“Like what?”
“Like … you don’t like me.”
“I’m not. I don’t!”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t not like you.”
“I don’t not like you either.”
A child interrupted them to buy a deflated beach ball and a transistor radio shaped like a frog.
“I miss you,” said Walter, when the transaction had been completed. “Do you miss me?”
“I try not to,” said Topsy.
“But you do?”
“A little.”
“How much?”
“I told you: a little.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying. I don’t lie.”
Walter felt like saying, yeah, you don’t get scared, either, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “Are you sure?”
“Walter, stop it. Please. I’m not going to discuss this in the church hall.”
“Will you discuss it somewhere else?”
“No. It’s pointless.”
Walter threw his empty coffee cup into the garbage can. He picked up his tackle box. “Here,” he said. “I don’t really want this.” He put the box down on the table.
“Take it,” said Topsy. “You paid for it.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t fish.”
“Well, then, let me give you your money back.” She took eight dollars out of the box and held them out, but Walter was walking toward the door. She looked at the money in her hand, then put it back in the cash box.
When Virginia Doyle came in later that afternoon, Topsy deducted eight dollars from her grand total. When Virginia asked why, Topsy said they were just giving discounts to good customers. Virginia looked at her as if she were crazy. She told her that was no way to run a church bazaar.
For a while after Topsy stopped seeing Walter, she avoided driving past Knox Farm. If she were going over to Hempel she took the long way, out to the end of Cobble Road and back around through Gaitlinburg. But one day—the first day it was warm enough to drive with the windows open—she found that she had forgotten to take the long way; that she was on the Range Road, and the next thing she knew she was driving up the dirt road to the farmhouse. For a few minutes she just sat in the car, not knowing what she wanted to do. She had tried to park out of sight and when she opened the windows wider an overgrown arm of forsythia unfurled into the car. The thin stalk was speckled with wartlike, pale green buds; it bobbed in front of her face. She opened her mouth and set her lips to it. She bit a little so she could taste its bitterness. She closed her eyes. She thought about her life and how things happened in it, how you couldn’t stop things from happening or control them. It was as if you and all the things that could possibly happen in your life were floating in a pool the size of an ocean and you only touched some of them, and it was all accidental, and the things you wanted were as slim and slippery as fish. Fish swam between your fingers and legs and brushed against your sides; silver-sided fish nibbled at your toes; shy, skittish fish flitted to the surface and then flipped away, no matter how still you stood, no matter how quiet you were, for they could sense your desire: It pulsed from you like sonar—come to me, come to me, come to me—driving the swarms of swimming things far away.
In early summer, when the days were like balm, Topsy drove to the Norwell Valley Savings Bank and climbed the stairs to Walter’s office. Gladys Wallace was feeding a pencil to an electric sharpener.
“Hello, Gladys,” Topsy said.
“Well, hi, Mrs. Hatter. What can we do for you?”
“Is Walter in?”
“Mr. Doyle? He’s in a meeting at the moment. Did you have an appointment?”
No, I don’t. But maybe you could tell Walter—Mr. Doyle—that I’m here. He told me to stop by anytime.”
“O.K., I’ll let him know. Will you excuse me?”
“I sure will,” said Topsy. She sat in an easy chair and picked up a copy of Colonial Homes.
Gladys reappeared shortly, closing the door behind her as if she had just got a baby down inside. “He says he’ll see you now,” she said. “You can go right in.”
“Thanks,” said Topsy. She went in Walter’s office and closed the door, a little less quietly than Gladys had. “Hello, Walter,” she said.
Walter nodded. He looked a little stunned.
“They climb out the window?” Topsy asked.
“Who?” asked Walter.
“The folks you were meeting with. Gladys told me you were in a meeting.”
“I wasn’t,” said Walter.
“I guessed not,” said Topsy.
“I’m in a meeting sometimes,” said Walter.
“I’m sure you are,” said Topsy. She sat down. For a moment neither of them said anything. They heard Gladys resume her pencil-sharpening. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” Topsy asked.
“I was wondering,” said Walter. “Although it’s nice to see you.”
Topsy snorted. “I’m here on business,” she said. “I want to buy Knox Farm. I’m going to sell my house.”
“Why?” asked Walter.
“Why what?”
“Why are you going to sell your house?”
“It’s too big.”
“Knox Farm isn’t small.”
Topsy smiled, “This is business, Walter,” she said. “I just want to buy a house your bank happens to own.”
“Well, how much are you offering?”
“I’d like to see it,” said Topsy.
“I thought you had.”
“I’d like to see it again. Before I make an offer.”
“Oh,” said Walter. “I guess that seems fair.”
“Maybe you’d drive out there with me? Show it to me?” They looked at each other for a moment. Then Walter stood up and put on his jacket. “Certainly,” he said. “I don’t see why not.”
Walter opened the back door with a key that was hidden in the milk box. They went into the kitchen. The only thing in it was sunlight.
“This is the kitchen,” Walter said. He turned on the faucet; rusty water flowed into the sink. “Running water,” he announced.
“Stop it,” said Topsy.
Walter turned off the water and shrugged. “What do you want?” he asked. “What are we doing here?”
“I just wanted to talk to you,” Topsy said.
“Oh,” said Walter.
“I’m lonely,” said Topsy.
Walter didn’t respond. He didn’t want to look at her so he opened a silverware drawer, looked in at its emptiness.
“I can’t stand … being lonely like this,” he heard her say. “I mean, I was lonely before you, but I never realized. It wasn’t till we were together—well, after, when we stopped—that I realized …”
Inside the drawer an ant walked across a field of green felt. It climbed over a cork and paused at the summit. Walter decided to pretend he hadn’t heard what Topsy had said. Once decided, it was easy.
After a moment, he said, “Did you really want to buy the house?”
“No,” said Topsy. “Well, maybe for a minute. It was just an idea. A dumb idea.”
“It’s not a bad house,” Walter said. He closed the drawer and wiped his hands together. He stood up straighten “Well, then,” he said. “I guess we should be going.” He jiggled his car keys.
Topsy didn’t move. “You go,” she said. “It’s O.K. I want to stay for a while.”
“How will you get home?”
“I’ll walk. Go.”
He looked around the kitchen as if instructions for how to act might be displayed somewhere, like a choking poster. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t want to stay …”
“I didn’t expect you to stay. I don’t know what I thought. Please, go.”
“No. I mean, I still feel the—I still feel for you. I do. It’s just that, well, things are better with Virginia. We’ve worked some things out. I mean, we’re trying. And I don’t think I should—”
/> “It’s all right.” She looked up at him and smiled. “That’s good for you. I’m happy.”
Walter studied his keys as if they were unfamiliar to him. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride?”
“It’s a nice day to walk,” she said.
“O.K., then,” he said. He moved toward her, as if he might embrace her, but then walked around her, out the door. She waited till his car had pulled away, till the sound of it was gone, before she moved. She went upstairs and walked through the rooms, looked out the bedroom window. The same cornstalks were still standing patiently in the field. She didn’t feel particularly sad. She felt numb.
Eventually she went back downstairs. Walter had left the key in the door. She thought about taking it as a souvenir, but then she realized she didn’t want one. She locked the door and tossed the key into the milk box, kicked the lid shut with her foot, and started walking home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some of these stories originally appeared, sometimes with different titles, in the following magazines: “Slowly” and “The Winter Bazaar” in The New Yorker, “Not the Point” in The Mississippi Review, “Just Relax” in Rolling Stone, “The Middle of Everything” in The Paris Review, “The Near Future” in Columbia, “The Secret Dog” in The Kenyon Review, “The Cafe Hysteria” in The Quarterly, “What?” in Vox, “The Half You Don’t Know” in Bostonia, and “The Meeting and Greeting Area” in Antioch Review.
The writing of this book was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, and The Corporation of Yaddo. The author wishes to express his gratitude to those organizations and the following individuals: Victoria Kohn, Sheila McCullough, and Jim Harms.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1991 by Peter Cameron
cover design by Andrea C. Uva
978-1-4532-5035-8
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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Far-Flung Page 17