The Blessing

  “All right,” Jason said, laughing, “monkeys it is. Do you know how to paint monkeys?”

  Max nodded so vigorously that his whole body shook.

  Jason took the boy’s shoulders in his hands and said, “Now, I want you to listen to me, all right?”

  When Max’s attention was fully on Jason, he said, “I want you to go with this lady, her name is Doreen, and I want you to pick out everything you need to paint your monkeys. Big monkeys, little monkeys. A whole room full of monkeys. Understand?”

  Max nodded.

  “Any questions?”

  Max shook his head no.

  “Good. I like a man who can take orders. Now go with Doreen while I work with your mother. Okay?”

  Again Max nodded; then Jason stood and looked at Doreen. She held out her hand to Max; he took it, and the two of them disappeared down the aisles of the art store.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done,” Amy said. “You can’t let a two-year-old have carte blanche in a store. Heaven only knows what he’ll buy and—”

  Taking Amy’s arm, Jason pulled her in the opposite direction. “Come on, let’s get what you need and get out of here. At this rate the president will be here before the murals are started.”

  “Then maybe you should have ordered the supplies before I arrived. I did send a list to Mildred so everything would be ready.”

  “And the supplies were purchased,” Jason said under his breath.

  Amy stopped walking. “Well, then, why are we here buying more?”

  Jason gave a sigh. “You wanted watercolors, so Doreen ordered sets with those tiny squares of watercolors in them.”

  “But I ordered gallons . . . Oh, my. How many of those sets did she order?”

  “Let’s just say that every schoolchild in Kentucky now has a brand-new set of watercolors.”

  “Oh,” Amy said, smiling; then she couldn’t help but laugh. “I hate to ask about the overhead projector.”

  “Did you know that when you turn a slide projector upside down that all the slides fall out?”

  “No, I’ve never tried it. How do you know that that’s what happens?”

  “Because Doreen bought thirteen different brands of them and couldn’t find one that could be used ‘overhead.’ ”

  “I see,” Amy said, trying unsuccessfully not to laugh out loud. “It’s a good thing you’re marrying her, or you’d be broke in another couple of weeks.”

  “Amy, I need to talk to you about that.”

  “Really?” she said. “I hope you aren’t going to tell me anything bad, as it puts my work off when I hear bad news. And Arnie—Ow! What was that for?”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said as he released her arm. “You want to get what you need so we can get out of here?”

  For the next hour and a half Amy concentrated on what she needed to buy for the huge art project ahead of her, and she couldn’t help thinking how wonderful it was to be told that money was no object. It was luxurious in the ultimate to be able to buy the best brands of paint, the best brushes, the best . . . “This is going to cost a lot,” she said, looking up at Jason, but he just shrugged.

  “What else do you need?” He was looking at his watch, obviously bored and wanting to leave the store.

  “Men,” she said, which made him look back at her. “Or women.” She gave him her most innocent smile. “I need at least three of whichever to help me paint.”

  “Taken care of.”

  “That was fast.”

  “You may have heard that I used to run a business and I often did things quickly.”

  “Oh? I do believe I heard something about that. So why did you—? Oh, no,” she said, without finishing her thought.

  Down the aisle, coming toward the cash register, was Max, Doreen following him. Only Max looked liked a young prince leading his elephant, for Doreen was laden with three carry baskets of goods and a paintbrush in her mouth. Only she wasn’t carrying the brush across her teeth as any one else would have done it. No, Doreen had stuck the brush into her mouth so it was sticking out about eighteen inches.

  She went past Jason and Amy, spit the brush out onto the counter, then dumped the three big baskets by the register. Only then did she turn to Amy, and say, “Your kid is weird”; then she walked away.

  “Max, what have you done?” Amy asked, but Max put his hands in his front pockets and tightened his mouth in an expression that Amy didn’t recognize as being just like one of hers.

  But Jason recognized it and laughed.

  “Do you want to buy all of this or not?” the bored clerk said.

  “Sure,” Jason said, just as Amy said, “No!”

  “So which is it?”

  “We’ll take it,” Jason answered, getting out his wallet to hand the young man a platinum American Express card.

  But Amy was going through what her son had chosen to purchase, and she was beginning to agree with Doreen that, if not the child, the child’s purchases were indeed strange. “Max, honey, did you buy one of every brush the store has?” she asked her son.

  Max gave a nod.

  “But what about your colors?” she asked. “What colors are you going to paint your monkeys? And what about the jungle? Are you going to make them live in a jungle?”

  Before Max could answer, Doreen reappeared with four one-gallon cans of black acrylic paint and a step-ladder. “Don’t look at me,” she said. “He only wants black.”

  When Max stood there with his hands in his pockets, his face defiant, Jason laughed more.

  “Don’t encourage him,” Amy snapped. “Max, sweetheart, I think you should get another color besides black, don’t you?”

  “Nope,” Jason said. “He wants black and he’s going to get black. Now, come on, let’s go. We have to get out of here before—”

  “The president comes,” Amy and Doreen said in unison, then laughed at Jason’s scowl. Fifteen minutes later the back of Jason’s Range Rover was filled and they were on their way back to the library.

  And that’s where Amy first met Raphael. He was about seventeen years old, and he had the anger of the world in his eyes, along with an unhealed knife wound on his face.

  She took one look at the young man, then grabbed her son’s hand and started out of the door, but Jason blocked her way.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “He was all I could get on such short notice. The other painter was bringing his assistants, and this boy needs to do community service.”

  “Needs?” she said in a high-pitched voice. “Needs? Or do you mean ‘sentenced to’?”

  When Jason shrugged guiltily, Amy pulled Max to one side.

  “You can’t leave me,” Jason said. “Just because the boy happens to look a little rough—”

  “Rough? He looks like something off a Wanted! poster. How could you think of letting Max around him?”

  “I won’t leave you alone with him. I’ll be here every minute. I’ll carry a gun.”

  “Oh, now, that’s reassuring,” she said sarcastically. She didn’t say any more because Raphael pushed past her and started down the library steps. When Jason grabbed the boy’s arm, he said something in a language Amy couldn’t understand; then, to her surprise, Jason answered him in the same language.

  “Look, Amy, you’ve hurt his feelings, and now he wants to leave. But if he does leave, he’ll have to spend several months in jail. Do you want that on your conscience?”

  Amy could have burst into tears, for she knew when she was defeated. “No, of course not.”

  To her consternation Raphael gave a big grin, then walked back into the library.

  “He never meant to leave,” Amy said under her breath. “He was manipulating me.”

  At that Jason laughed, picked Max up, and took him back into the library.

  And that was just the beginning, Amy thought as she ate the last of her muffin and stared at the fire. After that things were too hectic to pay much attention to any one thi
ng. Once she got started with transferring her drawings onto the walls, she was too busy to think about being afraid of Raphael. All day long a steady stream of girls in ridiculously tiny bits of clothing trouped in and out of the library, all of them posing so Raphael could see them. But Amy had to give it to the young man: he kept his mind on his work and never once did his concentration falter.

  Not so Amy, as her son seemed to have turned into someone she didn’t know. He marched into the room Jason had said was his, Doreen trailing behind him, her arms full of bags of brushes, and closed the door.

  And Amy hadn’t seen him the rest of the day. Here she’d been worried that her son would fall into a traumatic fit if he was away from his mother for more than three hours, but now Amy was thinking that he’d been wanting to get away from her for his whole little life.

  “Don’t be jealous,” Jason said from behind her. “Max probably recognizes that Doreen is his intellectual equal.”

  “I am not jealous!” she snapped. “And stop saying bad things about the woman you love.”

  Then, to add to Amy’s annoyance, Jason didn’t make his usual disclaimer about Doreen, but instead, said, “There are other things to recommend her,” just so Amy could hear him. As he said this, Doreen was walking into the anteroom, and every male in the library stopped to watch her.

  “Drop dead!” Amy said, then stuck her nose in the air and walked away, Jason chuckling behind her.

  But Max didn’t seem to miss Amy at all. In fact, they didn’t see each other all day because Max used Doreen as his emissary.

  “He wants to know what monkeys eat,” Doreen said on her first trip out of the Land of Secrecy, as Amy had immediately dubbed it after Max had told Doreen not to allow anyone, including his mother, inside the room.

  “What do I know?” Amy said over her shoulder. “I’m only his mother.”

  “Vegetation,” Jason said. “Tree leaves.”

  Doreen went back into the room, but she came out again almost immediately. “He wants pictures of what monkeys eat.”

  When Amy opened her mouth to speak, Jason said, “Let me”; then he went into the stacks and came back with some books on monkeys and their habitat. One of the books was Japanese.

  Doreen took the books into the room, but she was soon out again, one of the books in her hand. “He says he wants more books like this one. I don’t know what he means, ’cause it looks like all the others to me.”

  “Japanese art,” Jason said as he disappeared into the stacks again, returning with his arms laden.

  As Doreen took them, she said, “He’s a weird kid.”

  At four o’clock, Mildred showed up with three baskets full of food and told Amy she was taking her out to “lunch.”

  “Lunch was hours ago,” Amy said as she studied the color of the face of one of the horses she was trying to paint.

  “And did you have any?” Mildred asked.

  Amy didn’t answer, so Mildred took her arm and pulled her toward the entrance door. “But I—”

  “They’re men. They’re not going to work if there’s food around, so we have about thirty-seven minutes all to ourselves.”

  “But Max—”

  “Seems to be in love with Doreen from what I’ve seen.”

  Amy grimaced. “How long were you watching us?”

  Mildred didn’t answer until they were seated in a booth in a coffee shop across the road, their orders placed, and drinks put in front of them. “I was only there for minutes, but Lisa Holding was in the library earlier to check out a book on abnormal psychology—actually she’s engaged to the banker’s boy, but she’s got the hots for Raphael, so she went to see him—and she told her cousin, who told my hairdresser, who told me that—”

  “Told you everything that’s going on,” Amy finished for her.

  “Of course. We’re all dying to know what’s going on between you and Jason.”

  “Nothing is going on, really nothing. All the men in there are so hot for Doreen that all work stops every time she slinks in and out of that room. Even my own son—” Amy paused to take a breath.

  “Jealous,” Mildred said, nodding. “I know the feeling.”

  “I am not jealous. Will all of you stop saying that?”

  “Jason told you you were jealous?”

  Amy took a drink of her Coke and swallowed, refusing to answer her mother-in-law.

  “When Billy was a baby, we were never apart for the first year of his life; then my sister kept him one afternoon and that night Billy refused to let me put him to bed.”

  When Amy didn’t answer, Mildred said, “So how are you and Jason getting along? Has he proposed yet?”

  Amy didn’t say anything but looked down at the club sandwich that had just been set before her. “I know this is a game to you, but I don’t want to make a mistake like I made last time.”

  “You want to talk to me?” Mildred said softly. “I’m a good listener.”

  “I want to get to know Jason. I want to spend time with him. I made a big mistake the first time I got married, and I don’t want to do it again.”

  She looked up at Mildred with pleading eyes. She wanted to talk to someone, but she was well aware that this woman had been Billy’s mother. “I don’t want to think what my life would have been like if I were still married to Billy. And one of the few things I know about Jason is that he lies well. He lied to me about being gay, about why he wanted to move in with me, and about why he needed a home. In fact, everything I knew about him was a lie.”

  She took a breath. “So now I’ve been told that he’s been searching for me for two years, but what does he really know about me, about my son? And what kind of man is he really? Can he take a joke as well as play one?”

  Mildred smiled at Amy and said, “With the kind of money Jason has, who cares what kind of sense of humor he has?”

  “Me. I care and your grandson cares.”

  “You’re a hard woman to please.”

  “No, I just want to get it right this time. This time I have to think about a man who will be a good father to my son. I don’t want Max to get attached to a man, then have the man leave when the going gets rough.”

  “Or put something in a needle and get out that way,” Mildred said softly.

  “Exactly.”

  Mildred smiled. “You’ve grown up, haven’t you?”

  “Maybe. During the last two years I think I was able to find out who I am and what I’m capable of. I can take care of myself and my son if I need to. In fact, I can make quite a nice life for the two of us. And I’m proud and happy to have found that out.”

  Mildred reached for Amy’s hand. “And I’m glad you aren’t after a man for his money. So tell me all about Jason and Doreen. Tell me everything.”

  It was nearly six when Amy got back to the library to find a furious Jason.

  “Are you going to take a two-hour lunch every day?” he said to her.

  “If I feel like it,” Amy said without blinking an eye.

  “She was on the phone to her beloved fiancé,” Mildred said. “Love like theirs takes time. I think he might come to see her next week.”

  Jason’s scowl deepened. “In the future, please conduct your personal life on your own time. Now, could we get back to work?”

  Amy looked at her mother-in-law and couldn’t decide whether to be pleased by her comment or exasperated.

  Mildred felt no ambiguity about the situation. “Don’t worry,” she said, “you can thank me later.” With that she turned on her heel and left the library.

  So Amy went back to work, even working through the delicious dinner that Charles showed up with. “I owe everything to your son, who has the taste buds of a gourmet,” he said over Amy’s shoulder.

  She glanced around to see everyone eating, Max ensconced in the middle, a plate full of food before him. He didn’t so much as look up at his mother.

  At nine o’clock, Amy decided that Max had to get to bed, whether he wanted to or not, and
that’s when she found out that the Abernathy Room door had been locked against her and other intruders. Annoyed, she tapped on the door, and Doreen answered.

  “It’s time he went home and went to bed,” Amy said. “This is too late for him to stay up.”

  “All right, I’ll ask him,” Doreen said; then to Amy’s further annoyance, she shut the door against her.

  Seconds later Max came out, rubbing his eyes from sleepiness, and Amy felt guilty that she had allowed him to stay up so late. Outside, she strapped him in the car seat in the car Mildred had lent her and drove Max home.

  And that’s when the trouble started, for Max would not go to sleep. He was usually a good-natured child, but that night he was a demon. He screamed at the top of his lungs, and when Amy picked him up, he straightened out his arms and legs so rigidly that she couldn’t get him into the bed.

  At eleven he was still fighting, and Amy could not figure out what was wrong with him—and Max only screamed, “No!”

  “I’m going to call Jason,” Mildred shouted over Max’s screams as she picked up the telephone.

  “What good would that do?” Amy shouted back. “Please, please, Max, tell Mommie what’s wrong,” she said for the thousandth time, but Max just yelled and cried, his little face red, his nose stuffed.

  “Anything, anything,” Amy said as Mildred dialed the phone.

  Within minutes Jason was there, and from the look of him he had still been working. He hadn’t showered and his clothes had paint on them.

  But Jason’s presence had no effect on Max. “Poor ol’ man,” he said as he tried to take him from an exhausted Amy, but Max wanted nothing to do with him.

  “I have an idea,” he said at last. “Let’s take him home.”

  “Home?” Amy said. “You mean we get on a plane at this time of night?”

  “No, I mean his real home.” Jason didn’t give Amy time to say more as he took Max from her, the boy fighting him, carried him outside, and strapped Max into a car seat. By this time the child was too tired to fight, but he still cried.

  Amy got into the passenger seat and watched in amazement as Jason drove them through town to . . . At first she couldn’t believe her eyes. He pulled into the driveway of what had once been the derelict old house that she and Billy had owned. When she left, she knew that the property would revert to Mildred because she had co-signed on the mortgage, so Amy hadn’t concerned herself about the house. She’d assumed that Mildred had sold it, maybe for the building materials, as it wasn’t worth much else.