What Was Mine: & Other Stories (9 page)

She turns. “Why don’t you ask Dr. Ford over for cocktails?” she says. “Or do you think the sight of real life might be too much for him?”

“Are you quitting?” I say. But I’ve lost heart. I’m out of steam, nearly out of breath. I say it so quietly I’m not sure that she heard. “Are you ignoring me?” I holler. When she doesn’t answer, I know she is. She gets in the car, starts it, and drives away.

For a minute I’m so stunned that I sink down in one of the porch chairs and just stare. The street is unusually quiet. The cicadas have started to send up their sound. As I sit there, trying to calm myself, the boy on the bike pedals slowly up the hill. The neighbor’s poodles start barking. I hear her shushing them. Then the barking subsides.

What was Marie thinking of? I can’t remember the last time I was late for dinner. It was years ago. Years.

Katrina Duvall comes by. “Mitch?” she says, raising her hand over her brow and looking at the porch.

“Yes?” I say.

“Have you gotten your paper the last couple of Sundays?”

“Yes,” I call back.

“We stopped it when we went to Ocean City, and we can’t get it started again,” she says. “I knew I should have just asked you to take it in, but you know Jack.” Jack is her son, who is slightly retarded. She either does everything to please Jack or says that she does. The implication is that he is a tyrant. I know very little about him except that he slurs his words and once, during a snowstorm, he helped me dig out my driveway.

“All right, then,” she says, and walks away.

In the distance, I hear rock and roll. There is loud laughter in the Vandergrifts’ house. Who is having such a good time, if the child is sick? I squint hard at the house, but where the windows are lit it’s too bright to see in. A squeal, and more laughing. I get up and walk across the lawn. I knock on the door. Molly, breathless, answers.

“Hi,” I say. “I know this is a silly question, but did my wife invite you for drinks tonight?”

“No,” she says. She smooths her bangs off her forehead. Behind her, her daughter zooms by on a skateboard. “Take it easy!” Molly hollers. To me, she says, “They’re coming to refinish the floors tomorrow. She’s in heaven, being able to do that in the house.”

“You didn’t speak to Marie on the phone tonight?” I say.

“I haven’t even seen her in a week. Is everything all right?” she says.

“It must have been somebody else she invited over,” I say.

The little girl whizzes by again on the skateboard, doing wheelies.

“Jesus,” Molly says, putting her hand over her mouth. “Michael went to Dulles to pick up his brother. You don’t think Marie asked Michael and he forgot to tell me, do you?”

“No, no,” I say. “I’m sure I’m mistaken.”

Molly smiles her usual radiant smile, but I can tell I’ve made her nervous.

Back in my house, I turn the light down a notch and stand at the front window, looking up at the sky. No stars tonight. Maybe in the country, but not here. I look at the candles and figure what the hell. I strike a match to light them. They’re in ornate, heavy silver candlesticks—a hand-me-down from my aunt, who lives in Baltimore. As the candles burn, I look at the window and see the flames, and myself, reflected. The breeze makes the wax bead and drip, though, so I watch the candles burn only a few seconds more, then blow them out. They smoke, but I don’t lick my fingers and pinch the wicks. After looking again at the empty street, I sit in a chair and look at the table.

I’ll show her, I think. I’ll be gone when she gets back.

Then I think about having a few drinks and some food.

But time passes, and I don’t leave and I don’t get a drink. I haven’t touched the table when I hear a car coast to a stop. The blinking lights get my attention. An ambulance, I think—I don’t know how, but somehow she hurt herself, and for some reason the ambulance is here, and …

I spring up.

The caterer is standing at the door. She is frowning. Her shoulders are a little hunched. She has on a denim skirt, a tube top, and running shoes. Behind me, the house is entirely quiet. I see her peer around me, toward the light in the front room. Her puzzlement is obvious.

“It was all a joke,” I say. “My wife’s joke.”

She frowns.

“There isn’t any party,” I say. “My wife went away.”

“You’re kidding,” the caterer says.

Now I am looking past her, at her car, with the lights blinking. The boy is not in the front seat. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Oh,” she says, dropping her eyes. “I actually—I thought that you might need help, that I’d pitch in for a while.”

I frown.

“I know that sounds funny,” she says, “but I’m new in this business and I’m trying to make a good impression.” She is still not looking at me. “I used to work in the bursar’s office at the community college,” she says, “and I hated that. So I figured that if I could get enough work as a caterer …”

“Well, come in,” I say, standing aside.

For some time, bugs have been flying into the house.

“Oh, no,” she says. “I’m sorry there’s trouble. I just thought …”

“Come have a drink,” I say. “Really. Come in and have a drink.”

She looks at her car. “Just a minute,” she says. She goes down the walkway. She turns off the lights and locks the car. She comes back up the walk.

“My husband said I shouldn’t butt in,” she says. “He says that I try too hard to please and when you let people know you’re eager you’ll never get what you want.”

“His philosophy aside,” I say, “please come in and have a drink.”

“I thought your wife seemed edgy,” the caterer says. “I thought she was nervous about having such a big party. That she might be grateful for some help.”

She hesitates, then steps in.

“Well,” I say, throwing up my hands.

She laughs nervously. Then I laugh.

“Wine?” I say, pointing to the windowsill.

“That would be fine. Thank you,” she says.

She sits, and I pour her a glass of wine and carry it to her.

“Oh, I could have gotten that. What am I—”

“Sit still,” I say. “I’ve got to be the host for somebody, right?”

I pour myself a bourbon and take a few ice cubes out of the ice bucket with my fingers and drop them in the glass.

“Do you want to talk about it?” the caterer says.

“I don’t know what to say,” I say. I move the ice around in my glass with one finger.

“I came here from Colorado,” she says. “This place seems odd to me. Uptight, or something.” She clears her throat. “Maybe it’s not,” she says. “I mean, obviously you never know—”

“What’s really going on with other people,” I say, finishing the sentence for her. “Case in point,” I say, raising my glass.

“Will she come back?” the caterer asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “We’ve quarreled before, certainly.” I take a sip of bourbon. “Of course, this wasn’t a quarrel. It was sort of a prank on her part, I guess you’d say.”

“It is sort of funny,” the caterer says. “She told you all those people were invited and—”

I nod, cutting her off.

“Funny if it’s not you, I mean,” she says.

I take another sip of my drink. I look at the caterer. She is a thin young woman. It doesn’t seem she could have any particular interest in food herself. She is actually quite pretty, in a plain way.

We sit in silence for a while. I can hear squeals from next door, and am sure she hears them too. From where I sit, I can see out the window. The lightning bugs make brief pinpoints of light. From where she sits, the caterer can only see me. She looks at me, at her drink, and back at me.

“I don’t mean that this should matter very much to you,” she says, “but I think it’s good for me to see that things aren’t necessarily what they seem. I mean, maybe this town is an okay place to be. I mean, as complicated as any other town. Maybe I just have it unfairly stereotyped.” She takes another drink. “I didn’t really want to leave Colorado,” she says, “I was a ski instructor there. The man I live with—he’s not really my husband—he and I were going to start a restaurant here, but it fell through. He’s got a lot of friends in this area, and his son, so here we are. His son lives here with his mother—my friend’s ex. I hardly know anybody.”

I get the bottle and pour her another glass of wine. I take a last sip of my drink, rattle the ice cubes, and fill my own glass with wine. I put the bottle on the floor.

“I’m sorry I stumbled in on this. My being here must embarrass you,” she says.

“Not true,” I say, half meaning it. “I’m glad to see somebody.”

She turns and looks over her shoulder. “Do you think your wife is going to come back?” she says.

“Can’t say,” I say.

She nods. “It’s funny to be in a situation where you know something about somebody and they don’t know anything about you, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean? You just told me about Colorado, and the restaurant you were going to open.”

“Yeah,” she says, “but that’s nothing personal. You know what I mean.”

“Then go ahead and tell me something personal.”

She blushes. “Oh, I didn’t mean that.”

“Why not?” I say. “This is a strange enough night already, isn’t it? What if you tell me something personal?”

She gnaws at her cuticle. She might be younger than I thought. She has long, shiny hair. I try to picture her in a nylon jacket, on a ski slope. That makes the night seem hotter suddenly. It makes me realize that in a few months, though, we will be wearing down-filled jackets. Last November there was a big snow.

“The guy I live with is an illustrator,” she says. “You’ve probably seen some of his stuff. He doesn’t need money, he just wants to have it all. To draw. To have a restaurant. He’s grabby. He usually figures it out to have what he wants, though.” She takes a drink. “I feel funny saying this,” she says. “I don’t know why I started to tell you about us.” Then she stops talking, smiling apologetically.

Instead of coaxing her, I get up and put some things on two plates, put one plate on a table by my chair, and hand the other plate to her. I pour her another glass of wine.

“He has a studio next to the ceramics factory,” she says. “That big building with the black shutters. In the afternoon he calls me, and I take over a picnic basket and we eat lunch and make love.”

I break a cracker in half with my thumb and first finger and eat it.

“That’s not it, though,” she says. “The thing is, it’s always something like Wonder bread. It’s real kinky. I trim off the crust and make bologna sandwiches with a lot of mayonnaise. Or I’ll make Cheez Whiz sandwiches with Ritz crackers, or peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches. And we drink Kool-Aid or root beer or something like that. One time I cooked hot dogs and sliced them to go on crackers and squirted cheese around the circles. We had that and Dr Pepper. The thing is, the lunch has to be really disgusting.”

“I got that,” I say. “I guess I got it.”

“Oh,” she says, dropping her eyes. “I mean, I guess it’s obvious. Of course you figured it out.”

I wait to see if she’s going to ask me to reveal something. But instead she gets up and pours the last of the wine into her glass and stands with her back to me, looking out the window.

I know that ceramics factory. It’s not in a good part of town. There’s a bar just down the street from it, and one night when I was coming out of the bar a kid jumped me. I remember how fast he came at me on his bike, and the screech of tires, as if the bike were a big car. Then he was all over me, half punching and half squeezing, as if my wallet would pop out of hiding like a clown’s head spinning out of a jack-in-the-box. “It’s in my back pocket,” I said, and when I said that he jammed his hand into the pocket and then slugged me in the side, hard. “Stay down!” he said in sort of a whisper, and I lay there, curled on my side, putting my hand over my face so that if he thought about it later he wouldn’t come back and make more trouble because I’d gotten a good look at him. My nose was bleeding. I only had about twenty bucks in my wallet, and I’d left my credit cards at home. Finally I got up and tried to walk. There was a light on in the ceramics factory, but I could tell from the stillness that nobody was there—it was just a light that had been left on. I put my hand on the building and tried to stand up straighter. There was a point when a terrible pain shot through me—such a sharp pain that I went down again. I took a few breaths, and it passed. Through the big glass window I saw ceramic shepherds and animals—figures that would be placed in crèches. They were unpainted—they hadn’t been fired yet—and because they were all white and just about the same size, the donkeys and the Wise Men looked a lot alike. It was a week or so before Christmas, and I thought, Why aren’t they finished? They’re playing it too close; if they don’t get at it and start painting, it’s going to be too late. “Marie, Marie,” I whispered, knowing I was in trouble. Then I walked as well as I could, got to my car, and went home to my wife.

I
’ll get to the point and describe the installation as best I can: it is a manhole cover, and from somewhere—maybe underground, maybe above our heads, but not clearly visible—comes the song “Only Make Believe.” The song is a duet, for those of you who aren’t old-timers or old-movie buffs, sung by Irene Dunne and Allan Jones, I think. In any case, it is a quite romantic song, and the woman’s voice soars convincingly.