Love in the Lights

"Thanks for that, Tim." He pointed at the dehumidifier. " And thank you for finding Emma. If you hadn't found her and gotten that ambulance her when you did she might have laid there all night long." He reached over and took my empty right hand in his. "Thank you."

His grip was firm, his eyes steady on mine and a sudden wash of embarrassment that I had seen his wife naked came over me in a flood. All I could hope was that I kept it from my face. I looked away as he let go of my hand.

"It was luck," I told him shrugging. "I could have just as easily put the groceries in our refrigerator till I could get her on the phone. It was Mom that suggested I bring them over."

"Well, however it came about thank you. The doctors said they want to run a few more tests but she should be able to come home this weekend. Maybe sooner." He shrugged and looked around at the sodden carpet, then up at the big spot on his ceiling.

"That's good news," I said, unsure of what to say. Kneeling down, I put the tray back in the dehumidifier.

"Yep." He lifted his foot and put it back down. Water burbled up from the padding. "I'm going to have to go rent a shampooer and see if I can pull up some of this water."

"Well, I'll keep coming over and dumping water." I told him as I turned it on. "This will keep mold from getting started at least."

He nodded then sighed. "I've got to get a few things together and head back over to the hospital. Again, thank you." At my shrug he headed up the squishy stairs. Feeling awkward, I left and went back home. Sitting on the swing, I waved from our porch when he pulled away from in front of his house. He nodded and waved back.

Between them, Mom and Mr. Jackson made sure someone was always there with Mrs. Jackson. On Thursday Mom and I went to the hospital together to see her. We stopped on the way and I bought her some flowers. My idea, but Mom liked the suggestion.

Mrs. Jackson smiled when we stopped in front of her room. She had looked up when Mom tapped on the already opened door. She gestured us in. She had a bandage around her head and was absently pushing food around on a tray. She ignored it after we came in.

"Well, if it isn't my hero. Hello, Timothy." She smiled when I placed the flowers next to her. "Oh, thank you."

"You're welcome, Mrs. Jackson."

She smiled, then looked to my mom.

"It's too bad about all the therapy he's going to need. We'll pay for it of course, since it was my fault," she said with a sad shake of her head.

Mom looked up from settling her purse. "What, Emma? Therapy?"

"Of course, from him seeing my saggy, old self naked. This poor boy could be mentally scarred for life."

"Emma." Mom shook her head. "You're only forty-five."

"That's what I mean. The horror of that for such a young mind. Oh, the horror!" She tried to laugh at the expression on my face, then touched the bandage behind her ear. "Ouch."

"Do you need something for pain?" my mom asked, looking for the nurse call button.

"No, I'm okay. I just need to not try and laugh anymore though."

Mom smiled then looked down at the tray in front of Mrs. Jackson. "Well, this looks..." Mom grimaced.

"It tastes like that too. Do you think they would let me have some salt?" Mrs. Jackson asked, looking over what was left on her still nearly full tray.

"I can go check." Mom walked out the door, and down towards the nurses station.

"Tom, told me that you set up a dehumidifier in the house. That was a very good idea. Thank you, Timothy." She smiled at me sweetly. "And thank you for finding me."

I shrugged, kind of shy to be alone with her after what I had seen. "It was just an idea I had. The dehumidifier I mean. Everything was so wet, I was afraid things might start to mold." I met her eyes, and she was still smiling, when I looked away I heard a soft chuckle. Then a sound of pain that brought my eyes back to her. She was holding the side of her head again. "Are you alright, Mrs. Jackson?"

"Oh, yes. Just the headache I've had for the last few days." She smoothed out the blanket over her legs. Then she patted the side of the bed indicating I should have a seat."You know Timothy, given that you are my hero... you could just call me Emma."

Sitting down, I shook my head.

"I would never hear the end of it from my mother if I did that." A little embarrassed, I looked at her tray. "She would probably send me to bed without supper!" Laughing, I looked back up to see her smiling at me. Then I had an idea. "How about if I called you Mrs. Emma?"

She broke eye contact and looked down at her tray. There was a soft sigh I just did hear. "Mrs. Emma?" She shook her head. "I must look worse naked than what the mirror has been showing me." Her words were but a whisper, but I was close enough to hear. Then she smiled and looked back up at me. "Mrs. Emma will do fine."

Getting up, I went to the door and looked down the hall. I saw my mother leaving the nurses station heading towards the elevators. She must be going to the cafeteria to get salt.

"Mrs. Emma," I said softly as I turned around. She was looking at me puzzled. When our eyes met, I smiled softly. "You...you looked beautiful."

She blushed, but I saw a slight smile cross her lips. "I did?"

"Yes...I mean, except for the blood coming out your head...I mean you looked..." Hearing myself starting to babble, I looked away.

"Thank you, Timothy."

"Tim," I told her shyly after a moment. When I looked, she was smiling that beautiful smile I've loved my whole life.

"Tim, it is then."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

"Dad?"

"Yeah, Tim?" Dad looked up from the Rubbermaid full of lights.

"Mom said to tell you the airport just called. They said their pilots are complaining that our street looks too much like a runway."

Dad chuckled.

"Tell her I said, not to bother me till NASA calls to say I'm keeping their astronauts awake at night." He pulled the Rubbermaid out the garage and began to lay out bundles of lights across the trunk of the car.

Laughing, I walked down to where my car was sitting at the end of the driveway. As I walked up to it, I couldn't help running my hand across the fender. A Buick Grand National. It might be an eighteen year old beater, with a dinosaur under the hood that drank a bathtub of gas for every mile, but it was mine. Bought and paid for by me. I loved every part of the car, and the almost glowing paint showed the daily work I had been doing waxing it. It no longer showed that it had rolled off the assembly line just a month before I was born.

"Tim!"

Looking up, I saw Mrs. Emma at her mailbox, putting a large stack of envelopes into the box. Christmas cards no doubt, I guessed as I crossed the street to her.

"Yes, Mrs. Emma?"

"Tim, are you going to be busy in a bit? I would like to go to the farmer's market, but Tom is too busy pulling out boxes of lights.

"Sure, I'll take you. Just whenever you are ready, let me know." I dropped my voice to a conspirator's whisper. "Anything to get me out of here before the ladder comes out."

She giggled. "Let me get my purse."

** ** ** ** ** ** **

The farmer's market was about ten miles away, and as we rode, Emma talked a lot at first. Asking me about school, what colleges I was looking at for after I graduated in May. As the miles passed though, she began to be silent for longer and longer. Then I noticed she was watching the red leaves falling from the tree that overhung the road, showering the hood of my car to be swept away.

She sighed, then turning toward me, she began to look over the interior of the car.

"You got a good deal on this. I remember back in eighty two when these first came out. They were the hot thing for a while there." She looked over into the backseat. "Although, I remember the back seat being bigger."

She giggled.

I felt my face heat up as I caught her meaning. I glanced over at her to see her looking at me. She giggled again, with a slight blush of her own at the look on my face. She kept shooting me glances and laughing at me the last few miles.

When we got to the market, I found a place to park near the stalls. This late in the year the watermelons of summer were a memory, but the pumpkins? They were in full attendance. Not the gnarled squat ones sold last month for Jack-O-lanterns, but the round pie making type.

I loaded three of these into the trunk while she went to look for apples. As I set the pumpkins down, I swear I could almost already taste Mrs. Emma's pumpkin pie. Looking up, I watched her hips sway as she moved around a basket of pears. A wicked thought came to mind. She had another type of pie that I wouldn't mind a taste of. I sighed away that thought. In the two years since she had her fall there was an image I could not get out of my head. In fact it was an image that had been reenforced each summer at the beach, watching her in her bathing suit. A white one piece, that clung to her curves when wet.

Looking up from my daydream, I saw her walking towards me with her arms full. Rushing over I took the bag of apples then went to the stall she had just been at and brought back the two gallon jugs of cider she had bought. When I got these stored away in the trunk, I turned to see her now carrying a big burlap bag of pecans. Moving to her, I slid my hands under the bag to take it. She let go too soon, then tried to grab at the bag as it began to fall. I did the same.

We ended up almost nose to nose, with my hands between the side of the bag and her breasts. I could feel a warm, soft, firm and springy at the same time heat pressed into my hand as I tried to not drop the shifting burlap bag. After a second the pecans stopped moving and the bag settled.

"Got it?" she asked.

When I nodded, she let go, and the soft pressure disappeared. I turned to put the bag in the trunk. She walked up beside me and looked into the half-full space.

"God, I love these old cars. So much room in the trunk. You could pack three people into one, easy." I must have looked at her strange, she smiled coyly then explained. "Drive in movies. There were still a few around when I was your age. My brother had a 69 Chevy Impala. I was smuggled into more than a few movies in that car's trunk. Me and my boyfriend more often than not."

Mrs. Emma gave me a wink, then went back to shopping. I watched her walk away. Was she flirting with me?

Needing to think about that, I decided to go grab a few things for Mom. Maybe some...pears. Yeah.

When I came back about ten minutes later I saw that the door of the car was opened and that the driver seat was leaned forward. Her long leg was stretched out and she was leaned inside. Setting my stuff in the trunk, I went around to the other side, and opened that door.

"Tim! Help me get these...blessed...plums! The bag tore just as I was sitting them inside, and they rolled under the seat."

Leaning the passenger-side seat back, I leaned in and started trying to gather plums out from out the floorboard and from under the seat. As I did, I started to catch whiffs of perfume from her. When she moved till she was almost kneeling on the back seat, her head would, at times, be almost right next to my face.

She looked up, her hands full of plums, and seemed to suddenly become aware of just how close we were to each other. Our faces just inches apart. Before I could stop myself, my eyes dropped to the open cleavage of her blouse. The light splattering of freckles covered her skin down to where the lace of her bra began. My memories removed that bit of white cotton, and added the rose-colored nipples to where they should be.

"Did you find them all?"

Looking up quickly, for a second I thought she was talking about her freckles. I saw that beautiful smile, just inches from my lips. Her mouth was so very close to mine, I had only to lean forward to taste it. I had just about nerved myself up to lean forward when she moved. She backed out the car, stood up, and closed the door. I got out my side and looked across the roof at her. She titled her head a little, the edge of her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

"I think we need to be heading home, Tim." Her tongue came out to quickly wet her lips. "Tom and your dad may have burned down the neighborhood by now."

Nodding, I walked around to the driver side. When she walked past me her arm brushed mine, and then as we got into the car I saw her eyes drop to my crotch. I realized that the bulge in my jeans had to be very visible. When I looked up, she looked away quickly...But I saw her reflection in the window. For a few seconds, she had a very sexy smile tugging at those beautiful lips. Then, as I cranked the car, I heard a sigh and saw her shake her head. When she looked back at me it was her normal smile. Beautiful as always though.

We talked about the coming holidays all the way home.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

I won't say that our whole street was dark, because it wasn't. It was just our houses. The lack of their normal displays did not only dim the whole of the street, but it was a cold dagger in my heart. A dagger that slipped into the hole that was there like it was its sheath. A hole that had begun to form earlier this year.

Mr. Jackson had suffered a massive stroke back in February, while watching the nightly news. Mrs. Emma's frantic call to our house had sent me running across the snowy street, Dad right beside me. Forever in my mind will be locked the image of my dad, his face wet with tears, as we worked together at CPR till the ambulance arrived. Exhausted, I had knelt there on the floor as the paramedics went to work. It was so very surreal. Mom holding a crying Mrs. Emma, Dad demanding answers of the paramedics that they could not give him.

They quickly took Mr. Jackson out the door. The nightly news continued to play unheeded, telling about the death of NASCAR race driver Dale Earnhardt, the ongoing recovery efforts from an earthquake in El Salvador. An FBI agent was caught spying in Russia. The weather. Sports. All of the normal, every night gloom and doom reporting rolled past my eyes, unheeded, as I tried to not feel as helpless and useless as I was.

Mr. Jackson lived as a near invalid for four more months, only to die from a second stroke...just as he was beginning to look better. The loss of him while still so young a man was a devastating blow to all that knew him.

Dad was like a man drained of all his energy. He went about that summer as if his world had ended. Little did we know...

My dad...my dad, given more out of town work by his boss to try and help him get his mind off things, boarded United Airlines Flight 175 to Los Angeles for an early September morning flight.

It had been just a normal day at my college. Nothing more spectacular going on than the normal worrying about this or that test. Then the news reports had begun, just mostly rumors. By the time I found myself in front of a TV...my dad was already dead. Not that I knew that. Not yet. I was just watching the news like everyone else. Seeing the buildings burning, seeing them fall. Horrified, like everyone else. Then the phone call came, and I learned what horror really was.

My mom had been there for Mrs. Emma. Then, Mrs. Emma had to be there for my mom. Me? I had felt so very helpless when Mr. Jackson died, then when my dad was killed I truly was helpless...and I was alone. Alone in a grief that never seemed to end.

Looking out the window of my car I looked at the snow-laden clouds overhead. I wondered what the weatherman had to say. That was all I could really do was wonder. I hadn't turned on the TV since mid-September. I couldn't trust any of them anymore. All they ever showed me was my dad... dying over and over. No person should have to watch that happen as many times as I have seen it.

Mom threw her TV out the front window.

Pulling my new car into the driveway, I shut off the motor and just sat there for a few minutes, just looking at the house I grew up in. It should be ablaze with lights by now. When I got out of the car I saw that white salt haze covered the bottom half of the car. I settled my coat around me, as I wondered why I wasn't concerned over that. With my old car I would have been trying to get that off just as quickly as I could. I knew why though. I didn't love this car like I did that old Buick.

This was the one Mom made me buy. The one she made me take Dad's car to the dealer and trade in. One less trigger for tears, that's what she had said at least. I don't think it helped. I know it didn't in my case. Just looking at the house like this made me want to cry.

I hadn't been home in more than a month.

Not since Dad's funeral.

We buried a casket full of photos, moments of his life captured by friends and family. Mrs. Emma had, with her eyes dripping tears, placed a rolled up strand of Christmas lights and a photo of our house taken from her porch. Dad had done that at Mr. Jackson's funeral.

The memories began to tear at me and I had to stop and just stand on the side porch till I calmed down. I took a deep breath and went inside.

When I opened the kitchen door, I could smell the food cooking. Mom had thrown herself into it, trying to forget the empty place that would be at the table this year. I saw her move into the pantry as I stepped inside. Putting my bag down, I made my way to her and wrapped my arms around her as she turned around. She squeaked in surprise, but it was the perfume that alerted me. Startled, I turned her loose and stepped back.

"It's good to see you too, Tim," Mrs. Emma said as she laughed.

"Sorry, I thought..."

She put down the box of cake mix and wrapped her arms around me. When her arms went tight around my ribs, and I felt her bury her face against my chest, I hugged her back nearly as tightly. I could tell that her tears were like mine, hovering just at the edge. I'm sure it seemed to last longer than it did, but I felt like I held her then for an hour. When I heard Mom move into the kitchen I reluctantly let go of the woman in my arms.

"Tim?"

"Hi, Mom," I said. Mrs. Emma patted me on the back and I got out of the pantry door. Mom came over to me and hugged me, briefly.

"How...how was school?" She asked when she turned me loose. I could hear her voice quiver, even though her eyes were dry. We were all just about cried out from the last months. Her eyes went to my face. "Oh, you're all scruffy!"

"Fine. Schools fine. Things have started to settle down a bit." I absently fingered my chin, feeling bristle I would not normally allow. I also felt grungy. "I'll grab a quick shower before dinner."

She nodded and went back to working on dinner.

Grabbing a chair, I took a seat out of the way, and watched my mom and Mrs. Emma working their kitchen magic. To be honest I watched Mrs. Emma more. She bustled around our kitchen, and I soon saw that it was her that was getting my mother going. It was her energy that my mom was working with.

My eyes, once drawn only to her body, now more often than not tended to linger on her face. I noticed the changes. How her hair, once longer and brown was now worn much shorter than I had ever seen it. There was also gray beginning to frame her face. Those faint lines at the corners of her eyes and the laugh lines under them only enhanced her beauty. Not that she had done a lot of laughing in the last year. None of us had.

As I watched her, I had to acknowledge in my head what my heart already knew. I was in love with Emma. Emma...still called that only in my inner thoughts. When I looked at her face my mind saw past the effects of time to the mischievous girl she must have been at my age. I saw, not a woman with gray hair, but a young woman with a flirty smile. One that had once flashed a nipple at me on the beach when no one had been looking.