Cold Tea on a Hot Day (13 page)

He let himself survey Lindsey, and saw the man gearing up to say something more, but just then Marilee and Corrine appeared out of the hallway. “Corrine’s ready to say good-night.”

“Well, good night, missy. I sure enjoyed our taste testin’.” He always fell into a deep Southern drawl with young ladies.

“Good night, Corrine.” Lindsey did not have much of an accent.

“Good night,” Corrine responded in a faint, shy voice.

Marilee disappeared with Corrine, and reappeared a few minutes later. She looked uncertain, and Tate figured he would do best to take the initiative of making things easier on her. People always greatly appreciated the person who made things easier.

“I’d best be goin’,” he said. “Thanks a lot for the dinner and the company. Good seein’ you again, Parker.”

At the door, he looked long into the deep pools of Marilee’s blue eyes and wondered if he dared kiss her.

“Thank you for an evenin’s hospitality. I enjoyed it mightily, Miss Marilee.”

“I did, too.

“Good night.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

She became very still. “Good night, Tate.”

He turned and walked away. When he reached the sidewalk, he briefly looked back. Marilee was standing there, gazing after him. He waved, and she waved. As he continued on walking beneath the streetlights, he mulled things over and decided Marilee was not thoroughly engaged as yet. And what he needed to do was give her a proper kiss. A kiss would reveal the possibilities between them.

Charlotte, given the dubious honor of editing her boss’s work, did not approve of the editorial. She thought it way too familiar in tone, and that he was opening them up for all sorts of kooks and weirdos and just plain time wasters. She thought the paper should set a more formal standard of leadership and not
mingle.
Ms. Porter, who everyone knew was a kind and compassionate soul, nevertheless had known the wisdom of retaining her place as a leader, not a mingler.

Charlotte brought this argument up to her boss and
suggested he might want to rework his editorial, especially the last paragraph.

But Tate Holloway was a man set on his own way. “Keep an open mind, Charlotte, or you get old. Change can be good.”

“You could put down a time we are open for visitors,” she suggested, motioning with her pencil. “Maybe Wednesdays, after noon.” That was going to be their least busy time from now on.

“People won’t remember that.” He gazed at her and then said, “How ‘bout you just check my spellin’ and punctuation and let it go?”

“You were the one who gave it to me to edit,” she pointed out, tapping her pencil on the paper. “You have spell-checker on your machine.”

“Yes, but it makes mistakes. Won’t catch
there
and
their,
you know, and I interchange those a lot.”

“Do you want
delicious
capitalized?”

“No…that was a mistake. Glad you caught that.”

“There isn’t such a word as
gifter,
” she pointed out.

“Well, hmmm…” He knotted his eyebrows and rubbed his cheek. “I guess we should change that. Put
citizen
in place of
gifter.
I don’t like it, but we have an educational standard to uphold.”

She was glad he had some standard, even if she found it lacking.

“If you decide to reconsider about inviting all and sundry to come in here, I will be able to change it until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow.” She placed the editorial in the layout, with a reminder to check before sending it to the printer.

Life’s Unexpected Moments

M
unro lay on the rug in front of the kitchen sink. His children sat at the table, doing something that caused them to speak in low voices and every once in a while laugh.

His lady came in to speak to the children. Munro liked her voice, most especially when it held a smile. Lying there, his eyes contentedly closed, he listened to his humans; that was how he thought of them, as
his
humans.

“I made a gir-affe, like in my bo-ok,” Munro’s boy said.

“Well, it sure is. Good job, honey. Did Corrine help you?” It was his lady’s voice; it made Munro’s tail twitch happily.

“No.” This was Munro’s girl, her voice soft, slow and true, like a sun-warmed creek in summer. “All I told him was to use the yellow clay, that giraffes are yellow with brown spots. He made it all by himself, though.”

“He did?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, my goodness…this is really something….”

Quite suddenly, Munro’s ear detected another sound, and his head came up. Someone was at the front door.
Someone was opening the front door.
Instinct had him up and at the kitchen door, peering around the jamb and through the house. The person entering the front door was a stranger.

Munro went in a silent, streaking motion toward the door.

“Marilee…Marilee!” The stranger’s eyes fell on him and went wide. “Yeeaaw!” A bulging brown bag came flying at Munro, and the woman’s scream ripped the air.

Munro ducked the bag, at the same time seeing the contents—which were nothing but cloth—spill out across the floor.

“Mother? What is the problem?” It was his lady, her footsteps clicking, her voice now filled with alarm.

Munro, peeking out from around the big chair, watched and listened to the two humans, trying to judge if he might need to defend his charges or hide himself.

“That dog just about attacked me.” The stranger pointed at Munro and her voice was sharp enough to cause him to wince.

“Munro?”

His lady’s voice held a question. He looked upward to see eyes searching him. Then she smiled in a way that made him feel he’d done a good thing after all, even if he had not been going to attack this silly woman. He had been ready for attack, though, and he knew he had done right with that.

“Well, I guess he didn’t realize…since you let yourself in. He doesn’t know you, Mother. It’s okay, Munro. She can come in.” His lady patted his head, causing his heart to swell up in the right place.

Although still a little embarrassed, and quite annoyed with this stranger, Munro returned confidently to his rug in the kitchen.

“You should watch that dog,” the woman with the sharp voice said. “He slips around, and he could have a vicious streak. You don’t know….”

She went on in that sharp voice, and Munro thought maybe she would profit by his giving her a bite on the ankle.

Corrine went into Aunt Marilee’s room to try on the clothes her grandmother had brought her: two dresses and a skirt and blouse. They all came from the secondhand thrift store, and so did the red plastic car Willie Lee played with in their room. The car looked brand-new. The clothes did, too. But they weren’t.

Wearing the first dress, Corrine looked at herself in the mirror. She wondered if the dress was supposed to look like this on her. She wanted to tear it off and stomp on it. But doing that would make everyone mad at her.

Slowly she opened the door and went out to display herself to her aunt and grandmother. She was in sock feet, and they did not hear her.

Her grandmother was saying, “She’s dating a lawyer from the district attorney’s office. He’s taken her out three times in a week.”

Aunt Marilee said something in a low voice.

“Well, Anita says he is quite a big-wig…and he drives a Jaguar.”

Corrine, not wanting to hear another word about her mother having a boyfriend, entered the room.

“Well, now…” Her grandmother’s head came around. “That looks really pretty. It’s a little big, but she’ll grow into it.”

Corrine jerked her eyes over to Aunt Marilee to judge what was the truth, seeing immediately that the dress was not right.

“Mom, she isn’t goin’ to grow into that until next year.”

“Well, then it’ll last her. Turn around, honey, let’s get a good look.”

Corrine did as she was told. Her eyes coming around again to her Aunt Marilee, she had the urge to run and throw herself into her aunt’s arms.

“It’s not that big. Children grow.”

Corrine headed back to Aunt Marilee’s room. Just inside the door, she stopped, hearing her grandmother and Aunt Marilee.

“Mom, why can’t you buy her something new? Something that fits now?”

“You have to buy big for children. I always did for you girls. You and Anita grew so fast at that age, I couldn’t keep clothes on your back. It’s no sense buying new, when she’ll be right out of it before you know it.”

Corrine pushed the door closed and went to the bed, ripped off the dress and took up the second one. It was green and looked like a melon.

Then she plopped on the bed and brought her legs up and clutched them, wishing to make herself very
small. She wished she could just disappear and not be any more trouble to anyone.

Marilee walked her mother to her car in the driveway.

“I don’t think Corrine liked the dresses.” Her mother was hurt.

“She thanked you for them, Mom.” This was the best Marilee could think to say.

“She should wear dresses more. Anita hasn’t taught her, and now you have to teach her, Marilee. You need to teach her to wear dresses and fix her hair, to be ladylike. Pretty is as pretty does. If you let her keep on wearing jeans and overalls—” her voice dropped “—she’ll turn out strange.”

“Oh, she will not, Mom. She’s only eleven, for heavensake. What do you want—her to paint her fingernails and start dyin’ her hair?”

Her mother said with a knowing air, “Eleven is a lot older these days than what it used to be when you were a child.”

Marilee wanted to say that eleven had been quite old enough when she had been there, but she stopped all the resentful thoughts that tried to crowd into her mind.

“There is plenty of time for Corrine to grow up,” she said. “She needs to just be a child and not think anything about growing up.”

“Life doesn’t allow us much
not
thinking about tomorrow,” her mother said primly. “And that is what Anita is doing. She’s looking down the road for some security, and it is a fact of life that she will be more secure with a husband who has a successful career than she will be alone, trying to make it on a secretary’s salary. You need
to think about that with Parker. Don’t throw away what Parker could give you, Marilee. There’s nothing wrong with finding a man with a future.”

Marilee took a breath. “How are the tires doin’?”

“Oh…they’re fine, I guess. Carl thought they were too expensive. I was afraid of that when you picked these.” She looked at the front tire and frowned.

Marilee looked at the tire and held her lips together.

“Well, I guess I’d better go.” Her mother cast her that rather helpless expression, as if knowing things were not right between them but not having a clue as to what to do about it. Marilee felt the same.

Marilee hugged her mother. At least she could do that. “Goodbye, Mom. Drive careful.”

She stood politely in the drive, thinking she was glad to give her mother a daughter who watched and waved as her mother drove away in the gleaming Cadillac with the brand-new, too expensive tires.

Willie Lee and Corrine were both in their bedroom. Marilee went on to her own room and saw the clothes Corrine had left neatly spread upon the bed. Corrine was the neatest eleven-year-old Marilee had ever seen.

She held up one of the dresses, and then the other, and then the skirt and blouse, looking them over, shaking her head at both the colors and the large size. Painful memories of her childhood flitted across her mind. For a long time Marilee had believed that all children stuffed newspaper in the toes of their shoes to keep them from flopping off at the heel. There had been that black coat that she had hemmed two full turns; she had thought that
made it the correct size, but then someone had pointed out how it hung off her shoulders. One day she had glanced at her image in the girl’s bathroom mirror at school and seen a child’s face in an old-lady’s coat. She had been seventeen when she finally realized that she was not likely to wear a large in anything, because she wasn’t going to grow much further.

Hearing a sound, she turned and saw Corrine in the doorway.

“Do you really like any of these?” Marilee gestured to the clothes.

“They’re okay.” Corrine’s expression, as usual, was carefully guarded.

“You don’t have to like them. You did the polite thing by thanking your grandmother, but you don’t have to wear any of these.”

Marilee tried to read her niece but couldn’t. She wanted very much to shake the child and say, “Speak up. Tell me what you want.”

Corrine gave a small shrug.

“Well, they’re too big for you right now. We’ll store them in my closet for a while.” She reached into her closet for hangers, and her eyes fell on a bit of fur peeking out at the end of the closet rod. Beginning to chuckle, she wrestled the piece from the press of clothing and held it out for Corrine to view.

Corrine’s eyes went wide.

“This was a present from your grandmother.”

Marilee held the pink robe with the fake fur collar up in front of her and then sashayed a two step. “Can’t you just see me wearing this when I take out the garbage?”

She was rewarded by Corrine’s grin.

“Your grandmother tries to please. It’s just that her ideas don’t quite match ours. But still, it is the thought that counts. This is the only way she knows to show her love.”

Her niece’s heart-shaped face relaxed with understanding, and she nodded.

Marilee put the robe and Corrine’s dresses in the back of the closet.

“You know, all of us really do need some summer clothes. Let’s go shoppin’ tomorrow.” Now, there was an outstanding idea!

“Okay,” Corrine said, and there seemed to be a glimmer of eagerness in her face.

Anita telephoned late that afternoon. She spoke for five minutes to Corrine and then wanted to speak to Marilee.

“I’m in a hurry,” her sister said, sounding somewhat breathless. “I got a date, and he’s pickin’ me up in half an hour. He’s an attorney.”

“Mom told me this afternoon. She brought Corrine some clothes.”

“Oh, Lordy, are they like what she used to buy us?”

“Pretty much.” Marilee felt a warm connection to her sister flow over her. “Corrine does need some new clothes. She’s grown quite a bit. I’m going to take her shopping tomorrow.” Marilee thought how much fun it would be if her sister could join them in shopping.

“Okay. I’ll send you some money from my next check.”

The fantasy of them shopping together disintegrated. “When are you comin’ up to visit?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t get any time off, with just startin’ and all.”

“There are weekends.”

“I’m tryin’ to save money, Marilee. It takes money to get a nice place and everything. And I really don’t think my car will make it up there and back.”

“Corrine needs to see her mother, Anita.” Marilee was aggravated at herself; she sounded as harping as her own mother.

“Look, things are really goin’ good for me right now. I got this new job, and I’ve met Louis, and he’s so great. I’m gettin’ myself together, and who knows—maybe soon I’ll have a new daddy for Corrine. I’d just love to do that for her. Oh…Louis is here. I gotta run. Kiss my baby for me.”

“Anita! She likes the cards you send. Don’t stop.” Marilee wasn’t quite certain why she felt the need to say that. She was feeling a strange panic, as if she needed to reach through the phone and grab hold of her sister to keep her with them and safe.

“Great, I won’t…bye now.” Then she was gone and the line went dead.

Marilee hung up and stood there for a long minute trying to believe that her sister would actually send money, and experiencing the strong urge to run down there and get Anita.

She always felt the need to save Anita, only she was not exactly sure what from.

As she checked the cabinets and tried to drum up interest in making supper, wondering if Parker might find
Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti acceptable, it came to her that it had been almost two weeks since she had promised Parker to consider marrying him.

Receiving this thought with some alarm, she checked the Stidham Texaco calendar hanging on the kitchen wall beside the telephone and saw that this was exactly the case.

Guilt assailed her. She had not given the question much thought at all. It was not that she did not care, but so many other things seemed to have taken precedence since then. Researching and developing lesson plans for teaching the children, planning their days to include stimulating activities, adjusting to new conditions at the paper and new working arrangements—all of that left little time to consider meals, much less marriage.