Pickin Clover (18 page)

“It’s really something how kids can sleep like that,” she remarked. “Remember the times we got home late and put Susannah down just this way?”

“Yeah, I do.” Why did she constantly have to remind him? Michael wondered wearily. It was like having someone pick at a scab.

“You want a glass of juice or maybe some wine?”

“Wine sounds great.”

Her earlier anger seemed entirely gone now, and he felt enormously relieved. They made their way back downstairs, and he poured them each a glass of white wine from a bottle in the fridge. Polly perched on a high stool in the kitchen and Michael took the seat across from her. He lifted his glass in an old and automatic toast “To us, my love.”

A shadow flitted across her face, but she held her own stemmed glass aloft and repeated, “To us.”

Michael reached in his trouser pocket for Jerome’s keys. “I can go over there first thing in the morning, if that would help, and get Clover’s stuff.”

Polly shook her head. “I’ll go. It’s probably better if I take her with me. That way she can bring whatever things she wants.” She dragged a hand through her hair, and Michael noticed the dark circles under her eyes, the fatigue there.

“Polly, remember there’s always Community Services for Clover.” Whatever the other considerations, he wouldn’t have her worn down by this. s “I know you feel a responsibility because Jerome is your friend, but if this is too much for you, I’ll make other arrangements for her.”

“No.” Polly shook her head. “I promised him, and a promise is a promise. I talked to Nora. She’s gonna take Clover on her days off.” Polly scowled. “My mother should have volunteered to have her at least part of the time. I’m really furious with her over this, Michael. She made friends with Clover. She’s the logical person to care for her. But no. She’s got some man on the string who’s staying with her overnight, can you believe that?”

Michael grinned, equally amused by Isabelle’s antics and Polly’s reaction to them. “It doesn’t really surprise me that she’s sexually active. Isabelle’s an attractive woman. I just hope she’s practicing safe sex.”

Polly shot him a look, but she had to smile. “You might not think it was so funny if she were your mother.”

“Oh, I don’t know. My mother turned herself into a self-pitying martyr after my father died. She might have lived longer and been a lot more pleasant to be around if she’d decided to have an affair or two.”

Michael was an only child, and his mother had made his life difficult before her death ten years earlier. She’d quarreled with everyone in the senior’s home, demanded that Michael visit her every single day, then complained nonstop about everything. She’d been a thoroughly miserable, self-centered woman, and it had almost been a relief when she’d contracted pneumonia and died suddenly.

Michael had always privately thought Isabelle was by far the easier of the two women, even though she, too, was monumentally self-centered.

What Michael liked about Isabelle was her indomitable spirit. He’d never told Polly she’d inherited that same fiery spirit from her mother. He knew his wife wouldn’t consider it a compliment.

“Do you really think Mom’s promiscuous, Michael?” There was consternation in Polly’s voice. “I’ve joked about it, but I’m not sure I really believed it”

“She could be.” Michael thought it more than probable. “But what difference does it really make, Pol? You’re not responsible for her actions.”

“Maybe not but we’d have to take care of her if she got some disease. What if she got AIDS?”

“I think Isabelle’s wise enough to protect herself, but if that happened, we’d just have to do the best we could. Anyhow, the things we worry about aren’t usually the things that happen, Pol.”

That wasn’t entirely true, of course. Although he’d never once considered the possibility of losing Susannah, he’d always worried about losing Polly, and that fear had come all too close to reality; she’d almost died when Susannah was born. She’d bled out and had to be transfused, and her heart had stopped during the procedure.

Having Susannah had nearly lost him Polly; now, ironically, losing Susannah seemed to be doing the same thing. Tranquil moments such as this were increasingly rare between them. More often than not, Polly was angry with him, or he with her.

Cold and terrible fear clutched at his bowels and he set down his wineglass and suddenly took her in his arms, kissing her lips, running his hands down her lovely body, reassuring himself that for this moment in time, she was still here, still his.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Let's go to bed,Polly.”

Michael’s words were an invitation, and she acknowledged it with her lips, kissing him with deepening passion, winding her arms around his neck and pressing her body against his.

Holding her close to his side, he led the way upstairs. In their bedroom, he again took her in his arms and kissed her, long, sensuous, endless kisses that brought her body alive in his arms until she moved restlessly against him, wordlessly pleading for more.

Still kissing her, he undid the buttons on the front of her denim dress and slid it off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. Beneath it, she wore a white lacy bra and silk panties, and he bent and closed his lips around lace and taut nipple, teasing first one breast and then the other before he reached behind her and undid the clasp to free them to lips and teeth and tongue.

Polly moaned, and Michael lifted her and placed her on the wide bed, then stripped off his own clothing and propped himself up beside her, his heart lurching at the softness of her velvety skin, the incredible delicacy and perfection of her slender body. He pulled her to him, trying to fit every inch of her diminutive frame against his own long length.

Softness, heat, sensuality.

“Sweetheart, I love you, I love you so,” he breathed, his mouth traveling from lips to neck to breasts and back again. He knew her body intimately, but familiarity brought only increased excitement.

He sensed the exact moment when desire became need, when need turned to urgency, when urgency became desperation. Only then did he enter her, slowly, tantalizingly, controlling his violent urge to plunge again and again, choreographing every long slide, pausing with exquisite delight to encourage her climb and inadvertently his own.

She trembled, hovering, and with one final long, desperate stroke he brought them to the summit, and together they tumbled into ecstasy...and immediately became aware of a child wailing just outside their closed bedroom door.

“Damn. Damn it to hell.” Polly scrabbled under her pillow for a nightgown, and Michael yanked the bedcovers up an instant before the door swung open.

Polly tugged on her gown and made her way to the door, her voice husky and still trembling slightly from the force of their loving. “What’s wrong, Clover?”

“I...want...my...da-a-addy. I...want...Wilbur.”

“Daddy’s not here. Go back to bed, now.”

“ I... want... my... rabbit. ”

“Come on, it’s time for sleeping.”

Clover’s wails grew fainter as Polly led her down the hallway, but they didn’t stop. Michael got up and fumbled in his drawer. He found a pair of pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, pulled them on and made his way toward Clover’s bedroom.

Polly was tucking her firmly in, and although Clover didn’t resist, she was sobbing into the pillow, deep, heartbroken sobs that shook her body.

“Go back to bed, love. I’ll get her settled.” Michael pressed a quick kiss on Polly’s neck and sat on the edge of Clover’s bed, rubbing his hand up and down her small back. He could feel every vertebra, as well as the child’s agitation.

“We’ll get your rabbit tomorrow, sweetheart,” he soothed. “How would it be if I told you a story now?”

Through her sobs, Clover nodded.

“Once upon a time...” He hesitated, at a loss for a beginning. It had been a very long time since he’d made up tales for a small child. He tried without success to remember stories he’d told in the past.

“Once upon a time there was a fish named Oscar,” he began, thinking suddenly of Duncan. “Oscar lived in a glass fishbowl and he belonged to a little girl called—”

The sobbing had stopped and Clover rolled over on her back, eyes on Michael’s face.

“Susannah. The girl’s name is Susannah,” she prompted, sniffing hard.

Could he do this? He swallowed the lump in his throat and made himself go on. “Oscar was a very special goldfish because he knew how to talk, but only to—” He forced himself to say it. “Only to Susannah. No one else could understand him, because no one listened the way she did.”

The ideas and words were beginning to come easier; his daughter’s name not so difficult to say.

“Oscar had a small round glass fishbowl filled with water, because fishes need water to breathe. But he wasn’t happy there. He’d put his face against the glass and look out at the big world where Susannah lived, and wonder what it would be like to get out. Gradually, it was all he thought about. It was what he wanted more than anything. Now, one day a terrible thing happened. Susannah’s daddy hurt his leg and had to go to the hospital to get better.”

“Just like my da-daddy.”

The hitch in Clover’s voice touched his heart. “Just like your daddy, yes.” Michael nodded and stroked the damp hair back from her forehead.

“Susannah’s daddy made sure there were good people to take care of her while he was away, but she was very frightened and terribly lonely. She cried all the time. She wrapped her arms around Oscar’s fishbowl and she cried and cried and cried. Oscar tried to tell her that everything would be okay, but she wasn’t listening properly and so she couldn’t hear him, and that made her even sadder. Her tears fell into Oscar’s water, more and more and more of them, and they were salty, because tears are like that, very wet and very salty. Soon Oscar began to feel a little sick because he was breathing in all the tears Susannah was crying.

“ ‘Stop, stop,’ he pleaded. But she couldn’t hear him. She wasn’t listening. Slowly, the fishbowl filled up more and more with her tears, until at last it was filled to the very brim. All the salt made Oscar float to the top and suddenly, he floated right out and into Susannah’s lap, all wet and fishy and gasping for water, because fishes can’t breathe air.

“Now, the shock of that made Susannah stop crying. She stared down at her lap and said, ‘My goodness, Oscar, what are you doing out of your fishbowl?’ And she waited for him to answer, but of course Oscar couldn’t. He’d gotten what he wanted, which was to be out of his fishbowl, but now he didn’t like it at all. He flipped and flopped because he was a fish out of water, and at last Susannah realized that her tears had filled up the bowl and floated poor Oscar right out. Quick as a wink, she put nice fresh water into the bowl, and cupping her hand carefully around him, she put Oscar back. ‘Thank you, oh, thank you,’ he gasped, and now she could hear him again, because she was listening. And he told her what he knew to be true—that very soon her daddy would be coming back to her—and Susannah knew that what Oscar said was right, because he always told the truth. And from that day on, Oscar never wanted anything except what he had, which was a lovely round fishbowl, lots of water, and a good friend he could talk to.”

Clover sighed; her eyes drifted shut, opened again.

Michael made his voice softer and softer. “And Susannah stopped crying, and very soon her daddy was all better and he came home to her.”

She was asleep. “And they all lived happily ever after,” Michael whispered, pulling the warm quilt up and gently tucking it around her.

He closed Clover’s door and made his way back to the bedroom. The bed lamp was on and Polly was propped up on pillows, a magazine against her bent legs.

“Is she asleep?”

Michael nodded, slipping under the covers, reaching out to take her in his arms.

But she resisted. She tossed the magazine to the floor and flopped back on her pillows, arms crossed on her chest. “We’re going to go through this every single night, Michael. I just know it.”

“Probably not. She’ll get used to being here. Right now she’s in a strange place and she feels very alone. She misses Jerome. He’s all she’s got.”

“I know that, and I do feel sorry for her. I just wish I could like her a little more.” Her ambivalence toward Clover troubled her still. “It’s awful not to like a child. You don’t seem to have that problem with her.”

It sounded almost like an accusation.

“She’s not an easy kid,” he acknowledged. “When Jerome first brought her in to see me, she fought like a little tiger.”

“She’s sullen, which makes me crazy. Susannah was cheerful almost all the time.”

Michael didn’t answer. He reached over and turned out the bedside lamp. Why did Polly have to bring their daughter into every single conversation? Even Clover had named the girl in his story after her.

“Would you believe my mother actually said that Clover reminds her of Susannah?” Polly’s voice mirrored her outrage. “As far as I can see, there’s not one single thing about Clover that could possibly remind anyone of Susannah.”

A long-forgotten bit of poetry flashed unbidden into Michael’s head.

“
She is a little lonely child, lost in hell. Persophone, take her head upon your knee, Smile and say, my dear, my dear, it is not so lonely here...”