The Stories of Richard Bausch

by Richard Bausch

  Because of their family history, they were collectively afflicted with what Mother had described as an overly developed sense of crisis, and an overwhelming fear of hurting the other’s feelings: when Lauren was a baby, colicky and faintly jaundiced, Georgia had come to help out; and that week Lauren’s father drowned out on the Chesapeake Bay, where he had gone, alone, in his small skiff, to fish. Mother had chided him into going—desiring to provide relief for the stressed new father, who at the time was working two different teaching jobs, and spending part-time hours working construction on weekends. Fishing was something he loved to do, and since the baby’s arrival he hadn’t been able to spend even one morning out on the boat. Late that night, the skiff was found empty, floating with the currents, off Annapolis Point.

  No one ever found Lauren’s father.

  Georgia and Mother went through that together, and Georgia just stayed on. The child’s first memories were of the two women nursing their sorrow, and worrying about her and each other, and she had absorbed from this early experience the idea that life was fragile, that everything could be taken away at any moment. She knew where her love of baseball had come from: those summer nights in her young childhood when Mother let her stay up to watch the games, the soothing fact that it could go into extra innings, and she would be allowed to lie there on the living room rug, lost in the leisurely pace of warm-ups and visits to the mound, the pitcher looking in to read the sign, the calming announcers’ voices—and she could forget about the blackness outside, the bad dreams of her babyhood. It had been established early in life that Lauren was a nervous child, with troubles about night and sleep. Doctors had put her on various medicines, and the best medicine had been the baseball. It didn’t make the fear go away, quite, but kept it at a level: what she had come to consider the world’s portion of unease. As if a person wouldn’t be anxious enough, growing up without a father, and with a grandmother like Georgia.

  Who now called again from the bottom of the stairs. “We’re all going to be late for dinner, my darlings.”

  Silence. Lauren waited for Mother to respond.

  “Guys?”

  Georgia’s word for them.

  Mother said from her room: “Hey, girlie, are you ready?”

  “Dalton’s not here yet,” she returned. Then she murmured, low: “Poor man.”

  “Yes he is,” Georgia called from downstairs. “He’s standing right here.”

  Hearing Mother in the hall, and hearing the note of worry in her voice as she strove to seem vivacious, Lauren felt a twinge of guilt, and, glancing into the mirror over her dresser, practiced a smile. She went out to follow Mother down the stairs. But here she was in the upstairs hallway, and a clamor had begun in Georgia’s room, the crow cawing and the macaw setting up its own exotic racket. The cages rattling. Farther along the hall stood Dalton and the old woman. Georgia had led him up here, and opened the door of her room to show him the jungle, as she called it. The commotion continued, though the monkey—a spider monkey with scarily long skinny arms and a screech beyond belief—was strangely silent.

  “I keep it moist,” Georgia said, loud over the noise. “You can see water beaded on the leaves, there, see it? We started it together, but lately it’s just been me. Which is fine.”

  “Yes,” Dalton said. There was no way at all to tell what was in his mind from the even tone of his voice. “And that’s a—what is that? A weasel?”

  “No,” said Georgia, “it’s a wolverine. Have you ever seen a wolverine?”

  “Actually, I have.”

  “Georgia, please,” Mother said.

  “You’d know a wolverine if you saw one,” Georgia went on. “Would you?”

  “I think so.”

  “This is Georgia,” said Mother to Dalton. “And you’ve met Lauren. And that is not a wolverine.”

  Georgia said, “We introduced each other at the door, my darling. Didn’t we, Lance.”

  “Dalton,” said Dalton. “And I knew it wasn’t a wolverine.”

  “Lance is quick,” said Georgia. “He knows when a joke is being played.”

  “I’m Dalton.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Georgia, you know perfectly well—” Mother began. Then she took a step toward the stairs. “Please close the door.”

  “I was just showing Lance the jungle.”

  “I thought we were late,” Lauren interrupted.

  “Well, it’s a ferret,” said Georgia to Dalton, still holding the door open on the glooms of humid green and the tumult of the birds. “You obviously knew that. Would you like to hold him? Actually she’s a female.”

  “I had a friend where I work who had a pet ferret,” Dalton said, smiling. “Used to let it run loose in her house. It made a good pet.”

  “This one would bite your finger off.”

  “I guess I don’t want to hold him, then,” Dalton said in the tone of a quip.

  “She,” said Georgia.

  “Pardon?”

  “And where is it that you said you work? I know I asked you that downstairs.”

  “I don’t recall that you did ask. I’m a contractor—mostly carpentry.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Aren’t we going to be late?” Lauren asked.

  “Well, it’s a fascinating setup,” Dalton said, obviously growing restive. Mother stood at his side, her hand on his elbow. Was she squeezing it? Lauren watched them. Georgia waited a moment to satisfy herself about something, then closed the door.

  Dalton. A name out of books. And it didn’t fit him. He had a little potbelly and soon he would have a double chin: there was already the slightest suggestion of it when you looked at him from certain angles. His hair was thin at the crown, and he parted it low on one side so he would have more of it to comb over. It was a light brown color, with a little gray in it. Lauren had heard Mother talk unaccountably of this as an attractive feature. He wore a pair of gray slacks and a white knit shirt today. Apparently he had just bought the slacks: the tag was still attached to the back pocket. Among all the other little imperfections, he was very absentminded. And for all that, Lauren liked him—and felt a sense of protectiveness toward him. He had no interest in baseball, and knew nothing about it. He talked to her as a man talks to a young girl.

  “Did you make reservations?” Mother asked him, pulling the tag off.

  “Oh, I didn’t even see that,” he said about the tag. “Yes, I did.”

  “Score one for the male gender,” Georgia said.

  Dalton actually laughed. And then he did something quite surprising: he extended his hand. “Hello, I’m Lance.”

  Georgia looked at his hand. He stood there smiling warmly with his joke, and waited. The only thing left was to say something. Lauren attempted a sardonic lightness of tone: “He’s not radioactive, Grand.”

  “Well, I did wonder how long he would go on seeing your mother outside her family.”

  “I confess that I selfishly did want to keep her to myself.” His smile remained. In another second, it would seem unnatural. It was already unnatural. He looked down at the old woman’s hand, still holding his own out. In that moment, Lauren understood that of course he had indeed been warned about Georgia.

  At last, the old woman shook hands and then reached for her purse, turning her back on all of them. “Nice to meet you, Lance.”

  Strolling out into the sunlight with the knowledge that Dalton knew and was ready, Lauren wondered gloomily what she might remember about this evening, many years from now. Before the loneliness started, she had often felt on the brink of something grand and unimaginable. The sensation always gave way to an indefinable longing that made her irritable and cross. But there were moments when, staring at herself in mirrors and windows blacked by night, she received the suspicion that she might turn out to be quite lovely. When the angle was right, and the light, she could fancy that she looked a little like Audrey Hepburn, all of whose movies she had watched on videotape before she was thir
teen. But that was all gone now, and there was only the isolation, the suspicion that all plans would work out badly, the feeling of being defined as some kind of oddity by everyone around her. And it was baseball, which she had loved so much and been so delighted to learn she could do well—even from the start—it was baseball that had been what brought it on.

  Now she turned and looked at Mother in her white cotton blouse, and poor Dalton, with his new slacks—Dalton, at the beginning of his ordeal. It was going to be a long night. She got into the back seat of his Honda, and he held the door for Georgia to get in, too. Georgia thanked him sweetly, and bumped her head slightly on the doorframe as she bent down. “Oops,” she said. “These small cars.”

  Dalton closed the door on her and then held the passenger door for Mother. He was being gallant. Georgia wouldn’t miss the chance to comment on it. As Mother settled into her seat and Dalton walked around the car, the old woman said, “Where’s the white horse?”

  “Okay, Georgia. Please. I mean it, if you mess this evening up I’ll never speak to you again, I swear on a stack of Bibles.”

  “It’s that important, is it? A stack of them.”

  “Yes, as a matter of damn fact. It is that important.”

  Lauren sat staring out. The street seemed abandoned. The yards all empty, though well kept and green, with splashes of cool-looking shade from the trees. Nothing stirred. It looked like the world knew what was about to unfold: the silence of graves, of the appalled seconds after an accident.

  “Just wondered where the white horse was,” said Georgia as Dalton got in and settled himself.

  “We ready?” he said.

  “Ready,” said Mother with forced cheer. He glanced in the rearview mirror at Lauren before he started out into traffic.

  “These cars aren’t built for Americans,” Georgia said. “They were built for little Asian-type people.”

  “You mean those tiny little sumo wrestlers?” Lauren said.

  “Sumo wrestlers are rare. Don’t be impertinent. They’re all so impertinent these days. I think they get it from television.”

  “I’ll move my seat up,” Mother said.

  “Don’t bother. You be comfortable, darling. I’ll sit back here and think about the Bible.”

  “It’s no trouble, Georgia.” Mother had chosen to ignore the aside.

  “What about the Bible?” Dalton said.

  “The problem,” said Georgia, “is head room.”

  “There’s no adjustment for that,” he said pleasantly. “They do make these cars awful small.”

  “Like a tin box,” said Georgia. “This one, anyway.”

  “Dalton had it designed especially for you,” Lauren said.

  “See? Impertinent. I think they get it from television. And speaking of television, somebody believed the commercials about the room in these little Japanese boxes they call cars.”

  “Okay,” said Mother. “We’ve established that the car is small.”

  “I’ve been wanting to get a bigger car,” Dalton said.

  “Too late,” murmured Georgia.

  He gave forth a little chuffing laugh. “Right.”

  As if to cover for him, Mother turned in the seat and addressed Lauren. “Honey, did you decide anything about the baseball?” Then she explained to Dalton that Lauren had been asked to try out for the boys’ team.

  “Really,” Dalton said.

  Lauren sank lower in the seat, arms folded. She shook her head at her mother, who looked the question at her again.

  Georgia said, “The kid’s got the best fastball in the state.”

  Lauren wished they’d change the subject.

  “It’s those long arms of hers,” Georgia went on.

  “My arms aren’t so long,” Lauren told her. “And could we please not talk about me in the third person, like I’m not here?”

  They all sat gazing out the windshield at the lights of the traffic ahead and the city towering around them.

  “Do you remember where it is?” Mother asked.

  “Should be right up here on the right. A right turn. Belmont Street. Or Belfort Street. I think.” Then he spelled the two names out.

  “Well, which?” Georgia said.

  “I think it’s Belfort.”

  Lauren tried to read the signs, and couldn’t.

  “We went past a Belfort Street about nine blocks back,” Georgia said.

  Dalton sought her in the rearview mirror. “Did we?”

  “I didn’t see it,” said Mother. “And I’ve been reading the street signs.”

  “It’s ahead here,” Dalton said. “I’m pretty sure.”

  “I know I saw Belfort,” Georgia said.

  Dalton leaned forward, and said something about looking for a place to turn around. The next street sign read BELL PARK.

  “Bell Park,” Mother said.

  “That’s it,” said Dalton, and took the turn.

  “I saw Belfort,” Georgia said. “You’re sure it wasn’t Belfort? You can’t remember to take a tag off slacks. Why should we trust you?”

  “Oh, Georgia,” said Mother. “For God’s sake.”

  “I’m just joking.”

  “I did forget the tag,” said Dalton with an air of good-natured self-deprecation.

  They pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant, and got out in a commotion of opening and closing doors. No one said anything for a time.

  “Confusing,” Georgia said. “This is the place you wanted to take us. And not someplace over on Belfort.”

  “This is definitely it,” Dalton said. Then, with a self-deprecating smile: “If I remember correctly.”

  Georgia seemed dubious. “You didn’t just pull in here out of a wish not to be wrong about the street—”

  “I don’t remember,” he said, and gave forth the little laugh.

  “So you’re not just trying to save face—”

  Mother talked over her. “I’ve gone by this place a few times. Always wondered what it might be like.”

  “It was recommended to me,” Dalton said, and at the same time Georgia had spoken, or gone on speaking. He turned to her. “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing. I said it doesn’t look like much from the outside.”

  “No?”

  “But then it’s often the case that really good places don’t.”

  “I’ve found that to be true,” he said.

  Lauren didn’t have much appetite. As they all entered, she murmured this to Mother, who frowned and murmured back. “Do your best.”

  “What?” Dalton said.

  “You know,” said Georgia, pulling his sleeve. “I come with the whole deal. I’m part of the package.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Mother said, “You and Guatemala, right, Georgia?”

  “What’s a house without a rain forest?” Dalton said.

  They were led to their table by a slender young woman in a black skirt and white silk blouse whose flaring shiny sleeves trailed past her hands. Because the entrance hall was narrow and the tables were close together, they had to file along, one behind the other, with Dalton bringing up the rear. Lauren felt the urge to turn and stop him. It was absurd; he was a grown man.

  The interior of the restaurant was all heavy wooden surfaces and thick leather padding, oak tables and chairs, with matching squares of the same leather padding on seat and back. There were little half moons of light along the walls, designed to look like gas lamps. The motif of the place was nineteenth century. The wallpaper showed repeated patterns of antique catalog pictures of ladies in long bathing suits and men in derby hats, and archaic farm implements had been suspended by wires from the cross beams in the ceiling. Several other diners were seated on the other side of the room, but it seemed isolated where Lauren and the others were. They all took their places, Georgia and Dalton across from each other, Lauren across from Mother, beside Georgia. The young woman set menus down for them, and then slipped away. Heavy-leafed potted plants bordered their spot on
the right; a wall of empty booths led away to the left.

  Georgia took one of the green leaves between her fingers and felt the texture of it. “Real,” she said. “They should give it some water.”

  “It seems we’re never far from Guatemala,” Mother said.

  “What kind of plant is it?” Dalton asked.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  “Can we change the subject?” Lauren said. “Why don’t we talk about the real Guatemala.”

  “I guess we should let her dictate the conversation for the whole evening,” Georgia said. “Although this isn’t a baseball game.”

  “I don’t want to talk about baseball, okay? I’d rather talk about Guatemala.”

  “I bet she doesn’t even know where it is. I bet she doesn’t have any idea.”

  “Do you know where it is? Other than in your room?”

  “Don’t be impertinent. I swear—listen to that. Where do they get such disrespect?” Georgia looked across at Mother. “I certainly never allowed that in my house.”

  Mother was staring at Lauren. “Honey, what is it? Something’s bothering you.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Not many people here,” Georgia said to Dalton. “I always took that as a bad sign about a place.”

  “Maybe it’s exclusive,” said Mother.

  “Well, as I said, it was recommended to me,” Dalton put in.

  “Who recommended it?” Georgia asked.

  Dalton smiled. “The owner. He’s from Guatemala, I think.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s certainly a recommendation you can trust. Somebody from a lovely green country like that. You can trust it like you can trust someone swearing on a stack of Bibles.”

  “What’s this about the Bibles?”

  “That’s Georgia’s way of talking,” Mother said quickly.

  “I never used the expression before tonight. And I never heard a thing about Guatemala until tonight. I guess my jungle room is a problem.”

  “That’s an old expression,” said Dalton. “Isn’t it? Stack of Bibles.”

  They were quiet.