A Father for Philip (13 page)

At once she was released from the warmth
of the embrace which had held her while she slept. She lay back on her pillow
while the man beside her rose up on an elbow and looked down at her with
David’s gray eyes, and smiled David sweet smile surrounded by a thick, dark
beard. He spoke in David’s well remembered voice. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

She could feel him touching her, feel
his warm length along the flesh of her body, and tears filled her eyes. She
could not speak, for all the things she needed to say, need to ask were making
such a tangled mess in her brain. Tears overflowed and trickled down her face.
She ignored them and looked up at him through a mist, her face working, her
throat thick, unable to move. With vast effort, she managed to speak at last. Eleanor
opened her trembling mouth and said, “The roses as did grow.”

At that, David buried his face against
her breast and together they wept for years lost, for joy regained, and for
happiness yet to come. Her hands went up from his back to tangle in the dark
hair and she pulled his face up to hers, her mouth asking for his kisses which
were given and returned and more so much, much more…

Later, he smiled down at her and said
huskily, “You can tell Grant for me, you are most definitely not frigid.”

At David’s mention of Grant, her world,
the present, and all the people in it came rushing back upon her. “Philip!” She
gasped. “He’s got to go to school.”

“He’s gone,” said David, pulling her
back into his arms. “He had porridge… With raisins in and brown sugar on… Fed
the dog, chased the horse out of your roses and even remembered to tell me to
make his lunch. He tried to stall so he could miss the bus, but I rousted him
out in a hurry.”

“You… rousted him out? What horse? You
gave him breakfast… Made his lunch? But how… How long have you been here? How
long was I sick? What’s going on?” This last came in a bewildered wail.

“One at a time, sweet.” He laughed at
her, holding her tightly. “No. Stay still,” he added as she tried to pull away
from him. “Come back to me, darling.”

Eleanor thrust herself away from him and
jumped out of bed, out of reach of those seeking hands, and stood there,
trembling, wide-eyed. She grabbed her robe and wrapped it around herself,
suddenly conscious of her nudity. “Get out,” she croaked. “Let me get dressed.
What are you thinking of, coming back into my life like this without warning,
and catching me when I’m too sick to think, to fight back? Oh, God!” she cried,
and sank into the chair. “Oh, God! What have I done? I almost agreed to marry
Grant! David! You’re here! I can’t take it in. You have to go. Leave me. Let me
think.”

“I can’t, sweetheart. I don’t have any
clothes on. You’re sitting on my pants.”

“I’m…?” Wildly she jumped up, threw his
trousers at him and fled from the room. She was still terribly weak and feeling
quite miserable, she realized as she huddled in a dejected heap on the couch in
the living room. David…
David! Here!
It was too much to believe. How could it be? Where in God’s name had he been?
And how, how in the world had he known about Grant’s calling her frigid?

He filled the doorway, shirtless,
barefoot, hair standing on end, and looked at her with grave, concerned eyes.

“How…?” she said again. “I mean… Why?
You aren’t even the same shape!” she cried accusingly, her mouth, bruised from
his kisses, trembling.

“No, darling. When you last saw me I was
twenty-four. A man fills out in that many years, Eleanor.” He limped over and
sat beside her heavily, not touching, but looking, looking, as if he could not
get his fill.

“You limp,” she said more quietly, but
with the same accusing note in her tone.

He nodded. “My leg was injured when I
got lost. Before I was found it become quite badly infected. Part of the thigh
muscle was destroyed.”

“You… You knew about Grant’s calling me
frigid…” she stammered. “How?”

“Philip.”

“Philip? But he… How?” She shook her
head in bewilderment. She had to quit saying that!

“He asked me if it was a bad word.”
David reached out a hand and gently stroked the hair out of her eyes. “He said
it made you mad and you didn’t even say goodnight to Grant but you told him
to.”

She jerked away from his touch, and he
said, “I want some coffee, Eleanor. You?”

“Coffee! You come waltzing in here like
you belong and want coffee? Offer it to me in my own home, before you even tell
me how you came to be here?”

“Who has a better right to be in our
home? Who built it, sweetheart?” She glared at him, speechless. “You always
were bad tempered before you had your morning coffee, weren’t you?” He ducked,
grinning, out of the room and the cushion she threw at him missed. She ran into
the bathroom, closed and locked the door then stood leaning against it for a
long moment.

She caught sight of herself in the
mirror, her wild eyes, wild hair, bruised mouth and shaking shoulders.
Trembling, she washed her face, brushed her teeth and tried to run a brush
through her hair. It felt sticky, and resisted the bristles. She shoved it off
her face and tied it back.

She tightened the sash on her robe,
shoved her hands deep into the pockets, and opened the door, hearing David
cheerfully whistling a tune she didn’t recognize.

David returned to the living room in a
short while, carrying a tray which he held carefully in front of him. From it
emanated the tantalizing aroma of coffee and cinnamon toast. He put it on the
coffee table before her and said, “Sweetheart, you still make damn good cookies
and doughnuts. Thanks for sending them over with Phil.”

“Over…?” she whispered, confusion
battering at her brain.

“To the log cabin,” he said impatiently.
Then, “Now look, Eleanor. He said he’d told you about me—about the log cabin.
That’s the only reason I let him stay around for such long periods at a time.
He said you weren’t worried. He said he’d told you all about his friend Jeff.”
He frowned. “I must say I wondered about your letting him spend so much time
with a stranger. Just for safety’s sake, should questions ever arise, I never
let him go into my camper. In fact, I didn’t so much as pick him up and hold
him until he got sick from eating salami.”

“Then… You… You’re Jeff?” She wanted to
laugh. She wanted to cry. “I thought you… Jeff, was an imaginary friend. He has
them, you know. Solomon the Soldier, and we had to call him just that. Solomon
all by itself wouldn’t… She choked on her coffee, put her cup down and wept
wildly as David gathered her into his arms.

“You could have been anybody! A hobo, a
drug addict, an escaped convict! A child molester! I asked him once if he’d
seen any strangers around, anyone who didn’t belong, and he told me there was
no one. And I didn’t believe he had anybody there and the other day I was
feeling so terrible and Grant found me crying because Philip had told me the
cabin was right beside the dogwood tree, and…My God! To think there was really
someone there with him all that time and I…”

“But it wasn’t just ‘someone’, darling.
It wasn’t any of those terrible things you’re thinking. It was me. And the
first day I saw him he was just a little boy with a big load of problems,
taking them out on a log with my ax because he couldn’t use it on Grant.”

“What do you mean?” Eleanor raised tear
drenched eyes to David. He kissed her nose gently and set her away from him.

“Drink your coffee, Eleanor.”

“No. I want to know what you meant.”

“He was upset at something Grant had
done to him. I was resting in the shade when I heard someone chopping with my
ax. Well, not really chopping. He’d lift it then let the blade fall. It was too
heavy for him to control. I took it away from him, and he disappeared, but he
hung around in the trees watching me work, not knowing I knew he was there. I
told a squirrel I needed help, because I felt sorry for the little guy—Philip,
that is, not the squirrel. The next day when I went back to the glade, the
brush I’d cut was piled up and he was hovering in the trees again. You called
him and he snatched up his bike took off.

“Then as the days went by we became
friends because we needed each other. Even before I knew who he was, what he
was to me, I had learned that his mother was going to marry a man named Grant—a
man whose head he wanted to chop off. So, knowing that, how could I come to
you, Eleanor? I had to wait, to see what was happening. If you had found
someone else you truly loved, I was going to leave, let you have me declared
legally dead, or let you divorce me for desertion if necessary. But,” he added
grimly, “not now. Now I have you, and I have my son, and I have a firm
commitment to him. Regardless of what happens between you and me, Philip and I
are going to finish that cabin, and we are going to live in it together each
and every summer vacation for so long as he wants. I’ll be asking for some of
his weekends, too. And you, Grant, all the courts of the land won’t stop me
from keeping that promise I made to my son.”

She stared at him and his grim face.
“But why didn’t you come to me as soon as you got back? Why did you start
building a cabin in the woods on the Anderson place instead of coming to me?
And why the Anderson place at all? It’s private property, even though we always
did treat that stretch of woods as our own. Why build in the little glade?”

David ignored the first two questions.
“The Anderson place is mine, Eleanor. I bought it. The glade was a wonderful
part of my memories of you, and I had to live there, to bring you close. If I
couldn’t have you, at least I could have that.”

“Oh, David,” she cried, reaching for
him, holding him as tightly as he held her. “It was so wonderful, our little
glade, wasn’t it?”

He did not answer her with words for a
long time, and then, running a finger down her shoulder and arm, he said, “It
will be again, sweet, so get well and we’ll go back there together.” He re-tied
her robe to keep the draft from her precious skin and sat her up into the crook
of his arm.

“It’s just lucky you weren’t wearing
this that night I watched you sit at your computer and not work. That silk
dress and the way it fit you, especially when you leaned back and stretched,
nearly did me in, Eleanor Bear.”

She gasped. “How did you know about
Eleanor Bear?”

“I know everything.” He grinned, rubbed
his beard against her face. “Thanks to our talkative young Philip.”

“Did he volunteer all this information,
or did you…?”

“Pump him? I most certainly did,” David
replied, giving her the one answer she had wanted to hear. “I found out you’re
not fat, you don’t eat enough and Grant said it was because you were
‘love-lorna’—he thought that meant you are in love with Lorna, like he is—and
that your hair is the color of root beer Popsicles.”

Eleanor thumped him on the top of his
head with a balled up fist. “Thanks a lot,” she laughed, and then sobered. “But
that night… I knew someone was staring at me. I felt it. That’s why I closed
the drapes. Then the next morning I saw your foot-prints by the rose arbor and
I was glad I had felt it necessary to lock the doors for once.”

“A good thing, too,” he said severely.
“I might’ve been anybody… A hobo, a drug addict, an escaped convict…”

“Don’t make fun of me. Why didn’t you
come to me that night? I dreamed of you, Dave. I used to dream about you a lot,
but all that came through clearly even in the dreams was your voice. That
night, though, I dreamed of your eyes. I wonder if my heart knew you were
near?”

“It should have. You looked right into
my eyes in the restaurant at the hotel. I knew the risk I was taking but I had
to see you again. I had to see you with Philip, and with that Grant person. I
hoped the beard would be enough to disguise my face in case you did happen to
look at me, and at the same time, I hoped it wouldn’t, that you’d see me, know
me, dump Grant’s soup in his lap and come running to me.” He shook his head.
His mouth twisted wryly for a second. “Foolish dream.

“If it hadn’t been for that little scamp
grinning at me all evening, you never would’ve cast your eyes in my direction.
Oh, darling! I wanted so badly to rush over, bust Grant right in the chops. I
wanted to drag you away from his table and bring you home and make passionate
love to you. I didn’t even sleep that night, so you are luckier than I. At
least you had dreams. I gave mine up when I saw you laughing with Grant.”

At that moment a loud knocking came on
the door and Eleanor jumped to her feet. “David! Get up! Go back to the
bedroom! We look like we’ve been—”

“We have been, Eleanor, and why not?
We’re married.”

Eleanor wrung her hands in agitation.
“Go. Just go, please! I’m not ready yet to… to…”

“Share me?” He grinned. “Well get rid of
whoever it is and quick.” He ducked into the hallway, out of sight. Eleanor
shoved the extra plate and cup under the couch and went to the door.

It was Bill.

“Three!” he said, by way of greeting.
“Three!”

“Three?” Eleanor repeated stupidly,
then, as the light dawned, she squealed. “Triplets? Good grief. Three babies?
Oh, Bill! How’s Kathy?”