Aurora 06 - A Fool And His Honey (3 page)

Regina was digging at all my sore—or rather, sensitive— spots. Barrett had not come to our wedding. He’d been up for a big part, he’d told his dad, the implication clear that a new part for Barrett was more important than a new wife for his father.

And he hadn’t visited Lawrenceton in the three-plus years Martin had lived here.

But he’d found the time to come to Regina’s wedding, where he’d managed to dodge us with an almost unbelievable agility. Martin had told me he’d had a drink with Barrett in the hotel bar after I’d gone up to bed the night before the wedding, and that had been the contact he’d had with his son—whose career he’d been subsidizing.

I was beginning to wish Martin’s only niece had stayed in Ohio. I was also beginning to puzzle at the reason behind her visit. She was being mighty evasive.

“Regina,” I said, when she’d finished blathering about Barrett’s career, “I’m delighted that you came to visit, but this evening, just for a couple of hours, may be a little awkward. Your uncle and I have a long-standing dinner engagement, and though we could call and tell the Lowrys we have to take a rain check, I’m afraid—”

Regina, who happened to be holding the baby (Hayden, I reminded myself), looked up with something approaching alarm. “You two go on like you had planned. I’ll be fine here. Just point me at the microwave and I’ll be glad to fix my own supper. After all, I just appeared on your doorstep.”

It seemed to me—almost—that Regina was anxious to get us out of the house. I could feel my eyebrows draw together in a frown.

“Excuse me a minute,” I said. Regina, her attention focused on the baby, gave me an absent nod.

I went across the hall into the room we’d decorated as a study and a television room. Plucking the cordless phone from its stand, I plumped down on the red leather couch in front of the windows. Madeleine, the cat that lived with us, emerged from her favorite private place, the basket where we put newspapers after we’d read them. While I was punching in numbers with one hand, I was tickling Madeleine’s head with the other. One part of my mind noted that I’d have to get Madeleine out of the study before Martin got home. He and the cat enjoyed a hate-hate relationship. It had started with Madeleine deciding Martin’s Mercedes was her basking site of choice, especially when the ground was muddy and she could leave some nice footprints on the hood and windshield. Martin had retaliated by parking the Mercedes in the garage and closing the door every night. Since it was then her move in their little game, Madeleine (who ordinarily couldn’t be bothered) caught a mouse, decapitated the rodent, and put the corpse in Martin’s shoe. Then Martin . . . well, you get the idea.

“Martin Bartell’s office,” Mamie Sands said. Her raspy voice was all business.

“Mrs. Sands, this is Aurora. I need to speak to Martin.” It had taken me weeks to stop apologizing for disturbing him.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Sands said, her voice several degrees warmer than it had been when I first married Martin, “but Mr. Bartell’s out in the plant. Want me to page him?”

I thought of trying to tell Martin that his niece was here with an unexplained baby, over a telephone where he stood surrounded by employees. “No, that’s okay,” I told the secretary.

“Please ask him to call me before he starts for home.”

I hung up the phone. I made a face, the kind of face my mother always warned me would make my features stick in permanent disgust.

I strolled back across the hall to Regina. She was putting some bottles of formula in the refrigerator.

“I just made myself at home,” she said brightly. She’d gotten out a pan and boiled some water, and an empty can of formula powder was on the counter by the sink. “It always helps to have plenty made up and ready to heat. Now, when I heat them up ...” and she described the procedure at tedious length.

Hayden stared at me with the big round-eyed goggle some babies have. He was a cute little guy, with a pink mouth and rosy cheeks. In fact, he was strikingly fairer than Regina, who was pretty enough, but endowed with the dark complexion and wide hips her own mother’d bequeathed her. Hayden waved his arms and made a sudden gurgling sound, and Regina looked at him adoringly.

“Isn’t he wonderful?” she asked.

“He’s so cute,” I said, and tried not to sound yearning.

“Too bad Uncle Martin’s too old to have another kid,” Regina said, actually giggling at the idea.

I could feel my back stiffen and I was sure my face had followed suit.

“We talked about it,” I said in a voice of pure ice. “But unfortunately, I am not able.” Martin, who was staring fifty in the face, hadn’t been able to work up any enthusiasm for starting another family, though at my just-turned birthday of thirty-six, I could still hear my biological clock ticking. Loudly.

However, it was ticking in a malformed womb, which let Martin off the hook as far as making a decision.

I began to empty the dishwasher, all the time telling myself I’d sounded hostile and I had to calm down. Regina, who really seemed to be remarkably tactless, had stuck a sharp stick into my tenderest grievance, my inability to conceive. She was staring at me now, trying to look properly cowed, but I detected a certain—what? Satisfaction? Her eyes had the same look I saw in Madeleine’s when she’d left those footprints all over Martin’s windshield. I had a sudden inspiration.

“Would it suit you if we put you and Hayden over in the garage apartment?” I asked, trying to make my voice light and friendly.

“That would be super. I wondered when I drove up if that was a separate apartment,” Regina said. Maybe she sounded a tad disappointed that I’d changed the subject. “Hayden still gets up at night, and we’d be less likely to bother you.”

“Let’s just take your things over there,” I suggested. Taking the keys from a hook by the back door, I grabbed the big diaper bag and Regina’s purse and trotted across the covered walkway and up the stairs that ran up the side of the garage, the side toward our house. The heavy bag looped over my shoulder banged ponderously against my thigh. Though the air was colder and wetter, it wasn’t actually raining at the moment.

The apartment smelled only slightly stale. Our friends Shelby and Angel had moved out about eight weeks ago. I had been keeping the heat on so nothing would freeze or mildew, and I turned it up and glanced around as I heard Regina open her car trunk below.

The garage apartment is one very big room, with a corner walled in for a bathroom and adjacent closet. There’s a queen-sized bed, a chair and love seat and attendant tables, a television, and a small table for two in the kitchen area. It’s as pleasant as basic apartment living gets.

Regina seemed pleased.

“Oh, Aunt Roe, this is so nice,” she said, throwing a suitcase on the bed. “Before we got married we lived in an apartment that was a lot smaller than this.”

I hated to think about that.

“Well, I hope you enjoy it,” I said at random. “You and Hayden, that is. I’ll leave you to unpack. Oh, do you have something for the baby to sleep in?” I had no idea what to do if she didn’t. But Regina assured me she had a portable travel crib. That seemed a luxurious item for a poor mother to have, and I wondered a little.

I heard the crunch of gravel as I stood in the doorway. Martin emerged from his car and stood staring at Regina’s car for a minute.

“Martin,” I called, “come up here.” Evidently he hadn’t returned to his office before he came home.

He passed under the walkway to stare up at me. “What are you doing in the apartment?” he asked. No one had been in the apartment since Angel and Shelby had bought a house in town.

“Oh,” I said, feeling a pleasurable anticipation, perhaps tinged with a touch of malice, “you won’t
guess
who’s come to visit, honey!”

Looking distinctly apprehensive, Martin came up the stairs. I stood aside so he could enter the apartment.

“Uncle Martin!” cried Regina. She faced the door with a big smile stretching her generous lips, the baby pressed to her chest like a bag of groceries.

Martin’s face was priceless.

“Did we know she was coming?” he asked me in a low voice as we walked over to the house.

I shook my head.

“Did we know she’d had a baby?”

I shook my head again.

“Then Barby must not know it either,” he said. “She wouldn’t keep something like that to herself.”

I didn’t think so either. I further thought that Barby would just hate the idea of being a grandmother. I was willing to bet Regina knew that, too.

“So, we don’t know why she’s here?” Martin, used to commanding information and having everything lined up and organized, was definitely on the frustrated side.

“It’d be easier to tell you what I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know why she came or how long she’s staying. I don’t know where Craig is. I have no idea what your sister knows.” And though I didn’t say it out loud to spare Martin’s feelings, I was far from certain of the provenance of the baby.

Martin stood in the kitchen drinking a glass of tea while he mulled this over. “I’ve got to go back up there and speak to her again,” he said abruptly. “Get some of this settled. We still going to the Lowrys‘?”

“I don’t think we can put it off. Regina seems all right about us going, and you know how touchy Catledge is.”

“Okay. I’ll just be a minute or two with her, then I’ll come in and shower.” Thunking his glass down on the counter, he marched out again into the gathering dark and dripping rain. His white hair gleamed through the darkness.

I went upstairs to finish getting ready. As I put on makeup and jewelry and pinned my hair out of my face with a pretty black-and-gold comb, I wondered if Martin would be able to winkle any more out of his niece than I had. Martin is far more likely to ask direct questions than I am.

But he didn’t look satisfied when he trudged up the stairs twenty minutes later. He looked tired and worried.

After giving me a quick kiss on the neck, Martin unzipped his pants and sat on the bed to untie his shoes.

“Hey, sailor, how about it?” I asked, in my best Mae West voice.

Martin flashed me a smile. He glanced at the bedside clock. “Afraid we don’t have time,” he said regretfully. “I have to shower. Two people in the meeting smoked.”

Martin hates the smell of smoke clinging to his hair and clothes.

“You could have asked them not to,” I said mildly. Martin’s asking might as well be called telling: He was the boss.

“They’re going to retire at the new year,” he said. “If that weren’t the case, I would have kicked their asses out in the hall. As of January one, I’m going to make the entire plant a smoke-free zone.”

We talked about how many smokers Pan-Am Agra employed, and mulled over other mundane topics as Martin stripped, showered, and re-dressed. Martin is almost thirteen years my senior, but he looks absolutely great without his clothes on, and he’s just as attractive dressed.

He has snowy white hair, but his eyebrows are still black, and his eyes are a light, light brown.

He lifts weights and his racquetball games are endurance tests for the younger members of the management staff.

“Didn’t you say you had your physical today?” Looking at Martin’s physique had prompted another train of thought.

“Yes,” he said rather shortly. My wifely antennae perked, tuned in to what he wasn’t saying.

“Wasn’t everything all right?” Martin had never had a bad physical. In fact, he was usually boastful after his annual checkup, required by the plant.

“Zelman wants me to have a full battery of tests. Just because I’m getting older,” Martin added hastily, before I could even fully develop my concerned expression.

“Did he find anything?” I asked, in the voice that said he better let me know everything.

“He said I was stressed. He just wants to run some more tests.” Martin was standing in front of his closet picking out his clothes for the evening. I understood from his tone that the subject was closed.

“We’ll schedule those right away,” I suggested.

“Sure, I’ll get Mrs. Sands to do it tomorrow. Did I tell you she’s going to be a grandmother?”

“Is she happy about it?”

“Oh, yes, she’s already named the baby and picked out a preschool. Not that her daughter knows about that. . .”

All this chatter was a delaying tactic of Martin’s, while he thought over whatever Regina had told him.

“What’d Regina say?” I asked, as he used his electric razor.

“Not much,” he admitted, sticking out his chin to shave under it. I was sitting on the toilet lid.

Not for the first time, it occurred to me how much I enjoyed being married, just sitting in the bathroom with a man while he shaved, and all the little intimacies that entailed. “I don’t think she’s going to tell us why she’s here until she’s ready.” He stretched his upper lip down over his front teeth. “I hope nothing’s happened to Craig.”

“If he’d been in a wreck or been ill, surely she’d let us know,” I said hesitantly, aware I wasn’t on Martin’s wavelength.

“I was thinking more of Craig being in trouble,” he said, pulling on a fresh shirt and tucking it in. “Do you have your lipstick on yet?”

“No,” I said, surprised.

Martin pulled me to him and gave me one of those wonderful kisses that makes my pulse jump around like a drop of oil in a hot skillet. I responded enthusiastically, and let my fingers do the walking.