by Mad Dash
I’ve never seen Cottie Bender in a dress before, nor with her long braid pinned up on her head. My glance goes right over her amid the afternoon crowd at the Velvet Cafe until she waves to me from a back booth. I hurry over, wishing I’d dressed up more; the only concession I’ve made to our lunch date is to put on slacks instead of jeans. I didn’t know it was fancy. “Sorry I’m late! Have you been waiting long? Chloe called right as I was leaving—”
“Just got here. Sit.” She’s finished most of a glass of iced tea, so I know that’s a fib.
“Sorry, sorry, but then we got into a fight, and so then we had to make up before we could say good-bye. Sort of make up.”
“You and Chloe?” She has a garnet circle pin on the collar of her long-sleeved shirtwaist dress, and clip-on earrings that almost match it. She leans toward me in sympathy. “You had a fight?”
“You won’t believe what she said, Cottie.”
“Oh no. What did she say?”
“I’m still in shock.”
“What?”
“She’s decided to major in drama.”
She sits back. “Oh. Really?”
“The theater.” I put my hands on my cheeks. “After all these years of knowing exactly what she wants to be, a historian, a scholar like her father, now she wants to act.”
“Oh, my. Well,” she says with a tolerant chuckle, “if that’s what she really wants…”
I look at her in disbelief. But she doesn’t know Chloe, doesn’t understand the complete absurdity of this so-called decision. “How could she be so impractical? Chloe’s the smartest one in the family! I thought.”
Sue, the waitress, appears. I’m too distracted to read the menu, I practically know it by heart now anyway. Today’s special is turkey and stuffing with choice of two vegs. I order that and Cottie orders the big salad.
“This is so crazy, and she will not be reasoned with,” I go on after Sue leaves. “She got angry with me. I’m still upset. We rarely fight. We disagree constantly, but we rarely fight. And the worst is, Andrew doesn’t mind. Andrew. Or so she tells me—I haven’t spoken to him yet. I called him immediately, but he wasn’t there. And then, before that, Greta tells me she’s marrying Joel. What is going on?” I stick my fingers in my hair and pull. “I don’t get it, I just don’t get it.”
Cottie looks at me as if I’m a riddle she can’t solve.
I flutter my hands. “Never mind, let’s not talk about it now, boring family business. How are you? You look wonderful, truly—Owen said you’re feeling good, too.”
So the conversation changes, but part of me is still back on the phone with Chloe. She mentioned it almost in passing—“Hey, Mom, I’m switching majors”—then she was surprised when I wasn’t thrilled with the news. “What difference does it make?” she kept saying. “Why do you care so much?” Why do I care so much! Because it’s impractical, impulsive, unwise, and immature. “Do you know how many people make a living in the theater? One percent!” (I have no idea.) “Since when have you been practical,” she said to me, and that set me off. I said the one thing I now regret: “Let’s not forget who’s paying for your sky-high tuition.” At least I didn’t add “young lady.”
“I don’t get you,” we ended up telling each other, and hanging up practically in tears—me, anyway. And to hear that Andrew has no problem with this—I can’t get over that. If it’s true, it’s just to spite me. Everywhere I look, I am having the rug pulled out from under me. No one’s behaving the way they should, and I don’t understand why I keep looking like the bad guy.
Cottie pours oil and vinegar on her salad from the smudged glass bottles Sue brings. “I should’ve gotten that,” I say, spreading a pool of yellow gravy into my mashed potatoes. “You’re such a sensible eater.”
“Only recently.”
“But haven’t you always been slender?”
She nods. “I was sickly as a child, never have been able to put on much weight.”
“Rheumatic fever,” I remember. Owen told me.
She examines a chunk of iceberg lettuce on the end of her fork. “Never thought I’d make it to old age, to tell you the truth. Since I was nine, every year I’ve given myself about four more years.”
“Oh, Cottie.”
“I never thought I’d make it off the operating table after surgery. Never thought I’d get this far in my recovery.”
“Cottie Bender.”
She grins, then looks down. “I’ve got a little confession to make. Remember when we first met?”
“Of course.”
“I had in mind that you were a particular kind of person that I could be friends with, like I couldn’t be with anyone else. Not Shevlin, not Owen or Danielle, none of my friends from church.” She gives a hooting laugh. “Definitely not them. Somebody I wouldn’t have to be so damn cheerful and hopeful with, frankly.”
“Oh.” I put down my fork.
“Because you came from the city! You had an artistic job, and you’re so smart and dress so chic. Your husband’s a professor, your car isn’t American. Sophisticated, that’s it. I thought you might be the perfect person I could be my secret self with.”
“But why?” I’m not getting this. I thought she just liked me. “Anyway, what secret self?”
She looks around, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “I am a pessimist. And”—she leans forward for this—“I might almost be an agnostic.”
“I think I knew that,” I say slowly. I feel surprised that I’m not more surprised. “So with me…”
“With you, I thought I could be negative. Honest.”
“Well, sometimes you have been. I guess.”
“I don’t know if I have been or not, but the point is, I was wrong. And not that it matters anymore, but it’s turned out, you’re a bigger optimist than Reverend Ashe—our pastor at church.”
“Well, that’s what everybody says.”
“It was foolish of me to make you into a certain type of person before I knew you, that’s what I wanted to say. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, please. Just so you’re not disappointed.”
“No, I’m not disappointed.” She smiles her sweet smile.
I try to think of something I could confess. “I thought you were going to be much squarer. A country lady.”
She loves this; her eyes light up and she colors. “I am a country lady.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know you’d be so worldly.”
“Worldly.” She rolls the word out, savoring it like a mint. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“Well, you told me you used to sneak cigarettes when Shevlin wasn’t around.”
“Used to,” she agrees, patting her chest.
“And…you know.”
“What?”
“You know.” Now I’m the one lowering my voice and checking for listeners. “What you’d say to him,” I whisper. “In his coffin.”
“Oh!” We cover snorts of laughter with our hands. Cottie once told me, I forget in what possible context, that if Shevlin died first, she would feel compelled to tell him the truth at last. She would whisper in his ear as he lay in his casket, “Honey, I always voted Democrat.”
“How did you meet him?” I ask.
“How did you and Andrew meet? You go first.”
“Oh, at a party on New Year’s Eve.”
“And did you like him right away?”
“Right away. As soon as I saw him.” I don’t tell her I kissed him the second I set eyes on him. She might get the wrong idea about me.
“Why? What set you off?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Well, he was cute. And sort of courtly, I thought. Knightly. And I could tell he liked me—I always like people who like me.”
Cottie laughs.
“He was twenty-eight and I was twenty-four, but it seemed like more. Almost as if he was from a different era. I don’t know who I thought I was in those days. I’d get an idea of myself, but then it would change, and…But I was happy most
of the time, and I think people like that in other people.”
“Andrew liked it in you.”
“Yes.” I could see myself appealing to him that night, I could see him letting go of some of his reserve. “That’s seductive, don’t you think, watching someone fall for you? Of course, it was happening to me just as fast, so I didn’t have time to gloat.”
I don’t know how to explain to Cottie a feeling I had from the first, almost as soon as I saw him, that—Here is someone who knows things I’d like to know. Things about life, that’s as specific as I could be. Secrets about how to live, what the best things to want were. Maybe something about rectitude or discretion, a quieter, calmer way to get through my life. Of course, it was all mostly unconscious at the time, and even now it’s not exactly crystalline. I thought he had something I wanted, simple as that. Although that night it was mainly to know how the back of his neck would feel, just below the shaggy hairline.
“So anyway, we just hit it off,” I conclude. “Now you go—how did you and Shevlin meet?”
“Well.” Cottie sits back, blots her lips with a napkin. “I was an old maid, living at home with my father. Who was on disability for a leg he lost from diabetes. My sisters were married and older, it was just me. I had adored my mother—you and I have that in common—but my papa was another story. Deacon in the church, real strict, and very pious. Shevlin didn’t even go to church, claimed he didn’t believe in God. So wicked, that seemed to me. And attractive.”
“Yes.”
“I was a good girl, but I had a tongue in my head. He said that’s one reason he liked me right off. We met at a dance social at the fire hall—he brought another girl. He looked dark and dangerous, like a tough customer. And quiet, like he was thinking dangerous thoughts. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.”
I squeeze my arms, give a mock shiver.
“Well, he got away from that girl he had with him and got me on my own and he said, ‘I’m calling on you.’”
“‘I’m calling on you.’”
“But the way he said it. It was old-fashioned even then, but neither one of us were spring chickens, we were both in our thirties, that whole sixties business had passed us by.”
“So then?”
“So then, that’s just what he did. Papa hated him. Called him the devil, which was all I needed.” She smiles. “But no, it wasn’t like that, I was too old to fall for a man just because my father disapproved. Though I’m not saying it didn’t help.”
“And he pursued you,” I remember. Cottie had felt like a dandelion in the wind.
“He did. Me, I was sick of singing in the church, being the girl every boy treated like a newborn rabbit. Shevlin was never disrespectful, but he surely did let me know I was no newborn rabbit. One time…” She chases a last bit of tomato around the bottom of the oily bowl. “We used to meet in the cemetery on occasion for a date.”
“The cemetery?”
“It got so tiresome dealing with Papa every time we wanted to go out, so once in a while we’d meet in the cemetery. Well, this one night I couldn’t go at the last minute, Papa wanted me to help him with his bath, so I missed our date. I was sitting in my room feeling blue when who waltzes around the corner and through the door but Shevlin. In my room! It was such a shock. At first—but then it just seemed natural as anything. We sat on the bed and visited—which is about all we ever did, strange as it might seem now, even in the cemetery. We were talking and laughing, feeling safe because Papa was downstairs with the radio on, we’d fixed up the dining room like a bedroom so he wouldn’t have to use the stairs—”
“How did Shevlin get in?” I interrupt.
“Through the front door and up the steps, that’s how. Which is just like him, I know now: He always takes the direct approach. Well—somehow, I guess with his X-ray ears, Papa figured out something was up, because all of a sudden we hear this thump. Thump. Thump. The sound his crutch made on the stairs.” She puts her hand on her heart. “I have never been so scared in my life. Shevlin—you ought to’ve seen him. First he tried to get under the bed, but the space was too narrow, plus I kept my suitcase under there. Then the closet, but the door wouldn’t close. Thump. Thump. I had my sewing machine under the one window. It took the two of us to shove it aside, and Shevlin tore his pants and his underpants on the window crank when he squeezed through.”
“My God.”
“There was this horrible crash just before Papa came in—I thought sure Shevlin was dead, but he fell on top of the hydrangea. It broke his fall.” Her shoulders shake; she dabs a tear of mirth from her eye. “We have laughed about that almost every day since.”
“What did your father do?”
“He made us get married. Which is all we were after to begin with.”
“Cottie, what a great story.” She sighs in agreement. “Andrew would never do something like that.”
“No?”
“No.” He wouldn’t even come down and get me when I was pregnant with Chloe. All he could do was call and reason with me. Mama was on his side. I see I’m not quite over being mad at both of them for that. “No, it would be too undignified,” I tell Cottie. “You can’t laugh at Andrew. He’s got a lovely sense of humor, but not about himself. I’m the only one who can tease him.”
“Well, there.”
“Yes, but even I have to be careful.”
She drums her fingers on her jaw thoughtfully. “Owen would never do anything like that, either, I don’t believe. Sometimes I wish he would. If he’d ever take the bull by the horns, I believe Danielle might go back with him.”
I can’t think of anything to say to that. I stare back blandly. Yesterday Mo asked me, “Are you going to have an affair with Owen?” “Maureen!” I put all the innocence into my voice that I’m now putting into my face. It didn’t put Mo off at all. “Well, are you?” I laughed indulgently. “The chances of that happening are about a hundred to one,” I said. “Practically nil.” She said, “Practically,” and I changed the subject.
Sue comes over and refills our iced-tea glasses. No thanks, we tell her, no dessert for us today.
“What’s funny,” Cottie says, stirring sugar substitute into her glass, “is that after Shevlin got baptized again, he took to going to church like it was the Blue Tick Roadhouse, which, believe me, he used to attend regularly.”
“He got baptized again?”
“My father insisted on it. And this time it took, Shevlin’s the Bible clerk at church, and he does so much work on the grounds he might as well be the sexton.” She shakes her head for a long time. “I’m not as fond of church as I ought to be. Which I can tell you,” she says with a sly smile, “my sophisticated friend. I don’t say it to Shevlin nor Danielle. Especially not Danielle, who I doubt has set foot in a church since she moved to Richmond. Raising Matthew like a little heathen,” she says fondly.
“Andrew goes to church.”
“Andrew does?” She’s astonished. Another stereotype blown away.
“On holidays. He says he likes the music. He doesn’t make a big deal of it—God has his place, no need to get all emotional about him. He’s like the president of the United States: You respect the office even when you disagree with his politics.”
“Well, I declare.” Again she glances around the restaurant, thinning out now that it’s after two. “I hope you don’t mind if I confide this to you.” She leans in. “I get lonesome nowadays. For…you know.”
I look dumb, in case I’m mistaken.
“Intimate relations,” she clarifies in a murmur. “Shevlin is so careful of me since the operation. I keep telling him I’m fine, but he doesn’t like to take a chance.”
“Oh, Cottie.” I’m so touched by this, her eagerness, his reticence, the sweetness of it. I think of Andrew, how nice it was with him the last time. I think of what a nice phrase intimate relations is. “I miss it, too,” I confess. “Not so much the sex”—I whisper that; the Velvet Cafe, at least to me, is not a place in which one s
ays “sex” out loud. Maybe at dinner, but not lunch. “Not the actual sex so much as the closeness.”
“Oh, I’ve got the closeness. What I would like some of now is the actual sex.”
We start up again, cackling, sagging against the wall of our booth. Sue brings the check just then and wants to know what’s funny. “Whoo,” Cottie says, pushing my wallet back at me, taking out hers. “Nothing, honey. Foolish woman talk is all. Just foolish woman talk.”
“Beautiful afternoon.” Cottie puts her head back to catch the sun, slipping her arm through mine. The sidewalk’s narrow; pedestrians have to go around us, but we don’t care. We’re in a good mood, we feel entitled. “What should we do now?” she asks. “Do you have to get back?”
“I’ve got the whole day.”
“Let’s go in here.”
Treasures and Things, Dolley’s antique store. A hundred percent Things, in my experience, but I stop in all the time anyway. Must be because I’m an optimist.
“Are these tacky?” I hold up salt and pepper shakers shaped like cows standing on their hind legs.
“Definitely.”
Mr. McDorn, who owns the place, is a nice man, but he’s usually too busy talking your ear off to do anything as dull as dust or straighten up or put price tags on things. It’s like your dotty old grandmother’s attic: no rhyme or reason, not to mention an asthmatic’s nightmare.
“I wonder if Shevlin could use this.” Cottie fingers a metal contraption, some sort of tool, evidently, since it’s in the store’s loosely gathered tool section.
“What is it?” I ask.
“I’m not just sure. Something for cows?”
“Maybe Owen could use it, then.”
“Or it might be a trap.”
“You mean, a trick?”
She gives me an amused look. “No, honey, a trap. For some poor animal.”
“Oh.” Before my eyes, the metal contraption becomes hideously ugly. I’m glad when Cottie puts it down and moves on.
We wander around, picking up and putting down, admiring, making cracks. Mr. McDorn waylays us in the particularly decrepit used-book section, where I hang back and eventually drift away, letting Cottie tackle him; she’s known him longer, she can handle his barrage of words better. He must be lonesome, I always think, and let him go on for as long as he likes. Cottie’s perfectly sweet but also brisk; soon we’re out and on the street, and I don’t even feel guilty for not buying anything.