The arrangements took most of the day, which annoyed him. He had several tasks on the list of things he intended to get done today. Now they would all have to be pushed over into tomorrow. Plus what he had scheduled for tomorrow. Some of which would have to be rescheduled for the next day.
He hadn't planned to spend today dealing with Bryant Holloway's leftovers. But he supposed that he had known he would have to do it one of these days. Today was as good as any.
He sat on the bench, his elbows on the table. Lola had cooked some supper. Nothing fancy, but hot. Seventeenth-century stir fry. A little bit of chicken, lots of onions and cabbage. The apples had given it a good flavor. He usually just had a cheese sandwich at night, along with the second beer he allowed himself.
"What are you doing for politics?" he asked. "Now that you're missing the American idols?" She had named her children Clinton and Hillary.
She was washing up the dishes. Looked at him. Turned back to the dishpan. This house didn't have a sink.
He made another crack. Just couldn't resist it. They'd always argued about politics.
She turned around and started to blast him for a fool. Apparently Missy Jenkins had talked to her.
She blasted him more devastatingly than Ron Stone had done. As an ex-girlfriend, she knew him well enough to manage to hit him in places where it really hurt.
She pointed out that there had been a while between the Ring of Fire and the conception of the twins. Like about nine or ten months. During which he could have done something about it. She had a few choice words to say about the fact that during any one of those months, he could have betaken himself off to the doctor. To Adams or Nichols, if his masculine sensitivity was too delicate to patronize Susannah Shipley.
As far as Lola was concerned, there were no self justifications allowed.
Although when she finally reduced him to, "Because I'm a wimp?" she did laugh.
She blew steam out of both ears for about two hours.
The dishes were long done by then. Mostly he just sat there, looking at his hands.
Finally she said, "Look at me!"
He did.
"Are you going back to her?"
He looked back down at his hands.
"You married Latham before I married Chandra."
"It was several months after you got engaged to her. Are you going back? Bringing her here?"
About fifteen minutes later, he reached the answer. "No."
"Why not?"
That took more time.
"She was just a kid, Lola. As naive a kid as could possibly have existed in the United States of America in the last decade of the twentieth century, the way Wes and Lena brought her up. A really good kid. She had no idea what she was doing to me. Standing there in her modest little blouses and skirts, her not-by-any-means-too-tight jeans and her plenty-loose-enough-to-pass-Lena's-scrutiny tee shirts, radiating enough come-hither to drive a man mad."
"She was a good kid," Lola agreed. "She's grown into a nice person, too. Friendly. Capable. No nonsense. Funky sense of humor. I really like her better than Lenore, to be honest. Not so passive."
It occurred to him suddenly that Lola had probably seen a lot of Chandra while Lenore was married to Bryant. Whom they had buried today. While he had been down in Frankfurt, most of the time. For the last couple of years, she would have seen a lot more of Chandra than he had.
"She doesn't deserve for me to cut her off to handle four kids alone."
"She's not going to be any more alone with them from now on than she has been for the last two years almost. Look at it straight. She does deserve better than to be tied to you long distance forever. 'Irreconcilable differences' covers a lot of ground."
"All I could think of, when she came here to Frankfurt, was that I had to get her away before it started up again. Even though she really had come just to find out what was going on. Even though she didn't come down with the slightest intention of . . . When I saw her leaving with Missy on that motorcycle, all I really felt was relief.
"Chandra . . . wasn't really ever what I had planned on." He looked at Lola a little helplessly. "Not even what I had hoped for. She just happened to me."
"It's about time you faced up to that," Lola said. "That you haven't always been in control of things."
Then she took him to bed.
It was safe. She'd had her tubes tied when she divorced Latham. She had the sense to realize when she had enough on her plate.
And God only knew, it had been a long enough wait.
Chapter 64
Grantville
The phones were still down two days later. That made four days without phones. Grantville did not have a decent messenger system. Naturally. When it had working telephones, it did not need one. Even the messengers it did have, for delivering packages, were summoned by phone.