Time After Time (23 page)

Susy turned to Jack and
said formally, "Goodnight, Mr. Eastman." Liz was too conservative a
Yankee ever to encourage her daughter to kiss new guests good
night, and Jack was no exception to her rule.

Jack nodded to Susy with a
friendly smile but made no attempt to leave the chaise longue in
which he sat. He was staying.

This was new, at least to
Susy. She glanced back at him when she was on the porch and then
sneaked a peek at him, sitting alone in the candlelit garden, from
her bedroom window before being tucked in for prayers.

"Doesn't Mr. Eastman have
to go to bed, too?" she asked innocently.

"He's just finishing his
coffee, honey," Liz said, but she felt the familiar flush in her
cheeks as she spoke of him.

The fact was, she'd never
had to explain a man hanging around the house before; there simply
hadn't been one. Liz had been so involved in keeping Susy and
herself afloat that she'd had no time for anyone else. When
well-meaning relations came up with what they considered suitable
young men, she'd put the kibosh on their designs at once. Nor had
the party-planning business yielded any real prospects: once or
twice a single father had hit on her, but they were clearly on the
rebound and she'd wanted no part of them.

And now Jack. He was far
less likely a prospect than her mother's second cousin's son; far
less likely than the airline pilot who was desperate for a woman to
help him manage his three children on custody weekends. So why, oh
why, did she insist on viewing him as a prospect at all — good or
bad?

"And bless Gramma and
bless Grampa and also bless Oliver."

"Oliver?" asked Liz,
coming out of her daze. "Who's Oliver?"

"He's the ghost," Susy
said, curling one arm around her dog-eared teddy bear. "I think
Oliver is a good name for him."

"But he doesn't look
anything like an —"

Good God, what was
she
doing,
going
on about what he looked like? One fleeting hallucination — okay,
two — and suddenly the thing was being regarded as fact. This was
how myths, legends, and wild stories that brought down presidents
began.

Struck with an
inspiration, Liz said gently, "I don't think you should call Oliver
a ghost. I think you should call him your pretend-friend." God knew
Susy needed one; she was never going to have any brothers or
sisters.

Liz tucked her daughter in
with a sweet-dreams kiss and was at the doorway when Susy said
through a sleepy yawn, "I just think I don't know him good enough
to call him my
friend,
Mommy. Maybe I'll just call him my pretend-ghost."

"
Well
enough,'" Liz corrected in a
weary cop-out. "You don't know him well enough. Good night,
honey."

Outside, Liz dropped into
a chaise longue with a tired sigh. The first words out of Jack's
mouth were, "Is the front door locked?"

"Oh
yeah
. Ever since the burglary. It's
too bad, really; my parents never had to lock their door. Oh, and I
have news about my graduate student," she admitted, hating like
hell to have to pass it along. "It turns out that the scratches on
his hands
were
from hiking. The police got hold of the Visa record of his
fill-up; he really was in New Hampshire. Or at least his car was,"
she said, not giving up entirely on her theory.

She glanced up
automatically at Susy's bedroom window, listening for a possible
summons.

"Should we go inside?"
asked Jack politely.

"No, I'll be able to hear
her through the window," Liz said. "By the same token," she warned,
"she'll be able to hear us, too."

She heard the smile in his
voice as he said, "In that case I won't spell out where I'd
really
like to spend the
rest of the evening."

The words washed over Liz
like warm honey. She felt caught by them, held by them, unwilling
to work her way out of them. She should run. But she didn't want
to.

"She's probably out like a
light by now, anyway," Liz said, amazing herself. Apparently she
was hoping that Jack would spell out exactly where and how he'd
like to spend the evening.

Dangerous,
she told herself.
This
is getting dangerous.
But she hardly
cared. She rolled her head lazily toward him and murmured, "I'm
glad you were free for supper. It was fun."

Liz had turned off the
kitchen lights on her way out, leaving the two of them in a deep,
satisfying darkness broken only by a small citronella candle
flickering in its red bowl on a nearby stepstone. Jack reached over
and took her hand, threading his fingers through hers. "I hardly
know anything about you," he said in a voice more wistful than
before. He seemed surprised by the fact, as if he'd just found out
she was a double agent. "Tell me who you are."

Liz laughed at the
challenge of explaining herself in a phrase or two. "Single working
mother," she said, defining the most elemental thing about
herself.

"Right. Now tell me
something I
don't
know," he said, absently rubbing the pulse point of her wrist
with his thumb. "Tell me ... oh, let's see ... how did your
marriage end?"

"Awkwardly," Liz said,
sucking in her breath. Did he really have the right to know? It was
such a humiliation; even her family hadn't been told the whole
story.

"I'm sorry," he said after
a pause. "You don't want to say."

Liz decided after all that
she
did
want to
say. She didn't know why. She wanted to make some sort of ...
gesture. Of trust. It was all, really, she could ever give him: a
small, wrenchingly intimate piece of her history.

"When we got married," she
said very softly, "it was with the understanding that we wouldn't
rush into having children. Well, what can I say? In a couple of
years I changed my mind. I suppose it had something to do with
this
slew
of
babies that were being born, all at once, into my family. We all
joked about there being something in Newport's water. I was the
only one, it seemed, who wasn't pregnant or nursing."

Liz stopped and listened
for sounds through the upstairs window. Susy was asleep; she knew
that. And yet she felt as if she were about to say something
disloyal, and it made her hesitate.

She took a deep breath.
"What began as theoretical discussions about the pros and cons of
quitting my job to have a baby became ... well, knock-down,
drag-out fights. Keith was dead against it. I was dead for it. It
became — I don't know — a power play between us. I don't think,
now, that he was as against it as he said. And maybe I wasn't as
ready as I'd insisted I was. Not that I'll ever know," she added
with a small, pained laugh.

"Anyway, one day — without
telling him — I just stopped taking my pills," she said, forcing
herself to go on. "The maneuver was a grand success; I got pregnant
almost instantly. If I'd had any second thoughts, they disappeared
in the next round of arguments over whether to keep the baby or
not. I suppose, if I'm going to be brutally honest about it, that
was a power play, too."

The candle flickered more
fitfully than ever; it was on its way to burning out. Liz fixed her
attention on it, listening for sounds from Susy's bedroom,
wondering whether Jack was going to interrupt. But he said nothing.
He could have been asleep, for all she knew; only the gentle, idle
caress of his thumb on her wrist told her he was not.

If the candle goes out,
I'll stop the story. The end is obvious, anyway.
But the candle flickered on, and Liz
resumed.

"I had the baby," she said
simply.

She wanted to say, "And
suffered a postpartum infection," but he hadn't asked her how the
delivery went, and she hadn't either the courage or the audacity to
offer the information on her own.

"About a week after the
baby — after Susy — was born, I came home from a visit to the
pediatrician and found —" She bit her lip and told him what she'd
found. "A note. From Keith. At least he took the time to say
good-bye. We think he's in California, but nobody really knows.
There was talk of an ashram in Iowa, but Keith's more of a loner
than a commune type."

After a long pause, Jack
said, "He can be tracked down, you know."

Liz blinked away the tear
that had risen, Pavlov style, at the thought of the note, and then
blinked away her disappointment at Jack's response. That was it? An
offer to track Keith down? For this she'd split her heart open in
front of him?

She slid her hand
carefully out of his and sat up on the chaise. She, of all people,
should've been able to predict that he, of all people, would cut
right to the chase: the missed payments of child support.
Everything with his kind was about money. Everything.

"Thanks all the same," she
said, rubbing her arms against the chill that had come out of
nowhere, "but I don't particularly want to find him
anymore."

"You don't really mean
that" came Jack's voice from behind her. He sat up, too, and swung
his legs over the side of his chaise so that he could face her.
"Look, this guy's got a responsibility here. He's Susy's
father.
He should be
visiting; he should be writing; he should be paying for child
support."

She laughed softly. "You
don't get it, do you? But then, why should you?" she said,
implicitly throwing his bachelor status back in his
face.

"You're right," Jack said,
coolly now. "I
don't
get it. Enlighten me. Tell me how a man can walk away from
that kind of commitment."

Liz jumped up and rounded
on him. "Are you kidding? Because he thought Susy was a dirty trick
I'd played on him! Because he never
committed
to having children! As far
as he was concerned,
I
was the one who broke the commitment."

"I guess I don't see it
that way," Jack said, looking up at her. "I guess I see it as a
case of your hurt pride getting in the way of your daughter's
welfare."

"
That's
— outrageous!"
Liz said, stunned. She walked off to the far end
of the yard, stifling the urge to scream and shout. Overhead, the
branches of the huge copper beech on the other side of the fence
began to sway in the steadily rising wind. Clouds were scuttling
through, and the dark, starry night was turning into a seesaw
affair between the threat of rain and the pledge of more fine
weather.

Fine for what?
Liz wondered while she waited for Jack to leave.
Not for romance, which ten short minutes ago had been uppermost in
her mind. What a fool she'd been, to think she could depend on his
sympathy. God! He didn't even admire her spunk!
Everyone
who knew her admired her
spunk.

"We can agree to disagree
on this, you know," Jack said. His hand was on her shoulder. She
tried, not very hard, to shrug it away, but he turned her around to
face him. "You're right," he said with that improbable melancholy
that she associated with him. "In matters of family, I don't have
much to go on. I've never been married, and my own father is — as
you now know — a master of irresponsibility."

She felt like arguing, so
she said, "Is he? After all, he's taken in Caroline — and even her
brother — when they needed someone."

"A noble gesture. My
mother doesn't think so."

"She knows about
this?"

"What do
you
think?" he
snapped.

Liz said defensively, "I'm
not the psychic around here, remember? All I know is that Netta
said Mrs. Eastman had extended her visit in Italy. That could mean
anything."

"Sorry; sorry. The
situation's been going on for weeks, but it's still very ... raw."
He sighed and said, "I don't know what the hell my father was
thinking — that he'd get Stacey Stonebridge in and out of the
clinic before my mother came back? That he'd just let the chips
fall where they may? That we'd all live as one big happy family at
East Gate? I have no idea how his mind works anymore.

"Anyway, in answer to your
question, my mother may well not come back. No one knows. My
mother, probably least of all."

Maybe it was the darkness;
maybe it was the baffled, rueful tone of his voice. Whatever the
reason, Liz felt like his equal for the first time. They were two
lost souls, wandering through the swamp of human motivation
together. It was reassuring that he was just as confused as she
was.

"Your father knew Caroline
existed?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah. There was a
generous settlement, all very proper and legal, when she was born.
If my mother was aware of it at the time, she never told me. I
guess Stacey went through all the money and came back for more. I'm
not exactly in the loop on this one."

"I guess you can always
give her the benefit of the doubt."