Detours (10 page)

Ellis pulled a handful of sticks from the bag. “You make them sound so appetizing.”

“It’s a gift. Comes from all my years of working with words.”

“Tell me more about the magazine you work for.”

The hour flew by as Ellis and Mary picked up from where they’d left off in their earlier conversation of that afternoon. At eight-fifty-eight, Mary called Natalie, as promised, and then had to make a new promise to call again before Nathan took her to school the next morning.

Mary wiped her brow in mock exhaustion. “Now I think my motherhood duties are finally complete—for today, anyway.”

Ellis nearly melted into a puddle from the seductive look Mary cast her way.

“My daughter is with my ex-husband. My cat and your dog are once again asleep on Natalie’s bed.” Mary peered around the room, then completed her thought. “It would appear that we’re alone.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Ellis inched over as far toward Mary as she could get and still keep her right leg on the footstool.

“I’m inclined to say good, but remember, I’m new at this.”

Ellis shoved the pretzel bag out of the way and left her hand palm up on the sofa cushion. Mary reached over and slid her palm over Ellis’s, just barely making contact.

“Mmm. Nice.” Ellis leaned her head against the back of the sofa. “Last night you were a soup tease, tonight you’re a hand-hold tease.”

“You’re not exactly lily-white in that regard, you know.” Mary laced her fingers with Ellis’s.

“What do you mean?”

“Seems to me you owe me some information about a major character flaw and an explanation about someone named Becky.”

Without thinking, Ellis yanked her hand free.

“How do you know about Becky?” she blurted.

Mary seemed taken aback. “The same way I knew about Sam. You mentioned them both when you were talking in your sleep yesterday on our way here after getting your ankle checked.” Mary stretched and reclaimed Ellis’s hand. “I guess calling that a character flaw was a little strong.”

Ellis knew her laugh sounded tinny and nervous, but she couldn’t manage one less forced. “Oh that. Yeah, I can be a real orator, when I’m not a snore-ator.” Her palm felt moist, and she hoped Mary didn’t notice. “Darn good thing I’m a sleep talker and not a sleepwalker. That could cause all sorts of trouble with my cast and crutches.”

“If you don’t want to tell me about Becky, you don’t have to.”

“Not much to tell.” Another forced, fake laugh. “We used to be a couple, but now we’re not.”

“What went wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything.” Ellis used her free hand to graze the back of Mary’s hand with her knuckles. “We just had different goals for our lives. We figured out it was better if we each went our own way.”

“Do you still keep in touch with her?” Ellis felt the tension in Mary’s question.

“We don’t have much in common these days. We don’t go out of our way to avoid each other, but we don’t talk on the phone every week, either.”

“So she’s in Atlanta?”

“Yep. Candler Park.”

“What kind of work does she do?”

“She’s the office administrator for a nonprofit research group.”

“A real brain, huh?” Mary lifted their hands off the sofa, then let them plop back onto the cushion.

“That’s a strange comment.”

“Not when you realize I consider myself the dumbest woman on the planet.”

“Get in line behind me.”

“Oh, right, Little Miss Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. I bet there were plenty of biology and chemistry classes involved in getting that degree.”

“So? What have I done with them? I mow lawns in the summer and eat mac and cheese all winter, wondering if the bank account will stretch far enough to get me back to the busy season so I can buy a hamburger once in a while, and then for a splurge, have fries and a Dairy Queen treat.”

Mary furrowed her forehead. “It can’t be all that bad. You’ve got a nice truck, and your apartment isn’t exactly a dump. I’ve been there, remember?”

“The truck was part of the deal I made with Becky. We’d each gotten a new vehicle shortly before we split up. She kept the house and paid off my truck loan to pay me back for what I’d put into the mortgage there.”

“How long had you two been together?”

“About ten years.”

“And all you got out of that was your pickup truck?”

“No, she agreed to pay off whatever was on the credit cards we had, and I got a promissory note, too.”

“Not that it’s any of my business, but has she paid on the note?”

“I haven’t asked her to.”

“Why not?”

“I wanted to see if I could make it on my own.”

“Can you?”

“Too soon to say. We’ve only been apart for a little more than a year.”

Mary looked at Ellis out of the corner of her eye. “Have you dated anyone since you and Becky broke up?”

“Just one, but it’s serious.” Ellis gave Mary’s hand a quick squeeze. “You’ve met her. Black, curly hair. Sweet brown eyes. Good kisser. Loves puppy cookies, squirrels, and nine-year-olds named Natalie.”

“Sam, the bed hog?”

“That’d be the one. She’s the only girl I’ve dated since Becky kicked me to the curb.”

“At least Sam seems loyal and devoted.”

“True enough.”

“Despite her loyalty, I bet she’s grateful she has a night’s reprieve from my holy terror.”

“Or she’s pining away for her new best friend.”

“Either way, she seems to have decided she likes it here.”

“Can’t say as though I blame her.” Ellis sidled a bit nearer to Mary. “I could get used to it myself.”

Mary released Ellis’s hand and eased close enough to drape her arm around Ellis’s shoulder. “Good. That’s saves me the trouble of trying to convince you to move in.”

Ellis stiffened.

“While your ankle heals, I mean,” Mary said. “I didn’t want to have to argue with you about you and Sam staying for the next few weeks ’til you’re off the crutches and out of the cast. It was my fault you got hurt, after all.”

“Your fault?”

“Uh-huh. You fell for me, so the least I can do is help you get back on your feet.”

“How can Christmas be less than a week away?” Mary poured ketchup on Natalie’s hamburger and passed the plate to her. “Seems like the last thing I knew, it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I was on my way to a book discussion at Charis Books.”

Natalie ignored her lunch and instead continued her inspection of her Christmas gift from Ellis.

“This is so cool. I love it!” Natalie used her new, kid-version digital camera to snap three more pictures of the dog and cat sleeping in the sunny spot on the living room floor. “Sam and Swiffer look like they’ve been together forever.” She held the camera so Ellis could see the image in the camera’s playback viewer. “This is a great present.”

“I’m glad you like it, toots.” Ellis accepted Natalie’s hug. “After you and your mom get back from visiting your relatives, I’ll show you how to organize the pictures on your computer, but now, you’d better sit down and eat before your hamburger gets cold.”

“Okay.” Natalie paged back through the two dozen shots on the camera. “I wish you and Sam were coming with us.”

“We’ve talked about that, Nat,” Mary said as she sat at the table. “You know how Gramma Anna and Aunt Gloria and Aunt Naomi are about having strangers around for Christmas.”

“They let Daddy come.”

“That’s different. Daddy’s family.”

“But Ellis is family. So is Sam. They’ve been with us lots more than Daddy lately.” Natalie perched on the edge of her chair. “And Ellis sleeps in your room every night. You’re gonna miss her while we’re at Gramma Anna’s.”

Ellis didn’t dare look at Mary. It had been three weeks and six days (not that she was counting) since Mary had brought Ellis and Sam to the house on Wilson Woods Drive. She had shared Mary’s bed every night. Although she’d been surprised when Mary insisted on sleeping with her in case she needed help on her first night there, she was beyond delighted when Mary continued the practice on subsequent nights, even though it was apparent Ellis could readily get around on her crutches. They’d shared dozens—no, make that hundreds—of delicious kisses and some tantalizingly inviting touches, but that was as far as it had gone. They had talked at great length about their feelings for one another, but between Ellis’s painful ankle (and her barely admitted hesitancy over becoming involved with a woman with a child) and Mary’s shyness and lingering Baptist-induced horror over fulfilling her lifelong urges, frustration and inertia had thus far won out over desires and hormones.

Now, here it was the Friday before Christmas, and the next day, Mary and Natalie would be driving up to the foothills of the north Georgia mountains to spend the holiday with Mary’s mother, sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, nephews, and other assorted relatives. Nathan would be going up to his parents’ house—just down the road from Mary’s mother’s house—in his own car on Saturday, too, and he and Mary had agreed to specific periods of time when Natalie would be with the Kimbrough family during the coming week.

Ellis would stay in the city, probably at Mary’s house, so that Sam could use the yard, thus sparing Ellis the strain of walking her. Ellis’s ankle was certainly much improved, but being able to let Sam roam in a fenced yard was far better than Ellis limping up and down stairs at her apartment building and trying to keep Sam on a leash. Besides, that way she could take care of Swiffer without having to drive between her apartment and Mary’s house a couple of times a day.

Since Mary and Natalie would be away, it didn’t make sense to put up a Christmas tree, so they’d moved the coatrack that usually stood in the front entryway to a spot in front of the picture window in the living room. For a face, atop the coat rack, they’d secured a round tin serving plate bearing one of the classic Coca-Cola Santas grinning cherubically. Ellis had rigged a small spotlight that illuminated their skinny Santa from the floor up, making the scrawny figure look even more bony and garish. When they were done decorating it, it looked suspiciously like an anorexic Saint Nick with homosexual tendencies, given the number of rainbow-themed items affixed to the threadbare Santa suit bagging off the spindly post. Natalie had dubbed him “Jolly Old Saint Stickalus,” and the three of them spent time over the past week adding more adornments to the hopelessly overdone substitute for a tree.

Mary, Ellis, and Natalie had just shared their version of Christmas Eve, albeit in the middle of the day on December twenty-second. Ellis gave Natalie the digital camera, her first, which she mastered in far less time than it had taken Ellis to read the instruction booklet. Ellis gave Mary a gold ankle bracelet with a polished turquoise heart interwoven in the strand. Mary’s gift to Ellis was a custom-made key chain with a clear Lucite fob containing a picture of Natalie, Sam, and Swiffer bundled together, sound asleep on Natalie’s bed. Keys to Mary’s house were attached to the chain.

Ellis refused to admit to herself how accurate Natalie’s observation about her missing Mary was. No, she and Mary weren’t exactly lovers, but the thought of spending the next many nights apart felt like being exiled to a distant galaxy. Being in Mary’s house—Mary’s bed—without her would make it even worse. She and Mary hadn’t discussed the impending week’s separation, other than to say they didn’t want to talk about it.

Of course, they hadn’t decided how much longer Ellis would stay at Mary’s house, either. They had considered what they should say to Natalie about their relationship, which seemed to be a nonissue to the nine-year-old, and a good thing, too, since they weren’t at all confident they could describe for Natalie (or anyone else) exactly what their relationship was. They’d pondered what they needed to tell Nathan—again something of a mystery. Telling him they slept in the same bed and kissed a lot didn’t really seem like a definitive explanation.

“Did you even ask Gramma Anna if Ellis could come with us?”

Sam trotted into the kitchen. Natalie dropped to one knee and folded Sam’s ears on top of her head, giving her a canine version of the original Aunt Jemima look.

“No,” Mary said, “and I’ve warned you about going on and on about Ellis to Gramma.”

“I’ll have to tell Gramma where I got my new camera.” Natalie picked it up from the sofa and swung it by its carrying string. “You always tell me not to lie.”

“There’s a difference between truthfully answering a question that’s asked of you, and telling everybody everything you know just because you like the sound of your own voice.”

“’Tis the season to be jolly,” Natalie sang, “Fa la la la la, la la la la. Who wouldn’t want to hear me?”

“Why don’t you go to your room and make sure you’ve picked out the seven outfits you want to take to Gramma’s? I don’t want to have to discuss that with you tomorrow morning when it comes time to put them in your suitcase. And you can sing your heart out the whole time if you want to.”

“Okay.” Natalie headed for the hallway. “Can Sam come, too?”

“Sure,” Ellis said.

Girl and dog, with the added bonus of a cat, vanished from the room. In a moment, Ellis and Mary heard the muffled sounds of Natalie singing.