Home Song (39 page)

“So am I.”

“But you said it long ago, and I wouldn't believe you.”

“Do you believe me now?”

“Yes! Not only do I believe you, I see how wrong I was. Dear God, I nearly tore this family apart for good.”

“Oh, Claire,” he whispered, and closed his eyes.

She turned to fit her forehead into the familiar cove of his jaw. “Please forgive me,” she whispered while her tears wet his shirtfront.

She felt him swallow and sensed his inability to speak at that moment, having been put through a spell of fear and come through it intact.

“Please forgive me, darling,” she whispered.

They embraced through a renascent stretch of silence, the house holding a still watch around them, as if this reunion were a sacrament. “I thought I'd lose everything I'd worked so hard for,” he whispered, “you, the kids, our home, everything I loved. I was so scared, Claire.”

“I'm so sorry I put you through that.”

“The trouble was, I knew that if that happened, it would be my own fault.”

“No, no, I'm just as much to blame, maybe more for not forgiving you for something that happened so long ago. Oh, Tom, I love you so much, and it's so lonely and unrewarding being as stubborn as I've been.”

Their mouths joined, and he slipped his arms inside her coat to keep her, full-length, against his body. His hands took possession where they would, and hers followed suit.
Several blissful minutes later Claire interrupted their idyll to murmur against his lips, “I think something's burning.”

Tom's head lifted, and in one quick leap he rattled the griddle onto a cold burner. “Damn it!” He switched off the heat. Stench and smoke rose from four ruined sandwiches.

Claire peered around him and inspected the spoils. “We sure fixed them, didn't we?”

“And the refrigerator looking like everybody's gone on vacation. I don't know what we're going to eat.” Twisting aside, he slung the burned sandwiches into the garbage disposal and leaned the pan against the side of the sink. All the while she clung to him like a barnacle, letting him move, but not too far.

“I have an idea,” she said when he'd finished rescuing them from fire and was concentrating on her again. “Why don't we send the kids out to pick up some fast food?”

He twined his fingers low on her spine and settled her hips against his. “I have a better idea. Why don't we send the kids out for some slow food?”

She bit his chin and offered a provocative grin. “Why stop at slow food? How about a five-course dinner?”

“Well, hell, while we're at it, how about a five-course dinner at Kincaid's?”

Kincaid's was in Bloomington, about a thirty-minute ride away. It was the top-rated restaurant in the Twin Cities and required a hefty wait without reservations. Tom and Claire had been talking about going there for over three years, but hadn't made it yet.

They laughed, feeling the rhythm of their humor falling back into place.

“I suppose that would be just a little transparent, wouldn't it?” Tom conceded.

Claire shrugged. “Chelsea would grin.”

“And Robby would take us up on it and it'd probably cost us about a hundred bucks.”

“So how are we going to get them out of the house?”

He caught her around the neck with one arm and shifted her to his side. “Watch this.” Hauling her along with him to the foot of the stairs, he raised his voice and shouted up, “Hey, kids, will you come down here?”

They appeared in record time, negotiating the steps at breakneck pace, leaping down the last two, at the foot of which their dad waited with his arm slung nonchalantly around their mom's neck.

Tom said, “Your mom and I want to be alone for a while. Any chance you'd take a bribe and go out and find yourselves some supper?”

Chelsea's eyes brightened and she looked at her brother with sheer elation all over her face. “Heck, yes!”

Robby said, “How much do we get?”

Tom let his arm slip from Claire and brandished a fist. Robby doubled over to protect his middle before the mock punch landed.

“You little bloodsucker,” Tom teased. “I told your mom this would cost us money.”

“Well, heck, I wasn't born yesterday, Dad. I can tell a vulnerable guy when I see one, and I know when to bleed him for all he's worth.”

Tom pulled out his wallet and gave the kids thirty dollars. “Tell you what. Go out and get some supper, then find a movie somewhere. We don't want you back here until at least ten o'clock . . . agreed?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“Sure, Dad.” Chelsea glanced dubiously at her mother. “But I thought I was grounded.”

Claire told her, “We'll talk about it later, after Dad and I have a chance to talk, okay?”

Chelsea nodded meekly.

Claire kissed Chelsea's cheek, hugged Robby, then the kids left.

The moment the door slammed, the kitchen grew quiet. The smell of the burned cheese sandwiches lingered in the air. Claire and Tom faced each other with flushed cheeks.

He asked, point-blank, “What do you want to do first, talk or go to bed?”

She wanted to go to bed. Lord, she had not wanted him this badly since the forced abstinence of their first dating days. But now that they were alone, she was terrified of the ground they still needed to cover between sex and reconciliation.

“I'll leave it up to you,” she answered. “I think I'm going to cry when we talk, though—just so you know.”

He remained where he was, his face still highly colored though he banked his desires and posed questions first. “There's only one thing I want to know. What did you do with John Handelman?”

“I kissed him. Once. That's all.”

“All right,” he said, questioning her no further. “Then it's behind us. Forgotten.”

“Even though I still have to get through another three weeks of play rehearsals with him?”

“I trust you.”

“I trust you too,” she replied. “I'm sorry it took so long for me to realize it.”

“Monica told you there's nothing between us?”

“Yes, and much more—that there never was. She also said that the first time she talked to you about Kent, you told
her that every year we were married just got better and better.”

“It's true. Up until this year.”

“Can you understand what it did to me though, finding out about Kent? How it undermined my security?”

“Yes, Claire, I can. No matter what you thought, I was never insensitive to your hurt, but I didn't know what I could do about it. I couldn't undo the past.”

“I guess that's what I expected of you, wasn't it? Even though I knew it was impossible.”

“Is that what you still expect? Because I can't. And Kent is very much a part of my plans for the future. You might as well know that right from the start. He's my son, and I plan to be there for him from now on, as his father. If you can't handle that, Claire, you'd better say so right now.”

Her lips trembled as she whispered in a shaken voice, “Tom, may I please come over there and hold you? B . . . because I don't think I can get through this without your arms around me.”

They each moved halfway, meeting without the abandon of earlier. She walked into his loose embrace and felt his hands curve around her waist and his head drop over her shoulder. She lay her face against his shirtfront and folded her arms up his back. The moment they touched, her tears formed. He knew it. He understood. He simply held her and let the healing continue.

They stayed that way awhile, nestling gratefully, making vows in their heads, thinking of constancy, and the past that would have to be forgiven and forgotten if they were to make it. And the future, which would include some new wrinkles.

When Claire finally spoke, her voice had calmed some. “The children were together today . . . here, in our house, all three of them. Did they tell you?”

Against her cheek she felt his heart beating wildly. “No, they didn't,” he whispered.

“And afterwards at Monica's house they decided it's time they got to know each other.”

He closed his eyes and fought to control a sudden sting in his eyes.

“Oh, Claire, I can't believe it,” he whispered, overcome.

“If Robby and Chelsea are willing to accept him, how can I do anything less?”

“Do you mean it, Claire?” He pulled back to study her face with its luminous tear-filled eyes and shiny lips, slightly puffed from crying earlier in Monica's car.

“I'm going to try, Tom. It may take some time before I'm totally comfortable around him, but I'll do my very best, that's a promise.”

He lifted both hands to push back her hair and hold her face, his thumbs resting at the crests of her cheeks. “You've given me two children of our own, and I love you for being a good mother to them, so please don't misunderstand what I'm about to say . . . but, Claire, you've never given me a greater gift than what you just said.”

With her voice on the verge of breaking, she asked, “Why did it take me so long to come around to it? Why did I put our family through so much misery?”

He rested his forehead against hers. “Because you're human, and you were scared, and because love isn't perfect. We can love somebody very much and still make mistakes that hurt them.”

“I'm so sorry I hurt you,” she whispered.

“I'm sorry I hurt you too. The trick is to learn from what we've been through, and I think we have.”

“Yes, I think so.”

Gently, he kissed her forehead. The secondary issues—
how to handle Chelsea, when Tom would move back home, how they would blend their future with their children's—could be dealt with later. Now there was peace to be made, love to be restored.

She whispered, “I missed you so much. This house was like a sentence without you. Mealtimes were just awful, and when the alarm clock went off and you weren't there to roll over against, and when I'd get home from school at night and know you weren't driving in behind me. And wh . . . when Chelsea started acting up. Oh, Tom, I n . . . needed you there for strength so badly, only you w . . . weren't there and I d . . . didn't understand mys . . .self . . . and . . .”

“Shh . . . don't cry, Claire, it's over.” He gathered her up hard against him, rocking her from side to side while she clung to his neck. “We're together, and that's how we're going to stay. Chelsea will be all right as soon as she sees that we're all right. She's going to come through this just fine, you just wait and see. Now come on, Claire”—he tucked her under his arm—“let's go to bed.”

Climbing the stairs with him, she said, “I'm sorry I couldn't keep from crying. I've ruined our good mood.”

“I think I know a way to make you happy again, and besides, we got all those tears out of the way, so from here on out it's just going to get better. Come on, take me to our own comfortable bed in our own clean house where I don't have to wonder how long it's been since the laundry was washed.”

She obliged him with a chuckle and rubbed her face against his shirtfront to dry her eyes.

“I knew you couldn't last out there at your dad's permanently, but I was terrified that you'd move into an apartment of your own, and then what if you just loved it? Maybe you'd discover that it was nice not having rock music ramming
through the walls, and teenagers arguing at the supper table, and junk cars needing fixing, and wives who wake you up with their blow-dryers when you want to sleep an extra ten minutes in the morning.”

“Are you kidding? You've just described what makes me the happiest. It's called family life, and without it I was a lost man.”

“And I was a lost woman.”

They had reached their bedroom. She slipped from beneath his arm to turn on a lamp while he closed the door. Then he crossed to the bed, cocked one knee onto the mattress, and fell, flipping onto his back with his arms upflung. “Ahhh . . .” he sighed, closing his eyes as he lay on the familiar softness. She studied him, stretched out, hollow-bellied, his hair dark against the spread. Days past, she had wondered what to expect when and if this moment came, and in her imagination, it was not this. She had pictured swift passion, a reclaiming in no uncertain terms. Instead, he fell back like one exhausted.

But his eyelids were twitching.

And suddenly it struck her: she had wounded him deeply by turning him away time and again. There were still amends to be made.

She removed her clothing, watching him and knowing he listened to the silken rustles of her undressing.

Naked, she went to him, dropping to one knee on the bed, bending to him with a hand on either side of his head.

“Tom,” she whispered, “open your eyes.”

He did, and she saw the last-minute uncertainty within them.

“Tom . . . I love you. Through all this, I never stopped loving you, never stopped wanting you . . . not even when I turned you away.”

She lowered her mouth and his opened to receive it, though he lay as before, like a body washed up on a shore. She kissed his twitching eyelids, stilling them—first one, then the other—and the bridge of his nose, his temples, left and right, and the cowlick at the center of his hairline, which so reminded her of his other son. And his mouth once more, with infinite tenderness.

“No matter what,” she whispered, “you must never believe it was because I didn't desire you. I was proving other things. They had nothing to do with this, Tom, nothing.”

She touched him where no other woman would ever have the right to touch him, and his arms, lying lax a moment before, became instruments of possession, hauling her down where she had so missed being these past tormented weeks. From out of the past all the memories and promises they had built came back to compel, to move their hands one upon the other and bring an end to their separateness. In tangled bedding, with tangled limbs, they recommitted vows made years before, bringing back all the good, strong, wondrous sexual commitment to bond the spiritual commitment already made.