From EDDA
The next time she saw him was on a weekday in November, one of those last, heady warm days before the rawness of winter locked in. She was at school, in line for lunch, when Mrs. Harold, the teacher supervising the cafeteria, tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Your uncle is here to see you.”
“My uncle?”
He stood next to the head mistress in the cashmere drape of his European sports coat—he might be a film producer—hogging his share of handsome in the empty corridor. The clink of eating utensils and two hundred girls prattling their way through lunch clattered on the other side of the door. His arms cradled a wicker basket covered with a floral tea cloth while the head mistress beamed with the happy surprise she was providing.
If Rose said too much, he might disappear again. She was no snitch, though she didn't yet grasp the ploy.
“Uncle!” She didn’t know his name. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m only in town this noon, so it’s now or never. I’ve apologized to Miss Paley for just showing up, but I missed my favorite niece’s name day and I thought we might have a picnic.”
“Lucky girl,” the head mistress said. “You may be excused from lunch. What is your next class?”
“French, with me,” said Mrs. Harold, who had followed, curious.
“Off you go then,” said Miss Paley.
They made for the exit door, marching self-consciously away from the two women in the quick camaraderie of criminals.
“Who are you?” Rose whispered when they were far enough away not to be heard.
“An old friend of Myrna and your mother. I knew them before you were born.”
That fits, she thought. “Okay. But why are you here?”
“Fried chicken? Mexican strawberries?”
“You know what I mean.”
They rounded the corner of the building, Rose trotting to keep up, and walked through the grass to put the basket down on the schools' picnic table. Miss Paley had already returned to her office, now keeping track of them from her window not fifty feet away. He gave her a friendly wave. She waved back.
“I wanted to have lunch with you. I saw you ride by at the racetrack and remembered your mother…and wanted to get to know you.”
“Why not go see her?”
“Not yet. She’s mad at me. Both she and Myrna.”
“You must have done something pretty terrible.”
“Youthful mistakes. Don’t suppose you’ve committed anything along those lines?”
Youthful mistakes. The sailors at Munson Beach for starters, only in that they got caught. Denny Delmonte might be a mistake in the making. Her childhood friend next door was a high school junior now, who’d matched her light fingers and upped the ante, cigars, and unopened beer bottles, kept cold in the lake by the breakwater, and once, even a Derringer Jimmy lifted from his father’s office. Recently, he’d caught up with her sailing her sunfish on the lake and reminded her of their childhood explorations in physiology. They’d pretty much decided they were going to take each other’s virginity—the logistics had yet to be arranged. Accepting the ankle bracelet? That might turn out to be the biggest mistake yet. She couldn’t tell. It was presently crumpled into the toe of a shoe in her closet.
She said, “You just happened to have a sapphire anklet in your pocket?”
“What can I say? I’m a romantic. When you rode by me a month or so ago, I was depressed and you made my day. I knew you were your mother’s daughter. I felt like giving you something.”
“And because you’re my father.”
His hand, reaching toward the tea cloth, stopped. Then he laughed, and removed the cloth to smack it in the air like a waiter before smoothing it on the wooden table.
“No-no-no,” he said in quick succession. “How old do you think I am?”
“Old enough.”
“Oh Rose,” he said, crestfallen. “Rose, Rose, Rose. Foolish me. I hadn’t thought. Of course you would see me that way, but let me disabuse you. Your mother was already pregnant when I met her. I am definitely not your father.”
“Do I believe you?”
He stopped to take both of her shoulders, one in each hand, and stare at her full-on with his intense gaze. “I am not your father.”
“Too bad.” If not you, who, she thought. "Do you know who he is?"
"Not a clue."
He put china plates out on the table, silverware and napkins, a covered dish with chicken, rolls, aromatic and warm, and strawberries. “Shall we?”
She nodded. Why was he showing up on the sly—though it made sense, if her mother were mad at him. He was maneuvering for something, and with that puppy look, he was talented at it. Takes a conniver to know a conniver. “My name day?” she asked. "Is there such a thing?"
He shrugged. “I didn't know your birthday and Miss Paley might.”
“You are too smooth, Mr.…?” she said, picking up a piece of chicken.
“Lucas. Call me Lucas. And please don’t tell your mother. You look astonishingly like her, by the way.”
“Gosh,” she said dryly. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“I apologize. I’ve been unoriginal. That's a sin in my book.”
“Is that like original sin?”
“There is nothing about original that is sinful to me.”
“And why shouldn’t I tell my mother?”
“Because I’ve already bribed your silence.”
That stopped her.
“You can give the bracelet back if you don’t accept."
“What’s to stop me from keeping it and telling my mother?”
“Intrigue? Naughtiness? Fried chicken at lunch on a boring day?”
“Are you going to see her?”
“Someday.”
He poured Sunsweet Prune Juice into Dixie cups and twisted a pre-cut lime onto the rim. She wrinkled her nose.
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“Not prune juice!” she said after sipping. “Dubonnet?”
“I hear you like it with lime.”
“How do you know? You've been to the compound! But I’ve never seen you at Happy Hour.”
After her most recent birthday, Randy, the present Lake House barkeep, was permitted to serve her Dubonnet on the rocks with a twist of lime. The perfect starting drink for a young lady, Valencia said. “Do you know Randy?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“How then?”
“I’m very good at what I do.”
She took another sip, then looked up to Miss Paley’s window, but she was no longer watching. She should be.
“A spy. You must be a spy. Or you were. Done with the war and bored?”
“Something like that. Tell me, Miss Delores Rose Brown, what are you going to do when you grow up?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. That’s the best line you can come up with?”
“Humor me. We’re getting to know each other. We have to start somewhere.”
“I suppose it’s better than, ‘How do you like your teachers?” She ate the fried skin separately, greasing her lips, then picked the meat away from the cartilage with her nail.
“And?”
“I’m thinking…….I want to go around the world in a hot air balloon, like Phileas Fogg.”
“Excellent choice. A creature of the air.”
“Maybe. I'll let you know when I've been up there."
"I see."
"Do you? And maybe I’ll work at The Lake House.”
“Oh, don’t do that.”
“Because you don’t approve?”
“Me? I approve heartily. I think it’s a noble calling. But for you, it lacks imagination. It’s unoriginal…”
“The Unoriginal Sin.”
“Yes,” he nodded, “and not an easy life.”
“It’s great money though. I know one thing, I don’t want to be poor when I grow up. What are you going to do? Or are you doing it already? I assume not, or you wouldn’t be at St. Alden’s in the middle of the week having lunch with a schoolgirl. What are you going to do when you grow up?”
“That is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind or not to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…”
“That’s a little over the top. Can we have the strawberries now?”
“How old did you say you were?”
“I didn’t. How old did you say you were?
“I didn’t.”