Uncertain Ground

by Carolyn Osborn

  “Celia!”

  “Yes … yes, Mother.” What was he doing in Leon? I’d written him, told him I was in Galveston. “Mother, when was he—? What time did he—?”

  “About eleven, just about two hours ago. I would have called you then, but I had to run out and stop the yardman. You know how he is. He was supposed to just trim the nandina. He’d nearly cut it to the ground and was moving on to the bridal wreath. I had to tie strings on things to show him where to stop. Then I needed to get lunch ready, so I called you as soon as possible afterward.”

  It was about seven hours by car to Galveston from Leon. If Tony drove straight down, he’d be there by that evening. If he stopped to rest. … He’d driven hundreds of miles already.

  “Was anybody with him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He really needed some sleep. I don’t know which one of us looked worse. He’s a good-looking boy, but he’s a wreck. I thought I should warn you he was coming your way.”

  I thanked her, hung up the phone, and went back to the couch like a small dumb animal going back to a familiar spot. Emmett had already gone out prowling around somewhere. Aunt Bertha must have returned to her nap. She’d shouted down to ask if everyone was all right. By that she meant, if no one’s injured or dead, don’t wake me. Long distance calls, to the Chandlers, generally meant trouble.

  Lying on my back, the book open on my chest as though I might weigh the hollowness down with it, I remained numb. For a while I stayed there, breathing normally, but feeling as inert as the carved wooden ladies holding the coffee table on their heads.

  When Bertha woke from her nap about two and came down, I went upstairs to reread Tony’s last letter, which I’d hidden in my suitcase. He didn’t give the slightest hint he’d come. School was still in session. There were no holidays I could think of in August. I remembered Alicia Dorman’s letter well enough. Tony was seeing his old girlfriend again, and I’d been sure he was more interested in her availability than in my distance. How could I be responsible for luring him down to Texas? I’d been so unhappy that I hadn’t trusted myself to write him after tearing up my angry letter. Had he guessed someone had told me about Judy? I wasn’t sure I even wanted him to come. Why was everything so complicated?

  I kept going over the hours, the simple mathematics of his arrival in my head. It was one when Mother called after lunch … if he’d left Leon when he’d checked by the house around eleven, by six or seven, depending on whether he stopped to eat or sleep and how fast he was driving, he would be in Galveston. There was no way, as much as I tried to guess, to know exactly when he’d be there. Knowing exactly, I was determined, would have helped some, an idea that kept circling around in my head.

  Luis called about the movie we were supposed to see that night, a re-run of Show Boat that had just come to town. I made excuses. A friend had suddenly decided to drive down. I didn’t say whether my friend was male or female, the only dodge I was capable of inventing at the time. I certainly wasn’t going to invent a fake cousin.

  Aunt Bertha had to be told. On my way to the kitchen I eyed the phone wishing I could talk to Alicia Dorman, but I couldn’t call her from the house. In a family where only death and disaster messages were delivered long distance, I couldn’t ask permission to phone a friend in Colorado just because I needed to talk, which was all I could admit to Aunt Bertha. I didn’t want her to hint to Emmett that Tony was particularly important. He was simply someone I’d known in Colorado who’d decided to come to the coast I said.

  “He must have gotten some idea in his head. I didn’t ask him to come.”

  Aunt Bertha gave me a knowing smile. “You’re sure you don’t want your friend to stay here, Celia? You could move back to that empty bed upstairs, and your friend could have the couch.”

  The mere idea of going back upstairs to sleep by Emmett’s side again made me furious.

  “No.” I blurted, then caught myself, and added, “No, Aunt Bertha. You’ve got enough company already. He can stay at a motel … the Jack Tar. That’s the nearest one, isn’t it?”

  I edged toward the downstairs bath and jumped into my bathing suit while still talking about how comfortable Tony would be at the motel through the half-closed door. Then I moved out of the side door as fast as I could. I couldn’t stand the idea of Tony Gregory staying at the house, not with Emmett hanging around leering and asking rude questions, not with Uncle Mowrey and Aunt Bertha watching our every move. No matter what they might happen to think of him, they would be. … Oh, they would be forever there, too close to us in one room or another.

  What right had he to turn up without any kind of notice? Why had he gone to Leon when I’d written him two letters from Galveston? Probably it was my fault, or he would say it was. I must have neglected to say how long we were staying. He could have called me in Leon, and Mother would have told him where I was. What kind of surprise did he think he was going to spring on me? Didn’t he realize she’d call? Questions swarmed in my head. I couldn’t understand why he acted as he did. I never had been able to.

  Walking fast toward the Gulf, wearing a beach jacket over my suit, I was carrying only a towel and a few dollars in one pocket. Finally I found a pay phone in a drugstore two blocks from the seawall. It was hidden behind a pile of pink beach balls, the kind people bought for their children when they came down for a weekend, cheap ones they could afford to leave behind or let a sneaky wave steal.

  I got some dollars changed and pushed coins in the phone with shaking fingers. In my hurry I dropped two quarters on the floor, so I stood on one while raking the other toward me with my foot. Repeating the number to the operator, I prayed that Alicia would answer. It wasn’t likely. There were about fifteen girls living in the same house. I let the phone ring ten times before someone I didn’t know told me she was possibly in class. Whole minutes ticked away while I waited for the girl to look around.

  “She isn’t upstairs,” the same voice with a midwestern accent said. “Could I have her call you?”

  “Yes. … No! Tell her Celia Henderson called. I’ll … I’ll get in touch later.”

  A clerk, a woman who had a heavy looking pile of dyed black hair spilling around her high pale forehead, the same one that changed dollars for me, asked as I slowly walked out, “You get your call through?”

  I nodded. It made no difference whether I had or not. What good would it have done to talk to Alicia? Some. Maybe she could have told me what Tony had been doing lately, if he was still going out with Judy, if he’d said anything about taking off for Texas. What if she didn’t know the answers to any of those questions? Talking to her would still have helped; she could have, at least, commiserated. I would have loved talking to Alicia.

  I tried to think of Tony as only a boy driving in my direction, a boy who had somehow decided he had to see me. We had agreed he might come down to Texas at Thanksgiving, but that was four months in the future, and the whole trip was totally conditional, based on how one or both of us might feel in November. I’d planned to see him—if he came—on home territory in Leon. Instead he was coming to Galveston which, for me, was uncertain ground at best. Emmett would be hanging around. Aunt Bertha might resume worrying and watching as she did when we first came, and Luis— Where would Luis be in all this?

  I walked on down to the Gulf, and without wading around on the long shallow slope, and swam deliberately out to water just above my head. Moving parallel to shore, out of reach of the low tide’s waves, I could swim as much and as hard as I wanted and what I wanted was to swim beyond thinking, to be so physically strained my tumbling questions would stop. Unfortunately I found I couldn’t swim that hard. The more I decided not to think about Tony showing up, the more I thought about it. By suppertime I couldn’t eat.

  Emmett noticed; so did Aunt Bertha. Uncle Mowrey either didn’t see the plate of food cooling in front of me or tried not to. I was getting ready to leave the table when the front doorbell began ringing.

  When
I opened it I could see Tony was practically leaning on the bell. I usually got a good deal of pleasure just looking at Tony Gregory. He was tall and fair, and he moved surely, aware of himself but not posturing. His face was generally animated. He smiled easily. Tonight his features were drawn, his forehead flushed with heat, and his chin, lightly stubbled. Fatigue had worn such shadows under his blue eyes that his face looked bruised.

  When he saw me he slumped against the doorframe, reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “Found you.”

  Unable to say a word, I waited before him, almost paralyzed by conflicting emotions. I’d wanted so much to see him while I’d been so sure I should forget him. I wanted to trust him, but he wasn’t trustworthy. Now here he was. I held my right arm out toward him like a child frozen in one of the strange positions we used to assume when we played statues. Impulsively I moved toward him.

  Before I could touch him, Aunt Bertha’s voice rose behind me. “The poor boy. Bring him in, Celia,” she insisted as if she thought I should try to carry him in the house.

  I swung the door wide and let Tony step into the hall. Quickly I introduced him to Bertha who was still clucking in the background. “You look exhausted. Come in. Come on in. There’s plenty of supper.”

  He swore he was too worn out to eat. After he made his excuses, I drove him over to the Jack Tar. Its sailing ship sign, placed above the building, blinked on and off making the ship look like it was rocking across neon waves.

  “God! Make it quit!” Tony said.

  I led him to his room. We didn’t say much. He was too weary, and I was still half-numb. Promising to return when he called the next morning, I drove the car back to the Mcleans’ house. The black convertible, impractical for traveling, still smelled new even though it had been driven through most of Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle and the entire length of droughty dusty Texas.

  In the morning Tony was still a little groggy when we met for breakfast, but he was able to tell me before he’d had coffee that he’d quit law school. The course in procedure was more than he could bear. I couldn’t tell whether it was the course or his own willingness to quit which decided him. Some of both, I guessed. His parents didn’t know yet. He hadn’t said anything to them; he just got in his car and drove to Texas to tell me.

  We were eating in the same diner Luis had taken me to the night I ran away from the Balinese. Somehow its shabby tidiness was comforting; the row of revolving stools covered with slightly peeling light green plastic, the chrome napkin holders all polished and shining in each booth and, just beyond the last seat at the counter, the pie display—two glass shelves of precise triangles of chocolate meringue, lemon meringue, and cherry with a lattice crust on top—all appeared to promise that someone was in charge, and the day would continue in an ordinary fashion. Tony had already complained that his eggs were too hard, a familiar fault of cooks in Texas as well as those in Colorado. He was lamenting fry cooks in general when a big broad-chested man who might have been a truck driver or a wharf worker came in. Obviously a regular, he said “Morning,” to the waitress who immediately placed a cup of coffee in front of him. Surrounded by calm, I grew calmer.

  After he’d finished his coffee, Tony reached across the table and took my hand. “I guess I should have told you, should have called and told you I was coming.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I couldn’t take the time—”

  “But you had to stop now and then.”

  “Celia, I can’t explain it. You…you were out there, out in front of me. That’s all I could think about.”

  I was flattered, then angry at him all over again. Sitting in the same place where I’d sat letting Luis comfort me, I could feel my contrary impulses rising. I wanted Tony to be there, and I wanted him gone.

  “Let’s go back to the room.” He pulled a Do Not Disturb sign out of his back pocket and grinned.

  I shook my head. I was mad at Tony, mad at myself. Earlier I wished for him, yearned for him. If he’d been there a week before, if he’d gone with us to the Balinese Club, I would have stayed on the dance floor next to him. Now, across the table from him, I chewed hard on a piece of toast and tried to wash it down with tepid coffee. So many miles away from me, he’d been a memory; here he was a lover, one I realized I’d begun to put aside. I’d almost escaped when he turned up to make demands. Anger made me wary. I wouldn’t go back to his room with him. Instead, keeping well away from Luis’s house on West Beach, I showed Tony the Galveston Luis had shown me.

  We walked almost to the end of the pier Luis and I had walked, drove to the wharves, took the ferry to Bolivar, ate lunch at Gaido’s. Tony was interested only in the food and drink. He was pleased to be able to stroll into a bar at noon and order Scotch before lunch. Other than that, the pier was boring, the sea, a strange sandy brown, the wharves were nothing more than stink and decay. The ferry, though a relief from the heat, was repetitious. Tony chaffed against everything except the one bar I took him to and Gaido’s which he found civilized. Despite the picnics we’d had in Colorado and the two brief hikes we’d done in Estes Park, Tony didn’t really like the outdoors. He vastly preferred being in any air-conditioned room, preferably a bar or bedroom, and he would not really talk to me about his future. If I brought up cooking schools, he said the Cordon Bleu was in Paris, which was too far away from me. As for those in this country, he couldn’t think of one in Texas. Law school couldn’t be discussed. Texas was too hot and dry; otherwise he rather liked the state. He had no intention of calling home anytime soon. Perhaps I should call. It was my fault he was there, he teased. Without ever mentioning the motel room again, he cajoled. And I decided, yes, I still yearned for Tony. I understood that he was more worn out and more worried than he cared to show. Even if he didn’t see the city as I did, I still liked watching him move, seeing his eyes crinkle when he laughed, feeling his arm around me.

  I told him, of course, I still loved him. At the same time I told myself I couldn’t trust him. He was way too unhappy, too moody. He’d quit school, gotten in a car and driven two days to see me without bothering to call first. He’d pulled off to the side of the road, slept four or five hours in his car, washed his face in filling station men’s rooms, eaten in cafes he could neither remember nor wanted to remember. All this I was supposed to understand, even to admire the hardships he’d gone through to reach me but why, I asked again, couldn’t he have used just one telephone in all three states he passed through?

  “What if I weren’t in Texas? I could have gone back to Tennessee to visit?” We were walking back to the car from Gaido’s. The afternoon sun soaked the asphalt in the parking lot, bounced off the cars around us.

  He smiled. “You were though. You wrote me from Galveston. I went to Leon first because you didn’t say how long you were staying.”

  “That is so crazy! What if you’d gotten here, and I was involved with someone else?”

  “I would have turned around and gone back,” he said, laughed and added he didn’t think I was.

  I didn’t tell him about Luis. What was there to tell? We’d spent some time together. Tony had been spending time with someone else. Judy? She was just someone he knew, had known for years, an old flame, an old friend, someone to have a beer with now and then. I was the one he had to see. Romantic as it appeared, I couldn’t believe him. What was he trying to prove to me, to himself? I wouldn’t go back to the Jack Tar with him. I could see him only if he would give up trying to get me to bed.

  “We’ve been so near to it, we might as well have slept together. …”

  “I can’t stand worrying about pregnancy for weeks.”

  “I can use something.”

  “Girls get pregnant, even with … with rubbers.”

  “You won’t.”

  “You don’t know. You can’t make that kind of promise.”

  He was furious. So was I. We were caught in a trap we’d made for ourselves. I thought perhaps he’d leave. Instead he took me to
the Mcleans’ late that afternoon. I knew I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t want to have to talk to Aunt Bertha so I got in the tub and stayed as long as possible trying to soak away weariness.

  In an hour he was back. We sat in his car next to the big palm. I saw he was as miserable as I was, and I still couldn’t bear the idea of him driving off alone. He wouldn’t go with me to the beach or to a bar. I agreed to go to the motel with him. We would not make love, he promised.

  Trying not to grin, he hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob. The room was dark. The long twilight had begun; little glimmers of daylight mixed with neon from the ship sign crept around the edges of the curtains. The bed was neatly made. He’d been there taking a shower, he said.

  I laughed thinking how we’d both been under water while we were apart. There was only one chair in the room. I sat down on the edge of it while he mixed a Scotch and soda.

  He sat on the bed drinking quickly, watching me, saying little, then quite deliberately, put the glass down on the nightstand.

  “Come here.”

  I shook my head.

  He walked over to me, knelt and began untying the shirt-tail knot I’d made in front. I’d changed into a fresh shirt and shorts, the same sort of clothes I’d worn every day on the island.

  No one had totally undressed me since I was a child. We had almost made love, our clothes half on, half off, somewhere in Estes Park one rainy afternoon. I remembered he had the same expertise before. I remembered also that we hadn’t even kissed each other but once since he arrived.