for other people, people Matt seemed to think were beneath him.

“Don’t do no harm to change direction some times,” Horace said, “when the weather changes.”

Jasmyn wondered. She had loved Matt for a long time, or thought she did. Had she just loved being in love, always having a date for the dance, having a secure future with a man destined for success? But she was no longer sure how secure that future was. She said, “Maybe the weather has changed, Uncle Horace.”

“Only one way to find out, honey. Matt will hear if you’re going out. See what happens then.”

So he would. People love to gossip. She said, “Rory can be fun. It will be an entertaining brunch.”

THE FOURTH WATCH

It is said that all experiences, everything seen and learned, remains somewhere in the subconscious. In the deepest part of the night, the mind is the most vulnerable, the body at its lowest ebb, and it is then that the subconscious tends to surface.

The ancients called it the fourth watch of the night.

There were times when Naomi Caldwell dreaded sleep. No matter how tired she was, she would wake in the early hours, overwhelmed by her doubts and fears. Now was one of those times: Tom was leaving, deserting her, just as everyone else in her life had. She had no one to turn to for comfort.

She had been abandoned so many times in the past, she should be used to it. Her heart was hardened, but each time it hurt more, left a deeper, aching empty place in her soul. When she was ten, her beloved father had left. He went out on a Friday morning as usual to go to work and did not come back. She had never seen him again and no one had ever told her why.

She still dreamed about him sometimes, imagining him phoning her, his rich, warm voice asking about her, saying he wanted to see her, could she come to him? Such dreams caused a tightness in her chest that could last for days.

With her father gone, her mother had withdrawn into her own misery, leaving Naomi to deal with her grief and loss by herself. She had turned to Ben, her much older brother, for solace, for strength to carry on. But, after a while, Ben, too, had gone. He couldn’t stand their mother’s despair and bitterness, he told Naomi, and he needed to get on with his life, but he would keep in touch. Naomi had gotten a note from him once in a while, asking how she was doing, giving her some encouragement, telling her to hang in there. She had looked forward to the notes, cherished them, but then they had stopped. She had no idea where Ben was now, or even if he was still alive somewhere. Sometimes she still hoped, looked at the little box where she kept his few letters, but rarely took them out, not risking the tears they would bring.

While in high school, Naomi had found work where she could, baby-sitting, working part-time at a grocery store, and after graduation as a waitress in a mid-level restaurant. She had supported both herself and her mother while she dreamed of better things. Her mother had gradually faded away, sinking deeper into her despair until she had died of it. Although she had offered Naomi little in the way of love or support, she had been family. All the family Naomi had.

With her mother gone and the final bills settled, Naomi had no hope of going to college, not even the local tech school she had wanted to attend. She no longer even had a dream of becoming a paralegal. There was no way she could afford the classes.

Then she met Daniel. He was a few years older than Naomi, a good-looking, happy-go-lucky charmer, and his attentions began filling in some of her aching empty places, giving her small pleasures. They had gone to movies, out to dinner, and a ballgame or two. She had found solace in intimacy, and she dared to begin to dream again: a home and family of her own, maybe some of the schooling she wanted, a better job.

But Daniel had no plans, no intentions, for marriage or fatherhood. When she told him of her pregnancy, he left her some money for doctor bills and she had not heard from him again. A lawyer friend had made some inquiries, but she could not afford the search.

She did not consider an abortion, that would be the total abandonment of another being who deserved to live, and she could not face that. The pregnancy had actually lifted her spirits in spite of the uncertainties of the future and how she would support the two of them. A baby would be someone to love and care for, someone who would love her in return, and give her the love she so desperately wanted. But that dream, too, was short-lived, with a miscarriage early in her fourth month. She thought sometimes of that unborn daughter and in her mind called her Benita, for her absent brother.

When she was well again, she went back to her job at the restaurant. She had no place else to go and little energy to search for something better. She accepted her co-workers’ words of condolence, shrugged off comments that it was “probably all for the best,” and walled off her heart.

There were men who talked to her, of course. The regular customers who flirted a little as she poured their coffee, but she didn’t listen to them.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing working here?” Joe asked. She did not consider herself pretty; her hair was too carroty, her face too round and too freckled, her build too short and a little too chubby. Besides, as she well knew, Joe had his heart set on the very pretty and popular Susie who worked at the bank. He was just talking to pass the time.

“You’re way too smart to stay here,” Sam often said. “How come you don’t get something better?”

Sam was pleasant, rather shy and sort of homely, and his wife had left him. Naomi knew he was missing his kids, and had no interest in another woman.

Peter was handsome, working on his business degree, and just teased. He reminded Naomi of Daniel.

Her heart was safely walled away from all of them and she would not allow it to be broken again. She tucked her sadness deep inside and dreaded the dark part of the night when the old memories sometimes came back to haunt her, especially if she was tired, or the day had not gone well. She had no one to turn to for comfort, but it was safer to trust no one. She would not be hurt again.

Tom came into the restaurant for the first time during a mid-morning lull. He was a late twenty-something, carrying a laptop and a battered briefcase. He chose a table in the back, opened the computer, and took a book from his briefcase.

When Naomi approached him, he looked up at her and smiled slightly. She looked for a second into a pair of remarkably warm, hazel eyes and momentarily caught her breath. Ben’s eyes were almost that color.

He asked, “Coffee? And a raspberry square?”

She nodded, and wrote it on her pad without answering. When she came back, he looked up from his laptop and smiled again, a little hesitantly. “Is it okay if I work here for a while?” He had a pleasant voice, friendly and warm.

“Sure,” she said, not caring. “As long as nobody’s waiting for a table, no one minds if you stay.”

“Thanks. I have a two hour break between classes and the school coffee shop is way too noisy for me to study.”

She didn’t think any more about him and returned to her other customers, but later she stopped by his table and asked if he wanted more coffee.

He glanced at the almost empty cup, then looked up at her and smiled. “Sure, warm it up.”

Since she had no other customers just then, she asked, “You go to the Tech?”

He regarded her more closely. “Only on Thursdays.”

She said, “Oh,” and filled his cup. She noticed a new couple had come in, and went to serve them.

Naomi didn’t think about him again, but on the following Thursday morning, he was again at the back table with his schoolwork.

“Hi,” he said, glancing at her nametag. “I’m Tom. And you’re Naomi.”

She smiled a little. “I am. Coffee?”

“Sure, and a cinnamon roll.”

She noted again the clear hazel eyes, and this time his pleasant face and unruly sandy hair as well. She asked, “What are you studying?”

“Some pharmacology stuff.”

She decided he was an egghead of some sort, and didn’t comment.

But Tom seemed inclined to talk. “I’m an EMT,” he said, “and I work as an aide at the hospital, but I want to be a registered nurse. They have a real need for male nurses.”

She said, “I’m impressed. It must be a long haul if you work, too.”

“Yeah.” He looked back at the book he was reading. “But if I keep working at it, I’ll get there. Even with only one class a week at the school. I do most of the stuff online.” He paused. “While waiting for the pager to go off.”

She turned away. “I’ll get your coffee.”

When she came back he was engrossed in the book and didn’t look up.

Naomi began to look forward to Thursday mornings. Tom was generally quite serious, didn’t flirt, didn’t tease, and talked a little about his studies and his enthusiasm for nursing. She learned it was possible to pursue a college degree one or two classes at a time and she began to think about it, and some of her earlier dreams of becoming a paralegal seeped back. She wanted something better than waitressing, but how long would it take? Years?

“But so what?” Tom asked her one cold, drizzly morning. “So you might be, what, thirty when you graduate? How old will you be if you don’t do it? If that’s what you really want, go for it.”

He had recently extended his stay to include a soup and sandwich lunch, and today he was reluctant to go out in the rain. “Let me bring you stuff from the Tech.”

She said, “Sure,” but didn’t think she’d read it. Fitting classes into her schedule sounded difficult and she was often too tired to do anything.

He turned away from her for a long moment, then asked hesitantly, “When do you get off work?”

“Three-thirty. I only do breakfast and lunch.”

He regarded her again, his eyes wide and guileless. “Maybe we could take in a movie or something? I’m off duty on Tuesdays.”

“Oh.” She considered it for a moment thinking,
Why not? I don’t have to commit to anything and it’s been a long time. And he seems nice. When was the last time I went to a show?

She said, “I guess.”

It turned out to be more fun than she had expected. After the movie he took her to a small restaurant—a treat for her to be served by someone else, although she did note that she could have done it better, much to Tom’s amusement. She found Tom had a dry sense of humor, brought out by the really bad comedy movie, and they agreed to do it again some time. There was a small warm spot next to her frozen heart.

But it was some time before she saw Tom again. He missed the next two Thursday mornings.
Was it something I said? Was he coming here only to see what he could get? Did he think I was something I’m not and I’m not what he wants?
She admitted to herself that she liked him and missed him. It was another small sorrow, but it was what always happened, and after all, she should be used to it.

But Tom came back on the third Thursday. “Sorry,” he said, obviously contrite. “I could have called, but wasn’t sure how, or if they’d give you a message. I was working an extra shift at the hospital because a couple of people have the flu, and then I had to work extra to catch up on my class. Finals are coming up.”

She poured his coffee without comment, shutting him out. It was safer that way.

“Really, Naomi, I’m sorry. Are you free on Tuesday?”

She looked up at him, met his eyes, saw he was serious, and gave in to her own loneliness. She said, “Sure.”

After the movie they sat in a little corner shop over coffee and apple pie with sharp cheddar. Tom talked about his family. “My older sister lives in Florida and my parents retired down there to be near the grandkids. Sometimes they say I should come, too, but I don’t think so. I’ve always lived here and I couldn’t stand the summer humidity.”

Naomi told him about her father and Ben.

“That’s tough, to have nobody, no family. Even though mine have moved, I can still visit them and talk to them if I want to.” After a pause he added, “Not that I want to very often.”

On another Tuesday, Tom talked about his future plans. “When I get my nurse’s degree,” he said, “I’d like to work in some little country hospital—you know—the kind that always need people?” He hesitated. “The kind that doesn’t pay very well? That’s where I think I could really help people.”

Naomi knew, but she had nothing to share. She said she had no future plans, no way to plan anything.

“But you should have,” Tom told her. “Everyone should have something to plan for, to look forward to. It’s what keeps people going.”

She wondered if he had studied psychology and was practicing on her. “I used to,” she said. “I wanted to go on to school, but I had to take care of my mother and then pay all of the funeral expenses. There was nothing left for me. I thought I’d like to be a paralegal, work on some of those interesting cases you read about.” She hesitated, not looking at him. “I figured it was too late.”

“It’s never too late.” He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. “Think about it. The fall semester begins in a week or so. Just try it.”

She thought about it, looked through the materials Tom brought her, saw a course or two she might find interesting, but she didn’t do anything. He shook his head and said she was being stubborn, but he didn’t give up. He didn’t berate her, or find fault with her, and she was grateful.

Tom began calling her sometimes in the evening, “I’m sitting here in the ambulance bay waiting for my pager,” he’d say. “I can only study for so long.” He’d tell her a new joke, or talk about an accident he’d covered, those parts of it that he could talk about, about how the fire department had used the Jaws of Life to rescue a drunk from his upside down car in a deep ditch, or the motorcycle rider who would have had few injuries if he had been wearing his helmet. “It makes you wonder about people,” he said. “Sometimes they do such stupid things.”

Genuinely curious, she asked, “So why do you keep doing it?”

“I need to help people. When someone recovers, it’s a great feeling that you’ve helped someone walk out of the hospital. That’s why I do it, I think.”

They drifted through the fall and into the start of the holiday season, growing closer, sharing many more evenings, if only on the phone. They moved into warm hugs and a long kiss now and then, but Tom did not actually suggest anything more. Perhaps he felt her reluctance. Naomi grew comfortable with him, looked forward to his calls and their weekly dates, and she dared to dream of a future with him. Maybe he was different, he wouldn’t abandon her.