Anne McCaffrey
The year of the Lucy
With great friendship for my Wilmington Cronies Isabel Worrell Betty Philips Dorothy Rathje and to the memory of Elsie Watson
CHAPTER ONE
MIRELLE STRUGGLED against returning consciousness because it would end the delightful sequence of dream. Eyes half-opened, she lay on her stomach, feeling out the day ahead of her as she often did, trying to decide if getting up was really worth the effort. Sometimes she knew in advance that it wouldn't be. Today, the coolness from her open bedroom window, a patch of brilliant blue sky seemed propitious auguries. Something else, however, niggled and she cast her mind back to the lingering aura of the dream that she had been so reluctant to leave.
She mumbled with pleasure to herself as she recalled a fleeting part of the sequence. It was a dream that she had often had before, reaching only a certain point before wakefulness dissolved it. When Steve had been away on a long swing around his territory, or when she was particularly annoyed with him, she would deliberately conjure the opening scene of that dream in erotic revenge.
This morning it had merely arrived within her unconsciousness. Mirelle closed her eyes, hoping that she had not passed sufficiently into the day that she could not return to the dream. She imagined herself back where she had left and tried to progress to the next episode.
"Mom!" A strident yell shattered her efforts. "Where are my clean socks?"
"That tore it." She rose to her elbows, turning her head over her shoulder toward the bedroom door. "In your drawer. Probably under the school pants you crammed in there yesterday when I told you to straighten your room."
"They are not… oh, yeah," and Nick's voice, starting from a roar, dwindled abruptly to a chagrined mutter. If Nick were dressing, she'd better rise.
Well, thought Mirelle, I'll pick up the dream tonight where I left off. She threw back the blankets, grinning at her reflection in the mirror over the double chests. Seeing Steve's unused bed in the reflection, she wrinkled her nose at it. Never around when you want him. Why can't he have a promotion into the main office? She sighed, turning on the hot water tap to soak her cloth. Grumpily, she regarded herself in the cabinet mirror.
The face that returned her sleepy stare had a livid crease mark across one cheek where she had lain on a blanket fold. She rubbed at the mark with the hot cloth, reddening her prominent and slightly slanting cheekbones. Subjectively she hated this inheritance from her Hungarian father. The clear ink-blue eyes and corn-silk hair were also his legacy but these were common enough. She wore her heavy hair straight, just below shoulder length, clipping it back from a center part with barrettes. No hair style, elaborate or plain, would ever soften the set of her eyes above those distinctive Magyar cheekbones.
When she reached the kitchen, the floor and cabinets were already awash with mushy designs of cereal and spilt milk. She blinked furiously, trying to clear sleep from her eyes as she filled the kettle, measured coffee into the pot. She could hear the TV set going and only hoped that the troops were well supplied so that this morning, at least, she might have the first cup of coffee in quiet.
She was not, by nature, an early riser like Steve and Roman, her eldest son. Fortunately Steve enjoyed puttering bright-eyed by himself in the morning and Roman was now old enough to use such energy delivering morning papers. When Steve was away, as he was so often, Roman could be relied on to wake the children in time to dress for school, now that all three went full time. The years of dutiful rising with alert babies had been endured and were now behind her. In Mirelle's estimation, the luxury of an extra half hour's sleep was well worth the messy kitchen. And there were even mornings when riot and rebellion did not erupt before she had consumed the first of her many morning cups of coffee.
"I want Channel 3," screamed Tonia in a piercing treble.
"Well, you can't have it," replied Nick in a bellow which provoked Tonia to repeat her order an octave higher.
Will he never learn to handle her as Roman does? Mirelle squirmed, wondering how long she could ignore the wrangling.
"No one can hear a thing," cried Roman, loud enough to make himself heard, but in a placating voice. "Tonia, you have fifteen more minutes to watch than we do. You sit and eat."
"But that isn't fair."
"Eat," Roman repeated authoritatively.
He sounds just like his father, Mirelle thought, holding her breath, wondering if Tonia would subside, and adoring her diplomatic Roman. If Nick will only keep still all will be well.
The kettle whistled inopportunely though she got it off the heat with amazing speed. Not quickly enough, however, for she could hear footsteps on the TV room steps: Tonia to deliver her complaint in person now that Mommie was among the living.
As she poured water into the drip pot, Mirelle realized she had hunched her shoulders in anticipation of Tonia's demands.
"Not a word, Tonia," Mirelle said, taking the initiative. The injured expression on Tonia's pretty face altered to incredulous. "You do have more time before school so they have choice of channel now!"
Immediately her daughter's face crumbled but seeing that Mirelle regarded her with stolid impassivity, Tonia retired in sulky tears to the TV room. Apprehensively, Mirelle held her breath but all she heard was the scuffle as Tonia arranged her chair. She wondered if Roman might be gagging Nick with a firm hand or a subtler form of fraternal blackmail.
There was something to be said in favor of the English system of nursery and nanny, Mirelle told herself. Something, the sane observer in her mind replied drily, but not too much, ducks. Mirelle's nanny had been a Yorkshire lass, stern, impartial and unaffectionately devoted to her charges. As Mirelle raised her own children, she'd often noticed, with grim amusement, her tendency to do the diametric opposite of what Nanny would have done. Abruptly, Mirelle cancelled this train of thought, as she always did when vagrant thoughts brought back associations with that period of her life.
The coffee had dripped down and, as she carried pot and mug into the dining room, she caught the flash of yellow between the houses on the crest of the hill two blocks above their house.
"Bus, Roman!"
Her summons precipitated a thudding on the steps, a slap-slap of hands on the wall by the closet door, more thumps culminating in a rattle and the decisive bang of the front door. From her view out the dining room window, she saw the lanky form of Roman charging down the lawn. He and the bus converged on the corner of the street. There was no perceptible halt in the bus's movement as Roman swung through the open door and the bus maneuvered past the stop.
"Well, he never does miss it." Half an hour more and the house would be hers until 3:30. The joys of motherhood consist mainly of the times the children are NOT in evidence. "Not precisely true," Mirelle amended candidly because she did enjoy her children's company: only not all three at once.
"My hair won't part," sobbed Tonia from the doorway. Automatically Mirelle held out a hand for the comb and concentrated on Tonia's hair, as thick, silky and tawny as her own.
"Wear the corduroy jacket, duckie, it's chilly," she said as she fastened the heavy barrette in place.
"It'll be boiling by lunchtime and then I'll have to carry it home," said Tonia in a petulant voice.
"So be hot by noon but wear the jacket now when you need it. 'Sides, the day I see you carrying anything home…" Mirelle leaned around to glance at the pert face and smiled. Tonia tried to glower but failed. Exuberantly she threw her arms around her mother's neck, kissing her cheek. Some of Mirelle's irritation with the early morning hassle vanished with the sweet pressure of her daughter's arms.