Beloved (54 page)

I
t
was as if all the air had gone out of all the balloons at the same time. Without Mac, the party wasn't the same. Even Uncle Easy seemed to feel it; his one-liners lost some of their punch. Or maybe it just seemed that way to Jane. She sat there with a poor excuse of a smile on her fac
e, waiting for Mac to come back
from what she hoped would be a quick walk to Celeste's car.

The pile of torn wrapping paper and undone ribbons got higher. No Mac. Uncle Easy opened Jane's gift — a collection of jams and jellies and half a dozen of his favorite cigars — and complimented Jane's interesting split personality. Everyone laughed. Ignoring the knot in her stomach, Jane laughed too. Still no Mac.

So this is what it's come to,
she thought miserably.
Pining away like a teenager because the boy I like
sneaked out early from the part
y with the prom queen. I hate this.

Uncle Easy, sensing that the company was getting restless, whipped through the rest of the presents quickly. The chairs got rearranged again into small groups; the early leavers left. The older girls were playing
Monopoly
, the boys Nintendo, but the smaller children were beginning to get bored and cranky. Uncle Easy surveyed the situation, then yanked Jane aside.

"I ain't ready for this party to end. Help me round up the troublemakers. We'll herd
'
em into an upstairs room with a game."

Jane turned to Bing and her mother, who were deep in a discussion of fund-raising techniques. "Would you mind?" Jane asked her mother.

Her mother waved her away without looking at her. Bing's blue eyes flickered unhappily, but he continued to hang on to every word that Gwendolyn Drew uttered.

The son-in-law from heaven,
Jane decided with a wry smile as she left them with their coffee.

The game Uncle Easy had in mind was Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and the cutoff age seemed to be six or seven. Certainly Jerry and his pals weren't interested. "Too bad for
them,"
said Uncle Easy.

Despite Jane's objections, Uncle Easy chose Mac's bedroom to hang the donkey poster in; it was the only room that didn't have a chair rail in the way. "Mac won't care," the old man said breezily.

With great care he opened the tattered cardboard box and unfolded the fragile poster. The game was now an antique; Uncle Easy had paid fifteen cents for it on an expedition to
Boston
half a century earlier. Although the original brass tacks were in the box, Uncle Easy had made a concession to modern technology and
had a supply of
plastic pushpins, because they were easier for a young hand to hold.

In the meantime, Jane tried not to notice Mac's pajama bottoms hanging on the door, and tried not to wonder whether he ever wore the tops. She tried not to imagine him lying on the plain four-poster bed, and tried
very
hard not to speculate whether someone lying next to him would roll into his heavier weight. But most of all, Jane tried not to breathe, because the bedroom smelled intimately, irresistibly like books and leather and Old Spice and Mac McKenzie.

She helped Uncle Easy organize the group into a kind of big-kid, little-kid pattern so that there would be a sense of drama. The first one up was
Doris
's grandson Stinky, a seven-year-old who was so sure he'd win that he asked to be spun around five extra times. Uncle Easy blindfolded him, spun him, and let him go. He pinned the tail on the donkey's nose. James, his four-year-old cousin, got so excited that they had to take the blindfold back off so that he could go to the bathroom. Lucy, also four, pinned the tail deliberately on the wall because she didn't want to hurt the donkey.

And so it went, with the simple, old-fashioned game yielding more about each child's character than any Nintendo game ever could. When everyone had had a turn, Jenny, a shy and adorable three-year-old sitting in Jane's lap, looked up at her and said, "Now
you
do it."

Instantly there was a clamor. "Do it! Do it! We'll help you! Do it!"

Jane laughed and let Uncle Easy wrap his red bandanna around her eyes. She stood there, waiting to be spun around, but nothing happened. "Well? Isn't anyone going to make me dizzy?"

There was another pause, and then some giggling, and then Jane felt two powerful hands take hold of her shoulders and begin to spin her slowly, slowly around. A low sound escaped her throat, of surprise and a sense of pleasure so deep it bordered on fear. Around she went, with one of his hands trailing across her back, the other sliding onto her shoulder in slow, fluid repetition. She was caught in a lasso of heat, and the pleasure it gave was almost impossible for her to understand. She let herself be turned; turned; turned. She would gladly have continued until the end of time.

But he let her go, amid squeals of anticipation from the children surrounding them. "You're cold, you're cold!" they screamed as she groped the air ahead of her, feeling for the donkey poster. "You're warmer! Warmer!"

Her free hand touched his face. "Hot! Hot!" the children cried, laughing hysterically at her error. She let herself fall under the spell of play, lightly skimming his high cheekbone, the cleft in his strong chin, the pronounced bridge of his nose. He did not move under her touch as she raised her other hand and pretended to get ready to pin the tail on him. The children were in an uproar. "No, no, no!" they shrieked. "He's a
man!
He's a
man!"

Jane whispered, "I know."

He took her by the shoulders again and adjusted her direction slightly. Jane stepped cautiously forward while the children cheered her on. She found the poster, made her best guess, and drove in the pin to loud laughter and cries of relief. When she lifted the bandanna from her eyes, she saw that the tail was hanging from the middle of the donkey's chest.

"Right about where the heart would be," said Mac from behind her.

Wrong heart,
she thought, turning to him. "I missed," she said in a small, sad voice.

"Then you'll have to try again sometime." He stood there, relaxed and smiling, in no particular hurry. She'd never seen him like this before. His hands were in the pockets of his baggy khakis; the trendy red floral tie that dressed up his stonewashed denim shirt was loosened. She'd been staring at that tie all evening. For a man like Mac to buy a tie like that
—
well, he was wearing it for
someone,
that was for sure.

The children were expecting something amusing to happen between Mac and Jane. When it didn't, they instantly lost patience and demanded their prizes. Uncle Easy worked out a system based on age, height, tail number, and sportsmanship. Everybody got a cash prize; Jane won fifty cents.

"Don't spend it all on one man," said Uncle Easy, winking at Mac. "Was there plane trouble?" he added to his nephew.

"We needed some time; she had the plane wait."

Uncle Easy snorted. "She can afford it nowadays."

They all poured out of Mac's bedroom, Jane with little Jenny in her arms. Mac said, "Thanks for your help tonight."

"Don't mention it," Jane replied coolly.
I'm jealous. Jealous, jealous, jealous.

Mac looked baffled by the lightning shift in her mood. "Something I said?"

"Very possibly," Jane answered. They descended the rest of the stairs in silence. Mac went off and Jane handed Jenny over to her mother, a clerk at the town post office. Then she rejoined her own mother, who was making noises about leaving.

"I'm sorry now that I booked the car on the six-thirty ferry," Gwendolyn said with genuine regret, smiling across the room in
Bing's direction. "Bing wanted to take us both to breakfast. What a perfectly wonderful young man he is. Kind, attentive, considerate; he's practically raised his sister, you know."

"So I've been told," Jane answered, a bit snappishly. "I hope I haven't led you on about Bing, Mother. He is
not
the marrying kind."

"Be serious, Jane. What man is, anymore? You just have to convince him that you know better. You're halfway there already," she added, lowering her voice. "Bing spent the better part of the evening raving about you
. I admit, he has a certain ..
. elusiveness. But when a man like that finally does decide to make a commitment, he'll charge straight ahead. Mark my words."

"Must we talk about this
now?"
Jane asked, amazed at her mother's indiscretion.

Chastised, her mother said, "You're right. You're right. I'll take the car back to the house myself. You stay. Enjoy yourself. Bing can bring you back." Gwendolyn kissed her daughter happily, said good night to her new friends and acquaintances, and left.

Bing came up to Jane immediately afterward. "Is there something going on around here that I should know?" There was a dangerous depth to his blue eyes, a darkness she'd never seen there before. "Your mother is giving me one set of signals about you, but you seem to be giving me another."

"My mother talks too much. All mothers talk too much," Jane said lightly. But she was thinking,
Is this a birthday party or an encounter group?

"I think it's time to stop being coy with me, Jane," he said quietly. "If you're not interested, say so."

"Bing! H
ow can you ask me that here ..
. now?"

"Evasive isn't any better than coy, Jane."

"I'm not being either!" she said hotly, then lowered her voice in the steadily emptying room. "But this really isn't the time or place. The truth is, I don't have a
clue
what's going on around here," she admitted, distressed. "I wish you would give me time to sort it out. If I could just get some time to think
..."

"Falling for someone isn't like buying a car, Jane," he said, idly fingering a gold button on her blouse. "You can't sit down with a cup of tea and the latest edition of
Consumer Reports
and research the person. When it's right, you know it. For me, it's right. I want you to know it."

He looked immensely appealing just then: tall and lanky and just ill-used enough to make her feel she was being pretty stupid to keep him at bay. And after all, what
did
she want? On paper — and in the flesh — Bing Andrews looked perfect. Everything her mother said was true, and more besides. If there was anything wrong with what he was telling her, she couldn't see it; not with him standing there with that rueful, beguiling look of his.

"Maybe I —"

"I would've preferred a yes or a no." He leaned over and kissed her gently on her lips. "But I can see I'm not going to get either. Do you want a lift home?" he asked, disheartened.

"I'd better not," she said with a sigh. "I'll just say my good nights to everyone and walk back. It's a beautiful night."

"It could have been," he said shortly, and left. She felt as if she'd turned down her first marriage proposal. When she thought about it, though, she realized that there was nothing new in what Bing had said. It was odd how good men were at implying that they were in love with you and wanted to spend the rest of their days at your side, when all they really wanted was to take you to bed.

She went into the kitchen to say good night to Mrs. Adamont, who was packing up the last of the leftovers for the stragglers. Mac was there, as Jane knew he'd be, saying good night to his guests in the most normal, friendly way. It simply amazed her.
I'm not the
only
schizophrenic here tonight, dammit.

"Honey, get me more aluminum foil," Mrs. Adamont said to her as Jane waited her turn to say good night. "I think I saw an extra roll under one of the cupboards."

Jane tracked down the foil, and after that the plastic wrap, and somehow ended up scrubbing the pots that were too big to fit in the dishwasher. All the while she kept telling herself,
Say good night and get out; you're just
tr
ying to prove how humble you are.
But she couldn't. He was only ten feet away, close enough for her to hear the rich, friendly laugh in his voice, and soak up his nearness, and understand the side of him he would not let her see. She wanted so badly to be able to slip her arm through his and say to the guests, "We loved having you, come again," and to be the one to turn off the lights in the kitchen.

Maybe he could use a cleaning woman,
she thought, trying to laugh off the irony of the situation.

She and Mrs. Adamont finished up about the time the last guest left. Mrs. Adamont took off the apron she'd brought and stuffed it into her paper shopping bag.

Mac slipped his arms around her and said, "Adele, you saved my life. This could've been a disaster. How'm I gonna pay you back?"

"Oh, and I suppose limbing MacGruder's tree that was blocking my roses isn't payment? Now stop fooling around and let me go; I'll be late for
Saturday Night Live."
She grabbed her purse and shopping bag, gave Mac a buss on his cheek, and dashed out.