SERIES: Woman 'Cross The River

PART: 1 of ??

RATING: PG (Adult thematic material, language, adult content)

PAIRING(s): L/L

DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Myself and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine.  Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

 

Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!

CATEGORY: Drama

FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!

SETTING IN TIMELINE: Includes canon up to "The Cruise" - roughly six years later.  This fic is set in 1963.

SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Laverne meets an unforgiving ghost on her summer vacation.

NOTES: I'm considering making this sharable or collaboration.  If there's no takers by next week, I'll be flying solo.

 

***

 

 

"When do we get there, Mamma?"

 

Laverne's back stuck against the vinyl car seat as she turned around.  "Just a few more minutes."

 

The child, christened Emilia Jean but called Emmy by everyone, was around six years old.  She sported violet overalls with the pant legs rolled up, a faded and beloved tee-shirt in a darker eggplant shade with the words "Pizza Bowl" barely visible on the chest, and thick butterscotch-colored pigtails.  She had a sensitive, bow-like mouth, her lower lip more prominent than the upper and swathed in strawberry-scented lip-gloss, and green eyes that had a tendency to stare off into the distance in the most Prussian, romantic way.   While she resembled a tragic Viking princess, her baby brother Dominick's swarthy northern Italian features were a mirror of their mother.   Sitting in the back-seat of the Kosnowski family station wagon as it rumbled down an unpaved back road, she stuffed her mouth with animal crackers.  To her mother, watching this scene, she so strongly resembled her father that she turned in her seat to watch Lenny drive just for comparison's sake.

 

He pushed the brim of his porkpie hat down, blocking out the butter-rum colored sunlight streaming through the passenger-side window.  They had been making good time since they left Milwaukee, switching off every four hours, with stops for food and a rather interminable wait at the Canadian border - at this rate they would reach Ontario in less than an hour.   He felt her staring and, as always, was attuned to her needs. 

 

"You wanna pull over and stretch out your legs?"

 

She shook her head.  "Nah.  We're almost there."

 

He grinned.  "You glad I talked Squig into setting up that vacation account now?"

 

"Yeah, yeah," she smirked back at him.  "I don't know how you talked old man Shotz into giving you two weeks off."

 

Lenny shrugged.  "I told him you were pregnant again and you couldn't move without throwin' up."

 

Her jaw dropped.  "Don't say it!  It'll happen!"

 

His expression turned cocky.  "And why would it be bad if it did?  I had two weeks of sick pay coming to me, anyway."

 

She grumbled.  Lenny was yanking at the sole bone of contention in their marriage - his desire to have one more child.  She wanted another one too - in a few years, when they financial situation finally finished solidifying. 

 

Things had only recently begun to look up in that regard, since she had convinced her father that she was mature enough to run the Pizza Bowl upon his retirement to California with his new wife, Edna Babbish.  The restraint had become Laverne's first major responsibility - and considering how badly she had failed in running Dead Lazlo's Place, she understood her father's initial caution.  The income from the Pizza Bowl had given her money - a solid, rapid influx which she had never before experienced, and that she had generated without dependence on others.  Part of it was shared with her father; though he often refused her offers of cash - with Edna, Frank had founded his own franchise of the Cowboy Bills chain and didn't lack for money.

 

She and Lenny had drifted together naturally, once he had begun to show some ambition in his work and interest in advancement.  He had taken his dispatcher's test on her advice, and found himself keeping charts together for the entire fleet of truckers on the Shotz line.  Their romance had developed organically from that, and they had gradually begun to see more of each other.  Laverne had plenty of time on her hands, since Shirley -

 

Laverne clenched her jaw - she was doing it again, thinking of the woman she'd vowed never to dignify with even a whispered breath.  Immediately, she returned her mind to the hazy days of her courtship with Lenny - which hadn't run smoothly.  Considering their personalities, she jibed herself; she was surprised that it had gone as far as it did.  But their friends had made surprisingly strong cheerleader -

 

"Emmy, don't poke your Uncle Squiggy."

 

Lenny's voice alerted his wife to Emmy's position - she had unbuckled her safety belt and was hanging over the station wagon's backseat, staring at her uncle, who had sprawled across their luggage and was sleeping there in the back. 

 

"And buckle your belt," Laverne added.

 

Emmy grumbled, climbing back over the seat and buckling herself back in.  Laverne patted her husband's hand as his right arm snaked around her shoulders.  The sight of him steering with one hand, slouching down, caused a whirl of desire to spin through her body.  Driving around with Lenny had a tendency to remind her of their early courtship, their sexual vagaries which had been civilized by time, exhaustion and children.  No matter their voracities, she loved him now more than she had ever dreamed possible. 

 

It made her anger toward Shirley bubble up anew...

 

"Mamma!  Dominick threw up."

 

The parents shared a look.  In the distance loomed a mighty oak gate with the words "Shining Pines" carved into the top arch. 

 

"I guess I forgot to burp him," Lenny admitted.  It had been his turn to feed the kids while Laverne grabbed a three-hour nap back at Lake Michigan/

 

"S'Ok."  Laverne unbuckled her belt and then crawled over the backseat.  She rummaged underneath Emmy's discarded coloring book and an empty bottle of Donald Duck Orange Drink to find a baby bag and fresh onesie for Dominick. 

 

As she wicks runny oatmeal off of her son's chin, she remembered her childhood fantasies of a teeming throng of children.  She wasn't exactly rueful about them - at least, not yet...

 

***

 

"Aww!  I wanted a pool!"

 

Laverne chuckled at Emmy's tone as Lenny and Squiggy began hauling bags into their cabin.  She noted that Squiggy was, as usual, taking the smallest and lightest suitcases, leaving her husband to do the mule work.

 

"Squig, would you please get Dominick's playpen?"

 

"I ain't your slave, woman!"  But years of being Lenny's wife gave her clout - Squiggy picked up the playpen along with the last two suitcases.

 

Turning her attention back to Emmy, Laverne steered her daughter to a nearby couch and settled her down.  "We got something better than a pool."

 

Emmy frowned up at her mother.  "What's better than a pool?"

 

Laverne grinned.  "Go look out the back door - watch out for Uncle Squiggy and daddy."

 

Emmy leapt up off of the couch with an Indian yell and ran across the room, heading out to the oak deck off of their kitchenette.  Laverne took a moment to admire the glorious cabin she and Lenny had selected.  It had been cheaper to vacation in Canada, and the hours of overtime they had both put in to pay off their Christmas debts and save up for this vacation had been more than worth it.  They had ended up with a split - level pine wood structure with shiny bare floors, completely furnished, complete with three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchenette and two and a half baths. 

 

Not to mention the lakeside access.

 

Yep, she had sure moved up in the world - from desperately trying to fit in with high society and starving herself to death for dress money to having her own business and being a successful wife and mother, Laverne's dreams - dowdy as they had been - were now real.  She followed her daughter out onto the deck, to bask in the late-day Canadian sunshine. 

 

The lake was as beautiful as it had been in the pictures - sunlight glittered off of the blue waters, which were teeming with swimmers and inner tubes.  Their cabin was located on the right bank of the water, one of the ten which formed a ring around the main office of the campgrounds and exit.

 

"Momma!" Emmy said, meeting her mother and baby brother at the door.  "There's a little girl waving at me across the lake - can I go play with her?"

 

Laverne squinted through the light, making out a little girl with coal-colored hair and a pink sundress waving madly at them from the porch of the cabin directly across from theirs on the lake.  She withheld judgment.  "Is her mamma outside?  She needs to say it's okay for you to go there."  Laverne searched vainly for an authority figure. 

 

Suddenly, the door to the neighboring cabin opened - and into the sunshine strode a figure changed so little by time that Laverne went silent with shock.

 

"Momma - I want to go play."

 

Suddenly, the figure locked eyes with Laverne - it was electric with fraught emotion.  Laverne's expression tightened, while the woman's face remained opening in forgiveness.  Laverne clutched her daughter's hand and dragged her inside.

 

"I want to play!!" She whimpered again.

 

"Not with her."  Laverne said flatly, and shut the door.

To Part 2