Jennifer Greene - Wild in the Field

The next thing she knew, sunlight was streaming through the bedroom blinds in ribbons. She felt the warmth on her skin, the sensation of well-being and sleepy security, and lazily opened her eyes. There was Killer, his snout on her sheet, eyes staring hopefully at hers from mere inches away.

“I take it you want to go outside,” she murmured.

The dog woofed.

“Exactly when did you start sleeping in my bedroom? The last thing I knew, you worthless mutt, you were sleeping outside.”

The dog laved her hand lovingly.

“I’m not keeping you, remember? You don’t belong to me. Nothing belongs to me, Killer. So don’t get attached.”

The dog woofed again, and then reached over to lovingly wash her face. The feel of that long, wet tongue got her out of bed bouncing-fast.

She let the dog outside, then stumbled back into the bedroom and sank on the bed’s edge, just for a few moments, struggling to get her emotional bearings. Last night simply had to have been a dream. Really, there wasn’t even a question in her mind about that. In real life, she’d never have done those things, felt those things. It was unfair to make herself feel guilty for a dream. It was just disconcerting because everything about their lovemaking had seemed so exquisitely real. The sex was part of that, but the invasive memories that shook her far more were her feelings for Pete, the feelings he’d shown her, how they were together, all the love and tenderness and sensitive caring he’d given her so freely. Obviously, it had been fantasy. A superb fantasy, but nothing she had to worry was conceivably true…

From the corner of her eye, she spotted the sock on the floor. It wasn’t remotely unusual to see socks on the floor, of course, and the cottage was an extra disaster this morning because of all her unpacking and box-hauling the night before.

But this particular sock wasn’t hers.

This particular sock was as big as a football.

Practically as big as a boat.

Only one person she knew had feet that big-and he was no fantasy.

Suddenly there was no more pretending-especially to herself. Her breath caught, and suddenly Camille couldn’t swallow.

She finished an entire row of lavender in record time-and had record blisters to prove it. When she stopped to yank off her gloves, two of the darn blisters broke, and stung like fire.

She hung a swearword on the wind, and then took a long, slow look at the field.

The lavender was barely recognizable from the knobby, weed patch it’d been weeks ago. It wasn’t perfect. There was no way to make it perfect in a single year. But the mulch had prettied up the rows, cuddled under the plants, and each trimmed lavender plant now looked evenly rounded, its fronds green and soft. There was no sign of purple yet, but there was a promise of that color, and a hint of the scent in the new growth.

There were still a couple more rows to finish. That was all, but they were long rows. Camille sighed. Truth to tell, she’d made two days of headway just this afternoon alone. One advantage to being miserably upset was that she’d worked double fast. The disadvantage was the blisters, the backache and the weak left ankle. She shook her hand, as if wind could somehow chase away the fiery hurt, and then spotted Laurel and Hardy loping over the knoll, in their baggy pants and high-class clippers.

“Hey, Camille.” Sean and Simon spoke with one voice and a matched pair of frowns.

“I don’t need help today,” she said.

“Yeah, well, that’s what you always say.” Simon ignored her. “Don’t start with us. We had a bad day.”

She didn’t ask. It wasn’t her problem, why the boys were grumpy. It was her problem, trying to figure out why the boys’ father had climbed in her bedroom window and made love to her until she couldn’t see straight.

She had no answer for either question-only four hours worth of blisters to testify that she’d tried her best to figure it out.

Killer, the traitor, hustled from boy to boy to be petted and cosseted, as if the damn dog thought it was loved and desired. Sean always spent some time stroking the dog, but invariably it was Simon who baby-talked and really fussed. Today, though, neither spent much time on Killer. They both worked down a row clip-clip-clipping as if they were both suffering from the same sore tooth.

Camille started on the last row, but without bandages on her blisters, even the smallest clip made her wince.

Sean easily caught up with her, from his side of the far row. “Dad’s going to let me get a horse.”

“I thought he’d said absolutely no.”

“Yeah, well. He changed his mind.”

Camille didn’t care, but damnation. The last she knew, a horse was the kid’s most ardent desire, worth fire and brimstone at the very least. Yet now, Sean couldn’t seem to come through with a smile to save his life. “So that’s soon?”

“I’m having a little trouble pinning him down. I know I can’t even start looking until school’s out. But then, I guess. Anyway, she called last night.”

The last sentence was tacked on as if it logically followed. Camille sensed that the most intelligent thing she could do was shut up and not invite trouble, but somehow she had to poke out one more question. “Who called?”

“Mom.” The tone was disgusted, furious, the head bent way down. “I don’t know why Dad didn’t pick up the phone. Probably because he doesn’t hear it when he buries himself in the study real late. And Gramps-when he’s in his room, he can’t hear any of the phones anymore.”

“No?”

Sean glanced over to where Simon was working. “He talked to her, too. Like we wanted to hear from her, you know? After all this time.”

He clipped and pruned, dropping the dead branches in baskets as he went, head still bent as if hiding from a storm.

“It was unbelievable. She leaves us, you know? Because we don’t matter enough to her to stay. She doesn’t care about us. But now she calls, wanting it to be okay . Like sure.”

Camille quit pretending to work.

“She says, like, she needed space . She says how she felt smothered. She says she was afraid she’d have a complete breakdown if she lived in the country another minute, so that was why she left, because she didn’t want us exposed to her going crazy. She didn’t want to hurt us. You ever heard such bullshit?”

Simon, who was supposed to be clipping down at the far end of the row, had mysteriously scooched up to the other side of Sean’s row. “Don’t say bullshit in front of Camille, stupid.”

“Why? She doesn’t mind. She’s like us.”

“I don’t mind,” Camille agreed.

“See. She’s no girl type. She’s like us.” Clip-clip. Clip-clip. “You know what I told my mom?”

“No. What?”

“It’s like she wanted us to tell her it was okay . That she just took off on us. Well, it’s not okay .” Sean lifted his face, just for an instant, his eyes aching with fury.

“So we told her just what she’d told us.” Simon tucked his head down now. “We told her we needed some space . Like how we felt smothered living with a mother all the time. So she could just have a real great time with her boyfriend, because we didn’t need her. And Dad doesn’t need her either, or any other woman, too.”

Everybody clipped. A cloud chased across the sun, than bared it. Sean said, “We were gonna wake Dad and tell him about the call, but we figured he was either working or sleeping, because we didn’t hear him behind either door. So we told him this morning.”

“He was pretty mad,” Simon said.

“Mad at you two?”

Sean and Simon both shrugged. “He said we should have been nicer. He said, no matter what she did, she’s still our mother. He said, that the fact of her calling meant that she was at least trying to say she was sorry. I said that was totally stupid.”