Whatever she was doing, it would end with her alone in bed. Like Cork. Like Rose. Like Jo.
Finally drowsy, Cork closed his eyes thinking that there was something wrong with a world in which so many people slept alone.
16
“Daddy!”
They came before Cork was really awake. He heard them scamper across the floor of the guest room, then was jolted wide awake as they leaped onto the bed, driving their knees into his kidneys. He rolled over, felt them warm and wiggly all around him.
“Hey, Anne, Stevie.” He grinned.
He wrapped them in his arms and hugged them tightly to him. He felt a stab at his ribs where the blows had hammered him the night before. But the good feel of his children helped him ignore the pain. The kids were still in their rumpled pajamas, their teeth unbrushed, their hair stale and disheveled. Even so, they seemed like heaven to Cork.
“Aunt Rose said you were here.” His daughter buried her face against his T-shirt. “Are you staying?”
“For a while,” he said.
“Quithmath tree!” Stevie said.
“What?”
“We’re going to get our Christmas tree today,” Anne explained. “Are you coming?”
Cork rubbed Stevie’s hair. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Jenny stepped into the open doorway looking tired and grumpy. “What’s all the noise?”
Cork lifted his head so that Jenny saw him.
“Oh,” she said. “What happened? Break your leg or something?”
“Only my furnace.”
She scratched at her purple hair. “Sort of a one-night stand here?”
“Sort of,” Cork admitted.
She shrugged and turned to leave.
“We’re buying a Christmas tree today,” he called after her.
“Ho, ho, ho,” she said, her voice trailing dismally down the hall.
Rose had oatmeal ready for them. On top of the steaming cereal in their bowls, Cork and Stevie and Anne made funny faces with raisins. Jo had gone to work long before Cork or the others were up. Jenny finally came down near the end of breakfast.
“Oatmeal, Jen?” Rose offered.
“I’ll just make toast,” Jenny replied sullenly. “I’m not very hungry.” She took a couple of pieces of whole wheat from the bread drawer and dropped them into the toaster. She crossed her arms and waited.
“After breakfast, would you be willing to take a short drive with me?” Cork asked.
“Where?”
“I’m going to visit a couple of hungry friends.”
“Some kind of Samaritan visit in keeping with the season? I don’t think so, thanks.”
“Just for a little while. I’d appreciate it.”
“You could order me to go. You’re still my father.” She was watching the toaster carefully.
“I don’t want to do that.”
Rose quietly wiped dishes at the sink. Stevie and Anne had gone to the living room to watch cartoons. The toast popped up. Jenny stared at it a moment.
“I suppose,” she finally agreed.
The drive was painfully silent. Cork tried to think exactly what it was he’d meant to say to her, but all the words seemed weak and self-pitying. Jenny stared out the window and sniffed.
“A cold?” Cork finally asked.
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“How’d your date go last night?”
She shrugged.
“What’s his name? Kubiak?”
She didn’t seem to think that deserved a response of any kind.
“Go out with him much?”
She waited a few moments, then said, “A couple of times.”
“Movies, huh?”
She swung her gaze toward him and gave him a look that made him feel as if a door had just been slammed in his face.
“Just interested,” he apologized.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.” She looked away again, as if the all too familiar landscape of Aurora were far more interesting than anything her father could possibly say.
But Cork kept trying. “Still planning on reading Sylvia Plath at the Christmas program?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d talked it over with your teacher. Maybe she’d changed your mind.”
“She respects my judgment,” Jenny said.
“Good.” Cork nodded, trying to generate a show of enthusiasm. “That’s great.”
He pulled the Bronco up beside Sam’s Place.
“What are we doing here?” She gave the Quonset hut a look of disgust.
“Wait and see.”
The morning was bright and cold, the sunlight startling. Cork went inside and half-filled the bucket with dried corn.
“Going to try farming now?” Jenny asked when he came back out.
“Follow me.”
He led the way down to the open water. The geese glided across the surface, riding their reflections in the still, blue water, leaving gentle creases where they’d moved.
Jenny watched them, unimpressed. “Annie’s told me about these two. Dumb if you ask me. Just asking for trouble.”
“Spread the grain on the ground for them.” Cork pointed to the circle he’d cleared in the snow.
She frowned but did as he’d instructed, then stood expectantly watching the geese on the water.
“Why don’t they come? Aren’t they hungry?”
“They’re wild. They’re still more afraid of us than they are hungry. Let’s step over this way.”
Cork led her some distance away. The geese paddled to the shore and began noisily to eat.
“Why haven’t they gone south?” Jenny asked.
“See that one?”
“The male?” Jenny said.
“Good.” Cork was surprised she knew. “His wing is injured and he can’t fly. They’re kind of stuck here now.”
“She stays with him?”
“Some geese are like that. They mate for life.”
“I’m glad somebody does.”
“Could we talk, Jenny?” Cork finally asked. “About your mom and me?”
“What’s to talk about?” Jenny kicked at the snow. “You’re going to do what you’re going to do. That’s all there is to it.”
“Not quite.”
She glanced at him, her eyes full of suspicion. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t think I want to divorce your mom, Jen.”
She didn’t believe him. The stone look on her face told him that.
“But it’s not my decision alone,” he explained.
“You mean she wants to divorce you.”
“That’s kind of how it stands.”
“Why? What did you do?”
Cork watched the geese. They’d finished the grain and moved back down to the water. As they entered, they broke the reflection of the sun into a thousand fragments.
“I was gone from her too long.”
“You mean since you moved out?”
“Before that. Long before that.”
“You want to come back?”
“I miss home.”
“I don’t believe you,” Jenny said. She turned and started for the Bronco.
“I don’t blame you,” Cork said after her. “In your shoes, I wouldn’t believe me either. But, Jen, I’ve never lied to you. At least not intentionally.”
She turned back angrily. “You’re saying Mom’s responsible for the divorce.”
“I’m not trying to turn you against her, sweetheart, really. I hurt her pretty bad, I guess, and maybe all this is exactly what I deserve. I just want you to know that if I could, I’d put it all back together.”
For a while Jenny looked at the trampled snow between them, then at the geese. “I thought if you loved someone you were supposed to, like, forgive them. I thought that was what love was supposed to be all about.”
Cork shook his head. “Easy to say, harder to do.”
“So… what are you going to do?” Jenny asked quietly.
Cork risked moving to her. “I’d like to get your mother to talk with me. Tom Griffin-Father Tom-has offered to counsel us. I’m not saying we’ll succeed, but I’d like to give it a try. What do you think?”
She looked past him where the ice edged the open water and the signs warned of danger and the safety stations offered the help of ropes and life rings and sturdy sleds. What could he offer her that was as substantial?