"Chris," she cried, and hurried down to him. I watched her kneel to hug him and saw his hands around her waist. He held onto her for quite a long time. I thought.
When she straightened up. I couldn't hear what they were saving, but a moment later, she helped Daddy turn around and wheel back into his room. I started toward it, too, but they closed the door so I stopped.
I didn't think Grandmother Emma had been paying any attention and therefore didn't know Kimberly was here, but she stepped into the doorway of her office and looked my way. "Your father can't live without his toys," she muttered. "Go amuse yourself and forget them. Jordan," she instructed, and waved toward the front of the house.
One of the changes that had occurred since Ian's departure was Grandmother Emma's giving me more freedom. I could go outside by myself as long as I stayed away from the pool and didn't leave the grounds. There wasn't very much to do by myself, however. I enjoyed playing croquet, but most everything else required another person. Nevertheless. I went out and walked the grounds to watch Mac and his staff trimming bushes, fertilizing plants, or whitewashing fences and storage sheds. Once, he let me help paint. I got messy, but Grandmother Emma didn't complain or bawl him out for permitting me to do it.
As I walked around the house. I thought about Daddy's friend and about Mama and tried to
remember when she looked as pretty and as vibrant. If she got better and really woke up, would she come home and look as wonderful and alive again or would that take a long time, too? Was Daddy just tired of waiting? Was that why he wanted his friend to visit? She sounded so happy to see him. Would Mama be as happy or would she be as Daddy thought, still angry at him?
All these questions fell into that pool of mystery Mama used to call adult talk so I would stop asking about them. Was I still too young to know the answers?
I didn't deliberately do it, but I rounded the house and found myself walking toward the windows of Daddy's room. When I realized it. I stopped as if I were approaching some forbidden area, an area as off limits as the pool without supervision, but then my curiosity took over and like a puppet master pulled the right strings to get me to draw closer and closer to those windows until I could actually look into the room.
At first I saw no one and thought they had gone out and were somewhere else in the house, but then 1 saw Kimberly walk out of the bathroom and I felt the blood drain from my face as a ripple of electricity flowed down and through my body.
She was naked. And smiling.
I had to shift to the right to see where she was going. She was walking toward Daddy, who was naked as well on his bed. She stood beside the bed looking down at him. He reached up for her hand and then she lowered herself over his face. I saw her left hand go to his knee, but before I could see anything else. I heard a lawn trimmer right behind me and spun around to see Mac doing the edges of the puss near the patio stone.
He looked my way and I shuddered with embarrassment because I knew he could see I was peeping through Daddy's window. I turned and quickly ran toward the front of the house, my heart pounding with each step until I reached the portico and Daddy's ramp.
A kaleidoscope of emotions went swirling through me. I was excited, frightened, and angered by what I had seen. I didn't know which emotion was most comfortable and welcome. All that I had learned about making babies came rushing back, too. Daddy could put tadpoles into that woman. What would happen then? Why was he doing that with her? Mama would be so upset. I thought. So would Ian and so would Grandmother Emma. I wondered if I should tell her so she could stop it.
Daddy would hate me for sure. I thought as I walked up the ramp and into the house. I stood there in the entryway trying to decide what I should do. I heard Grandmother Emma come out of her office, close the door behind her, and walk toward the stairway. She saw me standing there and stopped.
"What's wrong, Jordan? Why are you just standing there like that?" she asked.
I shook my head. I couldn't say it or tell. Instead. I ran past her and up the stairs as quickly as I could.
"Jordan!" she called after inc. "Jordan March!"
I didn't stop. I ran to my bedroom and I closed the door. There was really only one person I could tell and that was Ian. I thought. I went immediately to my desk and started to write another letter. I told him what Daddy's friend looked like. I told him how she had hugged him and how he had held onto her, and I told him what I had seen through the window. I asked him what he thought I should do and then I folded the letter twice and sealed it in an envelope.
Grandmother Emma took a long while to come upstairs, but when she did, she came to my room. "Did something happen outside. Jordan?" she asked me.
I shook my head and said, "No."
"Well, why are you so upset?" She waited and then added, "Is it because of your father's female friend?"
I looked at her and then I nodded without saying yes.
She nodded too. "You have a right to be upset," she said, "but unfortunately or fortunately depending on the way you view it your father still has manly needs. There are names for women like that, but there is no reason to talk about it with you. Just think of it as nothing important, nothing more than his going to the bathroom," she said, and smirked. "It's the way I thought of it when it came to your grandfather," she added, which raised my eyebrows.
She shook her head. "I'm tired," she said. She had never said that to me in the middle of the day before. She's just very upset about Daddy. I thought,
She turned and went into her room and closed the door.
I went to my textbooks and read and did some workbook pages. Then I fell asleep for a while. When I woke up. I remembered the letter I had written to Ian and I took it and went downstairs to Grandmother Emma's office. I went in and put it on her desk so she would send it off as she did with my first letter. Every day I had been anticipating a letter back from Ian, so when the mailman came. I was right there waiting, but none had come yet. I was sure it was because he was thinking hard and long about what he wanted to say so it would be perfect. Ian always wanted everything he did to be perfect.
Just as I stepped out of the office. I heard laughter and saw Kimberly wheeling Daddy out of his room. They both saw me standing in the doorway.
"What are you doing. Jordan, having a business meeting with your grandmother?" Daddy asked.
"No," I said. "I left her my letter to Ian. She mails them to him for me," I told him.
He stopped smiling. Kimberly held hers, though, and continued to look at me.