Your Dream And Mine. Susan Kirby
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Coffee perked on the stove as Thomasina let herself in. Hand towels with crocheted tops were buttoned to the knobs of floor-to-ceiling bead-board cupboards. The cow salt-and-pepper shakers matched the cookie jar on the red gingham-covered table. Dated and charming, the kitchen, like the rest of the house was as hospitable as Mary Chambers herself.
Thomasina dropped her flowers beside the white enamel sink. She found the milk-glass vase Milt had specified and was cutting the flower stems to size under running water when Mary came in. Her hair was braided and coiled on her head like a silver garland. Her eyes brightened at the sight of the flowers.
“Special delivery for you,” said Thomasina.
“Heliotrope! I could smell it from the living room!” Mary broke into a wrinkled smile. “Thank you, dear.”
“Thank the milkman.”
Mary laughed. “Once a dairy man, always a dairy man. The coffee’s almost ready. Will you have a cup with me?”
“It smells wonderful, but I better not,” said Thomasina. “I’ll be sweltering once I get home and off to bed. No point in adding caffeine to the mix.”
“Your air-conditioning still isn’t working?” Mary said, “Honey, you’ll have to be more assertive with your landlord if you hope to get any results.”
“I’m taking the pacifist route, and moving,” said Thomasina with a wry grin.
Mary looked up from running water into a copper-bottom sauce pan. “You’ve found something?”
“Maybe. It’s in Liberty Flats.”
“Really? Anyone I know?”
Thomasina wrinkled her nose and admitted, “I didn’t jot his name down, I was so busy asking questions.”
Mary reached for the oatmeal box. “I wonder if he’s married.” She pinched salt into the pan, adding quickly, “Married men make better landlords. They’ve learned how to fix things. On the other hand, if he isn’t married, who knows? He might like to be.”
Thomasina smiled and tucked the last flower into the vase. “You and Milt—the poster kids for matrimonial bliss,” she said, and swept the trimmed stems into the trash.
“You’re a sweetheart,” said Mary, patting her hand. “May you find Mr. Right and live happily ever after.”
“Mr. Right? What’s that got to do with it?”
Mary laughed. “Lord preserve us from Saint Self-Sufficiency!”
“Of course if we’re talking wish trees, I’d adore a man who adored me. So long as he likes kids and has tons of patience, or he’ll be at odds with the other wishes on my tree,” said Thomasina with a cheeky grin. “And speaking of trees, what’s this I hear about the oak in your front yard?”
“The kids think this house needs a deck, and the tree is in the way.” Mary met Thomasina’s eye over the rim of her coffee cup.
“It’s a beauty, though,” said Thomasina.
“Yes,” agreed Mary. “But a deck will be nice, too. It’ll stretch halfway across the front of the house, and wrap around the corner. There’ll be a sliding glass door off the living room and a second door leading right out of the bedroom. It will link up with the brick path to the garden. Will promised to build a ramp to give Milt easy access.”
Suspecting that Mary’s willingness to let them take the tree down was born of a lifetime of putting her loved one’s needs ahead of her own, Thomasina asked, “Have you asked if there’s a way they could spare the tree?”
“And throw a monkey wrench in the works?”
“Stick up for yourself,” quipped Thomasina. “Isn’t that what you were just telling me about the air-conditioning?”
Mary peered at her over the rims of her glasses. “That’s different.”
“Tell you what, I’ll mention to Milt that you’re attached to that tree, and maybe—”
“Please don’t,” Mary cut in. “Milt’s just beginning to get over the kids hiring nursing care against his wishes. I don’t want him getting his back up over this. Promise me you won’t say anything.”
“All right, then, if you’re sure,” said Thomasina, chagrined at alarming her. “Your tree cutter is waiting, by the way.”
“Trace is outside? Why didn’t he come in?”
“I asked. He declined.”
“He did, did he? We’ll see about that!” Mary angled for the front door.
Thomasina folded the pad of time tickets into her pocketbook, slung the strap over her shoulder and started for the bedroom, the vase of flowers in hand.
“I thought I’d give you the flowers so you can give them to Mary in person,” she said as she breezed into Milt’s bedroom. “You’ll get more brownie points that way.”
Milt spread a lap quilt over his lower torso with a hasty fumbling hand. “You ever hear of knocking?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll go out and come in again.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Milt. “Go out and keep going.”
Milt was fully clothed beneath the lap robe, so it wasn’t modesty motivating him. That was pretense, anyway, when she’d spent the past few weeks nursing him.
Milt closed the nightstand drawer with a snap, and met her searching eye, bold as brass. “Well? What’re you waiting for?”
“Compliments,” she said, and set the flowers on his nightstand with a flourish.
“Nice,” he said. “Now beat it.”
The damage was long since done. If he wanted to sneak a smoke, was it any of her business? But the ever-present danger of the oxygen compelled Thomasina to warn him. On the other hand, she didn’t want to accuse him, then find out she was wrong.
Deliberating, Thomasina moved in front of the mirror and freshened her lipstick with one hand while she opened the nightstand drawer with the other. It held a few pencils, a marble, some toothpicks and some matches. No cigarettes. But the odor of tobacco wafted from the drawer. She nudged it closed and glanced at Milt’s lap robe. The sharp edges of a book showed beneath it. Meeting his steely-eyed glare, she sucked in her cheeks and tried to make him laugh, making dimples and duck lips.
He snorted. “Trying out for the talent show?”
“Sure. I thought we’d be a team. What’re you reading?” she asked.
“None of your beeswax,” he said.
Thomasina flipped back the corner of the robe and squinted. “‘Hymns of Praise.’ Are we singing a duet?”
“Who’s we, rose lips? You got a frog in your pocket?”
“Let’s see the book,” said Thomasina.
“I haven’t swiped one of your kissy-face books, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
Overlooking his jab at the paperback poking out of her shoulder bag, she said, “Did I ever mention a boy I once knew who liked to carve the center out of books? I admired his ingenuity, but it made the story lines a little hard to follow.”
“What’re you getting at?”
Thomasina held out her hand in silent entreaty.
Milt coughed and blustered in a half-strangled voice, “How’d a gal with such a suspicious bent get