The Other Mr. Bax

by Rodney Jones

  “Like a recognized kinship?”

  “I’ve never thought of it that way, but I think you’re right.”

  A short while later, they arrived back at the public garage. “How’re you doing?” Joyce said. “Should we stop for a snack on the way home?”

  “What about Valerie?”

  She stopped and looked into Roland’s eyes as though she was attempting to gage his sincerity. “Oh… no, that was a ploy.” A smile came to her lips. “I thought you knew I was making it up. An excuse to get away.” Her smile broadened. “I don’t really know a Valerie.”

  His brow furrowed. “I didn’t know.” He threw his hands up. “I don’t really know you.”

  The smile on Joyce’s face fell away. “Oh… right.” She swung back around and marched on.

  Roland followed a half-step behind, his careless statement souring in his mind, where stunted apologies and justifications struggled to take shape. They arrived back at the car, climbed in, and pulled the doors shut. Thump! Joyce twisted the key in the ignition switch. The car shuddered, then smoothed to a low hum. “Roland…” Her hands dropped from the wheel, her gaze, straight ahead, somewhere beyond the windshield. “I do forget. This… you. Being with you… it’s like dancing with a broom.”

  Roland’s chest collapsed as though the weight of his regrets was upon it. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s me. I’m nervous. This thing in me, this tension and, I don’t know… I’m trying, but I just can’t shake it. I feel like I’m no longer in control of my life.” He shook his head. “I hate where I’m at.”

  Joyce sat there, staring forward.

  “I mean, figuratively. I hate where I’m at, figuratively.”

  “I’m just trying to help, you know?”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m reacting. I can be a baby at times, overly sensitive. You might already know that. I feel sorry for myself. A lot lately. All the time.” He stared out the window, over the hood of the car, drawing in breaths, letting out breaths. “The gallery… the Valerie thing… that was thoughtful. Really. And I was being… well, mostly selfish. And now I’m sorry.”

  Joyce’s eyes wandered about, as if they were chasing thoughts.

  “So, can we please go to Valerie’s now?” Roland said. “She has food?”

  Roland watched as the desert panned by the window on his right. He had once hitchhiked through the Southwest, fresh out of high school, a different lifetime, an adventure, which had left him with a trove of memories. Perhaps it was that experience that accounted for the feeling of familiarity he now puzzled over.

  Joyce steered the car into her driveway. One of two garage doors rose, revealing an empty bay. Parked in the other bay was a station wagon—Roland’s motive for making the trip—or was, originally. As the door came down behind them, they climbed out. Roland stood there studying his surroundings. Cardboard boxes and camping gear lined the shelves mounted to the back wall of the garage; two mountain bikes hung on racks to his right. Even they seemed familiar, though he was certain he’d never been there before. Joyce was quiet as she came around to the front of the car. Roland could only assume she had her own set of peculiarities to sort through, and that that was where her mind was just then—sorting. But then, perhaps he was only projecting.

  “Would you like a tour?” she said.

  “I would, but I’m afraid I’ll not make it all the way through. My knees are shaky, and my vision is blurring.”

  “Oh, you’re ill?”

  “Hungry.” He feigned a stumble—“Famished”—and gave her a smile.

  “Me too. Come. I’ll rustle us up some vittles.”

  They entered a small foyer. To the right was the front door of the house, and opposite that, an archway, which opened to a spacious living room. Roland followed Joyce into the house and was again struck with déjà vu.

  “The bathroom’s at the end of the hall.” She pointed.

  As he returned from the bathroom, the smell of ginger and tamari teased his growing appetite. Joyce stood at the kitchen stove stirring shrimp in a sizzling wok. A large bowl of sliced vegetables waited on the counter next to it. A bowl of rice, which she’d apparently cooked earlier, sat on a warmer.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “You want to put on some music?”

  He returned to the living room and began looking over shelves of compact discs.

  “Do you have any jazz?” he called.

  “Bottom shelf.”

  He found a CD of Bill Evans’ music, stepped up to the stereo cabinet, but then stopped after noticing the pen-and-ink drawing hanging above it, a quirky barroom scene—a drawing he recalled doing nearly two decades before, shortly after meeting Dana.

  He leaned in close. Every mark on the paper was familiar. The hand written date next to his signature confirmed his recollection.

  “Joyce?”

  “The CD player is to the left of the TV, top shelf,” she yelled.

  “This drawing. How’d it end up here?”

  “The one above the stereo? You did that… long time ago.”

  “I sold it at an art festival.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, a woman bought it at an art festival in Florida.”

  Joyce stood in the entryway of the kitchen—her right hand in an oven mitt. “The Main Sail, in Saint Pete?”

  Roland again studied the drawing, trying to recall the particulars. “It might’ve been.”

  She stepped up alongside him. “That’s where I first saw it, where I met you. The first time I’d seen you since grade school. That was my favorite drawing. You gave it to me just before you returned to Illinois.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  Ding! A timer went off. Joyce returned to the kitchen.

  Roland stood before the drawing, recalling Dana’s excitement over his having sold it along with two others. He’d rarely sold anything in Illinois, which was what prompted their move to Florida.

  “It’s ready,” Joyce called.

  He dropped the disc in the CD player, and hit the play button. Song for Helen began playing. He returned to the kitchen and leaned against the food-prep-island. “Does it make sense? The drawing?”

  Moving dishes to the table, Joyce said, “Maybe. I mean, you and my husband share the same history, up to a certain moment, right?”

  He nodded. “That seems to be the case.”

  “Perhaps your histories converge around the time of the art festival.” She set a bowl of stir fry on the table.

  “Yeah… that could be.”

  They sat across from each other, at opposite sides of the table. Joyce lifted the cover from the serving dish and handed Roland a large spoon. Dishing rice onto his plate, he said, “I’m glad you have the drawing.”

  She appeared lost in thought as he spooned veggies and shrimp over his rice.

  He leaned in over his plate. “Smells good.”

  She nodded absentmindedly.

  Roland took a bite, chewed, swallowed.

  “Doesn’t it make you wonder?” she said. “I mean, everything you do, every choice you make? Not only that, but the choices other people make that affect your life.” She lifted her glass to her lips and took a sip.

  “But in my reality,” Roland said, “Dana left her husband and moved to Illinois where she met me at just the right moment in my life. The timing was so curiously right. We ended up married. It all seemed right, like fate. Whereas in your reality, it’s something entirely different—you and I. The timing again like fate.”

  “But fate is a fixed plan with a fixed outcome,” Joyce said.

  “Yeah.” He pointed at his plate with his fork. “This is making me happy.”

  She smiled, and took another sip of wine. “I used to believe that… that fate is what brought us together that day in Saint Petersburg. Our meeting seemed so freakishly coincidental.”

  “It seems like most everything that happens depends on an intricate set of circum
stances, doesn’t it?” he said.

  “Maybe what often appears as fate is nothing more than a set of circumstances that turn on our decisions,” she said. “By choosing one way over another we select an alternate set of circumstances, which we then become locked into.”

  “That my meeting you in Saint Petersburg was fate, and Dana’s timing in showing up in my life was also fate?”

  Joyce nodded.

  “But how does this”—he gestured with his eyes and hands—“our current reality, fit in?”

  “Perhaps a glitch, a bug in the program.”

  Roland furrowed his brows. “I don’t like that. It leaves you with only two options: live with it, or call tech support. Both suck.”

  Joyce laughed. “Sir, is it plugged in?”

  “But, seriously, it doesn’t fit, does it?”

  “Roland, perhaps it too is fate… or nothing is. It doesn’t exist. Anything could happen. And at some point you look back and are amazed at the coincidences and intricacies. But they’d be there no matter where you end up.”

  “You might be right. Fate’s nothing more than a romantic idea we dress up the usual with, to make it unusual and interesting.”

  Joyce lifted her fork to her mouth.

  Roland turned and looked out the window to his right.

  “Mineral Butte,” she said, chewing. “We’d sometimes take our sleeping bags up there. It’s like a big patio up there. The night sky here is so much starrier than in the east, you know? Up there, you get the whole sky. In August… the Perseids Meteor Shower. Have you ever seen it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Hey! We could take a picnic dinner up there some night, watch the sun set, count the stars. You want to?” Her eyes danced with expectation.

  He turned back toward the window. Dana entered his mind, sitting across from him at a different table in a different world.

  Joyce added, “Well, I just thought…”

  “I’d like that. I love sleeping out.”

  “Okay then. We have a plan.” She smiled. “You want that tour now?”

  Nodding, Roland returned her smile, then rose from his chair.

  “And through here…”

  The piano music was still playing. Roland walked up to the entertainment center, looked again at his drawing—a visible link between Joyce’s past and the only past he knew. The drawing, though small, seemed wrapped in an infinitely complex story. Two whole, separate realities tangled around it. He gazed at the drawing, sensing a tug—subtle, like it was pulling at him, that other reality.

  Joyce’s voice came from just behind him. “I look at that sometimes and am instantly taken back to that day in Saint Petersburg. It still amazes me that you were there, that we found each other, after all those years.”

  Chapter sixteen – blue

  The landscape was nearly void of life, except for small patches here and there of cactus and other prickly, stabbing, hostile plants. The clumps of grasses growing along the old weathered fences appeared as dry and lifeless as the rocks and sand that accounted for the bulk of the terrain. Trapped by the fences, tumbleweed competed with bits of dusty, sun-bleached reds and blues, dashes of white, and the occasional metallic glint of a bottle or can. The litter thinned more and more the farther from Flagstaff he traveled. Despite the trash and the harsh environment, Roland felt an affinity for the region.

  On the horizon to his left, beyond a few miles of nearly featureless terrain, were the rusty shapes of two small, worn-down buttes—like the two hills Joyce had pointed out to him, the night they’d spent on Mineral Butte.

  A little before sunset, they’d filled two backpacks with firewood, and then hiked from the house to the top of the butte. From its roof, they watched the sun vanish over the mountains in the west. Joyce pointed out landmarks in the distance: Sierra Estrella, San Tan, Twin Peaks, the lights of Sacaton. A network of ravines converged at some imagined distance in the south, like silent rivers of shadow emanating from a common void. They grew quiet as the sky morphed from deep-blue-dusk to the star-speckled black of night—the waxing moon, two days from full, rose in the east, as large as ever.

  Sitting, mere inches away, Joyce began to fidget. She folded her arms, rubbing goosebumps from them.

  It may have been a cue for him to move closer, but Roland was reluctant to presume and be misunderstood. “It’s a bit chilly, isn’t it?” he said.

  After another stretch of silence, Joyce finally hopped up and said, “A fire. We need a fire.”

  Flames danced in their eyes, while the shadows around them swayed and shifted. They sat close enough to share the cookies and brandy they’d included with the night’s supplies. Joyce passed the flask to Roland. He lifted it to his lips and took a nip. As the warmth of alcohol filled his chest, he relaxed into a smile. “This was a good idea.” He glanced about as though to clarify that “this” was all inclusive, then handed the flask back.

  Joyce turned his way with a smile.

  “You ever been to Wyoming?” he said.

  “A couple times”—her eyes shifted in a playful manner—“with you.”

  He nodded.

  She took a swig of the brandy, produced a huff, then said, “The Bighorn Mountains. We drove up from Chicago, camped in the Badlands. A few years later, we went back to the Bridger Tetons, and to Flaming Gorge.” She reached up and scratched the back of her neck. “I guess that’s Utah, isn’t it? On the border. Maybe it’s both.” Her eyes drifted up toward the sky. “Oh… you liked it there. Said you wanted to go back, but we’d inevitably pick some place that we hadn’t yet been to.” She drew in a breath. “I’d go back though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If I had a companion.” She caught Roland’s eye, then quickly returned to the fire.

  “Maybe we will, someday.”

  “Yeah.”

  Roland gazed into the hot coals at the base of the fire. “So, what was so great about Flaming Gorge?”

  She handed him the flask. “Mmm… we camped by this narrow stream—a babbling brook. No, it was a gibbering crick.” She giggled. “You could hear it from our tent. We were in a grassy area, surrounded on two sides by trees, but still open enough to see the stars at night. Just to the other side of the stream was a steep rise of rock, like a wide plateau, on and on in both directions, maybe fifty feet high. The stream emptied into a big, beautiful, blue lake. Blue like I’d never seen blue.”

  He smiled. “How blue?”

  “Like the most bluest blue ever.” She grinned. “And crystal clear. We swam there. Found a rock ledge to dive from.” She sighed. “I remember sitting around the campfire one night and you saying that it felt like an old western, like John Wayne could come riding up on his horse at any moment. Hey there, partner. Why don’t cha give your ass a break from that thar saddle? Park it here by the fire fur awhile.”

  A smile found its way into Roland’s eyes. Joyce’s face was alight with contentment. Roland handed her the flask. She took a sip, made a breathy “ahhh,” followed by a quick shiver.

  “When was that?”

  “Few years ago. August ’97.” She lifted her eyes toward the moon.

  “I’m ready.”

  Her eyes widened as a smile stretched across her face. “Really?”

  Roland repositioned his legs, shifting his weight.

  She added, “You don’t really mean it, do you?”

  “Well… yeah, but… I mean...” He poked a stick into the fire. “I was just thinking out loud… wishful thinking, I guess.” A long, heavy sigh left his throat. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe I’ve had a bit too much brandy.”

  Joyce turned her gaze to the fire. “Well, if you ever want to.”

  He looked at her. The glow of the fire on her face and the shine of moonlight in the loose wisps of hair about her head brought to mind the fairies from an old black and white movie he once saw: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And then, for an instant, he caught a glimpse of the little girl on the swing he h
ad fallen so hopelessly in love with as a boy. “I really would enjoy it,” he said.

  She took another sip from the flask, coughed, then, as though feeling his eyes on her, she turned, held the flask out toward him, and in her mock-western accent, said, “I’m a-thinkin’ you ain’t no way had enough.”

  “Such an ass,” he whispered, as he passed a caravan of semis. “I could’ve said yes. Sure, Flaming Gorge, why not?” He glanced at the speedometer. “Like there’s this urgent need to get back. To where?” He flipped on the turn signal, checked the passenger side mirror, then pulled back into the right lane, ahead of the leading truck. His eyes were pulled to the right. A set of train tracks had been within sight since leaving the Flagstaff area. Three engines, pulling an endless string of freight cars, slowly crept ahead.

  “Mrs. Bax,” he said. “Joyce Bax…”

  Chapter seventeen – my past our past

  The exit onto Broadway was backed up to the beginning of the ramp; the morning traffic was heavier than usual. Joyce stopped at the end of the queue, reached up and twisted the rearview mirror toward her. Her eyelids were slightly pink and puffy—evidence of the cry she’d had earlier. She visualized Roland behind the wheel of the station wagon and wondered if he was thinking of her too. She knew in her heart that her fantasy of him falling in love with her was nothing more than that—expectations and thin hopes. She was fine with the hopes—it was the expectations that she now regretted. She’d kept reality at bay for the three days he was there, but then, the moment his car disappeared down Olberg Road, it was right there in her face.

  A car horn beeped—a nudge. She jolted back to the moment at hand, lifted her foot from the brake pedal and crept forward a few yards. Again, she studied her eyes in the mirror, then readjusted it so she could properly see behind her. Something Roland had asked her the day before came to mind. They’d gone for a walk down Olberg Road, west, toward the reservation. She’d slept little the night before, their night on the butte, the same as Roland. He’d admitted that much as they walked along in the afternoon sun. He’d admitted, too, that his sleeplessness was largely due to his excitement over being there. That got her attention. But then, fanning that spark of curiosity, he added, “What was it like meeting me at the art festival in Florida? Did you somehow recognize me? How’d that happen?”