“Oh, that,” she wailed, hiding a cheek behind a palm. “Jeff, did you have to blab that to him? I could have died when I took those curlers out and saw what I’d done to you.”
“
You
could have died? Mother was the one who could have died. That time it was
you
who should’ve gotten grounded, and I think you would have if you hadn’t been eighteen already and going to college.”
“Let’s finish the story, little brother. In spite of the fact that you looked like an explosion in a silo, it got you that spot in the band, didn’t it? They took one look at that ball of frizz and decided you’d fit right in.”
“Which also put you beyond mother’s good graces for the remainder of the summer, until I could prove I wasn’t going to start sniffing cocaine and popping uppers every night before we played a gig.”
They had reached the escalator to the lower level where the luggage return was located, so were forced to break rank while riding down.
Studying the backs of the two heads below him, Brian Scanlon couldn’t help envying the easy camaraderie between sister and brother. They hadn’t seen each other for twelve months, yet they fell into a familiar groove of affectionate bantering as if they were good friends who saw each other daily.
They don’t know how lucky they are,
he thought.
The revolving luggage carousels were surrounded, for holiday travel was at its heaviest with only a couple days left till Christmas. As they waited, Brian stood back and listened while the two of them filled in each other on family news.
“Mom and dad wanted to come and pick you up, but I got nominated instead because today was the last day of school before vacation. I got out at two, right after the Christmas program was over, but they both have to work till five, as usual.”
“How are they?”
“Do you have to ask? Absolutely giddy. Mom’s been baking pies and putting them in the freezer, and worrying about whether pumpkin is still your favorite and dad kept asking her, ‘Margaret, did you buy some of those poppy-seed rolls Jeff always liked?’ And mom would lose patience and say, ‘Willard, that’s the third time you’ve asked me that, and this is the third time I’m answering. Yes, of course I bought poppy-seed rolls.’ Yesterday she baked a German chocolate cake, and after all that fussing, came out and found dad had taken a slice from it. Boy, did the fur fly then. When she scolded him and informed him she’d baked the cake for dessert tonight, dad slunk off and took the car to the car wash and filled it up with gas for you. I don’t think either one of them slept a wink last night. Mother was absolutely grumpy this morning, but you know how she gets when she’s excited—the minute she sees you it’ll dissolve like magic. Mostly she was upset because she had to work today when she’d rather have stayed home and gotten things ready, then come to the airport herself.”
It was plain to Brian that this homecoming had taken on premiere proportions in his family’s hearts, even before Theresa went on.
“And just guess what dad did?”
Jeff only smiled a query. Theresa tipped him a smile with hidden meaning. “Get ready for this one, Jeff. He took your old Stella up to Viking Music and had new strings put on it and polished it all up and brought it out to the corner of the living room where you always used to leave it.”
“You’re kidding!”
“God’s truth.”
“Do you know how many times he threatened to turn both me and my fifteen-dollar Stella out of the house if the two of us didn’t quit bruising his eardrums with all our racket?”
Just then a duffel bag came circling toward them, and Jeff shouldered forward to grab it. No sooner had he set it behind him than a guitar case followed. As he leaned to snag it, Theresa exclaimed, “Your guitar! You brought your guitar?”
“Guitars. Both of ours.”
She glanced up at Brian Scanlon, remembering he, too, played. She caught him studying her instead of the luggage return, his eyes the hue of rich summer moss, and Theresa quickly dropped her gaze.
“Can’t let those calluses get soft,” Jeff explained, “and anyway, two weeks without pickin’ would be more than we could stand, right, Scan?”
“Right.”
“But I promise I’ll pick a few on the old Stella, just for dad.”
A second guitar case came bumping down the conveyor belt, followed by another duffel bag, and Theresa watched Brian’s shoulders stretch his blue uniform jacket taut as he leaned to retrieve them. A young woman just behind Brian was giving him the once-over as he straightened and turned. The end of the guitar case caught her on the hip, and Brian immediately apologized.
The blonde flashed him a smile, and said, “Anytime, soldier boy.”
For a moment he paused, then politely murmured, “Excuse me,” and shouldered his duffel, glancing up to meet Theresa’s eyes, which slid away shyly.
“All set?” She directed her question at her brother, because Brian made her uncomfortably aware of how inordinately pretty his eyes were for a man, and ever aware that they never dropped lower than her coat collar.
“Yup.”
“Homeward bound. Let’s go.”
They stepped beyond the sliding doors of Minneapolis—St. Paul International into the crisp bite of December cold. Theresa walked between them again as they entered the cavernous concrete parking lot. But when they approached the correct row, she announced, “Dad and I traded cars for the day. I have his wagon, he has my Toyota.”
“Hand me the keys. I’m dying to get behind a wheel again,” her brother declared.
They loaded guitars and duffel bags into the rear and clambered inside. Through the fifteen-minute ride to the nearby suburb of Apple Valley, while Jeff and Theresa exchanged pleasantries, she tried to overcome her resentment of Brian Scanlon. She had nothing against him personally. How could she? She’d never met him before today. It was strangers in general—more particularly
male
strangers—she tried to avoid. Somehow she’d always thought Jeff guessed and understood. But apparently she was wrong, for when he’d called and enthusiastically asked if he could bring his buddy home to spend the Christmas holidays, then explained that Brian Scanlon had no family, there’d been no hesitation from Margaret Brubaker.
“Why, of course. Bring him. It would be just plain unchristian to make a man spend Christmas in some miserable barracks in North Dakota when there are beds to spare and enough food for an army.”
Listening on the extension phone, Theresa had felt her heart fall. She’d wanted to interrupt her mother and say, Just a minute! Don’t the rest of us have any say about it? It’s
our
Christmas, too.
There were frustrations involved with living at home at age twenty-five, and though sometimes Theresa longed to live elsewhere, the certain loneliness she’d suffer if she made that move always gave her second thoughts. Yes, the house belonged to her mother and father. They could invite whom they chose. And even while Brian Scanlon’s intrusion rankled, she realized how selfish her thoughts were. What kind of woman would deny the sharing of Christmas bounty with someone who had no home and family?
But as they drove through the late-afternoon traffic, Theresa’s apprehension grew.
They’d be home in less than five minutes, and she’d have to take her coat off, and once she did, it would happen again, as it always did. And she’d want to slink off to her room and cry ... as she often did.
Even as the thoughts flashed through her mind, Brian said in his well-modulated voice, “I certainly want to thank you for letting me come along with Jeff and horn in on your holidays.”
Theresa felt a flush of guilt working its way past her high gray coat collar, and hoped he wasn’t looking at her as she politely lied. “Don’t be silly. There’s an extra bed in the basement and never a shortage of food. We’re all very happy that Jeff thought of inviting you. Since you two started up the band together you’re all we hear about when he calls or writes. Brian this and Brian that. Mother’s been dying to get an eye on you and make sure her
little boy
has been traveling in good company. But don’t pay any attention to her. She used to practically make his girlfriends fill out an application blank with three references.”
Just then they drew into the driveway of a very run-of-the mill L-shaped rambler on a tree-lined street where the houses were enough alike as to be almost indistinguishable from one another.
“Looks like mom and dad haven’t gotten home yet,” Theresa noted. A fresh film of snow dusted the driveway. Only one set of tire tracks led from the garage, but a single pair of footprints led up to the back door. “But Amy must be here.”
The doors of the station wagon swung open, and Jeff Brubaker stood motionless beside the car for a moment, scanning the house in the way of a man seeking reassurance that none of the familiar things had altered. “God, it’s good to be home,” he breathed, sucking in a great gulp of the cold, pure Minnesota air. Then he became suddenly effervescent, almost jogging around to the tailgate of the wagon. “Come on you two, let’s get this junk unloaded.”
Thinking ahead to the next five minutes, Theresa appropriated a guitar case to carry inside. She didn’t know how she’d manage it, but if worse came to worst, she might be able to hide behind it.
At the sound of the tailgate slamming, a gangly fourteen-year-old girl came flying out the back door. “Jeffy, you’re home!” Smiling with a flash of tooth braces, Amy Brubaker threw her arms wide with an open gesture Theresa envied. Not a day went by that Theresa didn’t pray her sister be granted the blessing of growing normally.
“Hey, dumpling, how are ya?”
“I’m too big for you to call me dumpling anymore.”
They embraced with sibling exuberance before Jeff plopped a direct kiss on Amy’s mouth.
“Ouch!” She jerked back and made a face, then bared her teeth for inspection. “Look out when you do that. It hurts!”
“Oh, I forgot about the new hardware. Let’s see.” He tipped her chin up while she continued curling her lips back as if not in the least daunted by her unattractive braces. Looking on, Theresa wondered how it was her little sister had managed to remain so uninhibited and charmingly self-assured.
“I tell everybody I got ’em decorated just in time for Christmas,” Amy declared. “After all, they do look a little like tinsel.”
Jeff leaned back from the waist and laughed, then quirked a smile at his friend. “Brian, it’s time you met the rambunctious part of the Brubaker family. This is Amy. Amy, here he is at last—Brian Scanlon. And as you can see, I’ve talked him into bringing his guitar so we can play a couple hot ones for you and your friends, just as ordered.”
For the first time, Amy lost her loquaciousness. She jammed her hands as far as they’d go into the tight front pockets of her blue jeans and carefully kept her lips covering the new braces as she smiled and said almost shyly, “Hi.”
“Hi, Amy. Whaddya say?” He extended his hand and smiled at Amy with as charming a grin as any of the rock stars beaming from the postered walls of her bedroom. Amy glanced at Brian’s hand, made an embarrassed half shrug and finally dragged one hand from the blue denim and let Brian shake it. When he released it, the hand hung in the air between them for a full fifteen seconds while her smile grew and grew, until a reflection flashed from the bars of metal spanning her teeth.
Watching, Theresa thought,
oh, to be fourteen again, with a shape like Amy’s, and the total lack of guile that allows her to gaze point-blank in unconcealed admiration, just as she’s doing now.
“Hey, it’s cold out here!” Jeff gave an exaggerated shiver. “Let’s go in and dig into mom’s cake.”
They carried duffel bags and guitar cases into the cheery front-facing kitchen of the simple house. The room was papered in an orange- and gold-flowered pattern that was repeated in the fabric inserts of the shutters on the windows flanking the eating area, which looked out on the front yard. An ordinary house on a street with others just like it, the Brubaker home had nothing exceptional to set it apart, except a sense of familial love that Brian Scanlon sensed even before the mother and father arrived to complete the circle.
On the kitchen table was a crocheted doily of white, and in the center sat a pedestal plate bearing a mouth-watering German chocolate cake under a domed lid. When Jeff lifted the lid, the gaping hole came into view. In the hollow wedge was a slip of folded paper. He took it out to reveal a recipe card from which he read aloud: “Jeff, it looked too good for me to resist. See you soon. Dad.”
The four of them shared a laugh, but all the while Theresa stood with the broad end of Jeff’s guitar case resting on the floor at her toes, and the narrow end shielding the front of her coat. She was the delegate hostess. She should ask for Brian’s jacket and hat and make a move toward the hall closet.
“Come on, Brian,” Jeff invited, “see the rest of the place.” They moved to the living room and immediately four raucous, jarring chords sounded from the piano. Theresa grimaced and glanced at Amy who rolled her eyeballs. It was “Jeff’s Outer Space Concerto.”
They drew deep breaths in unison, signaled with nods and bellowed simultaneously, “Je-e-e-eff, knock it off!” While the sisters giggled, Jeff explained to Brian, “I composed that when I was thirteen ... before I became an impresario.”
Theresa quickly hung up her coat in the front-hall closet and hustled down the hall to her bedroom. She found a pale blue cardigan sweater and whisked it across her shoulders without slipping her arms into the sleeves, then buttoned the top button at her throat. She glanced critically in the mirror, realigned the button-and-buttonhole panels so the sweater covered as much of her as possible, but found to her dismay it did little to disguise her problem.
Oh God, will lever learn to live with it?
Her usual, end-of-the day backache plagued again, and she sighed, straightening her shoulders, but to no avail.
The house tour had stopped in the living room where Jeff had found his Stella. He was twanging out some metallic chords and singing an offbeat melody while Theresa tried to bolster her courage and walk out there. Undoubtedly it would be the same as it always was when she met a man. Brian Scanlon would scarcely glance at her face before his eyes would drop to her breasts and he would become transfixed by them. Since puberty she had relived those awful moments too many times to count, but Theresa had never become inured. That horrifying instant when a man’s eyebrows twitched up in surprise, and his lips dropped open while he stared at the outsized mammary glands that had, through some unfortunate freak of nature, grown to proportions resembling volleyballs. They rode out before Theresa like a flagship before a fleet, their double-D circumference made the more pronounced by her delicately boned size-nine frame.