A Ford in the River

by Charles Rose

  Instead of the stork a cowbird had come and flown off with Mary Jean’s baby girl. That was Mary Jean’s story. She had said she was going to have a girl. The kitchen had been a mess, three days of dirty dishes. Julie had not been there. She was in school when it happened, had not known what it was like. He had dipped his hand in water and blood, scooped up this dripping dead thing. He’d taken Mary Jean to the hospital, done what was necessary. Wet tissue slopping in his hand.

  “We took turns washing dishes. Then we swept every room and cleaned the bathroom. Mama stayed in bed that night.” Julie spooned up a cucumber. “Maybe these are too sweet,” she said.

  He told her he liked his cucumbers sweet. They couldn’t be too sweet for him.

  “If they are, I know they won’t hurt me. I know now what will hurt and what won’t.” Julie looked out at her husband turning the steaks on the patio. She watched Harry close the gas grill. The timer buzzed in the oven. “I need to take out the casserole. We’ll talk tomorrow, if you want to.”

  He said he did, trying to mean it.

  She must have come in while he was asleep. A mug of hot coffee awaited him on the dresser. He took a sip, went to the bathroom. He had unpacked his shaving kit last night, plugged in his electric razor. He squeezed toothpaste carefully out of the tube, the way Barbara would urge him to do, from the bottom, an eighth of an inch at a time. He made sure he washed out the sink before he put the razor back in his shaving kit. He didn’t make the bed or close his suitcase. He’d hung his convention suit in the closet last night. There was a wine stain on the lapel, red wine, two glasses at dinner on Saturday night.

  He took his coffee mug out on the terrace. The canvas top was buttoned down on the hot tub. The leaves in the pin oaks had turned, but hardly any of them had fallen yet. Today his daughter was wearing a powder-blue jumper, and brand new Nike running shoes. Mary Jean would have worn khaki pants, a sweatshirt and floppy straw hat. She’d worn flip-flops around the house. She wore brogans if she went out in the groves or went fishing, to guard against snakes. You would not have known she was beautiful if you’d seen her traipsing out for the mail. A stranger passing on the road would have thought she was plain, from the way she was dressed.

  Julie looked at their private lake, shaded homes, boat docks, everything right and tidy. She sipped on her coffee and laid it aside. “I thought we might drive to Island Grove. The house we lived in, it’s still there. It looks almost like it used to.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “I hadn’t for years,” she said. “Not long after I knew I was pregnant, I was listening to the radio. There’s this program that comes on at nine. You know, lost dogs and cats, and also items for sale. I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes,” Julie put a bright voice on, “a little shaky still from morning sickness and I heard this man on the radio, I heard him say a lady from Island Grove had lost a female beagle pup. Island Grove, that’s where we used to live, that’s what came to me then. And then I wondered whether the house was still there.”

  “And it was there. You went out to see for yourself.”

  “Yes, I did. I mean I didn’t go in. But I thought of knocking on the door. I thought if someone did live there and answered the door, I’d say my family used to live here once. But I didn’t do that. I couldn’t be sure who would answer the door. But with you along, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Her lips went tight, her voice was defensive now. “We can always do something else. There’s a bookstore downtown we can go to. We can take a tour of the campus. Or go to where Harry and I used to live, on Sixth Avenue. After that I’ll take you out to lunch.”

  No, he would take her out to lunch, in Island Grove. And after that they would go look at the house.

  They stopped off at the apartment house on Sixth Avenue. The two-room apartment was occupied by other students now. New generation, old house, he thought. She and Harry had lived there while Harry was in medical school. He’d seen the live oak in the backyard, climbed the steps, had dinner there. That was while Mary Jean was still alive, in St. Petersburg, still in her condo, only nobody brought them drinks by the pool. The bedroom had casement windows then. It was hot, but he hadn’t minded the heat. He remembered the mosquito truck chugging by while Harry was grilling the hamburgers.

  Julie took a photograph of him with a compact point-and shoot-camera. It had a telephoto lens, macro-micro capability. She slid the camera into its leather case, both straps looped around her neck. He hadn’t offered to take her picture, even though he knew she wanted him to, and again he was thinking of Mary Jean, popping in on him naked in the shower, her Kodak, flashbulb attached, in his face.

  They drove south through Micanopy, took the county road to Island Grove. In half an hour they were there. Julie stopped to take a photograph of him in front of the city limits sign. He took another of Julie on the bridge, the leather case for the camera tipped on the mound of her belly. He looked down the creek, toward Lake Lochloosa, the boat dock, a hundred yards from the bridge. It was hard to believe they had fished in that lake. He kept his back turned to their house, on the other side of the bridge to the west.

  They had lived here for nearly ten years. He had a job teaching history and government at the high school in Island Grove. He’d made enough for them to live on. Sometimes they could afford to rent a boat. He could remember seeing the sleeping porch, a long way down the creek, on past the bridge and the restaurant, the school building where he’d taught. They would be coming in off the lake. He’d move the boat into the mouth of the creek, the outboard puttering at his back, Mary Jean with her hands on the thwarts, facing him, fish twitching in the net. She wore khakis, the straw hat shading her face, nondescript, nothing special, flecks of red hair around the brim of her hat. As the boat moved slowly up the creek, he watched the sleeping porch jutting out from the house. There was a mattress on the floor. The windows would get larger. On rainy nights Mary Jean would open them, let moths and mosquitoes in with the rain.

  They had lunch in an air-conditioned cafe. The restaurant with the Sunday buffet, with its ceiling fans and clean tablecloths—there was a Chevron station where it used to be. He remembered the name, “The ’Loosa Cafe.” The sign was hand-painted, not neon.

  They had cheeseburgers and iced tea. Julie talked about the Sunday buffet. She ran down the list, corn bread, greens, black eyed peas, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, platters of Southern-fried chicken. It wasn’t long before she brought up Mary Jean. “We tried to eat there one Sunday. That one time we came back from fishing. Mama really looked like hell. But she refused to go home and change clothes. She wanted us to make an issue of it.”

  He remembered the men in their starched white shirts, their wives wearing flowered print dresses. A few of the men glanced at Mary Jean, but the women refused to look at her.

  “They would have served us, you know that Julie. But we thought it would be best to go.”

  “She shouldn’t have gone in there looking like that. She should have worn something decent.”

  “Well, she didn’t. We didn’t fit in.” He remembered hearing the electric fans hum; it didn’t matter what these crackers were saying, those stony-faced decent country women looking everywhere but at Mary Jean.

  “I know. I know we didn’t. Sometimes I wish we had. I think about what might have been if we had. But I guess there’s no use talking about it. If we’d stayed out here for good, I’d have grown up stupid and country. But Mama, she might have been okay. Out here she could live with herself. She could fish. She could do whatever she liked without anyone knowing what she did.”

  “People know things in the country,” he said. “Your neighbors, even those miles away, they know a lot more than you think. It couldn’t have worked out, Julie.”

  Julie looked at him dubiously. “You don’t mean that. If you did, you wouldn’t have come with me.”

  “I came with you because you
wanted me to.”

  “You never wanted to come here yourself? Please, tell me. I want to know.”

  “All right. There were times when I did want to come here. But since Barbara was with me, I didn’t do it.”

  “You don’t have to say anymore. I can understand why you didn’t come here.”

  There were times, on their way to see Julie, that he’d wanted to turn off the freeway, show Barbara where he’d lived once, the house still there with its rambling screened-in porch, the tangelo trees out behind the barn, the creek in front, the rutted road. He could have shown her the school at Island Grove. Barbara wouldn’t have had to know how he’d felt in the classroom reliving the nights with Mary Jean. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from the sun-creased creek, scummed with shadow under the bridge. Sometimes he’d go home on his lunch break and surprise Mary Jean in the kitchen. He would slowly lift up her corduroy skirt. He couldn’t wait to get home and have a drink on the porch. Or they’d be taking back roads to the county line to pick up a week’s supply of liquor, and Mary Jean, her skirt hiked up on her thighs, would tongue his right ear and he’d pull over.

  He had to take his eyes off the creek. “We should have done this a long time ago. I’m sorry we waited so long.”

  “It’s all right, Daddy. We’re here now.” He watched Julie collecting napkins, a few fries, bits of hamburger bun, arranging them neatly on her plate. “I’ll bet you never knew about this thing we did once. Mama told me she wouldn’t tell you.” Julie folded her hands on her belly, the powder-blue cloth of her jumper, without putting her hands in the pockets. “I must have been in the third grade. In that crappy country school you taught at. I’d get home before you did, and Mama and I had this thing we did. We cut animals out of cookie dough. Horses and cows and a rabbit, Mama even tried to cut out a raccoon, but she said it looked more like a skunk to her. We lined up all our animals on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven to bake. The next day we painted them. We used my watercolors and Mama’s nail polish.” Julie lifted an eyebrow. “That was something you didn’t know about. We had chickens and pigs, a cat and a dog. Enough for a farm, Mama said. She was drinking, I knew that even then, but what she did then was really wonderful.”

  “So tell me, what did you do next?”

  “What we did was start our own little farm, out back of the house in the tangerine grove. We put all our animals out there, one afternoon you were late getting home. Mama said the foxes would get them someday. Or the ’gators. But they would be all right for awhile. Mama said it was like an Easter egg hunt you can do any day of the year.”

  “An Easter egg hunt? Here in Island Grove?”

  “All right, so it was a cookie hunt. And yes, here in Island Grove.”

  She set down his glass of iced tea, sliding it on the tablecloth. He was able to signal the waitress. The waitress brought the check and he paid with cash. Julie offered to pay, but he insisted. He wouldn’t let Julie get the tip.

  The house was beside the bend in the creek, off by itself past the edge of town. There was a number to call on the For Sale sign, but no real estate agency. Julie locked both doors of the van, and made sure the sliding door was locked. She had the camera looped around her neck.

  He made out newspapers on the front steps, yellowed, rain-soaked, then dried by the sun. How long had the place been up for sale? The grass hadn’t been cut for awhile but it hadn’t had time to grow that much. He’d kept it mowed with a power mower, taking turns with Mary Jean. She would mow awhile while he rested or raked. She wore khakis and brogans against the snakes; he wore the cleated boots he went fishing in. It took them all day to do it, backing and angling around the trees, squashing tangelos, pulpy fruit split by the rotary blades. He watched Julie move on ahead of him, up the driveway across the flagstone walk, the camera held out in one hand from the strap, away from her belly. He stopped to look into the mailbox, a magazine sweepstakes, junk mail. Whoever had lived here would never get it. Julie tried the screen door, pulled it open. She waited for him on the front steps. He had chosen his words when he joined her there.

  “I don’t think we should go inside,” he said. “It isn’t legal. And I don’t think it’s right.”

  “You don’t want to?”

  “I don’t think I want to.”

  “You’re afraid of what it might do to you.”

  He nudged aside one of the newspapers. “This house, it isn’t ours anymore.”

  “Something of it still is.”

  He followed her into the screen porch, but that was as far as he would go. There was a porch chair, cobwebbed, corroded, not fit for either of them to sit on. They stood there, looking out at the road, the mailbox, beyond it a stand of pines, a brick bungalow with a satellite dish. Anyone who might see them might think he was with his pregnant wife. Would a man bring his pregnant daughter here? A buyer might bring his daughter. A pickup truck with two men in the cab came by, radio blaring. Julie turned away from the screen door.

  “I’ve come here more than once,” she said. “It isn’t occupied. And we can get in.”

  The owner hadn’t put in new locks; out here what would be the need? Julie asked him to use her skeleton key, much like the key he’d used before, the same pressure on cold metal. Julie closed the door behind them.

  The living room was musty from having been closed in. The place where the carpet had been was directly in front of the fireplace. A chunk of charred wood tipped off a firedog. Newspapers and flattened cartons were packed in the back of the fireplace. Something he hadn’t done when they left, dumped trash in the fireplace. But this was for starting someone else’s fire. He tested the flue; it was closed. He breathed in the smell of ashes. He watched Julie move toward the dining room. She reached up and touched a chandelier, the teardrops Mary Jean used to touch in the dining room, before dinner.

  “We always had dinner on time,” Julie said. “Or almost. Not too long after the six o’clock news.” Which the three of them watched in the living room, the television set in one corner.

  Julie came back from the kitchen. “I don’t want to see anymore,” he said. “You can do what you like.”

  “I’ve already been upstairs. This time I want you with me. You used to put me to bed. Read me stories. You should be there too.”

  She was waiting at the foot of the stairs, waiting for him to go ahead of her. Her room was at one end of the upstairs hall, past the bathroom, the sleeping porch. He remembered the medicine cabinet’s cracked mirror, where the mattress was on the sleeping porch. And Julie’s room, there used to be dolls on the mantel, he couldn’t remember how many. Julie’s bed was by the window. He used to sit in a chair by her bed and read bedtime stories to her. He’d have a drink nearby, on the mantel. He would read on after she closed her eyes. The space heater that had been there then looked like it still might work. He tried the valve, but failed to move it. One corner of her room was covered with ants, streaming in and out from a heap of chicken bones. Behind the space heater, hunks of melon rind.

  Julie ran a finger along the mantel, where she used to have her dolls lined up. She made a crooked streak in the dust. “There’s something I think you should know. You told me I didn’t need all these dolls. Mama stood up for me. Remember? She said I could keep my dolls.”

  He could see them clearly now, Raggedy Anne and Barbie, the kewpies, the Southern belles, legs splayed or hanging over the edge of the mantel. I never had any dolls to speak of. My little Julie can have all the dolls she wants, she can have anything she damn well wants to have and you’re not going to stop her. He pushed a wine bottle with his shoe. It rolled a little, then came to a stop.

  It came out—“Why did you bring me here? What is it you want from me, Julie?”

  “Don’t you know? Can’t you see, Daddy? I want you to know how I felt in this room. I heard awful things go on between you. And the drinking, that went on all the time.�
�� Julie drew something crooked in the dust on the mantel. “But I had the dolls Mama gave me. I thought they would make everything right.”

  She blew dust off her fingers. “Did you know sometimes while you were at school, Mama and I would take a nap together? She’d come in here where my bed was and say, Julie we need a little rest. I’d be lying awake while Mama slept and look at my dolls on the mantel. I’d smell the whisky on Mama’s breath but that didn’t stop me from loving her.” She put her fingers around the camera case and lifted the strap up over her head. She set the camera case on the mantel, between Barbie and Raggedy Anne. “And I loved her when she was dying. She said she would get all her ducks in a row so I wouldn’t feel bad about losing her. Did you know that, Daddy? Her ducks.”

  “No I didn’t know. I wasn’t with her.”

  “That’s right. You were with Barbara. You weren’t with us while she was dying and you didn’t go to the funeral.”

  Julie came over to where he was waiting for her. “You weren’t there when I telephoned you.” The telephone had gone on ringing, goldfish cruising in the seething pond, ants crawling over the chicken bones, Julie too close, too close. She put her hands on his shoulders. “So now I want you to know what it was like for me, knowing what I know now.” She pushed his hands, hard, against her belly. He felt the elastic band of her panties through the tight cloth of her jumper. Someone unknown was moving inside her.

  “I found out for myself ten days ago. I’m going to have a daughter. Harry doesn’t know because I lied to him, I covered it up, because he could never know what it was like for me to be your daughter. And Mama’s, how could he know that?”

  Her hands were loosening on his wrists. He looked out through the dirt-streaked window at the tangelo grove, spots of fallen fruit, standing close to her but not touching her now, not knowing just when she had released his hands, moved away, gone back to herself. Then she was going back to where her dolls were once. She picked the camera case up off the mantel and slung it around her neck, moving rapidly past him through the bedroom door.