“It’s a beautiful home. And I like her.”
“She kind of took a shine to me,” Charlie said, “probably because of my Midwest background. Her favorite uncle was from Iowa and was the Iowa Hawkeye mascot when he went to school there. I guess the rest of her family is all East Coast, so her uncle was an exotic. She said I reminded her of her uncle. The way I talk, I suppose.”
“Do you come out often?”
“Sundays like this. There’s a little secret you don’t know about me,” he said, and he bumped her shoulder with his, flirting. “It’s nothing nefarious. It’s simply that I’m a bit of a birder. Not a big birder, but my dad has a life list and he taught me to pay attention and to look up. Around here, the river is just terrific, especially for waterfowl. So she indulges me. I sometimes come out with another guy, an old fellow named Fritz, and we sit and use binoculars and smoke cigars. That’s my confession.”
“I bet she loves having you both.”
“She scarcely notices us. We just sneak out to the edge of the river and set up our seats.”
“It’s funny you mention birds, because just before you showed up at the farm I was listening to a phoebe. We have a phoebe every spring, and I was wondering if it’s the same phoebe or different one each year.”
“Probably an ancestral nest, but I’ll ask my dad. Sayornis phoebe. It’s one of the few names I know in Latin.”
Almost on cue, a W formation of mergansers flew down the core of the river, their wings audible as they swatted air underneath them. Margaret recognized them; in Maine they landed on the fire pond beyond the barn now and then and she had looked them up in the old Norton bird book so that she would have their name for Gordon. They flew rapidly, their wings casting forward and back, rowing, and she found their passage somehow emotional. She smiled to see them, and yet felt close to crying. They reminded her of Thomas, of his northern life, and she put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder to steady herself.
“I’m a sap in the spring and fall,” she said, feeling silly and oddly moved by their swift passage over the river. “That’s my confession. I get all stirred up and I hardly know why. I’d like to know more about birds. Maybe you’ve inspired me. Maybe I’ll join a bird group when I get back.”
“I aim to serve, ma’am,” he said and smiled.
She couldn’t help it. She leaned into him and kissed him. She kissed him a long time. The mergansers, she thought, and she felt her chest flutter and she held him tighter, fearing that some part of her, some part she could never recapture, would take leave of her now and fly after the birds. After their kiss, she put her head against his chest and stood for a long time that way.
“Oh, Charlie,” she said, “what have you done to me?”
Chapter Thirteen
A little later Charlie looked back at the house and raised his hand to wave. He spotted Terry and Margaret sitting together in the catalpa’s shade, cups of tea in front of them. The women waved back. At the same moment Henry slammed a shot at his sister, Jordan, and yelped when it kissed her yellow ball.
“She’s out!” Henry shouted.
The game had devolved from croquet to Poison, a bastardization of the standard game wherein every ball was poison and could eliminate any other ball if it so much as touched it. If the ball touched a wicket or passed through one, or if it touched a post, it also died. As a result, the game established a wary dance of cat-and-mouse that forced players to lag shots into defensive positions before they could take a final leap at an exposed adversary. That was what had just occurred with Henry’s attack on Jordan.
“It didn’t touch!” Jordan countered. “Now I’ve got you.”
“It did, too, touch! Charlie, didn’t it touch?”
“I didn’t see it. I was looking up at the house.”
“Believe me,” Jordan said emphatically. She was a cute blonde, eleven, a year older than Henry, and she wore a pink sundress and bare feet today. She also wore a pink ribbon that had come undone and now trailed behind her head like a streak of color. She ignored everyone and began aiming her shot at Henry. Henry put his foot on his ball and his mallet in front of his foot.
“Don’t,” he said to Jordan. “I hit you; you’re out.”
“Why don’t we do a do-over?” Charlie asked.
“Because I hit her fair and square,” Henry lamented. “Charlie, she’s cheating.”
“So says you,” Jordan said.
“Compromise,” Charlie said. “Let’s just go back one turn. I’ll promise to pay attention this time.”
“Cheater,” Henry said, but he picked up his ball and walked it back into position. He took a long time lining up his next shot, but when he finally went his ball rolled to within a foot of Jordan’s. An easy kill shot for her.
“This is unfair,” Henry said and threw down his mallet. “She’s a cheater.”
Charlie had to fight back a laugh when Jordan stuck out her tongue at Henry. Then she lined up her shot and put Henry out of his misery. It was a quick turnaround from death to conqueror. Henry, deciding finally to be a good sport, enacted a brutal death, spinning and choking, grabbing his chest and falling slowly to his eternal rest, as the rules dictated.
“Showdown,” Jordan said, turning like a gun turret toward Charlie. “Prepare to die, Charlie.”
“Come and get me, Jordy,” Charlie answered.
Henry, from his death scene on the ground, pointed up at the sky.
“That cloud looks like an alligator,” he said.
* * *
“I’ve adopted Charlie, you know? He has that wonderful vulnerability that’s catnip to any woman. He is a little too good for the world, isn’t he? That’s always been my impression of him. This wonderful Midwestern boy who grew up going to sock hops and proms and heading out in his roadster to the Saturday football game. I suppose I romanticize him, but not by much. I keep waiting to see him do something small or mean, but he never does.”
“He’s a wonderful man,” Margaret said. “At least he seems to be. I haven’t known him for very long.”
“Yes, he is a wonderful man. But he hardly knows it himself, and that’s his charm. He gives everyone around him more credit than they’re due. He believes people are good fundamentally, and most of the people in Washington believe people are venal. It’s refreshing to be around him. He’s a tonic.”
It felt good to sit, Margaret realized. She watched Charlie playing with the kids. Beyond them, the river ran like a black sock. She sipped her tea.
“You helped him with his leg?” Margaret asked.
“I didn’t help him, but I made sure someone did. These damn wars. We have so many young people coming back with injuries, and of course Congress doesn’t like to spend the money to fix them. And they can’t really be fixed. Not deep down. But Charlie has handled his leg well. He was an athlete, so he knows how to keep his body fit and he knew how to commit himself to rehab. He’s bright as a penny now, but it took time.”
“He’s very grateful to you. I know that.”
“To be honest, I get so sick of the Washington crowd that I look forward to these young men and women who come through the hospital. I don’t mean that I want them to be injured, obviously. They just come at the world from a different place than the politicians I bump into. Charlie’s sweeter than most, but there are plenty of good young people coming through the hospitals. Has Charlie told you about Fritz?”
“The fellow bird-watcher?”
“Is that what he said?”
“Yes. Isn’t that accurate?”
Terry sipped her tea. Margaret watched as Charlie grabbed his heart and pretended to die. Someone had won something in the croquet match, but Margaret couldn’t tell who or what or why. She watched the two kids pretend to put their feet on Charlie in conquest. The boy, Henry, drummed his chest like Tarz
an.
“Fritz is a quad,” Terry said. “He’s been institutionalized since Vietnam. He stopped talking some years back, and when Charlie was in the hospital for treatment he happened to bump into him at an X-ray station or something. Somehow it happened that Charlie learned his story from the nurses, so he decided that he would sit with Fritz for a little while each day. No big deal to Charlie, but to anyone else . . . Fritz was never a very nice guy even when he did talk. So Charlie sat with him and read to him and eventually Fritz began talking again. Nothing big, no major philosophical discussions . . . just simple companionship. So Charlie found out that Fritz was from Nebraska, and that Fritz had been a bit of an amateur birder. Something about the sandhill cranes. I don’t know. I’m not much of a birder myself. Long story short, Charlie figured out a way to get Fritz a van and a driver and get him out of the hospital. He brings him here mostly, but they’ve gone to some other places . . . bird sanctuaries and parks. It’s been a transforming thing for Fritz. He’s not much less grumpy, but he communicates now and has gotten a couple other long-timers involved with birding. It’s something they can do from the windows of the hospital. So, that’s Charlie. And it’s also like Charlie to dismiss Fritz as a guy he goes birding with.”
“That’s a wonderful story.”
Terry reached forward and broke off a piece of croissant that she had saved on her plate earlier. Margaret watched as Charlie rose off the ground, pretending to growl at the kids. A bright yellow kayak passed by on the river.
“And your husband?” Terry asked. “Vegetative? That’s such a horrible word.”
“Yes, he is. He was shot in Afghanistan.”
“I’m sorry. I knew the basics from Charlie. What a shame.”
“He was a very good man,” Margaret said and she felt tears suddenly fill the spaces behind her eyes. “Is a good man, I mean.”
“And you’re a good woman.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve felt like a traitor all weekend. Or not like a traitor, but something else.”
“It can’t always be about him, Margaret. I don’t know your situation, so forgive me, but I know many men and women who have found themselves in situations they never dreamed of before these wars. They’re good people, believe me. One of the sordid side notes to these wars is the notion that people can simply go along without it affecting their lives. I’ve been thinking about this lately, and of course I run into it all the time at the hospital. Because we see so little of the war on television, and we debate so little about it in any meaningful way, we’ve relegated it as a nation to a small parlor in the back of our minds. People aren’t drafted, you see? So the war is simply a thing that certain people are hired to carry out. It’s a job we contract out, like a kitchen renovation. That sounds horrible, but it’s true. And if some people are injured on that job, well, we say we care and we have Veterans Day, but we’ve cut benefits to wounded soldiers. Sorry to unload all of this on you, but I can’t always speak my mind to folks around here. The point I’m trying to make is that we have people enduring tremendous pain and suffering, all against a backdrop of normalcy for everyone else. So if you have indulged yourself to some degree this weekend, don’t sit in judgment. Your husband was caught up in these terrible wars, but so were you. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say in my long-winded way.”
“Well, thank you for saying it.”
“I knew a woman in your circumstances who divorced her husband and then adopted him. Crazy sounding, I know, but these are crazy times.”
“I couldn’t do that,” Margaret said.
“No, I didn’t think you could. And listen to me making all of these pronouncements and I hardly know you. But I feel as though I do, so forgive me. Now we should change the subject. Tell me about farm life in Maine.”
Margaret smiled.
“It’s not very glamorous, I’m afraid,” she said. “The wardrobe consists mostly of old jeans, a down vest, and muck boots.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Come visit someday,” Margaret said and she meant it because she felt a warm, genuine connection to Terry. “We live in a beautiful area. We have an old farmhouse that is the devil to heat in the winter, but through three seasons it’s very pretty. And the farm is set on rolling hills, so it looks like a farm should look. It’s a simple life, but a good one. I love it. It’s down deep in my blood.”
“You know, I go up to Maine every now and then so I might surprise you. Is it near the seacoast?”
“Inland. Old logging country.”
Terry moved her chin slightly to indicate that Charlie was returning. She sipped her tea and when she put down her cup she smiled at Charlie. Margaret watched as Charlie sat down.
“What kind of horrible things have you two been discussing?” Charlie asked.
“Why is it that whenever a man sees two women together he assumes they’ve been talking about him?”
“Because we’re paranoid and it’s a matter of survival.”
“Who won the game?” Margaret asked.
“Just a battle in an ongoing war,” Charlie said. “Each side claims victory, but I think a careful study of the replay might give the nod to Jordan.”
“What time is it?” Margaret asked.
Charlie glanced at his watch.
“It’s getting close to noon.”
“I’m such a bad flier,” Margaret explained to Terry. “And I never trust connections will go off as they should.”
“You’re more than welcome to hang out here,” Terry said. “Airports are such horrible places.”
Charlie poured himself a glass of water. He drank it down in a couple of swigs. Then he poured himself more.
“I’ll be right back,” Margaret said, rising.
“Good,” Charlie said, “now we can gossip about you.”
“Or start a fan club,” Terry said and reached across the table and took Margaret’s hand.
“I’m going to come visit you someday on your farm,” Terry said. “I’d like that very much.”
“I hope you will,” Margaret said. She squeezed Terry’s hand. Then she left the table and went toward the house to use the bathroom and to call the airport.
Chapter Fourteen
Margaret used the half bath off the kitchen. She washed her face and hands and then took a moment to brush back her hair with her fingers. She felt tired and her face, she decided, appeared washed out. She wanted to pinch her cheeks, as Scarlett O’Hara had done in Gone with the Wind, but that seemed silly. She wished, absently, that she possessed more skill with makeup. She did not care for makeup as a rule, but there were times, times like now, when a touch of makeup would have been a welcome friend. She wanted to look her best with Charlie, and if that made her vain, so be it. She leaned close to the mirror, checked her skin, checked both sides of her mouth, then stared for a moment into her own eyes.
It was all very simple. She had fallen for Charlie, and Terry had confirmed what she already knew—that Charlie was a fine man—and then Terry had put into her head the idea that one could go around things a little in a time of war. Margaret was not sure Terry had meant it that way, but there it was: she could divorce Thomas and adopt him so that her responsibility to him changed from wife to mother. And, really, wasn’t that a more honest arrangement? She was a mother to him; her visits had long ago changed from a wife’s visits to her husband’s bedside, to the practical, maternal visits she experienced now. Was he being turned enough? Had they tried a new regimen against staph infections? Procedural questions and discussions. How many years had it been, she wondered, since she had climbed into bed with Thomas and held him, used the weight of his body for comfort? She had done that often in the first months after his return. Wife and husband. It had not been a case of playing the dramatic near-widow, the yearning, devoted wife, but rather, a case
of longing and desire, a case of a wife wanting her husband to return to her. Come back to me, she had whispered like a prayer, saying it in their private moments, whispering it in his ear, and she had said it so much that she had believed, in a small, delicate tissue of hope, that he would hear her and follow her voice back to consciousness. It was ludicrous; she knew better. But it had been a wife calling for her husband, and she wondered now, staring into the mirror, when that impulse had changed. When had she become the mother visiting the child with measles?
It was important, she decided, not to obscure things. Not to pretend one thing and do another. No hypocrisy. If she wanted to be with Charlie—and she did, down deep inside her—then she needed to be clear and forthright about it. In some curious way, Thomas deserved that. He deserved honesty. She was going to go with Charlie to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and she accepted that as a married woman, as a woman with a husband in a bed in Bangor, Maine, as a person whose wedding vows still remained intact. Eyes open, she told herself. No pretending or giving the choice a fancy coloring.
She examined her face one more time, brushed down her clothes, shaped the dress around her hips and breasts, then stepped back into the kitchen. For a moment she misremembered the direction of the backyard. It took her a second to get her bearings. By the time she sat on the lovely living room couch, her phone open to her ear, she heard a clock ringing noon.
* * *
“Will you go for a little walk with me?” Charlie asked and held out his hand. “Terry’s turned on a movie for the kids and she’s going to sit inside and watch it with them. Everyone else has cleared out. I want to show you something.”
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