Memories of You (12 page)

He gaped at her, feeling the color drain from his face. “I’m not sure I…what did you say, ma’am?”

“I was asking you,” she said calmly, “how long you’ve known Zeke and Speedball.”

Steven fumbled for an answer, still too astonished to think clearly. “How did you…”

She smiled, looking a little sad. “Never mind how I know, Steven. I happen to have all kinds of sources for various bits of information. I assume you met them after you moved to the city this summer?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “I went to a rock concert in the park one day and started talking with them. But how did you—”

“Do you know anything about them?” she interrupted, still regarding him with that calm blue gaze.

“Of course I do.” He gripped his coffee mug tensely. “They’re my friends.”

“Did you know that both of them have been in trouble with the police a number of times, and that Zeke’s still on probation for assaulting an elderly woman? Apparently, it was quite a brutal crime.”

“How do you know all this?”

“As I told you, I have my sources,” the professor told him quietly.

“Yeah, well, maybe your sources don’t know what they’re talking about.” In his outrage, Steven forgot to be polite for once. “Guys like Zeke and Speedball always get a bad rap, just because people won’t give them a chance. Everybody’s down on them.”

“In my experience, when everybody’s down on a person, there’s usually a good reason.”

“Oh, sure!” he shouted, causing a few of the other students to look at them curiously.

Steven lowered his voice and leaned across the table.

“The reason is that they’re poor and homeless and they’ve never had a chance, that’s all. When I walk around downtown, everybody’s so damn anxious to help me and smile at me, just because my dad’s rich and I’ve never gone without anything in my whole life. But if Zeke looks sideways at somebody, they call the cops. It’s not fair.”

She was watching him with a calm, measuring glance. “So you believe Zeke’s just a well-meaning
boy who’s been abused and misunderstood. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yes. I bet if Zeke had half a chance, he’d be a good person. It’s hard to care about other people when nobody cares about you.”

“I see. Well, I’m afraid I have to disagree with you.”

He stared at the woman, so angry that he forgot his usual caution. “Look, Dr. Pritchard, I’m not sure how you happen to know who Zeke is. But if you’ll excuse me, I don’t see how you could possibly understand anything about him.”

“And why is that, Steven?” she asked.

“Because you’re so…” He paused and groped for words. “You’ve never even been close to the kind of life those kids live on the street. You don’t know what it’s like to be oppressed and despised, and afraid for your own safety most of the time. If you’d ever experienced even a minute of it, I’ll bet you wouldn’t be so quick to judge.”

She was silent, gazing out the window again. All he could see was her elegant profile, the clean, aristocratic line of her nose and chin.

“Dr. Pritchard,” he ventured at last, feeling terrible.

“Yes, Steven?”

“I’m sorry if I was rude just now.” He flushed. “I didn’t mean to say all those things to you. I just…this stuff gets me really upset.”

She smiled and patted his arm. “I admire somebody
who gets aroused over moral issues. It shows real depth of character.”

“I wonder if…” He paused once more.

“Yes?” she prompted. “What are you wondering?”

“If you’d sort of…not say anything to my father about this.”

“About what?”

“My friends. He gets all upset if he thinks I’m in bad company. He can be really dumb about some things.”

“It’s not dumb, Steven,” she said quietly. “I also happen to believe you’re in bad company, and it could be dangerous for you.”

“But shouldn’t it be my choice?” he asked. “I’m practically an adult. I think I should be allowed to choose my own friends.”

She nodded slowly, considering. “Yes,” she said at last. “I think you’re probably right.”

“Then you won’t say anything to my father?” he asked eagerly. “Do you promise?”

“All right. But that doesn’t mean I won’t discuss the matter with you again, if I feel it’s warranted.”

Steven felt a brief surge of relief, then sagged in his chair. “I hope I can trust you,” he muttered. “People break their promises, especially when they’re dealing with kids.”

“If you’re talking about your father, I can’t imagine him breaking a promise,” the professor said. “He strikes me as a very honorable kind of person.” .

“Oh, my father’s honorable, all right,” Steven said
bitterly. “But my mother sure isn’t. She lies all the time.”

“Steven, I don’t think…”

He didn’t want to tell her more, but saying the words aloud had brought the pain surging back, hot and strong, and he couldn’t stop himself.

“My mother’s been lying to me ever since I was a kid. She says she’ll come to visit and then doesn’t turn up, or she promises to send a letter and then forgets. I learned when I was really young that you can’t trust anybody when they give their word.”

“Not even your father?”

“My father’s different,” Steven said in despair. “He’s always
there.
I never even have to think about him. But my mother…”

“She’s the one you crave,” she said gently, “because you can’t ever seem to grasp hold of her. Right?”

He looked away. “Not anymore. I don’t care anymore. She can do whatever she wants. But it’s kind of hard to…”

“Yes?” she asked when he paused. “What were you going to say, Steven?”

“Just that it’s upsetting,” he muttered, “to see her treating the twins the way she used to treat me and Vanessa. They’re real smart but they’re still just little kids, and they don’t understand. They get hurt when she breaks her word.”

The woman across the table sipped her coffee. Her sympathetic expression encouraged him to tell her more than he intended.

“My mother’s a really selfish, immature person,” he said. “But she can be nice, too. She laughs and tells jokes, and she’s fun to be around. Sometimes it’s like she actually cares about you, and you get all happy and warm and reach out to her again. But then something distracts her and she’s gone, and you’re left holding a handful of air. It really…it used to hurt me a lot.”

Dr. Pritchard was silent a long time. Finally she touched his arm and leaned toward him. “Part of growing up is learning to understand people, and forgive them for not meeting our expectations,” she said. “If your mother simply isn’t capable of being the person you want her to be, it won’t do any good to be angry with her.”

“I didn’t say I was angry,” he muttered. “It just…hurts, that’s all. Actually, it makes me hate everybody who’s got money and lives the kind of selfish, careless life that she does.”

“Does it make you hate yourself?” Dr. Pritchard asked.

Steven glanced up at her, startled. “What do you mean?”

“Sometimes when we’re rejected and disappointed by the people closest to us, we tend to blame ourselves for it. We start thinking that we must be inadequate in some way because they don’t love us. And those feelings can lead to all kinds of selfdestructive behavior.”

Her words were so surprisingly accurate that Steven was uncomfortable. He shifted in the chair and
looked down at his coffee mug. “I don’t feel like that,” he lied. “Not a bit. Maybe my brother and sisters have problems with it sometimes, but I don’t care how my mother treats me.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Because you’re a very valuable person, Steven, and your mother’s behavior is her own problem, not yours. You have to forgive her, accept whatever she’s able to give you and let the rest go. You can’t allow the negative actions of others to affect your own behavior.”

Steven sensed that in some obscure way she was still talking about his friends. Abruptly he got to his feet and gave her an awkward nod.

“Well, thanks a lot for the coffee,” he muttered. “I have to go now.”

He turned and made his escape, conscious of the way she sat in silence as he plunged out of the student lounge and headed downstairs to the parking lot

C
AMILLA SIPPED
the last of the dreadful coffee and pushed her mug aside, still watching the doorway where the boy had disappeared.

He reminded her so much of Jon as a young man that it was unsettling to talk with him. And he shared a lot of personality traits with the boy she remembered—especially a generous spirit and a deep concern for the welfare of others.

But Steven seemed to lack Jon’s sunny confidence, the balanced strength of character he’d displayed even in his youth.

She frowned, wondering about the woman Jon had married.

He’d obviously made a mistake in his choice of a mate. But she could understand how it happened. Jon had been the kind of person who could easily be drawn into a relationship with somebody he felt sympathy for, a woman he thought could be helped and transformed by a stable partner.

And then, like so many idealists before him, he’d learned when it was too late that nobody could ever transform another person. So his wife had remained self-indulgent and shallow, and her behavior had damaged the children in different ways.

Despite Camilla’s first impression, the twins probably hadn’t suffered quite so much because they’d never really known their mother. After all, the woman had left soon after their birth. Jon had been the only parent they were closely involved with. But the older children must have been deeply hurt that their mother showed so little interest in them.

Camilla wanted to forget about all of them. She longed to turn away from Jon Campbell and his children and run back into the comfortable, scholarly world she used to occupy, where she was safely locked away in a shell of cool detachment and nobody could touch her emotions.

Still, she couldn’t forget Steven’s troubled face, his look of edgy defiance when she talked to him about Zeke.

Something was going on there, and it worried her. Camilla wished she hadn’t promised not to talk with
Jon about Steven’s friends. But right or wrong, she’d given her word and the last thing the boy needed at this point was another woman breaking her promise to him.

Finally she gathered her armful of books and left the cafeteria, heading across the campus in the mellow autumn twilight:

She let herself into her apartment, where both cats were waiting by the door.

Madonna mewed loudly, demanding to be let out onto the balcony. Elton sat by the sliding glass door, looking on with wistful eyes as his friend’s sleek gray body vanished into the depths of the poplar tree.

“You can go with her if you like,” Camilla said. “Go on, Elton. Have some fun. Climb up on a fence and sing at the moon.”

He put one of his paws on the metal track, then drew it back again and gave Camilla an eloquent, pleading glance.

She bent and scooped him into her arms. “I know just how you feel, darling,” she whispered against his warm fur. “You don’t have to go out there if you don’t want to. You can stay home with me and be safe.”

Safe.

Camilla carried the cat into the bedroom, brooding as she rested her chin on his head.

She’d been thinking about safety ever since the beginning of the school term when Jon Campbell had turned up so unexpectedly in her classroom and scared her half to death.

But she was also taking more and more risks, edging further out onto thin ice with every day that passed.

“I can’t believe I’m doing all this, Elton. I’m falling in love with his kids, and now I’ve actually agreed to go to his ranch this weekend. What on earth is wrong with me?”

She tossed the cat onto the bed, where he curled up and watched with drowsy interest while Camilla opened her closet door.

“I don’t have the slightest idea what to pack.” She hauled down a couple of expensive tan-leather duffel bags from an upper shelf. “What exactly do you wear for a weekend jaunt with a man who terrifies you?”

M
ADONNA WAS SULKING.
Camilla could see the faint glow of yellow eyes under the couch, her cat’s favorite retreat when she felt ill-used.

Camilla knelt and peered into the shadows. “Come out and talk to me, sweetie,” she coaxed. “Please don’t be upset.”

The only response was an indignant hiss and a rustling sound as Madonna retreated deeper into her cave. Elton sat nearby on top of Camilla’s suitcase in a bright ray of morning sunlight, licking his front paws and rubbing them industriously across his whiskers.

Camilla sprawled on the rug, still addressing the space under the couch. “I can’t possibly let you go out,” she said earnestly. “I’m going away for three days, and you have to stay inside while I’m gone. Otherwise something terrible could happen to you and I’d never know.”

Prolonged silence from under the couch.

“Mr. Armisch is coming up every evening to feed you and make sure you’re all right,” Camilla pleaded. “And Elton is here to keep you company.”

Elton gave her a sympathetic glance and began to
groom his plump flanks, but there was no response from the darkness under the couch.

Camilla gave up and got to her feet, wandering back to her own room to look at herself nervously in the mirror. Elton jumped off the suitcase and padded along behind, settling in his accustomed spot in the middle of the bed while Camilla picked up a brush and toyed aimlessly with her hair.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said to the cat, who regarded her with unwinking yellow eyes. “You think I’m crazy to be going away with him this weekend. Don’t you, Elton?”

Elton yawned and sneezed.

“You think it’s impossible that he hasn’t recognized me by now, and he must be playing some kind of game. Don’t you?”

The words hung uneasily in the air. Camilla felt her stomach tighten. She set the hairbrush on the dresser and stared intently at her reflection.

“Well, I’ve been wondering about that, too. But you know what, Elton? I was very young when he met me. Besides, lots of times I get visits from kids I taught less than ten years ago, and often they’ve changed so much I don’t recognize them, even though they spent a whole term in one of my classes.”

Elton kneaded the bedspread and stretched lazily, then rested his chin on his paws and watched her in thoughtful silence.

“In this case,” Camilla went on, “it’s been more than twenty years. I was smaller and thinner, my hair was a different color, my nose was all swollen and
shaped differently, I still had those bruises around my eyes…”

She crossed the room and flopped onto the bed next to the cat.

“Now you’re wondering why I had no trouble recognizing
him,
even after all those years, right?”

Elton blinked and yawned again.

“Well, it’s different,” Camilla said. “Jon was twenty-one, a grown man. In fact, he really hasn’t changed very much. He’s the same size, his hair’s mostly the same color…he even dresses the same way. How could I not recognize him?”

Elton continued to gaze at her, then leaned over to lick her hand.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Camilla murmured, stroking his glossy back. “The man’s not going to remember me. I’m safe, really I am. I’ll just keep myself well away from him all weekend, and after this trip is over I’ll figure out some way to separate from the whole family. Then I won’t be in any—”

The front-door buzzer sounded, making her breath catch in her throat.

She climbed off the bed and ran to answer, waiting nervously for Jon to come upstairs. The doorbell rang and she let him in, then stood watching in silence as he looked around her apartment. The man seemed larger in this setting, and so handsome that she could hardly bear to look at him.

If she hadn’t been so terrified, she would almost have enjoyed the irony. Of all the people in the world
to be standing in her living room, admiring her plants and her little collection of Aztec pottery…

“This place is really nice,” he said with a smile that made his eyes crinkle pleasantly. “Not exactly what I’d expected.”

“What was it you expected?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. Something a little more conservative and understated, I guess.”

“So you think I’m conservative?”

You idiot! Don’t ask him things like that,
she told herself furiously.
You’ve got to keep this relationship as impersonal as you can.

“Well, I used to think that.” He gave her a smile that made her feel a little dizzy as he crossed the room and stood near her to reach for the suitcase. “But now I’m not so sure.”

She wanted to ask why, but this time caution prevailed. Instead, she stood back and watched while he lifted Elton gently from the suitcase and settled him in a nearby armchair.

“I thought there were two cats,” Jon said, looking around.

“How did you know that?” she asked, startled and wary.

“The twins have been here a few times. They never stop talking about you.”

Camilla relaxed. “Oh, that’s right. They’re very fond of the cats. Madonna is hiding under the couch. She gets really cranky when I…when I won’t let her go outside.”

“The kids also told me you like to wear blue jeans
and plaid shirts, but I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”

Camilla looked down at her faded denims and felt herself blushing. “Professors are human beings, you know, Mr. Campbell.”

“Jon. My name is Jon.”

“I don’t know if that’s…”

He moved toward her, still carrying the suitcase, and held her arm gently with his free hand. “Please, call me Jon.”

“Jon,” she whispered, looking down at the floor to avoid his steady blue gaze. “And I suppose…you and your family should probably call me Camilla. The twins already do.”

She was painfully conscious of the peaceful weekend morning, the lazy sun dappling the carpet, her drowsy cat and the warmth of Jon’s hand on her bare arm.

Camilla felt languid and strange—almost lightheaded. Worst of all, her courage was beginning to desert her once again.

Oh, God, she thought with a shiver. I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s crazy to be going away with him. I should make up some excuse…

But before she could think of a way to extricate herself, they were heading out the door with her jacket and suitcase. They stopped briefly at the super’s apartment for some last-minute instructions about the care of the cats. Then they were in his car and on their way.

The sunny morning was glorious—rich and mellow
with the scent of autumn, of dried grasses and warm sage and a hint of snow from the distant mountains.

A few minutes later, they were driving west across the city.

“Does this ever make you feel a little sad?” she asked, gazing out the window.

“What?” He glanced over at her, gripping the wheel casually, one arm resting on the back of the seat.

“Autumn.” Camilla avoided his eyes. “There’s always something a little melancholy about this time of year. It’s so lovely that it brings a lump to my throat.”

“I know what you mean. Sometimes beautiful fall weather makes me start brooding about lost opportunities,” he said with rare seriousness. “Maybe because I’m getting conscious of how quickly my life is slipping by. I’ve always thought lost opportunities are the saddest things on earth. How about you?”

“‘Of all sad words by tongue or pen,’” Camilla began, smiling.

He grinned back at her. “The saddest are, ‘It might have been.’ Right?”

“I suppose so.” She settled in her seat, watching the trees and houses drift by as they headed out of the downtown core and toward the suburbs. “But your life seems very successful. It’s hard to believe you’ve missed many opportunities.”

He frowned thoughtfully as he maneuvered past a farm truck hauling a load of cattle. “I guess I’m thinking mostly of that experience I described in my
last essay. It was probably the major lost opportunity of my life.”

Camilla’s heart began to pound, but she kept her voice carefully neutral. “I’m trying to remember the essay. I think it was something about a girl you met by chance when you were a young man?”

Jon nodded. “I tried so hard to find her after she disappeared. I’ve often wondered how my life would have turned out if I’d been successful.”

“Perhaps you romanticized the whole thing,” Camilla said, hoping he couldn’t hear the way her heart was thudding gainst her jacket. “It’s possible you might have found her again and learned that the two of you were totally incompatible, and caused yourself all kinds of heartache.”

He gave her a quick smile. “So what are you saying, Camilla? You think dreams that don’t come true are the best kind?”

“They’re probably the safest,” Camilla said after a moment. “You know what they say…be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.”

“I suppose there’s some truth in that, all right. But ever since, I haven’t met anybody else I could talk with so easily about everything under the sun. It was a rare experience.”

She stole a glance at him, but all she could see was his aquiline profile, strong and unrevealing against the blue sky beyond the window.

“Besides,” he went on, “my dream girl could hardly have been more incompatible than the woman I eventually married, and that was a choice that’s
caused all kinds of pain for my whole family. So, in a way, I still look on the whole thing as a lost opportunity. Especially,” he added quietly, “since life doesn’t always give you a second chance.”

He sounded so unhappy that Camilla longed to reach over and touch his arm, but she restrained herself. Instead, she looked around at the peaceful, rolling countryside they were passing through.

“It’s nice out here,” she said. “Look at all these beautiful acreages.”

“Don’t you ever go for drives in the country?”

“Not very often.”

“So what do you do for pleasure, Camilla?”

“Well, I go for long walks on campus and play with my cats, and paint a little, and I read a lot…”

The words sounded so hollow in her ears that she was embarrassed.

What a contrast to this man’s life, with his brood of children and his vast prairie ranch, his surprising return to college after a twenty-year absence, his airplane and lavish houses…

“Here we are,” he announced. They pulled down a long approach road and into a yard where a light plane was sitting at the end of an airstrip. “Look, everybody’s waiting for you, Camilla.”

V
ANESSA STARED OUT
the window of the plane, thinking how much she always loved this time of year and how desperately she missed the countryside around the ranch.

She would have been humiliated if anybody knew
what she was thinking, though. The whole family believed that all she cared about was clothes, makeup and boys. Vanessa liked it that way. She was terrified of showing her real feelings, and so skilled at creating a facade of brittle shallowness that it had become second nature.

She leaned forward to look down at a tightly bunched herd of cattle moving slowly along a country road. It was too far away to see details clearly, but she knew the herd would be followed by a couple of riders with their cotton bandannas pulled up over their mouths and noses to protect themselves from the choking clouds of dust.

Vanessa sighed and looked at Amy who was in the seat next to her, after losing a fierce battle with Ari over who would sit beside Camilla on the plane trip. Amy had unfastened her seat belt and was kneeling on the seat, also staring down at the cattle.

“Maybe that’s Tom,” she said, jumping up and down in excitement. “Hey, Ari, look at the cattle! Do you think Tom’s riding down there?”

“Don’t be stupid. It’s not Tom,” Vanessa said shortly. “The ranch is still a hundred miles away.”

Amy glared at her sister for a moment, then returned to her study of the rolling landscape below the plane. Vanessa settled back in the seat and glanced at Camilla Pritchard’s smooth blond head.

This slender woman was everything Vanessa wished she could be.

Camilla was elegant, quiet and intellectual, a selfpossessed woman who knew exactly what she was
and where she was going. There was nothing shallow or tawdry about her. Though she was dressed casually for the weekend in jeans and a cotton shirt, she still exuded an air of pure quality.

Vanessa always felt so cheap. Even her looks seemed flashy and overdone, with black hair and blue eyes and pale skin, as if nature was deliberately trying to make her conspicuous.

Just like your mother, people had been saying to her since she was a little girl, stroking her hair in admiration. What a pretty little girl, Vanessa. You’re the image of your mother.

She gritted her teeth and rolled her head on the seat back.

Vanessa was tormented by a constant fear that she’d turn out to be the same kind of person as her mother. How could you look so much like somebody and not have inherited her personality, as well?

In Vanessa’s opinion, there was no point in having feelings and caring about others, being sensitive and kind and considerate. Not if people thought you were going to turn out just like your mother. No, it was better to be coldly, deliberately selfish right from the start As soon as she reached adolescence, she’d begun to play the role.

By now she didn’t really know how to be different. In fact, Vanessa was growing increasingly convinced that everyone had been right all along. She must be cold and selfish like her mother or she wouldn’t have been able to fool everybody for all these years.

Involuntarily, she glanced at Enrique who sat up front with Jon.

This was the boy’s first ride in the plane, and his first trip to the ranch. Vanessa could feel his excitement.

There were lots of times she could sense what Enrique was thinking. She knew that sometimes he was afraid, and often humiliated by the need to accept her father’s generosity. He was lonely, too, yearning to reach out to her and Steven for friendship. And at the center of him was a dark well of sorrow that he needed to talk about. But the poor boy had no friends his own age to listen while he talked.

Vanessa felt sorry for him, and passionately admired his courage. She couldn’t imagine being all alone in a strange, faraway country, making her own way without anybody’s help.