Showers in Season (23 page)

Barry pulled up to the window at the fast-food restaurant and paid for the burrito he’d ordered. As he drove, he choked it down, then wished he hadn’t. He thought of heading back to the office, but he’d finished all of his work for the day and was sick of the place. He needed someone to talk to, he thought, but he hadn’t disclosed his problem to anyone except Linda Holland. Even now he wasn’t sure why he had shared such a personal thing with her. He supposed it was nothing more than her being in the right place at the right time.

The secret had bonded them in a way he hadn’t expected. She had started bringing him cups of coffee that he hadn’t asked for. She consulted him on more than she needed to, as if it was an excuse to check on him and boost his spirits. Almost daily, she asked him if he’d like to have lunch with her and talk. He always gave her some excuse not to. Occasionally she asked him if Tory had come to her senses yet. It vindicated him, to some extent, to have someone understand his position.

He didn’t know where else to go, so he drove to the Point at the top of Bright Mountain. It had been dark for more than an hour, but was still too early for the teenagers to gather just yet. He pulled into a space and looked out over the lights of Breezewood below. He rolled the windows down, and the cool autumn breeze whispered through the car.

Maybe he needed counseling, he thought. Just someone who would listen objectively and not judge him for doing what was best for his family. But if he suggested it, Tory would want to counsel with their pastor. Barry didn’t know him well, since they’d only started attending his church a couple of months ago. He didn’t relish the idea of telling him what he had in mind. No one could understand this unless they had lived through it themselves.

He stared down at the cellular phone, and wondered how hard it would be to find Linda’s number. Feeling bold, he called information and asked for Linda Holland, and in seconds, he had her number. Would it be misconstrued, he asked himself, if he called her just to talk? Would she think it meant more than it did? Or would she understand that he just needed a friend?

Before he had made the decision entirely, he was dialing the number.

“Hello.” Her voice was clear and upbeat over the line, and it took him a moment to respond.

“Linda?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Barry. Barry Sullivan.”

There was a pause, then, “Hi, Barry! Where are you?”

“In my car,” he said. Guilt surged through him, for he knew she really wanted to know where Tory was. “Look, uh, I just needed to talk. I hope I’m not bothering you.”

“Not at all!” she said, too enthusiastically. “Things were pretty quiet around here tonight and I was kind of glad to hear that phone ring.”

He had never thought of her as a lonely woman. She always seemed to be too busy, too distracted to have mundane feelings.

“Is everything okay with Tory?” she asked.

He shook his head as if she could see him through the phone. “Actually, no.”

Linda was quiet for a moment. “Do you want to meet somewhere? Talk face-to-face?”

“No,” he said quickly. “That’s not necessary. The telephone is fine.”

“But that cell phone bill could get pretty high, and Tory might wonder about it.”

He hadn’t thought of that, and wasn’t sure if he cared.

She sighed. “You sure you don’t need a shoulder to cry on?”

He stared down at the steering wheel with dull eyes. “It’s just that when I came home tonight the kids came running out to me tell me we were having a baby.”

“She didn’t,” Linda said.

“Oh, yeah, she did. Told them everything. Told them and got them all excited. They were bouncing up and down, turning flips.”

“Did she tell them about the Down’s Syndrome?”

“Not as far as I could tell, but I have to admit I didn’t stick around very long to find out.”

“Oh, Barry, I’m so sorry. You poor thing.”

He closed his eyes. It was good to be understood.

“This is so awful,” she said. “I wish I could do something. Do you want me to call Tory and tell her what a stupid move that was?”

He laughed sarcastically. “Yeah, I’m sure that would improve things a lot.”

“Just an observation from an impartial bystander,” she said. A moment of silence followed. “Come on, why don’t you meet me out for a cup of coffee? It’ll cheer you up.”

“No, I’d better not.”

“Just a stinking cup of coffee. We can meet in a perfectly public well-lit place. I have absolutely nothing else to do tonight, Barry, and you don’t either, so we might as well at least have a piece of pie and a cup of coffee and a little friendly conversation. You know the alternative is that you’re going to go back to the office and work yourself into oblivion.”

He knew it was true. She really did understand. “All right,” he said, finally. “Meet me at Shoney’s on Torrence Boulevard.”

“Will do,” she said. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

He breathed a deep sigh as he hung up. They were just two friends having coffee, he told himself. Tory wouldn’t like it if she knew, but Tory didn’t like much of anything he did lately. He started his car and headed back down the mountain. Something in the back of his mind told him he was treading on thin ice, and once he fell through, there may be no way to get back to the surface again.

But when Linda arrived, he was waiting for her in the parking lot. She brought laughter into the restaurant with them, and made him feel better before he’d even touched his coffee.

Tory was waiting up when Barry finally got home. Since putting the kids to bed, she had cleaned all of her baseboards and ridden her stationary bike five miles. She was drenched with perspiration and her face glowed with anger.

But Barry’s expression mirrored hers as he came in and dropped his keys loudly on the table. “Tory, I don’t want to get into this with you right now.”

She snatched the keys up and hung them on their hook. “I don’t want to get into it with you either, Barry,” she said. “That’s not why I waited up. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I don’t intend to apologize.”

“Didn’t do anything wrong?” he asked. “The fact that you told the children when I hadn’t given you permission—”

“I don’t
need
your permission to tell my children they have a baby sister on the way!”

“Fine.” He threw open the basement door and started down the stairs.

“Your mother called tonight,” Tory said. Barry stopped and looked up at her. “She wants to know if we’re spending Thanksgiving with her.”

“Tell her no.”

“No?” Tory repeated through her teeth. “Why not? We spend every Thanksgiving with her. She looks forward to it.”

“Well,
I’m
not looking forward to it,” he said. “Did you tell her, too?”

“No, of course not!”

“Well, don’t sound so surprised at me for asking,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d tell the kids, but you did!” He came back up the steps and stood in the doorway. “I don’t want my mother to know you’re pregnant. I don’t want her to have to deal with this. And I don’t think the kids can keep from telling her now if we go.”

“No one would have to tell her!” she said. “She would look at me and know.”

“One more reason not to go!” he said, going to the cabinet and getting a glass. He swung back to her. “I can’t believe you told the children.”

“And I can’t believe what you’ve been demanding of me.”

“I
haven’t
demanded it,” he said. “If I’d demanded it, it would have happened.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” she bit out. “Not as long as I have breath in my body.”

He slammed the glass down. “You just told them to spite me,” he said. “It had nothing to do with the baby or the kids.”

“I’m
showing
, Barry! Open your eyes. I can’t hide this much longer.”

“I’m not asking you to hide it,” he said. “I’m asking you to do something merciful about it before time runs out.”

“Abortion is not merciful no matter how you look at it,” she cried. She burst into tears and shook her head frantically. “I can’t even believe this is
you!
The man I married never would have condoned this. You sit in church and worship just like you believe…”

He crossed the room and leaned over her, his body trembling with restrained fury. “You could never in a million years
understand. A year from now, you’ll be devastated and asking, ‘Why me?’ You’ll wonder what could have made you put this life sentence on a child who never asked to be born.”

“You’re wrong. Those children I saw at the school were not enduring a hard life. They were happy and content.”

“Well, were their parents content?”

“Your mother is!”

“She has no choice!”

“If your mother knew what you wanted for our baby, she would be just as disappointed in you as I am.”

“Maybe so,” he said. “That’s why we’re not going for Thanksgiving. I have enough trouble knowing that my wife despises me. I’m doing the best I can. I can’t do more than that, Tory.”

She had heard Cathy utter those words today, and they flitted through her mind like autumn leaves blowing across the yard. That phrase usually came from someone who was doing all the wrong things.

“So what
are
you doing, Barry?” she asked. “I’m the one carrying this baby. I’m the one getting to know it. I’m the one who’s been throwing up and feeling my body change and hiding my stomach. What exactly
have
you been doing other than coming home late and sleeping in the basement?”

“I’ve been thinking and praying about it a lot.”

“Well, isn’t that wonderful?” she snapped. “Seems that your thoughts are outweighing your prayers, because God would never tell you to do what you’re suggesting.”

“You don’t have a
clue
what God would tell me!”

“Well, since
I’m
the parent who’s carrying the child, he’s going to have to tell
me
,” she cried, “and I don’t think he has.”

“You wouldn’t hear it if you did hear it.”

She wanted to break something. “God does not condone murder. He’s a big enough God to change things himself if he wants them changed.”

“All of a sudden, you’re the theologian,” he said. “You’re the one who spent the first few years of your children’s lives
wishing you didn’t have them around so you could write a stupid novel.”

“Oh, that’s constructive.” Her face twisted. “I’ve done better in the last few months, Barry, and you know it. That was a low blow.”

He turned away and rubbed the back of his neck.

She felt as if the top of her head would blow right off, or her heartbeats would blend into one long, fatal grip. She got up to leave the room, but stopped at the door. “So if we don’t go to your mother’s, what are we going to do for Thanksgiving?”

“We can stay here,” he said.

“Oh, great.” She threw up her hands. “I’m supposed to hustle around and cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner for only four people, one of whom is not speaking to me?”

“I don’t care whether we have Thanksgiving dinner or not,” he said. “I don’t feel real thankful right now.”

“No kidding!” She said the words with disgust. But as she padded back to the bedroom, she had to admit that
she
didn’t see much to be thankful about, either.

Thanksgiving morning, Cathy woke her children up at seven o’clock, intent on training them in proper table manners before they got to Steve’s house just before lunch. She figured the four hours she would have to go over things with them would just about do it.

They came to the table too sleepy-eyed to be combative, and she fed them a big breakfast, then sat down with them as they all began to wake up. “Now, kids,” she said, “I don’t know how to emphasize to you enough how important today is for me. When we get to Steve’s, I don’t intend to be embarrassed or humiliated.”

“Even if I do embarrass you, there’s not really anything you can do to me,” Mark said as he picked at a strip of bacon. “You’ve already taken away the computer and the television, and ruined my social and educational life. I can act any way I want to and you can’t do anything about it.”

She stared at him for a moment, no emotion passing over her face as she turned his words over in her mind. “You know,
you’re wrong about that, Mark,” she said in a calm, controlled voice. She looked at Rick. “Rick, would you please go upstairs and remove the television from Mark’s room?”

Mark looked up at her. “Remove it? Why?”

“Because the tone of your voice tells me that temporary grounding from it isn’t going to do it. We need to remove it from your room altogether And if you continue to talk to me the way you do, you’ll lose all of your other possessions, one by one.”

“But my dad gave me that TV,” he said. “You can’t take it away if he gave it to me.”

“Then I’ll return it to him,” she said. She looked at her older son. “Rick?”

Rick looked as if he was considering objecting, but then he seemed to think better of it. She imagined him taking inventory of his own possessions, and realizing he could be next. “I’m going,” he said. He went upstairs and came back a few minutes later, holding the television in his hands. “What do you want me to do with it?”

“Just put it on the floor in the dining room,” she said. “You can take it with you to your dad’s this weekend.”

“That’s it,” Mark said, throwing the bacon strip down. “I’ve had it. I’m going to live with Dad.”

She knew that her ex-husband wasn’t interested in full-time fatherhood. Every time this had come up before, he found some way of talking the kids out of it. She hated seeing their hearts broken, even when she was so angry.

“No, Mark, you’re not going to live with him,” she said. “You’re going to stay right here and you’re going to learn how to behave.”

Rick returned to the kitchen and den area, and plopped into the recliner in front of the television. “Rick, come back over here.”

Groaning, he got up.

“Now, we’re going to go over a few things that will make me very happy,” Cathy said.

“Are we going to learn Scripture?” Annie asked, propping her face on her hand.

Cathy remembered what Brenda had warned her about teaching the kids Scripture when she was angry. Then it occurred to her that she was always angry at her kids. When could she teach them Scripture if it wasn’t when she was mad?

“No, we aren’t about to learn Scripture. We’re going to learn manners.” She drew in a deep breath. “Now, when we get to Steve’s, we’re going to go into the house, and I want each of you to say, ‘Hi, Steve. How are you?’”

“I’m not gonna say that,” Rick argued. “That’s cheesy.”

Cathy shot him a threatening look. “Rick, so help me, you’d better say it.”

“So you want us all to walk in one by one and repeat exactly what the one before us says?”

She couldn’t believe they were making this so hard. “You don’t have to repeat it exactly, as long as you get the same effect.”

“’Cause I was thinking about saying, ‘Hey, Steve, how’s it going?’”

She thought that over for a moment. “I guess that would be all right, as long as you shake his hand.”

Mark sat straighter. “Can I say, ‘Hey, Steve, whassup?’”

She looked at her watch, glad she had gotten them up four hours early. It was going to take every minute. “Why don’t you just go in and shake his hand and say, ‘Thank you for inviting us over’?”

“You’ve got to be kidding, Mom. I can’t say that.”

She wasn’t sure, but she thought smoke was beginning to waft out of her ears. “Then just say hello.”

“What about me?” Annie asked. “Do you want me to curtsy?”

Cathy offered a saccharine smile. “No, thank you, Annie. You can just flash him one of your beautiful smiles and tell him the food smells good.”

“Yeah,” Annie said, “that’s a good one. It smells good. I like that. What are we having, anyway?”

“Don’t ask him that,” Cathy said. “That’s rude.” She looked from one child to the others. “So let’s go over this again. We
walk into the house, and instead of groaning or plopping on the couch, you each say your piece.”

“’Hello there, Steve. How is it going?’” Rick said, like a bad actor. Mark grinned.

“No,” Cathy said, “that won’t do.”

He feigned exaggerated politeness and reached out to shake his mom’s hand. “Hello, Mr. Bennett. How-do-you-do?”

He sounded like Ernest T. Bass on the “Andy Griffith Show.” She tried not to smile, and turned to her daughter. “Your turn, Annie.”

“The house looks great, Steve!” Annie said with an overly bright smile. “Something smells great, and whatever it is, I know we’ll eat every tasty bite.”

Laughter pushed into Cathy’s throat, but she knew that if her children saw that she was amused, she wouldn’t be able to teach them another thing. “Okay, that’s good,” she managed to say. The mirth was taking over, and she couldn’t fight it. “Real…real good.” She covered her face and began to laugh.

The kids all burst out laughing, too.

After a moment, Cathy tried to get serious again. “Okay, we’ve got the greeting down. I don’t suppose you could all promise not to say another word until we leave?”

Fresh gales of laughter blew over them.

After a moment, she tried to get control again. “Guys, I’m serious. Sometimes you do tend to pull my strings when we’re with other people. I really want to make a good impression.”

“Why, Mom?” Annie asked, more seriously. “Are you gonna marry him?”

“We haven’t talked about marriage. I just don’t want you to embarrass me. And let’s face it. You know it’s your favorite pastime.”

They looked at each other with amused, guilty eyes.

“Okay, so every time they address you, you say yes, ma’am or yes, sir.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rick said with a grin.

“And when they offer you something to eat, you say ‘thank you’ or ‘no thank you.’”

“Mom, we already know this. We weren’t raised in a barn.”

“And when we’re at the table, you don’t start demanding to leave the moment you put the last bite of pie in your mouth.”

“What kind of pie?” Annie asked.

“I don’t know.”

“So how long do we have to stay?” Mark asked.

“Until we finish visiting and it seems like the right time to go.”

“What if it seems like the right time to go as soon as we put the last bite of pie in our mouths?” Rick asked.

They all grinned again.

“I’ll decide when it’s the right time to go,” Cathy said. “Annie, I’d appreciate it if you’d spend some time with Tracy. She really likes you.”

“I like her, too. She’s a good kid. Sure, I’ll play with her hair, and paint her nails. She likes that.”

“Do we have to sit there like little statues?” Mark asked. “Or can we watch TV and play with his computer…Because I shouldn’t be grounded on a holiday, you know.”

Cathy smiled. “I guess it’s okay for just the length of time we’re at his house,” she said, “but as soon as we come home you’re grounded again.”

“Cool,” he said. “I can watch the football game.”

“No way,” Annie spouted. “We’re watching the soaps.”

“Annie, you’re not watching the soaps. You’ll all watch whatever is on when we get there.”

“What if he doesn’t care what we watch?”

“Just promise me you won’t fight over the television.”

“We won’t, Mom,” Rick said. “Come on, we’re not going to embarrass you.” He started to get up from the table. She grabbed his hand and pulled him back down.

“We have to go over our table manners,” she said. “Does anybody know what the small fork is for?” They all moaned, but Cathy didn’t let it stop her.