*****
Someone was moving stealthily
around in her bedroom, or at least they were making an attempt at stealth. She
opened her eyes cautiously, confused by the identity of her visitor, and then
doubly confused by her whereabouts. That’s not my clock radio on the
nightstand… wait…it’s Kel’s. Disorientation gave way to recognition. She
was, in fact, home after all.
She rolled over silently and
watched him quietly ricochet from bathroom to bureau to closet in an attempt to
locate an entire outfit suitable for work. The concept of matching, she
thought ruefully, isn’t an issue. I really have to do something about his
wardrobe. His task was complicated by the fact that last night’s attempt to
organize the bedroom had been abandoned in favor of more celebratory
activities. This had been her first night in his - no, she corrected
herself - their home. They’d both taken yesterday off to get the
remainder of her belongings transferred from her apartment to his house. She
smiled at the memory of Kel scooping her up in his arms and carrying her over
the threshold.
“Aren’t you supposed to do
this after we’re married?” she asked.
“Well, consider this a
rehearsal since you refuse to get married now.”
“Kel, I told you,” she
explained again, “I only plan on getting married once, and I want a real
wedding. That takes planning, weeks if not months of planning, and I have
absolutely no desire to waddle down the aisle, six months pregnant, looking
like a pear in white chiffon. End of discussion.”
“You’re awake.” He was
peering at her. She hadn’t even heard him approach the bed. “Did I wake you?
I’m sorry. I tried to be quiet.”
She wound the sheet around
herself and sat up slowly, mindful of the morning sickness that still
occasionally plagued her. “No, you
didn’t wake me up.”
He sat down gingerly. “You
feel okay?”
“Kel, I’m fine. Really.
Please stop worrying.”
You had to give him credit;
he’d quickly learned to accept her rebuffs of his excessive concern rather
well. “So, what have you got planned for today?” he asked.
“Well, I thought I’d start by
getting everything put away in here, since I didn’t get to it last night.”
“Yes, well…” he had the grace
to blush.
“Not that I’m complaining,”
she added.
“That’s good. I wouldn’t want
any complaints.”
“Then I
thought I’d start unpacking some of my boxes, after all you keep telling me
it’s my home too, so I should ‘change
whatever I want’.”
“Maybe, you never know. Then
again I might start with cleaning out the closet in the spare…the nursery.” The
nursery…that would still take some getting used to. “It sounds like it’s a
repository for heaven-knows-what.”
“Dix, don’t lift – ”
She stopped him in mid-nag,
“I promise anything over ten pounds I will leave for you, okay?”
“Okay.” He checked his watch.
“I need to get going. I’ll be home sometime between five and six,” he grinned
“What?” “It’s nice, having someone to
come home to.” He leaned in to kiss her goodbye. “I love you. Take care of Scooter.”
Scooter. ‘The
baby’ he had explained, sounded too impersonal and you couldn’t just say ‘him’
or ‘her’, what if you picked the wrong sex? So he’d decided that the baby
needed a nickname, something suitable for a boy or a girl, and he’d decided on ‘Scooter’.
It almost made sense if you thought about it. Scooter, she shared with her
newest confidant, Daddy’s been spending just a little too much time with Johnny
Gage. ******** She’d
started with their bedroom. Without help or interruption, and mercifully spared
a bout of morning sickness, she had everyone’s clothes separated and organized
in no time and her suitcases tucked away in the bedroom closet. The temptation
to edit his clothing had been almost irresistible, but she’d decided that it
was bad form to begin remaking him less than twenty-four hours after moving in.
He ought to be allowed some grace period. Especially considering what was
probably about to happen to his house. After a
shower she headed into the kitchen for breakfast. Taking her toast and juice in
hand, she’d promised to give up coffee for the duration of her pregnancy, she
wandered through house taking stock of her new kingdom. She walked through the dining
room and stopped to look through the window to watch it rain on the front yard.
Plants would be nice along the porch. Maybe some flowers in big terra cotta
pots. She continued on into the living room, taking a seat on one corner of
the couch. For a man with such an under-developed fashion sense, his house was
remarkably well decorated. Spartan, not much in the way of ornamentation, but
the furniture was nice. The couch and chairs in the living room were a buttery
soft charcoal-colored leather, the rest of the furniture a beautiful oak in
simplistic Mission style. She’d discovered his secret over a box of china. They’d waded
through his-and-hers kitchen implements and a minor skirmish over whose dishes
to use, when he acquiesced to her pattern by adding, “Okay, we’ll use yours
since we’ve got my china.” “China? You have china?” “Uh huh. Well, it
was my mother’s. I sort of inherited it, among other things, when Dad moved
into his apartment.” “Where is it?” “I think it’s in a box in
the utility closet…or out in the garage.” Once
unearthed from the closet, she found an eight-piece setting of a familiar
pattern in a beautiful shade of blue. “Kel, my grandmother had some of this,”
she said, turning one plate over to confirm her suspicions. “Yeah, I’ve seen it
before. Probably mass-produced.” “Kel, it’s Spode…it’s bone
china…this is good stuff.” “Really? Wonder where in
the world they got it then? My parents didn’t have a lot when they got
married.” “Well, let’s have your Dad
over for dinner and ask him. Help me get this into the kitchen.” He lifted the box, carried
into the kitchen and slid into the counter next to the sink. “Want me to load
in the dishwasher for you?” “Kel, you don’t put china
in the dishwasher, you…just stack it on the counter, okay.” After
explaining that china did, in fact, necessitate something to contain it, they’d
gone out to purchase a cabinet. “This
is where I got everything else,” he had explained. As
it turned out, Kel had gone into one of the better furniture stores in LA,
wandered around until he found a display he liked, then proceeded to fill the
salesman’s entire yearly quota in commissions by outfitting nearly the entire
house. He appeared to have stopped there and had added little in the way of
artwork or decoration. It was as if once it was functional, he’d dismissed it.
He’d actually paid more attention to decorating his office. She found the whole
situation rather pleasing. Her task to turn the utilitarian bachelor house into
a home. She finished the last of her
orange juice. The next stop – her boxes or the closet in the spare bedroom. I
know what’s in my boxes, the closet it is. ************* She flipped on the light and
surveyed the nearly empty room. Kel had previously used it as a combination
study and spare bedroom. The curtains had been consigned to Goodwill and most
of the furniture donated to a local charity. Her boxes had been stacked neatly
in the far corner, while Kel had taken the responsibility for moving the books
and shelves out of the room. The medical books had been taken into work, and
the rest of the surprisingly vast array of literature had been divided between
the living room and the bedroom. She was going to have to get used to sleeping
in a library. Kel, she had discovered,
apparently spent much of his time away from the hospital reading, as did she.
The difference, however, between a doctor’s salary and a nurse’s meant she
checked everything out of the library except for a selection of well-loved
favorites while Kel bought hardbacks, lots of hardbacks. The westerns weren’t
really a surprise - he had everything written by L’Amour and Gray - nor were
Forester’s Horatio Hornblower adventures or some of the classics – Dickens,
Salinger, Faulkner. Neither was the shelf upon shelf of mysteries, once he’d
explained that ‘diagnosis isn’t so very different from detection’. What had
caught her off guard was the amount of science fiction and fantasy. The
revelation that the serious and analytical Dr. Brackett had a dreamy side that
read books about hobbits and starships and giant sandworms shouldn’t have
bothered her, yet it niggled at her. Not so much the literary choices as the
notion that even though they’d worked together for years and were now engaged
and living together, there was still so much about one another they didn’t
know. In some aspects of their lives they were virtual strangers, yet in
slightly less than five short months they’d be
responsible for another little person. What if we’re not ready? What if it’s
too much, too fast? What if love isn’t enough to see us through the fact that
we have, in fact, gotten the cart way before the horse? A rumble of thunder and
increased torrent of rain on the roof prompted an end to her gloomy musings on
the practical considerations of blending family and career. This is absurd,
she said to herself, I can’t spend the next five months agonizing over what
could happen.
Other people manage to do this everyday. We’ve got to trust each other and have a little faith. We can do
this. She opened the closet,
selected a box at random, and drug it out into the center of the room for
sorting. It was full of trophies in a variety of sizes, all with tennis players
on top, a few plaques, and a nice silver bowl. There must be nearly a dozen
in here, going back seven or eight years. Why in the world would he put these
in a box? She knew he played tennis, but apparently between work and
reading he managed to squeeze in a few competitive amateur matches. How
about that, Daddy’s an athlete. Wonderful, we’ll let him chase after you when you
learn to walk. Dixie dumped everything out on the floor and tossed the box
into a corner. She selected the most recent trophies and carried them into the
living room and added them to the bookshelves, while the silver bowl took up
residence on the coffee table. The remainder she added to the bookshelves in the
bedroom, interspersing them with the books. One box down. She selected a
second and opened it. Good grief, more books. Only these were old
medical texts and notebooks. Flipping through them she realized they dated back
to medical school. Twenty-year-old course notes are not part of the
decorating scheme. She pushed box into a corner for Kel to throw out or
take into Rampart later. Two
down. The third box appeared to contain
a collection of ancient sports equipment …old cleats, ice skates (must be left
over from his residency in Minnesota), dead tennis balls and a flattened
football long past its prime. Nothing worth keeping except one catcher’s mitt.
That might be worth saving for Scooter, boy or girl, so she placed it aside.
Box number three joined box two in the corner. She was making great progress. The remaining boxes were all
taped shut and labeled with Kel’s name in an unfamiliar feminine hand. The
first contained a crocheted afghan in deep blues and greens and several pillows
in a beautiful jacquard of greens and grays in a vaguely geometric pattern of
swirls. These are lovely, she thought, running her hand across one pillow.
They’d probably look pretty good in the living room. The next box
contained two quilts. One large quilt in a pattern of interlocking rings in the
now familiar deep blues and greens. The other, a smaller version for a twin
bed, in a random patchwork of bright colors. A note was safety-pinned to the
smaller quilt: “Kel’s quilt – 1940.” It must have been his as a child. Kel hadn’t
talked much about his family, only that his mother has died of cancer when he
was in medical school. She must have packed these away for him. The last box
she opened was a small one whose contents took her quite by surprise. Inside,
she found a small, crocheted baby afghan; some impossibly tiny booties; an
envelope of baby pictures, one of a petite woman with masses of dark curls
holding a baby that could only be Kel, judging by the eyebrows; and a battered
but obviously much loved (judging by the amount of fur missing) stuffed rabbit.
His mother must have packed these things away as well. Ironic. Here she was worrying over impending
motherhood and yet holding another mother’s last act for her son. I wonder what you were thinking when you
packed these boxes. Certainly not that they’d be opened by me, especially under
the current, unexpected conditions. What would you have thought of your son’s
path to fatherhood? Or of me?…Did you worry about being a good mother? Did you
wonder how you would handle everything? After a final study of each
picture, she put them aside to ask him about later. The rest she added to the
catcher’s mitt in Scooter’s pile. ********** Dixie gathered up the afghan
and pillows and carried them into the living room. The afghan found a place
draped across one chair, the pillows on the other chair and sofa. The smaller
quilt she folded up and added to the baby’s pile; the larger quilt she took
into their room and replaced the bedspread. It looked lovely, except that it
clashed with the sheets. A quick inventory of the linen closet revealed that
nothing now matched. From the look of things, they were going to need new
sheets and pillowcases, pillows and towels too as long as she was replacing
things. Well, as long as we’re creating anew… He’d given her carte
blanche with the house and had added her name to his credit card. Perhaps a
shopping trip was warranted. She’d get
lunch while she was out as well. *********** Dixie was in
the spare bedroom packing away the old linens for Goodwill when she heard the
garage door open and his car drive in. She made a mad dash through the house to
get the mass of empty shopping bags thrown away, then one last sweep through
the living room before the kitchen door opened. “In here,”
she called. Kel walked
through the dining room and shopped short in the archway. He looked around the
room in what appeared to be stunned amazement. “Wow! What happened?” He
wandered into the room, taking in the transformed space. When he’d left in the morning
the room had all the personality of an expensive hotel room. Now there was
color and texture and plants in the windows and little knickknacks and pictures
arranged on the endtables. He recognized some of his tennis trophies and
Dixie’s candlesticks on the mantle and a couple of paintings from her apartment
now adorned the walls. She moved to stand beside him
and took his hand. “What do you think?” “It’s wonderful. I can’t believe how well things just sort of
blend together…” Please, let that
be an omen. “Dix where did you get this?”
he asked, noticing the afghan. “Was it your mother’s?” “Yeah. Where did you find
it?” “In one of the boxes in the
closet. I found some of your baby things and the afghan and the pillows,” she
said gesturing towards the sofa, “and a couple of quilts. Did your Mom make
them?” “My grandmother made the
quilts, I think. Mom made this,” he said lifting the afghan. “I’d forgotten all
about this. I remember lying under this and listening to the radio as a kid.”
He sat down on the couch and picked up one of the pillows to examine it. She smiled at the shared
memory. “Was the little quilt yours?” “Lots of little squares?” he
asked. She nodded. “Yeah.” “Well, I thought I’d save
that for Scooter if you don’t mind.” He looked up
at her in silent agreement, not trusting himself to speak. “I put the larger one on our
bed,” she continued, “but then….” “Then what?” “Well, then
the sheets didn’t match, so I decided to get new ones. And I figured as long as
I was buying new sheets, I might as well replace the pillows and the towels and
…” she trailed off, looking slightly chagrined. “Dix, what are you trying to
tell me?” “That I spent a lot of money
today.” “Good. It looks like money
well spent.” He stood up and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her hair. “I
still can’t believe you did all this in one day…it looks so…” “What…it looks so what?” “Homey…like a family really
lives here…like it might be a nice place to be a kid.” She dropped her head against
his chest. “Thank you,” she mumbled. Maybe that horse would catch up to the
cart after all. They stood together for a few
moments until Kel asked, “Does the rest of the place look this good?” “Why don’t I give you the
nickel tour and you tell me?” She took his hand, leading him into the hallway.
“Come on, we’ll start in the bedroom.” “Why don’t we end in the
bedroom?” he countered hopefully. She regarded him for a moment before deciding on a plan.
“We could, but I was thinking of ending with a brief demonstration on the uses
of new towels.” He looked baffled, so she explained further. “They’re supposed
to be very absorbent, perfect for moping up spilled water - or bubbles.” “Bubbles?” he asked. She
couldn’t possibly be suggesting … She reached up, wrapping one
hand behind his neck and pulling his head down to whisper in his ear. “Bubbles.
I told you, Kel. I spent a lot of money today. I picked up a few things for us
too.” In the spirit of family and
cooperation he had to agree with her. A demonstration of the absorbent quality
of towels sounded perfect. Just perfect.
************** Acknowledgements:
Thanks to Audrey and Stephanie for letting me borrow their E! universe for my
amusement [Audrey's note--I sure love what you've done with the place...*grin*], to LaraLee for being willing to discuss the Desert Island Top Ten
books of fictional characters, and to AJM, as always, for her encouragement and
insights.
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