Roses in Autumn (13 page)

Well, the day wasn’t over—or at least the night. She could still hope to get his attention at a quiet, candlelight dinner. She had looked up several choices in the guidebook. “Tom, this evening—”

“Yeah, I was going to talk to you about that. I need to get back to Phil in the morning with some final figures on the K.C. property. Do you mind if we have dinner in our room rather than going out?”

“Oh, no, I don’t mind at all.” So much for a warmly romantic dinner to ease her into the mood to wear that caftan tonight. But then, it would be the perfect apparel for a candlelight dinner in the room. Of course, the purpose of this dinner was to give Tom more time to punch out figures on his supermeg laptop. Still, maybe she could arrange something.

Back in their room, Laura stifled a sigh, picked up a copy of
Writer’s Digest,
and curled into a corner of the love seat. She looked across the room at the small jade green fireplace and wished, as she did every time she looked at it, that it weren’t just for decoration; there was nothing like dancing flames and glowing embers to improve the atmosphere. She thumbed through her magazine, pausing to read interviews with two of her favorite romance writers, scored well on the Grammar Grappler, and read the fiction column—all to the accompaniment of her growling stomach. Finally their room service order arrived.

Tom didn’t actually bring his laptop to the table with him, but he might as well have. Laura could see the figures calculating in his mind. Immediately after dinner he went back to his charts. And Laura went back to her place alone on the love seat.
Honeymoon. Right.

Well, since Tom was spending the evening on math, so would she. Opening her briefcase she took out the neatly columned business-expense-tracker Tom had designed for her. Well, he had really designed it for himself since he did the bookkeeping, but it was for her to fill in the blanks. After scrabbling in coat pockets, purse, sacks, and the odd corner for receipts and jotted notes, Laura transferred all the figures to neat columns. The columns were neat, even if her figures weren’t. The only thing she liked about that job was that she felt positively righteous when it was finished.

From the appearance of Tom’s head bent over his work, Laura knew it was going to be a long evening. But she always had her own refuge. She pulled out her notebook.
“Kevin, I love you so much.” Gwendolyn clung to him and sobbed. “Why won’t you let me share your life—your joys and your sorrows?”

“When someone promises to take me for better or for worse, I want them to have at least even odds of getting the better.” He shook her hand off his arm and …

“How’s it going?”

Laura was so lost in the pictures in her head she jumped visibly when Tom spoke to her. “Oh, hello. Well, it’s getting nicely complicated. The hero’s younger brother is involved with a group of hoodlums …”

“I thought you were writing a romance, not a thriller.”

“Category romances are getting more realistic. Readers are getting tired of all that fantasy stuff.”

“Hmmm. Well, I suppose troubled teens are realistic.” Tom shrugged and returned to his papers.

And so is a troubled marriage.
Laura forced her mind back to her work. It worried her not to know where her story was really going. She usually had it all worked out before taking a research trip; that avoided wasting precious travel time. But when she returned to the blank paper in front of her, it was her own thoughts that filled her head, not her heroine’s.

Kyle said today that intimacy has its own inner law—it must either grow or die. It looks like our patient needs a transfusion. Would appearing before Tom in that caftan be a cure? Or a fatal shock? But the question isn’t what it will do to Tom. What will it do to me?

The picture in her mind was of herself in the scarlet robe, standing below a towering wall she must cross to get to Tom. The enormous, hand-hewn stones were labeled: fear, distrust, self-consciousness … All the barriers her early training had erected loomed around her. Did she want to remove that wall, even if she could? The same wall that hemmed one in could also keep harm out. Removing it would be like tearing down the parapets of a city during an enemy onslaught—being stripped naked of all defenses. Unthinkable.

And yet …

She snapped her notebook on all her arguments and walked into the closet that was large enough to double as a dressing room. When she reached to the back of the rack where the new gown hung under her coat, it wasn’t the sound of swishing silk that filled her ears, however, but a familiar, hissed whisper, “Cover up. Cover up!”

Mother! I forgot about you. I’m getting things out of order, aren’t I? Kyle said I had to deal with you first.
She hung the caftan back in its concealment. Her long-sleeved, highnecked gown would do very well for tonight. A potato sack would do, really. Tom would never notice. Maybe she should take a marking pen and put statistics all over her lingerie—the ultimate in dressing to please her man.

Laura came out of the closet and looked at the clock—almost midnight. That made it nearly two o’clock in Houston—hardly a propitious hour to initiate a long-distance mother-daughter reconciliation. Laura knew her sense of reprieve was cowardly—but she welcomed it anyway. Maybe she’d feel more like confronting her mother tomorrow. Unlikely, but she wouldn’t feel any
less
like it than she did right now.

Then she turned to Tom. There was one more difficult subject she had to broach, and this one might as well be now. “Tom—”

“Hmm?” He looked up and rubbed his eyes.

“I told Glenda we’d go to church with her and Kyle Sunday. That’s OK, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Why not?” And he turned back to his calculations.

“Good, I just wanted to check. I know you’ll like them.

They’re really a neat couple. And, uh—” Now for the hard part. “Kyle suggested … that is, I was wondering …” She swallowed, hard. “Er—would you be willing to see Kyle too? I mean, not just at church, but—”

Tom turned so abruptly he knocked several papers to the floor. “You mean professionally? You want me to go to this guy and talk about my nonexistent sex life? No thank you! I may have my problems, but they’re my own. I can handle them. I don’t need some guy with a fancy degree telling me what to do in bed.”

He stormed across the room and yanked the door open. “I’m going to see if the coffee shop’s open. You might as well go on to sleep. I’ll be hours yet on that report.”

Laura turned and walked slowly up the stairs to the bedroom. As she passed the dressing room door she wondered, would she ever get to wear that red caftan for Tom?

Chapter
12

The next morning Laura drank an extra cup of strong tea to sustain her for the ordeal ahead. Then she placed the phone call to her mother before she lost her nerve. She sat biting on her fingernails as the phone rang in her ear.

“Hello, Mama. This is Laura.”

“Laura, honey! What a nice surprise. How are you?” She was shocked when she heard her mother’s voice across the wire. It wasn’t the harsh, condemning voice of her conscience that memory brought back to her. She heard simply the quiet, southern drawl of an old woman. Laura hadn’t realized her mother was getting old. She always thought of her just as she had been all those years ago—straight and sure and vigorous.

They visited for a few minutes about Laura’s trip and the warm weather in Texas. She hadn’t talked to her mother in months, yet they could have spent the whole time discussing the weather and the flowers her mother arranged for the church altar. Laura took a deep breath. “Mama, I need to talk to you. Really talk. About something serious. I’ve been seeing a—er, a doctor here—”

“Laura, baby, are you sick?” Laura felt more than heard the fear in her mother’s voice.

“No, Mama. It’s not that kind of doctor. I’m not sick, but my marriage is—”

“Laura! You and that man aren’t getting a—divorce?” The last word was almost whispered, as if someone might be listening at the door.

“I certainly hope not. I’m doing everything I can to prevent it. And his name is Tom, Mama. Now, please, don’t interrupt. This is very hard for me to say—but Dr. Larsen said I had to talk to you about this because a lot of the problems are caused by the way I was raised—”

“I raised you to be a good, God-fearing girl, young lady, and there’s nothing wrong with that! Are you seeing one of those secular humanists? I’ve been hearing preachers talk about them on television—”

“Mama! I said don’t interrupt. Now you’ve got to know that because you taught me that sex was bad—even with my husband—Tom and I have never been as happy as we could have been—as we should be.”

Across the miles Laura could see the thin lips tightening. “Laura, if you’ve called me to talk dirty, I won’t have it. I always did what I thought was best for you. I tried so hard to protect you. Maybe I tried too hard. But if I did, it was because I love you—because I didn’t want anything terrible to spoil your life like—” She stopped so abruptly that for a moment Laura thought they’d been cut off.

“Mama? Are you there? You didn’t want anything terrible to spoil my life like what?”

“Like anything dirty or sordid. I didn’t want anything like that to come near my daughter. Laura, I loved you so much. You were such a beautiful baby. And you were all I had. After everyone—” Again, the abrupt halt.

“Everyone what, Mama? There’s something you’re not telling me, and I need to know. Please, Mama, my whole marriage—my whole life may depend on this. If you love me as much as you say, you’ve got to help me.”

Laura couldn’t believe it when the next sounds she heard were sobs. Her mother had never cried. Laura didn’t think she was capable of it. “I never wanted you to know, Laura. I couldn’t bear the thought of having you despise me and turn against me like everyone else …”

“Mama, please.” Now Laura was sobbing too.

“Your father—he was just back from Vietnam, so young and handsome in his Navy uniform. We all—my friends and I—we wanted to show our fighting men a good time. You’ve got to understand how it was then, Laura. There was so much controversy. Marchers were spitting on men in uniform, calling them traitors; brave men who risked their lives for our country had to watch long-haired thugs burn the flag they had fought for. All those hippies demonstrating for free love and no war—what did they know? If men like Joe hadn’t fought to keep those good-for-nothings—”

“Yes, Mama. I studied all about that in American history.” Laura gave an impatient sigh.

“But you have to understand, Laura. I wasn’t loose or wild. I was a good, patriotic American girl who cared about our country. I was never a bad girl. Never before …”

“Of course you weren’t.”

“But everyone said I was then. They said I was dirt. Joe moved to another base before we knew I was—er—before we knew you were coming. Of course he promised he’d be back, but—”

“Mama, are you saying you weren’t married?”

Her only answer was a sob.

“Didn’t you write to him or call him or anything?”

“I tried. He never answered. I don’t know. Maybe he was sent back to the war and got killed. I don’t know. But when my condition got obvious, my family said they’d be guilty of my sin if they condoned it by putting up with me.”

“They kicked you out?”

“Well, not exactly. They sent me to a home. If I hadn’t been taught that suicide was a sin, I’d probably have taken care of the whole thing right then. But after you were born and you were so beautiful, I couldn’t help but be glad I had you in spite of everything. But I was determined to raise you so you’d never get into trouble like I did. I didn’t want you to have to go through anything like that.” The voice on the wire rang with triumph. “And I did it too. You were always a good girl, Laura.”

Laura sighed. “Yes, Mama. I was always a good girl.”

“Laura, you’ve got to understand. You were all I ever had. Laura …” Suddenly her mother sounded old and alone and afraid. “Laura, don’t hate me. Please. I tried so hard …”

Help me.
Laura knew this was the moment. She had to say it.
Make the words come.
But tears came instead of words—washing, cleansing, healing tears. And then, finally, “Mama, I love you. Thank you for trying to do the right thing. I understand now. I really do.”

For several moments both women sat there and cried, the telephone carrying their heartache to each other.

“God bless you, Laura.”

“Yes, Mama. And you too. And, Mama, you come visit us sometime. How about Christmas? We’ll send you a ticket …”

When the call was concluded Laura sat, just staring at the phone, but her mind was seeing a picture of her mother that she could never have imagined: her mother, young and pretty, laughing and in love with a young sailor.
Oh, Mama—all those years. It didn’t have to be that way between us. Maybe we can make up for a little of it now.

There would still be problems—they were inevitable. They would need many, many more talks, but this first step was an enormous one.

Laura heard the alarm clock ring by Tom’s side of the bed. He had worked most of the night. Now he’d be getting up to phone his report to Phil. Dear, hard-working Tom. Was Kyle right? Now that things were better between her and her mother, would they be better between her and her husband?

The bells of the city announced Sunday morning. The carillon tower down by the harbor chimed for the blue skies and white clouds overhead while the tower bells of Christ Church Cathedral rang to the glory of God’s handiwork in the autumn trees and bright flower gardens around them.

“Let’s walk to church, Tom. I think it’s only about three blocks.” Laura slipped the jacket of her hunter green suit on over an ivory linen blouse and picked up her briefcase, which she often used simply as a purse. Tom agreed to the idea of walking, and as they began the gentle uphill climb the bells quieted, leaving the stage to the gulls calling overhead in the clear air. Laura slipped her arm in Tom’s and took a deep breath. “Hmm, the air’s so fresh. It’s as if the whole day has been washed clean.”

Maybe this wonderful fresh air was an indication of a whole fresh approach to their marriage. Laura realized she had made a giant stride forward with her mother. Now Tom. She hadn’t given up on her hope he would agree to see Kyle for counseling. If only their meeting today could be successful; if it could somehow pave a way to a better future.