A Garden of Earthly Delights (23 page)

Mostly, she'd ceased thinking of the past. She did not wish to think of Carleton, Pearl, her brothers. Her sister Sharleen she had not seen in years and would never see again. She did not wish to think of her spindly limbed child-self she'd rapidly outgrown.

From the five-and-dime discards Clara acquired old melted lipsticks, broken packages of face powder, bent tweezers. Eyebrow pencils. Plucking and arching her eyebrows in the style of Joan Crawford, or Katharine Hepburn, or Bette Davis whose movies she saw for ten cents, in the movie house on Main Street. Clara loved best those movies where a man and a woman met, and fell in love; and the man went away; and the woman missed him, and waited for him; and the man returned. Emerging into the evening air, Clara wiped at her eyes.

So happy! This was her new life, and there was a man she was waiting for. There was a man her hopes could fasten upon, always.

Yet: sad sometimes. Lonely sometimes. As she'd never been sad and lonely in her old, lost life she had believed she despised.

For now, suddenly, there were two times in Clara's life, and disproportionate times they were. When Lowry was in Tintern, and would take time to see her; and when Lowry was away.

He'd warned her not to speak of him to anyone, and so she had not. Seeming to know that if she boasted of him, or complained of him, he would disappear from her life as abruptly as he'd appeared; and she would be left alone in Tintern, under the eye of Mr. Mulch.

Lowry was beginning to take notice of her, Clara thought. For she was older now, living alone and spending so much time in her own thoughts. Tilting her head like Katharine Hepburn, fixing her eyes upon a man's face like Claudette Colbert. And her hair, she'd begun to trim and curl with bobby pins, parted neatly on the left side of her head in the way of Joan Fontaine, whose hair was ashy-blond like Clara's. Lowry took her driving in his car, along the river; rarely did he take her to a restaurant or tavern in Tintern, only elsewhere. He was ashamed of her, she guessed. She understood, and did not blame him.

As a dime-store girl, Clara was able to buy things at a reduced price. Sweaters, blouses, skirts, sometimes even dresses. In those towns in the Eden Valley to which Lowry drove her she appeared older than fifteen in her gaudy, tight-fitting clothes and high-heeled shoes. Lowry, in public, seemed always in a hurry and walking with his face slightly averted, as if he were both with her, yet not with her. Sometimes he was in good spirits, playful; at other times he behaved like an older and remote relative of hers, a cousin or uncle entrusted with her for the evening. If Clara dared to take his hand, and stroke his fingers, as she'd seen women do in movies, Lowry stiffened but didn't always draw away at once.

Sometimes, as if unconsciously, his fingers closed about hers.

“My little girl's getting growed up. Happens fast, sometimes.”

Clara smiled, in that way she'd perfected of not showing any more teeth than she needed to show. Her heart was suffused with happiness.
My little girl.

One Saturday night Lowry drove her to Lake Shaheen, which must have been about twenty miles to the north. The Anchor Inn was on the lake and overlooked a boatyard. Clara had never been inside so nice a place: it excited her that Lowry seemed to be known here. The main room, with a timber ceiling, was crowded and romantically dim-lit, and people were dancing. Some of the women were young, nearly as young as Clara. “I want to dance. Oh, let's dance!” Clara begged.

But Lowry left her in a booth by herself, drinking a Cola and eating pretzels. He'd told her he had friends to see, to catch up on, and Clara had smiled and said that was all right; she was happy sitting by herself in such a nice place, and listening to music. Her eyes followed the dancers, eagerly. Just watching, she was learning: it was like the movies. It was like ringing up sales at the five-and-dime, you learned by doing. In fact she'd learned to smoke, from Lowry. She'd needed something to do with her hands.

For when Lowry drifted away from her, talking with women he hadn't troubled to introduce to her, Clara needed something to do with her hands.

At the Anchor Inn that night, Clara waited. Thinking
I can wait. I've been waiting fifteen years. I'm happy.

Lowry returned, she saw a smear of lipstick on the side of his face. He might have checked his reflection in a mirror and missed that smear. “Sorry, sweetheart. Something came up.”

In the car driving back to Tintern, Clara spoke quietly of a man who'd befriended her. Took her to the movies. In fact he was the hardware store owner, and Clara believed he was a married man, but she didn't tell Lowry this. “He said, any new dress I wanted, in any shop in Tintern, he'd buy for me. If I wanted it.”

“What's that mean?”

“I don't know. What it means.”

“You want to get pregnant?”

“Get
pregnant
?” Clara was incensed, insulted. “All we do, mister, we go to the movies! That's all.”

“How many times did your mother get pregnant?”

“None of your damn business. Damn you!”

Clara was smoking, trying not to cough. A flame of pure hatred pulsed over her, for this man beside her.

“You don't care about me. You never did. I'm just some old mangy kicked dog you found along the highway.”

“Is that so.”

“Somebody would marry me. People say I'm pretty.”

Lowry, driving, leaning his elbow out the window, said nothing.

“Then I wouldn't be a bother to you.”

“Clara, you aren't a bother to me.”

Clara was thinking: if she could read better—if she could write— if she didn't have to struggle so with words, things would come easier for her. There were times when an idea brushed her mind, but she couldn't seize it. Like a butterfly fluttering out of her reach.

Lowry said, in the way of a man reasoning something out for himself that surprised him, “You were just a kid then. Not that long ago, but you've changed. I don't believe I had ever done one damn thing in my life I was proud of or cared even to contemplate, but I was glad that I could help you. And I didn't take advantage of you, either.”

“That woman back there, at the tavern,” Clara said carefully, “is she—”

“None of your business. That's what she is.”

At Mohigan Street, Clara waited for Lowry to say goodnight to her but instead he asked could he come upstairs, see what her place was like? “Sure!” Clara said. “I'll make coffee for you.”

“
You
, coffee?”

“I can do all sorts of things, mister. You'd be surprised.”

Upstairs she unlocked the door eagerly. She'd hoped for this: Lowry coming to see her. The small furnished room held a bed, a card table she'd draped with a floral print cloth from the dime store, a few chairs. Waterfall and sunset scenes she'd framed in dime-store frames and hung on the walls, like real pictures. “This is new. I got it at the store, marked down.” A small lamp of dimpled milk glass and a shade decorated with pink satin bows. Lowry smiled, and switched it on.

Uninvited, Lowry sat on the edge of Clara's bed. There was no bedspread yet, she was saving for something nice. But the bed was neatly made, and she knew he was seeing that, taking note. A dark blue blanket primly drawn over the single pillow. On the floor at Lowry's feet was a small oval rug of some fuzzy material, also dark blue. Lowry looked at it for a second too long.

“For when I'm barefoot and it's cold,” Clara said.

Clara fumbled to make coffee. She'd learned at the five-and-dime, where instant coffee was sold. Lowry glanced through some of the magazines Clara had brought home. She was embarrassed, damn old dumb movie magazines, a
True Romance
her friend Sonya had given her. “Clara, why don't you go back to school? What grade were you, when you dropped out?”

Clara said quickly, “I'm too old.”

“If you want a life different from your parents' lives, you need to be educated, at least some. I could help you.”

“I said I'm too old.”

Clara bit her lips to keep from crying. That flame of hatred for him came over her, she felt weak, dazed as if he'd struck her.

She was fumbling, preparing coffee. Her double-burner hot plate, in a corner of the room. Here too was a small enamel sink with a rusty faucet. Above the sink, a calendar with a photo of a baby in a bonnet playing with two kittens. Clara began to chatter
nervously telling Lowry about working at the store; and about her girlfriends she liked so much, and trusted—Joanie, Sonya, Caroline. She'd told Lowry about them before and he'd never seemed interested as if Clara's life apart from him was of no significance. How many times she had tormented herself over the months with Lowry's words
What I want is a voice. A woman, a voice.
Her own voice was thin, nasal, persistent as a head cold. “Caroline, she's engaged, too. She's only eighteen. Her fiancé works on that big farm up the valley.”

“The Revere farm?”

Lowry's voice was alert, edgy.

“ ‘Revere.' I guess so. D'you know who it is?”

Lowry didn't reply at once. Then he said, “The same family owns the gypsum land, too. The mines.” He paused again, like a man who isn't certain what he means to say, listening to his own words. “They were neighbors of ours. The Reveres.”

“That's where you live now? Up the valley?”

“No.”

Lowry's answer was short, curt. Clara knew she must not ask more. She poured coffee for Lowry, carefully into one of her good, clean cups; the hot steaming coffee smelled good to her, but was too strong for her to drink at this time of night. Lowry said, shrugging, “They bought out my father. He hadn't any choice but to sell. What's called the Depression now, nobody knew what the hell was happening then. It was like the earth opening up and swallowing some people but not others, their neighbors. Though I know it was more than that, I know there was human blame. Fuckers!”

Clara nodded vaguely. The Depression: Carleton had spoken of it sometimes, resentfully. The Depression kept farmers' prices low, so pickers were paid low. The Depression shut down factories, businesses, so there were too many pickers for the jobs, the jobs went to the cheapest labor. The Depression made Clara think of a sky of ugly thunderhead clouds, bruise-colored.

“My folks wanted to own things, lots of land. More than they could farm. So they lost it all. I'm not like them, I don't give a shit for owning things. Just my car.” Lowry spoke with an air of bemusement.
He sipped Clara's coffee not seeming to mind how hot it was.

“I want to own lots of things!” Clara said. “I love these things here, my rugs and pictures. The bed I don't own but the sheets and things. My own sheets … I have my own toothbrush. I'm going to get a certain bedspread at the store, it's kind of gold-colored, with embroidered flowers. Then, a goldfish.”

Lowry laughed. “What the hell you want with a goldfish?”

Clara felt a little hurt. “I like them. At the store, it's nice to watch them.… I feel sorry for them, see, in the damn old tank they live in.”

“Goldfish.” Lowry shook his head, smiling. “What do they cost, thirty cents?”

Clara felt her face burn, but it was a pleasant sensation. She loved being teased. Nobody except Lowry teased her now, not in a long time.

“Well,” Clara said, biting her lip to keep from smiling in an angry, hard way, “that woman you were with tonight—”

“Christ! You're really jealous, aren't you?”

“No! 'Cause you're with me here, and not with her. So goddamn her to hell.”

“I'll see her some other time. We keep in touch.”

“But right now, you're here with me.”

Clara spoke with childlike obstinacy. She wanted to throw her cup of coffee into Lowry's face.

She was too restless to sit down. If she couldn't sit close beside Lowry on her bed, which he wouldn't like, she couldn't sit anywhere for long. Felt like a cat, cooped up in this small space, a cat in heat, Nancy had said the poor things really suffered, wailing and moaning if you kept them cooped up at such a time. Clara leaned against the sink seeing through the small oval mirror she'd hung on the wall Lowry behind her, lifting the coffee cup to his mouth and drinking, bemused, not even looking at her.

“Where'd you go with her? In your car?”

“Who wants to know?”

“You fucked her, did you? That's what you did?”

Lowry shrugged. Now he was looking at her, but not taking her seriously.

Like none of it matters. Fucking.

None of it matters much.

“Does she do that with other men?”

“How do I know? Possibly.”

“Does she like it, too? Do women like it?”

“Sure, why else would they do it?”

Clara turned to face him, smirking. She was beating her thighs with her fists lightly, half-consciously.

“ 'Cause men want them to do it, I think. So they do it. 'Cause they love the men, they want the men to love them. I think.”

Lowry shrugged. His expression was casual, indifferent. An edginess in his eyes, that were fixed on Clara as if he thought her childish, someone to be humored.

“My ma used to tell me it would hurt real bad,” Clara said earnestly. “But that was just to scare me, I think. Now I'm bigger, I'm different. Anyway I wouldn't care, if—”

“Clara, drop it. I told you.”

“—if I loved who it was. The man.”

“You don't know what the hell you're talking about, actually. You're just a kid, what—fifteen?”

Clara fumbled for a hairbrush, and began brushing her hair.

Like a movie scene, this was: Bette Davis brushing her hair in quick angry strokes. Eyes glaring like a cat's.

“You don't like me. You feel fuckin sorry for me. My new dress, you didn't even notice.”

“Sure I did. It's a very pretty dress.”

“It isn't! It's a cheap stupid dress. It's what I can afford. And if some guy wants to buy me a dress, you tell me no. Fuck
you.
”

Lowry laughed. Watching her now, more alertly.

“Damn dress is all wrinkled and wet now, I been sweatin.” Clara pulled at the collar as if she wanted to rip it off. Rip the dress off herself. “I'm gonna take it off.
I can't stand it.
” Fumbling at the buttons Clara removed the dress, yanked it over her head and let it drop onto a chair. Standing now in her slip that was a soft amber color, a fabric smooth like silk, or almost, she'd purchased at the
dime store at half-price. Clara was panting, tears in her eyes. She saw how Lowry stared at her, not smiling now. “Someday you might want to love me, and I'll tell you to go to hell. I'll say—‘You're the wrong age. You're too old.' I'll be married then and I'll drive past your car in my car and honk my horn at you, to get out of my way.”