by Bruce Jones
“Of course,” the father replied emptily.
FOURTEEN
Richard’s biggest surprise was his sense of freedom.
Not that he didn’t miss Allie, he did; he missed her company, her humor, her take on life and her quick wit. But far from feeling lonely, he relished his new solitude.
Maybe that wasn’t completely it. He’d known plenty of solitude, he was a writer. But he was quick to learn the advantages, the easy pleasure of doing what one wanted when one wanted and how one wanted to do it. Even if it meant just lazing about, coming and going when it suited his schedule without the constant dovetailing of hers.
The death of a loved one, or divorce or even separation from a wife was supposed to be one of the apex contributors to depression. And thought its shadow stalked the penumbra of his thoughts, it never came closer than that. Richard found himself worrying more about how Allie was making out in La-La Land than how he was maintaining here in Topeka.
“You look good,” Maser told him in his office.
“My last test?” Richard said, buttoning his shirt.
“No, Rich, you. You look healthy. It’s very vexing.”
Richard gave him an alarmed look.
Maser grinned. “Maybe it’s a good thing Allie left. The bachelor life seems to suit you!”
“We aren’t divorced, Maze. It’s just a time out.”
Maser was staring out his own office window, only half listening. “…would we ever get together at all without hormones,” he was saying, mostly to himself
“Maze?”
“What?”
“Let’s go shoot some hoops. No, let’s go play tennis.”
Maser turned to him. “Really? You feel well enough for that?”
“Absolutely.” Then after a moment: “Why are you staring at me like that?”
Maser shrugged, shook his head. “Amazing. The new Richard Denning.”
“So how about the new Richard Denning and the old Bobby Maser break out the old rackets, what do you say?”
Maser was back at his again, back in work mode. “Mine needs restringing.”
“I’ve got an extra.”
“I’ve got patients. You go on. Take your new body and your new life and discover newfound vistas.” He sounded a little wistful.
After a moment, not looking up, Maser said, “Why are you staring at me like that?”
Richard shrugged into his coat jacket. “We didn’t get them, did we, Maze?”
“Get what?”
“All those things we wished for when we were kids.”
Maser’s eyes jerked up just a fraction faster than they seemed to want to. He looked suddenly vulnerable. Then he was back at his paperwork. “Surely you, of all people, aren’t complaining.”
“No. But you were.”
“When?”
“Just now, about not being able to play tennis, chase vistas.”
“Take your immortality and get out of here, I’m busy.”
“But not happily.”
Maser turned a page from a green folder before him. “If you’re so goddamned bored, Rich, why don’t you just do it?”
“What?”
“You know what.”
He did know. “I already called her.”
Maser looked up again. “And?”
“Answering machine. She isn’t married anymore, by the way.”
“I can see that by that stupid look on your face. So go see her.”
Richard rocked back on the balls of his feet once, hands in his jean pockets. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
Richard retreated to the office door. “Because you can’t go home again.”
“Fucking writers. That the way you feel about the rest of us?”
“You know I don’t. It’s not the same.”
Maser slapped the sheath closed and went to file it. “No, indeed it’s not. Nothing stays the same. But different can be good too. Different can even be better.”
“Maybe.”
“What have you got to lose, Rich?”
Richard had to think about that awhile. He left the medical building thinking about it, was still thinking about it on the drive back home.
It seemed, for some reason, a good question.
* * *
During the next week he finished the story about the dog.
He thought it was pretty good. There had been no really viable short story market in years but he hadn’t written it for money, he’d written it to see if he could still write.
Of course you can write, he thought, sitting in his little study watching the pages print out beside his computer. You wrote it to see if you would write.
And he had. Which is why he was bothering to print the thing out, to remind himself, have tangible, hard copy proof of the fact. Writers were insane. Every newly begun blank page was a fresh terror. And he was happy to be among the dysfunctional. Happier still to once more be a functioning dysfunctional.
Richard reached over and took a sip of coffee gone cold, listening to the pages being spit out with mechanized preciseness. If only his mind could work that way, spit out the pages all neat and ready in a tray without all the attendant brain-bashing in between. He glanced at his study window and saw the green Volkswagen parked in the driveway next door at the house the Seasons family had lived in when he was a teenager. He’d seen it before, parked under the shadow of the garage eve, but paid it no mind. It came and went as any neighbor would. Not until this moment did his beleaguered mind put together the fact that he had no next door neighbor, that the house had been for sale for months now, the lawn overgrown, weeds unattended. Meaning the occasional presence of the green Volkswagen meant either a realtor or an interested customer.
Richard took another sip of his coffee, long ago used to drinking it cold, especially when the writing was going well and he half forgot the cup was there beside him. He squinted at the Volk’s interior, too dark in contrasting bright sunlight to tell if the driver was male or female. Richard got up from his desk, printer still clicking and humming, and went to the window with his coffee. The moment he got there he heard the car’s engine start across the distance between the two houses.
Start, but not turn over. And whoever the driver was, he or she was too anxious or inexperienced to give the ignition a rest; the grinding motor became more shrill with each twist of the ignition until the engine was surely flooded.
The last page spat out of Richard’s printer. He turned, gathered them up, patted them vertical atop his desk to make them even and completed the process with a black metal clip to keep his little masterpiece together. Then he set it aside, his mind already on another idea. But the grinding sound from next door was becoming distracting.
He went to the window again, stared out, draining his cup. Glancing at his watch and noting it was still early enough for another cup without it keeping him up tonight, he descended to the kitchen and the Mr. Coffee machine. Somehow he found himself getting detoured in the front hall, heading toward the front door instead of the kitchen, opening it and walking across his front lawn to his empty neighbor’s house and the green Volks sitting silently now in the drive. Its driver was slumped back defeated in the seat. A woman, Richard could now see.
“Hey. I think it’s flooded.”
She didn’t answer him, didn’t look up as he approached, just put an elbow up on the side window ledge and a hand to her temple, hiding her profile. Richard sensed apprehension.
“I could take a look under the hood, if you like.”
She sat there a moment, left hand still masking her face, finally dropping it as if giving up hiding, as if hiding was more embarrassing now than being seen. She turned in the seat and looked up at Richard and became Laurie Seasons.
Or no, surely her daughter; Laurie couldn’t possibly still looks so young.
“Hello, Richard.”
Moms and daughters can sound alike. But not that alike.
“Laurie?” As if he still
questioned it, as if he didn’t know perfectly well who the green Volkswagen’s owner was.
She smiled shyly then, and threw thirty years of memories at him. Had he actually forgotten how beautiful she was? The rich summer air was suddenly hard to breathe.
“My God,” he said, as nothing much else would come to mind.
Her smile, still slightly tinged with apparent guilt, widened a fraction. “Yes.”
It was all that needed saying; yes, it had been a long time.
How often had he dreamed of this moment? How more ill-prepared for it could he be?
So many questions, his throat felt choked with them, mind quickly approaching overload. Laurie. At last. Laurie Seasons. Still-lovely Laurie.
“You look wonderful, Richard.
Oh, sure he did. “Sure I do.”
“You do. So…young! Much younger than I anticipated.”
Anticipated? Really? Her too?
“Thanks. I had cancer.” It just came out. Like she was still living next door and they still told each other everything. He hadn’t yet mentioned it to Allie, and here he was blurting it to his old girlfriend. “Old,” but hardly old.
And she was smiling even brighter now, nearly laughing, looking even more like the Laurie of his youth. Of course: she’d thought he’d been joking. Like always.
No, I really had cancer! But he let it go. Better she really thought he was joking. Not a good way to renew an old friendship, over fatal illnesses.
He became aware of the sun on the back of his neck, how stifling her car must be without the AC running, even in the shade. “I really think it’s flooding,” he said, “why don’t you come in for a few minutes?”
His heart seized with the sudden terror he’d come on too strong; that she would decline.
She did make him wait there for a few indecisive seconds—there were doubtless a million things going through her pretty head—before nodding “Thanks,” she finally said, pushing open the Volk’s green door.
Then she was in sunlight. Never kind to even the best of us, it made no allowances for his old flame. The lines and wrinkles the car’s interior had masked stood revealed. As did the sprinkles of salt and pepper in her otherwise raven black hair. Richard wasn’t sure how this could possibly make her more beautiful; he was only aware that it did. His heart played him strange tricks. Where had he read that?
She wore a faded t-Shirt and cut-offs, clearly not dressed for visiting, with flip flops and just a smattering of make-up. Her legs were shorter than he’d remembered, but tanned and shapely with the still-perfect ankles. And the still-perfect waist that probably said: no kids. He smelled the natural oils in her hair in the sun’s heat. He wanted her. Right there in the driveway.
Richard became aware he was staring.
Okay, though. She was staring too.
A sublimely awkward moment.
* * *
Inside the house his own AC felt abruptly too cool, annoyingly so. He wanted it warm again, even hot, so he could smell her. He was already imagining tasting her.
“What are you drinking?”
“Whatever you are,” she said, looking about his living room. “Is your wife at work?”
He could have said merely yes and not been lying. He found himself saying, “Away for a while.” Also the truth but somehow more of a lie.
Richard got down glasses from the kitchen cupboard, filling them with ice and Coke. He hesitated, then got down the Mt. Gay Rum, unscrewing the top. He hesitated again and recapped it, placing it back on the shelf. Something had just bloomed in his mind, clear as yesterday. He crossed the kitchen to the living room again, wondering if she’d sense it too.
He handed Laurie her glass.
She took it, already beaming at him. “You probably don’t remember—“
“I do remember,” he grinned above the lip of his drink, “the lawn mower?”
Did she actually blush a fraction? Hard to tell there in his living room, his eyes not yet fully adjusted from outside glare. “You had just moved into the neighborhood. The big yellow Mayflower truck was still in your driveway. I was mowing the lawn out front, looked up and saw this skinny, long-legged kid with a waterfall of black hair helping her parents carry boxes in from the family car. You wore cut-offs and t-shirt then too, only the t-shirt was red.”
“Yes.” She seemed very pleased.
“I ran over my foot with the mower.”
She looked aghast. “What!”
“Watching you move back and forth between car and house in those cut-offs, I ran the mower over my foot.”
“Richard!”
“Ruined the tennis shoe, didn’t touch the foot.” And he laughed and she joined him and her laugh, maybe more than anything, got him deep down. Let me kiss you, he thought. And she stopped laughing and looked away shyly as if he’d said it aloud.
“And then you came over,” he said. “Came swinging across your front yard into our front yard, very confident and sure of yourself.”
“’Swinging’?”
“Your hips, anyway.”
She smiled at herself. “The rest of me was in a state of utter panic, believe me.”
“No.”
“Oh, yes. I had to keep swallowing to moisten my throat so I could ask you. You scared me half to death.”
“No.”
“Then when I got closer I thought, oh, God I thought, he looks all wrong. This is the boy I’m going to marry and he doesn’t look right at all.”
“You really thought that?”
“While I burbled something about my father wanting to know if you’d cut our new lawn for us because our mower was still on the moving van.”
“Was that true?”
“Of course not. I was maneuvering. I mean, the mower may have been on the silly van, I don’t remember, but the whole lawn cutting thing was just an excuse. I wanted to get a close look at this boy next door who was staring at my ass as I unpacked.”
And they both laughed again, Richard unable to remember when laughing had felt so good.
“And then what?” he said.
“Then it was your turn to come up with the lame excuses. Remember? ‘I’ll have to ask my folks,’ you said. Oh, brother!”
Richard spilled some Coke laughing this time.
“I thought, ‘ask his folks to mow a lawn? What kind of wimpy boy is this?”
“But you said ‘okay’, anyway.”
Laurie nodded. “Said ‘okay’ and accompanied you into your house so you could ‘introduce’ me to your parents.” She shook her head wryly. “Really lame, Richard.”
“Oh, yeah? If it was so lame how come you followed me inside here?”
“Because I was hoping they weren’t home. That either you already knew that or had forgotten. It was the former, right?”
“Of course. I was maneuvering.”
And they both laughed again; couldn’t seem to get enough of laughing there in the old living room.
“So, you went straight to the kitchen and made us both Cokes and I said, ‘where are your folks?’”
“And I said--?”
She looked at him, not smiling now and not at all shy. “ ‘Away for a while.’ You just remembered.”
“Wow, was I slick or what?”
“And then you handed me my Coke.”
Laurie took a sip from hers now. Richard joined her.
Then he said, “And then I kissed you.”
“Yes. Barely.”
“Barely?”
“On the cheek. Very chaste.”
“Yes. I was sure you’d hate me.”
“I was thrilled. To my toes.”
“But you handed back the Coke and left, practically ran.”
“Not quite. Only made it to the front door—only just my hand on the front door knob--then I turned around and came right back to you.”
“And took the two Cokes out of my hands.”
“And took those hands in mine, and put them around me. And put mine around you.
And kissed you back. On the mouth. And then I ran.”
They each looked past the other’s shoulder, remembering it, smiling wistfully.
“But you came back,” Richard finally said.
“Well, somebody had to. You were never going to call! I waited over a week by the phone.”
“Umm…more like three days, I think.”
“Four days! And six hours! I was furious!”
Richard shrugged a smile. “I was scared to death.”
She grinned. “Think I wasn’t? I couldn’t sleep. I looked like the walking dead. It was awful. My father was sure it was the flu. I could my parents talking about me downstairs.”
“What did they say?”
“Dad said, ‘She’s got the flu.’”
“And mom?”
“Mom said, ‘She’s in love, George. Live with it.’ That’s when I got out of bed and marched over here and banged on your parent’s door.”
“Actually, I believe you just walked right in…”
Laurie thought a second, shrugged. “I’m sure I banged at least once. Your mom was making dinner in the kitchen—roast beef, I remember the smell—your dad was reading the paper here in the living room.”
“What did he say when you came charging in loaded for bear?”
Laurie giggled. “He didn’t even look up from his paper. He just turned a page and said, ‘He’s in his room.’”
Richard chuckled. “You were lucky. Mom never would have let you go up there alone.”
“Much good it did me. Your door was locked.”
“I was…busy. Didn’t stop you from pounding.”
“Politely knocking. Until you finally opened up a crack. I’ll never forget the look on your face…”
“I’ll bet. I think it’s time to stop reminiscing now, Laurie. So, you live on a farm now?”
“You were all pink. I thought you had a fever. I was sure you were dying.”
“Is that why you almost knocked me down coming through the door?”