The Blessing Read online

  “Parker?” Jason asked, his voice filled with horror.

  “No, her.” Charles nodded toward Amy’s bedroom door.

  “You could be fired, you know,” Jason said, glaring at the little man.

  Silently, Charles turned to a porcelain bowl on the counter behind him, lifted the lid and held it under Jason’s nose. It was crepes with hot strawberry sauce, Jason’s favorite.

  In reply, Jason just grunted and looked toward the overhead cabinet that held the dishes. Within seconds he was eating double forkfuls. How was Charles able to always find the best produce no matter where he was? Jason was willing to bet that these lusciously ripe strawberries didn’t come from the local supermarket. On the other hand, based on what the last few days had cost him, he thought it best not to ask where the strawberries had come from.

  “I really am thinking of starting a baby food business,” Charles said seriously. “Maybe you can advise me in what I should do to get started in my own business.”

  It was on the tip of Jason’s tongue to tell him to forget it, because to help Charles meant that he’d lose him as his personal chef. Instead, Jason acted as though his mouth were too full to talk. Some part of his conscience said, “Coward!” but the strawberry crepes won over his higher moral values.

  “Of course I guess everything depends on Max,” Charles was saying. “Do all babies have such educated palettes?”

  Here Jason was on safe ground. “Max is unique in all the world, one of a kind. Speaking of which . . .” He trailed off as he listened silently for a moment, then rose and went to Amy’s bedroom door, opened it, and tiptoed inside. Minutes later he came out with a sleepy-looking Max and a clean diaper.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Charles said. “You must have great ears.”

  “When you get to be a—” Jason didn’t say “father,” as he meant to, but stopped himself. “Get to be a man of experience,” he finished, “you learn to listen for things.”

  But Charles wasn’t listening to a word his employer said, because his wide-eyed interest was on the fact that Jason had thrown a dish towel down on the kitchen table and was changing the baby as though he’d done it all his life. All Charles could think was that this was a man who had everything done for him. His clothes were chosen and purchased for him by his valet, his car was driven for him, meals cooked for him, and anything that was left over, his secretary did for him.

  Charles recovered himself enough to smile at the baby. “And how do you like strawberries, young gentleman?” Max’s reply was a toothy grin, but Charles’s reward was when Max grabbed the crepes with both hands and sucked and chewed until there was nothing but sauce on his hands. And on his arms, face, hair, and even up his nose.

  “How utterly gratifying,” Charles said, standing back and watching Jason clean Max with a warm cloth. “He is without prejudice. Without preconceived ideas. His culinary gusto is the purest form of praise.”

  “Or criticism,” Jason said, annoyed that Charles was still hinting that he wanted to start his own business.

  “Afraid of losing me?” Charles asked, one eyebrow arched, knowing exactly what was in his employer’s mind.

  Jason was saved from answering by a pounding on the front door. As he went to open it, Max draped over his arm, Amy came out of the bedroom, a ratty old robe over her nightgown and blinking sleepily. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  When Jason opened the door, he was shoved aside by a thin blond man who was followed by two other thin young men and one woman who were carrying huge boxes, plastic cloths slung over their arms. All four of them wore nothing but black, lots of black, layers of it. And all of them had hair bleached to an unnatural white blondness that stuck out at all angles from their heads.

  “You must be the one,” the first man, who was carrying nothing, said as he pointed at Amy. He had three gold earrings in his left ear and a heavy gold bracelet on the wrist he was extending. “Oh, dearie, I can see why I was told to come early. That must be your natural color of hair. What was God thinking when He did that to you? And, dear, where did you get that robe? Is it kitsch or have you had it since the Nixon administration? All right, boys, you can see what we have to do. Set up here and there, and over there.”

  He turned, looked Jason up and down, and said, “And who are you, darling?”

  “No one,” Jason said emphatically, then tossed a look at Amy. “Max and I are going out.”

  Amy gave him a look that begged him to take her with him, but Jason had no pity. Heartlessly, he grabbed jackets for him and Max, then was out the front door before it closed. When he’d told Parker to have someone do a makeover, he’d meant maybe hair rollers for half an hour and a little eye shadow. Amy possessed natural beauty; she didn’t need the help of an army of beauticians to prepare for a party.

  For all that Jason pretended to leave the house because of the arrival of the makeover people, the truth was that he was glad to have Max to himself for a while. It was amazing how important the adoration of a child could make you feel, he thought. And it was even more amazing the lengths that a person would go to to entertain a child.

  Jason knew that he had a whole morning before Max would have to nurse again, so he had the baby to himself for hours. The carriage was in the back of the car, so he drove to the tiny downtown of Abernathy and parked. Since Max was still in his pajamas, the first thing he had to do was buy him something to wear.

  “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” the man who owned the Abernathy Emporium said, squinting at Jason. Since the man had served Jason, David, and their father hundreds of times while the boys were growing up, he should remember him.

  “Mmmmm,” was all Jason said as he put the baby overalls and T-shirt down on the counter along with a snowsuit for a two-year-old. It would be too big for Max now, but it was the best-looking one they had, and Max did have his pride.

  “I’m sure I know you,” the man was saying. “I never forget a face. Did you come with them city people this mornin’ to do up Amy’s face?”

  “I need diapers for a twenty-pound kid,” Jason said, starting to take out his credit card, then paying instead with cash. He didn’t want the man to read his name on the card. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to come to Abernathy; he should have gone to the mall.

  “It’ll come to me,” the man said. “I know it will.”

  Jason didn’t say anything, but put his hand through the handles of the plastic bags, then wheeled Max out of the store. That was a close one, he thought as he pushed Max back toward the car. But the encounter had taken him back in time to when he lived in Abernathy, and now he could see the place with the eyes of an adult, an adult who had traveled all over the world.

  The town was dying, he thought, looking at peeling paint and faded signs. The little grocery store where his father had shopped twice a week and where Jason had stolen candy once had a broken pane of glass in front. He had stolen only once in his life. His father had found out and had taken Jason back to the store. Attempting to teach Jason not to steal again, his father had arranged for him to sweep the store’s wooden floors and wait on customers for two weeks.

  It was during those two weeks that Jason got his first taste of business and had loved it. He found that the more enthusiastic he was, the more he believed in a product, the more he could sell. At the end of the two weeks both he and the store owner regretted having to part company.

  The Abernathy dime store windows looked as though they hadn’t been washed in years. The Laundromat was disgusting.

  Dying, he thought. The malls and the larger cities had killed poor little Abernathy.

  By the time Jason reached his car, he was feeling quite bad about the place, as he did have a few good memories there, in spite of what he told David. Thinking of whom, he wondered why his brother would want to go through med school, then move back to this funeral-waiting-to-happen of a town.

  Jason got into the car, turned on the ignition, waited awhile until the car was