All Dressed Up (29 page)

She crept over
to the window and looked down.

Out in the
driveway, Charlie had just returned from his run. His T-shirt stuck
to his body and his breathing rasped hard. His legs and arms were
so brown and long. He saw Mac waiting there beside the motorcycle
and grabbed at him with a look of stark fear. Some horrible series
of connections had occurred to him, apparently, re Emma, priestly
comfort in times of trouble, and little Billy Dean in the
hospital.

Through the
open window Lainie heard him attempting to gasp a question. “Wh –
what – ? I’m sorry.” He bent to prop his hands on his locked knees,
chest expanding and then caving back. He wasn’t usually this
breathless. He must have pushed himself way too hard.

“I’m just here
to see your mother,” Mac said.

“Oh God I
thought it must be Billy. Oh God. You haven’t come from the
hospital?”

“No, no… I’m
taking her out to eat. She had to change because of the bike. Has
something happened?”

“Emma’s… uh…
brother. Appendicitis. It’s okay.”

“Right, no, I
didn’t know about that.”

Charlie
straightened. His breathing began to settle. He looked up at
Lainie’s bedroom window and she had to wave at him because it would
have been worse not to. Hi, yes, I’ve been watching.

She hurried
down, passing Charlie at the bottom of the stairs. “Why is he
taking you out?” Charlie asked abruptly. “I mean, is there a
reason?”

“I guess
because we like each other.” She felt so vulnerable, couldn’t he
see? “Charlie, could you look at this as being about more than its
potential impact on you?” She touched his steamy forearm.

“Is that what
you think I’m doing?”

“Maybe I’m
pre-empting. I don’t like you asking about reasons, as if it’s so
impossible to think – ”

“I didn’t mean
it that way. That was a real jerk of a way to react. I’m sorry. You
deserve… Well, anything you want.” He actually hugged her, harder
and for longer than he’d hugged her in ages. He felt so good. Her
son, big and clever and adult, who loved her.

“I think Mac
might be what I want. Would that be okay with you?” she asked
him.

“Of course it
would. I told you. Anything. I’m taking a shower.” He went up the
stairs too soon, the way he’d been doing for years, the way maybe
everyone’s children did. They disappeared up into their rooms way
before you’d finished with the conversation. At what point did your
kids become generous, lingering with you and telling you more than
you wanted to know about their lives? Listening to more than you
should probably tell them about yours?

Outside, Mac
waited patiently beside his machine.

“Tell me the
name of the bike,” she blurted out. She refused to mention Charlie,
or apologize, or worry in case there was still a trace of the
overly-dark lipstick at her mouth corners.

“It doesn’t
have a name. You were thinking Lucille, or Midnight, or
something?”

“No, I mean,
what’s it officially called. By the manufacturer. A Norton
something-something.” She touched the black gas tank. It was shaped
like the thorax of an ant, with the word Norton printed on it in
dashing gold script. “What do those numbers mean that they always
use? Honda 350. Kawasaki 625. The engine volume.”

“It’s a 1977
Norton Commando 850.”

“1977. You’re
kidding.”

“I know. It’s
a shock. You were so sure it was a ’76.”

“Upstairs I
was thinking about 1977, that’s all. Feeling eighteen.”

“You feel
eighteen today?”

He leaned
toward her and desire shoved roughly into her body like strong wind
hitting her around the corner of a building. She could smell the
trouble he’d taken for her – the fresh toothpaste and shampoo, the
clean clothing. The different scents blended with the warmth of his
skin and made her want to ingest him like a street drug.

“Since you
called, I do,” she said, then closed her eyes and let her face
fall. “I shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Well, if you
can’t say them at eighteen, when can you?”

She laughed.
“True. We already agreed there’d be no games, didn’t we?”

“I don’t think
we can afford them at our youthful time of life. Do you need some
help getting on the bike?”

“If I do, I’m
not going to admit it. You’re getting on first, right?”

“To hold it
steady.”

“So you won’t
see how clumsy I am, you’ll only feel it, from behind.”

He swung his
leg across the seat and she gave a sort of hopping lurch and got
hers over, too. The outside of her thigh hurt as a result, just
below her hip. Tomorrow, horse-back riding. Then a rodeo. Maybe a
little pole-dancing. Eventually, her hips might be in a fit state
for sex.

If you want
sex, Mac.

She put her
arms around his body, leaned her ear against his back, felt the
throb of the bike between her legs and the warm breeze curl over
her shoulders, and then the dip and swing as they rode the bends
beside the lake on 9N… and wondered if becoming a practicing
Christian was anything like taking up gemology because the man you
loved had an interest.

She didn’t
think so. It was more like him wanting children and you having
already had a hysterectomy, which had happened to Angie once, about
fifteen years ago. It ruined Angie’s relationship with the man, but
for a while after that Lainie had trusted her closeness to her
cousin a lot more, because for once Angie’s vulnerability had
showed.

“Yu-um,
Mo-om!” Brooke said.

Angie had
brought her a casserole tonight. The dish and foil cover were still
hot to the touch, and the freshly-made meal smelled enticing and
good. It had chicken and bacon, mushrooms and toasted almonds,
celery, sour cream, white wine… She’d found the recipe years ago in
a magazine and had made it so many times she didn’t need to look at
the recipe now. She was proud of it, proud of the warmth of the
gesture when Scott’s poor prospects and the approach of the wedding
had been keeping her awake at night.

“You don’t
have to cook for me,” Brooke scolded her. “You already do so
much.”

“I wanted to.
Can’t your own mother make things easier for you when you’re
getting married in less than three weeks?”

“Oh, we’re
fine about the wedding. We’re relaxed. We’re kind of wishing we’d
just eloped to Vegas.”

Brooke still
wore her uniform. She only bothered to change and shower right away
if she’d had what she called “a messy day.” Angie bit her tongue
about the hygiene and the risk to Ash. “Oh, Billy Dean is in the
hospital,” Brooke said with her head in the freezer and her maroon
tush sticking out. “Complications from appendicitis.”

Angie reacted
in the right way. She made sure he was going to be fine. She showed
the necessary concern. But she didn’t feel it in her heart the way
most people did.

Or the way
they pretended to.

There was a
lot of over-reaction and insincerity on that front, she
considered.

Of course she
did hope he was going to be fine, but she trusted the hospital
system and, after all, her cousin’s son’s ex-fiancée’s little
brother wasn’t exactly a close relative, not a case for her to
burst into tears and rush off to hug people. How would it help if
she did that? Billy had plenty of loving family.

She saw Brooke
pulling out packets of fish fingers and oven fries and setting them
on baking trays. “You’re not having the casserole?” Her face
prickled and sweat steamed along her jaw and beside her ears,
flooded its way down her chest, made her shoes slippery on the
insides.

“I promised
Ash this. Go figure, it’s her favorite dinner this year. We’ll have
the casserole tomorrow. Are you staying?”

“Not for fish
fingers and fries.”

Brooke paused
over the fish fingers. “I guess the adults can have the casserole,
if you want.”

“No, you go
ahead with your plan.”

“Are you
sure?”

“Of course I’m
sure. Otherwise, you’re stuck finding another meal for
tomorrow.”

“That’s what I
thought. Scott doesn’t mind fish and fries.”

The doorbell
sounded and Scott brought in Charlie, who looked taken aback and
not happy to see Angie sitting at the kitchen table. His dark hair
was damp around the back of his neck from a recent shower, and
Angie felt sick, as usual, at seeing him beside Scott and mentally
contrasting their earning power and their charm.

Although Scott
did just scrape to a win on shoulder breadth and muscles.

“Hi, Cousin
Angie.” Charlie’s voice pitched itself at a reluctant level.

“Hello,
Charlie, sweetheart.” As a lesson in manners, she showed him much
greater warmth, even stood up and put her arms around him and gave
a kiss in the air next to his ear, while the love and the envy
battled in her heart. She could have been proud of him, fond of
him, if Ben and Scott had even half-way measured up. “I didn’t know
you were back up here.”

“I drove up
today. I had some time off. Couple of days.” Not happy to see her
at all.

Well, it was
mutual, to be honest. She found him unsettling, close to. Had been
having this reaction to him for more than twenty years, from when
he’d still only reached to her shoulder. She didn’t trust the way
he looked at her – all the IQ that Lainie, too, had seemed almost
disturbed by when she’d found out, back in his pre-school days.
Right now, ten seconds after he’d entered the kitchen, she felt an
itch to adjust her clothing as if her bra was showing.

“Are you
working a split shift, Brooke?” he asked. “Are you sitting for her,
Cousin Angie?” They seemed like odd questions. What was he trying
to find out? She saw him take in the foil-covered casserole dish,
and note the way she and Brooke were in the kitchen while Ashlyn
played on the back porch.

“I’m just
visiting,” Angie answered him. “She finished a couple of hours
ago.”

“We saw each
other at the hospital, Charlie and me,” Brooke explained. “I told
you about Billy.”

“You’re a
doctor, wouldn’t you think she’d change right away?” Angie appealed
to him.

“Yeah, but
sometimes you just forget, when you’re tired.” He took in her own
neat clothing and she had the itch to adjust it again.

“Sometimes you
make me feel like a butterfly stuck on a pin, Charlie Keogh,” she
blurted out.

“Yeah, sorry,
I have stuff on my mind.” Then he added, as if suddenly hearing
that the first time had sounded fake, “I’m really sorry.”

“Charlie, want
a beer?” Scott offered, and listed what was showing tonight on
ESPN.

Charlie
accepted the beer and expressed some interest in the sport, but
didn’t immediately leave the kitchen. Ash came in and announced
that she was hungry, and Brooke turned the oven up higher.

“They’ll just
burn on the bottom,” Angie warned.

“I’ll flip ’em
and they won’t. Charlie, are you staying?”

“To eat? No…
Thanks,” he said vaguely, and asked a couple of questions about how
people were doing. It wasn’t clear why he’d come.

He got on well
with Scott. To be honest, if he could still find common ground with
Ben, getting on with Scott wasn’t such a stretch. It irritated
Angie that Charlie could play the down-to-earth, sport-and-beer
type when he wanted to. He was that smart.

He kept
looking awkwardly between Angie and Brooke and Ashlyn until Brooke
told him, “Go watch sport,” and when he did, she mouthed to Angie
so that Ash wouldn’t hear, “He pretty much stormed out of the
hospital today after he’d come to see Emma and Billy.”

“So it’s not
back on?” Angie mouthed back.

“Doesn’t seem
like it.”

“Do you think
there’s any chance?”

Brooke
shrugged. “Lotta tension. Lotta chemistry.”

“Oh,
chemistry…”

“Don’t knock
it.”

“Chemistry
fades.” It was the closest Angie dared get to any suggestion about
Brooke and Scott, and she had to wait for a moment with her breath
held, because if Brooke guessed she’d said it on purpose…

But apparently
she’d been subtle enough.

Five minutes
later Charlie came back into the kitchen, tipping his beer can into
his mouth as if in a hurry to get it down. “Ahh, I won’t stay,” he
said. “I think the Deans were glad to have you at the hospital this
afternoon, Brooke, so thanks for that.”

“You’re
welcome, Charlie. Anything I can do. I’ll look in on him every
shift, I told them.”

“Thank you. I
mean that. Thanks.”

“Sit down and
talk to us, Charlie,” Angie urged him. She might be able to get him
to tell them something juicy and significant if she could just keep
him for longer and make him eat. “You don’t have to have fish
fingers, you can have the chicken and mushroom.”

But she’d
never had any influence over him, and he left.

Mac sat beside
Lainie in the darkest corner of McGinty’s and their heads almost
touched over their shared order of wings and fries. Lainie looked
at him, and from this distance his skin was blurred. She could see
the flaws in it, but they were softened. She liked God’s strategy
in this area. Older lovers with their focal length blowing out saw
each other in soft focus, close up. It was clever. It worked.

He took a slow
pull on his beer and grinned at her, and Lainie watched the grin
from her blurry vantage point, liking the flaws in his face,
wanting to learn them off by heart, liking McGinty’s with its
shadowy lighting. Mac’s eyes looked deep and dark with their pupils
dilated. He was still grinning at her. She couldn’t even see the
line of his jaw, just a generalized pinky paleness shading off into
the background of his shirt and the wood paneling on the walls.

She attempted
a self-conscious prayer. Lord, thank you for my increasing focal
length. Thank you for shadows. Thank you for Mac still having nice
eyebrows not those rampant wiry ones some men get at his age. And
ear hair. Thank you for him not having that. Help me to think of
more reasons to thank you and to believe that you’re there and
interested in us. Maybe this is better than if he liked gemology.
Help me to remember that it could have been worse. Model
rail-roading or show dogs.