Circle of Three (18 page)

I heard Jess walk by the door, heard water running in the kitchen, and guessed he was finished with his phone calls. It was funny to think of him being a businessman, not just a guy who milked cows and went fishing and taught funny tricks to his dogs. I remember being surprised to see him in a suit and tie and all at my dad’s funeral. Like, because he was a farmer all he could ever wear was denim and flannel. Silly. I had a grass stain on the shoulder of my blouse, I saw. I was saving up thinking about Raven for later, though. I combed my hair with my fingers and went to find Jess.

We went outside and walked down to the river, to the dock that went out from the bank along the rough shore, which was half trees, half grass. The dock was high enough so you could sit on the edge with your legs hanging over and not get your feet wet. Except in spring after a hard rain; then the river flooded and the dock disappeared until the water receded. Jess was an expert fly fisherman, but here from the dock he just did what he called coarse fishing, using worms and what-have-you to catch chub and perch and roach fish. Last summer he taught me how to bait a hook with wasp grubs, how to cast a float rod, how to reel in a big fat carp. Maybe someday he’d take me fly-fishing.

We sat on the end of the dock and talked about fish for a while, and how we wished spring would hurry up because we were sick of winter. He must’ve thought I had something to tell him, that I’d come by for a particular reason, because pretty soon he said, “Everything okay?” and looked out over the water instead of at me, in case I felt shy about talking.

I really hadn’t come for a reason, not that I knew of, it had just been a while since I’d seen him and we were driving right by his lane. Spur of the moment. Still, what popped out of my mouth was, “Everything’s great, except my mom had a date last night. Can you believe that? My dad’s been gone for half a year, and she goes out with this
body
builder.”

Jess watched a buzzard flying high up in the sky and didn’t say anything.

“Of course she says it wasn’t a date, it was business, because the guy’s her boss, but since when do you do business at night in a saloon?”

Jess still didn’t jump in and sympathize, so I said, “Not that I care who she sees, it’s none of my business, for all I care she can go out with every guy in Clayborne. I just don’t think she should lie about it. And I don’t think it’s such a hot idea to date your boss anyway. Especially this guy, who’s a total jerk. I mean, he wears a goatee.” I bumped Jess with my elbow, trying to get a rise out of him. “A
goatee
. Plus he’s got no neck.”

Finally he grimaced. “You’re talking about Brian Wright.”

“Yeah. So do you know him?”

“Slightly. I do a course for the school.”

“Oh, yeah. Fishing,” I remembered. “So what do you think of him?”

“I don’t know him well enough to think anything.”

I hadn’t expected him to get all discreet on me. Now I wished I hadn’t even told him. “It’s no big deal, I really don’t care what she does.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a date,” he said after a while. “Have you and Carrie talked about it?”

“I don’t have to talk about it. She calls me from a nightclub, she’s drinking, she’s with a guy. I call that a date. Oh, and she gets home after
I
do. I pretended I was asleep—I didn’t even
want
to talk to her.” Jess started to say something. “Not that I care,” I said again quickly, “it’s her life, she can do whatever she wants. But I just…” I looked away downstream, where the river bent and the sycamore trees leaned over on both sides. From this angle, it almost looked like they touched in the middle. “She told me no one could take Dad’s place—that’s exactly what she said, ‘Nobody’s taking his place.’ She said she wasn’t available.”

“Ruth.”

“What? You don’t have to defend her.”

“I’m not.”

“I know everything you’re going to say. I’m being selfish, she’s allowed to have some fun, what she said wasn’t really a promise—I know all that. I just don’t like it.” I leaned out over my knees to stare down at the brownish green current, thinking I always talked too much around Jess and wondering why that was. He couldn’t be a father figure because he wasn’t anything like my father, and he wasn’t exactly a friend because I didn’t know that much about him. “Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked him.

“What?” he said, even though he’d heard.

“Are you going out with anybody?”

“No. Not right now.”

He looked very uncomfortable, which cheered me up for some reason. “Hey, Jess, did you know Becky Driver’s in my class? I met her mother—I had dinner at their house.” He nodded pleasantly. “She’s nice, Mrs. Driver,” I said leadingly. “I mean, she’s
really
nice.”

“She is nice.”

“Becky’s not yours, though, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So…” What happened? How come your marriage didn’t work out? You couldn’t ask questions like that straight out, you had to beat around the bush.

I was trying to think of a subtle approach when Jess said, “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Ha.” Good one. Touché. We grinned at each other. “Well,” I said, “there’s this one guy. Raven.”

“The vampire.”

I laughed—he remembered! “Yeah. I’m not sure if he’s my
boy
friend,” I said, making a face. What a stupid word. “He’s the one who dropped me off here.”

“Ah. So you were playing hooky together.”

“Just today, just this once. Honestly, this is not my practice, I mean, it’s not my lifestyle.” I decided to tell him. “We went to my dad’s grave. We had sort of a picnic. It was nice. I mean, it was respectful and everything.” If you didn’t count
smoking dope and kissing and making out. “I keep thinking, you know, if only he hadn’t died. What it would be like. Or if he had to die, if only he’d lived for five more years, say. I think if I’d been, like, twenty, we could’ve been much closer. Sometimes I think he was waiting for me to grow up to be really friends. Now—he’ll never know how I turned out,” I managed to say before I started crying. Shit. I turned my head away, put my cheek on my knees, so Jess couldn’t see.

He put his arm around me. I thought he would try to cheer me up, tell me my father had loved me very much, blah blah, but he just said, “It’s sad,” and it went right through me.

“It is,” I said gladly, “it’s so
sad.
I think trying not to be sad is worse than being sad.”

“I do, too.”

“So I’m glad I went to his grave.” I sat up. “I don’t think my mom goes. I don’t know, she might. We went together at Christmas and on January ninth, his birthday. If she does go, she doesn’t leave flowers, because there weren’t any.”

“I think she’s trying to be strong for you. Trying to do the right thing, be what she thinks you need her to be. I think she’s feeling all the things you feel about your father, missing him, and wishing there had been more time. One thing I’m sure of—you’re the center of her life.”

“Then why’d she go out on a date?” I laughed, to make it sound more like a joke. Less whiny.

He looked pained. “Why did you?” was all he could come up with.

“It’s not the same, he was my
father
, not my
husband
. He would’ve wanted me to have a boyfriend. He wouldn’t have wanted her to.”

“Maybe you should talk to her about it.”

“No.
No.
I don’t want to hear her stupid explanations.
God
. She’s so
embarrassing
.”

“Embarrassing?” Jess gave me a crooked smile. “When I was your age,” he said, “fifteen or so.” He leaned back on his elbows and stared at his belt buckle. “You saw my mother’s picture?”

“In the house? Yeah,” I said, “she was really pretty.”

“She was schizophrenic.”

“Oh.” I swallowed.

“It didn’t start until I was about ten. Before that, she was fine. But she had a miscarriage, and after that everything changed.”

“God. I’m really sorry.”

“When she’d get bad, she’d have to go away, go in the hospital. My father and I were close, but we were lost, like orphans when she was gone. Then she’d come home, and I’d drive her crazy by not leaving her alone. I couldn’t get enough of her. I was always trying to cure her, with presents and things I’d make for her, food, spells. Tricks.” He laughed. “Sometimes it seemed to work, whatever it was—some drink I’d concoct, a special, particular prayer. But not for long. And nothing ever worked twice.”

This was bad, but something worse was coming. I already sort of knew what it was.

“She did a lot of crazy things. She’d get lost, wander off and lose herself. We’d have to call the cops. One day we were in Belk’s, buying me some clothes for school. It was the end of the summer. She’d been fine for months, her old self, but it was starting again. I could always tell. She was odd in the store, saying things that didn’t make sense. She kept complaining that she was hot, burning up, why didn’t they turn on the air-conditioning. I was afraid she’d complain to the saleslady, and I didn’t want to be around if she did. I wandered off, into a different area of the department. Far enough away so I could pretend nothing was happening.”

“Oh, God, Jess.”

“I heard a commotion. Raised voices. You could feel it in the air—shock. Somebody called security over the PA. I didn’t want to, but I had to go see.” He reached out and touched me on the arm with the lightest pat, a reassurance, and he gave me a tickled, helpless smile. “She’d taken off her clothes. Every stitch. She was naked as a jaybird in the men’s sweater department at Belk’s.”

I moved my hand far enough from my mouth to whisper, “What did you do?”

“Ran away.”

“No.”

“Yeah. But only to the elevator. If it had come immediately, I’d have gotten on and gone down and outside and away—I’d have run away. But it took forever. So.”

“You had to go back.”

“I’ve always been ashamed for that, how close I came to leaving her. I had this fierce love for her, I loved her more than anybody else. But she…”

“Embarrassed you.”

He smiled.

I blushed. But I didn’t feel lectured to or guilty or caught in the act in some sin. No question, he’d made his point, but not only was he not rubbing it in, he was helping take the sting out by admitting that once he’d done the same thing, only worse. With better cause, okay, but still.

God! Imagine having a crazy person for a mother. Really crazy, like certifiable, not just weird or irritatingly nuts like Mom. It really put things in perspective.

“That’s awful,” I said, and I put one finger on the sleeve of Jess’s sweater. It was the first time I’d ever comforted
him
for anything. “That’s so sad. She looks so beautiful in the picture. I think you look like her. Do you believe in heaven? She could be watching down on you. I’m sure she’s very proud of you, you know, how you’ve turned out and all.
God
.”

“What?”

“That’s what people have been saying to me,” I realized. “You know, old people, mostly—that my dad’s probably still with me, he’s proud of me, yadda yadda. Does that comfort you? Because it
never
comforts me. But now I at least get why they say it.”

“Why?”

“Well, to be nice. To be kind, to show that you care and you wish the person didn’t hurt.”

“Yes.”

“So that’s something. Isn’t it? It might be a crock, but the person saying it means well.”

“I think it’s something. I think it’s all we get.”

We lay on our backs and watched clouds and sky and birds go by, peaceful as two old, old pals. I almost told him about Raven, that’s how comfortable I felt. I might have, but then he sat up and said, “Four o’clock.”

“How can you tell?”

“Listen.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Listen.”

“Oh. Cows.” They were mooing way off in the distance. “You have to milk them now?”

“Pretty soon. Mr. Green will start.”

I scrambled up from the dock. “I didn’t know it was so late,” I said, matching Jess’s long strides up the hill. “Guess you sort of blew off your afternoon, huh?” He just smiled at me, and I felt fine. “Hey, Jess. Can we take the pickup truck?”

“Sure, if you want.”

“And, Jess?”

“Hm?”

“Can I drive?”

“Got your learner’s permit with you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then.”

“Yay!” I clapped my hands, did a little dance. Jess’s pickup was a stick shift, the most fun of all to drive. “And, Jess?”

“
What
?”

I laughed. “Can we take Tracer? Can we put her in the middle between us? I’ve always wanted to do that, drive in a pickup truck with a dog and, you know. A guy.”

He shook his head. “The cowgirl look.”

“I guess.”

“Amazing. I thought you were into vampires.”

“Well, I am.”

“Or health food and vitamins.”

“Them, too.”

“You’re a very versatile person.”

“Thanks.”

Versatile. I was very versatile. Cool. And here I thought I was just confused.

“N
EVER MIND,
D
ANA,
you wouldn’t have had that much fun anyway. The women’s club is full of poops, nothing like our day. You’re better off without ’em.”

“I’m
not upset
.” I’d told Birdie that three times since we got in the car. “It’s nothing. I’m not losing one wink of sleep over this, believe you me.”

“Well, I should hope not. Because that would be a waste of perfectly good energy. How come your house is so dark?”

“What? Oh, he forgot to turn on the porch light again. I swear, it’s like living with a mole.”

“You sure he’s in there?”

“He’s there. He’s either working in his office or watching TV in the den. Want to come in?” I invited without much enthusiasm. “Cup of coffee before you go home?”

“Oh, my, no, a cup of coffee would keep me up all night.”

“Decaf, I meant.”

“Rain check?”

“Sure.”

“Unless you want me to. Unless you want to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk,” I said, laughing, “I want to
sleep
. I’m perfectly fine, Bird, this means very little to me.”

“Oh, I know that.”

“I won’t even think about it tomorrow.”

“Of course you won’t. You’re too smart for them, that’s the problem. They didn’t know a good thing when they saw it.”

“Thanks. Thanks for the ride.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Want to go to a movie or something? There’s a sale—”

“Can’t tomorrow. Maybe next week.” Birdie’s sympathy was starting to grate on me. Much better if she’d just say, “I told you so,” and get it over with.

“’Night, Dana,” she called. “Really, don’t give it another thought, it’s not worth your—”

“Drive carefully,” I said, and slammed the door.

The house wasn’t just dark, it was cold. More like living with a bear than a mole, some heavy, lumbering animal that hibernates, I thought, going around turning on lights in the living room, the kitchen, turning up the thermostat. Canned laughter sounded from the den. George has two passions, if you can call them that: his book and old TV shows. The older the better; he even buys them on tape from 800 numbers, old episodes of
Lassie
,
Bonanza
,
77 Sunset Strip
,
The Loretta Young Show
. I don’t know what to make of that. Was life so much better for him in the 1950s than it is now? Was there some
tone
then, something he responded to, some flavor or style that he’s nostalgic for now? I wonder what it is. I would really love to know. But when I ask him, “Why do you like that old stuff?” all he ever says is, “It’s amusing.”

Tonight it was
I Love Lucy
. I walked into the den just as Lucy was opening her big mouth wide and crying, “
Waaaah
,” because Rickie wouldn’t take her on a vacation. George looked up at me and smiled with fond, laughing eyes—I smiled back before I realized it wasn’t me making him so happy and appreciative. Should I have tried to be more like that? A silly, wacky, zany kind of woman? Was that what he’d wanted?

“You’re back,” he said, hitching over to make room for me on the couch.

Where did I go?—I almost asked, to test him. But I was blue enough tonight; if he flunked the test, I’d feel even
worse. “From the women’s club,” I said instead, helpfully. “Election night.”

A commercial came on, and he muted the sound with the remote control. “How did that go?”

“I lost.”

“Oh, dear.” He blinked sympathetically through the middle bar of his trifocals. He looked pretty natty in tweed trousers and the blue crew neck sweater Carrie gave him two Christmases ago. He had dandruff on his shoulders, though, and a yellowish stain on his chest, maybe dried orange juice. And he smelled like his pipe. We were a fairly handsome couple in our day, I’ve got pictures to prove it, but we’ve turned into the kind of people you don’t look at twice. Which one of us will end up at Cedar Hill first? I wonder that too much lately. It’s awfully easy to imagine me visiting George in a room like Helen’s. Wheeling him down to arts and crafts, bending over his stooped shoulder, showing him how to make pot holders.

“Yep,” I said, “the new president of the Clayborne Women’s Club is Vera Holland. Who’s seventeen years old.”

“Really?”

“Or twenty-seven, what’s the difference. A younger woman. Her platform was ‘diversity.’Translation, let’s all go out and recruit more of her tacky friends.”

“Tsk.” His eyes flicked briefly to the TV. A shampoo commercial.

“I didn’t even want the damn job, I just didn’t want her to have it.” Well now, that wasn’t true. “Oh, I sort of wanted it. Shake things up. I wanted to feel, you know…active.” Alive, rather. “Anybody can belong to a club, that doesn’t mean anything. What it was—I think I felt like testing myself before it’s too late.”

I felt a little breathless from the frankness of that. Showing much of myself to George, revealing my deeper feelings—I quit that years ago, it didn’t pay off. A one-sided
exercise that usually just left me feeling foolish. Not that
not
telling him things has gotten me anywhere, either. It’s pretty much a lose-lose.

“Well,” he said.

“Well. Well, what?”

“Well…maybe it’s for the best. Lot of work you don’t need.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I stood up. “And my life’s so rich and full already. I don’t know what I was thinking.” I scooped up my coat and my purse.

“Dana.”

“What?”

“I’m sure you’d have made an excellent president.”

“I don’t know if I would have or not, but it would’ve been nice to win. I really did want to win.”

He shrugged, shook his head. Pursed his lips, blinked his eyes. Body language attempts at commiseration.
Words, George, I want words
. On TV, Fred and Ethel came into Lucy’s apartment. Fred talked out of the side of his mouth, deadpan, and Ethel rolled her eyes.

“Well,” I said, “let me get out of your way.”

“I’ll be up in two seconds,” George called. Gales of laughter followed me up the stairs.

It was even colder on the second floor than the first. Undressing in front of my closet, I heard the flick of light switches downstairs, then the clump of George’s shoes on the steps, slow and heavy, reluctant sounding. As good as his word, even though it was a little early for him. Did he feel sorry for me? To hell with that. But in the glimpse I got of him passing behind as I bent over to take off my hose, he just looked tired.

Ghastly sight, me in the bathroom mirror. Since 1979, I’ve been asking George to replace the fluorescent tube over the sink with a regular one, a tungsten bulb. He’s never going to do it. I complain to Carrie and she says, “Well, if you can make yourself look halfway human in
that
light,
just think how beautiful you must look in the real world.” Nice logic, but it doesn’t work anymore. Not for the last, oh, twenty years.

I brushed my teeth, brushed my hair. Which is thinning. Took my blood pressure pill. Hunched toward the mirror, I pulled down the collar of my nightgown to study the new lines on my neck. Turkey neck. Turkey jowls. This is a nightly ritual I really ought to discontinue. It’s funny, but I’m getting more vain the older I get instead of less. No,
vain
isn’t the right word.
Aghast
. That’s it.

Would George want to make love with me if I looked prettier? Lost twenty pounds? Doubtful. Truthfully, I can’t see him getting excited about sleeping with Sophia Loren. Maybe June Allyson; he’s always liked her. Too bad for him he married a woman more like Ethel Merman. Joan Crawford. A coarse brunette, not a perky bone in her body.

He looked up briefly from his newspaper when I slid into bed beside him. “Tired?” he asked.

“Why, do I look tired?”

He shrugged and went back to his paper.

“Well, one thing I accomplished tonight anyway,” I said, interrupting him on purpose.

“What’s that?”

“I made a motion to start a petition drive to halt this ark-building foolishness, and it passed.”

“You mean—the ark on the river?”

“No, the ark on I-95.” I really was in a bad mood. “Yes, the ark on the river.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why! That’s public property, George, people tie up boats to that dock.”

“Oh, but not very many, I don’t think.”

“Well, what about the stupidity factor?”

“Ah.”

“And separation of church and state? I’ll tell you what happened—Jess Deeping railroaded that vote through the council before anybody knew what was happening. What if
the national news gets a hold of this story? It’s like—Charles Kuralt finding some lunatic in Idaho building a shrine to the Blessed Virgin out of bottle caps.”

“He did?”

“No, I’m saying—we’ll all look ridiculous. It’ll be an eyesore, a public nuisance, we just can’t have it.”

He took off his glasses and started polishing them with the edge of the sheet. “What about Carrie?”

“What about her?”

“Isn’t she interested in this? I thought she was—”

“That’s just boredom, that’s another one of her artsycraftsy projects. Carrie needs to concentrate on her real job, not ally herself with this fundamentalist religious claptrap. Of all the crazy things! And wouldn’t you know Jess Deeping’s right in the thick of it? If that isn’t typical. Blood tells.”

“What are you talking about?”

“His mother. She was insane, don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“Well, she was, she died in an institution, and he’s a chip off the old block.”

He shook his head,
not
sympathetically, and rattled the pages of his newspaper. Conversation over.

That’s typical, too. Ignore a problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. Carrie probably wasn’t going to appreciate my petition motion, either. She might even question my motives. Sure as shooting, she’d never
thank
me for it. The petition might not do any good anyway, it might be too late. Talk about an end run. Jess Deeping should be ashamed of himself. Maybe I’ll write a letter to the editor.

“You know what Birdie said?”

George sighed. “What?”

“She said I just wanted to be president so I could boss people around.”

He looked up at that. I waited for him to scoff, but he just looked at me.

“She said it as a joke, but I didn’t appreciate it.”

“No…”

“You think I’m bossy?”

“Absolutely not, dear.” He ducked his bald head, shooting me a glance under his eyebrows. He had a hopeful twinkle in his eye. I laughed. And he laughed, and it was a good few seconds.

He folded his paper and put it away, turned out his bedside lamp. He falls asleep every night on his right side, facing away from me; after about forty minutes, he turns over on his back and snores. He started getting his covers just so, pushing the sheet out at the bottom so his feet weren’t constricted—every morning I tuck it back in.

“George?”

“Hm?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” A feeling came over me, a squeezing sensation, like a vise, something hopeful pushing up from below, something else old and knowing pushing down from above. “What do you think about taking ballroom dancing?”

He turned his head, craned it over his shoulder. Stared.

“Friday nights, out at the Ramada Inn. Six weeks, and it starts next week. We could have dinner first—a night out for us. Just something to look forward to.”

“Well. Hm.” He frowned hard. “The only thing is, Friday’s the night I’ve been meeting with Albert on the book. I gather it’s the only time he can do it.”

“Friday is the only night of the whole week he can meet you? Friday night?”

“Well, that’s what he says.”

“Fine, never mind.”

“Sorry. It would’ve been fun,” he lied. “Maybe next year.”

“That’s a good idea.” I reached for the novel on my table. “Let’s wait till we’re even older.”

“Dana.”

“Maybe next year they’ll offer ballroom wheelchair dancing.” I slapped open the book, found my place from last
night. “Quit.” I was so mad. I twitched his hand off my hip and turned over. “I’m trying to read.”

He sighed like a martyr, rustled the covers, settled on his right side. “Night.”

I met George when I was eighteen, working in the customer service department at Willie’s Auto Repair. My first job. I did typing and filing and greeting the customers. I don’t know where I thought this job would take me—nowhere, I suppose; we just got married in those days, we didn’t have careers, not girls from my background anyway. One day George brought in his old rattle trap Plymouth and I waited on him, filling out the little form we had, getting his name and address, writing down what was wrong with his car. He had on an argyle sweater, I remember as if it was yesterday. College boy. I flirted with him because he was sweet and shy, but I’d never have made a play for him. I knew my place. When he asked if he could call me sometime, I almost said no. I thought he didn’t know the rules, that, being from Richmond, he must somehow not be aware that Remington boys didn’t ask out Clayborne girls. Not with good intentions, anyway.

He took me to an orchestra recital on campus on a Friday night. If he’d been Casanova, if he’d been Don Juan, he couldn’t have come up with a more seductive date. I was thrilled out of my mind, and I was absolutely terrified. That very night I set my cap for him.
I want this
, I thought. To be with people who talked softly and said things that were just out of my reach.
Maybe I can learn this
, I thought. Campus—oh, just the word made me dizzy.
Campus
. It meant peace and quiet and safety. Most of all, it meant respectability.

It was easy to make him fall in love with me. I was pretty then, and I just pretended he was the center of the world, I cut out of my mind everything but George, I turned all the wattage on and blinded him. Nowadays I suppose I’d have had to sleep with him, but back then it was enough to make
him want me. He’s still the only man I’ve ever been with. He says I’m the only woman, but that’s as may be. I don’t question that too closely. The only one in many, many years, though,
that
I wouldn’t doubt.