Speak Softly, She Can Hear

by Pam Lewis

  He’d grown up in Queens and he’d gone to NYU and moved up to Vermont along with every other hippie, to get back to the land, and here he laughed. To the land anyway, not exactly back in his case, since he’d never been from the land in the first place. He’d moved in with some purists in Adamant who voted to become vegetarians midway through raising a pig, some chickens, and a steer. All the animals were set free and died of starvation over the winter. “It got me to thinking about survival and how none of us knows enough about it, and worse, a lot of people are so sure they have it knocked. They don’t know how little they know. Like you, right?” he said. “You thought you knew. It’s not a criticism. It’s a fact.”

  He’d received training from the Red Cross and taken courses at the University of Vermont, so he knew what he was talking about. Right now he was doing what he could to teach it to others—in schools, to groups, at the community college.

  She knew she was twisting her hair in her fingers too much and lowered her hands to her lap, only to find them sliding around again, to her throat, her ear, her hair again. Like she was pointing out parts of herself to him. Look here, look there. My lips? My hair? She wriggled and squirmed, all the while trying not to. The thing was, she felt like kissing him. Not any big passionate kiss. It was just a sort of friendship kiss. And she asked him, interrupting, “Do you mind if I kiss you?” He’d laughed out loud, loud enough to cause Rachel to stir, so when Rachel woke, there was Carole kissing Will Burbank—just lightly, demurely, on the lips, but still kissing him.

  Carole took a quick detour into the kitchen, with its stainless-steel counter and fluorescent lights, to check on the state of things. The wash-up crew—two kids from Goddard—was at it. Steel racks of washed glasses and plates were steaming, and the counters were clear. Sandy, her best waitress, was putting some desserts together.

  “These are the last,” Sandy said of the desserts. “And I’m out of here.”

  She pushed back out through the swinging doors and went over to join the others. “Squeeze in,” Rachel said, hoisting the baby, Dylan, to her other side. Rachel had gained weight with the pregnancy and wasn’t planning to lose it. She was happy, she said, to give in to the whole earth-mother thing once and for all. She hoisted herself around, setting off the muffled sound of the bells she’d sewn into all her clothing.

  “Squeeze indeed,” Morgan said, shifting his long scissors legs aside for her.

  They watched Will and Pepper play checkers for a while, listening for the sounds in the kitchen to end. Pretty soon, Sandy and the kids came through the swinging doors, laughing and shrugging on their parkas and saying good night. Then Carole brought out the plates of food she’d made for tonight. Stuffed mushrooms, spinach salad, and hot bread. She drew beers for Morgan and Will, glasses of seltzer water for Rachel and Pepper, and another cup of tea for herself.

  Will slid the topo map out of its plastic sleeve, unfolded it, and spread it across the table. A black dot on the map indicated where she and Will lived; another indicated Morgan and Rachel’s place. Between the two, razor-thin brown lines grew dense, far apart, and dense again, indicating steep hills and deep valleys.

  “February twenty-eighth?” Will looked at each of them in turn, then touched the dot indicating his and Carole’s house. “We start here. Five o’clock.” He went over it all, showing where the trail ascended, where it forked, where it crossed a ridge, where they’d stop. She looked around at the others, their faces serious in the light of the hurricane lantern. But her attention was drawn to Pepper, to the shiny scar that ran down his forehead and came into sharp relief in the light. The ugly red thing shocked her all over again with its size and depth, the way it severed and puckered his eyebrow. In ordinary daylight the scar was hardly noticeable, and she could go for weeks or months without thinking of it, the way she could go for long periods without noticing a person’s accent or some other small habit that set them apart. But then something would happen, like right now with the light the way it was, to make her aware again. Pepper must have felt her gaze, because he put his hand to his forehead, a self-conscious gesture she’d come to recognize, and she looked away, ashamed to have been caught staring.

  After that night at Chacha’s, Will had driven Carole and Rachel home over snow-covered streets to the Capitol apartments. Already she felt safe with him. He drove carefully, stopping at lights and signs even though theirs was the only car on the road. Rachel had asked him if he wanted to come in, wanted even to crash there, given the weather. “It’s a bitch out, right, Carole?” she’d said. Will had smiled and shaken his head. Thanks, but that was okay, he’d be fine. He’d reached across the front seat to open the car door, and the feel of him so close, of his hand brushing past her, had been electrifying. He’d waited in the car, looking up through the windshield until Carole turned on the light in the apartment and came to the window to wave that she and Rachel were safely inside.

  He called her the next morning while she was still padding around her apartment in her robe. “Will Burbank from last night,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, sinking into the couch with a giddy pleasure at the sound of his voice. She’d stayed awake long into the night thinking about him, reliving every inch of their conversation, awed at what she’d done, asking for that kiss, but not regretting it either. Not at all.

  “So how are you,” he’d said to her, and something in the downward cant of his voice with its emphasis on the word you told her that he’d already made up his mind about her. Now all she had to do was make up hers about him.

  He came back into Chacha’s that afternoon and settled in at the bar with a cup of coffee and the afternoon newspaper. She felt his eyes on her as she hustled beers and sandwiches, as she bumped through the swinging doors to the kitchen, hip first, and then out again. She found herself preening under his gaze, tossing her hair, rolling her sleeves, tapping her pencil against her lower lip while she took orders, and glancing sidelong at him whenever she could. She went to ask him if there was anything she could get for him, but instead of asking from behind the bar, she came around beside him and leaned in to point out items on the menu so that her hair pressed against his face and she could breathe in the slightly smoky smell of him.

  “What time can you get off?” he said.

  “Anytime,” she said. Business was light again today, and Rachel would cover for her.

  “I’ll cook you some dinner.”

  He took her up to his house, the same house where they now lived, which was four miles out of town on a dirt road. It had a steep driveway, the snow so deep on either side she could barely see over it. The house itself was nestled into a clearing with a view of the White Mountains on a good clear day. It had a big woodstove in the living room and a cathedral ceiling he’d made himself by knocking through the upstairs room. He’d put in skylights and a big fan to keep the warm air from collecting up there. There were two big couches in faded plaid in the living room, a coffee table made from a pocked telephone wire spool, and a million books on all the walls. Beyond was the dining room and then the kitchen, which was all business at one end and all indulgence at the other, where he’d installed a Franklin stove and a big armchair with a good light. She sat in the armchair and watched him make their supper of rice and beans and leftover pork, a salad and fresh oranges for dessert. He told her his whole story over dinner, as if getting it over with, as if he already knew it had in it the things she would want to know. He said he’d had a two-year marriage that had ended eight years earlier, and that his only long-term girlfriend had moved back to New York a year ago. And then the floor was open to her, and she’d felt shy. “I’ve never been married,” she said. “I’ve never really even dated.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” he said, letting go his booming signature laugh. “A good-looking woman like you?”

  “I’ve been busy,” she said. “I’ve got my work.”

  He apologized right away, as if he’d insulted her. He said he hadn’t meant to pr
y. And then he cocked his head and said, “But it’s true. You are a good-looking woman, Carole.” She smiled and stared down at her hands and then looked into his eyes for a dangerously long time.

  He pushed his chair out from the table, took her by the hand, led her to the stairs, and she followed oh so willingly, oh so eagerly. She wanted, or at least her body wanted, what was in store, even as her mind objected all the way up the stairs and into his bedroom. Look out. Be careful. Remember the last time. And when she reveled in the feeling as he unbuttoned her shirt, kissed her neck, and pulled her gently to the bed, her mind ratcheted up its objection and conjured images of Eddie and Rita in that motel room, him demanding, like a spoiled child stamping its foot, that she obey. But her body won out, her melting body and the delicious comforting feel of his kisses and whispered assurance that he knew this was too soon to say it, but he loved her.

  She had moved in three months later, when her lease was up. That was where they lived, and that was where they went after making plans at Chacha’s with the Weaver-Lears, driving the four unlit miles in their usual companionable silence. Often on nights like this they had to leave the truck at the base of the driveway and walk up, but tonight they sailed over the snow-dusted drive and pulled to a stop in the dooryard. Will turned on the porch light, and they went inside, took off their boots at the door, padded into the dark living room in stocking feet, and warmed themselves at the woodstove.

  Besides the glow from the stove, the only light in the room came from the red blinker on the answering machine. There were more messages than usual, and the sheer number made her curious. On her way to the kitchen, she hit the start button and listened as she got the coffeepot ready for the morning and checked the refrigerator to see what they had for breakfast. The first call was just a bleep, followed by a long silence. Whoever it was breathed into the receiver a few times and then hung up. The one after that was a woman’s voice. “Blast from the past!” The voice laughed, and Carole stopped, frozen in place, staring at the machine. “It feels so bloody far out to hear your voice on that machine after all this time. I was so freaked out just now that I hung up. That was me, the last call, by the way. Or maybe it was the answering machine that freaked me out. I never would have expected you to have one. You of all people. I don’t even have one. Hardly anybody does.”

  Carole hit the stop button hard and stood staring at the machine. It can’t be, she thought. It just can’t be. Not Naomi after all these years. How could she have found her? How had she gotten the number? What did she want? She looked around to see if Will had heard, but he must not have. He was nowhere in sight. Heart pounding, she brought the answering machine closer to herself and huddled over it, turned down the volume, and then hit the start button again. “Carole, baby.” Oh, the voice, the familiarity of it, as though no time had passed. “Okay, here it is. You’ll never believe what I’ve done. Call me as soon as you get in, okay?” Naomi screamed out the word soon. “This is just so bloody groovy I can’t believe—”

  Carole stopped it again because Will’s footsteps were approaching. He went through the dining room to the kitchen, where he turned on the faucet and let it run a few moments, drank a glass of water, then passed through the dining room to the woodstove, which he banked every night before they went to bed.

  Once he was busy with that, she hit the start button again and listened with the volume lower still. “Where the hell are you? I can’t keep waiting. Don’t ask. Same old thing here.” Laughter. Carole felt ill at the sound of it, at the way Naomi could be so carefree, as if this was all some great big joke when it wasn’t. And the big question begging an answer: How had she found her?

  “Look, I’m going to be away for a few days, but meet me at the class reunion on Friday, okay? You are going, right?” The phone clicked off. And then the last message came on. “Oh, shit. Of course you’re not going. You never go to reunions. Well, you’ve got to come to this one.” Laughter. “I have news. ‘Noose,’ as they say in Brooklyn. We’re going to be neighbors. I’m moving up there. I’ve already found a house and everything, and it’s not even that far away. It’s over in the Shady Rill section. Oh, God, Mason, there’s so much to catch up on. Tons of water under this bridge. I can’t possibly go into it all now over the phone. Ten years’ worth of stuff, can you believe it? But I haven’t forgotten you for a minute, you know. My shrink said I should do zero-base thinking, so I did. Start from nothing, no expectations, no baggage, nothing. Who’s the person you admire the most? he wanted to know. Not now but in your whole life, and I said you right away. Didn’t even miss a beat. It came as a surprise to me, but the minute I said your name out loud, I knew it was true. I know we sort of lost touch, but hey. Oh, God, we had such a great time in high school, remember? All the stuff we did, how close we were? Seriously, though. See you Friday.” There was a long pause. “Be there, Mason, please.” Another long pause. Carole stared at the telephone while the tape rewound, clicked, and buzzed. She’d never once thought it would be Naomi who would find her. She’d thought Naomi was gone, off and married to that guy. Bax, that was his name, living some jet-set life somewhere. She never, ever expected this. Eddie maybe, but never this, never Naomi.

  “Who’s that?” Will said, making her jump. She hadn’t heard him come in.

  “Nobody.” She might have shouted it. “Somebody I used to know.” She felt numb all over, like nothing in her—mind or body—would work. She was caught in a collision of her two lives.

  “I got that much,” he said. “And she’s moving up here—”

  “She doesn’t mean it,” she said.

  “Sounds like she meant it to me. Who is she?”

  “You don’t want to know,” she said, and oh, God, what a lie it was. Her skin was beginning to hurt. Something throbbed behind her eyes. The thing about dread was how it gripped you like an all-over vise, how it obliterated everything but itself.

  “I don’t?” He was grinning at her, expecting her to open up the way she always did.

  She had to say something to stay in the here and now with him. “I think she’s an alcoholic. I could hear it in her voice, couldn’t you? And crazy, if you want to know the truth. Unpredictable. I don’t know what she’s thinking. A real city girl. Born and bred.”

  Will just stared.

  “Well, it’s true,” she said, slapping the table with the palm of her hand. “No matter what you might think.”

  He put up his hands, his old I give gesture. “Whatever you say.”

  “Well, it’s not just whatever I say, Will. It’s the truth.”

  “Christ,” he said. “Okay.” She looked away, her signal that there was nothing else to say.

  After he went upstairs, she listened again to the tape, this time like a thief, turning the volume way down. Then she dialed the operator and asked for Naomi by her maiden name. But there was no listing. Of course. Baxter, that was the husband’s name. But Baxter was his first name. And for all Carole really knew, no matter what she’d said to Will, Naomi might not even live in New York, might have called from some other place.

  She went back to the machine and listened again. We’re going to be neighbors. … I’ve already found a house and everything. This was crazy. She couldn’t possibly mean— Carole dialed the operator. There must be a way to find her, to call and stop her. “I got a call,” she said. “They didn’t leave the number. Is there any way to trace it? To find out the number she called from?”

  “I’m sorry,” the operator said. “We’re not authorized—”

  “But it’s an emergency,” Carole whisper-shouted.

  “What sort of emergency?” the operator said.

  Carole slammed down the receiver. She played the message again: … already found a house. Found! So there! Not bought, only found. That was so much different. There was still time. Carole could hear the liquor for sure in Naomi’s voice this time. She had seen enough drunks to know they flew high on an idea and forgot it in the morning. She became aware of Wil
l again, standing at the door to the dining room, watching her hunched over the telephone like something wounded. “What?” she said. “Why do you keep sneaking up on me like that?”

  “Is everything okay?” he said.

  “Of course it is,” she said. “What makes you think—”

  He raised his shoulders slightly and let them drop. Isn’t it obvious?

  “I might go,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “To that reunion.”

  “You’re kidding,” he said, frowning. “You’ve never—”

  “I know that,” she said. “This is different.”

  “Different,” he said. “Okay. I’ll buy that. When is it? Where do you have to go?”

  She was glad for the solid ground of the when and where questions. “Friday. New York. I’ll call the school to double-check.”

  He was watching her, waiting for more. He gave her a long time, the space she needed to tell him what was really going on. When she said nothing, he came over to kiss her good night.

  Stay calm, she told herself. It was only a telephone call. Don’t take the leap from those phone calls straight into some full-blown catastrophe. And it was a drunken telephone call. She’d seen plenty of those at Chacha’s, usually women at the pay phone late at night dialing one number after another. Not a snowball’s chance Naomi would really come here to live. It had been nuts of Carole to even consider the truth in that. This was one of Naomi’s crank calls.

  She went directly to the nearest mirror to look at just exactly what Naomi would see. Not the chubby full-faced sixteen-year-old. No. She looked long and hard at her image. Her hair was pulled back from her angular, very serious face. She looked worn for twenty-six. The other women at the reunion would be much better preserved. Naomi most of all. They would already be thinking about saving their faces, and it would show. Carole had fine lines at the outer edges of her eyes, between her brows, and around her mouth, but she liked the age that showed in her face. She liked the speed with which she was getting through life.