I wanted to ask if Dan would be. Instead, I said 'Please tell Dan how tremendously relieved I am that he's been cleared of the charge. And… and tell DJ, and the girls, that I asked my publisher to send them…'
'You don't have to do that, Jenny.'
'I've done it. I never disappoint my fans, Peter.'
'I don't think you could.'
The ring in his voice embarrassed me and I stammered something, remembering to mention the diary, and how elegant it was and how kind of him.
'I'll send yours back to you. Are you returning to Ireland right away?'
I really didn't know and said so. 'Remember me to Dan,' I said, which was as inane as it was inadequate.
'He's not likely to forget you, Jenny,' Peter said and then, with a formal phrase of thanks and goodbye, rang off.
How anti-climactic! How bloody depressing! Not that I wasn't overwhelmingly pleased that Dan, and I, were vindicated: that he was spared the stigma of a trial and DJ more crushing uncertainty. The truth had out! We had told it but the irony was it wasn't the truth that had made Dan free! It was lucking out with the ski-masked, burglars: pure chance.
And I was expected to go back and write children's books? Full of high moral integrity and ideals like Truth, Honesty, Kindness? Were my 'Timmy' tales really what I should be telling youngsters? Or the unvarnished truth of adult life that was facing them? And yet, the Good Guys had won this round because my reputation was good: and the principles I stood for in my books had tipped the creaky scales of Justice for a nice guy in clutch of circumstance.
My mood was composed of many elements, few of them complimentary to the shining public image that had helped reprieve Dan. I think I felt cheated that my 'sacrifice' was not needed. I knew I was damned sorry I wasn't going to see Dan, under whatever circumstances, again. And I wanted to see his son, too, to see the boy no longer haunted but happy the way boys should be… before they have to grow up. I worried that I had raised Tim right, if my sojourn in Denver were an example of what he might face. I was disoriented, too, because I'd just geared myself to working elsewhere other than my home when I must suddenly switch again. Mostly I couldn't wait to get myself on a plane and back to Ireland, to what was familiar, unexceptional, anonymous and dull. I yearned to be 'missus' and talk of the weather and hear complaints about the desperate prices of food, the high rates and the 'turrible inconveniences of the latest strike.' To get away from the sleek look of hotel rooms ' and effusive p.r. men and babbling do-gooders and idiotic ideals.
I got on the phone to Aer Lingus and booked myself on a flight that evening. If I pushed myself, I could make it and still have a few more hours with Tim. Once I make up my mind…
I could leave packing till after my lunch with Tim. He was genuinely relieved that the charges against Dan had been dropped. He might have been proud of my sense of obligation but he hadn't liked his mother involved in a 'hairy' situation. I think, under other circumstances, Tim would have liked Dan.
We went to the Maples for lunch because I was a bit bored with the hotel food. We'd finished the shrimp cocktails when Tim got round to what I had sensed must have been on his mind for some time.
'Mom,' he began in the casual tone of someone who has spent hours rehearsing, 'if Trish wangled a plane ticket out other old man, do you think she could visit us in Ireland a while this summer? She's saved enough to keep her while she's there…'
'I can't see why not,' I said, keeping my face straight with an effort and matching his diffidence.
'Then you liked her?' There was a little leaping of gladness in his eyes.
'Of course, I liked her.' I damned the Denver affair again for my preoccupation with it. I ought to have seen how important Trish was to Tim. 'She's got a lovely voice, plays beautifully, and she's got her head on right. If you'd like, I'll make a formal invitation to her parents…'
'Ah, Mom, no one does that any more.'
'I do. If I had a daughter…'
His eyebrows went up and he regarded me with all the amused tolerance of the young generation for the vagaries of the older. I plowed on.
'Her parents are much more likely to cough up for that all important ticket if the invitation comes from me. You know your generation but I sure as hell know mine. And it's very obvious to me that Trish comes from a "good'' family and is very well brought up.'
We thrashed that topic about a while and it ended that I would write the invitation for him to give Trish for her parents… as a clincher.
There was more to her proposed trip to Ireland than vacationing. She wanted to research the Irish musical form called lilting, or lumming, in which the singer mouths syllables instead of words to the music of drum, accordion or fiddle. I'd heard it with Tim when we went to Kerry one Easter. I suppose the form had academic merit. I couldn't, however, imagine Trish wasting her lovely voice on lilting. Would that have occurred to her as a research subject before she met Tim? Ah, the resourcefulness of the young is awesome. I was touched, amused and delighted with the pair of them.
And suddenly very envious.
We finished lunch in a welter of enthusiastic plans and I used three pages of my new diary to make preparation notes. I was to check the tent and see if we needed new pegs or lines: Trish had her own sleeping bag. (Did I dare ask Tim how he knew?) Would I ask Eamonn Dunne if we could have the loan of his sister's bike? Tim was going to lay in a supply from that great store in Philadelphia which specialised in dehydrated and flash frozen camper foods. The questions and queries were still coming thick and fast when I dropped him back to the campus for his afternoon lab.
He stroked my hair as he often does in farewell, boyishly awkward, more as if he were caressing a dog than his mother. (There are certain things a mother can't instruct her son in but I rather hoped he was more adroit with Trish.) Then he gave me a quick, absentminded kiss and, wishing me a safe journey home, went off to class. Already he was thinking ahead: I could tell that in his jaunty step, the tilt of his head. He reminded me so of his six year old self, saying a nonchalant goodbye to mommie on his first day of school.
I got back to my hotel room, called the cashier to ready my bill and shoved my clothes back in the case. When I came to my knitting bag, I spread the finished Arran sweater in my lap. I carefully refolded it and then sat, thinking, thinking of snow, and love-making, and Daniel Jerome Lowell, and the good things which had occurred in Denver. I hadn't knitted the sweater with him in mind nor had I finished it as a gift for him but unquestionably he'd look good in it with his broad shoulders. It would cover that incipient midriff roll… unless he'd swum it off. Or worried it away. If he intended to live in Denver for DJ's sake, he'd need the thick warm oiled wool… in snow-stormy Colorado.
The desk clerk was surprised at my request but before I could fret, he sent the bellgirl up with a used, but good, length of wrapping paper and a ball of twine. So I packaged the sweater and addressed it to D.J. Lowell, c/o Peter Taggert. I chuckled and put my initials and Tim's college box number as return address. Then I slipped the unused portion of the Denver ticket into an envelope to mail back to Peter. He oughtn't to have any trouble getting the refund since his office had paid for it.
I was keyed up now and got on the road to New York, and Ireland, by mid-afternoon. I'd mail the sweater from the airport. Cost me less and give me something to do while I waited for the nine o'clock flight. I didn't miss all the commuter traffic out of New York City but then I did have time to kill. When I had paid the rental car fee, I wondered if it wouldn't have been cheaper to have flown from Philadelphia. But the activity of driving had been therapeutic… if expensive.
I phoned my agent to tell him the news, asked him to check to make sure the books had been sent. I dutifully called Suzie and said that, unfortunately, I wouldn't get a chance to see her because my excursion time had run out. She kept chattering on about her husband and the price of meat and this and that until my coins dropped into the box and released me from the sound of her carping. I promised I'd write her and we were cut off. I mailed Dan the sweater.