Almost Home. Debbie Macomber

okay? I don’t need your pity. Ask me the damn questions you need to ask, and let’s get this over with. I’ll keep my kisses to myself.”

      His eyes went bleak all of a sudden, his voice gruff. “That wasn’t what I meant, Chalese, not at all.”

      “Sure it is. The frumpy children’s book author made a fool of herself, and you’re trying to let her down easy by saying it’s ‘not the time or the place for me to return your kiss.’ Shove it, okay?”

      “The last word I would use to describe you is frumpy, even if you are still in your pajamas.”

      “I’m working. This is my work uniform. Got a problem with it, close your eyes.”

      “I have no problems with your work uniform, even if you do have pink giraffes on your pajamas. And I don’t pity you, so don’t start with that. We’re going to talk about what happened down there another time.”

      “Sure we are. As soon as I grow a third head out my spine. Let me grab the dogs, and we’ll walk down to the ocean.” I shut the door, dove into the shower, yanked my jeans on without the usual force, which was strange, and threw a red sweatshirt over my head.

      We got all the leaping dogs on leashes and headed for the ocean, the sun golden and warm, shining through the trees in sparkling rays.

      The dogs were poorly behaved and rambunctious, as usual, and soon I let them off-leash. They grinned victoriously, their tongues lolling about, and headed off into their high adventure.

      Aiden got out a notepad as we strolled along the shoreline and I tried to avoid looking at him. “All right, I need you to trust me a little bit here with a few simple questions.”

      I quivered inside but tried not to show it. Trust him. My childhood had about beat my ability to trust any man right out of my body.

      “When did you start drawing?”

      “I can’t remember not drawing.” That was the truth.

      “So you started as a child?”

      I nodded. I didn’t want to say that drawing and writing were an escape for me then. That drawing gave me a way to block out my father and the rampant fear he caused, the crushing hurt, the anger, the way I felt when I saw him clock my mother or lock her in their bedroom suite for days in our New York apartment.

      Kangaroos in pink aprons I could control. A fox in a tuxedo I could laugh at. A parakeet who braided her head feathers I could handle. Pretty soon, my animals were talking. At first it was simple stuff, from a child’s viewpoint. But that child, moi, grew up pretty quick in that house, and my kangaroos in pink aprons were soon giving little speeches in Australia about the land belonging to everyone. The raccoons in the forests of Oregon were working with the beavers to fight off pollution that was killing the fish. The polar bears were discussing how they could all get along.

      “I loved to draw because it was creative. It was fun. I loved animals. Still do.”

      I smiled at him with as much confidence as I could muster over my deadly boring answer.

      Aiden stared at me. “I know there’s more to it than that behind your beaming, fake smile.”

      My stomach clenched as if two vises were being screwed into it. I tried to seem perplexed. “No, I don’t think so. I’m pretty simple. Very normal childhood. Normal life here, too. Normal childhood. Normal. Very.”

      I heard the dogs bark in the distance. They loved to run. I wanted to run.

      “Why writing and illustrating? Why that career choice?”

      Because then I could hide like a hot-flashing turtle and live quietly. “I wanted to write books for kids. I wanted them to love my books, love reading. I wanted to teach them what a truthful, kind society should strive for and how we have to take care of each other and the planet.”

      “And?”

      “I wanted to make them think.” That was a raw truth. “We often tell kids what they should think. We dump information on them. We tell them what to do, tell them what to learn, tell them how to be. I wanted them to think about their relationships, their lives, their futures, animals, this country, the world, people that look the same as them, and people that are different, people who have different opinions. My animals in my books struggle with the same emotions people do, but reading it from a fluffy bunny appeals to kids more than if I stuck an exhausted mother of three in there.”

      I stopped.

      “Does that make sense, or do I sound like an inebriated rattlesnake?” I hit my forehead and reminded myself once again to lose the animals out of my conversation.

      He nodded at me. “Completely. It’s admirable.”

      “Thank you.” Must you be so sexy?

      “How did your normal, very normal”—I did not miss his emphasis on those words—“childhood affect your decision to write books with such depth?”

      My childhood had affected every part of my life. It’s only been in the last years that I’ve been able to separate “it” from “me,” and I’m still working on it. I hugged my arms around myself. “My childhood allowed me the time to draw and write.” Lots of time. Times of sheer terror move quicker when one can draw white storks in bikinis while hiding under a bed.

      “Were your parents supportive of your work?”

      “Yes.” My mother was. She snuck me crayons and pencils and pads of paper. My father gave her enough to feed us—barely. He would not allow her to work. It was outrageous, really. We had a fancy apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York, a car and driver for my father, but often no money to buy milk.

      The way my mother got my father to spend money for clothes on us once a year was by implying she was worried about what other people would think of our sorry state. We would live through another rage, he’d leave without us for a charity dinner or fancy ball where his face would appear in the society pages the next day—but by morning my mother would have an envelope on her side of the bed. No telling what my mother had to do to get that envelope.

      “How?”

      I shuddered. “How what?” How come my father seemed to hate me and was much more interested in Christie? How come he often sent me to my room—“Go to your igloo,” he’d order—as if he didn’t want to see my face? How come he was such an angry man and asked me with a sneer if I wanted whale meat to eat? I don’t know.

      His eyes narrowed. “How were they supportive?”

      “My mother bought me pencils and crayons and paper.”

      “And your father?”

      I grimaced, then pulled my arms closer to my body. “He paid for them.”

      “Was he an artist?”

      “No.” He was a nightmare. A black-haired nightmare.

      “Was your mother an artist?”

      “No.” She was a survivor.

      “What did your parents do for a living? Where did you grow up?”

      I was feeling more and more ill. “My father was a businessman.” For a while. Until he made his world collapse. “My mother was a full-time mother. I grew up in … I grew up in … in …” What to say? If I said New York, that would give him another door to open. “I grew up in Connecticut.”

      So that one was a lie. My father had one of his homes there. We visited once. He hadn’t wanted us to go there, ever again, without him. Sometimes he’d be gone for a week, and later he’d tell us he was at the Connecticut house. He’d stare right at my mother when he said this and smirk.

      “Any siblings besides Christie?”

      “No.” Maybe. Probably. None that I know of. Mrs. Zebra licked me. Lightning circled, making sure I was okay, then bounded off into the waves again.