Cold Tea On A Hot Day

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“Which ones do you like?” Marilee asked the children.

Corrine, not quite meeting Marilee’s gaze, shrugged her small shoulders. Her eyes slid again to the flowers.

“I need some daisies,” Marilee said, reaching for a bouquet. “Absolutely need them.”

One thing she intended to teach Corrine was a hard-learned lesson she herself had experienced, and that was that beauty was a necessary part of life. She felt society in general had forgotten this, and that fact might just be a major cause of wars. Often, against every cell in her body that told her to be frugal, she would buy flowers or a pretty picture, because she felt her very life might depend on it.

“You can both choose a bouquet for yourselves,” she told the children as she examined the bouquet she had chosen, peering at little purple things that looked suspiciously like weeds.

Willie Lee wanted Marilee to pick him up so he could see better, which she did, and he gleefully pulled a bouquet of red carnations from one of the tubs.

“Cor-rine, you like yel-low,” he said.

Corrine chose very slowly and reverently a bouquet of yellow daisies and white carnations.

“Oh, those are lovely, Corrine.”

“Mun-ro needs flow-ers, too.”

“He can enjoy ours,” Marilee told her son.

Her son sighed heavily and bent to let the dog sniff his flowers.

Pulling a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse, she had Corrine help her figure out the total cost of the three bouquets, which Corrine did with amazing speed. Then Marilee handed the bill to Corrine and told her to go inside and pay Mr. Grace.

Corrine hesitated, and Marilee wondered if she had asked too much of the painfully shy girl, but Willie Lee spoke up and said, “Mun-ro says he will go with you, Cor-ine,” and indeed, the dog stood ready at the girl’s side.

Corrine turned, and Marilee watched her niece’s oh, so slight figure disappear into the store. She felt like hurrying after her, to be there beside her, guarding for any type of hurt that might come her way.

Then, peering through the window while trying not to appear to be peering, Marilee saw Corrine walk up to the cash register and hand up the money to Fred Grace. Munro stood right at Corrine’s leg, his head next to her knee, looking upward, too. Fred handed down Corrine’s change, and then out Corrine and Munro came, a smile playing at the girl’s lips.

“Thank you, Aunt Marilee,” she said softly, depositing the change in Marilee’s hand.

“Thank you, Corrine. And Munro.” She and Corrine grinned at each other.

The three of them, accompanied by the dog, started down the sidewalk. Marilee, seized by a warm happiness, felt certain they were all walking straighter and marveled at the power of a handful of colorful flowers. The few people they passed along the way smiled, and one man tipped his ballcap.

The colorful flowers gave way to a spontaneous idea.

“Let’s grow our own.” Marilee looked at the children. “Let’s have a garden.”

Willie Lee gave back an enthused, “Yes,” and Corrine raised an eyebrow, as if wondering if it could be done.

At the temporary plastic greenhouse set up at MacCoy’s Feed and Grain, they ran everywhere at once, picking out flats of pansies and the biggest marigolds in the world. Corrine liked the blue cornflowers. Then the tomato plants looked so perky, and the idea of sweet homegrown tomatoes seemed so inviting, that Marilee got a half dozen of them.

The revolving stand of crisp and colorful seed packets caught Willie Lee’s attention. When Marilee went to pull him away, she selected several packets.

Into the back of the Cherokee went containers of perky little plants, seed packets, bags of fertilizer, a new shovel for Marilee, and two small-size shovels for the children, all paid for with the ease of a card. Felt like she wasn’t even spending money.

They sped home, where the first business was to get their cut flowers into vases of water. Marilee, determined to make everything a learning opportunity, showed the children how to cut the stems slanted to soak up the water and taught them as much as she knew about how flowers took water up their stems.

Afterward they trooped out to the backyard and hauled out shovels and their tender plants and seed packets. Watching Willie Lee attack the ground the best he could with his small shovel, Marilee found her hopes resurface for being able to teach her son simple skills that would enable him to function on a more or less adequate scale with everyday living in the world. Perhaps he would not ever be able to read or to count sufficiently, but learning to plant and grow and cut, and to clean up after himself, would see him a long way when his mother was no longer available to care for him.

Seven

Points of View

“What’s for supper?” Parker asked after giving Marilee a kiss on the cheek.

“I have no idea.”

Sprawled on the couch, having been gazing blankly at the television news, she felt incapable of any endeavor involving getting up and moving around.

“We dug a garden today. Shovels, half the backyard.” At least it had seemed like half.

“Why didn’t you go rent a tiller?” He shifted her legs over and sat beside her.

“I didn’t plan to make it fifteen by fifteen. I just wanted a small garden for the children to grow some flowers, but then I saw the tomato plants, and they came in a container of six, and then Willie Lee saw the cantaloupe seed packets and wanted to grow those—they always put seeds in packets with beautiful pictures of perfect fruit, without all the hard work and bugs. I was just as bad as Willie Lee—I got carried away and bought zucchini seeds because of the picture, and I didn’t remember the awful bugs until I was on the way home. Anyway, I figured before planting the seeds, we needed to get the ground turned and let it sit there for the grass to die.

“I don’t know. It just seemed to…mushroom,” she ended lamely.

She really was unclear as to how she and two children had gotten into digging up a good portion of the backyard. Thinking of it now, she was amazed at the accomplishment, and as Parker began massaging her legs, she told him all about the activity with the children, painting word pictures of their funny antics for him. She had enjoyed digging in the dirt, had gone at it with a vengeance, for which she was now paying.

“Why weren’t the children in school?” Parker asked, having now worked himself upward to leaning over and nuzzling her neck.

Marilee, vaguely aware of his scent and the warm, moist touch of his lips on her neck, realized she had not told him of her decision to remove the children from school.

“I took them out of school for the remainder of the school year,” she said, now experiencing a rising certainty for the decision.

Parker quit nuzzling her neck and sat up. “You took them out of school?”

“Yes, there are less than three weeks left of the school year anyway.” Seeing the disapproval bloom on his face, her certainty faltered. She realized two things at once: she had counted on his approval, and she had not been paying sufficient attention to his manly attentions moments earlier. No man was ever happy to have his advances ignored.

She felt at fault and annoyed at the same time. She was tired and not in the mood to deal with his male needs, nevertheless, this seemed a poor attitude on her part, so she sat up and tried to work up the stamina required of her.

“I believe that more than anything they can learn in the few remaining weeks of school, the children need to be secure and reassured,” she said. “They need to be home for a while.”

“What about your job?”

She saw he was determined to focus on obstacles, instead of swinging immediately into support.

She went on to explain her reasoning for her actions, which had begun to sound truly logical and reasonable when she had told it all to Aunt Vella, yet, in the light of Parker’s expression now, Marilee had to work hard to keep on track.

“Tate doesn’t have a problem with me working at home. He’s giving us all laptop computers. Hooking them up on a network. I had already planned to try to work half days at home during the summer, anyway.”

She thought that despite whatever Parker might be thinking behind his frown, her enthusiasm to proceed with what she saw as a viable healing endeavor for her children remained intact. She became more annoyed at Parker for not immediately grasping this concept.

“I know there is a curriculum available,” she said, continuing to explain her plans for educating the children, “and I’ve heard of some support groups that I want to investigate. I’m going to draw up something for them to study every day. Especially Corrine. She is really smart, and one of her problems at school may have been boredom. Would you discuss ideas with me over supper? I want to start putting a plan in place for the summer.”

If she could get Parker involved, he would come around. And, while she considered herself fully intelligent, she thought Parker better at critical, organized thinking. He could be, if he would apply himself, a great deal of help.

Parker, however, gave a remote shrug that Marilee did not find at all an acceptable reaction. She told herself not to be surprised. Parker could get into a very remote mood, as could every man of her experience.

But here she was more or less inviting him into her life, and he was not responding with any small bit of gusto. She supposed she wanted too much from him, and she felt at fault but couldn’t figure out why, other than that her plans had brought on his disapproval. She felt herself getting all jangled inside, and angry because of it.

When the telephone rang, she grabbed it, as if grabbing some remedy for the conflicting moment. Unfortunately, she heard her mother on the other end of the line.

“Marilee? Marilee, this is your mother.” Her mother had the habit of saying her name twice.

“Yes, Mom.”

Her mother wanted Marilee to take her car for new tires tomorrow.

As Marilee listened to this, Parker stepped close and whispered, “Ask her to take the kids for the evening.”

Marilee, amazed that he would suggest such a thing, scowled at him. “I can’t do it tomorrow, Mom. I can on Saturday.”

Why couldn’t she take it tomorrow, her mother wanted to know.

“Ask her…” He encircled her from behind and whispered in her ear about how they could drop the kids off at her mother’s house.

She wiggled away from him and tried to think of how to put her mother and the tires off until Saturday without getting into a long explanation of having taken the children out of school. She finally got the arrangements straight, promising to go up to Lawton on Saturday morning for tire shopping.

“I have to go fix supper now, Mom. I’ll see you Saturday.” She hung up with a hard click and looked at Parker, who had turned from her and was stroking the back of his head.

“You know I do not leave the children with my mother. She does not want the care of them. She won’t half watch them, and I am not going to leave them up there at her house, with her husband drinking every night.” She wondered what in the world had gotten into him to suggest such a thing.

“Marilee, I want us to go out to dinner. The kids will be okay at your Mom’s for a couple of hours. So what if Carl gets drunk? He doesn’t bother the kids.”

She gazed at him for several seconds, knowing he could not understand that taking them to her mother’s was the same as setting them adrift for a few hours on a vast, turbulent ocean. The thought of it scared the daylights out of her.

“Corrine has had enough of that,” she said flatly.

She averted her gaze, biting back all manner of words she was certain she would regret. She could not sort out what she truly felt. Likely she was overreacting, as was her habit. She just had to get some sort of control of herself.

“How ‘bout gettin’ a baby-sitter for the kids, then?” Parker asked.

“I am too tired to shower and dress, much less call to get a baby-sitter on last-minute notice,” she said, unwilling to move in body or mind. “Besides, I have my pieces for Sunday’s issue to write tonight.” She would have to be writing more at nights now, and she thought him shortsighted not to get this point.

“But I can make hamburgers,” she offered, swept with the urge to make up for her stubbornness, “and you can sit at the table and talk to me while I cook.”

This would mean energy spent on cooking, which she should save for her writing job. How much easier if he would have been just as pleased with a can of soup thrown on the stove.

But hamburgers were Parker’s very favorite food, as long as there were buns to go with them—Parker would not eat a hamburger on plain bread. Marilee was fairly certain she had buns in the freezer, and she wanted him to talk with her about the children. She wanted him to understand. She wanted him to share.

He did not fall into the plan with enthusiasm, but he did fall in and follow her into the kitchen, where he went straight to the refrigerator and pulled himself out a canned cold drink, while she peered out the back door to check on the children, who were playing in the dirt at the corner of their newly turned garden. At least Willie Lee was digging in the dirt for some reason, with Munro lying in it and watching. Corrine was sitting nearby in a yard chair; Corrine was a neat person who seemed to avoid dirt.

Seeing the children thus apparently contentedly occupied, and finding hamburger buns in the freezer, Marilee’s spirits revived somewhat, and she had hope that she could set everything right with Parker by serving up both a good meal and the correct, upbeat attitude.

She set about winning him over as she went about preparing supper. She told him of her plans for the summer with the children. She hoped to better prepare them for school in the fall, and to enable herself to take a more forward part of their education, even when they went back to school. She felt she had been expecting too much from the school, a place made for the masses, to deal with the special particulars of her children’s needs. It was her responsibility as a parent to see to those particular needs.

Parker, who had settled himself at the table with his cold drink, waiting for his supper to be served, replied to her remarks with “Hmms” and “Yes, I guess you can do that,” all basically cautionary in nature, and all much less than satisfying.

Finally Marilee said, “Parker, I really would appreciate some support here.”

To which he replied with raised eyebrows, “I’m listening.”

“But you do not seem to be putting forth helpful ideas,” Marilee said. “I do want your ideas, Parker.”

“I don’t think you want my ideas. You already have your mind set.”

She gazed at him, telling herself not to overreact. One thing that she felt always got her into a lot of trouble was her habit of getting so emotional. Both Stuart and Parker had often accused her of this, and she determined at that minute not to give Parker ammunition.

“One thing you need to think about,” Parker said, “is what Anita might think of you takin’ her daughter out of school.”

“Anita wasn’t seeing that Corrine got to school half the time,” Marilee answered, stung to the core. “And I don’t see that she is here, making any of the decisions.”

“Anita is still her mother. You’re makin’ all these plans for a child that isn’t yours. You’re gettin’ way too involved, Marilee. You are referring to Corrine as your child. What if Anita shows up tonight at the door and wants to take her daughter with her? What are you goin’ to do then?”

“I don’t know,” Marilee said. “I’m just tryin’ to deal with ‘right now’ the best I can. I won’t worry about ‘then’ until it happens.”

Now that he had brought the concern to the front of her mind, she experienced fear of exactly that happening. This made her angrier at him for making her more fearful.

“And I don’t know what you expect me to do. Should I just drop Corrine? Not look after her to the best of my ability? Well, who is goin’ to do it, then?”

Clamping her mouth shut, she turned to the stove to remove the hamburgers from the hot pan before they burned. She herself was burning pretty good and didn’t want to say something she would regret.

Parker didn’t say anything more about it, and Marilee found this good thinking on his part.

The atmosphere at the supper table proved strained, despite all Marilee’s good intentions for happiness. She and Parker were patently polite to each other in front of the children. Corrine’s dark eyes moved from Marilee to Parker in a furtive fashion, and seeing this, Marilee brought up the subject of their gardening and the fun they had enjoyed. She managed to get Corrine to smile.

It had been a good idea, Marilee realized. The children had rosy faces. They had been outside, where they needed to be in the spring, and she had the sudden inspiration that tomorrow she would keep them outside most of the day. There were a lot of things she could teach them outside. So many things that must be experienced and could not be found in books. Being stuck at desks in school had no doubt been a major problem for them. They were souls who at this time needed to be out in the sun. And she could give them that.

The thought so pleased her that in a flush of warmth for everyone, she looked at Parker and smiled. He saw and smiled in return.

Marilee and Parker were alone in the lamplight in the living room. After supper Willie Lee had, with the innocence of an untroubled mind, simply lain down on the kitchen rug beside Munro, closed his eyes and gone instantly to sleep. Marilee had put him to bed in his underwear and simply wiped his hands with a damp rag; he had not awakened. Corrine was in the bath.

Parker wanted to make out.

“Corrine will be coming out of the bathroom any minute,” Marilee said, pushing away from him after a particularly stimulating kiss that in truth she was reluctant to end. But the idea that Corrine might see them in a sexual encounter, even one with all their clothes on, was unnerving.