Saint and Scholar (4 page)

“Open the window,” he mouthed with dramatic emphasis. He even made a cranking motion with his hand. The car wasn’t
that
old.

She rolled her eyes, but turned on the ignition and let down the glass all the same. “What do you want?”

Tony narrowed his eyes and jabbed a finger at her shoulder. “Thanks for embarrassing me.”

“You
should
be embarrassed. I can pick my own dates, Tony, so back off. Tell Mom that, too.”

“Tell her yourself. Besides, the last time I checked, you had a legendary inability to select suitable partners. Do I need to spell it out for you?” He narrowed his eyes. “O-T-T-O.”

She rested her left elbow on the window track and showed her big brother one of her favorite fingers.

Tony growled. “I’m trying to do you a favor. He’s a good guy.”

“So
you
date him.”

“I’ll have him give you a call. Make sure you answer it. Stop being such a bitch.”

Oh
. With the stealth of one pissed ninja, she removed the canister of pepper spray from the driver door compartment and gave Tony’s neck a healthy spray.

“Fuck!” He started to hack and cough, and backed away from the car to rip his bike jersey over his head.

“Enjoy your cologne.” She motored up her window and drove off.

* * * *

“Hey, Dad, I know it’s late there, but pick up if you can hear me.” Grant waited for about ten seconds and heard the predictable fumbling and indelicate handling of a corded phone receiver being activated.

“Grant, my boy! What did I do to earn the pleasure of one of your rare phone calls? It’s been so long I could hardly find the damned phone.”

Grant gritted his teeth to hold back the retort on his tongue, then he spoke it anyway. “No, you probably can’t find the phone because you haven’t cleaned the damned house.”

“We always seem to wind ’round to that in every conversation, huh?”

“We wouldn’t if you cleaned that place up. That leads me to the point of my call.” He took a breath to gird himself from the coming response. “I’m coming home.”

“I’m sorry, what? I think I misheard. Did the prodigal child say he’s returning? I thought you were American now.”

“Funny, but don’t quit your day job for comedy. I’ll be home early next week, after I get things squared away here. I took a job in Maynooth. I just need someplace to stay until I find something to rent. Perhaps
buy
.” He switched his cell phone to the other ear and neatened the small stack of exams he’d graded thus far. He had only managed to work about a quarter of the way through and briefly considered reneging on Seth’s invitation. At this rate, he would manage to assess two more booklets before he had to change clothes. The exams were so full of pompous navel-gazing and irrelevance, scoring them took twice as long as usual. He’d already drained the ink of his favorite red pen.

“Oh, you know you don’t have to rent. This is your place as much as it is mine. Stay as long as you’d like, or forever, if you want.”

“I appreciate the offer. You know I do, but I’m thirty-one. I need something of my own.”

His dad blew a raspberry into his receiver. “What, afraid I’ll infringe on your hanky-panky?”

“Goddamn it, Dad.” Grant took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. They were starting to burn. He’d been spending entirely too much time in front of computer screens lately. “My love life is off-limits.”

“Because you don’t have one. Shame, good-looking boy like you being unattached. You know, all the hags in the parish have been trying to match you up with their daughters for years and years–since you were just barely toddling. I guess they figured you’d be a knockout like your old da.”

Grant groaned.

“They’re all about married off now, but if you hurry you might be able to snatch one. Want me to pick out one or two for you to look over?”

“
Go hifreann leat
.”

“No need to be rude, boy. Pretty sure you didn’t learn that in compulsory studies.”

“No, I picked that up on my own, being a scholar and such.”

“Bah.”

When Grant ended the call, he paced in front of his coffee table for a few moments to gather up his courage. Performance anxiety had never before debilitated him in such a way, not as a teenager playing in full stadiums and certainly not as an adult standing in front of packed rooms giving lectures. This was different. This was
personal
, one-on-one.

He opened the drafts folder of his text messages and sent the one he’d carefully composed and rewritten thrice before settling on
Meet me for coffee?

After one anemic beep of confirmation from the phone, he tossed the device onto the couch.

Fuck, what was I thinking? She’s going to think I’m cheap. I can certainly spring for dinner.

When his phone buzzed from the sofa crease, he took his time ferreting it out, certain the response would be a kind, though unambiguous, rejection.

Hi, that’s sweet, but this isn’t Carla. I think she had this number before me. I get a lot of messages for her. You seem like a nice guy. What do you look like?

He deleted the message and fell face-first onto the sofa with a groan.

Chapter 3

Carla met her mother for dinner at her childhood home that evening and updated her on the status of the break-in case. The two met for dinner a couple of times per month to reconnect. It was chore for Carla, and had been even before her mom’s boyfriend Chet moved in the year before. She did it anyway, because it was a duty. She and her mother had once been close, but after Daddy died, Mom made many decisions Carla felt didn’t make a lot of sense.

She’d essentially travailed the grieving process alone. The boys had kept stiff upper lips for Mom’s sake, and Carla hadn’t wanted to bother them. When her mother’s giant Italian family had descended onto their tiny little home to take care of things after Daddy’s death, no one paid any attention to her. It was all about her mother. Carla had hidden away at her friend Sharon’s for a few days. Tony had dragged her home when he realized she’d gone missing, and yelled at her to never do that again.

Then there had been the talk about what would happen with Carla’s college education. Her mom had been matter-of-fact. “You’ll have to get a job. Time for you to grow up.” That had been that.

She had to take the entire next year off because she couldn’t afford the tuition. Her father hadn’t been keeping up with his life-insurance premiums, likely thinking it wasn’t a big deal, so the money that could have been a buffer for her education didn’t exist. Her mother, a police officer, earned too much for Carla to get significant financial aid. At least, on paper it’d appeared so.

What little extra money there was got allotted to her elder brother Ashley’s med school tuition. “I can only deal with one of ya,” her mother had said. “He’s closest to finishin’.”

Carla had tried complaining once or twice, but her mom didn’t seem to understand what the problem was. “Either you do it or you don’t,” she’d said.

Carla had spent the year when she was nineteen, going on twenty, working various unskilled jobs such as cleaning offices and working on a painting crew. She’d also moved back into her parents’ house. Another blow–being there with her father gone and her mother, who might as well have been. She hated the work, but at least it was mindless. As long as her hands were moving, she didn’t have to think too hard about how sad she was.

Years later, she understood Mom had been on edge, but part of her carried a grudge for not having anyone help her during that transition period. Her mother had gotten mostly back to normal, but Carla no longer remembered the generous spirit who had during childhood let her daughter eat all her ice cream cone when all she’d offered had been a lick.

Then there was Chet. He was a friendly enough guy, but Carla considered him a dim bulb compared to her gregarious supernova father. So, she’d learned to only accept dinner invitations when she knew Chet was working a late shift at the grocery store he managed.

She generally tried for benign conversation, because every now and then they’d get off track on some insignificant subject and the interaction would turn into an all-out screaming match between her and her mother. Carla wasn’t in the mood for screaming, so light and frothy sounded right about her speed.

“Mom, how old were you when you met Daddy?” she asked as she plucked the black olives out of her side salad.

“Hmm…” Mom drummed her fingertips against the top of the table. “Hard to keep up with that kind of information since I don’t tell people my real age anymore. Give me a moment to recalibrate.” She closed her eyes and made beeping noises, which made Carla laugh. One thing she could say good about Chet was that Mom had refound her sense of humor since hooking up with him.

“I must have been around sixteen.”

“
Sixteen
! And you got married at twenty.”

“Well,
I
was twenty. Your dad was nearly thirty then.”

“Well, what took you so long? I know things were different then. Engagements weren’t as long, right?”

“Oh, honey, we weren’t together that whole time. We didn’t hook up until maybe a month before we got married. And
no,
I wasn’t pregnant. I see the judgment in your eyes.”

“I can do math, Mom,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Ashley is thirty. You’re fifty-two.”

Mom narrowed her eyes. “I’m not a day over forty-nine, and don’t you forget it.”

Carla couldn’t help but smile. “What was it like for you…I mean, being with someone quite a bit older? Did you feel immature at times?”

Mom pursed her lips and shook her head. “No, can’t say I did. Your dad wasn’t exactly an old man, you know. We had a lot in common, so that ten years didn’t seem like much, even when I was sixteen.”

“Hmm.” Carla stared down at her salad. Grant had her by at least six years. Even when he’d been about her age teaching first year composition, he seemed to have a maturity and confidence she felt like she was still growing into. That’s why she hadn’t noticed when sitting in front of him for all those weeks that he was a man of around twenty-four and not some faceless, tenured nobody who reeked of dusty books and dry-erase markers. She didn’t notice that until that day in the student store when they were in line together. Once she really noticed him,
saw
him, there had been an instant attraction she was far too timid to act on.
How had he earned that confidence?
she wondered as she flicked out radish. By the time she was done, the salad would be wholly lettuce. Mom had a tendency to get fancy, and Carla suspected it had more to do with Chet’s grocery contributions and not so much Mom’s interest in the culinary arts.

“Why? This about Alex? Don’t worry about him. He’s just an overgrown thirteen-year-old, really. I wouldn’t worry about excess maturity
there
.”

“God, Mom, no. While we’re on the subject, though,
please
stop trying to hook me up with people I have to work with. Tony thought it was a goddamned riot.”

Mom put up her hands as if she were ready to be frisked. “My bad. I know you’re shy, so I thought I’d help. He’s a cop, so the background check thing is already taken care of, you know? Wouldn’t want to have another blunder like…”

Carla gave her a dark look and Mom looked off, whistling.

“Look, I appreciate it, Mom, but I’m pickier now than ever before.”

“
That’s
an understatement.”

She shoved some lettuce into her mouth and forced herself to chew at least thirty times before swallowing. She would practice using her patience. When she swallowed, she tried for a new line of conversation. “Hey, have you found any new information about Daddy’s family tree?”

Mom wiped cream sauce off her lips with the corner of her napkin and held up a finger. She walked into the den where she kept her desk, her special plaid nap sofa and her massive collection of paperback genre novels. Rummaging, a slam of a drawer being shut, then a dragging noise as another was opened…

Mom was the de facto historian for
her
family, but she never got around to working up a family history for her husband. He had only been fifty-three at the time of his death. Mom still hadn’t gotten around to it and now being in a committed relationship with another man, Carla doubted she would
ever
get it done. Carla had decided to take up the task herself, hoping, in part, it would tie her closer to that side of her family but mostly what she sought was closure from her dad’s sudden death. She’d been ruminating on it for too long, and her father had always been the type of man who didn’t stress over things he couldn’t change. She was trying to get there herself, but felt like she couldn’t let him go without solidifying the
connection
she had to him.