Washed Up with a Broken Heart in Rock Hall

by Peter Svenson

  A week later, Budge has chatted with her twice on the phone and arranged to meet her again at the Friday pot luck. A cheap date, he figures, and this way he can veer off to other prospects when and if the conversation lags. He’s bringing a bowl of tabouli replete with fresh tomatoes and parsley and a serving spoon. He asked her what she was bringing, but she didn’t know.

  The crowd is larger, maybe twice that of the previous potluck. Budge’s first impression is that there’ll be plenty of other women to talk to. He heads straight for the buffet table, setting his contribution between a platter of deviled eggs and a salver of brown chunks in gravy that turns out to be goatmeat. Recognizing at least ten friendly faces, he begins to socialize without hesitation (he has always been good at remembering names—a holdover from his book-signing days).

  Ten, fifteen minutes go by with no sign of Teresa. Mindful that the offerings are quickly running out, he grabs a plate and fork and commences to load up, not omitting his own delectable contribution and somebody else’s wine. Following this, he bravely barges into a convocation of complete strangers, taking an empty chair and authoritatively introducing himself.

  No wallflower am I tonight! My goal is to make Budge Moss a household word in Rock Hall.

  Perhaps Teresa has decided not to come after all. Well, it’s her loss. Systematically, Budge plies conversation with every female face that confronts him. Age and looks and marital status don’t matter; he glides free and easy on myriad topics, garnering and giving laughter, dripping with attentiveness, drenched in sincerity, surpressing any inclination to be judgmental. He’s just happy to have a square meal, a glassful of free merlot, and a chance to talk with other people. When he finally stands up for seconds—wine included—and dessert, he works his way across the room and sits with a different group. He is too full of energy and lightness of being to withhold himself from anybody who might seek the pleasure of his company.

  Nearly an hour later, when he’s mellowly talked out and stuffed to the point of bursting, in walks Teresa with a huge pot of baked beans. He’s struck by how short and shapeless she is. Her peachy hairdo looks as if it has been wired to a Van de Graaff generator. She’s got on a smear of lipstick, a little eye makeup, a ton of jewelry. Her purple shantung tunic distends above bellbottom trousers of the same tint, and the heavy beanpot is pressed against her chest like an offering that could spill over and ruin her finery in an instant. She has a quizzical, pained look on her face—she’s realizing how late she is.

  Out of pity, Budge goes over to relieve her of her burden, placing it on the table with the mostly polished-off platters and serving dishes.

  I feel so sorry for her, truly I do. She probably lost track of time on my account, getting all gussied up and nervous and hoping for the best. And the beans! God, she’s brought enough to feed an army! I imagine she’ll be eating them at home for the next three weeks. There’s something irregular and touching about her—she’s so out of it! Among her skeins and spindles, she must live in her own little world—I haven’t seen it firsthand, but I imagine it so. I feel terribly guilty for asking her to meet me here. It was all my idea and she couldn’t say no.

  Budge sits with her and does most of the talking while she eats (predominantly beans). He can’t tell if she is glad for his company or not; she is unfailingly polite, but she manifests no particular interest in pushing the envelope of their relationship, so to speak. As he prattles on about his writing, his cottage, his cat, his past and future, she listens, but that’s about it. He starts to wonder if he is wasting his breath. Is she completely numb? Have her highs and lows been chemically flatlined?

  As he talks, he can’t help but give her the once-over again. Call it sexual scrutiny, call it incorrigible curiosity, it is a habit that Budge the writer and practiced observer of human nature falls into readily. A refrain of an old country song comes to his mind about how the girls always look prettier at closing time. Well, she’s a girl, isn’t she? And closing time’s coming up, isn’t it?

  When she’s finished eating, he proposes that she drop by his place on the pretext of showing her the cottage, showing her his books, showing her anything he’s got that she might be interested in. She’ll be, he tells her, his very first guest! He’ll give her a ride, too. Indifferently, she assents. He volunteers to heft the beanpot to the parking lot, and she carries his near-empty tabouli dish and spoon.

  Driving across town, Budge secretly congratulates himself. He has known her type before. They play the indifferent game all the way. It’s a kind of old-fashioned-female existential position, not overtly wanting attention but not saying no to it either. In his horny state, it doesn’t matter. With a little luck, he’ll score.

  In the cottage, he offers her a glass of wine.

  She announces that she doesn’t drink. “What, not even a glass of wine? How about a beer, then?”

  “No, nothing at all, thanks. Alcohol doesn’t agree with me.”

  “Fine,” I say, “how about some tea? I’ve got herbal tea.”

  No, she doesn’t want tea either, herbal or otherwise, nor decaf, nor even a glass of water.

  “Is there anything you do want?” I ask, hinting as strongly as I dare.

  No, she doesn’t want anything. She arranges herself on the chair and just sits there. It takes me an arsenal of verbal gambits to wean her away from silence. Eventually, though, she consents to talk. At first we discuss the weather and upcoming events in Rock Hall, but her tongue loosens further when we get on the Single Person’s Two Favorite Subjects: marriage and divorce.

  She begins to open up now—don’t we all?—as she outlines the downward graph of her 20-year marriage that ended ten years ago (her one and only matrimonial experience). Out of high school, she fell in love with a native of Greece, who turned out to be a habitual cheater. At times, he even lived outright with other women. Addicted to a cushy lifestyle and too cowed to venture out on her own, Teresa coped as best she could. Finally, her grown daughter convinced her to get a divorce and move in with her—a living arrangement that lasted for seven years until the teen-age grandchildren began overrunning the household. That was when Teresa fled to Santa Fe.

  When Budge expresses disgust at her ex-husband’s behavior, Teresa smiles blankly and says that she forgave him years ago. Furthermore, she adds that she communicates frequently with him in letters and phone calls—always has and always will. There are no hard feelings.

  I want to ask, Why aren’t there hard feelings? Why can’t she show her anger? The Greek misused her, robbed her of self-confidence, circumscribed her life and filled decades of it with pain—and she forgives him?

  As I study Teresa in the chair, I see what I missed earlier. She has a robotic quality about her, as if she’s been trepanned by years of psychic abuse. Emotion has been wrung out of her; all that’s left is a benign resignation, a shuffling along. She asks no questions and expects no answers.

  I realize that my prospects for the evening have grown dim. My desire for her, nebulous as it is, has shrunk to zilch. This person has about as much interest in sex as a eunuch on saltpeter. She looks at her watch and announces—so like an old person looking at her watch and announcing!—that it’s time to be walking home.

  Budge offers to walk with her, but she tells him it isn’t necessary—a scant three blocks under the protective glare of streetlamps. He insists, however, and she assents. Will she invite him in? Probably not. The brief stroll is pleasant enough, but it reminds him of unrequited evenings long ago, walking college girls back to their dormitories, when opportunity for romance was already squandered and conversation lost its zest, and the only thing left was a goodnight peck followed by a solitary walk back across the campus.

  On the street in front of Teresa’s house, he pauses while she continues ahead to the door. “Goodnight,” he calls, but she doesn’t respond—evidently, her hearing isn’t good. She offered no peck, no nothing.

  A week later, he phones just to ask how she’s doing, a
nd she replies that she is still busy unpacking and assembling her loom. “If you need help, I’m pretty handy with tools,” he offers, but she doesn’t rise to the bait.

  “One of these days I’ll have to invite you over,” she says, “but things are in too much of a mess right now.”

  A few days later, he calls again. He has saved the Style section of the Sunday Post for her because it’s got an article about weaving. He suggests that they meet on the boardwalk at sunset.

  I get there first. The sun’s almost down. I could be accomplishing more important tasks, like reading e-mail, correcting my manuscript, or making headway in an aging New Yorker, but I choose to be a nice neighborly guy. A fitting epitaph for me: writer and nice neighborly guy. No, I’m not anticipating my demise anytime soon, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

  With ten or twelve others, I watch the sun disappear. Cloudglow in pink and orange and purple. Subdued conversation; I make a point not to catch a word of it (the benches are far enough apart). Intensifying streetlamp aura. The breeze picks up as wavelets turn indigo and lights begin to sparkle along the western shore. Twelve miles distant, the outline of the Bay Bridge becomes a jewel-encrusted swag. I quite forget about Teresa. It’s good to be out here this evening—participating in the spectacle but keeping my distance.

  Then, peripheral vision cues me to her approach, just around the time mosquitoes ratchet up the nuisance factor. Oh well, I’m good for another five or ten minutes.

  Teresa seats herself at the far end of the bench, and I thrust the paper in her direction. Vapidly, she scans the page I’ve turned down and nods. We exchange few words. Suddenly, she has become the most uninteresting woman in the world to me. She lacks humor, earthiness, inquisitiveness, vitality, mystery, bone structure, and punctuality. We’re merely acquaintances—that’s all we’ll ever be.

  Slapping at the insistent insects, Budge rises to his feet, bids her goodnight, and makes a beeline back to the cottage. He never calls her again and she never calls him.

  Chapter 5

  A truck is backing up not ten feet from my open window, and the woman in the passenger seat stares right at me. What’s going on? I wouldn’t mind this invasion of privacy if I had clothes on, but I don’t. I’m sitting at my desk quite naked. The morning’s already hot, and I just haven’t gotten around to getting dressed.

  I quickly grasp the situation: the truck’s come to pump out the portajohn. Brazenly, I stare back and the woman lowers her gaze (I hope she’s not disappointed). At the phragmites border, the truck halts and the driver, a portly fellow in suspenders, climbs down to connect the pumping hose. An odor of disinfectant soon wafts on the breeze. The woman gets out, but she takes a few steps in the opposite direction to look at the bay.

  When the emptying’s done—it takes no longer than five minutes—the couple remount the cab and come rumbling right past the window again. I haven’t moved (I’m busy working). Again the woman looks in, but I’m neither surprised nor offended. I smile at her and she smiles back. Experience has taught me that curiosity thrives on small rewards. Were I in the passenger seat, I’d be doing the same thing. My own curiosity, in fact, may be greater than hers; if I were driving the truck, I’d probably hit the brakes and take a good look. How often does one catch an honest-to-goodness glimpse of a writer in the act—his brow furrowed, his fingers tap-tap-tapping? This lair of a wordsmith is as odd and noteworthy as any in Rock Hall.

  Budge is finding plenty of solitude—a prerequisite for his work—but with it comes loneliness of a magnitude greater than any he has ever known. His estranged wife isn’t having second thoughts and a new lover isn’t dropping out of the sky. He doesn’t have the inclination or disposable income right now to patronize bars. He is not a churchgoer, he neither golfs nor sails, and he doesn’t play bridge. Were it not for the potlucks at the Mainstay and the always dependable sunset club, he’d have no social life to speak of. He has chatted only briefly with his neighbors—as a new single man in their midst, he wants to make sure they understand that he’s not a pervert or child molester.

  The people next door are elderly, with inflexible daily routines. They go for a stroll around the block at precisely nine o’clock each morning. They call their dog to supper at six. Their mailbox and garbage rituals are as dependable as clockwork. The rest of the time, they spend indoors, doing God-knows-what.

  Across the street, the retired economics professor and his wife, a retired audiologist, each take a cup of coffee and a slice of buttered wheat toast to a boardwalk bench by 7:30 a.m., where they sit and importune passersby. Their friendliness constitutes a roadblock to exercise walkers in the vicinity. Budge’s own morning routine—a 1.5 mile fast walk—has been waylaid enough times so that he now makes a point of setting forth in the opposite direction.

  In fair weather, morning walkers along Beach Road are plentiful and they propel themselves at a good rump-wiggling clip, often in groups of twos and threes. Obese folk and those with dogs, of course, dawdle. Joggers pass by few and far between—a function of the age demographic—although every once in a while a gangly oldster in track shoes comes chuffing along. Whatever the exercise style, a protocol of genteel greeting is unfailingly adhered to: on a typical circuit, Budge will call out “Good Morning!” as many as twenty or thirty times.

  Every “good morning” is a reaffirmation that I’m not entirely alone, although such slight and impersonal contact, over and over, isn’t conducive to a real feeling of connectedness. I picture myself bidding “good morning” to strangers for the rest of my life—not a particularly sanguine glimpse of the future, but if this is the best I can do, I’ll have to live with it. Starting off the day in this fashion makes me at least thankful to be ambulatory.

  On his walks, Budge never fails to notice the women, although the single ones are usually not up to snuff and the good-looking ones always have partners—businessmen, yachtsmen, whatever. Taking stock of the various female physiques and physiognomies, he will sometimes experience a razor pang of regret for losing his wife, although he is careful not to allow himself to get carried away again and start talking to her, i.e., talking to himself. He is gaining more control, especially in public; he doesn’t want to be branded a babbling idiot. He finds, moreover, that when he puts a lid on self-conversation, his thoughts tend not to dwell in the past.

  Every footstep is an increment toward healing, he reminds himself. Getting out is synonymous with getting over. But looking outward is the real key, and that can also be done from within the confines of the cottage.

  I’ve grown to relish this proximity to strangers. They provide me with a yardstick to measure my own insularity by. Take, for instance, the young woman and her child under the locust tree just outside my window. It’s a hot afternoon; clad only in underwear, I’m toiling at my desk with the electric fan on. The woman has spread a blanket in the shade and is lying on her back fast asleep—not 25 feet away from me!—while the child sits in a folding chair, absorbed in a picture book. I find myself studying the woman’s features: short and spiky bleach-blonde hair, angular cheekbones, sculpted lips snoozingly parted. Beneath the fabric of her T-shirt, her breasts jut to either side, obedient to both brassiere and gravity. Her hands are folded across her stomach, and her legs, emerging from shorts, are twin tapering logs bumped at the kneecap. She could be an artist’s model, a perfectly still specimen for transliteration to another medium. I want to sketch her. The angle of her bare feet reminds me of Manet’s dying toreador.

  But I’m afraid that the slightest commotion on my part might break the spell. Instead, I just sit there and watch. So oblivious to the world is she that it becomes contagious. After ten minutes or so, I’m inspired to shut down the computer and go into the bedroom for a nap.

  The heat of August slows everything down except tourism. Along Beach Road, every place is rented, with SUVs hunkering in the driveways. Rainbow-colored pennants are fastened to porch posts and flagpoles, signifying residency. The beach draws sun
bathers and onlookers and a few intrepid swimmers (the stinging jellyfish are at their peak). Youngsters wade and splash, skip stones, excavate oyster shells, explore the reedy promontory beyond the portajohn. On a sweltering Saturday afternoon, almost every square foot of sand is accounted for by either a blanket or a body or a cooler.

  You might even say it resembles Coney Island—on a much reduced scale. It makes me wonder why all these people have congregated here, when an ocean beach is less than two hours distant. That’s where the real action is: miles of sand and surf, boardwalk amenities, midway thrills, high-rises. Who’d settle for Rock Hall when they could have Ocean City?

  But I answer my own question. Maybe they’re here for the same reason I am. There’s no substitute for a friendly small town atmosphere. You can be unfashionable, you can be out of step. You can disobey the “Beach Rules” sign and nobody, not even the local constabulary, gives a hoot. Stores and restaurants are ten short blocks away; you can hop on the trolley and be there in minutes. And most important of all, Chesapeake Bay holds a quieter allure. You watch the sun go down across the water without neon stabbing you in the back.

  Budge doesn’t mean to sound like a civic booster, but his attitude is changing. He’s growing comfortable in his newfound home. He’s not so on edge. If anything, he’s come to terms with his loneliness, realizing that it may take months to alleviate. Meanwhile, he’s determined to make the best of it, although the heat keeps him indoors during the daytime and he rarely deviates from his writing schedule.