In the fall, I started at the junior college as a commuter student. I took writing and Western civilization and chemistry and history and French. I learned about playwriting and psychology. Everything electrified me.
The farm stayed the same—always on the brink of some disaster with weather or insects or tired soil. Hendrix joined my dad in working full-time, taking some classes in accounting and business management for the day when he was going to inherit the whole mess. My father’s face had hardened into a kind of calcified disappointment, but I tried to be kind to him. Poor man, still possibly in love with someone he’d never again have, tied to this land that threatened him with ruination day after day after day. He couldn’t be saved, but I didn’t hate him anymore, or fear him. My new feeling was pity, and I didn’t see at the time how that might have been just as unfairly destructive.
At the end of my first year in college, Tenaj wrote to me that she’d left Jesse. She hoped I was doing well. She and Chloe had moved into a house with a lot of interesting people. She said she’d been right all along, that marriage was bad for women. But she was glad for it just the same: after all, she’d gotten a gallery and a daughter from the deal.
A precious, precious daughter.
At first, I felt the old rage and disappointment coming back, and I didn’t want to answer her, but then I remembered how Bunny had urged me to react with kindness. People were incompetent and clueless, but I was, too—and we were all just doing our best.
I wrote a little note back. I said, “I’m sorry that your life has changed and that your marriage didn’t work out. But I know you are finding your way. You always do.”
That was it.
She didn’t write back, and before I knew it, between doing my school work and helping Maggie and Bunny, and going out on the weekends with Judd and Hendrix and Ariel, my sophomore year at the community college had passed.
That May, two big things happened in our family. Hendrix married Ariel. They got married in our barn with crepe paper streamers over the bales of hay and candles set out on rented folding tables. There was a big dance afterward with just about everybody in town, and I had a great time, shimmying and jitterbugging with all the former Old Spice guys.
Was there a moment in the dancing, drinking, and swooning that I thought of staying there forever? That I looked at Hendrix and Ariel and felt envy? I don’t think so. Judd was happily slow dancing with Karla Kristensen, whom he’d had a crush on since tenth grade when she’d suddenly burst forth with enormous breasts and an ability to lead all the cheerleaders in pyramid formations. He winked at me across the barn and gave me the high sign. They were going to be an item. I gave him a wink right back.
A week later, I graduated from junior college, and at the end of the summer, I packed up and moved to New York City so I could attend NYU and get to be a writer.
And in my pocket, I had a check to NYU from Bunny for the first year’s tuition. She had given it to me, she said, because she believed in me. She knew I was a writer. She and I had spent so many hours together, me reading her my stories. She made suggestions—gentle ones, kind ones.
She had once wanted to be a writer herself, she said.
Maybe I would go to college for both of us. And maybe someday I’d bring her to New York, and we could walk down Fifth Avenue, see Tiffany’s window, maybe go up to the Empire State Building, and get a White Castle hamburger. She’d heard of those.
“Live your life,” she said. “And do it for both of us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By the time the baffled, outplayed South Carolina sun struggles to come up, the world is blanketed in snow. I know it from the moment my eyes fly open. I so recognize that feeling of living in a muffled, snowbound world. There are no traffic noises outside—no cars whooshing by, no sirens in the distance. Nothing.
I turn, bleary-eyed, to look at the bedside digital clock. The numbers are dark, and as a special treat, my head is throbbing.
Shit. Is the power out? Why is it dark?
Yes. The power is out.
And I’m hungover.
And I’m in trouble at work.
Aaannnd . . . my crazy mother was on a texting tear through the night, and thanks to that, my phone is dead.
I stumble out of bed and go over to the window and push aside the blinds. There is nothing but whiteness, so bright it makes me squint. It’s still snowing. The stuff is heaped up on the roofs of the parked cars. The awning of the building across the street. Looks like about eight inches. Maybe.
There’s a knock on my door. It feels like someone might be knocking from inside my head, using a ball-peen hammer.
“Phronsie? It’s Adam.”
Go away, I want to say. I’m not fit for human companionship this morning.
“Have you talked to Darla?” he asks. “Because I have.”
My heart starts doing its calisthenics. Have I already missed calls from her this morning? I grab my phone and then remember it’s dead. That’s right; you have to plug these things in, especially if you have a mother who wants to discuss the universe with you all night.
“No. My phone died. What time is it?” I say, leaning against the door. I look at him through the peephole, and there is his big eye right at the hole, staring in at me. I jump back.
“Nine forty-five.”
Oh dear God.
“All right. I’m letting you in, but I’m warning you. I haven’t brushed my teeth or combed my hair . . . or anything. You can come in, but you are not to look in my direction. And if you do look in my direction, you are to forget what you saw.”
“Agreed,” he says, and I slide the chain-link lock open. He comes in, looking around. Smiling. All dressed. Carrying a bottle of orange juice, which he thrusts in my direction. “Sustenance,” he says.
“Thank you. I have some questions.”
“Shoot.”
“First: Are we fired?”
“We do not seem to be fired as of this morning.”
“Okay, at least there’s that. Now—”
“She does, however, want to talk to you.”
“Of course. We’ll get back to that conversation with her in a moment. The next huge question is: Is the power really out, or am I just in a particularly defective room?”
“Power is out.”
“And so does this mean there isn’t any coffee?”
“Correct,” he says. “Only orange juice.”
“Orange juice is not going to get the job done,” I say.
“It helps though. Vitamin C, hydration, sugar, pleasing color.” He squints at me. “Just how bad are you feeling?”
Maybe this is when I should mention to him that we will never again be kissing. But I can’t seem to think of the proper segue. And anyway, I am surely not someone who would be desirable to kiss. In my present state, I am in no danger.
“There are elves in my head who have hammers.” Having said that, I go back and sit on the bed because it’s too painful to be standing upright. Also, another advantage to being on the bed is that I can put the blankets back over me. Less of me to look at. I’m wearing my usual sleep outfit, which consists of black leggings and a black long-sleeved T-shirt, so I’m decent, but I don’t like it that he’s looking at me after I specifically said he shouldn’t. He is, in fact, standing there staring at me—or gazing or whatever. His hands are in his pockets and he’s rocking on his heels, smiling.
He is fairly adorable this morning. Despite the haze through which I am seeing him.
Tell him you’re sorry about the mistake of kissing him. Now.
“So, what’s the news from Darla?” I say. I take a sip of the orange juice. It’s much too zingy for my current state—not comforting, not coffee, and it is probably not going to help.
“She just wanted to know what the hell had gone wrong. So I told her the truth, that Gabora took out her crack pipe and starting bashing people over the head when they complained about her book, and that you and I had to fight off the bo
okstore people using only our fists, and then the cops came and took Gabora away, and we spent all last night dancing for tips in a club so we could bail her out of jail.”
I fix him with my most imposing stare. “God. You’re actually happy this morning, aren’t you?”
“Yep. I’m not in the office, and I’m not on my way to California for Thanksgiving, and I suspect that all flights are canceled anyway, so I think you and I are pretty much stranded here for a bit. And we don’t have to go to any more bookstores and fight for Gabora’s honor. And all that makes me happy.”
“What did you really tell Darla?”
“I gave her the rundown pretty much. People were rude, there were protesters, the reading got cut short—wait a second. Are you worried?”
“Well, of course I’m worried! You’re not? I mean, we had the job of protecting our author—and then while we were out carousing, she got so upset that she called her stupid daughters to come and get her, and we didn’t even know about it.”
“You know, these days you hardly ever hear the word carousing. Which is a shame, really—”
“And Darla left me like fifteen messages last night that I didn’t even get!”
“Riiiiiight . . . you didn’t get them . . . and so . . . you didn’t answer them. Perfectly defensible.” He goes over and gazes out the window at the white world below. Then he sits down in the armchair by the window. “This is all going to be fine. We know Darla. She’s not going to freak out about something like this.”
“No, she will. Because I should have probably let her know what was happening when it happened.”
“Excuse me, but you didn’t know it was happening! You were out dancing and drinking in a club.”
“Exactly! Dancing and drinking! That’s not a great defense.”
“What were you supposed to be doing? Standing guard outside Gabora’s hotel room? Sleeping next to her? If you ask me, you went way beyond the call of duty, frankly, when you actually took off her clothes for her and put her in her pajamas and practically brushed her teeth for her. I mean, come on, Linnelle. That is combat duty, as far as I’m concerned. And now it’s another day, and she’s gone, and we’re still here, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”
“But I was unavailable.”
“What? You’re not supposed to have any fun? Were we supposed to be on duty twenty-four seven? I didn’t get the memo on that. Sheesh. Between that and the expectation of being combat-ready, I might not have agreed to come.”
I rub my head. “I don’t know, I don’t know. It just is . . . unseemly, us being out. Somehow. Hard to defend. Did she sound mad?”
“She sounded . . . Darla-ish. You know her. Brisk, no-nonsense, in command. Where were we? What happened? Why didn’t we take her calls last night? Demanding answers. It was Professional Darla.”
“Oh God.”
“Oh God, what? There’s no ‘oh God’ to this.”
“Demanding answers? I should call her now and explain the whole thing. And I should call Gabora and see if she’s okay. And then see about a flight out of here. Let’s see, it’s Tuesday morning—I also need to call the bookstore and tell them we’re canceling, which is not a good look for Tiller. Our author bailing—”
“See? That’s the very best part: this whole city is shut down! Nothing is taking place anymore. Nada. Zilch. Power outages, snow piled up in the streets—and these poor sun-loving Southerners don’t have the equipment to remove it.” He gets up and goes over to the window again. “Come. Look down here—you’ll see that nothing is going on. Nothing. The stoplights aren’t even working.”
“I’ll call her. Where’s my—oh God. I forgot. It’s dead, and I can’t charge it. Wait. Where’s yours? Give me your phone.”
“Nope. Mine’s dead, too.”
“But what are we going to do?”
“I think,” he says, upping the wattage on his dazzling smile, “that once we calm down a little, we are going to have the time of our lives. I suspect we’re going to leave this horrible hotel and go in search of caffeine, swanning down the street like celebrities who know how to walk in the snow—the Southerners will be stunned at our prowess—and they’ll beg us for lessons, but we won’t have time, because after we find coffee, we’re going to take the Gabora poster that the bookstore gave us and turn it into a snow saucer and ride down the hills in the park. And after that, who knows? Snowball fights? Snowman building? Hot cocoa, if we play our cards right. And later, I do believe there are some alcoholic beverages in our future, and possibly more dancing, although who can say for sure? Lots of talking, that’s for sure. I need to hear more about Tenaj, for starters.”
I look at him.
“About the kissing last night,” I say.
“I know, I know. No more of that stuff. We’re coworkers. You’re engaged to John-Boy Walton. Totally inappropriate.”
“It was the alcohol talking. And the dancing.”
“Of course it was. But now we have a day off,” he says. “There’s nothing we can really do about anything. So why not enjoy it?”
He’s right. Or he might be right.
I hear my father’s voice admonishing me that I really stepped away from my post. Even Maggie is there in my head saying that I should take action now, do something to make things right with my boss. Make sure everyone’s okay, all fine, and that all people concerned realize that I didn’t do anything wrong.
I am terrified of doing anything wrong.
But you know what? I say to the Maggie in my head. I don’t want to just be good all the time. I have to have fun. The Maggie in my head isn’t convinced.
“Think of it this way,” Adam says. “This is like time out of time. We’re away from all our responsibilities. Our last responsibility got in a car driven by her daughters and went away from here, not even bothering to leave a message for us. The airport is closed, the hotel is out of power, we can’t even call our boss. So—what the hell? Let’s go see how much fun we can pack into one day.”
I look at his face, at how he’s still unshaven. His cheekbones. The light in his eyes. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I don’t have to be the most responsible human in the world right now. No fretting, no worrying.
Luckily I have my down vest, my boots, my heavy coat with me, because I was planning to go straight to New Hampshire from Charleston.
I’m going to get that Gabora poster and look for a hill to slide down.
With Adam.
Just this once.
There’s an agenda for Time Out of Time Day, Adam tells me a half hour later, after I’ve met him downstairs in the lobby, dressed in warm clothes and more or less willing to give fun a try.
First, he says, we have serious needs: coffee and food, for starters. Ibuprofen will be important. It’s snowing so ridiculously hard, and we walk, laughing, in it until we find the street where the power company has somehow been able to restore electricity—oh merciful zappings of life. That was Adam’s line.
There’s a coffee shop, with grits and ham steak and runny eggs and buttered biscuits, and I’m so hungry that I’m afraid I’ll fall on the food and devour it in one go. Adam has snow in his eyebrows and on his eyelashes. The waitress there blesses our hearts and keeps bringing coffee refills. She is only eighteen, she tells us, and she’s never seen snow before, she said, except on television. She didn’t know, for instance, how wet and cold it really was, and so when she came outside this morning, the first thing she did was to throw herself down in the middle of it and roll around.
“And—well, I learned my lesson real fast!” she says. “That shit is frozen water!”
That became the motto of the day: “That shit is frozen water.”
The snow falls steadily all day long, piling up in windows and doorways, and all the Southerners are confused, but we walk throughout the city, ostentatiously sliding and jumping. We have a snowball fight in the park. We ride down a tiny hill on our Gabora poster over and over until it rips apart. And then we scrounge fo
r cardboard in liquor stores, and make two sleds and ride down the hill together. For some reason, my cardboard sled always seems to turn me going backward, and I’m shrieking with craziness. I have to roll off to save my own life. And then I lie there on my back, no smarter than the waitress, letting the cold seep into my bones.
Two kids come over and want to be shown how to sled, and so we give makeshift lessons, pushing them off from the top of the hill and making sure they don’t land in the pond that’s also covered in snow.
Later, the power comes back on over the city, and Adam says, “What would be fun now?”
Making love, I think. Making love would be the most fun thing.
Because all day, every moment, it seems I’m aware of sex. I may have mentioned that I’m in my prime. I’m a childless woman in her midthirties. We have raging hormones, we thirty-somethings. And I am so much in my prime on this very day that it’s like all the hormones have gathered together and are having a circus. I am weak from these thoughts.
And it’s been so long, I think.
Except that then I realize it hasn’t been so long really.
A week. Since Judd and I . . .
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
We’re freezing, so we find a brewpub and we go inside. It’s cavernous and there are television sets all around, and basically the whole place is just about beers and production of beers and drinking and testing of beers. I like exactly one kind of beer, and they don’t have that, so I choose something in a blueberry IPA, whatever that means, because what the hell. Then it tastes so awful that I nearly spit it out on the table.
Adam is staring at me, his face all contorted with trying not to laugh. “No good?” he whispers.
“It’s like cough medicine!” I say. “Who would put blueberries in beer, anyway? What kind of a scam are they pulling here?”
He gets up and takes my glass to the bar, and I hear him tell the bartender that I need something in a wimp flavor—“beers for amateurs,” he calls it—although what he should have said is that they should leave the Robitussin out of the brewing process. The bartender looks over at me, and I smile and wave, and then he and Adam decide I’d like something in a light amber. He brings it back over to me, and he and I both taste it, and it’s okay.
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