Another Homecoming (7 page)

The butler whispered discreetly, “But Mrs. Rothmore specifically ordered—”

“Go ahead and do it.” His voice was strong enough to be heard by both Randolf and Abigail. “Make it snappy—people are coming in.”

“Right away, sir.”

Kyle reached for her father’s arm. “Shouldn’t you lie down?”

“I’m fine, little princess, don’t you fret.” He gave her a look of such love and pride that she put aside her fears. “Now you two go and enjoy yourselves.”

Kyle led Kenneth over to where Bertrand was holding out her chair. As she settled herself, Bertrand leaned down to whisper, “Well done.”

Before she could ask him what he meant, her mother entered the chamber upon the arm of the senator. Abigail’s glance flitted over Kyle as if she were not even there. Kyle dropped her gaze to her lap.

“It was very kind of you to accompany me,” Kenneth said, obviously uncertain of what was taking place.

But Kyle was not about to go into that. He was an employee of her father, she reminded herself, someone her mother would have referred to as the “office help.” As the guests settled around the great oval table, beneath a gilded chandelier from a castle in France, Kyle sought a suitable subject. “What do you do for my father, Mr. Adams?”

“Anything he wants me to. And please call me Kenneth.” His smile, warm and broad, creased his features, accenting the vigor and strength of his face. His eyes were dark green, full of life and curiosity. “Right now I am head of his investigating services. I’m responsible for making sure insurance claims are genuine. And sometimes I have to hunt down people to whom claims have been assigned.” He glanced down as a flat bowl rimmed in gold was placed before him, then soup was ladled in. “But I shouldn’t bore you with business.”

“Lobster bisque,” Kyle said, not needing to even look at her own bowl. Her mother always arranged for every formal dinner to start with the same dish. Kyle found it rather rich for her own tastes. She went on, “Maggie says there’s almost a whole cup of cream in each bowl.”

“Maggie is the cook?”

“That’s right.” Kyle hesitated, then ventured, “And my friend.”

“Sounds like a smart woman,” Kenneth said, glancing about the room.

Again there was the sense of seeing the chamber through his eyes. She looked around with him, taking in the men in their tuxedos and the women in their gowns and jewels. She saw the fancy Wedgwood china and the polished silver and all the fine possessions standing upon the antique sideboards. She felt as though she were seeing everything for the first time. She also understood the expression on his face. Sometimes she did not feel as if she belonged here either.

“Pick up the round spoon,” Kyle murmured quietly. “Do what I do. Just raise it up and touch it to your lips. That way you won’t look impolite.”

“You don’t like it?”

Kyle decided to confess what she had not told another soul, not even Maggie, for fear of hurting her feelings. “Melted shrimp ice cream would taste better.”

When Kenneth laughed out loud, several faces turned their way. Kyle decided to deflect the attention by turning to her other neighbor, one of Rothmore’s senior board members, and asking about his family. But in truth her mind remained on the young man seated to her other side.

She waited until the second course was set in front of them before turning back. Kenneth met her with another of his appealing smiles and said, “Tell me about yourself.”

“Me?”

“Sure. What do you like? Do you ever listen to rock and roll?”

Kyle felt uncertain how to respond. She had never had a dinner guest at one of her mother’s events speak
with
her. Everyone politely spoke
down
to her, doing their duty, until they were allowed to turn away and discuss something that really interested them. Kyle decided to risk more honesty. “Sometimes. I’m not sure I like it, though.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of strangeness out there. But some of it is powerful.” Kenneth ate his filet mignon with gusto. “ ‘See You Later, Alligator’—have you heard that one yet?”

“Yes.” Kyle was unsure what to think now. He looked like an adult, or sort of. He certainly carried himself like one. But adults weren’t supposed to be interested in this music. Or were they?

“Then there’s ‘Que Sera.’ I think it’s a terrific way to think about the future.”

Her eyes widened as she nodded. She had heard the song for the first time the week before.

He smiled his thanks as his plate was removed. “But it’s too bad the singer didn’t point out that confidence in God is the way to accept each day as it comes.”

The informal yet intimate way he spoke of God reminded her of Maggie. “Maybe that’s not what the singer had in mind,” she ventured in response.

“Well, she should have.” He gave her another smile. “Only way to make a philosophy like that really work.”

When Kyle did not respond, he gave a little shrug and asked, “Have you been reading about Grace Kelly’s wedding plans?”

It was the perfect question. “Oh yes, isn’t it wonderful? Princess Grace, that’s what she’s going to be called. It’s like out of a fairy tale.”

“It sure will be something,” Kenneth agreed.

“She’s going to keep her American citizenship. I saw it on television last week.”

“That’s right,” he nodded, his smile flashing.

“I wish I could see it. Don’t you?” Then Kyle met her mother’s gaze from across the table, and she felt her enthusiasm fade into a chill of apprehension. She dropped her eyes back to her plate, her appetite gone.

Kenneth asked, “Is something the matter?”

“No, everything’s fine,” she murmured. She was always doing the wrong thing, talking to the wrong person. She was supposed to keep the proper distance from people like Kenneth. She shivered as she pictured the coming confrontation with her mother.

Kyle leaned forward and glanced at where her father sat at the head of the table. He was laughing at something the senator’s wife was saying. Would he really ask her to marry Randolf Crawley?

She risked another glance at her mother. The afternoon’s discussion between her parents came back to Kyle’s mind. Once again, she found herself wondering what on earth her mother had meant.
Instead
of what?

5
 

Joel lay in bed,
unable to sleep. The moon was high and bright in the clear night sky, and silver light shimmered across his little upstairs room. The house’s second floor he had to himself. Well, almost. His father did not like stairs, so his parents slept in the converted back parlor. There were four rooms downstairs, and two upstairs under the eaves. Joel had one. The other was called the guest room, which was strange, because his family never had guests. Gramma Grimes lived only fifteen miles away, and they didn’t see much of anybody else except Doc Austin, and he lived just up the road.

His mother had placed frilly pink touches in the guest room that had no guests, items that Joel thought would have looked better in a baby’s room. She went in at least once a week to tidy up. She would sit on the room’s little bed for a while and stare out the window with a faraway look in her eyes. And when she came back downstairs, her eyes sometimes looked puffy and red and her voice was distant. Often she avoided other family members for a time. It puzzled Joel.

Once in the middle of the night he had thought he heard sobbing. Troubled, he had crept quietly across the little hall that joined the two rooms and peeked through the door. The light from the streetlamp spilled through the room and out into the hallway, touching as it passed the pink cushions on the perfectly made bed. He had expected to find his mother weeping, but to his surprise and bewilderment, it was his father who sat in the chair by the bed, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. His father never climbed the stairs. Never. What would bring him to the guest room in the middle of the night? Joel had had a difficult time returning to sleep and had shivered under the warmth of his comforter. But though he had wondered, he had never dared to voice the questions that troubled him so.

Joel now lay and listened to his heart. It was pounding over-loud again. But it did that now and then. Usually Joel ignored the occasional pains and the odd sounds his heart sometimes made. But tonight every rapid beat seemed etched in absolute clarity.

He craned his head and through the screened window watched the stars wink at him. Down below, a solitary car drove by, its passage disturbing the crickets and wind and night owls, but only for a moment.

He glanced at the ticking clock. The hands seemed stuck in place. He rolled over, closed his eyes, and finally drifted off.

The whistle of an early bird jerked him back from sleep. He reached for the clock. His alarm was set to go off in twenty minutes. He tried to lie there, but the anticipation was too great. Finally he rose and slipped into his clothes, tiptoed down the stairs, grabbed the sandwich and apple he had set out the night before, then quietly left the house.

The early dawn was a gentle wash across the sky, the light beginning to dim the stars. The April morning was chilly enough for him to see his breath, but Joel was too excited to feel the cold. The moon was a lustrous circle in the west. As he stood on the corner and ate his sandwich, he imagined that the man in the moon was smiling down on him.

Right on time, the square van chugged down the street and stopped in front of him. A cigar-chomping man stuck his head out of the van’s side door and demanded, “Are you, hang on a second, I got your name somewhere. Yeah, here it is. You Joel Grimes?”

“Yessir. Good morning, sir.”

“You don’t gotta ‘sir’ me, kid.” He slid a thick work-gloved hand under the tightly wrapped wire and tossed the bundle out of the van. It landed at Joel’s feet with a heavy thunk. “You bring pliers?”

“Nossir, I didn’t—”

“Here, use mine today. Snip the wire and peel it back, careful, otherwise it’ll jab you like a knife. That’s it. How old are you, kid?”

“Thirteen, sir. Almost fourteen.”

The man studied Joel for a moment, as though deciding whether to challenge his statement of age. Joel knew that he was smaller than other boys of thirteen. In fact, that was one of the reasons why his father had agreed to the paper route. “Might build some muscle, put some meat on those bones,” he had said. Any reason was good enough for Joel. He wanted the route.

Joel was relieved when the man finally gave a curt nod and returned to his previous argument. “I told you, you don’t need to say sir to—”

“Lay off the kid already,” the driver called from his place in the front of the van. “Nothing the matter with manners.” The driver was as heavyset as the first man, but his features were bright and smiling. “Thirteen’s pretty young for a route all your own. Think you can handle it?”

“Yessir, I sure hope so,” Joel replied, handing back the pliers.

“Sunday’s the worst,” the first man allowed. “Gotta remember to put a magazine and comics into each paper—they come separate. And don’t try to carry them all. Find some place to stash them where they won’t be seen from the road, otherwise some wise guy’ll come by and steal a couple.”

“I’ll remember that,” Joel said, breathless with the fact that it was really and truly happening. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” The gruff man pointed a gloved thumb at his chest. “Name’s Hank. The smart aleck up there driving is Julius.”

“Nice meeting you, sir.”

“Likewise, kid. And good luck.” Hank pounded the side panel, and with a gust of black smoke the van pulled away.

For a moment Joel stood there, taking it in. The dawn was his and his alone. Finally he hefted half the bundle and carried the papers behind the nearby hedge. The others he coiled using the bag of rubber bands he had brought, then set the awkward rolls into his bike baskets. He had two of them now, one in front of the handlebars and the other over his back tire. He had borrowed money from his mom for them, promising to pay it back from his first paycheck.

In the days leading up to this moment, Joel had done his best to prepare. He had mapped out his route and discovered that it was split in two, with the collection point set almost in the middle. He had spoken to the young man whose route he was taking over, a friend of Doc Austin’s who was headed for medical school up north. The young man had described the difficult people, especially the ones who called and complained to the paper’s circulation office. They were the ones who could cost him his job. Joel had also called the office himself, though the act had scared him.

Joel mounted his bike and moved out on the route he had already committed to memory. A lot of his tosses didn’t land right, which meant stopping his bike and walking up the lawn, sometimes hunting through bushes, pulling out the paper, wiping it clean, and setting it on the front porch. Then he came to the first problem house, an old man who complained his papers were being stolen. Quietly Joel climbed the stairs, opened the screen door, and slipped the paper down where it couldn’t be seen from outside.

Another block included the house of old Mrs. Drummond; he already knew about her from Doc Austin. She was not a complainer, but her arthritis was so bad that walking to the edge of her porch was very difficult for her. Joel did what Doc Austin had suggested, which was to slide her paper through her mail slot. As he walked back to his bike, he remembered what else Doc Austin had said, how the woman amazed him with her cheerfulness, how despite her pain she met each day with a smile and a prayer. Doc Austin said he could never understand how someone so afflicted could hold on to faith. Joel wondered what that meant, “hold on to faith.” But he didn’t ask.

Joel finished the route’s first half and hurried back for the second load. His tires whispered down the empty street, and his speed blew up a gentle breeze. He pulled the papers from behind the hedge and began rolling them up. As he bundled them into the rubber bands, he wondered what it was about some people that made them believe in God like that. His parents never talked about religion. Never. His father worked almost every Sunday because he picked up time and a half for weekend work. Joel had seen people going to church, all dressed up and looking stiff and formal. To him it seemed like a strange way to spend a Sunday.

Joel began the second sweep, not bothered by how long it was taking him. He was ready to spend as much time as it took in the beginning, determined to get things right. Besides, he loved having the morning to himself. As he biked down one quiet street after another, his thoughts stood out fresh and clean in the quiet air, and he could think clearly about things. It was even better than being alone in his small upstairs room, working over a new model plane at the desk beneath the window.

His teachers at school said he was too quiet for his own good. He had overheard one of his teachers tell another that his withdrawn nature was a sign Joel did not feel things. Joel did not agree with that at all. As far as he was concerned, he felt things too much.

He finished the route, almost sad that it was done. But school would start soon, so he gathered up the wire and the scraps of paper and started home. As he did, he thought about the call he had made to the newspaper office. The woman had been astonished to hear from him. She had dug up the complaints and read them over the phone to Joel. She said it was the first time she had ever been called for this information by a new paper boy, and that she was going to mention his name to her boss. Joel felt anew the glow over that and resolved that everything was going to go well. There would be no complaints on his route. Not one.

When he turned onto his street, for some reason Joel found himself thinking about old Mrs. Drummond. Strange how she could be so sick and still be happy. Joel parked his bike on the front walk and wished there was some way he could make his parents happy. He’d give anything to have people speak about them the way Doc Austin had talked about the elderly lady.