STEPPING  UP

PART ELEVEN:

The next four days were spent mostly lounging around the house so

his leg could heal. He sat at the kitchen table as she cooked for him.

They spent a lot of time on the porch swing, just talking. There was

much soaking in hot baths. He discovered gardenias were her favorite

scent and that she once had rolled a comb up so tightly in her bangs

she couldn't get it out and so had chopped it off with scissors, leaving

stubble at the top of her forehead. She had been five. She discovered

that he had gotten cat-scratch fever from a...rabbit.

"I was holding it on its back in my arms," he explained, "and it started

to wave its hind legs frantically. I didn't have sense enough to drop it and

just stood there while it scratched my chin and neck. Finally Bethie came

and grabbed the rabbit."

Holli loved all the little details of his life. She and Martin had never talked

like this, about all the thousands of small things that make a person who

they are.  For the first time she really realized how little Martin had known

her. How little he had been interested in knowing her was more like it.

When he limped less and with a large ace bandage firmly in place for

support, they crossed Grandview and stood along the railing of the

nearest concrete mushroom, looking down on the river and beyond to

the city. Finding a vacant wooden bench along the sidewalk, he sat

while she brought him an orange icee from a vendor's cart and they

looked at the city more, looked at...one another.

She knew her city well, had taken the time to get to know it, know about

it, and he loved for her to tell him what she knew. She'd never had anybody

who actually wanted to listen and so she bubbled over with it. He fell

ever more deeply in love with the sound of her voice, the tilt of her head,

the movement of her hands as she spoke.

"This whole thing," she said, indicating Mount Washington itself, "was

first known as Coal Hill. Much less attractive-sounding, eh?"

He nodded in agreement, watching the movement of sunlight on her wild

blonde curls.

"The bituminous coal was mined here as early as 1762. It was so right at the

surface that people could just bend down and pick it up, stuffing their baskets

full. By the late 1800's, one-fifth of the total US coal production came from here.

It was considered the most commercially-valuable mineral deposit in North

America."

She obviously like the thought of it, was quite in love with the place where she

lived. He steadily became more and more aware of that as the days passed.

What did he know of New York City? How to hail a cab and where the subway

stations were? That was about it.

"Some things about this big mound we're on are hard for me to imagine," she

continued. "In the 1760's a fire started accidentally in the underground coal

field here and burned uncontained for 16 years. I don't know why," she

mused, "but I like knowing about such things, like knowing what's gone on

right here before I arrived. Does that make sense?"

"You make sense, Holli. And then you make everything else make sense, too.

I see how you care about all this...," his arm moved to indicate the city, the

mountain, "and it makes me want to care about it, too. It's kinda seeping

into me. That what's important to you is becoming what's important to

me. I've never felt like this before."

He remembered lying in bed with Monica while she talked and talked about

educational matters that she found vital, but he'd been bored out of his mind.

It was different with Holli, perhaps because he himself was different with Holli.

"Come, look!" she said, going to the railing and motioning him to follow. The

Mon Incline just down a bit to their right was rising up its tracks. "I never

tire of watching it," she laughed. "It...it's just so...so...Pittsburgh!"

Pittsburgh. The word settled in his brain, a word he'd never in the world

thought would ever connect to him. But she, she...was...Pittsburgh for him.

And her interest and excitement were infectious. He was finding that more

and more he wanted to be infected. He rested his palm in the middle of her

back as she leaned over the railing so she could get a better view.

"There used to be a dozen of these things going up and down the mountain

in the old days," she went on, waving at someone in the car who waved back.

"But now there's only the two. The one you came up on when you arrived,

the red one, and this one. Some of them were even big enough back then to

carry wagons and a team of horses. I like to think of them all going up and

down, up and down, carrying the men to and from work."

She pointed down to their left. The steep slope was entirely green, entirely

covered with massed vegetation. "Down there, just beyond the other incline,

there used to be stairs." She turned, leaning her elbows on the railing, looking

up at him. "Man, would that've been a picture for you to take, Steve! Was

called the Indian Trail Steps...more'n a thousand of them snaking their way

up the mountain. It was all bare for a while there. Nothing green at all. Hard

to imagine. And the men who'd just gotten off their 12-hour shifts, if they

didn't want to fork over the nickel or whatever to ride up on an incline,

they'd trudge up those stairs. I think of how tired they must've been after

being in the mills for 12 hours, how all they wanted to do was get home,

yet they faced those stairs day after day. Wouldn't that have made some

photograph for your series?"

He smiled. She got so, how to put it, 'involved' in it. "I love you," he said,

his eyes sparkling as he looked at her.

"You do?" she grinned.

"God," he said, shaking his head. "You have no idea how much."

"I want to find out."

He came close in front of her, resting a hand on the railing on either side

of her. "I want you to."  He nuzzled her nose with his own, then kissed her

soft and long.

"Do you know what you do?" he asked, pulling just slightly back.

"What?"

"You make me care about things I've never thought of before."

"I do?"

"I now pronounce you man and wife," he grinned, kissing her again.

"Someday?" she asked. It seemed a lot still lay blocking any path to that.

"Someday soon," he affirmed.  "We are engaged, right?"

"You did ask," she smiled.

"And you answered."

"I did, having barely met you I did."

"And...now?"

"Now I've had time to think about it, Steve."

A worried look formed on his face. "And...?"

"And now I know I gave the right answer. I knew then, with my heart I

knew." She touched his cheek.  "Now I know it with my soul as well."

"I know, Holli, that when I am with you I'm a better man.  Sometimes,

well, a lot of times, maybe most times even, back in New York I didn't

like myself all that much. There wasn't all that much about me to like.

But when I look into your eyes and I see the way you look at me, the way

you're looking at me right now, and I see my reflection in them, there's

a Steve in there I'm only just getting to know."

"He's very worth knowing," she said softly.

"I never...expected...."  His voice trailed off.

"Often, Steve, it's when we're not even looking that we find ourselves, that

love finds us."

His gaze went over her head to the skies above the city. "I think I looked so

hard back in New York, Holli, way too hard. It was always such a blasted

effort and I almost never liked it." His eyes dropped to hers again. "But

when I came to Pittsburgh, I wasn't even thinking about any of that. All

I wanted was to get in, get my shots, and get out as fast as I could. But then

there you were, right there at the door.  I simply stepped up the stairs to

the porch, and you were there."

"Sometimes it's like that. When it's right, when we find ourselves stepping up

the right stairs to the right door, when it's time for all the scattered pieces

finally to fall in place, to fit where they belong."

"I know where you belong, Holli. Where do I belong?"

"You'll know, Steve. When you're ready, you'll know."

He closed his eyes a moment and she rested her palm on his arm. "You'll know,"

she repeated softly.

He looked at her. "You already know, don't you?"

She simply smiled, her answer in his eyes.

"Oh, Holli," he almost moaned, wrapping his arms around her. "What would I

ever do without you?"

"I don't 'spect you're going to have to find that out, Mr. Moran."

He pressed his lips together tightly, his chin on her shoulder, his eyes on the city.

Damn you, Steve, he shouted at himself. Why aren't you as sure of that as she is!

(I actually had an orange icee while sitting on that very bench in the picture up there...on the 4th of July, 2007. Took a

picture of it because I decided Steve would sit there and have one, too!)

ON TO PART 12

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