Tender Love

“Watch the paper for yard sales, and take her to one of those. You can add a few new outfits, and Mark won’t notice.”

“I also want to have a professional cleaning service come in and clean the whole house. He does have a woman come in for a few hours on Thursday, but she can’t keep up with all the work.”

“A group of our church women has taken house cleaning as a ministry. If the family is able to make a donation, fine. If not, they clean the house free of charge. Talk to Mark about it—he’ll never know how much money you give them.”

“Thanks, Betty—you’ve solved my two biggest problems.”

“Let me warn you, Alice, that Mark Tanner is an intelligent man, and he’s going to realize soon that you aren’t an ordinary nanny. You should tell him before he figures it out for himself.”

“This is only for a month’s trial,” Alice reminded her. “After that, I may tell him.”

“If you stay there three more weeks, Alice, you’ll be hooked, and you know it. I’m your friend, and I don’t want you to get hurt. I feel responsible for you since I’m the one who mentioned the Tanners to you.”

Alice laughed at her. “Hey, I’m a big girl now— I can look after myself.”

Betty’s eyes were skeptical. “I wonder.”

“By the way, who is Ethel Pennington?”

Betty grinned at her. “So you’ve seen her, have you?”

“I can hardly help it. She’s been in and out of the house several days this week, and Wednesday, she brought hamburgers and French fries for Kristin and Eddie at two o’clock in the afternoon. I took charge of the food and told her that we’d have it for dinner—that I’d scheduled regular hours and I didn’t want the children nibbling between meals. She was obviously angry, and Kristin and Eddie weren’t happy about it either, but I won that battle, for so far, Mark is supporting me. Too much of that kind of food isn’t good for Eddie. Dr. Zane said he needs fruits and vegetables.”

“To answer your question—Ethel is a spinster who’s had her eye on Mark for years. She lives a few blocks from the Tanners, and as soon as Clarice got sick, she became the ministering angel. She intends to be the next Mrs. Tanner, and she’s working on Mark through the children.”

“Is Mark interested in her?”

“I doubt it very much, but she isn’t easily discouraged.”

The night before Kristin left for church camp, Mark telephoned that he would be late getting home.

“If you don’t mind, Alice, you can put the children to bed early. I don’t want them staying up until I come home.”

She prepared beef stew, Waldorf salad, and hot rolls for dinner, putting aside enough food for Mark in case he hadn’t eaten before he came home. The children were quieter than usual as they ate, and Kristin merely picked at her food. As Alice cleared the table and filled the dishwasher, the children dogged her steps—she couldn’t get a foot away from either one of them.

After her work was finished, she said, “Your father asked me to send you to bed early, for he didn’t know when he would be home.”

“Oh, Alice, please don’t make us go to bed before Daddy comes,” Kristin begged, and Eddie puckered up as if he would soon burst into tears.

“But he doesn’t know what time he’ll be here, and we leave for camp early in the morning.”

Kristin grabbed her hand, and Eddie tugged on Alice’s jeans. “But I won’t sleep until he comes. When he’s late, we’re always afraid he’s not coming home. Please, don’t send us to bed, Alice. Eddie will cry until he’s sick.”

Like a bolt from the blue, Alice suddenly realized that she’d misjudged the situation in this home. Her whole focus had been to discipline these children, Eddie in particular, and to build up their physical bodies with the right kind of foods and exercise. And while those things were necessary, suddenly she realized that, more than anything else, Kristin and Eddie needed love and security. They’d witnessed their mother’s slow death, and knowing that Mark was all they had left, their fear of losing him was overpowering.

She’d been listening to her head and not her heart. Her conscience smote her, and she put an arm around Kristin and ruffled Eddie’s hair.

“You can wait up for a while anyway. Why don’t you take your baths, get into your pj’s, and we’ll sit in the living room and wait for him? What do you and your father do in the evenings?”

A smile lit Kristin’s face, and Eddie hugged Alice’s legs. “We play games sometimes or sit on the couch and watch television.” She giggled. “We watch the programs, but Daddy sits with his arms around us and goes to sleep most of the time.”

“I should be able to handle that,” Alice said. “Up the stairs with you, then. I’ll help you with your bath-water, Eddie, and I’ll turn down your beds so you’ll be ready when your daddy comes home.”

“Will you tell him we got ready all by ourselves?” Eddie asked.

“If I don’t have to do too many things for you.”

While she waited for them to finish bathing, Alice tried to think of a game that would interest both of them. As soon as Mark helped her set up the computer, she could provide many educational and entertaining programs for them to watch, but that wouldn’t help her tonight.

Deciding there was a difference between spoiling and loving, she started downstairs. “Come down when you’re ready,” she called. She was mixing a pan of fresh apple muffins when they found her in the kitchen.

“I’m going to put these in the oven to bake, and we can have milk and muffins later on.”

“Oh, boy,” Kristin cried. “We’ll like that, won’t we, Eddie?”

He nodded happily and tugged on Alice’s hand. She knelt beside him and smoothed back his wet hair, and he threw his arms around her and kissed her. The caress had a strange effect on Alice, for it lighted an ember in her heart that had never been touched—she had the first glimmering of what a mother’s love entailed. Her voice quavered when she spoke.

“While the muffins bake, let’s play a game my sister and I used to enjoy. We’ll sit here at the table.” On the table, Alice laid a sheet of paper she’d brought from her room. “We’re going to draw creatures. I’ll start first.”

“But Eddie can’t draw,” Kristin said.

“Sure, he can. I’m going to draw the head of a dog, then you, Kristin, can add the body, and Eddie will draw the legs and feet of the dog.”

“That won’t be hard to do,” Kristin agreed. “I make good grades in art.”

“Ah, but there’s a catch to it,” Alice said. “Neither of you can look while I’m drawing the head, and I’ll fold over the top of the paper before I hand it to you. Eddie can’t watch while you’re shaping the body, and you’ll fold over what you’ve done before he draws the feet and legs.”

Kristin frowned. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Let’s try it anyway. Each of us will mark where the next part of the animal is supposed to be drawn. Cover your eyes.”

Alice quickly sketched an outline of what purported to be a poodle, although art wasn’t one of her strong points. She folded the paper so that only the edge of the neck was showing.

“Okay, Kristin, you can look now, but Eddie keeps his eyes covered.”

Kristin screwed up her eyes in concentration as she carefully drew the body of a dalmatian. Watching her, Alice deduced that she did have some artistic talent. When Eddie’s turn came, with his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth, he outlined four legs that could belong on no other dog except a dachshund.

As she watched Eddie’s tiny fingers painstakingly creating the legs and feet, Kristin smiled broadly, and when he finished and Alice unfolded the paper, Kristin laughed, shouting, “That’s the funniest looking dog I’ve ever seen.”

The head of an aristocratic poodle attached to the spotted, thin body of a dalmatian, supported by four short, sturdy legs was amusing.

Eddie giggled, saying, “But I did make nice legs, didn’t I, Alice?” He jumped up and down on the chair. “I want to draw a bird. Let me draw first this time.”

They’d made three more creatures by the time the muffins were ready, and the two children were more animated than Alice had seen them. She removed the muffins from the pan.

“Do you want to eat a muffin now or wait until they’ve cooled?”

“They smell so good, let’s have one now,” Kristin said, “and maybe we can have some more when Daddy comes home.”