He put the television on and sat on the couch, watching the news without really taking it in. The shower ran, and now and again a banging came from the nursery. Mary sat across from him with the baby.
“Would you like to hold her?” she said. There was a hint of her private tone with him, the old intimacy. Force of habit.
“You wouldn’t mind?”
Her smile was softly remonstrative. “Jack, really.”
He got up, turned the television off, and went over to her, and she handed the baby up. Ballinger stood there. The small face looked too soft to touch, the mouth open. “She’s not cranky now,” he said, low.
“How have you been?” Mary asked him.
He felt like crying. The feeling surprised and embarrassed him. He handed the baby back. “I’ve been better, Mary.”
She had turned her attention to the baby. But when she spoke, it was to him. “I miss you.”
“Me too.” He felt a weight on his breastbone. He reached down and touched the child’s impossibly smooth cheek.
She said, “I’ve been remembering.”
“And?” he said.
“I don’t know.” She looked at him. “I can’t say exactly how I feel. It’s not a mental thing.”
He waited. But she was attending to the baby again. The baby had stirred and was trying to build up a cry.
Melanie came in from the bedroom, drying her hair with a towel. She’d changed into a pair of denim shorts and another white blouse. “William and I will go pick up some Chinese food for dinner,” she said. Her husband called from the other room that he needed help getting up from the hard wood floor. “Daddy, would you?” Melanie said.
At the doorway of the room, looking at his graying son-in-law, Ballinger thought of death, the future. Yet he was filled with an odd exaltation—a sense, as Mary’s friend Alma might have put it, of life’s unexpected abundance. The older man grasped his hand and pulled, rising, bones creaking. Ballinger looked at the bald crown of his head. He had never felt more uncomplicatedly friendly toward anyone in his life.
“I got too stiff, sitting in that one position,” said William. “But this damn crib is substantially done.” He laughed, low, at his own profanity.
They gazed at it. The baby cried in the other room.
“Thanks for helping me get up,” William said simply, moving off down the hall. Ballinger turned and followed. The older man stopped at the entrance of the living room, leaned on the frame, and flexed his knees.
Melanie said. “Dad’s staying. Right, Dad? Tell him he’s staying, Mom.”
Mary’s response seemed modulated, as though she were trying to keep something back. “If he wants to,” she said, “I think that would be fine.”
“Please stay,” William said, putting his arm around Melanie’s waist.
Ballinger looked at them, husband and wife, forty years apart. He had a moment of being too strongly aware of the force of loving, the power and flame of it, as Melanie leaned in to turn the edge of the blanket down to look at her baby girl. He was close to tears again.
When Melanie and William had gone, Mary sat on the other end of the couch, away from Ballinger. She put her hand out and rocked the bassinet slowly. For an awkwardly extended time, they were silent. Then the baby made a small disturbed sound, and Mary murmured, “All right. It’s all right.”
Ballinger said, “How’s Alma?”
Mary looked at him. “Oh, fine. Thanks for asking.”
He said, “I thought about her today. I remembered what she said about abundance.”
“She’s having a little trouble with arthritis in her hips now. It makes her irritable.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“Her family neglects her terribly. She lives in that place—”
“She’s got you.”
“Don’t make it sound easier than it is.”
“Jesus, Mary. Have you and Melanie been at some conference specializing in verbal policing or something? Sometimes I say exactly what I mean. You’ve known me long enough to know that I’m not very subtle.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Mary said. “It’s difficult for everybody.”
“I never said it wasn’t gonna be difficult, did I?”
“No. You were very clear about how it was going to be.”
A moment later she said, “How have you been, really, Jack?”
“I do cartwheels in the mornings.”
She was still rocking the bassinet. “You know why Melanie did this about going out and getting the dinner, don’t you?”
He waited.
“I’ve been tending this child and remembering. All day I’ve been doing it.”
“Melanie said you looked so happy.”
She smiled. It was a wonderfully familiar-feeling smile. “I missed you all morning, Jack. The baby was crying, and I was busy, but I missed you. Missed you. I didn’t want to be young again or anything like that. Do you understand me?”
“I wanted to hit these two phone men earlier,” he told her. He couldn’t think.
She stood. “I’m going to get some water or something.”
“I think there’s some mineral water left.” He watched her go into the kitchen. When they had been younger, their desire for each other had often contained an element of humor; they could laugh and tease and play through a whole afternoon of lovemaking. He took a deep breath, then stood and walked in to her. She was standing at the sink, running water.
“Tepid water,” she said, turning to face him.
“Mary.” He took the little step toward her. She put the glass down. The water was still running. He reached past her, turned it off, and then his hands were on her shoulders, pulling her to him. To his exquisite surprise, her arms came around him at the waist. He put his mouth on hers, and the two of them tottered there, under the bright light, holding on. He was dimly aware of their one shadow on the wall, tilting. He breathed the flower-fragrance of her hair.
“We’ll wake the baby,” she said.
The phrase sounded so perfectly right, so natural, that he forgot for an instant where he was, where he had been, what processes of dissolution and legal wrangling he had been through over the past months, what loneliness and sorrow, what anger and bitterness and anxiety, negotiating an end to his long and complicated life with this still-young woman, who held so tight to him now, murmuring his name.
WEATHER
Carla headed out to White Elks Mall in the late afternoon, accompanied by her mother, who hadn’t been very glad of the necessity of going along, and said so. She went on to say what Carla already knew: that she would brave the August humidity and the discomfort of the hot car if it meant she wouldn’t be in the house alone when Carla’s husband came back from wherever he had gone that morning. “It’s bad enough without me asking for more trouble by being underfoot,” she said.
“Nobody thinks you’re underfoot, Mother. You didn’t have to come.”
They were quiet after that. Carla had the Saturday traffic to contend with. Her mother stared out at the gathering thunderclouds above the roofs of the houses they passed. The wind was picking up; it would storm. Carla’s mother was the sort of person who liked to sit and watch the scenery while someone else drove. It was something she got from growing up in South Carolina in the forties, when gentlemen did most of the driving. You hardly ever saw a lady behind the wheel of a car.
“I hope we get there before it starts to rain,” she said.
Carla was looking in her side mirror, slowing down. “Go on, idiot. Go on by.”
“We don’t have an umbrella,” her mother said.
Lightning cut through the dark mass of clouds to the east.
“I have to watch the road,” Carla said, and then blew her horn at someone who had veered too close, changing lanes in front of them. “God, how I hate this town.”
For a while there was only the sound of the rocker arms tapping in the engine and the gusts of wind buffeting the sides of the car.
The car was low on oil—another expense, another thing to worry about. It kept losing oil. You had to check it every week or so, and it always registered a quart low. Something was leaking somewhere.
“This storm might cool us all off.”
“Not supposed to,” Carla said, ignoring the other woman’s tone. “They’re calling for muggy heat.”
When they pulled into White Elks, Mother said, “I never liked all the stores in one building like this. I used to love going into the city to do my shopping. Walking along the street, looking in all the windows. And seeing people going about their business, too. It’s reassuring—busy city street in the middle of the day. Of course we would never go when it was like this.”
The rain came—big, heavy drops.
“Where’re we going, anyway?”
“I told you,” Carla said. “Record World. I have to buy a tape for Beth’s birthday.” She parked the car and they hurried across to the closest entrance—the Sears appliance store. Inside, they shook the water from their hair and looked at each other.
“It’s going to calm down, sweetness.”
“Mother, please. You keep saying that.”
“It’s true, though. Sometimes you have to say the truth, like a prayer or a chant. It needs saying, baby. It makes a pressure to be spoken.”
Carla shook her head.
“I won’t utter another syllable,” said Mother.
At the display-crowded doorway of the record store, a man wearing a blue blazer over a white T-shirt and jeans paused to let the two of them enter before him.
“Thank you,” Mother said, smiling. “Such a considerate young man.”
But then a clap of thunder startled them and they paused, watching the high-domed skylight above them flash with lightning. The tinted glass was streaked with water, and the wind swept the rain across the surface in sheets. It looked as though something were trying to break through the window and get at the dry, lighted, open space below. People stopped and looked up. Everybody was wearing the bright colors and sparse clothing of summer—shorts and T-shirts, sleeveless blouses and tank tops, even a bathing suit or two—and the severity of the storm made them seem exposed, oddly vulnerable, as though they could not possibly have come from the outdoors, where the elements raged and the sunlight had died out of the sky. One very heavy woman in a red jumpsuit with a pattern of tiny white sea horses across the waistband said, “Looks like it’s going to be a twister,” to no one in particular, then strolled on by. This was not an area of Virginia that had ever been known to have a tornado.
“What would a twister do to a place like this, I wonder,” Mother said.
“It’s a thunderstorm,” Carla said.
But the wind seemed to gather sudden force, and there was a banging at the roof in the vicinity of the window.
“Damn,” Mother said. “It’s violent, whatever it is.”
They remained where they were, in front of the store entrance, looking at the skylight. Carla lighted a cigarette.
“Excuse me,” the man in the blue blazer said. “Could you please let me pass?”
She looked at him. Large, round eyes the color of water under beams of sun, black hair, and bad skin. A soft, downturning mouth. Perhaps thirty or so. There was unhappiness in the face.
“Can I pass, please?” he said impatiently.
“You’re in his way,” Carla’s mother said. They both laughed, moving aside. “We got interested in the storm.”
“Maybe you’d both like to have a seat and watch to your heart’s content,” the man said. “After all, this only happens to be a doorway.”
“All you have to do is say what you want,” said Carla.
He went on into the store.
“And a good day to you, too,” Carla said.
“I swear,” Mother said. “The rudeness of some people.”
They moved to the bench across the way and sat down. The bench was flanked by two fat white columns, each with a small metal ashtray attached to it. Carla smoked her cigarette and stared at the people walking by. Her mother fussed with the strap of her purse, then looked through the purse for a napkin, with which she gingerly wiped some rainwater from the side of her face. Above them, the storm went on, and briefly the lights flickered. A leak was coming from somewhere, and water ran in a thin, slow stream down the opposite wall. Carla smoked the cigarette automatically.
“I’ve always had this perverse wish to actually see a tornado,” said Mother.
“I saw one when Daryl and I lived in Illinois, just before Beth was born. No thank you.” Carla took a last drag on the cigarette, placed it in the mouth of the metal ashtray attached to the column, and clicked it shut. Then she opened it and clicked it shut again.
“You’re brooding,” Mother said. “Stop it.”
“I’m not brooding,” Carla said. She took another cigarette out of the pack in her handbag and lighted it.
“I didn’t come with you to watch you smoke.”
“We’ve established why you came with me, Mother.”
“How you can put that in your lungs …”
“Leave me alone, will you?”
“I won’t say another word.”
“And don’t get your feelings hurt, either.”
“You’re the boss. God knows, it’s none of my business. I’m only a spectator here.”
“Oh, please.”
They were quiet. Somewhere behind them, a baby fussed. “What were you thinking about?” Mother said. “You were thinking about this morning, right?”
“I was thinking about how unreal everything is.”
“You don’t mean the storm, though, do you?”
“No, Mother, I don’t mean the storm.”
“We need the storm, though. The rain, I mean. I’m glad it’s storming.”
“I’m not surprised, since a minute ago you were wishing it was a tornado.”
“I was doing no such thing. I was merely expressing an element of my personality. A—a curiousness, that’s all. And that’s not what I’m talking about. Let me finish. You never let me finish, Carla. You’re always jumping the gun, and you’ve always done that. You did it to Daryl this morning, went right ahead and finished his sentences for him.”
Carla shook her head. “I can’t help it if I know what he’s going to say before he says it.”
“You didn’t know what I was going to say.”
Carla waited.
“I was going to say something about this morning.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
They were quiet again. Mother stirred restlessly in her seat and watched the trickle of water run down the wall opposite where they sat. Finally she leaned toward the younger woman and murmured, “I was going to say it’s just weather. This morning, you know. You’re both going through a spell of bad weather. Daryl’s still got some growing up to do, God knows. But all of them do. I never met a man who couldn’t use a little growing up. And Daryl’s a perfect example of that.”
“I think I’ve figured out how you feel about him, Mother.”
“No. I admit sometimes I think you’d be better off if he did move out. I promised I wouldn’t interfere, though.”
“You’re not interfering,” Carla said in the voice of someone who felt interfered with.
“I will say I don’t like the way he talks to you.”
“Oh, please, let’s change the subject.”
“I for one am happy to change the subject. You think I enjoy talking about it? You think I enjoy seeing you and that boy say those things to each other?”
“He’s not a boy, Mother. He’s your son-in-law, and you’re stuck with him.” Carla blew smoke. “At least for the time being.”
“Don’t talk like that. And I was just using a figure of speech.”
“It happens to make him very mad.”
“Yes, and he’s not here right now.”
She smoked the cigarette, watching the people walk by. A woman came past pushing a double s
troller with twins in it.
“Look,” said Mother. “How sweet.”
“I see them.” Carla had only glanced at them.
“You’re so—hard-edged sometimes, Carla. You never used to be that way, no matter how unhappy things made you.”
“What? I looked. What did you want me to do?”
“I swear, I don’t understand anything anymore.”
After a pause, Mother said, “I remember when you were that small. Your father liked to put you on his chest and let you nap there. Seems like weeks—just a matter of days ago.”
Carla took a long drag of the cigarette, blew smoke, and watched it. She had heard it said that blind persons do not generally like cigarettes as much as sighted people, for not being able to watch the smoke.
“But men were more respectful in our day.”
“Look, please—”
“I’ll shut up.”
“I’m sure it’ll all be made up before the day’s over.”
“Oh, I know. You’ll give in, and he’ll say he forgives you. Like every other time.”
“We’ll forgive each other.”
“I’m not uttering another word,” Mother said. “I’m sure I cause tension by talking. It’s no secret he hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you. You drive him crazy.”
“I drive him crazy? He sits in the living room plunking that guitar, even when the television is on, never finishing—have you ever heard him play a whole song? It would be one thing if he could play notes. But that constant strumming—”
“He’s trying to learn. That’s all. It’s a project.”
“It drives me right up the wall.”
A pair of skinny boys came running from one end of the open space, one chasing the other and trying to keep up. Behind them a woman hurried along, carrying a handful of small flags.
“Do I drive you crazy?” Mother wanted to know.
“All the time,” Carla said.
“I’m serious.”
“Don’t be. Let’s not be serious, okay?”
“You’re the one that’s been off in another world all afternoon. I don’t blame you, of course.”
The Stories of Richard Bausch Page 50