Circle of Three (15 page)

“’Course you can.” He dragged me up in a close clinch, one beefy arm clamped tight around my waist, the other holding my right hand down at my side. “All you do is walk backward. I walk forward, you walk back.” He demonstrated by walking into me. When I stumbled he just picked me up, an inch off the floor, and kept walking. It was like dancing with a bear.

A big, sweaty, masculine bear. As the shock wore off and the mysteries of the two-step became clearer, I tried to figure out what I was feeling. How was this? Did I like being held against Brian’s strong, hard, weight lifter’s body? Yes and no. Impossible to say, the situation was too ambiguous; I couldn’t separate the fact from the context. The context was that it was
Brian
’s body, Brian my colleague, Brian who signed my paycheck every two weeks. How could I know what I felt? Was this all good clean fun? Did he just want to get some exercise?

We were panting by the time the dance ended. He held my hand on the way back to the table, swinging it up and down with muscular exuberance. Oh, I thought, this is nothing. The directness, the lack of calculation, the
boisterousness
in the way he touched me—finally I realized he was just being Brian, friendly and bluff and fun loving. And I was an ass for worrying. I always made things too complicated.

The waitress came for our order. Brian was as forceful about rib eye as he was about the two-step, but in this case I didn’t mind. “Just don’t tell Ruth,” I joked. “She’s trying to turn me into a vegan.”

“How are things going at home?” he asked, leaning in, elbows on the table. “How’s Ruth getting along without her dad? It must be really tough on both of you.”

“We miss him a lot. Sometimes I think it’s getting easier,
and then something happens and it’s hard again. But we’re doing all right. I don’t know what I’d do without Ruth—she’s my lifesaver.”

“I’m sure she feels the same about you.”

I made a dubious face. “Hard to say. You know kids.”

“Oh, I know kids.” His were nine and twelve, both boys. He saw them on weekends, alternating holidays, and a month every summer. “Craig wants to go to computer camp this summer—that’s the latest.”

“I thought it was basketball camp.”

“That was last week. He’s the opposite of Gordon, whose goal never changes.”

“Uh-oh.” Gordon, the twelve-year-old, wanted to play lead guitar in a heavy metal band. “I wonder who’s harder to raise,” I mused, “boys or girls.”

“Boys,” Brian said immediately, and told a story about the night Gordon set fire to his mattress by hiding the lit candle he wasn’t supposed to be playing with under the bed. That reminded me of the time Ruth put so many newspapers in the fireplace she set the chimney on fire, then the roof. “If the neighbor hadn’t seen the flames and called the fire department, we’d have lost the house.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Brian said, and told about the time Craig and Gordon decided to “drive” the car by coasting it down the driveway and out into the busy street where, by a miracle, it came to a harmless stop on the grass median between two lanes of traffic. “You don’t want to dance, do you?”

“What?”

“You looked funny. Lost in the music.”

“Oh, no,” I said, laughing, “go on, no, I’m listening.”

No, I wasn’t. I was listening to Neil Young sing “Helpless.” It used to be my favorite song. I’d played it so often, my
Déjà vu
album got warped. Jess borrowed a friend’s tape deck and recorded “Helpless” twenty-seven times, one after the other, on both sides of a blank tape, and gave it to me for
my eighteenth birthday. To this day, it’s the sweetest, funniest gift anyone’s ever given me.

Over our steaks, Brian told me his life story. He grew up in eastern North Carolina, oldest of three kids, came to Clayborne to go to Remington, got a B.S. in business administration, married a local girl, and stayed on. For his first job—already an entrepreneur—he started an employment counseling and temp service. But in Clayborne there weren’t enough people to counsel or find temporary jobs for, so that failed. Then Norma got pregnant and poor Brian had to settle down and find a real job—registrar at the college. He hated it. “I can’t stand working for anybody except myself, is my problem. Don’t have the patience. They don’t go fast enough, they don’t see far enough,” he said feelingly, jabbing at a piece of meat with his fork. “When things get screwed up, I don’t want to blame anybody but me.”

“That’s good to know.”

“Not that I’m a control freak, at least I don’t think so. You think I’m a control freak?”

“No.” Yes.

“Yeah, because I don’t think so. I pick good employees, tell them what I expect, and then I don’t get involved in what’s their responsibility. Right?”

“Right, boss.”

“Right, because I don’t need to. You’re good at what you do, Carrie, I’m good at what I do. We make a team.”

“And Chris is good at what she does, too.”

“Sure.” He toasted me with the last of his beer and signaled the waitress for another round.

“Not for me,” I said.

“No? Sure? Well, this is my last. Never have more than two drinks when I’m out, not if I’m driving.”

The second beer loosened him up enough to talk about his ex-wife. He never had before, not even to joke. I knew, because Chris had told me, that the split had been bitter, that they still only spoke when necessary, and that Brian deeply
resented that Norma had gotten custody of the children. Now I got to hear what a bitch Norma was. Not that he ever used the word, but he didn’t have to; a woman who was manipulative, shallow, childish, passive-aggressive, unreasonable, withholding, judgmental, and intellectually bankrupt was pretty much, by definition, a bitch.

I listened for as long as I could, then excused myself to go to the ladies’ room. On the way, I used a pay phone in the corridor to call Ruth. She was at Jamie’s, and this time I had the number with me.

“Mom,” she said immediately, “where in the world
are
you?”

I’d gotten used to the noise; it took me a second to realize she could hear the music on the jukebox, currently a blue-grass tune, lots of fiddling and banjo picking. I laughed. “Oh, I’m someplace called Cactus Flats. It’s a sort of roadhouse, it’s—”

“Out on Route Twenty-nine?
That
place?”

“Have you been here?”

“No, but jeez, I’ve heard of it. What are you
doing
there?”

“Well, Brian wanted to talk business, and so—and it was time to eat anyway, so—we came here. He likes it, he’s been before, I think he comes here regularly, in fact.”

“Business?”

Trust Ruth to leap immediately on the only weak point in the explanation. “Yes, actually. We’ve been brainstorming about a new direction the school might take, or might not.” In the car, en route, but that counted. “How are you doing? Get your homework done? I just wanted you to know where I am in case you get home before I do, although—”

“Well, good thing, because I’m just leaving.”

“Oh, so early? Well, that is a—”

“It’s not that early, Mom, it’s eight o’clock. In fact it’s
ten after
.”

“Is it? Well, that’s not so late. Okay, so you’re going home now. Got your key? And you know the routine. Lock the doors, don’t—”

“I
know
.”

“Don’t let Jamie drive off until she knows you’re safe inside. Blink the porch light so she’ll know.”

“Mom, I know.”

“Okay.”

“So when are
you
coming home?”

“Very soon. We’re ordering coffee.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“What?”

“Haven’t you. I can tell. I can tell by your voice.”

“Ruth—” I’d have laughed, but she might think I was drunk. “Honey, I had one beer. About an hour ago.”

“Yeah, right. What about
him
?”

“‘Him’?”

“Are you on a date?”

“No, I am not on a date. I told you—”

“Right, you’re brainstorming, it’s a business dinner at Cactus Flats. That’s a good one, Mom.”

“Listen. I—we’re talking about other things, it’s true, and we had a drink before dinner, but that’s it. We’re not—”

“I totally don’t care anyway.”

“Fine, but this is not a date.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Ruth.”

“But even if it is, I don’t care.”

“But it’s not!”

“Okay.”

I banged my forehead lightly against the black metal edge of the phone box. “We’ll talk about this when I get home.”

“I’ll be asleep.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“What for? According to you there’s nothing to talk about. I gotta go, have a nice evening.”

“Ruth—”

She hung up.

In the ladies’ room, I leaned over the sink and looked myself in the eye.
Are you on a date?
I honestly didn’t know. I
touched up my lipstick self-consciously, thinking, I would do this anyway. I’d do this if I were with girlfriends, it doesn’t mean anything.

As it turned out, we didn’t leave Cactus Flats until after nine. It was open mike night, and Brian said we had to stay at least for the beginning. I worried about Ruth—her suspicions, not her safety—but he wheedled and prodded until I couldn’t say no. And then I had to admit, open mike was a hoot. “I told you!” Brian crowed, clapping and whistling for a young man whose cover of a raunchy Hank Williams Jr. song brought down the house. “This is the next best thing to karaoke.”

“That was fun,” I said truthfully on the drive home. “I’m really glad we did that.”

“Good. I thought you could use a night out.”

“Thanks, Brian.” I smiled at him warmly. It changed things, thinking he’d chosen a place like Cactus Flats for my sake. “That was nice of you.”

“Well, sometimes we don’t know we’re stuck and need a change. We’re in a rut.”

“It’s true.”

“You lost Stephen, but you’re alive. Gotta keep remembering that. It’s not even good for Ruth to see you depressed all the time.”

“No. Well…I wouldn’t say I’m depressed all the time.”

“You just need to get out more.”

“Probably.”

“Definitely. It’s been six months.”

Six months. That had a ring to it.
She went to a country-western dance hall, and her husband dead only five months
. That sounded callous; that was borderline despicable. But
six
months, now you were veering over into acceptable territory. You could go out to a roadhouse at six months and it sounded respectable. But with a man? Hmm. That muddied the water. But if the man was your boss, that was different, surely.

Who was I imagining the sound of these numbers
for
, though? Not myself, and not for my friends, who couldn’t have cared less if I went out to dinner with a man, boss or not. It was for my mother. I was forty-two and I still had conversations in my head, mental dialogues, imaginary debates; in some I played myself and in some I played my mother. A form of self-censorship. Did all daughters do that? Did Ruth? Were we all second-guessing schizophrenics, bound from the start to be both the sound and the distorted echo, the main character in the story of our lives and also the critic? Mother Nature’s system of checks and balances. Very efficient, and what it lost in spontaneity it made up for in prudent living. Being a mother and a daughter, I could see the pros as easily as the cons. Mama’s emotional hold on me was tiresome and life sapping and unhealthy—mine on Ruth was caring, selfless, sensitive, and benign. That neither of those extremes could possibly be true was just, in my old age, beginning to dawn on me.

We picked up my car at the office, and Brian insisted on following me home. I intended to say good night at the door, or even on the sidewalk by the car, but he parked, got out, and came inside with me. I wasn’t sure how that happened; one minute we were on the front porch, me rooting in my purse for the key, the next we were in the foyer and he was helping me take off my coat.

“Well,” I said, “thanks again.” The living room light was on, but no Ruth. She must be upstairs. “That was really fun. Just what I needed.”

“This, too,” he said, pulled me into his arms, and kissed me.

Well, that answered that. We
were
on a date.

“Brian…” He had a big, soft mouth, furry at the bottom—his goatee. He opened his lips and enveloped me, sucked me in. Behind closed eyes, I had a vision of a dark cave, deep and scary, damp inside. “Brian,” I managed to say, “don’t.”

“Why not?”

Stuck for an answer, I hesitated. He took it as permission to lift me under the arms and pull me up against his chest. The bear maneuver again. He clamped one arm around me and used his other hand to rub the bare skin of my back, under my hiked-up sweater. He kept kissing me, mauling me with his lips, using his tongue. “Stop, stop it,” I hissed. I wanted to yell, but I didn’t want Ruth to hear. I stuck my chin in the air, out of his range. “Put me down.
Damn it
.” He had me in a vise, pressed back between his body and the front door. The expression on his face looked friendly and interested, excited but in a good way. Anticipatory. “Brian, stop it!” He put his hot mouth on my neck and sucked.

Was this really happening? It could be a joke—he was a kidder, a practical joker, especially with Chris, maybe this was some kind of a—

He wormed his heavy hand between us, got it on my left breast, and squeezed.

I turned into a woman with a lot of joints, especially elbows and knees. None of them did any damage—he was built like a safe—but they finally got his attention. He took his hands off and backed up.

For the first time since it started, my feet touched the floor. My heart was pounding; I felt shaky in the knees. I said, “Jesus, Brian,” and wiped my mouth with the side of my hand.

He kept smoothing his palm down one lapel of his jacket, a habit when he wasn’t sure of himself. “Bad timing, I see. Sorry, Care. Didn’t know you weren’t ready.”

Weren’t ready? To be assaulted? I got a hand on the door knob behind me and jerked the door open. “Good night.” I stepped back, letting in the cold.

“No harm done, I hope. Right?” He grinned, friendly and hopeful. Just a big teddy bear. Doubt made me scowl at him. Could I be overreacting? No. But—it was only Brian. Not Jekyll and Hyde, just Brian. My vivid new image of him was
already fading, bleeding into the old one, the jovial, easygoing, good-hearted guy, who brought raisin muffins to work because they were Chris’s favorite. I just knew something extra about him now. Keep away from him.