Starting from Scratch (4 page)

“H
ere's Elisha,” Elisha declared the second Henry opened the door to let her in. It was almost a week since he'd phoned her at the office, but the way she saw it, better late than never. “Doesn't have the same ring as ‘Here's Johnny,' but the spirit is there,” she told him, stepping over the threshold.

Warmth came rushing up to her, a direct contrast to the unseasonably brisk weather she'd left behind her outside. The beginning of April had brought snow with it, a rarity in New York, and although it was now almost all melted, the memory and the temperatures lingered on.

Her cheeks stung for a moment until she acclimated herself, absorbing the warmth that the house had to offer. Both varieties of warmth, the physical and, more important, the emotional.

No doubt about it, Henry's home had a peacefulness that went beyond the comfortable spread of the twenty-four-hundred-square-foot layout, beyond the bricks and the concrete of the pleasant two-story building. There had been, and still was, love in this house, a great deal of love. She could feel it in every room.

Henry and Rachel had been the happiest couple she'd ever known, as in tune with one another as her parents had been before them. And they had adored their two daughters. Andrea and Beth, in turn, despite an occasional display of willfulness from Andrea, had loved them right back with a fierceness reserved for the very young and very loyal.

On those rare occasions when she felt that the world was too much with her, Elisha liked to retreat here for a few hours, to relax and recharge before venturing out again.

In all honesty, a few hours was all she could take, because along with the love was a slow pace that would have driven her up a wall if she had been part of it for any extended period of time. She knew that for a fact because when she'd broken her leg three years ago, Henry had insisted that she stay with him and the girls to convalesce.

She did.

For a week.

And then she went hobbling back on her crutches to the noise and breakneck pace that surrounded her Manhattan apartment. She needed the rapid pulse of the city, throbbing all around her, in order to feel alive. Slow and steady was wonderful if you were a turtle determined to beat a vain and slothful rabbit, but it definitely was not what she was about. So accustomed to moving fast, she even tossed and turned madly in her sleep. Or so Garry had claimed.

“What's all this?” Henry asked. He grinned and looked, for all the world, like a taller, male version of her, right down to the bone structure and coloring. He was eyeing the boxes she had in her arms. The ones she'd been struggling to keep from falling on the ground from the moment she had emerged from the taxi that had brought her from the city to his Long Island home.

“Tribute,” she announced, willingly surrendering the booty into her brother's open arms. “Conscience gifts. Call them whatever you want. This is to make up for the dinner I missed.”

“You don't have to try to buy us off,” Henry told her, setting the pile on the side table.

“Sure I do,” she contradicted. Elisha slipped off her coat and tossed it over the back of the sofa with the ease of someone who knew she was home. She turned to face him. “Besides, I just like buying you and the girls things,” she told him for perhaps the hundredth time before her brother could protest again. “What else do I have to spend it on? I don't own a house with a pool, so I can't be lavishing all my money on a poolboy slash boy toy.”

He looked thinner, she thought. As thin as he had right after Rachel died, when eating had ceased to be important to him.

Everyone around her at the office was coming down with something. She wondered if Henry'd had the flu. It was just like him not to mention anything.

The next moment, Beth came rushing up to her. At ten, the girl had dark brown hair and was slight for her age. Though brighter than her years, her maturity level had elected to remain happily ensconced in childhood for as long as possible. She still slept with a stuffed animal she'd had since she was two, a rabbit that looked every bit of his well-loved years.

Coming up a little past her waist, Beth wrapped her arms around the aforementioned body part and cried, “Aunt Lise,” and “What d'you bring me?” in the same breath and almost at the same time.

“Beth,” Henry looked at his daughter.

“She has a right to ask,” Elisha said. “After all, it would be a terrible thing if I'd brought all those gifts and none of them were for her.” She caught Beth's small heart-shaped face in her hand and tilted it up a little. “Right, kiddo?”

“Right,” Beth agreed with a sharp nod of her head. And then she looked at her curiously. “What's a boy toy, Aunt Lise?”

Flashing a contrite glance in Henry's direction, Elisha still laughed as she looked down at her niece. “Something a looker like you is bound to find out in another five, six years.” She laughed as she heard Henry groan. Looking at him over her shoulder, she said, “And you thought
these
were the tough years.”

“No, I didn't,” he answered. “I remembered what it was like with you.”

She had the good grace to wince a little. There were no two ways about it. She had been a hellion at seventeen, slipping out at night to hang around with her friends. She never did anything that would have gotten her standing in front of a camera holding a placard with a long number against her chest, but she had come close a time or two. She didn't envy what lay ahead for Henry.

Taking two of the packages she'd brought, Elisha presented them to her younger niece.

Beth hurried off to the sofa, declaring, “Thank you,” and “Can I open them?” even as she began to do so with the bigger of the two gifts.

“That's what wrapping paper is for, honey. To rip off.” She watched the girl fondly as Beth made short work of the blue-and-white paper.

“Wow, thank you!” she cried once she was looking down at a popular video game and the latest imprint of a classic children's book. “I love them both.”

“See?” Elisha turned to look at her brother. “One gift for the mind, the other for the soul.” She picked up two almost identically sized gifts and handed both to Henry. “Open yours.”

Though it looked as if he would have rather waited until after dinner, when things were a little more settled, Henry did as she asked. He'd managed to remove only a little of the tape on the first gift before Elisha gave it away. “It's Sinclair Jones's latest thriller. I know you like him.”

“I do. Thank you.”

“Open the other one.”

“Why don't you just tell me what it is?” he teased. “Save me the trouble of tearing off the wrapping paper.”

“You don't tear wrapping paper, Henry,” she accused. “You ‘remove' it. Like a neurosurgeon carefully working his way through a maze of nerve endings. You're supposed to rip it off. Like Beth.” The ten-year-old looked up at her and flashed a smile before going back to reading the first page about a little girl who lived in the Swiss Alps.

“We all do things our own way,” Henry told her. He slid open the side of the second gift. The appreciative smile that curved his mouth was worth waiting for. She'd scored, Elisha thought.
“The Life and Times of James ‘Wild Bill' Hickok,”
he read aloud. “Thanks, Lise.”

She paused to kiss his cheek. “You've very welcome. Hey, if I can't get good books for the people I love, what's the point of working at a publishing house?” She looked around. By now, they should have numbered four, not three. “Where's the other lovely member of the family?” Elisha asked her brother.

“Right here,” Andrea answered. She walked in, her hands deep in the pockets of the jeans that had a tendency to reside on her hips rather than in the vicinity of her waist. “Hi.” She brushed a kiss against Elisha's cheek, her eyes on the remaining two packages on the table. “Anything for me?”

“Sorry, these are for the mailman,” Elisha told her, picking the packages up and holding them to her. Then she laughed and thrust them toward her niece. “Since he's not here, I guess you can have them.”

But before Andrea had a chance to open even the first gift, her father asked, “Did you finish your homework, Andrea?”

The older girl's hand dropped from her gift. She held them against her with her other hand, her eyes communing with her shoes rather than looking up at her father. “Almost.”

“How many pages in an almost?” Henry asked in a voice that held the echo of endless patience. With Andrea, he found that he had to be. And at times, even that didn't work. He knew she had a paper due in English the next day, a paper she'd been putting off writing for over three weeks now, ever since she'd gotten the assignment.

“Two.”

He was familiar with the game. “Two pages to go, or two pages done?”

She didn't stick out her lower lip, but Andrea looked petulant. Fifteen was the age for it, Elisha thought. Again, while she didn't envy her brother, she did admire him.

“Two done.” And then the girl, a carbon copy of her late mother with her delicate features and her long, silky blond hair, sighed dramatically as she went on the offensive. “I just don't get it,” she lamented. “Why do we have to study Shakespeare anyway? Nobody talks like that anymore.”

It was a familiar complaint. Not one that she had made herself, Elisha thought, but that was because she had fallen in love with the beauty of the written word only a little after she'd climbed out of her first crib. She'd taught herself how to read. Her mother had called her precocious. The real reason was that Elisha had been impatient. Too impatient to wait for her mother to read to her. So she'd learned how to sound things out on her own, asking any nearby adult to help her when she needed it. She was reading by four.

“They did once,” Elisha pointed out. “And who knows, maybe no one'll talk like you do now in another hundred years.”

The expression on Andrea's face was the last word in skepticism. “Yeah, right.”

Now,
there
was a challenge if she'd ever heard one. “Nobody says
groovy
anymore or talks about the cat's pajamas,” Elisha said.

On the sofa, her finger marking her place, Beth looked up and laughed at the expression. “Cats don't have pajamas.”

Unless they're in cartoons, Elisha thought. “That's what they said in the forties.”

Beth's face became solemn and thoughtful. She looked a great deal like Henry when she pondered things. “Cats had pajamas in the forties?” the girl asked.

Elisha did her best to keep a straight face. “It was a more innocent, less complicated time.”

“Sounds boring,” Andrea said. “Just like this play I have to do my report on.”

Her interest piqued, Elisha asked, “Which play are you doing?”

“Romeo and Juliet.”

A section of the past came flooding back to Elisha. In high school, the drama class had put on the play and she had landed the role of Juliet. She had some very fond memories of rehearsing the kiss Juliet gave Romeo in an attempt to share the poison she thought he still had on his lips. Tommy Leonetti had some very definite ideas about just how “dead” Romeo was supposed to be at the time. She wondered if Tommy was still a great kisser.

Banking down her thoughts, she looked at her older niece. “You should be able to relate to that.”

“Why?” There was almost contempt in Andrea's voice, but it was aimed at the Bard and the story she had to sludge through. “I wouldn't be dorky enough to get married at fourteen.”

A little gentle education was called for here. Not to mention a helping hand with the report. Making up her mind to tackle both, Elisha looked at her brother. “How long until dinner?”

“Take all the time you need.”

“Okay, then.” Elisha slipped her arm around Andrea's shoulders, leading the girl back to her room. “What I meant by you being able to relate to this story is that Romeo and Juliet rebelled against their parents.”

Andrea looked at her, a spark of interest entering her eyes as they left the room. “Cool.”

H
enry said nothing on the subject throughout dinner, a simple but palate-pleasing pot roast. Neither did she. Instead, the conversation around the dining-room table centered on a variety of items that were of interest to the girls.

But as soon as Beth had run off to test out her new video game and Andrea had excused herself to talk to her girlfriends, Henry looked at her knowingly. “You did the rest of the paper for Andrea, didn't you?”

She knew better than to make eye contact with him. Henry had a way of staring a person down to the point where the truth just popped out of its own accord. She'd often thought he'd missed his calling as an interrogator, although as a lawyer, it did come in handy at times.

Elisha studied the delicate pattern on the white tablecloth as she said, “No, I guided her through the rest of the paper.”

He sipped the last of his mineral water, his eyes still on his sister's face. “So the report is written?”

“Yes.”

He laughed softly and shook his head. “You did it for her,” he repeated.

Elisha looked up from the white-on-white swirls. Henry had her and they both knew it. “I didn't physically sit and write it.” A grin quirked her mouth. “She types faster than I do.”

“But you dictated.”

It was an old game. She was determined not to cry uncle, at least not completely.

“Maybe some of the words,” she allowed, then quickly followed up with, “Can I help it if she likes the way I phrase things? Really, Henry, she's a very bright girl, just a wee bit lazy when it comes to planting her bottom on a chair and doing the work.” She knew she wasn't telling him anything new. No man was as up on his kids and their habits as Henry was. “Hell, I deal with that almost every day.” Slowly, she began to gather up the dishes, stacking them on one another as she talked. “You have no idea how many writers talk a good book, but when it comes right down to sitting there and facing a naked page, or trying to get from point A to point B, they become like willful children. Anything'll distract them so they don't have to deal with that emptiness.”

Reaching for Andrea's water glass, Henry placed it by his own. “Emptiness?”

“Of the page or computer screen,” she elaborated. Elisha moved her own glass next to her brother's, then brought over Beth's to complete the set. “There are a lot of good words inside their heads, but they swirl together like alphabet soup and they don't think they have the wherewithal, or patience, or whatever to put it together so it makes sense.” Dropping the silverware on top of the four dishes, she smiled. “That's where I come in.”

He cocked his head ever so slightly, as if the information would transfer itself into his brain a little more swiftly at that angle. “You put it together for them?”

There were times when she was sorely tempted to toss out a page and put her own words down in its stead. But that was the easier way and the more dishonest way. Although she had to admit it was personally satisfying to see her words in print, even under someone else's name.

“I nag,” she corrected him. “I push, I prod, I provide the encouraging word, sometimes over and over again.” For her most insecure authors, she thought. With them, bolstering their morale was very much like trying to pour a given amount of water into a pail with a gaping hole in it. “Until they get it done.”

Henry nodded at the explanation. “You had it right the first time. You nag.” He grinned. “As I recall, you were quite good at that.”

“I never nagged you.”

“You most certainly did.”

Stubbornly, she refused to give up any ground. “About what?”

He rolled his eyes, seeming more amused than frustrated. “Everything. You thought things had to be done a certain way—your way—and you wanted me to do it just that way.”

From her point of view, she'd been altruistic, but she supposed she could see that from his position, her behavior might have seemed a little irritating. “I just didn't want you making my mistakes.”

“Kids need to make their own mistakes,” he told her quietly. He got up from the table, picking up the stack of plates and silverware. “That's how they learn.”

He had a point and she was more than willing to concede to it. Henry was even a better father than theirs had been, and she had adored their father.

“Which is why you're the parent and I'm the editor. I wouldn't have the patience to stand back and let them learn on their own,” she admitted honestly. “I'd just jump right in there and do it for them.” Holding the glasses to her to keep from dropping them, she followed Henry into the kitchen. “You really have done a great job with the girls. They're wonderful.”

Henry placed the dishes on the counter and opened the dishwasher. One by one, Elisha rinsed off the dinner plates and handed them to him to place on the rack.

“Yeah, they are, aren't they? Don't get me wrong, there have been a few rough patches, especially with Andrea, but for the most part, I've been pretty blessed.” The last dish he took from her slipped through his fingers. It landed on the tile with a clatter. Because it was the everyday dinnerware, the plate didn't shatter.

Not looking in his direction, Elisha stooped down to pick up the dish.

“Never knew you to drop anything,” she teased. “I'm the one who does that, usually because I'm moving faster than the speed of light.”

When she rose back up, her grin froze, then abruptly faded the second she saw her brother's face. Henry was struggling to mask it, but she was positive she saw a glimmer of pain flash across his features. Something squeezed her heart.

“Henry, what's wrong?”

He did his best to look unaffected as he waved a hand at her question, dismissing it. “Nothing. It was just a twinge.”

“A twinge of what?” she demanded. He made no answer, as if the question had no significance. Still looking at him, Elisha quickly pulled over a chair. “Here, sit,” she ordered.

When Henry did as she asked, she became really concerned. Henry had never had a macho complex, but he just never showed any weakness. If he needed to sit down, something was very, very wrong.

She looked at his color again, thinking how pale he was. She could feel the foundations of her world weakening, as if she'd just found out that they were constructed of cardboard instead of concrete.

She placed a hand on his shoulder, trying not to feel at a loss, wishing she was that know-it-all big sister again, or at least could somehow channel her. “Maybe you need to see a doctor.”

Henry raised his head and gave her an acquiescing smile. “I
am
seeing one.”

“Seeing?” she echoed, picking up on the one telltale word. He hadn't just gone once and gotten a clean bill of health. “As in an ongoing process?”

This definitely didn't sound good to her.

“Don't make a big deal out of this, Lise. I just went in for a checkup.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Because I knew you'd make a big deal out of it. I went because I haven't been to a doctor for a while and I thought it might be a good idea to get myself checked over.”

She wasn't buying that, not for a moment. “Women think like that,” Elisha pointed out. “Men don't think like that.” She was doing her best not to allow panic to cross her threshold. So far, she was succeeding. “Now, what's wrong?”

With the patience of Job, Henry stuck to his story. “Nothing.”

She couldn't very well choke the story out of him. “How serious a nothing?”

Henry laughed, stood and reached for the dishwashing detergent. He added the appropriate amount to the machine. “You always were dramatic.” He punctuated the statement with an affectionate laugh.

She sighed. The man was a veritable sphinx when he wanted to be. “And you were always closemouthed.”

There was deep affection in his voice as he posed the question, “How would you have known? You were always talking. Or dictating,” he added before she could defend herself. They knew one another very well. They always had. “I couldn't have gotten a word in edgewise. Mom and Dad wouldn't have even known I could talk if you hadn't had to go to kindergarten a few hours a day and leave me at home.”

“You're trying to divert me, Henry. All right, if you're already seeing a doctor, what did he or she say?”

“It's a he. Dr. Steven Rheinhold,” he said. “And he think's that it's probably just an ulcer. He wants to run some tests.”

An ulcer would be consistent with someone who kept everything inside and never displayed any anger, she thought. An ulcer could be treated and managed.

“Tests.”

He smiled and passed his fingertips over the furrow that had formed between her eyebrows, smoothing it out. “Don't say it as if it's a death sentence.”

The second he said the forbidden word, Elisha rallied. She instantly forgot about her own reaction, her own concerns, and became the eternal cheerleader.

“No, of course not. Tests are good. They rule out things, put your fears to rest. Tell you what you should be doing.” She looked at her brother pointedly. “Like resting.”

He returned her look without flinching. “You'd be the one to talk.”

With her, it was more a case of collapsing instead of resting, and she did so periodically. But this wasn't about her, it was about him. The only really important “him” in her life.

“Like you just said, brother dear, I always do.” She sobered slightly, turning the dishwasher on for him. “You'll tell me the minute you find out anything?”

“If I can get through.”

She knew he was referring to the last time. The woman on the switchboard had placed him on hold and immediately lost the connection.

“Call my cell,” she told him. “And the answering machine.”

“So in other words,” he deadpanned, “you don't want to know.”

“I'll answer it,” she promised. “I don't want anything happening to you.”

“Nothing's going to happen to me,” he reassured her in the soft, patient voice that inspired confidence in all who heard it. “I've got too much to live for.”

“Yeah, you do,” she agreed. Pausing to kiss his cheek, she ordered, “Remember that.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he murmured, then laughed.

She loved the sound of his laugh. It made her feel better.