The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman (7 page)

Down the aisle, Bjorn and Trish were gesturing at different trees. Bjorn was doing most of the talking; Trish looked more and more defeated. Once in a while I heard an isolated “but honey” from her. Soon Bjorn strode back down the aisle holding the spruce like a victory lance. “We decided on this one.”
We?

Trish smiled weakly, then looked down at her feet, then up over the fence, across the street, anywhere but at any of us. I felt sorry for her. Even though I did like the tree Bjorn had chosen better than any of the piñon pines, I also knew what it was like to be railroaded by Bjorn. He was pigheaded sometimes.

Richard, Fleur, and Ashley put their “swords” back and followed Bjorn to the shack at the far end of the lot. We all went inside. A guy with mossy teeth—the kind of teeth so greenish and repulsive that you can only stare at them—sat in a lawn chair just inside the door.

“How much?” Bjorn asked.

The man told him. The price startled Bjorn. His head jerked up involuntarily.

Richard saw it too. “I have some money with me,” he offered.

“Piñon pines are cheaper,” the man said.

“Well, if they’re cheaper—” Trish started.

But Bjorn was already paying the man. “It’s fine,” he said.

“How about some ornaments?” The man nodded into the corner. “My wife and her friends make them,” he said.

The ornaments, mostly crocheted stars, hung by strings from the low ceiling.

“Oh, let’s get some. Aren’t they beautiful?” Trish’s energy level was back. “These are just wonderful. Bjorn?”

“Honey, I don’t have any more money—really,” he said.

“But honey, they’re not that much.”

“Honey, please—”

You’d have thought we were in a beehive with all that “honey” flowing about.

“Thanks a lot,” Bjorn said to the man, and opened the door of the shack. A blast of cold air hit us.

Trish turned back for a last look at the crocheted stars.

Bjorn and Richard tied the tree to the top of the Cherokee and we were off for home. It was a very quiet ride back.

* * *

T
HE FRONT HALL
looked like a Dutch flower garden when we got home. Mother had brought all the potted tulips up from the basement. They were wrapped in dark green shiny paper with red ribbons. “Where did you buy tulips at this time of year? They’re absolutely lovely!” Fleur said.

Richard had picked up one of the pots. “She forces them herself. This neighborhood would be in crisis if Mrs. Bjorkman stopped giving away tulips at Christmastime.”

“Hardly,” Mother said, pulling her coat out of the closet. “Did you find a tree?”

“We got a great one. I’m going to let it thaw in the garage for a while, and we can decorate it tonight.” Bjorn rubbed his hands together like sanding blocks. “It’ll be great,” he said. Trish, who had followed him into the hall, walked around him and went upstairs without a word to any of us.

Mother’s eyes followed her briefly.

“I want to learn to force bulbs,” Fleur was saying.

“Oh, it’s simple,” Ashley said, squeezing herself between Fleur and Richard. “Anyone can do it.”

Mother pursed her lips. “True.”

Bach’s
Goldberg Variations
floated in from the study.

“Play Christmas music!” Bjorn shouted to Dad.

“What?” Dad shouted back.

Bjorn repeated himself.

“I can’t hear you; I’m playing
The Goldberg Variations
.”

Bjorn shook his head and went into Dad’s study. “Hey, old man,” we heard him say before he shut the door.

“Are you making the deliveries now?” Richard asked Mother. “Mind if I come along?”

“I would love the company. Fleur, would you like to come too? I can show the two of you off to the neighbors.”

She made them sound like a couple.

I turned to Ashley. “You want to run down to the mall now? This is as good a time as any.”

She looked at her watch. “No, I told Mom I’d be back to help her with the rest of the Christmas baking.” She looked at Richard when she said this.

“Really?” I said, stunned. Ashley never helped her mother with anything if she could avoid it.

“Yeah, see you.” She turned to Mother and the others. “I guess I’ll be seeing you again in a little while.” She knew Mother always gave them a pot of tulips at Christmas, and she wanted to be there. Totally transparent.

I followed her to the back door. “What’s up, Ash?” Might as well be direct.

“What do you mean?” She was retying her muffler, trying to avoid my eyes, but I willed her to look at me. It’s a power I have.

“Well, okay,” she said when she finally stopped fiddling with her muffler. “I have to be honest with you.” She licked her lips nervously, pressed them together, ran her tongue along her upper lip—she was getting ready to lie. “Kate, really, I don’t think you have a ghost of a chance of getting with Richard. I know it hurts to hear it—” Her voice got more efficient. “See, you’ve let your lip gloss wear off.” She pulled some out of her pocket, uncapped it, and was moving to apply some to my lips.

I caught her wrist in midair. “I don’t think lip gloss is the solution here.”

“And that’s what I’m saying. There’s so much—” She caught herself.

“So much wrong with me?”

“No, it’s not that!” She fumbled with the cap of the lip gloss, which dropped to the floor. “It’s just that—” She stopped to retrieve the cap. “I—”

“You’re in love with Rich yourself and you can’t let go. It’s too important to you.” I tried to keep my voice flat.

She looked relieved and clasped both my shoulders. “You understand, don’t you? He’s different from anyone I’ve ever known. He’s so much more mature, for one thing. He’s just so
nice
. I just can’t help myself!” She let out a shrill giggle.

“Yeah, I know—it’s his thighs,” I said.

“Oh, you
do
understand, don’t you.” She gave me a feigned kiss on the cheek and a half-hug. “You understand everything,” she said, leaving me in her wake of freezing air.

I looked at myself in the mirror Mother had hung by the back door. The lip gloss had worn off, just as Ashley had said. It didn’t matter. The overall effect of my face was that of a goldfish looking out of its bowl. Nice skin. Nice hair. Nice person. Smart too.

Mother was pulling brown paper grocery sacks out of a drawer in the kitchen while Fleur and Richard brought in the tulips.

“They’ll need protection from this cold,” Mother said.

I stood in the entranceway watching all of them. “You’ll probably be invited to lunch at Ashley’s,” I said.

They were placing individual pots of tulips in the sacks.

“What makes you think so?” Mother said.

“Because Ashley’s in love with Rich’s thighs.”

I loved their reaction, heads popping up simultaneously. I walked past them and turned before entering the dining room. “She loves his”—I let my tongue rest between my teeth and said it slowly—“thighs.”

I could hear Mother and Fleur laughing as I went upstairs. “No offense intended, Rich, but Ashley loves everyone’s thighs,” Mother said.

I was at the top of the stairs when Richard called to me from the hallway. “Hey, Bjorkman!”

I turned and looked down at him. His arms were filled with tulips.

“Yeah, Bradshaw?”

“What I want to know is, what do
you
think of my thighs?”

My face got all hot, but this was no time to get tongue-tied, so I leaned over the banister. “I like your thighs—yes—but I’m especially fond of your
buns
.” I smiled my most expansive smile.

Our eyes locked for the first time.
The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book
would say: His “eyes caught and held” mine. He “captured” my eyes with his. And I thought I “detected laughter in his eyes.”

“Why don’t you go with us?” he asked.

“I’d better do some shopping,” I said. I didn’t want to
see Ashley again today. “Besides, I’m plumb out of lip gloss.”

He laughed. “That is a crisis! See you later.”

“See you.” Our eyes held a few seconds longer.

Maybe we could be friends, I thought. Friendship had a better prospect for longevity than romance, and I wanted Richard Bradshaw for life.

I knocked on Trish’s door, but she didn’t answer, or she was asleep.

I spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for our unexpected Christmas guests. I had sent gifts for Bjorn and Trish weeks ago with Mother’s packages, but I wanted them to have something from me to open under the tree on Christmas morning. Trish was easy. I drove directly to Grand Avenue and bought her a dozen of the crocheted Christmas stars she had admired that morning, and then, remembering how much Bjorn liked the tree lights that looked like real candles, I bought him a couple of strings of those for their own tree—if they could ever decide on what kind they would have. Bjorn’s pigheadedness had annoyed me, but the way Trish had withdrawn for the day irritated me as well. I searched around for Fleur and decided on an angora wool muffler that would look stunning on her. It cost more money than I could really afford, and I charged it on Mother’s Visa, hoping she would forgive me and knowing I would be her slave for weeks to come.

I wandered through the mall for an hour and a half wondering what I could buy Richard but couldn’t come up with the right thing. I wanted to buy him something special, but not too personal, and not so special that he
would know I thought he was special, but special enough that he would be pleased.

Aaugh. The way I was thinking reminded me of Ashley, and that scared me more than anything. So I finally bought him a picture book of the Boundary Waters, where he and Bjorn had gone canoeing every summer. Not too special and not too clunky either.

 Revision Notes

Why, I am asking myself, was I friends with Ashley Cooper for all those years? The reader will surely want to know as well. She used me in what seem to me now indefensible ways. In these last two chapters, I have made her selfish, calculating, and just plain hateful. The problem is I have described her accurately. The dialogue, too, is not imagined. It is exactly what she said.

I called to ask Shannon’s advice. (If she didn’t go to Key West every Christmas to visit her grandparents, she could have helped me through this mess last Christmas.) I asked her why she thought I had remained friends with Ashley.

“Easy,” she said. “You’re a caretaker.”

This sounded like a label she’d picked up in a psychology class.

“What do you mean—caretaker?” And was that good or bad? I wondered.

“Well, you’re nice. Too nice, maybe. You want her to feel good. You’re willing to overlook a lot And it’s helped that the two of you have absolutely nothing in common—you never had to compete over anything or anybody.” She paused. “Until last Christmas, that is. That’s when you saw her for what she really is—B-I-T-C-H.” When Shannon spelled, it meant her little brother was in the room.

Was that right? I tried to think.

“Are you working on your novel?” Shannon asked.

“Yes.”

“Maybe you ought to tell about that third-grade birthday party of Ashley’s—the one
without
the pony. You must have told me that story a dozen times when I first met you in middle school. It was your way of explaining why she had to eat lunch with us. I thought she was a case of strychnine myself.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Write it and see how it feels.” She was quoting Midgely.

So here goes nothing—the story of how Mr. Cooper left Ashley and Mrs. Cooper forever on Ashley’s ninth birthday: he left without eating any cake and it was his favorite kind, caramel with whipped marshmallow frosting—the shiny kind.

I was there along with a half dozen other girls from Falcon Heights Elementary School, standing on the porch looking for prizes that had been hidden earlier among the flowerpots and wicker furniture. We were also waiting for Mr. Cooper to arrive with the pony that was to be the event of the party. “Everyone can have a turn riding it,” Ashley had told us.

But Mr. Cooper arrived in his red Mustang convertible without the pony. He had Tom Cruise good looks: that same easy smile.

“Daddy, where’s the pony?” Ashley’s voice rose with an anxiety that made my own stomach knot up.

“Oh, Piglet, I forgot.” He patted her head, his smile bewildered as if he hadn’t heard of Planet Earth, let alone any pony. He seemed surprised to see us. “I’ve got to talk to
Mommy, Sweetums,” he said, jumping the stairs two at a time.

From the porch we heard Mr. and Mrs. Cooper shouting in the kitchen at the back of the house. Ugly shouting with name-calling and blaming. I hunted furiously for the prizes on the porch and found a ball and jacks. “Oh, this is great!” I said to Ashley.
I can’t hear your parents
was what I wanted to say.

“This is cool,” Ivy Joy Miles said, turning a yo-yo in her fingers. She too looked at Ashley as if to say
I can’t hear them. Honest
.

Ashley, a half-smile creasing her lips, was twitching behind her skin. “I chose the prizes myself,” she said.

Her father left in ten minutes. Ten minutes that seemed like three hours. He called Mrs. Cooper “one glorious bitch.” It is seared into my memory. Then he left. “See ya, kitten,” he said, his voice completely altered from the loud cursing of seconds before. “See ya, girls.” He even waved.