A Simple Thing (14 page)

Her connection to the baby was so all-encompassing that she didn't even miss Bill, not at first. She was busy from the time Jim's first cry woke her in the morning until she lowered her grateful body into the bed at night. Jim slept next to her in the double bed—after all, who could afford to buy a crib on the mainland, carry it by bus and ferry and haul it up the long ramp on the dock, and truck it home? Claire's oldest boy had slept in a dresser drawer for his first year, she told Betty, but the younger one had fussed so much she'd brought him in bed with her, and there he'd stayed for ten months, until Don came home and built a small bed for him with a rail on one side.

After six months, though, Betty began to miss Bill. She missed having someone to talk to in the dark, lying in bed late at night. She missed his strong back and arms when she carried heavy loads of wood from the shed to the porch, or bent to plant row after row of early lettuces (God knows he was a cad but never one to shirk hard physical work). She missed the way he'd clamp one hand on her thigh when they drove somewhere in the truck. She missed the way he'd throw back his head and laugh at her tart retort to something he'd said.

When he returned home, at the end of March, she sent Nick to pick him up at the dock. She dressed in the same dungarees and warm flannel shirt she wore most days, and brushed back her hair, which had grown long and curly, into a ponytail. She put on bright red lipstick, but then she did that even to go to the post office, just for the hell of it, just because it was something she loved to do, even though few women on Sounder bothered with makeup.

When she heard the scrape of the tires on the gravel road her heart began to beat faster. But she steeled herself not to go to the door to greet him, busied her trembling hands with scrubbing the grit off the cast-iron skillet in the kitchen sink. Jim was asleep on a pile of blankets on the floor in the living room, where she could see him. She'd made up the twin bed in the back room for Bill.

She heard the front door open and close behind her. She straightened up and waited, still facing the window above the sink, her hands in the dishwater. She turned her head to the side, so he could hear her.

“The baby's sleeping there, on the floor in the corner, if you want to see him.”

She bent again to the skillet. She heard his footsteps as he crossed the room behind her, the creak of the old floorboards as he bent down next to Jimmy. Then she heard the floor creak again as he stood, his footsteps as he came up to her and stood behind her without touching her. She paused in her work and stood still, one hand holding the skillet and the other holding the dishrag. He leaned forward, so his lips were next to her ear.

“He's incredible, Betty,” he said, his voice low. He paused. “And so are you.”

She could feel the warmth of his body behind her even though he wasn't touching her, could feel his breath warm against her ear. She wanted his lips on her neck, his arms around her, his hips pressed into her.

“Oh, hell,” she said, dropping the dishrag in the sink. She let go of the skillet, too, and turned around to face him. She put a damp hand on either side of his head and pulled him toward her and kissed him. He kissed her back urgently, parted her lips with his tongue, and grabbed her hips with both hands to pull her to him. They made love until the baby woke up an hour later, and then all night long after he went to sleep that night.

Chapter 14

Susannah 2011

“I have a favor to ask of you,” Jim said.

Susannah looked up from the pizza dough she was kneading. Jim opened the back door of the white cottage. He wore his teacher clothes—a shirt and tie under a warm sweater, a waterproof parka, and thick corduroys with the right pant leg tucked inside his sock. His commute involved a trek on a mountain bike through the woods, which explained the pant leg. He held his backpack in one hand.

“Sure,” Susannah said.

“Next week is Pizza and Poetry Day. I've mentioned it before, right?” He pulled a thick book out of the backpack and placed it on the counter.

Susannah nodded.

“Great. I want to have some posters this year—portraits of famous poets, with a few lines from their best-known poems. I heard about your artistic ability, and I wanted to see if you'd consider doing the posters for me.”

Susannah wiped her floury hands on her apron and looked at him with surprise. “I'm a window designer.”

“I know. But I heard you're also a terrific artist.”

Susannah shrugged. “I used to paint quite a bit.” She thought again about the brilliant colors of the landscapes she'd painted during those heady early years of her marriage. She thought about the mural she had painted on the walls of Katie's room when she was a baby, filled with cartwheeling flowers, dancing trees, swirling waters, and a flamboyant sun. She had painted tiny faces in the flowers, friendly animals in the curling leaves.

“It's been years since I painted,” she said. “Once Katie was born I never seemed to have the time, and then when Quinn came along . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Anyway, Quinn shouldn't have told you—”

“It wasn't Quinn,” Jim said. “It was Katie.”

“Katie?”

“She was quite complimentary, too. Said you painted her room when she was a baby, and that you used to illustrate stories for her when she was little, about a family of fairies.”

“I did,” Susannah said. “I haven't thought of those in years.”

“Would you mind trying your hand at the posters? Just some simple pen-and-ink drawings. Give it an hour or two, and if it's too much work, forget it.”

“I'll try. It's been a long time.”

“That's okay.” Jim nodded toward the book. “Surprise me. Draw a few poets—you can choose any poet in the book. I marked some favorites with sticky notes, but it's up to you.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a paper bag. “I brought you some art supplies from school, too.”

She smiled. “All right, I'll give it a try.”

“Thanks. Could you do it by Monday?”

“Sure.” It was the first time in years she'd agreed to something without consulting her calendar first, she realized. Come to think of it, she didn't even
have
a calendar here.

“Great.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder. “So I'm getting to know your Katie better and better. She's an interesting kid. Terrific writer.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Yes. Did she show you the essay she wrote last week, on Steinbeck's
Travels with Charley
? It was incredible.”

“No. She didn't even tell me about it.”

“I figured. Kids don't like to be known at this age, at least not by their parents. Ask her to show it to you sometime.”

“I will. Thanks for letting me know about it.”

He paused, one hand on the counter. “There's one more thing. Generally, I keep what I hear at school to myself. If the kids trust me enough to talk to me, I don't want to betray that trust.”

Susannah's heart thumped, a frantic rabbit leap in her chest.

“Don't look like that,” Jim said. “It's not something terrible. You told me about some of the problems she had at home, like writing that newspaper story about that girl.”

Susannah sighed. “Yes.”

“The girl she wrote about? She sounds like a mean kid. Katie said she asked out some shy boy, seduced him into kissing her, and had a friend secretly videotape the whole thing. Then she posted the video online and turned it into a big joke. The boy was devastated; Katie says he left school.”

“You're kidding.” Katie had refused to discuss the whole newspaper episode.

“That same girl bullied other kids, according to Quinn,” Jim said. “I asked him about it. Katie's newspaper story seems like just retribution to me. Seems she can't stand it when something is not fair.”

Like Matt
. Susannah suddenly had a vision of plump, moon-faced, ten-year-old Davey Godwin, with his black-rimmed glasses and striped T-shirts. Matt—lean and competitive and the best athlete at camp—had always picked Davey first for every team he captained—kickball, baseball, Capture the Flag. He would coach Davey on the fine points of running the bases, or fixing his swing so he didn't hit so many pop-ups. Davey idolized him. “Why do you always pick him first?” Susannah had asked. After all, Matt could have waited and picked him second or third or next-to-last. “It's not fair,” Matt had said with a shrug. “Everyone deserves to be first sometimes.”

“I had no idea,” Susannah said. “She never told us.”

Jim shrugged. “She was pretty fierce about protecting Quinn the first few days of school, too. He was nervous, worried about the germ thing and fitting in.”

“She's pretty mean to him at home.”

“As I said, she lets you see what she wants you to see.”

Susannah absorbed all this. “Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Matt will be happy to hear this.”

“How is Matt?”

“Oh, fine. Busy.” To be honest, Susannah wasn't sure how Matt was doing. He was still hard to reach on the phone, and when they did talk he sounded tired, or annoyed. Lately she had the sense that everything she said irritated Matt, but she didn't know why, or what to do about it. When she'd ask him if anything was wrong, he'd say, “I don't know what you're talking about,” and then there would be a long, uncomfortable silence.

“Good. I've gotta run,” Jim said. “The posters by Monday is okay?”

“Yes, Monday,” she said, getting back to her pizza dough. And for some reason, when the door closed behind him, she felt lonelier on Sounder than she ever had before.

 

On Monday Susannah stopped by the school with her posters. She'd spent several days working on them, reading poem after poem in the books Jim had given her, doing sketches, experimenting with moving her sketchpad around to take advantage of the natural light. It had been years since she'd attempted anything artistic, and she was plagued with doubt. At last, after crumpling up drawing after drawing and stuffing them in the woodstove, she'd decided to try something different.

School was over when Susannah arrived. As was usual now, she had little idea where her kids were. Katie was probably with Hood and Baker somewhere; the three of them were inseparable. Quinn was likely headed over to Barefoot's house. Barefoot was teaching him how to identify and catalog plants, an endeavor Quinn loved. And if he wasn't with Barefoot, he was with Evelyne Waters, his new best friend. Ten-year-old Evelyne lived on the other side of the island, where her parents farmed lavender. They sold lavender jelly and lavender sachets and lavender-scented soaps. Susannah wondered if the sweet, soothing scent of lavender that clung to Evelyne—to her hair and clothes and even her skin—was part of her appeal. She was Quinn's personal aromatherapy.

Susannah saw Jim perched on a wooden ladder by the big windows along the west side of the building, with a rag in one hand and a spray bottle in the other. “Hey,” she said. “You're the window washer, too?”

Jim put the rag down on the top step and climbed down. “Yes, that would be me. You did the posters? I can't wait to see them.”

Susannah felt shy. “I'm not much of a portraitist,” she said. “Is that the right word? I'm good at landscapes and still lifes, but people aren't my area of expertise. So they're not exactly
portraits
of the poets.”

“I bet you underestimate yourself.” He gazed at her with those green eyes—a look that went right through her, as though he saw all the self-doubt that had gone into her work. “Come inside,” he said. “We'll spread them out on the table and take a look.”

He slipped off his shoes, sturdy clogs with rubber soles, and stepped into the white frame building. She did the same. No one wore shoes inside the school, to protect the old pine floors. It added to the quiet, too; so different from the noisy classrooms at home. She took the rubber band off the roll of posters and spread them out on the big oak table, sliding books over to weigh down the corners and keep them from curling up.

They were colorful; she had to give herself credit for that. Frustrated by her attempts to draw realistic portraits, she'd resorted instead to collage, illustrating one image from a single poem for each poet, using scraps of newsprint, paint and pencil, bits of fabric and feather. She had chosen Robert Frost's “Design,” and made a “dimpled spider, fat and white” out of tufts of sheep's wool and bits of twine, sitting on a bright blue flower against a pale pink-orange sky. On another poster she'd created a purple raisin out of scraps of fabric, baking under the brilliant rays of a shiny sun made from gold foil, to illustrate Langston Hughes's “Dream Deferred.”

Jim leaned over the posters and then looked up at her in surprise.

“This is not what I expected.”

“I know. You wanted something more traditional—drawings. I thought—”

“Oh, no. These are perfect. I love them. They're just kind of”—he gave her a speculative look—“I don't know,
bold,
surprising. As I said, not what I expected.”

“Should I be flattered or insulted?”

“Flattered, Susannah. Bold is good. Unexpected is good.” He pointed to the third one. “What's this?”

“Oh, God, I know.” Susannah laughed. “It's a slug. I thought the kids would like it. I picked poems by the poets you suggested, but I wanted to throw something different into the mix. That's for Sam Green's poem ‘Scripsit.' Do you know it?” She fumbled with the messenger bag and found the sheets on which she'd written out the poem. “It's about a slug whose trail makes a perfect cursive
o
.”

“Believe it or not, I know that poem. Sam Green is a favorite of mine.” He sat on the edge of the desk opposite her and cocked his head to one side. “You're altogether way too intriguing for a runaway suburban mom.”

When had Matt last found her intriguing? Or bold, or unexpected? Her parched self looked at Jim Pavalak and wanted to gulp down his vision of her in a long, refreshing swallow.

“Don't be insulted,” Jim said. “I'm teasing about the runaway suburban mom stuff. You're a good artist. I had no idea. These will be great.”

“Thank you.”

She felt warm and happy and attractive—yes, attractive!— and guilty, all at once.

Her attraction to Matt had been such an elemental part of her life for so long that she was shocked to feel herself even a little bit attracted to Jim. From the time she was fifteen, Matt had elicited something raw and hungry in her. She remembered one summer after college when she was living in Seattle and hadn't seen Matt in more than a year. He'd surprised her and walked into the store where she was working, and when she looked up from the counter and saw his blue, blue eyes, his lopsided smile with the dimple in the right cheek, and the way his faded jeans settled on his firm hips, she had been ready to strip down and take him right there, in the middle of Nordstrom's.

But over these past few years, with the kids' crazy schedules and the fights about Katie, their sex life had slowed. Often at home she'd be making the bed or driving to pick up the kids and suddenly remember a moment of intimacy—she and Matt tangled together, her body warm and throbbing. Her skin would tingle and she'd anticipate the coming evening, envision turning to Matt in the dark, exploring him with her hands and lips. But Quinn would need help with a science project, and the cat would throw up on the good rug, and Katie would announce she needed to cram for a math exam, and Susannah wouldn't have time to look at Matt, let alone seduce him. God, there were moments, though, when she longed for some good head-banging-against-the-headboard sex—raw and uncomplicated by resentment over who forgot to load the dishwasher.

But of course that longing had nothing to do with Jim.

 

“My mom wants to come for Thanksgiving,” Susannah said to Matt. She cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder while rooting through the cupboards for flour.

“That's fine,” Matt said. “Is there somewhere for her to sleep?”

“She can sleep at Betty's. All the beds here will be full.” She found the flour and set it down on the counter. “It's just—it's the first time you and I and the kids will be all together again. It might be nice to be alone, just the four of us.”