Together Alone (2 page)

He wore old jeans, a black T-shirt that had seen blacker days, a pair of worn sneakers, and a three-day stubble. It was his undercover look. Back home, it was tough. Here, it was camp.

Julia toddled on with the occasional whimper.

Beside the drugstore was a video store, with its long expanse of neon that gave Julia a few seconds’ pause, then a bookstore, then, marked by elegant gold letters on a burnished field, the Eatery. Brian felt a surge of energy. “Well, look at that. Right there when we need it. Now, that’s a good omen, I’d say.”

The Eatery would have been lovely had he been there with Gayle. But Julia was hungry and tired, alternately gnawing on her fist and crying, not at all pleased to be held in one place, and the menu was Southwestern, heavy on avocados, sprouts, and salsa, none of which was her standard fare. He had been hoping for something as pedestrian as roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and peas. Going with the next best thing, he settled for a burger and fries.

The place did have milk, a large glass of which the waitress set before him. It was a breathless minute of pouring from the glass into Julia’s bottle, working around her eager arms and impatient cries, before, at last, came a blessed silence.

Brian cornered himself in the booth and settled her in his arms. Her eyes met his and stayed, eerily knowing, daunting in that. He tried to convey confidence, since a confident touch was what she needed, or so his mother had said. She had also said that Julia could stay with her, that it would be easier for him until he was settled, that the trip would be rough with a baby, but he hadn’t listened. He had needed to take her then and there, had needed this little scrap of Gayle and him, the best of their old life, the seeds of his future.

Besides, if he hadn’t taken her then, he might have lost his nerve.

Which was a joke, given what he did for a living. He was known for his calm under fire, but hell, the police academy hadn’t prepared him for fatherhood. As detectives went, he was street-smart and quick, but neither of those things impressed Julia, and as for his shield, she’d as soon bury it in cereal as cower before it.

Brian knew what it was to see the seedy side of life, then go home, close the door, and shower it away. But there was no showering Julia away. She was his for the forseeable future. Taking her from her grandmother in Chicago was the most daring thing he had done in his life.

“A burger and fries,” the waitress sang, setting a platter before him. He smiled his thanks, but didn’t move. Julia continued to drink. He knew that she was perfectly capable of sitting up, tipping her head back, and holding the bottle herself, but she seemed content.

And so, for that brief moment, was he.

But the moment passed. Julia finished the bottle, sat on the booster seat beside him, and ate pieces of the hamburger he offered, but she was tired. Normally neat, she grew messy and whiney. She rubbed at her eyes with ketchupy hands. She said words that Gayle would have known, but that meant nothing to Brian. He tried to pacify her with more milk, but she wasn’t having any part of it—or with the Coke he had ordered for himself—and when she started crying, “Mommmmy—mommmmy,” he lost his appetite.

Swinging her into his arms, he paid the bill and started back toward the Jeep, only to set her down again when the squirming resumed.

It was warm out. The air was still, heavy with the ripe smell of trees and grass and so different from where he had been that he wondered if this was an omen, too. He had never particularly wanted to live in the country, but it seemed the best choice, given the circumstances. He needed a sane place to raise Julia. He needed a peaceful place to heal.

Julia began to whimper again.

He swung her up. “What is it, sweetie?”

“Mom-my.”

“Mommy isn’t here, but Daddy is. Everything’s going to be just fine. See? Here’s the Jeep, right where we left it.” And intact—which was a city thought if ever there was one—but not so dumb, given that the vehicle held the sum of his most precious earthly possessions. Not to mention paraphernalia for Julia, her favorite crackers and juice, and the stuffed rabbit that she refused to sleep without.

Brian’s mind lingered on crackers and juice and his own belly, which would undoubtedly speak up several hours hence. Julia’s crackers and juice wouldn’t do the trick. He had tried the night before.

So he returned to the drugstore and bought a party-size bag of cheddar popcorn, three Heath Bars, and a six-pack of apricot nectar. He was turning to leave, with Julia under one arm and his purchases under the other, when a round of squeals drew his attention to the back of the store.

A photo booth stood there, its half-curtain drawn, and beneath and behind, more legs than he could sort out and count. He grinned. He remembered that fun.

The squeals came again, high laughter followed by a flash of light and the frenzied repositioning of legs. The laughter rang out, the legs froze, the light flashed, then it all began again. When it was done, six preteens tumbled from the booth.

Brian wasn’t sure how they had all fit in, but they seemed happy and healthy, and the activity suddenly struck him as such a throwback to an earlier time, such a refreshing change from a world of video arcades and computer massacres, that he couldn’t resist.

Tucking the paper sack into the booth, he dug in his pocket for change, and slid in with Julia on his lap. “Grammie will
love
this,” he told her, and tried to push her curls into some semblance of order. “If we smile for the camera, she’ll see that we’re doing just fine. Isn’t that a
great
idea, Julia?”

Julia was looking at the innards of the booth as though it were a house of horrors. Her unearthly eyes were growing wider by the second. Tears pooled on their lower lids.

“Oh, sweetie, it’s okay,” Brian coaxed. “Nothing will hurt you here. Daddy won’t let it. Look,” he said with pumped-up enthusiasm, “I’ll just feed it some quarters—want to help me—here, hold the quarter—”

It fell on the floor.

He bent over to retrieve it, inadvertently squashing Julia, who let out a wail. He hugged her. He kissed her head. “Shhh. Daddy didn’t mean that. Here, let’s try again.” But he pushed the quarters in himself, because retrieving the thing in such cramped quarters hadn’t been easy on him either, and because he figured he had Julia quieted, but not for long. “There. Now we look here,” he pointed at the big black circle just as the first flash went off.

Startled, Julia began to scream and didn’t stop this time, despite Brian’s efforts to console her, cooing his sympathy, holding her cheek to his, begging her to smile. Moments later, standing outside the booth waiting for the strip of pictures to emerge, he figured that, if nothing else, he had that first shot before she had lost it completely. Guardedness was better than terror, he supposed.

As it happened, he didn’t even get guardedness. He got three shots of Julia crying her heart out while he held her cheek to his. For that first shot, she had been down on his lap. All that showed of her was a mess of curls on the top of her head.

Wondering if this, too, was an omen, he folded the strip of photos in half and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he set Julia on his hip, snatched up the paper sack, and strode from the store.

Myra Balch sat at the upstairs window of her small frame house, watching the world go by. It wasn’t a large one, as worlds went. She lived at the end of a dead end street lined with small frame houses not unlike hers, but from her end, the only house she could see was the Arkins’.

That didn’t mean she didn’t know what was happening on the rest of the street. She most certainly did. She knew when the Wilsons’ weekly oranges came from their daughter in Florida, because the UPS truck turned around in Myra’s driveway. She knew when Abel Hinkley got a raise, because the furniture delivery truck did the same. And that funny little truck painted like a rat. The exterminator. At the LeJeunes’. Again.

Of course, there were things her driveway couldn’t tell her. That was why she went walking up and down the street every morning at eleven. She wanted the news. And the exercise, of course, she wanted that, too. Frank was a big one for keeping in shape. If she ever got fat, he’d leave her, no questions asked.

The sheers moved, just a flicker. She wished for more, wished for a breeze to cool the house. Frank kept promising her a fan, but he never seemed to get around to buying it, so the air remained still and warm.

She leaned forward. The photographer who had taken pictures of the Arkins was leaving. He was the same one who had taken pictures for Ginny Haist’s sixty-fifth birthday, and the pictures were grand. Myra hoped he had done as well for the Arkins.

She had crocheted Jill an afghan for school and planned to give it to her on the night before she left. She knew Emily would be touched.

The photographer backed out of the driveway and drove off, leaving Emily’s old wagon looking bare and forlorn. It had seen better days, poor thing.

Doug’s car was another matter. It was little more than a gleam of black and chrome in the shelter of the garage. She wondered if it would stay there when they rented out the rooms above. She wondered if the renter would be expected to park on the street. She wondered whose idea it was to rent in the first place.

Probably Doug’s. He would want the money. It wouldn’t bother
him
if there were strangers around.
He
wasn’t the one who would see them coming and going.
He
wasn’t the one whose privacy would be disturbed.

Emily deserved more. Myra did what she could to help—and her lace cookies
were
the best in town—but lace cookies could only do so much.

Flowers helped. Myra always had one bloom or another to give Emily. And, of course, there were things like knitted mittens or an afghan, guaranteed to bring a smile.

Myra gasped. There they were, Emily, Jill, and Doug, climbing into that rusty wagon, off to the Whittakers’ cook-out. Tomorrow night there was a party at the Davieses’, and the next night one at the Eatery, where Jill and her friends had all waitressed.

One party after another. Myra didn’t know what it was about people that made them want to make fools of themselves in public. Emily understood that.
She
wasn’t throwing a party for Jill.
She
didn’t see the girl’s leaving home as cause for celebration. Their parting would be a private affair, surely a sad one.

“But I don’t talk,” Myra vowed as she rose from her chair, “never have, never will. I bake my cookies and knit my sweaters, and keep still. So what do they do? They plan a party for
me
.” She started down the stairs. “I don’t want a party.
They
’re the ones who want it. They left here the very first chance they could, and they never came back for long, and they feel guilty about that. So now they’ve brought food for a party, and they’ve taken over my house.”

To her right, at the bottom of the stairs, the dining room table was covered with her mother’s embroidered linen and the first of the food her daughters-in-law had brought. To her left, the living room was filled with sons and grandkids, all glued to a baseball game on television.

Turning toward the back of the house, she slipped through the kitchen, let herself out the door, and went down the steps and across the lawn without being noticed. She paused to admire the whole of the huge, pale green weeping willow that stood on the bank of the pond, before settling onto the scrolled wrought-iron bench that sat beneath the veil of its arms.

She plucked bits of fallen leaves—willow lint, she called it affectionately—from the bench, then leaned over and plucked bits from the ground. She worked her way down the bench, grooming the grass beneath the willow until it was neatened to her satisfaction. Then she sat back and admired the pachysandra she had planted and pruned over the years, and beyond that, the impatiens, and beyond that, the lilies. Looking out over the water, she sighed.

Such a beautiful spot. And so well tended. She had done her best. She would continue to, until the day she died.

That thought made her restless, impatient, and frightened at the same time. She carried a dreadful burden. When she thought of death, the burden shifted and threatened to spill. She gathered her strength, steadied it, and vowed that she wouldn’t die yet.

But it was coming. She knew it, more and more so, with each birthday that passed. Time was running out.

“Myra?” It was her daughter-in-law Linda, the career woman who believed that all women were sisters, regardless of age, and that “mother” was too formal a name for her mother-in-law. “Why are you sitting out here alone?”

“I’m not alone,” Myra said kindly. She liked Linda, actually. Quirks and all, Linda was more tolerant than the others. The others would have argued with her even now, but Linda merely smiled.

“We want pictures. Will you come inside?”

“But pictures should be taken out here. This is the most beautiful spot around.”

Linda swatted away a mosquito. “It’s very buggy.”

“Not for me. I use the right perfume. It’s in the bathroom off the kitchen, if you’d like to try some. Not that the boys will like it, but a few bites won’t hurt them any. Yes,” the idea was growing on her, “if we’re taking pictures, I’d like them taken here. But you’ll have to call Frank. We can’t take pictures without him.”

Linda smiled. “I’ll go get the others.”

Myra returned the smile, and it lingered. A picture-taking session beneath the willow was perfect. So there was something to be said for daughters-in-law, after all. Certainly for grandchildren. Even for sons who felt guilt after years of neglect. Far be it from her to tell them that by the time they had left home, she had been ready for them to go, tired of the fights with each other and with Frank, tired of the cooking and the cleaning. She had been more than ready for a rest.

Not that she would tell
Frank
that.
Lord
no. He would be
furious.
He hadn’t liked the boys leaving, hadn’t liked it at all.