To Be Sung Underwater

by Tom McNeal

  Judith turned back to him. “Who?”

  The man seemed to be trying to make his puggish grin less unpleasant. “You and me.”

  “I don’t think so,” Judith said coolly, and the pinkish man’s eyes were suddenly smaller. The two men had formed a kind of enclosure around Judith, and with just the slightest shift from the pinkish man, the enclosure had tightened. Beyond them, the lot was deserted.

  “I’ve got to go now,” she said.

  The pinkish man kept his tiny eyes on her and didn’t move. Then the taller one in his easy voice said, “Boss Krauss, we’re impeding the lady’s progress. You can see she’s got places to go and people to see.”

  Judith turned sharply toward the man. She had heard that voice before, she was pretty sure of it. Where was what she couldn’t remember.

  The pinkish man didn’t move, but the other man stepped back, giving Judith a gap to step through. In passing him by, she smelled the slightly sour odor of beer and, just beyond that, the smells of sawdust and sweat, which were not unpleasant.

  As she moved toward her car door, the pinkish man said, “I know where I saw you now.”

  Judith made the mistake of glancing back. “It was in a dream,” the man said, and the truculent grin was back. “A real randy one.”

  He turned then and moved off toward Gibson’s in quick short-legged strides that accentuated the bow of his legs. Judith slid into the car and was starting the engine when the tall man materialized alongside and with a little twirling motion asked her to roll down her window.

  Don’t, Judith thought, and then she did, halfway.

  “Funny thing is,” he said, bending toward her, “you and I have met.”

  “What would make that funny?” Judith said.

  For just an instant the man’s face went blank. “Funny odd,” he said. “Not funny ha-ha.”

  Judith gave him no encouragement.

  “We met at the Guest place. You and your father were buying a washing machine. I was roofing the barn.”

  So that’s where it was. Except he’d had a beard then. But those were the pale blue-gray eyes, all right.

  The man eased his voice down to a gentler level. “I said you were dangerous. Muy peligrosa. Maybe you don’t remember it.”

  Judith, perversely, said she didn’t. “Why? Should I have?”

  His answer surprised her. “Well, I remember you clear as day, and when you remember somebody clear as day, you just suppose they remember you in turn.” He let his smile rest on her a second. “But I guess how often we’re wrong is one of the things that makes this a funny old world.” He looked at her. “Funny odd, not funny ha-ha.”

  These words had a softening effect on Judith, and without something sharp for retort, she found she had nothing to say at all. The only thing she could think of was that he looked better without a beard, and she wasn’t going to say that.

  He’d been leaning forward but now straightened to full height and looked off. He let a truck pass on the highway, and, still looking away, he said, “Now here almost two years have passed and”—he turned toward her—“you don’t seem one iota less dangerous to me.”

  His gray-blue eyes settled into her, and with a shock of recognition she realized this was how he’d looked at her in the dream when he’d stood above her bed watching her sleep, and later—years later, in fact—looking back on it all, she wondered if this wasn’t part of their particular compact, his ability to awaken in her the reckless girl he alone imagined her to be. A girl she hadn’t thought existed.

  “I’ve got to go now,” she said.

  She touched the accelerator, the car began to move, and with a flick of his finger he slightly tipped back the sweat-stained bill of his seed cap, so that as she drove away she could see a little more of his open, amused face.

  From Gibson’s, Judith drove around for a while trying to settle her nerves, then headed for the Dairy Queen, where Deena waved her into the back, behind the service counter. She wasn’t wearing her plastic shower hat or latex gloves. “Guess Mr. Ed’s not here,” Judith said. He rarely was anymore. His interest had shifted to another Dairy Queen he’d opened sixty miles away, where, he’d told Deena, “the leash needed shortening,” though what actually drove him to the other stand, in Deena’s opinion, was the fact that when he’d finally worked up the courage to ask Melinda Payne for an after-work cup of coffee, the Amazonic bank teller had brusquely declined and thereafter avoided the premises. “He thinks if he turns himself into a big hamburger magnate, it’ll change her tune,” Deena said.

  Judith thought that if that strategy hadn’t panned out for Gatsby or Heathcliff, it probably wasn’t going to pan out for Mr. Ed, but she didn’t say so. She noticed that Deena had undone the top two buttons of her Dairy Queen shirt, a tactic that, from the right angle, revealed what appeared to be real cleavage, and for the second or third time in less than a month Judith wondered whether Deena had put on an actual inch or two or just begun wearing push-up bras. She scooped a bag of French fries from under the heat lamp and sat on one of the prep counters.

  “Slow today,” Deena said. Then: “So who died?”

  “What?”

  “You look like somebody just died.”

  “Oh.” She looked at the French fry in her hand, then at Deena. “I think I just got hit on by a grown man.”

  Deena said, “That’s happened a couple of times to me. It wasn’t that bad really. They were train guys.”

  The Southern Pacific had a switching yard in Grand Lake, sixty miles south.

  Judith said, “ ‘He don’t, she don’t, it don’t,’ ” her code phrase for those local choices she saw as doomed, which was just about all of them.

  Deena touched a wetted finger to the top of the big metal saltshaker, then set the salted finger to her tongue. “Yeah, I guess.”

  Judith gazed out at her Bonneville with the terra-cotta pot sticking from the open trunk. “There were two guys, actually. One was that guy in the orange pickup with flames I told you about. His skin looks boiled pink, and he’s got a little potbelly and little bowed legs.” She nipped the end of a fry and chewed thoughtfully. “His attentions weren’t that flattering.”

  “No, I don’t suppose,” Deena said. She absently licked her finger to lift more salt from the shaker and Judith said, “That’s not hygienic.”

  “You think?” Deena said, and did it again, which made Judith laugh in spite of herself. They were both quiet a few seconds before Deena said, “Who was the other one?”

  “What?”

  “You said there were two guys. Who was the other one?”

  Judith didn’t know what to answer. Patrick Guest had once told her the roofer’s name, but she couldn’t remember it. All she could really tell Deena was that he had pale blue-gray eyes and he’d had a full beard the first time she’d seen him but now he didn’t, which didn’t help much by way of identification.

  “But he was cute, though?” Deena said.

  Judith said she guessed he was, in his own way, and Deena was working on a translation of this observation when Doris Cantwell came in. Doris was a regular. Deena said under her breath to Judith, “She’s thinking she’d like a Dilly Bar,” and moved to the service window.

  Doris Cantwell, middle-aged, a routine fifteen or twenty pounds overweight, studied the posted offerings for a full minute and then said, “I’m thinking I’d like a Dilly Bar.”

  On her way home, Judith detoured by Gibson’s, but the orange pickup was gone.

  Although Judith had been accepted by the state university in Lincoln, she’d still heard nothing from the two more distinguished colleges that had not quite accepted or rejected her. “Wait-list situations,” Mr. Flood told her, “are always iffy. The news can come anytime right up to September.” It was only May, but still, upon returning home from school each day, Judith quickly sorted through the mail that lay scattered on the wood floor under the front-door mail slot. When there was nothing from the colleges, she sometimes go
t down on all fours to look under the library table, where a few weeks before a Nebraska Public Power bill had managed an improbable slide. Then, getting back up, dusting her knees, she didn’t know what to make of herself. Why did she worry so much about colleges she wasn’t certain she wanted to attend? Once, in Vermont, three different girls had told Judith that a boy named Lonnie Hazelwood was going to ask her to the Harvest Ball. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go to the Harvest Ball, let alone with Lonnie Hazelwood, but every day that passed without his asking made her think she might really want to go with him after all. When he finally asked her, mumblingly, two days before the dance, without looking her in the eye, she had felt a kind of triumphant relief, then said she was sorry, but she’d already made other plans.

  Following her final examinations in calculus and modern American literature, neither of which had proven difficult for her, Judith joined her father for a final lunch at the faculty club. Even before they ordered, her father presented her with a graduation present, a used hardbound copy of The Portrait of a Lady with tissue paper protecting the frontispiece illustration. He had inscribed it, To Judith, upon her graduation, with much love from her father. When she looked up from it, he said, “You’ll need to tell me what you think of Miss Isabel Archer, as well as her suitors.”

  She turned the book to look at it from different angles. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “But it won’t be yours…” he said, and didn’t have to finish the sentence. She knew how it ended: until you write in its margins. Her father felt a book hadn’t been read if it hadn’t been underlined and annotated.

  There were only a few scattered diners—most of the faculty had already left for the summer—and the clinks of silverware and china seemed to echo in the room. The waiters and waitresses had little to do. Their own server, a thin girl with long white-blond hair, was at their table every few seconds to check dishes and replenish liquids. After the girl topped off their water, there was a slight lull and Judith said, “Maybe I’ll just go to college here next year. At Rufus State.”

  Her father, idly freeing last bits of roasted chicken from the bone, looked up and regarded her for a second or two. Then he said, “Did you go home to check the mail before coming up here to eat with me today?”

  The question surprised her. She flushed slightly and admitted she had.

  “To check for a letter from one of the schools?”

  She nodded. She should never have left the mail in a neat pile on the library table every day—that was how he knew.

  “And?”

  “There was nothing there.”

  “But you walked eight blocks out of your way to check in hopes there would be some word from one of the schools to which you’ve applied?”

  She nodded again.

  He said nothing but signaled for the waitress, who was upon them at once. He ordered a dish of chocolate ice cream for Judith and coffee for them both. “With cream,” the waitress said, more a statement than a question, and Judith’s father nodded. The girl’s hair was the blond of cornsilk, and almost as fine. As she walked away, Judith had to keep herself from staring at it.

  “Okay, Judith,” her father said, “let’s start with the facts. Where did you apply and what have you heard?”

  So the unasked question had been finally asked, and the wall was down. Her answer was brief but complete: three rejections at upper-tier eastern schools, two wait-lists at Major Stretch schools, which were the ones she kept hoping to hear from, and the one acceptance at the U in Lincoln. “And if I’m staying in Nebraska, I’d rather stay here with you.”

  This was a surprise: she’d meant only to say she’d rather stay here in Rufus Sage.

  “I think you’re underestimating Lincoln,” he said. “They have good people there. And after a year or two, if you’re dead set on another school, you can transfer.”

  “I can transfer from here, too. And it’d be lots cheaper. The other schools, the ones where I really want to go—they all cost a fortune.”

  Something stiffened in her father, and she knew she’d made a mistake. “Money isn’t the issue,” he said. “We’ll find the money.”

  This—and she felt it in her bones at this moment—was how her father had staked such a claim on her. He was the one who took care of her and loved her and yet helped her to do what she wanted to do and go where she wanted to go—all of those things, and all at once.

  The blond waitress appeared with the check, which her father signed without scrutiny. “And a bit more coffee, please, if you don’t mind.” The waitress didn’t mind at all. She brought it quickly and said, “Anything else, Dr. Toomey?”

  Judith’s father shook his head distractedly, and at the exact moment that it registered with Judith that the waitress was disappointed, had been hoping for something more, her father said, “But you’ve been very helpful, Zondra.”

  A faint pretty pinkness bloomed on the waitress’s cheeks, and after she left, Judith said, “Her name is Zondra? With a Z?”

  He nodded. “Zondra Evans. She’s been in a couple of my classes.”

  Zondra Evans stood at the service area along the wall, adding water to two glasses of ice. Judith was trying to remember whether her eyes were blue—she didn’t think so, which meant the whole blond thing might be store-bought—when her father said, “And Stanford’s one of the wait-lists?”

  “Mmm. But Mr. Flood told me not to get my hopes up there in particular.”

  “Why was that?”

  Judith shrugged. If Mr. Flood had said, she couldn’t remember.

  Her father brought his fingertips together and was pressing them against his lips. Perhaps half a minute passed. Then the cage broke apart and he said he was going to tell her a story.

  Judith had the sudden impulse to flee. “What kind of story?” she said. “Is it going to be about fledglings needing to leave the nest?”

  He seemed amused. “Why? Is that the kind of story the situation requires?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll proceed as planned.” He stirred cream into his coffee. “I was thinking of the house your mother and I had on Madison Street when you were born. There was a sewing room that your mother turned into a nursery. She painted everything a beautiful pale pink with mint-green trim—everything, even the crib and an old chest of drawers that was in there.”

  His gaze drifted, and he settled into his memories. “One day a month or so before your first birthday, I was the only one in the house with you. You were crawling then, and pulling yourself up, but not walking. You’d already had your nap, you were whumping your playthings around in the nursery, making happy little sounds while I worked at my desk, and then after a time I became suddenly aware of the quiet. A deep, strange, frightening quiet. I almost ran to the nursery. And there you were, sitting atop the chest of drawers. How had you gotten there? You’d pulled out the drawers, one a little less far than the one before, so you could use them as steps on your way up. When you looked at me from your perch, you were the purest essence of happiness. You had a pair of my rolled socks in your hands and happily waved them at me. I can tell you this much: you were absolutely enchanted with your own powers.” He issued a small laugh. “They were red-and-green argyle socks. Are, I should say, because I still have them. They’re too ugly to wear, and I can’t throw them away.”

  Judith had heard the story before, with slight variations, but she saw no need to say so, or to mention that it was a fledgling-needing-to-leave-the-nest story after all, because it was really, wasn’t it? Her father looked out one of the large windows that gave onto mown lawn and leafy trees. Judith regarded the soupy remains of chocolate ice cream in her dish. She wanted to spoon it out but didn’t want to risk the clicking sound.

  “That moment of deep, strange, frightening quiet…” her father said, but didn’t finish the thought. Then he said, “You know, this is not where I wanted to come. I came here because it was the best I could do.”

  This was both a surprise to Jud
ith and a hard idea to grasp. “What was wrong with Middlebury?” she said.

  “Other than the fact that they weren’t going to offer me tenure?”

  Another surprise. “How’d you know that?”

  “Dale Irwin was on the tenure committee. He was kind enough to give me a heads-up.” Dale Irwin of the traveling-to-Florida-and-getting-in-a-car-wreck Irwins.

  “Why?”

  Her father’s face twisted into a mild grimace. “So I could look for a job before tenure denial was part of my official record. The problem was, it was already there between the lines. Interviewers would say, ‘Do you expect to be offered tenure at Middlebury?’ and I would say, ‘Yes, I’d expect that,’ and the interviewer would say, ‘Then why are you choosing to leave?’ ” Her father smiled. “Oh, it’s fine. It’s all fine. It takes no more than a single gin and tonic to see it as a not unhappy ending.” He started to raise his coffee cup but set it back on its saucer. “I interviewed at a half-dozen places before interviewing here. When they asked me why I wanted to come to Rufus Sage, I said it was because it felt like coming home. As I heard myself saying the words, I realized not only that they were true, but that rattling within their truth was the admission that I was giving up on some wider ambitions.” Again he smiled. “What’s interesting is that it turned out to be strangely disencumbering. My life here is simpler and better proportioned.” He paused. “This morning I was thinking of how people complain repeatedly about the pinched nature of the small town, how no tic or foible goes unnoticed and all the rest, but do you know what interests me? The fact that in a town like this, you have only to walk a mile or two out and you will have slipped into a vast landscape that is, when it comes to you, entirely indifferent.”

  Judith didn’t expect him to stop talking then, but he did, and she sat wondering what these anecdotes might be circling around or wandering toward. Was he arguing for staying home or going to Lincoln or holding out for the wait-list schools or just learning better wilderness skills?