“Local legend is important here, as it is with most small towns. Ursula Harris in the English department teaches a course on this.” Anna walked farther in and took a seat opposite him. “For example, I was sitting in the movie theater last year and two elderly ladies came in and sat behind me. They were talking about someone named Phineas Young and how he was the strongest man in town and he was going to tear down a rock wall at the back of their property for them. I’d been looking for someone to remove some stumps in my backyard, so I turned around and asked them if I could have his number. They told me he had a waiting list and he might not live long enough to get to me. It turns out that the strongest man in town is ninety-one years old. But local legend has it that in every generation of Youngs, there’s always one named Phineas, who is born with superior strength, and that’s who you want to help you with hard labor.”
“What does this have to do with Claire?”
“Locals believe that what’s grown in the Waverleys’ garden has certain powers. And the Waverleys have an apple tree that is talked about in almost mythic proportions around here. But it’s just a garden, and it’s just an apple tree. Claire is mysterious because all her ancestors were mysterious. She’s really just like you and me. She’s probably even more savvy than the average person. After all, she was smart enough to turn that local legend into a lucrative business.”
There was probably some truth to what Anna was saying. But Tyler couldn’t help but remember how, when he was young, every year on January 17 it snowed on their colony in Connecticut. There was no meteorological explanation, but legend had it that a beautiful Indian maid, a daughter of winter, had died on that day, and every year since, the sky wept cold snowy tears for her. And as a boy it was a fact that if you caught exactly twenty fireflies in a jar, then let them all out before you went to bed, you’d sleep through the night without bad dreams. Some things couldn’t be explained. Some things could. Sometimes you liked the explanation. Sometimes you didn’t. That’s when you called it myth.
“I get the feeling this isn’t what you wanted to know,” Anna said.
Tyler smiled. “Not exactly.”
“Well, I know she’s not married. And I know she has a half-sister.”
“Half-sister?” Tyler said with interest.
“They have different fathers, from what I’ve heard. Their mother was a little wild. She left town, had kids, brought the kids here, then left again. I take it you’re interested in Claire?”
“Yes,” Tyler said.
“Well, good luck,” Anna said as she stood. “But don’t mess it up. I don’t want to have to find someone else to work our department parties just because you broke our caterer’s heart.”
At home late that night, Tyler sat on his couch in his shorts and a short-sleeved button-down shirt, trying to focus on the class line-drawing assignments, but he kept thinking about Claire. Anna didn’t know Claire. No one really knew Claire. As a matter of fact, Sydney was probably the only person who could give him any insight into the woman who wouldn’t leave his thoughts since the moment he first spoke to her.
Sydney said she’d talk to Claire, so he’d wait to hear from her.
Or maybe he would call Sydney in the morning and talk about Claire.
Or stop by the White Door tomorrow.
The phone rang, and he reached over to where he’d set the portable on the coffee table.
“Hello?”
“Tyler, it’s Sydney.”
“Whoa,” Tyler said, sitting back on the couch. “I was just hoping you’d call.”
“It’s Claire,” Sydney said in a soft voice. “She’s out in the garden. The gate is unlocked. You might want to come over.”
“She doesn’t want me over there.” He hesitated. “Does she?”
“But I think she might need you. I’ve never seen her like this.”
“Like what?”
“She’s like a live wire. She’s actually singeing things.”
He remembered the feeling. “I’ll be right over.”
He walked across the yard and around the Waverley home to the back garden. Like Sydney said, the gate was unlocked, and he pushed it open.
He was immediately met with the scent of warm mint and rosemary, as if he’d walked into a kitchen with herbs simmering on the stove.
The footpath lamps looked like small runway lights, and they cast a yellowy glow over the garden. The apple tree was a dim figure at the back of the lot, shivering slightly, like the way a cat’s fur crawls in its sleep. He found Claire in the herb patch, and the image stopped him short. Her short hair was pulled back with that white headband. She was on her knees in a long white nightgown that had straps over the shoulders and a ruffle at the hem. He could make out the sway of her breasts as she picked at the ground with a hand rake. All of a sudden he had to bend over and put his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths.
Sydney was right. He was hopeless.
When he finally felt he could stand without passing out, he slowly walked over to Claire, not wanting to startle her. He was almost next to her when she finally stopped raking around the plants. The leaves of some were dark, as if burned. More still looked wilted, as if they’d been exposed to something hot. She turned her head and looked up at him. Her eyes were red.
Good God, she was crying?
Tears did him in. All his students knew it. All it took was one tear from a freshman who had too much homework and couldn’t complete her assignment for him, and he was giving her an extension and offering to talk to her other professors for her.
She winced when she saw him and looked away. “Go away, Tyler.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” she said tersely, clawing the dirt with her hand rake again.
“Please don’t cry.”
“What does it matter to you? This has nothing to do with you.”
“I’m making it something to do with me.”
“I hit my thumb. It hurt. Ouch.”
“Sydney wouldn’t have called me if this was just about a sore thumb.”
That did it. That pushed a button. Her head jerked around. “She called you?”
“She said you were upset.”
She seemed to struggle with the words at first. But she got over that pretty quickly. “I can’t believe she called you! Will it ease her conscience if she knows you’ll be here for me when she goes? You’ll leave too. Doesn’t she know that? No, she doesn’t know that, because she always does the leaving. She never gets left.”
“She’s leaving?” Tyler asked, confused. “I’m leaving?”
Claire’s lips were trembling. “You all leave. My mother, my grandmother, Sydney. Even Evanelle has someone else now.”
“First of all, I’m not going anywhere. Second, where is Sydney going?”
Claire turned away again. “I don’t know. I’m just afraid she is.”
She likes things that don’t go away. Sydney had told him that. This woman had been abandoned too many times to let anyone in again. The epiphany brought him to his knees. His legs literally gave out from under him. So many things about her made sense now. He’d lived next door to the Waverley house long enough to know that maybe there was some merit to local legend, but Anna was right about one thing. Claire was like everyone else. She hurt just like everyone else. “Oh, Claire.”
He was beside her now, both on their knees. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“I can’t help it,” he said, reaching out to touch her hair. He expected her to pull away, but to his surprise, she leaned into his hand slightly, her eyes closed, looking so vulnerable.
He inched forward, lifting his other hand to her hair, now cupping her head. Their knees touched and she leaned forward to rest her head on his shoulder. Her hair was so soft. He ran his fingers through it, then he touched her shoulders. She was soft everywhere. He rubbed her back, trying to give her some comfort but not knowing exactly what she needed.
After a moment Claire pul
led back and looked at him. Her eyes were still wet with tears, and he used his thumbs to wipe her cheeks. She lifted her hands to his face, touching him like he touched her. Her fingers outlined his lips and he could only watch, as if he were outside himself, as she leaned in to kiss him. This would be a stupid time to faint, he told himself. Then she ended the kiss, and he returned to his body and thought, No! He followed her as she pulled back, his lips finding hers. Minutes passed like this, hearts beating harder, their hands going everywhere. At one point he had to tell himself this was about her, not him, about her pain, not his pleasure. But she wasn’t exactly complaining, he thought on a wince as she bit his bottom lip.
“Tell me to stop,” he said.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered back, kissing down his neck. “Make it better.”
She worked at the buttons on his shirt, her fingers shaking, clumsy. Finally she had his shirt open and her hands touched his chest, sliding around to his back. She hugged him, putting her cheek over his heart. His skin tightened and air hissed through his teeth at the contact. It almost hurt, but it felt so good, that energy, that hot frustration seeping through his skin. There was too much of it, though, and he couldn’t absorb it all.
This was probably going to kill me, he thought drunkenly. But it was a hell of a way to die.
He shrugged out of his shirt, but she didn’t let go. He finally pulled her up so he could kiss her again. She pushed and he fell on his back to the ground, but they never broke the kiss. He was lying on some herb, thyme maybe, and his weight was crushing it, its scent exploding around them. This all was faintly familiar to him somehow, but he couldn’t quite place it.
Claire finally pulled up for a breath. She was straddling him, her hands flat against his chest, sending erotic pulses into him. Tears were still running down her cheeks.
“God, please don’t cry. Please. I’ll do anything.”
“Anything?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Will you not remember this tomorrow? Will you forget everything tomorrow?”
He hesitated. “Are you asking me to?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
She pulled her gown over her head, and suddenly it was hard to breathe again. His hands went up to touch her breasts, and she cried out at the surge the contact caused.
He immediately pulled back. He felt like a teenager again. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered.
She lowered herself to his chest, flattening her breasts against him. “Just don’t let go.”
He wound his arms around her and reversed their positions, rolling her over onto some sage. Again, it was so familiar. He kissed her hard, and she grabbed his hair and wound her legs around him. He couldn’t make love to her, not right now. She wasn’t thinking straight, and she didn’t want consequences tomorrow. That’s why she wanted him to forget.
“No, don’t stop,” she said when he broke the kiss.
“I’m not stopping,” he said, kissing her neck as his thumbs hooked into the sides of her plain white underwear. Her abdominal muscles jumped nervously as he pulled them down. He kissed her breasts, took one nipple in his mouth. He could almost remember doing this to her once, but he didn’t understand. He’d never been with Claire before.
Then he remembered.
It was that dream.
He’d dreamed this all before.
He knew exactly what was going to happen, the smell around them, how she would taste.
Everything about Claire screamed fate. And everything that had brought him here to Bascom, following dreams that never came true, led him to this.
The one dream that did.
The next morning, Claire felt a swish of air and heard a thud echo in her ear, coming from the ground beside her.
She opened her eyes, and there was a small apple about six inches from her face. Another thud, and another apple appeared beside it.
She’d fallen asleep outside again. She’d done it so many times before that she didn’t even think. She just sat up, shaking dirt out of her hair, and automatically reached for her gardening tools.
But something wasn’t right. First of all, the ground she used to leverage herself up was soft and warm. And the air seemed to feel a little cooler on her skin. She felt a little…
She looked down and gasped.
She was naked!
And that soft warm ground beside her was Tyler!
His eyes were open, and he was smiling. “Good morning.”
Everything came back to her, every humiliating, cathartic, erotic thing he’d done to her. But then she realized she was sitting there naked, staring at him like an idiot. She slapped an arm over her bare breasts and looked around for her nightgown. Tyler was lying on it. She tugged on it and he sat up.
She pulled the gown over her head, relishing the brief time she could hide her face behind the fabric. Oh, God. Where was her underwear? She saw them by her feet and snatched them up. “Don’t say anything,” she said as she stood. “You promised me you would forget everything. Don’t say a word about this.”
He rubbed at his eyes sleepily, still smiling. “Okay.”
She stared at him again. He had dirt and thyme in his hair. He still had on his shorts, but his chest was bare. He had red splotches all over his skin, burn marks from her, and yet he didn’t seem to mind. Not then, not now. How could he do that, all that last night, for no pleasure on his part, just for her?
She turned and started walking down the pathway, but stopped when he said, “You’re welcome.”
For some reason, that made her feel better. He was being an asshole. He expected her to thank him. She turned around. “Excuse me?”
He pointed to the ground beside him. “You wrote it, here.”
Curious, she walked back to him and looked. There on the ground were the words Thank You, raised in the dirt, as if written from underneath.
She let out a growl of frustration and picked up one of the apples. She threw it as hard as she could at the tree.
“I didn’t write that,” she said, and stormed away. Fat raindrops began to fall as she ran out of the garden. By the time she’d reached the house, the sky had opened up and it was pouring.
Fred drove home in the rain that evening, thinking about James. He was always alone when he let himself think of him, afraid that someone might see him and know what he was doing.
Fred had always known he was gay, but when he met James his freshman year at Chapel Hill University, he thought he finally understood why. Because he was meant to be with James. Fred’s mother had died in her bed when he was fifteen; his father died at the kitchen table when Fred was in college. That’s when Fred had to drop out and leave James, to come home and take over the store. He thought it was his father’s final punch, to take Fred away from something that finally brought him joy regardless of what people thought.
But after a tearful good-bye at school, to Fred’s surprise, James showed up in Bascom three weeks later.
Eventually, with time on his hands, James took classes at Orion while Fred ran the store. He got his degree in finance and a commuter job in Hickory. Over the years he encouraged Fred to get rid of everything that reminded Fred of his father and his cruelly withheld approval. It was James who said, “Let’s go out to eat. Let’s go to the movies. Let’s dare the people of this town to say something.”
And what was once youthful indiscretion, two twenty-one-year-olds quitting school and moving in together, finally answerable to no one, turned into more than thirty years of companionship. To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn’t what he expected. He wished he had paid more attention to the story.
He wished he’d paid more attention to the storyteller.
He drove to Evanelle’s house. He’d forgotten his umbrella, so he had to run to the porch in the rain. He stopped at the door to take off his wet jacket and shoes. He didn’t want to get water all over her nice floors.
“I’m up here,” she said, and he followed her voice to the attic.
Evanelle was trying to sweep the sawdust that the workers had produced that day, but it was like trying to sweep tiny birds who flew away in a flurry when you touched them. She was wearing a white face mask, because every sweep of her broom sent the sawdust birds into the air, making the entire space beige and smoky.
“Please don’t do this. I don’t want you to wear yourself out,” Fred said, walking over to her and taking her broom. Being left makes you doubt your ability to keep people, even friends. He wanted Evanelle to be happy he was there, to do all he could for her. He couldn’t bear to lose her too. “The workers will clean up when they’re done.”
Evanelle still had on the mask, but the skin around her eyes crinkled in a smile. “It’s coming along real nice up here, don’t you think?”
“It looks great,” he said. “It’s going to be great.” As soon as he moved his things in, that is. But that involved going back to his house, something he’d been avoiding.
“What’s the matter?” Evanelle asked, sliding the mask up and resting it on the top of her head like a beanie.
“I had some bag boys drop off boxes at my house today. I’m finally going over there to do some packing. I was thinking of renting out the house. What do you think?” he asked, eager for her opinion.
She nodded. “I think it’s a fine idea. You know you can stay here with me as long as you want. I love having you.”
He let out a wet laugh, full of sudden tears in the back of his throat. “You love having a fool with a broken heart around?”
“Some of the best people I know are fools,” Evanelle said. “The strongest people I know.”
“I don’t know how strong I’m being.”
“Trust me. Even Phineas Young would be in awe. Want me to go with you to your house?”
He nodded. He wanted that more than he could say.
It was the first time since James had taken his things out that Fred had been in the house. He looked around the living room. It felt strange to be here now, and he didn’t want to linger. This place wasn’t home without James, it was just a lot of bad memories of Fred’s father.
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