by K J Steele
Benson Ferguson and his brother-in-law bade Victoria a quick hello as she met them on the sidewalk, relinquishing their perpetual debate just long enough to pass her by, then resumed, each empowered with a renewed vigor after the temporary cease-fire. Both retired farmers with little to do, they’d learned to make sport out of argument, and if one said it was a fine day, the other would set off to prove unequivocally that it most certainly was anything but. She walked behind them, found herself listening not to their words but to the inflection of their voices, the variances of their speech. It could have been anyone who’d phoned her. Anyone. Suddenly the whole town was under her suspicion, every male voice that drifted by her as she walked caught her attention, and she found her pace slowed several times as she tried to superimpose static and disguise over them. She waved at those who waved to her, but she also tried to catch their eye, see if any secret was hidden there. She felt exposed.
Glad when she finally gained the smooth plank stairs of the feed store, she double-stepped up them and slipped into the comforting aroma of grain and straw and the peachy-sweet smoke of Mr. Miller’s pipe. A brass cowbell clanged overhead as she shut the door, summoning no one and leaving her waiting in its echo. She walked to the counter, picked through a magazine on sheep and then examined the names on the delinquent checks taped to the cash register. Eventually two voices emerged from the back where the stacks of feed were stored, joined together in a hushed giggle and subsided. She couldn’t be sure but one had sounded like a girl’s, and it wasn’t long afterward that she saw Benny Olson’s third-youngest daughter slip across the loading dock and disappear down the street.
A good-looking kid sauntered rather than walked in through the back door, flashing her with smirking green eyes and a kick-ass smile.
“Help you, ma’am?”
A grimy white telephone attached to a wooden post beside the cash register rang shrilly over her reply. She jerked back awkwardly, her gaze darting back and forth as she waited for him to silence it. Instead, he casually roved freely over her face with his eyes.
“Go ahead,” she offered, gesturing toward the telephone.
“Thanks,” he grinned as he picked up the receiver, dropped it back down to disconnect the call then let the handle dangle loosely down the post.
Victoria stared at it. The plaintive tone of the severed line reached back to her.
“Don’t worry about it, ma’am. They’ll call back. What can I get ya?”
Her attention was fixated on the dangling telephone, ears straining for the sounds of static, mind tumbling with why he’d been so reluctant to answer that call.
“Umm, I need to get some grain, Mark,” she stammered. “Bobby will pick it up later. And I want to talk to Mr. Miller about my laying hens. Is he in?”
“Nope. What’s wrong with them?” he asked, but his concerns were clearly already elsewhere, appraising her up and down.
“You know about chickens?”
He swaggered out in front of the counter and leaned against it, crossing arms grown massive from chucking fifty-pound bags and eighty-pound bales and winked her a challenge.
“Try me.”
She smiled back, middle-aged respectful as if she hadn’t caught his brazen, double-edged invitation. A piece of flattened gold straw fell from his shoulder, and she noticed more trapped in the glossy black curls escaping from under his red cap.
“Um, okay,” she stammered dryly. “Well, they used to lay fine. Up until a couple months ago.”
“Ya? What happened a couple months ago?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmm. Something must have.” He helped himself to an overt sampling of her reflection in the store window. “You try amping up their light?”
Victoria nodded uncomfortably. She could feel the heat of his body beside her. Smell the rut of his sweat. “Ya. Didn’t seem to help.”
“Maybe they’re just too old.” He smirked down at her.
“They’re not that old,” she quickly defended.
“Got a rooster?”
“Ya.”
“In with them?”
She shook her head impatiently.
“Why not?”
“Well, because I don’t want the eggs fertilized.”
Mark threw his arms up in an exaggerated gesture. “Well, that’s your problem, then.”
“What is?”
She eased backward as he leaned toward her, ran a slow search over her body then fixed her with an audacious stare.
“Ain’t no fun happening in your hen house, ma’am. Hens no different than chicks. You want ’em to give up the goods, they’re gonna want a little something in exchange. Right?”
“Uh . . . I. . . Um . . . maybe. Maybe I should call back when Mr. Miller’s here.”
“Whatever cranks ya.”
Winking, he took a step closer to her and for a moment she thought he was going to slap her ass. But his hand fell to a feed sack behind her and he hoisted it onto his shoulder like it was lightly stuffed with cotton. She tried desperately to scramble her memory backward over his words, feeling for similarities, convinced for a moment she’d found her anonymous caller. But something about it didn’t make sense. He was so brazen, so comfortable with himself. He hardly struck her as the type to hide behind a blank wall of static.
“Anything else I can help you with?” He smiled, knowing full well he’d successfully seen her undone.
“No. Yes, yes, I mean. My grain. I didn’t order my grain.”
“Oh, right. What do you want, same as usual?”
She nodded even though she had planned to try something different. But she needed more advice for that, and she sure as hell wasn’t anxious to begin over again from where they’d left off.
“How many bags? Five do you?”
She nodded, fumbling her purse open as he scribbled some figures onto a pad. Pressing the bills into his thick hand, she was careful not to make contact, but he curled his fingers up around hers brushing them softly, deposited her change with a firm touch then wished her a good day.
“Been a pleasure, ma’am.” He tossed her another wink, obviously pleased with his performance.
Walking back down the stairs she retroactively felt offended. The smart ass, who did he think he was, parading around like a virile young bull? Feeling drained, she stopped on the bottom step and leaned briefly against the peeling white post that held up the feedstore’s sign. No wonder Diana was having trouble with him. Hollywood looks, a testosterone-inflated ego and muscles to pump it up with. The perfect heartbreaking combination: deadly not only to young girls but to his distressed mother as well. And she had to admit, at least to herself, that his self-assured cockiness had gotten to her in no small degree.
~ Chapter 10 ~
The telephone shrilled incessantly and Victoria hurried down the hall, her fingers working dexterously with the clasp of her bra, hoping to have one hand free by the time she got to it. Twice she’d almost had the bra fastened before it sprung loose again. She cursed mildly as she debated missing the call altogether or sacrificing her breasts to a few more moments of freedom. Choosing the latter, she let them fall free as she grabbed for the phone. She’d been rushing for it all week, waiting for Diana to call to say whether Pearl had agreed to let them use the ballroom for a dance studio. Ragged bits of static greeted her breathless hello.
Jolted, she just barely stopped herself from slamming the receiver back down. Watching it carefully, as if it might suddenly come alive in her hand, she slowly inched the handset up toward her ear. She shot a glance through the porch window to make sure Bobby’s truck was still gone. Holding her breath, she listened. Fear began to palpitate her heart as her mind raced with images of who might be breathing into the other end of the line. But, slowly, as she returned her thoughts back over the delicious memory she held of the previous call, her anxiety began to transform into anticipation. Really, there had been no harm done. He had not been crude or frightening, although the strangeness of the
call, coming when she was stranded all alone out at the trailer had unnerved her. Maybe Rose was right. Maybe, she should just hang on for a bit. What would be wrong with just listening to what he had to say? Inching a chair toward her she slid into place.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate her senses into the line. Focusing deeply, she attempted to listen through the erratic pop of static to glean any wayward background noise, which might inadvertently offer a clue to the caller’s identity. Soon tiring of this, she resorted to more obvious attempts to draw him out.
“So, did you call to talk to me or not?”
Silence.
“I have to go pretty soon, you know. Did you have something you wanted to say to me?”
She waited briefly, growing irritated at the noisy silence that crackled in her ear, then decided to beat him at his own game. Two could sit in silence just as easy as one. He was the one who had called her, let him work up the courage to speak. She pulled her knees up onto her chair and began to work the telephone cord through her bare toes like a curly black snake. It was a silly little standoff; she knew that. As immature and petty as those that spice the earliest interactions between young lovers and young love. But it gave her an almost sexual pleasure to imagine his attraction to her could be so strong that her silence could actually coax him out beyond his anonymous security. As the two of them sat silently stalemated in their cat-and-mouse game, a smile played lightly on her lips. She imagined him to be doing the same: imagined his mouth—full, generous and responsive—framed by features worn into being by the wind and waves rather than the sharp, steady chip of a sculpture’s tool. Craggy rather than chiseled.
“I think you’re really beautiful,” the voice cut forcefully through the line, penetrating her thoughts so deeply it was as if he had stood right inside her.
“Oh! What? No, I’m not. I’m not. I’m just me. Just me.” And then, prodded by the habit of good manners, flustered, “But thank you anyhow for saying so.”
Suddenly she became aware of the coolness of air against her breasts and, grabbing Bobby’s jacket up from where he had hung it on the floor, she wrapped it around her shoulders. It was as if the image of the caller that she had created in her mind were so real it suddenly seemed possible he also might have the ability to imagine her sitting there, curled up on a chair missing half her clothes. The thought was erotic and ridiculous at the same time, yet for some reason she could not push it away. She rolled the cold, black telephone cord tight across her breasts, pleased as the nipples sprang back up like hungry brown hatchlings.
“Is that why you phoned me?” she prodded. “Just to tell me that?” She managed to coax casual into her voice, but she was like someone who, having tasted a new delicacy for the first time, suddenly realizes they cannot live without a second bite.
“You’d probably really like the way I look right now,” she teased playfully. “I had to run to catch the phone and I never had time to get dressed.”
She felt a little race of panic as she released this half-truth, but it was short lived, alleviated by the real power she felt imagining him imagining her. Listening carefully, she waited to catch his reply until finally it came to her not in words, but in a slow pulsing sensuality that began to seep back to her across the line. She closed her eyes and breathed it in as if it were a stream of loving caresses and soul-searching kisses. She was about to offer more of herself when a scattered spray of words stopped her cold.
“Are you lonely?”
“Lonely?” she repeated defensively. She blinked her eyes as if casting off a daydream. “I’m not lonely. Why would you think I’m lonely?”
They were not the words she had been expecting and no more fit into her moment than an elephant into a canary cage. Yet even as she denied their truth, loneliness began to emerge all around her as if it had always been there but as faded and dingy and unnoticed as the wallpaper. Unobserved and unobtrusive until somebody turns on the light and makes a point of imprinting its unmistakably dismal existence onto your brain.
Victoria pulled Bobby’s coat tighter as these new feelings began to focus around her. She would not have described herself as lonely because to her this feeling was normal. She had never felt any other way. Always lonely. Always alone. She put her feet on the floor and sat up straight. It annoyed her to be forced to see herself in this light. She preferred to think of herself as a loner: someone who chose not to waste her time in the gossipy presence of the other wives, someone who was comfortable in her own space. Not lonely. Not alone. Not these strong, desperate, glaring words that illuminated her back upon herself.
“I should go now,” she whispered flatly, shocked to find the caller already gone and the line dead. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she buried her head and began to cry as if she had just received news of the death of an old friend.
~ Chapter 11 ~
Victoria glanced quickly behind her as she grappled with the mangled ring of keys Pearl had given her. Her hands trembled visibly as she searched for the long-unused one that would unseal the ballroom doors. She was irritated by her nervousness. It wasn’t as if she were doing anything wrong, she chided herself. Bobby knew full well what her plans were for the studio. They had discussed it again just the night before. Vehemently. Now, standing alone outside the massive double doors of the ballroom, she began to wonder if she shouldn’t have considered his objections a little more seriously.
Fumbling the key ring, she accidentally scraped the ornate carving beveled into the thick oak panel of the left door. A sprinkling of filigreed gold fell to the burgundy carpet. Rubbing it invisible with her foot, Victoria suddenly became aware of the complexity of the doors. Over the years she must have walked right past them hundreds of times. But, she had never really paid them any attention, saw them without seeing them. The way someone who grows up in the shadow of a mountain may never truly encounter its raw majesty.
That seemed impossible to her now as her eyes explored the imposing and intricately carved doors. They rose at least three feet above her head. Even with both her arms stretched out, she would not be able to encompass their span. Stained a depthless indigo, the carvings in the raised panels had been brushed with a now-crackled and flaking gold. Sturdy brass hardware held the doors firmly in place.
Her fingers toyed with a long, jagged key. Even without looking she knew it was the brass one that would unlock the door. She hesitated, her mind raging with a searing question: Who was she to open these doors? Who was she to disturb these hopes and dreams and fears, so silently sealed away? The carefully carved pictures on the door captivated her as she vacillated between expectation and anxiety. Demure ladies in kimonos, ferocious dragons, snowcapped mountains, a collage of symbols she could not understand.
The key slid easily into place, but she could not turn her hand. She felt paralyzed. Suddenly, she wanted the whole crazy idea of the studio to disappear. She thought about sliding the key back out. She could return it to Pearl. Say the room was unsuitable. It was too big. That it would be impossible to control the children in such a large space. It would be pandemonium at least and chaos at best.
She would simply tell Bobby she had changed her mind. Not that the idea couldn’t work, as he insisted, just that she didn’t feel like pursuing it yet. And Elliot. She felt an unexpected rush of rage course through her. Why had he even suggested such a thing in the first place? He knew nothing about her. She hadn’t danced in years. Not really. Not since she’d come home from the failed dance audition, thrown her shoes in the basement, buried her albums and pictures in a bottom drawer and hissed to her mother that she never wanted to dance again. Even to herself it had been a surprise how perfectly able she had been to alienate herself from the only thing that caused the blood to course through her veins. She had felt she had no other choice. Bassman had stolen far more from her that night than he would ever know. Her dignity, yes. But far worse was that without the protection of her arrogant faca
de, he’d managed to expose her to herself.
Her eyes lingered on the gently spiked motif in the center of the door. A flower: foreign, mystical. Certainly not anything that could ever survive in Hinckly’s inhospitable climate. A lotus flower, Victoria thought, surprised she could identify it. She wondered at the workings of the mind, how it could hold so many random bits of information, able to dislodge and float them forward at seemly obscure, unimportant moments.
Her thoughts turned to Lily. Fresh, beautiful, innocent Lily. Her protective affection for the child puzzled her. She felt her hand turn the key. She knew she turned it not for herself. She turned it for Lily. For a promise made which she felt compelled to keep.
The door slid open easily. As if it had been merely awaiting her decision. A gust of damp, musty air escaped past her like a desperate sigh. She wondered again how many half-lived dreams had been sealed up behind these doors. For a moment she again faltered, then the sound of someone entering the lobby coaxed her quickly forward. Sliding inside, she closed the door behind her and was instantly encased in darkness.
Keeping her hand on the cold doorknob, the sound of her shallow breathing filled the room with a rapid, audible pulse. Shadows evolved into shapes. Gloom hung as tangibly as the tattered blankets nailed across the tall windows. She was surprised to discover the room was not expansive at all. A dividing wall, unpainted and none too straight, had been slapped up somewhere over the years, consuming at least half of what had once been a palatial space. The room was suffocated with boxes, crates, bottles, jars, bed frames, sagging mattresses, broken televisions and bent bicycles. Partially used rolls of silver duct tape littered the floor. Like the elephants’ elusive graveyard, Victoria realized she had just solved the mystery about what Bud did with the copious amount of stuff he was constantly dragging home from the dump. Sinking onto a broken-backed chair, she pulled her knees up to her chest and closed her eyes.