Small Blessings (10 page)

Russell nodded. “Of course. Well then, we'll be going. Unless, that is, there's anything at all we can do for you?” Tom Putnam was still looking at Rose. Really, he was
staring
at her. Russell glanced down at the top of her tousled head. Rose Callahan wasn't all
that
wonderful, was she? Just different, really; more like a refugee from an artist colony than a college employee.

“No, thank you, Russ,” Tom was saying. “Agnes and I just need some sleep. We've got a lot to see to tomorrow. You know how it is.”

Tom offered his hand. Russell shook it, warmly. Really, Tom Putnam was a fine fellow; it was hard to see him in such an exhausting muddle. It was difficult to imagine what it must be like, not loving your wife at all, but still sticking with her and ordering everything you did around her. Then one day you come home from work, and—
poof!
—she's gone.

Rose had taken a couple of steps toward Tom and put her hand on his arm. What was this about? Russell wondered. She'd never put her hand on
his
arm, and he'd talked to her every day for four weeks. As far as Russell knew, Tom had only met her that one brief time in the Book Store. Of course, she was taking his Shakespeare class. And the two of them had had to deal with horrid Iris tonight when she'd begun wailing like a banshee in front of the president and passed out right there on that bench. Russell felt an internal stab when he thought about Iris. He'd have to call Lewis, his AA sponsor, when he got home and confess he'd been goading her again. What was even worse—and what he might leave out of his confession, because he didn't want to hear AA Lewis
not
being judgmental about it—was that he'd been goading Iris
and
plying her with alcohol. How many AA venal sins had he committed by doing that? But it was so hard to resist egging awful Iris on, and it was so much easier to do when she was drinking; besides, awful Iris was mean as a snake to him every time she got the chance. Really, the woman was insufferable. Completely insufferable. She wasn't the right sort for this college, at all. At this, Russell felt another stab. He could hear Lewis's patient reply if he voiced
that
sentiment.
Russell,
he would say,
perhaps the fact that you think such a thing about a colleague actually says something about you that might be worth thinking about as a recovering alcoholic.
God, Russell hated trying to be good!

“I'm so sorry,” Rose was saying, her hand still on Tom Putnam's arm, her eyes looking up at Tom Putnam's face. Russell felt another stab—jealousy this time, something else about which AA Lewis would have a few disgustingly tolerant words to say. Why was he feeling jealous? He liked smooth, glossy, finished-looking women. Graduates of St. Catherine's or St. Anne's—that sort. Not someone as casually turned out as Rose Callahan. Sure, she was fun to talk to, but not the real deal as a woman, at all!

“Thank you,” Tom said, not even bothering to put his hand on hers and give it a little squeeze, which Russell certainly would have done. “And thank you for the flowers. Marjory would have been so pleased.”

Russell looked at his old friend more closely. My God! There were tears in Tom Putnam's eyes. Here he'd gone through the whole evening dry-eyed, stoically enduring the crowd at his house like a politician who'd just lost an election. And now, just because Rose Callahan had brought his dead, unlovable wife a bunch of thorny roses from her backyard,
now
he was tearing up. If Russell didn't know Tom better, he'd suspect him of making a show of grief for Rose Callahan's benefit, the way he, Russell, might have been tempted to do. But since he
did
know Tom, Russell could only conclude that the tears really had something to do with what he was saying to Rose Callahan, that her silly posies would have pleased dead, unlovable Marjory.

Russell hunched his shoulders and squinted at the lighted doorway behind Tom's head. He did not like complicated emotions. The straightforwardness of Alcoholics Anonymous was the one thing that probably kept him in the program. “Keep It Simple!” was plastered everywhere you looked at an AA meeting and was often chosen as a topic for discussion. Russell took “Keep It Simple!” to mean that you shouldn't dig around too far under the surface of your own emotions, thoughts, or impulses. Just turn your life over to your Higher Power, whatever that was, and plow full steam ahead. And right now—keeping it simple!—what Russell wanted was Rose Callahan's hand on
his
arm so that he could plow full steam ahead out of there. “Shall we?” he said, stepping toward her, offering his arm.

Tom immediately stepped back, well trained by his marriage not to be caught doing anything, under any circumstances, that might be considered flirtatious. In that way, Russell thought sadly, Marjory would haunt him for years.

Instead of taking his arm, however, Rose simply let her hand fall. She didn't bother with any feminine ruse, either, such as pretending she hadn't seen his offered arm. She simply noticed it was there and didn't take it. “Good night, Professor Putnam,” she said. “Please tell Agnes good night for me as well. We had a nice chat out on the back steps.”

“I will,” Tom said formally, like the old schoolmaster he was. “Thank you both for coming.”

Enough was enough. Tom Putnam might be his very good friend (another stab—oh, for heaven's sake, Russell!
Keep it simple!
), but Tom was single now and, whether he knew it or not, competition for feminine attentions. Russell firmly exorcised all ambivalence about leaving and propelled Rose ahead of him toward the front door. “Good night, Tom,” he called over his shoulder.

*   *   *

It was a truly lovely night, clear as a polished shot glass, with just a hint of sharpness. Russell walked briskly along the sidewalk toward the main campus, swinging his umbrella, feeling unashamedly glad to be alive. If Rose Callahan hadn't taken his arm, at least she was beside him, loping along in her ugly dress and sloppy sandals, exuding what he'd come to think of as “Rosiness,” a quiet, contained, removed quality that—for whatever strange reason—drew him to her like a sugar ant to a chocolate cake. He'd never spent time around a woman before who didn't seem to care at
all
what he thought of her. Even horrible Iris sought some kind of reaction from him, but Rose just hung out in his presence if he happened to be there, probably exactly as she'd been before he showed up and exactly as she'd still be once he left her. The other women he knew seemed to have a thousand personality permutations. They adjusted this and muted that as people—particularly men—drifted in and out of their sphere. And he, Russell, was much the same, now that he thought about it. He made constant minor adjustments, depending upon whatever company he was in. But this didn't seem to work around Rose Callahan. He'd tried hard to find the right note with her, subtly struck this pose and that, only to find her slight air of distance and—dare he think it!—
disinterest
deepening. Rose had seemed the most interested in what he had to say the other day when he'd talked to her seriously about an article he'd been reading about Spenser.

Russell glanced down at her. Her dowdy blue dress blew back against her in the slight breeze. Rose really was thin as a whippet. Maybe she ran marathons? Maybe she had a high metabolism? Really, he knew almost nothing about her—he couldn't remember Rose Callahan answering one direct personal question satisfactorily. Her complete self-possession made such questions pointless, anyway. Russell usually asked women about themselves to help them feel more at ease with
him,
but Rose had been at ease with him from the moment he'd come up to her in the Book Store and introduced himself. If he was honest—which was another thing AA demanded, even though honesty often seemed the antithesis of keeping it simple—it was he who'd needed to be put at his ease around Rose. And this she must have done, because here the two of them were at the end of Faculty Row, and they had yet to exchange a word. How strange. He'd actually been
thinking
in a woman's company, instead of chattering—something he couldn't remember doing since he'd escaped the stultifying boredom of his brief marriage.

Russell glanced up. There was a bright demi-moon sailing loftily across the sky. It would light their way perfectly if they left the well-lit campus. “Let's go this way,” he said, pointing off to the right toward a hockey field. “It's a nice shortcut to your house.”

“All right,” Rose said. There was no bridling. No pretending they were teenagers and he was cooking up some ruse to get her off somewhere private so he could feel her up. Russell sighed. Would that they were teenagers. He'd wasted his teen years studying and worrying about his drunken, impossible mother. He looked down at Rose's hands, swinging freely by her sides, and briefly considered catching one up and giving it a little squeeze. But, for reasons he didn't understand and didn't want to understand, Tom Putnam's sad, befuddled face intruded and he gave up the idea. Instead he asked, “Will you be going to Marjory's funeral on Tuesday? I'd be glad to give you a ride if you need one.”

Rose shook her head. “I don't think so. I just met Marjory the one time. I only came tonight by mistake, remember?”

Russell found himself giving her another little bow without breaking stride. He did a lot of this bowing stuff, didn't he? “I'll bet you're one of those people who's never met a stranger, Rose. You fit in here as though you've been around us all for years. And we're not always an easy bunch to get along with.”

“Thank you,” she said, with that mystifyingly straightforward look of hers that went straight to some unfamiliar place inside him. “My mother and I moved around a lot when I was a child. It helps you learn to adapt to new situations.”

“Oh?” Russell was immediately interested. Here was the perfect opening for a personal question. “Was your father in the military?”

She shook her head. “I don't think so. I can't imagine that he was.”

What did she mean by that? Surely she
knew
whether or not her father had been in the military? If it had been anyone but Rose, Russell would have thought she was playing with him. “That's interesting,” he said, hoping it was obvious he would like more information.

But Rose walked on silently beside him. A paper cup skipped across the ground, a rare piece of litter on the immaculate campus. They had reached the center of the hockey field. Russell found himself conversationally stymied. For once, he didn't want to be charming. All he wanted was to ask Rose what her father had done for a living that had kept him on the move. What he
wanted,
Russell realized, was to ask Rose Callahan about herself and have her give him a straight answer. Before he could stop himself, he heard himself saying, “Would you have dinner with me tomorrow night, Rose?”

She didn't even pretend to consider. “No, I won't, Russell. Or any other night either. But thanks for the invitation.”

“My, my, aren't we direct?” Russell knew he sounded testy, but what the hell—he
felt
testy, and directness was a two-way street.

Rose's eyes were on the moon. “My mother was a bartender. She always dealt very openly and directly with men.”

“Ahh,” Russell said. So he had stumbled onto a little personal information tonight, found out he'd just been derailed from possible entanglement with the daughter of a bartender. That was probably a blessing, even though it might not feel like one at the moment. Most of the women he went out with had ancestors who had helped form the country and once ruled in the South. Russell began to feel better. “I knew the first time I met you that you were an unusual child of unusual parents.”

“Parent. There was only my mother.”

Russell finally did put his hand on her arm, not to flirt, but to make a point. “That, my dear, is a biological impossibility.”

“Says you,” Rose said, still talking to the moon. Russell considered this. It didn't seem like the time or the place to argue biology. And back to her bartender lineage. Surely that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy her company? “So how about lunch? Surely we could have lunch together?”

“Of course we could. I eat in the college dining hall almost every day at noon. I'd be glad of your company.”

The college dining hall! Russell hadn't eaten in the college dining hall for years.

They had reached the end of the hockey field. In front of them was a short hill. They climbed it together. Russell kept his hand under her arm, and Rose didn't object. She was having trouble with her floppy sandals slipping on the wet grass. It made him feel pleasantly straightforward to be in physical contact with her at last, and have it be for some useful reason. At the top of the hill was the main entrance road into the college. Farmhouse Lane stretched just ahead of them on the left. Russell let go of Rose's arm. “I'm almost home!” she said, sounding surprised.

They walked together past the dark houses, first the sprawling residence of the director of the Riding Program, then the increasingly humble cottages of the college's lesser souls. Rose had left on her front porch light, and a lamp burned brightly in her front room. Russell peered in from the road, unabashedly curious. The room inside reminded him of his graduate school adviser's office at the university—run-down furniture and piles of books everywhere. “You have a lot of books,” he said. “And your furniture looks a bit—shall I say—eclectic.”

“Right on both counts.” Rose stopped at the end of her front walk and extended her hand. “Thanks for seeing me home.”

Russell took her hand, shook it, and let it go again immediately. The straightforward feeling of the hill had lingered, and he didn't want to lose it by trying to force some romance into the evening. “Thanks for letting me.”