Acts of God (6 page)

“I knew I knew that name.”

At the half, Springdale and Fayetteville were tied 7 – 7. Fayetteville's seventh point had been scored by Grady's son, Jesse, and Grady was lit with pride. When the half came Grady and Carly walked down to the refreshment stand and Carly let him buy her a Diet Coke.

“I really need to talk to you about New Orleans,” Grady said. “Can you get away for lunch tomorrow? Or dinner, or anytime you can?”

“Come by tonight after the game,” she said. “Come sit on my porch for a while.”

“Okay. I will. Tell me how to get there.”

“Do you know where Sanger Street is, up near the university?”

“Sure. I've lived here all my life. I know where everything is in old Fayetteville.”

“Okay, I live in the middle of the block, in a blue house. It's eight six four. There's a mailbox with a number but it's hard to see at night. Eight six four, Sanger Street. Call me if you can't find it. I ought to be home about forty minutes after the game. Daniel's going home with a friend.”

“I'll be there. As soon as I take my folks home.”

AN HOUR LATER
Carly was sitting on her front steps with the lights on in the house behind her. She had taken the wilted geraniums around to the back and thrown them under a trampoline. She had swept off the swing and the porch and the steps and put a bottle of wine in the refrigerator and tied her best yellow cashmere sweater around her shoulders. “It's just a man whose child goes to school with mine,” she muttered out loud to herself. Then she added, “No, it's not. It's a good-looking man who actually works for a living and makes me laugh. How often does that happen anymore? Well, never.”

IT IS A
strange thing to begin a new relationship when an old one was really bad. Carly's relationship with Charlie had been bad, but Grady's marriage had been worse. His ex-wife was trying to keep his child from him, telling Jesse that Grady was a bad man, never packing Jesse any decent clothes to wear when he went to stay with Grady, any mean-spirited thing she could think up she was doing.

“What a game,” Carly called out as soon as Grady started up the path to the steps where she was sitting. “I still don't believe we won. No one beats Springdale. How do you think we did it?”

“Your son scored a touchdown and mine kicked two extra points is how we did it and I wish we could quit while we're ahead. Watching their games is twice as hard as playing.”

“Do you want some wine?” she asked. “I put some in the refrigerator.”

“No, I don't drink anymore. I quit for good five or six years ago. I got tired of having hangovers.”

“How did you quit?”

“I went to a counselor for a while. Then I went to a few AA meetings. Then I just decided not to do it. It wasn't that hard really. It was making me fat. So you don't think I'm fat?”

“No, you are not fat.”

“I lost fifteen pounds after I quit drinking. I was fat. I was fat for three or four years. It's humbling, being fat. It makes you feel really bad. I ought to start running again. When do you run?”

“In the early mornings. I leave here and run up to the campus and circle it and then go down to the track and finish there.”

“They still let people run on the track?”

“They let me. I know Coach McDonald. I chaperoned the teams to some relays. He gave me a key.”

“Goddamn, Carly. You're a star.”

“I am not a star. Stop saying things like that. So do you want a Coke or a Diet Coke or some Sports Tea? Sports Tea is good if you've never had it. It has potassium and ginger and licorice. You want to try it?”

“Sure. I'll try it.” He sat on the wooden steps where he had sat down beside her in the dark on the porch and Carly got up and went into the house and returned in a few minutes with a tray and glasses full of ice and a pitcher and a plate of cookies. She set it down between them and poured the tea.

“Where's Daniel?” Grady asked.

“He's gone to spend the night with John Tucker. They have a test tomorrow and they are going to study for it over there. They were so high over the game I don't know how they are going to study history.”

“I'm high over the game. When I was in high school I think we beat Springdale one time. We beat them by one point at one homecoming and that was because their quarterback was sick.”

The moon had come out from in between clouds and was very bright. It was cool and the moon was bright and they were both scared to death of how much they liked sitting on the porch steps drinking Sports Tea and having seen their children win a football game. It made Grady so nervous he ate four of Carly's homemade chocolate chip cookies before he stopped himself.

“What did you want to ask me about New Orleans?” Carly asked, but Grady couldn't for the life of him remember and had to make something up.

“I heard some men almost got blinded because someone threw gallons of Clorox into the water at one of the pumping stations that take the water back out into the Gulf. Did you know anything about that?”

“Yes, I know all about it. We had a lecture about it the next day. There were people down there doing things no one in the world would believe. After a while it quieted down but the first week it was chaos.”

“I was only there two days and most of the time I was driving around wrecked neighborhoods or being taken to see places they want to use for landfill. They don't even know where they can take the stuff that needs picking up. I kept telling people they ought to take tractors and just pile it up behind the levees on the lake to use for second barriers. Why move all that wood and debris fifty miles up to farmland? Or why not burn some of it? Well, no one's in charge. That's the biggest problem. No one has the power to say what's going to happen next. I took a lawyer down there with me and he couldn't believe the contracts they were wanting me to sign. He said he wasn't even sure what the jurisdiction would be if something went wrong. Mostly, they can't promise who's going to pay for work.”

“It's really good to talk to someone who's seen it. I'm about worn out from answering questions from everyone at school. They can't imagine it. Let's sit on the swing.” Carly got up and then bent down to get the tray but Grady already had it and had moved it to a table near the porch swing. Carly sat on one side of the swing. Her white cotton skirt was soft and made of something that looked like a soft, soft sheet. When she sat in the moonlight on the swing, the material fit down against her legs and draped along her knees and Grady was glad it was dark when he sat down across from her on a chair.

“I'm not saying anything,” he said at last. “I mean, I don't want to say anything you think is wrong. But I want you to go out with me and soon. I want to be with you. Is that okay to say, Carly Dixon? Is that going to make you mad at me?”

“I want to make love to you,” she answered. “So does that make you mad? But not now, it's too soon and you'll think I'm some sort of easy chick or promiscuous and I'm not and I never have been. But Daniel's gone to spend the night and we're both here. I don't know. What would happen if we went inside?”

“We could take a chance,” he said. “I might have forgotten how. It's been awhile. It's been two months at least.”

“Do you have a rubber?”

“I might have one in the car. Or I'll go get one.”

“Then go look,” she said. “I'll be inside. In my bedroom.”

“I don't know where that is.”

“Then I'll wait here for you.”

In a few minutes Grady came back up on the porch. “I found something,” he said. “I wouldn't swear it's much good. It's probably been in that glove compartment for several years.”

“Come inside,” Carly said and took his arm and led him into her darkened house and through the living room and into her bedroom where a small lamp was burning on a bedside table. “The bathroom is over there,” she said, and pointed to a door. Then she unbuttoned the white cotton skirt and let it fall to the floor and she stepped over it and kicked it out of the way. Then she began to unbutton the blouse and Grady gave up being shy or scared because he had never desired anyone in his life as much as he desired this beautiful, talented, brave woman who was standing before him.

“I've never had any reason to have to use a rubber except to keep from making babies,” he told her as he moved into her space and began to remove the blouse for her.

“Neither have I,” she answered. “And I take birth control pills so get rid of it. We have a lot more to be afraid of than things like that, I think.”

He picked her up in his arms and lay her down upon the bed and then he took off his clothes and lay down beside her and began to remember the heaven that men and women could sometimes give to one another, on certain nights, under certain circumstances, when the moon is right and the universe has decided to bestow its riches.

FIVE THURSDAY NIGHTS
later, after Fayetteville won another game 7 – 6 over Bentonville, at Bentonville, when the children were settled and the cold night air had driven Carly and Grady into the living room where they were pretending to watch a television show until Daniel went to sleep, Grady picked up the channel changer and turned off the television show and very awkwardly turned to Carly and handed her a diamond engagement ring he had picked up from a jeweler at four that afternoon.

“If you will have me,” he said. “If you will be my wife, I will love you and care for you and for Daniel until the day you die. Please say yes.”

“What would we tell the kids? What if they don't want us to?”

“They will want it. We're good people, Carly. They love us and we love them. We'll work it out. I already asked Jesse anyway. I told him I wanted to marry you and he said it was good, a good idea. Well, he asked where we'd live and I said wherever you wanted to live and he said we ought to get a new house that was big enough for everyone. He said we ought to build one next summer when he was out of school and could help build it.”

“Yes,” Carly said. “I mean yes. I mean I want to be your wife, because I love you and I love Jesse and I think I could do this, but I have to ask Daniel. He has to be part of this.”

“You think he's asleep?”

“No, he's too excited after games to go to sleep. He e-mails people for a while or calls his girl, you know, he's a kid, he's excited. They won.”

“May I ask him, not any big decision, just ask if he'll think about letting me ask you to marry me?”

“Now? Tonight?”

“Yes.” He hung his head way down into his chest, then lifted it and looked at her. “He's a man, Carly. I'll talk to him like a man. If he's hesitant we'll wait until I win him over. I think I can make him like the idea. Maybe I can't. He's always had you to himself.”

“All right. You can try. I'll leave the house. I'll walk around the block.”

She got up and went down the hall to Daniel's room and knocked on the door. “Come in,” he said. He was on the computer writing an e-mail to his friend John Tucker. He finished the sentence, hit send and turned around to her, in all his thirteen-year-old-covered-with-victory glory he looked at her and it was as though he already knew what she was going to say.

“Could you come in the living room a minute and let Grady talk to you about something?” she said. “Something about us, about you and me and him.”

“Sure,” he said and he got up from the chair and stood beside her. “So are you guys in love or what? Is that it?”

“Yes. Do you mind?”

“I don't know. It depends on what you do about it.”

He followed her down the hall to the living room and stood beside the sofa. Grady got up and faced him. “I'm leaving,” Carly said. “I'm going to run around the block a couple of times.” She went out the door and left them to it. She went down her sidewalk and out onto the deserted street and started running. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, she counted. It's all right. It's whatever it is. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

“I WANT TO
marry your mother,” Grady said. They were both still standing. “I think she's the nicest lady I've ever met in my life. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to share her or live with us and Jesse or have to help us plan where we want to live. I would build us a big house or live here and add on to this house to make it bigger. I'll do whatever you want to do. I won't change your life, but I'd love to be your father to any extent you want that to happen. I think I'm a good one. I think Jesse will tell you that I'm fair and if I get committed I stay committed.

“What do you think, Daniel? It's up to you. Your mother said it's going to be up to you and you don't have to decide on this tonight or this month. I love Carly. That's not going to change. I waited all my life for her. I'm here on whatever terms I can get.”

He stood there waiting and the thirteen-year-old boy, still wearing his football jersey but with pajama bottoms on beneath it moved nearer to him and put out his hand. “You can marry her if she wants to,” Daniel said. “I love a girl. I know how hard it is. As long as you are always good to her and know she is the best. She's the best. I know that every day.”

“You've made me a happy man, Daniel. I'll pay you back for your trust in me. I'll be the best stepfather I can learn how to be and you'll have to help me with that. So where do you think we should live?”

“Wherever she wants. I'd like a new house. Or we can fix up this one. I don't care. Houses aren't all that much to me.”

Carly came in the front door and saw them laughing and went to her son and put her arm around him. “You said yes?” she asked. She was sweaty from running and her hair was curled around her head and her face was glowing. “You'd let me marry this guy?”