The Angel Singers (3 page)

Jonathan’s being gone at least two nights a week was disruptive, and while I did my best to pay attention to Joshua and play with him, it wasn’t quite the same when he was used to having both me and Jonathan at hand. Our social circle was relatively small and made up of couples who had been part of Joshua’s life since he first came to us. Eric was a brand new element, and Joshua quite probably saw Jonathan’s enthusiasm in having a friend all his own as competition. And before I wrote that off as Joshua’s just being a kid I had to stop and think of the many adults I know who tend to react in the same way.

Eric made several references during the evening to how much he envied Jonathan and me our relationship. From what he said, I gathered he’d never had a long-term relationship and very much wanted one. I knew from experience that platitudes such as “Well, you’ve got plenty of time” really didn’t mean much when one wants something now.

Dinner went well, except for Joshua’s tendency to deliberately interrupt Eric on several occasions with his attempts to get Jonathan’s attention. Jonathan finally told him gently but firmly that it was not polite to interrupt. Eric was gracious enough to appear not to notice.

“Are you coming to Crandall Booth’s next gathering?” Eric asked as Jonathan refilled his wineglass.

“Is there a date for it? I hadn’t heard.” Jonathan offered to refill my glass, but I raised my hand to indicate I was okay.

“A week from Sunday. Roger will be announcing it on Tuesday,” Eric said. “I was talking to him last night.”

“Isn’t that pretty short notice?” Jonathan asked.

Eric took a sip of his wine and shrugged. “That’s the way Booth does it. I think he tends to have some control issues, and I know Roger doesn’t like it. But because Crandall’s a major financial backer and a member of the board, he can do stuff like that.”

“Well, I’m looking forward to it,” Jonathan said.

“I want to go, too!” Joshua declared, which struck me as a little aggressive. Usually he would put his request in the form of a question.

“We wouldn’t go without you,” Jonathan said, reaching over to put his arm around the boy’s shoulders.

After dinner, I asked Joshua to come help me clean up the kitchen and put the dishes in the washer, to give Jonathan and Eric a chance to talk; but he would have none of it until Jonathan said, “Joshua, go help Uncle Dick. He needs you.”

The minute the last dish was done, Joshua was back in the living room.

*

Around eight thirty, seeing it was close to Joshua’s bedtime and knowing he would be very unwilling to go, I said, “Hey, Joshua, are you about ready to take your shower?”

I hoped the mention of a shower would, given his behavior most of the evening, offset the chances for a tantrum, since to his mind taking a shower was synonymous with being a grown-up. Jonathan gave me a quick look then realized what I was doing and told Joshua to go get his new pair of pajamas from his room.

Ever since he’d recovered from his recent appendectomy, we’d been trying to give Joshua more independence and responsibility when it came to taking care of himself. While we didn’t have any standard yardstick of five-year-old behavior to measure how his development compared to other five-year-olds, or even if we were treating him in an age-appropriate manner, we tried using common sense and playing things by ear. As far as we knew, he was doing very well.

When he came out of the bedroom, I excused myself and went with him into the bathroom for his evening getting-ready-for-bed routine. He wanted Jonathan to do the honors, but Jonathan said, “It’s Uncle Dick’s turn. You go with him.” I was vastly relieved when this did not provoke a cloudburst. Maybe he was just getting tired of sulking.

We had started alternating his regular tub baths with occasional showers, which he took as a true sign that getting his own car and going off to college weren’t far away. Still, showers were a little tricky in that they required our turning the water on for him and adjusting it before he got in, thus invariably getting ourselves at least partly wet, then watching him closely through the glass so he didn’t try to tinker with the controls. The first few times had involved either Jonathan or me getting into a bathing suit and actually getting in the shower while he mastered shampooing and soaping.

When he was through, we’d open the door to turn off the water and have him step out of the shower and stand on a towel during the drying-off stage, which he was also getting used to doing for himself. He seemed to be under the impression that if he couldn’t see it, it didn’t need drying, so we usually had to do at least some touch-up with the towel.

Actually, it was probably a lot more trouble than dunking him in the tub as we always had, but we figured it was important to him to feel more grown up.

*

When we returned to the living room, Eric and Jonathan were standing by the bookcase, and I saw Eric had a copy of one of Jonathan’s favorite books by Morgan Butler.

“It’s great,” Jonathan said. “You’ll love it. Just bring it back when you’re through with it.”

Joshua, wanting to milk his staying-up time to the maximum, immediately ran over to his Lincoln Logs set as though he’d just discovered he had them, sat cross-legged on the floor and began reconstructing the project he’d begun earlier, asking Jonathan to come help him.

“It’s a little late to start building a fort tonight, don’t you think?” Jonathan asked.

“We can build a house,” he said and, noting Jonathan’s raised eyebrow, quickly added, “A little one.”

“Okay,” Jonathan said. “You go ahead and build your house. Twenty minutes. Then bed.” He then returned to talking and laughing with Eric.

When the twenty minutes were up, the total experiment in being a big boy went out the window. Told it was time to go to bed, he obediently put his Lincoln Logs away, then marched over to Jonathan.

“Let’s go read a story,” he said.

“I’ll read the story tonight,” I said. “Let’s let Uncle Jonathan and Eric talk.”

That did it! Major, major tantrum of Oscar-nomination proportions. He didn’t want me to read him his story. He wanted Uncle Jonathan to read him his story. Nobody else. Uncle Jonathan.

Okay, that did it. Taking a deep breath, I scooped him off the floor, tossed him over my shoulder and carried him kicking and yelling into his bedroom. Closing the door, I dropped him on the bed like a sack of potatoes.

He hopped off the bed, headed for the door. I scooped him up and put him back on the bed. Off the bed. Back on. Finally, he curled into a fetal ball and covered his head with his arms.

“I hate you!” he yelled, though the yell was muffled by his elbows.

I put my hand on his shoulder and he jerked away.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear you say that,” I said. “Because I don’t hate you. I love you. Uncle Jonathan loves you, too. You know that.”

No response.

I was really at something of a loss as to how to handle the situation.

“Joshua,” I said finally, “you’re getting to be a bigger boy every day, and someday soon you’ll be all grown up…”
If my patience holds out
, I thought. “And much as we all hate it, we have to learn that we can’t always have things the way we want them.”

His silence clearly said he wasn’t buying it.

“Okay,” I said. “Now, do you want me to read you a story or not?”

“No!” he said, and I got up to leave the room. I was reaching for the knob when he started sobbing.

Oh, Jeezus!
I went back to the bed and sat down beside him and cradled him, not having a clue as to what I was supposed to do.

A moment later the door opened and Jonathan came in, looking worried. He quickly moved over to sit beside me.

“Here,” he said, reaching toward me, “give him to me. You go out and keep Eric company. I’ll be right out.”

I passed Joshua, whose sobs had subsided to the softer, gulping-air variety, to him and left the room.

“Sorry about that,” I said as I returned to the living room. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but he’s never like this.”

Eric gave me a soft smile. “I understand,” he said. “Jonathan told me what happened to his folks. It must be hard for a little kid like that. You guys have done a great job with him.”

“Thanks,” I said. “He’s really a great kid…usually.”

When Jonathan hadn’t appeared after another five minutes, Eric said, “Look, I’d really better be heading on home.”

“Don’t rush off,” I said. “Jonathan should be out any minute now.”

As if on cue, the door to Joshua’s room opened, and Jonathan stepped out.

“I’m so sorry, Eric!” he said. “I don’t know what got into him tonight.”

Eric got up from the sofa. “Don’t worry about it. Kids are kids.”

I got up, too. “I’ll get your jacket.”

“You’re not leaving, are you?” Jonathan protested.

“Yeah, I’ve got to go in to work tomorrow. I hate working Saturdays, but they keep asking me to come in, and I can use the money, so…”

We said our good-byes and “Thanks for coming”/“Thanks for having me” pleasantries and he left.

As soon as he’d gone, Jonathan shook his head. “I honestly don’t know what got into Joshua tonight. He’s
never
acted like that before.”

“Well, maybe not around company,” I corrected, “but he’s pretty good in the hissy-fit department, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

We sat together on the couch. “Did he say anything?” I asked.

“That we don’t love him,” Jonathan said, “and that broke my heart.”

I patted him on the leg. “As it was intended to do,” I said. “Remember, five-year-olds are more emotion than logic. Of course he knows we love him; he just needs constant reassurance.”

“I don’t know how much more reassurance we could give him than we already do,” Jonathan said, entwining his fingers in mine.

“He’s jealous of Eric, I think,” I said. “He’s used to our friends, but Eric is
your
friend and he feels left out.”

“That’s nonsense!”

“Yeah, but try explaining nonsense to a five-year-old. It will take him a while to get used to it, but he will.”

“I suppose,” he conceded.

We talked for a while about the evening, then watched some TV and went to bed.

As Jonathan leaned across me to turn off the light, he said, “And as if this Joshua thing wasn’t bad enough, now I have to start watching my back.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Eric thinks you’re hot. He told me when you were busy with Joshua. I’d better watch out, or he’ll snatch you away in a heartbeat.”

I reached up to pull him to me for a bear hug.

“I don’t think you need to lose too much sleep over that one,” I said. Still, it was flattering to hear.

Chapter 2

The next week passed quickly. Joshua returned to his old self, though I was well aware there was nothing to set him off, and Tuesday night after chorus rehearsal Jonathan verified the Sunday-afternoon gathering at Crandall Booth’s estate.

One feature of Booth’s get-togethers was a brief performance of a few of the numbers the chorus was working on. Booth insisted on it, ostensibly so the members’ partners could feel a little closer to what their other halves were doing; but it was also a subtle way for him to wield a bit of power by expecting a command performance. I understood Rothenberger wasn’t too wild about that aspect, but went along with it out of political necessity.

The “case” I’d been working on finally came to an end, and I had a couple other little assignments to fill my time, none of which were particularly difficult or interesting.

Since we were to be at the Booth estate by two on Sunday and had been told he always served a light buffet, we had a larger-than-usual breakfast before Jonathan and Joshua went to church then ate a tide-us-over lunch when they returned and we left the apartment around one fifteen.

Booth lived, not surprisingly, in Briarwood, the city’s wealthiest subdivision, his property backing onto the Birchwood Country Club’s world-class golf course. Since most Briarwood residents also belonged to the country club, they could get around the ban on street parking by arranging with the club to use the parking lot—well, one specific section of their lot, on the edge farthest away from the clubhouse—for large private parties, and for the club to provide bus shuttle service to the party-giver’s home.

We arrived as a bus was pulling up to the designated pick-up point, and there were probably eight other guys waiting, including two with a little girl around Joshua’s age. Jonathan waved to the ones he knew, and we hurried to catch the bus before it left.

Booth, I was interested to realize, lived on the same street as my former clients Arnold and Iris Glick—having been to their home numerous times, I had a good idea of how the other half lived. Jonathan had been to Briarwood on landscaping projects with the nursery for which he worked but hadn’t had much of a chance to see the interiors of any of the homes. Suffice it to say that Versailles would not have been too much out of place in Briarwood.

The bus dropped us off in front of a Southern Colonial gem that would have made Tara from
Gone with the Wind
look like a sharecropper’s shack, all gleaming colonnades and manicured lawns and flowerbeds. We followed the crowd down the drive that ran beside the house to the gated backyard. Like the Glicks’ home, there was a huge pool and a large pool house. Because winter was on its way, the pool was covered with a heavy tarp, but the day was comfortable and chairs were arranged around the end closest to the cabana.