Cold Tea on a Hot Day (35 page)

Charlotte was still not happy with Tate’s bent for inviting all and sundry in to visit them. She deleted the last sentence, thinking Tate would not notice.

“Put that back in there,” he told her, just before she sent the disks to the printer.

Moving On

“T
ate’s here,” Corrine called.

Marilee grabbed her purse and her tote. “Okay, let’s get movin’.”

“We are mov-ing, Ma-ma,” Willie Lee said, as he walked with deliberate motion out the door ahead of her, Munro at his heels.

They piled into Tate’s car and drove to school, where children were pouring out of buses and cars, and streaming across the yard and up the walks. Marilee kissed Willie Lee, who then walked away with Tate, Munro walking right along with them, to his classroom. Then she walked Corrine to her classroom.

Outside the door, Marilee said, “Do not hesitate to call me if you need me.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“I know…but you will be all right.”

Marilee breathed a deep breath, wondering at who mothered whom. She kissed her niece, who, her shoulders straight and stride easy, went into the classroom. Corrine had grown taller, and her grace of movement was arresting. Marilee, still gazing in the doorway, saw a number of boys turn their eyes to her dark-haired niece. Oh boy, more hurdles. Corrine would be equally as beautiful as Anita.

It was so hard, leaving them. As she walked out of the school, she felt she left her heart behind.

“How’d he do?” she asked Tate when they met back at the car. She had resisted the urge to go peek into Willie Lee’s classroom, afraid she might be spotted, afraid she might go in there and jerk Willie Lee back out.

“Very well. He seemed to accept that Munro is show and tell just for today.”

Tate directed the car from the curb, and Marilee sat there, looking straight ahead. She breathed deeply. She would be okay. As long as her children were okay, she would be okay.

Tate drove to the
Voice
offices, parked at his space in the rear, and gave her a quick kiss before getting out of the car. They went inside together, Tate into his office and Marilee to her desk, where she worked for two hours, her eyes repeatedly checking the clock and thinking the day so very long.

Finally, almost not realizing she was doing so, she took up her purse and tote and headed out the door, telling Charlotte, “I need to go home for some things that are on my computer there.”

She walked out the door into the hot August day,
across the street and up the long block of Church. She was wet with perspiration by the time she got to the corner of Porter. Her pace picked up, though, heading for home. She went into her house and shut the door and leaned against it, listening to the quiet.

She hated the quiet.

Pushing herself away from the door, she went to her computer on the desk, sat down and turned it on.

She wished Munro were there, at least.

This would not do. She had to get ahold of herself and her swirling thoughts.

She went to the back door, more or less just aimlessly moving. The sunlight made speckles through the trees on the back steps. She went out and sat down.

This was where Tate found her. He drove over to check on her when he had found her gone from her desk. It was a little absurd, but he had been worried since they had let the children off at school. He knew it was hard on her, and she had seemed too calm to him.

He got in a little panic when he went in the front door of her house and didn’t find her. The house was stone quiet, and he had the thought that maybe she had been abducted. She never did lock her doors. Things could and did happen, even in small towns.

“Oh, here you are,” he said, speaking with some relief when he got to the back door and found her sitting there.

“Well, yes.”

She moved over to let him out to come sit beside her.

“Someday I shall get new lawn furniture,” she said.

“I like sitting on the step.”

“I do, too.”

They grinned at each other.

She looked away quickly, suddenly sad and afraid to reveal herself. Then she dared to say, “I miss them.”

“I do, too.”

“I’m really glad for the summer we had. They came so far this summer. I think Willie Lee has real talent with sculpting, and we wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t started tutoring him.”

“He really does. No tellin’ what can happen there.”

“And Corrine’s had time to get confidence. She’s really growing up. She’s becoming a young lady.”

“Yes. A lovely young lady.”

The entire time Marilee was thinking and chatting of these things, she was becoming more and more aware of Tate’s strong thigh touching hers. More aware of the fact that they were there alone, for the first time in months. Her brain seemed to whirl, bouncing between her awareness of Tate and her sadness at missing the children that had by now caused a lump in her throat and the need to cry, which she really did not want to do.

“They don’t need me like they used to,” she said. “Oh, they’ll always need me, but it’s changing. I feel like there’s a sinkhole right underneath me, the sand just runnin’ out.” Tears began to roll down her cheeks. “I’m so tired of adjusting. You know that’s what life is, adjusting time after time, and sometimes I just don’t want to adjust any more.”

“I know.” Tate put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her against his chest. “I sure miss them, too.”

“You do, don’t you?” This fact somewhat amazed her. Tate had so fully involved himself in the children’s lives.

“Yes. Makes me feel old without them.”

“Oh, you’re not old.” She tried for a smile for him and to dry her eyes, but then a fresh wave of discouragement came over her. “I feel old, too. My babies are growin’ up. What will I do?”

With that she went to sobbing against him. He rubbed her back and whispered soothing whispers. Gradually she became very aware of his hand caressing her back, of his strong chest, of the scent of him.

Then he was nuzzling her neck and said, “Let me make you feel better…let me…”

She lifted her head and met his kiss, eagerly and completely.

Tate’s response to this kiss, when he lifted his head, was to say, “Good golly!”

They made love in her bed, slowly and without nervousness. They had been together for months now and discovered, with delight, that they knew each other very well.

He was a miracle, Marilee thought, pressing her cheek against his chest and hearing the beating of his heart.

“Nothing is awkward with you,” she said.

“Don’t know why it should be,” he replied. “This is most natural between a man and a woman who are attracted to each other.”

He kissed her in places all over her body, and he caressed her with abandoned pleasure, and he made her laugh, and made her cry, and made her shout his name with searing ecstasy.

Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms and talked as they had not talked in the past two months.

“I guess when two people have done this,” she said blushing, “it is easier to say some things.”

He grinned at her and kissed her and whispered that she sure did something to him that was great.

She told him she was afraid, and then she told him something about when she had grown up, how she realized where she got the mothering talent. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to be a woman as a wife. I’ve messed it up for two relationships now.”

“But you’ve learned. We learn from our mistakes. And I’m not the same as Stuart and Parker.”

“No, you aren’t.”

He told her about his growing up, about a father who drank until he got run over by a train, and his mother, whom he described as beautiful and with quite strong spiritual ideas, as he put it. Marilee liked watching the light in his eyes as he spoke. He told of his failed marriage, and how he had not been able to be married, had not really wanted to be.

Then he said, “But I want to be married now. And I want to marry you. Will you?”

Immediately all sorts of questions popped into her mind. Fears.

“Yes,” she managed to get out at last.

He laughed aloud. “It is sure a good thing I’m a secure man.”

Then he kissed her in the way every woman wants to be kissed and only a few get to experience.

They went to pick up the children together, as they had taken them to school. Marilee could not wait, and they
were in Tate’s car at the curb in front of the school ten minutes before the children were let out.

Marilee jumped out and went to meet them and kiss them both. “Oh, I missed you so much!”

Willie Lee said school was okay, but that Munro did not want to go anymore.

Corrine said she would like a special planner notebook. “In lavender, if I can,” she added.

Tate said, “We need to celebrate today,” and cast Marilee a private smile. “Let’s go down to Blaine’s.”

They were greeted by Aunt Vella, who was once again manning the soda fountain, but only four days a week, with Fridays off. She said, “How are my shu-gahs today?” and kissed each of them, even Tate.

Willie Lee wanted a cherry ice-cream cone, and, “Mun-ro wants a dish of van-il-la, please.”

Corrine, after much deliberation, chose a dish of pecan ice cream.

Tate ordered a glass of iced tea, and Marilee, who had been about to get a chocolate shake, changed her mind. “I’ll take iced tea, too.”

The bell above the door rang out, and Parker entered. Tate welcomed him over. “Let me buy you a cold drink, buddy.”

Parker went behind the counter and got his own drink, then leaned on the counter to visit with all of them, the children telling about school, Parker telling about one of his patients, Aunt Vella talking about her latest rose catalog. Soon here came Uncle Perry and Winston from back in the pharmacy. The two, to everyone’s amazement, had taken up playing chess. They sat in chairs with
glasses of lemonade and discussed the television channel that featured a chess instruction program.

Marilee’s eyes chanced to look up in the long mirror on the wall. She saw herself and Tate, sitting side by side, in the midst of her family and friends.

Quite suddenly she realized she was looking at today, herself as a full woman, the haunting of yesterday’s child nearly faded clear away.

Tate’s gaze met hers in the mirror. He leaned over and gave her a kiss, then said, “Good company, good tea…it doesn’t get any better than this.”

Tate, upon making his normal rounds of town that afternoon, made certain everyone saw the article on Willie Lee. He said, “Just when you think it doesn’t get any better, by golly, it always can!”