T
HE night that followed was one of the worst in Lee’s life. She was left utterly decimated by the rift between her and Sam while at the same time she realized she must buck up her spirits to face her sons. She damned Sam Brown for bringing this emotional turmoil into her life at a time that was already rife with it. Facing the boys brought again that sick-sweet lifting of the heart that was half joy, half pain, and as she knelt to greet them, it was with a foreknowledge that this visit was somehow doomed from the start.
Jed and Matthew had grown so much since she’d seen them. At six and eight, they now resisted her hello hugs. Telling herself not to feel slighted, she backed off, realizing she seemed strange to them and that it would take them a while to warm up. They loved her new townhouse, though, and claimed their new beds with exuberance and a few surprised “wows.” They fell upon P. Ewing, seeming to have missed him more than their mother, and she looked on with heartsick emptiness, remembering how she and Joel had decided to get the cat because they’d been fighting more and more and thought the pet would be good for the boys.
Daddy, they said, was fine, and they liked his new wife, Tisha, real good. Tisha made the best lasagna in the world. No, Lee answered her younger son when he asked, she wasn’t too handy at lasagna. How about spaghetti? But it seemed Matthew had lost the fetish for spaghetti she remembered.
They squealed with glee at her suggestion that she take them to a pro football game the second day they were there. But they didn’t know the Kansas City players’ names and before long squirmed in their seats and became occasionally disruptive, teasing each other and punching playfully, their bouncing and boisterousness drawing unfavorable glances from people in nearby seats. They left the game after the third quarter. On the way home Lee learned that soccer was their favorite game now. Daddy was coaching their team, and Tisha came to every game.
On Monday Lee won their hearts by taking them on an all-day outing to Worlds of Fun amusement park. They rode the Zulu, Orient Express, and Scream-roller until Lee’s feet hurt from standing around waiting. But after each ride she shared their renewed delight and robbed her pitifully poor pocketbook again and again for the junkfood they wanted. She forgot to bring suntan lotion, so by the end of the day the boys were both burned, thus irritable and uncomfortable in bed that night.
In her own bed, she thought about Sam and the day they’d ridden the Zambezi Zinger, but the day that had been so happy then only brought a bittersweet pang now and made her cry miserably. She missed him terribly, even while she hated him for the hurt he’d caused her. She considered calling him, but her emotional equilibrium was already strained to its limits by being with the boys again.
The boys. They hardly seemed like her sons anymore, and she felt increasingly inadequate. Nothing she did seemed right for their needs while everything Tisha did must be perfect. Tomorrow, she vowed, she’d make no mistakes.
That day she took them to the sixty-acre Swope Park Zoo with its six hundred animals. But they’d been to Florida’s Busch Gardens last year and had ridden down the African Safari Ride, where elephants spray you while you go past. The Swope trip seemed a definite second best to her sons.
Each night when they were asleep in their twin beds, Lee stepped to the doorway of their room and studied the dark heads on the pale pillow cases, and tears clogged her throat. At those moments, the disastrous days paled and were forgotten. She was desperately happy to have them here. The two sleeping children were hers again, flesh of her flesh, beings of her making. She loved them in a terrifying way, yet knew with a keen, piercing certainty that their stepmother’s love was far more influential than her own. Soon she would become a shadow figure to them. Perhaps she already was.
Matthew had a bad dream the next night and awakened in tears. She sat on the edge of the bed while the backs of his sunburned hands smeared tears across his cheeks and he cried, “Where’s Mommy?”
“I’m here, darling,” she answered soothingly.
But, disoriented and accustomed to the securities of his life in another home, he cried, “No-o-o, I want Mommy.”
By Friday both Jed and Matthew were discussing their friends at home and making plans for what they were going to play when they got back.
On Saturday they produced money “Mommy” had given them to buy a gift for Daddy. Lee took them to the store of stores—Halls, in the Crown Center—where there were items like nowhere else in the world. They bought Daddy a bar of soap shaped like a microphone so that he could sing in the shower.
On Sunday Lee dressed them each in a brand new outfit she’d bought and waited anxiously for their father to come and pick them up. She wondered what her reaction to Joel would be and felt a quailing in her stomach as the doorbell rang. The boys catapulted to answer it. But with him they babbled mostly about all the exciting things they’d done during the week. It was to Tisha, waiting in the car, to whom they ran with arms extended.
Joel looked healthy and happy, watching the boys gallop across the lawn before he turned to her. She surveyed him with immense relief and realized he no longer posed a threat to her emotions. At some point she had stopped loving him, and she could face him now, comfortable with the fact.
“How are you, Lee?”
“Oh, I’m fine. Things are going well with my new job, and I’ve got the house now, and . . .” Her eyes wandered down the sidewalk to the boys, then back to Joel’s face. “You and Tisha are doing a wonderful job with them, Joel.”
“Thanks.” He stood relaxed before her. “We’re expecting another one in February.”
“Well, congratulations!” She smiled. “I . . . well, please tell Tisha the same.”
“I will.” He made a move to leave and for the first time seemed slightly uncomfortable. “Well, I guess the guys will see you again at Christmas.”
“Yes.” The word sounded forlorn.
“Boys,” Joel called, “come and kiss your mother good-bye.”
They returned on the run, gave Lee the required kiss, then forgot everything except getting back into the car as fast as they could.
When they were gone, Lee wandered about the house like a lost soul, hugging her arms. The kitchen smelled like cherry popsicles and she found one melting down the sink, dropped there hastily when she’d said their daddy had arrived. She picked up the stick and threw it away, then rinsed the red liquid down the drain. But the pink stain remained. She stared at it for a long, long time until it grew wavery. A tear dripped down and landed beside it on the almond-colored porcelain, and a moment later she leaned an elbow on the sink edge and sobbed wretchedly. The sound of her crying made her weep all the harder, echoing as it did into the empty room.
My babies.
She clutched her stomach and let misery overwhelm her, leaning her face against her forearm until it grew slick. Her sobbing became so choppy and prolonged that it robbed Lee of breath, and she felt her knees buckle. She moved to the kitchen table and fell into a chair, dropping her head forward on her arms, crying until she thought there could be no more moisture in her body.
Where’s Mommy?
P. Ewing came and rubbed up against her leg and purred, bringing a renewed freshet of misery. She needed a tissue, but had none in the kitchen, so she stumbled upstairs and blew her nose and dried her eyes. Clutching a handful of soggy tissues against her nose and mouth, she leaned against the bedroom doorway and felt her grief renewed at the sight of the twin beds and the pennants on the wall above them. Her head fell tiredly against the doorframe, and she cried until her throat and chest ached.
I love you, Jed. I love you, Matthew.
Her misery seemed to have eternal life. The convulsive sobs continued until her head was bursting, and she dragged herself to the bathroom for two aspirins. But at the sight of her ravaged face in the mirror, more tears burned her swollen eyelids and she thought that if she didn’t hear the sound of another human voice soon, she would most certainly die.
She stumbled down to the kitchen and dialed, seeking help from the only person who could solace her. When she heard his voice, she tried to calm her own, but she lost control and sucked in unexpected gulps of air in the middle of words.
“Ss . . . S . . . ham?”
A moment of silence, then his concerned voice, “Lee, is that you?”
“S . . . Sam . . .” She couldn’t get anything else out.
“Lee, what’s the matter?” He sounded panicked.
“Oh, S . . . Sam, In. . . need you so b . . . bad.” A huge sob broke from her as she clutched the receiver with both hands.
“Lee, are you hurt?”
“No . . . No, n . . . not hurt . . . j . . . just hurting. Please . . . c . . . come . . .”
“Where are you?”
“At h . . . home,” she choked.
“I’m coming.”
When the line clicked, her arm wilted toward the floor with the phone dangling from her lifeless fingers and she begged him, “Pl . . . please hurry.”
She was sitting slumped over the kitchen table ten minutes later when Sam Brown ran up the walk and burst through the front door. He skidded to a halt in the middle of the hall, chest heaving. “Lee?” He caught sight of her as she flew out of her chair. They met in the middle of the hall. She flung herself against him, sobbing abjectly and clinging to his comforting body as she burrowed into him.
“S . . . Sam, oh, Sam . . . h . . . hold me.”
He crushed her to him protectively. “Lee, what is it? Are you all right?”
Her body was heaving so much no answer was possible just then. He closed his eyes and pressed a cheek against her disheveled hair as hot tears melded his shirt and his collarbone. Her tormented body was wracked by shudders so he wound his arms around her tightly, waiting for her to calm down.
“Sam . . . Sam . . .” she sobbed wretchedly, over and over.
Never had a body felt so good. His hard chest and arms were a haven of familiarity. His scent and texture comforted immeasurably while he stood like a rock, his feet widespread, his long length shielding her. Forgotten were the hurts they’d caused each other. All forgotten was the pain of separation. Barriers fell as she sought his strength, and he gave it willingly.
“I’m here,” he assured her, spanning the back of her head with a wide hand and pressing her securely to him. “Tell me.”
“My b . . . boys, m . . . my babies,” she choked, the simple words becoming an outpouring of her soul while he remained unflinching, the solid foundation of her life.
“They were here?”
She could only nod against his neck.
“And now they’re gone?”
Again she nodded and felt him stroke her hair. She pulled back. “How l . . . long have you known?”
His hands spanned almost the entire circumference of her head while his thumbs stroked the tears that were her healing. “Almost since the beginning.”
She looked up through a bleary haze while her heart swelled with love for him. “Oh, Sam, I was s . . . so afraid to t . . . tell you.” She buried herself against him.
“Why?” His voice was thick, and she heard in it vestiges of the hurt she’d caused and promised herself she would make it up to him. “Couldn’t you trust me?”
Fresh tears spouted again while she clung to him. “I was so af . . . afraid of what you’d th . . . think of me.” Her shoulders shook even as relief overwhelmed her because he knew at last.
“Shh, don’t cry. Come here.” He pushed her back gently and slipped an arm around her shoulders, urging her toward the stairs. He sat down on the third step and tugged her down between his knees on the step below, then pulled her back against him. His broad forearm crossed her chest and hugged her tightly while he squeezed her upper arm and rested his chin against the top of her hair. “Now tell me everything.”
“I wanted to tell you the l . . . last time we were together. I wanted to so badly, b . . . but I didn’t know what you’d think about a . . . a mother who had her kids taken away from her in a divorce court.”
His lips pressed the top of her head. “Darling, I saw their beds the first day I came here. I’ve been waiting since then for you to tell me about it.”
“You’ve known all that time. Oh, Sam, why didn’t you ask?”
“I did once, but you let me believe they had died, and I realized then that
you
had to tell me. And that last night we were together, I . . . oh God, Cherokee, I’m so sorry for what I did. But it damn near killed me that you couldn’t trust me enough to tell me then. I’ve had a miserable week, thinking of how I’ve hurt you and wondering if my suspicions about your kids were right. At times I even found myself wondering if you were with your ex-husband, and I told myself if you were, it was no more than I deserved.” His arm tightened perceptibly across her chest.
“No, not that. He’s married again and they’re expecting another baby.”
“You saw him this week, too?”
“Yes, he came to pick up the boys just before I called you.”
“They live with him, then?” His quiet questions encouraged her to talk about them, and she marveled at having a man who understood her needs so well. His warm palm caressed her bare arm, and his voice was very soft and compelling.
“What are their names?”
She brushed his forearm and felt his breath warm on the top of her head. “Jed and Matthew.” Just pronouncing their names brought a sharp sense of renewed heartache. She sat quietly for a long moment, thinking of their empty beds upstairs. But she rested her head against Sam’s chest and drew strength from him as she continued. “Oh, Sam, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over l . . . losing them. That day in the courtroom was like . . . like judgment day, and I’ve been in hell ever since. It was totally unexpected. My lawyer was just as dumbfounded as I was when the judge declared that he was giving custody of the boys to Joel. But Joel had a high-powered attorney, one he could afford, and I had a less experienced one that I couldn’t afford. I just never dreamed I’d lose. My attorney kept telling me there was something called the ‘tender years concept,’ meaning basically that little kids need their mother. The boys were only three and five then. But the judge said the court found it would be in the best interest of the children to have a strong male role model.” Lee pulled away from Sam’s body, crossed her arms on her knees, and rested her head on them. “Male role model, for God’s sake. I didn’t even know what it meant.”