Joan Kilby - Child of Her Dreams

The phone in the kitchen rang, and he went inside to answer it. “Hello?”

“Ben?”

Through the static, Ben recognized his brother’s voice. “Eddie! I was wondering when you’d find a moment to call. How’s it going there? Are you finding your way around?”

“Everything’s fine,” Eddie said. “Except for the rain. It’s been pouring for days now.”

“Did I neglect to mention the rainy season?”

“Mostly it’s interesting,” Eddie went on in a lighter tone. “Today I was given a live chicken in lieu of payment. The fool thing is pecking apart my kitchen as we speak.”

Picturing it, Ben laughed. “You’re supposed to eat the bird, not keep it as a pet.”

“I was afraid of that, but I can’t bring myself to wring the poor thing’s neck. How is Hainesville? Are you enjoying being back in civilization?”

Ben took the cordless phone and went outside. “Hainesville is a treat. It’s got one stoplight, a mayor who goes fishing with the bank manager in the middle of the workday and the best hamburgers in the country. Right now I’m sitting on the front porch, breathing in the summer evening and watching the world stroll by.”

“Sounds idyllic. I can almost hear you slapping the paint on your white picket fence. Found yourself a wife yet?”

“Give me a day or two, would you? Oh, you’ll never guess…remember that model who collapsed in Milan, the one whose picture was in the newspaper you brought the day you arrived? She’s here. She grew up in Hainesville and has come home to recuperate.”

“And you’re her GP.” Eddie laughed. “Just deserts, big brother, just deserts.”

“Oh, she’s dessert, all right. But man cannot live on cake and ice cream alone.” Then he felt bad joking about Geena. She had helped him out. “Actually, she’s okay.”

“If you like that sort of thing,” Eddie said dryly.

“Which I don’t.” Sure, he found her attractive in a glamorous, superficial sort of way, but the idea of him getting involved with her was laughable. Geena Hanson was about as much his type as prissy Greta Vogler.

“Are you taking your malaria pills?” he said, as much to change the subject as because he couldn’t help looking after his little brother.

“Yes, Mom. Oh, hey, I’d better go. A couple of teachers from the next village are meeting me at the cantina.”

As Eddie spoke, Ben could almost hear the sound of marimba music, and he experienced a pang of homesickness for the village. “Have a cerveza for me, bro. And keep in touch.”

“Will do. How about we make this a regular time for me to call every week?”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll give you my number at the clinic, too, in case I’m working late.” He recited the phone number to Eddie, then signed off. “Talk to you next week, little buddy.”

THE NEXT DAY the heat woke Geena early. When she saw it was ten a.m. she kicked off the ivory damask bedspread, leaving her naked body covered only by an Egyptian cotton sheet, and snuggled deeper into the mound of rose-patterned pillows. With no reason to get up, she let her imagination flow in a fantasy of herself and Ben Matthews in a delicious, if implausible, scenario involving a stethoscope and an examining bed.

At noon, she dragged herself out of bed, dressed in a simple linen sheath and dabbed on perfume from a crystal bottle. Then she wandered down to the kitchen, wondering what she was going to do with herself for the next few months. Picking an apple out of the fruit bowl, she put her nose to the rosy skin and inhaled the sweet-tart scent. Reluctantly, she put the fruit in the bowl. She was hungry, but then, she was always hungry. Denying herself food had become a habit.

Steps sounded on the back porch, and Gran came in, breathing heavily and wiping perspiration from her brow. “Man, is it hot out there. But I had a heck of a workout,” she panted. “I met Marvin Taylor outside the Knit ’n Kneedles and we racewalked all the way up Linden Street.”

“Are you sure you’re not overdoing it, Gran?” Geena asked, noting the damp patches on her grandmother’s sweatshirt. Since recovering from her minor heart attack a year ago, Gran was taking her exercise very seriously.

“I’m in training for the seniors’ fun run,” Gran said. “Of course, at my age, run is a misnomer, and it stops being fun after the first mile. But we’re raising money for a new maternity wing on the Hainesville Hospital. Greta Vogler just won’t let that project go. The woman’s like a bull terrier.”

Greta Vogler. The woman who had branded her father a drunk driver, tarnishing his memory and Geena and her sisters’ lives growing up. Geena went to the fridge for a bottle of mineral water. “Does Miss Vogler still teach at the high school?”

Gran balanced a hand on the kitchen countertop and stretched her quads. “She’s vice principal now. Which reminds me—Linda Thirsk called. She wants to know if you’ve decided about your high school reunion.”

Geena shrugged and sipped her water. “I can’t believe she married Tubby O’Conner.”

Gran moved on to her hamstrings. “Linda’s phone number is on the pad on the counter. She’s probably home now. Why not give her a call?” When Geena made no move to pick up the phone, Gran stopped stretching. “You are going, aren’t you?”

Geena drained her bottle and put it beside the sink. The high school reunion, Ben… Everything conspired to remind her of her deficiencies.

“How can I?” she said, and was dismayed to hear her voice waver. “I never graduated.”

“Does it matter? You’ve become such a big success.” Behind her large-framed plastic glasses, Gran’s eyes showed regret, sympathy and a trace of guilt, none of which eased Geena’s self-doubt.

“Such a success I nearly killed myself. I’m going for a walk,” she said. “I’ll see you later.” With no idea where she was headed, she took off down the hall and out the front door.

“Geena,” Gran called after her. “Will you be back for lunch?”

“I’m not hungry.”

Geena’s restless footsteps carried her into town on sidewalks shimmering with the late-summer heat. Past Blackwell’s Drugstore, past the bank where Erin had been assistant manager until she had the baby, past Orville’s Barber Shop…

She hadn’t spoken to Orville since she’d been back and she knew he’d like her to drop in. A close friend of her father’s, he’d been like a favorite uncle while she’d been growing up. She peered in the barbershop window. Orville had his back to her, busy cutting someone’s hair.

The bell above the door sounded as she pushed through to the cool interior that held the familiar mingled scents of Old Spice and hair products. “Hi, Orville.”

Orville, a dapper man in his fifties, was dressed as always in neatly pressed slacks and a cashmere sweater. At the sound of her voice he turned with a wide smile and came forward to greet her. “Geena! How’s my best girl?”

“If I’m your best girl, who do you take out on Saturday night?” she teased. Geena had always thought it a waste that Orville, who had been widowed young, had never remarried. “I’m fine. How are you?”

“Same as usual,” he said good-naturedly. “One step behind the tax man, one step ahead of the Grim Reaper.”

Then he moved to one side, and through the mirror Geena glimpsed the face of the man in the chair. Ben. Surprise and pleasure tinged with embarrassment flowed through her. Embarrassment because it wasn’t every day a man turned her down—for any reason.

Orville returned to his work with a flourish of comb and scissors. Geena sauntered to the counter and perched on the edge, facing Ben. The only way to get over embarrassment was to meet it head-on. “Hi, there.”