by Jan Burke
“Now see here-” Sam began, but fell silent as the man opened his car door and stood next to it. He was at least six inches taller than Sam.
He extended a hand. “David Kerr,” he said amiably.
Sam shook the hand awkwardly. “Sam Barrington,” he mumbled. To Leila, he said, “I’ll call you later,” and excused himself.
“Thanks for the rescue,” Leila said to David, when Sam had left.
“A pleasure. As your knight in shining armor, do I deserve to know your last name, Leila?”
“Leila Anderson,” she said. “It was going to be Leila Barrington before that sweet young thing happened along.”
“You’re hopelessly stuck on him, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Well, we’re two peas in a pod. My ex-wife shops here with a fellow I call ‘Junior’ on Tuesdays. If you want to return the favor, I’ll meet you here tomorrow night at six.”
Leila laughed and agreed to see him there the next evening. She said goodnight and whistled as she drove home.
On Thursday night, Leila invited Alice Grayson to dinner. They giggled like schoolgirls over Leila’s recounting of the last three days. Tuesday night, David’s ex-wife had ignored the young man she was dating, nearly pushed Leila aside and said flat out that she missed David and would like to see him for dinner sometime soon.
David had thanked Leila, and they promised to keep one another posted on their progress.
On Wednesday, Sam had stopped by her office to ask her to go to lunch, an unprecedented event.
“I’m worried about you, Leila,” he had said.
“Why?”
“How well do you know this David Kerr?”
“Not well at all.”
“That’s what I mean! And you kissed him in the store!”
“I believe he kissed me.”
“You’re mincing words and you know it. Okay, so you were kissed, but you allowed it. Right in front of everybody! That’s so unlike you!”
“Maybe I’ve changed, Sam.”
He sulked in silence for a moment, then said, “I’m not sure I like the change. I liked you the way you were before.”
“You dumped me the way I was before.”
“Leila! That’s an unkind way of putting things.”
“It was an unkind way of doing things.”
He had the good grace to look guilty, but said nothing.
“It’s true, Sam. You all but said I was passionless. And I can see why you thought so. It’s my fault, really. I hope Marietta gives you all the passion you can bear.”
“There’s more to life than passion.”
“Really? Such as what?”
“Stability, reliability, companionship.”
“Don’t forget faithfulness.”
He turned red and looked away. After a moment he said quietly, “I really hurt you, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, Sam. Thanks to you, I have a whole new life.”
“With David?”
“No, probably not with David.”
He seemed about to say something, but he hesitated. She decided not to wait for him to make up his mind to tell her what it was. “I’d better get back to work, Sam.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he answered distractedly.
As they stood outside the door to her office building, he suddenly hugged her, nearly throwing her off balance. “Listen, I’m really quite fond of you, Leila. We are friends, aren’t we?”
“Of course,” she said, freeing herself from his embrace. “Goodbye, Sam.”
“Excellent!” Alice exclaimed. “Although I’ll warn you, Leila. Watch out for Marietta. From what you’ve told me, she won’t take any of this very lightly.”
Leila invited Alice to come over on Saturday afternoon. “I’ll be planting the roses in the back corner. I called my friend, Arnie, and ordered another loveseat. He’s going to try to find one similar to the old one. He thinks he can have one here by Monday, so I need to get the roses in place.”
On Friday, Sam came by her office at lunch time again. Leila had already agreed to have lunch with some of her coworkers, and summoning all of her willpower, she told Sam she would not be able to join him. “Let me take you to dinner, then,” he said.
She hesitated. “What about Marietta?”
“She’s got an aerobics class until ten. She has aerobics every night,” he added glumly.
“All right, I’ll meet you for dinner. Where?”
“Café Camillia at eight?”
She smiled. The restaurant was a favorite of hers, and Sam knew it. “Fine.”
That evening, she put on a rather daring dress, one she had bought on impulse. Impulse, she thought, liking what she saw in the mirror. What a heady new feeling this occasional obedience to impulse had given her! When she arrived at the restaurant, Sam was already there, nervously wringing his hands. When he saw her, he looked as if someone had just sent enough electricity through him to light Manhattan.
“Leila?”
“Yes, Sam, what’s the matter?”
“You-you look lovely.”
“Why, thank you.”
But throughout dinner, Sam hardly spoke a word. He looked unhappy. She began to think that the whole evening was a miserable failure. Maybe he was wishing he hadn’t invited her to dinner.
“Sam?”
He looked up at her, startled.
“Sam, are you regretting this?”
“Oh. No, not at all.”
“You don’t seem very happy.”
“I’m not.”
“Why? Have I done something wrong?”
“No, I have.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “Forgive me, Leila. I haven’t been good company this evening. I’ve got some thinking to do.” He glanced at his watch. “ Marietta will be home soon. I’d better go.” He motioned for the waiter and paid the check.
He walked her to her car. Suddenly, he said, “Leila, do you still care for me?”
“Yes, Sam. You’re still my friend.”
“I don’t mean as a friend. I mean, do you think you could still care for me?”
She smiled at the anxiousness in his voice. “I think you already know I do.”
“What do you see in me, Leila? I’ve cheated on you, broken our engagement, been a cad. I didn’t want to admit it before, but I have been.”
“I agree. But I think it has been for the best. We each had things to learn, didn’t we?”
“I’m just afraid the tuition may have cost me too much.”
“Talk to Marietta. I admit I don’t like her much, but she deserves to know how you really feel. Then come and tell me how you feel about me. But not until then, all right?”
He nodded, then watched as she drove off.
Leila had just finished mixing a huge bag of mulch into the garden soil when she heard the sound of the gate opening. At first, she thought it was Alice Grayson, but she turned to see an odd vision of Marietta, taller than usual, gliding toward her. Then she realized Marietta was on skates. Of course, Leila thought, the latest fitness craze. They were a fancy, in-line pair, with fluorescent pink wheels. As Marietta drew closer, Leila saw that her face was a hard mask of fury, and she was flying toward Leila like a Valkyrie on Rollerblades.
“You bitch! You miserable old bitch!” she shouted, and tried to grab on to Leila.
Frightened, Leila dropped the shovel and started to run toward the house, but the skating Marietta was faster. Leila was amazed at the other woman’s agility. Marietta caught hold of Leila’s hair and yanked hard. Leila came to a halt and Marietta slammed into her. Leila toppled to the ground, landing facedown in the dirt. Marietta fell on top of her. In no time flat, she had her hands around Leila’s throat, choking her.
“Sam is mine! I won’t let you have him!”
Leila couldn’t breathe. Her head pounded as she tried to pry Mariet
ta ’s fingers from her throat. But Marietta was strong, and her fingers didn’t budge.
“Let her go,” Leila heard a voice say, but everything around her was swimming out of focus.
“No! I’m younger, I’m prettier, I’m stronger-”
“You’re dead,” the voice said, and Leila heard the shovel ring out once again. She fell into darkness.
Sam and Leila were sitting on the loveseat. Two rosebushes grew on one side, a third on the other.
“ Marietta still hasn’t come back,” Sam said. “I think she’s left me for good.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you never see her again,” Leila said.
“I suppose you’re right. She went absolutely insane when I told her that I had decided to beg you to take me back. The language she used! Called me things I never imagined anyone would ever call me. And when Miss Grayson called that evening to tell me that Marietta had come by to attack you like that-“He looked at the bruises on her throat and winced. “I’m so sorry, Leila. You should have called me sooner.”
“I didn’t want to worry you. I’m fine now, really.”
“Anyway, I’m glad Miss Grayson called me. I guess it was while I was over here with you that Marietta cleared all of her things out of our old apartment.”
“ Alice was a great help that day,” Leila said, thinking of the apartment key that was now in a jar of buttons. She leaned back against Sam, who put his arms around her. “I’m glad you came over to see me.”
“Of course! You needed me.”
They sat in silence for a while, Sam holding Leila close, amazed by how strongly he had felt about her lately. Oh, he had thought of her often during the few months he had spent with Marietta, but somehow, something had changed in Leila since she had lived in this old house. He looked at the riot of colors around him. Amazing, he thought. And this loveseat. That seemed so sentimental, so unlike the old Leila.
“You planted this garden yourself?” he asked in wonder.
“Yes, all except this corner. Alice Grayson helped me with this one.”
“Ah, that explains the loveseat.”
Leila merely smiled.
It seemed to Sam that he had never desired her more.
Why Tonight?
Why tonight?
As she lay staring up at the lazily circling blades of the ceiling fan, Kaylie asked herself the question again and again. She wasn’t sure what caused her to ask herself that question more than any other, especially as there were certainly other matters she should be addressing before the sheriff arrived. But through the numbness that surrounded nearly every other line of thinking, one question occurred to her repeatedly, refused evasion by tricks of distraction: Why tonight?
Was it because of the heat? It was hot tonight. But then, it wasn’t the first hot summer night in Kansas. Even her grandmother used to say that the devil couldn’t be found in Kansas in August; in August he went back to hell, where he could cool off. No, the heat had not decided this night would be the night that Joseph Darren died.
She had met the man whose body hung from a rope tied to the rafters of the garage on another, long-ago August night, when she had gone down to the small, man-made lake on the edge of town, hoping it would be cool there.
She had talked Tommy Macon into driving her down there that night. She smiled, thinking of Tommy. Tommy who used to have a crush on her. Tommy, taking her out to drag Main in his big old Chrysler. Kaylie calling ‘Hey!’ to Sue Halloran, just to rub it in. Sue calling back, half-heartedly, like a beaten pup.
Willowy. That’s what Joseph called her that night. If his eyes had moved over her just a little more slowly, it would have been insulting. He had taken in her skinny frame, a body she dismissed with the word ‘awkward’ up to that moment, that moment when Joseph asked, “Who’s the willowy blonde, Tommy?”
When he introduced them, Tommy, who would never be a Thomas, whispered to her, “Don’t never call him ‘Joe’.” He needn’t have bothered with the warning. She knew from that first moment that Joseph would be extraordinary. He would never be “an average Joe”. Tommy was sweet and clumsy, but she was too stupid in those days to see the advantages of being with a sweet and clumsy man.
She sighed, closing her eyes. Too late to mourn the loss of Tommy, still married to Sue, and five kids and fifty pounds later would stay married to her. Kaylie couldn’t even bring herself to contemplate the idea of mourning Joe. She tried it. Not mourning him-calling him Joe.
Joe. Joe. Joe. She said it like a curse. Joe you. It suited him now, she decided.
He was a poet, he had told her, when he was Joseph. A poet. Tommy confirmed it. Tommy, naively bragging on a man he hadn’t even realized was already his rival. Joseph’s poetry had been in every issue of the Butler County College Literary Magazine every semester he had been there. Tommy didn’t claim to understand it all, but he thought it was pretty interesting that Joseph used all small letters, like that Ogden Nash-no, hell, no, that e.e. cummings fellow. That, and did Kaylie know that Joseph could recite all of the words to “American Pie” and tell her exactly what they all meant?
Joseph never did recite “American Pie” for her or unravel its meaning. Too late now.
Kaylie shifted to her side, looking out the top half of the bedroom window. The busted air conditioner sat in the bottom half. It made her mad just to see that air conditioner, so she forced herself to look up over the top of it.
The refinery was still burning. Flames, in the distance, reflected odd colors off the clouds of smoke that billowed and rolled into the night sky. Even with the wind blowing most of it away from town, the air was filled with the stench of burning oil and gas, and doubtless would be for some hours.
Maybe it was the fire. Was that why Joseph had died this night, and not some other night? Had the stinking, burning oil made the sky so different tonight, so different that things had come to this?
She turned away from the window, restless, unwilling to watch it, knowing neighbors had died there tonight. No time to think of that, not now.
Damn, it was hot.
She wondered if Joseph’s students would miss him. He had always managed to have a coterie of A.Y.M.s around him. That was one of Kaylie’s secrets, calling them that. An A.Y.M. was an Adoring Young Miss, and many of them had fastened their hungry, barely-lost-my-innocence gazes on Professor Joseph Darren.
And why not? He could have been a Made-For-TV English Professor. He taught poetry, was a published poet (mostly through a small local press owned by a childhood friend). All those A.Y.M.s thought he was so sensitive. (Their own boyfriends were sweet but clumsy, and so immature, i.e., not twenty years their senior like Professor Darren.) He was handsome and tall and distinguished looking, with an air of vulnerability about him. Slender but not gaunt. Big, dark, brooding eyes. Long legs. Long lashes. Long, beautiful fingers.
His fingers. Only one of Joseph’s poems had been published in the American Poetry Review, and it was Kaylie’s favorite. For some years now, it had been the only one she could stand to read. It was a poem about something that had really happened. It was a poem about the time he righted a fallen chair, the chair beneath his mother’s dangling feet, and stood upon it, then reached up and placed the fingers of one hand gently around her ribs, and pulled her to him, holding her until he could use the fingers of the other hand to free the rope from her neck.
He had shown the poem to Kaylie not long after they met, and told her that his mother had committed suicide one hot summer day. Kaylie could see at once that he was a troubled man who needed her love to overcome this tragedy. Thinking of that poem now, she held her own strong hands out before her. Had she taken him that seriously then? Well yes, at eighteen, the world was a very serious place. At forty, it was serious again.
But the poem had genuinely moved her, and after they were married, she had sent it off to the Review. Joseph had been unhappy with her for sending it in, told her she had no business doing so without his permission, and he was probab
ly right. But in the end, it had been that poem in the Review that got him the teaching job.
Joseph’s talk of his travels around the world had pulled at her imagination. He had travelled a great deal after his mother died. His father had passed away the summer before, and there was an inheritance from that side of the family that he came into upon his mother’s death. Joseph told her of places he had been, of Europe and Northern Africa and India. She had pictured the two of them travelling everywhere: riding camels on the way to the Pyramids, backpacking to Machu Pichu.
But after they married, he didn’t want to go anywhere. He had satisfied his wanderlust, it seemed. When she complained about it, he gave her a long lecture about how immature it was of her to want to trot all over the globe, to be the Ugly American Turista. Those other people didn’t want us in their countries, he told her. Besides, he couldn’t travel: he had to get through graduate school.
So she washed his clothes and darned his socks and typed his papers instead of riding camels. One of her friends was almost a feminist and told her she shouldn’t do things like that for him. But her almost-feminist friend was divorced not long after that, and, as Joseph asked Kaylie when he heard of it, didn’t that tell her something? Soon she stopped having anything to do with the woman, because Joseph told Kaylie that the woman had been coming on to him. Now, she wondered if it was true.
There had been years of small deceptions, she knew. He had seemed so honest in the beginning. She had misunderstood the difference between baldly stating facts and being honest. On the night he told her about his mother, he also told her about his daughter, Lillian. He said he loved Lilly, but he didn’t marry Lilly’s mother exactly because she had tried to trick him into marrying her by getting pregnant. He might as well have said, “Let that be a lesson to you.”
When he finished graduate school, Joseph told Kaylie that he had decided against having any more children. He had a vasectomy not long after he made that announcement. She was twenty-one then, and didn’t object very strongly; it was a disappointment, but she could understand Joseph’s point of view. She told herself that they would have more time to do the things they wanted to do. And even every other weekend, Lilly was a handful.