Crooked Hearts

by Patricia Gaffney

  Every time she came to visit, Grace saw herself regressing to her worst, her most immature Grace-ness, eventually retreating into total, puerile silence. It was nothing Lucille did on purpose; she was unfailingly kind and gracious, and patient even when Grace was rude to her, although she hadn’t been openly rude in years.

  It was just that she was so damn perfect. Watching her shake hands with Reuben, Grace noted sulkily how attractive she was, with her deep, stately bosom, the thick chestnut hair that was finally—thank God—starting to streak with gray, her handsome, smooth-skinned face, always alive with charm and intelligence. “Grace, you’re looking so beautiful,” she exclaimed, with every evidence of sincerity, taking the easy chair and reaching for the glass of sherry Ah You offered her, like a queen accepting her crown.

  Grace ought to like her. How childish to hold back affection from such a paragon. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t seem to see Lucille as anything but a threat. Reuben would go away soon, she could feel it; Willow Pond, the only home she’d ever known, was as good as gone, forfeited to the creditors. She wanted Henry to be happy, to have his heart’s desire, but—but—what would she have left if he abandoned her, too?

  Dinner was an ordeal. Besides everything else, something was the matter with Reuben. “I have to talk to you,” he muttered urgently, following her out of the living room when she excused herself to go help Ah You. All she needed was another traumatic encounter with him tonight. “No,” she said tightly, “absolutely not,” and pushed past him, leaving him stranded. At the table, he stared at her in the oddest way, not saying much, but laughing uproariously at anything anyone said that was even remotely funny. Was he drunk? He hardly touched his wine, or his food for that matter. His eyes had a strange, excited glitter; he looked wound up, ready to explode. He made her nervous.

  Somehow she got through the meal without snapping anybody’s head off. But she sagged with relief when Lucille said she couldn’t stay for coffee, she had to get home before dark. They said good-bye in the hall, and Henry went outside with her to her pony gig. Grace turned away, and walked straight into Reuben.

  “Can we talk now?”

  “No!” She slid past him; he started to follow. Luckily Ah You came through just then with an armload of dishes. She snatched a stack of plates out of his hands—”Here, let me help you”—and sailed down the hall ahead of him, heading for the kitchen.

  She stayed there as long as she could, cleaning and washing, lavishing muscular energy on the grease-spattered stove. Ah You watched her in wise, knowing silence, which didn’t improve her mood. When he finally spoke, to say, “Lady redwing who wake up to find new wife in nest should never—”

  “Don’t start!” she cried imperiously. “Not one word!”

  He made her a low bow full of mock deference, and handed her the coffee tray to take up to Henry and Reuben; they were in the parlor, he told her, reading the afternoon newspaper Missy Waters had graciously thought to bring with her.

  That proved to be only half true. Henry was reading, but Reuben was pacing. He looked like a big cat in a zoo, caged and restless, ready to leap over the fence. She handed him his coffee charily, afraid to get too near.

  “Want to go for a walk with me, Grace?” he asked, smiling tensely.

  “No.” What now? Was it a campaign to drive her mad?

  “Why don’t you, Grace?” Henry asked without looking up. “Do you good. There’s going to be a full moon, it’s a nice—”

  “Because I don’t want to!”

  He lifted his head, startled by her tone.

  “I’m—it’s—I’ve got a headache,” she said lamely. “Excuse me, I still have chores.” Without looking at either of them, she escaped again and went back downstairs, to scrub the pot she’d just told Ah You to soak overnight.

  She couldn’t believe it when Reuben followed her. She thought the footsteps on the stairs were Ah You’s until a low, tentative voice said, “Hi,” from the doorway, and she whipped around, hands dripping soapsuds, and saw Reuben. “Oh, God,” she groaned, and took two steps sideways.

  “Wait, Grace. You’re not scared of me, are you?”

  That did it. Knees locked, back braced against the spice cabinet, she prepared for battle. “Scared of you? Scared of you? You miserable—There’s only one thing I want from you, Reuben Jones, and that’s for you to go away and leave me alone!”

  He came closer.

  “Don’t! Don’t, I can’t stand this anymore. No, don’t you dare touch me—”

  “Grace—”

  “Stop it, I mean it. If you think you can sweet-talk me, kiss me, and then turn around and tell me I’ve got no conscience—”

  “That was before—”

  “I’ve got a conscience! It’s telling me to stay away from maniacs like you.”

  “Listen. Would you be quiet and listen to me for one minute?”

  “No, I won’t. You’re not the man I thought you were—”

  “I know I’ve been—”

  “—and I can’t stand how you treat me, Reuben. It’s not fair and I don’t deserve it. I’ve never been anything but straight with you—”

  “Gus—”

  “Don’t call me that! If you’re finished with me because you’ve—you’ve had your fun with me, or you can’t use me anymore to—”

  “Shit!”

  “—get rich somehow, the decent thing to do would be to just go away, not hang around thinking up new ways to torment me.” She snatched the handkerchief he handed her and batted at her eyes. “Why are you touching me?”

  “Shhh.”

  “I never cry,” she snuffled, heartbroken. “If you’d go away, I wouldn’t have to.”

  “Are you through yet?” He had her in a loose, perversely comforting embrace, softly rubbing her shoulders.

  She heaved a wavery sigh. “I suppose.”

  “You mean I can talk now?”

  She glared at him through wet lashes. “Who’s stopping you?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but then he closed it. All of a sudden he looked uncertain, not urgent. “There’s a reason why I’ve been a little difficult these—”

  “Difficult?”

  “Why I’ve been a bit of a … a bit of a …”

  “Prick?” She made a face and put her hand over her lips. “Wash my mouth out with soap,” she muttered bitterly.

  “Why I’ve been somewhat out of sorts—”

  “Out of—”

  “Okay! Okay! Why I’ve been a complete horse’s ass since I got here!”

  She scowled up at him, satisfied. “Well, that’s a start. Let’s hear the reason.”

  “The fact is I’ve been … I was, um …”

  “Yes?”

  He muttered something that sounded like “jels.”

  “Pardon me? You were what?” His lean cheeks went faintly bronze; he couldn’t meet her eyes. “Jealous?” she guessed, incredulous.

  “Yeah.”

  “Jealous?”

  “I said jealous.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of Henry. You and Henry.”

  She stared at him, unable to speak. Then a laugh bubbled up, a helpless, giddy giggle that made him blush even harder. She pressed her hand to her heart, which was thumping wildly. “You were jealous of Henry? Of me and Henry? Oh, Reuben”

  He grimaced. “Well, hell, Grace, you told me he was your husband, and then you said he was your lover—”

  “I did not, I never said he was my lover!”

  “The hell you didn’t. You said you lived with him—”

  “I do live with him! He’s my uncle.”

  “Your uncle!”

  “Well, not really my uncle, not technically—”

  “Hah!”

  “Hah! What does that mean?”

  His frowning face suddenly cleared. “Nothing. It doesn’t mean a damn thing.” He scooped her up and hugged her, laughing, and she could feel the same gladness and relief in him that were
streaming through her.

  “You were jealous,” she whispered, awed, running a line of soft kisses across his lips from cheek to cheek. “You must be crazy about me.”

  “I must be crazy.” He looked serious. She thought of taking offense, but then he caught her up again and covered her mouth with a rough, passionate, unconsidered kiss. Her mind flew off; lighter than air, her body almost followed, but Reuben’s strong arms anchored her. Jealous, she thought dizzily; oh, God, he’d been jealous. Hands down, it was the nicest thing that had ever happened to her.

  “Lord, you smell good,” he told her, nuzzling behind her ear. “I missed you like hell, Gus.”

  Her heart skipped two consecutive beats. “I missed you. It was awful, Reuben, not knowing why you were so angry with me.”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t see straight. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to share you with some old man.”

  “Henry’s not old.” She laughed at his expression. “And now you don’t have to share me with anybody.” Because I’m all yours. But she didn’t say that out loud.

  She loved the rough texture of his shirt under her hands, but she wanted more: she wanted bare skin. Frustrated, she found his mouth and kissed him deeply, and they held each other’s face with the same fierce, possessive tenderness. Another admission, a joyful, searing truth was on the tip of her tongue—but caution, or maybe cowardice, kept her from saying it. Anyway, she forgot it when Reuben wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up, pivoted, and set her down on top of the kitchen table.

  She felt her own cheeks redden; her eyes went wide with excitement. He was watching her while he put his big hands on her knees and pulled her thighs apart. She gasped, and he stepped into the V of her legs. “Holy saints,” she breathed. “Oh, my, my. Reuben, what you do to me.” She had her eyes closed and she was humming with pleasure, her feet hooked around his calves, running her hands up and down his ribs. But the humming broke off when she felt him pulling her skirts up over her knees. “Uh-oh. Wait now. No, we can’t do this, absolutely not. Are you crazy?”

  “Yeah. Simple as that, I am completely crazy. Look at your legs, Gus. Holy—what is it?”

  “Saints—Reuben, we’re in the kitchen.”

  “So?” His hopeful smile turned her muscles to jelly. “Think of all the time we’ve been wasting,” he coaxed.

  “Yeah, but we can’t—”

  “Why not?”

  She forgot.

  He pressed closer, sliding his hands up the sides of her thighs, above her stockings, until he had her petticoats up to her waist. A lot of feeble, insincere arguments for why this wasn’t a good idea came and went through what remained of her mind, but when Reuben kissed her they all skulked away, whipped, their tails between their legs. He caressed her with his magic hands, and crooned to her, “It’s all right, Gracie, it’s all right,” and they were really going to do it, “it’s all right, Gracie,” and her fingers were fumbling at the buttons on his trousers—

  And then Henry called them.

  “Grace? Reuben? Where the devil are you?”

  Luckily they were kissing; otherwise Henry might’ve heard her scream.

  “Come to my room tonight,” Reuben commanded, holding her still when she tried to jump down off the table.

  “Oh, God. I want to—but I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “No, I can’t. Not in the house. I don’t know why, I just can’t, I can’t.” Never mind that she’d just been about to make use of the kitchen table. She had her wits back now.

  “Grace?” Henry hollered. “You down in the kitchen?”

  “Tomorrow,” she blurted. “I know a place outside—it’s not too far.” A terrible thought struck. “You can walk, can’t you?”

  He sent her a look that made her laugh. “If not, I’ll crawl.”

  “I’ll carry you.”

  “Tomorrow, Grace,” he promised grimly.

  Footsteps on the stairs.

  He picked her up and set her on the floor. They kissed, both red-faced and shiny-eyed. “Tomorrow,” she repeated, breathless. “I can hardly—”

  “Here you are. Didn’t you hear me?”

  They made ambiguous noises.

  “Look, I’ve found it!” he exclaimed, shaking the newspaper at them.

  “What?”

  “The hook, what we’ve been looking for! It’s right here on the front page.”

  Grace took the paper from him, and she and Reuben read the headline he thumped with his finger. “Nineteen Years after Enactment,” it said, “Burlingame Treaty Finally Enforced.” They looked up, uncomprehending.

  “Here,” he said emphatically, whacking the paper a good one.

  “‘Under the treaty’s provisions,’” Grace read aloud from the third paragraph, “ ‘it is now unlawful for any Chinese resident of the United States or American resident of China to import opium into this country.’” She skimmed the rest in silence, still mystified. The new law, which was really an old law that had never been implemented, prohibited the importation of smoking opium—that containing less than nine percent morphine—altogether, and limited the import of other kinds of opium to American pharmaceutical companies and other legitimate medical concerns.

  “Don’t you get it?” cried Henry. “Wing’s supply is cut off. If he wants to stay in business, he’s going to need some help from the white devils.”

  Understanding dawned. “Medical white devils,” Grace realized. “A doctor!”

  Reuben’s smile stretched wide as a mile. “And I know just the man.”

  16

  Truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.

  —Herman Melville

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU forgot our date.”

  “Hm?” sounded from a far-off corner of the wine cellar.

  “What in the world are you doing?” Grace hung her lantern on a hook in the wooden post holding up the crossbeam overhead, and hugged her arms. It was chilly down here after the hot noon sun. She took off her floppy straw hat and moved toward the glow of the oil lamp Reuben was holding at head height while he peered into nooks and crevices. “What are you doing?” she repeated when he didn’t pay any attention to her.

  “Ah You told me about this,” he answered finally, gesturing around the dusty, echoing cellar. “Do you know what you’ve got here?”

  She glanced around. “Old wine-making stuff?” He made a face. “Well, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but that’s such a … I mean, what a … Look at this.”

  She went closer, in case she was missing something. “A stack of old casks?” she guessed, more tentatively.

  “Four-foot white oak puncheons coopered in Germany,” he informed her, with poorly disguised amazement at her ignorance. “And this is a basket press, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen, and these are pupitres for holding the bottles at an angle. And it’s all just—sitting here, molding and rusting and mildewing.”

  “Well, I told you Willow Pond was a vineyard before it was a farm,” she reminded him.

  “When did it stop being a vineyard?”

  “When my stepparents bought it. They thought wine-making was a sin.”

  He muttered something unkind and resumed prowling around the cellar, looking for more treasures. “Look at these walls,” he said, smacking his hand against the one in front of him. “Know what they’re made of?”

  She’d learned her lesson: she didn’t guess, “damp, dirty old stone?” She just shook her head and waited for enlightenment.

  “Limestone. A hundred years ago somebody—monks, probably—carved these cellars out of the living rock. The temperature down here doesn’t vary all year by more than about two degrees.”

  She made an impressed sound. “Would you like to see what’s left of the vineyard?”

  He whirled around so fast his lantern nearly went out. “You mean you’ve still got vines?”

  She nodded. “Up on th
e hillsides, above our part of the valley. Want to see?”

  “Yes,” he said, with enough subdued fervor to tell her it was an understatement.

  “I could be mad at you, you know,” she said, catching his hand and leading the way out of the cellar. “You said you’d meet me on the terrace at noon for our, heh-heh, walk.”

  “I didn’t forget,” he grinned. “How could I? I just got distracted.”

  “Oh, now I feel better. I guess I’ll have to keep you away from old limestone walls if I want your undivided attention.”

  He grabbed her around the waist and kissed her, holding her a foot off the ground. He let her down slowly, so their bodies slid against each other with maximum contact. By the time her toes touched the grass, she wanted to keep sinking lower and lower, and lie down with him right here behind the hollyhocks. He smiled, reading her mind. “Show me the vines,” he ordered, murmuring it against her lips. “I’m dying to see the vines.”

  “You’re a very peculiar person, Jones.”

  “Show me the vines.”

  So she took him to see the scraggly, wasted remains of the hilly wine fields, where the old grapevines ran wild through thimbleberries and manzanita and thorny chaparral. He called them “Mission-Monica” vines, and swore some more when she told him there had been others, on the flatter fields below, but her stepfather had plowed them under to plant wheat. She couldn’t understand his dismay, his near-violent disappointment over the fate of the vineyard; he seemed to take the whole thing personally. “What difference does it make?” she dared to ask. “The soil here is terrible—look at it. Nothing much could grow in these foothills, Reuben. Even the valley is too dry for wheat most years—”

  “‘Bacchus loves the hillsides,’” she thought he said, squatting in the weeds and sniffing at the two dead ends of a dried-up vine he’d broken in half.

  “What?”

  “That’s Virgil. You’re right about the soil, Grace, it isn’t very fertile. But it’s got exactly the right minerals for grapes. The best vines in the world grow on flinty hillsides just like this.”

  “But—”