What You See in the Dark (13 page)

To ask for both, she thought to herself, was greedy beyond words. She thought of Cheno, if he daydreamed while yanking nectarines from the branches, what he asked the sky for.

In the bottom of the corner display, she noticed the name Ricky on one of the album covers. She had to lean down to look at it, at him. There he was, a black-and-white picture, but she guessed that his hair was brown, rich and deep, and he looked back at her with eyes she could not guess the color of. Maybe blue. Maybe green. But the long lashes! Casting shadows almost, and she studied the rest of his face—his lean nose, the faint bit of stubble, his eyebrows leaning in to each other, the way his left eye seemed to signal a different kind of feeling: the regret she had heard in his voice last night. That was the eye she focused on, as if she could feel his longing, as if she could fall in love with it and alleviate it. Didn’t Cheno have it, too? And yet why couldn’t she fall in love with him? She put her hand on her purse, feeling the small weight of the jar of pumpkin seeds. Ricky’s bottom lip jutted out thick and full, the upper one much thinner, his mouth holding in a perfect line, capturing who he was—a singer—and how everything that mattered about him centered on the moment he opened that mouth.

For hurt to matter, she thought, you had to be beautiful. She thought of Cheno’s small frame scrambling into the bed of the pickup truck. She thought of Dan Watson, how even he lacked the long lashes and strange eyes of Ricky Nelson. She thought of her father, whom she had never met, and wondered how handsome he was to lure her mother all the way to Texas.

Cars rumbled by more frequently now, so Teresa made her way to the shoe store, waiting outside the doors. Mr. Carson had not yet arrived, nor had Candy, her co-worker. Sunlight warmed the sidewalk. She could feel the heat in her shoes. Mr. Carson was always early, so by the time his Oldsmobile approached the store, she knew it was probably eight thirty.

He parked fastidiously, poking his fat head from the car window to peer down at the painted lines on the asphalt. He locked the car with his key and approached, a paper cup of coffee in one hand, a small white bag in the other.

“You,” he said, searching for the key to the store. “What are you doing here so early?”

He was genuinely surprised, Teresa could tell—there wasn’t a hint of malice in his voice. “Just a few minutes is all,” she replied.

“Well, don’t expect to get off early,” he said, holding the door open for her. The giant round oak clock read twenty minutes to nine, and without needing to be told, Teresa walked quietly to the back of the store, through the archway blocked off with a thick beige curtain, and to the aisles and aisles of boots and sandals.

She and Candy had a small worktable near the back door, all of the inventory ledgers neatly stacked, the single rolling chair waiting. The floor was cement, and all day came the echo of their clicking shoes as they searched for a requested pair from the stock shelf, or the scrape of the ladder being pulled into place. A second phone could be accessed from their desk, its bell to be answered by the third ring if Mr. Carson failed to
get it at the front of the store. A large floor fan, for the moment, sat turned off. The room, Teresa realized, was actually quiet for once. She listened to the silence, the clock’s tick, the slight creak from one of the shelves settling, everything so faint she could hear the shuffle of Mr. Carson’s newspaper out front as he turned the page, then the quiet again, as if he were thinking.

She knew Candy had arrived when Mr. Carson’s deep-throated but friendly voice greeted her, a little muffled because he’d been caught with his mouth full. The two exchanged morning banter with an unforced pleasantry, something he rarely did with Teresa.

It was not yet nine. Candy finally parted the thick beige curtain and walked across to their worktable. She smiled wanly at Teresa but did not say good morning, passing a few minutes shuffling papers, and when the clock finally struck nine, she turned to Teresa with a clipboard and a stack of salmon-colored index cards.

“Will you do the inventory of the shoes on those racks over there?” Candy pointed to the far wall. “We’re getting a shipment sometime next week, so Mr. Carson is planning to put those ones on sale.”

“Of course,” Teresa replied, taking the clipboard and then going over to the worktable for a sharpened pencil. It would be slow and tedious work, checking each of the boxes, noting the condition of each pair of shoes—some of them had lost their shine after being tried on so many times—but it would keep Teresa occupied until lunchtime.

Fifteen minutes passed in quiet. They were intolerable, lunchtime forever off. This is what it was to be in love, Teresa
thought, her heart possessing complete control, allowing her neither rest nor distraction, relentless and constant as a star. She looked at the clock yet again, the long hours until noon.

She was on the ladder when she heard Candy’s footsteps approaching, and she looked down in time to see her appear at the front of the aisle, arms crossed.

“You were here so early today,” Candy said. It had not been a question, but she looked up at Teresa with a measure of genuine curiosity. But there was something else, too, Teresa saw, a vague shadow of suspicion.

“I was up at dawn,” she told Candy. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, so I ended up leaving my apartment very early this morning.”

“You have a record player?” Candy asked.

“Well … no, I don’t,” Teresa answered, but now her admission felt almost like a defeat, like when the salesman at Stew-art’s Appliances had approached her the one time she dared step inside, the way he had asked her, “Are you interested in purchasing this television, miss?”

“I have one,” Candy said. “Pricey.”

“I’d imagine so.”

Candy moved fully into the aisle now, her arms still crossed in front of her.

“You going to buy one someday?”

She looked down at Candy, unsure of how to answer. “Maybe I’ll save for one.”

“They’re expensive, you know. Did you know you have to buy needles all the time? Or else they scratch your records if they’re not sharp enough.”

“What do you mean, needles?”

“For the record player,” Candy answered, her mouth opening a little in surprise when Teresa looked back at her blankly. “The arm on the record player,” she explained. “It has a tiny needle that fits exactly—exactly—into the groove of the record.”

“I see,” said Teresa. They remained looking at each other, Teresa on top of the ladder and Candy at the bottom, arms still folded, the silence drawing longer, more awkward. She realized then that maybe Candy had seen her in front of the record store.

“All of that—the needles and the records—starts to add up. That’s a lot of money for a salesgirl,” said Candy.

“Who bought yours?” Teresa asked.

Candy’s arms tightened in their fold. “A boy I’ve been seeing.”

“That’s generous of him.”

“He’s a sweetheart,” said Candy.

Though she was on the ladder and above Candy, Teresa felt vulnerable and intimidated, as if it were not Candy at the bottom of the ladder but Mr. Carson’s awkward teenage son, trying to look up her skirt. Candy’s banter was odd—she rarely spoke to Teresa except to give orders.

“I saw you,” Candy finally said. “In front of the record shop. I was on my way to get a couple of doughnuts for me and Mr. Carson and I saw you standing out by the window.”

How long?
she wanted to ask Candy. Teresa pictured her standing across the street the entire time, silently watching, with hardly anyone else around to notice either of them. She imagined seeing herself as Candy had, looking at a still figure
admiring the glacial turns of the records hanging from fishline, the shimmer of the window, and how easy it was to guess what she desired.

But there was nothing—was there?—in Candy making note of her standing in front of the shop. Teresa looked down at the clipboard and the salmon-colored index cards as if they might give her an idea of what to say. Candy, though, spoke first.

“You stand in front of store windows a lot,” she said.

Teresa swallowed. “I like to watch the variety shows at lunch,” she said calmly.

“The singers,” said Candy. “I didn’t know you sang.”

“Well, I don’t—”

But Candy interrupted. “I saw you yesterday, too. Riding in Dan Watson’s truck.” She looked up at Teresa, and the tone in her voice was unmistakable: accusatory, yet not mean spirited, a flat statement that dared to be denied, as if she were confronting Teresa with an empty cashbox, wordless, yet with the facts in hand, a fact that needed to be explained.

“He was taking me home,” Teresa said cautiously, the words feeling too deliberate. She knew immediately that she would not be able to say either too little or too much.

Candy already had a story in her head, standing there in her pleated purple skirt, a thin gold bracelet shimmering on her wrist, her blue blouse with a stitched pattern on the collar, a sheer pink scarf knotted at the side of her long throat. She shopped at department stores rather than make her own clothes from Simplicity patterns from TG&Y—that much Teresa could tell just by looking at her, though in truth she knew nothing about Candy. Candy gave her things to do, instructed her
as if she were the boss when in fact they were hired to perform the same tasks. A pretty girl who shopped at department stores, who owned a record player, was being courted by a sweet boy, and yet somehow still wanted more and could not hide it.

Teresa knew she shouldn’t say any more, but she wanted Candy to know and not know at the same time: “He plays guitar and he’s teaching me,” Teresa said, and the moment she said it, she realized for the first time that maybe her own life could be an existence that others could dream about. That everyone, at one time or another, stood near a window and looked out, imagining a life that was not their own. “How do you know him?” she asked, because she wanted to ask the questions now, not just answer them.

“Everyone knows Dan Watson. Just like everyone knows Mr. Carson. Just like everyone knows everyone here.”

“No one knows me.”

“I know you,” said Candy, but both of them knew it wasn’t so. All she knew was that her name was Teresa and that she stood outside store windows for a long time and that the most handsome man in Bakersfield had opened the door to his pickup truck to give her a ride home.

Mr. Carson’s heavy, lopsided footsteps sounded at the entrance to the storage room, and that finally broke Candy away from the aisle. She eased back toward the desk as if she had never carried on a conversation with Teresa, simply going on with the business of the morning, and though Teresa could not see Mr. Carson, she knew Candy’s demeanor had worked. “Oh, there you are,” she heard Mr. Carson say, and then he began discussing a matter for the front desk.

Teresa went back to her inventory.
I know you,
she kept hearing as she counted out pairs of sandals she remembered having ordered a year ago.
I know about you,
she imagined Candy saying, and there it was—just the additional word, the single key and the lock turning for a door that revealed everything about Teresa in glaring light: her father gone, her mother following, money scarce, the men below her window whistling.
I know all about you,
she tried, this time her own voice saying it, repeating it, as she counted out white shoes favored by the nurses at the hospitals, tasseled flats in elderly beige, pink canvas sneakers, dancing shoes with glittery straps and heels as thin as expensive vases.
I know, I know, I know,
as she wrote her counts onto the salmon-colored index cards, the morning passing along torturously and Candy not saying another word to her.

I know.
But Candy didn’t. Here was a pair of shoes like Candy’s, a modest pump, the heel barely off the ground, dark brown and plain, no intricate patterning. Teresa glanced at the price on the box and wondered how much Mr. Carson would reduce it—a single pair left, but maybe she could afford it if it went on sale. Women like Candy purchased such shoes throughout the year, the price not too high for them. Candy had a record player and could walk into that record shop and buy every Ricky Nelson song she desired, a different version of his beautiful face on the sleeve any time she wanted.

Teresa continued her inventory but noted more and more shoes she wanted to buy for herself, taking a single index card and jotting down the styles she would pay attention to later. She held them up for inspection: spectator shoes, stack heels, plain Mary Janes and ballerina flats, espadrilles and pumps. All
of these for Candy, all of them purchased for her by the sweetheart boy she was seeing. The noon hour crawled closer, and the closer it came, the more she thought of Dan, the things she could have with him, and she felt an impatience that she didn’t have them already. When she came across a single pair of cowboy boots—chocolate, the left one scratched badly at both the tip and the heel, a ring of delicate brown roses etched around the mouth—she took one out of the box and held it up as if it could be broken. How unfair of Candy to want more than she already had. Teresa glanced at the shoe size and knew it would fit, then checked the other one to make sure they were a matching pair, as she was supposed to. There was only one pair of the boots left, meaning Mr. Carson had sold them well, but this box had been stuck near the top of the rack, its cover a little dusty from waiting.

Teresa held still, listening for Candy before she even knew what she was actually doing. The floor fan had not yet been turned on and she waited for some kind of signal of Candy’s presence in the silence of the storeroom—a shuffle of paper, Candy’s shoes against the cement floor, a cough against the dust in the air, but the place remained quiet. The longer the silence went on, the more Teresa hesitated, and she strained for the bells of the front door or voices or the telephone. Nothing came. The longer she waited, she knew, the greater the chance she would never have the boots.

She stepped off the ladder with the boot box in her hand and walked down the aisle, listening. Candy was not at the desk. Teresa stopped momentarily and listened once more. The clock read twenty minutes to noon; the lunch hour was
finally arriving. She bent down to get one of the large paper bags with sturdy twine loops, carson’s printed on both sides. Briskly, she unfolded it, as if she were going about her business, but after one more glance at the beige curtain leading to the front of the store, Teresa slipped the boot box into the bag and walked quickly to the rear exit, the door leading out to the alley and the garbage cans, and there she tucked the bag behind one of the trash bins, inconspicuous, where she would pick it up after work.