Any Rainy Thursday

by Jessie Salisbury

  “Yeah,” Connie said. “He’s a bit odd.”

  Althea felt a small pang of guilt, of conscience, for not saying more, but she couldn’t bring herself to really elaborate. It was all still so tenuous. “He plays a whole lot of instruments. I’ve never heard a harmonica quite like he plays one, or pan pipes.”

  “I don’t know what those are.”

  Althea laughed. “An old fashioned instrument, sort of a flute thing, but the one he has is modern. He also plays the guitar and a banjo, but what he studied in school was the flute.”

  “He plays for you?”

  “Sometimes.” Althea imagined Connie’s thought – how romantic, serenading you, but Connie said, “I knew he was an odd one.” She turned away. “Glo mentioned some of that, how much he’s into music.”

  Althea didn’t ask when Connie and Glo had gotten together. “I’ll have to think about going to this performance. It’s to benefit the Food Pantry, so I should go.”

  Connie picked up the poster from where she had dropped it on the counter. “I’ll put this up.”

  “Okay.”

  Connie regarded the placard for a moment after she had fastened it to the patio post. “The note said he’d be gone. Glo says he’s in and out all the time. Does he travel for work?”

  “Sort of, I guess. He’s a consultant of some sort. Computers.”

  Connie turned around and looked searchingly at her for a long moment. “You really like him, don’t you?”

  Althea laughed shortly. “Maybe I could.”

  “Don’t let him hurt you, honey.”

  She wondered just what Glo had said about him, what they had talked about, and why they had discussed Miles. “I think I can manage, Connie.”

  “Just be careful. I’m not sure you can trust him.”

  “I will be. I don’t think Miles is serious.” But she wished for a moment that he was, that she could be sure that he was. “Except about music.”

  “You can’t trust that minstrel kind,” Connie said. “You know all those old stories.”

  She did, and she tucked Connie’s concern and advice into the back of her mind.

  ~ ~ ~

  The apple festival was held in a small park on the edge of the neighboring village, a pretty stretch of lawn with a bandstand, a couple of flower beds and a few old trees. Althea found a seat away from the collection of booths and tables, a space on the low stone wall that bordered the back of the open space, a spot from which she could watch the performers in the bandstand. They were as she remembered them—animated, energetic, and crowd-pleasing. She relaxed and simply enjoyed it, letting the sounds wash over her, engulf her, without thinking about it or the players. As before, she knew most of the old songs.

  She watched as the musicians collected their instruments and left the bandstand, greeting the next group of performers. Miles stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked around, obviously searching for her. She got up and went to meet him.

  His grin was broad, enfolding her and relief and pleasure was in his voice. “You came.”

  “I did.”

  He slipped his arm around her shoulders, gently steering her away from the festival. “Let me put the guitars in the Jeep and then we can find something to eat.”

  That “something” turned out to be hot dogs, French fries, and onion rings served from a locally owned food wagon. She piled her toasted roll full of chopped onions and relish, the only way she really liked frankfurters.

  Miles led her to a picnic table. “This isn’t my usual meal,” he said. “But I guess this is where you eat hot dogs.”

  “Or at a ball game.”

  He took a generous bite of his sausage. “I don’t do ball games.”

  She laughed. “I don’t, either, except maybe watching the World Series.” She took a small bite.

  “I don’t even do that.” He picked up one of the fat onion rings and regarded it for a moment before taking a bite. “But then, I never imagined myself doing this, either.”

  She dipped a fry into the container of ketchup. “So what did you imagine yourself doing?”

  He ate the onion ring. “I don’t know exactly,” he said slowly. “I guess I had grand ideas when I was in school about symphonies and such.” He glanced at her and laughed shortly. “Or maybe a big record contract. Me and my flute or the pipes or something.”

  She took another nibble of the hot dog. It was much better than the usual such offerings, but maybe it was just the time, the place, and the company. She asked carefully, off-handedly, “So why didn’t you go that way?”

  He regarded the plate of fries for a long moment, selected one, and then said quietly, “They said I wasn’t good enough.” He dipped the potato strip in the ketchup and popped it in his mouth. “They said I’d never make it professionally.”

  She hid her shock and dismay. Who would say that to a young person with such obvious talent? Why discourage anyone’s ambition? Why not just steer them in another perhaps more suitable, attainable, direction? “Who told you that?”

  He picked up his can of Coke and sipped at it. “A couple of my college instructors. They didn’t like the way I played. They said I didn’t do enough studying of those old instruments I like to play. I skipped the history and just studied the instrument. That seemed to me to be the more important part.” He took another swallow, sighed deeply. “I didn’t fit their idea of a proper musician, I guess. I didn’t want to do anything the traditional way.”

  “So they discouraged you?”

  “Yeah.” He took another couple of bites, still not looking at her. “I always did like mechanical things, fixing stuff like your irrigation pump.” He glanced sideways at her. “So I changed my major to something else.” He picked up the soda can again. “And did my playing outside of school. I still do. With people like Andy. Where nobody criticizes my fingering or anything, where they don’t care if I know the background of the music. We just harmonize.”

  She said softly, searching for words of both comfort and encouragement, “But you do like what you do now, don’t you? You always look like you’re really enjoying yourself up there on the stage.”

  “It’s fun,” he said. “I like the guys. And we usually do something like this, raising money for somebody or some cause. That helps.”

  “But it’s not what you wanted. You haven’t really accepted that.”

  He took another large bite of his hot dog. “I enjoy it. I really do.”

  “Sometimes you have to just go along with what happens to you.” She paused a moment, choosing an onion ring. “I wanted to play the church organ like my grandmother, but I never managed to learn it right. It was all beyond me. Even with her helping me.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t look at her.

  She didn’t know what else to say so she asked, “Do you have another event coming up?”

  “Andy manages that. He just tells me when or where we’re going. If I can make it.”

  “You don’t always?”

  He looked up and grinned at her, his usual lighter mood returning. “I haven’t missed one yet.”

  “And you’ll let me know when the next one is?”

  “If it’s in the area. Andy sometimes takes us down Boston-way. Friends of his we sit in with sometimes.”

  “That must be exciting.”

  “Different. I usually learn something.”

  He stuffed the last of his hot dog into his mouth and said after a minute, “And I’ll be gone pretty much all next week. I don’t know when I’ll be back. The company I’m working for wasn’t very definite about the scope of the project. I guess they didn’t know.”

  “Does that happen very often?”

  He shrugged. “Places like to get work done before the end of the year, before the holidays
. Budgets or something. And it is the end of October.”

  “Almost.” A fear tightened her chest. Was he saying that he wouldn’t be coming back?

  “So I don’t know if I’ll be around next weekend or not.”

  She couldn’t comment, couldn’t say she wanted him to come, that she would be waiting for him. She said, “I’ll miss your poetry.”

  “Just my poetry?”

  There was a wistfulness in his voice, a longing that she responded to. “You do have a way with words.”

  “With words.” He picked up the last onion ring. “Maybe now that you know all about my past, my failures, you aren’t interested anymore.”

  “I haven’t done too well myself, you know. Music-wise.”

  He kept his gaze on the empty paper plates. “I never told anybody that before, what the professors said. I just told Ted that I thought computers or something would make more money.” He laughed shortly. “I was right about that. And I still refuse to starve for my art.”

  “But it doesn’t leave you fulfilled.”

  “Nothing yet has done that.”

  She waited. His pronouncement had been so flat, so final, as if he expected nothing ever would. “So why are you telling me? If you never told anyone else?”

  He scooped up the crumbs of the French fries. “I guess I wanted you to know why I’m like I am.”

  She asked gently, “Why? You have kept it inside so long, letting it eat at you, color your thinking of the world and everybody in it.”

  He looked up and met her gaze for a long moment. “Because you’re different from everyone else. You understand the music, why I have to play, why it doesn’t matter what other people think.”

  “You care what I think?”

  “Very much.”

  She digested that, considering it, and watching him recover his composure, become his usual jaunty self again. “I’m sorry, Miles. For you, what happened to you, what they said. I do think you play well. For me.”

  “Always for you.” He sighed, in his usual dramatic fashion, pushed himself to his feet and began gathering up the plates and napkins. “I will be back eventually.”

  She couldn’t ask when, but she wanted to know.

  “And now I guess I have to go. I’ll walk back to your car with you.”

  She had to be satisfied with that. He had withdrawn into his other world again. When they reached the car he slid one arm around her, held her close for a moment, and kissed her lightly. “My Bonny Thea. I will think about you while I’m gone, slaving away.”

  “You know where I’ll be. Where I always am.”

  “I will think about you in the arbor, even though now devoid of its roses.” His eyes twinkled at her, more green than gray in the sunlight. “You are rose enough.”

  Flattered as usual by his gallantry, she returned his smile.

  He opened the car door for her and helped her slide in. “Take care, Althea.”

  “And you, too.”

  “I always do.”

  The sad note was back in his voice. She almost thought of it as despair. She watched him stride away, and then she drove home. There was nothing else she could do.

  IN THE RAIN

  With Mavis helping at the stand, Althea spent part of the next Saturday afternoon in the pumpkin patch, grateful for the water that had made them plump and thinking kind thoughts of Miles and what she might say when he came again. She put aside her nagging doubt, her uncertainty. Of course he would come. When he had left her after the festival, he had sounded so resigned to what had happened to him, she’d felt his sadness and it had hurt. It pervaded her own thoughts.

  Next week it would be Halloween, so she chose the biggest and best of the pumpkins for display in front of the stand, and arranged them artistically with sheaves of corn stalks at either end of the patio. She wasn’t totally pleased with the effect. She set out bushel baskets of fresh-picked apples, McIntosh and Macoun, both red, and golden delicious. In another week, a farmer up the road would bring her a selection of heritage varieties, banana apples, greenings, Romes, winesaps and Baldwins, and a few of the newer variety, Paula red. A little later he would have the northern spies, the winter apples so beloved by her older neighbors who claimed they made the very best Christmas pies. His was the only old orchard left in this section of town, the others all replaced by houses or simply abandoned to the deer. Those newcomers who planted a tree or two in the yard chose the new, smaller trees that were easier to care for.

  She offered only locally grown apples. Those who wanted Granny Smith or one of the many kinds she couldn’t name could go to local supermarket. Inside the stand, she had a wide variety of colorful and fancy gourds, and some of Glo’s pears, which they had determined were Bartletts.

  Althea was as ready for Halloween as she could be. Halloween, the start of the holiday season. She did not feel the excitement of the coming festivities as she usually did. She sat in the arbor after closing, sure that Miles would come. She waited until after dark, and went home cold and disappointed, her heart sore.

  Nor did he come on Sunday, a day she spent quietly, waiting on the few customers who came by. She decided she needed a day of rest. A real day off. She knew the listlessness, the disquietude, was a reaction to Miles’ departure, but she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to miss him. He had disrupted her life, unsettled her routine, and made her think about the world beyond her gardens, something she didn’t want to do. But he had filled her soul with music and her heart with his poetry. Now he had taken that away and left her wanting more.

  Did he really say goodbye? Did he decide he couldn’t trust me after all? Does it bother him that much that I know his past, his hurts? After all he said, is he that distrusting? Doesn’t he need somebody who does know him, somebody besides his cousin? Somebody who can see him, beyond those people who had hurt him?

  She didn’t know. A loneliness settled around her heart, a heart that had finally begun to thaw, to warm toward Miles, to appreciate him and what he had to offer, what more he might give her.

  ~ ~ ~

  The first half of the last week of October was unseasonably warm, but the local farmers appreciated the dryness to finish collecting the last of the hay. Ed mowed the lawns one more time. The maple trees were in their final blaze of glory, backed by the variety of yellows and oranges of the other trees. The oaks were beginning to turn purple. The wild asters were in full bloom, and the many pots of mums she had set out along the driveway seemed more vibrant than usual, and in a wider range of colors, from creamy white and bronze through lavender to deep crimson. Althea felt the coming autumn through the heat and was both sad and exhilarated.

  She had pushed Miles into the back of her mind, and sealed her heart against him. He had been just a passing fancy, someone wandering through her summer, as ephemeral as the breeze. He hadn’t been real. She was, as Glo had told her in the beginning, just his current fantasy. She told herself so. Several times.

  Thursday dawned chilly. It didn’t really rain, it was more like mist mixed with an eerie rising fog. With the clouds thickening through the afternoon, Althea decided to mulch the flower beds along the hedge before the promised showers, get them ready for the inevitable cold weather. When she finished, just before dark, the mist had turned to a light rain, but it was still warm enough to walk in, and Althea accepted the invitation. She needed to clear her mind and there would be few, if any, opportunities before next summer. She undressed in the back entry as she usually did, left her clothes piled haphazardly on a chair, and stepped outside into the cool dampness. She stood with arms raised, letting the gentle rain collect on her face and run down her arms. She reveled in the freedom of her nakedness. She wanted to go farther, out into the yard where the mist was heavier, but her innate modesty required that she wear clothes, even though her
e, at the back of the house, she could see no neighboring lights. However, the rose arbor, where she intended to go, was too close to the road. She knew, deep down, that no one passing could see her, even if it wasn’t yet really dark, but she couldn’t go naked.

  She shrugged into the old T- shirt she kept hanging on the back of the door. It was much too large, reaching almost to her elbows and falling in folds to mid-thigh, but it was not restricting, as close to nudity as she could contrive. She slipped her feet into a pair of flip-flops and went out again. She walked slowly around the end of the house and onto the side lawn, savoring the heady scents of the evening air: mown grass, pine trees, and damp earth. The mist grew heavier, and there was just light enough left to see the hedge. She strolled that way, indulging her love of the rain, of her home, that all of this was hers.

  The air was chillier than she expected, making her shiver. All day it had seemed like lingering summer but now she could feel the chill of fall. Sadness crept over her, the thought of winter cold when she could not be outside, the time when her beloved gardens would lie silently waiting under the blanket of snow. Winter was a time to dream, but she had little to dream about. Miles had not come back and she had no one else. And I don’t want anyone else. He’s the one who has given me back my dream.

  She walked slowly, overcome with longing. I shouldn’t be out here alone. There should be someone with me, or waiting for me in the arbor. That was her long-cherished fantasy. Someone else who would enjoy the rain as she did. She had been alone too long, without a partner, with no one to share her heart, her aching soul, and her body.

  The opening to the arbor was in front of her, a darker place in the shadowy hedge, and it drew her in as it always did. She sighed, stepped toward the waiting darkness and into Miles’ arms as he emerged from the arbor. He didn’t speak, simply enfolded her against him, his face against her neck. She reacted without thinking, slid her arms around his neck and raised her face for his expected kiss, a long, lingering, gentle embrace that warmed her heart. He came back. I knew he would.