A Man of His Own

by Susan Wilson

  The good news is that Francesca and Keller seem willing to be in the same room together a lot more now. It’s easier, not having to go from living room to garage all afternoon long while Francesca irons and Keller reads. Now they sit together, reading and talking, in the living room while Rick naps in his room. Pax settles on the braided rug and dozes, listening to their low voices. He doesn’t understand one word, but the soft human vocalizations lull him. Francesca’s voice has lost some of the tautness he’d grown used to hearing. Keller is using his voice more. They vocalize like crooning littermates, and Pax enjoys the sound of effortless companionship. He’s one of them, Keller’s sock-covered toes scratching at his belly, Francesca’s fingertips finding the nirvana place at the base of his tail. Good boy, Pax. They smile over him, pleased with him. He’s keeping everyone happy.

  He is a good boy and life is sweet.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Keller chalks up that spontaneous hug to the emotion of the moment. She was upset, and he just wanted her to feel better. He tells himself that it wasn’t any more significant than had Francesca been his sister. Or cousin. Except that he’s never had a sister, or had any desire to touch either of his female cousins, who lodge in his memory as tormentors, not pals.

  If it meant only a quick dash of human kindness, why are they assiduously avoiding physical contact now? If her hand bumps his in passing the salt, she apologizes. If he accidently grazes her with his arm as he is reaching for a screwdriver out of the utensil drawer, he backs away like he’s been scalded. If it meant nothing, why does he think about it all the time? The feel of her cheek against his chest, the way she sank into him, as if climbing into a life raft. How good it felt to have his arms around another human being. It wakes him up at night.

  After a warm early fall, the weather has turned more seasonable, and even with two extra army blankets over him and the dog’s warmth, it’s getting pretty hard to imagine staying in the garage bedroom much longer. At the very least, they’ll have to start closing the connecting doors to keep the cold out of the house, and that will make it difficult to hear Rick if he needs Keller in the night, and Pax will have to chose one place or the other to sleep. They haven’t talked about it yet, but they’ll have to. Not counting the den, which has been made over into Rick’s sickroom, the house has only two bedrooms, both on the second floor.

  The thing is, Keller hates giving up the privacy, or the illusion of privacy, that the garage apartment offers. If he moves into the spare bedroom, there will be no separating himself from the Stantons. Even retreating to an upstairs bedroom to read or do homework won’t give him the psychological break that going into his “apartment” lends.

  But it’s not just a loss of privacy that makes moving into the house an uncomfortable idea. After all, he’s said good night to her any number of times and watched her mount the stairs to bed. Greeted her as she comes down in the morning, housecoat tied neatly around her waist but her curls tousled and her cheeks rosy like a child’s. If she’s slept well, he can see it in her clear eyes; equally, a restless night and he can read in the shadows beneath her eyes the thoughts that have kept her awake. Once, she greeted him exactly as she does Rick: “Good morning, sunshine.” She blushed at her mistake, but throughout the day he kept smiling at having been so greeted.

  Keller just can’t imagine being across the landing from her all night long. It’s just too intimate. It just doesn’t seem—what’s the word?—proper for him, as a single man, to be sleeping across the hall from his landlady. Sleeping, or not sleeping, a mere two yards apart.

  Landlady. Keller laughs at his choice of word. What is she really? His boss? No. Rick’s wife. He would be sleeping in close proximity to Rick’s wife. What would the neighbors think? “What do you say, Pax? Will the neighbors talk if they think I’m sleeping on the same floor as a married woman? Will you chaperone us?” Pax just shakes from nose to tail, stretches fore and aft, and utters nothing useful.

  Maybe he’ll go to the hardware store down on Hancock Street tomorrow and see if they have any space heaters he’d feel safe using. During the worst of the winter months, when the woodstove in the parlor was inadequate to the task, Clayton would haul out a cylindrical kerosene heater and fire it up. Keller remembers sleeping with one eye open on those nights, the noxious fumes of the burning kerosene leaving a bad taste on his tongue, and the fear of burning to death in the night.

  It’s easier to think of tomorrow’s errands than it is his task of tonight. It’s decidedly the oddest request that Rick has made of him, and he’s still not certain how to handle it. Francesca kicked about it, too, but in the end Rick, as always, made a good case. It’s their anniversary, the Stantons. And Rick wants Keller to take Francesca out to dinner and to the Totem Pole Ballroom out in Auburndale. “Be my surrogate.”

  Keller had to look the word up. Surrogate, meaning “replacement.” A willing replacement.

  “It’s what I would be doing, and why should Francesca be denied a little fun just because I can’t do it?”

  “I don’t dance.” That seemed the most reasonable way to refuse. “I mean, not since they forced us to learn the box step in gym class.”

  “Francesca is a wonderful dancer; she’ll help you out.”

  “Rick, don’t do this.” Francesca twisted a tea towel in her hands, and the smile on her face failed to suggest that she thought he was teasing, that Rick was having them on.

  “Honey, come on. It’ll be fun.”

  Keller put his oar in. “Rick, you take her. I’ll drive you there. We can go early, get a good seat for you close to the floor.”

  “And do the jitterbug with her? No. I want her to dance and I want you to take her.”

  Rick keeps doing this, throwing them together, as if their eating at the Clam Shack or taking a walk or going to a picture show somehow entertains him.

  “But, Rick, it’s our anniversary. I want to spend it with you.” Francesca had that tension in her voice again. The tension of not saying what she wants to.

  Keller left the room; this was just too marital for him. Later, she came to him, smiling, shaking her head, as if Rick were a naughty little boy getting his way. “Have you ever been to the Totem Pole? We used to love to go. Good music. And, Kel, we don’t have to dance if it makes you uncomfortable.”

  Keller wondered if she meant dancing in general, or just dancing with her might make him uncomfortable.

  “Francesca, we can do whatever you’d like to do.”

  “I think I’d like to go.” At once, Francesca looks young, girlish.

  “Then we’ll go.” He points at her, smiles. “As long as you don’t ask me to tango.”

  * * *

  “You kids look beautiful.” Rick shifts in his wheelchair. “Where’s the corsage?” Keller hands him the box with the flower in it, ordered, exactly as Rick wanted—pink and blue chrysanthemums with a white ribbon. Rick gets the box open, but they all realize at the same time that there is no way he can pin it on his wife. Keller awkwardly fashions the arrangement to Francesca’s dress. It flops and she unpins it, walks to the hallway mirror, and fixes it for herself. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.” She doesn’t look at either of them, so it’s hard to tell whom she is thanking.

  In order to make this less like a date and more like a night of bowling, they’ve had dinner already. Before he took his plate into his room, Keller got Rick out of his and to the dining room table, where he had put two place settings, a little bouquet of fall flowers in the center to mark the special occasion of their anniversary and Rick’s grudging willingness to sit at the table. Rick insisted that he not be put to bed, that he’d be up waiting for them with Pax. He and Pax would listen to the live broadcast from the Totem Pole on the radio. He’d be fine, he insisted.

  By the time Keller and Francesca arrive at Norumbega Park, the Totem Pole Ballroom is crowded and the dance floor swarming with people dancing to a small combo warming the crowd up for the next act. Black tuxedos and
gowns in jewel-like colors blur and spin below them. Keller is dressed in his only pair of good trousers, black merino wool, his only dress shirt, and a tie borrowed from Rick. His jacket is borrowed, too. He’s never owned a suit, never before felt the need, but here he stands with Francesca, in the dress that she made herself. She’d chosen the material well, with an eye toward what’s fashionable, and she looks every bit as sophisticated as anyone else on that dance floor in the bell-shaped skirt and narrow belted waist of her blue-and-white dress. He offers his arm and they descend to find an empty seat.

  “Can I get you something? A martini, maybe?” A martini sounds as sophisticated as she looks, he thinks.

  Francesca tilts her head, nibbles her lower lip. He can see the thought process behind her eyes. Should she relax enough to say yes? Should they keep this as simply fulfilling a bizarre whim of Rick’s? “Sure. Why not.”

  It takes nearly fifteen minutes to get through the pack lined up at the bar, and then he loses some of the expensive drink as he maneuvers his way through the crowd back to where Francesca waits, her gaze on the dancing couples, a smile on her face, as if she knows she needs to look like she’s having a good time. But Keller recognizes that wan smile as one she so often wears when Rick has been difficult. “Here you go. What’s the expression? Mud in your eye?” He wants to get that wan smile off her face and replace it with a genuine one.

  “Something like that. I’m afraid I’ve never been one of the toast-giving crowd.”

  “Me, either. Seems like something they only do in the movies.” Keller sips the martini, fishes out the olive, is uncertain if he’s supposed to eat it, puts it back in, leaning the tiny sword that skewers it against the rim of the glass.

  They watch the crowd in silence for a bit. It seems obvious to Keller that he should ask her to dance. They can’t keep sitting here all evening drinking expensive drinks, ignoring the intent of being in such a place; it’s not the sort of place where you go simply to sit and drink martinis. Rick is listening to the WNBC broadcast and will grill them later, want to know what music they danced to. “I have to live vicariously now. Do it for me.” That’s what he said as they went out the door.

  Keller starts to speak, when Francesca sets her drink down and says. “So, tell me, how do you know so much about carpentry? You were a fisherman, right? Before the war?”

  Maybe it’s the unaccustomed martini, or maybe it’s the music surrounding this conversation; maybe it’s the fact that, in asking him about himself, Francesca has laid a hand on his arm, just above his wrist. Whatever it is, he is drawn into telling her the truth. “I went to reform school when I was nine. I learned carpentry there.” He sits back, pulls his arm away, and waits for her reaction.

  “Nine. Oh my, what could you have possibly done to get sent to reform school at that age?” She doesn’t look at him with distaste, but curiosity, maybe even a skeptical amusement, as if she doesn’t believe him.

  “Truancy. Well, I decked a truant officer and the state took that as a sign of my delinquent nature.”

  “That seems very harsh.”

  “In a lot of ways, it was better than getting passed around from relative to relative who didn’t want me. I got three squares a day and clothing that mostly fit. And a trade.”

  “But you were smart. I saw the inscription on your book that your teacher wrote. She thought a lot of you.”

  “Miss Jacobs? Yeah, she did. But that was when I was living with Clayton. He claimed me when I was sixteen. Put me to work.”

  They sit quietly, letting the old war tunes work a little nostalgia on them. Keller tosses back the rest of his martini. “Hey, we’re here to dance, not reminisce.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  The radio is tuned into WNBC’s local affiliate. At nine o’clock, live music from the Totem Pole Ballroom begins. The announcer introduces the band, no one Rick has ever heard of, and the guest singer, also no one Rick has ever heard of. No Dinah Shore or Dorsey Brothers. But the music is nice and they play a lot of tunes he remembers from when he and Francesca thought a good night out on the town was when they went someplace and danced. For a little Iowa girl, Francesca knew how to do all the modern dances—jitterbug, Lindy hop, and even the East Coast swing. She was fun to sweep off the floor in his showboating exuberance, swinging her up feetfirst toward the ceiling. Keller may take her out on the floor, maybe even now as the band plays a Duke Ellington song, but Rick doubts he’ll have any of those moves. Too bad. Francesca deserves to have a great partner on the dance floor.

  Pax stands up and shakes himself, shoves his nose beneath Rick’s resting hand so that Rick can give him a good ear scratch. It’s well past the point in the evening when Rick is put to bed, if only to lie there awake. Long hours in the chair, longer hours in the bed. The band finishes up “Cottontail” with a flourish, and the sound of applause fills the airwaves. The band leader introduces the next song, and a bouncy tune Rick doesn’t recognize comes out of the boxy radio. His fingers begin to tap out the rhythm on the dog’s skull, gentle six-eight taps, as if he’s playing drums. Pax wags his tail and laughs his doggy laugh. Rick dances his fingers up and down the dog’s long back and Pax motors his back leg as if he’s being tickled. The music changes to a swing rhythm and Rick rocks from side to side, patting the new beat on his paralyzed knees. He can hear it but not feel the slap. He slaps his face on the bad side. A different sound than hitting terry-cloth-covered dead knees. Sharp and snappy. He slaps his good cheek and says, “Ouch!” He does it again. Pax has stopped laughing and watches, his eyes on Rick, his nose working and his ears, determined to comprehend Rick’s behavior. He’s making the sound of violence but laughing at the same time. Puzzled, but convinced there is no danger, Pax sits facing Rick.

  “Let’s dance, big boy.” Rick thrusts the knotted rope toward Pax. Obligingly, the dog grasps the end and tugs left, in the direction Rick is looking. Then Rick quickly looks right and the dog tugs him right. The wheelchair swings left, then right, but not in time with the music. Pax can move him only a foot or so in either direction. It’s more a slow waltz than dancing to the thumping beat of the high-energy trumpet solo being played now.

  The plaintive first notes from a clarinet take the place of the energetic piece and a slow and sensuous music fills the room. Whatever it is, the key provokes a musical nostalgia in Rick. Every rising note reminds him that he is not listening to this music with his wife on their anniversary; he’s playing with his dog and his wife is maybe dancing to this very sweet and sensual music with another man. Dancing in the very place where he got down on one knee, just like in the movies, and asked her, their acquaintance barely a week old, to marry him. And she said yes. He has cheated Francesca of the life she deserved.

  Every descending third in the clarinet solo reminds him of how much he loves her. And how often he treats her like a servant, an annoyance. “Pax, why do I do that?”

  Pax has let go of the rope. He has no answers.

  The radio is on the built-in shelves that house the encyclopedias and the dictionary. The glow from the tubes casts a candlelike warmth into that dark corner. The music has grown too much to bear, but no one has taught the dog how to turn the radio off. Whenever the band takes a break, in that few seconds before the band leader or the announcer or whoever he is introduces the next song, Rick can hear the crowd noises—applause, laughter, the clink of stemware against stemware. People having fun. Francesca and Keller, having fun. It’s what he wanted, to give her a good time. Is that her voice he hears, laughing like she used to in the days when the Totem Pole was their place? Touching him just so, so that he knew when it was time to leave; to go home and continue the dance. How soon would she suggest to Keller that they leave? How soon before her fingertips graze the back of his neck?

  He has got to shut this radio off. It’s enough to have made them go; it’s suddenly too much to listen to it. He’s like a blind man imagining a elephant.

  “Pax, pull me.” Rick tosses the end o
f the knotted rope out to the dog as if he’s throwing himself a lifeline. “Pull.” The dog is so astute to his gestures that Rick has only to look at the radio to get the dog to aim for it. The dog has to back up. If he were wearing a harness, he could pull Rick by moving forward, a more natural and effective method. But, as it is, the big dog literally has to back himself into a corner in order to get Rick where he wants to go. Which means that he can only get him within a foot of his objective, because the dog’s own body is in the way. “Good boy.” Pax slips out from the alley made between Rick’s chair and the shelves. Rick can get himself close enough now; his good left hand is enough to propel the chair forward that much more. Except that the radio isn’t on the lower shelf. It’s placed on the third; no one took the time to move the books, instead just setting up the radio in the most convenient place. Keller drilled a hole in the shelves so that the cord, attached to an extension cord, runs down the back of the unit and disappears behind the closed doors of the built-in cupboard that makes up the base. Rick’s fingers don’t quite reach to the knob. No one has ever thought that Rick might want to shut the goddamned thing off. It’s become such a habit, this leaving him out of things, making sure he wants for nothing and, by doing so, turning him into a hopeless invalid.

  Rick stretches as far as he can reach. The music continues to taunt him, louder, livelier, sexier. She looked so beautiful tonight. Keller’s hands on her as he struggled with the corsage. Shy or desirous? Rick pushes his chair back a foot. Examines the geometry of his helplessness. In therapy, they want him to get to the point where he can push himself up, be of more help to those helping him. Rick grips the armrest and pushes himself toward the radio; he lifts himself half a foot, maybe more, and then is struck with the truth. If he lifts himself with his only hand, he has nothing to shut the radio off with. He starts to laugh, a dry, hacking, chest-deep sound that brings Pax to his side. Even the dog knows that there is no humor in the sound he’s making.