by Tina Welling
Seems I can. “Suzannah.” Seems a smile loosens itself.
“I mean it. You are beautiful.” Did he say that once before and I didn’t hear? I smile in response and look around the room again. Eyes are still watching us; one set is familiar. It takes me a moment to attach a name. Mick Farlow, Bo’s lawyer friend. I haven’t encountered him since the barbecue. At the memory, I look again at the table and make chain links with my glass.
“The bastard isn’t worth it,” Deak says.
I look up at him.
“Give me a shot. I’ll be gone singing in some other smoky bar in a few weeks, and by then the son of a bitch will have had some time to set his priorities straight.”
“It’s not my style,” I say. The idea has appeal though, and I laugh a bit to think of being involved in a romance that simple. Not a romance simple enough to fix with a little dash of jealousy, but one that lasts till the lover moves on to some other smoky bar. At the moment that suits me. Brief and uncomplicated. Fun and fast moving. I have been primed for romance since I understood the one with Erik was all in my head.
Deak tells me his group, Your Sister’s Cherry, has one more set to play. Then the motel restaurant next door is fixing the band steaks for a late dinner. He’d like it very much if I would join them.
I can’t believe I heard the name of his group right. I look toward the bandstand and read the name on one of the drums.
Yep.
I decide two things: One, I will not look shocked and ask about this name. And two, I’ll go to dinner. I’ll go because I need a rest from myself and because I don’t want to go home yet and don’t know where else to go. Besides, Bo and I never got around to eating tonight.
I say to Deak, “I would like that.” And he orders a third Moosehead for me to sip during the next set.
I am starving. I eat the entire T-bone draped over the sides of my plate. The five guys in the band are hilarious and revved. They don’t intend to sleep till the sun comes up. The plan is to drive to Willow Hot Springs after dinner, soak, and smoke a little marijuana. I am invited to join them, along with two other women (who call themselves “girls”) who come from the band’s hometown, Louisville. Since I grew up across the river in Cincinnati and spent the first couple years there while married to Erik, we might have some places in common.
“Have you ever played the White Horse Inn?” I say.
“The White Horse?” Deak says.
“Right across the Ohio River next to the bridge on the Kentucky side.”
“That was torn down; there’s a circular high-rise with a revolving restaurant on top now. Not our kind of music.”
The bass player says, “My parents used to talk about the White Horse. It’s been gone twelve, fifteen years.” I think his name is Tom, could be Ron. There’s a Don here, too, and an Andy. I’ll get them straight later. The girls are Delta and Sandy. Think beach.
Now that I’ve advertised my age, I may as well come fully out with it. “When I was in high school, it was the place to go for dinner dates.”
At least they know Roy Orbison.
twenty-one
Driving home, all I think about is a hot shower to rinse off whatever organisms are mighty enough to survive winter in a Wyoming hot springs. Then I will burrow deep into my down comforter for the night’s sleep I missed out on. Though I am tired, I feel rather pleased with myself. I carry a warm glow from my audacious skinny-dipping with a group of musicians who were strangers to me yesterday. I pull into my drive, get out of the car, and stretch at the new day before opening my cabin door.
“What are you doing here?” I blurt. Bo sits at my kitchen table. His Suburban isn’t parked in my drive; he must have skied over from his place. “You can’t just walk into my cabin whenever you want.”
“Since when?” Bo sits up straighter. “Hey.” His features harden. “Don’t walk in here”—he checks the time with a flick of his eyes to the wall clock—“at eight in the morning and accuse me of a crime.”
I feel like I took him by surprise as much as he surprised me. Maybe he fell asleep at the table.
Bo’s eyes get fierce. “You didn’t come home, goddamn you.”
“That’s not your affair.” I turn my back on him and walk into the mudroom.
“That’s just what I’m talking about,” he says, scraping back his chair and following me. “Your affair. With a—”
“Go home, Bo.”
“A little guitar-plucking shit with hair to his shoulders.” Outrage tightens Bo’s vocal cords and his voice rises at the end. I’m convinced he fell asleep and is working himself up to reclaim anger that mounted throughout the night while waiting for me to come home. I hold the picture of him pacing and checking the clock till dawn.
I hang up my jacket and, ignoring Bo, head back into the kitchen. He halts me with a hand on my shoulder.
“You slept with him.” Bo’s face flips from anger to injury. “How could you do that?”
I look at his hand on my shoulder much the same way I looked at the slime I brought up from the bottom of Willow Hot Springs on my toe somewhere around four o’clock this morning.
“Why, Suzannah?” Bo dips his face downward to recover himself, then lifts it and tries again, softer this time. “Suzannah, why would you do that?”
I continue to ignore him and bend down and pull off my cross-country boots, tie their laces together, and move away, back into the mudroom, to hang them above the dryer. I rather enjoy Bo’s mistaken notion that I slept with Deak. I want to ask how he knows I’ve been with someone, but I’d have to break my facade of indifference.
“Some dumb-ass kid.” Bo gets himself stoked up. “Sleeping with some druggie musician just to—I don’t know—get me moving.”
I swing around to face him. “Was that my job? To get you moving?” I yell, “Damn you.”
I fill with fury. All the years with my mother and Erik and here I am again dealing with yet another person who refuses to be accountable. Same dance, different partners. It’s like being with someone who needs emotional potty-training, always wading through unaddressed matters.
“This is it, neighbor. You can stay put running errands for Caro and stalling Crybaby Ranch and letting your grandfather insult the heart of your life all you want, but—”
“I’ve never let him insult you.”
I’m stopped. “I’m talking about your sculpture.” We stare at each other. Bo’s immediate assumption that I am the heart of his life stirs me. But I can’t afford to halt my life in hope that he’ll grab hold of his. It’s too easy for me to live for other people; I must make the choice to move on.
“Bo.” I feel ready to cry. “Bo,” I begin again. “I can’t be with you. You’re not living fully enough for me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You’re too content to follow low ground. Like a shallow stream, you just wander where it’s easiest. You don’t need to stand up and declare yourself and maybe that works for you. Maybe that’s your family’s way. Your mother doesn’t declare herself. Nobody knows who she is. Your grandfather doesn’t admit who he is either. And your father—you’ve never even tried to find out who he is.”
“If this has something to do with you shacking up in a sleazy motel room, I’d like to know what.” Bo turns away from me, starts making fresh coffee, as if this were any old morning, as if we were just discussing today’s skiing conditions.
But I can’t stop. The flow of words triggers my thought, instead of the other way around, and I won’t know what I’m thinking without voicing my ideas as I hear them unfold.
“Your grandfather dishonors his own creativity, as well as yours. If you let him continue doing that to you, you will get stuck doing the same kind of artwork all your life. Like him you will never move on. You will build the same pieces over and over. And like him you will condemn anyone who does grow in their creativity. What kind of artist retreat will you offer then?”
I take a deep breath.
Bo has halted his coffee making and turned to me. I wipe my eyes and shake my head.
“But nobody in your family has taught you to how to stand up for yourself or even suggested to you before that this might be a good thing for you. I think you’ve gotten some other message about getting along with everybody, not rocking the boat. You’ve accomplished a lot so far, Bo, but none of it—Crybaby Ranch, your art, your self-worth—will benefit by stopping now. And it seems to me that you have stopped.”
Bo shoves the bag of coffee beans away and angrily approaches me standing beside the table. “After Farlow called I came over here and waited for you. I sat here all night knowing what you were doing.” Bo thumps the tabletop. “You weren’t alone with him, Zannah. I was there with you the whole time.” Bo looks like he could cry himself.
I sit in defeat on the edge of a chair. Bo has finally given up the idea that we’ll drink coffee together at the end of this, but he hasn’t given up his position of most injured party. He’s trying to win something; he’s not trying to understand anything. I don’t know if he can hear me right now, but I still have things I need to say, to make the feelings clear to myself and to know I’ve acted responsibly and honestly with him.
“Bo, I fell in love with you as a courageous, creative man taking charge of his life and sculpting it as carefully and soulfully as any piece of art submitted to a gallery. But that’s not the man I skied away from last night.” I rise from the edge of the chair. “Last night I saw a man who feels indecisive about his future with me, a man not ready to declare himself as an artist or to stand up for his morals with Caro or his self-esteem with anybody. I saw a scared man, a lazy man. And I left.”
I go back into the mudroom, grab a clean towel from the shelf over the washer, and tell Bo I’m taking a shower. “I want you to leave.”
It’s silent in the kitchen. Then I hear Bo come to me as I reach for the bathroom doorknob.
“Look at me,” he says, cupping my chin as I begin to turn away from him. He waits until I drag my eyes to his. “I’m your future, Zannah.”
I feel a buildup of emotion that is gathering in dammed pools behind my eyes.
Bo releases his hold on my chin and I open the bathroom door.
I turn on the shower, but wait listening at the door, still dressed until I hear Bo leave.
“Zannah,” Bo said to me in bed last night, “I want to hold you close, spend the night with my hand on your bare hip.”
Then Caro phoned.
Was that really just hours ago?
After a shower and a long midday nap, I drive to the bar. I stand a moment inside the entrance. Right off, I spot Bo, spun around on a stool, his back against the counter and his boots stuck in the aisle. Deak whispers into the microphone, “Suzannah, Suzannah.” My name echoes softly throughout the room. “Suzannah, Suzannah.” Some people cheer when they follow Deak’s gaze and find me here again tonight. I smile broadly at our romance groupies. Deak begins to play “Pretty Woman.”
As I walk past Bo, he says loud enough for only me to hear, “Hey, Zannah, want to dance?”
I’m surprised to discover Bo has such a nasty streak. I refuse to look at him. I step over his boots and move toward the music. I sit at the table Deak said he would save. How does the band do this every night? I slept till late afternoon and still I am tired. Thank God I didn’t have to work today.
Half a dozen songs later, Bo approaches and leans one-handed on my table, the narrow neck of a Beck’s Dark hanging from a circle of forefinger and thumb at his side.
“What the fuck’s going on, Zannah? You want me jealous? I’m jealous. Now get rid of the little squirt.”
From behind Bo, after signaling his band to continue on without him, Deak has approached. He says now, “You must be Bo. Suzannah told me you’re neighbors.”
Bo does not move, nor does he speak; he raises his eyebrows at me in accusation, as though I had betrayed an intimate secret: neighbors.
“I’m Deak, Suzannah’s…” Bo lifts his weight from the table, carefully straightens, and slowly turns toward Deak, challenging him to finish this sentence. Deak smiles into my eyes. “Little squirt,” he finishes and offers his right hand to Bo.
“I’ll shake to that,” Bo says.
Deak returns to the microphone, and Bo drops into a chair. “Shit,” Bo says, “he’s a decent kid.”
Bo never got around to installing a separate meter for my cabin so I could pay my own electric bill. He joked that we would always be wired together. So I say now, “Bo, nothing is different. We’re still wired together and you’re still welcome at the neighborhood potlucks.” I want Bo to experience the inanity of his reaction to Deak so soon after continuing his flirty relationship with Caro.
“You kicked me out.”
“I was angry. My boiling point is lower in the mountains.”
“I’m not coming back till you dump him.”
“So long, then.”
Bo is not entirely sober. I should have realized that earlier. He tosses down the rest of his beer, bangs his bottle on the table, and stands. He looks down at me a long moment. For the first time, I see in him a strong resemblance to his grandfather. As Bo walks away, through the bar and out the doors, I recall a time O.C. was visiting the ranch and a veterinary supply salesman drove up and, mistaking him for a ranch hand, said, “Sir, excuse me. Who is your superior?” O.C. spit to the side of himself and said, “The son of a bitch hasn’t been born yet.” Bo could have said just those words as he stood staring down at me. As far I am concerned, he would be perfectly correct. No one is superior to Bo. If a competition were involved, the matter would be settled.
But Deak is like a cool float in the hotel pool after emerging from the turbulence of the ocean. I imagine I will surrender easily to swimming short laps with him, touching the finite boundaries of our brief future together.
twenty-two
I told Tessa about Deak approaching me in the bar. “I felt so unaware of myself and my surroundings that night, I could have been drooling for all I know. And if I was, Deak was overtly enchanted by it. How do you figure? I’m much older than he is.”
“But you look really young,” Tessa said. “And you’re full of vitality.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “You’re full of something else. Come on, what’s the deal? You hear about younger guys with older women a lot lately.”
Tessa said, “Okay then, consider dysfunctional young men as the deepest blessing of middle-aged women and enjoy him.”
And I do.
Most nights, Deak and I carry food and drink to his motel room after the final set. We throw back the covers to expose the white expanse of laundered sheets and lay out our food as if we were picnicking on snow. Prop up our pillows and stretch out on the bed. Shoes fly across the room first, next socks, Levi’s, and shirts.
The lack of decoration in this motel room puts me in touch with the impersonal places I’ve kept within myself. Those universal shrines of femininity at which I haven’t yet left personal tokens of favor.
My body had been the climbing post of the toddler Beckett, my lap his nesting box. But these leaps of intimacy were claimed without the prerequisite experiences of birth and recognized motherhood, because Delinda was expected any day to claim her child. In the same way sex with Erik was artificially accelerated to parental lovemaking without the leisure and uncertainty of new romance. As if after a proficiency test, the professor registered me in the advanced class.
“A match flame of a romance,” Tessa prescribed many months ago, “something you can blow out at will.”
It’s odd to be mature enough to recognize I am filling in the blanks of my youth, yet still enjoying the process with naive abandon. I bodysurf waves of desire as Deak’s mouth opens and nears my breast. I glimpse the edge of a tooth between his lips and feel a surge as the glint of light bounces off it. His touch is all I imagined, my response more than I expected. I am absorbed by this huge physical rush, this pooled awareness of th
e two of us. The word desire repeats itself over and over in my mind, undulating around my head as if it were writhing on a water bed. It’s such a sweet word. I am tugged deeper and deeper into its sibilance.
After we eat and make love, I lie in bed and stare at a black-and-white framed photograph of a moose standing in leafless aspens. Snow hock-high, no shadows, no apparent source of light. At first I didn’t like the motel room, how it exhibits a lack of personal taste—anybody’s. Now I feel grateful for the way the walls recede from consciousness, even the way TV noises from other rooms seep into our space. It’s like eating at a fast-food chain: There is no flavor to object to in this room.
Only years from now am I likely to fully understand the meaning of this brief romance. I am not meant now to do more than drink deeply, swallow whole, laugh, and sleep afterward. I am certain I provide something for Deak as well; after all, he pursued me. And as much as I need his exuberant pursuance, I believe he has needed to win me over. So I give myself to him knowing I am salve to some unseen injury, even while the exercise of my giving is cure to me.
We play doctor.
As Deak sleeps I rise gently from the bed and gather the used plastic forks, the containers, and empty soda bottles. I’m often surprised at Deak’s wisdom. He writes most of the group’s music, a poet alert to the world around him. Yesterday we spotted an old dried nest beneath the eaves of the bar. Deak pointed to it. “A piñata of wasps,” he said. Hummingbirds, he tells me, make a sound as if they were blowing kisses.
As the earth’s frost line drives deeper and deeper toward its center at winter’s end, and its skin layers with snow and ice and fragrances remain dormant, my body thaws, core outward. My skin melts beneath Deak’s skiing fingers and the fragrances of my hair and body steam.
The planet winters and my body summers.
It’s written in the small print of our contract that this romance ends with the gig. Yet my experience is larger than my previous assumptions about temporary romance. Larger, too, than an outlet for lust, a good break from the final dreary years with my ex-husband, or even a distraction from the loss of my mother—all remarks made by my coworkers as more and more people spot me sitting at the band’s table during sets this past month.