2:2 Clueless

 

Shortly after the night of the science fair, Rodney Sanders showed up at the door.  Rose, who hadn’t heard from him since the argument before Jack was born, went out to talk with him.

“Rodney.  What are you doing here?”

“’Bout time I came over, saw my boy!” he said, words slurring.  Rose recoiled from him, waving her hand in front of her face.

“Have you been drinking?”

“Don’t matter.  Time that boy had a man in his life!  Tha’s me,” he added, pointing to his chest.  He swayed slightly, eyes not quite focused.

 

“Oh, I don’t think so!  You left when I was pregnant, told me you didn’t want anything to do with me or the baby.  Hell, you said it probably wasn’t even yours, so what makes you think you can come here now and–”

He cut her off mid-sentence.  “Psht.  Was dumb.  Why you gotta get up in my face, be a bitch that way?  All you haveta do is look at him, you can see the kid’s mine.  Now, get my boy out here, ‘fore I haveta go to th’ cops.  He’s mine, and we’re leavin’.”  He straightened up, arms crossed, staring blearily.

The expression on Rose’s face turned black, and she stepped forward, hissing.

“You lost all rights to him the day you walked out and called me a whore.  I’d like to see you call the cops, you drunk screwup, and see how fast they toss your ass in jail.”  She drilled her finger into his chest and he took a step backwards, looking shocked, as she continued.  “Now, you get the hell out of here, and leave my son and I alone, or I will make sure that no one ever finds any piece of your worthless hide.  Do you understand me?”  Death stared from her bright blue eyes, and Rodney seemed to sober up as he looked at her.

He opened his mouth, and she raised one eyebrow.  Thinking better of whatever he’d been about to say, he turned and ran toward the street.  He tripped over the curb and went sprawling.  As he climbed to his feet, he looked back and shouted, “I’ma call the cops!  You’ll be sorry!”

“Go ahead, you little prick!  Get your ass thrown in jail, good riddance!” Rose yelled after him.  She came back inside and leaned against the door, shaking, then disappeared into Jack’s room with tears in her eyes.  The next morning, she got a restraining order against Rodney.

 

Weekend dates with Lucy quickly became a regular part of my life’s routine.  We would usually go to the theater or the art gallery, then follow it with dinner at the Bistro.  The routine was comfortable, and I enjoyed our conversations—she was very intelligent.  At the conclusion of one such evening, I was escorting her to her door as we talked about the play we’d seen.

“Reg, we need to talk,” she interrupted, laying a hand on my arm to stop me.  I turned to face her.

“Of course, Lucy,” I said, though I was confused.  Hadn’t we just been conversing?

“Look, Reg.  I think you are a really nice guy.”  She paused, biting her lip.

I smiled at her.  “Thank you, Lucy.  You are a splendid person as well.”  I started to turn back toward the building, but she stopped me.

“No.  Reg, I…I don’t know how to say this.  The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but this just isn’t going to work out.  I’m sorry.”

I just looked at her a moment, as the meaning of her words sunk in.  “I presume you are not talking about the play?” I asked, just for clarification.

“No Reg, I’m not talking about the play.”  She said it softly, and looked into my eyes.  “You really are a nice guy, with so much to offer some lucky girl some day.  But I’m afraid that girl just isn’t me.”

“Ah.”  My ever dependable brain failed me, leaving me with nothing to say.  “Well then.”

She reached out to stroke my cheek, and I could see the tears glistening in her eyes.  “Goodbye, Reginald Seabrooke.”

I stood and watched as she walked into the building, feeling as hollow as a discarded test tube.

After her graduation, Jenna went to register as a self employed Sculptor, so that she could begin to work for commissions.  She was becoming very proficient at her sculpting station, and we had a few pieces on display around the house.

She got her first commission shortly after registering, a statue of a man in a victorious pose.  Her customer was appreciative, and promised to recommend her to others.

That didn’t stop her from working around the house, though.  She still took it upon herself to do everyone’s laundry, as well as making most of the beds and cleaning the bathrooms, taking over progressively more of Mom’s chores.  She even asked Dad to teach her to cook, and many afternoons I would find them working together in the kitchen when I got home from the lab.

 

For the first while after the breakup with Lucy, I found myself at a loss for what to do with my time.  Eventually, I began bringing files home to read, research for other scientists around the country, as well as lab notebooks from others there at Landgraab.  The reading was fascinating, and helped distract me from the voices, whispering that I wasn’t good enough for any woman.

Dad was spending more and more time in the garden, saying it was to be with Mom.  While he did assist her in the gardening tasks, he also spent a lot of time running through the sprinklers—testing them, as he said, to make sure the water was flowing efficiently.  I just smiled, knowing he enjoyed them.

His old friend and boss Ken Smythe retired, and started coming over on Dad’s days off.  They would spend time out in the garden talking, Ken trying to persuade Dad to retire.

“I haven’t had this much fun in a long time!” Ken insisted.  “I spend most of my time fishing, and Katherine and I are closer than we have been in years.”

Dad didn’t say anything, but after Ken went home that evening, he spent a lot of time wandering the grounds, thinking.

The gnomes were in the garden a lot too, unsurprisingly.  They turned up there more often than anywhere else, though we would occasionally still find them elsewhere.  The old one, Quinn, didn’t get up into his crazy poses nearly as often any more, but once in a while he would.

 

To give Jenna more time with her sculpting, I decided to hire a maid.  We were definitely making enough now to be able to afford it, and I didn’t think it was right that Jenna should do all the housework herself.  I called Meadow Glen Green Clean, because they advertised all natural cleaning solutions.  Working with chemicals at the lab all day made aware just how detrimental they could be.  I did not want them in the house, especially with Jack so young.  The woman I spoke with arranged to send our new maid, Casie Salisbury, over on Monday morning.

Monday morning, the sound of the doorbell pealed through the house.  I let the maid in and quickly went over what we expected of her, trying to be quick about it.  I couldn’t help but notice that Casie, as she insisted I call her, was rather attractive.  The carpool driver honked from the curb, and asked if she had any questions.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, Mr. Seabrooke,” she said, smiling.  I shook her hand and left for work, feeling confident that we were in good hands.

 

Mom was growing steadily better at her painting, and was contacted by city hall for a number of paintings they wanted to hang around the town.  She and Rose worked for weeks to complete the order, painting constantly, but when the order was done they had achieved some truly brilliant pieces.  I would have called some of them masterpieces, but Mom simply laughed.  Many of their pictures hung around the house, and I marveled at their skill with the brushes.

The city workers loved the art, and put plaques with Mom and Rose’s names next to all of the pictures.  Rose was contacted by the local gallery about displaying her work there, and was ecstatic for days.  While I was happy for her, I couldn’t help but think it would have been nice to go see them with Lucy.  I guess I looked rather down about it, because Rose told me to snap out of it.

“Look, Reg.  I’m sorry, I know you liked her and all, but she wasn’t smart enough to see what was right in front of her face.  You need to move on, start dating again!  There has to be some girl you are interested in, right?”

Uncomfortable, I evaded the question, then turned it back on her.  “What about you, Rose?  Don’t you think that you should begin dating again?”

Rose frowned a little.  “It’s not the same, Reg.  I have a son, and Jack doesn’t need that kind of upheaval in his life.  There is time enough for dating later, when he is a little older.”

Rose made sure that Jack never felt like he was missing anything, despite only having one parent in his life.  When he arrived home after school, she would help with his homework, then play with him at whatever game he wanted.  When I jokingly told her that maybe she should use her skills and paint herself the perfect man, she smiled.

“Maybe I will, at that!” she laughed.  The next day, she got to work on her ‘dream man’, as she called him.

When it was completed, she hung the picture in her room, saying that when she met a man capable of taming dragons, she would know she met her soul mate, and take it down.

 

 

Jenna was improving her sculpting skills by leaps and bounds, and would sculpt anything that stood still.  One afternoon when Casie was done cleaning, Jenna asked her to pose for an ice sculpture.  Casie was game, and before long there was a full sized ice replica of her standing on the station.  She seemed rather impressed by it, and Jenna let her take it home.

Casie came to me one afternoon and asked to speak to me, not long after I’d returned home from work.

“Mr. Seabrooke, I was wondering if I could change my shift to the afternoons?  I am going to start taking some classes at the college in the morning, and that would make it a lot easier.”

“Of course you can,” I told her.  “I think it is a wonderful idea to continue education, and I am willing to help however I can.”  Her face lit up in a wide smile, and she threw her arms around me.

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Seabrooke!”  As if realizing her actions were inappropriate, she jumped away, blushing.  I smiled, unable to help myself—she was definitely a pleasant armful.  As she left the room, she looked back and I was almost certain I saw her drop a quick wink at me.  I shook my head, telling myself I was imagining things.

 

As the next few weeks passed, I began to wonder if perhaps I hadn’t imagined the wink.  With Casie working in the afternoons, she would still be there when I arrived at home, and I kept finding reasons to leave work early.  I had my reading material, and would try to concentrate on it as she dusted and picked up around me.  When she reached to dust the top of the picture frame over the bookcase, I could hardly breathe noticing just how short the skirt of her uniform was.  I tried to be surreptitious about watching her, but would often catch a knowing smile flitting across her face as she shot me a look from the corner of her eyes.

One evening as I slipped into bed, I felt something crackle under my pillow and pulled out a note.

I’ve seen you watching me.  Let’s get it started.

I could picture Casie leaning over my bed to make it, tucking the note in, and could hardly breathe.  I wanted her so badly, thought I might go crazier with need.

The next day, I came home after only a half day of work.  Mom and Dad were out in the garden, and Rose and Jenna were in the art room.  I looked around for Casie, but didn’t see her, so decided to go grab a quick shower.  The water had just started to pour down on me when I heard the bathroom door open.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Shhhh,” came Casie’s voice.  A moment later, the shower door slid open, and she was in the enclosed space with me.  I was too ready for her to remember to be nervous, and too far gone to listen to the almost sane voice telling me this was wrong.

As the affair with Casie developed in secrecy, I couldn’t help but be a little envious of what Mom and Dad had together.  They spent more time going on dates, often to the old pier.  They would spend hours there, after Mom’s garden work was done in the morning, wrapped up in each other.

They took up chess, and joined a group of older people that met in the park every week.  Sometimes they would watch tournaments, or play themselves, often late into the evening.

When they did get home, they would invariably end up sitting out on the lawn somewhere, watching the stars.  It was all very romantic, and part of me yearned for that for myself.  I somehow couldn’t imagine it with Casie, though, and was not sure why.  I decided to content myself with what I had for the time being.

The one person in the house who didn’t seem very happy was Jenna.  She spent all of her time in the art room, and we could hear the sound of her sculpting night and day.  She started to lose weight that she couldn’t afford to, and dark circles spread under her green eyes.  In a sharp departure from her usually fastidious nature, she would often spend days in the same sweatsuit as she hammered away at her creations.  When anyone would ask, however, she insisted that everything was fine, she was just trying to get to the next level of her career.  We all still worried, though.