A Chance of a Lifetime, page 7
Calvin was still sleek, muscular but not-in-your-face so. There were a few hard lines etched into his face, and his eyes were flat—not emotionless, but wary. Unwelcoming. There was none of the mischief or the gleam she’d always associated with him, none of the pleasure at seeing her.
Well, that was only fair, because she wasn’t feeling any pleasure at seeing him, either. Her chest hurt, and the air simmered around her, and she wanted nothing more than to vent her anger, to stomp her feet, to stare right through him, to freeze him to the core.
All he’d said so far was I, uh…, but Mama didn’t need silly things like responses; she could keep a conversation going all by herself with minimal effort. After a good long hug, she stepped back and gestured Bennie’s way with one elbow. “Well, Calvin, say hello to Bennie, or did you not recognize her there? All growed up, dressing like a woman instead of a tomboy, and she finally quit torturing her hair.”
“Mama.” Heat rushed though Bennie, but she steeled herself for his gaze, sliding head to toe as if he were confirming that she had indeed grown up, morphed from buddy into woman, and gone natural. She hoped he didn’t think she’d dressed up for him because obviously she hadn’t. Obviously she wouldn’t even be there if she hadn’t been tricked. Her jeans were almost as comfortable for studying in bed as sweats, and the dappled gray sweater was flattering. Nothing special.
“Say hello, Calvin,” Mama prompted.
Lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. “Hello, Bennie.”
Mama beamed. “Now you say it back, Bennie.”
Bennie would bet matching lines had formed around her mouth. She knew her teeth were clenched so tightly that it was a miracle sound could escape. “Hello, Calvin.”
Mama appeared oblivious to the tension, but Bennie knew better. The old woman wasn’t oblivious to anything, no matter how she might pretend.
“I brought you one of my famous coconut cream pies,” Mama said, lifting the carrier to bring his attention to it. “I remember how much you loved them. I’ll just take it inside and say hello to your folks and to Emmeline. Here, Bennie, you have a seat and make yourself comfortable for a few minutes.”
Why? Why was Mama putting her through this? She knew everything that had happened between Bennie, J’Myel, and Calvin. She knew how he had let Bennie down, how he’d broken her heart even when it was already breaking.
But Mama was a woman of grace and forgiveness. She thought some of that had rubbed off on her granddaughter.
Bennie scowled at her grandmother’s back all the way to the door. Wishing she had her big coat with pockets to hide her fists and a hood to hide her face, she turned to stare out at the street. One minute ticked by after another, nothing but silence in the air. She didn’t mind silence. She wasn’t intimidated by it. She could stand right there, chilled to the bone, and say nothing until Mama finished visiting with the family inside. Wouldn’t bother her in the least.
So she couldn’t begin to explain why the next sound she heard was her own voice, hostile and thick and as cold as the air. “Why are you here?”
More quiet, then finally came the creak of the rocker. “I go where the Army tells me.”
She closed her eyes. He had a man’s voice now, deep and steady, though she would bet he still had the ability to hit some notes that were high for even her when he was excited. Squeaky, J’Myel used to call him. Squinty, Calvin responded, a reference to the glasses J’Myel had hated.
“How long will you be here?”
“As long as they say.”
Oh, God, had he been assigned to Fort Murphy? Was he going to be living in her town for the next however many years, where she could run into him every time she left the house? Could she bear seeing him at odd times, caught off guard and overwhelmed with memories?
Tallgrass was a decent-sized town, she reminded herself while struggling to steady her breaths, and the fort was even bigger. Since he would work on post and she was at the civilian hospital, and he would hang out with his Army friends and she would stay with her friends, it wasn’t likely they would run into each other. Maybe in the neighborhood here, but she would be on alert. She could avoid him as thoroughly as he’d avoided her the past five years.
That was what she would do: avoid him when she could, ignore him when she couldn’t. The way he’d avoided her. The way he’d ignored her. It was a plan she could live with.
So she was doubly surprised when her body turned to face him of its own volition and the next sound she heard, once more, was her own voice. “Why didn’t you ever say I’m sorry?”
* * *
As Calvin’s hands tightened on the arms of the rocker, Bennie’s hand flew to her mouth as if she wanted to capture the words and force them back inside. A sharp wind from the west made his eyes water. Not sorrow. Not guilt. Not the anger of her and J’Myel’s betrayal.
He was sorry, all right. He was sorry J’Myel had let him down. Sorry Bennie had thrown away more than fifteen years of friendship with him in favor of staying on J’Myel’s good side. Sorry that J’Myel had died and sorry that he had lived when so many good people hadn’t.
“What do you think I owe you an apology for?”
She blinked, her brown eyes going even darker with emotions flitting through them. She really was all growed up. She’d been pretty when he and J’Myel had left for the Army, but in the years since, she’d matured, gotten all soft and womanly. Curls framed her face, and her curves had filled out, rounding her breasts and hips. Any man would give her a second glance, would go out of his way to speak to her, learn her name, earn a smile from her…if he didn’t already have a history with her.
Annoyance settled in her eyes as she freed one hand long enough to make a dismissive gesture, one he’d seen from her a thousand times. “Not an apology. Sympathy. When J’Myel died. My husband. Your best friend.”
Too restless to sit any longer, Calvin surged to his feet and walked to the end of the porch. From the corner of his eye, he could see his father through the window, sitting in the old easy chair with the newspaper, and he knew from experience that the women were in the kitchen, gathered around the table there to gossip.
Probably about him.
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, he faced Bennie, though he had to focus every second on keeping his gaze from darting away. “He wasn’t much of a friend the last few years,” he said flatly, refusing to acknowledge even to himself how deeply those words hurt. “And neither were you.”
She didn’t have anything to say to that. She tried. Her lips parted, then closed, parted again, then closed again. There just wasn’t any defense to the truth.
Even though it was the truth, he still could have sent a card. People who hadn’t known J’Myel and Bennie even a fraction of the way he had, had sent cards, maybe even flowers. Calvin could have, probably should have, but the time for that was long past. The fact that he hadn’t was just one more in a very long list of regrets.
Bennie at a loss for words was a rare thing, and he couldn’t remember it ever lasting more than a moment. This time it dragged on, the tension obvious in the way she stood, the way her jaw clenched. He could imagine words building up inside her with such pressure that they would eventually explode, erupting in bursts that made no sense until anger finally forced them into some kind of order. Volcano Bennie, J’Myel had once called her, though after she’d chased him down and tackled him to the ground, he’d never done it again.
After a moment, she breathed in deeply, then blew the air out through her mouth. “Tell Mama I had to get back to studying. Tell her to call me when she’s ready to come home.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and headed off. He watched as she reached the sidewalk, then the driveway, then turned left onto the street. He watched until she was little more than a hazy figure, striding across her own yard, up her own steps, into her own house.
And finally he released his breath. He shifted so the wall of the living room was at his back, and finally, oh, God, finally, he looked down the street to the right, his gaze zeroing in on a white house on the other side with a front porch that filled most of the front yard. A house where he’d spent probably half of his life, where he’d built forts and played basketball and slept in a tent out back on hot summer nights.
It had been just J’Myel and his mom in the house. His parents had divorced, and his dad had taken a new job in Seattle. They’d stayed close, though, the three of them, and J’Myel hadn’t given up hope that his parents would get back together until the summer he’d turned sixteen, when his mother began dating for the first time since the divorce.
As far as Calvin knew, Golda Ford had never remarried. She’d stayed in that house, working as a paralegal for a local law firm, tending her overgrown bushes, and fretting over her son. What mother didn’t fret about a son at war?
Then, after J’Myel had died and was buried with honors at the Fort Murphy National Cemetery, Golda quit her job, put the house for sale, packed up, and moved to Edmond to be closer to her family. His death had broken her heart and maybe her spirit. But what mother wasn’t heartbroken at the death of her son?
The bleakness he’d lived with so long was starting to settle, like clouds so heavy with gloom that they had no choice but to sink low to the ground. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressed the heels of his hands to them, and breathed deeply, evenly, pushing it away with every fiber of his body.
“Calvin?”
A hand, soft and capable despite its age, clasped his forearm, and he jumped, jerking away, putting a half-dozen feet between himself and—
Mama Maudene. She was giving him a look, part knowing, part curious, all sympathetic. She reached out, hesitated as if to give him time to adjust, then gave his head a soothing pat. “If you had any hair to speak of, I’d brush it back,” she said quietly. “All you boys who practically shave your heads bald…You know, the Army lets you have hair. I see it every time I go to town.”
Calvin focused on calming his breathing, on controlling the fear that had, for an instant, ricocheted through him.
“Did my granddaughter go home without me?”
He swiped a hand across his face, drying the sweat that had popped out on his forehead. “Uh, yeah, she did. She said for you to call when you were ready to leave.”
Mama snorted. “That girl. She acts like I never walked the streets alone. I moved here, just me and my kids, long before her daddy had even noticed girls, and we not only got along, we prospered.”
He’d heard the story before: how she’d divorced her husband back when it wasn’t common, how she’d moved west and raised her kids without any help from their father. You took them away, now you take care of them.
“She also said to tell you she had to study.” He had no intention of saying anything more, none whatsoever of showing any curiosity, but there it was before he could think better of it. “What is she studying?”
“Nursing. My girl’s going to be a registered nurse.” Mama’s smile was filled with pride. “She says she’s going to specialize in geriatrics or pediatrics. I tell her, she spends enough time with old people as it is. Besides, if she works in pediatrics, maybe she can borrow me a great-grandbaby, because I don’t think I’m going to get one any other way.”
Calvin could imagine Bennie with a baby, but not J’Myel’s. Back when he’d heard they were dating, when the best, deepest friendship he’d ever known had turned ugly and mean, he hadn’t been able to wrap his mind around it. He’d realized Bennie was a woman, not their childhood pal, their bud, but he hadn’t known J’Myel had come to see her as more, too. Them being more than friends? Kissing, having sex? Making plans for a wedding, a family, a future? There’d been something disconcerting about it. It had taken Calvin a while to get used to the idea, to try to be happy for them when deep inside he felt lost and left out and jealous. For more than half their lives, they’d existed as parts of one whole, and suddenly he was the outsider looking in.
“Come walk me home, Calvin,” Mama said, taking his arm without waiting for an agreement. She knew he wouldn’t refuse any reasonable request she made—and more than a few unreasonable ones as well.
He let her draw him to the steps, following the invisible trail Bennie had blazed a little while before. The air chilled him through his shirt and felt good on his skin, the dampness a reminder of his time stationed in Washington. When he breathed deeply, he smelled autumn: browning leaves, wet ground, a wisp of smoke drifting up from someone’s fireplace. It smelled good and sweet and fresh.
“Your folks are awfully happy to have you home again,” Mama commented before giving him a sidelong look. “You’re not quite as pleased to be here, are you?”
A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “No, ma’am.”
“I understand. All three of my children chose to leave home.”
“So did you.”
Her laughter touched old memories inside him. “That I did.”
“Is Brenda still in Stillwater?”
“Yep, teaching economics at OSU, and Roland is still lawyering in Ada. They’re my pride and joy—my kids and my grandkids. Just like you’re your mama’s and daddy’s and Emmeline’s pride and joy, and J’Myel was Golda’s and Steve’s.”
Calvin’s chest tightened. There was joy for his family, that he was alive, but what kind of pride could they find in him now?
Every day you survive is another day that counts, Chaplain Reed back at Lewis-McChord had told him. Every day you don’t die is another chance to make things right. And Calvin was determined to make things right. Some days it seemed like a losing battle, but he was trying. He wouldn’t stop trying.
When they reached the Pickering driveway, Mama looked at him earnestly. “I hate to poke in your business, Calvin, but can I tell you something?”
The smile that had almost formed earlier was back, stretching broad enough to make long unused muscles feel odd. “Mama Maudene, you’ve been in my business since I was a baby, and you never hated it even once.”
“You’re right on both counts,” she admitted before gazing off into the distance. “That girl of mine…you’ve helped her through some really hard times when she came here with no daddy or mama. All those years you were the friend she needed when she needed it. My heart tells me you’ve reached some really hard times. Give her a chance to give back. Let her be the friend you need.”
He loved Mama the way he loved Gran, but he couldn’t give her the answer she wanted. Let Bennie be his friend? Hell, she didn’t want to share the same air he breathed. Those few minutes back on his parents’ porch had made it clear that she would have been happier if she’d never seen him again.
But he didn’t have to give Mama any answer at all because suddenly she was in a rush to get inside. “Thank you for walking me home, Calvin. I’ve got to get in and put on my costume and do my makeup and make sure we’ve got enough candy for the trick-or-treaters tonight.” She released his arm and started down the sidewalk, doing a crablike sidestep so she could continue to talk to him. “Why don’t you borrow some of your cousins’ kids and walk them around the neighborhood? I’ll be sure and save you some special treats.”
“I think I’ll skip it, but thanks.”
Mama was on the porch by then. “You and Bennie are old fuddies. Enjoy your TV watching while I’m having fun scaring and treating the kiddies.”
He watched until she was inside—old habit—then raised his face to the sky. Rain was starting to fall again, cold and uncomfortable. It wouldn’t stop the trick-or-treating, though. Mama’s treats were too well known in the neighborhood. Even if the little buggers had to crawl on ice to go to only one house, it would be Mama’s.
He would be back in his bland apartment—yes, probably watching TV—before the goblins and ghosts and zombies came out. If that made him an old fuddie, so be it. The description was the only thing he had in common with Bennie anymore, and hopeful though he was trying to be, he couldn’t see that changing.
Chapter 6
Tell me again why we’re not staying home to answer the door for trick-or-treaters.”
Joe looked down the hallway toward Lucy’s bedroom, where she was just out of sight but making plenty of noise. “Because we decided last time that this year we’d rather be anywhere but here.”
“Oh, yeah. I think it was the mothers who did it for me. Witches’ hats with everyday clothes, vapor cigs in one hand, and their very own candy bag in the other.” Lucy lowered her voice to a rasp, punctuating words with a hacking cough. “‘Hey, Taylor Leigh, be sure to get your mama something that goes good with Bud Light.’” She coughed again to get her own voice back to normal. “You’re sure that wasn’t a big kid in costume as a bad mother?”
“I’m sure. Her son is on the junior varsity football team. She asked me once if there was anything she could do to help him get moved up to varsity.” He winced at one of the worst moments of his football career. Thank God the athletic director had walked in at just that moment.
At last Lucy began making the sort of noises that meant she would be coming out soon: spraying perfume, which made Norton sneeze, then throwing his yellow ducky onto his bed with a squeak, which made Sebastian meow and pounce on it. Joe had suggested they dress up, since he pretty much lived in gym clothes and she wasn’t much better. Her loose, unstructured clothes that had been bought for comfort were practically falling-off too big now. Just once he would like to see her in something snug and clingy, to celebrate the achievement of her forty-pound weight loss.
At the sound of footsteps, he quit pulling at a loose string on his jacket and looked up. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, his gut tightened as if he’d just been sucker punched, and the little voice that lived in his head couldn’t stop chanting Lu-cy, Lu-cy, Lu-cy. Then it added a made-up-on-the-spot cheer: Who’s the luckiest guy in town? Lucy’s guy.
She wore a dark red dress that had long sleeves and a short hem that showed a lot of the muscles she’d built pounding the pavement since last May. The fabric plunged between her breasts and wrapped around her, classy but sexy. Her hair was down, its subdued brown picking up red tones from the dress, and her jewelry was minimal. Gone were the chunky rings and office-sturdy watch; small diamond studs nestled in her ears, a delicate watch circled her wrist, and a diamond pendant in the shape of a star hung on a thin gold chain around her neck.
