Elizabeth Bevarly - Father Of The Brood

Ike didn’t know why no one had bothered to inform Annie that the sixties had ended more than two decades ago, and he had to force himself not to impart the information to her himself. Instead, he decided he may have been a bit rash in dismissing her upper regions so easily last weekend. Although small, Annie had good form. Then he noted the exhausted-looking duffel bag at her feet that appeared to be more empty than full. Annie, it seemed, traveled even more lightly than he.

“I saw you from my window and decided to come down to meet you,” she said. “I was hoping to make it before the kids trampled you, but…”

Ike glanced up when her voice trailed off, only to realize that she had once again been observing him as he ogled her. She had arched her left brow in that maddeningly challenging way, as if she were waiting for him to either assault her or offer an explanation for his rudeness. Ike did neither. He just tried to tamp down his irritation before it could become impropriety.

Hoping to defuse her anger, he glanced over his shoulder at the hastily scrambling children. “Do they all belong to you?” he asked. When Annie’s gaze skittered past him to fall on the children, every ounce of animosity left her eyes, and her lips formed a fond smile. Ike knew then that inquiring about her children had been exactly the right thing to dissolve her exasperation.

“Yeah, they’re all mine,” she told him.

“Funny,” he said dryly, “a couple of them look like they’re in high school. You must have been about eight when you gave birth.” Ike wanted to offer the further-wry observation that Annie was in remarkably good shape for someone who had spent most of her adult life pregnant. But he refrained, fearing the comment just might put them back where they started—with him ogling, and her being ogled, and neither of them any too comfortable with the knowledge of it.

Her smile was still wistful when she said, “I may not have carried them inside me, but they still belong to me.”

“So then you don’t have any kids of your own?” Ike ventured.

She looked at him strangely for a moment. “Why do you ask? For some reason, you strike me as the kind of person who doesn’t care much for children.”

“That’s because I am the kind of person who doesn’t care much for children.”

She sounded almost disappointed when she replied, “That doesn’t surprise me. And no, I don’t have any kids that are the product of any personal biological workings. But I do have kids. Lots of kids.” Before be could ask anything more, she met his gaze again. “I’m ready to head out whenever you are.”

Ike nodded. “Good. I didn’t want to leave my car parked out here any longer than I had to.”

She glanced past him at the bright red convertible and frowned.

“What?” he asked when he saw her disapproval of the sleek car he’d coveted for years before being able to afford it. “You don’t want to drive to the coast with the top down?”

She shook her head. “Oh, I love the feel of the wind when I’m driving.”

“Then why the sour look?”

“I was just thinking you probably paid more for that car than I spent buying and refinishing and outfitting this whole building.”

This time it was Ike who frowned, wondering why he felt so damned defensive around this woman. “Yeah, I probably did. Real estate in this area isn’t exactly prime—” He eyed her building deliberately before adding, “—or safe— for commercial or residential use. You know, my partner and I are working with the city on a beautification project that’s leveling neighborhoods like this one and turning them into something useful.”

She glared at him. “Neighborhoods like this one used to be the backbone of the city.”

He smiled acidly. “Soon they’ll be parking garages.”

“And that’s supposed to beautify the city?”

Ike looked around him again. “A nice, clean parking garage will be a damned sight more attractive than this… this…”

“Look,” Annie interrupted him, “maybe you don’t see much use for neighborhoods like this, but I see it in a way you obviously don’t. Granted, the area isn’t what it used to be, and yes, a bad element has begun to thrive. But there are still a lot of good people here. Besides that, it’s affordable and suits my needs just fine.”

Ike wanted to counter that if that was the case, then she was obviously and sadly neglecting her needs. But he kept his mouth shut. For the time being, he decided, he’d just as soon not wonder about Annie Malone’s needs. She probably had way too many of them for any man to be able to satisfy her. And why he should suddenly feel a tingling— and not unpleasant—sexual awareness of her at the idea of such, Ike couldn’t begin to imagine. So he pushed the thought away and bent to retrieve her duffel.

But someone else had beaten him to it, he realized before completing the action. Clutching the bag that would be nearly as big as he was if it were full, was a young boy with hair the mixed pale yellows of chicken noodle soup and eyes so blue and large and guileless, they almost stopped Ike’s breath.

“I got it,” the boy said as he stepped past Annie. “I can carry it. Where do you want it?”

So transfixed was he still by the child’s round-eyed expression that Ike could only thrust a thumb over his shoulder. The boy looked past him at the car parked at the curb, and his huge eyes grew even larger with admiration.

“Cool!”

He slapped down the steps and stumbled down the walk, weaving first one way and then the other under the weight of the duffel. He dropped the bag by the trunk and, before Ike could stop him, hauled himself over the side of the car and into the driver’s seat. Immediately the alarm erupted, as loud and raucous as an air raid siren. And the little boy’s expression—the one that had been so utterly open and carefree—transformed into a grimace of unadulterated terror. When his gaze met Ike’s, the boy actually began to cower as if he were about to be sucked down into hell’s darkest core. Ike had never seen anyone look so scared before in his life.

“Hey, kid, it’s okay,” Ike tried to reassure him over the noise.

He started down the walk toward the car, watching in amazement as the little boy’s fear grew more tangible with every step he took. And when he rounded the front of the car toward the driver’s side and reached in to deactivate the alarm, the little boy covered his head with his hands, curled into a tiny ball and screamed.

Screamed as if his lungs were about to burst.

Ike could do nothing but stare dumbfounded as Annie calmly came up behind him, reached into the car instead and effortlessly plucked the boy out of the driver’s seat and into her arms. He curled himself over her body as if he wanted to crawl inside her forever, then buried his face in her neck and began to cry with all his might. Annie patted his back and murmured soothing sounds until the boy’s sobs abated some.

Then she looked at Ike with a perfectly normal expression and stated in matter-of-fact terms, “Mickey was badly beaten by both of his parents before he came to live with me. He thought you were going to hurt him for setting off the alarm.”

Ike shook his head dumbly and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. So he watched in silence as Annie carried the boy back up the steps and sat down on the front stoop beside him. Ike didn’t know what she said to the boy to calm him down, but within a matter of minutes, the little guy was nodding and scrubbing a finger under his nose. Not long after that, he was smiling shyly again. Ike watched as Annie kissed the crown of his head with much gusto and hugged him close one final time. Then Mickey jumped up from the stoop and raced past Ike without looking at him, and joined the other kids in their completely disorganized and unorchestrated game of street hockey.