Promise Me A Rainbow (17 page)

“Sure you can. Somebody who wants to get laid by a good-looking bastard like you, not somebody who might care enough to take on a man with a struggling business and three kids—a man who can’t or won’t get over his dead wife.”

Joe stood up abruptly from the kitchen table.

“I told you I don’t want to talk about this.”

“And since when has that stopped me from saying what I want to say? I’m telling you. It’s time to get on with your life.
Your
life, Joey. I want you to be happy like I am.”

“Okay! You’ve said what you wanted to say, and I heard you! Now leave it, will you?”

Michael grabbed him and hugged him, giving him a fatherly pat on the cheek whether he wanted him to or not.

“Jesus, Michael,” he complained, but Michael only hugged him again.

“See you Monday morning, sport.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“You pay attention to what I said.”

“Good night, Michael!”

He switched the light off and sat down at the table again. The house was so quiet. Nothing in it but him. And his memories of Lisa. And Catherine Holben.

He had enjoyed himself. That was the problem. He had
enjoyed
himself. He had spent half the day in the company of a woman who didn’t want anything from him and he’d liked it. He’d liked it enough not to take her straight home. He’d driven her and Fritz out to Wrightsville Beach instead, because he wanted to stay in her company a little longer, and because he wanted her to see the building site on the far end of the island. It was on the oceanfront, a blank space in a strand of new resort housing that faced the Atlantic. He’d taken her all over the empty sand, showing her imaginary walls and walkways, and then, in the last of the late-afternoon sun, she and Fritz had walked up and down the windy beach looking for washed up pebbles. He’d watched them running from the waves, laughing, sharing their finds with each other, and he’d felt such a pang of longing that he’d nearly cried out with it, longing for Lisa and all they’d missed together, and also longing somehow for Catherine Holben and the possibilities she represented. He felt disloyal and filled with anticipation all at the same time. Now he could do nothing but sit in the dark.

I want you to be happy like me.

Poor Michael. Didn’t he know what Margaret was like?

He put his face in his hands. He was so tired. Life was so simple to Michael. If one was faced with the possibility of some kind of relationship, all one had to do was “check it out.” Michael didn’t see the consequences of that simplistic approach any more than he’d seen the consequences of marrying a hungry woman like Margaret. Joe didn’t want his life any more unsettled than it already was. Della had always rebelled against even the idea of someone taking her mother’s place. He was sure that it was Della who had resurrected the old photograph of him and Lisa and put it back on the mantel, just as he was sure that it had been done for Catherine’s benefit. God knows he had enough to worry about with Fritz. He didn’t want to have to deal with Della, too, particularly when there was no real reason for her to be concerned. Catherine Holben had given no indication that she was interested in anything other than Fritz and, unless he took the initiative, he’d never have to see her again. Even if he took Fritz to visit the gnomes, he could do it without seeing Catherine. It wasn’t too late. He could hold back, and she would be out of his life. Then he could just go on as he had before.

He heard the front door open, and he braced himself for the return of his children, hoping that Margaret didn’t decide to come in with them. Charlie went whistling up the stairs, and Della followed him. He listened for Fritz. She was in the living room, and she was being very quiet.

He got up from the table and walked to the kitchen door.

“Fritz?”

She jumped. She had the picture of him and Lisa in her hand. He snapped the kitchen light on. “Come in here,” he said. “Bring the picture with you.”

She looked so worried. My God, he thought. Had he been that bad, so bad that his little girl thought she had to protect him from his own grief?

He smiled and took the picture out of her hands, setting it on the kitchen table.

“Did you have a good time today?” he asked.

“It was good,” she said.

“Did you get enough to eat? There are a few burgers left. I’ll heat us up a couple if you’re hungry.”

“I had ice cream at the mall.”

She was still worried, and he sat down at the table, pulling out a chair for her, too.

“I . . . wanted to talk to you,” he said.

“About what?”

“Just . . . things. I wanted to make sure you had a good day today. Things like that.”

She sat down. “I had a good day,” she said, glancing at the picture, then away. She gave a soft sigh and looked up at him. “I had the
best
day. The burgers were crisp, but Catherine didn’t mind.” She reached into her pockets and began to put on the table the beach pebbles she and Catherine had picked up. “Catherine and I traded,” she said.

“Pebbles?”

“No, stories. I told her the Blue Willow story one time, and so today she told me about these.” She dropped more pebbles on the table. “These are the moon goddess’s tears,” she said reverently.

“Tell me about them.”

She looked at him doubtfully.

“I’d like to hear.”

“Well,” she said, giving him a pebble to hold, “this is what happened. Long, long ago there was a beautiful princess. She was
so beautiful
. On the outside, not in her heart. In her heart she was cruel—cruel to her mother, cruel to her father, cruel to her own true love . . .”

“Go on,” Joe said when she hesitated.

“Well, she was especially cruel to strangers. You know what happened then?”

“No, what?”

“She was cruel to just one stranger too many, Catherine said. She
really
picked the wrong one this time. He was a wizard traveling the world disguised as an old, old man, looking for doers of good deeds. Well, she wasn’t a doer of good deeds, and he saw that her heart was truly unkind. So he decided to teach her a lesson.”

“What kind of lesson?”

“I’m getting to that,” Fritz said, and he grinned.

“This is what happened. The princess knew she was up the creek without a paddle—especially when he said he was going to take away her beauty and make her just as old and ugly as he was. She didn’t like that one little bit, because her beauty was all she had, after all, so she thought real hard until she remembered something somebody told her.” Fritz paused and took a deep breath. “‘Nobody destroys that which is useful.’ She told him that, just as humbly as she could.”

“And what did the wizard say?”

“He said, ‘Well! Perhaps I was wrong about this beautiful but cruel princess.’ But he wasn’t taken in yet. ‘
You
are not useful,’ he said, and scared the living daylights out of her—because she knew she wasn’t. So she thought really fast and she said, ‘But I will be.’ And the wizard said, ‘How?’ And the princess thought, ‘Oh, gosh, this man is so tiresome. How do I know
how
?’ So she had to think again, and it was really giving her a headache because she didn’t think very often. ‘I know!’ she cried. ‘I am
very
beautiful. I shall stay up an hour past my bedtime every evening so people will have more time to see me. Of course, I shall have to sleep in an hour later each morning or else I shall have bags under my eyes.’”

Joe chuckled, and Fritz frowned.

“That’s not the end, Joe.”

“Oh. Sorry. Go on.”

“So the princess told the wizard about staying up later and everything, and the wizard said, ‘That’s it? That’s your idea of being useful?’ Well, the princess got hacked . . .”

“Hacked?”

“
Hacked
. P.O.’d,” she added, using one of Charlie’s phrases for clarification.

“I see. P.O.’d. Go on.”

“Well, here she’d been doing
all
the thinking—she even had a headache. ‘Do I have to do everything?’ she said. ‘
You
think of something!’ And the wizard said, ‘Oh, my dear girl, you shouldn’t have gone and said
that
.’ So there was this big puff of smoke, and when it cleared, the princess was a prisoner in the moon. ‘You wanted to be useful, and useful you shall be,’ the wizard said. ‘From now on, twice a day, every day, you will send out the ocean tides and bring them back again. Every single day! Forever!’ The princess was upset. She fell on the floor of the moon and had a tantrum, then begged and begged. ‘Not forever!’ Well, the wizard had a soft heart, and the princess
was
beautiful, so he said, ‘Well, maybe not forever.’ ‘No?’ the princess said through her tears. ‘If your own true love will do a good deed in your name, I will set you free.’ That didn’t sound good to the princess, so she began to cry again, and the wizard said, ‘Look, lady, that’s the best I can do—you have to learn your lesson. Except . . . well, maybe I could give you a promotion.’”

“A promotion?” Joe asked, thinking he hadn’t heard right.

“Yes, a promotion. The wizard said, ‘From now on, you will no longer be a princess.’ ‘This is a
promotion?
’ the princess asked. ‘Silence!’ the wizard told her. ‘From now on you shall be the goddess of the moon.’ She’s still there today, being useful. All the tears she cried when she had her tantrum fell into the oceans, and they still wash up today. And see?” She gave him some more pebbles to hold. “They look like pieces of the moon.” She glanced up at him. “The end.”