Another Homecoming Read online

  “Anyone in her right mind would like you,” Bertrand responded reverently.

  “The others don’t. The ones Mother says I need to socialize with. They don’t like how I talk to . . . to everyone.” The tone dropped as she added the word Emily Crawley used most often to describe her. “They call me common.”

  “They wouldn’t dare,” Bertrand said hotly. “Not if you allowed me to meet you out front like you should.”

  She gave him a smile that carried warmth and appreciation, then changed the conversation by reaching into her satchel. “Look what I made for Maggie’s birthday.”

  Bertrand slowed long enough to glance over. What he saw caused him to turn the car to the side of the road and stop. “Kyle, what can I say? It’s lovely.”

  Neither of them noted that he had not included “miss” with her name, a misdemeanor that would have brought Kyle’s mother to the point of banishing him forever. “It’s a watercolor of ‘The Praying Hands,’ ” Kyle explained. “It’s Maggie’s favorite.”

  “Twelve years old, and already you’re a marvel.” Bertrand’s heart nearly burst with pride. “Maggie is going to love this.”

  “I’m thirteen—remember?” The young girl’s face shone with delight. “You really think she will?”

  “I know so. I’ve been wondering what to get her myself, and now I know. I will arrange to have this framed.”

  Kyle drew up her shoulders in pleasure. “We’ll be giving her something together.”

  “Indeed we will.” They shared a smile until Bertrand glanced at the clock and jerked upright. “I’ve forgotten the time. We’re already late.”

  But Kyle did not look worried. Carefully she replaced the painting into her satchel, then leaned back with another smile. “Lunch with Daddy, all by myself. Then I can be in his office all afternoon. And guess what? I Love Lucy comes on tonight.”

  Her sigh of pleasure warmed Bertrand’s heart. “I’m certain your favorite program does not come on until tomorrow,” he said as he watched her from the corner of his eye.

  Kyle frowned, ran through the days of the week on her fingers, then caught sight of Bertrand’s teasing glance. “Oh, you.”

  “Here’s your father’s street, Miss Kyle,” Bertrand said, returning to formality. “Perhaps you should think about—”

  But before he finished, Kyle took a quick glance around, then in a flash was over the seat into the rear. She settled back, then leaned forward to snatch up her hat. A few seconds of straightening her clothes and hair, putting the hat on and her face into proper lines, and the car slowed to a halt.

  As Kyle waited calmly as Bertrand cut the motor and came around to open her door, she caught sight of her father. He was standing just inside the Rothmore building’s brass-lined glass doors, talking to someone she vaguely recognized. Then she saw what he was holding as he stood grinning and waiting for her to alight. Kyle’s breath came out in a gasp, and she scrambled out the door Bertrand held for her, positively at odds with what her mother would have called ladylike behavior.

  She ran to her father. “You got it! Oh, Daddy, it’s beautiful!” she exclaimed.

  “A Schwinn,” Lawrence Rothmore declared proudly. “Won’t be released until next summer, but a buddy in their head office wrangled this one for me. Get a load of those white sidewalls, will you.”

  “And colored tassels, and I love the silver and blue,” she enthused. “Oh, Daddy, can we take it for a ride?”

  “Later, my daughter,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulder as he motioned Bertrand forward. “Put this in the trunk, will you?”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Kyle watched as the bicycle was wheeled away. “Promise you’ll ride with me, Daddy?”

  “Soon as I get home.” He waved forward a young man who hovered just out of range. “You remember Randolf Crawley, don’t you?”

  Kyle stopped watching intently as Bertrand maneuvered the bicycle around to the back of the car and turned back to her father. As she had been taught, she lifted her skirt lightly and gave a graceful curtsey. “Good day, Mr. Crawley.”

  “Call me Randolf, please.” Her father’s associate sounded surprisingly friendly to Kyle’s way of thinking. “There’s not that much difference in age between us.”

  She looked curiously at him. His hair was a shiny blond, combed up and back in careful folds. His chin was cleft, his nose straight and long, his teeth perfect. Randolf Crawley was ancient as far as Kyle was concerned. At least twenty-four or five. “There isn’t?” she asked frankly.

  Her father patted the younger man on the shoulder. “Randolf’s going to become my protégé. It’s your mother’s idea. He’s got a law degree from Yale, and insurance law’s becoming trickier by the minute. Besides that, I’m not getting any younger, and I need a pair of strong shoulders and a good mind to carry some of the load. Abigail thinks he’s perfect for the position.”

  Kyle had not understood all of what was just said. But she did not like any suggestion that her father was not well. And she really did not like the way that man was smiling at her. “You’re fit as a fiddle, Daddy. That’s what you’re always saying.”

  Lawrence Rothmore’s laugh was as big as the rest of him. But nothing could disguise the sudden flush that crept into his face as he stopped and the heavy breaths that followed. “My little lady. Loyal to the end,” he puffed.

  “I am pleased to see my young sister becoming friends with you, Kyle,” Randolf commented. “She talks about you quite a bit.”

  “How nice.” Kyle used the phrase she heard her mother say whenever she was displeased but didn’t wish to show it. In truth, Kyle was uncomfortable around Emily Crawley. She was as beautiful as her older brother was handsome. Emily was leader of the group of wealthier girls at St. Albans, and this group was the biggest reason Kyle did not feel like she belonged. The Crawleys were her mother’s distant relatives, and Emily seemed to have Abigail’s ability to make Kyle feel as though she did not measure up, could never be as correct and superior as she was supposed to be.

  Kyle felt she had been polite to Randolf Crawley long enough. “Where are we having lunch, Daddy?”

  “The boardroom, where else?” Dining in the boardroom was one of their little rituals, whenever they had a time alone. “I believe I heard the chef say he had managed to make your favorite dessert.”

  “I bet it’s banana cream pie!”

  Lawrence squeezed his daughter’s shoulder and said to Randolf Crawley, “You’ve never seen anything like it,” he boasted. “All my little lady has to do is smile, and she could get the Statue of Liberty to lend her the torch.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a minute,” Randolf agreed. “I’ve heard Emily say something about Kyle’s friendliness.”

  But Lawrence had already turned away. “Come on, princess. On to the top.”

  He handed over a key to Kyle, a ritual they had played out from when she was a tiny girl. There was a private elevator for members of the board. Her father had let her operate it since she had been old enough to reach up on her tiptoes and fit the key into the special hole. Kyle stepped into the wood-paneled elevator, and as the polished doors closed she caught a final glimpse of Randolf’s smile directed at her. She wondered why it made her uneasy.

  As though reading her mind, Lawrence asked, “So what do you think of my new protégé?”

  “I think he’s—well, he reminds me of his sister,” she said, speaking her mind as was only possible when she and her father were alone.

  Lawrence chuckled fondly. “He’s going to be the youngest member of our board before long, taking over the seat from his father. When I was just starting out, old Crawley helped bankroll me. His father and your mother’s grandfather were brothers, but I suppose you know that. He probably did it out of family loyalty, but he’s done well by it. Very well. He has ten percent of the company stock and a permanent seat on our board.”

  Kyle did not ask him to explain what all that meant. She had no interes
t in Randolf Crawley. Instead she announced, “Maggie’s kitty had six babies.”

  “Is that a fact.” He regarded her fondly. “Don’t I recall your naming that cat Benjamin?”

  She nodded. “Yes, that was back when I was too young to know better. So now she’s called Ben-Hur.” When her father laughed again, she worked up nerve to ask, “Daddy, do you think I could have one of the kitties?”

  “No pets, my love. We’ve already been through that with your mother when Jim’s golden retriever had puppies.”

  “Oh, Daddy, please. They’re such precious little white fluffballs.”

  “No pets,” he repeated, his tone regretful but firm. “Your mother’s really put her foot down on that. I’m sorry, princess.” He steered the subject back around with, “She thinks very highly of young Randolf.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “She says it would be a good idea if you were to get to know him.”

  Kyle looked up at her father in utter bafflement. “But why, Daddy?”

  For some reason, the question made him laugh a third time. He stroked her fine silky hair once more as the elevator doors opened before them. “Why indeed, my princess. Why indeed.”

  Joel Grimes sat on the parlor floor, his birthday present opened in front of him. Light from the setting sun spilled through the louvered windows, framing him in sharp lines of gold and shadow. He unfolded the large page of plans, being as careful as he could. It was important not to grow impatient, even now when he was so excited he could hardly sit still. Experience had taught him that the plans would be opened time and time again, and the crease-lines needed to be followed very carefully, because when the paper became old it would easily tear. And it was always in the creases that there was some important connection he couldn’t figure out without the plans. So he unfolded the white paper, big as a road map, very carefully, noting how the folds went so he would know how to put it back later.

  Beside him was the magnifying glass Dr. Austin, his parents’ friend, had given him for his last birthday. Save his eyes from squinting over those tiny lines, was what the doctor had said. And now he had a brand-new tube of epoxy glue that was from Grandma. And a new razor blade in the little metal holder that his father had brought him from the tool shop. His mother always left the room when he started working with the blade. She was back in the kitchen now, preparing his tenth birthday dinner. Which meant he only had a few minutes left to look over the plans.

  Joel’s father sat on the other side of the small front parlor in their Riverdale home. Joel had been born in Baltimore, but the family had moved the fifteen miles south soon after. This was the only home Joel had ever known. He sat on the floor and watched his father listening to news over the radio. The announcer was talking about something called the Cold War. And some man called Nikita Kruschev. Whenever the news started on about those things, his father would always clam up and lean over, his face so tight he looked hungry.

  His father was quiet most of the time. He would come home from work, sit there in the front room, and say hardly a word. His distant gaze suggested he saw another world, one that really was just for him, one where Joel had no part at all. It made him feel so small, being in the room with his father and knowing that the man did not see him or even realize he was there.

  There was something which lurked deep inside his father, something frightening. Joel had seen it surface that very morning when his father had stomped out on the back porch and argued with the milkman. The veins had stood out on his father’s forehead and neck like whipcords. His voice had sounded like an angry lash. All over a missing pint of milk. Joel had sat with his breakfast cereal and known with wisdom far beyond his ten years that it was more than milk that made his father so angry.

  Sometimes, though, his father roused himself, and he would look at Joel and say something. Joel’s whole world seemed to light up when it happened.

  The announcer started talking about baseball, and his father cut off the radio. Washington’s baseball team, the Senators, was at the bottom of the rankings, and Baltimore wasn’t doing much better. The only time his father was interested in baseball was when the Yankees or the Red Sox were in town.

  His father turned to him, watching him cut the first balsam piece free of the wood strip. “What you got there, sport?”

  “A B-29 Superfortress,” Joel replied with a grin. His father knew that. An illustration of the plane in all its glory was on the box front, flying through a sky filled with dark gray flak clouds, its machine guns spouting flames.

  “Ain’t that something,” his father said calmly. “How many does that make now?”

  “Eleven.” The gift had been from both his parents, but Joel knew his mother had saved from her household money to buy it. Even so, his father recognized the plane. His father knew all about planes. He worked as a mechanic at the Baltimore airport. It was one of the few subjects that would occasionally light up his eyes, especially if he was talking about military planes.

  “I had two more,” Joel explained, “but I messed them up and so they don’t count. But that was when I was little.”

  “Listen to this guy. Ten years old and he’s not little anymore.” His face’s deep creases tightened slightly, as close as Harry Grimes ever came to a smile. “Can you understand the instructions, son?”

  “I think so.” It was so rare to have his father actually say the word “son,” that Joel knew a little thrill. In a sudden rush of insight, he picked up the plans and crossed the room. “I’ve read them, but I’m not sure I get what to do first.” The large sheet rustled as he spread it on the small table by his father’s chair. He pointed at a paragraph above the first drawing and asked, “Will you explain that to me?”

  “Why, sure.” Harry spread the plans smooth, squinted, and slowly began to read and comment. Joel listened carefully, but in truth he didn’t need help. Joel wanted a reason to stand near his father. Most of the time it seemed as though his father had an invisible barrier around him, keeping everyone from coming close, even his own son. Joel hesitated, then reached up and put his hand on his father’s shoulder. It felt hard as a rock. He moved a little closer so he could lean against his father’s arm.

  His mother chose that moment to walk into the room. When Joel looked over at her, she appeared to be holding her breath. Her face ran as if it were made of wax, just melting into soft, sad lines. It was so strange to stand there, leaning against his father, feeling so happy and so sad at the same time. His mother struggled to make a little smile for him, then turned and silently left the room.

  When his father stopped his explanation of the paragraph, he sat and examined the plans for a while. Joel remained content to stand there and lean against him. Harry pointed at the turrets appearing on the drawing’s underside and tail and asked, “How are you supposed to make these?”

  Eagerly Joel leaped for the box, pulled aside the balsam strips intended to form the plane itself, and came up with an oddly shaped piece. It looked like a slender tree sprouting rigid gray fruit. “They made them out of plastic, Pop.”

  “Well, ain’t that something. Here, let me have a look.” Harry’s strong fingers moved across the pieces, comparing them to the scale drawings. “Getting more complicated all the time, aren’t they?”

  “Sure are.”

  “Good training for a mechanic. You aiming on coming over, working on the planes with your old man?”

  “That sounds great, Pop.” But in truth, Joel had no idea what he wanted to do when he grew up. Whenever he thought about the future, it all felt flat to him, as though there was something important he was missing. It was the same way his family was. Everything seeming to be in order, but something was missing. He knew it in his heart.

  Harry let the plans slide from his lap. Joel knelt and began the folding process. Then Harry said, “Yeah, the Superfortress and the B-17, they made all the difference. We ruled the skies after that. Had ’em on the run.” He was silent a moment longer, then asked, “You heard about the new one?”


  “You told me about it, remember?” The other night, the paper had printed an article on the new army bomber. “The YB-52 Stratosphere. That’s what they called it.”

  “You sure got some memory, sport.” Harry reached over and tousled his son’s hair. “Mind like that, you’ll go a long way.”

  The moment was so special, Joel decided to risk it. He kept his head bowed over the plans as he asked, “Pop, can I get me a puppy? Bobby Benson’s spaniel, she had six pups. Please, Pop. They’re the cutest—”

  “No pets,” Harry Grimes said. More than the words cut off Joel’s pleadings. The cold grating sound was back in his father’s voice.

  Joel felt his heart fall to his stomach in fear that he had ruined the rest of his birthday. That his father would sit over to one side of the table, staring out the back window, saying nothing to anybody the whole time. Meals like that were excruciating.

  Steps scraped up their front porch, and a heavy voice said through the doorway, “Are we late? We better not be. I get cranky if I don’t get my share of the birthday cake.”

  “Haven’t even got started,” Harry replied. “Come on in, Howard.”

  Dr. Howard Austin stepped through the door, followed by his wife, Carol. The Austins had also moved down from Baltimore, and Dr. Austin ran a very successful family practice. Joel found himself thinking as always how incredible it was, the similarity between Carol Austin and his own mother. They could have been sisters. They even had the same soft, sad smile. Dr. Austin demanded, “Hey, it’s the birthday boy. What you got there?”

  “A model of the Superfortress,” Harry replied for him. To Joel’s enormous relief, the coldness was gone from Harry’s voice as he rose and limped over. Favoring his left leg, Harry picked up the model box and showed it to the doctor. “Get a load of all those pieces. Some are made of plastic. It even says how many on the front cover. Look at that—two hundred and seventy-three pieces. Worse than the real thing.”