Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You (10 page)

Dr. Peebles stood up and introduced himself and his wife and me and asked her to be seated.

“He's up in the air right now, but you're welcome to
sit and wait. He gets his water here and he hasn't been yet. He'll probably take his break about five.”

“That is him, then?” said Alice Kelling, wrinkling and straining at the sky.

“He's not in the habit of running out on you, taking a different name?” Dr. Peebles laughed. He was the one, not his wife, to offer iced tea. Then she sent me into the kitchen to fix it. She smiled. She was wearing sunglasses too.

“He never mentioned his fiancée,” she said.

I loved fixing iced tea with lots of ice and slices of lemon in tall glasses. I ought to have mentioned before, Dr. Peebles was an abstainer, at least around the house, or I wouldn't have been allowed to take the place. I had to fix a glass for Loretta Bird too, though it galled me, and when I went out she had settled in my lawn chair, leaving me the steps.

“I knew you was a nurse when I first heard you in that coffee shop.”

“How would you know a thing like that?”

“I get my hunches about people. Was that how you met him, nursing?”

“Chris? Well yes. Yes, it was.”

“Oh, were you overseas?” said Mrs. Peebles.

“No, it was before he went overseas. I nursed him when he was stationed at Centralia and had a ruptured appendix. We got engaged and then he went overseas. My, this is refreshing, after a long drive.”

“He'll be glad to see you,” Dr. Peebles said. “It's a rackety kind of life, isn't it, not staying one place long enough to really make friends.”

“Youse've had a long engagement,” Loretta Bird said.

Alice Kelling passed that over. “I was going to get a room at the hotel, but when I was offered directions I came on out. Do you think I could phone them?”

“No need,” Dr. Peebles said. “You're five miles away from him if you stay at the hotel. Here, you're right across
the road. Stay with us. We've got rooms on rooms, look at this big house.”

Asking people to stay, just like that, is certainly a country thing, and maybe seemed natural to him now, but not to Mrs. Peebles, from the way she said, oh yes, we have plenty of room. Or to Alice Kelling, who kept protesting, but let herself be worn down. I got the feeling it was a temptation to her, to be that close. I was trying for a look at her ring. Her nails were painted red, her fingers were freckled and wrinkled. It was a tiny stone. Muriel Lowe's cousin had one twice as big.

Chris came to get his water, late in the afternoon just as Dr. Peebles had predicted. He must have recognized the car from a way off. He came smiling.

“Here I am chasing after you to see what you're up to,” called Alice Kelling. She got up and went to meet him and they kissed, just touched, in front of us.

“You're going to spend a lot on gas that way,” Chris said.

Dr. Peebles invited Chris to stay for supper, since he had already put up the sign that said:
NO MORE RIDES TILL
7
P.M
. Mrs. Peebles wanted it served in the yard, in spite of bugs. One thing strange to anybody from the country is this eating outside. I had made a potato salad earlier and she had made a jellied salad, that was one thing she could do, so it was just a matter of getting those out, and some sliced meat and cucumbers and fresh leaf lettuce. Loretta Bird hung around for some time saying, “Oh, well, I guess I better get home to those yappers,” and, “It's so nice just sitting here, I sure hate to get up,” but nobody invited her, I was relieved to see, and finally she had to go.

That night after rides were finished Alice Kelling and Chris went off somewhere in her car. I lay awake till they got back. When I saw the car lights sweep my ceiling I got up to look down on them through the slats of my blind. I don't know what I thought I was going to see. Muriel Lowe
and I used to sleep on her front veranda and watch her sister and her sister's boy friend saying good night. Afterwards we couldn't get to sleep, for longing for somebody to kiss us and rub up against us and we would talk about suppose you were out in a boat with a boy and he wouldn't bring you in to shore unless you did it, or what if somebody got you trapped in a barn, you would have to, wouldn't you, it wouldn't be your fault. Muriel said her two girl cousins used to try with a toilet paper roll that one of them was the boy. We wouldn't do anything like that; just lay and wondered.

All that happened was that Chris got out of the car on one side and she got out on the other and they walked off separately—him towards the fairgrounds and her towards the house. I got back in bed and imagined about me coming home with him, not like that.

Next morning Alice Kelling got up late and I fixed a grapefruit for her the way I had learned and Mrs. Peebles sat down with her to visit and have another cup of coffee. Mrs. Peebles seemed pleased enough now, having company. Alice Kelling said she guessed she better get used to putting in a day just watching Chris take off and come down, and Mrs. Peebles said she didn't know if she should suggest it because Alice Kelling was the one with the car, but the lake was only twenty-five miles away and what a good day for a picnic.

Alice Kelling took her up on the idea and by eleven o'clock they were in the car, with Joey and Heather and a sandwich lunch I had made. The only thing was that Chris hadn't come down, and she wanted to tell him where they were going.

“Edie'll go over and tell him,” Mrs. Peebles said. “There's no problem.”

Alice Kelling wrinkled her face and agreed.

“Be sure and tell him we'll be back by five!”

I didn't see that he would be concerned about knowing this right away, and I thought of him eating whatever he
ate over there, alone, cooking on his camp stove, so I got to work and mixed up a crumb cake and baked it, in between the other work I had to do; then, when it was a bit cooled, wrapped it in a tea towel. I didn't do anything to myself but take off my apron and comb my hair. I would like to have put some make-up on, but I was too afraid it would remind him of the way he first saw me, and that would humiliate me all over again.

He had come and put another sign on the gate:
NO RIDES THIS P.M. APOLOGIES
. I worried that he wasn't feeling well. No sign of him outside and the tent flap was down. I knocked on the pole.

“Come in,” he said, in a voice that would just as soon have said
Stay out
.

I lifted the flap.

“Oh, it's you. I'm sorry. I didn't know it was you.”

He had been just sitting on the side of the bed, smoking. Why not at least sit and smoke in the fresh air?

“I brought a cake and hope you're not sick,” I said.

“Why would I be sick? Oh—that sign. That's all right. I'm just tired of talking to people. I don't mean you. Have a seat.” He pinned back the tent flap. “Get some fresh air in here.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, there was no place else. It was one of those fold-up cots, really: I remembered and gave him his fiancée's message.

He ate some of the cake. “Good.”

“Put the rest away for when you're hungry later.”

“I'll tell you a secret. I won't be around here much longer.”

“Are you getting married?”

“Ha ha. What time did you say they'd be back?”

“Five o'clock.”

“Well, by that time this place will have seen the last of me. A plane can get further than a car.” He unwrapped the cake and ate another piece of it, absent-mindedly.

“Now you'll be thirsty.”

“There's some water in the pail.”

“It won't be very cold. I could bring some fresh. I could bring some ice from the refrigerator.”

“No,” he said. “I don't want you to go. I want a nice long time of saying good-bye to you.”

He put the cake away carefully and sat beside me and started those little kisses, so soft, I can't ever let myself think about them, such kindness in his face and lovely kisses, all over my eyelids and neck and ears, all over, then me kissing back as well as I could (I had only kissed a boy on a dare before, and kissed my own arms for practice) and we lay back on the cot and pressed together, just gently, and he did some other things, not bad things or not in a bad way. It was lovely in the tent, that smell of grass and hot tent cloth with the sun beating down on it, and he said, “I wouldn't do you any harm for the world.” Once, when he had rolled on top of me and we were sort of rocking together on the cot, he said softly, “Oh, no,” and freed himself and jumped up and got the water pail. He splashed some of it on his neck and face, and the little bit left, on me lying there.

“That's to cool us off, Miss.”

When we said good-bye I wasn't at all sad, because he held my face and said “I'm going to write you a letter. I'll tell you where I am and maybe you can come and see me. Would you like that? Okay then. You wait.” I was really glad I think to get away from him, it was like he was piling presents on me I couldn't get the pleasure of till I considered them alone.

No consternation at first about the plane being gone. They thought he had taken somebody up, and I didn't enlighten them. Dr. Peebles had phoned he had to go to the
country, so there was just us having supper, and then Loretta Bird thrusting her head in the door and saying, “I see he's took off.”

“What?” said Alice Kelling, and pushed back her chair.

“The kids come and told me this afternoon he was taking down his tent. Did he think he'd run through all the business there was around here? He didn't take off without letting you know, did he?”

“He'll send me word,” Alice Kelling said. “He'll probably phone tonight. He's terribly restless, since the War.”

“Edie, he didn't mention to you, did he?” Mrs. Peebles said. “When you took over the message?”

“Yes,” I said. So far so true.

“Well why didn't you say?” All of them were looking at me. “Did he say where he was going?”

“He said he might try Bayfield,” I said. What made me tell such a lie? I didn't intend it.

“Bayfield, how far is that?” said Alice Kelling.

Mrs. Peebles said, “Thirty, thirty-five miles.”

“That's not far. Oh, well, that's really not far at all. It's on the lake, isn't it?”

You'd think I'd be ashamed of myself, setting her on the wrong track. I did it to give him more time, whatever time he needed. I lied for him, and also, I have to admit, for me. Women should stick together and not do things like that. I see that now, but didn't then. I never thought of myself as being in any way like her, or coming to the same troubles, ever.

She hadn't taken her eyes off me. I thought she suspected my lie.

“When did he mention this to you?”

“Earlier.”

“When you were over at the plane?”

“Yes.”

“You must've stayed and had a chat.” She smiled at me, not a nice smile. “You must've stayed and had a little visit with him.”

“I took a cake,” I said, thinking that telling some truth would spare me telling the rest.

“We didn't have a cake,” said Mrs. Peebles rather sharply.

“I baked one.”

Alice Kelling said, “That was very friendly of you.”

“Did you get permission,” said Loretta Bird. “You never know what these girls'll do next,” she said. “It's not they mean harm so much, as they're ignorant.”

“The cake is neither here nor there,” Mrs. Peebles broke in. “Edie, I wasn't aware you knew Chris that well.”

I didn't know what to say.

“I'm not surprised,” Alice Kelling said in a high voice. “I knew by the look of her as soon as I saw her. We get them at the hospital all the time.” She looked hard at me with her stretched smile. “Having their babies. We have to put them in a special ward because of their diseases. Little country tramps. Fourteen and fifteen years old. You should see the babies they have, too.”

“There was a bad woman here in town had a baby that pus was running out of its eyes,” Loretta Bird put in.

“Wait a minute,” said Mrs. Peebles. “What is this talk? Edie. What about you and Mr. Watters? Were you intimate with him?”

“Yes,” I said. I was thinking of us lying on the cot and kissing, wasn't that intimate? And I would never deny it.

They were all one minute quiet, even Loretta Bird.

“Well,” said Mrs. Peebles. “I am surprised. I think I need a cigarette. This is the first of any such tendencies I've seen in her,” she said, speaking to Alice Kelling, but Alice Kelling was looking at me.

“Loose little bitch.” Tears ran down her face. “Loose
little bitch, aren't you? I knew as soon as I saw you. Men despise girls like you. He just made use of you and went off, you know that, don't you? Girls like you are just nothing, they're just public conveniences, just filthy little rags!”