Cascade (20 page)

But it was likely the question everyone was thinking, and valid, because she was being paid a crazy amount of money for doing something she had the time of her life doing. Seventy-five easy dollars to add to her playhouse fund. The cost of an actor’s wage, the cost of printing a season’s playbills. Zeke’s counter was full of someone’s grocery order—Wonder bread, cans of vegetables, a triangle of meat wrapped in thick white paper. At least ten dollars’ worth—and to think that she would be getting seven times that.

Surely, there was more work down there for her. Abby was right—if she only got herself to New York, she would do all right. Illustration was something women had been doing successfully for years. And couldn’t Asa do all right, too? If everyone in town had to leave anyway, why did it have to be Asa’s decision where they would live?

Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

“I’m happy for you, Dez.” It was Lil, though she didn’t look happy at all, her manner begrudging. But then Bud Foster burst through the screen door, interrupting with a big hug—
Jeez, Dez, how’d you manage this?
And Bill Hoden and his twin sons hovered off to her side, waiting, wanting to know what she had in store for next week.

Dez was almost out the door when Lil cornered her again.

“Elsie mentioned she saw you at the Criterion the other night. I thought you were too busy to go.”

It took a moment to process this—that in the midst of Dez’s small, personal glory, Lil was caught up in hurt feelings. Dez felt herself sputtering inside, thinking of all the ways she could respond, but in the end, she voiced only the truth, that the movie was very last-minute, that she didn’t even know she was going herself until she found herself wandering in.

Lil nodded. “I see,” she said. But there was something else going on, Dez wasn’t sure what.

At the drugstore, every stool was occupied, grill sizzling, drink blenders whirring, Mrs. Raymond refilling a glass cylinder with paper straws. Out back, Asa was bent over his mortar and pestle, grinding a prescription.

He looked up when she came in and he, too, behaved oddly—hesitating when Dez showed him the magazine. But his enthusiasm as he looked over the postcards was admiring and flattering. He pointed out details he liked and repeated how good the paintings were.

Still, his pleasure, his pride, seemed dampened. He was holding something back.

“Is something wrong?”

He shook his head in a way that said he was reluctant to spoil her moment, at the same time that he breathed in deep, ready to get something off his chest. “Well, it’s this,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck, perplexed. “One of the operators happened to overhear you talking to that editor in New York. Saying you knew Cascade would be chosen.”

“Lil handled that call,” Dez said.

“Doesn’t matter who.”

“She shouldn’t have been listening to my conversation.”

He made a broad, forgiving gesture with his hands. “You know it happens. And that’s beside the point, which is, is this true?”

“No one knows for sure what’s going to happen.”

“But did this man make a deal with you?”

“Of course we made a deal.”

“But is it true he said he was only interested in doing this if you were positive Cascade was going to be the town they chose?”

“When did Lil tell you this?”

“It doesn’t matter, I just want to know: Did you flat-out lie to that man?”

Had she? Not flat-out, no. “Mr. Washburn knows that nothing’s very certain in this world right now. He’s happy with the feature, and so is everyone else in this town except for my own husband and someone who used to call herself my friend.”

He looked abashed; she saw him second-guessing himself. But when he wrapped her in an apologetic hug, when he said, “Just let me finish up and we’ll go celebrate,” she was sobered by a memory, a line from one of the plays, she couldn’t remember which one exactly, and she couldn’t remember the exact phrasing, but she did remember the gist:
Glory is like a circle in water which spreads and spreads and by its spreading, disappears to nothing
.

H
ow quickly resolve, contrition, could turn to that eager, selfish state known as titillation. The crazy heartbeat, the wild wish: if only Asa had lagged behind. Because there was the black truck, parked in front of the Handy. There was Jacob himself walking out with a copy of the
Standard
in his hands.

“Oh, look, it’s Jacob,” she said, her voice somehow calm as her heart kicked against her chest.

He hesitated when he saw them, she could see that. But it was too late for him to do anything but do what he did, which was walk up and shake Asa’s hand, looking him full in the eye in a way that Dez suspected meant that he was contrite. Then, to Dez, he was too overly cordial, asking how was it that in the short time he’d been away, she had managed to get herself into the pages of
The American Sunday Standard
? “I’ve been in New York,” he explained. “I only just saw your telegram today.”

She saw the look on Asa’s face and hurried to explain how she’d come up with the idea. She knew she was blushing, and talking too quickly. It was the first time the three of them had shared the same space, and in the light
of day, on Main Street, her connection to Jacob felt nothing like a relationship between two artists. He was the peddler. She was Asa’s wife.

They were on their way to the Brilliant, she said, eager to break up the meeting. But first there was the sight of Jacob’s palm disappearing inside Asa’s handshake to endure, followed by unbidden thoughts: she had known the touch of both those hands (Asa, a little bit undone to find a bride in his childhood home, in his parents’ old bedroom; Jacob, removing the pins from her hair). And what kind of a woman did that make her? The kind that hoped Jacob wouldn’t bring up what he did bring up: that he had one more delivery to make to Al, and since Stein’s closed on Thursdays, he was hoping they could have one last meeting next Wednesday. His manner was courteous, genial, as it had always been, showing Asa—and himself?—that these weekly meetings were faultless.

She wanted that final meeting—it might be her last chance to see him, and it would be innocent, the last time had simply been an aberration caused by the shock of Dr. Proulx’s death—but she had to shrug, for Asa’s sake, and murmur, “Sure,” as if he had said he would deliver some apron or sauce pot.

At the Brilliant, there was distraction in the form of more congratulations. Everyone was clearly hoping that the exposure would start some kind of countrywide swell of support for Cascade. When Asa and Dez finally slid into one of the high leather booths, Dez gazed blindly at the menu Helen Whitby offered and tried to keep up a running conversation about the next postcards. There would be two: one depicting “now,” one depicting “then.” She had so many ideas for “then,” cards, she said, wistful looks back at the 1910s and ’20s—the regattas and parades. Maybe she could do a concert on the common, seeing as how the summer band concert series was about to start.

“You should put the old boys’ camp in somewhere,” Asa said. “All those little cabins, fun to look at.”

“Good idea,” she said, relieved enough to finally meet his eyes. He
looked as if he was turning something over and over in his mind, and though he didn’t seem particularly happy, he didn’t seem angry, either. He had to understand that it hadn’t been easy to tell Jacob not to come. “And for the ‘now’ card, I want to show how the town is fighting it—draw the town meeting, I think. I could put Zeke Davenport in it. He’d get a kick out of that.” Let Lil spread stories about her after seeing that.

“Zeke would.”

“I think I’ll get the special.” Her eyes sought Helen. “If I get the package to the expressman first thing Monday morning, they can promise delivery in New York by Tuesday, and then I won’t have to bother Boydie. And I’m even thinking they might want to expand this—after Cascade, do similar pieces on other American towns. Everyone’s got a story, when you think about it, especially in these times. Here’s Helen.”

Dez had never been more grateful for Helen Whitby, for her plump good cheer and nonstop chatter as she placed their order then whistled over every detail of the postcard spread, asking a stream of questions, even making Asa laugh with her impressions of the humorless group of Boston men—must have been water authority men—who had come in a few weeks back. When Ike, behind the counter, signaled that their plates were ready, Dez wished Helen could sit with them, keep the joviality going. The food looked so good: the kind of delicious meat loaf Stan had been looking for, sliced thick and studded with peppers and onions, with Helen’s hot ketchup sauce on the side. Buttery mashed potatoes, a hill of green peas.

Asa casually picked up his fork. “So you sent him a telegram, huh?”

Dez’s heart rate slowed to a thud.

“And he was obviously never told not to come to our house anymore.”

Her appetite vanished, the food turning leaden on her plate. She pushed it away. “I couldn’t, Asa. The day I was going to was the day he found Dr. Proulx.”

Okay, his nod said, I’ll give you that but—“That day you never shared the news with me, you sent him a telegram.”

“I called the drugstore and you were out. I told you that.”

“You never bothered to call back. Yet you made an effort, you paid money, to send him a telegram.”

“I sent the telegram later, after I gave Boydie the artwork, and I just did it to let him know—it was while I was already at the office sending one to Abby.”

“I’ve been blind,” he said, banging the table with such force that even he involuntarily did what Dez did—glanced around to see if anyone noticed.

But no one had. Helen was bent over a faraway booth, pointing out something on a menu. People were talking, eating, paying them no mind, and there, thankfully, was Zeke Davenport walking through the door.

Zeke, one hand shaded over his eyes to search the room, waved and headed over, sliding in next to Dez. For the next ten minutes, he was a savior, full of talk about the water authority, helping himself to the plate Dez had pushed away. She watched his fork digging in, back and forth, meat loaf to mouth, as he talked about the article his friend was writing for
The Boston Evening Transcript
—it would be published next week. Someone even came out to take pictures of the new golf course. “When I told him about Dez’s postcards, it made all the difference. They really paved the way.” He beamed at her and slapped the table. “Though she gave you the burn, didn’t she?”

In response to their quizzical looks, he flipped open his copy of the
Standard
and pointed to Dez’s small signatures, painted in the bottom left-hand corner of each postcard.
Desdemona Hart, 1935
.

“I didn’t even notice,” Asa said, turning toward Dez. “Why did you do that?”

As if she’d done something wrong. As if she’d done nothing right. “Because I did it for the playhouse,” she said. “I did it for my father. I’m the last of the line, and I’m still a Hart even if I’m married.”

Zeke slapped the table again, unaware of the tension that sat in the booth with him. “She’s always been a firecracker in disguise.”

It took forever to wind up the dinner, to pay, and then, on the way out, to stop and talk to everyone in the booths between theirs and the door.
Outside, Asa set off across the common, hands stuffed into his pants pockets, walking faster than Dez could keep up. Jim Carson, on his way home in his milk wagon, had to rein in his horse to avoid running into him.

Dez caught up with him at the playhouse. He was down by the water, crouching, picking through a pile of stones. When he became aware of Dez, he hurled one into the water.

“That reminds me of a line in one of your father’s plays,” he said bitterly, nodding toward the spreading ring the stone’s entry formed. “Something about fame being like a circle in the water, getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it’s nothing. Until it’s gone.”

Too strange that he should call that same phrase to mind! A coincidence that felt like it must mean something. Her hand closed around the magazine. “I didn’t realize you paid such attention to the plays,” she said carefully.