Page 87

Giving Up

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Austin returned on Monday to continue my

therapy. My doctors had told him to keep my exercise light and easy and gradually build back up to the program we had been following. Consequently, we spent a lot more time just talking and being outside. He told me about himself and his family, revealing that he never really liked the way his father treated his mother.

"She works with him at the plant. Actually, I should say she works for him. He acts like she's just another employee. There's no change in tone of voice, no warmth, no real sharing. She doesn't even know how much money they have.

"For as long as I can remember, she asks him for things the way my sister Heather Sue and I do. I mean, she needs his permission to spend any of their money, even on her own things. My father has a business manager who reviews their household expenditures as well as their business expenses and gives him a monthly report. God help my mother if the categories have gone up in any dramatic way. Then we have the Spanish Inquisition at my house!"

"Doesn't she complain?" I asked. "She likes it that way."

I knitted my eyebrows together.

"I swear. She's one of these old-fashioned women who believes the man should be totally in charge of these things. She likes being dependent. I think."

We were outside, under the sprawling old oak tree to the right of the house. A pair of squirrels watched us suspiciously. They seemed to freeze in midair when they stood up or turned, their eves always on us.

The sky was strewn with thin long clouds that the wind spread like cream cheese over the deep blue. For us it was a welcome breeze coming out of the northwest, driving the humidity away.

Austin was on the grass, sprawled on his back beside my wheelchair, chewing on a blade and looking up with his hands behind his head. Suddenly, that looked so inviting to me.

"I want to lie on the round. too," I said.

"Do it," he challenged. "You don't need anyone's permission orhelp."

I lifted myself out of the chair, mostly with my arm strength, leaned on my right leg that he had been strengthening with our exercises and then tried to lower myself gracefully, but I toppled to my left and fell over him instead. He screamed with pretended pain and threw his arms around me, holding me there for a few seconds. I turned and our faces were inches apart. Our eyes locked. He smiled.

"Nice try." he said and lifted his head just enough for his lips to reach the tip of my nose. He kissed it and started to lower his head again.

"Nice try," I retorted.

His smile widened and then his eves drew something deep and strong from inside him as he raised his head once more and this time brought his lips to my lips. It was a very soft, gentle kiss, but a kiss electric with expectation. It stirred feelings in me that I thought were gone, trampled and forever crippled by my injuries. My breath quickened as my heart began to pound.

"Oh boy," he said after he pulled back. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that."

"You mean that's not part of my therapy?"

He laughed and shook his head.

"I thought I was the one with the sense of humor here." "Maybe I'm not joking." I said.

His smile tightened and then he moved me gracefully off him and I lay back on the grass. He sat up and took the pillow I had on the wheelchair off and put it under my head. "Comfortable?"

"Yes," I said.

He sat, looking down at me for a long moment, playing a blade of grass over his lips as he thought. The breeze lifted some strands of his hair and made them dance about his forehead.

"I'm not supposed to let emotionally involved with any of my clients," he said. "it's not fair and it isn't very professional. I can't let something like that happen again. Seriously," he insisted, "If I did. I'd have to ask my uncle to have me replaced.

"Not that you're not a very pretty girl. Rain. You art. If I wasn't your therapist. I could fall in love with you."

"Right," I fired back up at him. "You would see me wheeling myself down some street and say, there's a girl I'd like to know,"

I turned away, fuming, frustrated, an arrow of anger looking for a target and finding nothing but air.

"You're making a mistake thinking you're not still very attractive."