‘‘Hello,’’ she said, amazingly happy to have him waiting.
‘‘Hello.’’
‘‘Where did the swing come from?’’
‘‘Made it for you.’’
‘‘Rebecca and Ethan will be glad.’’
‘‘So will I, after dark.’’
Her gaze dropped to his lips, and she let a beat pass before replying, ‘‘So will I. Thank you. It’s very nice.’’
They had stopped in the break of the bridal wreath bushes where the long shadows from the neighbors’ trees laid strips of gold and green across the yard. From the end of the block the sound of a horse’s hooves passed, and up on the porch the swing chain was creaking. Gabriel stood with his back to the house, Roberta with her back to the street.
‘‘Know what I wish?’’ he said.
‘‘No. What?’’
‘‘That I could kiss you.’’
‘‘I wish you could too. I found myself thinking about kissing you a lot today.’’
‘‘That’s a good sign. Does that mean you’ll marry me?’’
‘‘Not necessarily. But I thought about that, too, especially after I talked to my mother.’’
‘‘Oh?’’
‘‘She said she didn’t know anything about the Benevolent Society taking my kids away from me.’’
He nodded three times, very slowly, as if his mind was on something else. A half-smile narrowed his eyes, which roved over her hair and face. ‘‘I’ve never told you before, but I really like you in your uniform.’’
‘‘Do you? Why’s that?’’
‘‘The way you roll up your hair over the edge of your cap, neat and tidy. The way your apron straps cross in the back. Your clean white shoes.’’
‘‘You’d like me all neat and tidy all the time, wouldn’t you?’’
‘‘I guess so.’’
‘‘What if I’m not? What if our house is not? What if my children are not and you were married to me, then would we fight about it?’’
‘‘I don’t know.’’
She took a turn assessing him and liked what she saw.
‘‘If we were married, where would we live?’’
‘‘I don’t know that either.’’
‘‘Where would you want to live?’’
‘‘Your house is too small.’’
‘‘And your house is too Caroline’s.’’
‘‘Are you going to be jealous of her?’’
‘‘I doubt it. I actually spoke to her picture when I was alone in your room.’’
‘‘What did you say?’’
From up at the house Susan yelled, ‘‘Hey, are you two going to stand there and talk all night? We’re starving!’’
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder and called, ‘‘Be right there,’’ then turned back to Roberta and calmly repeated his question. ‘‘What did you say?’’
She liked his unflappability along with his blue eyes and sharp-edged lips, his thick eyebrows and his overall generous size.
‘‘I told her that I love you.’’
‘‘You did not.’’
‘‘Yes, I did. I said, ‘I love your husband, Caroline Farley.’ And I do, Gabriel.’’
She saw very clearly how she had stunned him anew with her declaration. He got slightly breathless and his lips dropped open as if he wanted to lower his head, close his eyes and delight them both right there on the front path.
‘‘Roberta, I don’t understand you. You love me, yet you won’t say you’ll marry me.’’
‘‘Come on, you two!’’ Isobel yelled. ‘‘It’s almost seven-thirty and the meat loaf is done!’’
This time it was Roberta’s turn to glance at the porch, leaning to see around Gabe, then straightening without answering Isobel.
‘‘Let’s take this up on the new swing at eleven o’clock or so,’’ she suggested.
‘‘That’s a long time from now.’’
‘‘Well, maybe I can get the girls to go to bed by ten. I’ll do my best. Now let’s go see if Isobel set the table all neat and tidy, or if my girls just planned to pull the meat loaf apart with their hands.’’
He let her lead the way to the house, and when she’d passed him by he said from behind her, ‘‘ I set the table all neat and tidy.’’
‘‘Oh.’’ She smiled to herself. ‘‘Well, who knows? We might work out some kind of connubial compromise after all.’’
That supper seemed to take forever. Another kingdom come seemed to pass before the girls had cleaned up the dishes. Then they decided to try folding some origami designs, and by the time Roberta convinced them to start picking up paper scraps, it was well after ten. Following that, Gabriel felt obliged to drive Isobel home. And at quarter to eleven at night he didn’t want everyone up and down Alden Street to hear his truck returning to Roberta’s house, so by the time he walked back up the hill it was after eleven.
She had washed up quickly, rubbed on almond cream, changed into a calf-length dress and a sweater and was waiting inside the living room screen door in the dark when he came up the porch steps.
‘‘Hi,’’ she whispered, opening the door stealthily and stepping outside.
‘‘Hi,’’ he whispered back.
‘‘I didn’t think they’d ever go to bed.’’
‘‘Me either.’’
‘‘Does Isobel know you came back?’’
‘‘No. She doesn’t have to know everything.’’
‘‘Neither do my girls. I can’t believe I’m sneaking around meeting a boyfriend at my age.’’
‘‘Me either, but it’s kind of fun.’’
‘‘All except for the mosquitoes.’’
‘‘They weren’t so bad when I was walking back. Maybe they’ll leave us alone. Come on.’’
He took her hand and they tiptoed to the swing and sat, his arm slung loosely around her shoulders. They spoke only in whispers.
‘‘You took your hair down.’’
‘‘To keep the mosquitoes off my neck.’’
He reached over and put his hand on it . . . then in it . . . finding her skull with his fingertips. ‘‘Now what were we talking about when the girls called us in for supper?’’
This was what they’d been waiting for all day, this moment of reaching, touching, tasting once again with his head bowed over hers. It was immediate, that first kiss, and earned by a long day’s wait. They were eager and ardent from the instant they touched, roused by their hours of anticipation and the inky intimacy of the shadows beneath the porch roof. However inhibited Gabriel Farley was in the light of day, he shed his inhibitions on the privacy of that porch swing. The kisses Roberta had missed during the waning years of her marriage she received over and over in a roundelay of sweet repetition. A mosquito came and bit her ankle right through her cotton stocking and she tucked her legs up, covering her feet with her skirt, relinquishing none of the sweet suckling hold she had on Gabe’s mouth. It was open above hers, his breath beating against her cheek, and his hand on her back stretching everything—her sweater, her dress, her skin—making flat circles that substituted for more intimate caresses.
There were questions rapping at her harried heart and she tore her mouth free to ask them.
‘‘How long since you’ve done this?’’
‘‘Since Caroline.’’
‘‘How many years?’’
‘‘Seven.’’
‘‘George stopped kissing me years ago, unless he wanted money. It got so I hated it with him . . . but I missed it . . . oh, I missed it.’’
They kissed again, making up for lost time, curling against each other with an impatient embrace. Then two mosquitoes bit him at once—one on his neck, another on his wrist. He shook off one and slapped the other and said against her lips, ‘‘Let’s go in, Roberta.’’
‘‘No, I can’t.’’
‘‘We’ll be quiet. Nobody will know.’’
‘‘I’ll know. You’ll know. And I won’t give this town the satisfac
tion.’’
He drew back his head and said, ‘‘But that’s silly. All we’re going to do is stand behind the living room screen door where the mosquitoes can’t get at us. I promise. That’s all we’re going to do.’’
‘‘I can’t, Gabriel. If I weren’t divorced it would be different, but that’s just what the town expects me to do—take men into my house at night when my girls are sleeping.’’
Another stinger sank into his jaw. He hit and missed it and said, ‘‘Then go get a blanket.’’
‘‘Oh, Gabriel, you can’t be serious.’’ He could hear the makings of a chuckle in her tone. But just then she killed a mosquito on her face.
‘‘Roberta, this is just damned ridiculous. Go get one.’’
Dropping her feet off the swing she said, ‘‘All right, I will.’’
He sat there slapping mosquitoes while she tiptoed across the porch, opened the door without making a peep, disappeared and returned as noiselessly as she’d gone.
‘‘Here,’’ she whispered, flinging the blanket as she resumed her place beside him.
‘‘Where did you have to go to get it?’’ he asked, flipping and settling it until he got it just right.
‘‘Clear upstairs in my bedroom.’’
‘‘Think they heard you?’’
‘‘I don’t care if they did. I have a right to sit here on my own front porch swing, don’t I?’’
He chuckled and got them situated to his liking with the blanket shrouding all but their heads.
‘‘Hey . . . I like this,’’ he murmured, slipping a hand beneath her arm, narrowly missing her breast. ‘‘Come here.’’
There are ways to combat modesty and yet maintain it . . . and he found them, leaning back into a corner of the swing and dragging her with him until their limbs were stretched and aligned like the folds of the blanket that covered them. One six-minute kiss later, when their mouths were getting tender, and the mosquitoes had found their bare faces, and his empty hand could be denied no longer, he flipped the blanket over their heads, and there in a tent of total darkness where the scent of his bay rum consorted with that of her almond cream, she scolded, ‘‘Gabriel!’’ And giggled.
‘‘Shh . . .’’ he whispered, and cupped her breast. And stopped her breath for that singular moment, then started it again . . . faster.
Five minutes later their mouths were swollen and so were some other strategic parts, when a voice outside their blanket said, ‘‘Mother? Is that you under there?’’
Gabe and Roberta turned to a couple of pillars of clay. Only these pillars looked like they were halfcarved and the sculptor had gone to lunch. There they sat—well, lay, actually—two bumps beneath a dark blanket, like half-finished works of art. From the outside it appeared to Rebecca that her mother was trying to push herself up and pretend she hadn’t been lying against Mr. Farley’s open legs, because one of hers was hanging in midair as she struggled against gravity.
‘‘Mr. Farley? Is that you, too?’’
There was some whispering under the blanket, and the four legs managed to untangle. The two bodies managed to square themselves side by side, and finally Roberta lifted the blanket far enough to peep out. Rebecca had turned on the living room light and its distant rays picked out two very messy heads of hair and four eyes that peered out sheepishly, like a pair of raccoons caught in the headlights.
‘‘Yes, Rebecca?’’ her thirty-six-year-old mother said, striving for dignity where there was none.
‘‘Mother? What in the world are you doing under there!’’
‘‘Talking.’’
Some embarrassing seconds ticked by before Gabriel jumped into the gap.
‘‘Ah . . . the mosquitoes,’’ he explained lamely, folding back the blanket.
‘‘Well, why don’t you come in the house?’’ Rebecca said sensibly. ‘‘There are no mosquitoes in there.’’
‘‘Good idea,’’ Farley said, and peeled Roberta’s skirt off his left pantleg. ‘‘Let’s go in the house, Roberta.’’
He had no idea she was on the verge of breaking up until her laughter escaped her pinched lips and sent up a ‘‘Pppppppt!’’ like a draft horse breaking wind. When she started laughing, he couldn’t help himself and started, too.
Rebecca grew indignant and planted her fists on her hips. ‘‘Mother, for heaven’s sake, get in the house right this minute before the neighbors see you out here with that ridiculous blanket over your heads! Good Lord, a person would think the two of you were twelve years old!’’
She slammed in the house, cranked off the light and left the two on the porch laughing with two fistfuls of blanket pressed to their mouths. Roberta was so breathless she could scarcely get the words out.
‘‘Oh, Gabe . . . oh my word . . . if we get married . . . we’ll have to tell this story to our grandchildren. Oh, Gabe . . . you should have s-seen yours-self coming out from under that blanket.’’
He rubbed his hair with one big paw, leaving it worse than before. ‘‘Oh, well, what the hell. They know anyway.’’
She laughed some more, then sat beside him until her breathing leveled off. She hooked both hands over the edge of the swing seat and glanced at Gabe on her right. ‘‘Let’s say good night. We’re too old for this anyway.’’
‘‘Too old for what?’’ he said suggestively.
She whispered, ‘‘Not for that. Just for this.’’ She rose, taking a tail end of the blanket along. It was pinned under his butt, and he hauled away until it towed her back to him. She dropped one knee onto the swing seat and fell against him, their momentum sending them and the swing backward. His wide hands caught her high around the ribs, his thumbs just beneath her breasts.
‘‘Marry me, Roberta,’’ he said seriously, lifting his face as she looked down on him.
He had made a true effort to please her, and she liked the change, the way he had come a-courtin’, as she’d said she wanted—on a porch swing under a blanket, no less. And he’d loosened up a great deal where Isobel was concerned, and certainly the girls were in favor of their courtship. But courtship was one thing and everyday life was another—with mothers, and brothers-in-law, and ladies’ societies.
‘‘Maybe,’’ she replied, and kissed him good night.
Sixteen
Toward dawn the next morning, Roberta had a nightmare about the rape. She awakened herself with a scream and gained consciousness to find that she was cowering against the headboard, sweating and weeping, her heart driving like a ramrod in her chest. Rebecca came tearing around the corner from her bedroom, wearing a wrinkled nightdress, terrified out of a sound sleep.
‘‘Mother, what’s wrong!’’
‘‘Oh, Becky . . . oh . . . oh . . .’’
Rebecca flew to the bed and held Roberta fast. ‘‘Were you dreaming?’’
‘‘It was terrible.’’ Roberta’s voice shook as she clutched her daughter. ‘‘It was Elfred again, doing that awful thing to me, only just before he did it he . . . he lifted his head and it was Gabriel, not Elfred, and I was so heartbroken that he had deceived me and that he wasn’t the kind of man I thought he was, and I kept trying to fight him off, and I was pushing at him and telling him he was a liar, only I couldn’t get the words out. Oh, Becky, it was just terrible.’’
Becky petted Roberta’s hair and kept her close. Her own heart was banging as if she’d had the nightmare herself.
‘‘It was just a dream, Mother. Look, it’s almost dawn and the girls are still asleep, and everything’s just wonderful. Don’t be afraid.’’
Roberta began to calm, and her grip slackened.
‘‘Why would I dream such a thing about Gabriel?’’
Becky sat back, capturing her mother’s hands, rubbing her thumbs across Roberta’s knuckles.
‘‘I don’t know, but last night you were sitting on the swing with him and it didn’t look to me like you were trying to fight him off at all.’’
‘‘Oh goodness . . .’’ Roberta glanc
ed at the window. Pale lavender dawn was flowing over the scarred sill, and the lacework of leaves lay motionless on the branches of a maple tree outside. As she remembered the previous night, her terror subsided and her heartbeat slowed. ‘‘You were very displeased with us.’’
‘‘Not really. You woke me up, creeping upstairs to get that blanket, I suppose. Then I lay there wondering why you were up so late and if you were okay. I just couldn’t believe it when I looked out on the porch and saw you two with that blanket over your heads. But I’m not displeased with you, not really. I’m happy you’ve got Mr. Farley.’’
‘‘Really?’’
‘‘Why wouldn’t I be when you’re so happy yourself?’’
‘‘I am, aren’t I?’’
‘‘He’s given you a wonderful summer, given us all a wonderful summer, actually—our first Camden summer, filled with so many good memories. I think you should marry him, Mother.’’
‘‘He asked me again last night.’’
‘‘Are you going to do it?’’
‘‘I suppose I am, eventually.’’
‘‘I keep thinking about how safe you’ll be with him, then men like Uncle Elfred can’t hurt you, and the gossips of this town will have to find somebody else to whisper about. And I’ve been thinking a lot about how pretty soon Susan and Lydia and I will be all grownup, and when we find husbands and move away from home you’ll be so lonely. I’d love knowing that you were with Mr. Farley. And at holidays we’d all come home—we three and Isobel, too—and imagine what a good time we’ll have. Coming back to Camden for another seaside summer, probably with a whole mess of babies. Oh, Mother, you’ve got to marry him, you’ve just got to.’’
Roberta took her daughter in a loose embrace. She was totally calm now, her heart welling with appreciation for this remarkable young woman whose loving and caring attributes made her truly special.
‘‘Have I told you lately how much I love you, Becky?’’
‘‘Of course you have.’’
‘‘Well, let me tell you again.’’ She kissed Becky’s cheek, hard. ‘‘I love you, Becky, light of my life. I don’t know what I’d have done without you these last two years. The older you get, the dearer you get.’’