“It’s five forty-five, and there’s not a thing wrong with your watch, Willard. It was working seven minutes ago when you asked.”
In her bedroom at the end of the hall, Theresa put the final touches on the makeup that by now she was adept at applying. She buckled a pair of flat, strappy white sandals onto her feet, inspecting the coral polish on her toenails—they’d never been painted before this summer. Next, she slipped into a brand-new pair of sleek white jeans, snapped and zipped them up, ran a smoothing palm down her thighs, and watched herself in the mirror as she worked the kelly green top over her head, covering her white bra. She adjusted the knot upon her left shoulder, stood back and assessed her reflection.
You don’t look like a Christmas tree, Theresa, but you look like
—she searched her mind for a simile Brian had used—
like a poppy blossom.
She smiled in satisfaction and flicked the lifter through her freshly cut and styled hair, fluffing it around her temples and forehead until it suited perfectly. Around her neck she fastened the new chain with the tiny puffed heart. At her wrist went a simple gold bangle bracelet. She inserted tiny gold studs in her ears and was reaching for the perfume when she heard her father’s voice calling through the screened windows at the other end of the house.
“I think it’s them. It’s a van, but I can’t tell what color it is.”
Theresa pressed a hand to her heart. The hand wasn’t yet used to feeling the diminished contour it encountered in making this gesture. Her wide eyes raked down her torso in the mirror, then back up.
What will he think?
“Yup, it’s them!” she heard in her father’s voice, before Amy bellowed, “Theresa, come on, they’re here!”
A nerve jittered in her stomach, and the buildup of anticipation that had been expanding as each day passed, thickened the thud of her heart and made her knees quake. She turned and ran through the house and slammed out the back door, then waited behind the others as the cinnamon-colored Chevy van purred up the street, with Jeff’s arm and head dangling out the window as he waved and hollered hello. But Theresa’s eyes were drawn to the opposite side of the van as she tried to make out the face of the driver. But the windshield caught and reflected the bowl of blue sky, and she saw only it and the branches of the elm trees flashing across the glass as the vehicle turned and eased up the drive, then stopped.
Jeff’s door flew open, and he scooped up the first body he encountered—Amy—lifting her off her feet and swirling her around before doing likewise with Margaret, who whooped and demanded to be set on her feet, but meant not a word of it. Willard got a rough hug, and Theresa was next. She found herself swept up from the ground before she could issue the warning to her brother not to suspend her. But the slight twinge of discomfort where her stitches had been was worth it.
Yet while all this happened, Theresa was primarily conscious of Brian slipping from the driver’s seat, removing a pair of sunglasses, stretching with his elbows in the air and rounding the front of the van to watch the greetings, then be included in them himself. Theresa hung back, observing the faded blue jeans slung low on his lean hips, buckling at the knees from a long day of driving; the loose, off-white gauze shirt with three buttons open; the naked V of skin at his throat; his dark, military-cut hair and eyes the color of summer grasses that smiled while Amy gave him a smack on the cheek, Margaret a motherly hug and Willard a handshake and affectionate pat on the shoulder.
Then there was nobody left but Theresa.
Her heart pounded in her chest, and she felt as if her feet were not on the blacktop driveway but levitated an inch above it. The sensuous shock of recognition sent the color sweeping to her face, but she didn’t care. He was here. He was as good to look at as she remembered. And his presence made her feel impatient, and nervous, and exhilarated.
They faced each other with six feet of space between them.
“Hello,” he greeted simply, and it might have been a verse from the great love poets of decades ago.
“Hello.” Her voice was soft and uncertain and quavery.
They were the only two who hadn’t hugged or touched. Her tremulous lips were softly opened. The corners of his mouth lifted in a slow crescent of a smile. He reached his hands out to her, calluses up, and as she extended her fingertips and rested them upon his palms, she watched the summer-green eyes that last December had so assiduously avoided dropping to her breasts. Those eyes dropped now, directly, unerringly, down to the freckled throat and the V-neck of her new knit shirt, and then lower, to the two gentle rises within. Brian’s mouth went slightly lax as he stared in undisguised amazement.
His puzzled gaze darted back up to her eyes, while Theresa felt her face suffuse with brighter color.
“How are you?” she managed, the question sounding foolishly mundane, even in her own ears.
“Fine.” He released her fingers and stepped back, replacing the sunglasses on his nose while she felt him studying her from behind the dark lenses. “And you?”
They were conversing like robots, both extremely self-conscious all of a sudden, both trying in vain to regain calm footing.
“Same as ever.” They were scarcely out of Theresa’s mouth before she regretted her choice of words. She wasn’t the same at all. “How was your trip?”
“Good, but tiring. We drove straight through.”
The others had preceded them up the back steps, and Theresa and Brian trailed along. Though he walked just behind her shoulder, she felt his eyes burning into her, questioning, wondering. But she couldn’t tell his true reaction yet. Was he pleased? Shocked for sure, and taken aback, but beyond that, Theresa could only guess.
Inside, the Brubaker house was as noisy as ever. Jeff—exultant, roaring, fun loving—stood in the middle of the kitchen with his arms extended wide and gave a jungle call like Tarzan, while from somewhere at the far end of the house The Stray Cats sang rock, and at the near end The Gatlins crooned in three-part harmony. Margaret tended something on the stove, and Jeff surrounded her from behind with both arms, his chin digging into her shoulder, making her wriggle and giggle. “Dammit, ma, but that smells rank! Must be my pigs-in-the-blanket.”
“Listen to that boy, calling my cabbage rolls rank.” She lifted a lid off a steaming roaster, and Jeff snitched a pinch of something from inside. “Didn’t that Air Force teach you any manners?” his mother teased happily. “Wash your hands before you come snitching.”
Jeff grinned over his shoulder at Brian. “I thought we were done with C.O.’s when we got our walking papers, but it looks like I was wrong.” He patted his mother’s bottom. “But this one’s all bluff, I think.” Margaret whirled and whacked at his hand with a spoon, but missed. “Oh, get away with you and your teasing, you brat. You’re not too old for me to take the yardstick to.” But Jeff had leaped safely out of reach. He spied the cake, and gave an undulating whistle of appreciation, like that of a construction worker eyeing a passing woman in high heels. “Wow, would y’ look at this, Brian. Somebody’s been busy.”
“Amy,” put in Willard proudly.
Amy beamed, her braces flashing. “The dumb thing is listing to the starboard,” Amy despaired, but Jeff wrapped an arm around her shoulders, squeezed and declared, “Well, it won’t list for long cause it won’t last for long. I’d say about twenty minutes at the outside.” Then a thought seemed to occur to him. “Is it chocolate?”
“What else?”
“Then I’d say less than twenty minutes. Shh! Don’t tell ma.” He picked up a knife from one of the place settings and whacked into the high side of the cake, took a slice out and lifted it to his mouth before anybody could stop him.
Everyone in the room was laughing as Margaret swooped toward the table with the steaming roaster clutched in a pair of pot holders. “Jeffrey Brubaker,” she scolded, “put that cake down this minute or you’ll ruin your appetite! And for heaven’s sake, everybody sit down before that child forces me to get the yardstick out after all!”
Brian took it all in with a sense of homecoming almost as familial as if he were, indeed, part of the Brubaker clan. And it was easy to see Jeff was their mood-setter, the one who stirred them all and generated both gaiety and teasing. It was so easy being with them. Brian felt like a cog slipping into the notches of a gear. Until he sat across from Theresa and was forced to consider the change in her.
“Take your old place,” Willard invited Brian, pulling a chair out while they all shuffled and scraped and settled down for the meal. During the next half hour while they gobbled cabbage rolls and crusty buns and whipped potatoes oozing with parsley butter, then during the hour following while they ate cake and leisurely sipped glasses of iced tea and caught up with news of each other, Brian covertly studied Theresa’s breasts as often as he could.
Once she looked up unexpectedly while passing him the sugar bowl and caught his gaze on her green shirtfront. Their eyes met, then abruptly shifted apart.
How?
Brian wondered.
And when? And why didn’t she tell me? Did Jeff know? And if so, why didn’t he warn me?
The kitchen was hot, and Margaret suggested they all take glasses of iced tea and sit on the small concrete patio between the house and the garage. Immediately they all got to their feet and did a cursory scraping of plates but left the stacked dishes on the cupboard, then filed out to the side of the house where webbed lawn chairs waited.
While they relaxed and visited, Theresa was ever aware of Brian’s perusal. He had slipped his sunglasses on again, even though the patio was in full shade now as the sun dipped behind the peak of the roof. But occasionally, as he lifted his sweating glass and drank, she felt his gaze riveted on her chest. But when she looked up and smiled at him, she could not be sure, for she saw only the suggestion of dark eyes behind the tinted aviator lenses, and though his lips returned the smile, she sensed it did not reach those inscrutable eyes.
“Oh yeah!” Amy suddenly remembered. “Glue Eyes called and said you should be sure to call her as soon as you got home.”
Jeff pointed an accusatory finger at his playful sibling. “Listen, brat, if you don’t can it with that Glue Eyes business, I’ll have ma take the yardstick to
you.”
“Aw, Jeff, you know I don’t mean it. Not anymore. She’s really okay, I guess. I got to like her a lot last Christmas. But I’ve called her Glue Eyes for so long it kinda falls outa me, ya know?”
“Well, someday it’s gonna fall out when you’re standing right beside her, then what will you do?”
“Apologize and explain and tell her that when I was learning to wear makeup I tried to put it on exactly like she does.”
Jeff gave her a mock punch on the chin, then bounded into the house to make the phone call, and returned a few minutes later, announcing, “I’m going to run over and pick up Patricia and bring her back here. Anybody want to ride along with me?” Theresa was torn, recalling the ardent reunion embraces she and Brian had witnessed last time, yet not wanting to stay behind if Brian said yes. He seemed to be waiting for her to answer, so she had to make a choice.
“I’ll help Amy and mother with the dishes while you’re gone,” she decided.
“I’ll drive you, Jeff,” Brian offered, stretching to his feet, adjusting his glasses and turning to follow Jeff to the van. Theresa watched him walk away, studying the back of his too-short hair, the places where the gauze shirt stuck to his back in a tic-tac-toe design from the webs of the lawn chair, his hands moving to his hips to give an unconscious tug at the waistband of his jeans. His back pockets had worn white patches where he carried his billfold, and his backside was so streamlined the sight of it created a hollow longing in the pit of Theresa’s stomach.
He’s upset. I should have told him.
No, you had no obligation to confide in him. It was your choice.
In the van, the two men rode down the street where evening shadows stretched long tendrils across green lawns. Brian drove deliberately slow. He pondered, wondering how to introduce the subject, and finally attacked it head on.
“Okay, Brubaker, why didn’t you tell me?”
Jeff gave a crooked smile. “She looks great, huh?”
“Damn right she looks great, but my eyeballs nearly dropped onto the goddamn driveway when I saw her standing there with her ... without her ... aw hell,
they’re gone.”
“Yup,” Jeff slouched low in the seat and grinned out the windshield. “I always knew there lurked a proud beauty inside my Treat.”
“Quit beatin’ around the bush, Brubaker. You knew, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I knew.”
“Did she write and tell you and ask you not to tell me?”
“No, Amy did. Amy thought I should know, so I could warn you if I thought that was best.”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t think it was any of my business. Your relationship with Theresa’s got nothing to do with me, beyond the fact that I’m lucky enough to be her brother. If she’d wanted you to know beforehand, she’d have told you herself. I figured, what business was it of mine to go stickin’ my two cents worth in?”
“But ....” Brian gripped the steering wheel.
“But ...
how?
”
“Breast-reduction surgery.”
Brian’s shaded brown lenses flashed toward Jeff. “Breast re—” He sounded flabbergasted. “I never heard of such a thing.”
“To tell you the truth, neither had I, but Amy told me all about it in her letter. She had it done three weeks ago, right after school got out for summer vacation. Listen, man—” Jeff turned to watch his friend guide the van onto a broader double-lane avenue “—she’s ... I don’t want to see her get hurt, okay?”
“Hurt?” Brian turned sharply toward Jeff, then back to his driving. “You think I’d hurt her?”
“Well, I don’t know. You’re kind of ... well, you act kind of pissed off or something. I don’t know and I’m not asking what went on between you and Theresa, but go easy on her, huh? If you’re thinking she should have confided in you for some reason, just understand that she’s a pretty timid creature. It’d be pretty damn hard for a girl like Theresa to even have the surgery, much less write and discuss it with a man—I don’t care
how
close you’d been.”