Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger

by Lee Smith

  Not to mention his family.

  He gave them up too.

  But this morning when he leaves the hospital after his eight o’clock visit to Cherry, Harold finds himself turning left out of the lot instead of right toward Food Lion, his store. Harold finds himself taking Route 60 just south of town and then driving through those ornate marble gates that mark the entrance to Camelot Hills, his old neighborhood. Some lucky instinct makes him pull into the little park and stop there, beside the pond. Here comes his ex-wife, Joan, driving the Honda Accord he paid for last year. Joan looks straight ahead. She’s still wearing her shiny blonde hair in the pageboy she’s worn ever since Harold met her at Mercer College so many years ago. Harold is sure she’s wearing low heels and a shirtwaist dress. He knows her briefcase is in the backseat, containing lesson plans for today, yogurt, and a banana. Potassium is important. Harold has heard this a million times. Behind her, the beds are all made, the breakfast dishes stacked in the sink. As a home ec teacher, Joan believes that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The two younger children, Brenda and Harold Jr., are already on the bus to the Academy. James rides to the high school with his mother, hair wet, face blank, staring straight ahead. They don’t see Harold. Joan brakes at the stop sign before entering Route 60. She always comes to a complete stop, even if nothing’s coming. Always. She looks both ways. Then she’s gone.

  Harold drives past well-kept lawn after well-kept lawn and lovely house after lovely house, many of them houses where Harold has attended Cub Scout meetings, eaten barbecue, watched bowl games. Now these houses have a blank, closed look to them, like mean faces. Harold turns left on Oxford, then right on Shrewsbury. He comes to a stop beside the curb at 1105 Cambridge and just sits there with the motor running, looking at the house. His house. The Queen Anne house he and Joan planned so carefully, down to the last detail, the fish-scale siding. The house he is still paying for and will be until his dying day, if Joan has her way about it.

  Which she will, of course. Everybody is on her side: desertion. Harold Stikes deserted his lovely wife and three children for a redheaded waitress. For a fallen woman with a checkered past. Harold can hear her now. “I fail to see why I and the children should lower our standards of living, Harold, and go to the dogs just because you have chosen to become insane in midlife.” Joan’s voice is slow and amiable. It has a down-to-earth quality which used to appeal to Harold but now drives him wild. Harold sits at the curb with the motor running and looks at his house good. It looks fine. It looks just like it did when they picked it out of the pages of Southern Living and wrote off for the plans. The only difference is, that house was in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and this house is in Greenwood, Mississippi. Big deal.

  Joan’s response to Harold’s desertion has been a surprise to him. He expected tears, recriminations, fireworks. He did not expect her calm, reasonable manner, treating Harold the way she treats the Mormon missionaries who come to the door in their black suits, for instance, that very calm, sweet, careful voice. Joan acts like Harold’s desertion is nothing much. And nothing much appears to have changed for her except the loss of Harold’s actual presence, and this cannot be a very big deal since everything else has remained exactly the same.

  What the hell. After a while Harold turns off the motor and walks up the flagstone walk to the front door. His key still fits. All the furniture is arranged exactly the way it was arranged four years ago. The only thing that ever changes here is the display of magazines on the glass coffee table before the fireplace, Joan keeps them up to date. Newsweek, National Geographic, Good Housekeeping, Gourmet. It’s a mostly educational grouping, unlike what Cherry reads — Parade, Coronet, National Enquirer. Now these magazines litter the floor at the side of the bed like little souvenirs of Cherry. Harold can’t stand to pick them up.

  He sits down heavily on the white sofa and stares at the coffee table. He remembers the quiz and the day he found it, four years ago now although it feels like only yesterday, funny thing though he can’t remember which magazine it was in. Maybe Reader’s Digest. The quiz was titled “How Good Is Your Marriage?” and Harold noticed that Joan had filled it in carefully. This did not surprise him. Joan was so law abiding, such a good girl, that she always filled in such quizzes when she came across them, as if she had to, before she could go ahead and finish the magazine. Usually Harold didn’t pay much attention.

  This time, he picked the magazine up and started reading. One of the questions said: “What is your idea of the perfect vacation? (a) a romantic getaway for you and your spouse alone; (b) a family trip to the beach; (c) a business convention; (d) an organized tour of a foreign land.” Joan had wavered on this one. She had marked and then erased “an organized tour of a foreign land.” Finally she had settled on “a family trip to the beach.” Harold skimmed along. The final question was: “When you think of the love between yourself and your spouse, do you think of (a) a great passion; (b) a warm, meaningful companionship; (c) an average love; (d) an unsatisfying habit.” Joan had marked “(c) an average love.” Harold stared at these words, knowing they were true. An average love, nothing great, an average marriage between an average man and woman. Suddenly, strangely, Harold was filled with rage.

  “It is not enough!” He thought he actually said these words out loud. Perhaps he did say them out loud, into the clean hushed air-conditioned air of his average home. Harold’s rage was followed by a brief period, maybe five minutes, of unbearable longing, after which he simply closed the magazine and put it back on the table and got up and poured himself a stiff shot of bourbon. He stood for a while before the picture window in the living room, looking out at his even green grass, his clipped hedge, and the impatiens blooming in its bed, the clematis climbing the mailbox. The colors of the world fairly leaped at him — the sky so blue, the grass so green. A passing jogger’s shorts glowed unbearably red. He felt that he had never seen any of these things before. Yet in another way it all seemed so familiar as to be an actual part of his body — his throat, his heart, his breath. Harold took another drink. Then he went out and played nine holes of golf at the country club with Bubba Fields, something he did every Wednesday afternoon. He shot an 82.

  By the time he came home for dinner he was okay again. He was very tired and a little lightheaded, all his muscles tingling. His face was hot. Yet Harold felt vaguely pleased with himself, as if he had been through something and come out of the other side of it, as if he had done a creditable job on a difficult assignment. But right then, during dinner, Harold could not have told you exactly what had happened to him that day, or why he felt this way. Because the mind will forget what it can’t stand to remember, and anyway, the Stikeses had beef Stroganoff that night, a new recipe that Joan was testing for the Junior League cookbook, and Harold Jr. had written them a funny letter from camp, and for once Brenda did not whine. James, who was twelve that year, actually condescended to talk to his father, with some degree of interest, about baseball, and after supper was over he and Harold went out and pitched to each other until it grew dark and lightning bugs emerged. This is how it’s supposed to be, Harold thought, father and son playing catch in the twilight.

  Then he went upstairs and joined Joan in bed to watch TV, after which they turned out the light and made love. But Joan had greased herself all over with Oil of Olay, earlier, and right in the middle of doing it, Harold got a crazy terrified feeling that he was losing her, that Joan was slipping, slipping away.

  But time passed, as it does, and Harold forgot that whole weird day, forgot it until right now, in fact, as he sits on the white sofa in his old house again and stares at the magazines on the coffee table, those magazines so familiar except for the date, which is four years later. Now Harold wonders: If he hadn’t picked up that quiz and read it, would he have even noticed when Cherry Oxen-dine spooned out that potato salad for him six months later, in his own Food Lion deli? Would the sight of redheaded Cherry Oxendine, the Food Lion smock mostly obscuring her dy
namite figure, have hit him like a bolt out of the blue the way it did?

  Cherry herself does not believe there is any such thing as co incidence. Cherry thinks there is a master plan for the universe, and what is meant to happen will. She thinks it’s all set in the stars. For the first time, Harold thinks maybe she’s right. He sees part of a pattern in the works, but dimly, as if he is looking at a constellation hidden by clouds. Mainly, he sees her face.

  Harold gets up from the sofa and goes into the kitchen, suddenly aware that he isn’t supposed to be here. He could be arrested, probably! He looks back at the living room, but there’s not a trace of him left, not even an imprint on the soft white cushions of the sofa. Absentmindedly, Harold opens and shuts the refrigerator door. There’s no beer, he notices. He can’t have a Coke. On the kitchen calendar, he reads:

  Harold Jr. to dentist, 3:30 p.m. Tues.

  Change furnace filter 2/18/88 (James)

  So James is changing the furnace filters now, James is the man of the house. Why not? It’s good for him. He’s been given too much, kids these days grow up so fast, no responsibilities, they get on drugs, you read about it all the time. But deep down inside, Harold knows that James is not on drugs and he feels something awful, feels the way he felt growing up, that sick flutter in his stomach that took years to go away.

  Harold’s dad died of walking pneumonia when he was only three, so his mother raised him alone. She called him her “little man.” This made Harold feel proud but also wild, like a boy growing up in a cage. Does James feel this way now? Harold suddenly decides to get James a car for his birthday, and take him hunting.

  Hunting is something Harold never did as a boy, but it means a lot to him now. Harold never owned a gun until he was thirty-one, when he bought a shotgun in order to accept the invitation of his regional manager, “Little Jimmy” Fletcher, to go quail hunting in Georgia. He had a great time. Now he’s invited back every year, and Little Jimmy is in charge of the company’s whole eastern division. Harold has a great future with Food Lion too. He owns three stores, one in downtown Greenwood, one out at the mall, and one over in Indianola. He owned two of them when his mother died, and he’s pleased to think that she died proud — proud of the good little boy he’d always been, and the good man he’d become.

  Of course she’d wanted him to make a preacher, but Harold never got the call, and she gave that up finally when he was twenty. Harold was not going to pretend to get the call if he never got it, and he held strong to this principle. He wanted to see a burning bush, but if this was not vouchsafed to him, he wasn’t going to lie about it. He would just major in math instead, which he was good at anyway. Majoring in math at Mercer College, the small Baptist school his mother had chosen for him, Harold came upon Joan Berry, a home ec major from his own hometown who set out single-mindedly to marry him, which wasn’t hard. After graduation, Harold got a job as management trainee in the Food Lion store where he had started as a bag boy at fourteen. Joan produced their three children, spaced three years apart, and got her tubes tied. Harold got one promotion, then another. Joan and Harold prospered. They built this house.

  Harold looks around and now this house, his house, strikes him as creepy, a wax museum. He lets himself out the back door and walks quickly, almost runs, to his car. It’s real cold out, a gray day in February, but Harold’s sweating. He starts his car and roars off toward the hospital, driving — as Cherry would say — like a bat out of hell.

  THEY’RE LETTING HAROLD STAY with her longer now. He knows it, they know it, but nobody says a word. Lois Hickey just looks the other way when the announcement “Visiting hours are over” crackles across the PA. Is this a good sign or a bad sign? Harold can’t tell. He feels slow and confused, like a man underwater. “I think she looks better, don’t you?” he said last night to Cherry’s son, Stan, the TV weatherman, who had driven down from Memphis for the day. Eyes slick and bright with tears, Stan went over to Harold and hugged him tight. This scared Harold to death, he has practically never touched his own sons, and he doesn’t even know Stan, who’s been grown and gone for years. Harold is not used to hugging anybody, especially men. Harold breathed in Stan’s strong go-get-’em cologne, he buried his face in Stan’s long curly hair. He thinks it is possible that Stan has a permanent. They’ll do anything in Memphis. Then Stan stepped back and put one hand on each of Harold’s shoulders, holding him out at arm’s length. Stan has his mother’s wide, mobile mouth. The bright white light of Intensive Care glinted off the gold chain and the crystal that he wore around his neck. “I’m afraid we’re going to lose her, Pop,” he said.

  But Harold doesn’t think so. Today he thinks Cherry looks the best she’s looked in weeks, with a bright spot of color in each cheek to match her flaming hair. She’s moving around a lot too. She keeps kicking her sheet off.

  “She’s getting back some of that old energy now,” he tells Cherry’s daughter, Tammy Lynn Palladino, when she comes by after school. Tammy Lynn and Harold’s son, James, are both members of the senior class, but they aren’t friends. Tammy Lynn says James is a “stuck-up jock,” a “preppie,” and a “country-clubber.” Harold can’t say a word to defend his own son against these charges, he doesn’t even know James anymore. It might be true anyway. Tammy Lynn is real smart, a teenage egghead. She’s got a full scholarship to Millsaps College for next year. She applied for it all by herself. As Cherry used to say, Tammy Lynn came into this world with a full deck of cards and an ace or two up her sleeve. Also, she looks out for Number One.

  In this regard Tammy Lynn is as different from her mama as night from day, because Cherry would give you the shirt off her back and frequently has. That’s gotten her into lots of trouble. With Ed Palladino, for instance, her second husband and Tammy Lynn’s dad. Just about everybody in this town got took by Ed Palladino, who came in here wearing a seersucker suit and talking big about putting in an outlet mall across the river. A lot of people got burned on that outlet mall deal. But Ed Palladino had a way about him that made you want to cast your lot with his, it is true. You wanted to give Ed Palladino your savings, your time-sharing condo, your cousin, your ticket to the Super Bowl. Cherry gave it all.

  She married him and turned over what little inheritance she had from her daddy’s death — and that’s the only time in her life she ever had any money, mind you — and then she just shrugged and smiled her big crooked smile when he left town under the cover of night. “C’est la vie,” Cherry said. She donated the rest of his clothes to the Salvation Army. “Que será, será,” Cherry said, quoting a song that was popular when she was in junior high.

  Tammy Lynn sits by her mama’s bed and holds Cherry’s thin dry hand. “I brought you a Chick-fil-A,” she says to Harold. “It’s over there in that bag.” She points to the shelf by the door. Harold nods. Tammy Lynn works at Chick-fil-A. Cherry’s eyes are wide and blue and full of meaning as she stares at her daughter. Her mouth moves, both Harold and Tammy Lynn lean forward, but then her mouth falls slack and her eyelids flutter shut. Tammy sits back.

  “I think she looks some better today, don’t you?” Harold asks.

  “No,” Tammy Lynn says. She has a flat little redneck voice. She sounds just the way she did last summer when she told Cherry that what she saw in the field was a cotton picker working at night, and not a UFO at all. “I wish I did but I don’t, Harold. I’m going to go on home now and heat up some Beanee Weenee for Mamaw. You come on as soon as you can.”

  “Well,” Harold says. He feels like things have gotten all turned around here some way, he feels like he’s the kid and Tammy Lynn has turned into a freaky little grown-up. He says, “I’ll be along directly.”

  But they both know he won’t leave until Lois Hickey throws him out. And speaking of Lois, as soon as Tammy Lynn takes off, here she comes again, checking something on the respirator, making a little clucking sound with her mouth, then whirling to leave. When Lois walks, her panty girdle goes swish, swish, swish at the top of her legs. Sh
e comes right back with the young black man named Rodney Broadbent, Respiratory Therapist. It says so on his name badge. Rodney wheels a complicated-looking cart ahead of himself. He’s all built up, like a weightlifter.

  “How you doing tonight, Mr. Stipe?” Rodney says.

  “I think she’s some better,” Harold says.

  “Well, lessee here,” Rodney says. He unhooks the respirator tube at Cherry’s throat, sticks the tube from his own machine down the opening, and switches on the machine. It makes a whirring sound. It looks like an electric ice cream mixer. Rodney Broadbent looks at Lois Hickey in a significant way as she turns to leave the room.

  They don’t have to tell him, Harold knows. Cherry is worse, not better. Harold gets the Chick-fil-A, unwraps it, eats it, and then goes over to the stand by the window. It’s already getting dark. The big mercury arc light glows in the hospital parking lot. A little wind blows some trash around on the concrete. He has had Cherry three years, that’s all. One trip to Disney World, two vacations at Gulf Shores, Alabama, hundreds of nights in the old metal bed out at the farm with Cherry sleeping naked beside him, her arm thrown over his stomach. They had a million laughs.