He felt a pang, recognizing his own occasional bouts of self-doubt, and repeated something a friend had once said: “You know, it isn’t the fact of publication that defines a poet.”
Squaring her shoulders, she angled away from him, her gaze once more fixed on the roiling darkness steadily consuming the hot summer sky beyond the window. “My father would agree, but not in the way you mean. Publication itself is nothing. A poet’s work is rarely assessed properly in his lifetime. His—you note that. He didn’t think much of women poets. True greatness is only conferred by the ages.”
“He sounds like a very harsh critic.”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward, trying to engage her. “And unrealistic. Come on, we can’t know how the writers of today will be judged in the future, but we are living now. Besides, that’s just his opinion.”
She turned to frown at him. “His opinion matters…mattered. My father was an English professor.”
“He’s retired?”
“He’s dead.” A flash of pain darkened her eyes, and he felt an even closer kinship with her. Two wounded, lonely people…Was it too much to hope that they might heal each other? Too soon, maybe, and he didn’t want to scare her off, but he decided to seize the moment.
“Gretchen.” He longed to touch her, to stroke the smooth, tanned flesh of her leg or hold her hand, but restrained himself. “I’d like to get to know you better.” He cleared his throat. “It happens to be my night off. If you’re free—what do you say to dinner?”
She reached and grasped his hand. Her flesh was smooth and warm, her grip firm and strong. “I was thinking the very same thing.”
“Wonderful.” He smiled. “Where shall we go? What sort of food do you like?” He squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back. She had quite a grip. “I like simple, fresh, home-cooked food.”
“Got somewhere in mind?”
She smiled. “I do.”
Outside Bellini’s Books and Java, the storm arrived. A great bolt of lightning struck down in the near distance, and they both turned their heads to watch it. He imagined her on a horse behind him, holding him tightly around the waist as the horse mounted the sky, carrying them both to the golden halls of Valhalla.
* * *
—
She lived in a house on Eagle’s Point Lake, some forty minutes northwest of the city. In his trusty old Toyota Corolla he followed Gretchen’s newer, misty-blue Lexus sedan around the broad span of Loop 820.
He had been a little slow, thinking she was talking about a fancy restaurant out of town before he realized she was inviting him to her house.
“Trust me, I’m a good cook, I’m not going to poison you,” she teased.
“But you don’t know me—”
“You think I don’t?” She gave him a searching look.
“For all you know, I could be a serial killer.”
She laughed. “No. No. You’re a poet, and I know it.”
The storm had hit hard but quickly tailed off; now the rain gentled down, but he heard on the radio that another front was predicted to move in later in the evening.
Gretchen drove fast, recklessly given the slickness of the road, and Brad was compelled to accelerate more than he liked in order not to lose her. She was a woman in a hurry, spontaneous, impulsive, and generous as her invitation proved; she took chances.
His ex-wife, too, had been impulsive, but hers was a more selfish, calculating nature. Letty was not a bad cook, but she preferred to eat out. If she ever cooked him a special meal, it was always part of a plan to get something from him or win his forgiveness. Their relationship was volatile from the start, but the frequent storms had always been a prelude to passionate sex that confirmed their love until the night, when, taunting him with hints of her infidelity, she pushed him too far.
He almost missed the turnoff to Old Marina Road, and as he skidded, twenty yards behind the Lexus, he scolded himself for letting his mind drift. Forget the past. Letty had been his muse, once upon a time, but finally she had killed his love stone dead.
With Gretchen, everything would be different. She valued the poet in him, being a poet herself. He would be different, because she was. Of course, she had her own problems; already he sensed within her an emotional vulnerability at odds with her physical confidence, a psychic wound the source of which he could not guess. But again the idea came to him that they could soothe each other’s pain, and together they could heal and grow…
He told himself he had to stop running romantic scenarios through his head and pay attention to what was really going on.
By the time both cars angled into Caldwell Bay Lane, the rain had stopped. The snaking asphalt path wound through a raw quarter-mile stretch of oak and spiny hackberry occupied by a mere scattering of houses, each one isolated on its own broad tract of land. Most were built of brick or stone and dated back to the fifties. Occasionally, through the houses and the trees, Brad caught a glimpse of the lake, its waters, under the dark ceiling of the sky, the gray-blue shade of sadness.
Gretchen’s property was protected by a whitewashed corral fence, but the wide metal gate was open. Parked just to the right of it was a bright red older-model Ford van idling loudly, a rhythmic bum-bum-bum bass note spewing from its tailpipe. The sign on the door identified it as belonging to CARLOS: HANDYMAN & LAWN CARE. A big, dark, well-muscled man in rainsoaked work clothes—presumably Carlos—was loading a lawnmower through the open side doors.
The man looked up and grinned in welcome as Gretchen pulled the Lexus up beside him. She stretched across the front seat and powered down the window. He leaned down to talk to her through it. Between the noise of the engine and the Toyota’s air conditioner pumping away Brad could not hear their conversation, but he witnessed what appeared to be an argument, accompanied by a vigorous shaking of the man’s head and ending as he stepped back, planting fisted hands on his hips.
Gretchen powered up the window, slid back across the seat, and drove through the gate and up the drive. As Brad followed, he saw Carlos staring at him, the look in his eyes icy enough to flash-freeze a hot tamale. If looks could kill, he thought—but why me? He felt that murderous gaze on the back of his neck all the way to the end of the drive.
A medium-size single-story sandstone house was set at the back of the property, high above the lake. A matching two-car garage stood a few yards to the right of the house, doors open. Gretchen parked in the left bay, and Brad slotted his Toyota in on the right.
“Here it is,” said Gretchen when they met outside the garage. She spread her arms wide. “The old homestead.”
But he looked back, his attention caught by the sound of tires burning rubber, the bum-bum-bum note pumping loudly as Carlos vamoosed. “Problem with your yardman there?” he asked as he faced her again.
She widened her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“He gave me quite a look when I went past.”
“What kind of look?”
“Like he wanted me dead.”
He saw her cheeks flush. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “I may as well tell you. Carlos and I used to be lovers.”
His stomach twisted jealously; he felt a flash of possessive anger, and with it came arousal. “But it’s over?”
Her eyes, wide and brilliantly blue, flashed up to meet his. “Of course! Do you think I would have invited you here if there was a man in my life?”
“But he’s still around.”
“He works for me, that’s all.”
“It didn’t look like that was all.” He spoke coldly. He would not stand to be played this way again. How Letty had loved to make him jealous! He had only met Gretchen a few hours ago, she was an adult, naturally she had a sexual history, and it would be stupid to
expect anything else. But to meet one of her ex-lovers and feel his antagonism, on their first date, felt like a warning he should heed. “Are you telling me the truth?”
She looked uncomfortable and pursed her lips. “It’s over. I ended it, but he’s still carrying a torch, I guess. He’s been fine, don’t get me wrong, but you know how macho Latinos can be. I guess he felt jealous, seeing you.”
“You should get rid of him.”
“Oh, Brad, I can’t. He’s a great yardman and he can fix absolutely anything. Really, I sometimes think I’d be lost without him. Living out there, it’s hard to get someone to come if there’s a problem. I like to think I’m pretty competent, but there are things I need help with.” She reached up and stroked his cheek. “You’re not jealous?”
“Should I be?”
“No. I don’t want that.”
He turned his head and kissed her hand where it lingered on his face. “I still think you should get rid of him, find another handyman. That Carlos looks like he could be one nasty bastard.”
She traced his lips with a finger. “I know him. He’d never hurt me.”
How often did women nurse that fantasy? Love wasn’t always poetry and roses; didn’t she realize how easily passion could turn to violence? A man could not keep his rage bottled up forever, as he knew to his own great cost. He opened his mouth to warn her, but she stepped back, closing the subject.
“Aren’t you hot? I’m broiling; come on, let’s get in out of the heat.” She led him along a walkway at the side of the house to the kitchen door. As she unlocked it, he remembered the Simic retrospective, the book he had taken from the car.
“Here,” he said. “A little present.”
She looked startled. “But you just bought that for yourself.”
“I want you to have it. Swap? A great book for a great meal.”
She accepted the gift with a shy smile. “I hope my cooking lives up to your standards.”
“My standards? I still eat Rice-A-Roni.”
Laughing, she opened the door, and he followed her into the house, which felt deliciously cool after the muggy heat outside. She put the book down on a counter and went to the refrigerator. “A glass of chilled Californian chardonnay, or a bottle of Coors?”
“Wine sounds great. Thank you.”
He gazed around the kitchen as she fetched two long-stemmed glasses and poured the wine. The pattern on the linoleum flooring, the olive-green tiles set against walls painted a yellowing cream, even the shape and size of the room with its slightly too-low ceiling reminded him of his grandparents’ house in Arlington. Clearly, it had not been redecorated since the seventies.
She gave him a glass and clinked hers against it saying, “Prosit.”
He repeated the traditional German toast before adding, “To us.” Taking a sip, he asked, “How long have you lived here?”
“Forever.” She put her glass down carefully. “Well, apart from a few years in various crummy apartments. I grew up here. It was my family home. I’m an only child, so I inherited it last year.”
“And you’re happy to live out here by yourself? You don’t even have any neighbors,” he said, thinking of the few isolated houses they had passed on the drive in.
“Yes, a lot of people would kill for this much privacy,” she said, taking up her glass again. “It’s very peaceful.”
“You don’t get lonely?”
“Don’t they say that poets thrive on solitude?” Her blue eyes gleamed at him over the rim of her glass and his heart lifted, but before he could pick up on the subject, she handed him the book, saying, “While I start cooking, would you like to give yourself a tour? Put this away when you find the right place for it—that shouldn’t be too much of a challenge for a bookstore manager.”
* * *
—
The living room was decorated with rustic charm, and featured a fireplace with a natural limestone surround, a display of pinecones and dried flowers filling the cold hearth. There was a handsome glass-fronted bookcase, but the books inside were mostly works of literary criticism or biographies of long-dead poets.
Sliding glass doors opened on to a patio with a barbecue pit, a table and chairs, and a rowing machine, a bench and a set of weights. Brad nodded: That was where her muscle work was done. Beyond the patio, down a steep slope, the lake glittered darkly in the early-evening light. He guessed it was about a hundred feet below the house as he assessed the long flight of concrete steps leading down to an old wooden dock.
Turning away, his eye was caught by a cluster of framed photos displayed on an antique hutch. Several were of Gretchen as a child or teenager, but the majority depicted a distinguished, good-looking man whose facial similarity to Gretchen was unmistakable. He had thick blond hair, deep-set, intense blue eyes, and a confident smile displaying perfect teeth. But the picture that most commanded Brad’s attention was an eight-by-ten in a gold frame, a photograph of Gretchen and her father together, both of them in swimwear, outdoors in sunlight on a dock, with the lake behind them. Gretchen might have been in her early twenties, but it was hard to tell, for she looked practically identical to the woman he had just left in the kitchen—her face as smooth and radiant, her body perhaps a little thinner, the muscles in her upper arms not so defined. But that may have been simply in contrast to her very muscular father, a man probably in his late forties, wearing nothing but a bright red Speedo that had a noticeable bulge in it. The most disturbing thing about this picture was the way they were posed: The man held the woman cradled in his arms; she had her arms wrapped around his neck, her long, shapely tanned legs dangling down, and they gazed into each other’s eyes, smiling intimately, like lovers rather than a father and daughter.
Only one other person was depicted amid all the photographs of the two Starks: a pale blond woman whose thin lips were curved in a smile that did not reach her haunted eyes. Gretchen’s mother, almost certainly; an outsider in her own family, he thought.
Disturbed by his own imaginings, Brad turned away from the hutch and, shifting the Simic collection from one hand to the other, he strode out of the room in search of more bookcases. There were none in the large master bedroom, only a stack of books on the bedside table, which he was, inevitably, drawn to inspect: Best American Poetry 2015, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke, Cemetery Nights by Stephen Dobyns, The White Goddess by Robert Graves.
Amazed, he hefted the last book in his hands. It was the same yellow-covered reprint edition from the seventies as the copy he had picked up at a garage sale, age nineteen. What a revelation it had been! Not that he could claim to have entirely understood, or even read every word of it, but the basic ideas—that true poetry is a form of magic, that the poet must be inspired by a muse, and that the poetic muse is a sort of avatar of an ancient goddess of love and death—well, it would not be too much to say that this book had changed his life, confirming him in his decision to dedicate his life to the pursuit of poetry, with bookselling the more lucrative second string to his bow.
But he had rarely met anyone else who had read The White Goddess. And when he had made the mistake of mentioning it in a poetry workshop he’d briefly attended, all the women there had piled on him, calling him a sexist, practically baying for his blood. Graves was an old misogynist, according to them, and his book claimed that only heterosexual males could be real poets, and women were supposed to be grateful to serve and inspire them. He had left that gathering never to return, feeling he had been lucky not to have been lynched, and wary of ever mentioning the book in mixed company.
To find it here was another proof that Gretchen and he were soul mates.
Unless, of course, she was reading it as preparation for demolishing it for a feminist book club…With a wince, he replaced it at the bottom of the pile.
There was one more
bedroom—at least, he guessed it must have been Gretchen’s bedroom when she was growing up. It had since been turned into a library, with bookshelves covering three walls. The books—mostly poetry and fiction—were arranged alphabetically by author, and snugly packed, but Brad managed to wedge in the new Simic volume. As he browsed, he became aware of an oddity about her collection: how few women authors were featured. There were works by Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, and a few others, but no contemporary female poets, and none of the moderns most women seemed to revere—no Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, or Sharon Olds.
Apart from the books, the room was simply furnished with a plain table and chair. On the tabletop, different colored journals were stacked beside a pot of pens and pencils. He admired the simplicity of it.
He went back to the living room and was looking at the display of photographs again when Gretchen came in from the kitchen with the bottle of wine. “Are you all right? Do you need anything? More wine?”
She had unbraided her hair; it fell to her shoulders in thick golden waves, and he was struck anew by her beauty. Beautiful.
“What?”
He was chagrined to realize he had whispered his thought aloud. “You heard me. And you are—the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
“Easy, tiger,” she said, grinning. “I think you’ve had more than enough wine already.”
“Not even half a glass,” he said, holding it up. He sank onto the couch and patted the cushion. “Come and sit, talk to me, if you can take a break from cooking.”
“I’d love to,” she replied, sitting down close beside him.
“I was looking at your pictures. The sad-looking lady—was she your mother?”
“We don’t look anything alike, do we?”
He agreed.
“I am glad,” she said grimly. “Sad-looking—yes, she was sad, sad and cold. We were never close—she never let me get close—she couldn’t wait for me to grow up and get out of her life.” She took a deep breath. “She’s been dead seven years now. Car wreck. Her own fault—does that sound hard? It’s the truth. She was a reckless driver, never gave herself enough time and she was always rushing off somewhere, always running late and taking crazy risks for no good reason. Nobody cared if she was late—she was always late.” She took a gulp of wine. “The late Mrs. Stark.”
Volume Ten Page 15