That summer he’s racing midget cars, little winged bombs that slide sideways through the turns, throwing rooster tails of dirt. He’s in the paper every week, winning or coming in second. Once there’s even a picture of him kneeling with a tall trophy by his car, a Hoosier baseball cap replacing his helmet. Patty lingers over his bandito mustache, a lot like Tommy’s. Number 17, Tracy Van Deusen. Owego’s so small, he has to be related to the farm equipment people. She’s been going by Van Deusen’s New Holland since she was a little girl, impressed with the rows of red tractors and wagons and combines. The connection makes him seem less of a stranger, almost a neighbor, the reckless boy-next-door.
It’s just a crush, she thinks, stupid and high schoolish.
But she’s nearly thirty. She doesn’t need a fantasy. She already has enough of Tommy, wearing his chamois-soft T-shirts to bed and dreaming he’s there with her, summoning his hands when she gives in to hers. She has Tommy, she has Casey. She shouldn’t be thinking of anyone else.
He’s got a girlfriend anyway, and a pretty one—Kristi Coughlan, the second youngest of the six Coughlan girls, each of them a Dairy Princess. She works the drive-thru at the bank downtown, long straight hair, dresses nice. Patty’s almost glad. Leaving aside the fact that she’s married, she’s never been the kind to go after someone else’s guy.
It’s silly. She’s only really talked to him once, in a bar, after a couple of beers. He probably doesn’t even remember her name.
And then one hot day while she’s out stopping traffic on Lisle Road, she sees the flatbed waiting in line, five cars back. She’s been sweating, splashing cups of water from the cooler on her face so it runs down her front. She’s hoping it’s not him. Her hair’s stuffed under her hardhat and she’s wearing mirrored shades and the usual resurfacing getup—safety vest over a plain gray T-shirt, cruddy jeans and workboots. Maybe he won’t see through the disguise. She pictures pretty Kristi Coughlan counting out crisp twenties behind her air-conditioned window and thinks it doesn’t matter.
At the other end, Glenn raises his arm and spins his sign so she can read SLOW, and she turns hers. The first car rolls by, an older guy inside ignoring her, then a woman in a Thunderbird, a family in a wagon. As the flatbed grows closer, Patty can see it’s him, wearing the same cap he had in the winner’s circle, and mirrored shades like hers. They could pass each other anonymously, face to face, like spies. She’s ready for it as the flatbed rumbles up, and pinches her lips together. She keeps the SLOW sign showing, figuring she’ll let him go and then a few more for insurance before stopping them.
As he nears, he smiles and waves—a polite thanks she’s fielded a million times with a straight face—but this time she can’t stop from automatically waving back. Just a hey, an innocent flip of a hand acknowledging his, and the truck rattles past. No one else sees it, so no one rides her. She tells herself it means nothing. So why, that night, does she replay it again and again? Why does she wonder if Eileen and Cy are going to the races on Friday?
HER OWN SHADOW
OF COURSE THEY AREN’T, AND EVEN IF THEY WERE, PATTY WOULD find a way to beg off. Saturday is visiting day.
Sunday is visiting day.
Saturday is visiting day.
They’ve run out of things to talk about, so they talk about Russ riding his Harley all the way out to Sturgis in the ninety-degree heat. They talk about her mother thinking about putting in central air and how much that would cost. They talk about Shannon going back to school in the fall (and how much that must cost).
She’s eaten everything in the machines except the egg salad, leery of bad mayonnaise. By the end of the afternoon they’re scavenging the ballooned bag of microwave popcorn, sucking the tough kernels.
After a good visit, she misses him; after a bad visit, she feels him slipping away. She goes down and visits the bulb-lit corner of the basement every once in a while, folding back the dropcloth and rubbing the naugahyde arm of his recliner and the nicked varnish of the coffee table, remembering whole fall weekends spent watching football, the smell of dinner filling the house like lamplight. She has to duck her own shadow to see. It’s like looking at old pictures of them; she gets stuck, and yet when she finally covers up the pile again, that time seems further away than ever.
PRESENT
THE NEW LAWYER THINKS THEY HAVE GROUNDS FOR INSUFFICIENT counsel. And honestly, it’s the only way he can see. He’s combed through the transcript and there’s nothing out of order there. With no new evidence to introduce, they have to throw doubt on the process. It’s simple negligence. Tommy’s lawyer should have advised him to take whatever plea the DA was offering.
“He did,” Patty says.
“He should have been more forceful. No offense, but you had no clue what you were walking into. He’s a professional. He should have made you listen to reason.”
Patty agrees but doesn’t see why that would overturn the verdict. She still wants Gary to tell the truth.
Tommy’s not happy either, but it took so long to get this guy that he doesn’t want to go back and start all over again. Patty’s not sure. If this one doesn’t work, can they appeal again?
In a naked effort to cheer her up, her mother makes her favorite, lemon meringue pie. The jellied sweetness and lard-puffed crust only make Patty focus harder on the reason they’re having it, but she forks hers up, nodding at how good it is. For a week the pie sits in the fridge, stiffening. Her mother’s not wild about lemon, so Patty has to get rid of it piece by piece, sneaking them down the disposal while Johnny’s on.
At work she doesn’t mention anything. If Russ wants to talk about Tommy, they do it in his office, not in the truck, and even there she keeps things on the surface. Turnover’s been high this fall—Glenn’s moved to Elmira—and half the crew is new. After Russ, she’s got the most seniority (not that it makes a difference in her paycheck). She doesn’t tell the new guys on her truck about her husband, lets them think he’s waiting for her at home. They’re younger, best friends right out of high school, jokers who don’t look beyond the next weekend. The ring and her new crow’s-feet are enough to keep them at bay.
As her birthday nears, she feels like giving up. Part of it is turning thirty, a number she never worried about before. She can’t stay at this job and live in her mother’s house forever. She’s jealous of Shannon, going back to college to finish up her degree, and pictures herself walking across campus with an armful of textbooks. Where would she get the money? Anyway she hasn’t been in class for twelve years, and wasn’t very good at it then. Every morning she pores through the classifieds, inching a fingertip down the columns, but the only jobs she’s qualified for are waitress and maybe line cook, and they pay less than she’s making now.
During her birthday call, Tommy says that if the appeal doesn’t go through he’d understand if she wanted to leave him and start over, an accusation that makes her cover her face and shake her head. She’s never said anything about that to him or to anyone. She’s barely allowed herself the idea, immediately vetoing it as a cowardly way out, Nixon flashing his victory signs and flying off in his helicopter. Does this mean he’s quitting? She thinks it must be her fault, her negative attitude rubbing off on him. She tells him not to write off the appeal. Anything can happen. They’re due for some good luck. But afterward, alone, she knows it’s a lie.
A KIND OF HOLIDAY
RACING SEASON IS OVER, BUT SHE SEES TRACE EVERYWHERE—OWEGO’S not that big. Only briefly, from a distance, a greedy surveillance. He always seems to be in a hurry, as if he can’t slow down. He’s familiar to her now, his Hilltop uniform, his tight stride across the Dandy Mart lot, the way he swings the cardboard box of subs and sodas up into the cab of the flatbed and climbs in after it. She waits to see him, wakes up wondering if today they’ll finally meet.
“I think I’m getting a crush on you,” she might say, like it’s a problem they could work out together. Because it can’t be love. She doesn’t know him at all, only that sh
e gets excited when she spies on him, that he makes her nervous and unsure and dreamy as a teenager. How does love start? Was it like this at the beginning with Tommy, a sudden, dumb attraction?
The best they could hope for would be secret meetings at his place, the pain of coming together and then being apart, the illogical jealousy, the complicated lies (her mother watching Casey while Patty’s in Trace’s bed, resting slit-eyed with pleasure), yet when she looks at Trace the rest of the world disappears and she’s herself again, a woman with the usual desires.
Maybe all she wants is the intrigue. She has to be so responsible in everything else, maybe she feels she deserves this fling as a reward, a kind of holiday from her other life. That it’s all in her mind makes it safe. If she never acts on her feelings, she never has to give up her fantasy. It’s the best explanation, because otherwise none of it makes sense. She doesn’t want to hurt Tommy or have people around town talk about her that way. She’s practical, despite what her mother might say. She likes to think she’d never sacrifice what she has for something as undependable as romance. There are so many other things she really needs.
TIN MAN
LIKE EVERY YEAR, THE SUNDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING CHANNEL 5 shows The Wizard of Oz. Casey watches for about ten seconds before he totters off to play with his gas station. Her mother’s seen it too many times to be interested and takes her magazine into the living room, leaving Patty to follow the four misfits as they make their way to Emerald City.
She wonders if Tommy’s watching, if the other guys voted for it over The Six Million Dollar Man. From what he’s told her, they like ragging on shows, laughing and talking back to the actors. She can’t see them sitting still for a fairy tale.
Dorothy tosses the bucket of water and the Wicked Witch of the West melts into a puddle, guaranteeing their reward, but the Wizard turns out to be a fake. It must be her worry about the future, because this time Patty sees herself not just as Dorothy, as she has since she was a little girl, but as all of them. She already knows there’s no place like home; that’s not enough. She wishes she was smarter for Tommy about the legal stuff, and braver dealing with the system. She wishes her heart were pure.
BUTTERFINGERS
THE MESSAGE IS WAITING FOR HER WHEN SHE GETS HOME FROM hanging the bristly tinsel bells and reindeer and candy canes on the light poles downtown. Her mother took the call, jotting down the time and the number for Patty on the pad in the kitchen.
“What did he say?” Patty asks.
“He didn’t say anything. He wants you to call him.”
It’s five-thirty. He’s probably gone already, but she calls anyway, on the off chance he’s working late. It could be good news. Usually she has to call him.
It barely rings twice.
“Mrs. Dickerson,” he says. “I’m glad you caught me. Have you talked with your husband?”
“No.”
“I was hoping he might have called you. That’s all right.” He stops and starts again. “Last week we submitted the brief and our supporting materials to the court.”
Then why are you just telling me now, Patty wants to say.
“Considering what we had to work with, I think we did everything we could.”
Again, she waits.
“Today I received word from the DA’s office that someone there has been assigned to write an answering brief to ours.”
“Okay,” she nudges him.
“Mrs. Dickerson,” he says, as if she doesn’t understand, “the court has agreed to hear your husband’s appeal.”
He goes on, but, clutching the phone, Patty’s remembering the first call that freezing night after the game. She reaches for the counter, rests against it like a tired swimmer using the edge of a pool. Tommy probably wasn’t allowed to call her because he wasn’t signed up for that time. Her shock turns to gratitude, then caution, the fear that they’re only postponing a deeper disappointment.
Her mother’s happy for her, and Eileen. Patty lets them know what the lawyer said about getting their hopes up, to show she understands how long the odds are. They already think she’s being unrealistic. But that night when Tommy calls he plays down their chances, and she has to be encouraging. “You don’t know,” she says.
In bed, she allows herself a daydream of how it would be, the three of them together in their own place somewhere outside of town. She sees them in the backyard, a sunny day, Casey digging in his plastic turtle sandbox, her and Tommy watching from a picnic table. She knows it wouldn’t be a perfect life, that they’d have the same problems everyone does, but there’d be good times too, times when all three of them would be happy just being together. Simple things like eating dinner or watching TV, waking up and making love, getting ready for work.
Deep down, she knows they won’t win. And there’s no one to tell, no one to share her secret with.
It’s a weird side effect, but over the next couple of days she’s clumsy, bumping into doorframes and fumbling away her keys as if she’s pregnant. At work they ride her for spilling a coffee in the truck, and while she laughs with them, she’s worried it might be more than just nerves. It’s the holidays, but she’s lost weight, and she hasn’t slept well in months. A hit or two before bed seems to help, but makes waking up harder. Her first cigarette gets earlier and earlier. Driving in, she feels spacey, dazed, as if she might drop off behind the wheel and roll it in a ditch. And this is after good news, she thinks. She can’t imagine how she’d be feeling if the court had turned them down.
For the rest of the world it’s Christmas. The decorations are done, the spotlit crèche outside of town hall, the wreaths on the courthouse doors. The days are short, and driving through town after work she sees dark shapes stopped to peer in the display windows on Front Street. Miles into the countryside, houses rise out of the night like UFOs. One of them is her mother’s, a colored string of lights blinking in the dogwood. Rolling up in the truck, Patty feels a nagging blankness instead of pleasure. It’s only six and Casey will want to play, her mother will want to talk. She takes off her gloves and rubs her eyes, using the moment alone to recover, to change into the Patty they know.
RAISE PLOW
IT’S LATE FEBRUARY BEFORE THE DA’S BRIEF ARRIVES AND THEIR case is finally scheduled. It’s really going to happen, the lawyer warns her. He understands she’s been waiting a long time for this.
Patty knows he’s getting at something but can’t read him over the phone.
The whole thing only takes fifteen minutes, which Patty thinks is a joke, and then they won’t hand down their decision for a month or two. He says there’s no need for her to come to Albany. It seems wrong to Patty that she won’t be there.
“What do you think you’re going to do there?” Tommy asks with a shrug, and he’s right. Her being at the trial didn’t help, and she was pregnant then.
The morning the lawyer is supposed to argue their case, she goes to work like usual. It’s supposed to snow, so they bolt on the hoppers, load them up with cinders and hang around the garage, breaking down old road signs and listening to the weather bureau on the scanner, waiting for Russ to make the call. Patty doesn’t trust the radio. She keeps going to the sooty window behind the welding screens, as if Tommy might show up and surprise them all.
Everything she sees is charged—the dark sky, the leaning trees. A sparrow perches on the mirror of his truck, then flits away. WRONG WAY, one sign says; PASS WITH CARE, says another. She gouges a knuckle on a stripped screw and has to suck a thick drop of blood from it. Far off, the clock tower chimes. Later, from the hills, comes the crackle of guns; it’s still deer season, one of his favorite times of the year, their freezer heaped with meat. She can’t help but think of Gary and the rifles and the money, and how the court won’t hear the whole story.
The front moves in from the west, following 17 across the Southern Tier. The weather bureau’s forecasting three to six inches along the river, more in the hills. It’s snowing in Elmira when Russ finally emerges from
his office, wearing a scarf along with his Pirates cap and clapping like a coach. “Let’s hustle up,” he says, and assigns them their trucks. He gives her the north side of town because 17C is his and he doesn’t trust the new guys with the railroad underpass. As she heads out, chains ringing, she goes by the Citgo and the darkened pizza places, the falling-down rowhouses, and realizes it’s the same road she and Donna took to the county jail so long ago.
She patrols North Avenue back and forth from Depot Street all the way to the town line, doing the slippery bridge over the creek, then raising the plow and turning around in the bare lot of the boarded-up Dairy Queen, the yellow light wheeling out in front of her. Flakes dissolve against the windshield. The snow’s wet, bending branches so they scratch at the cab, piling up on the stones of Evergreen Cemetery, icing the wipers, covering up her tracks. She’s not surprised when Russ lets them know they’re not stopping for lunch. The weather bureau’s changed their prediction; now it’s six to ten inches, possibly a foot at higher elevations. They’re looking at some serious OT—news that brings whoops from the new guys. Patty should be happy—the money will help with Christmas—but now there’s no way she’ll get home in time to call the lawyer and find out how it went. She gets a sub at Lawler’s Market and calls her mother from the pay phone outside to let her know she won’t be home till late. She could ask for the lawyer’s number, or have her mother call, but it’s too early, and part of her doesn’t want to ask how it went, not yet. The snow’s falling harder, wetting her hair as she stands there. She climbs back in the cab and keeps going, scraping back and forth through town as the day darkens and the streetlights pop on, trying to fight the sky to a draw.
The Good Wife Page 14