Mittman, Stephanie (11 page)

"Shame
to wake him up," Ash said softly.

"Ssh,"
Liberty said, his loud voice making a mockery of the word. "Oh! Oh! Shut
up, you stupid bird!"

They
waited, but the bird actually had in fact shut up, and finally Charlotte sighed
and nodded.

"He
can spend the weekend," she told the doctor. "You tell his father
that he's safe and that he can come for him Sunday night if he's stone sober.
And tell him Moss Johnson will be here if he's not." Moss had been a
fighter once, and there wasn't a man who lifted a glass in Oakland who didn't
drink one to old Moss, who'd had to give up the ring when age had gotten the
best of his reflexes. He was still a worthy adversary most men wouldn't dare
cross.

"So
next Friday? Vhat then?" the doctor asked, easing the boy's arm out of the
sling and placing a pillow beneath it.

"We'll
catch that streetcar when it stops at our corner, Eli," Charlotte said. At
the very least the boy could spend his weekends with her while his father slept
his anger off.

"Ach,
but she's an angel, isn't she?" Eli asked Ashford, who nodded reluctantly,
staring at her as if she'd suddenly sprouted wings. Eli rose and took her hands
in his. "I guess He had enough up there, not like down here vhere ve always
need."

"If
you were Irish, Dr. Mollenoff, I'd say you were kissing the Blarney
stone." Charlotte tried to appear annoyed, but was sure she failed. What
was it Cabot always said?
That face, Charlotte, is your greatest liability.
When you lie, it gets in the way of your sincerity.

She
saw the doctor to the door and bade him goodnight, then crept back into the
parlor to take another look at her newest client.

***

"Oh,
feces equitum!"

"Care
to translate?" Ash asked. He recognized a curse when he heard one, even if
it was in a language he didn't speak, but didn't mind putting her on the spot
just to see her wriggle out of it.

She
didn't try, leaving him ashamed to think she would. "It's Latin," she
said quite honestly, "for horse dung."

He
felt himself grimace. She sure was blunt. And unabashed. Not like any woman he
knew. "Cabot teach you that?"

She
shook her head. "The seminary. Learned three languages there. A girl can't
be too cultured! I can curse in Latin, Greek, and French.
Merde!"

"I
never realized a fine school like that would offer elementary gutter
dialect," he teased. It was refreshing the way she opted not to play those
foolish games so many other women did, pretending never to have heard a dirty
word, pretending one had never crossed their lips. And it was electrifying to
see her smile, positively heart stopping to hear her laugh.

"Oh,
yes," she said, big hazel eyes sparkling devilishly in the dim lights.
"I'll have you know I got an A in that course too."

"I
suppose you got an A in everything." It was hard to imagine her being less
than perfect at school. She was certainly perfect at everything else he'd seen
her attempt. The woman seemed like a ready sponge, anxious to learn everything.
No wonder Cabot found her irresistible. If Ash had anything to teach, he'd
surely enjoy Charlotte as a pupil.

"Absolutely,"
she confirmed, while she made sure the boy was settled in, the afghan was
pulled nearly up to his nose, the pillow was centered just perfectly under his
head—and all without disturbing him. When she was done she turned that
wonderful smile on him again and added conspiratorially. "Of course,
nothing but the cursing has ever come in handy when I needed it. Except, of
course, with Cabot."

"Well,
Cabot has a tendency to make me curse too. And did you get him at the seminary
as well? Don't tell me. You were taking husbandry." That smile was surely
something. It was a wonder it had taken Cabot as long as it did to snap her up.

Ash
had been on one of his first trips to the Hawaiian Islands when his mother had
mentioned a young lady in the house doing filing and such for Cabot. He
supposed in all the intervening years he'd never been around long enough to
hear the "Courting of Charlotte Reynolds" story. Amazing that he
hadn't wondered before this very moment.

She
stood there with that dazzling smile, her hair glistening in the glow of the
gasolier, and it occurred to him that there was really no rush for him to get
on up to bed. "So you met my brother at the seminary?" he asked. It
was about time he got at least one version of the story.

Charlotte's
head bobbed up and down, all those glints from her hair nearly blinding him.
"Oh, yes! But not in husbandry, Mr. Clever! Nor in the classics lectures
or the botany field trips or—well, certainly not at roller skating!"

She
squatted down next to the couch, and he handed her a nut, which she offered
without hesitation to Liberty. There weren't many women brave enough to put out
their hands to the huge macaw, whose beak could probably snap off fingers as
delicate as hers were.

"Not
that I skate anymore. Anyway, Cabot was speaking there—part of a lecture series
about the law—and he was magnificent!" She sighed, rolling her eyes.
"I can still remember him looking out over the crowd of girls and telling
us that we could make a difference in every major case that came to trial. It
was the first time I had a sense of worth as a person."

"The
first time? Surely when you were accepted at the seminary you knew you were
special." Ash had forgone college, opting for experience and the chance to
get away from home, but he'd been sorry later. Regret was like a big pot of
stew for him, and college was just one of the many ingredients that went into
the tasteless meal he couldn't avoid.

"Oh,
I was just sent there by my grandmother to learn the fine art of being the wife
of someone of importance." She seemed to consider what she said and find
it amusing. "I suppose that's what I became. I really wanted to go to
Hastings Law School, you know, not that my grandmother would have stood for it.
After she died, the cost was such that I could never... so when Cabot..."

Even
in the dim light he could see her blush as she stumbled to correct the
impression she had inadvertently given. "I don't mean that I married Cabot
because I couldn't go to law school. You shouldn't think that. I'm not the kind
of woman who would take advantage of a man, or a situation, or..."

"Oh,
no. I don't think that at all," he was quick to reassure her. "You're
a stellar example for all women—" he said, stumbling over his words.

"If
I am, it's because of your brother. Because that afternoon he said that how
women felt and acted impacted the world at large. That our opinions carried
weight."

"And
you fell in love with him, then and there?" he asked, amazed at how her skin
glowed in the semidarkness. He supposed that a man who could make a woman feel
important was probably worth his weight in gold. Had he ever made a woman feel
like anything more than a pleasurable moment in a pleasure-seeking life? No
instance sprang to mind.

"Fell
in love?" She seemed taken aback by the question. "No. Well, maybe. I
was only seventeen. I just knew that I wanted more. More of him, more of the
heady feeling of making a difference in the world."

"You
certainly make a difference," he said, nodding in the boy's direction.

"Well,
if I do, it's because of Cabot. I actually begged him to let me come and help
him. You should have seen me, nearly prostrate, begging him to use me."

Still
seated on the floor, she demonstrated, bending over herself so that her head
nearly touched his bare toes, and looked up at him with pleading eyes. He
didn't suppose she could have looked much younger then than she did at that
moment. Or more appealing. "And Cabot succumbed." It was more a
statement than a question.

She
remained on the floor, rising enough to clasp her hands together. She begged
with her eyes, big and innocent; with her lips, soft and pouty; with her chest,
which rose and fell with every breath. It didn't take much to imagine her as a
teen. She was barely a woman now.
"Oh, please,"
she said so
sweetly he could taste it in his mouth.
"I'll do anything,
I begged
him. I thought if I could only convince him..."

Ash
crossed his legs, and shifted in his chair, grateful when she finally sat up
and brushed the hair from her eyes. "And he took you up on it. You were,
what did you say? Seventeen? That's pretty young." She still seemed young.
Still seemed innocent, fresh. He could imagine his brother being quite seduced
by her joie de vivre, her thirst for knowledge, her slim body with those slight
soft curves just where a woman's curves ought to be. His brother must have
found that bottom lip impossible to resist. His brother must have wanted to run
a finger, just one finger, or perhaps the back of his hand, against that cheek
to see if it could possibly be as soft as it appeared.

"Oh,
not too young for Cabot. He says you can't be too young. That way you've no bad
habits to break."

But
his brother should have known the hell better than to let this woman, this
child,
offer herself up like some sacrifice. "No? I suppose bad habits get
developed as you age."

When
he tried to draw a breath he found his chest was hot and tight. With great
deliberateness he worked at rolling up his sleeves while she continued to tell
him the intimate details of her infant association with Cabot.

Details
he had no desire to hear. And yet he couldn't pull himself from the room,
couldn't pull his body from the chair, couldn't pull his eyes from her face.

"Oh,
Cabot doesn't permit bad habits. He's very demanding, you know. You'd guess he
was soft, but he can become rigid in an instant. You know, just like
that!" She raised her index finger up, then, studying his face, she
hedged. "Well, maybe you don't."

He
uncrossed his legs and tried to put his weight onto his feet. He wanted to get
up, to leave the room, but his lower half refused to obey anything he wanted it
to do. Or not do. He recrossed his legs, his hands in his lap. Rigid was
something he understood perfectly at the moment.

"Of
course, he was patient with me," she said. "Despite all that
insistence that I use my hands and not my mouth. And all that practicing,
practicing."

"I
would really prefer not to hear this," he said. He knew damn well he was
misunderstanding everything she said. He had to be, or his brother was about to
lose the use of his arms along with his legs.

"He
was right," she said in defense of the man whose wife she now was. Ash had
to give Cabot that. He'd married her, kept up his end of the bargain. "I'd
never have learned, otherwise. I've such a big mouth, and I'm so quick to use
it."

There
was no question that he wasn't hearing right. That he had a dirty, filthy mind
and that he was putting words in her mouth she couldn't be saying. And because
he was a hopeless reprobate he was now forced to sit on one hip, curled nearly
in a ball, still too mesmerized to simply get up and leave the room. In all his
experience, no woman had ever been so blunt, so...

"I
mean, the written word is so much more effective than the spoken one. And Cabot
is right. A judge makes his decision on the strength of the papers before he
even walks into the courtroom to hear oral argument, more often than not."

"Oral
argument?" Ash choked out, his voice breaking high.

"My
forte, Cabot says. He could see that right from the beginning. That's why he
made me write out everything,
ad astra!
I didn't get to use my mouth
till I got to say 'I do,' in the judge's chambers. And even then, I thought
he'd make me write out my vows!"

He
tried to catch his breath, control it, smooth the hairs that stood on end down
his arms and up his neck. He concentrated on the Latin phrase she used, trying
to overcome his body's reaction to what he'd thought he'd heard.
Ad astra?
Ad astra?
To the stars.

"What
exactly was it you did for him?" he asked, ashamed of himself for wanting
to know but unable to resist knowing every detail of their lives. "When
you started out with him... at seventeen... before you married him...
then." He stumbled over his words like a schoolboy. He wondered if it
wasn't her very presence that had made the young boy sleeping behind her
stutter so. Another conversation like this one, and Ash, too, would be
stuttering hopelessly.

"Filed.
Edited the papers he wrote. Let him practice on me," she answered. He choked
on air and she watched him sympathetically until he motioned for her to
continue, elaborate. "Speeches, summations. Just like now. Not much
changed when we married."

He
couldn't keep from wondering if she was doing it on purpose.

"Except
of course that you live here now. Share a table... an office... a bed."

There
was something in her eyes—there for a second, then gone. He could have sworn it
was pain that flickered there, and then the innocence returned, more genuine
even than it had seemed before.

"Charlotte?
Did I say something wrong?" he asked when she came abruptly to her feet
and stretched.