Bitter Sweet (33 page)
‘I hope so.’
Everything so platonic on the outside, while a forbidden glow was kindled by his very presence.
He stowed the blankets in the bed of the pickup and they got under way. The sun had not risen. Inside the cab the dash lights created a dim glow and on the radio Barbra Streisand sang ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’.
‘Remember the time...’
They talked - had there ever been a person with whom she could talk with such ease?- about favourite Christmases of the past and a particular one, in the sixth grade, when they’d both been in a Christmas pageant and had had to sing a carol in Norwegian; about making snow forts as children; about how candles are made; how many varieties of cheeses come out of Wisconsin; how giving away cheese at Christmastime had become a tradition. When they grew tired of talk, they found equal ease in silence. They listened to the music and the weather forecast- cloudy with a sixty per cent chance of snow - and laughed together at a joke made by the deejay. They rode on in companionable silence as a new song began to play. They felt the rumble of occasional ice patches beneath the tyres, and watched ruby taillights sparkle on the highway ahead, and observed the coming of dawn - a grey, sombre dawn that made the interior of the truck feel insular and cosy.
A red-and-green neon sign appeared on their right, announcing, Ta. DONUT Hole. Eric slowed the truck and turned on the blinker.
‘You like doughnuts?’ he asked.
‘At this hour of the morning?’ She pretended disgust.
He angled her a grin as he made a right-hand turn and the truck bumped into an unpaved parking lot. ‘It’s the best time, when they’re fresh out of the grease.’ A tyre dropped into a pothole and Maggie slapped the seat to keep from tipping over.
She laughed and said, ‘I hope their food is better than their parking lot.’
‘Trust me.’
Inside, plastic Santas and plastic wreaths decorated fake brick walls; plastic poinsettias in plastic bud vases adorned each plastic-covered booth. Eric directed Maggie to a booth against the right wall, then slid in the opposite side and unsnapped his jacket all in one motion, the way he had unsnapped his leather jacket a hundred times in days gone by.
A buxom waitress with coal-black hair came over and thumped down two thick white saucerless mugs, then splashed them full of coffee. ‘It’s a cold one out there this morning,’ she said, laving the thermal pot. “You’re gonna need this.’
She was gone before the coffee stopped swirling in the mugs.
Maggie smiled at the woman’s retreating back, glanced at their drinks and remarked, ‘I guess we ordered coffee, huh?’
‘I guess so.’ Picking up his mug for a first drink, Eric added, ‘ “The Hole” isn’t classy, but it’s got good country cooking.’ The menus stood between the sugar jar and the napkin dispenser. Eric handed her one and suggested, ‘Check out the Everything-in-the-World Omelette. It’s more than enough for two if you’d like to share.’
It took Maggie a full thirty seconds to read the list of ingredients in the omelette, and by the time she finished she was bug-eyed.
‘They’re serious? They put all that in one omelette?”
‘Yes, ma’am. And when it comes, it’s drooping over the edge of the platter.’
‘All right, you’ve sold me. We’ll share one.’
While they waited they reminisced about Snowdays dances in high school and the time the principal dressed up like Santa Claus and Brookie had taken a dare to hold a piece of mistletoe over his head and kiss him. They refilled their coffee cups and hughed about the fact that no pieces of silverware on their table matched. When their omelette arrived they laughed even more, at its sheer size. Eric cut it and Maggie served - a delectable concoction filled with three kinds of meat, two cheeses, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, green peppers, tomatoes, broccoli and cauliflower. He ate his with two enormous homemade doughnuts, and she with toast, and neither of them heeded the fact that they were again building memories.
Back in the truck, Maggie groaned and held her stomach as the pickup jounced out of its parking spot. ‘Oh, easy, please!’
‘You just need tamping down,’ he teased, and, doing a speed shift, tromped on the gas and fishtailed across the parking lot, bouncing both of them around like corn in a popper. Maggie’s head hit the roof and she shrieked, laughing. He gunned the engine, cranked the wheel in the opposite direction and she flew from the door against his shoulder, and back again before he finally lurched to a stop at the approach to the highway.
‘S... Severson, you’re cr... crazy!’ She was laughing so hard she could scarcely get the words out.
He was laughing, too. ‘The old whore’s still got some spunk in ‘er yet. We’ll have to take her out on the ice someday and do doughnuts.’In their younger days all the boys had ‘done doughnuts’ by the dozens: driven their cars out onto the frozen lake and spun in controlled circles, leaving ‘doughnuts’ in the snow.
Then, as now, the girls had shrieked and loved every minute of it.
Sitting in Eric’s truck, laughing with him while they waited for an oncoming car from the left, Maggie experienced a flash of
de ja vu
so profound it rocked her. Maggie, Maggie, be careful.
But Eric turned and flashed her a wide, happy smile, and she ignored the voice, teasing, ‘You have a doughnut fetish, you know?
‘Yeah? So sue me.’
In her younger days she would have slid across the seat and tucked herself under his arm, and felt its weight on her girlish breast, and they would have ridden that way, with the contact ripening their want for one another.
Today, they remained apart, linked only by their eyes, knowing what was happening, feeling helpless to stop it. A car rushed by from the left, leaving a gust of sound that faded away. Eric’s smile diminished to a grin and he shifted lazily to first, still with his eyes upon Maggie, then turned his attention to the road and entered the highway at a respectable speed.
They rode on for some time, sorting through a welter of feelings, wondering what to do about them. Maggie stared out her window, listening to the hum of the snow tyres on the blacktop, watching tan weeds and snowbanks pass in a blur.
‘Maggie?’
She turned to find his eyes on her as they rolled down the highway. He returned his attention to the road and said, ‘It just struck me how seldom I’ve laughed in the last few years.’
There were tens of replies Maggie might have made, but she chose to remain silent, digesting the unspoken along with the spoken. She was getting a clearer and clearer picture of his marriage, his loneliness, the loosening mortar between the bricks of his relationship with
Nancy
. Already he was comparing, and Maggie was clear-sighted enough to understand the implications.
In
America
and had decided to sell the estate and divide the moneys.
The antiques were eclectic and well preserved. Eric watched Maggie as she moved through the rooms, making discoveries, exclaiming, ‘Look at this!’ She’d grab his sleeve and haul him towards a find. ‘it’s bird’s—eye maple!’ she’d exclaim, or, ‘It has a buried inlay!’ She touched, admired, examined, questioned, sometimes dropped to her knees to look underneath a piece. Through it all she showed an enthusiasm upon which he doted.
Nancy
admired fine things, too, but in a wholly different way. She maintained a certain reserve that held her just short of animation over the small excitements of life. At times that reserve bordered on hauteur.
Then Maggie found the bed, a grand old thing made of golden oak, with a serpentine-designed headboard seven feet high, replete with scrollwork and lush bas-relief carving.
‘Oh, look, Eric,’ she breathed, touching it reverently, staring at its intricacies as if mesmerized. ‘Oh my...’ She ran her fingertips over the oak-leaf detailing on the footboard.
‘This is why I came, isn’t it?’ She neither expected nor received an answer, did not even draw her eyes from the piece. From the doorway he watched her caress the wood, his thoughts trailing back years and years, to a night in Easley’s orchard when she had first touched him that way.
‘This is a wonderful bed. Old, sturdy, solid oak. Who do you imagine did all this carving? I can never see a piece like this without wondering about the craftsman who made it.
Look, there’s not a mark on it.’
‘The other pieces match,’ he pointed out, meandering into the room with his hands in his pockets.
‘Oh, a washstand and a cheval dresser!’
‘Is that what you call it? My grandma used to have furniture like this.’
He stood beside her, watching her open the doors and drawers of the other pieces.
‘See here? Dovetailed drawers.’
‘They won’t come apart for a while.’
She knelt, opened a door and poked her head inside. Her voice trailed out hollowly, like a note from a woodwind.
‘Solid oak.’ She emerged and looked up at him high above her. ‘See?’
He squatted beside her, adulating as expected, enjoying her more with each passing minute.
‘On this piece I would set a pitcher and bowl, and I’d hang huck towels on the bar. Did I tell you I’ve been doing huck towelling?’
‘No, you didn’t,’ he replied, grinning indulgently, still squatting beside her with one elbow on a knee. He had no idea what huck towelling was, but when she smiled about it the dimple in her chin became as pronounced as if carved by the same artist who’d done the bedroom suite.
‘I had a devil of a time finding patterns. Oh, won’t they look lovely hanging on that bar?’ On her knees, with eyes agleam, she turned to face him. ‘I want the whole set. Let’s find the man.’
‘You didn’t check the price.’
“I don’t need to. I’d want it if it were ten thousand dollars.’
‘And it’s not a four-poster or a brass bed.’
‘It’s better than a four-poster or a brass bed.’ She fixed her eyes on his. ‘Sometimes when a thing is right you simply must have it.’
He did not look away.
The rose in her cheeks matched that in his. Their hearts experienced a beat of disquiet. In that unwary moment they let their susceptibilities show, then he gathered his common sense and said, ‘All right. I’ll get the man.’
As he began to rise she grabbed his arm. ‘But, Eric?’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Will the old whore hold it all?’
He burst out laughing. The vulgar name was so inappropiate coming from her.
‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded.
‘Just you.’ He covered her hand on his arm and gave it a squeeze. ‘You’re a delightful lady., Maggie Stearn.’
She bought more than a truckful. They arranged for delivery of the pieces they could not take and hauled away only the three she most prized. Maggie supervised the loading with amusing zealousness. ‘Be careful of that knob!
Don’t rest the drawer up against the side of the truck. Are you sure it’s tied tightly enough?’
Eric glanced over at her and grinned. ‘Just because you’re a ragman and I’m a stinkpotter doesn’t mean I can’t tie a decent knot. I’ve sailed a boat, too, in my time.’
From the opposite side of the truck she gave a mock nod, and replied, ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Severson.’
One final yank on the knot and he said, ‘Come on, let’s go.’
They had spent the hours at the estate sale blithely forgetting his marital status, but their next stop would be at Bead & Ricker, and his mission there brought back reality with a sharp sting. By the time they pulled up at the kerb before the store a sombreness had fallen upon them both.
He shifted to neutral and sat for a moment with his hands on the wheel, as if about to say something, then seemed to change his mind.
‘I’ll be right back,’ he said, opening the truck door. “It shouldn’t take me long.’
She watched him move away- the one she could not have - loving his stride, the way his hair brushed his upturned leather collar, the way his clothing fitted, the colours he chose to wear. He entered the jewellery store and she sat with her gaze fixed on the window display - scarlet velvet and gems beneath bright window lights, trimmed with holly leaves. He had ordered his wife something custom made for Christmas. She, Maggie, had no business feeling despondent knowing this, yet she did. What was he buying
Nancy
? A woman that beautiful was made to wear things that glistened and shone.
Maggie sighed and turned her attention across the street, to the entrance of a hardware store where two old women chatted. One of them wore an old-fashioned woollen scarf and the other carried a cloth shopping bag with handles.
One pointed up the street and the other turned to look in that direction.