A Minute to Smile Read online

  “Maybe I’ll go tell him some soldier stories,” Abe said with a wicked grin and headed for the backyard.

  Esther turned toward Alexander, brushing wisps of hair from her porcelain face. “Would you like to sit down?” She gestured toward a rattan love seat.

  As he settled on floral cushions, he decided that she made him think of a goddess, but not those ethereal creatures artists were so fond of, with their flat blond hair and frail figures. Rather, Esther was more like an ancient goddess of fertility—laughing and lusty, drawn in robust hues, love and appetite flowing from her like sunshine.

  Oddly appropriate that she was an herbalist.

  “Since you’re English, I’m sure my tea won’t suit you,” she said, “but can I offer you a glass of lemonade?”

  Alexander had to gather his scattered thoughts to speak and it annoyed him. He was thirty-nine years old and in addition to having been married twelve years, he was no stranger to women. What was it about this woman that tied his tongue? “Lemonade is fine,” he said gruffly.

  “Fresh squeezed,” she said, sliding open the door of a glass-fronted cooler that displayed all sorts of exotic juices and soft drinks. She poured a tall glass of lemonade for each of them from a pitcher, then settled in the chair Abe had vacated. The pose put her against the light, giving her hair an edging of gold fire. Taking a dainty sip of her lemonade, she gave him a curious glance. “So, tell me more about this class.”

  Alexander fingered his beard momentarily, gathering his thoughts. “My specialty is the history of the dark and middle ages, and I’ve several students who need a touch of reality regarding their favorite time period.”

  She flashed that inviting, mysterious, goddess smile. “How interesting. What would you like me to do?”

  “We need someone to share the old ways of medicine with us. Abe said there’s no one who knows the herbal arts as well as you do.”

  Again she brushed away the compliment. “He’s much too loyal. But I love talking about herbs on any level.” Biting her lip, she paused. “I think I may even have a few books on the dark ages in particular.”

  “An honorarium would be arranged, of course.” He forced himself to look away from the glowing colors of the woman before him and sipped the pulpy lemonade.

  “Waive the honorarium,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve taken a class of any kind. I might enjoy sitting in on the sessions that I don’t teach.” She looked at him, a hint of shyness in her rich brown eyes. “Would that be all right?”

  “Of course.” He smiled to put her at ease and cocked an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”

  “How many students are in the class?”

  “Only eleven—most of them very intense, I should warn you. The sort of students who live and breathe for history. All of them are very bright, eloquent, and—” he gave her a rueful smile “—absurdly certain that the world we left was a far better one than the one in which we live.”

  “You sound as if you know them very well.”

  “Oh, I do. I proposed the class with all of them in mind. Obsession can be dangerous.” He shook his head. “You’ll see what I mean soon enough, I’m afraid.”

  “Believe me,” Esther said with asperity, “I’m familiar with the syndrome.” She laughed. “I’ve probably even been one of those students.”

  “As have I, I’m afraid.”

  A group of little boys rushed up to the door. “Mrs. Lucas, can Jeremy play?” one called through the screen.

  “He’s around back, guys.”

  Alexander watched the gaggle of them run toward a parked group of trikes and tiny two-wheelers.

  “Do you have children?” Esther asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Somehow I didn’t think so.”

  “Oh, really? Why is that?” His question was more curious than anything.

  “You strike me as someone with an orderly life—and don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.”

  For a moment, he was surprised, then he laughed at how accurately she had pegged him. “As a matter of fact, I do have an orderly life.” He inclined his head, realizing with a small part of his mind that it had been literally years since he’d laughed out loud so spontaneously. “But would I still live amidst disorder if my children were grown and gone?”

  “Not a chance, Professor. That silver might fool some people, but you aren’t old enough to have children already sprung from the nest.”

  “Right again,” he said. He stood up. “I’ve got a feeling I’m going to like working with you, Ms. Lucas.”

  She inclined her head, as if taking his measure, a measure that somehow puzzled her. “The feeling is mutual.”

  “I’ll send you a syllabus for the class and you’ll have a clear idea of what I’ll need from you on that.” He stood up and extended a hand. “I’m listed in the university directory if you should have any questions—and I don’t live very far from here, either.”

  “All right. It was nice to meet you, Alexander Stone.”

  “Goodbye,” he said formally, and firmly placed his hat on his head. Outside, the day seemed bursting with life and energy. He decided suddenly to forego the work he’d had planned for this afternoon in favor of working out at the dojo.

  As he walked home to get his things, he found himself whistling.

  Chapter Two

  The dojo was nearly empty on this warm afternoon, which suited Alexander as well as if it had been filled with people. He didn’t come here for social reasons.

  The room was still, with reflected light falling in soft white arcs to the mats from windows high in the walls. It smelled faintly of hardworking bodies and the polish on the floors, with a hint of the incense Ryohe Kobayashi burned in his private room. As Alexander headed barefooted toward the unoccupied end of the room, he nodded at a young muscular man working with a heavy bag suspended from the ceiling.

  Shutting external signals out, Alexander moved into the tai chi chuan exercise that had led him into the practice of martial arts as a boy. A series of 128 slow-motion movements, it served to loosen his body and shut down his brain. After so many years, he was able to block his rational processes, but another portion of his mind never entirely quieted. A purely sensual vision of Esther flashed against the darkened screen of memory, a vision of yellow light shimmering in her pale copper hair, of her sloe-eyed smile and throaty voice.

  No thoughts. He pushed them away, slowly easing away even the vision of Esther as he sought the quiet of mind that marked true discipline.

  Some days, when he worked hard and long, he found himself suspended in the flow and concentration that marked the art of tai chi. Not often—it was nearly impossible for a Western man to completely master the art of silence. But the mellow sense of peace occurred often enough that he continued to seek it. In the past few years, even the pursuit of it had often saved his sanity.

  Flutters of calm touched him today and after several hours, he strolled home in the bright heat of early summer, feeling pleasantly energized.

  On his porch, however, were the gory remains of a robin. The head, wings and tail were scattered beneath a chair, surrounded with a few loose gray feathers.

  “Damned cat,” Alexander swore, and found a shovel to remove the carcass. Piwacket, the murderer, slept serenely below a rosebush in the backyard. The mangy tom opened one eye as Alexander began to dig a shallow hole.

  “The only thing that comforts me, Piwacket,” he said to the animal, “is that soon you’ll be much too fat to climb a tree.” He frowned, eyeing the rippling, dusty belly that billowed before the cat like a sail. “It amazes me that you can move fast enough to catch even a robin.”

  Piwacket yawned and flopped back down into the warm dirt. Despite himself, Alexander grinned—few creatures were as unrepentantly degenerate as his cat.

  He spent the afternoon gardening, taking pleasure in the feel of the warm sun on his bare head and arms, in the rich smell of the earth and the damp fe
el of it on his hands. He weeded between sprouting marigolds and his late wife’s energetic lilies, and transplanted the tiny purple and blue violas that would create such lovely contrast to his collection of roses as the season progressed.

  By dinnertime, he was satisfyingly sweaty and dirty, his arms and hands nicked from thorns and rocks. He showered, broiled a steak and sat down with a bottle of ale and the newspaper.

  All according to schedule.

  When he settled in the library for a nightcap of cognac and a little reading, that, too, was well within his routine. A breeze danced in through the French doors that led to his garden, carrying with it the relaxing scent of earth and wet grass.

  He picked up a paperback suspense novel from the lamp table and read, sipping cognac in the quiet evening. Piwacket padded in on enormous paws and flopped his ragged, unkempt body at Alexander’s feet. He meowed, but Alexander ignored him.

  Annoyed, Piwacket jumped up to Alexander’s desk, batting halfheartedly at pens and paperclips to watch them drop to the floor. Turning a page in his book with studious quiet, Alexander nonetheless smiled.

  Next the scruffy animal leaped with surprising grace for his outrageous size to the lamp table. For a moment, he sat there, tail flicking, then reached out a paw and stuck it into the cognac, toppling the glass in the process. Alexander caught it before much was spilled, then shooed the tom off the table. “I thought we settled this,” Alexander said with annoyance, dropping a paper napkin on the mess. “It’s bad enough you don’t purr, that you kill birds and leave me their heads, that you snore and knock things over, but you’re also an alcoholic!”

  Piwacket blinked, licking his whiskers. His yellow gaze was focused intently upon the cognac-soaked napkin. Alexander almost threw it into the dustbin near the desk, then thought better of it. He’d be picking up little scraps of paper in the morning, and Piwacket would have a bellyache from devouring the napkin.

  “Come on,” he told the animal his wife had rescued—against Piwacket’s protests—from an alley behind a Denver hospital. “I’ll get you some food.” Not that Pi would eat it. A single bag of commercial food lasted several months and in spite of that, the animal was grossly overweight. He fed himself on birds and snakes and squirrels when he was lucky enough, but would be content with spiders, beetles and garbage pickings if times were lean.

  But the evening sprinkle of food in Piwacket’s plastic dish was also part of Alexander’s meticulously ordered life. As he bent over the dish, smelling a fresh night wind blow through the open back door, he wondered how much longer he would cling to the web of routines. It seemed he’d been noticing them all day, since the lovely Esther had made her comment.

  As he’d stood in the doorway of her sweet-smelling shop, with sunshine streaming in to dance in her hair, he’d found her perceptiveness amusing and interesting. After a day of observation, however, he wondered if he’d grown too entrenched—if his life had any meaning beyond his habits and schedule.

  Until his wife’s death four years before, he’d felt no need of regular timetables except those relating to his classes and that sort of thing. After Susan’s death from leukemia, he’d found himself unexpectedly unable to cope with even the smallest chores without planning them in advance. All meaning had been stolen from his life, and into the void, he placed routines. They had lent at least an appearance of order to the endless days.

  Looking out the door to the glittering, starry sky, he shook his head. Even Susan would protest this long recovery. She, perhaps, above all.

  So instead of ascending the stairs for a shower as was his habit, he wandered into the living room and flipped on the television, clicking through channels until he found the late show. Once he’d enjoyed watching old movies. How long since he’d indulged the pleasure?

  He poured a second cognac in further defiance of habit and settled in.

  Unfortunately he tuned into a tragic romance made in the thirties. As he watched, trying to stick to his resolve to break his mindless routines, he thought of Esther and his instant, heady attraction to her. There was a sense of vibrant sensuality about her, a zest and verve that drew him like nothing else could have.

  Susan, too, had possessed that quality. Even his mother, Juliette, had been an extraordinarily vibrant woman.

  And both had died young.

  For a moment, he was reminded of the dark, soul-devouring despair he had known after Susan’s death. Each moment of each day had been an ordeal to somehow overcome.

  Vitality was no guarantee of protection against life’s capriciousness, he thought, and turned off the television. Better empty routines than the bleak despair.

  * * *

  Sunday mornings when the boys were home were Esther’s favorite. The store was closed and there was time for a big, leisurely breakfast.

  This morning, Daniel sprawled on the living-room couch, watching cartoons. Jeremy played in the dining room, wearing Superman pajamas complete with cape and a foreign legion hat. In the kitchen, Esther listened to U2 on a cassette player and danced as she made French toast. Heaven, she thought, flipping the toast in time to the music.

  The phone rang and Esther cheerfully answered it, tucking the phone between her shoulder and chin.

  “Hi,” said Abe. “Are you making waffles?”

  “No. Sausage, orange juice and French toast. You want to come? I’ll throw in some scrambled eggs and cheese just for you.”

  Abe groaned. “Thanks, but it sounds like a zoo over there. I’m not up to it this morning.”

  “It is,” Esther replied, unoffended by the running joke. “What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to find out if you were going to teach the class.”

  After Alexander’s departure a few days before, the shop had been swamped with customers and Abe had left with a single wave of his hand. “Yes,” she said. “As you knew full well I would.”

  “Good.”

  “You aren’t matchmaking by any chance, are you?”

  “Esther, please.” His voice was thick with disdain. “That’s hardly my style.”

  “Mmm,” she said skeptically. “Not officially.” She turned the toast in the pan, satisfied at the golden finish. “But when I told you about the man in the dojo, you must have known who I was talking about.”

  “Yeah, I figured it was him. It didn’t seem important.”

  Esther twisted her mouth, sure he was matchmaking now. “Sure, sure. What do you know about him?”

  “Not much, really. He’s been teaching me tai chi and we talk sometimes.” Abe coughed uncomfortably. “He’s a widower.”

  Her heart plummeted. There was the tragedy she had seen in his eyes. “Recent?”

  “No. At least a few years.”

  Esther thought of his leonine grace and power at the dojo. “I’m intrigued,” she admitted out of long habit. It was impossible for her to hide anything much from Abe.

  “I thought you would be,” he said and laughed. “Bye, Esther.” He hung up without giving her a chance to say anything in return.

  “Brat,” she muttered, glaring at the phone. But as usual, Abe had accurately pegged her. Alexander Stone was the first man in ages to have caught her eye. There was something about him...

  A wounded lion, she thought with a sigh. Damn Abe. He knew the last thing in the world she needed was another man with scars on his soul.

  After breakfast, Daniel suggested a “city hike.” They packed a lunch in a backpack and set off, walking the city blocks to view newly blooming flowers.

  The neighborhood was one in which people took their exercise in the open air, against the backdrop of the Flatirons and the incredible blue of the Colorado sky. As they strolled, an older couple in neat sweat suits walked by, and a runner with earphones attached to his head dashed intently by them.

  Daniel walked next to his mother, sometimes holding her hand. Jeremy played raven, running ahead of them with his arms outstretched as wings, cawing every so often. Several times, a real raven ans
wered him.

  Daniel watched. “Why is he so noisy, Mommy?”

  “I don’t know, honey. It drives you crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “Sometimes.” He looked at her with enormous blue eyes. “But you know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “He’s really going to be good at gym when he goes to school next year.”

  Esther grinned. “You’re probably right.”

  “Maybe he can help me.”

  “Are you still having trouble?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t throw things very well or catch them, either. It seems like I figure it out, and then, it just doesn’t work the way I want it to.”

  “Everybody is good at different things.” She leaned toward him and in a confidential tone said, “I was terrible at gym.”

  Daniel brightened. “You were?”

  “The worst.”

  He took her hand. “If you had a hundred people and only five of them were good at gym, that would be five percent.”

  She looked at him. “Have you been studying percentages?” First grade seemed a bit early for that.

  “No,” he said with a shrug. “I just read about them the other day.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  It would be impossible for a woman to have two more disparate children than she. Daniel was her little thinker, a child who’d memorized long books at two and added simple numbers by three. At four, he started reading and subtracting. And yet, it was never enough to satisfy him. Each new thing led him to something else. Already his room was littered with Encyclopedia Brown books and magazines about computer games and a huge text on simple science experiments. He was cautious, meticulous and prone to horrid rages of frustration.

  Gifted, his teachers said.

  “Hey, Mommy,” he said. “What’s in the back of Rafael underwear?”

  “What?”

  “The sais.” He burst out laughing.

  Esther laughed, too—he was, after all, only six years old. “Where’d you get that?”

  “I made it up. What’s Donatello’s favorite sport?”

  “What?”