Year of the Dog (23 page)

I took a breath and reminded myself we were standing on my turf using up my time. “You want, we can talk about it again with Cletus in his office. I need to tend to my customers.”

“Hell, Janey, you haven't changed a bit.”

“I'll take that as a compliment.”

Then after a couple of hours, just as I was taking off my white coat to slip out for lunch, the way I used to do, late, who but Ralph Smalley should walk in. He asked had I heard the news concerning his recent divorce, if that happened to be of interest to me. I said how about let's go eat at Southern Fried, I'd been missing the food. And we did.

He looked good, a former All State player, who'd put on a loaf-of-bread size bulge at his middle and was showing a little wear and tear, but he still had the moves, striding with that spring up onto the balls of his feet that he'd perfected on the court. Walking the three blocks to the cafe, I figured everybody in town was watching us, drawing the same conclusion: that we'd end up together. After all, we'd gone around in high school, we'd both played pretty good basketball, we looked a pair—both a head taller than the average. And, sad if you thought about it, both of us divorced at our age. The frightening thing was wondering if I would have been thinking the same thing, strolling down the streets of Peachland with him—if I hadn't gone away? Would I have gravitated toward
him out of familiarity, figuring that we more or less belonged together and might as well pick up where we left off, the way Millie and Curtis had? It gave me cold chills even to have that thought.

Over fried okra, hushpuppies, and fried catfish with a side of sweet-potato fries, he and I covered the two decades we'd shared since his folks moved here from Charleston in first grade. We talked about getting our growth early, and then about high school, when we no longer felt like freaks. When we might even have been considered cute. He admitted he'd got to be hot for a while, junior and senior year, when girls who wouldn't look at him twice before, looked at him at least once, and he went out with a few. “Including you, if my memory serves.”

We talked about all the people we'd lost track of and all the people who'd had bad things happen, and who of our crowd already had four kids, and who still hadn't got married. We mentioned our moms and daddies, and the moms and daddies of all the other people we knew. And I began to feel the effects of the southern sun on my brain, wondering if anyone in this town ever did anything but talk about everybody else, from morning till night.

When we'd got our sugar-dusted fried peach turnovers and a refill on the coffee from Maydelle the owner, Ralph slid his arm over on the back of my chair—checking to make sure he wasn't disturbing the dog resting under the table. “If you'd gone to the All Night Party with me, Janey,” he said, “instead of going with Curtis Prentice who you hardly knew, the rest would've been history.”

“Oh, Ralph,” I told him, “the rest
is
history.”

40

I WAITED AT the Greenville airport for the long-lost son. For James Maarten, who had been abroad, and come home. But I didn't know exactly what that meant to him now,
home.
Would he catch up with what he missed, hanging out at Lucille and Owen's house, see about some graduate courses at Dartmouth, it wasn't too late. On the other hand, I didn't exactly know what it meant for me either,
home.
Was I there? Was this it? The rose-colored cottage, the fenced yard for Second Dog, the occasional evenings with Ralph Smalley. Mom checking in with me every morning on the phone, catching me at the pharmacy if she didn't catch me at my rented house, saying how the whole town was glad I had made up with Millie.

The truth was, I missed James deep in the pit of my stomach and not a week had gone by since I got here that I didn't think about putting Edgar in the car and heading up the highway toward the Canadian border. But my fear was:
real life wasn't a sabbatical.
In real life, Pete, James's sidekick with the overbite and faint acne scars and eager smile, would be all grown up with a wife he'd met in Germany, and they'd come eat with us on the weekend, and James might miss him hanging out with him worse than he'd missed me. Maybe I'd see my old scroungy upstairs neighbors, Larry and Roland, at the
Pharmacy where I'd got a job in, say, South Burlington, coming in for drugs of a milder, prescriptive nature. But they too would have their own places, their pieces of paper that entitled them to decent jobs, and would scarcely recognize me in my white coat without my doggy companion. Maybe I'd stay at PACIFIC VIEW, monthly rates, while I pretended to look for a house, taking Edgar for after-work walks along the lake in the Dog Park so he could trot in the brisk air and snap at snowflakes, or to visit his former person Sylvia when she needed cheering. And we'd both be grateful not to have to spend another panting summer in muggy Carolina.

Could I do that? Leave?

He didn't look the same. Coming through the gate into the waiting area in black t-shirt, khaki pants, clean shaven, a carryon in one hand, the other slinging a jacket over his shoulder. James.
James
? I could see in my mind the straggly face-hair and grubby headband knotted around his forehead that he'd worn that first time. But here he was, all cleaned up, looking like a teacher just back from abroad. I got a lump in my throat. I didn't want improvement; I didn't want change. I wanted what I'd fallen for way back when.

“Hey,” he said, his blue eyes looking happy to see me, leaning over to miss my mouth by half an inch.

“Hi,” I said, slipping an arm around his neck and doing a better job of managing a welcome kiss.

“How big he is,” he said, bending down to pat Second Dog.

“He is. I found him a vet, and a big yard.”

He slipped the arm clutching his jacket around my shoulder. “You doing okay? About losing her?”

In the car, driving us back to Peachland, I tried to talk about my
fine good dog
which I hadn't done long distance. We'd mostly emailed during the summer, because of the time difference when he was in The Netherlands, and I'd been glad
every time to see his name and read his e-talk, but it wasn't the same. His actual voice told a lot he didn't put into words.

I said, “You were right, you know, about the hydro-electric plant. That turned out to be a big step for her. Her leading me out of there.”

“She did great, I told you.”

“She did, but I didn't really understand, not till I saw her at the trials, backing her person away from the big scary danger—that
stupid black umbrella.
” I had to pinch my nose to stop the tears. It didn't do to think about all that, and I still couldn't say her name, even to myself. Sometimes I'd think Good Big Dog, but that was all I could manage. Maybe in a year or two. I'd stuck the photos of her in the back of a Physician's Desk Reference Manual five years out of date. Maybe in a year or a dozen I could look at them.

We went up the steps of my rosy rental and he started toward the door, but I said, “Let's try out the porch swing first.”

We did, pushing lightly with our feet, then I asked the real question. “How are Lucille and Owen?”

“I talked to them, but I haven't been to see them. I wanted to come down here first. But listen, I want us to take my dad over there to The Netherlands next time, see Maastricht, the town where the kids study. I want him, you know, to see his people, where they come from. I mean, I've made that trip a dozen times, and he's not even been out of the country. It's another world over there, like a century ago in a way, everybody on bicycles or on foot; going over those cobblestone bridges you hear a dozen different languages at once.”

Want
us
to take him? Pete? His students? Me?

James said, “He asked how you were doing.”

“How am I
doing
? I wash my undies and it's all over town before breakfast. The first day I step out my front door, my ex's wife shows up like the Welcome Wagon.”

“You need to come back.” He turned my face to him. “I told him, my dad, I said, Janey'll be there with me, at the reunion. That's September.”

“Reunions are just for family.”

“We can remedy that. Come on back.”

“James, how can I leave here? Everybody in town needs me.”

“You stay, you'll be double-dating with that guy you used to be married to, by Christmas.” He glowered in my direction.

I nodded at the not unlikely thought. “There've been recorded cases.”

“Come on, you liked Vermont.” His voice rose, “You liked
me
.”

I took his hand and let the swing slow to a stop. “Right on both counts.”

“How about you show me your bedroom that I came all the way down here to see, now that you've really got one.” He stood and hefted his bag.

“I may not be able to, you know—in this place.”

“Hey, we're here, Janey. Don't get cold feet.”

I smiled and opened the door—no need to lock it around here. “Not in this climate.”

I let Edgar out into the green backyard, loose and off his leash since he was an ordinary dog, with a bowl of fresh water under the shady cottonwood tree.

Upstairs, out of his black t-shirt and good trousers, his heart pounding, James became his old self again, that boy I'd met at the Dog Park. Glad to have him here, I slipped out of my flowered southern dress and best new pale blue undies, and, under the breeze from the ceiling fan, we made Carolinamoon love in broad daylight on my big bed with the crisp white sheets.

He seemed agreeable—after we'd got caught up over chicken-salad sandwiches in my sunny dining room with the ceiling
fan, sharing the leftovers with Edgar, and then had a little tour of the town in the car, so as not to attract too much attention—to the idea of meeting my parents at the Southern Fried Café for supper. In fact, he seemed extra glad at the prospect of seeing my daddy again, Daddy not being one for writing thank-you letters about Sulzer Escher Wyss turbine photos.

Probably, if I hadn't been so needy to see him, so happy he'd invited himself down, I'd have thought through what our meeting my folks for a family supper in Peachland, South Carolina, meant. It meant the whole town had to show up for a look.

It was still daylight when we walked through the door, me in a long pink skirt and tee, James in a blue shirt and khakis, with Mom and Daddy following behind us. Daddy, nervous in his best summer church jacket and tie, Mom in a green-and-white flowered silk, her eyes stuck wide open with mascara. Both of them dressed for a major public social event. The arrival of Janey's new beau.

“This table good for you?” ' Maydelle asked, lifting off the RESERVED card next to the little vase of cut flowers.

“It's fine,” I said. “Maydelle, this is my friend James Maarten.”

At once, he stuck out his hand, “Maydelle,” he repeated.

While Daddy and my mom got themselves settled at the table, deciding who should sit where, I bit the bullet and, with James holding my hand, made the rounds of the crowded room.

Saying hello first to Millie and Curtis, who no doubt were sitting at the exact same table where they had eaten with her parents in another life.

“Millie, Curtis,” James repeated, hand out, eyeing my ex, a former stud grown slack, who grudgingly offered to shake.

I greeted Madge from the bank, and her husband Cletus, my lawyer. “This is James,” I presented him.

“Madge, Cletus.” He pumped their hands.

“Evening, Mr. Grady,” I said, seeing he had a RESERVED card on his table also. “And, my, this must be Gloriana, all grown up. James, this is Cornelius Grady and his niece. And this is Mr. Solomon Haynes and Blind Dog, who—.” I choked up and had to look away.

“Glad to meet you,” James said, shaking every hand. “Good boy,” he said, gently patting the big black lab.

Then he shook hands with Mr. Sturgis, who stood to his full rotund height and told him, in a near-deafening voice, how glad they were to have me back and not one instant too soon, and for him, James, not to be taking me away again any moment, now. “You hear me?”

“Mr. Sturgis,” James said, “Janey talked about you all the time, and that's the truth.”

“That right?” Mr. Sturgis, now
Orville
to me, looked around the room to be sure everyone caught that.

Mom had turned petunia pink with all the fuss over her only daughter having a decent looking man to show around. After we sat and gave our orders to Maydelle for the fried chicken and chicken-fried steak, fried okra and sweet-potato fries, and the buttermilk biscuits and the cornbread, deciding that we'd think about dessert later, Mom said, “We figured you for a keeper, James, we did, right from the start.”

“That's right,” Daddy agreed, “we figured that up there Christmas, at the home of the aunt and her
lady friend.
” He said this offhand, as if his mind had already fit the two women into it and moved on.

Mom, waving at Madge, didn't appear to hear the reference to her blood kin in another sate.

After a pause, Daddy asked, “How you been, boy? I set a lot of store by that picture of the turbine you sent me. I got it mounted in the hardware.”

“I gave
my
dad one, too,” James said, lighting up. “He's a
high school physics teacher.”

“You don't say? Your dad? Huh.” Daddy looked at me to see if he'd get in trouble asking a personal question outright. “Where's he at?”

“New Hampshire. My parents live in New Hampshire.” James looked at the ceiling, as if amazed to hear himself say the words.

“I don't know about physics, but we've got plenty of engineering around here these days. You ought to detour over to Camden to check those little Chinese refrigerators they're turning out.”

Mom looked thrilled enough to pop, and kept glancing around to note who all else in town had decided to come have supper on the spur of the moment, mid-week, at Southern Fried, and so was seeing her at the center of the event.