She knew that guests had been invited for five in the afternoon, and they would be eating dinner at seven. “The other guests are coming at five, but you can come earlier if you need to.” She didn't want him to have to hang around the airport all afternoon, waiting to come for dinner.
“Five will be perfect,” he said serenely. He would have come at six in the morning if she'd told him to. He didn't know why, but he was anxious to see her. After years of emotional solitude, he was deaf, dumb, and blind to his own feelings. “Is it very formal?” he suddenly asked nervously. He didn't want to appear in a suit if everyone else would be wearing a tuxedo. And if he needed one, he would have to borrow one from Charles, and send it back to him.
“No, my father usually wears a dark suit, but he's pretty stuffy. You can wear whatever you've brought with you.”
“Great, I'll wear my flight suit,” he teased her, and she laughed.
“I'd like to see that,” she said, and meant it.
“Maybe we can arrange for a short flight for you and your father this weekend.”
“Just don't tell my mother. She'll choke on her turkey, and make you leave halfway through dinner.”
“I won't say a word. See you on Thursday.” He sounded remarkably relaxed as she said goodbye to him, but as they both hung up the phone, they each found that their palms were sweating. She still had to tell her mother he was coming for dinner.
She broached the subject gingerly the following afternoon when she got home, and found her mother checking the china in the kitchen. She was well known for the beautiful table she set, and her elaborate flower arrangements. And she was distracted when Kate first walked into the kitchen, trying to assess her mother's mood.
“Hi, Mom. Need a hand?” Her mother looked over her shoulder in surprise. Kate was always the first to escape when she thought her mother needed help in the kitchen. She always said that domestic duties bored her, and they were demeaning.
“Did you flunk out of school?” her mother said with a look of amusement. “You must have done something really awful if you're offering to help me count china. How bad is it?”
“Couldn't it be that I'm just more mature now that I'm in college?” Kate said with an imperious look, and her mother pretended to think about it for an instant.
“That's possible, but very unlikely. You've only been there for three months, Kate. I think maturity starts to happen junior year, and doesn't come full-blown until you're a senior.”
“Great. Are you telling me that after I graduate, I'll actually want to count china?”
“Absolutely. Particularly if you're doing it for your husband,” her mother said firmly.
“Mom… okay, okay. I did something in the spirit of what you always tell me Thanksgiving is about.” Kate looked innocent as she faced her mother.
“You killed a turkey?”
“No, I invited a homeless friend for dinner. Not homeless, but family-less.” It sounded reasonable to both of them the way she said it.
“That's sweet, darling. One of the girls in your house at Radcliffe?”
“A friend from California,” she hedged, trying to soften up her mother before she told her.
“It's perfectly understandable she can't go home. Of course you can invite her. We have eighteen people coming here for dinner, and there's plenty of room at the table.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Kate said looking relieved, at least they had room for him. “By the way, it's not a girl.” Kate held her breath and waited.
“It's a boy?” Her mother looked startled.
“Sort of.”
“From Harvard?” Her mother looked genuinely pleased. She loved the idea of Kate dating a boy from Harvard, and it was the first she'd heard of it. And only three months into the school year.
“He's not from Harvard,” Kate dove into the icy water, “it's Joe Allbright.”
There was a long pause as her mother looked at her with eyes full of questions. “The pilot? How did you happen to hear from him?”
“He called me out of the blue yesterday. He's visiting the Lindberghs, and he had nothing to do on Thanksgiving.”
“Isn't it a little odd that he would call you?” Her mother looked suspicious.
“Maybe.” She didn't tell her about the letters, it was hard enough to explain why she had invited him for Thanksgiving. She wasn't even sure why herself, but she had. And now she had to find some plausible reason to explain it.
“Has he called you before?”
“No, he hasn't,” she was able to say honestly. Her mother didn't ask if he'd ever written to her. “I think he just likes Dad, and maybe he's lonely. I don't think he has any family. I don't know why he called, Mom, but when he said he had no plans for Thanksgiving, I felt sorry for him. I didn't think you and Dad would mind. It's kind of the spirit of Thanksgiving,” she said blithely, and helped herself to a carrot from the icebox. But her mother wasn't entirely taken in, she knew her better, although she'd never seen her daughter look quite like that. But at fifty-eight, she hadn't entirely forgotten what it felt like to be wooed by an older man when you were young, or to be smitten. But something about Joe Allbright worried her. He was so remote and so aloof, and at the same time so intense. He was the kind of man who, if he turned his full attention on you, could be overwhelming. And even if Kate didn't understand that, because she had no experience with it, her mother did, and that was precisely why she was worried about him.
“I don't mind if he comes to dinner,” Elizabeth Jamison said honestly, “but I mind very much if he's pursuing you, Kate. He's a lot older than you are, and not the sort of person I think you should fall in love with.” How did one decide those things, who to fall in love with, and who not? And how could one control it? But Kate only nodded at her mother.
“I'm not in love with him, Mom. He's just coming to eat turkey.”
“Sometimes that's how those things start, by being friends and becoming too familiar,” her mother warned her.
“He lives in California,” Kate said blandly.
“I'll admit, that makes me feel better. All right, I'll tell your father. And I hate to say it, but he'll be delighted. But I swear, if he offers to take your father up in some dangerous plane with him, I'll put arsenic in his stuffing. And you can tell him I said so.”
“Thanks, Mom,” she beamed at her mother, and wandered nonchalantly out of the kitchen.
“I thought you were going to help me!” her mother called after her just before the kitchen door closed.
“I have a paper due on Monday, I'd better get started on it!” she shouted back, but her mother wasn't fooled. The look in Kate's eyes after her mother had said Joe could come to dinner absolutely terrified her. She had had that look in her own eyes only once, when a friend of her father's had secretly courted her and broken her heart, but fortunately her parents had discovered it and intervened before anything too awful had happened. And she had met Kate's father only weeks later. But now she was worried about Kate and Joe Allbright. She spoke to Clarke about it quietly in their bedroom later that evening. She told him about Joe coming to Thanksgiving dinner, but he didn't share her fears about him.
“He's just coming to dinner, Elizabeth. He's an interesting man. He's not foolish enough to run after a girl of eighteen. He's a handsome guy, he could have any woman he wanted.”
“I think you're being naive,” she said wisely. “She's a beautiful girl, and I think she's fascinated by him. He's a very romantic figure. Half the women in this country would be happy to run after Charles Lindbergh, and I'm sure some of them have tried. Joe has the same kind of mystique and charm. All that aloofness and his being a pilot make him seem like a romantic figure to a young girl.”
“Are you afraid that Kate is running after him?” Her father looked startled. She had a good head on her shoulders, and her mother wasn't giving her credit for it.