Eden Hill (8 page)

Mavine was seated at the kitchen table when he arrived, but the only aromas in the room were soap powder and bleach. The dinette and the stove were clean and bare, with no evidence of cooking or food preparation in sight. And no sign at all of Vee.

“Hello, Mavine. Are we just having sandwiches today?” The washing machine was chugging and sloshing away, so she’d also been working this morning.

“I suppose so. There’s bread in the breadbox, and Dixie loaf in the refrigerator.” Her voice seemed strained and tired.

He tossed his coat onto the back of his recliner. “You feeling okay, Mavine?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m just not hungry right now.”

Opening the refrigerator, he grabbed the milk bottle and a small Tupperware that contained an old package of lunch meat. It popped when he opened it
 
—not a good sign. A quick sniff, a grimace, and he reached for the peanut butter in the pantry.

Virgil sat down across from Mavine, and then remembered his milk still sitting on the counter. He arose and walked back across the room. “Are you sure I can’t get you something? There’s some leftover soup . . .” His voice trailed off, as he found Mavine not listening. She sat at the dinette and looked out the window.

He retrieved the forgotten milk, spread the peanut butter generously onto a slice of bread, and thought for a minute. Once again, he couldn’t think of anything he’d done recently to deserve the cold shoulder, and this year he’d even remembered her birthday gift
 
—early, for a change. Even though it was still over a month away, he had already bought her a nice pair of gloves from Willett’s Dry Goods.

Had Mavine come home with yet another
Pageant
magazine? The old one was back on his desk
 
—somewhere. Why couldn’t the Glamour Nook subscribe to something like the
Saturday Evening Post
? Norman Rockwell would never get him in trouble with his wife like Betty LaMour did.

“Sorry you’re not hungry, Mavine. Are you unhappy with me about something?”

“No, not at all, but I
am
unhappy with Vee. He’s been a
real challenge this morning.” With that, Mavine returned to the back porch. Sounds of running water suggested rinsing of some kind, and soon the machine resumed its low rumble. She returned to the table, taking a couple slices of bread on the way past the counter.

“What did Vee do now?”

“I caught him smoking this morning.”

“Smoking? Smoking what?”

“A cigar
 
—a big fat one. I suspect he got it through the mail
 
—from an ad in one of those horrible comic books he reads. The men all have blue hair, the women have way too much bosom, and they all use bad grammar. You’ve seen the mail-order advertisements in the back. Where do you think he got that disgusting thing he took to church last Sunday?”

“Mavine, he’s ten years old. He spent his own allowance, and he also got a genuine miniature spy camera and a book about throwing his voice. And he told me it only cost four dollars for everything. Postpaid.”

“That’s not the point. It’s what he did with it.”

Virgil tried hard not to smile at the memory. Somehow Vee had placed the whoopee cushion in Toler’s chair during the opening hymn. When the song leader sat down after the final notes of the amen, the entire congregation heard the expected result. Toler turned red as a beet, Reverend Caudill gave him a look that would freeze steam, and almost everyone else just tried to keep from laughing. Vee couldn’t, so Mavine had hauled him out by the ear. His penance had been to read
The Scarlet Letter
.

“Mavine, boys do stuff like that. I think you get a little carried away sometimes.”

“What do you mean, ‘carried away’?” Mavine’s voice was rising. “Vee needs to behave in church and pay attention to the Sunday sermons. And he needs to know the facts of life.”

“He doesn’t need to know all of that at his age. Vee asked me what adultery was, and I didn’t know quite what to tell him. He thinks it just means being a grown-up, and can’t figure out why it’s such a sin. Couldn’t you just have him read the Hardy Boys or cowboys and Indians or something?”

Mavine stood and returned to her shelf of classic books. “Virgil, I know you don’t see the value in classic literature, but it’s good for Vee. If I left it up to you, he’d be reading Zane Grey. Or worse, a Louis L’Amour. But all right then, here’s James Fenimore Cooper. So you get your Indians, anyway.”

Virgil followed her into the living room and frowned at her choice of reading material. “Mavine, just what are you so unhappy about?”

“Virgil, he was being disobedient and obstinate. Probably sulking up in his room.”

Obstinate? Something bad, apparently. “All right, Mavine, so Vee was smoking. He knows better and probably ought to have some kind of punishment for it, but that’s no reason for
 
—”

“Virgil, I have such high hopes for our son. He’s a smart boy and is making such good grades in school. I want him to go to the university
 
—I’ve always loved the idea of a university education. To be successful in life. That’s why I give
him good books to read; I want him to have the same love for literature that I have. To make his world bigger.”

“And you think making him read on a snow day is going to help? I have high hopes for him too. The hardest thing for him right now would be to think about his friends having fun out on their sleds while he’s stuck in here reading.”

She looked to one side, not a good sign. “Virgil, I kept my schoolbooks after graduation instead of selling them, even though my family could have used the money. They were about the only thing that kept me going with the war on and all. You were stationed at Fort Benning, so you never knew how much they meant to me. Vee’s learning to love them too, even if he doesn’t realize it yet.”

“Vee loves other things right now,” said Virgil, “like being a good, healthy kid. I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“I want Vee to make something of himself, Virgil. Something he’ll be proud of. I don’t want him to end up like you.”

Virgil might as well have been smacked in the face with Mavine’s steam iron. He said nothing for several seconds, trying to sort out the words he had just heard. Mavine clapped a hand over her mouth, then dropped the book on the table with a heavy thud, turned away, and buried her face in both hands. She seemed to be trying to say something, but no words were coming out.

For his part, he bit his own tongue, not sure he could trust the words he might say in return. He loved their son too. Didn’t she understand that? Somehow, in one sentence, she’d reduced him to a nobody. Anger and confusion welled
up inside him, and his thoughts were fuzzy and whirling. Was Mavine angry, hurt, disappointed, or confused? All of these? He couldn’t tell, but he knew any response he might make right now would be one he’d likely regret.

Virgil stood, nearly knocking over his chair, only to find himself surprisingly unsteady on his feet. He leaned on the table for balance and took a breath, trying to quench the fires inside and pull his thoughts together into something that made sense. “So, Mavine. Is there something wrong with who I am? I may not have much schooling, and I haven’t read all those classy books of yours, but I think I’ve done pretty well.” His voice was rising in both pitch and volume, so he paused, looking for words that wouldn’t make matters worse.

“I work hard to put this food on your table, keep you in clothes and buy you the washing machine to put them in. And I’ve tried my best to be a good husband for the last fourteen years. Is that not enough?”

“Virgil, I didn’t mean . . .”

Suddenly, an unexpected sound broke the silence. Both looked at the stairway landing, where Vee had stepped on a squeaky board while eavesdropping. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear and confusion, and he turned and ran back up to the second floor.

Virgil felt steadier now, and motioned toward the steps. “And I’d be more than happy to see Vee grow up just like me.”

He started for the front door but turned to pick up his forgotten jacket. “I’m going back to work. And tell Vee I said no more cigars!”

Virgil closed the door harder than he should have,
shaking the front room and rattling the windows. Hopefully Ticky would be waiting for him with her tail wagging. Right now, he could use a friend.

Mavine sat at the table, absently running a finger along the edge of
The Last of the Mohicans
, waiting for the rinse to end. It did, but she didn’t move. Wringing out clothes was not what she wanted to do just then. This was the last load, the one with the sheets and pillow slips in it. It could wait.

Why in the world had she said such a thing to Virgil? She loved him dearly, didn’t she? She certainly thought so. Running a service station was a fine thing for Virgil
 
—he never even made it to high school, let alone college. He’d had even less opportunity than she had. Was she wrong to want more for Vee than a life like this? Certainly she was wrong to blame Virgil for it.

On the other hand, her husband made a good honest living. He was right
 
—she and their son had never wanted for anything. Her own mother and father had struggled through the Depression, selling eggs, eating crackers and poke salad. Memories of patched dresses and hand-me-downs, darned socks and slivers of soap wrapped in pieces of burlap from a flour sack were still deeply etched in her mind. Her husband had been through it too, as his father worked hard to keep his own repair shop afloat. Virgil had to drop out of school to help, and then was drafted and served his country.

Mavine shoved the novel across the table, just like she’d
done with the
Pageant
a couple of months earlier. Her hands, chapped by laundry soap and dishwater, told a story. Her story. With all her reading, all her dreams, what had she accomplished in life? Was it fair to blame Virgil for her dissatisfaction? Sure, he didn’t act like the men in those magazine articles that Gladys had given her. And the recent sermon series by Reverend Caudill had made her feel . . . what? Afraid? It could be the toy service station Vee had received for Christmas, which seemed as though it might limit his potential. Or maybe it was just her.

Mavine sighed. She forced herself up from the dinette, tossed out the paper napkins, and dusted the bread crumbs into the trash. Laundry was waiting and couldn’t be put off any longer, even with an argument as an excuse.

The wringer started with a mechanical groan when she flipped the switch. Vee’s bedspread was the first to come out of the tub. The fringes were clean again, and the Oxydol had done its job well on the smudge just above Gene Autry’s lasso. Through the mighty rollers it ground, water pouring back into the tub from both sides. “Cowboys!” Mavine grumbled to herself as she pitched it over the clothesline on the porch.

Next came a pair of Virgil’s work pants. Mavine rubbed the stiff khaki fabric between her fingers and paused. The man who wore these wasn’t perfect, but she did love him. And more than that, she realized, he loved and cared for her in every way he knew how. Reaching for the trouser stretcher, she smelled something odd. Burning. Quickly, she turned the wringer off, thinking that perhaps the motor wasn’t powerful
enough for a full bedspread going through crossways. No, it wasn’t coming from the machine. Perhaps . . .

“That Vee,” she growled under her breath, “has done it now. Another
 
—cigar!” She spat the word. “It’s
A Tale of Two Cities
for him now, and maybe
War and Peace
too.” Mavine ran upstairs, bent on full retribution. She stopped in the doorway and opened her mouth to issue Great Words of Wrath. Nothing came out.

There was no cigar, nor any other vice for that matter. Vee was engrossed in his toy service station, and making engine noises
 
—pretty good ones, too
 
—and it seemed that in spite of her rampage, he still hadn’t heard her. One of Virgil’s old work caps sat on his head, turned at just the right angle.

The oval rug was spread across the bare mattress, toy cars lined up on the pattern as on a racetrack. The service station that Santa had given him at Christmas fit well in the center of the bed; even the ramp to the upstairs parking deck lined up nicely with the design on the rug. Vee reached into the garage door and pulled out two cars and a pickup truck; the wrecker was retrieved from the top of his bookshelf. The plastic gasoline pumps were set up in front of his imaginary driveway.

Vee pushed the pickup up the ramp and began filling the cars with gasoline and running them around the track, making all the appropriate sound effects. The book jacket from his recent Hawthorne reading had been turned inside out and made into a fine billboard, lettered in pencil. He’d propped it against the front wall, right between the big doors marked
Engine Service
and
Tune-Ups
.

As the Ford in Vee’s hand moved to the left, he looked up with a start. His eyes were red and puffy, and she could see streaks down his cheeks.

“Oh hi, Mom. Sorry, I didn’t hear you coming.” He looked down sheepishly. “Have you and Dad picked out a new book for me yet?”