Authors: Mad Dash
Patricia Gaffney (25 page)
Although, in fairness, Owen probably couldn’t teach a course on the American Revolution.
While he loads up his truck, I set out sodas, cookies, peanuts, pretzels, olives, carrot sticks, hummus, and pita pieces. The cornucopia effect; I learned it from Cottie. When he comes inside, Sock trailing, he asks if he can use the bathroom. I rattle ice cubes while he pees so I can’t hear. I don’t know why.
“How’s the washer-dryer? Any leaks?” He pulls out a chair and sits down at the table, frowning at a napkin in a wooden holder I put at his place.
“Nope, not a one. Owen, would you like a beer instead? I didn’t even think to ask.”
“This is fine.” He takes an enormous swig of Coke, ignoring the lemon wedge I stuck on the glass. Leans back, getting comfortable. Looks around the kitchen. “So. How do you know what you’re eating?”
“You asked! Finally—you’ve been so
discreet.
” We look over at the big paper labels for tomatoes, corn, asparagus, beets—anything colorful—I glued behind the sink for a backsplash, and crack up. They brighten the room, no question, but over in the glass-fronted cabinet are the byproducts of my cleverness I forgot to plan ahead for: lots of naked, anonymous cans of who knows what. “The other night I had lima beans and corn for dinner with a side of succotash.” That’s not even true, but it makes Owen laugh harder. “You’re crazy,” he says, as if it’s a compliment.
He tells me about some genuine oak parquet squares he can get for practically nothing if I want them for the living room. “Hm” is my answer; I love the old pine boards. “Maybe in the kitchen, though. Instead of this linoleum.” He looks taken aback, unsure. Parquet in a kitchen?
“Forgot to tell you—Miz Bender said be sure to call and tell her what’s a good day for you two to get together.”
“Oh, good. I’ll call her this afternoon.” Cottie and I are going out for lunch one day this week. “You always call her ‘Mrs. Bender.’ She told me you’re as close to her as a son.”
His blond eyelashes go down and he smiles, showing a crooked eyetooth. “I’m the same. She could be my mother.”
“How did you lose your parents?”
“You mean Miz Bender didn’t already tell you all about it?”
I show my open palms, look innocent.
“My father got blood poisoning from a tractor accident, and my mother got cancer.”
“When you were very young?”
“Not that young. Twelve, Mama died. My father, I was fifteen. Lawyers wanted to sell the farm, but I wouldn’t let ’em. Made ’em lease it.”
“And the Benders took you in.”
“Eventually. After a spell with my uncle and aunt down in Staunton. Pretty bad spell.”
Cottie didn’t tell me about that. I can see Owen’s not going to, either.
“Benders knew me from church, knew my family. Some people talk about charity and doing what’s right, helping out your neighbor when he’s in need, and other people do it and don’t say a word. Benders took me in and never made me feel beholden or like I had to be thanking them all the time. They even—” He pauses a second. “Even lent me some money when I got out of the army, get the farm going again. And that had nothing to do with Danielle, they just wanted to help me get started in my life.”
I’m not surprised that Cottie never told me that, either.
“Do you like living by yourself? Or do you get lonely on your farm sometimes?”
He has light, clear eyes, and when he goes quiet or shuts down, he turns them away so I can’t see them, as if otherwise I’d always see the truth. Andrew’s a bit like that, too. Owen leans over to retie his boot lace and says, “Oh, I’m used to it. I get along fine. Too much to do to get lonesome.”
I fall into a reverie I’ve had before, that Owen and I are married. We live on his farm. I tend the big vegetable garden and dress venison and can things in my spare time while he does the heavy outdoor work, planting the fields, castrating bulls, and what not. I don’t have too much spare time, though, because I’m also the local vet. We’re very
real
people, salt of the earth, nothing frivolous about us. I take his name. Our lives are simple but meaningful.
Sock puts her paw on his knee, and he pulls her up on his lap. A different kind of reverie comes over me. Sock splays her long adolescent legs over Owen’s, and the worn corduroy stretches over his thighs, pulling the seams tight. His thick fingers disappear under the fur around her neck. She yawns in ecstasy, turning her head this way and that for more, shameless as a cat.
Owen’s asking me something. I hear “week going?” and take a startled stab at the answer. “Oh, very well so far. I read and walk, I have my projects.”
“Like what?”
“Well, black-and-white studies of the pond, that’s one. In fact, the one thing I forgot to do is bring down my old enlarger. I used to develop pictures in a little bathroom darkroom—I could do that down here, just for fun. I miss film. Digital’s great, I’d never go back, but sometimes I miss the darkroom.”
“You should do that, then.”
“I think I will.”
“You’re sure good at a lot of things.”
“Me? I thought I was only good at one thing.”
He shakes his head. He and Sock are both looking at me through half-closed eyes. “Cottie thinks you’re about the smartest woman she knows.”
“Oh. Pshaw.” I trace a drop of condensation down the side of my glass with my finger. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s gotten a lot more interesting around here since you came.” He smiles. In a friendly way? A seductive, inviting way? Is his answer a factual observation or an overture? Is he oblivious to what he does, or is he doing it on purpose to make me crazy?
He picks up my camera, hanging by the strap on the chair next to his. His fingers look too big on the black case, fumbling it open, pulling the camera out. I’m a bit unnerved. Be careful, I want to say, don’t crush it. He finds the power button and swivels it on. The lens hums out. He looks at me through the viewfinder.
“Don’t take my picture.”
“Why not?”
“Here, I’ll take yours.”
But he leans back, won’t let me have the camera. He closes one eye and turns the focus ring. “Smile.”
“No.”
“You have a pretty smile.”
“I hate having my picture taken. I know, the irony.” I give him a flat-lipped smirk.
“Don’t do that. Smile sweet. Then you develop it and let me have the picture.”
I don’t know what kind of smile I give him, but he takes the photo. I imagine the blacks and grays being born in developer, the whites emerging. It’s me, all right. I’ve got antlers. Headlight glare flashes back from my dazed pupils.
Before he goes, he checks the stove in the living room and tells me I’ve got creosote, not to light another fire in there till I get it cleaned. Maybe this is all I want from Owen, manly advice, someone to look out for me. That’s a comfortable role. He plays it well, and it doesn’t confuse me.
I’m in a tricky phase, though. Anything could happen. I have a certain feeling in my skin, as if it’s unnaturally thin, ultrasensitive. From past experience, I know this feeling can sometimes precede an impulsive act.
I walk outside with him. It’s a bright, breezy, hopeful afternoon, warm in the sun, chilly when a cloud hides it. The sound of the wind is different from only a week ago, softer and more encumbered now that the buds have turned to baby leaves. April’s mean streak is over.
Owen is one of those people who take forever to say good-bye. I don’t think it means they hate good-byes—
I
hate good-byes, so I expedite them, kiss-hug-disappear. I think they just don’t know how to leave. Owen presses the small of his back against the truck while he tells me about a porch swing he’ll let me have cheap because he bought it in the fall when nobody wanted a porch swing. About how he’ll kill the mice in the cabin walls if I don’t have the heart for it (I don’t, and I’m not letting him, either, but I say I’ll think about it). About how these burrows in the ground here are from voles, not moles, and I should encourage Sock to eat, not just sniff them—why, his dog, Rex, eats so many, he’d be fine if Owen forgot to feed him for a week.
Then: “Do
you
ever get lonesome?”
I drop the stick Sock and I were mock-fighting over. “Who, me?”
“Your husband never comes down anymore. I know there’s trouble. Miz Bender didn’t say, but…”
She probably implied. I’m touched that Cottie hasn’t told her own family everything I’ve told her about Andrew and me. I’m also amazed that Owen is finally saying something to me directly, no gallant circuitry, about my marital situation. I’ve referred to it plenty of times, but till now he never has.
“Yes, sometimes, sure. I’m lonely. But like you,” I say deliberately, “I’m getting used to it.” That’s an invitation: mine to his. I’m already anticipating his response—
we should keep each other company
, something like that. Because to me, and now, obviously, to Owen, inquiring about whether a person is lonely or not is almost always an invitation.
He opens the door of his truck. “See those jammed-up oak leaves up there?” I follow his pointing finger to high, bare branches, a dark mass of something or other among them. “You got a flying squirrel’s nest. Come out some night when the moon’s full and watch. It’s a sight to see.” He gets in the truck and starts it up. “Okay. See you.”
That’s it? “Thanks—the closet is wonderful—I’ll send you a check.” Sock barks at the truck, which has begun to reverse; I scoop her up in my arms. “How much do I owe you?”
“I’ll catch you on that later.” He shifts gears and drives away.
I think that’s what he said. Or “I’ll get you on that later”? “I’ll get with you on that later”? Any way I construct it, and I try several more combinations, I can’t make it a double entendre.
seventeen
I
’ve never seen Cottie Bender in a dress before, nor with her long braid pinned up on her head. My glance goes right over her amid the afternoon crowd at the Velvet Cafe until she waves to me from a back booth. I hurry over, wishing I’d dressed up more; the only concession I’ve made to our lunch date is to put on slacks instead of jeans. I didn’t know it was fancy. “Sorry I’m late! Have you been waiting long? Chloe called right as I was leaving—”
“Just got here. Sit.” She’s finished most of a glass of iced tea, so I know that’s a fib.
“Sorry, sorry, but then we got into a
fight
, and so then we had to make up before we could say good-bye.
Sort
of make up.”
“You and Chloe?” She has a garnet circle pin on the collar of her long-sleeved shirtwaist dress, and clip-on earrings that almost match it. She leans toward me in sympathy. “You had a fight?”
“You won’t believe what she said, Cottie.”
“Oh no. What did she say?”
“I’m still in shock.”
“What?”
“She’s decided to major in drama.”
She sits back. “Oh. Really?”
“The theater.”
I put my hands on my cheeks. “After all these years of knowing exactly what she wants to be, a historian, a scholar like her father, now she wants to
act.
”
“Oh, my. Well,” she says with a tolerant chuckle, “if that’s what she really wants…”
I look at her in disbelief. But she doesn’t know Chloe, doesn’t understand the complete absurdity of this so-called decision. “How could she be so
impractical
? Chloe’s the smartest one in the family! I
thought.
”
Sue, the waitress, appears. I’m too distracted to read the menu, I practically know it by heart now anyway. Today’s special is turkey and stuffing with choice of two vegs. I order that and Cottie orders the big salad.
“This is so crazy, and she will not be reasoned with,” I go on after Sue leaves. “She got
angry
with me. I’m still upset. We rarely fight. We disagree constantly, but we rarely fight. And the worst is, Andrew doesn’t mind.
Andrew.
Or so she tells me—I haven’t spoken to him yet. I called him immediately, but he wasn’t there. And
then, before
that, Greta tells me she’s marrying
Joel.
What is going on?” I stick my fingers in my hair and pull. “I don’t get it, I just don’t get it.”
Cottie looks at me as if I’m a riddle she can’t solve.
I flutter my hands. “Never mind, let’s not talk about it now, boring family business. How are you? You look wonderful, truly—Owen said you’re feeling good, too.”
So the conversation changes, but part of me is still back on the phone with Chloe. She mentioned it almost in passing—“Hey, Mom, I’m switching majors”—then she was
surprised
when I wasn’t thrilled with the news. “What difference does it make?” she kept saying. “Why do you care so much?” Why do I
care
so much! Because it’s impractical, impulsive, unwise, and immature. “Do you know how many people make a living in the theater? One percent!” (I have no idea.) “Since when have you been
practical
,” she said to me, and that set me off. I said the one thing I now regret: “Let’s not forget who’s paying for your sky-high tuition.” At least I didn’t add “young lady.”
“I don’t get you,” we ended up telling each other, and hanging up practically in tears—me, anyway. And to hear that Andrew has
no problem
with this—I can’t get over that. If it’s true, it’s just to spite me. Everywhere I look, I am having the rug pulled out from under me. No one’s behaving the way they should, and I don’t understand why
I
keep looking like the bad guy.
Cottie pours oil and vinegar on her salad from the smudged glass bottles Sue brings. “I should’ve gotten that,” I say, spreading a pool of yellow gravy into my mashed potatoes. “You’re such a sensible eater.”
“Only recently.”
“But haven’t you always been slender?”
She nods. “I was sickly as a child, never have been able to put on much weight.”
“Rheumatic fever,” I remember. Owen told me.
She examines a chunk of iceberg lettuce on the end of her fork. “Never thought I’d make it to old age, to tell you the truth. Since I was nine, every year I’ve given myself about four more years.”
“Oh, Cottie.”
“I never thought I’d make it off the operating table after surgery. Never thought I’d get this far in my recovery.”
“Cottie
Bender.
”
She grins, then looks down. “I’ve got a little confession to make. Remember when we first met?”
“Of course.”
“I had in mind that you were a particular kind of person that I could be friends with, like I couldn’t be with anyone else. Not Shevlin, not Owen or Danielle, none of my friends from church.” She gives a hooting laugh. “Definitely not them. Somebody I wouldn’t have to be so damn cheerful and hopeful with, frankly.”
“Oh.” I put down my fork.
“Because you came from the city! You had an artistic job, and you’re so smart and dress so chic. Your husband’s a professor, your car isn’t American. Sophisticated, that’s it. I thought you might be the perfect person I could be my secret self with.”
“But why?” I’m not getting this. I thought she just liked me. “Anyway, what secret self?”
She looks around, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “I am a pessimist. And”—she leans forward for this—“I
might
almost be an agnostic.”
“I think I knew that,” I say slowly. I feel surprised that I’m not more surprised. “So with me…”
“With you, I thought I could be negative. Honest.”
“Well, sometimes you have been. I guess.”
“I don’t know if I have been or not, but the point is, I was wrong. And not that it matters anymore, but it’s turned out, you’re a bigger optimist than Reverend Ashe—our pastor at church.”
“Well, that’s what everybody
says.
”
“It was foolish of me to make you into a certain type of person before I knew you, that’s what I wanted to say. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, please. Just so you’re not disappointed.”
“No, I’m not disappointed.” She smiles her sweet smile.
I try to think of something I could confess. “I thought you were going to be much squarer. A country lady.”
She loves this; her eyes light up and she colors. “I
am
a country lady.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know you’d be so worldly.”
“Worldly.”
She rolls the word out, savoring it like a mint. “What in the
world
are you talking about?”
“Well, you told me you used to sneak cigarettes when Shevlin wasn’t around.”
“Used to,” she agrees, patting her chest.
“And…you know.”
“What?”
“You know.” Now I’m the one lowering my voice and checking for listeners. “What you’d say to him,” I whisper. “In his coffin.”
“Oh!” We cover snorts of laughter with our hands. Cottie once told me, I forget in what possible context, that if Shevlin died first, she would feel compelled to tell him the truth at last. She would whisper in his ear as he lay in his casket, “Honey, I always voted Democrat.”
“How did you meet him?” I ask.
“How did you and Andrew meet? You go first.”
“Oh, at a party on New Year’s Eve.”
“And did you like him right away?”
“Right away. As soon as I saw him.” I don’t tell her I kissed him the second I set eyes on him. She might get the wrong idea about me.
“Why? What set you off?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Well, he was cute. And sort of courtly, I thought. Knightly. And I could tell he liked
me
—I always like people who like me.”
Cottie laughs.
“He was twenty-eight and I was twenty-four, but it seemed like more. Almost as if he was from a different era. I don’t know who I thought I was in those days. I’d get an idea of myself, but then it would change, and…But I was happy most of the time, and I think people like that in other people.”
“Andrew liked it in you.”
“Yes.” I could see myself appealing to him that night, I could see him letting go of some of his reserve. “That’s seductive, don’t you think, watching someone fall for you? Of course, it was happening to me just as fast, so I didn’t have time to gloat.”
I don’t know how to explain to Cottie a feeling I had from the first, almost as soon as I saw him, that—
Here is someone who knows things I’d like to know.
Things about life, that’s as specific as I could be. Secrets about how to live, what the best things to want were. Maybe something about rectitude or discretion, a quieter, calmer way to get through my life. Of course, it was all mostly unconscious at the time, and even now it’s not exactly crystalline. I thought he had something I wanted, simple as that. Although that night it was mainly to know how the back of his neck would feel, just below the shaggy hairline.
“So anyway, we just hit it off,” I conclude. “Now you go—how did you and Shevlin meet?”
“Well.” Cottie sits back, blots her lips with a napkin. “I was an old maid, living at home with my father. Who was on disability for a leg he lost from diabetes. My sisters were married and older, it was just me. I had adored my mother—you and I have that in common—but my papa was another story. Deacon in the church, real strict, and very pious. Shevlin didn’t even go to church, claimed he didn’t believe in God. So wicked, that seemed to me. And attractive.”
“Yes.”
“I was a good girl, but I had a tongue in my head. He said that’s one reason he liked me right off. We met at a dance social at the fire hall—he brought another girl. He looked dark and dangerous, like a tough customer. And quiet, like he was thinking dangerous thoughts. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.”
I squeeze my arms, give a mock shiver.
“Well, he got away from that girl he had with him and got me on my own and he said, ‘I’m calling on you.’”
“‘I’m calling on you.’”
“But the
way
he said it. It was old-fashioned even then, but neither one of us were spring chickens, we were both in our thirties, that whole sixties business had passed us by.”
“So then?”
“So then, that’s just what he did. Papa
hated
him. Called him the devil, which was all I needed.” She smiles. “But no, it wasn’t like that, I was too old to fall for a man just because my father disapproved. Though I’m not saying it didn’t help.”
“And he pursued you,” I remember. Cottie had felt like a dandelion in the wind.
“He did. Me, I was sick of singing in the church, being the girl every boy treated like a newborn rabbit. Shevlin was never disrespectful, but he surely did let me know I was no newborn rabbit. One time…” She chases a last bit of tomato around the bottom of the oily bowl. “We used to meet in the cemetery on occasion for a date.”
“The cemetery?”
“It got so tiresome dealing with Papa every time we wanted to go out, so once in a while we’d meet in the cemetery. Well, this one night I couldn’t go at the last minute, Papa wanted me to help him with his bath, so I missed our date. I was sitting in my room feeling blue when who waltzes around the corner and through the door but Shevlin. In my room! It was such a
shock.
At first—but then it just seemed natural as anything. We sat on the bed and visited—which is about all we ever did, strange as it might seem now, even in the cemetery. We were talking and laughing, feeling safe because Papa was downstairs with the radio on, we’d fixed up the dining room like a bedroom so he wouldn’t have to use the stairs—”
“How did Shevlin get in?” I interrupt.
“Through the front door and up the steps, that’s how. Which is just like him, I know now: He always takes the direct approach. Well—somehow, I guess with his X-ray ears, Papa figured out something was up, because all of a sudden we hear this
thump. Thump. Thump.
The sound his crutch made on the stairs.” She puts her hand on her heart. “I have never been so scared in my life. Shevlin—you ought to’ve seen him. First he tried to get under the bed, but the space was too narrow, plus I kept my suitcase under there. Then the closet, but the door wouldn’t close.
Thump. Thump.
I had my sewing machine under the one window. It took the two of us to shove it aside, and Shevlin tore his pants and his underpants on the window crank when he squeezed through.”
“My God.”
“There was this horrible crash just before Papa came in—I thought sure Shevlin was dead, but he fell on top of the hydrangea. It broke his fall.” Her shoulders shake; she dabs a tear of mirth from her eye. “We have laughed about that almost every day since.”
“What did your father do?”
“He made us get married. Which is all we were after to begin with.”
“Cottie, what a great story.” She sighs in agreement. “Andrew would never do something like that.”
“No?”
“No.” He wouldn’t even come down and get me when I was pregnant with Chloe. All he could do was call and
reason
with me. Mama was on his side. I see I’m not quite over being mad at
both
of them for that. “No, it would be too undignified,” I tell Cottie. “You can’t laugh at Andrew. He’s got a lovely sense of humor, but not about himself. I’m the only one who can tease him.”