Cold Tea On A Hot Day. Curtiss Matlock Ann

beside her, guarding for any type of hurt that might come her way.

      Then, peering through the window while trying not to appear to be peering, Marilee saw Corrine walk up to the cash register and hand up the money to Fred Grace. Munro stood right at Corrine’s leg, his head next to her knee, looking upward, too. Fred handed down Corrine’s change, and then out Corrine and Munro came, a smile playing at the girl’s lips.

      “Thank you, Aunt Marilee,” she said softly, depositing the change in Marilee’s hand.

      “Thank you, Corrine. And Munro.” She and Corrine grinned at each other.

      The three of them, accompanied by the dog, started down the sidewalk. Marilee, seized by a warm happiness, felt certain they were all walking straighter and marveled at the power of a handful of colorful flowers. The few people they passed along the way smiled, and one man tipped his ballcap.

      

      The colorful flowers gave way to a spontaneous idea.

      “Let’s grow our own.” Marilee looked at the children. “Let’s have a garden.”

      Willie Lee gave back an enthused, “Yes,” and Corrine raised an eyebrow, as if wondering if it could be done.

      At the temporary plastic greenhouse set up at MacCoy’s Feed and Grain, they ran everywhere at once, picking out flats of pansies and the biggest marigolds in the world. Corrine liked the blue cornflowers. Then the tomato plants looked so perky, and the idea of sweet homegrown tomatoes seemed so inviting, that Marilee got a half dozen of them.

      The revolving stand of crisp and colorful seed packets caught Willie Lee’s attention. When Marilee went to pull him away, she selected several packets.

      Into the back of the Cherokee went containers of perky little plants, seed packets, bags of fertilizer, a new shovel for Marilee, and two small-size shovels for the children, all paid for with the ease of a card. Felt like she wasn’t even spending money.

      They sped home, where the first business was to get their cut flowers into vases of water. Marilee, determined to make everything a learning opportunity, showed the children how to cut the stems slanted to soak up the water and taught them as much as she knew about how flowers took water up their stems.

      Afterward they trooped out to the backyard and hauled out shovels and their tender plants and seed packets. Watching Willie Lee attack the ground the best he could with his small shovel, Marilee found her hopes resurface for being able to teach her son simple skills that would enable him to function on a more or less adequate scale with everyday living in the world. Perhaps he would not ever be able to read or to count sufficiently, but learning to plant and grow and cut, and to clean up after himself, would see him a long way when his mother was no longer available to care for him.

      Seven

      Points of View

      “What’s for supper?” Parker asked after giving Marilee a kiss on the cheek.

      “I have no idea.”

      Sprawled on the couch, having been gazing blankly at the television news, she felt incapable of any endeavor involving getting up and moving around.

      “We dug a garden today. Shovels, half the backyard.” At least it had seemed like half.

      “Why didn’t you go rent a tiller?” He shifted her legs over and sat beside her.

      “I didn’t plan to make it fifteen by fifteen. I just wanted a small garden for the children to grow some flowers, but then I saw the tomato plants, and they came in a container of six, and then Willie Lee saw the cantaloupe seed packets and wanted to grow those—they always put seeds in packets with beautiful pictures of perfect fruit, without all the hard work and bugs. I was just as bad as Willie Lee—I got carried away and bought zucchini seeds because of the picture, and I didn’t remember the awful bugs until I was on the way home. Anyway, I figured before planting the seeds, we needed to get the ground turned and let it sit there for the grass to die.

      “I don’t know. It just seemed to…mushroom,” she ended lamely.

      She really was unclear as to how she and two children had gotten into digging up a good portion of the backyard. Thinking of it now, she was amazed at the accomplishment, and as Parker began massaging her legs, she told him all about the activity with the children, painting word pictures of their funny antics for him. She had enjoyed digging in the dirt, had gone at it with a vengeance, for which she was now paying.

      “Why weren’t the children in school?” Parker asked, having now worked himself upward to leaning over and nuzzling her neck.

      Marilee, vaguely aware of his scent and the warm, moist touch of his lips on her neck, realized she had not told him of her decision to remove the children from school.

      “I took them out of school for the remainder of the school year,” she said, now experiencing a rising certainty for the decision.

      Parker quit nuzzling her neck and sat up. “You took them out of school?”

      “Yes, there are less than three weeks left of the school year anyway.” Seeing the disapproval bloom on his face, her certainty faltered. She realized two things at once: she had counted on his approval, and she had not been paying sufficient attention to his manly attentions moments earlier. No man was ever happy to have his advances ignored.

      She felt at fault and annoyed at the same time. She was tired and not in the mood to deal with his male needs, nevertheless, this seemed a poor attitude on her part, so she sat up and tried to work up the stamina required of her.

      “I believe that more than anything they can learn in the few remaining weeks of school, the children need to be secure and reassured,” she said. “They need to be home for a while.”

      “What about your job?”

      She saw he was determined to focus on obstacles, instead of swinging immediately into support.

      She went on to explain her reasoning for her actions, which had begun to sound truly logical and reasonable when she had told it all to Aunt Vella, yet, in the light of Parker’s expression now, Marilee had to work hard to keep on track.

      “Tate doesn’t have a problem with me working at home. He’s giving us all laptop computers. Hooking them up on a network. I had already planned to try to work half days at home during the summer, anyway.”

      She thought that despite whatever Parker might be thinking behind his frown, her enthusiasm to proceed with what she saw as a viable healing endeavor for her children remained intact. She became more annoyed at Parker for not immediately grasping this concept.

      “I know there is a curriculum available,” she said, continuing to explain her plans for educating the children, “and I’ve heard of some support groups that I want to investigate. I’m going to draw up something for them to study every day. Especially Corrine. She is really smart, and one of her problems at school may have been boredom. Would you discuss ideas with me over supper? I want to start putting a plan in place for the summer.”

      If she could get Parker involved, he would come around. And, while she considered herself fully intelligent, she thought Parker better at critical, organized thinking. He could be, if he would apply himself, a great deal of help.

      Parker, however, gave a remote shrug that Marilee did not find at all an acceptable reaction. She told herself not to be surprised. Parker could get into a very remote mood, as could every man of her experience.

      But here she was more or less inviting him into her life, and he was not responding with any small bit of gusto. She supposed she wanted too much from him, and she felt at fault but couldn’t figure out why, other than that her plans had brought on his disapproval. She felt herself getting all jangled inside, and angry because of it.

      When the telephone rang, she grabbed it, as if grabbing some remedy for the conflicting moment. Unfortunately, she heard her mother on the other end of the line.

      “Marilee?